Hello, world!
[[I've made some edits to chapter 1 as of Dec 6, 2020.]]
If you a) ship Androtrix, b) fancied Andromeda in Shards of Nuance, c) need to feast on some angst, or d) just need something weird to shake things up - this story is for you :)
Re ship tags: yes, I ship Bellatrix and Andromeda, but also I stand firm with Andromeda/Ted. Relationships are complicated, and that's what makes them exciting. I am often of the opinion that the platonic/romantic/erotic are not so easily separated even when we experience them as such. Herein this opinion lies this here tale.
If you're not into baby Andy and baby Bella, you can skip to chapter 5 for very teenaged Andy/Bella. If that's still not your jam, I recommend chapter 8 and on. I personally like the later chapters better, but I think the beginning is important for the ending.
In later chapters, there are very short excerpts adapted from Shards of Nuance because those events in SON are memories of the past – which is this story. The excerpts will be in italicized blocks unless they have been changed significantly. If they are changed, it's because memory is a lying bitch and not even the Black sisters escape its manipulation.
ALL THIS TO SAY: If you are here and you 1) have read SON, cool, cheers and carry on, 2) haven't read SON, stop, go read SON, and come back here after – but also you do you and don't let me tell you what to do.
FYI, I almost abandoned this project, but Androtrix shippers need a little more love so I've returned with a small supply.
Thanks for stopping by.
After chapter 1, all author's notes will be at the end of the chapter.
For Chapter 1 specifically:I - Poem in the very first section is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
**never have i ever owned or made money from anything as wonderful as the harry potter world. i'm just playing in it.**
"Tell me the story again - the one I don't believe in."
"Which one?"
"About the Black sisters."
An unavoidable snort comes out. "…Which one?" This earns the potential storyteller an unamused glare from the woman across from him. "About Andromeda?"
"Well, it's about all of them."
"But you're asking about it because of Andromeda."
"Not necessarily."
The storyteller rolls his eyes. "You asked me to meet up across the street from the only church in this part of town – an ancient boarded up eyesore with "St. Andrea's Catholic Church" still visible above the front doors, and you want to tell me you're not just trying to hear about Andromeda again?"
The slim shadow from the dilapidated church's steeple falls over the street and both sidewalks, across the table between them, darkens the thick grass, and rests its tiny point at the base of the water fountain. The water fountain is not running. There is no one else and no closer sound than small chatter from an outdoor dining space on the other side of the park.
"Why does it matter?"
The storyteller's shoulders rise and fall with a big sigh. He closes his eyes for a long moment. When he opens them, they have lit up – grey-blue that could be sparkling with stars if one felt romantic about it.
"Where do you want me to start?"
"At the beginning." The asker leans forward on her elbows and then thinks better of it, returning her hands to her lap and her back to the seatback.
"And how far do you want me to go?"
"As far as it makes sense."
"What parts are most important to you?"
A pause filled with distant clinking glasses and a grand toast while the asker tries to decide what she wants. "It's all important. You choose."
The storyteller smiles widely, and his eyes sparkle again. "You're right – it is all important."
In the courtyard, a very young, very tiny Andromeda Black, her brow furrowed in concentration, was reaching delicately toward one of the newborn peacocks. She was also trying desperately to ignore her older sister skipping circles around her and throwing pebbles at the hatchling every time it almost let her touch its crest feathers. The older girl chanted in a singsong voice that was already annoying, even if it wasn't yet the evil affront it would become later in life.
"There was a little girl
Who had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead."
Bellatrix tugged hard on a lock of Andromeda's auburn waves that had fallen over her face and giggled at her frustrated whine ("stop!").
"When she was good,
She was very, very good,"
The older girl tossed her own black curls and leaned in with a sycophantic whisper in the other's ear.
"But when she was bad, she was horrid!"
