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Black Daughters

They were bound to each other, bound by blood, bound by love.

There's a picture of the three of them hanging in Grimmauld Place. It's a dark picture, most of the pictures of them are, and it hides a legacy behind its frame, the lives of the three most intriguing Blacks. It holds mysteries, the mysteries of their lives, of their deaths, and sometimes if a person stares at it too long he or she feels coldness climbing up their spine, hears menacing whispers in their ears. It's haunted, as haunted as the lives of those three girls, as haunted as the shadows hidden in their eyes.

The painting itself is very serene. It has a sterling silver frame, a black back drop, and their clothes are a somber mix of white and gray. The subjects don't move except for in their eyes, which if you look at the right moment you may catch one of them blink for a second, may see them look to each other as if sharing in some joke, as if divulging some important information. The painting itself is very plain. There is nothing special about the three children posing in the painting. At a glance, those three girls are normal teenagers, just the victims of overbearing, overachieving parents who like to exert power over the weaker humans. At a glance nothing will jump out at a person, nothing will take someone by surprise. At a glance.

On a stool in the front sits a petite girl with no smile lighting up her face. She's about fifteen in that picture although no one would ever be able to know that due to her dainty frame and innocent appearance. She doesn't smile, just stares into space with hard eyes and her trademark smirk. Her skin is as white as a ghost and her hair as dark as night. Her lips are redder than a rose and her eyes are a piercing gray. She is beautiful, has always been the most beautiful out of the three sisters, has always been the one you should fear the most. And yet, she's the one who could have manipulated the world, could have won any person's trust she wanted to.

Standing behind the stool is a tall girl of seventeen. She has a small smile on her face and her bright blue eyes glow through the paint. Her hair tumbles in ringlets down her shoulders and the ends of her hair are hidden behind her younger sister's chair. Despite the smile she wears her posture, her eyes, everything is as cold and as hard as the smaller girl before her. Everything about their eyes makes a bystander shiver in even the hottest summer days. It's as if she, as if they all, can look into your very soul, see into your very mind. Her skin is darker than the other child's, her hair is a light brown, and she doesn't look as if she'll break at the touch of a hand, has none of the sister's fragility, none of her sister's astounding beauty.

A small girl stands next to the stool. She has long blond hair with a black headband on her head. Her face doesn't smile, her eyes don't shine, and despite the coldness of her every feature hearts warm at the childishness of the girl. She looks more innocent than the other two and couldn't be more than eleven or twelve. She looks as if she holds a secret and in her left hand a piece of crumpled paper sticks out very slightly. Her head is held high and she looks nothing like her two elder sisters, has none of their darkness, none of their passion.

A picture is worth a thousand words and anything to do with the Black family has to be worth at least twice that amount. Let's take one scenario. The eldest smiles slightly as if defying her parents, her heritage. The eldest smiles as if she's about to embark on some adventure, but not wide enough for anyone to be able to see it at a glance. Take this idea for a ride.

Two weeks before this picture was painted there was a fight in the house. The eldest sister was caught in a bad situation. She's a Black, the eldest daughter of the Black line, the hopes of the family. She was caught mingling with a muggle one day as she snuck into the muggle world. Caught by one of her Aunts or Uncles or other crazy family members as she sat with him in a muggle park and kissed him in the moonlight.

A few months prior the eldest Black daughter fell in love for the first and the last time. It was her first time in muggle London, her first time anywhere besides Hogwarts or her own manor. She met him at a park she went to when she needed to escape. She was sitting on a bench and he came to sit down next to her, pulled out a newspaper, and yet looked at her and said, You're in my seat. He thought she was beautiful when he first met her. Thought she was strange. Thought she was unique. And for some reason he felt compelled to talk to her, felt compelled to meet her in the same spot day after day.

They went on their first date few days after. They went dancing at a muggle club and then went to a muggle restaurant where she had her first taste of muggle food. They walked on a moonlit beach and when he begged her to meet him the next day she shyly said she would try her best. Then, he kissed her and she felt everything a girl in love should feel. Warmth spread through her body and after a life of coldness it's what this girl needed most. She decided to meet him every day.

One day they met in that exact spot. They kissed when they saw each other, inquired after one another's health, only that day, everything was different. He stroked her cheek, kissed her eyelids and told her he loved her. At first she was scared and backed away. She told him that he didn't know her, know her family. At first she cried because she thought it would be impossible, that she and he could never work. Then, she looked at him, melted at the pain etched into his eyes as he tried reasoning with her and told him that she loved him, too.

