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March, 1998. Narcissa.
The teacup tremors in your sister’s hand. You notice. You pretend not to notice.
Hers is the tremor of an opium-addict, you think, or a child shaking in her sheets.
Bellatrix is neither. Even as a child, she did not shake.
In summer’s heat of days long gone, you would run after her on chubby legs—she was faster, her robes hitched immodestly for sake of speed. She would look at you with a challenge on her lips: climbing trees, sliding down banisters, and shattering potted plants in bursts of passion. Bellatrix was never afraid as a child.
Is she scared now? You could not say. It cuts you to admit it; your sister is a near stranger to you, these days. Everyone becomes strange in the Dark. Sweet Draco, home for the holidays, looks like an old man to you.
You watch Bellatrix’s hands again. Her fingernails are unshorn. She has applied a coat of midnight-colored varnish to them, but she has not troubled to slough off the dirt or tame the talons. Bellatrix has ever been careless of toilette.
When you were girls together, Bella would comb your hair, noting its blonde where she is all raven-dark, and teasing at how long it took you to dress. She never readied herself. As people stare at forest fires, people took notice of her no matter what she wore or how she did her hair.
Her dirty nails almost spur your smile, imagining what your mother would say. All this is fantasy, you remind yourself: you mother can say nothing. She slumbers below the moss, no more visitors to receive. All your family seems headed to the same place as your mother, do they not? For the Blacks, and the Malfoys too (for now you are both) they are in a hurry to get there: they run towards their graves. They leave, or they vanish, or they die.
But Bella…she breaks. She breaks differently than the vases and trinkets she used for childhood target practice. Your sister’s fracture is at once slow and sudden. It makes a mockery of time.
Bellatrix sets down her teacup. She has not drunk a sip.
Tea is ridiculous, you think wryly. In your house, wizards dress in costumes to play torture, and a man who cannot die lounges in your parlor. Your own sister flirts with madness.
And you perch here, in the sitting room, feeding her tea, as innocuous as a piece of china yourself. Tea with Bella is a weekly ritual. To you, it is a performance of sisterhood, which comforts you in lieu of actual sisterhood.
Everything you do seems a performance these days. Your gestures are nothing but repetitions of a different time: laughable, hallow, and false. Maybe this is your fate, as spiraling toward shattering seems to be Bella’s: you will reduce and reduce until you are a marionette. You even repeat the same phrases, like an enchanted doll, hearing them become paler and stupider.
Now, you try out one of your most frequently used:
“It is grey out today.”
This balm of neutrality may be the perfect sentence for these times. No one can accuse you for such a sentence: no hint of your own perspective is revealed. You are cleverer than they think. You remind yourself this, as you are often cleverer than you think, too. The sentence is also a test—a person’s response might reveal a rare shimmer of candor.
If they are optimistic about the day, perhaps they maintain faith in the regime. If they are not—perhaps you have an ally.
An ally. You are foolish to think this way. You tell yourself you must still have faith. At least—you will enjoy the regime once it comes to fruition. Once the fighting ends—won’t you?
You sip your tea for distraction.
Bellatrix, in any case, is immune to psychological nudging. She says, “I hate daylight. It is dull.”
You lay your cup on its saucer, gentler than she has done. “Would it be good for you to rest?”
This is another crafted query. Asking, “Do you have a mission tonight?” would go too far. One should not speak of such things. Asking, “Will you be up all night regardless, doing things I fear to ask you about?” would be unthinkable.
“I cannot sleep,” answers Bellatrix, her tone harsh. It is another unhelpful response. Her fingers, free of her cup, twitch on her robes, as if craving her wand.
Now, the only time Bellatrix stills is when she fights. When did her restlessness, jubilant as a child, begin to look like a symptom of illness?
Your husband shakes, too. You know he is afraid; too afraid to even speak aloud his fear. Perhaps Azkaban makes one shake. On the subject of what she experienced therein, your sister has been as silent as the grave.
