insane
Patient has never been a word used to describe Bellatrix. Even when she was younger and still trying to please her parents, she could never manage to be patient. She needed things to happen, she needed answers, she needed to not just sit by and watch things happen around her. When things are left up to other people, she gets even more impatient.
It seems other people just don’t want to give her what she wants.
They never have. She’s always been expected to just bend to everyone else’s whim and do as they want her to. That all started with her parents, and even after choosing to leave and to make a life for herself, she has still ended up not getting what she wants. And Bella just has to take it.
There isn’t much that she has done for herself. Okay, maybe there is nothing she has done just for herself because she wants to. The brothers have reminded her of that more times than she can take. Even leaving home wasn’t for her. That was for Narcissa, and her, but mostly her sister.
So there’s another word that no one would use to describe her. Selfish. Most people would consider that a good thing. It’s taboo to be too selfish, it’s bad. No one should want to be selfish. But that’s what she wants now. With her little sister back in her life, she wants to do something for herself. She’s earned the right to be selfish. Granted, she’s not good at it. Not when her priorities have always been with the people most important to her.
That doesn’t stop her from trying. When Dorcas doesn’t answer her first text or the second one, she decides to get to work early every day in order to get her questions answered. Her coworker knows who wrote those books. Deep down maybe she does too, but they need confirmation. Today, now the fourth day in a row that she gets to the office over an hour before working hours start, she’s more determined than ever.
Or she’s pissed off that Dorcas keeps avoiding her. Bellatrix does genuinely like her as a friend, they could get on well. If she would stop ghosting her and finding excuses to avoid her at their shared place of work. That’s not even asking that much. It’s quite frankly only making her more paranoid and also more sure of the fact that it’s one of them. Not Andy, she doesn’t think it’s her, but one of her cousins. It has to be.
It’s not even eight in the morning yet, but she is up, fully ready, and sitting in the lobby of the office building. Waiting. Narcissa tried to tell her to ease up. That they could figure this all out eventually. It’s not something for them to stress over. If they’re meant to see the rest of them again, they will. Just give it time, she keeps saying. Sorry, but screw that. Bellatrix is tired of waiting.
It took eight years for her to find Narcissa while actively searching. And even then it was by pure luck, or bad luck given that it was a car accident. Otherwise they may have lived the rest of their lives in the same city, not even far from each other, and still never reunite. All five of them are probably here, of course they would all stay in the city even after leaving. That’s assuming her cousins left home, but that’s an easy assumption.
The door chimes, she doesn’t have to whip her head up to see, she’s already looking. “You’re here early! Want to join me for some coffee or tea?” Rita is far too awake and far too loud for this time of day.
“Can’t. I’m busy.” She quickly dismisses her, and magically it works, likely because she assumes Bella is just cranky.
“Well alright. I’ll be up there if you change your mind. Hope, -ah whatever you’re busy with works out.”
“Actually wait, have you talked to Dorcas? She’s ignoring my texts.” It’s a hail mary to ask, but that’s where she is at.
Rita studies her for a moment. “Sounds like someone is doing to you what you do to everyone else for a change. But no, I haven’t.”
Rude. That’s what that is. She’s really not at all in the mood for this. Everyone is out to make her life difficult. Normally she would easily brush it off and not care, or find ways around it. But this is about her family, her sister, and she doesn’t fucking play when it comes to them. So yeah, she’s pissed off that anyone is knowingly standing between her and reuniting with Andromeda.
For three hours she sits there waiting for the door to open again. It does, but never by Dorcas. It’s not possible that she snuck in without her seeing, so she concludes that she isn’t coming today. Even more annoyed now, she opens her phone to her work email and goes through to see what needs to get done and what she can push off.
If she works for a few hours now, then she should be able to go home early and start working on this herself. Maybe laying off Dorcas for a bit will ease the tension and she can catch her when she’s not expecting it. This just isn’t something she can let go of. Not when she just got Narcissa back and has a chance at the rest of them too.
Around one in the afternoon, Bella is ready to give up. Any of the work she tries to do gets lost in her thoughts. Luckily Rabastan texts her to see if she’s busy. He knows that she has work, he just likes to ignore that fact since he does not have the same schedule. She nearly always gives in to him or his brother unless she has a meeting with a client, and today is no exception.
