A/N. This is another one that I found on the ol' laptop and was quite happy with, so reviews would be so appreciate.
I really hope that you enjoy it.
MBRB'xoxo
There is a point in every persons' life when they realise that everything they have ever known is going to change and it is never going to amend itself. Time is shifting and whirling on and it pays no heed to the fact the people and the feelings it heaves with it may lose each other in its chaotic motion. It's usually in that hideous time of late childhood when you see the sharp reality that adults don't hold the answers to everything and not everybody is a pleasant. It was around this time that my sisters and I were forced to say goodbye to the past and become independent. Gone were the days when we were not three people; but a single entity. One mind, one body, one name. The three witches together.
Things had been out of sorts for a while and there was a slow build of unease in the pit of my stomach. A storm was brewing within the family just as it had been with the usually still weather of the manor that we had grown and lived in. My quill was scratching against the parchment in time with Andromeda's as we both sat in a troubled silence that neither of us was particularly used to but it was something that was becoming more and more common; whenever Andromeda walked into the room, anxiety entered with her. Giggling broke the rhythm of our writing and footsteps began to creep up the stairs in the unmistakable way that a drunk tries to sneak into a house. Bellatrix was home. A smile broke over my face as and my eyes rolled by themselves as I heard her slip and fall on the wooden staircase, her chuckle becoming louder. Andromeda glanced up vaguely at the closed door of my bedroom which separated us and our intoxicated sister and the continued to write. Bellatrix's face soon peeked round the side of my door with her eyes sparkling and a smirk on her pretty lips.
'What're you doooing, Cissy?' she sang, her voice filled with laughter.
'I'm wriiiiting, Bellatrix' I sang back to her. Her thin body slipped through the doorway and threw herself onto the bed next to me where she began to read the letter that I was composing over my shoulder.
'Ohhhhhh Lucius, heyyy? What's happening with blondie?' she asked as she nudged me with her shoulder playfully. My lips formed a coy smile and I felt my cheeks flush with embarrassment. Lucius and I were writing nearly every day and my thoughts were always with him. I knew that we were going somewhere. This didn't seem to satisfy Bellatrix though, and she moved on to Andromeda in search of juicier gossip. As she looked over the edge of the bed where Andromeda lay on her stomach writing, her face dropped and the mood in the room went from frosty to positively icy.
'Why're you writing to him again?' Bellatrix asked, her voice low and dangerous. Andromeda didn't even flinch, let alone supply and answer to our sisters question. 'I told you that he's filth.' Silence. 'I told you he wasn't worthy of you!' her anger was bubbling inside her and I could practically see it spilling from her. Oozing through her skin. 'I TOLD YOU to stop writing to him!'.
The next thing I knew, time was playing it's tricks again, flying past and spinning me on my head. Memories flash past me when I think back to that evening when everything changed. Andromeda snatching up the parchment that contained her love-sick words. Venomous words being spat. Bellatrix pursuing Andromeda down the long hallways of the Black manor. Slaps being given in exchange for a love declaration for the wrong kind of blood status. And before I knew it, I was stood in the doorway of the Black manor with wind whipping around my face as my sisters screeched at each other, their tones dark and hateful. Suddenly, a climax of voices and yelling came to a sudden halt as both sisters tried to catch their breath. With their chests heaving, the only sound that could be heard was the snarl of the wind as it thrashed around them, pushing between them and shattering any bonds that had remained between them.
'You don't love anyone but yourself, Bellatrix' Andromeda finally said, her voice quiet and cold.
'I loved you more than that mudblood ever could' Bellatrix retorted her voice equally as cold and distant. My eyes were filled with tears that refused to spill. How could I shed tears over this when it couldn't truly be happening. The image before me didn't connect to the reality that I knew couldn't be so easily shattered.
