"Another life
another time
We're Siamese twins writhing intertwined
Face to face
no telling lies
The masks they slide to reveal a new disguise"
-"Face to Face" Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Narcissa's had noticed Bellatrix's absence by now. Andromeda wouldn't DARE show a black family function after the disgrace she'd caused. Yet Narcissa felt her sister's presence not long ago. Andromeda radiated this unsettlement that no one could really quite understand.
She longed to get away from these imbeciles; she yearned for early retirement, and a cup of tea. Chamomile just like she always had it. She enriched her life with the finest things, when you're surroundings are immaculate, internally you get bored. Narcissa's was the most materialistic person you'd ever meet, but the constant remodeling of the house had always distressed her father, who grudgingly permitted her renovations for she was his favored daughter.
Bellatrix was such a contrast; while Narcissa spent her days dictating to anyone she has the influence over, Bellatrix would sit out on the wood-and- rope swing as the wind swayed her slightly with its breeze. She'd sit in that swing all day, scrawling incoherencies Narcissa neither comprehended nor desired to peruse.
Bellatrix had a whole library of her notebooks, each one far more dissipating towards life and existence then the last. Bellatrix had always been viewed as if through a kaleidoscope, fragments and distortions of something she'd probably never get the full picture of. They were like the dark and the light. Neither prevails, for one could not exist without the other, but the difference is so drastic it's startling.
Narcissa had proper pride in everything, Bellatrix hated everything, and Andromeda denied everything. They were all shades of gray.
No one hated hate more than Andromeda. That was Andromeda for you, Narcissa mused, always a contradiction. Bellatrix loathed anything she laid her eyes on, there wasn't a reason for it, and it was a part of her personality. There was something in the way Bellatrix looked at you, that made you shrivel up inside. She has such a calculating gaze. She guts you like a fish with her eyes.
Narcissa reminisced about something fine and wore a true smile on her featureless face beneath the mask. This metaphorical mask was used so constantly you'd surely believe it to be her true face. If only she had emotions, if only she had true expressions, if only she felt anything towards anything, regarding anything.
Its frustrating when you want a reaction out of something chiseled from stone, or more from something colder, from ice, dry ice, the kind that will tear your flesh if you touch it. So you'd give up, because no matter what you do, that stone is never going to move, and that ice will never cry or even smile back at you.
As she shrewdly glanced around the entrance area, which was very spacey and used for casual greetings and whatnot, Narcissa was ready to move them into the dancehall, so she called their attention.
"If I could direct you ladies and gents to the dance hall just along the corridor over there, yes—no—yes right, just there, I'll have the banquet prepared and we'll toast to my dear sister—who seems to have run off again!" Narcissa said with a cold sarcasm as she analyzed the room so intricately it was like her eyes were magnifying glasses, nothing got by Narcissa.
The crowd chuckled at Narcissa's bitter comment, and they all moved like a slow motion herd of cattle, spilling into the double doors and trailing down the red carpeted hall through another set of oak doors and into a spacious rectangular room that stretched so high you couldn't see the ceiling, or so that was the illusion, with the ceiling charmed like the stars, highlighting all the constellations, such as Bellatrix's and even their cousin Sirius was marked. Paintings and tapestries decorated the old walls and the wooden flooring shone beautifully in the flickering firelight spilling across half the room from the massive decorative hearth that a giant would be comfortable by.
Narcissa was so lost in her critical observations of everything, that she had forgotten her arm was linked with her fiancé's. Lucius looked at her all the time and beamed. He was so possessive, he wanted her all to himself, and he made it well known that she was, in his mind, his property, he owned her and everything she touched, everything she held dear. But she would just laugh when she thought of this. He'd never own her; she wasn't even there to begin with.
Bellatrix was another matter entirely. No one could own her or any part of her. Narcissa used to spend so many nights twisting her long dainty fingers through her sister's hair, breathing in perfect unison with her, and yet being so detached inside that it was almost meaningless.
She suddenly jolted from her reverie when she picked up a certain perfume. It was as she recalled sitting up in her room, in a jade bottle with a label in silvery letters 'illusion" spread across the side, it reeked of jasmine and eucalyptus with this strange whimsical not harsh quality to it. But it was brittle, and she never wore it. She preferred delicate, sweet scents that draw people to you like a child to candy.
Bellatrix used to wear that horrible scent. She's drenched herself in it. She said it felt like spring. Narcissa would scoff and say it felt like chlorofoam. This had always made Bellatrix smile. Bellatrix used to smother the house elves with a cloth seeped in chlorofoam, knock them out for several hours and drag their bodies somewhere that would aggravate father, so they'd be dismissed or beaten. Bellatrix was always conniving.
She remembered sitting in a circular basin that was set into the white marble floors of their bathroom, walls rose up and arched, leaving a glass ceiling that poured the light in by day and shone the moon through at night. She remembered how she would always have the temperature at the same warmth, hotter than average but not to boiling, with pink salts poured in tainting the water like blood, and the rose petals would form a layer on top, and would sift with the slightest movement in the water. Narcissa loved moments like these, where she would move her arm to examine her hand and the rose petals would sick to her flesh like a second skin, and yet flake off at the slightest touch. It was delicate, just as she's always had things. And sometimes she'd dose off in there. And when she did she wakes only at the caress of a serpent.
