Another piece for the Houses Competition. This one, again, is AU - I changed the order that the three sisters are born in. Andromeda first, then Narcissa, then Bellatrix.

Ravenclaw, HoH, Themed piece (jealousy), Prompt: Birth, WC: 2120

The Tale of the Three Sisters

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She was born when I turned three. My innocent eyes staring up into her perfect face from where she rested against my mother's chest, my sister's clear eyes, and her dark mind. She was exactly what my parents desired. Bellatrix Black. Her heart as black as her hair. I sensed it immediately. She was the navy velvet, the blood red apple, the temptation and evil that was the only way to survive in a community such as ours. Andromeda was there too, by the crib our parents had laid her in. Bellatrix screamed for attention for hours at a time, shrieking and bawling, throwing her tiny fists in every direction.

I watched her from my own corner of the room, eyes trained on her pallid face and her heavily lidded eyes, watching the poisoning of her soul begin through our parents. Their thirst for power corrupting her, through genes and blood. Their hunger for dominance in her veins from conception. I know that hunger too, felt it every day. I had always had an ache in my stomach for something more than the less-than-mundane lives we lived. The Black Family Manor was never quite enough for any of us. We certainly weren't disgraced, but there was always more out there to be had. And Bellatrix looked as though she would be the one to get everything and anything I had ever dreamed of, or could ever want.

My parents were not heartless people, nor were they especially unloving. But as Baby Bellatrix grew, their attention from me dwindled.

"Narcissa, I can't play right now," my mother told me, picking up Bella from the crib and carrying her from the room. Her eyes swept away from me even before the speech, watchful over her third daughter. Andromeda was too old to be cared for, and I was the middle child and easily forgotten. Bellatrix was the forefront of their every attention. Her birth had taken my own life away from me. To say I was jealous is an understatement.

"She's a beautiful baby," Andromeda commented to our parents, from time to time. She never understood. She never saw my glares, nor did she ever sense the fury boiling beneath my heavy clothing and thick skin. She never understood how her comments made my mind turn to fury. "Don't you think, Narcissa?" I never responded to those remarks, merely continued with whatever was the task at hand. Building a manor for my dolls, made from silk and magic. Eating my veal. Holding my own hand as members of our family visited to meet the youngest of our family. Beautiful Baby Bellatrix.

It's not in my position to say I was never tempted to just end things for her. When she was reaching for the bookshelves. Balancing gracefully on a stair. Tumbling from an arm of a chair. Andromeda got to her first, as I stood there in the shadows, waiting for the pressure on me to release and for the child to just fall. It would have come as a relief. Fortunately for her, my oldest sister was kind and clever. She was not like the rest of us. Her heart was never poisoned from birth. Maybe I'm envious of that, but certainly not as much as I was of the perfect baby.

"Sissy," was her first word to me. My mother had just shouted at me, maybe a year and a half after Bella's birth. I had never been looked at by the baby before, except for this one instance. Her attention was caught by my mother's shouting. She didn't cry. She didn't smile. She raised one delicate hand and gurgled, hissing the word, snakelike. When I told Andromeda of my concerns that Bella was some sort of spawn of Satan, she laughed at me. Almost unkindly. But I saw the concern in her pale eyes, the crinkling of worry around her mouth. Saw the way her lips pursed. I noticed these things.

"Cry, devil child," I found myself hissing back at Bella one night, tall enough to see into her crib by now. "Cry until your voice is dry and your mouth cannot move."

Andromeda came in and took her away, bringing her from me and to our parents, who I rarely saw. As the middle child, I was lost between two stars and forever stuck in the darkness. I was somewhere between the devil, and the innocence my eldest sister retained. She was the epitome of purity, and Bellatrix was the one on the complete other end of the scale. I had no identity. Her birth had ruined me.

I played by myself for the next year. Andromeda was reading, studying already. She was no Ravenclaw, but clever enough to be powerful. She could churn the clouds with a fingertip if she demanded. Bellatrix could alter the stars if she attempted it, I'm sure.

We grew up in a soundless life. Bellatrix was quietly strong, never demanding attention through her crying or her abrasive words after she turned four, but instead using silence and her magical abilities. She would stand in the corners of rooms, throwing the world off-balance. Saying crude things, like sharp knives tearing through the lives we had created. Our parents didn't see the darkness in the same way I did. When she was four, I watched her being doted on by family members, for her strength, and her beauty, and her ability.

"Sissy," she hollered to me from across our bedroom. It wasn't even marginally a shout, but a request. My head didn't turn in her direction, me being completely unwilling to participate in her games. Then again, her tone more commanding, "Narcissa."

"What, Bella?"

"Watch me." Her voice is stronger, willing me, yet still childish in tone. I turn, half-furious, to watch her, as per her ridiculous request. Hands raised as though she were summoning something from the depths of hell, there was no modicum of surprise when the candle-lights flared and hissed, and the mattress between us crumpled like a used-up piece of parchment. Her hands rested in the air for a moment, smirking triumphantly. Then she let them fall, and the mattress sprang back to its untouched state. Inside me, a cold jealousy curled like flames, but on the outside I was keeping my unimpressed façade. Looking for all the world as though her party trick was nothing more than that, a trick.