They weren’t exactly helpful when it came to tracking down Narcissa. Both of them tried their best, she will give them that, they just weren’t successful. Which is why she hasn’t bothered to bring them into this new search. Plus she and her sister are the ones with actual possible connections. Regardless, he wants her to come over with no context so she might as well. It’s not like she’s needed here right now.
“Oh you’re leaving already? I was going to see if you wanted to get drinks after work.” Rita stops her.
She somehow has still not given up on them being friends. “Have to help a friend with something. Or pester them into helping me find someone.”
“I’m really good at that, you know. Or you wouldn’t since we never hang out, but if you need help…” She smiles at her.
As she’s shutting her computer and shoving it in her bag she sighs. It’s been so long working here and she has managed to keep her distance and separate her life and work. Rita doesn’t ever give up though and well, maybe she knows something. If she’s like this with everyone else in the office then maybe she can get Dorcas to answer. Wouldn’t that be a shock, for her to be more than an annoyance to Bella.
“You’re not going to give up on this are you?”
“I just think if you gave me a chance we could get on well.” She smiles and moves to grab her own things. “So we’re going?”
“Fine. But only because you might actually know something that could help.”
On the way out of the building she sends a text to Bas telling him there’s a change of plans and to meet at the pub. Bella doesn’t particularly want to bring Rita over to either of their houses, having her join at all is a stretch. He responds, annoyed since he apparently actually wanted her to come over for a real reason that he still doesn’t say. But agrees anyway.
They get on the tube and for the most part she tunes out whatever Rita is talking about. She can literally talk to a brick wall without taking a single breath. It’s exhausting. But on the way Bellatrix thinks about asking her sister to come. She isn’t working today and could, but last time they talked about this she said they should just wait it out. That’s just not something that she can do though.
The two of them get a table and Bella orders a pint for her and one for Bas, while Rita doesn’t get anything. “So are you going to explain anything to me or…?”
“I would rather not, you just insisted on coming.”
“Well, do you want my help?” Rita crosses her arms, challenging her with an annoying smile.
Why couldn’t literally anyone else be here and offering to help?
“Fine. I think one of the authors that Dorcas works with is my sister or one of my cousins and they’re writing books about our lives. We haven’t seen each other in nearly a decade and now Dorcas is avoiding me.” Bellatrix unloads the summary of it in one breath.
For a moment Rita is silent, it’s unnerving. She studies her and thinks before answering. “Well that’s not as hard as I thought it would be. I could try to get into her files and see what I find. Do you have the books?”
What shocks her is that she doesn’t ask for more details. She’s honestly expecting her to try to dig for every last piece of information. Not even just about the books and her need to find them, but about her past. Bella doesn’t go around talking about that at all. When she got Narcissa back, she suddenly started to mention a sister in casual conversation and refused to say anything more about the mysterious appearance when multiple people thought she was an only child.
Rita pulls out her phone and types out a few of the things that she relays. Like the name of the book that she does have, the author’s pen name, and the few details she does have. It shouldn’t be that hard. It’s just- she needs confirmation that it’s one of them first. To know and then she can go searching. If one of them is writing these, that must mean they would be okay with her getting in touch. At least that’s her hope.
“And you’ve read the books?”
“Only one of them, but it was enough to be fairly certain. I’m trying to get the others to be sure.”
The drink in front of her is slowly drained so she goes for the one meant for Rabastan. Who still isn’t here. He is supposed to be to make sitting here with Rita easier. He wanted her for something today, so why is he abandoning her now. It’s not like him, he doesn’t bail on her, he doesn’t change plans or cancel on her, he shows up. Just as she’s starting to get frustrated, causing her to snip more at Rita, he walks in the door.
“Bas!”
“Hey Bells.” He takes a seat and swipes the drink from her hand.
They sit there for a decent amount of the afternoon talking. Eventually moving on from the topic of the books and instead to Rabastan pestering them about if they are friends or not. Rita claims they are and it shocks her to her core. Bellatrix is hardly even nice to her, why would they be friends. But at least she’s promising to help with this. When she gets home she said she’ll go through the system and see if she can find the email of the author or anything like that.
Which is helpful. It might not really tell her anything, knowing that any of them could have an email address that isn’t their name. It’s just a possibility and finding any pieces of information will be welcome but it’s still so unknown. She just wants… She wants them back. Not that Narcissa isn’t enough but she has a taste of the past and she needs more.
“Let me know what you find, yeah?” She starts to get up to go.
