Chapter One ~ Black Heart

Bellatrix Black had been quite a society jewel when she was young. Pureblood, beautiful, Dark in a way that, back then, was rather alluring, as it became in time for her youngest sister. Andromeda had been very similar in many ways. She looked rather like Bella, and was rather close to her. Perhaps, the old families said to each other over cocktails at high society events, not quite as Dark as dear Bellatrix, but a Black nonetheless. A lovely addition to any family, they smiled, and glanced at those who had unmarried male heirs bitterly or boastfully.

Narcissa was really rather the icing on the proverbial cake for her parents. Three daughters to marry off to young, eligible men, and perhaps Cissa was the most beautiful, but the other two had the look of the Black family, carelessly, elegantly good looking. Rather like Sirius and Regulus.

Narcissa Black was always rather close to Regulus. He was quite close to her age, and funny in a very sarcastic, Slytherin way, rather like herself. Also like herself, he rather embraced darkness - as they all did, Dromeda and Sirius less so, but they were Blacks and so darkness was a part of them.

When Cissa and Reg were both very young, they talked about taking over the world together. "Purebloods in charge," said Reg. "No Mudbloods or Muggles," and Cissa had nodded vigorously because they didn't need scum to step on.

When she was a little bit older, Bella, who she loved lots and lots, as much as Dromeda, got called into their mother's room far more often. Bella could be vicious after those long sessions in there, and sometimes she'd kick the house elves down the stairs.

One of them broke its neck once. Mama had laughed and said something about knives.

Bella went to Hogwarts and got Sorted into Slytherin, and while Mama didn't do anything as silly as gush, she did smile slowly and tell Papa that he could trust her with Bella. After that he had nodded when Bella ripped her room apart at Christmas with a mixture of magic and madness and simply said, "Lovely, Druella."

A couple of years later, when Cissa and Reg were seven and quite grown up really, Mama talked to Andromeda, the same long talks that happened behind closed doors and Cissa and Reg couldn't hear what they said as Bella still had.

The first time, Dromeda had been a little bit off when she came out, until Mama went to bed and then she had screamed once, and Bella had hugged her and said that they were Blacks.

Sirius became, if at all possible, more of a sullen rebel than before, and when he came round, he only talked to Dromeda and sometimes Bella, the three of them shooting little glances at Cissa and Reg in the corner talking about how they couldn't wait to go to Hogwarts as long as they weren't with any Mudbloods. Purebloods had magic, simply. They were better.

Sirius and Dromeda went to Hogwarts the next September, and Cissa and Reg waited eagerly for their letters home. Dromeda's arrived first. She said she was in Slytherin, but Sirius was in Gryffindor. All the Slytherins were really nice but some of the other Houses were awful and prejudiced. Sirius said hi if he passed her in the corridor but Houses didn't really talk. Bella was fine. Cissa had frowned at the letter and her father had taken it, read it, passed it to her mother, let her read it, took it back and threw it in the fire. Then all of them had gone over to Reg and Sirius' house, and the adults had talked over their heads and said it was an Outrage and should they write and demand he be reSorted.

When Dromeda had come home for Christmas, Sirius hadn't come home. He didn't leave Hogwarts all year, and then at the end of the year he had stepped off the train, better-looking and taller and very, very tense. All of the girls in first or second year sighed as he sauntered over, still so tense, and Cissa took his arm and tossed her long hair. Their parents had hustled them off the platform, all of them back at last, Bella, Sirius, Dromeda, Reg and her. She had sighed contentedly. Sirius had stayed in his room for most of the summer, and no matter how many long talks in his Mama's room he got, he never took down the Gryffindor banners and Muggle photographs plastered on his walls.

Dromeda took to spending the time that wasn't in Mama's room in her room. She didn't play with Cissa any more no matter how nicely she asked, and Bella played odd games sometimes now. She laughed at the most obscure things with a note of almost hysteria in her voice, and seconds later she could be collectedly moving through to the dining room and curtsying to a Malfoy or a Greengrass or Parkinson as a demurely Dark little thirteen-year-old, old enough for her parents to be thinking about marriage now. And they did.

While Bella and Dromeda were back at school, Narcissa began to have those talks with her mother. At first it was merely about Pureblood supremacy, and Mudblood filth, until one day Mama had come home from a meeting with a glint in her eye, breathing heavily, and dragged her into her room.

"Do you know what pain is, Cissy?" She had spat at Cissa, who was all of ten years old, who had swallowed and replied with only the slightest quiver in her voice, "It's - it's when you get hurt, isn't it, Mama?" Her mother had laughed in a far more terrifying way than Bella did, and breathed from behind her, "Pain is so much more," with an almost loving twist to her voice, "This is pain, Narcissa Black," and whispered Crucio and she had screamed and collapsed to the floor, shaking with the feeling of red hot pokers tearing her apart, cutting off her limbs and agony searing through her as she thrashed around, still screaming, screaming, screaming, shaking until she was so exhausted she could no longer move.

She had no idea how long it was that she lay there, sobbing brokenly, but when the pain vanished her mother hissed at her to get up and she couldn't. She just twitched and took her ragged breaths in gulps. Mama hauled her up and threw her into her own room, and told her to come down for dinner in half an hour (had it really only been a couple of hours?) and she lay on the floor in her crumpled dress and sobbed because her mother had just tortured her and made it hurt - you have to really mean it - and pulled herself together and replaced her dress with a dining sort of dress and made her way down the stairs very carefully. Her Papa was home for supper and he looked at the way Cissa wouldn't look at her mother and her hand shook as she lifted her glass to her lips and said to her mother that perhaps she was going soft to have waited so long. She had shrugged elegantly and said he didn't really think that or he'd have taken matters into his own hands.

He had laughed and said she was absolutely right.

When Bella and Sirius and Dromeda had come home over summer, she had learnt not to scream - "be quiet, stupid girl" - and they had stepped off the train and all three had looked at her and Sirius had patted her - and Reg - on the shoulder and Dromeda had hugged her. Bella had waited till they were home before all three of them had held on to one another so, so, tightly because that was all that was left.