Heart of Gold
I want to live
I want to give
I've been a miner
For a heart of gold
2nd February 1974
Sirius Orion Black was satisfied to say this his third year had been doing jolly well so far. His birthday bash had been excellent; Christmas a pleasant exchange. Even with Ara’s little outburst, things were still going well. She’d calmed greatly the next day, even helping him and the boys set up a prank for the Slytherins. After a little light grovelling, she’d forgiven him with a smile and a shake of her head - and he knew everything would be alright. All because of one simple thing. Ara’s nightmares had tampered down this year - replaced by dreams of his own.
A little forcibly, sure, but it was working. Both of them were far happier for it, anyways.
Besides, if Ara truly wasn’t a Seer, it meant the dreams were just that.
Dreams.
Not something they needed to constantly be subjected to. Her imagination of their future.
Unfortunately for him, Regulus did not agree.
Now that the youngest Black was in on the secrets, he was desperate to solve the mystery. He’d cornered both twins a dozen times to ask questions. Trying to piece together the mystery from memories and theories.
Sirius was half-sure he had a notebook hidden somewhere with all his ideas scattered within the clues.
Especially when Regulus would suddenly accost him with questions.
“How long has it been going on?” Regulus asked by way of greeting, suddenly behind the corner Sirius had been turning down on his way to meet James. The two Gryffindors had plans to practice their flying, both for James to practice for the next James and Sirius to attempt to try out in the next academic year. Their beaters were graduating this summer. “Since before The Incident? Or after?”
“Why can’t you just let it alone?” Sirius groaned, trying to walk past his brother. Regulus merely joined in his journey. “I’ve only just managed to hold off her nightmares, I don’t need you dredging them back up.”
“We can’t ignore it, Sirius!” Regulus snapped, shaking his head at his elder brother. “She’s dreaming of someone else’s life, likely in the future. What if there’s something we need to know?”
“You’re such a little shit. Why can’t you leave well enough alone?” Sirius stopped walking as he let out a huff, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest.
“Because she’s misérable!” Regulus snapped, mimicking his body language as he narrowed his eyes. “Everyone knows that she went off on Manto last week and she isn’t coming to spend time with me and my friends anymore.”
“Is that it?” Sirius laughed, rather rudely. “You’re just jealous that she’s spending time with the Gryffindors.” He sneered.
“But she isn’t!” Regulus shook his head at his brother, looking to him as though they had never met before. As though his brother was some stranger, some weak and cruel thing that ought to have paid more attention to its bonds. “You’ve got so caught in pretending that everything is fine, but it isn’t! She isn’t!”
“We are fine!”
“You are, Sirius!” Regulus implored, eyes wide and desperate. “And she snapped at the bloody Divination professor for bloody nothing!”
“Manto said her mind was cracked!”
“And it is!” Regulus snapped. “But that doesn’t even matter. You just stayed. She told me that.”
“I didn’t think she wanted me.”
“Try another excuse, won’t you?” The younger Black brother shook his head, laughing derisively as his stomach coiled with disgust. It had been overdue, after all. That first proper splitting of the Black brothers. “That one’s just pathetic.”
“Fine! I didn’t want to deal with it, alright? I wanted to stay with my friends.”
“And there it is.” Regulus spoke solemnly. “You’re so caught up in convincing yourself that everything is fine, ‘cause you don’t want to deal with it anymore.”
“I can’t, alright?” Sirius bit back. “Nothing I do fixes it, so yeah. Maybe I do need a break.”
“Her mind is splintered, of course it isn’t fixable. But you’re just giving up on her, and lying to yourself about it.” Regulus shook his head, his disgust plain and clear. “Some Gryffindor you are. Thought you were all supposed to never give up.”
“Oh piss off.”
“Fine. Ce n’est rien.” With a scathing glare, Regulus turned in place and walked away. He did not look back.
In another life, it would have been the opposite. Sirius turning his back on the younger Regulus; green tie tucked in, shamefully. But in another life, they had no sister to hold them together - and simply broke apart.