Bellatrix would slide into the water unnoticed until she reached out those spider like hands and trailed her pointed fingertips carefully down her cheek tracing the path of a tear so to speak, with a rapt expression of exultance in her eyes, she was of course mesmerized by the vain Narcissa, who wasn't surprised at the fluttering of her pale eyelashes to see Bellatrix leaning her limber body on its front into Narcissa's.
Bellatrix had a body that felt like a rock. All her muscles were tense, but she looked so frail and angular, you never would have guessed her to feel so solid. Her dark hair would spread evenly through the tub, raining down her head and into the discolored water. Her intense brown eyes fixated on Narcissa's clear ones, that gazed back lazily, almost bored.
But that was Narcissa's true face, impassive. Bellatrix would raise her hands from the water like a dolphin for a breath of air, and like serpents they'd slither through the halfway mark to the other. Her palms would gently and in slow motion hit Narcissa's collar where the fingers would in sequence fall over the curve of her shoulders. Taking advantage of this, she'd glide forward and press her body into hers. Narcissa s eyes would show a sign of surprise but her face remained immobile.
Bellatrix would dart her tongue along her sister's neck like a snake breathing in her scent. Narcissa would close her eyes and squirm beneath the resilient angles and bones of Bellatrix's figure. Her tongue would trace the outline of her cheekbones and would pause only to protrude and settle inside the parted lips.
Narcissa would think of nothing else. Her tongue like poison, so swollen, fills up her mouth and drowns her. Bellatrix would then pull Narcissa in an upright position with her bony hand gripping the younger ones chin only; her arms limp at her sides and her eyes wide with some indecipherable sentiment. She'd ravage her mouth and bite into her muscle, Narcissa would then flinch and flail her arms helplessly at the sides, as her body shivered and shook. Bellatrix would lick off every blood droplet from her own lips and smile toothily with her pointed teeth that she'd inherited from their father, tingeing with the scarlet substance.
Narcissa would twitch involuntarily, and Bellatrix would peel a petal from Narcissa's breast ever so slowly before she'd open Narcissa's mouth again and place the petal atop the wound and then close her mouth manually before pressing her rouged lips against that of her sister.
Bellatrix was always the one. She would tinker with Narcissa like a new toy or some unknown object, she press certain things and monitor the reactions, shed bite and kiss and suck certain areas all over just to see how Narcissa would respond, or to see IF she would react at all. And when Narcissa began screaming in that bittersweet feeling of pleasure and pain, Bellatrix would grip her mouth with her brittle grasp and submerge that angel face under the rose petals and smack that blonde head into the stone basin. Bellatrix would straddle her sister and as her sister went down into the water flailing like a madwoman, drowning, being drawn in, to be cleansed, to be purified.
When Narcissa's mouth bubbled through the cracks in Bellatrix's fingers, and her body ceased all movements, Bellatrix would laugh and draw her figure upwards and cradle that beautiful woman in her long limbed arms as she showered soft kisses over her platinum hair littered with rose petals.
And when Narcissa would wake Bellatrix would be laying beside her in that same-feathered bed, with the blue velvet covers drawn about them, their sticky figures intertwined like a braid. Narcissa would pull away and fret over her hair and its quality. She always hated if one single strand was out of place. It had to be perfect, she had to be perfect, and—everything had to be perfect.
Bellatrix would rise completely relaxed and uncaring of modest censorship. She would run about the house in the nude all day if Narcissa didn't fist her hair and drag some form of clothing over that rigid body. Bellatrix would laugh and laugh and laugh. Then she'd take that wretched perfume and practically roll in it like oil. She'd pour it in massive amounts into her palms both of them and run it through her hair and over her breasts, along her throat and over her back, down her thighs and over her legs, between her fingers and through her toes, an she'd reek of it so bad Narcissa felt nauseated. But Everything Bellatrix did was to an extreme. Nothing was simple or moderate. It was none or all.
Bellatrix wafted out of the room in those days with her maniacal laughter ringing in Narcissa's ears. Like a curse she taints this place.
When Narcissa came out of this state of bemusement, she excused herself from Lucius and the party and she headed for the back door where she knew Bellatrix would not be far from.
Bellatrix sat for the longest time at the edge of that lily pond, where the crickets chirped all about her, serenading to avoid the silence. Bellatrix was too preoccupied to care about anything but Andromeda. So perhaps a part of her does belong to someone else. Perhaps she is capable of love, what if love is what she held for Andromeda? What if lust and domination was all she had with her other beautiful counterpart in birth?
Narcissa approached and Bellatrix knew it, but she didn't want to talk to her, and she had a feeling Narcissa knew that but would disturb her anyway. For it's what Narcissa does best above all things. Ruin, the ruiner should be her middle name or her title; both seem fitting do they not?
"Go away from here." Was the first words from Bellatrix's mouth as she heard the footsteps crunching through the lawn and in her direction.
"Is that really what you want, my child?" Came a slightly high-pitched voice from behind her. She turned so quickly and fell to her knees in one swift motion.
"My LORD!" she whispered covering her mouth with her hand and bending her abdomen over her folded knees.
"Bella, have I not told you to greet me properly?" he questioned softly. "Of-of course you have, I am—I have forgotten myself, I'm sorry." she crawled forward and kissed the hem of his black cloak and then shifted her gaze into those gleaming red eyes.
"My lord...may I inquire as to the occasion?" she asked meekly.
"It wouldn't matter, you would inevitably find out would you not?" he said coldly. "I have come to initiate you."