"I'm only five. You're eight. What can you do?"

I shrug the remark off, turning away.

Bellatrix taunted me throughout our childhood, but only in moments between us, like that one. She would rarely confront me if anyone else were around. I was always convinced that her secret plot was to eradicate me from life itself - to erase my own sense of self. She asked me what I had, whether it compared to things she would have; what I had to offer the world, if not beauty, or intelligence, or power. The nightmare that was my sister only grew bolder and darker as our altercations lengthened and increased in frequency. Andromeda was gone for most of the year, away at Hogwarts. I was almost convinced that my parents would treat me equal to my sister after that. Of course, I was dealt with more distantly than ever.

I moved silently over stone floors, drew the curtains soundlessly, as Bellatrix moved from our shared bedroom to a separate room. She had bloodlust in her eyes, as she left me, not looking directly in my eyes. It was as though there was a massacre behind me, and it was all she could see.

Andromeda wrote me, though I barely responded. By my tenth birthday, I barely felt alive. Except for the roaring beast inside of me - the one that spat venom when dear Bella spoke, and erupted at one of her cutting remarks, and cursed when she performed magic, and shrieked voraciously when she would dare to look in my miserable direction. She was fire, and I was ice; I was melting under her storm. Bellatrix Black. Born to be every sense of evil, bred to be wicked. Betrothed to Rodolphus Lestrange before either myself or Andromeda had spoke of boys.

She looked more like Andromeda each day, which led me to despise them both. My older sister had even met a boy at Hogwarts whom she liked, but her letters didn't reveal his obscure identity. I was certain I didn't know him, which confused me even more. Usually, our social interaction was limited to the small circle of people our parents deemed suitable. Bella was judgemental, due to possessing even less knowledge, spotting our sister's cheerful gait when she arrived from Hogwarts that second Christmas. Predictably, while I aimed to procure knowledge on boys, friends, and people, Bellatrix wanted to know what magic was taught, and whether she could do it already.

Finally, it was my turn. I was leaving.

Clothing was all packed into a robust trunk, a silver necklace hung around my neck - a present from my father, as a going-away gift. I felt like I was leaving them for good, and not even returning for Christmas. It was an extremely lonely experience, not feeling the love that my parents had so unequally distributed amongst my siblings. Andromeda sat with me on the train, but her friends joined us too. Halfway through the ride, Ted Tonks poked his head into the carriage. I noticed the change in my sister immediately, and felt the familiar rush of burning cold running through my veins. He was so simple. So dull. But he made her smile, like no one had ever made me smile. I was instantly jealous.

"So that's him?" I asked, petulant and frustrated. "Which family is he from?"

"He's... He's not."

"He's not pureblood?"

My sister didn't respond, and, to my young, bigoted mind, that was the end of that. I hardly spoke to her, except when she demurely congratulated me for making it into the house our family had been sorted into for generations. Slytherin welcomed me, but I felt nothing towards it. The ambition reminded me of Bellatrix. The cunning reminded me of her too, of her harsh words and coldness. Of my parents' coldness. Of my lonely childhood, which transformed itself into a lonely youth.

Lucius was somewhat a saving grace. He didn't show me love in the way I saw it bestowed upon others - onto my sister, Andromeda, or practically anyone in Gryffindor house, fully and completely - but in a way that made me feel as though I was living a beautiful life. As though I were caught in a novel. Bellatrix had her betrothal, but I had something more this time. Love. It wasn't fiery, or furious, but measured and precise. He was the good in a world of dark, though he came with his own demons. Only, his manifested in the form of Tom Riddle, The Dark Lord.

Impassioned chaos overcame Slytherin when Bellatrix arrived. As expected, there was rallying around the ideals of dark power. It manifested itself in the form of a man: Tom Riddle in his youth, Voldemort as he aged. There were groups of them, surrounding him and supporting him - though I don't fully believe he was ever a man with heart and soul like the rest of us mortals. Bellatrix loved him, more than she had ever loved her husband, or perhaps in a different way entirely. She loved him, I think, because he too was born from loveless and lifeless people, and because his broken self birthed the red in his eyes, and the blackness in his heart.

Andromeda was long gone by this time. Housed-up with her muggleborn husband, Ted. Bellatrix was imprisoned for her crimes. Lucius and I had our baby, who I tried to love as much as I wish I had been loved. I gave him all that I could, given our status and our financial situation. Yet, when the Dark Lord returned, Bellatrix was favoured again by him - not us, who had stuck by him as silent partners the fourteen years he had been gone. When he returned, we were disgraced.

Although I feel the shame of being disgraced deeply, and of losing status sharply, and the horror of losing my husband to his crimes, there was a little light. Draco was alive. My beautiful son had made it through, albeit a little more damaged than I would ever have wished upon him. For that, I am eternally grateful. Thinking back on it now, with my son safe and home, I am terribly sorry that my sister never felt that unconditional love for someone who held even just a little light.

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Thanks for reading!