Shards of Nuance

Penelope Fawley found Andromeda in the Tonks residence slumped on the hallway floor halfway between her daughter’s old room and her own on the fifth day of the Wizengamot session. The court blamed Andromeda’s absence the first day of the proceedings on classic Black family arrogance. They were miffed when she didn’t show up the second day, and they were downright offended by the third. The Black family vassals were mortified on the fourth day of her absence, so on the fifth they elected the Fawley family seat to find her.

Penelope called St. Mungo’s who called Narcissa who called Bellatrix who was escorted by Hermione to the scene all before the two responding healers were able to begin their assessment. When they reported no pulse, Bellatrix and Narcissa argued loudly with them until the blonde woman hexed them out of way so she could tend to her sister. Hermione and Penelope had to wrestle them back from Andromeda’s body to keep them from being arrested by arriving aurors who were confused by the yelling, famous faces, and unfamiliar, haphazard spells. When St. Mungos’ head healer, who technically reported to Andromeda, confirmed her death, the sisters refused their grief. A stony-faced Narcissa with a trembling jaw called for an autopsy to be performed on the spot. A hesitant examiner joined the healers, and, though he was nervous to work under the gaze of the Black sisters’ throbbing magic, he executed the examination thoroughly and efficiently. When he reported no evidence of malicious injury or illness, the force from their anger knocked him over. With wild eyes and a pale face, Bellatrix called for him to repeat the procedure. He reported the same results with some trepidation, which was warranted because a spell from Narcissa’s wand – which was still pointed at the ground – cast him unceremoniously to the corner. Bellatrix insisted on another examiner, who informed them that all signs suggested death by ordinary cardiac arrest, which was unusual for Andromeda’s age, but not unheard of. The eldest Black sister screamed for another examiner and another examination, unwilling to accept that her sister’s death was ordinary. Hermione pinned the dark-haired woman’s arms at her side to keep her from delivering the blows she was threatening; it was a struggle to contain her flailing, forceful limbs. She finally had to stupefy her to contain the woman’s violent grief.

**

At the Black Manor, Bellatrix and Narcissa accused each other with words they didn’t mean. Their voices were loud enough to hear throughout the house, even where Hermione was trying to avoid them in the library.

“Did you do it? Did you kill her?” Narcissa’s words sliced the air.

“Are you really fucking saying that to me? I should be asking you that. You’ve been pulling the strings since day one.”

“Oh, please, Bella. If anyone in this family has a proclivity for hate and murder and manipulation, it’s you,” she spat.

“Only because you became more of a Malfoy than a Black.”

“Excuse me? Who gave you the right to decide who’s good enough for the family and who isn’t? Blowing Andy off the family tree must’ve finally gone to your head. You sound like our father.”

“SHUT UP! I have spent my whole goddamn life protecting Andromeda Black from the Dark Lord, from father, and from her own bloody magic, and you fucking know that!”

“Protecting? Ha! Do you have any idea what it’s like to be your sister and to not be Andromeda? You have no idea what it’s like to deal with you two. To live with you. I’ve been protecting you both from each other since before we can remember. I’ve been holding this family together by myself since we were children!”

“Get off your high and mighty horse. You’re no martyr.”

“You should’ve let me go to Azkaban, Bella!” Narcissa’s voice was now shrill. “You shouldn’t have covered it up.”

“Would that make you feel better about yourself now? Your ‘shoulds’ and your guilt disgust me.”

“You didn’t hear yourself trying to sleep after the Dark Lord gave you back all your memories of Azkaban. It nearly killed me! You think it’s been easy for me to watch you drain away, to see you living without your magic?”

“Oh, Azkaban! Was that too much for you to see? Did you have to leave the room so you wouldn’t hear me scream like I was being tortured? Or was I croaking like a dementor was feeding on me? Or did I call out for Andy and not for you? Did it make you feel sad?” Her sarcastic bite hurt them both.

“Yes, that is exactly what happened, Bellatrix! You’re fucking half in love with her!” They had been moving down the corridor and now paused so that Hermione could just see them through the ajar door. As soon as the comment left her lips, Narcissa looked like she regretted it.

Bellatrix exploded at her. “Is that the problem? Are you ashamed of me? Of her? Are we not respectable enough for you? Is she deviant? Am I vile to you? Was this whole empire game just something to cover up all the things you despise about our family?”

