Disclaimer: If you recognise it, it's not mine.

AN: A sequel to Ouroboros, because Bellatrix won't leave me alone. Draco visits his auntie, and learns a word he never forgets.

Dissolution.

"Everything dissolves; everything dissolves and falls away. Everything degenerates."

She looks at you with wide mad eyes and says, "Everything is crumbling."

You don't know what to tell her. She says, "That day by the lake, and the light turned your eyes so pale."

Though she is bound you want to run away. Her great black eyes are scorched holes in her drawn face. Her clawlike white hands grip the chair. Her pictures are so beautiful; her mouth alone is beautiful still.

"As children we love," she says, "We trap sunlight. Then everything that is felt decays; every dream and pretence shatters. Little fairy girl becomes the hanged bride. Are you listening to me? Dissolution," she says, staring at you.

You say, "I'm listening."

She says, "It is the nature of things." She doesn't care that you are listening. You can hear her rant like this to an empty room, hour on hour.

"Nothing is a still place," she says. "When there's nothing left it's as still a place as if you were dead. He hanged the bride," she says, "he hanged the bride."

She stares at you with those wide mad eyes, and just for a moment her voice is strangely lucid.

"It is the nature of things."

It is a plea for your understanding, but you are six and afraid and cannot find her madness beautiful yet. Your time is up, but for nights to come you will dream her mad black eyes blank but knowing behind a filmy white veil.

Outside, your mother takes your hand.

"Everything crumbles," you tell her.

Narcissa looks at you.

She says, "I know."