I am SO SORRY this took so long. If anyone is still reading... enjoy.
The gardens were wet the day of the funeral. A silvery rainfall had fallen at dawn, and pearly dewdrops still sat on every blade of grass. Blanche heard Narcissa Malfoy complaining about the ruin of her shoes as a result of the weather.
The ceremony was short and callous, and no one cried aside from Andromeda Tonks. Sirius held her hand as she wept, taking the place of her husband who she had left behind at home for safety. Blanche would have liked if Sirius had sat next to her, but she knew her father would never permit that. He was angry enough with her for allowing him to accompany her.
Bellatrix had been overjoyed to see Sirius at the train station. In her extremely peculiar manner, she called Sirius her 'most sweet and handsome cousin' and kissed him on the cheek sloppily when she saw him. Blanche hardly spoke at all on the way to Upper Flagley; Bellatrix gushed about the Dark Lord's most recent successes in the Dark Rebellion, including the support of a band of giants he had earned in November. Blanche only piped up once, inquiring as to the state of Bellatrix's marriage to her uncle, Rodolphus.
"Quite well, I suppose," she answered hurriedly. "He's just a bit shrimpy, is all."
Blanche's uncle Rodolphus—her father's younger brother—was in fact a small man. And at that, rather unattractive as well. He and Rabastan looked nothing alike. It did not surprise Blanche in the slightest that Bellatrix seemed discontent with her marriage, as it was undoubtably arranged by Druella, Bellatrix's mother. These Pureblood marriages were not designed for physical attraction—only preserving purity.
When Walburga Black first saw Sirius embracing his brother, Regulus, inside Lestrange Grange just before the funeral procession began, she marched over to him and berated him for nigh on fifteen minutes without a pause for breath. Regulus was the one to stop her, as Sirius just stood there on the receiving end without anything to say. Blanche watched the encounter from her place beside her father; Regulus was an unusual boy—so unlike and like Sirius at the same time. He was almost parallel in handsomeness to Sirius, but there was an undeniable dullness in his eyes that made Sirius the brighter of the two. A passion for life was also lacking in his vigor and voice, which made him significantly less interesting. Before anything else he was a quiet follower, which enabled him to become something of an ideal son to Walburga and Orion. However to the parents he had never amounted to Sirius' innate excellency.
Before Sirius had 'gone rotten,' as Walburga said, he was truly the brightest star in her night sky. Exceedingly handsome since youth and somehow becoming more so by each week, naturally intelligent, infinitely ambitious, courageous as a lion, and sharp as a whip, she had the highest of hopes for him. But then he'd met the 'cursed traitor Potter' and she'd tried her hardest to keep him within her reach—all by severe means. She'd ordered Orion to bring the belt to him, raided his room more than thrice a month, locked him in a coatroom, threatened to stop paying his tuition, and forced him to go to more Pureblood gatherings and balls than was healthy. None had worked. And so now she settled on Regulus—her younger son who was continually shadowed and dwarfed by Sirius' former prospect.
Blanche walked to the open casket in which her mother lay. She looked at her with a removed scrutiny—her body was rendered gaunt by the illness she had for two months suffered, and her once lovely auburn hair had dulled and silvered at the roots. The black dress she had been put in was too big for her as she had lost most of her weight before her death, and her rings were evidently too large for her emaciated fingers. The beauty that had once thrived in her arched brow, thick lips, and swanlike neck was more than gone, and in its place was nothing but a misshapen corpse.
Blanche left the casket and found a place next to Sirius. She kept her hand around his arm and held his muscled forearm so tightly he was sure he'd have bruises come next morning. She felt her other hand become embraced in a warm palm, and looked to see Andromeda holding her hand. The birth of her daughter and a rumored miscarriage had thickened her face and imprinted wrinkling on skin, but she was still beautiful. Her smile was heavy but weight-bearing, and Blanche felt a little lighter when she took her hand.
Sirius and Blanche sat on the wet grass after everyone had gone inside. He watched Blanche as she lowered her back to the ground, allowing the drops of rain to soak into her hair and dress. She kicked off her shoes and extended her hand to his. He took it and held it on both of his hand, studying it like a pilgrim did a long-awaited shrine. Her eyes followed the neatly-maintained garden that enclosed the large tract of grass. Most of the flowers were of dark shade—Queen of the Night tulips, black dahlias, chocolate cosmos, and black hollyhocks.
"How can a garden be all black?" She asked absentmindedly.
"We're at Lestrange Grange. That's how," he replied. She nodded with a small smile, and pointed toward a grove weeping willows at the back of the gardens that was hardly noticeable amongst the larger, taller trees that composed the back wall of the estate.
"Back there, beneath the willows, are a few patches of Lily of the Valley. I planted them one summer when I missed Lily," she said. "I never told her."
"You should. She'd love to know that."
