CHAPTER THREE:

Wasted

They switched from tea to red wine.

"I'm sure a little won't hurt it," said Bellatrix, pouring herself an almost overflowing glass.

"That's enough," said Andromeda, taking back the bottle. "You shouldn't have filled it more than halfway. Are you trying to give that baby brain damage?"

Bellatrix flashed a smile. "Red wine's good for the heart."

"Oh?" said Andromeda. "I wasn't aware that you had one."

"I told you I cried!" Bellatrix scowled, but whether she was more annoyed by her sister's quip or her own recent tears even she wasn't certain. "I've cried several times over the last few weeks, but especially over the last few days. Over stupid things. I get this guilty feeling over…" Neville Longbottom's baby face flashed in her mind, "Over stupid things I've never felt any guilt over. Things I've never needed to feel any guilt over. I didn't even know guilt was… was…"

"You didn't think you had enough of a conscious to feel remorse?"

"I know who and what I am and have no need to feel guilty for that!" She tossed her head back arrogantly. "Why must you be such a bitch?"

"I'm a bitch? A year ago you murdered our cousin and tried to off my only daughter. Why are you here? I mean, I get that you're pregnant, but so what? Why come to me?"

Bellatrix chewed her lip, shifting awkwardly in her chair, before answering.

"I'm not myself, Andromeda. I'm falling apart. I'm weak. I'm… I'm Narcissa. Remember how much she cried as a child?"

"Over damn near everything," said Andromeda. She only had the one clean wine glass (she'd been drinking a bit more than usual since her husband went on the run, not that she wasn't bordering on an alcohol problem before) so she was swigging directly from the bottle. "Yeah, I remember. Whenever Mother raised her voice, even if her anger was directed at one of us, Narcissa cried."

"Whenever Stepfather…"

"Don't," said Andromeda, holding up her hand. "Don't talk about him."

"Well, Narcissa was the only one who'd cry when he was through," said Bellatrix. She downed a long gulp of the wine. Andromeda sipped more from the bottle. They fell into an uncomfortable silence, which Andromeda eventually broke. "She still cries. All the time. Over anything and everything."

"I think he was worse to her than he was to us."

"Because she was weak," said Bellatrix. "That's why I'd take her place sometimes. She couldn't handle what we could. She wouldn't fight back if she were being bullied by a baby. I don't think she ever once used the word 'no.' But she didn't care, not really, not in the long term. Not like us. As long as he'd keep her in those fancy dresses with those lacy gloves and the shiny shoes, so she could be pretty, so everyone could tell her she was pretty, that's all she cared about. He'd dress her up and call her pretty and she'd smile like it was all alright. It's the same with her husband. He's a lech; I loathe him. But far as I know, she's never once confronted him. I think she secretly likes it when he's having his affairs because he buys her things, extravagant things, and tells her how beautiful she is, how lovely, how desirable, all the same things he says to the twenty-year-old girls he's bedding behind her back. He buys her jewelry, overlarge diamonds and gold trinkets, and she loves it. Fancy dresses made her forget as a child and expensive jewelry makes her forgive even now."

"I don't want to talk about this," said Andromeda. "You wanted to know what to expect, okay, I'll tell you. How far along are you? I'll give you what you came for and then you'll leave and we'll both pretend this never happened."

"I need more wine."

"You'll get pissed."

"I need it to loosen my tongue."

"A little more." Andromeda topped off Bellatrix's half-empty glass. "How far along are you?"

"July, I think, is when it happened, or maybe end of June, so… Two or three months? Eight or nine weeks? I haven't been to see anyone."

"How do your breasts feel?"

Bellatrix raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"How do they feel?"

"I don't know. I'd have to ask the…" She took a sharp intake of breath, realizing she'd nearly said The Dark Lord. "The man I'm with," she finally finished. Andromeda snorted.

"I don't mean how do they feel to other people, you dolt. Are they tender? Does it hurt when you put on your bra?"

"Oh!" Bellatrix cupped her breasts with both hands and gave them a light squeeze. "No more so than usual, I suppose."

"Well, that's frequently the first sign. I've been pregnant four times, you know, and that was the earliest signal with each one."

This was news to Bellatrix. "Four times?"

Andromeda nodded. She took another long sip from the wine bottle, comforted by the familiar taste on her tongue and subtle tingling down her throat. "Metamorphs are exceptionally rare but by some magic I keep conceiving them. We must carry a recessive gene… or Ted does."

"I don't know what that means." Bellatrix sipped her wine too. "Recessive genes, sounds like Muggle babble." She could feel the liquor going to her head. She very rarely drank, as one of the very few things she feared was losing control. She drank the night she met Voldemort in that pub. While she often assured herself she would've gone upstairs with Him even if she'd been drinking nothing but butterbeer, she sometimes wondered if that were true… especially lately. He'd plied her with an awful lot of liquor that night. Did He assume she liked to drink? Or did He assume she'd need to be drunk in order to…? She didn't want to think about it. That was the sort of thought that crept into her mind during her thirteen years in Azkaban.