Her fracture might have started in Azkaban. Like a scab that you could not help but pick, you thought of your sister every waking moment, those years when she was locked away. You had a shrine for her. Lucius mourned, too. The two had been like siblings themselves, nettling each other affectionately, trading jokes about trainings, and pranking each other as boisterous boys might.
You recall them, in the early days, coming home from nights as Death Eaters. Bellatrix would return looking aflame, chattering as if she was the priestess of a new religion. Lucius would sweep you in his arms, too energetic to even pretend at being aloof, perhaps smiling at your rounding stomach and the child within. He looked young. You smiled to receive them, then.
You indulge, for a moment, to reminisce.
In those early days, before the proper start of the war, it was often four of you: Bellatrix, Lucius, Rodolphus, you. Sometimes Rabastan, or once or twice another—Nott, Evan Rosier, all bright revolutionaries. The group would cozy in a chamber of someone’s home, trading ideas, laughing until the late hours, fantasizing of the world that would come to be. You all drank wine in those days, rather than tea. Sometimes all would drop into a doze on the couch. In the mornings, it had been a treat to tiptoe downstairs to spy the faces of these warriors youthened in sleep. You delighted in making them breakfast, charming fried eggs and toast while nursing Draco, growing like Engorgio. You liked presiding over those ambitious young Death-Eaters.
You remember Rodolphus, falling in love with Bellatrix. You tallied the signs, and you whispered your hope to Lucius who was hilariously unmoved. You remember Bellatrix confiding in you when he had finally proposed.
“The Dark Lord thinks it an advantageous match. We are,” your sister had smiled with her signature pride, “his two strongest recruits, he said.”
“But Bella, do you love him?”
She had hit you with a tickling charm rather than answer. You had taken this as a yes. (Now, it all seems folly.) But then, you had just delighted in giggling with your sister as though you were girls again, closer than you had been since Andromeda—
You do not want to reminisce that far, so you return to the lamp-lit evenings. Your sister’s face had been ecstatic, and you loved that she seemed fulfilled, finally able to do something which enabled her to shine. She did shine, then. Bellatrix rose through the ranks with unchecked fervor, her magic blazing like the star for which she was named.
The memories feel like those of school children, hopelessly naïve.
Even then, though, you feared. Didn’t you? You observed the fanaticism amid the excitement, the way your sister began to morph. You remember now: Bella’s cracks showed long before prison.
A piece of her was locked away. You resented, you think, that it seemed her Lord (apparently training her privately) had claimed this piece of her you lacked. Bella was unimpressed with your clever son. She ignored Rodolphus. She could not seem to carry any conversation that was not about the movement. But speak of the Dark Lord—she could monologue for hours, exultant words fighting over one another, oblivious when her audience’s focus waned.
You noticed other things, too. The scars. The unexplained injuries. The things she would do—signs, you suspect, of a stronger sickness, slithering out through various channels. The non-sequiturs which became a part of every conversation with her. Her inability to hold focus. The seemingly endless wine she began to drink. The heaps of food you knew she magicked out of your pantry to scarf in secret. Her laugh erupting at illogical points. Her body which began to shrink. Her anger which began to burn.
And, though Bellatrix has always been harder than you (something you always admired)—you had never seen her as blood-thirsty. That, maybe, has been the biggest change of all.
Watching the woman before you, you wonder if you should have said something then. She had still been composed, though, imperious, and the proud possessor of your leader’s favor. No one, save you, noticed the creeping change.
In the sitting room, Bellatrix stares into the distance. It is as if she is trying to draw contrast between her current self and your memories of her former glory. You have no guess what hides behind her eyes. She seems all eyes these days: bugging, wild eyes, darting over cheeks sunken in on themselves.
Did you know about the cruelty in the First War? Maybe you were ignorant to what your precious Death Eaters did when they left your house. You did not know of the torture, the carnage, and the blood. No; you are too generous with yourself: you knew and did not care. You fully believed, then, in the vision, fed to you like sugar-plums. The Death-Eaters are creating a new world. Draco, plump and sweet-smelling, had cooed in your arms. Yes, you had thought. A new world for me and my family.
You are not sure you believe in the vision now.