"W-what?" she asked not fully understanding. "I killed that girl for you, my lord, I—I was bathed in her blood and left for dead in that cell crucioed and ... erm...unwittingly violated by each member before I pledged my allegiance even if it would result in death, was that not the initiation?"
"That my dear, was the public initiation, I was testing you, to see if you would stand beside me even through torturous circumstances. For I have an idea that you'll be more valuable than most, so I would like you to be my aid as you will, my pupil and my personal consort. Rudolphus's was honored when I brought it up with him, to submit you into my servitude, and I am sure you're thrilled at this prospect are you not?"
"OH! Its all I've ever wanted—"
"Good, then you will need the mark. It's strictly for members of my inner circle. You will bear it with pride, when I call for you it will burn and you will apparate to me on command." He said slowly, his instructions were always vague; his plans were too complex for meager deatheaters to see the whole perspective of it, until it comes to fruition.
"Yes, of course my lord." She said with an insane devoted desperation. "Anytime, I'll not hesitate a moment."
"Very well. Your forearm please." It was a demand more than a request, but she didn't mind in the least. She threw both her arms at him. He smiled with that lipless mouth slightly and pointed his wand to her main artery. After a second of correct placement he chanted 'morsmordre!' and the twanging flesh tore into the image of a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth. And her eyes widened in amazement.
"My lord..." she said in awe, "its beautiful!" She cradled her arm in her right hand, cupping the torrents of beautiful crimson purity leaking under her fingernails and over the sides of her wrist. She analyzed more carefully her flesh was torn but also burning, it was mending together. She stared wide-eyed for several minutes in silence until it completely healed over and the blood began to dry and flake.
She hadn't realized how close she was standing to him until she looked up. Her eyes were quite wide in awe and her mouth was slightly open absentmindedly. The moonlight shone across her face, giving the impression of a silvery paleness, unmatched even by the dark lord himself.
Bella shivered involuntarily as she darted her eyes up into his determinedly yet quivering with hesitation. She bit her lip slightly as her eyes glistened... she moved slowly closer to him. Lord Voldemort stared back at her with pitiless red eyes set into a handsomely narrow face of a boy who once was, but has since died and grown distorted. He was completely immobile, but she swore she saw something moving behind his eyes.
She was still gripping her left arm as it twinged, and she arched her feet to bring her height up to its fullest extent, and she placed a delicate feather-light kiss on the left of his mouth. She settled down again and looked up and him fearfully, as if expecting to be punished, but instead he rose his brittle fingers and set his hand over her forehead in an almost fatherly fashion, as he drew away, a sinister smile was playing around that progressively lipless mouth. She stood there clutching her for arm as he dissapperated.
"Bellatrix! come out Bellatrix!"
Bella was dressed in wine, with a burning arm and a coldness lingering over her lips. "Hullo, Narcissa." She greeted with disdain.
"Well?" Narcissa asked angrily. "Don't you think you'd better show for your own party at some point?"
"I did show." Bella stated plainly.
"Not nearly long enough for comfort." Narcissa proclaimed bitterly gripping Bellatrix's shoulder. "Come along now."
"I'd like to remain a bit longer." Bella said distantly looking off into the night sky.
"You've wasted enough time Bella, now come."
"Do you really think you can make me do anything?" Narcissa froze at this. She thought of the many times Bella had done the opposite of what she was consented to do. Narcissa looked down under her dark lashes sadly, and startlingly and uncharacteristically, slouched her shoulders and looked feeble.
"No. I do not think so."
"Then leave me in peace with my own thoughts." Bella said turning her back, massaging her arm.
"What's that on your arm?" Narcissa was swift, she snatched it into her own fingers faster then Bella could protest, but on second thought, she wasn't really sure she would have minded anyway. Narcissa gazed down at the mark she'd seen so many times. She vaguely thought of tracing the mark with her fingers over Lucius's arm, because it was the only thing that made him shiver.
There was a long silence. Until Narcissa looked up with piercing eyes.
"You've left blood everywhere, how careless of you." Narcissa crouched beside the lily pond and dipped her cupped hands under the water, where she rinsed Bellatrix's arm, careful not to drizzle onto either of their dresses. Bella flinched a little, the contrast of old pain and new fresh pain was always the most agonizing.
"Bella?"
"Hmm?"
"Please come with me." Bellatrix had never seen anyone in her family look so pleading before now, especially not her sister.
"If it pleases you dear sister." Bellatrix said softly after a lengthy silence. Narcissa sighed with relief and assurance. She linked arms with her sister and the two of them set off for the manor in an air of content.
"I was not aware this was a masquerade." Bellatrix said stiffly when she entered the dining hall where hundreds of people were conversing politely.
"Sorry about the wait Ladies and Gents, but if you'll direct your attention here, we have located our little graduate." There was an enthusiastic applause, but no cheering, that was for unrestrained undignified people like the Weasleys, cheering was an unnecessary display of loud stupidity.
"That you all for coming" Bellatrix said politely.
"Yet this is far from all we have to regard!" Narcissa said setting her hand on Bellatrix's shoulder. "We also have a bride-t-be in our midst. And who would the lucky suitor be? Why, but one Rodolphus Lestrange! Come forward Rodolphus." Narcissa said politely with her ice like smile and a modest curtsy.
