Fanfiction: The Black Princess (Chapter Eleven)
Title: The Black PrincessAuthor: Gamma Orionis, gamma_x_orionis
Rating: R
Characters/Pairings: Bellatrix/Andromeda/Narcissa
Word Count: 16 160 thus far
Summary: Andromeda Black was named for a princess, but she is no such thing. She is a sister, a daughter, a lover, a friend, an outcast and a sinner.
Author's Notes: In progress, for a challenge on fanfiction.net. In the first few chapters, incest is not present, but it becomes clearer as the story goes on.
Warnings: Incest, femmeslash, child abuse
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
It seemed to Andromeda, from that point forward, that Bellatrix moved constantly further and further away. When the Christmas holiday was over and Bellatrix went back to school, it hardly made a difference in how much Andromeda saw her.
At least Andromeda had Narcissa.
Narcissa was as dull as ever, that was true - and she spent most of the rest of the holiday carting around her monstrosity of a doll - but having her around really was rather comforting. Andromeda came to rely on her baby sister's innocent presence.
Not least because, as long as Andromeda had Narcissa with her, their father seemed less frightening.
Perhaps it was Andromeda's imagination, but from Christmas day onward, Cygnus seemed to become a far more threatening presence than he had before. Maybe Andromeda had just never noticed how intimidating he could be, or maybe he really did become worse after the disaster of the Christmas dinner, but she found herself more and more nervous around him as time went on.
"Andromeda!" he barked out one day, simply calling her over to ask her some innocent question about what sort of biscuits she would like with her tea, but the sound of his voice frightened her so badly that she knocked into an end table and sent a vase shattering on the floor. Which, of course, did nothing to improve her standing with him.
But when Narcissa was around, Cygnus seemed gentler. Perhaps he really did behave differently, or perhaps it was only Andromeda's imagination - all she knew was that as long as her little sister was by her side, she wasn't afraid of her father.
The year came and went without anyone paying it much notice. Andromeda's tenth birthday was a dull and strained affair. She wished that Bellatrix could have been there with her, but she was off at Hogwarts and Andromeda didn't so much as receive a card from her. The only memorable part of Andromeda's birthday was the night, when Narcissa curled up in her bed - a far rarer event than Andromeda joining Bellatrix had been, as Bellatrix and Andromeda had shared a bedroom and Andromeda and Narcissa did not.
Andromeda had awaited summer eagerly for the chance to see her sister again, but Bellatrix was just as closed off and aloof during the summer as she had been in the latter half of the winter vacation. On the very first night Bellatrix came home for summer, Andromeda curled up in bed with her, as she had done so many times before, but Bellatrix just stiffened and pulled away.
"What's wrong?" Andromeda asked.
"Nothing," Bellatrix told her. "I just… don't want to be touched right now."
Andromeda didn't know what to say to that, so she crawled back into her own bed. That set the tone for the rest of the holiday - Andromeda trying her best to spend time with her older sister, and Bellatrix just pushing her away. Truth be told, Andromeda was not sorry when September came around and she saw her sister off to Hogwarts once again.
"Why aren't you crying?" Narcissa asked, the day after Bellatrix had gone, while she and Andromeda sat in the library.
Andromeda put down her book and looked at her sister, confused. "Why would I be crying?"
"Because Bella left."
Andromeda pulled Narcissa up into her lap and smiled slightly. "But I have you…"
"You had me last year and you cried when Bella left," Narcissa informed her. "You cried for days and days."
"Last year I didn't know how much I loved you," Andromeda told her, shrugging her shoulders slightly.
Narcissa beamed at that, and that was enough for Andromeda. It was true, too. Having Narcissa was better than having Bellatrix, the way Bellatrix had been acting since last Christmas. It would have been better, she supposed, to have the old Bellatrix, the one who went out onto the moors with her and who told her stories, but Narcissa was the nest best thing.
Andromeda missed Bellatrix, that was true, but she was not under any delusions that she would miss her any less if she was at home. Bellatrix acted as though she was so far away when she was at home that she might as well not have been there.
