Cissy felt a quiet pain reverberate in the hollow of her lonesome heart, her pearl-white fingers delicate against the skin of her sister's corpse. Bella, her ebony eyes closed contentedly, breathed haggardly against Cissy's wrist, a small smile glancing across her lips. But she is dead, Cissy thought to herself, her lily fingers knotted in Bella's hair. She stroked the gaunt cheekbones lovingly.
Azkaban had stolen from Cissy her own precious sanctuary, her sister's love. Prison had disfigured the Bella she knew almost beyond recognition, leaving behind a soulless, skeletal carcass that shrieked dark things into the night and bared its teeth hideously when Cissy pleased it with small kisses. The veined eyes glinted, and Cissy felt that her whole self came from this, a pivotal point in time and space that corkscrewed out from the center in a helix, tiny planets revolving a dead sun.
The leathery husk of Bella's body arced repulsively, beseeching, demanding, and Cissy obeyed. It seemed that she folded herself over and back, listening to her own distant whispers pleading in vain for her oldest sister to come home to her, and folded herself over and back, over and back.