The usual disclaimer: all of this belongs to JK Rowling. Please do not sue me.

Author's Note

And so continues my obsession with the Black girls. This baby, Gin in Teacups, has taken me ages to write - it's been done piece by piece over the last two months, perhaps longer. This is the most perfectionist I've ever been with a piece of fiction, and I hope you all like it - so please, read it, review it, and if you're very nice and exceptionally taken with it, give me a fave. Cheers!

And yet they were not some individual soul reproduced in carbon triplicate. They were a triumvirate, a troika, a triptych. They were the three parts of a whole, three utterly different young women who somehow seamlessly fitted together to create a single entity: the Black sisters. Those outside thought them interchangeable, as if one could be traded for another without anybody noticing. Those on the inside knew them as three individual and distinct beings who swept everything and everyone they needed along with them, and left all else scattered at the wayside.

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It was Bella's party. Bella, the eldest, celebrating her departure from Hogwarts with the fuck you party to end all fuck you parties, the only way she knew how. It was always said that the wild ones went to Bella's parties, the intelligent to Romy's, and the boys to Cissa's. Tonight they were all there, on that July evening in 1969. Someone had shot tiny incandescent lights up into all the trees. They cast an eerie blue glow across the lawns, across those stretched out through the garden behind Cygnus and Druella Black's home, sitting, standing, in pairs, in groups, drinking, smoking, talking. A record player was churning out endless songs, mostly Bella's current craze of twenties jazz. A few couples danced on the terrace, but most were elsewhere.

It may have been Bella's party, but it was Cissa's night of triumph. Barely out of her third year at Hogwarts, she was sitting on a blanket between Lucius Malfoy and Rab Lestrange, both of whom vied for her attention. Druella Black may have lectured her daughters endlessly about the importance of dressing elegantly and speaking faultless French and brushing their hair with a hundred strokes of the brush before bedtime, but of the three, it was Cissa who had taken those lectures and made them her own. Anybody with older sisters like Bella and Romy knew the score, knew how to fight, knew how to play the game from birth.

And Romy? What of the last of the sisters, the last of the truly toujours pur, who sought to shield what lay beneath with books and exemplary school reports and academia? She was lying beneath the trees, surrounded by her friends, pretending to listen but instead watching Bella and Cissa as they held forth amongst their allies.

She was the middle of the three. Somehow, she had inherited a little of each of her parents, and yet not enough of either to make a whole. Her life was spent dipping her feet in the pools of sisterhood - first in one, then the other, finding them too hot, too cold to handle, either one or the other, never both. She was the median, yet not the mean; she was not a combination of the two, but something else entirely.
And tonight, she was the only sister not at ease, the only sister with one eye on the skies, one ear open for the sound which could herald the reappearance of her parents - or of any other reveller turning up late to the party. A couple of boys were apparating back and forth across the lawn, just to prove that they could; and every time she heard that sharp crack, her head snapped around irresistably, like a puppet on a string.

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Bella saw what she wanted to see. Cissa saw what she needed to see. And Romy saw everything.

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Bella spins in the middle of the lawn. Her arms are stretched wide, her head tilted back like a sky worshipper. She is drunk on the stars and on life and on her father's forty year old gillywater. Rodolphus lazes on the ground beside her. He wouldn't catch her if she fell. Bella can look after herself, and anyway, Rodolphus doesn't care. He has nothing to prove to her any longer.

Not that he ever proved anything, anyway; it was always Bella who was doing the proving. Every moment she had spent buried in dusty tomes in the Hogwarts library during her final year was all for him. Every secret hex, every foul curse, every black spell committed to memory was all for him. That short, distinctly revealing red dress at the Quidditch cup victory celebration, and the long, luminous legs stretched out beneath the hem, was all for him. That blackened mark burned into her skin, the skull with a snake twisting from its mouth, branded on her arm barely two days previously was all for him.

