"You're world is an ashtray,
We burn and coil like cigarettes,
The more you cry your ashes turn too mud."
- "The reflecting God" Marilyn Manson
Bellatrix had crept silently into Narcissa's room. She didn't consider herself nosey, more so like a curious cat. She always felt at liberty to prod through her sister's things, even if Narcissa detested it. Bellatrix used to aggravate her something awful, in the days when she would leave the pale blue room in disarray… Narcissa was an organized enigma.
Bellatrix fiddled with her nightgowns, and swept back her curtains. Nothing was out of place. She was such a perfectionist in fact, that she, since the age of five, had ordered the house elves to clean her room twice daily. Narcissa herself bathes three times a day, she'll spend hours in that large basin tub, rose petals layering the top of the water, sticking to her milky white flesh.
Bellatrix had such fond memories of her diminutive quirks. But alas, no haven is complete without a secret, and behold! Upon inspection a hand mirror, with carvings of golden Veela set into the back and handle, sparkled in the dim light, the mirrors face… was shattered.
It seemed slightly unnerving that a woman of such insurmountable vanity would destroy such a lovely crafted work to ruin. And what was even more uncharacteristic about this unusual discovery was the fact that it was slid under her mattress and strategically placed in the center.
It was in fact so unlike Narcissa, that Bellatrix was mildly disturbed. Every reflective surface coveted a gleam of Narcissa, and she appreciated nature's admiration for her, with such a glorious absence of modesty.
Bellatrix handled the mirror idly for a few more minutes when she was jumped to a start at the appearance of Narcissa leaning languidly in the doorway.
"Cissa…" Bellatrix cooed in that mock baby voice she enjoyed imitating.
"I hate it." Narcissa said eyeing the mirror strewn across Bellatrix's hands. "I hate it." She repeated again nastily.
"What is it? Grandmothers?" Bellatrix was talking to herself more than Narcissa. She eyed its handiwork carefully. "Mid 1300's… You can tell by the gold's coloring, and the style of artwork, the carvings are positively alive…"
"Alive…" Narcissa whispered, taking the mirror into her hands. "Alive… yes its alive…" Narcissa stroked it lovingly a smile appeared briefly at the corners of her thin lipped mouth. Suddenly she clenched her teeth and widened her eyes, swinging the mirror violently about her head and smashing it against the wall where the remaining shards of mirror sparkled to the ground, slivers of a broken tapestry.
"It tells me I'm Ugly, " Narcissa spat viciously in Bellatrix's direction. "It shows you what you look like on the inside, and this is what I see!"
Narcissa gripped the front of Bellatrix's robes and tossed her to the side, upending the mattress and scooping all of the mirrors pieces into her long fingered hands.
She tossed the pieces onto the blank back and handle, and suddenly they morphed, forming back against the wood, looking perfect, despite a few missing shards in the center and around the edge.
"Have a look!" Narcissa raged her hands were bleeding from the shards pressing into her palms.
Bellatrix gazed into the mirrors depths and was horrified at what she saw; a pale corpse with hollowed eyes and a twisted expression, her mouth was contorted into an insane hideous smile. Her face was grotesquely misshapen and scarred, her cheeks were hollowed, and her limbs were bare. Nothing but bone, and her expression was surprisingly tranquil, in tune with its ugliness.
Bellatrix Felt drawn to the mirror, she inclined her face to the demon reflection, and Narcissa snatched it from her ands. "You see?" She hissed softly.
Bellatrix blinked slightly, she felt a strange craving to gaze into the mirror. Narcissa held the mirror to her face and gazed profoundly. She screamed and tossed it to the ground. A face of a frozen woman the flesh flaking away with the ice, a look of sheer terror carved into her expression was shattered in an instant.
"NO MORE!" Narcissa wept crushing the shards with her high heel. She took the handle and shoved it under her mattress and took the glass shards and slid them into a hatbox.
"It wants us to gaze, wants us to see as we are inside. Just like the Veela, their beauty is only skin deep, when they're angry their true forms mutate and they are hideous. Grandma was oblivious to its powers, she saw only her reflection because she was herself, she displayed exactly as she is. What you and I hide Bella are inner demons, Grandma was a demon, we are the same, in disguise. We are ugly… I am ugly…." Narcissa seemed shocked at her own assessment.
"Ugliness is all a part of perception. To me pain is beauty, distance detachment from all things human, makes you the most beautiful thing that could exist. You have what most people do not, knowledge of life's truths, truths only some are blessed with. Truth is harsh, but just is it not?"
"It is so." Narcissa said somberly, collapsing helplessly against the bed (which the house elves were making up as they spoke). Narcissa kneaded her temples with her knuckles massaging her strain with pressure.
