"The Ouroboros Ring," Andromeda, R
Title: The Ouroboros Ring
Author: kethlenda
Rating: R
Pairings: Andromeda/Bellatrix, Andromeda/Ted implied, and various other Blackcest and whatnot
Warnings: incest
Summary: this is nothing she has ever wanted, and nothing she will ever be able to escape.
Word Count: 4,174
Notes: Written for the "Sapsorrow" prompt at hp_fairytales.
I.
Mother is dying, and Andromeda is ready to hex Father into oblivion.
Weak bastard, she thinks, though one certainly doesn't say these things in front of the weak bastard's dying wife no matter how true they are. Only a weak bastard would sequester himself in his study and make love to his brandy snifter while his spouse of flesh and blood needed him. I can't bear to see her like that, Romy, he'd said the other night. It hurts too much. Never mind how much it might hurt to pass from this world without so much as a comforting word from one's husband.
Bella, too, is away, doubtless performing some menial task for the man she calls Master. Cissy, being only seventeen, is still away at Hogwarts. And so Druella Rosier Black is alone, but for her middle daughter, on the dreariest afternoon of a dreary fall. The light that seeps through the moth-eaten curtains is feeble enough that Andromeda wonders whether afternoon has turned to twilight when she wasn't looking. Rain spatters ineffectually, noncommittally, against the warped panes. Bloody hell. The least you could do is storm like you mean it.
"Are you sure you don't want me to call a Healer, Mother?"
Mother coughs out a bitter, dry laugh. "I've seen them all. They take my gold and prod me in unmentionable places and then tell me there's nothing wrong with me."
"There's got to be something I can do." Andromeda doesn't believe the Healers. There is something wrong--though she knows not whether it's an illness of the body or of the spirit--and it's killing Mother. Andromeda can almost see the Grim in the milling clouds. She can read the truth in the lines of Mother's face, lines that should not be there at such an early age.
Mother reaches out from under the covers and grasps Andromeda's hand. Mother's hand is gnarled and bony, traced all over by blue veins. A ring clings tenaciously to her fourth finger. Mother's wedding ring, fashioned in the shape of a serpent biting its own tail. Somehow this one relic, this token of commitment and duty, still fits. Mother's other rings have long since been relegated to the jewelry-box, having become too large for her wasting fingers.
"Don't worry about me, Romy." Mother's voice is a rasping near-whisper now. "The God's honest truth is, I'll be glad to be free of all this." She gestures in circles, indicating the house, the family, the world.
"I love you," says Andromeda, because there's not much else left to say.
Mother's cracked lips smile for a moment. She closes her eyes and breathes one last rattling breath. Andromeda holds on to her hand as the cold claims it. The snake looses its grip on its tail and the ring falls quietly to the sheets. A strange ring.
Andromeda rises, puts the ring away in the jewelry-box, and leaves the room. There are owls to write, and in the study a brandy-soaked widower to face.
II.
It is soon discovered that Druella Black has bequeathed all of her jewelry to her three daughters, to be divided among them as they see fit.
Mother is scarcely in the ground a day before Bella insists on seeing the treasures. Bella has never shown much interest in girlish baubles before, but Andromeda assumes that Bella in her own selfish and petulant way is showing her grief. Surely it's only that she wants something to remember Mother by.
Narcissa cannot quite conceal hungry eyes at the mention of jewelry, and Andromeda concedes that this truly is the best time to go through the box. Cissy will need to return to school in a few days, and God help the woman who dares to distribute jewelry in Cissy's absence.
Rooting through Mother's personal effects in the bedroom where she died feels a little too macabre to all of them, so they take the box to the red-draped chamber that was Bella's when she was a girl. There is something precious, something long-forgotten that courses through Andromeda's blood as they climb together into the canopied bed and pour out a king's ransom onto the duvet.
Innocence. That's what it is. It reminds me of when we were little, and playing at princesses. Or pirates, perhaps. She half-smiles, seeing those memories again through the shadowed glass of long troubled years and the fetid fog of a hundred other scenes played out in this bed.