'Loved?' Silence followed her repetition of the past tense. And then; 'I've chosen him.' And then I knew things had changed. When the harsh, cold cackle that spilled from Bellatrix's lips hit me like a sharp slap around the face. This wasn't the warm, alluring giggle that I had so frequently heard coming from the raven haired sister that I loved so much and was so fascinated by. This was like a web of malevolence trickling from her lips and wrapping itself around me, draining away the memory of the three girls who sat together as one and cackled around a toy cauldron. This new person who had suddenly seemed to appear between Andromeda and I shocked us both, and I have always thought it to be the spell that broke the muggles mind, so to speak. Andromeda turned and walked into the darkness of the night, apperating when she reached the borders of the mansion in a twist of liquid night, leaving me with the coldness of my sisters sinister laughter.
As the years passed, I didn't hear from Andromeda again. Neither of us did. This was something that I tried not to think about, but you can't help your thoughts running away with you at times. When you're not looking, all the memories you so carefully pushed aside, locked in boxes and built walls around peek out from their secreted corners and veiled windows. Memories have a habit of doing that – sneaking up on you. Bellatrix turned from the loving, mischievous girl that I grew up with into a battered, broken soul. There were aspects of her personality that ebbed away from her as time moved away from the little girl. The playfulness that she once possessed no longer existed. The songs and music that flowed from her little lips was stopped altogether and the dancing... Bellatrix had loved dancing. As a child she could be found in her bedroom twisting and twirling across her floor to music only she could hear. Her sisters were frequently picked up from their cribs and spun in her arms. The dance floor at a ball was always first graced by her twisting steps, delicate as smoke. Now the only dance that she did was with her constant partner; death. An ongoing waltz. Her dodging his advances and him chasing his partner across the floor. But there were parts Bellatrix that I admired so greatly. They had intensified and become almost a separate person. Her determination, for one. Once set a task, she will sit at it for hours on end not stopping to eat, drink, talk, breath. Until she is told that it has been done to her Lords standards, she will work and work at it. She's the bravest woman that I have ever known. Nothing will faze her when she has a glint in her eye. She will go into the deadliest of battles without thinking about it twice, her corset tied tight with laces and leather that hold her together. There are many things that I idolize about my sister, yes, but sometimes I can't help but feel that if I undid the ties on that armour of a bodice of hers, she'd fall apart and crumble. What a shame we become such fragile, broken things once our support has gone. Of course I was still there for Bellatrix. I supported her like I did anyone who needed me so deeply despite not acknowledging it herself, but occasionally I would catch her eye and look to see who it was. I'd hear her dark cackle and it's like hearing it for the first time – being slapped with it for the first time. I loved her for who she was, but the person that she had become was more of a challenge to care for. She was a shooting star that seemed to be losing parts of herself and intensifying the remainder of what she had as she fell deeper and deeper into the void that is time. She envied time, as time would move on; she would not.
The next time I spoke about Andromeda was when the letter came. Swooping through a window, a black raven landed lightly on the table before me, everything about it dripping sorrow and elegance. Untying the parchment that was attached to its leg with a black ribbon, I read the words written so carefully.
I am sorry to inform you that your sister, Andromeda Tonks nee Black, has passed away.
A funeral will be held for friends and family on the 23rd of this month.
Please contact Mr. Ted Tonks for details.
My heart jumped into my mouth and stopped beating for longer than I thought imaginable. Andromeda was dead. 'Passed away'. The phrase didn't seem to fit. It was like saying she'd gone away. Where? When would she be back? That night that she's last gone away, she'd never come back. And now she never would. Bellatrix needed to be told.
Climbing the stairs of the Malfoy Manor as slowly as I could, the parchment was burning into my hand. Telling Bellatrix that Andromeda was... dead... was like telling her that she really was never coming back. It was like admitting to myself that she was never coming back. I suppose that I had always had a tiny bit of hope. But that was now shattered. My hand knocked on her door without be even thinking about it and I floated into her room in a daze. A similar raven was sat on her desk, an identical letter open and abandoned next to it, and there Bellatrix sat reading a book of dark arts. She glanced up at me much the same way Andromeda had glanced up when Bellatrix had come into my room that last night, and then set about ignoring me. I left without saying a word.