Regulus Black would never quite be able to say how thankful he was to not be Sirius’s only sibling.
It would have killed him, in the end.
——
“I think Marlene hates me.” Lily huffed as she sat down on top of a desk, twisting to face Ara. The two had found an abandoned Charms classroom the week prior - its ceiling somehow stuck as a three-dimensional mirror to the ground below. All the desks and bookcases were present in duplicate on the ceiling, though no person was ever reflected in the odd misty recreation.
It was an odd location, to say the least. Which was why it was the perfect place to go, if you wanted to be left alone.
“She dislikes Severus.” Ara sighed, folding her legs to her chest as she hummed in sympathy. “It isn’t you, it’s his friends.”
“I know. He’s been hanging around the Avery’s and Mulciber. I don’t get it.” Lily rested her elbow on her knee, chewing her lip in great contemplation.
“He needs allies within his own House. As long as he doesn’t adopt too much of a Slytherin attitude, especially towards you.” Ara spoke, rather pointedly. It was known by now that Severus Snape seemed to view all muggleborns through one lens, and Lily through another, much more rose-tinted version. He had sneered at being paired with Mary MacDonald in Herbology, but hadn’t minded being paired with the Gryffindor Alice Brown, nearly so much. Marlene, as both Alice and Mary’s best fried, had taken note of this behaviour, and had started getting bolder in her comments against him. The dorm was slowly becoming split down the middle, and Ara wasn’t enjoying being stuck in the middle. “Now, have you got the book?”
“I have it.” Lily huffed, pulling the tome from her bookbag. “I’ve been practicing and I think I could attempt it on that.”
“It’ll be fine.” Ara reassured. “The spell itself is only a transfiguration with a charm-like flick at the end to repel the enchantments already woven into the metal. It’s not as though you’re undoing the lock or changing the state of the metal more than the top few layers.” Lily blinked at Ara’s accurate and well-thought analysis of the spell and properties of her bracelet.
“I always forget how smart you are.” Lily remarked.
“I don’t advertise it.” Ara shrugged. “I’m already the heiress of House Black, I can’t be the clever heiress too. That’s simply too much attention.”
“But you’re wasting your education!” Lily sputtered in disbelief, shaking her head at her friend.
“I plan to get my OWLs and NEWTs, Lils.” Ara rolled her eyes, leaning back slightly as she grinned up at Lily. It was moments like this that the ginger really thought her friend might be a little terrifying. Brilliant, but scary. “I just don’t plan on showing off in the meantime. I’ll leave that to you, my brilliant friend.”
“I don’t understand you.” She laughed, shaking her head.
“Most struggle.” Ara grinned, grabbing the book from a nearby desk to pull a piece of paper from the very back.
“What’s that?” Lily asked, furrowing her brow. “I hadn’t realised that was in there.”
“Letter from Andy.” Ara mumbled, stuffing it into her bag with a blush. When she looked back up, she tucked a loose curl behind her ear - smiling faintly. “She offered us to stay over summer.”
“That’d be lovely. You’d get to meet your goddaughter finally.”
“Walburga would never let us go.” She shrugged again, this time a far more defeated gesture. “We’re only really allowed to go to the Potters ‘cause Alphard stuck his neck out for Dorea. I bet Cygnus is looking to be keeper of the family ledger again.”
“What is that? You’ve mentioned it but you never actually explain.”
“It’s sort of pureblood taboo to talk about. We’re not really meant to say who the keeper is.” Ara admitted, looking towards Lily with mischief in her eyes. “But fuck all that family twaddle, right? Muggleborns should know the deeper parts of tradition, so they can make their own, right?”
Lily smiled at her friend, reminded once again of how very glad she was for that train journey at the start of second year. Without it, she dreaded to think of how her experience at Hogwarts would be. Ara Hermione Black was the kind of friend that Lily had always wished for herself. Equally as smart, if a little less caring to display it. Kind in spades. And truly supportive and consistent. Even if she disliked something, she let the other person decide on things for themself. It was more than Lily could say for herself, she begrudged internally.