Bella's lips are pursed, her eyes predatory. She studies each piece intently, sometimes murmuring an incantation or two over it. There is something she is looking for, but when Andromeda asks her, she denies it.
Narcissa has already found a dozen things she adores, and has put them all on at once, so that she glints and twinkles like an empress. "Why didn't Mum ever wear any of this? It's brilliant!"
Andromeda finds again the strange serpent ring. "Do either of you know anything about this?"
"Her wedding ring," says Bella.
"I know that--but I mean, is it enchanted or something? It stayed on her finger even though her finger was thinner, and then the moment she died, it fell off."
"Of course it's enchanted. Aunt Walburga has one too. It's some kind of spell to help the Blacks find worthy wives."
"Too bad there's no spell to help the wives find worthy husbands."
Bella laughs. "I doubt that crossed old Phineas Nigellus’ mind. Anyway, though, I think there's one for every man in the family. He's supposed to find the woman it fits."
"Like the glass slipper."
"Right." Bella slips the ring onto her finger. It stays loose, the snake's head and tail never drawing together to close the circle. "See? If the woman is unworthy, it doesn't work. No doubt I'm tainted by my lack of wifely virtues. Here, let me try it on you."
Andromeda jerks her hand away, but Bella strikes serpent-quick and seizes it, shoves the ring onto her fourth finger. Andromeda watches in horror as the snake curls inward, as the tail locks into the mouth with a sickening click.
"Get this thing off me! I can't marry my bloody father…"
Bella's laughter shakes the mattress. "You have to, now. Aunt Walburga told me so. The ring is a magical contract. It can never come off, and if you don't fuck him within a year, you die."
"You're lying." Andromeda doesn't really think Bella is lying. She wishes she could think that. She runs out of the room, past Narcissa's gaping stare, through the gauntlet of Bellatrix's cackling laughter.
There has got to be a way out of this. And I'll damn well find it.
III.
She stays at Dorcas's flat for a few days, trying not to think about the ring. Dorcas asks. Andromeda mumbles something about family heirlooms. Dorcas doesn't ask why Andromeda is upset, and Andromeda is grateful Dorcas is willing to chalk it all up to Mother's death. She doesn't want to talk about it. Not yet.
When she does go home, Bellatrix is there, with the smile on her face that Andromeda knows never bodes well for anyone, except perhaps Bella herself.
"You look like you've just caught a particularly juicy mouse," mutters Andromeda. She tries to walk past her sister toward the family library, but Bella insinuates herself between Andromeda and the doorway.
"Where are you going, Sister? Or perhaps I should call you Mother now?"
"Go to hell."
"I talked to Father about what happened."
"And he told you it was a mad and disgusting idea, and that he'd help me break the spell, I assume?"
"He told me he would do whatever was necessary to get a son."
Andromeda has become accustomed to being disappointed by her father, but this new betrayal knocks the floor out from under her feet. "I'm not going to be his broodmare. Bugger off. Both of you."
Bella licks her lips and traces a spiral on Andromeda's breast through her robes, pausing to scratch at the nipple that has grown hard under her fingers. Andromeda curses her traitorous body and tells herself she needs to twist away. Instead she leans in, closes her eyes. Bella pinches her nipple cruelly. "I don't see why you're so full of Muggle morals of a sudden. You never seemed to mind me in your bed."
"That's different," groans Andromeda, though she's not entirely sure how, and grasps at straws, at tiny distinctions, while Bella's other hand lifts Andromeda's robes, teases between her thighs. "You're not my father. You didn't make me. And you're a woman--we can't have children, there's no risk of…things being wrong…"
"It's your duty," Bella whispers. "If it hadn't been Father, it would have been one of the boys. One of us had to do it."
"You're so keen on it," says Andromeda, willing her body to stop writhing against those wicked hands. "You do it."
"Nonsense. I've got my Lord to think of. Cissy, she's the pretty one, we'll marry her to some rich fool--you're the perfect choice."
