Shards of Nuance

Bellatrix had no idea how relieved she would feel once Hermione kissed her. The first several times she lay in bed with her head buried in the young witch’s neck, pretending to be asleep, she flipped through memories like a picture book:

The surprise and fear she felt the day she found herself being served by the young war hero in a musty muggle bar. The shock of a warming spell spreading over her shivering body from the woman’s wand. Strolling through muggle shops looking for new clothing. Andy and Narcissa on Andy’s 18th birthday, right before it all fell apart. The first time Hermione called her “Bella” instead of her full name. The gun pointed at her out of the fog. Andy telling the story about how Hermione burst into the Ministry to berate Harry and Kingsley. The way she looked in her dress at the ball. The fear on the young woman’s face at Malfoy Manor so many years ago. Andy’s daughter outside the Weasley home and then dead on the floor of Hogwarts. A very young Andy fleeing the room throwing spells at their father. The fleeting moment she’d seen Andy in Knockturn Alley right after the Dark Lord had rescued her from Azkaban. Azkaban. Despair she could hold with her hands. Dementors, too many to count. Cissy’s glazed eyes torturing Alice and Frank. Some sort of ugly hope she felt in the presence of the Dark Lord. Raw, old magic that used to course through her veins when she dueled and destroyed. The relief on Harry Potter’s face when she commanded him as the Black Family Head to stop investigating the attack on her. Wizard’s chess with Hermione. The Dark Lord’s game. Her family’s new empire play. This young woman’s warm, intentional fingers – the most intentional she’d ever experienced.

Did it all lead to this moment, laying in Hermione’s bed after hours of making love? Or was this the thing from which it all emanated? Or was she just indulging her own pureblood proclivity for epic and tragedy? It didn’t really matter. She gave herself permission to let it be important - all of it.

**

Andromeda was at the Black Manor that morning to discuss with her older sister an impending proposal from the muggle prime minister about expanding automotive infrastructure into land traditionally set aside for magical creatures and ritual shelters, a proposal that had a shocking amount of support from the Sacred 28, given that the land also included the Forbidden Forest and the Black Lake, which implied the entirety of the Hogwarts grounds given the lake’s watershed. The tip-off from her mole in parliament reached her just before Minerva arrived on her doorstep to ask for her help. She had already formed a counter-proposal to present to the Wizengamot when it was announced, but she needed her sister to give her blessing, mobilize the Blacks’ standing agreements with the magical creatures in the area, and give Narcissa the go ahead to pull economic strings that would surely cause the old pureblood family seats to comply with Andromeda’s motion.

Bellatrix was late, however. This was not altogether unusual, but once Andromeda had finished two cups of coffee – a habit she’d picked up from Ted – and entirely reorganized the blood ritual section of their library (where she incidentally found nothing about virgin birthing), she ran out of patience. Not seeking out Narcissa to ask where their sister was, which in hindsight was a big mistake, she stalked up to the second floor to Bellatrix’ room.

“Bella!” She banged on the door. “Bella, we have a meeting that you are obnoxiously late for, and I have better things to do than wait for you.” There was no sound from the room. “I know you’re in there. Get up. This is important.” Her hand glowed golden as she unlocked the door and pushed it open. “The fuck - ?”

Her sister was propped up with one hand, running the other through her untamed hair. Hermione Granger lay next to her, conspicuously bare shoulders peeking out from under the covers, rubbing her eyes.

“Andy, you don’t need to be so loud.”

“I can’t believe you.” She stormed off.

**

“Fucking shit!”

In the conference room, Andromeda was fuming. She was furious with her sister and furious with herself for how strongly she was reacting. She had known this was going on, hadn’t she? Hell, she had practically set them up. Their relationship even made sense, given all that had happened. There was absolutely no reason to be upset, much less hurt. This was her big sister’s prerogative and her modus operandi; she shouldn’t even be surprised. All she wanted was to be able to ignore it, but, true to form, she could not. Old memories she’d forced out of her head for years emerged with vengeance.