And so that year passed in unremarkable monotony. Bellatrix came home for Christmas, but Andromeda and Narcissa kept their distance from her and she kept her distance from them. They saw each other, and even did some things together - needlework and baking and the like - but when Andromeda looked back on the time they had spent together, she couldn't really remember ever saying anything to her, much less actually talking to her the way the used to. She most certainly didn't get a chance to share her bed. Christmas dinner that year felt perhaps a little more strained than it had in past years, the memory of the outburst last time still quite fresh in many minds, but Bellatrix kept silent throughout the meal, and when she returned to school, Andromeda hardly even noticed.
She was, however, beginning to dread next September.
To Andromeda, going to Hogwarts had always seemed a far-off thing - something that she knew on a certain level was going to happen to her eventually, but that she never really believed would. But the time was looming, and, while she was excited to finally be able to go off to school the way she had wanted to for as long as she could remember, she was also nervous. Not nervous so much because she had never been away from home before, or because she was worried that classes would be hard, but because once she was at Hogwarts, it was going to be a lot more difficult to avoid Bellatrix.
When summertime came again, it seemed to pass much faster than it had last time. Last year, the two months of vacation had seemed to drag on forever, what with Bellatrix's standoffishness, and though Bellatrix's behaviour didn't seem to have changed, Andromeda felt as though the summer was slipping by more quickly than any time ever should. She felt as though Bellatrix had hardly stepped off the train at the platform before Druella was taking Andromeda to Diagon Alley to purchase school books and robes.
"Mother?" Andromeda said timidly, as the two of them walked down the street, Druella paying far more attention to greeting passers-by than to her daughter.
"What is it, dear?" Druella responded, distracted by Abraxas Malfoy, who was going in the opposite direction from them, young Lucius in tow.
"I…" Andromeda didn't quite know how to say what she wanted to. She had been voicing her wish to go to Hogwarts since she could speak - how was she now meant to explain that she felt as though she didn't want to go?
"Hello, Abraxas," Druella interrupted, pausing and smiling at Abraxas. Andromeda thought her mother had rather an odd look on her face - it was a smile, but a peculiar one for Druella, whose smiles were usually tight-lipped and emotionless. She was almost fluttering her eyelashes, and she looked genuinely pleased to see Abraxas.
"Hello, madam," Abraxas nodded, taking her hand and kissing it. "I see you're taking young Andromeda out for her school things...?"
"Yes," Druella all but giggled. "And you are taking Lucius?"
"Yes, well..." Abraxas clapped his son on his shoulder. Lucius winced, and rolled his eyes a little. Andromeda managed a small smile. Lucius may have been a stuck up brat, bad enough to rival even Narcissa - no, to beat Narcissa, Narcissa was a hundred times more relaxed and enjoyable to be around than Lucius - but even Lucius could occasionally tell that his father was behaving ridiculously, just as easily as Andromeda could tell that her mother was.
Druella and Abraxas spent a few more endless moments chattering about such unimportant things as the weather - Druella in a strange little high-pitched giggle and Abraxas in an oddly hearty tone, and then, after what seemed to Andromeda like an eternity, Druella took her arm and led her away, leaving Lucius and Abraxas to go on their own way.
"Were you going to say something to me, dear?" Druella asked absently, as they continued towards Flourish and Blott's to pick up the books on Andromeda's school list.
"No," she mumbled, looking down at her feet. "It wasn't... it wasn't really anything important."
"That's nice, dear," Druella told her, and she didn't say another word about it. Andromeda doubted if she would remember in five minutes.
It was just as well. What had Andromeda been planning on saying? "Mother, I've given it some thought and I've decided I don't want to go to school?" Well, she could say that, but what would Druella's response be? Undoubtably, she would ask why - or, even if she didn't, when she told Cygnus about it, he would ask why, and then Andromeda would have to tell her. And what would she tell her? That... that she didn't want to go to school because she didn't want to see her sister? They wouldn't accept that, and she knew it perfectly well.
Especially as they had already paid for her robes and half her books, Andromeda thought bitterly.
And so it was that on September the first, Andromeda had her trunk, and her uniform, and she stood next to Bellatrix on Platform 9 ¾, and they waved goodbye to their parents together.
Chapter Eleven on fanfiction.net