Sisters

Narcissa Malfoy's sharp blue eyes stood out on her soft round face and captivated the onlooker at once. Right now they were boring into the head of an elderly sales lady, who was taking her sweet time to ring somebody up.

Mrs. Malfoy was standing in line at the Louis Vuitton store in Paris, stomping her little foot impatiently. She had the strongest urge to pull out her wand and do something mean to the slow ass muggle. She restrained herself however, grudgingly pulled her hand away from the purse where her wand was peacefully laying, and continued to stand in line, while rapidly losing patience. She had just found herself the most adorable pink baguette, which matched her new Chanel dress perfectly. She would have liked nothing more than to quickly pay for it and be on her way.

The reason for her hurry was leisurely strolling through the back of the store, and to Narcissa's great delight, hasn't noticed her yet. She gave the sales lady and her wand another frustrated thought and sighed. "Hurry damn it," she thought to herself. "I'm running out of time. She will see me for sure if I linger in this store for more than two more minutes."

As soon as she finished saying the word minutes in her mind, she heard the familiar voice shriek excitedly across the entire store-

"Cissy!!!"

Too late. That voice has always made her cringe. She felt her entire body shudder and then turn stiff.She shot, the now available sales lady, another hateful look and putting a pleasant smile on her cold face, gracefully turned around to face her sister.

"Bella! … My darling. It's been TOO long!"

Petunia Dursley was spending the morning in her kitchen, at Number 4 Privet Drive. She was standing in front of the sink, wiping the same plate over and over again, while staring absentmindedly out of the window.

In all of her forty something years, she never even dreamed she would be here. In such a life shattering, mind numbing situation. In the duration of her simple, slow-paced, and overly sheltered life, she had never even known anyone who has gotten divorced, let alone thought that divorce could possibly be in her own future. Subconsciously she should have known that it was coming. They have been unhappy for a while.

It all started a little over five years ago, when her nephew went away to school. That same year Dudley was accepted into Smeltings, a great boarding school located on the other side of the country. So both boys went away at the same time, and left the two of them alone in the old house. Something that neither Vernon, nor Petunia have experienced since the very first months of their married life, before Dudley was born. In retrospect, she should have been preparing for that moment long before it actually happened, having heard a lot about the Empty Nest Syndrome. But she chose to disregard such rubbish, for she was never the one to believe in popular psychology, or take advice from insolent looking talk-show hosts. Perhaps if she did, it would have saved her marriage. For she still loved her husband dearly, no matter how badly he has treated her in the recent past.

Oh well. Now she will never know.

She has resolved, two days ago, to forget about her husband as soon as humanly possible and try to build a new life from scratch. A better life. One that would not resemble her old one even for a second. She didn't care what this new life was going to look like, as long as it never again reminded her of who she used to be.

Petunia knew what such a resolution meant. She had to change everything. She knew perfectly well what she had to do.

She sighed and put the plate down. She has made her decision and there was no turning back. With a stone cold expression on her bony face she marched right up to the small, unused guest bedroom and pushed aside an old night-stand, behind which there was a dusty stretch of wooden floor boards that have not been touched in years. Nobody ever used this room or this nightstand and thus she has never bothered to clean this area up. The dust could literally be measured in inches, and anyone else probably would have choked when it all flew up. But Petunia couldn't care less.

She knelt down and quickly counted the floorboards - four from the wall and one over to the right. Her now expressionless face stared at it for less than a moment before her bony fingers sprung to action, and with a well-practiced motion pried a loose board from the floor. Sticking her entire hand inside the deep hole, she felt around for something that she had left there nearly two decades ago. Back then, she swore that she would rather die than ever use this thing again.

Pulling an elongated box out, she blew the dust off of it and ran a trembling hand across the lid. Below the thick layer of moldy looking dirt, one could just make out an inscription written in intricate, loopy letters - Petunia Evans.

It opened, and a tear escaped Petunia's dry, dust infested eye.

There, inside this delicately crafted wooden jewelry box, laid her wand.

Narcissa and Bellatrix Black sat in one of the smallest rooms at the Malfoy Mansion, sipping plain black tea without any snacks. Both of the women knew better than to eat pastries at every single tea-time of the day.

They were struggling to make small talk and therefore waited more than impatiently for Lucius to get home.

You could actually tell quite easily that the two were related, even though at the first glance, they looked nothing alike. Narcissa was taller and almost sickeningly slender, while Bella was shorter with very distinct womanly curves. Unlike her younger sister she had jet-black hair that was currently cut at her shoulders and a heavy-set square jaw, which jutted out threateningly whenever she tried to smile.

But despite such striking dissimilarities, they were both very beautiful and uniformly charming, having inherited both of these qualities from their late mother.

All of the Black sisters seemed to squint, laugh and screw up their faces in exactly the same way whenever they were happy, neutral or dissatisfied. These two had an identical stubborn personality, a matching sarcasm-ridden sense of humor, and an overly developed cynical outlook on life. And if one were to spend a mere hour in their company, he would begin to see just why they couldn't stand each other for long periods of time. The reason was very simple. When any two peoples' personalities are practically the same, they naturally tend to clash and drive each other crazy.

After all they wouldn't say that "opposites attract" without having a good cause for it. And if opposites attract, then logically "similars repel."

Unfortunately it has always been this way for the Black girls. When they were younger Narcissa was their parents' favorite – she was always being fussed over, worried about and spoiled rotten in the process. Naturally this made everyone else in the household insanely, though quite reasonably, jealous, Bellatrix not excluded.

And it didn't change much after they entered Hogwarts. Even though they both belonged to the same house, their sets of friends could not have been more different. Bellatrix began spending a lot of time with a sketchy fellow named Snape, passing her days in labs mulling over controversial potions, and very soon afterwards dove head first into the Dark Art itself. Narcissa took the opposite route, she hung around with a Slytherin named Peta, obsessed about her grades and spent the days out in the grounds, sun bathing by the lake. Bella had resented her baby sister for not having an open mind about the Dark Arts, and Cissy in turn had condemned the older one for muddying up their family's reputation by joining in with the above said crowd.

Just like every other Slytherin, the sisters were quite cunning, selfish and ever ready to stab someone in the back. Unfortunately for each of them, that someone turned out to be the other sibling. By the time that Bella entered seventh year, they were barely speaking to each other, outside of the polite pleasantries that they exchanged at home in front of their parents. Narcissa was more than relieved when Bella had finally graduated, letting her live out her last two years of school in peace. Her constant bickering and nagging about the cool new gang that called itself the "Death Eaters" has annoyed the crap out of Ciss, who had no intention of ever being a part of it. When Bella left, Narcissa honestly thought that it would be the end of it.

They both went on to live their lives without ever dreaming of a sisterly "reunion."

However with time, Bellatrix decided to forgive her little sister for not following immediately in her footsteps. And was now eager to restore the family connection.