Cissa is lost in the moment. She's lying on an ancient, tattered rug with Lucius, her head in his lap. He's stroking her hair gently, talking politics with Rab. Cissa is only half listening. In her head she's building castles in the sky, fantasies where she lives happily ever after, Lucius at her side, and their beautiful blonde children play in a garden filled with roses and sunlight.

"He is the only true voice," she hears Lucius drawling, and opens her eyes to see Rab looking sceptical. "Ask your brother if you don't believe me."

"Who's the only true voice?" Cissa smiles up at Lucius. He doesn't smile back; perhaps he didn't hear what she said. "Who's the only true voice?" Cissa asks again.

Lucius looks down at her, irritated. "You'll learn in time," he snaps. "You'll all learn."

Romy has escaped. Up in her bedroom, in her sanctuary, she sits before the battered typewriter she begged from a muggle junk shop for a bargain price. Her fingers hover above the keys; her eyes are closed as she smiles. Firewhisky has made her head spin, yet somehow her thoughts are more coherent.

is this what it will be like then, forever? Always the one on the fringe, or caught in the middle?

what have i done that will be remembered? what will i ever do that will be remembered?

Andromeda pauses, stares at the page before her, at the inky characters. Whatever she had expected to come from her drunken miasma, it was not that. She pulls the parchment from the machine in one smooth, fluid motion, and is about to tear it apart when she hears voices outside her room. Boys. Two of them.

"Seriously, which of those girls would you rather do? Hang on - I've got a better idea. Rank them."

"That's meant to be difficult? Cissa, Bella, Romy. Romy's such a fucking prude, you can tell just by looking at her."

Romy can say nothing, just sits at the dressing table, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Cissa's clearly gagging for it, did you see her with Malfoy earlier?"

"Come on, your turn. Rank them."

"Same as you. Cissa, Bella, Romy."

Quietly, Andromeda looks up at her face in the mirror, wipes the tears from her cheeks, and draws her chin up. A fire blazing in her eyes, and with her lips pursed, she sweeps from the room. She'll show them who's a prude.

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Bella did only what she wanted to do. Cissa did only what she needed to do. Romy did everything that was asked of her.

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Bella stands beside the open curtains, gazing out into the night, wearing only her bra and knickers. There is still a faint light in the far north; in summer, it never really got dark. A full moon hangs in the sky, flooding the gardens with its luminescence. Bella turns around, looks at him. He is in her bed, asleep. Rodolphus lying there, naked, the sheets twisted around his body. His dark, curly hair is stark against the snow white pillows; but Bella's eyes are elsewhere. "You are perfection," she breathes.

Having Rodolphus Lestrange so close to her is more than merely physical consummation for Bellatrix Black, the girl for whom perfection and destruction and insanity are so closely entwined in her mind that they are inseperable from one another. Slowly, she pads back towards the bed, her feet slapping quietly against the ancient polished floorboards. She lies down on the bed, and curls up against Rodolphus. This is forever.

Cissa had watched Lucius leave, swaggering down the gravel driveway with two of his closest friends. Rab and Ed Nott had mounted their brooms without so much of a look backwards, but Lucius, before he straddled his Nimbus 1400, had turned around and blown her a kiss. Then he had followed his friends off into the darkness of the night sky, leaving Cissa behind, dressed in white, like a caryatid on the lawns in front of the Black house. And yet, people asked, what could Cissa support? She was the baby of the family, the softest, though not the most malleable. No, that was Bella.

But Cissa could support a weight greater than many. As she makes her way up the steps, she stumbles and falls, knocking her wrists against the stonework. Everything that was said about Cissa led people to believe that she would cry for help, sit there sobbing until the wound was fixed by someone's wand, until the pain had gone away and the world was rosy again. But apart from the hot flush of embarrassment rising to her cheeks, Cissa does nothing. She rises to her feet and hurries into the house. It's late; and time for her to be in bed. Whatever her sisters thought, she could take care of herself.