Narcissa winced. “No! That’s not how it is! I don’t know how to handle this, Bella; I don’t know what to do. I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything that happened, whether I did it or not. Everything was all bound up together. It still is.”

Bellatrix let out a furious screech and put her head in her hands. “Of course, it is, of course! I know that as well as you do. But maybe it’s time to untangle it and finally call it what it is.”

“We tried. There’s nothing to say; there’s no sense to make of it. There’s no meaning in this. She shouldn’t be dead. My son shouldn’t be dead. You shouldn’t have wasted away in Azkaban. None of it should be like this!”

“You make it sound like it all happened to us. We did it all, Cissy. We did it!” Bellatrix’ hands were gesturing aggressively. “Father invited the Dark Lord into our family because he wanted him there. You cared for the Dark Lord and his followers in your own home! And Andy left because she was afraid - afraid of our magic, of what she could do with it, of who she was. I don’t even blame her anymore. I chose to go to Azkaban, and it’s not like I didn’t deserve it given all the other things I’ve done! I tortured, and I killed, and I let myself be controlled! I had the power to resist, and most of the time I didn’t! We’re all to blame, but I could have stopped it early on - and I didn’t even try.”

“This isn’t about you, Bella!”

“You’re right. It never has been. It has always been about Andromeda. Everything. For both of us – not just me. And now she’s gone. Really gone. We destroyed ourselves the first time she left. What now, Cissy? What’ll become of us now?”

“That’s not what I meant!” Desperation ballooned in the younger sister’s voice.

“It is what I meant. I’m getting out of here.”

“Wait! Please, wait!”

Hermione joined Narcissa in the corridor in time to see Bellatrix storming out of sight and resisted the urge to summon her back.

Narcissa turned stoic despite the tears gathering at the bottom of her chin. “Why’re you here, Hermione?”

“What?”

“Why have you been here this whole time? You haven’t done any business with us. You don’t have any plans to do so. And don’t say you love my sister. Neither I nor anyone else would believe you.”

“Andromeda did.”

“Andromeda had all sorts of strange notions about love.”

“You all do.”

Narcissa looked at her sharply. “Pureblood magic and relationships are horrors we can’t escape. Being a voyeur to them doesn’t suit you, and that’s exactly what you’ve been doing.”

“You haven’t asked me to leave.”

“I haven’t felt the need to. And I’m not sure either one of them would’ve let me anyway.”

“Do you still look down on me because I’m a muggleborn?”

“A bold thing to ask a pureblood woman in her own house.” The blonde woman sniffed. “No, of course not. That was always ludicrous. But our position, our family, our history, the way we’ve habitualized our magic - it all means that we will always look like dark witches and wizards to you. And to ourselves, honestly. It was so much easier to not have to prove otherwise. Easier to invent blood status as a reason to let our magic be dark. Now we have no excuse and look where that’s getting us.”

Hermione had nothing to say. The Blacks were dark witches to her. At first, she thought she was getting to know the good in Bellatrix, that the woman had changed her ways for the better, that the bad in her was a result of her circumstances not of her innate characteristics - but now those hopes felt like platitudes to her, nuances she had made up to make herself feel better about loving the woman. The witch makes the magic dark. Bellatrix was someone who wanted her magic to be dark. Andromeda was afraid of the dark magic that came so naturally to her. Narcissa accepted the magic as it was, but even acceptance had not freed the magic from their corruption of it.

Hermione grimaced at the memory of the type of spells she had cast in battle. She remembered Harry’s feral “crucio’s” screamed at Bellatrix in the Department of Mysteries. She thought of her own parents – the happiest part of their life removed from them without their permission, for a reason they never knew, to assuage her own guilt and to serve a greater good that did not turn out to be entirely good. She remembered keeping the suspicious information about the horcruxes to herself and thought about all the potions she altered for more than dubious purposes. She decided not to point out to the blonde witch that perhaps she took too much satisfaction in erroneously imagining that purebloods bore the unique burden of having to confront their own magic. Though undeniable, the sheer power of Andromeda and her sisters, their proclivity for darkness, and even their story, was not what ultimately made them remarkable. What set the House of Black apart from everyone else, including the rest of the old families, was their awareness of and willingness to articulate their losing battle to be tragic. It was indeed a horror to have been privy to, a horror she couldn’t look away from.