"Male metamorphs are far more uncommon than female, and females are very rare. Typically, women who become pregnant for metamorphs miscarry. The medi-witch told me she wasn't sure a male metamorph had been carried to term within the last century. Females are less likely to be conceived, but only fifty percent likely to die in utero. I lost three baby boys, all in my second trimester. We named them, but…" Andromeda looked away, her eyes misty. She hadn't spoken to anybody about her miscarriages except Ted, her medi-witch, and once, when she was twelve, her daughter, and she didn't have any intention of getting emotional over it now, especially considering her current company. Finally, she finished, "Nympadora is my miracle baby."

"That's… sad. I'm sorry." Bellatrix shook her head. Who was that apologizing to her sister? She hardly recognized her own voice. Dammit. The baby was making her emotional again. That had to be it. Dammit, dammit, dammit. She rubbed her temples and tried to think.

"My miracle baby and you tried to take her from me."

Bellatrix shook her head again, this time because she was trying to clear it. She wasn't going to be pulled into this, wasn't going to feel guilty about doing what needed to be done. It's not like it was her fault, what happened with Nympadora. The idiot girl made the choice to fight for Dumbledore against her own family. She didn't have to. Bellatrix could have taught her so much, the way she did Draco, but no. The little mixed-blood brat was hell-bent on further populating the Wizarding World with half-breeds and half-beasts. If anything, the fact that Bella had come close to killing Nymphadora was Andromeda's fault. She was, after all, the one who turned her back on her own blood, not Bellatrix.

"Bella?"

"What else can I expect? For the first few months?"

"If you're like Narcissa, you can expect to get fat. You're probably already experiencing morning sickness, though in my experience it is not confined to mornings. Everything made me feel sick. My senses were hyper-alert. Every taste, every smell was magnified, and most gave me the feeling I needed to vomit."

Bellatrix nodded. "That I'm familiar with."

"Ted loved my mood swings." Recognizing Bella's confusion, Andromeda chuckled. "That was sarcasm, genius. Remember sarcasm? You were once the queen of it."

"Bite me."

"There's my girl!"

"I'll Crucio you," said Bella, but she didn't draw her wand (not that she needed it; she could perform that curse in her sleep). "Don't think I won't."

"I'll risk it," said Andromeda. "Here, have a little more wine. Just a bit."

"You're trying to get me drunk so you can take advantage of me," Bellatrix accused, though she wasn't sure what possible advantage her sister would have once getting her drunk. Unless she planned to kill her.

"Take advantage? That's what Lucius would do. I'm not Lucius. Remember him? Your sister's husband? That man you claim you haven't fucked him in almost twenty years?"

Bellatrix sneered. "You always were a bit of a cunt."

"Tsk, tsk, sister. Language. Tell me, did she ever find out? About your affair?"

"It was hardly an affair. One satisfaction-lacking shag in a dark alleyway."

"Satisfaction-lacking for whom? He couldn't finish?"

Bellatrix didn't particularly enjoy her recollection of that encounter, but she laughed all the same. "No, he finished." She ran her fingers through her thick black hair, debating whether she should tell Andromeda why it had happened. It was an assignment given to her by the Dark Lord himself, who wanted to test the loyalty of his then right-hand man, who, after the incident, took a backseat to newcomers Severus Snape, Barty Crouch, Jr., and even their cousin Regulus Black.

There wasn't anywhere safe for them to go, and besides, spending time looking for a location might've let Lucius rethink what he was going to do. When she offered herself to him, it was 1978, she was 27 years old, they were in the middle of the first Voldemort war, and he'd been married to her baby sister for six years. The Malfoys were in the process of trying to become pregnant but like most of the women on the lower branches of the Black family tree, Narcissa was struggling to conceive. Bellatrix didn't particularly want to do it – not only because of her sense of loyalty to her baby sister, but because she personally found Lucius nauseating – but she was confident that her Master had His reasons. In any case, no one should have known about it. No one should have seen them. What was Andromeda even doing skulking about the seedy underbelly of the Wizarding World, especially so late in the evening?

Lucius was there to see a man about buying forbidden objects, in particular a version of Veritaserum that had been altered to kill the user post-interrogation, and a golden cup with two finely-wrought handles adorned with a few jewels, marked on one side with the image of a badger. Bellatrix's job was to tail him without being seen, easy enough since the Dark Lord had worked with her extensively on a self-concealment charm, then approach him only after he had successfully obtained the potion and the cup.

