Disclaimer: Not JKR still.

fujilovesme: no, it's not marauder-era. Not exactly. Druella is Bellatrix, Andromeda and Narcissa's mother, and while I currently plan to take the story past that part of her life, it's not going to focus on the marauders at all, although Sirius will probably get a chapter just for the running away bit and such. So it's sort of...before that?

3. gazing at stars

She's allowed to start going out by the time she's eight, and Druella finds herself wondering if she shouldn't turn her hair pink just to make certain her parents never take her out ever again. She's never had much to do with anyone - even in the past two years, when she finally started meeting extended family; Druella mostly hovered near a window, looking wistfully at the world outside.

She's forever getting stains in her dresses from kneeling by the roses and the lilies, the tulips and irises and flowers she can't quite name. Druella adores being outside - her mother only really allows her to do so because Druella doesn't burn or tan. Or she doesn't appear to. Druella keeps her skin the milky white her mother insists upon, and revels in the simple pleasure of fresh air and dirt and grass and life. It helps that Druella knows just when to slip out. Her mother and father and the adults they insist on introducing her to turn around very often to find that she's gone, when they'd only looked away for a moment. She's jealous of her freedom, in the way of a girl who never had any before.

Being in control of herself as she has had to learn to be is an advantage - but she still doesn't quite like these children that she's been ushered off to play with. They accept her easily enough - the story is, Druella knows, that she's frail and weak and was ill for most of her childhood, and has finally recovered enough to leave home. She's pretty, and that helps, too. There's also Evan's proprietal manner towards his sister; he doesn't really like her much, and she doesn't really like him, but he doesn't like anyone else bothering her more than that. He's only four, but everyone here knows that he'll be everything in the Rosier family, that he's the heir; and that sort of power is important.

All the same, Druella's gone in an instant, as soon as attention is on the pastries being paraded in by house elves. It's an important affair, she knows, but Druella is out the patio door and running into the garden of this large, strange house. Soon enough her pretty white dress is muddied at the knees as she examines closely a rose of deep, velvet black.

They haven't any roses of the colour at home, and she's enchanted at finding a new sort of flower to smell, to touch in a hesitant, awed way.

"Why are you out here?" The voice is imperious, and very English; indeed, the girl standing over her is the very picture of an English rose, only...sharper. Darker. It takes Druella a moment to follow her words, although she's got a good grasp of English for her age; she's startled, badly, although her fingers on the rose don't flinch. She'd never willingly hurt something so lovely.

She speaks the language with her own French accent, all the same. "It was very busy inside." Druella speaks more slowly than the other girl - older than her by a few years, surely - trying not to stumble over herself or order things incorrectly. "From the window I saw the garden. I 'ave never seen black roses."

"Mother thinks it's appropriate." The sharp young girl doesn't seem to be angry - only curious. Druella draws her hand back into her lap, looking up in the calm, cautious way she's learned in her short life. "Black, black, you know. I think we could use more colour, but it's no use to say anything to mother."

Even Druella, with her reclusive childhood, knows the name Black.

There's something frightening about that much power belonging to one family, but she tries not to think about that. Instead she takes a quiet moment to frame her reply, still speaking slowly, and hoping desperately she doesn't seem slow to this impressive, nameless girl. "I do not think them so terrible. They are lovely. Truly. I would not give up our gardens at 'ome for this - " She nearly tumbles to a halt, uncertain if she's insulted the girl, who surely is a Black, "-but they are lovely in their own right, are they not? I wish we 'ad them at 'ome. We've so many colours, even blue, but not black."

"I'll ask mother if you can take a cutting or two," the girl isn't insulted, apparently, but rather seems...charmed. Druella supposes it's her fairy blood calling, or perhaps she's just as odd as her mother accuses her of being. "No one's noticed you're gone, really, except Al and me. He's the heir, though, so he'd have been noticed if he tried to slip away. I wasn't. They're used to me going off after a little."

"I'm Druella." It's a little after the fact and the other girl clearly already knows who she is - Druella should probably know the girl, really, but she'd managed to skip a great deal of introductions by simply fleeing to the sunlight through the open door. But it just seems the thing to say; it's a tentative offer of something Druella can't name she hasn't known friendship before this but instinctively feels.

"Lucretia." Having introduced herself, Lucretia extends one graceful hand to her younger, wide-eyed companion. It takes a moment for Druella to recognize that she's meant to take it, and then Lucretia hauls her to her feet, with very little effort - Lu's stronger than she looks, and Druella is just as light as she looks. Lucretia doesn't drop her hand when she's standing, but instead begins leading her away from the little maze Druella had found herself in.

When Lucretia stops walking they're standing before a small group of children, sitting off to the side of the patio door and daintily eating pastries. A girl who looks like but not like Lucretia glares warily at Druella, and she finds herself suddenly wishing she were elsewhere.

She looks at her hands, but they have remained exactly the colour they should.

"Why did you bring her?" The other girl - she's sharp and has a mouth that's clearly given to frowning, her eyes narrowing dangerously as she takes in Druella's small, timid figure next to Lu's only slightly taller one but so much more confident, equally dangerous.

"Don't be rude, Walburga. She's just as pure as us, if that's what you're worried about. As if you didn't know already." Druella isn't, of course, she's a dirty thing that could look just like Lucretia does now, dangerous and somehow calm and blasé all at once. She could wear Lucretia's figure like a dress, if she pleased. But she doesn't correct the other girl, only looks up from underneath her eyelashes at the other children, wary and quiet.

"Then why haven't we seen her before? I don't believe for a minute -"

"She has a weak heart; you heard it just like I did. Just now we were getting her some fresh air, weren't we Drue?" Apparently this other girl's dislike of her has endeared Druella that much more to Lucretia. She looks up and nods, suddenly shy.

"If Lu approves it should be fine, Walburga. Lucretia isn't the sort to make decisions lightly," one of the boys cuts in, soft and unassuming. It's clear he thinks Walburga is just being difficult. It's also clear he's not a child either, really, in the same way Druella, at eight, isn't.

She doesn't know that things can be different, so she doesn't know to be sad for them. Instead she turns her gaze to watch the boy, sitting next to his mirror image - who happens to be eating a pastry and ignoring the entire affair.

No one speaks for a few moments, but somehow the matter is decided in a silent battle of wills, Walburga and Lucretia glaring at one another.

Lu takes the last empty chair - there are two, one with Walburga already seated - that the boys had dragged out with them, and motions Druella to sit.

Druella isn't silly, or stupid, or slow, even if her English can be. She recognizes that these other children are as Black as Lucretia is, and she realizes that she's just been used in some way, some little show of power. But Lu is being gentle, and kind, to her at least, and so instead of thinking of how she'd probably just had an enemy made for her she focuses on Lucretia's hands in her hair and the sunlight falling on her face and imagines Lu's hands are her mother's hands, gentle but deliberate.

She can't quite make herself believe it, and it's not enough.