“Of course. I’ll text you.” Rita smiles, clearly feeling triumphant.
Bellatrix keeps her cards as close to her as she can, but what’s letting one more fall. “And if you are able to get me copies of the rest of the books, I wouldn’t hate that.”
“That’s easy.”
Hopefully it is.
The rest of the evening she spends with Bas. When he texted her, he apparently was just bored. Didn’t need help with anything, just wanted company. So now that he’s put up with her annoying coworker, she indulges him and goes over to his flat to lay on the sofa. They turn on the television but she doesn’t pay attention. She’s just thinking about how close she could be now.
When Bella was little, she was alone. The eldest, the first born, the only child of the family at the time. Her parents were very young when they had her and her aunt was even younger, so it made sense that no one else came along until after. It only took a few years for her to have sisters and then a few more to have cousins. But for two years she was all alone.
Most children don’t start to form memories until they are at least four. That’s what most people say. But not Bella. She remembers being alone. She remembers the feeling of having no one that she was tied to. For so long she didn’t have anyone and then one day she became a sister. No longer just Bellatrix, but instead she was an older sister. It changed everything. She never wanted to go back to having no one.
She wants them all back again. She’s tired of not having them. Narcissa is of course enough, but it makes the gap between them more obvious. Four years between them instead of having a bridge that breaks it up into two and two. Most people wouldn't notice that sort of thing, but they do. It’s coursing through their veins.
Every time they are together they can feel it. Two hearts beating in sync, skipping a beat to account for the missing third. It’s devastating and frustrating and they don’t have a way around it. They have to just exist this way. Unless they find Andromeda and pull her back to them. If she would even want to. That’s the thought she tries to never have, but it’s there.
The slight possibility that she’s happier without them, that she’s glad she left and didn’t look back, that she’s better without sisters than with. That’s never how Bellatrix felt. Though she had the same fear when looking for Narcissa. The same ghost haunting her mind saying that they left for a reason. At least the evidence, in the form of her littlest sister, proves that it’s possible. Proves that someone is happier with her than without.
It’s going to hurt her until she has Andromeda back. It’s going to stand between her and Narcissa as a ghost until she’s with them again. And that just fucking hurts. Each time she looks at her youngest sister she can’t help but pick out all of the features that she shares with Andy. Even more than that she finds every single difference too. Bella often wonders if Narcissa does the same with her, but of course she does. It’s hardly a question.
It’s hard to accept that they might never all be together again. And by hard to accept, Bellatrix is flat out refusing for that to be the case. She never gave up on finding her baby sister, yet she never tried properly before now to find Andromeda. It’s worth trying. She never wanted to be alone again once she became a sister.
She’s the only one of them to know what it’s like without sisters. It’s why she never left either of them behind. Everything was infinitely better having each other.
The following days are spent both making progress and undoing all of it all at the same time.
Mostly she just drives herself insane.
At first she takes a day off of work. Hoping that maybe, foolishly, trusting Rita to make some progress or find anything out for her, will do some good. Also she’s just tired and possibly coming down with something, but that’s a later problem. She never cared when she would get sick because she had other things to worry over and sisters to take care of. The habit of pushing through has stuck with her though.
Despite that, she takes a sick day to do her own research on the author. It comes up pretty empty. There are no links between the pen name Leo and any of her family members’ names. There are also no ways to contact the author. She looks. Not just on the website that she digs up and not through any public information. Not that she thought it would work.
Bellatrix doesn’t get to searching through those sources until pretty late and with a glass of wine in her hand. It’s easier to sort through things like this when it seems fun and not life altering or stressful. She makes a game of it. Find one piece of information, have a drink of wine. Fail to find what she’s looking for, have a drink of wine.
After an hour or so, she gives up. Coming up empty handed time and time again is beyond frustrating. She begrudgingly checks her phone to see if Rita has texted her and she hasn’t. This is the first time, possibly ever, that she’s annoyed by the lack of reaching out. Even with the feeling of disappointment, she still can’t get herself to be the one to send a text first. So she goes to sleep and dreams about them all being together again.
The following day, she thinks about picking up where she left off. That would be the easiest thing for one. And for two, she doesn't have any other leads at the moment. Bellatrix grabs her computer and goes downstairs to make herself a coffee and some breakfast. Once that’s all done in front of her, she opens the computer expecting to land on the author’s website where the other books are listed.