She was in her third year at Hogwarts. Cissy had been sorted into Slytherin barely three months ago. The Tri-Wizard tournament had been cancelled due to lack of interest from other schools. It seemed that wizarding Britain was falling out of favor with the continent, and Andromeda suspected it had something to do with her father’s sick fascination with the pureblood traditionalist movement. Hogwarts, however, had decided to host all the festivities at the school like normal without the tournament games.

Bella was in her fifth year and was delighted about the Halloween Ball, which Andromeda found confusing because Bella hated their mother’s balls, even though there were clearly more interesting people at them than would be at the school ball. It would only be students and potentially a few recent graduates returning for a lark.

Bella always conscripted her into things so easily, and getting ready for the ball was no different. It was unclear to her why she couldn’t just do it herself, but she already knew that most things her sister did were for dramatic effect. Andromeda zipped up her sister’s slim dress, tamed the wild curls, modified the height of her heels, and put glamour charms over the scratches she said she’d gotten dueling a drunk auror from Hogsmeade in the Forbidden Forest.

“You only won because the fool was ass-up drunk.” Rabastan had grumbled. He had lost a significant amount of money to Zabini in a bet on the duel.

“You know that’s not true.” Rod defended his bride-to-be while she silently hexed Rabastan’s DADA textbook to sprout teeth and latch onto his balls.

It made Andromeda anxious when her sister dueled outside the family and Hogwarts, and Bella was always picking fights in Hogsmeade. As soon as she had arrived at Hogwarts, Bella had begged her with sweet words, pouty lips, and earnest eyes every week to come watch the duels. The way her sister cackled while doling out spells she shouldn’t have known gave her a sick feeling deep in her gut. She stopped going to the duels last Spring, much to Bella’s chagrin.

Surely the acclaimed duelist, the brightest witch of their age, could apply her own makeup with ease, but here was Andromeda doing it for her. “Andy, please help me,” Bella had pouted, and she didn’t even think of telling her no. Now, she was touching up her lips with a color that wasn’t considered gaudy then, and she didn’t know why her stomach was tightly coiled with something she didn’t recognize.

“Your hand is shaking. Stop it.” Bella made a point of scanning her face deliberately but not with concern.

When Bella left the room with her hips swinging, she threw a smile over her shoulder that Andromeda would later come to know as predatory. “You’re such a dear, baby girl.”

Andromeda frowned and carelessly scattered a stack of Narcissa’s documents to the floor. Her older sister had always made her feel something; she resisted naming it until that year right before Dora went to Hogwarts when Ted had to drag her stumbling up the stairs every night so that Dora wouldn’t see and smell her mother sopping wasted. Desire, fear, reverence, lust, homesickness, love, rage, jealousy, some combination of them all. The worst part was that people knew – well, her sisters and Ted did. Cissy usually looked out for her, but that didn’t mean she was above giving Andromeda a hard time with tiny smirks, short laughs, and pointedly arched eyebrows.

“Sirius wants to come.” She said cautiously. She was perusing a dingy liquor store with Bella and Rod in January of Bella’s seventh year.

Rod snorted. “Did he tell you you were his favorite cousin again?” The last time Sirius said that to Andromeda, he’d let out a girlish shriek when a little goblin knife left Bella’s hand and sunk into the wall just over his shoulder. “Remind me again - why are we buying alcohol here when we could be raiding the Black cellar for elvish wine and old Tibetan rum?”

“Because we’re trying to get all of Slytherin sodding drunk without our parents knowing. Cheap liquor works just as well and gives everyone plenty of excuses for embarrassing themselves.” Bella selected a plastic bottle of shit vodka with an American label. “Probably about 20 of these. 10 of the rum.”

“If Sirius comes, we’ll need double that.” Rod joked. “Actually, let’s make him chug all that expired scorpion beer in the back.”