Romy is flat on her back on her parents' bed, worrying. Not about the boy above her, his hips brushing hers one moment, then hovering high above her the next, his lips grazing her neck; but about... stains. How good were her scourgifycharms, anyway? The house elves were brilliant at them, of course, but if they did it, her parents might find out. No, it was far easier for Romy to do it herself. And heaven knew from how useless Alex Gibbon had been so far, she'd need it. God, he could at least had the decency to come inside her, rather than all over the fine linens of her parents' bed.

A few moments later, with a grunt and a long, drawn-out sigh, followed swiftly by his body collapsing against hers, Romy realises he is finished. At least it wasn't on the bed, she says to herself, and says quietly, "Was that alright?"

"Amazing," Alex gasped. "Amazing."

And I did nothing, she realises, absolutely nothing. The easiest validation I've ever had.

She watches as he eases himself off her, and reaches for his clothes. "You're not going, are you? Already?" Romy is confused. As he pulls on his clothes, she wonders what all of this is, anyway?

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Cissa lies alone. Romy wishes she lay alone. And Bella wouldn't be anywhere else.

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Dawn breaks over the low, rolling hills of Wiltshire. Across the ancient and hallowed rooms of the Black family home, across the gardens and fields of the estate, teenagers with aching heads are waking up.

Cissa, ever the hostess, is down in the kitchens and dressed less than two hours after falling into bed, shouting orders at the house elves as they scurry around making breakfast for those guests nursing hangovers in the house above. She makes her way across the kitchen to one of the coffee pots and pours herself a mug of steaming coffee. The smell of it alone is enough to wake her up.

"When will I see you again, darling?" Bella has draped herself across her bed in a way she hopes looks alluring and languid. Rodolphus is dressing slowly, lazily, gazing out of the window she herself had looked out from in the middle of the night.

"Soon," he says, and as he turns, Bella sees that his finger is on the Mark, the mark they share. "He will call us soon." The thrill which rises slowly in the pit of Bella's stomach is greater than any rush she had experienced in the dead of night.

In the darkness of her room, the curtains drawn tightly shut, Romy lies on her bed, misery welling up and down inside her. What had possessed her? What had made her go against every single principle she had? She can hear the noise below, the clinking of silver on china, the talking, the laughter. Were they laughing at her? Probably. A single tear tracks down her face, and she draws the sheets tighter around her. Is this what it will always be like, then?

A few moments later, she hears a knock on her door. "Romy?" Cissa is standing outside, her ear to the door, holding a cup of tea. "You in there?" Without waiting, Cissa comes in, and deposits the tea on Romy's dressing table. "Come on, sleepy head," she says cheerfully, "time to get up." She draws back the curtain, and Romy blinks in the light. Cissa turns to her sister, and sees her reddened eyes for the first time. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," Romy says weakly. "Fine." Cissa looks at her sister, uncertain; but then the moment is gone. Bella's voice breaks through the stillness of the bedroom.

"Cissa, you darling, thank you so much for getting breakfast sorted out. You're such a sweetie, I would never have managed." She looks past Cissa and sees Romy sitting up in bed, her knees tucked under her chin. "You look like death warmed up," Bella observes. "Wild night?"

It is all Andromeda can do to stop herself bursting into tears. But she manages, and smiles wanly. "Oh, you know. The usual."

Bella comes over, and sits down on the bed. Romy looks at her, and is suddenly confused; there is something different about her sister. She seems changed, somehow. Cissa joins them, and then that moment is gone. Bella is still Bella.

"We are sisters," Bella says, her voice suddenly hard. She grabs Romy's hand with her left hand, and Cissa's with her right. "Whatever happens, we are still sisters." Cissa's eyes are wide; she looks at Romy as if for reassurance. What had brought about this sudden change in Bella?

The three sisters sit there cross legged on the bed in the morning light. Bellatrix, Andromeda and Narcissa know their places, know their roles, and somewhere underneath it all, they know how all of this will end. But at that moment, everything is still as it should be. And as they break the circle, and get up from the bed to go down for breakfast, they are the Black sisters, always and forever.

the end