She doesn’t. Instead she gets an error and no matter how many times she tries to navigate back to the site, it’s impossible. Something is blocking her and it troubles her even more. There wasn’t much on the site, just promotion for the series and for the upcoming book. Zero information on the author. The only contact information on the page directs to Dorcas.
Out of frustration she slams the computer shut and collapses into the couch. Back to square one. There is still the issue of getting the other books to read those, on top of finding which of them is writing these. There has to be a way. Sure the first one was easy since Dorcas had copies on hand. But this is a five book series, nothing would have been taken on by their company for that many if it wasn’t successful.
Though when she opens the computer again to one of the online bookstores she will sometimes order from, the books are nowhere to be found. She searches the titles and the author, along with common misspellings of every word. Still nothing. It’s like the series vanished off the internet since last night. Which isn’t possible. She still has the one copy, so they exist. Or at least Cissa has it, but that’s basically the same thing.
Without thinking Bellatrix dials the phone. “Cissa, I think I’m going crazy.”
“Hello to you too, sister. Is this a new revelation for you? I thought we already knew you were mad.”
“I’m serious!” Something twinges in the back of her head, but only for a split second before she swallows it. “I’m not kidding. Can you get your computer right now?”
“Sure, now are you going to explain why?” It sounds like the phone was clicked to speaker as her voice gets further away.
Bellatrix heaves a sigh. “Look up the Stargazing series.”
“Hang on!” She yells. “Okay, there’s nothing.”
“Fuck. Look up the name of the first book then.”
“Still nothing. What is-”
“It was all there last night. I saw it. Cissa I saw the website and was trying to find any contact information or order the books. But now it’s gone.”
It shouldn’t just be gone. Things like this don’t just disappear overnight. It doesn’t make sense. All she can do now is kick herself for not spending more time looking at it last night before it was gone. The thing that gets her though is that it can’t just be gone like that. There’s a whole other book coming out in less than two months. But it’s gone from both her and Narcissa, so it’s… It’s weird.
“Do you think… No, that's too crazy.” Narcissa starts through the phone.
“Say it. I think I’m thinking the same thing. It’ll just sound more sane coming from you.”
She pauses and sucks in a breath. “Do you think they restricted our access from the site because they don’t want us reading it? When you started digging, maybe they found out and blocked you as soon as they could.”
“Careful Cissy you’re starting to sound like me.” She laughs as if it’s a joke, though it’s the exact thought she had.
There’s a long silence between them. Too much to say. They don’t have nearly enough information to really come to that conclusion. To their knowledge, none of them have the skillset to even do that. But it’s too accurate for it to just be a coincidence. Or they’re just going crazy. It’s in their blood to be at least a little bit not right in the head, especially when it comes to family.
But why would they want to keep them out of it? That keeps coming back as they sit there listening to each other breathe. It’s only confirming that it really is one of them. It wouldn’t make much sense for it to be Andy, at least she doesn’t think it is. They would need to read more to get a better idea of that. This is all just a lot.
“Okay so, it really is one of them.” Cissa breaks the silence.
“It has to be. Who do you think?” She carefully and hesitantly asks.
“Maybe Andy, I mean she loved reading when we were little.” Her voice falters. “Do you remember that time she snuck out to buy a book that Mother refused to let her have? And how she carefully wrapped the cover and made it unrecognisable as that book.”
“It looked like something Mother would have approved of her having. God she was so good at that sort of thing.”
Remembering her hurts. No matter how many times they let themselves talk about her or think about her or even just say her name. It hurts viscerally every single time. Bella won’t stop though. It’s a good kind of hurt. One that shows that they had something good once. That it’s worth missing and worth remembering. It’s - she’s- not something they should lock up in the depths of their minds.
This time Bellatrix starts. “She also had that journal she carried with her. She would never let us see what was in it.”
“The one with the butterflies on it! Yes, I forgot about that. I always thought at the time she was writing little poems or love letters to her boyfriend in it.”
They go back and forth, losing track of where the conversation started. They haven’t talked this much about Andy ever. Slowly it feels like the bridge between them is building back up and reforming. Brick by brick, plank by plank. Soon they’ll be able to reach each other without a gaping hole in the middle. There will still be a small one until, or if, they have Andromeda back, but this is a start.
So much time goes by. Eventually her phone vibrates and she’s brought back to reality. It’s Rita. And for once she’s glad for it.
