I had to find you
Tell you I need you
Tell you I set you apart

Nobody said it was easy
It's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be this hard

-Coldplay, The Scientist

*

Morning light. A different day, different snow behind the cold glass.

We're a world apart, in here, removed from the swirling flurry and movement outside. Like insects from before time began trapped in hard amber prisons, that's my sister and I, that's this thick golden room.

I break the spell, flutter my eyelashes against the soft pale skin at the nape of her neck. Even when lying so close our lines blend like white and black into grey, we are still inextricably different. We fit together as two halves to the same story, but we stay separate, perfect entities.

She moves, rolls so her long slim back is replaced by that fragile, angular face with the eyes cut from the sky outside; white and grey and blue. I do not avert her gaze, we always look into each others eyes.

-Lucius will be dressing now. I should have been ready an hour ago. I need to check the flowers have arrived at the church, that the bridesmaids have their gowns.

I look into her face, bright as the moon, rippled with anxiety. I look at the shapes of our bodies through the bedcover, Narcissa's fragmented like the bones of a skeleton laid out in a museum, mine as defined and curving as a blue line of frequency.

-None of that exists. Only me. Only you.

Never have I spoken so tenderly. I did not know I possessed such tenderness, such yielding submission. She's rubbed away my hard edges, exposed a honeyed interior that scares me. But, like a drug, I can't help but succumb.

They appear in a rapid succession of phuts, agony from the Mark's burn still fresh on their sallow faces. Shuffling into a tight circle around me, greed and hunger growling through each gut, my own face reflected in each clouded eye.

-You will have heard by now, Death Eaters, that the traitor Bellatrix has escaped me with intent to damage the rise of our Order. I had always known that she could not be trusted and expected my followers to realise this. But you did not. You did not recognize she was allowed to live to test your cunning and faith in me. Even her search for me after my fall was all part of the ploy. You were meant to discover her dissent. Have I not always taught you to question everything to sort the believers from the enemies? You are responsible for her escape and if you want to keep your lives, you will go beyond your powers to locate her. If I find that any Death Eater is harbouring her, or spying to give her information, I will torture him until he splits in two.

I have lied to them before, about certain members who turned away from me. They are of the belief that Severus Snape is a lunatic.

Lucius asks what he is to do if he finds her.

I want her alive and brought swiftly to me, I tell them. She will be kept under the imperious curse and be given the treatment of charms that will create my perfect follower. When the child is born, she will be tortured to her death in front of you all. By that time, the child will have been transformed into a grown man and will cheer as she dies.

-A most excellent plan, Master, Lucius hisses from under his hood.

It is not a plan, I spit. It is a foretelling of events to come. Bellatrix will be found and she will be killed. Lord Voldemort is never wrong. Now go! Find her and bring her to me.

With a murmur of approval, their malleable minds already erasing any memories of a faithful Bellatrix, the Death Eaters disappear as quickly as they came. My lies have become truth. Bellatrix is a traitor, was always a traitor. They were fools to have ever believed otherwise. It is their fault that it has come to this. The truth will spread, convert the rotting mind of every Dementor, Vampire, Werewolf or other dark creature in my alliance. One way or another, she will be caught.

I leave the house and walk across the grass I ran through as she flew free, sensitive eyes weeping in the sharp winter sun.

This broom is so old it powders beneath my fingers. At every movement and shift of breeze I fear it will snap like a brittle bone in the gums of a puppy. My escape has got off to a rickety start. I hope this isn't a prefigure of things to come.

But I'm a good killer. I am certain that Harry Potter's death will be the smoothest part of this operation. So smooth, in fact, that I don't even have to think it through, just see it as an imminent event sparkling in some bed at Hogwarts, only separated from me by a couple of miles and a layer of cloud.

I once said pain was beauty. And I was right, there is always a temporary perfection in the stripped agony of a tortured human face. People are always closest to perfection before they die, for perfection is a life that has been completed. But beauty that shifts and changes, yet is as eternal as the promise of death, can be found in the sky. I look upwards at the brilliant dome of stars and see my namesake winking back, a divine eye always there to guide me. When we were children, Sirius and I would sleep on the cool manor lawns, safe under our separate watchers.

I saw no beauty in Sirius before he died. I saw a bitter shell who had already lived, had always known what was coming until it eventually came and swallowed him unawares. A curious thing, Sirius's mind. So wracked with frustration, yet so fulfilled with love for his godson.

I think of love; of death. How the two can coexist in not just Sirius but in everyone, how the sweetest of actions are tainted with annihilation. All actions have consequences. I realised the existence of love after I came closest to death. Sirius's defence of Potter lead him to his murder at my hand. As I swoop downwards into the Hogwarts grounds, as I hover by the window of the Gryffindor boys' bedroom, as my spell removes the glass and I creep across the moonlit room, I wonder what I'm doing all this for. Love or Death?