Unbidden flames spilled from the smaller girl's fingertips and reduced the peacock to a pile of ash in seconds. Bellatrix gave her little sister a taunting grin while the latter screwed up her face as if experiencing all the horror in the world.
"Andy! Bad girl!" Playful derision.
"I didn't mean to!" Andromeda cried. Earnest denial.
"Uh huh. Tell that to Mother." Leverage.
"Please don't tell her, Bella! Please." Desperation.
"What'll you give me if I don't?" Their grand, grand wickedness.
Bellatrix spent most of their early childhood pestering Andromeda about her unstable magic and gleefully tattling on her – that is, until the elf incident.
"The brightest star in my sky." Cygnus patted his oldest daughter's shoulder in an awkward but genuine display of affection.
Bellatrix, not a week away from turning 11, smiled hungrily at the mix of green sparks and smoke dissolving the statue in front of her. She mussed her tumbling curls with one hand and cast the spell again, but this time at her little sister, whom she knew was peeking around the open door. A yelp followed by a foul word that a child that young should not have known earned her an immense amount of immediate satisfaction. She smiled and raised the old family wand again, but her father caught her hand mid-air and slid the wand from her fingers on his way to the door.
"Andromeda!" He pushed the door open to reveal a child almost the mirror of his oldest daughter; only her softly shining auburn hair and impenetrable auburn eyes differentiated them. Barely a year and a half younger than Bellatrix, Andromeda was a much greater challenge. He was glad she wouldn't be going to Hogwarts for another two years since time was proving necessary to help her adjust to herself and her magic; he couldn't afford her unpredictability embarrassing the family. At that moment, however, she looked positively innocuous while sucking a rising burn on her pinky and glowering at her older sister.
"I thought you didn't want to join our lesson today." He was not quite disapproving and not quite welcoming to the small child.
"It looks fun now." Her eyes always betrayed the depth of her thought, even at that age. She did not yet have the language to call something both tempting and terrifying, but she was already well-acquainted with the feeling.
"It is fun, Andy. But you said you didn't wanna play." Bellatrix' eyes – mocking from the day she was born – flashed at her sister.
Cygnus opened his stance to throw a glance back at his eldest daughter. "We're not playing, Bellatrix. We're practicing."
She shrugged and shook bothersome curls from her face. "Feels like playing."
"I wanna play!" A much smaller girl, almost platinum blonde, too young to know anything heavy, too young to carry burdens, and too young to hide anything, rounded the corner to join the others crowding the doorway. Her eyes slid over her eldest sister and her father and came to rest on Andromeda's red, blistering hand. "Andy! Ouch!" She pointed at it.
"It's not so bad," came the girl's quiet response.
Cygnus knelt on one knee and put one arm around his youngest daughter. "Narcissa, I do have a game for you."
Her blue eyes widened, first in delight and then again in concern as she turned toward Andromeda. "But Andy's hurt."
"Yes, and you can fix it."
"I can?" She questioned and let her father wrap her palm over her sister's angry wound and rest his own over both. He whispered a quiet episkey in her ear and let her repeat it. A warm, liquid feeling spread from his palm around and through hers to coat her sister's skin. She felt the damaged skin curl itself back to normal underneath her hand.
That was the first time Narcissa registered her middle sister's pain and relief. It was also the first time Andromeda had the thought that she wanted to do that – what had just been done for her – instead of fight, like her father and older sister were always asking her to do. But it was not the first time that Bellatrix, who had drawn nearer to the trio, cycled through innocent interest and distinctly un-innocent amusement. The middle Black sister let her eyes dart between the other three, wild with a burgeoning, though not yet sharp, awareness of something significant.
Cygnus's voice had a hopeful note when he said, "Andromeda, I do hope you'll join us for practice tomorrow."