All had gone according to plan. Lucius stepped into the alleyway to apparate back to Malfoy Manor, where he was beckoned to by his sister-in-law. She offered herself up to him right there at that moment and he accepted without question. He lifted her skirt, pushed her roughly against the stone wall, and forced himself roughly inside before she was ready. While he cupped her breast with one hand, squeezed her thigh with the other, and panted into her shoulder, she stared at a point beyond him and mentally removed herself from the situation, the way she did when she was a child and Stepfather's hands would…. wander. She wouldn't have noticed the tiny pink-haired girl chasing a ball into the alleyway had the klutz not tripped over her own feet and fallen flat on her face when trying to retrieve it. Behind her appeared a thin, dark-haired, heavy-lidded woman who scolded her for running off, picked her up, then looked, and made direct eye-contact with the sister she hadn't seen in nearly a decade. Fuck.

Andromeda smiled wickedly, holding her daughter in a way that prevented her from seeing the scene in the alley, and said only five words: "Tell Narcissa I said hello."

She hurried away, holding tightly to her daughter, who whined about losing her ball. It was the first and only time Bellatrix had ever seen the child. She ordered Lucius to finish up, which he did, apparently not at all bothered by what had transpired. That was when Bellatrix realized Narcissa knew. Not about the two of them, but in general, she knew about his infidelity. She knew and didn't care. Bellatrix cared. She wanted him dead. But the Dark Lord merely tortured him, not terribly harshly, then temporarily cast him from their inner circle.

The following night He entrusted Bellatrix with Helga Hufflepuff's cup.

"Only you are truly faithful to me, Bella," He'd said.

"Forever," she'd assured him.

And He'd taken her to His bed and made love to her and told her she belonged to Him, and for the first time she didn't argue about not belonging to anyone.

"What were you doing there, Andromeda?" asked Bellatrix. "With your child?"

"It was during my fourth pregnancy. I'd learned of a Potions Master capable of dark magic and thought – rather stupidly – that he might be able to give me something to help me hold onto the baby. I had Nymphadora with me because Ted was away for work. He never would have approved. But what were you doing there? With him? I mean, I figured out what you were doing, but if he's as loathsome as you say, why?"

"You wouldn't understand."

"No, I'm sure I wouldn't."

Bellatrix downed what was left of her wine. Andromeda added the slightest bit more to the glass before finishing off the bottle herself.

"I hate him too," said Andromeda. "Lucius. He got serious with Narcissa shortly before I ran off to marry Ted, do you remember? They started dating when she was a third year. She was too young for him. When he took her virginity she was practically still a baby. Remember? Remember the first time she brought him home to meet Mother?"

"I've blocked it out."

"1971. You were twenty, I was eighteen, she was sixteen."

"So?"

"He hit on me at Mother's house over summer holiday. Narcissa was upstairs. She was supposed to be getting ready but let's be honest, she was probably just staring at herself in the mirror. Mother was in the dining room, ordering around that old house elf. Malfoy and I were in the parlor. He called me beautiful, kissed my cheek and brushed his fingertips against my hip, but when I got upset he said I was overreacting, he was just being friendly, saying hello. I couldn't escape that life fast enough."

"He'd fuck anything that moves."

"Including you."

"Fuck you."

"I'm not interested, thanks, but I'd be he still is."

Bellatrix laughed, genuinely amused. "You've gotten wittier in your old age, sister. Not to mention brave. I could kill you without even reaching for my wand and yet you're perfectly comfortable making little quips at my expense?"

"I figure if you'd come here to kill me you'd have done it already. You're here for a reason, aren't you?"

The sisters stared at each other for a long, tense moment, during which Andromeda wondered what her life would be like if she'd never met Ted, if she'd be a pathetic Death Eater's wife like Narcissa or a heartless killer like Bellatrix. Bella, on the other hand, was thinking about all the hexes she'd love to practice on her philandering brother-in-law but couldn't, because doing so would most likely anger the Dark Lord. She sighed.

"I'm here because I keep crying, Meda. Over nothing. When will that end?"

"It won't. All through pregnancy, your emotions will be all over the place. I would be laughing one minute then crying the next, I'd get so angry over damn near anything then beg Ted not to hate me for yelling at him. I was certain he'd leave me for being insane. That was the worst when I was carrying Nymphadora. The other three, the boys, they didn't make me quite as crazy. I remember headaches too, terrible ones, and I don't know if this happens to everyone, but I started having strange dreams."

"Dreams?"

"Nightmares, really. Mostly about… about our childhood. About Mother."

"And Stepfather?"

"I told you, I don't want to talk about him. In any case, I'd wake up in the middle of the night coated in sweat; sometimes Ted would wake me up because I was thrashing or sobbing. The mood swings weren't pleasant, but those nightmares were the worst. I don't know if they happen to other women though, because I didn't have anyone to ask about it. It's not as if Mother would have invited me in for a heart-to-heart. But be prepared, in case it's hereditary."