Two weeks before this painting was created the eldest daughter of a prestigious family was struck for the first time. Two weeks before the painting was created a girl cried and cried that she was in love as her parents tried to beat that feeling out of her. Two weeks before this painting was created two young girls looked on as their elder sister was punished for mingling with those of less pure blood, with a boy who wasn't even of wizarding heritage. Two weeks before this painting was created a young girl sent an owl to her forbidden lover. Two weeks before this painting was painted, as the girl sat at her window and wiped away her tears, the eldest Black daughter decided to break free.

A week after the painting was finished she was gone. A week after the painting was finished her draws were empty, her books were gone, and all that was left of the eldest Black sister was a quick note scribbled in black ink, were memories each person had of her. She didn't say goodbye.

A week after this painting was finished Narcissa walked into an empty bedroom and cried as she smelled the scent of her elder sister. Cried when she remembered sneaking off to a muggle park with Lucius. Cried at the surprise she felt when she saw her sister sitting on a bench with a boy she never knew. Cried because she never meant to drive her sister away, never meant for her parents to make Andromeda choose between love and family, between blood and love. She cried at the realization that she'll never see Andromeda again, and that it was all her fault.

A week after this painting was finished Bellatrix swore she would never follow in Andromeda's footsteps. A week after this painting was finished Bellatrix sat at her sister's desk, slept in her sister's bed, and wondered every second when she would see her again. A week after this painting was finished she heard a door slam in the middle of the night, ran to her window, and saw her elder sister climbing onto the night bus. A week after this painting was finished a young girl turned cold at the emptiness of her sister's room, turned hard at the sadness she saw in her mother's eyes and she made a vow to herself. She swore she would never break her mother's heart. Andromeda did that enough, already.

How about this one? The girl sitting on a stool lusts after a Gryffindor boy and yet dreams about a sister that ran away. She's seventeen when she falls in love for the first time. Andromeda was seventeen when she left, and yet the middle Black daughter always felt compelled to live up to her family's expectations, always felt compelled to be the best Black she could be. One day she's walking along the grounds of school and sees him by the lake with three of his friends. She doesn't know two of them that well, only that they're both purebloods and Gryffindor scum and hardly worth her time. The third friend she knows well and she sneers as she looks on at her cousin, the blood traitor of her family, the one she loved the most. She won't speak to him anymore, won't look at him, always remembering the vow she made the night her sister ran away. She looks back at the boy she can't stop thinking about. She stares at his messy hair, dreams about his hazel eyes, and walks back to her common room before he could look over and see that she was there.

She stares at him again during dinner, glances at him as she slurps her soup, glances at him as she pretends to listen to Narcissa gab about the potions essay. He catches her. The boy looks up and stares into her cold gray eyes before she looks down with a blush on her cheeks. She looks up again in seconds and smiles slightly when she sees he's still looking. He smiles back.

She bumps into him in the library one day. She is working on a history essay and he comes in with his quidditch robes still on, his transfiguration notes falling out of his bag. He sits down at her table as she looks at him trying to hide her surprise. She looks away quickly as he chuckles. He could almost smell her fear, her eagerness. They don't utter a word and he leaves before she realizes that McGonagall didn't assign a transfiguration essay. Before she figured out McGonagall didn't assign any homework at all. She almost calls out for him as he walks out of the door, but her dry lips won't move her throat won't allow her to speak.

She bumps into him again a few days after that in the Astronomy tower. He walks in as if he fully knew she would be there and stares at her as her abnormally pale skin glows in the moonlight. The torches, the stars, the moon, they all seem to enhance her beauty and sometimes he imagines he fell in love with her that night, when he allows himself to think of her at all. He walks up to her slowly and strokes her cheek as her head rests inches below his. She kisses him, kisses someone for the first time with real feelings attached. Later that night as she wanders back to her common room she'll swear to herself she could do that for the rest of her life.

That night she dreams about her older sister and the night her parents caught Andromeda with a muggle. She hears the screams, sees the blood on her sisters cheek, remembers the black eye, and then she wakes up in a cold sweat panting like a child who's afraid of the dark. That night she tries to rationalize her love for him. Andromeda fell in love with a muggle. She fell in love with a Potter, one of the oldest and purest wizarding lines in history. She fell in love with one of the richest heirs in the world. But, his family is against everything hers stands for. Her family hates everything his family adores. She cries herself to sleep when she realizes for the first time that he could never be hers.