Bella still didn’t look up. “Andy, tell Sirius he can come if he brings Lily Evans.”

Rod guffawed, and Bella shot him a menacing look to cut off whatever words he was about to say.

That night the Slytherin common room stank of alcohol. The far corner by the fireplace reeked of vomit even after a few people tried to clean it up. All their spells came crooked out of their wands and their words slurred. Loud music – muggle music, a secret prank Andromeda was playing on all the uppity purebloods – pulsated and drowned out most conversation. She watched Bella twirl with grandiosity on a table in the middle of the room, a bottle of the American vodka in her hand; she was sloshing it out onto the upturned faces with begging mouths that had gathered around her. How were they even related?

She grew tired later in the evening and decided to let Bella and Rod close down the party and clean up the mess, though they had both disappeared a while ago. Maybe the betrotheds are finally fucking, she thought, although she knew that was highly unlikely. She opened the door to the Black sisters’ quarters to a most unwelcome sight. Bella was straddling a half-naked Lily Evans on her bed, the Gryffindor’s hands clawing long red streaks into the dark-haired girl’s bare back.

“Gods in bloody hell! Get the fuck off my fucking bed, you whores!” She was livid.

She was not sure when or how she cast the spell, but she saw both of their eyes grow wide as the blazing kelpie head with a mane of crackling flames arose above her. She slammed the door behind her and ran down the stairs. The fiendfyre followed her, growing larger by the second. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the bannisters erupt with smoke, and by the time she was down in the common room flames were already licking the furniture that the other students were scrambling on top of to escape the fire. Useless spells were being cast. An otherwise impressive 30-foot fountain of water emitted from a sixth-year’s wand was swallowed whole by the kelpie’s mouth. Hundreds of icicles rained down from ceiling and disappeared instantly into the roaring flames. Aguamenti, aqua erecto, immobulus, glacius, flame-freezing and extinguishing spells all were consumed instantly and repeatedly. Smoke billowed from the rafters and embers exploded from the floor. Panicking students began trying to get through the door into the main castle, but it had been charmed only to open with the hosts’ wands in order to preserve the party’s secrecy.

She was seeing red, aware of the screaming and the burning, but not caring and not able to bring herself to respond.

It was her younger sister’s voice that penetrated her madness. “Andy! End the spell! ANDY! It’s going to kill us. Stop it!”

She was being shaken violently, but nothing could have mattered less to her. There were so many voices screaming.

“Narcissa, you have to get her to stop! It’s caught the tapestries! The ceiling!”

“She’s not responding!”

“Narcissa, we can’t get out! The center beam is smoking!”

“Zabini, can you still send a patronus?! To Slughorn! Or Dumbledore!”

“Do something, Narcissa!”

“I’m trying! It's like she's not even here!”

She was thrown to the floor, and a powerful slap exploded on her cheek. Narcissa’s blonde hair hung over her face like a curtain. “ANDY! Wake up! You’re going to kill us!” Another slap ripped her face to the side to no avail. “Someone find Bella now! Andy, please!” Another slap split her lip open. The smell of blood and smoke mixed in her nostrils; it was almost sweet.

Then a rush of black hair vaulted over her. Strong arms seized under her armpits dragging her upwards into a violent hug. Bella was behind her, with one arm wrapped across her chest and the other locked behind her neck vaguely reminiscent of some wrestling move. Her sister’s voice came low and urgent in her ear. “Andy. Andy. Listen to me. You can stop this. I’m here. Just listen. I’m here.”

Then she blacked out and with her the fiendfyre and her magic disintegrated to the floor.

The students told Slughorn that someone’s special potions project had gotten severely out of hand, but as usual he seemed to understand too much. In her next class with him, his skeptical gaze lingered on her for far too long. The other students were timid around her after that, and she waited out all subsequent house parties in the Room of Requirement. She started dating Ted a few months later, just for something to keep her occupied. The next year, when Lily began to be seen in public holding hands with James Potter, she fucked James in the Shrieking Shack until he cried. He begged her to meet again for months after that, but she blew him off and reveled in watching Lily’s self-esteem plummet. Ted was a saint and probably a madman for putting up with it.