Bellatrix gulped down the last of her glass of wine. Nightmares. She couldn't stand to have nightmares, especially not about that. Merlin's beard, would that ever make her look weak, especially in front of Rodolphus. Dammit, she'd just let the words 'Merlin's beard' creep into her inner monologue. She was losing it already. Eager to change the subject, she asked, "When do I gain weight?"

"Any minute now. Your clothes will start to feel tight but it won't show, not at first. Your breasts will get bigger too. Ted liked that, quite honestly, and I can't say I minded," she chuckled, momentarily enjoying the memory. "I didn't show in my midsection with Nymphadora until halfway through my sixth month, but I believe that's very late. The medi-witch was worried, since at that point I'd already lost two in the fifth month and I showed with both of them. The key to not looking like Cissy is to eat fruits, vegetables, and other healthy things instead of the cakes and pies you'll crave." Andromeda felt a pang. She missed her husband. She missed her daughter. And she couldn't remember the last time she'd called their baby sister Cissy. It hurt.

It was entirely surreal, sitting at her kitchen table, knowing her husband was on the run from Snatchers and Death Eaters, knowing Voldemort had infiltrated the Ministry, wondering whether her daughter, unborn grandbaby, and son-in-law would be killed any day, while sharing an entire bottle of red wine with the pregnant older sister she hadn't seen in over eighteen years or conversed with in twenty-five, a woman who was a Death Eater in Voldemort's inner circle, a woman who boasted about her loyalty to Him even after His fall, even though it meant being sentenced to a lifetime in Azkaban. Andromeda took in a deep breath, let it out slowly, and figured she might as well get on with it.

"In your last trimester, you won't be much good at anything. You'll feel as if your brain is broken. You'll forget things, stupid things. Oh, and you might feel in increased need for… physical connection, which will be semi-negated by how unattractive you'll feel. The baby grows fast during those last three months. You'll be able to feel it inside you, moving and kicking. If I remember correctly, around the middle of the eighth month the baby will flip so its head is facing downward, preparing for birth. You'll be exhausted all the time. You'll experience cramps and pain."

"This sounds bloody awful," said Bellatrix weakly. "All that trouble for a baby. I don't even like babies. What in the hell have I gotten myself into?"

"No one says you have to have it," said Andromeda. "There are ways."

"I'm aware." About this, she offered no details. "Terminating it is not an option."

"In that case, be aware that you'll also have heartburn, varicose veins, false contractions, back pain, and stretch marks. You'll be clumsier that usual, your breasts might leak, the crazy dreams – or in my case, vivid nightmares – will get worse, and you'll probably pee when you don't intend to. Be sure to avoid laughing, crying, or coughing. Now let's discuss the birth!" Andromeda was starting to enjoy this. With every symptom she listed, her older sister looked a little more frightened. It was a nice change. "For starters, giving birth makes the Cruciatus curse feel like a pleasant massage. In other words, it fucking hurts."

Wine and tea swirled in Bella's stomach as all that she just heard swirled around in her brain. "Stop. I think I'm going to be sick. Right now."

"This way." Andromeda stood to lead her sister to the bathroom. She was surprised when Bellatrix stumbled. "Merlin's beard, you're a lightweight."

"I'm dying," said Bellatrix, her voice shaking. She hiccoughed. Andromeda chuckled. She helped Bellatrix down the hall into the loo.

"If you're going to vomit, try not to get any of it on my damn floor."

And just like Narcissa had that morning, Andromeda held Bellatrix's hair and rubbed her back while she threw up and dry-heaved, because that's what sisters do.

When Bellatrix was done she wiped her watery eyes with tissue, struggling to keep composed. Her abdomen was sore. Getting sick so frequently was its own abs workout. She whimpered.

"Oh, stop it. You'll live," said Andromeda dismissively. "Women have been getting pregnant and giving birth since the dawn of time. You're no different."

Bellatrix reclined until her back was flush against her sister's chest. They were both seated cross-legged on the cold tile floor. Andromeda propped herself up against the tub, keeping a firm arm around her sister's waist to keep her from slumping over.

"But I'm alone," whined Bellatrix, her voice sounding smaller than Andromeda had ever heard it. "You're all I have, Andromeda."

Andromeda rolled her eyes. "Surely the baby's father can help you with it."

"No," whispered Bellatrix. Again she wiped her eyes, this time with her sleeve. She held her head in her hands in a futile attempt to stop the room from spinning. Even more softly, she added, "It's His. The baby, Meda. It's His."

"Whose?" asked Andromeda, smoothing her sister's hair, fully expecting to hear the words "Lucius Malfoy" come out of Bellatrix's mouth. "Whose is it, Bella?"

"His," Bellatrix said again, more vehemently this time. "The Dark Lord's."