The next day she's cold to him. She won't meet his stare, won't answer any notes he writes and when he tries to talk to her in the library she runs away. He wants to yell and scream and tell her that he may love her. He wants to tell her how he feels despite who she is, despite who he is, and he wants to tell her that he knows how she feels. That her eyes don't hide emotions as well as she thought they did. But she ignores him, ignores her screaming heart, and at dinner that night she starts a conversation with Ropholdus Lestrange. It's better to be safe than to be alone, she thinks as her minds wanders to the sister she hasn't heard from in over two years.

What about the youngest sister? The girl seemed passionless even at the young age of twelve, but she had to have some of her sisters' ability to feel, ability to love. Take this. She meets him when she's seven at a party his parents were hosting. She doesn't like him then, doesn't like his hair that seemed very white, doesn't like his smile which she felt was mocking her, and she doesn't like his eyes that she felt saw into her very soul.

At fifteen she fell in love for the first and the last time. At fifteen, she looked at this boy she knew forever and decided that he was it. He was a free spirit, a lot like Sirius was in his younger years except without the talent of pranking, without his enormous sense of humor. She sometimes wonders if that's why she fell in love with him, because he reminded her of her estranged cousin she was banned from seeing, from loving. Because when Lucius was young he had passion .When Lucius was young he was free. And she loved that about him, loved the smile that put a blush to his usually white face, loved the eyes that would or would not have a sparkle. She just loved him.

Take this. He comes to her house for Christmas the year they are sixteen. His parents attend the ball her parents throw and he spends the night in her bedroom. They act like children together and spend the day playing in the snow, spend the day decorating the Christmas tree or "accidentally" getting stuck under a mistletoe.

She dances with him at the ball that night, every dance with him, every moment with him. And when the guests start leaving she takes his hand quietly and leads him upstairs to her bedroom and closes the door. She knew that she loved him that night, knew that she would love him forever, and for a few short months she felt luckier than her older sisters' had ever been.

When she's seventeen his parents are killed by aurors. That's what he said, that it was aurors, those damn muggle loving fools. She tried to comfort him, he wouldn't let her. She tried to love him, he wouldn't let her. And when he left Hogwarts for the funeral, he left her alone in a stone tower at Hogwarts waiting day and night for his return.

When he comes back his eyes are stony and his skin cold and she cries that night knowing the boy who came home to her was not Lucius. When he saw her he didn't smile, when he kissed her there was no emotion, and when he said goodnight he didn't touch her, didn't once beg her to stay with him for even a minute longer. He wasn't the Lucius she fell in love with, she thought that night. She loved him anyway.

The next day he was still empty, she ignored it. A few months later, when his eyes still remained hallow, she screamed at him in the common room about his lack of emotion, screamed at him in the common room that he treats her like crap, that everything he is has become crap. She yells profanity his way, hits him across the face, and when that doesn't even make anger flicker across his face she breaks down and cries. She cries loud noisy tears and yells that she loves him, that no matter what she won't stop loving him. He holds her that night, holds her, kisses her, tells her he loves her. She knows he was telling the truth. The next day she walks down to the common room with her hopes higher than they have been in months. When she spots him with his two friends she screams his name and her heart breaks as she looks into his dead eyes. Nothing changed from the night before.

But the painting is just a snapshot of their life, a small look into the mystery that was them. They now live completely different lives: one content in the muggle world; one protected under the power of the dark lord; and the last stuck in a now loveless marriage waiting for the day when her husband's eyes sparkle the way they did when he was a child. But once they were as close as their figures on the canvas, eternally bound to one another by blood, by a sisterly love that never disappeared.

Take this, when Andromeda was ten she taught Narcissa how to braid her hair and taught Bellatrix hexes on her wand. When Bellatrix was eleven she taught Narcissa how to punch a guy when their cousins came for the usual summer visit. Take this, on Christmas night for over eleven years the three sisters would stay up way into the morning, sit by the fire, and just be with each other. For over eleven years they loved each other and yet, no one would be able to realize that love if they ever met one of the Black daughters, wouldn't realize they even have sisters. But once a long time ago, each of those girls had a deep love for each other and if you stare at the painting long enough, look at the wandering eyes which hold so much mystery, you'll be able to see the love that lies beneath the canvas, the love that even the most somber paint couldn't hide.

End

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