“Hang on, sorry. We- I don’t mean to stop talking about her. We can go back to that, I want us to. Rita texted me though. She’s looking into it for me.” Bella cuts her off mid story.
“What did she say?”
“There’s no email or phone number in our system for the author. If she can get into Dorcas’ account it might be there.” A slight let down, but it’s expected. Then another text. “Oh. It was just changed recently. Right around when we read the first one.”
“So they don’t want us finding out more?” The weak way her little sister’s voice comes out breaks one of the threads she is currently hanging on by.
“You know how we all get. I don’t care if they think we shouldn’t all find each other again. I’m not letting this family do that. I failed back then and I’m not going to fail now.”
Where that comes from she doesn’t know. It’s sewn through her. It’s been banging on her chest and her mind for a decade. Bellatrix loves this family; she loves nothing more. They are everything to her and she let it all fall apart. She was too focused on pleasing their parents, thinking that they were the ones to be loyal to even when they would tear all of them apart. It was family, she dealt with it because it’s family. That doesn’t make it right. That doesn’t make up for the fact that she let everyone slip away from her.
Not this time.
“If it’s Andy…”
“Cissa, listen to me. If it’s her, it’s still okay. When we have each other back none of it will matter.”
“But what if she doesn’t want us back?”
“It’ll still be okay. I’ll make sure that it is.” She just has to believe that, not just for herself but more so for Naricssa.
Quickly she texts Rita back. Just a little thanks for checking and to let her know if there’s anything else she finds. It would be better if she could find a copy of the next book. That’s the next missing thing. Even just because it could tell them a little bit more. What is the next one even about? If Andromeda wrote it, she wouldn’t know anything about what happened at home after she left. Since the first book ended with her leaving.
Then she has a thought. “What if it’s not her?”
“Sirius?” Narcissa mimics her thinking.
“Maybe. He- well he always liked art more than writing, but still. He would have been able to do that. It would make sense, and depending on the rest of the series, it would make more sense than Andy.”
“Okay so we need to get the books.” She confirms, pushing the sadness that crept in before far down.
That’s exactly what they do. It takes some time, but they figure it out eventually. Rita is a big help in it, as much as she hates to admit it. She isn’t able to hack into Dorcas’ account which is a let down, but she does manage to find where copies of the books are kept in the office. After Bellatrix got the first one, the stack of them was moved from the usual closet to a hidden storage on a different floor of the building.
She hadn’t gotten to that point of snooping around, but luckily Rita has no problem doing that. After that day talking with Narcissa for hours, she started to go back to work again. She stopped pestering Dorcas, and things seemed to go back to normal. Except for the fact that she has someone that tries to talk to her during lunch and that will more frequently ask her to get drinks. Sometimes she even goes.
It’s mid November by the time they get more of the books. Which is in a way for the better. It gives them time and space to breathe. To keep telling each other about memories from childhood before things potentially go up in flames. It's time to just breathe. To calm down and not frantically go searching. Some of that still happens, but only when there is a sign that they are close to something.
Narcissa comes over a lot just to spend time together during this time. Being together, curled on the couch together, makes them feel closer. It physically closes the gap between them left by Andy and she’ll never say no to time with her sister. Though that only happens on nights that Cissa isn’t off with Alice. They haven’t all gotten together since the night they came over for dinner. That’s for the best because Bella isn’t sure she would be able to hold back from interrogating her for anything she knows.
They haven’t told Alice about any of this. Well, Narcissa wants to keep her out of it and who is Bella to deny her little sister her happiness. It may end in flames when the truth comes out, but for now she deserves for it to be good. So on nights that they aren’t together, while Bellatrix is digging up anything she can find, Narcissa is pushing this all to the depths of her mind.
It all comes together on a day that Dorcas happens to be out of the office. Rita comes running to her desk with a stack of three books. “Bella, Bella! You’re not going to believe it.”
“You found them.” Her mouth falls open and she nearly jumps up to embrace Rita, but she has more self control than that.
“Took ages, but I did. Here.”
With the other books sitting in front of her, she doesn’t know what to do. It’s been weeks of waiting for this day to come and now it’s here. The last book comes out next month which means they have time for this. They can be prepared for whatever will come. Maybe even find them before then and go as a family. But finding three of them is harder than just finding who is writing these books. The city is big and they haven’t run into each other yet. It would be an insane coincidence if they are able to.
