Just a little fic I got inspired to write after watching MrArthurLestrange's YouTube video "The Black Sisters | So Cold". It got me thinking about the Black sisters when they were younger, and how they all must have loved each other once. Also, I haven't written anyting in a while, so I'm sorry if it's not quite up to par with my other one-shots or the characters are a bit OOC, Bellatrix especially.
I suggest listening to "So Cold" by Ben Cocks while reading this.
In order to save the ones we love, we must sometimes hurt them beyond forgiveness of ourselves.
"You need to leave."
Andromeda turned around quickly. "What?"
Bellatrix stepped further into the room. "I said you need to leave. Tonight. Now."
"I don't underst-"
"I know about your affair."
Andromeda carefully wiped her face of expression. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Stupidity does not become you, sister. I saw you with that Hufflepuff mudblood on the platform. You let him kiss you."
Andromeda felt her heart leap into her throat. "Bella, please don't tell mother and father. Please, they'll kill him!"
Bella locked her jaw. "I'm telling them tonight."
'Dromeda's eyes widened and her breath caught. "You wouldn't. You won't do that to me. You know they'll disown me."
"As they should," Bella's sneer cut through her like a knife. "You're a disgrace to the name Black. You've allowed that filth to touch you. You're too tainted for Seth Parkinson now. You know mother was arranging for your engagement to him. Now you're ruined."
"I'm not!" Andromeda exclaimed. "Ted and I haven't… we haven't done anything that matters."
"Liar. Do not forget who raised you 'Dromeda. I know you. You've given him everything that matters."
"I'm not lying! Please, Bella. I'm your sister!"
"You are filth! You're disgusting and vile and I can barely stand to look at you! Seth will take one glance and know you are beneath him. You will pack your things and leave this Manor and you will never return!" Bellatrix turned to leave.
"Bella, please!" Andromeda stepped towards her sister's retreating form and grabbed her arm, only to reel back when Bellatrix turned around sharply and slapped her hard in the face.
"Get out! Get out of this house, get out of my sight! Bloodtraitor!" Upon laying her eyes on her sister's shattered expression her fierce one wavered for just a moment. "I will give you thirty minutes to gather your things. Then I will fetch mother and father. By the time we come for you, you had best be long gone." With that she swept from Andromeda's bedroom and into her own across the hall.
Andromeda felt herself falling. She sobbed despairingly, utterly broken by her sister's betrayal. She had known Bellatrix believed strongly in Pureblood supremacy, but she had never thought it would surpass her love for family.
She took a shuddering breath and stood up, her knees shaking. She pulled out her wand and quickly started magicking her things into travelling cases. She knew without a doubt that Bella would hold true to her word, and Andromeda could not be here when her parents descended upon her. She tried to keep at bay the memories of her and her sisters as little girls in this very room, imagining their lives together. Their husbands, who would be dashing, loving men who would give them the world. Their children, who they swore would all be born at the same time and grow up the best of friends. Their family, which would continue to stand strong for many generations.
Andromeda had no idea of what her future now held, but she knew it no longer included the impossible fantasy she had once dreamt up with her sisters.
The clock struck seven, signalling that it had been twenty-five minutes since Bellatrix had left her. 'Dromeda looked around her room once more and despaired at not being able to say goodbye to 'Cissy, who would surely not understand her reason for leaving.
However, not having the time to think about such things right now, Andromeda gripped her bags tightly. With a loud 'crack!', Andromeda Black disappeared from Black Manor.
Bellatrix forced herself to turn around and stride back to her own room. She slammed the door immediately, not allowing herself to turn around.
Once the door was closed Bellatrix found herself unable to walk any further. She leant back against the door and pressed her ear against the dark wood. Andromeda's desperate sobs sliced through her body and she covered her still tingling hand over her mouth, as if trying to jail her own cries inside her body. She would not allow herself to cry. She would not.
The clatter of things moving around her sister's room could be heard. She was packing. Good.
Bellatrix slid slowly down the length of the wooden door until she was sat curled up against it on the floor. She pulled her hand away from her mouth.
"It was necessary." She whispered shakily into the darkness of her room. "I…I…"
Her sister sobbed once more.
"I'm sorry, my sister." Bellatrix closed her eyes. "You were wrong. You have given him your heart, and that is what matters. I will not allow you to marry a cruel man who does not love you. I will not allow you to…" Bella opened her eyes once more, thinking of her own betrothed, "…to suffer my fate."
Bellatrix new what awaited Andromeda in a loveless marriage with Seth Parkinson. The man was notoriously cruel and had already been married two times over, both wives having mysteriously gone missing. It was a well-known secret amongst the Pureblood families that he had rather extreme methods of keeping his wives in check.
Bellatrix would not allow her sister to become another terrible, scandalous whisper in the dark. An indecent topic of conversation at the dinner table. A story gossiped about by Pureblood housewives who have nothing better do with their lives now that they have exceeded their usefulness as a broodmare.
Better them be talking about Andromeda's traitorous affair with a mudblood openly, rather than discussing her murder in the shadows, until she is eventually forgotten.
Bellatrix was not committing an act of heinous family disloyalty. She had absolutely nothing to feel sorry for.
Still, the thought did little to comfort her when a loud 'crack!' sounded from the room across from hers and an overwhelming grief flooded through her, making her gasp from its force.
Her entire body wracked with sobs she tried desperately to suppress. Tears spilled from her eyes unwillingly, breaking the impeccable composure Bella clung to desperately.
She allowed herself ten minutes to lose control. To grieve for the sister she would hopefully never see again. Who had always been slightly better than the rest of them, because she held a light in her eyes that could not be blotted out no matter how hard their parents had tried. A light that Bellatrix herself thought she once possessed, but could feel slipping away with each day that went past.
Then Bellatrix forced herself to stand. She wiped her porcelain cheeks and positioned a blank, uncaring look upon her face. Bellatrix left to find her father.
She would not cry for her sister anymore.