"You've not seen your Aunt Bellatrix since you were little," Draco's mother tells him. She's wearing one of her billowing white robes, sheer white and feathers around her wrists like giant wings. She looks like an angel, something which her producers take full advantage of. Her cover art always makes her look like a spun sugar creation gifted from above the clouds.
Narcissa Malfoy. Her singles have titles like Love Me Lately and It's Been Magical and Baby Me. She does holiday covers of songs like Santa Baby and Silent Night. She's had half-and-half hair since before it was popular. No one even bothered trying to pin a half-naughty-half-nice label on her two-coloured head. Her marketing has been straight sugar since her first song.
She's the prettiest mom he knows.
He doesn't remember her very well, but Draco is fairly certain that his Aunt Bellatrix is the exact opposite.
xXx
Bellatrix doesn't knock on the door. She pounds it. There's a doorbell, and she purposefully seems to ignore it. Draco can hear the thudding of her palm against their old wooden front door from his second-floor bedroom.
He runs out and leans between the railing to watch his mother's maid walk quickly to the door. His mother is emerging from one of the other rooms. She's dressed up nice. His mother likes black with white polka dots and long sheer skirts. She's got her shoulders bare and a tiny gold timepiece hung around her neck on a chain.
The door swings open, and Bellatrix stands there, her hands shoved into the front pocket of a black hoodie. She's wearing tights that are torn, but he doesn't think they were intentional. There's a jean jacket over her hoodie. He can't read her patches from here.
He can smell the cigarette smoke from here. He can see how red and upset she looks from here.
His parents said Bellatrix was coming to visit because something had happened, but they didn't tell him what, and he didn't really care to ask. He's a little curious now.
But he's not going to get close enough to her to ask until she has a bath. She looks like she must reek.
xXx
His mother takes Bellatrix out shopping on her second day there, and Draco comes along. It's Wednesday, so his tutors aren't coming.
Bellatrix looks and smells better by then. Draco walks in on his mother braiding her hair. She looks cleaner, but now, up close, he can see how red her eyes are.
"Hey kid," she greets him, meeting his eyes in the mirror she's placed in front of, wearing a slip dress as his mom ties a silky scrunchie into her hair. "You think I dress fine, don't you?"
"No," he tells her, and she frowns at him, but it's more pouty than anything.
"You're supposed to be nice to me. Isn't he?" Bellatrix says, but she doesn't wait for a response from anyone before she starts talking again. "I've been through shit. You have to be nice to me."
Draco waits as his mother takes his aunt into another room to drag her into some of Narcissa's dresses, which do not smell like smoke. She comes out in olive-green cotton and a long cardigan with big black buttons. She still pulls a leather jacket on over it all and cheap black boots.
"How old is he?" she asks on the ride to the mall, staring over her shoulder at him in the back seat. She tends to talk about him like he isn't there, so he doesn't say anything.
"Eight," his mom says over the radio. Humming in tune to pop music that isn't hers.
They go to Victoria's Secret first. Draco sits outside the changing room and helps them pick out perfume. Then they go to a store with nothing but cashmere sweaters in neutral colours and dress shirts and overpriced flowy floral pants, and his aunt buys five shades of grey jumpers. She selects one pair of dressy trousers.
His mother leaves them sitting together in the kids section of the next store. They have specific instructions of what to get. Apparently, he needs new jumpers too.
"This?" his aunt offers, holding up something in camouflage. He recoils, and she sighs. "Look, I don't know what kids like. Rude and I never wanted any."
"Rude?" he prompts, and she goes glassy-eyed. His mother comes back and they go to buy his aunt some pajamas.
xXx
"Pass the salt?" Bellatrix asks. Draco skids it down the table to her, and she giggles, just a little.
She's been here a week.
Rude is Rodolphus. Her husband. Her ex-husband.
"Bella, please. That isn't healthy," his mom says after a while too long of Bellatrix shaking salt over her eggs.
His aunt mutters some curse words, but she stops.
Draco wonders if there is more salt than egg and buttered bread on her plate now.
His dad walks into the room in a blue waistcoat and a cream-coloured tie.
"Ready?" he asks, and Narcissa starts moving.
"Almost. I was just making them dinner before we leave."
Lucius eyes the fried eggs on toast and smiles at his wife.
His mom always makes breakfast food when she cooks. It's her favourite meal, regardless of the time of day. When the help is out for the day, it is breakfast or dessert in their house. Pancakes for lunch and ice cream for dinner. Draco loves it when the help is out. His dad does too.