As Narcissa dissipated to the side to allow room for Bellatrix's future husband, Bella felt a part of herself go. She was so detached in this moment. The chandelier cast prismatic lights through the crystal, reflecting off the silver and into her eyes, casting her silhouette against the oak of the door, and Rodolphus grinned broadly as he took her delicate hand and gave it a regal kiss.
Further clapping and noble smiles followed. Bellatrix was gazing around at everyone from beneath her heavily lidded eyes and she curled her arm around his and leaned against him ever so slightly as he stood tall and she fell into shadow.
I have become what I always feared to be.
She resented the very thought of being taken. She remembered the day of their meeting all those years ago. It was over a decade by now, surely.
She had been six. With long dark coils of hair pulled back into that familiar ornamental clip the serpent one Narcissa was so fond of, she was decked in green velvet with white lace fringe and collar. She had on a dark velvet cloak and a furry matching muffler. Her dark eyes surveyed her newest victim disdainfully.
"Bellatrix this is Rodolphus, go on say hello then."
"You look like a brute" Bella commented looking arrogantly down upon him.
"Bellatrix! Manners!"
'Now you two run along and play, Mrs. Black and myself have some affairs to put in order. See how you like her Roodie and tell me if you'd like her or not." Mrs. Lestrange said coldly. Bellatrix felt objectified by this, and was quite bitter about the impression of her being some doll in a display cabinet, that one could "have". As if to possess her like some thing, verses someone.
"Come and catch me, stupid brute!" Bella hissed as she took off for the hills beyond the borders.
He followed clumsily she dashed through even the deepest snow, swiftly, like a fairy she divinely glided across the ground like a prancing nymph. She ducked behind a tree and she peered around the side, as he looked stupidly from sided to side, lumbering along slowly calling out her name. She bit into her fingers to supress a giggle.
"AHAH!" he said triumphantly, she grew wide-eyed at the prospect of being discovered. Slightly impressed she grinned with her pointed teeth, and took off again. He followed. She climbed trees and so did he, she lunged from branch to branch, he followed, like a shadow he was at her heels, and she grew irritated after a while.
"No ones ever been able to catch me before!" she said angrily as se abandoned the muffler, deciding to throw it in his flushed laughing face instead of warm her hands. Caught off guard he fell from the tree and into a pile of deep snow.
He left an imprint of a human deep and forbidding. Bellatrix thought of how much trouble she was going to e in when this whole shirade was discovered.
'You damn silly ape!' she said in that tiny voice. "Come out now! I can't be getting in trouble you see, mum will take away my pillows."
"Pillows?" Rodolphus said from behind her.
"What? I just—you—and then you were—how did you?"
'Magic." He said shrugging with a mocking lopsided smile.
"Liar." She said through gritted teeth. She shifted through the snow, but nothing gave. She stomped her heel and a tunnel was revealed.
"I knew it, you tunneled." Then she was struck with an agonizing thought. 'How did you tunnel that quickly?"
"M-A-G-I-C." he repeated slowly.
"How?"
"You won't show signs f magic until you're my age." He said proudly pulling on his suspenders.
"Pshaw" she made a noise of blatant dissent. "You're only six months older than me."
She always made him chase her. At mealtimes she flung food at him, called him horrible names, and stuck insects in his food. She spat in his drink, and tripped him when he got up from the table. She showed magic for the first time in her trickery. She tied his shoelaces together by wiling it, and he tipped, she had him chased by bees, tangled in a thorn bush, hung by his trousers from a tall tree, bucked off a broom, and they disagreed on everything.
But it was her fiery spirit he adored. And it was this torment he longed for so naturally he demanded she belong to him. And he constantly reminded her of it. He always requested he come back to see her on Sundays. He'd torment her with "my Bella", "my darling", "mine, mine, and mine".
"I hate you! You make me sick!" she said to him one day when she was thirteen years old. And just as she moved for her copy of "Advanced Transfiguration" beside her on the cobblestone fence, he gripped her shoulders and kissed her harshly. She bit his mouth and spit his own blood in his eyes.
"I will never be yours!" she said ferociously. Getting to her feet, and clicking her heels along the cobblestone path leaving him there with a mountain of books as she disappeared into the elongating darkness of the garden pathway. He wiped his mouth and stared after her for the longest time in amusement.
Another time she was writing in her diary swinging along slightly, as an Augurey crowed mournfully. It was dusk and Rodolphus came up behind her silently. But she knew that annoying aura form a mile away. "Hullo, annoying fiancé." She said quietly.
"Hullo my darling." He said kissing her cheek as she flinched.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like you duffer?" she burst out savagely. "I'm writing!"
"May I read?" he asked snatching it out of her hands before she could answer.
"NO—you—may—NOT!" she said taking it back viciously a page tore from it in the struggle and fell onto the moist ground. For a moment they both stared at her neat cursive on the lined paper, and then he snatched it up to her horror, and he read aloud:
"No light no air to live in A place called hate
The city of fear
I play dead
And the hurting stops
It's sometimes just like sleeping
Curling up inside my private tortures
I nestle into pain
Hug suffering
Caress every ache
I play dead,"
He stared at her for a moment. "How sentimental." And with that he handed it back to her and walked away smirking. The mocking bastard, she mumbled inside her head.
