got up two chapters in one day. go me. alright. i've edited, changed the names of the three black sisters' parents, and fixed a few typos. read&&review

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"You think that…that….that thing's PRETTY?"

"It was meant to be a negative comment."

"Suuuure."

The seven of us were all in the girls' kitchen, each digging into a sundae. It had been only a few days since we'd met Lucius and Sirius and I were keen to get Bellatrix riled up at any given moment by mentioning him. Sirius didn't seem to be able to get over the fact that Bellatrix had called the little snot nosed peroxide a "pretty boy." So, he was now known to burst out with something like this at any given interval.

"You think he's pretty." Sirius cocked out with a smile.

Bellatrix looked up from her bowl. "For the last time, I do no—give that back."

Sirius had seized the moment of irritation to prize the cherry from the top of her sundae and was now dangling it over his open mouth. He looked away from it just long enough to make sure that she was watching and then dropped the cherry into his mouth. Swallowing it in a gulp, he licked his lips.

"Make me."

He'd given her the invitation to begin the war and without warning, Bellatrix grabbed her bowl, slid it in front of Sirius and just as he was eying it shoved his face into it. Sirius left out a muffled squawk before jumping up. He was a mess, face covered in whipped cream and revenge clearly buried somewhere under the white substance. It was on and everyone else in the kitchen knew it. His hand shot out, grabbing the nearly full can of whipped cream on the counter and a devilish smile came to his face.

"You wouldn't dare." Bellatrix taunted him.

"Wanna bet? You're gonna get it, Trixie." Sirius launched himself at her. Bellatrix fell off of the counter, which she'd been sitting on, landing on the floor with a rough smack. Sirius landed on top of her mere seconds later. She was kicking and screaming, just like she'd been the first time I'd met her, but none of us interfered. We knew not to get in the way of their little spats.

"Ruffians." Andromeda scoffed. She left her ice-cream on the table and retreated up to her room, shaking her head at the lot of us. Just as she disappeared from sight, I saw the edge of a set of hot pink robes vanish around the corner, heading for the dining room. Narcissa's bowl of ice-cream was missing.; the perfect little child obviously didn't want to get dirty with whipped cream.

"Ah. Could you two keep it down?" I interjected. Bellatrix had screamed and I only wanted to make matters worse for her. The two had disappeared behind the other side of the counter and seconds later, the whipped cream can came flying from behind it, clearly aimed for my head. I ducked just in time, barely avoiding the can as it went zooming over my head.

"Hey. Watch it, will you! That nearly hit me."

"It was supposed to." Bellatrix hissed.

"Aim a little better next time then." I loved messing with her, just to watch her fly off the handle. Loved it.

I was tired of not knowing what was going on and leaned over the counter. I choked, sucking in a lung full of air before falling down on the counter with laughter. Bellatrix was covered in whipped cream. It was all over her, in her hair, on her clothes, splotched on her face, and judging by the way her cheeks were puffed out, Sirius had managed to force her mouth open and squirt it full. After several more minutes of crude struggling and wrestling, she jumped up, raging. Spitting the whipped cream on Sirius, she stormed upstairs to her room, mumbling the whole way.

"Ew. Not very lady like Trixie." Sirius sucked in his stomach, trying to stop the sopping whipped cream from leaking through his shirt to touch his skin.

"You know you're in for it, right?"

"Yeah, Rodolphus. But I'm always in for it. Aren't I? Knowing Bellatrix means that you're in for it every day." He explained while trying to rip the shirt off over his head.

I nodded. Knowing Bellatrix was like knowing a wound up snake. She'd sit by and take as much as she could, then explode.

That was the last time that we were all together before. Bellatrix and I were to be off to Hogwarts two days later. We would slowly be split apart, form our own groups. It was one of the last times when we were all so innocent. We'd be corrupted soon enough and going to school would change our lives forever.

Druella and Mere waited till the day before we were to leave for Hogwarts to take us to Diagon Alley for our supplies. The two of them insisted that Lucius come with along, since he would be entering Hogwarts with Bellatrix and me. And I much as I disliked the thought of having him along for the ride, I had no choice in the matter and would have to sit there and "just deal with it" as Mere had already told me when I'd tried my best to talk her out of it.