"I feel it should stay a private delicacy of mine," she replied thoughtfully. "I've always wanted to rip all of the darkness out of this house. If it was ever abandoned by my family, I'd take it for myself and clean it up. Put up new drapes and replace the rugs. Maybe even build a little guest house out within the willow grove."
"If I didn't know you better, I'd say you sound rather domestic, Blanche," Sirius smiled. She shrugged and tried to pull him down on the grass beside her, but his attention was instantly jolted away from her when he caught a flash of icy light cross the gardens.
"Vermillious!"
"Protego!"
Blanche looked out to see Orion Black walking hastily toward Sirius and her with his wand directed at them. A very sour scowl was placed between his nose and his chin. Blanche grew angry instantly upon seeing him, as he hadn't been present for the funeral. The only reason he came was to punish Sirius upon hearing that he had shown his face in front of his mother.
Blanche watched as the vermillion sparks that flew from Orion's wand turned and headed toward him. With a defensive jab of his wand, Orion flicked away the sparks. Orion's nostrils flared as he glowered at his eldest son, who was standing with his wand in his hand. A moment of silence passed, before Sirius glared and shouted: "Everte Statum!"
As Orion flipped backward and landed on the ground with a thud, Rabastan was running onto the grasses with his wand prepared for combat. Blanche reached for her wand which was tucked into her stockings, but Rabastan got to her before she could curse him.
Wordlessly, he cast the Incarcerous Spell on her and Blanche instantly felt her hands bind together with a magical shackle.
Sirius ran to her and raked his brain before remembering and muttering, "Relashio." Blanche felt the shackles melt away into air.
Rabastan raised his wand again and Orion got to his feet. Both opened their mouths, but before they could cast: "Fianto Duri!" Blanche temporarily protected the small area in which she and Sirius stood. She watched one of Rabastan's bolts of color fly toward them, but it dissipated into thin air when it came within a small length of them.
"Stupefy!" Sirius set on his father, and Orion instantly dropped to the ground once again in the blast of shock.
As the protective charm she had set faded steadily from the air surrounded them, Blanche looked to the gargoyles that sat along the balconies above the manor's back entrance. They were ancient, gnarled creatures, with drooping brows and wings tucked into their scaled backs. She held out her wand to them, and Rabastan followed the direction of it. "Piertotum Locomotor!"
The gargoyles slowly cracked through their old and crusted shells of moss and mold. Their giant stone wings opened behind them and their pointed ears twitched in awakening. Several began to climb down from their elevated placement on the balconies, accidentally crunching and crushing the rock beneath their wide, taloned paws.
"Oppugno!" Blanche completed, pointing her wand to her father on the field. The creatures instantly leapt from their place into the air, flying beneath thick wings of granite. They swept and dove in the air, gnashing their teeth as they neared Rabastan in their oddly elegant flight.
He set each gargoyle to flying stone and whips of fire, but the task was quite time consuming. Blanche believed it was safe to say at this point that Lestrange Grange had far too many gargoyles. "Bombarda Maxima!" Rabastan blasted the last of them from the air.
"Expelli—" Sirius began, but it was too late.
"Expelliarmus!" Rabastan finished first, sending Sirius' wand meters from him. Blanche prepared her wand and pointed it toward him.
"Serpensortia!" She cried, sending a long and thick snake of viridian green from the tip of her wand. It went straight for Rabastan with a flick of its tail and a hiss of its tongue. It lodged for his foot with toxic fang, and Rabastan leapt away just before it could get him.
"Avada Kedavra!" Rabastan quickly cursed the snake. A dense flash of green shot from his wand and hit the snake, sending it writhing in the grass in death. Blanche became distracted by the lifeless creature lying in the grass, torn from life at the whip of a wand.
She raised her wand when she saw her father coming closer in her peripheral vision, but it was too late because the words were already leaving his mouth as she parted her lips: "Imperio."
Blanche froze still. She felt like she was made of rock as she stood more rigid than ever before. She could feel everything in her heart—the fear, the shock, the anger, and the disloyalty. Her own father.
"Blanche!" Sirius cried, running for his wand.
Rabastan sent the wand flying too far away before Sirius could reach it. Blanche's eyes turned in their sockets as she saw the wand land in the patch of Lily of the Valley beneath the willows. "Immobulus!" Rabastan froze Sirius.
"Orion! Help!" Blanche screamed from the top of her lungs, summoning anyone who was less heartless than Rabastan, more merciful than him—that was nearly anyone at this funerary event. But everyone was inside aside from Orion, who lay stupefied in the grass. "Andromeda!" Blanche cried as loudly as she could.
"Stop shouting," Rabastan ordered, and Blanche instantly closed her mouth. The screams for help were locked in her chest and banging against her ribs for release, but her body wouldn't allow it. Her body wasn't her own; in that moment, she belonged to Rabastan.
Sirius' immobility faded and his mouth opened, as it was the only part of him that was welcome to movement. "She's your daughter!"