Do marionettes need to believe anything, you wonder? Perhaps they just spin on, chiming as expected until no one notices them.
Reminiscing is dangerous. Thinking, in your household, is dangerous, these days.
You reassure yourself that no one has heard your current thoughts. Were she listening, Bellatrix would be glaring at you with that unmistakable expression. The Dark Lord is away today. If he was in the house, Bellatrix would not be sitting here, restless and queer-looking, with you.
Your sister stands.
“The boy is out there,” she remarks. This is one of her frequent remarks. (Does everyone just repeat themselves these days?)
You follow Bellatrix’s eye. She stares through the paneled drapes at the courtyard, which is brittle-looking in the thawing winter. You cannot tell if she is absorbed in something which she can only see in her mind, or something real beyond the glass. All you see is a (grey) March day, sinking into evening. The twilight will be upon you soon.
Unlike Bellatrix, you have begun to hate the night.
“Imagine, Cissy,” she says, “If we could be the one to catch the boy. If we could deliver Potter to the Dark Lord.”
You cannot imagine.
Watching her hardened figure, deflecting the pale light, you wonder if your sister exists at all. Or has she been broken already?
An idea occurs to you: why do you not ask her these things you crave?
You are afraid she will hurt you. Do you care if she hurts you? You glance at her—Bellatrix will not kill you, certainly. Anything else you can withstand. You are, more precisely, fearful she will sell you to her precious Lord should she sense any insurrection. He is gone for the day.
You feel as bold as she is unsettled. More than a doll are you, after all.
You leave the tea sitting cold on the table.
She regards you through her heavy eyes as you join her near the window.
“Bellatrix,” you falter. You are nervous as you once were to speak before the class as a student. “Are you well?”
Why you start here, you cannot stay, but looking at her, it is all you can summon. She was once the protector of you, her younger sister—sisters it was, then—and now you feel motherly compassion for her.
She sneers. “Do I seem unwell?”
“Yes." You have not been honest in so long, it tastes strange to speak truth. “You have not sat still this entire afternoon.”
Bellatrix does not reply. Nonetheless, something slackens between her brows.
Gingerly, you extend a hand and place it on her shoulder. Her neck twitches—and then she relaxes, accepting it. Her shoulder is a knot of bone.
When you were children, Bellatrix would rarely initiate confidence. If she had not already said something to you, it was because she had decided to conceal it. So it does not surprise you that she stays still as though she is some wild animal ensnared in a net—playing dead. Death might be a game, when all is said and done.
You must push harder.
“Sister. We do not speak anymore.”
Bellatrix’s eyes flash—but in that flash is a glimmer of sanity. “What would you have us say?”
“Do you remember,” a ghost of a smile rounds your words, “our question game? When we were children?”
She prickles. “I have already withstood interrogations, Cissy.”
You catch your breath, embarrassed. But. This is already more than she has acknowledged to you before.
“Come,” you say, feeling truly reckless. “Are you scared?”
You knew this would needle her: Bellatrix, then and now, cannot allow accusations of cowardice to stand.
A queer expression colors her face.
To show you are earnest, you seal the room.
“Impertubus.”
Bellatrix’s eyes widen.
“Well,” she says as she casts herself onto the ground. Only Bellatrix, in a room of fine furniture, would loll on the floor. “I’ll begin, shall I? Three questions, and swear to be truthful.”
You cannot tell if she is mocking you, but you nod and wait.
She is quick with her question: “Do you regret your interference in Draco’s mission last year?”
You consider this. You think of your sweet boy, who you are already reluctant to release back to Hogwarts when the Easter break ends. You think of your animal fear, the boon of Snape’s assistance, and Bellatrix’s fury. That was the first time her fury was directed at you. “No,” you say slowly. “I would do the same again.”
You are determined to set a prerequisite of truth.
Will she fly out of the room? Tattle on you?
Bellatrix only nods. Seeing your raised eyebrow, she laughs her hoarse laugh. “You suffer for it,” she says, and you are comforted.
“Tell me,” you begin, “what Azkaban was like.”
