In your sleep, you shed your armour
"Dearest, I need you to wake up," Lucius murmured into her ear.
Narcissa's eyes sprung open in the dark to find her husband standing by the side of their bed, gently shaking her shoulder.
"What's wrong?" she asked, still sleep addled.
"Rabastan came knocking on our door. Bella is screaming in her sleep," Lucius explained, whispering.
"Where's Dolph? He's the one who knows how to calm her down."
"Out with the Dark Lord."
Of course he was. Narcissa's mind was quick to solve this equation. Why else would Bella be allowed to scream in her sleep long enough to awake Rabastan? She had no idea about how to handle her sister's nightmares, but the task had befallen her anyway.
Narcissa sat up in bed, pushed the covers off her body and took Lucius' hand, kindly offered to help her stand. Her feet found purchase on the plush rug, and searched for the slippers. Her husband was ready with her dressing gown, and she swiftly put it on.
She forewent her wand and any candles. This was her home; she could walk about it blindfolded, backwards. And the screams of her sister were easy enough to follow. She pulled her dressing gown tighter around her body. The windows had been covered in frost for days, and her breath formed little clouds ahead of her.
That was it. The cold. Bella had been cold in her bed, and that always left her mind's door open for the worst nightmares.
The screaming became louder, and Narcissa could feel her sister's terror through the door. She had no idea about what could possibly have Bellatrix this scared. She was usually the scariest creature in the room.
Narcissa pushed the door to her sister's bedroom open to a bloodcurdling scream that made her cover her ears. She kept them covered as she assessed the scene before her. The screaming turned into loud sobbing, and Narcissa jumped to action.
Turning around on her feet, she told Rabastan to shut the door and silence it. Then, she crossed the room in long strides that made her skirts billow about her legs, aiming for the two frozen windows on the opposing wall. She pulled the curtains open as wide as they would go, letting the moonlight pour inside and illuminate the bed.
Bella had tucked her body into the smallest possible shape, taking refuge by the headboard, her back leaning on the poster that held a tester from which green velvet curtains draped. Her braid had come undone, and her curls cloaked her, in stark contrast to the white sleeping gown she had on.
Narcissa found her sister's eyes, grey just like hers, open wide and crying, but unseeing. They were pleading, and at that Narcissa realised just how daunting the task would be.
Bellatrix Black did not beg, had never asked for something she could simply take, and yet her eyes said otherwise in that moment.
Bellatrix Lestrange had married a dark wizard while being moulded by another to become the most dangerous witch of her generation, unmatched except for their Master, and here she was, cradling her own body and crying like a child scared into submission under threat of a rod.
She was talking, but her sobs and gasps prevented Narcissa from understanding any of it. Her feet kept sliding on the sheet, and every time a foot drifted forward, Bellatrix screamed.
Narcissa moved to the side of her sister, not daring to climb atop the mattress. She held her sister in her arms, tight, murmuring sweet nonsenses into her ear. She was all bones these days. Azkaban had stripped her of the slender but dangerous figure she had once had. Her muscles had waisted away, and two months of full meals, warm baths and soft beds were not nearly enough to repair the damage.
Bellatrix stopped screaming, but her sobs continued, coursing through her body, rattling her bones and travelling over to Narcissa's.
Narcissa bit her own sobs into submission. She could not break, not now. She had to calm her sister down. She tried to think of what had worked for them when they were little, when the Sisters Black still numbered three. Soft words and tight hugs. Warm bodies pressed against them, tender hands fluttering across sweaty foreheads. She was doing all that. She was the youngest, she was the one being comforted after her nightmares, never once had she had to comfort her oldest sister.
Bellatrix kept sobbing, kept her eyes open and staring into the nothingness that stood between them and the windows. There were no shadows, no furniture turned spectre in the dark, yet Bella's eyes kept wide in fear.
"Trixie? Trixie, it's me, Cissy," she whispered in her sister's ear, using the pet name they had both left behind in their early childhood. Grandmother Irma liked Bella best, and little Blacks liked what Grandmother Irma said, so soon the eldest sister had gone from Trixie to Bella. Only their father held on to the name.
"Where's my Pixie Trixie?" he would ask, well into Bella's teenage years, despite the notorious eyerolls of them all. It would take a scorching summer, and a sample of the darkness that dwelled inside his eldest daughter, for Cygnus to let the name fall into memories.
It worked. Bellatrix's sobs slowed down, subsiding to the gasps of an injured animal. The tears flowed all the same, though.
Narcissa dared use her body to push her sister further into the bed, sitting down on the edge of the mattress. Careful to keep her arms tight around Bellatrix, she slowly pushed herself onto the mattress properly, lifting her long legs up onto the covers, slippers and all.
"I'm here, Trixie. I've got you," she spoke into her sister's curls, kissing the crown of her head. "You can sleep now; I'll keep the nightmares away."
Bellatrix used to make the same promise to her, kissing her golden hair while she pulled her onto her lap, and wrapped them both in the covers she had no qualms about pulling from the bottom, leaving their beds a mess.
Now, it was her turn. She used her legs to peel the eiderdown away from the sheet. Dropping her slippers, she used her feet to tug it up enough that she could reach it properly. She wrapped it around her sister, who had made herself comfortable against her chest. Narcissa made sure to cover as much of her sister as she could, telling her to tuck her feet under the sheet. The feathers made for a light but warm cover, and Bella soon relaxed into the warmth.
The sobbing had stopped along the way, and the tears were finally slowing down. Narcissa used the back of her fingers to wipe them away from Bella's sharp cheekbones. Some still trailed down her neck, shimmering in the places where they were kissed by the moonlight, disappearing into the hollows at Bella's collarbones. Narcissa pulled the duvet until it hugged her sister's jawline, then went about combing her curls away from her face, revealing her once ivory complexion fully. There were dark, deep circles under her heavy-lidded eyes, and a pair of shadows on her cheeks.
Bella's breathing became laboured again, and a gasp broke the seal of her lips. Narcissa cradled her sister's body with her own, and kept whispering in her ear, like one might to a scared horse.
"Hush, Trixie, sleep. I'm here, I'll keep the nightmares away. You're safe. I've got you, Trixie."
She kept murmuring. A spoken lullaby to lure better dreams, quiet dreams.
Narcissa rocked her sister into a dreamless sleep, and by the time Rodolphus Lestrange returned, he found his warrior star wrapped in the petals of a flower.
Author's Notes: Prompts and Challenges
Auction Day 2 Round 4 - A has a history of severe nightmares, B knows how to calm A down but is out of town, so C has to try for the first time alone.
August Writing Club – Written in the Stars 9 (colour) golden; Showtime Waitress 15 I Love You Like a Table - (colour) White; Film Festival 11 Colour Green; Buttons Actions 3 Crying
Summer Seasonal Challenge – Days of the Year 1st August - Sisters Day Write about the bond between sisters; Self-Improvement Month 2 Bellatrix Lestrange; Indoor Plant Week Winter Cherry (weather) chilly; International Body Piercing Day Bridge piercing(s) (word) Fear; International Beer Day 8 Marz Community Brewing Co (Era) Trio; Colours 11 Ivory
Scavenger Hunt – 2 Write a story over a 1000 words
Fantastic Beasts and How to Collect Them – 20 Baku Japanese supernatural beings that are said to devour nightmares. According to legend, they were created by the spare pieces that were left over when the gods finished creating all other animals. Scenario: Write about comforting someone after a nightmare
365 Prompts Challenge – 170 (character) Narcissa Malfoy
WC – 1293 words