“In my family, they’re the one that controls the family tapestry.” Ara continued, Lily blinking back to the present. “The original copy that is, the one that ties all the others together. Cygnus used to be the keeper, but when he burned Andy off the tapestry, rules dictated that he had to pass it on to someone else. They tried to give it to my father, but he refused the role.”
“So what happens if they try to disown someone else?” Lily asked, her curiosity getting the better of her.
“My father still could, being that he’s Lord Black, but its a rare scenario. They only did it to Andy ‘cause she’d already left.” Ara shrugged. “How’s your family? Any better than mine?”
“Petunia wrote me. Actually wrote a letter and gave it to my owl.” Lily laughed as though she could hardly believe herself. “We used to get along, before I… you know…” she trailed off with a sigh.
“Met Severus and realised you were a witch?” The ginger nodded. “She just misses you, I think. It must be hard to be the muggle sister.”
“I wish she’d talk to me about it. I don’t know when we stopped talking. I miss it.”
“If she’s writing, maybe she misses it too?” Ara mused, thinking back to her first year at Hogwarts. It had been tricky, trying to keep the peace with Reg when he was miles away, and not receiving their mail. She imagined it would be harder if the sibling left behind was both older, and non-magic.
“Maybe.” Lily half-shrugged, not meeting Ara’s eyes as she withdrew into herself briefly. Then, with a blink, she straightened and faced her. “Are we doing this thing or what?”
“We are.” She nodded, rolling up her sleeves. “Panda’s off with Xeno, she said you’d be better suited for the job, and Sirius is distracting the boys. And I trust you.” Lily made a squeak as her throat hitched, blinking away wetness as she smiled down at her friend. “Worst come to worse, we’ll just chop off my wrist and ask Pomphrey to sew it back on.”
“Alright then.” Lily replied, a little nervous. “Though, I’m not letting you do that. We’ll figure a way to take it off.”
Ara did not reply. Instead, she smiled tightly and rolled up her sleeve - ignoring Lily’s sharp intake of breath beside her. In that moment, it dawned on her that her friend had never seen her bare arms. She hardly looked at them herself, with the white scars that followed her nerves; lines like lightning strikes across her body.
“What happened?” Lily winced, running a soft finger along a single scar - tracing it to the friction point, Ara’s arm twitching at the sensation.
“My mother.” Ara replied flatly, looking to the horizon before blinking back to attention. Her grey eyes met kind green, a sorrowful smile shared.
“I know Sirius says it all the time, but she really is a bitch.” Lily frowned, reaching to hold her friend’s hand. “Why won’t you talk about it?”
“It’s hard to talk about.” Ara admitted quietly. “Especially as the firstborn. It’s better that it falls to me than my brothers.”
“Better for who?” Lily asked sadly.
“Never mind that.” Ara flushed red, looking away bashfully. It was the unspoken rule that they did not address Ara’s weird martyr complex - something they all presumed to have been birthed at Grimmauld Place. Looking at the siblings, it was easy to see how they’d faired inside the gloomy home. Regulus had turned soft; more fragile than any of them cared to admit. He had been the most sheltered. But shelter hardly helps when living in a burning home.
And the twins. Both scapegoat and protector. Sirius had been turned to a bundle of nervous energy - expelled through moral exacting and overbearing excitement. Ara, an ever-ticking time bomb of rage from injustice; forever the defender of any damned or forgotten souls. Their loyalty, once obtained, was to whatever horrific ends it may incur.
The twins’s main difference, was in Sirius’s inability to make the sacrifice. From something as simple as games of chess with Peter in the Common Room, to staying in that Divination classroom after Ara left. He was unprepared to make himself the target, lest it were already on his back.
Not Ara, though. She would paint herself red and run at a bull if it so much as looked at her brothers. And the marks of it lingered on her skin. On her arms, on her face in white lines and burn marks. Only fourteen and already a tapestry of violence.
“Are you helping or not?” Ara asked, spurning Lily from her dissecting thoughts with a blush.