"I'll go put on makeup and grab a purse," his mother promises as she leaves the kitchen, and Draco watches her go, leaning over the centre island on a stool as his aunt licks salt off her plate.
"When will you be back?" he asks. They didn't hire a babysitter. It will just be him and Bella.
"Late. Sorry, Draco. After the show, we're going out for drinks and dinner," his dad tells him, tucking Draco's hair over his ear. Lucius' hair is pulled back into a fancy ponytail. He's got his silver cane. Draco wants one just like it. His father looks so cool.
His mom comes back with a light shawl over her sparkly baby-blue dress. Their show is themed. The roaring twenties. There are freshwater pearls around her neck and fringe around her calves. She's holding a clutch shaped like a clam shell.
"Goodbye, my love," she tells him and kisses the corner of his mouth. His father pets his shoulder and leads his mother out.
"So what now?" his aunt asks, dropping her plate in the sink. "What do you do for fun?"
"Do you like football?" he asks her.
xXx
His aunt is actually really good at football.
xXx
Bellatrix holds his hand as they walk to the park. He doesn't need his hand held, and he doesn't really like it, and it's embarrassing, but he doesn't have the heart to tell her. His aunt seems to have a little trouble comprehending age. She alternates between one time asking him if he wanted to take a bubble bath with her and another time asking if he has a girlfriend. She's just a little out of order.
"You look like me. Did your mother see you like this?" she asks as they walk, and he shakes his head, partially as an excuse to look around to see if anyone he knows can see them holding hands.
He's not sure he'd take it back, though.
He heard his parents talking that morning. Rodolphus called her last night.
"She was gone by the time I got dressed. She's having a date with her friends. She'll be back by lunch," he tells Bella.
He's wearing all black. He tied black ribbon around his neck like a choker. His most beat-up pair of trainers.
"I like dressing up to match," he says. "Pansy and I do it all the time."
They buy each other matching garments for their birthdays. His was last week. He's nine, and Pansy gave him a silver necklace that says "Daddy's Girl" to match hers. He's wearing it even if he isn't a girl. He's wearing it right now.
"I'm a bad influence," Bellatrix says mostly to herself.
At the park, she gets too close to the fancy water feature and they get yelled at by a scary old man with a cat and tree-cutting gear. Draco has never felt more scared or laughed so hard.
xXx
Bellatrix makes music too. He finds her online after he hears her singing in the shower. Or shouting. She sings like she's screaming at someone.
Online, all her pictures are in leather and flannel and fishnets. She poses with a band of five. She's holding a man's hand.
He can practically smell the smoke and anger off the images.
He likes her much better as she is now, hanging out on their couch in a grey cashmere sweater over his mother's maxi dress with antique jewelry hanging off her neck.
xXx
Bellatrix doesn't tell him when she leaves. His mom says she didn't want to make him sad.
It doesn't work, of course. He cries for a week. She's been there for four months. He's never liked any of the babysitters this much.
She leaves him a black shirt that says Drama Queen on the front and still smells like her Victoria's Secret scent. It's many sizes too big on him, but he keeps it regardless. He will wear it later.
xXx
When he turns eleven and his mother decides he should attend a proper school instead of having tutors, he goes to his first day at Hogwarts in black jeans and his aunt's shirt, which still doesn't fit him. Pansy does her best to imitate him in a black tulle skirt and a properly sized shirt with the same text, different design.
"You look punk," she tells him. He's trying to.
"I know," he says. "Hey, do you have any torn tights? They'd look cool for this."
xXx
Bellatrix sends him cards sometimes on his birthday. Extravagant, usually wildly misaged gifts. He gets a giant stuffed bear when he's sixteen. He's waiting for her to send him condoms when he's thirty five. And she likes his posts sometimes. He watches to see where her band is playing. She's still with them all, even Rodophus. Apparently they're cool with each other now.
At some point, he notices a new face in a lot of her pictures. Some mousy blonde baby-faced boy with pastel-pink streaks in his hair. Draco thinks he recognises the grey sweater he wears in one picture. He's got a safety pin ear piercing and a stud in his eyebrow and he wears bright colours and black boots and holds his aunt’s hand. They've got matching plastic bead bracelets.
Want to meet him? His aunt replies when he texts her about Colin Creevey.
Yeah, he tells her, and informs Pansy to be prepared to twin in a Drama Queen shirt again.
He is not meeting his aunt's new boyfriend alone.
But he is definitely meeting his aunt again.