"The party is almost over, in a few hours that is. You have to make an appearance, its mandatory that you do, it's your last in this house is it not?" Narcissa alleged finally.
"True, but I have no ambitions to be there. I won't miss any of them. Oh hell Narcissa, I can't remember half their names! And I have to return to them one last meaningless time so they can all say their falsely significant goodbyes, and cart me off with a man I don't love." Bellatrix was surprised at her own words. She didn't love Rodolphus?
"Then if not for the family, then for me, I want to be with Lucius, and I want to be with you. I want to say goodbye…" She added softly. Bellatrix reached gently for Narcissa's hands and wiped the blood from them with the train of her dress. The blood erupted freely, and Bellatrix licked at the wounds like a placid animal.
"The purest of bloods…" Narcissa began.
"…The blacks…" Bella continued for her.
"…Upholding three centuries of tradition…" Narcissa smiled.
"…Will not disappoint our lineage." Bellatrix whispered against her sister's hands.
***
The Evening passed by slowly, like a strip of film rolling in its light filter. It was exactly as anticipated; Bellatrix clung to Rodolphus's arm smiling bemusedly at everyone with his or her congratulations. Bella would smile a bit wider and nod towards them.
Narcissa glowed like a light, admirers flocked around her, women played with her hair, and plucked at her dress, and Narcissa soaked up the glory as she always does, occasionally casting Bella gleeful stares.
Lucius entered late to these functions as he always was, he lifted Narcissa into the air so her toes were just off the ground, and he would kiss her lightly, the same way Bellatrix did. And Narcissa would smile into his eyes holding the sides of his face laughing slightly.
"They look so happy…" Bellatrix said to no one in particular.
"Yes…" Rodolphus said quietly. "…And so will we my love." Bellatrix turned her head sharply in surprise, her eyes wide her mouth open into a tiny O of curiosity. She closed her mouth and nodded curtly in his direction before turning to Narcissa who was swept off her feet and into her fiancé's arms instantaneously.
"She's just like a princess…" Bella whispered aloud.
"Indeed, but you're like a queen." Rodolphus beamed at her, he put his arms about her collarbone and rested his chin into the small of her shoulder. He flicked his tongue against her ear and she smiled. Her hands came up her chest and clung to his wrists that crossed under her neck.
For a moment they held each other swaying slightly with all time stopped. (And it was only when the doors opened to reveal a most unexpected visitor) that they broke apart.
Andromeda was standing there with an emerald velvet cloak. The hood drawn over her auburn tresses, oh she had always been a beautiful creature, but an untouchable treacherous one. At her side was a six-year-old child, with a mop of curly pink hair and large gray eyes. The flesh was cartoonish and pale, so very unlike a real child. In that tiny red dress she looked slightly out of place.
Bellatrix advanced angrily towards her older sister. Andromeda was shaking slightly, and the little girl hid behind her legs.
"What calls for the occasion?" Bellatrix whispered venomously.
"I came to offer my congratulations, and this…" She extended her arm and dropped a silver ring shaped like a serpent, with emeralds lain into the eyes.
"Its lovely…" Bellatrix said without thinking. She slipped it onto her index finger and admired it briefly.
"Bellatrix, you are my baby sister, no matter what happens my love for you will not waver. Even if you despise me…"
"Would you like to accompany me on a walk?" Bellatrix asked quickly noticing that her sister's arrival hadn't yet been noticed. She knew what sort of drama was going to be generated if she were discovered. And yet something about his brave appearance intrigued Bella to question further before turning her away.
They strolled through the garden paths in silence. Andromeda was glancing around quickly and darting her eyes from rose to rose as if trying to work up the nerve to say something. So very unlike Narcissa and myself, Bellatrix thought pensively.
"This is Nymphadora by the way…" Andromeda grinned toothily; she always did have nice teeth, straight and white like their grandmothers. Bellatrix found something strangely beautiful about her sister; it was different from what she felt for Narcissa. It was a sort of detached hidden admiration that she always had possessed.
She always had held more daring then Bellatrix and Narcissa combined. The one thing Bella feared was her family's wrath, and Andromeda defied it all for something that was indefinite. 'But what's life without taking risks?' Andromeda used to jest loudly to Bellatrix on those warm summer nights in the rose garden.
"You know I used to love coming here with you…" Andromeda said. And something went off in Bellatrix's head. Like a book snapped shut in one sweeping motion.
***
It was the middle of July. Bellatrix was no older than eight and Andromeda was only just fifteen. Bellatrix liked to pick the thorny roses and squeeze the stems in her hand so they would gouge her flesh and she would have Andromeda fuss over the wounds and pour leftover potion on them so's they would heal before her eyes. Andromeda babied her.