And now here she stood, on the threshold of a new life. And she wasn't sure if she were pleased, angry, happy or irritated by the prospect. And then she thought of her master, and a smile spread across her face at long last.
another time
We're Siamese twins writhing intertwined
Face to face
no telling lies
The masks they slide to reveal a new disguise"
-"Face to Face" Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Narcissa's had noticed Bellatrix's absence by now. Andromeda wouldn't DARE show a black family function after the disgrace she'd caused. Yet Narcissa felt her sister's presence not long ago. Andromeda radiated this unsettlement that no one could really quite understand.
She longed to get away from these imbeciles; she yearned for early retirement, and a cup of tea. Chamomile just like she always had it. She enriched her life with the finest things, when you're surroundings are immaculate, internally you get bored. Narcissa's was the most materialistic person you'd ever meet, but the constant remodeling of the house had always distressed her father, who grudgingly permitted her renovations for she was his favored daughter.
Bellatrix was such a contrast; while Narcissa spent her days dictating to anyone she has the influence over, Bellatrix would sit out on the wood-and- rope swing as the wind swayed her slightly with its breeze. She'd sit in that swing all day, scrawling incoherencies Narcissa neither comprehended nor desired to peruse.
Bellatrix had a whole library of her notebooks, each one far more dissipating towards life and existence then the last. Bellatrix had always been viewed as if through a kaleidoscope, fragments and distortions of something she'd probably never get the full picture of. They were like the dark and the light. Neither prevails, for one could not exist without the other, but the difference is so drastic it's startling.
Narcissa had proper pride in everything, Bellatrix hated everything, and Andromeda denied everything. They were all shades of gray.
No one hated hate more than Andromeda. That was Andromeda for you, Narcissa mused, always a contradiction. Bellatrix loathed anything she laid her eyes on, there wasn't a reason for it, and it was a part of her personality. There was something in the way Bellatrix looked at you, that made you shrivel up inside. She has such a calculating gaze. She guts you like a fish with her eyes.
Narcissa reminisced about something fine and wore a true smile on her featureless face beneath the mask. This metaphorical mask was used so constantly you'd surely believe it to be her true face. If only she had emotions, if only she had true expressions, if only she felt anything towards anything, regarding anything.
Its frustrating when you want a reaction out of something chiseled from stone, or more from something colder, from ice, dry ice, the kind that will tear your flesh if you touch it. So you'd give up, because no matter what you do, that stone is never going to move, and that ice will never cry or even smile back at you.
As she shrewdly glanced around the entrance area, which was very spacey and used for casual greetings and whatnot, Narcissa was ready to move them into the dancehall, so she called their attention.
"If I could direct you ladies and gents to the dance hall just along the corridor over there, yes—no—yes right, just there, I'll have the banquet prepared and we'll toast to my dear sister—who seems to have run off again!" Narcissa said with a cold sarcasm as she analyzed the room so intricately it was like her eyes were magnifying glasses, nothing got by Narcissa.
The crowd chuckled at Narcissa's bitter comment, and they all moved like a slow motion herd of cattle, spilling into the double doors and trailing down the red carpeted hall through another set of oak doors and into a spacious rectangular room that stretched so high you couldn't see the ceiling, or so that was the illusion, with the ceiling charmed like the stars, highlighting all the constellations, such as Bellatrix's and even their cousin Sirius was marked. Paintings and tapestries decorated the old walls and the wooden flooring shone beautifully in the flickering firelight spilling across half the room from the massive decorative hearth that a giant would be comfortable by.
Narcissa was so lost in her critical observations of everything, that she had forgotten her arm was linked with her fiancé's. Lucius looked at her all the time and beamed. He was so possessive, he wanted her all to himself, and he made it well known that she was, in his mind, his property, he owned her and everything she touched, everything she held dear. But she would just laugh when she thought of this. He'd never own her; she wasn't even there to begin with.
Bellatrix was another matter entirely. No one could own her or any part of her. Narcissa used to spend so many nights twisting her long dainty fingers through her sister's hair, breathing in perfect unison with her, and yet being so detached inside that it was almost meaningless.
She suddenly jolted from her reverie when she picked up a certain perfume. It was as she recalled sitting up in her room, in a jade bottle with a label in silvery letters 'illusion" spread across the side, it reeked of jasmine and eucalyptus with this strange whimsical not harsh quality to it. But it was brittle, and she never wore it. She preferred delicate, sweet scents that draw people to you like a child to candy.
Bellatrix used to wear that horrible scent. She's drenched herself in it. She said it felt like spring. Narcissa would scoff and say it felt like chlorofoam. This had always made Bellatrix smile. Bellatrix used to smother the house elves with a cloth seeped in chlorofoam, knock them out for several hours and drag their bodies somewhere that would aggravate father, so they'd be dismissed or beaten. Bellatrix was always conniving.
She remembered sitting in a circular basin that was set into the white marble floors of their bathroom, walls rose up and arched, leaving a glass ceiling that poured the light in by day and shone the moon through at night. She remembered how she would always have the temperature at the same warmth, hotter than average but not to boiling, with pink salts poured in tainting the water like blood, and the rose petals would form a layer on top, and would sift with the slightest movement in the water. Narcissa loved moments like these, where she would move her arm to examine her hand and the rose petals would sick to her flesh like a second skin, and yet flake off at the slightest touch. It was delicate, just as she's always had things. And sometimes she'd dose off in there. And when she did she wakes only at the caress of a serpent.
