"Bella?"
"Hmm?"
"Can I ask you something?"
"Anything."
"Do you ever feel…"
"What?"
"I don't know, exactly.."
"What is it, Meda? Are you alright?"
"Do you ever feel…broken, kind of? No, incomplete. Like you don't belong here? Like there's a part of you…missing? That you can't ever, ever find, that you might not know is gone unless you look for it? That nobody around you is saying what you think is right and you don't know why?"
"Of course not, Meda. That's silly, you shouldn't think that way. You're only nine, you don't know anything about anything."
But she lied. The answer was "Yes." And perhaps if she'd told the truth, she would have been given an answer concerning muggles that might have changed her views of her sister forever. Or shown her the truth. She might have been warned, might have headed off the almost inevitable events of the future with her own admission to 'weakness'. She might have admitted. But she didn't. She lied. And lying was something she – and her sisters both – was very, very, good at.
0000000000000
Bellatrix stood on the edge of the brook that ran along the Black estate, spluttering and tumbling behind the stately mansion. Her dark, unruly hair was loose around her thin face, whipping around her shoulders with a brisk breeze that fanned her curls out around her head like a black halo.
"Bella?" The voice, soft and unsure, came from behind her. She didn't turn around. "Bella?" Andromeda crept softy up to stand beside her sister. The two girls stood silently, staring into the river where they were reflected, looking for all the world like twins. "Bella?"
"What is it?"
"Cissy says she couldn't find you at all this morning. Now you're down here all by yourself. Are you OK?"
"Don't listen to Narcissa. I was in my bedroom."
"No, you weren't, because I-"
"Just drop it, OK?" Bella snapped, her bitter, rough tone surprising her sister, who lapsed into silence. "Why don't you go away."
Andromeda nodded, and slipped silently into the grey evening mist, bare feet running through damp grass towards the house.
Bellatrix sighed when she heard her sister had gone. She gazed up at the sky, the reddish light from the fiery sunset reflected in the cloudy violet, turning them red as a snakes cruel beady ones. She slowly sank onto a rock that was glazed with the spray from the brook, not minding the dampness that sank through her black skirt. Propping her chin in her hands, she tossed a pinecone out into the dark depths of the water, watching the resonating ripples with unblinking eyes. When all traces of the pinecone had diapered, she bit her lip to stop herself from crying. Blacks don't cry. But the lack of tears did not necessarily mean lack of emotion, something her youngest sister Narcissa – now almost seven, a perfect china doll forever on display – did not seem to realize quite yet. Narcissa, with a unshakable desire easy in one so young, seemed to strive to eliminate all feeling from her sheltered world. But she did not understand, thought Bellatrix. It does not matter what you feel as long as nobody sees you feel it. And here, in the snow –tinged woods, was the only place she could safely feel. And although she sat motionless on the rock, in the caverns of her mind she paced, uncertain. She felt restless, disturbed. Unnatural in the cobweb-hung, snow-filled clearing that had for so long been her refuge, strange in the silence of their bitter dinner table, awkward around her sister, her long time confidant. She felt different, sharp cornered around the polished edges of her family. She cold not resign herself to them anymore. It was December and snow was piled high on the frozen grounds. In a years time, she would be at Hogwarts. Hogwarts. Maybe there it would be different, better. Maybe in a years time she would forget the burning ache that throbbed deep inside her, a longing – not quite realized, harbored for more then a year now, fueled by newspaper clipping, eavesdropping and dreams – that twisted in her mind in a ball of fire and glass. Maybe by next December it would all make sense. Perhaps. But perhaps not, perhaps not ever. But she knew that she would carry the heavy weight insider her chest forever, because it could never truly be quenched.
She had only just turned eleven, and already the unshakable Black blood ran through her veins, dark and pure out on to the white snow, melting it and staining it with impurity and salt.