"Would you like me to push you in the swing?" she would ask merrily, and Bella would smile silently and rush over to it.
"Wheee! How fun!" Bellatrix would laugh at Andromeda's words she was always entertaining, so full of life, so full of love, with a great potential to leave her mark on the world, but with desires only to have children of her own.
Bella had raced her through the gardens on those days, and Andromeda always let her win because her legs were shorter. She ran her ragged and the two of them would fall into the lawn together laughing like children.
"Bellatrix, you are beautiful you know that?" Andromeda said affectionately as she brushed silky black strands of hair from Bella's face.
"I know." Bellatrix said playfully jumping on her sister, with her arms wrapped about her neck, and then Andromeda would scoop her into her arms and shuffle around bare footedly through the garden. They used to burn their feet on the cobblestone path. Bellatrix always wore a large hat to protect her fair skin, but Andromeda had a rosy glow about her, that somehow made her more lively.
Bellatrix remembered the way they looked as they collapsed into the tulips, the way Andromeda's mouth bore her pearly white teeth, and how Andromeda's chest heaved from uncontrollable laughter. Bella would only smile, she never laughed, and she would only grin slightly with glittering eyes. Her hat would slide from her head and hang over her back attached around her neck by ribbons sewn into the straw brim of the hat.
"We'll have this forever won't we Andy?" Bellatrix asked serenely as she ran her fingers through her sister's long shimmering coils.
"Always Bella, always!" Andromeda kissed her forehead quickly and stuffed the hat onto her head roughly, she would snicker behind her hand and Bella would swat at her playfully.
***
"Why such animosity between us? I've never understood where it all went wrong." Andromeda seemed to be sharing her thoughts.
"You grew older, and more naïve. I know now that the decisions you made were out of delusional love, people are always more mundane when under this clouded emotion. I can hardly say I blame you, but I do not approve. You angered mother something awful. But I know-how she was hurting when you left. She cried for weeks." Bellatrix said monotonously, staring off into space.
"Really?" Andromeda looked slightly taken aback. "I thought mother hated me, she was always so strict… it must've been tears of frustration that I had dishonored the black name, I bet she enjoyed singeing my name off the tapestry, did she not?"
"She did." Bellatrix admitted emotionlessly.
"So is that all it was?" Andromeda asked quietly.
"Mother was only crying because you betrayed her, not because she missed you."
"No, I mean is that why you hate me?" Andromeda's eyes filled with a strange anxiety.
"No…" Bellatrix though briefly…
***
It was the winter of Andromeda's discovered pregnancy. Mother had found out only because Andromeda had a dress designed only a month prior to the unearthing, and it no longer fit her. Their mother had tugged violently on the back of the dress.
"Why doesn't it fit?" Spat mother. "Have you gained weight?" Andromeda wept and said "no". She was tested a few days later due to their mother's suspicions. Once she was found pregnant, their parents were disappointed, not angry, until they arranged the marriage asking for the boy's name. She wept into her hands and they eventually discovered he was a muggleborn not pureblood at all.
Andromeda was very along by this point. They told her to leave, and locked her from the house out in the snow.
Andromeda's things had been left in her room, untouched. The room felt contaminated when you walked in. No one was allowed to sluice the room of her former belongings. Bellatrix used to clamber into that room on summer nights and she would breath in the roses with bloody hands and Andromeda would not come to her aid.
Bellatrix grew to understand that somehow she had become attached to her sister, she had loved her, and she had become a mother figure that her actual mother could never have measured up to. Bellatrix used to wear Andromeda's clothes, and use her makeup, expecting her to come in angrily and tell her not to mess with her things.
But she never came.
She heard no word from Andromeda. She imagined Andromeda writing to her and their parents using the letters for firewood, but Andromeda made no attempts to contact. Bellatrix despised that she cared too much, that she looked forward to it so much. She longed for many months, for those warm summer days and the loving memories she would always have for her sister.
But the traitor had tainted their blood. three centuries of pure undiluted blood and the new breed was dying, fading into oblivion. Sirius her cousin was defiant and disloyal. Andromeda was a mud bloods lover, and all those children in the attic who were held there for their betrayal.
The family had always foreseen when a child would make a mockery of the bloodline. But the last seer had died out a hundred years ago and since then the families have held onto pride, that itself kept the pureblood community uncontaminated, undaunted by society's ever changing population of half bloods and mud bloods.