Of course, she hides. And while she hides I work towards her ruin. The death of the Potter boy took my followers by surprise. I sat, the eye of the storm, the calm presence at the centre of a circle of confusion and chaos.

But why? Lucius stuttered, the mathematic control of his voice disintegrating. Master, I do not understand - she heard the prophesy, she knows Potter is the only one who could oppose you. It is as if she is still working under your orders.

-She is under the illusion that she is more of a match to me than Potter. She believes that, in time, she could become more powerful than your master Lord Voldemort. Bellatrix carries my essence inside her while she is pregnant, and was able to kill the boy not to my advantage but to remove any opposition. The prophesy has been fulfilled in the most unlikely circumstances. I understand now…the real battle of power is to be fought between master and servant.

Lucius had squinted from beneath his hood. Battle? Master, surely it will not come to that? Surely we will wait for the child to be born, then simply kill her?

-I tell you, there is nobody who could ever defeat me. But Bellatrix will most certainly try and fight, I realise now she will not be held under Imperius for long.

Lucius's voice switched from disapproving to stunned. But Master, Potter could fight Imperius. Are you saying she possesses his strength of mind?

I turned to Lucius, my voice so chilled it shattered the air. The ability to fight Imperious does not denote strength, fool. It is a fluke, the capability of a particularly devious core.

-Of course, my Lord, of course. Forgive my stupidity.

So now, I wait, and lie of her strength, and say she can never defeat me. I pace the Riddle house, seizing every new piece of information that comes from every garbled follower's voice. I compile it inside my head, try to create a structure, a palace for execution of terrible beauty. But whatever way I try to fit these words I hear together, they fall apart into so many jagged black letters; useless and breaking under my tender bare soles. I try to console myself, if Avada Kedavra cannot kill me, then nothing she can find within herself can. I console, but only try to believe.

If I were the sentimental type, I would think of the joy Harry Potter would feel at finally being reunited with Sirius. I would have looked upon his peaceful white face against the pillow, the dent of my wand still imbedded in his soft cheek, and smiled that he was away from the pain of being without the one he loved, that he was finally returning to him. But I felt nothing for Harry Potter. I did not even pause to look at him as he sighed the familiar dying breath, was just satisfied he'd played his small but crucial role so successfully. As I flew away all I thought of was the house I was travelling to next, and the person who occupied it, and how she was the only one I could turn to now.

I arrive at the door of the manor just as the sun is rising. The grounds are bathed in low, slanting flares of violet light, each dew-crystalled blade of grass sparkling darkest amethyst. Naked trees cut through the crisp November air, their elongated shadows like silhouetted Halloween toys. I am exhausted, cold, my back aching and hateful swollen belly straining against my filthy robe, totally out of place against this gothic splendour. I watch my trembling fist bang the serpent's head door knocker, frenzied and desperate. If she turns me away, I will fail, they will catch me no matter how deeply I burrow. I need her to help me find my power, only her help I can trust.

I wait, my insides twisting like black snapping eels. So this is fear.

The door opens. We both gasp.

She looks different. Even in surprise, her face is stiff and proud as if carved from diamond; impossibly hard and polished. The lips are thin and frosted pink, the nose a lethal blade, the hair set and ice blonde. I, for the first time in my life, was ready to walk forward and put my arms around her in pure jubilation, but now I hold back. It's not just her face that has changed. Something inside her has solidified. Just as I remember our relationship as clear as water, she has forgotten.

What the hell are you doing here? she whispers, fury warping the diamond visage.

-I need somewhere to stay. Look, I know you still follow him, but I thought…

You thought what? You thought being sisters would be more important to me? You ignorant bitch. Us followers, we don't believe in family. I've been instructed to bring you to him, and I'm going to do exactly that. You were foolish to come here, Bellatrix.

I gape at her. I cannot breathe or think, I can only show her why I came. Which is why I move forward and grab her and hold her to me like a marble pillar and kiss her so hard my lips grind against hers and I can feel the slippery shapes of her teeth through them. At first, she tries to scream and throw me off, but I hold with all my might and eventually she slackens in my arms, though makes no effort to kiss me back. Even though I feel like I'm moving my mouth over a mound of pebbles, I think the message has got through.

I see a flicker behind us, platinum hair, colourless eyes. A gasp.

I break away and shove her aside, grab my wand and screech Imperio. Lucius falls to the floor in an ungraceful heap, a dreamy expression on his face.

Do not let Voldemort know I can be found, I instruct him.

Narcissa turns to me, blue flames burning holes in her eyes. She is trapped. She does not want me here, but she cannot turn me in. That kiss dragged up too much of the past, whatever she feels for me now is shackled by a distant memory, an unpleasant aftertaste that cannot be washed away.

I look to her, look into her eyes as I always do. Can I stay? You know something. Something that can help me. That day with the Heliopath - there's more to it than I know, isn't there? There's a reason why it swerved away from us.

She hangs her head, nodding angrily, breaking my gaze with defiance.

"You better come in, Bellatrix. There's a lot you need to learn."