Bellatrix would slide into the water unnoticed until she reached out those spider like hands and trailed her pointed fingertips carefully down her cheek tracing the path of a tear so to speak, with a rapt expression of exultance in her eyes, she was of course mesmerized by the vain Narcissa, who wasn't surprised at the fluttering of her pale eyelashes to see Bellatrix leaning her limber body on its front into Narcissa's.
Bellatrix had a body that felt like a rock. All her muscles were tense, but she looked so frail and angular, you never would have guessed her to feel so solid. Her dark hair would spread evenly through the tub, raining down her head and into the discolored water. Her intense brown eyes fixated on Narcissa's clear ones, that gazed back lazily, almost bored.
But that was Narcissa's true face, impassive. Bellatrix would raise her hands from the water like a dolphin for a breath of air, and like serpents they'd slither through the halfway mark to the other. Her palms would gently and in slow motion hit Narcissa's collar where the fingers would in sequence fall over the curve of her shoulders. Taking advantage of this, she'd glide forward and press her body into hers. Narcissa s eyes would show a sign of surprise but her face remained immobile.
Bellatrix would dart her tongue along her sister's neck like a snake breathing in her scent. Narcissa would close her eyes and squirm beneath the resilient angles and bones of Bellatrix's figure. Her tongue would trace the outline of her cheekbones and would pause only to protrude and settle inside the parted lips.
Narcissa would think of nothing else. Her tongue like poison, so swollen, fills up her mouth and drowns her. Bellatrix would then pull Narcissa in an upright position with her bony hand gripping the younger ones chin only; her arms limp at her sides and her eyes wide with some indecipherable sentiment. She'd ravage her mouth and bite into her muscle, Narcissa would then flinch and flail her arms helplessly at the sides, as her body shivered and shook. Bellatrix would lick off every blood droplet from her own lips and smile toothily with her pointed teeth that she'd inherited from their father, tingeing with the scarlet substance.
Narcissa would twitch involuntarily, and Bellatrix would peel a petal from Narcissa's breast ever so slowly before she'd open Narcissa's mouth again and place the petal atop the wound and then close her mouth manually before pressing her rouged lips against that of her sister.
Bellatrix was always the one. She would tinker with Narcissa like a new toy or some unknown object, she press certain things and monitor the reactions, shed bite and kiss and suck certain areas all over just to see how Narcissa would respond, or to see IF she would react at all. And when Narcissa began screaming in that bittersweet feeling of pleasure and pain, Bellatrix would grip her mouth with her brittle grasp and submerge that angel face under the rose petals and smack that blonde head into the stone basin. Bellatrix would straddle her sister and as her sister went down into the water flailing like a madwoman, drowning, being drawn in, to be cleansed, to be purified.
When Narcissa's mouth bubbled through the cracks in Bellatrix's fingers, and her body ceased all movements, Bellatrix would laugh and draw her figure upwards and cradle that beautiful woman in her long limbed arms as she showered soft kisses over her platinum hair littered with rose petals.
And when Narcissa would wake Bellatrix would be laying beside her in that same-feathered bed, with the blue velvet covers drawn about them, their sticky figures intertwined like a braid. Narcissa would pull away and fret over her hair and its quality. She always hated if one single strand was out of place. It had to be perfect, she had to be perfect, and—everything had to be perfect.
Bellatrix would rise completely relaxed and uncaring of modest censorship. She would run about the house in the nude all day if Narcissa didn't fist her hair and drag some form of clothing over that rigid body. Bellatrix would laugh and laugh and laugh. Then she'd take that wretched perfume and practically roll in it like oil. She'd pour it in massive amounts into her palms both of them and run it through her hair and over her breasts, along her throat and over her back, down her thighs and over her legs, between her fingers and through her toes, an she'd reek of it so bad Narcissa felt nauseated. But Everything Bellatrix did was to an extreme. Nothing was simple or moderate. It was none or all.
Bellatrix wafted out of the room in those days with her maniacal laughter ringing in Narcissa's ears. Like a curse she taints this place.
When Narcissa came out of this state of bemusement, she excused herself from Lucius and the party and she headed for the back door where she knew Bellatrix would not be far from.
Bellatrix sat for the longest time at the edge of that lily pond, where the crickets chirped all about her, serenading to avoid the silence. Bellatrix was too preoccupied to care about anything but Andromeda. So perhaps a part of her does belong to someone else. Perhaps she is capable of love, what if love is what she held for Andromeda? What if lust and domination was all she had with her other beautiful counterpart in birth?
Narcissa approached and Bellatrix knew it, but she didn't want to talk to her, and she had a feeling Narcissa knew that but would disturb her anyway. For it's what Narcissa does best above all things. Ruin, the ruiner should be her middle name or her title; both seem fitting do they not?
"Go away from here." Was the first words from Bellatrix's mouth as she heard the footsteps crunching through the lawn and in her direction.
"Is that really what you want, my child?" Came a slightly high-pitched voice from behind her. She turned so quickly and fell to her knees in one swift motion.
"My LORD!" she whispered covering her mouth with her hand and bending her abdomen over her folded knees.
"Bella, have I not told you to greet me properly?" he questioned softly. "Of-of course you have, I am—I have forgotten myself, I'm sorry." she crawled forward and kissed the hem of his black cloak and then shifted her gaze into those gleaming red eyes.
"My lord...may I inquire as to the occasion?" she asked meekly.
"It wouldn't matter, you would inevitably find out would you not?" he said coldly. "I have come to initiate you."
