Clashing Forces

Disclaimer: I don't own HP.

A/N: This is for the Forbidden Love competition with Sirius/Bellatrix. Enjoy!

They were never meant to be, though they were so alike – cousins - because they were so different like the houses they were in. Crimson and gold verses emerald and silver; those colors they were to live by separated them. Bellatrix was water and Sirius was fire. Both could live together or without each other but one thing was for certain; sparks and steam were to appear wherever they united.

They both had violence in their hearts and beauty passed down to them through their bloodline and, when they came together, the storm within them eased and they showed to each other their beauty wasn't just a mask - it wasn't just in their outside appearance. They craved and needed each other; they were addicted really. But as forsworn as they were, it didn't matter to them.

Sure, Bellatrix was cruel, could never be "tamed", yet she could be lovely, kind and so much more. She was like the sea, unpredictable and truly marvelous just the way she was. Sirius was kind, loyal and witty but his tongue could become a dagger and his hatred and temper were not something to mess with. They were yin and yang but at the same time they were so similar.

Each time they visited each other they swore until they were blue that it would be the last time; but when they came together, strong clashing forces - when lips met skin in a heated passion - their words meant nothing and they would come together again to bathe in the steam that they created.

When Andromeda left the family, Bellatrix was a hurricane and Sirius didn't know how to help her. He begged her to let him in, to let him soothe her and to make her feel alive, yet she just cast him away. Her heart was burning with rage; violent - more violent than Sirius had ever seen it - and it didn't seem to ever leave her. Her heart had been smashed like glass and sloppily sewn together. Yet she didn't let him in.

Finally, one day she set forth the painful events to come into the future.

At breakfast one morning an owl with onyx black feathers, reminding him of Bella's eyes, dropped a scroll before him. When he opened and read the letter he felt a pain in his chest and couldn't breathe let alone laugh at a joke James' threw his way.

Sirius,

I don't want this anymore. I love you and I am sure it goes both ways but I refuse to continue this. It's wrong despite our heritage, the motto we were born to keep, and I want power, pureblood supremacy, more than you. I realize that love is a foolish and distracting emotion and I don't want anything to keep me from my destiny.

-Bellatrix

The letter was so shocking, almost like lightning, that he didn't recognize her in this. He didn't-couldn't - make sense of the words before him. They were jumbled, confusing, swirling words that surely didn't apply to his life full of actions. How could they, mere tiny words as flimsy as paper, stop their encounters? Sirius didn't think she was serious at first until almost five months after. She was gone.

There was no more steam, or clashing forces, no heated embraces and sparks. There was nothing. Sirius almost broke his will to remain disinherited but Sirius may have lost so much of himself when she left but he didn't lose it all. He refused to let her change him, yet she already had. He dated more women in that year than all the other years he had been in Hogwarts combined. He swore it was because it was his last year but it wasn't. He just wanted the taste and visions of Bellatrix out of his mind. Sirius couldn't stand anything that reminded him of her and those little flimsy paper daggers of words from the letter.

Water can adapt and grow cold or warm, fit into any container it's placed in, without hurting itself but all fire does is burn itself out into ashes and cause pain and damage to itself and others.

So Sirius, like fire, was left with scars - Azkaban, Bellatrix, Peter's betrayal, James and Lily's death - while Bella grew mad, insane, and she never was left with any scars while she hurt countless others. She was water, the sea, and Sirius was fire, a self-destructive fire. She was spotless and Sirius was a Dalmatian. Bellatrix was broken but healed and Sirius was nothing but a shadow of a man he once was until the day Bellatrix sent him through the veil.

"I love you too." Sirius whispers before he goes through the veil and their story ends. The fire burns into ashes and the water keeps on going.