Offering a small nod of deference to youngest Black sister, she said, “I’ll go look for her.”

**

Hermione found Bellatrix on her way to the Great Hall floo. The woman was clad in her usual black uniform and was pulling a cigarette from her pocket when their paths intersected. Hermione frowned; she hadn’t seen the dark witch smoking since their frivolous days in the muggle fishing town.

“I thought that was only for effect.”

“Some effect.”

Hermione stepped closer and wrapped her arms around the woman who remained rigid until she began to speak. “Bella, I love you.”

The dark witch lowered her head onto Hermione’s shoulder and began to quake. She dropped the cigarette to curl her arms around the young woman’s back and clench at her shoulders.

“I’m sorry that this has happened. All of this.” Dark curls trembled violently at Hermione’s words. “I know I don’t know what it’s like, but I know what it’s like watching you hurt. And I hate it.” Bellatrix was sobbing now. “You shouldn’t have to hurt so much.”

“I must deserve it,” came the words between sobs.

“Deserving is nothing. No one deserves anything, good or bad.”

They remained embracing for a long time until Bellatrix disentangled herself, stood up straight, and wiped her face of tears. She sighed. “I need to get out of here for a little bit.”

“Ok. Do you want company, or would you rather be alone?”

“I would like your company.”

Hermione warmed at the comment. “Where are you going?”

“There’s a bar not too many streets from King’s Cross, owned by a shit wizard. Abhors wizarding politics so he puts up wards to keep people from apparating in and out. Mostly keeps everyone but muggles away. Easy to go unnoticed there. I used to go to right before and after Azkaban when I was trying to get laid.”

Hermione shook her head. “I don’t know the place, but you continue to astound me. Before and after Azkaban? Like while you were working for the Dark Lord?”

“Well,” she shrugged.

They shared a sheepish chuckle, feeling guilty about their ability to do so, and stepped into the floo calling for Diagon Alley. Then they took a portkey to platform 9 ¾ where they exited into muggle London. It was true, Hermione did not recognize the bar, but she knew she had to have walked past it dozens of times. On the second floor inside, they found a booth near the head of the bar that all but filled the long, narrow room. Bellatrix ordered one bottle of red wine and one of an American bourbon - “for options,” she said.

They sat in silence. Even though their light-hearted banter about Bellatrix’ amorous escapades gave the impression of ease, neither of them were comfortable. Hermione willed the woman’s fingers to trace the edge of her glass as she had at the muggle bar back when they were merely curious strangers to one another; they didn’t. Instead they were wrapped around the glass, which was planted firmly on the table in front of her, overflowing with the woman’s forlorn, charcoal gaze.

One of the many times Hermione shifted in the booth, she started to say, “Bella, I don’t really know – “

“Don’t. No one does.” The brooding dark witch interrupted.

“You didn’t let me finish.”

“I didn’t have to.”

There were so many things that Hermione didn’t understand about the older witch, and she had accepted most of them even when they were clearly problematic. She wondered if all the extra room she had made in her convictions about good and evil for Bellatrix’ nuances was for her own benefit, instead of Bellatrix’. Perhaps she was nuancing the woman out of existence and into little shards of personhood splintered a thousand times over, disregarding who she really was. The dark-haired witch’s own magic put her together the first time she shattered. Her sisters put her together the second. Could it continue this way?

The young woman did not differentiate well between acknowledging nuance and giving grace. By inviting Bellatrix into her bar, her home, and her body repeatedly, she had given the woman grace that she had taken away from the wizarding world after the war. She suspected this is what Andromeda had done as well. In that way, Bellatrix had given Hermione and Andromeda the same gift: a way to be gracious when they could not be gracious with themselves or the ones they otherwise loved. This dark witch was the means by which they let themselves be good. Their goodness bloomed in the shower of her falling, fragmented nuances.

A tense hand wrapped around her wrist, rousing Hermione from her thoughts. “Don’t move yet, but someone’s here for us.”

The sound in the dark witch’s voice, though not distinctly fearful, alarmed Hermione because it was so unfamiliar. “Who?” She let out a hoarse whisper.

“I don’t know. See the two at the bar shoulder to shoulder? They just cased us on the way in. Those two women in the booth to the right have their wands already on the table. Four at the far end of the big table on either side of it. Maybe a few more in the other booths judging by the way the others keep looking that direction.”