"So you want me to sacrifice my life so you won't have to sacrifice yours. How noble." Andromeda wants to slap the smirk off Bella's face, but her body's need strangles the anger, just for a moment, and she comes hard against Bella's hand, biting her lip to keep from crying out.
Later, alone and trembling in the library, she realizes what the difference is. As much as she loathes the part of her that desires Bella, that keeps slinking back to those perilous arms, it is still a part of her, something that some twisted shard of her soul wills. And it is something she has always assumed, always taken for granted, that she will outgrow and leave behind with other childish things, if not this year then next.
But this--this is nothing she has ever wanted, and nothing she will ever be able to escape. To become her father's bride would be to turn the family tree back upon itself, to make a circle of Andromeda's life as implacable as the one around her finger, to sublimate all that she is and become naught but a link in the chain, a vessel for the blood of the House of Black.
She does not accept.
IV.
She stumbles into Dorcas's flat at half past three in the morning, eyes dry and tired from hours of poring over Father's mouldering books. Dorcas is awake, waiting for her.
"What's wrong." It's not a question.
Andromeda bursts into tears. As she drinks the "medicinal" firewhiskey Dorcas administers, she tells her the whole sordid tale.
"So what you need," says Dorcas, "is to become unworthy, right? It would let go of you then."
The idea is so simple and shocking and obvious, a lightning bolt hurled from heaven. She'd scanned half the books in the library hoping for some potion, some spell, to release the coils of magical contracts, but simply making herself unsuitable to wear the ring? "I never thought of that."
Dorcas pours again. "The question is, what would some sick fuck--oh, beg pardon, some revered ancestor of yours have charmed the ring to recognize?"
The answer comes without hesitation. "Pure blood."
"So you need to be Muggle-born."
"Doesn’t help. I can't--oh." Hope flares in Andromeda's mind, a flash of clarity in her half-drunken misery. "Someone else's body. Polyjuice."
Dorcas smiles and raises her hand. "I volunteer. I think I can spare a hair or two…"
V.
The moon waxes to the full and wanes again into darkness. Dorcas's flat reeks of cabbage. Andromeda is restless with impatience and anticipation, and she marvels daily at Dorcas's endless patience with her wild swooping moods.
As Dorcas drops her hair into the glass, turning it a deep blood red, Andromeda closes her eyes and offers up a prayer to anyone who might be listening. She takes the glass and raises it in a toast to her friend, and drinks.
Her body shifts and flows into Dorcas's form. She fixes her eyes on her finger as her hands become smaller, more delicate. She watches as the ring loosens around her finger.
She waits for the clink of metal on the tile floor. She feels, instead, the serpent tightening, swallowing its tail deeper into its horrid maw, adjusting to "Dorcas's" finger. She sinks to the floor and pounds on the tile with Dorcas’s fists.
VI.
She stays on at Dorcas's, leaving only to slip into the Black house late at night to search the library again and again by candlelight, poring over Phineas Nigellus’ crabbed scrawl. His journals are part diary and part grimoire, filled with records of his experiments in magic, but there are several volumes missing, and in the remaining books she finds no footnote, no scrap of marginalia that might provide her with a countercharm or the knowledge of what flaw, what imperfection would render her an unworthy bride.
She passes Father in the halls from time to time. She is thankful he makes no reference to the ordained wedding, but worried at his increasing dissolution. He is usually deep in drink, and always sad. Some nights he seems not to recognize Andromeda at all.
Bellatrix is seldom at home, and Andromeda doesn't want to know what she does under cover of darkness. One night Andromeda does see Bella, and wishes she hadn't. Bella smiles knowingly and asks Andromeda if she's chosen a wedding gown yet, and if it will be white. Andromeda wrenches away from Bella's red lips and redder talons, and flees to her sanctuary in Muggle London, shabby and run-down but safe.
Safe, that is, from everything but the fate that awaits her. Fate recognizes no walls or locks.
VII.