Goddamn. Andromeda flung one of the old centaur hides covered in ritual runes against the wall. Then she cracked the mantle with two of the goblin-forged candlesticks. I don’t want to fucking be like this. But there was still more to haunt her.

She was hammered.

She and Cissy had come home from Hogwarts to the Black Manor for the weekend to celebrate her 18th birthday. Their mother had thrown a truly excellent party, though there had been a few too many convenient introductions made to potential suitors. Rod’s and Bella’s friends, two years graduated, had burst into the party late, making a big show of crashing it just as everything was winding down. She had wanted to enjoy it; really, she had. Instead, she spent the whole night, face buried in a drink, watching her older sister radiate mirth, a delicious smile on her perfect lips when her head tilted back with that laughter that trilled and thrilled. Bella was everywhere, and so was the cinnamon-sweet heat in her stomach when Bella slid her arm around her shoulders to peck her on the cheek, or when Bella danced lasciviously on the stairs, or when Bella did anything really. At one point, her dark-haired sister shoved her down onto the armchair, snatched a bottle from Rod’s hand, climbed onto her lap, and ran her hand through Andromeda’s hair, getting a good grip on it to force her head backwards and pour an excess of that liquid into her mouth. She let it go on for too long before making Bella stop, just to have her head forced back into position again after a moment’s pause. She had to explode the bottle in her sister’s hand to end it, but her stomach almost dropped out of her body when Bellatrix said “You’re so fun” in her ear and sauntered away. When everyone finally left and her sisters had gone upstairs for the night, she snagged the fullest bottle of firewhiskey she could find, and took it to her room, planning to drown the fire in her belly with it until she forgot her older sister or died, whichever came first.

It didn’t work. Now she was in just her underwear and one of Ted’s Tears for Fears t-shirts, swaying down the dark hallway that led to Bella’s room. She was humming some off-key ditty that she didn’t know when she was sober, stopping only to curse colorfully when she tripped over nothing and crashed into the wall. The doorknob to her older sister's room loomed in front of her, dancing in and out of focus; she swiped at it and missed.

Thin pale fingers gently seized her wrist. “Hey, what are you doing?” Her younger sister was at her side whispering.

“M’ goin to see Bella.”

“What do you need?”

“I juss wanna talk t’hr.” She was slurring something fierce.

“Why?”

“S’none of your business, Cisthy.”

An irritating look of realization dawned on her blonde sister’s face followed by one of stern warning. “Andy, this is a bad idea. You’re drunk.”

“M not drink.”

“What’s a bad idea? You know I love those.” Bella appeared in her now open doorway. She had a small blanket wrapped loosely around her, revealing her naked shoulders and cleavage draped with those silky black curls that were dashing even when unkempt. “Especially when they involve Andy.”

She lurched toward Bellatrix, but Cissy caught her around the waist with both arms. “Nope, nope, nope. You need to go to bed.”

“B’lla, I wan turk, thalk, talk to you.”

“You can talk in the morning. Not right now.” Narcissa tugged at her waist.

Bella looked at her curiously, a small smile beginning to flit across her face. “Baby girl! Did you finally grow a pair?”

“Bella!” Cissy’s voice was sharp.

Her older sister stepped toward her. “I am very interested to hear what all that liquid courage has you dying to tell me.”

“You are not helping!” Cissy spat at the careless, smirking woman before planting herself firmly between them.

“Le’mme in, Bell. I want yy– “ Her desperate whine was cut off by Narcissa’s hand forcefully clamping over her mouth.

“Ok, you're going to bed now.” Her blonde sister’s firm but gentle shove sent her reeling backwards, her legs as unsteady from Bella’s triumphant leering and low chuckle as from the alcohol.