It turned out that Andromeda was terrible at dueling spells, and while Cygnus had heretofore prided himself on his patience, many a lesson ended with him throwing his middle daughter out of the room and trying to repair an item or part of the building he had no idea how to repair. It wasn't that she had no skill, and it wasn't that she had no power. Even as arrogant as he was, he already suspected her magic was going to eclipse his own. No, it wasn't that she didn't have power; it was that she couldn't control it – not even half as well as Bellatrix or even baby Narcissa. Still, there was time to learn, and surely he would be able to train her at least well enough for damage control. He never considered that he might not have enough mastery over the family magic to do so.
To the end of equipping his children to master the other purebloods – which he was convinced was one of his main roles as head of the House of Black - right up until the last day before Bellatrix left for her first year at Hogwarts, Cygnus was trying to fit in a last few lessons to make sure she went in holding a significant magical edge on the other students. Recent days had been spent with the great fanfare of parading through Diagon Alley for unnecessary school shopping. Mostly, it was Druella who took Bellatrix and Andromeda (the two were inseparable these days) on these errands, but Cygnus insisted on making the visit to Ollivander's new shop himself.
It was a short trip. While a young, demurring Ollivander paid careful attention to the Black family heir, half a dozen wands of varying shapes, lengths, and components leapt off the shelves at Andromeda, pelting her in the face, chest, and arms. The auburn-haired girl burst into sobs that grew louder when Cygnus heaved her behind him and snapped at the flustered young man to hurry. His subsequent business stop at Borgin & Burke's was thwarted when Andromeda's inconsolable tears caused the ceiling to sprout a torrential leak and Borgin himself emerged from the back to threaten him to get his daughter out of the store. Without a word, Bellatrix gave her father a pat on the arm, took her sister's hand, and led her out of the building to rest against its stone outside wall. Cygnus found them there when his business was done, Andromeda's arms flung around Bellatrix' neck and her face buried in her hair, his oldest daughter murmuring soft words while she held her. His surprise at their tenderness was one of the purest feelings of his life, but the experience was fleeting and totally disappeared by the time they returned to the Manor.
That day's lesson was a disaster. Bellatrix did well enough, as expected; the bent, gnarled wand with a kelpie hair core seemed to indeed match her well. Her natural skill fine-tuned itself almost instantly and stoked Cygnus' lust for vicarious greatness. Andromeda, on the other hand, required almost all his attention and energy with an unprecedented display of volatile magic that almost certainly had been provoked by the events of the day.
He gave her the family practice wand (the one he'd learned on before he went to Hogwarts himself) and she let loose without warning. There were dueling spells; there were water spells; there were fire spells - all cast with children's words: "burn," "waterfall," "lightning," "broken." Then there were spells from guttural sounds. Then there were wordless spells. Bellatrix was absolutely delighted, her eyes shining fervently while she laughed and clapped and eventually dove into the fray of magic to practice dodging. When telltale green arcs began sprouting from his middle daughter's wand, Cygnus roared as he charged around them to stop her. Just before he reached her, the wand exploded in her hand. Splinters of wood spattered them both, and soot sprayed up her arm from the bare doxy wing core twitching in her grasp.
It happened very quickly – all in the moment he paused to gape in surprise. Andromeda threw the wand core to the ground, wound her arm up over her shoulder, and let out a screech of frustration as she whipped it forward in the direction of the portrait shelf. A crackling purple ball with gold specks zipped from her, but before it reached the portraits, a house elf appeared directly in its path to check on the commotion. The elf took the ball of magic straight in the chest, staggered backwards, and collapsed to the floor face down. Cygnus took one look at his daughter, distraught but still spurting out magic, and stupefied her for the first time. By the time he reached the elf, its eyes were rolled back in its head and a hole dripping tar was growing across its chest. He buried it in the Black family cemetery that evening.
Bellatrix slept in Andromeda's room every remaining night before leaving for Hogwarts. Neither of them spoke about the accident, to Andromeda's great relief. During the daytime, their father alternately railed at her at the top of his lungs or ignored her completely, but Bellatrix just held her in the dark, drawing shapes in the silvery-red magic that hung low over them in bed. Waking up nestled in a mess of sheets and her sister's soft, black curls was the greatest safety she felt in those days, and the comfort between young children that Bellatrix offered her shaped her perception of herself and the world as much as her shame over the elf's death did ever after that.