“That is not a question.”
“For you, what was Azkaban like?”
Hunched like a child, Bellatrix picks at a tassel of the rug. You wonder if you should have begun with something less harrowing, but she speaks.
“It was like freezing to death.” She smiles at you. Her smile is not a mockery now, you realize, but a frail shield. “Everything was a dream. I thought I was a dream. I have never felt so numb. Sense…was dulled. I could feel nothing—almost nothing.”
This stirs your memory.
The night Bellatrix was returned, you tended to her. You had not slept since the mission to free the prisoners was announced. You palpitated with anticipation while the escapees were escorted back to secure locations.
You were greedy for sight of her; you were shocked at the sight you received. Bellatrix's bones stood out like razors below her skin, and you wondered if they fed them in prison. Maybe, your sister had abstained from the food like some saint, or fanatic, might sacrifice—sacrifice for their Lord. It was snowing when you helped her out of her rags and into a bath. Naked, like a feral child, she ran onto the balcony, laughing while tears shook her emaciated frame. “Snow!” she shrieked. “Snow! Snow!” Her fists had grasped for the shards of ice. Her smile revealed decaying teeth.
It makes sense now. Bellatrix craves sensation and cannot tolerate lack of motion. Perhaps she cannot endure these little reminders of a time when life was half-lived.
“How did you survive?” you ask, voice hushed.
“Ah-ah-ah.” Bellatrix wags her finger. “My turn.”
As if considering, she begins making a complicated knot of her own fingers in her laps. Her hair trails over her face. You can only guess at her expression when she asks, “Do you still mourn the Blood-traitor?”
You once-sister is only called “Blood traitor” now, so you do not have to ask who she means.
With no idea of Bella’s intention, you reply, quickly, “No.”
She looks up at you. Her face registers your lie.
“Yes,” you amend. “Though I wish I did not. And I will never forgive her.”
You wish you could pose the question back to her, but there is something else you wish even more.
“Do you love Rodolphus?” you ask her next.
Bellatrix’s mouth quirks. You have taken her by surprise, you surmise. It sounds like the kind of question girls might whisper to each other at slumber parties. It approaches that which you really want to ask.
Bellatrix is silent for a moment. She thinks the question beneath her, but she will answer.
“In a manner of speaking,” she says at last.
“The rules of the game say a full answer, Bella,” you remind her quietly.
“You ask ridiculous questions.”
“Still.”
“I must,” she says, exasperated. Her dagger-like eyes peer at you. “But the way you speak of your husband...”
You note the condescension in her tone. Gone are the days when Lucius and Bella enjoyed a friendship of their own, or even mutual respect.
She continues, “I cannot imagine such a thing. For Rod. He is a—a partner, or accomplice, or...”
“You would not bear his children? Die for him?”
“No.”
You suspected as much. Still, hearing it spoken brings a queer pang to your chest. Her answer begs another question—you must save it for another turn.
“Last question,” says Bellatrix softly. She has eased closer to you, without you noticing. You are almost curled up together—she could practically lean her head upon your knee.
Bellatrix looks up from the floor, to you, in your chair. “Are you afraid of me, Cissy?”
Her question surprises you.
Before you can help it, a smile cracks over your face. Your battle-scarred older sister resembles nothing so much as a girl, desperate for approval.
“No,” you answer. And it is the truth. You take one of her unmanicured hands into your own; this time, she does not flee your touch.
“I fear for you, but I could never fear you.”
Bellatrix smiles too. Even in her hallowed face, the smile is more familiar. Less sadistic glee, and a hint of warmth.
“We are sisters,” she says. You nod mutely, swallowing the threat of tears while you do. Bellatrix notices and laughs. You laugh and dab your eyes hurriedly.
“You have one more question,” she prompts you.
Seeing her so close and feeling her once more, you almost do not want to ask what you had planned. But the curiosity burns.
Still holding her hand, you start: “Do you love...” Bellatrix shifts, restless again, so you finish your question, “anyone?”
You chart indignation, derision, shame, all flitting over Bellatrix’s face.
