Pairing: Bellatrix/Narcissa.

Rating: R.

Warnings: OotP spoilers, incest.

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended. Characters owned by J.K. Rowling.

Summary: Well, what's so wrong about sharing both blood and a bed?

Down a street that is dark and sometimes dirty and very, very cold during the winter, live three little girls. The day Bellatrix is born, a single gold line appears on the tapestry beneath the names of her parents and leads to her own in curving green. A year later, the line splits for Andromeda, and then again for Narcissa, nine months after that. Bellatrix never quite forgives them for destroying the purity of one clean glittering slash.


When they are too loud, or silly, or talk about blood traitors like Bobby Weasley oh isn’t he a dream? the house starts screaming, ancient blood magic leaking from the walls and ceiling and floor, creeping into their beds. Like cold hands touching them underneath thick feathered coverlets that are so white they bruise Bellatrix says, laughing in the morning at the blood stain, the muffled purple stain that runs right underneath where she sleeps Narcissa reaches up her skirt and finds the matching bruise licking her hip, matching like a pair of silver candelabra on opposite ends of the table, and when Bellatrix tries to say shh don’t cry you’ll wake Andromeda she ends up kissing her instead.


There are cold hands, and there are warm hands, and on some nights Bellatrix can’t quite tell the difference.


Narcissa turns fifteen on Wednesday, and at the party where she’s being choked by silver and polished shards of emerald, Bellatrix makes the toast after Lucius announces his engagement to her sister. He corners her near the gazebo in the afternoon, under the summer sun, the air filled with the sickly smell of the tangled garden weaving around their feet and says I wanted to marry you, you know, but your mother wouldn’t hear of it. Back in the grand hall, Elladora loops her arm around her second daughter’s shoulders and points out a boy in pale blue robes. What do you think about Delphinus Trelawney? Pause. Response. Laugh. Her fingers pressing into soft flesh. Not interested? Such a pity. He could so easily share both your blood and your bed.


Off with her head!, said the Queen, though Elladora’s words aren’t quite the same. Her hands are as cold as the axe she wields and there’s a thrill in the way the neck-bone resists the blade while the flesh is like warm butter. Time is the great deadener, Elladora says, caressing the wrinkled skin of the house-elf almost tenderly, but death stops time. Bellatrix ruins the ceremonial mood by laughing because the heads roll like croquet balls. It becomes very popular, and every year there are more, lifting their axes like mallets and sinking through warm-butter flesh. And so practical, too, Araminta exclaims.


Bellatrix finds Sirius kissing Andromeda in the dungeons, saving their lives by casting protego! when a serpent-manacle on the wall began creeping up Sirius’s leg. She tells him to go coldly and asks her sister a few questions. Well, what’s so wrong about sharing both blood and a bed? Andromeda responds defensive and ironic, bitter tasting like the residual magic in the dungeon air. So Bellatrix kisses her, and when Andromeda licks the blood off her lips she realises what’s wrong. Next year she marries Mudblood Ted Tonks who isn’t quite as dreamy as Bobby Weasley but certainly tries and Elladora blasts her name off the tapestry, just like her sister does a month later when her son Sirius runs away. Bellatrix casts a scourgify on her mouth, spitting blood into the sink, just in case it’s contagious.


Lucius wants Bellatrix wants Narcissa wants-- and that’s where the sentence ends in her head. Narcissa watches Bellatrix and Lucius together in Andromeda’s newly vacated bedroom, writhing and pale, their bodies so white after clothes are unpeeled. When Bellatrix tilts her head back and Lucius obscures everything but her streaming black hair with a kiss, Narcissa thinks it could be me and knows that’s why Bellatrix is doing it. I saw you, she says, after dinner when they’re climbing up to their rooms. You’re leaving me behind. You’re abandoning me here. Just like Andromeda and Narcissa laughs. You want to be abandoned. Bellatrix leaves bruises which she has to explain to Lucius on her wedding night, but after a few minutes he just smiles as well, because after all, he’s a Pureblood too, and knows.


Rodolphus writes her love-letters and compares her hair to inky black night and her eyes to starry jewels, copying Shakespeare because he thinks that she won’t know. Elladora burns them and holds on a bit tighter, her fingers like ceramic. You won’t abandon me here, just like Andromeda? Just like Narcissa? she wheedles, patting Bellatrix’s black-haired head. On Sunday she sees Narcissa at Gladrags and her hair is a cheap bright blonde which Bellatrix hesitates to touch. It could never be you Narcissa says, having finally finished the sentence in her head. You don’t really want to escape the house that screams.


On Monday Rodolphus slips a ring on her finger. When it clicks against the bone she can hear the snap of blood ties breaking, and the sound leaves her hollow.