Hermione began to panic. “Are you sure they’re here for us? It could be anyone.”

“It’s not. They’re here for us – for me. They always are.” Bellatrix’ eyes continued to rove around the room. The rest of her didn’t move an inch, so neither did Hermione. “I can’t tell who they are. I haven’t seen the women before, and the others are too far away. They’re waiting for something – some sort of signal.”

“A signal? What do we do?” Hermione clenched Bellatrix’ hand.

“You’re going to get out.” With her other hand, the eldest Black sister began to pour the remaining wine into their glasses without averting her eyes.

Hermione felt her panic sink into her stomach to form a pit of dread. “We both need to get out.”

“Listen to me, Hermione.” The woman briefly moved her eyes to take in the young woman. “You are going to run. The hallway to the right goes downstairs to the emergency exit. Once you pass the doorframe on the ground level, you’ll be out of the wards and you have to disapparate immediately.”

“You have to come with me!” She was dizzy with déjà vu; Malfoy Manor flickered around her until Bellatrix pulled her in for a long, uncharacteristically chaste kiss.

“Promise me you’ll go, Hermione.” Their foreheads rested together. “Promise me, damn it.”

Then the first spell ricocheted above their heads. Hermione ducked as her magic rose unbidden to shimmer around her. Bellatrix, however, stood to her feet as the second spell landed on the table, leaving a smoking bubble in the wood. She grabbed the wine bottle by neck and, to Hermione’s utter disbelief, pulled a pistol from her waistband under her jacket. Everything slowed down for Hermione after that.

“Go! Run!”

The dark witch gestured wildly with the bottle, somehow dodging another spell that sliced between her ear and shoulder. She whirled the pistol around and fired at the other end of the room while smashing the bottle down on the head of one of the woman whose wand was extended in her face. A small spiral of a spell died at the tip of the wand as the woman crashed to the floor unmoving. More crackling pops left the pistol’s barrel as Bellatrix thrust the broken end of the bottle up into the neck of the other woman.

“Get out of here!” The dark witch’s cry rang out again, but Hermione couldn’t move.

Spells continued to either be absorbed and neutralized in the wall of her magic or bounce off harmlessly. She almost licked her lips as Bellatrix drew an impossible, second pistol from her waistband and leapt onto the long table. Like a well-rehearsed action movie, the dark witch advanced forward down the table with her arms outstretched, firing at her opponents who ducked behind chairs and screaming customers to protect themselves. She moved in all her legendary glory: unconcerned about protecting herself, curls billowing behind her as she twirled to fire in new directions and dodge spells. A delighted smile baring her teeth accompanied that old maniacal laughter while she pranced across the table. Hermione was consumed by the thought that this was the most authentic she had ever seen Bellatrix - her soul lit on fire by battle, the blood and screams of her falling opponents watering her sense of wholeness. The woman she loved was unencumbered for the first time since they’d met.

When the first spell hit the dark witch in the leg, she barely registered it. The second and third hit her in the chest and abdomen respectively, but she continued forward reeling and wielding her weapons. The force of another in her shoulder, neck, and head spun her around. Her feral eyes fell on the young witch still frozen in the seat behind their abandoned drinks with her magic pumping around her.

“What are you doing? Go! Get out! Go!”

Then another spell in the dark witch’s back forced her to her knees. She rocked back on her heels, looking almost comfortable. An unsettling smile descended on her despite a thick streak forming from an open wound under her right ear steadily draining blood down her neck and soaking her shirt. For a moment, Hermione was in back in Grimmauld Place, staring at the portrait of Ashlys Black.

Then, like a coward, Hermione Granger, the famous war hero who was surrounded by a shield of her own raw magic and who was powerful enough to obliterate her own existence from her former life with a single spell, turned away from her lover kneeling in her own blood, bereft of her family’s magic, weapons exhausted of ammunition, and she fled. A man was on her heels instantly, and she knew before she made it to the stairs that she wouldn’t be able to outrun him. A string of spells she sent wordlessly behind her were deflected too easily to consider turning to fight him. In the stairwell, there was a large window with milky cracks snaking through it. Using the last of her strength she leapt from the bottom step and crashed through the window. The man’s lunging fingers barely grazed her pant leg before she cleared the window frame and disapparated mid-air.

She was a coward. Then there was the bus. And then there was nothing.