"W-what?" she asked not fully understanding. "I killed that girl for you, my lord, I—I was bathed in her blood and left for dead in that cell crucioed and ... erm...unwittingly violated by each member before I pledged my allegiance even if it would result in death, was that not the initiation?"
"That my dear, was the public initiation, I was testing you, to see if you would stand beside me even through torturous circumstances. For I have an idea that you'll be more valuable than most, so I would like you to be my aid as you will, my pupil and my personal consort. Rudolphus's was honored when I brought it up with him, to submit you into my servitude, and I am sure you're thrilled at this prospect are you not?"
"OH! Its all I've ever wanted—"
"Good, then you will need the mark. It's strictly for members of my inner circle. You will bear it with pride, when I call for you it will burn and you will apparate to me on command." He said slowly, his instructions were always vague; his plans were too complex for meager deatheaters to see the whole perspective of it, until it comes to fruition.
"Yes, of course my lord." She said with an insane devoted desperation. "Anytime, I'll not hesitate a moment."
"Very well. Your forearm please." It was a demand more than a request, but she didn't mind in the least. She threw both her arms at him. He smiled with that lipless mouth slightly and pointed his wand to her main artery. After a second of correct placement he chanted 'morsmordre!' and the twanging flesh tore into the image of a skull with a snake protruding from its mouth. And her eyes widened in amazement.
"My lord..." she said in awe, "its beautiful!" She cradled her arm in her right hand, cupping the torrents of beautiful crimson purity leaking under her fingernails and over the sides of her wrist. She analyzed more carefully her flesh was torn but also burning, it was mending together. She stared wide-eyed for several minutes in silence until it completely healed over and the blood began to dry and flake.
She hadn't realized how close she was standing to him until she looked up. Her eyes were quite wide in awe and her mouth was slightly open absentmindedly. The moonlight shone across her face, giving the impression of a silvery paleness, unmatched even by the dark lord himself.
Bella shivered involuntarily as she darted her eyes up into his determinedly yet quivering with hesitation. She bit her lip slightly as her eyes glistened... she moved slowly closer to him. Lord Voldemort stared back at her with pitiless red eyes set into a handsomely narrow face of a boy who once was, but has since died and grown distorted. He was completely immobile, but she swore she saw something moving behind his eyes.
She was still gripping her left arm as it twinged, and she arched her feet to bring her height up to its fullest extent, and she placed a delicate feather-light kiss on the left of his mouth. She settled down again and looked up and him fearfully, as if expecting to be punished, but instead he rose his brittle fingers and set his hand over her forehead in an almost fatherly fashion, as he drew away, a sinister smile was playing around that progressively lipless mouth. She stood there clutching her for arm as he dissapperated.
"Bellatrix! come out Bellatrix!"
Bella was dressed in wine, with a burning arm and a coldness lingering over her lips. "Hullo, Narcissa." She greeted with disdain.
"Well?" Narcissa asked angrily. "Don't you think you'd better show for your own party at some point?"
"I did show." Bella stated plainly.
"Not nearly long enough for comfort." Narcissa proclaimed bitterly gripping Bellatrix's shoulder. "Come along now."
"I'd like to remain a bit longer." Bella said distantly looking off into the night sky.
"You've wasted enough time Bella, now come."
"Do you really think you can make me do anything?" Narcissa froze at this. She thought of the many times Bella had done the opposite of what she was consented to do. Narcissa looked down under her dark lashes sadly, and startlingly and uncharacteristically, slouched her shoulders and looked feeble.
"No. I do not think so."
"Then leave me in peace with my own thoughts." Bella said turning her back, massaging her arm.
"What's that on your arm?" Narcissa was swift, she snatched it into her own fingers faster then Bella could protest, but on second thought, she wasn't really sure she would have minded anyway. Narcissa gazed down at the mark she'd seen so many times. She vaguely thought of tracing the mark with her fingers over Lucius's arm, because it was the only thing that made him shiver.
There was a long silence. Until Narcissa looked up with piercing eyes.
"You've left blood everywhere, how careless of you." Narcissa crouched beside the lily pond and dipped her cupped hands under the water, where she rinsed Bellatrix's arm, careful not to drizzle onto either of their dresses. Bella flinched a little, the contrast of old pain and new fresh pain was always the most agonizing.
"Bella?"
"Hmm?"
"Please come with me." Bellatrix had never seen anyone in her family look so pleading before now, especially not her sister.
"If it pleases you dear sister." Bellatrix said softly after a lengthy silence. Narcissa sighed with relief and assurance. She linked arms with her sister and the two of them set off for the manor in an air of content.
"I was not aware this was a masquerade." Bellatrix said stiffly when she entered the dining hall where hundreds of people were conversing politely.
"Sorry about the wait Ladies and Gents, but if you'll direct your attention here, we have located our little graduate." There was an enthusiastic applause, but no cheering, that was for unrestrained undignified people like the Weasleys, cheering was an unnecessary display of loud stupidity.
"That you all for coming" Bellatrix said politely.
"Yet this is far from all we have to regard!" Narcissa said setting her hand on Bellatrix's shoulder. "We also have a bride-t-be in our midst. And who would the lucky suitor be? Why, but one Rodolphus Lestrange! Come forward Rodolphus." Narcissa said politely with her ice like smile and a modest curtsy.