“I’m helping.” Lily sighed, lifting her wand to point it against the metal. With a little glance at the book to her left, one she still shook her head at (burdened as she was with the knowledge of how Ara stole it), Lily began to whisper the incantation. Her brow furrowed as her eyes crossed in focus, latin tumbling from her pouted expression.
The silver snake rippled as the magic washed over it - gold bleeding from the crevices to coat it entirely - washing over the eyes and staining them red. It seemed to try and wiggle against the flow, as though fighting the illusion. Sweat began to bead at Lily’s brow as the bracelet heated up - singing the hair beneath. Neither girl noticed, too enthralled as the snake finally let out a great shudder as the centres of each scale finally turned gold.
With a sigh, Lily dropped her arm and wiped her brow with her free hand - blinking up at Ara’s bright grin.
“That was bloody hard.” Lily remarked, her accent thick as she huffed a laugh.
“And I can’t thank you enough for doing it.” Ara beamed, looking down at the gold around her wrist with a faint smile.
“Let me see it.” Lily motioned and Ara moved her hand to be in the girl’s grasp - fingers deftly inspecting the newly golden metal. As she touched it, the heat immediately scolded her. “Ouch! Bugger, Ara, does that not hurt?” She exclaimed, waving her scorched fingers as though to cool them down.
“Glacius,” Ara casted, deftly pulling a glove from her bag to place the ice within, handing it to her friend with an apologetic smile.
“I think you need it more.” Lily frowned, nodding at Ara’s wrist. The bracelet had shifted as Ara had searched her bag - a thin line of burned flesh visible against the gold.
“Remus’ll have some dittany. It can wait.” Ara brushed her worry aside with practiced ease, clearly more concerned with the excitement of a golden band than the burn that formed through it.
“Sometimes I think they might be right when they call you mad, Ottie.” Lily remarked, shaking her head fondly.
“I just think it makes me more interesting, don’t you?”
——
Malfoy Manor had been considered one of the finest wizarding houses in Britain for a great deal of time. Considering its grandeur and grounds size… it was easy to see why.
Snuggly tucked between woodlands within Wiltshire, the Manor stood tall and gloomy - hedges shifting almost imperceptibly. Hideous albino peacocks strolled the grounds, their grey and white feathering so eerily matching the tones of the brick and stone of the Manor exterior. It was an eyesore against the natural greenery.
Or, at least, in the opinion of Bellatrix Black (not Lestrange, despite what the Ministry forms said).
Better though than the Lestrange Hall, that was awfully dreary and dark. At least Malfoy Manor had some hints of light within.
As Bella looked to her sister’s home, she could not help her shudder.
Narcissa met her at the entrance, clearly desperate to have escaped her new family in favour of greeting the old. She wore a tense smile, her skin unusually pale. The Black family had always been prided on their porcelain complexion. Currently, Narcissa looked blue. She did not wear her marriage well, it seemed. Naturally, Bella had suspected as such. From the increased letters and constant invitations to tea; it was transparent to all that Narcissa had regrets.
Still, she looked the part of a Malfoy wife. Her clothes were styles of grey and blue - washed out tones that complimented her ghostly skin. Her hair was pulled into a curled updo - the texture so very foreign on her usually pin-straight locks. Some new British fashion, Bella supposed. Not that she’d been keeping up to date, over in France.
Their mother had made enough comments on Bellatrix’s fashion to write a memoir - if it were titled ‘Merlin, Bells, why can’t you wear a proper skirt?’ Druella Black (nee Rosier) had never quite been able to handle her eldest child, nor had she the patience for her eccentricities of dress. She had been glad for her youngest. At least Narcissa did as bid.
“Bonjour, sœur.” Narcissa nodded in greeting, eyes darting to the sides. “Es-tu venu ici seule?”
“Rastaban will arrive for the important bit.” Bella rolled her eyes, quoting her husband with a nasally voice that had Narcissa pinching her lips to hide a laugh. “I decided I didn’t want to watch him and his brother fight over house elves and whores any longer. You know how men are with their things.” She spoke distastefully.
“I wouldn’t.” Narcissa replied, tersely. “My husband is entirely faithful.” With that comment, she stepped a little aside.