She doesn’t even know what to do. Open them? Read them? Sure, that’s the logical next step. But after the first one, part of her isn’t ready to do that. Weeks of searching and the answers are right in front of her. Other than the who of it all, the answers are laid out. Yet all she can do is stare. Reading about Andy leaving and all that came with that was a lot, can she do it again? Is that what comes next in the series?
“Bella, are you okay?” A hand lands on her shoulder.
Or maybe it was already there. She blinks rapidly and tries to pull herself away from looking at the books. It takes a second before she is able to turn to look at Rita. Her heart hammers on in her chest. She hasn’t felt like this in a long time. So close to things being right again. Her family is right at her fingertips. All of the years driving herself mad are finally coming together.
“I… I don’t know.” Bella whispers. “I think I should go for the day.”
Barely in her body she gets up, grabs the books and leaves. It’s not until she gets home that she realises she didn’t take anything other than the books home. Not her phone or her bag or her keys. She doesn’t even remember getting home. One second she was standing up from her desk and the next she walked through the door that she luckily didn’t lock.
The books are placed gently on the coffee table and she sits back. Staring at them. Trying to will herself to open them. Maybe Cissa should be here for this. She will want to know too. But she can’t bring herself to call her, especially not when her phone is still at the office. That will just have to wait. But reading them can’t. If she tries, if she doesn’t stop, she could read these in one go. Not stopping until she’s done.
Instead she just looks. Stares. Everything other than the books blur from her vision. She’s doing this alone. Just like she used to do everything. As a little toddler before Andromeda came around. Then again after she left to find Narcissa. They made her a sister and they nearly tried to take that away from her too.
Moving in slow motion, it takes what feels like an hour to even grab the top book off the stack. The second in the series. She doesn’t open it. It just sits in her lap now. Her fingers trace over the detailing on the cover. It would shock her that such a nice copy was just in a storage room at the office instead of an old advanced reader copy or a manuscript, but she’s not thinking like that right now. This is a naked hardcover with slight engraving that is silver. A book made to be displayed.
Bellatrix doesn’t remember what the first book looked like now. It’s lost in her mind, but it wasn’t the same edition as this one that’s for sure. Now that’s just another thing she will need to find after all of this. This one has an engraving of a flower. Her fingers trace over it again and again.
Then all at once she knows what this book will be about. It’s a daffodil on the cover.
A narcissus.
It’s too much to open this one now. It will be about the worst moments of her life. Watching her youngest sister slip away from her, wasting away from how their parents were, turning into a ghost of herself. Then finally leaving. She’ll have to read how she didn’t do as much as she should have, how she let her slips away, how she let her down.
Overwhelmed by it and barely able to breathe, she shoves the book aside gently. Making sure to not damage it, but needing it out of her immediate grasp. Her breaths are heavy, everything is still blurred. She grabs the next off the stack, just needing to find a way to disprove her thinking. To give her a reason to open the second book and not find the story of how Narcissa came undone.
Except this one has the same silver detailing, but this time featuring the Orion constellation with one star shining a bit more, a bit bigger. Her star.
Bellatrix.
She just sits and stares. The last book on the table surely has another set of stars on it, if she were to take a guess. She’s not ready to look through these. She can’t do it on her own. Narcissa should be here. The books will just need to stay there shut until then. Which is perfectly fine, Bella wouldn’t be able to open them right now if she tried. Air gets stuck in her throat each time she tries to inhale or exhale and her hands are half frozen and half shaking.
In her head she can hear a distant banging. Alarm bells going off perhaps. There’s no reason to panic like this, except for every overwhelming feeling she never let herself feel over the years. It was shoved so far down because her friends told her it would be better. To not hope for more, to not replay all of the moments. Now those moments are written on these pages for her to relive.
The banging continues, now louder. “Open the door Bellatrix!”
Oh, it wasn’t in her head.
She makes her way to the door somehow, her feet just carry her while the rest of her remains frozen. “Rita?”
“You left your things at the office, I brought them over.” She slips past her and into the house without being invited. “You- are you alright?”
“I don’t know.” Really, she has no idea and she hates it.
“Come on, let’s sit. You can talk if you want, or I can just be here.”
“I need my sister.” She says barely audibly, mostly just to herself.
At least in all of this she has Narcissa. If she had found any of this out before getting her back, it would be going an entirely different way. It would unravel her at the seams. Even now, she’s not sure what to do or how to do it. Except for two things.
They need to read the rest of the books and they need to find their cousin.