But as if still jesting, she answers, “You, Cissy, of course.”
It gratifies you, though she knows this is not what you meant.
“Full answer,” you say, with a strained smile.
“I have just answered that I care for Rod. All your questions are dull.”
Silence descends upon the study while she fidgets.
You wait, because that is what you do, every day. You might wait a few moments for the truth from you sister.
When Bellatrix at last speaks, her low voice is soft. “I think you know the answer, Cissy.” Her face has turned from you, so she is little more than a thicket of matted black hair. “I would die for him.”
“And I know,” she grows insistent, “I know he feels—he trusts me, as he does no other follower. He—”
Bellatrix clings tighter to your hand, drawing you close. “Do you remember the trick I taught you?”
Your heart thumps, not from fear of her, but fear of what you might see. The truth is dangerous, after all.
You nod.
“Legilimens,” you whisper.
As she is offering, pouring forth her own mind, you can receive what she sends. Her familiarity helps to fill in the gaps. Like the smell of her hair and her amber perfume, her mind is laced with her essence.
Visions rise before you: Bellatrix’s memories. Bellatrix’s hopes. Bellatrix’s fears.
You are struck by how jumbled the chaos of her mind is, but the thoughts she presents are vivid and lucid.
The first is a memory.
Bellatrix first shows you yourself, somewhere in the middle of your Hogwarts career. Skewed by her recollection, you are lovelier and more delicate-looking than you have ever truly been. She has just graduated; the two of you pose for a portrait. Bellatrix has smeared Andromeda from the memory.
Everything shifts, and Bellatrix walks through a darkened place, unfamiliar to you. You see the unfinished landscape through her eyes, feel her rising excitement.
The Dark Lord is before her. He is different than he is now—there is black hair on his head, a pointed nose rather than the snake-like slits, eyes only hinting at red rather than burning. Bellatrix looks at him, and through her eyes you feel the intensity of her appreciation.
He is dueling with her, teaching her. When she falters, he lacerates her with lazy flicks of his wand. She pants on her knees. When she cries, he is frustrated, and then he is amused. It is like watching a boy batter his favorite toy. Bellatrix is exerting herself—at wits end—but also grateful. She, too, enjoys the game (against all odds.) The peril is part of her adoration.
A breakthrough—she lands a curse, a new curse, new Dark magic unfolding. The Dark Lord moves closer, fervor shining through his reddish-eyes. Again, he murmurs, and guides her hand.
You wish you could break away, but watch, caught in the memory, as he plants his other hand on her neck. It is a gesture of possession. You anticipate where the memory will continue.
Like a terrible prophecy, that which you expect is unveiled. Bellatrix removing her robes. Bellatrix kneeling. The Dark Lord using his wand to pleasure her and pain her in turns—looking on with flickering enjoyment and thin, parted lips. Bellatrix yearning, reaching for him—the coldest and hungriest of kisses. The briefest of contact, then Bellatrix forced to the ground, spun, broken open...she shields the rest for modesty.
In this scene, you read what Bellatrix does not; he plays with her the same way he tortures his victims. To him, all seems mercenary at best. His enjoyment is in her crumbling resistance and subjugation.
On the other hand, Bellatrix imbues this memory as proof that he, too, is fulfilled by her, in whatever way she has rationalized it.
Other thoughts bubble— Bellatrix’s glee at her rising powers. You see her striding through alleyways, tracking the Order, more than intoxicated by the way her curses intensify.
And him, too: his secretive smile, directed only at her, when she has pleased him. He bestows her favors. His voice, sliding over the word, “Bella.”
You cannot deny that your sister has been singled out by the Dark Lord. But to you, it is not proof of his love so much as his manipulation.
You understand why Bellatrix sees her evolution not as breaking—but as blooming.
The world of her memory spins like a top. It is All Hallows Eve. The Death Eaters prepare for a somber ritual and the gay party, their observation a wizarding custom. Bellatrix knows her Lord undertakes a solo mission that night. She anticipates him returning to the festivities with reason to celebrate. She plants a wine-dark kiss on her own looking glass, thinking herself deserving of all his attentions.