Dressed in her signature black attire, Bellatrix and I had made our way towards the graveside. Crowds of people had turned up to bid their farewells to the apparently popular witch, but they all stayed far from the purebloods with the dark reputations. It was us who had reached the graveside first and it was us who were the last to leave. Others drifted away from us with mutterings of coming back later when they were gone.
'Three little witches all in a row.
Which will be the first that Death will know?'
My thoughts were interrupted by Bellatrix saying the words of her twisted poem – her first words of the day. I had been surprised when she had joined me by my side as I had left to make my way to my sisters' funeral. To anyone else, it would appear that Bellatrix had not made any effort today. Her dress was a simple black one that she frequently wore when there was no battle to be fought and her hair was loose down her back in crazed curls. But I, who knew her so well, could see the extra shine to her hair. I could see that the curls had been tamed, if only a little, and the wrinkles that usually printed her dress had been removed. This was as much effort as Bellatrix was going to go to say goodbye to the forgotten. I was also dressed in black, my hair tied back in a simple style. I had put a black lace veil on when I had been getting ready, but it seemed too hypocritical of me, even through my eyes. I knew that others would be talking about the sisters Black. They hadn't spoken to Andromeda for years and yet here they were at her graveside. No, a veil was too much.
'Two little witches for death to greet.
Who will be the next for him to meet?'
Her dark poem pulled at me once more and I stared at my sister, her hair being picked up and thrown in the wind. Her eyes sparkled as she saw the indignation in my eyes. A soft giggle escaped her lips and she raised a hand to cover her mouth with the tips of her fingers in an almost delicate manner. That laugh... I knew that laugh. The faint chords of history played at me until I pinpointed exactly where I had heard it. That was the laugh of my old Bellatrix. My together Bellatrix that didn't have the fractured wrinkles of madness running across her face. Her laughter didn't stop, just build and built until she was leaning towards me slightly, her mouth wide open with a smile and her eyes dancing with the flames of happiness that had been lit there. But this new music didn't fit her dance anymore. The laughter that poured from her was too sweet for the hard shell that I had known for so many years. And what had happened to this shell? I had always explained her mysterious changing to myself by saying that when Andromeda had left, she had taken the joy and happiness from Bellatrix with her. She'd taken the spark from her eyes, the joy from her laugh and left her with nothing but coldness and that horrendous, cold cackle. I had always told myself that the person that I was left with was beyond Bellatrixs' control – it was who she was but not through choice. And here she was, her eyes shining, exactly how she had been all those years ago. My Bellatrix hadn't gone at all. She had been there all along; the young girl hidden beneath the mess of a woman. And here she was making her big reappearance at the grave of our sister. Three sisters Black brought down to the last two, and there she was writing her own macabre poem about who will be caught by the hand of death next. For the first time in my memory, I was repulsed by my sister. She wasn't who I had thought and accepted her to be – she was the complete opposite. She was who I had always wanted her to be and now that I had her back, she made my stomach churn. The power hungry, dark creature of the night with the fearsome reputation was here standing before me laughing like the little girl that I knew and adored. I had said my goodbyes to her at the same time that I had said goodbye to Andromeda and I had accepted the replacement that I had received. But this replacement was not what I thought it had been and this girlish giggle was as wrong to my ears as the cold, hard laughter that I had grown used to.
Bellatrix, with the wind blowing her hair around her face, leant forward to me slightly and whispered
'Two little witches side by side.
Standing at the grave of the one who died.'
And with that, she threw her head back and laughed hysterically, her face twisted into an out-of-place look of glee.
And there I left her, standing at the grave of Andromeda, just as her little poem had stated. I could no longer stand to feel her presence next to me while I stared at the grave of my forgotten sibling. I said farewell to both my sisters that day. I turned my back on the Black's fallen stars.