Cygnus never practiced with his middle daughter again. His wife, who was much more measured (and ruthless, if he was honest), took over and never updated him on Andromeda's progress. Druella took her to get her wand early, in hopes that matching with a wand would help the child control her magic. Apparently, Ollivander had flinched when they entered the shop and sequestered them as far as possible away from the shelves. After a few lackluster matching attempts, Druella threatened the man at wandpoint to find a prohibited wand that she was confident he had – how she knew about it he couldn't fathom. Andromeda left with a 14-inch beech with acromantula web core, and Ollivander was placed under a fidelius charm about it that he never did shake, even after Druella died. The wand and the lessons were fruitful, however, and by the time Bellatrix returned home for the holidays, Cygnus was not constantly fearful of his middle daughter burning the Manor down.
The year passed quietly. When Bellatrix returned to stir things up, she found her sisters spending long hours in the library together, matching myths and healing spells to curses and every now and then reading something relatively pornographic out loud in hushed tones - both of which amused her greatly. Andromeda apparently had offered herself to the elves in meek penance, and they now allowed her to work peaceably with them in the kitchen and the laundry as long as she kept silent. Bellatrix, perceptive despite her impetuousness, decided then that her middle sister's unmatched desire to make things right - something that would characterize her the rest of her life - made her more extraordinary than even her magic did.
Narcissa allowed her middle sister to disappear outside on the Manor grounds for hours at a time, but Bellatrix did not. The eldest Black sister followed Andromeda on long, meandering walks, lingering just far enough away to watch but not disturb her. Many years later, Narcissa decided this was the time when the Fates intertwined them inextricably. More than once she wished she had interrupted it.
"I can tell you're here, you know," said Andromeda one day as she rested her back against one of the tall yew trees and began plucking blades of grass.
Bellatrix, who was not inclined to be bashful, took this as permission to waltz into the glade and flop down next to her sister. "Well, at least I don't have to act like I don't want you to know I'm here anymore. That was getting hard."
Andromeda smiled at her sister. She continued peeling apart pieces of grass and dropping them on her legs. A small twitch of Bellatrix' wand and the corner of her mouth transformed them into tiny snakes that slithered across Andromeda's lap. She smirked as the auburn-haired girl shrieked and flung them off her.
"Bella! Ugh!"
"They're harmless, baby girl."
"Yeah, right! Is that what they teach at Hogwarts?"
"No. It's what I learn at Hogwarts." Bellatrix flounced her shoulders and hair. She caught one of the snakes as it wriggled on the ground and held it close to Andromeda, who eyed it suspiciously. "Can you understand it?" She levelled her gaze at those auburn eyes.
The snake hissed with a vague humanity that called to the younger girl. "I can hear it, but I can't understand it. Can you?"
Bellatrix shook her head. "I wish I could. I bet you could if you tried."
"I don't want to be able to speak parseltongue. It's dark magic."
"Not always. What about other creatures?"
"I talk to the centaurs here."
"Everyone can talk to centaurs," Bellatrix rolled her eyes. "And that's as dark of magic as speaking to snakes."
Andromeda grimaced as she watched the snake squirm wildly in her sister's grasp. "It sounds upset, Bella. Let it go."
"I have a better idea." She took her sister's hand gently – much too gently for someone who had just turned grass into snakes – and placed the creature in Andromeda's palm. "Trust me."
Andromeda resisted the urge to throw it away first and clench her fist to end its life second. This gave her enough time to feel the snake cease writhing and quiet its frantic hissing. She blinked several times at it as it curled up and rested its head softly on her thumb.
"See? It likes you better than me. And you can trust me."
"I don't know about that." But she did. That she did.