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- and all that glitters is gone -
Madness, an Insight into a Black Insanity
She's the baby Black sister, all blonde hair and blue eyes, and Andromeda Tonks is the only link she has left in a world that's turned upside-down and inside-out.
There are pointed silences on the topic of Dark Lords, Lucius is hidden away in Azkaban for a (thankfullyreduced) four yearsentence, and, what's more, Draco's disappeared somewhere on the Continent, needing to escape from the strangulating clutches of notoriety. And his mother.
So Narcissa Malfoy, née Black, is all alone, because Andy's busy with the baby and even though you're sisters it's going to takes some time to heal the rift that twenty years and two wars has created (after all, she lost her husband, daughter and son-in-law thanks to your stupidstupid beliefs).
The Manor isn't home anymore – it echoes, still, with high pitched laughter and the hiss of snakes and sometimes in the night she thinks she sees red eyes gleaming in the darkness. It's all she can do to roll over and close her eyes (because what she sees with her eyes open isn't half as bad as what appears when her eyes are shut in sleep). Eventually, the resonance of evil becomes too much and she flees to the untouched house in Nice, which is silent and safe and far from her mistakes.
But silence is never good for those with busy minds, because sometimes you lose yourself in thoughts and the way back out is hard to find. The rope's been cut and you're driftingdriftingdrifting away in flood of memories and what-ifs.
Afloat in her world of isolation, Narcissa wonders over her dead sister; when it was that Bella went mad, or if, perchance, she was born that way. The more she remembers, the more she thinks, and the more she thinks, the more memories glide to the surface, conglomerating there like oil above water.
She can remember a time when they were very young and Bella threw a tantrum - she's always had a streak of viciousness, if Narcissa is truly honest with herself - the oldest of a family of daughters, she took her position as a leader and what Bella wanted, Bella got very quickly. Cissa had been minding her own business, quite happily watching a butterfly flitter about the garden, when all of a sudden its wings turned to stone and it dropped to the ground, pulled by dead weight. Bellatrix smiled cruelly at her young sibling before storming back into the house, her footsteps accompanied by a tearful wail.
It was neither the first nor last time Bella wreaked tragedy on a living creature; dead rabbits – some pets, some vermin – outside her sisters' bedroom doors, rats left on Regulus' bed, dog tails in Sirius' room - Bella was cruel by nature and cruel by nurture.
Perhaps she was always mad, somewhere in her soul, where it just lurked patienly, waiting for the web of self control to slip completely, aided by years spent in the darkness and horror of Azkaban, eventually poisoning her mind until there wasn't a part of her untainted. It seems that way to her baby sister.
Cissa doesn't like that thought, though, because it means, somewhere deep inside, maybe she's mad, too.
End.
How random. Eh, I felt like writing something about Crazy Bellatrix, and I've always liked Narcissa, so it just sort of ended up like this. I hope you enjoy it, at least a little. And, please, Read and Review Responsibly.