“Must be a nightmare, all that time wasted.” Bella replied dryly, moving into the entryway. “I’m going to miss France. So much time to spend on the important things.”
“I dread to think what you consider those to be.” Narcissa commented idly, leading her sister through the grand halls of the home.
It didn’t suit her. Bella only need minutes to conclude that fact. Narcissa was not made to be Lady of such a Dark House. For a family called Black, she was decidedly too Light. Even in her colouring, the paleness and sleekness she held in comparison to the dark madness of the rest. Still, she played the part as best she could. And it was killing her.
“I read, primarily, for the first year. Made sure I was fluent in the language of the country I inhabited, read their spell theory. Then I figured I ought to test out what I had discovered, so the next couple were spent inventing and trying new spells.” Bella explained with great enthusiasm, as though she hadn’t noted the icy tone her sister held. “The past few, I’ve just been writing and planning. And I taught myself to play the guitar, but I’m not the best.”
“That muggle thing?” Narcissa paused walking, grabbing her sister’s arm with a frown.
“Our cousins may have had a point, you know?” Bella raised a slender brow, undeterred by her little sister’s panic. “We always said that mother and father didn’t know what they were on about, why did we decide that they were right about this?” She paused to take a breath, quieting her voice but still speaking with fervour. “I went into the muggle parts of France, on outings. And they weren’t savages. They weren’t all monsters, they even had their own magic! Silly ticks they call illusions. They don’t fear it.”
“Arrête!” Narcissa hissed, grabbing her shoulders for a moment and looking around them with terror. “Tu ne dois pas parler comme ça!”
“Pourquoi?”
“You know exactly why!” She snapped. “Trixie, I can’t-”
“Bella.”
“What?”
“You know that I go by Bella.”
“I don’t care. You’re putting us both at risk, don’t you get that? Lucius took the Mark last week and swore we would uphold our promise. And it all rests on you. If you don’t come back, if you don’t play the part… I can’t do it alone, Bella. I really can’t.”
“I know. Why do you think I’m here?” Bellatrix sighed, tugging her left sleeve over her elbow. She looked to her Marked forearm with a sad smile, glancing back to her sister. They shared a rueful pout. “I just… I signed away my life, half a decade ago, for a sister that left and one that was stupid enough to marry their childhood crush.”
“I made my bed, Bella, I am aware.” Narcissa snapped, though the sharpness was lacking. Mostly, she sounded tired. “And I’ve learned that a boy that once planned to marry your cousin does not make a good husband. Especially when he cannot seem to let that fact go.”
“Elle a quatorze ans.”
“Flint is double that.” Narcissa replied. “It doesn’t matter to any of them. I ought to have set my sights on an older boy, when I was in the lower years. You were smarter.”
“I didn’t pick Lestrange. Mother did. I just signed the papers.”
“You were lucky.” Narcissa insisted. “He lets you alone.”
“We never had a pretence of love, Cissa. It’s easier for us to be so separated. No one suspected any different. One day, I’m sure that he’ll want and heir and I will do my duty, but…” she trailed off with a sigh.
There was nothing to say. Narcissa placed a comforting hand on Bellatrix’s shoulder, squeezing it softly.
“We ought to go inside.” Bella finally spoke. “I’m sure they’re wondering why I’ve kept you so long.”
“You’re my mad sister.” Narcissa shrugged, in a decidedly unladylike gesture. “They’ll probably think you were complaining about the peacocks or something.”
“They are atrocious.” Bella laughed, wrapping her arm around Narcissa’s as her sister led her to the drawing room.
“I know.” The blonde laughed in reply.
For a moment, in the dreary hallways of the Malfoy Manor, it was as though the two Black sisters were children again.
It was so very easy to see that once they had both been so much smaller. You could picture it, so clearly. Dressed in frills and bows, with scraped knees and spelled-perfect hair to protect it against their adventures. Three different heads of hair, once upon a time. Cousins in tow, their parents cold but ever-present.
They had been girls together.
Perhaps they could be again.