You remember this evening, too. Through Bellatrix’s recollection, you follow the inevitable: a tumult stirs through the crowd. News descends that the Dark Lord has fallen. Aurors intrude the mansion. Glass shatters. Bellatrix feels as though she has died. She cannot believe that He is gone. Young Crouch, crawling with blood on his face, whispers that the Longbottoms were the ones to expose the Halloween gathering. Bellatrix seizes at straws.
She kills two men who approach her. Crouch trembles. We will find them.
Bellatrix skirts past your attempt to stop her, past the torture of the Longbottoms...
Now, she huddles in stone that must be a cell of Azkaban, cold as a leaf rattling in winter wind. Her body aches. Her being aches. Over and over she thinks, He will return. He will return. He will return. He will love me for my loyalty. He will return. She thinks it like a spell.
Unclarity overtakes her mind. You hear buzzing and then--
Not a memory, but a projection of an imagined future unfolds. The Dark Lord is defeated. The Dark Lord is killed. Bellatrix herself cannot deny his death. His eyes, red like flame, are extinguished and blank.
It is inexplicable. The vision seethes with the same grief you would feel were Lucius, Draco, and Bellatrix herself all struck down at once. So, she is not only his lover in a technical sense; she does love him. She loves him in a way which transcends the irrationality of such emotions.
Tenderly, Bellatrix withdraws the recollection.
All at once, you are back in the wan light of evening. Compared with the violence of her mind, the sitting room is sedate and queer and sad.
Bellatrix is crying.
A primal instinct overtakes you.
“Shh, shh,” you murmur. You touch her hair. You curl her into the crook of your neck. “Shh.”
For certain, you are a traitor. For when you thought of the Lord’s death, you thought only of peace. You thought of disappearing into the country. There, you would watch Draco raise a family. You would walk through the garden, your mind as free as the birds that sing in the hedges. You would drink tea with Bella and speak of small things. But—no; that could never be.
Should the Dark Lord fall, Bella will follow him. The journey into her mind left you with no doubt. As do all the others you love, she sprints toward her grave. You wish you could change her. But if she had not her single-mindedness, her passion, and her death-drive, she would not be Bella. Restoration is impossible.
Her shattering is inevitable.
As you hold your sister, you add love to your list of things that are dangerous in these times.
You wonder if you will have to reassure her with hope that you do not feel. Bellatrix steadies herself.
“I should not worry.” With alarming rapidity, her tears have dried. Intensity fevers her words. “He will not fall. He cannot fall. All will be well. We will be glorious, Cissy. It is so close...”
Even with her return to militancy, she does not sever contact. Like a petal rippling on a pond, she plants a dry kiss upon your forehead.
“I will go rest.”
Bellatrix rises. She hesitates in the doorway.
“Cissy--”
You wonder if she will say more.
The phantom of her unspoken intention splinters.
“Finite,” Bellatrix mutters, restoring the room to its natural state. She looks at you with an odd, secretive smile and departs up the stair.
Alone, in the sitting room, you tidy. The monotony keeps your hands busy and stills your heart.
As you stack the china cups, you allow yourself to do something you have not allowed in years: hope. Maybe, somehow, no matter what, you and Bellatrix will have each other in that murky end that will come. Maybe the seed of affection will nestle, will bloom.
A noise interrupts. The cups clink in your hand.
The doors to your grounds are enchanted to alert the lower rooms of the Manor; Someone has requested entrance at the gate. They are yelling something to beg their admittance.
Gathering your skirts, you abandon cleaning and walk to the front door.
In the hall, you hear the cry.
The voice is victorious. To you, it sounds like a death bell.
“We got Potter!”
Oh, you think, oh.
You wish you could shut off love like a dripping tap.
And you cannot say whether it is despair or hope which stings your eyes. Perhaps both. No matter how the world will resolve, there is no world in which you and your sister might love each other without blood-letting and destruction and despair.
She loves you. She loves her cause more. The frisson will rattle her, rattle her, until she breaks.
Your hand tremors as you open the door.