As Narcissa dissipated to the side to allow room for Bellatrix's future husband, Bella felt a part of herself go. She was so detached in this moment. The chandelier cast prismatic lights through the crystal, reflecting off the silver and into her eyes, casting her silhouette against the oak of the door, and Rodolphus grinned broadly as he took her delicate hand and gave it a regal kiss.
Further clapping and noble smiles followed. Bellatrix was gazing around at everyone from beneath her heavily lidded eyes and she curled her arm around his and leaned against him ever so slightly as he stood tall and she fell into shadow.
I have become what I always feared to be.
She resented the very thought of being taken. She remembered the day of their meeting all those years ago. It was over a decade by now, surely.
She had been six. With long dark coils of hair pulled back into that familiar ornamental clip the serpent one Narcissa was so fond of, she was decked in green velvet with white lace fringe and collar. She had on a dark velvet cloak and a furry matching muffler. Her dark eyes surveyed her newest victim disdainfully.
"Bellatrix this is Rodolphus, go on say hello then."
"You look like a brute" Bella commented looking arrogantly down upon him.
"Bellatrix! Manners!"
'Now you two run along and play, Mrs. Black and myself have some affairs to put in order. See how you like her Roodie and tell me if you'd like her or not." Mrs. Lestrange said coldly. Bellatrix felt objectified by this, and was quite bitter about the impression of her being some doll in a display cabinet, that one could "have". As if to possess her like some thing, verses someone.
"Come and catch me, stupid brute!" Bella hissed as she took off for the hills beyond the borders.
He followed clumsily she dashed through even the deepest snow, swiftly, like a fairy she divinely glided across the ground like a prancing nymph. She ducked behind a tree and she peered around the side, as he looked stupidly from sided to side, lumbering along slowly calling out her name. She bit into her fingers to supress a giggle.
"AHAH!" he said triumphantly, she grew wide-eyed at the prospect of being discovered. Slightly impressed she grinned with her pointed teeth, and took off again. He followed. She climbed trees and so did he, she lunged from branch to branch, he followed, like a shadow he was at her heels, and she grew irritated after a while.
"No ones ever been able to catch me before!" she said angrily as se abandoned the muffler, deciding to throw it in his flushed laughing face instead of warm her hands. Caught off guard he fell from the tree and into a pile of deep snow.
He left an imprint of a human deep and forbidding. Bellatrix thought of how much trouble she was going to e in when this whole shirade was discovered.
'You damn silly ape!' she said in that tiny voice. "Come out now! I can't be getting in trouble you see, mum will take away my pillows."
"Pillows?" Rodolphus said from behind her.
"What? I just—you—and then you were—how did you?"
'Magic." He said shrugging with a mocking lopsided smile.
"Liar." She said through gritted teeth. She shifted through the snow, but nothing gave. She stomped her heel and a tunnel was revealed.
"I knew it, you tunneled." Then she was struck with an agonizing thought. 'How did you tunnel that quickly?"
"M-A-G-I-C." he repeated slowly.
"How?"
"You won't show signs f magic until you're my age." He said proudly pulling on his suspenders.
"Pshaw" she made a noise of blatant dissent. "You're only six months older than me."
She always made him chase her. At mealtimes she flung food at him, called him horrible names, and stuck insects in his food. She spat in his drink, and tripped him when he got up from the table. She showed magic for the first time in her trickery. She tied his shoelaces together by wiling it, and he tipped, she had him chased by bees, tangled in a thorn bush, hung by his trousers from a tall tree, bucked off a broom, and they disagreed on everything.
But it was her fiery spirit he adored. And it was this torment he longed for so naturally he demanded she belong to him. And he constantly reminded her of it. He always requested he come back to see her on Sundays. He'd torment her with "my Bella", "my darling", "mine, mine, and mine".
"I hate you! You make me sick!" she said to him one day when she was thirteen years old. And just as she moved for her copy of "Advanced Transfiguration" beside her on the cobblestone fence, he gripped her shoulders and kissed her harshly. She bit his mouth and spit his own blood in his eyes.
"I will never be yours!" she said ferociously. Getting to her feet, and clicking her heels along the cobblestone path leaving him there with a mountain of books as she disappeared into the elongating darkness of the garden pathway. He wiped his mouth and stared after her for the longest time in amusement.
Another time she was writing in her diary swinging along slightly, as an Augurey crowed mournfully. It was dusk and Rodolphus came up behind her silently. But she knew that annoying aura form a mile away. "Hullo, annoying fiancé." She said quietly.
"Hullo my darling." He said kissing her cheek as she flinched.
"What are you doing?"
"What does it look like you duffer?" she burst out savagely. "I'm writing!"
"May I read?" he asked snatching it out of her hands before she could answer.
"NO—you—may—NOT!" she said taking it back viciously a page tore from it in the struggle and fell onto the moist ground. For a moment they both stared at her neat cursive on the lined paper, and then he snatched it up to her horror, and he read aloud:
"No light no air to live in A place called hate
The city of fear
I play dead
And the hurting stops
It's sometimes just like sleeping
Curling up inside my private tortures
I nestle into pain
Hug suffering
Caress every ache
I play dead,"
He stared at her for a moment. "How sentimental." And with that he handed it back to her and walked away smirking. The mocking bastard, she mumbled inside her head.
And now here she stood, on the threshold of a new life. And she wasn't sure if she were pleased, angry, happy or irritated by the prospect. And then she thought of her master, and a smile spread across her face at long last.