Rabastan laughed, watching Sirius as he shook free his limbs and managed to take painful steps in the direction of his wand. "Blanche, raise your wand to Sirius."
"Father!" Blanche cried. She knew water was welling at the rims of her eyes as her arm raised to Sirius, wand pointed directly at him. Sirius looked to her for mercy with his hands up in surrender, acting before thinking. "Please don't, father," she began to sob. She clenched her eyes shut and felt a tear snake down her cheek.
"Stop crying," he ordered, and Blanche gasped as the water seemed to sink back in her eyes. Her cries were pushed back into her throat, joining the reserve of sounds she would make if she could.
"Try and fight it," Sirius offered pleadingly. She watched his hands tremble in the air, and for his sake she tried, but it only hurt. Every muscle she tried to move at her command burned with a thousand fires.
"Fighting it will only hurt her," Rabastan informed him matter-of-factly. Blanche gave up her trials and sunk into the curse, saving her strength for when—or if—she ever came out of it. "Blanche, curse him."
A short and cold breath left her mouth. She tried her hardest to shake her head in refusal, which only set an excruciating pain to her neck and jaw. "I won't—" she forced out, gasping for breath under the pain. The words leaving her mouth set her brain on fire, and if she wasn't directed by Rabastan she would surely crumple into pain and unconsciousness. She felt liquid rush into her nose and trickle onto her skin, and a similar sensation in her ears.
"You will," Rabastan urged, clamping Blanche's mouth shut. "If you keep fighting it, it will kill you."
"I don't—" she whimpered out before a scream ripped through her head. It went beyond pain—it was like her brain was imploding within its skull. She began to seize and cough, blood sputtering from her mouth.
"Stop fighting it," Rabastan finally ordered, and Blanche could no longer summon anything to fight it.
"It's alright, Blanche," she heard Sirius speak lowly to her from his openhanded position several meters from her. "Just do what he says."
A droplet of blood dripped from her mouth to her chest as she inquired: "Which curse?" The curse Blanche had been set to permitted this question; Rabastan had never said which.
"The Cruciatus Curse," he answered hesitantly, as though deciding upon the sweetest dish at a dinner table.
"It's okay," Sirius accepted it, keeping his eyes on her. "Just don't fight it anymore," he told her, but Blanche couldn't succumb. She tried desperately to release her wand from her grip, but the sensation only sunk like poison into her skin. She felt her skin split and blood flow from her hand's grip on the wand. It trickled down her forearm and the red rivulet felt like acid on her skin; her chest screamed and her head was again swathed in fire.
"No!" She released some strangled sound from her mouth—the best she could do. With her lips came a wispy gush of blood, and it burned down her neck to her chest. The ruby necklace she wore was engulfed in the blood as it slipped down her collarbones; she heard the jewel crack as it came into contact with the acidic blood and the gold of the chain melt over her skin.
"Stop now!" Sirius yelled at her, and his words nearly had more sway over those of her father's.
"Use the Cruciatus Curse on him!" Rabastan shouted, irritated by the fight she was putting up.
"Crucio!" Blanche cast involuntarily, feeling the surge of red fire leave her wand and penetrate Sirius.
Sirius instantly collapsed to the floor, screaming at the pain. It was like a hundred knives piercing his skin—a million teeth sinking into every inch of him. His eyes and ears no longer functioned under the pain, and he could swear his brain was melting if he could form a coherent sensation. All he knew was pain. He wasn't anything or anyone—he was just excruciating pain and that was all there was.
His cries ripped through her heart like a whip and she tried fighting it again, but the pain only reversed onto her when she did. He still writhed and she still stood with her wand pointed to him. There was nothing but black, and the only thing holding her up was Rabastan's curse in that moment.
"Finite Incantatum!" A voice sliced through the pain, and there was finally white. She still dripped with blood and soreness, but she would not yet submit to the faint that awaited her. It seemed quiet suddenly without Sirius' screams, and she fell over herself toward him, following the sound of his gasps. She collapsed on Sirius, barely holding up her head and dripping blood all over him.
"I'm so sorry," the words fell from every part of her with what energy she had left.
"It wasn't you," he breathed, reaching for whatever he could grab. He took a tuft of her hair in his hands and brought her closer, allowing him to encase her in his arms. If Blanche had the strength to move her neck, she'd have looked to see Walburga Black kicking Rabastan's wand away with a screech. Somehow, their savior had been Walburga—of all people.
"That's my son, you bastard!" She screamed at the top of her lungs. Her voice faded away as Blanche's sensations dripped away.
"Hold on to me," Sirius breathed through his frailty. She wrapped hands around what she could grab—his neck and his shoulder, and she felt him pull her so close to him her ribs hurt.
Sirius extended a long arm upward and tilted his head, finding his wand with his eyes. "Accio," he grunted, feeling the wand find its place in his hand before releasing a strained breath.
And then he somehow summoned the strength to Apparate them.