“Go ‘way, Cissy.”

“Don’t make me stupefy you, Andy. I swear to the gods.” Cissy advanced at her, corralling her back down the hallway away from their older sister and catching her repeatedly when she tripped over her own feet.

She woke up in her own bed the next morning, surrounded by a silvery-red self-loathing. She returned to Hogwarts without seeing Bella. The next time they did see each other, she was already pregnant.

Andromeda slammed her fists down on the table and let out a guttural howl. Why after all these goddamn years, after going through so much, was this coming back?

“I like when you get mad.” A sultry voice made her freeze. “Always have. It’s exciting.” She heard the intimidating steps that accompanied Bellatrix’ characteristic sashay coming closer to her. “Greengrass said you were practically a goddess of war when you stormed the Wizengamot. He let me take a peek at the memory as part of the deal. You were marvelous. I was… proud, you might say.”

Andromeda spun around to find her older sister already far too close. She backed away too quickly because she found an wall instead of the door. Her slick palms pressed flat against the cold stone in desperation; Bellatrix always caught her too quickly, too easily.

“Andy, I know. I know how I make you feel.” Bellatrix’ breath was warm and fresh on her lips.

She struggled to breathe. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” She didn’t think she’d ever sounded less confident in her life.

“I’m flattered, truly. You are so attractive – always have been. Maybe even more now than when we were young, which is saying something. The idea really is rather titillating.” She cocked her head just enough to accentuate the way she flicked her eyes to Andromeda’s mouth.

Andromeda was petrified. Bellatrix was close enough to place her whole forearm against the wall comfortably just above Andromeda’s shoulder. For the thousandth time she cursed the Dark Lord, this time for giving Bella back the body of her mid-20s. She felt lightheaded. “Bella – “

“Trust me. I did consider it – multiple times actually.” Bellatrix raised her hand and began to trace Andromeda’s bottom lip with her thumb and forefinger, tugging at it softly to punctuate the end of her sentence. “I just – “

“Bella, please stop!” She gasped.

Her dark-haired, dark-eyed sister, too stunning for her own good, did stop. She smirked deviously, patted Andromeda’s cheek with a cupped hand, and said, “Anything for you, little sister,” before stepping aside to release her.

She rushed from the room, only barely registering the young woman she bumped shoulders with on her way out.

**

“Something I should know?” Hermione was leaning in the doorway with her arms crossed.

Bellatrix was examining her fingernails. “My sister and I have a complicated relationship.”

“Clearly.”

“It’s been like that ever since I can remember.”

“Do you feel about her the way she feels about you?”

“She would be devastated to hear you talk like it’s so obvious. But no, I don’t.”

“Then why did you do what you just did?”

“Because I miss torturing people. And she makes it so easy.”

Hermione furrowed her brow. “Are you kidding me…?”

“It’s ok. She’s ok. She can handle herself. Finally.”

“That’s no excuse.”

“Andromeda is way stronger than I am - than any of us. She’s the most powerful Black in generations. If she didn’t want me to mess with her, she could easily stop me.”

“I don’t think that’s how that works. This is not ok for you to do.”

Bellatrix threw her hands up. “Look, I’ve spent my whole life looking out for her. She shouldn’t have needed it. The way she ran from her magic was selfish, silly, and dangerous for the rest of us, but she’s coming around. She can handle it.”

“It doesn’t really seem like it she can. And her magical power in no way justifies you manipulating her feelings like that, no matter what those feelings are.”

“I’m not manipulating her. Andromeda does what she wants. I don’t know what else to tell you. I’m being my authentic goddamn self – to you and to her.”

For some reason, Hermione decided to accept this even though it was patently awful and fully contrary to what she believed was right. She put the whole thing out of her mind and allowed herself to be dragged back into the dark witch’s bed, only later allowing herself to dwell on the image of the beautiful, auburn-haired woman working hard not to tremble against her sister’s body.