That morning we apparated to the Black Manor to find Lucius and Latona already there. Lucius and Bellatrix were seated on opposite sides of the living room and locked in a staring contest. By now I was used to their competitions and was grateful that for once, they weren't doing something dangerous. I walked over and sat down on the arm of the chair Bellatrix was in.

"Going to give up?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because."

"Because why?" I looked up. Lucius was angry. I'd taken Bellatrix's mental attention away from him.

"Just because." She was too determined not to lose and I could tell that she didn't like me questioning her.

Suddenly, I had a plan.

"Just quit."

"Why?

"Because this is stupid. Besides, it's not even dangerous." I'd hit something there. I could tell. Her facial expression changed slightly and she became less rigid. It was working. Bellatrix couldn't stand doing things that weren't in the least bit challenging and that didn't give her some rush of adrenaline, and a staring contest didn't fall under either of these categories.

"Come on, just quit."

"Why should I?" She demanded.

"Come on Bella, you're not even proving anything but who can stare off in space while pretending to look at the other for the longest amount of time." She didn't seem swayed by that, so, I decided to throw in the last weapon I had. "Do it for me?"

Slowly, she looked away, eyes coming in contact with mine. I turned my head in time to see Lucius storming from the room. I'd won. I had her attention.

The rest of the day was a blur of going into shops, trying on robes, getting a wand, and all the mayhem that went with school shopping. The three mothers took over everything, leaving the three of us to just mill about behind them. I remember getting our wands. Each of us received odd looks from the man who ran the store while he muttered something about dark magic and tragic years to come.

Each of our wands was different, each suiting the owner. Lucius' wand was ebony, with a dragon heartstring core; extremely powerful and dangerous. Bellatrix's was a blackened rosewood with a runespoor fang core; very powerful in the dark arts. My own was holly with a chimera scale core; very rare, but very powerful. The other thing that I seem to remember from that day was planting a frog in some aged woman's tea outside of a shop. It was Bellatrix's idea, of course. And the woman, wearing squared glasses and a green plaid set of robes screamed when she went to drink her tea and the frog leapt out onto her crooked hat. The three of us ran off around the corner, thinking we'd not been seen and laughing like mad the whole way.

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I crawled into bed that night, everything packed away and ready for the morning. And just as I was going to sleep, Rabastan burst into my room, face strewn with tears. I jumped up, falling out of the bed and landing on the floor. "Dear Merlin. What's wrong ?" He must have thought that I was angry for he only started to sob louder. I quickly jump up, running over to him.

"What's wrong?" I asked again, trying to sound as nice as possible and disgusting myself all the same.

"D- d- don't' leave me!" His arms threw themselves around me and I was locked in.

"I'm not. What happened?" I had no idea on what he was on about.

"You're leaving. Tomorrow. And you're not coming back."

Oh. He was talking about school. I guessed that he'd had a bad dream about me leaving and not coming back. "I'm not leaving you. I'll be back for Christmas. And in two years, you'll be coming along. Don't worry about it." He sobbed again, refusing to let go.

"I'm not leaving you." I repeated "I'll never do that. I promise."

It was another promise for me to keep and I intended to. Smoothing over his hair, I wrapped my arms around him. "I'm not leaving you."

He seemed to calm down a few minutes later, shoulders still shaking. He threw up several times that night, running back and forth between the bathroom and my room, before he settled down. Rabastan crawled into bed with me that night and I made no objections whatsoever. It took me quite some time to fall asleep. My mind was racing with images of my brother crying, the train breaking down on the way to the station during Christmas break. I'd managed to get by nine years without anything like this happening again, without being scared to death of what would happen to my little brother. But now, it was back and was ten times worse. He was scared that I would leave him forever and not come back.

I rolled over after two hours of debating in my head on whether or not just to skive getting on the train, to see that Rabastan was sound asleep, curled up to my side. I smoothed his hair out of his eyes in the same fashion I'd watched Mere do it back when he'd been a baby.

"I'm not leaving you." I whispered. "I promise."