And now it was all crumbling. She hated Andromeda for scarring tradition, for leaving muddy footprints on a clean slate of pride. She hated Andromeda for being happy when she wasn't. She hates Andromeda for being beautiful, for being the white sheep in the blackest of families. She hated Andromeda for betraying her.
***
"…No that's not why Andromeda." Bellatrix finished after a long moment of contemplation.
"Then why Bella?" Andromeda pleaded as the tiny child yawned and rolled over in Andromeda's arms.
"Because you made me love you, because I cared about you. Attachments are dangerous. I can't afford to have feelings for a traitorous girl like you."
"A traitorous girl…" Andromeda's voice shook. "Is that what you think I am?"
"That's what I think you are!" Bellatrix exploded making the child awake with a start.
Andromeda was shaking now, and she was choking back sobs. "I thought I'd at least have you. Narcissa's too young to remember me, or to care even, but you…you were different Bella, you were like my first child. I raised you since I was 7 years old and my life was blessed with your birth. And now you hate me! And all because I did what was right for me. I was never meant for this life! I hate dresses, I like being a housewife and making dinner for my husband, I like taking care of my child and I like living as I do. But you …none of you can be happy for me!"
"How can you expect me to understand? This is our world! This is what we own! This is our domain, our purpose!"
"The first born is the most likely to fail, because they haven't got older siblings to look at and learn from."
"Don't try to justify yourself here Andromeda! Your betrayed us, dad knew something was off when you got into Ravenclaw, but I knew something was wrong when you started kissing that boy in the rosebushes back in your 4th year. I always thought of kissing as an expression of emotion, not really intimacy, just a spur of the moment sort of expression that words can't provide. So I assumed that was what you were doing. But the way you kissed looked so… disgustingly sentimental, so attached and loving, like you'd always been."
"Do you resent that I was loving, that I am still?" Andromeda asked softly.
'To a certain degree yes I do."
"Will you hate me like this forever?"
"I can hold a grudge for a very long time." Bella snapped bitterly.
"Can I convince you otherwise?"
"No I don't think so." Bella raged on walking ahead of Andromeda. But Andromeda didn't attempt to catch up. Quite the contrary, she remained where she was, stock-still hands at her sides with her head tilted slightly and a very bland expression on her face. Nymphadora was sagging her head sleepily against Andromeda's legs.
"We have nothing to discuss then?" Andromeda sighed heavily.
"No we have nothing else. But I do give something I wish to show you.
***
They snuck up to Narcissa's room through the open window, and Bellatrix pulled out the mirror and placed the pieces back. She tossed it carelessly at Andromeda who gasped slightly.
"Oh! Its…beautiful!"
"Yes." Bellatrix came behind Andromeda to see the reflection. Andromeda was sparkling, she had a translucent glow about her, like a veil, she was exceedingly beautiful was a dazzling smile.
"I don't look like that!" Andromeda laughed openly… just like she used to. Bellatrix showed the two of their reflections together and Andromeda bit back a shriek.
"Nor do I.' Bellatrix said sliding the mirror unbrokenly under the bed.
"What was that?" Andromeda asked as she stroked her daughter's curly hair.
"Grandmothers mirror."
"Why was it broken?" Andromeda asked coming to her own conclusions about what the mirror did.
"Cissa."
"Oh… but why?"
"It showed her as an ugly woman." Bellatrix watched Andromeda throwback her head and laugh heartily.
"Oh that IS funny!" Andromeda howled. "So very like our materialistic, self absorbed, beauty isn't it?"
"Very." Bella replied. Nymphadora was now into R.E.M sleep, her chest rising and falling at predictable intervals.
"I'd better go. She's exhausted poor thing."
"She's a quiet child."
"Indeed, however you haven't' seen her at home, she's mad!" Andromeda laughed slightly. "She's a metamorphmagus."
"How clever you are…" Bella whispered into the Childs ear.
***
Andromeda dropped from the window, using a spell to cushion her fall. Bellatrix watched from the window. Looking down on her older sister with strained eyes.
"Promise under all this hatred their lies good memories of you and I?" Andromeda asked of Bellatrix.
"'And all our days have lighted fools'" Bellatrix quoted.
"Shakespeare." Andromeda smiled, and with that, she disappeared into the night. Never to be retrieved again. Bellatrix knew she would never see her sister again, and yet she felt a sense of closure here, like she's reached a peace with her, and although she would always hate the betrayal, she could never hate Andromeda.
***
Authors Note: I'll still be continuing this, so if you'd like to read on, LEAVE A REVIEW.
Shakespeare is © to himself, and so are his plays.
Harry Potter, as you all know, is not mine either,
It's the product and © item of J.K. Rowling,
"The oldest is the most likely to fail" –© to my friend Kevin and his teacher.