The first scent of winter is in the air when Andromeda goes to visit Professor McGonagall. She can't quite articulate why she chose McGonagall. It's some hazy logic that tells her that Albus Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard in the world, but that she doesn't want to talk to a man about the problem, so she'll do the next best thing. She'll go to his right-hand woman.
"So I don't think it's blood," she explains. "Or maybe Polyjuice doesn't really change your blood, though it really didn't feel like it was my body…"
Professor McGonagall adjusts her specs and studies the ring, turning it this way and that on Andromeda's finger. " No, I believe you're right, Miss Black. If it were designed to pass judgment on your blood, it would have an apparatus to pierce the skin."
Andromeda shudders at the thought of a biting snake ring and is heartily glad Phineas Nigellus didn’t think of that.
McGonagall murmurs a few incantations, hands tracing gestures in the air above the ring. "I am sorry, Miss Black. I have been unable to determine the exact nature of the spell that your ancestor placed on this object. It would seem, however, that it is designed to seek certain qualities in your mind, or perhaps your soul, which were the only things that remained constant when you took the form of Miss Meadowes."
Rage and panic rip through Andromeda's nerves. "What kind of soul would I have to have to be chosen by a thing like this?"
"You did tell me that the ring did not fit your sister, did you not?"
"Yes."
"So whatever trait the ring recognizes must be something your sister does not possess."
"I wish I could just nip on up to Dumbledore's office and ask old Uncle Phineas myself."
"And why can’t you?"
"Excellent point."
Professor Dumbledore is away for the afternoon, but McGonagall is armed with the password (Droobles' Best Blowing Gum) and they are able to gain admittance to the tower.
"They sleep most of the time," McGonagall warns her as they ascend the stairs.
"Still worth a try," says Andromeda.
McGonagall's fears are unfounded. Phineas Nigellus opens one weary eye the moment Andromeda races into the high round room.
"Merlin's balls, little girl. Can't a man have his rest when he's dead, and not be woken by tiresome children? I had my fill of that in life, thank you very much."
"I'm not a child," snaps Andromeda. She draws a deep breath and forces herself to calm down. Yelling at Phineas Nigellus isn’t likely to conjure up a solution to her problem. "Sorry, sir. I…I have a problem. I've got one of your rings stuck on my finger…"
"Ah, yes, another foolish little girl, wanting to escape her destiny. Perhaps you were never worthy of the ring at all, if you would so carelessly shirk your duty!"
"What makes a woman worthy of the ring?"
"Bah! I should have bewitched it to look for obedience! It might have been a damned sight more useful that way."
Phineas Nigellus harrumphs and shakes his head, then closes his eyes. A theatrical snore echoes through the room.
“He’s being less than cooperative today, I’m afraid,” says McGonagall, putting a comforting hand on Andromeda’s shoulder. “The good news is that he also left some journals here during his tenure as Headmaster. I do believe they’re shelved just under his portrait.”
Of course! The missing years. A gasp, and Andromeda is across the room and grasping at books.
VIII.
We are cursed, we Blacks. There is no other logical explanation.
Ursula is dying of causes unknown. Her flesh has withered before its time, and she appears to be many years older than her true age. This same tragedy befell my poor mother, I recall, and also my aunt. I shudder with remorse to think that I brought this upon my wife by bringing her into our tainted fold.
Mayhap my brother’s fiancée discerned this pattern long before I did. She did say, when she jilted him, that it was his family she was rejecting and not Sirius himself. God help me, all these years I have blamed her for my brother’s descent into drunkenness and his untimely death. Could it be that she was not fickle and faithless but merely showing an instinct for self-preservation? I cannot discount the possibility.
Now that I have seen the pattern, I see it everywhere. I see women everywhere in the family history who became crones at thirty and were dead by forty. Worse, I see other women who broke before the decline could begin, who went mad, who crumbled under some internal burden we men could not know. Women who died by their own wand.
Ursula, my dear, what have I done?
I know our marriage was decreed by arrangement and not intended for the pleasure of either of us, but though love eluded us, I owe her the deepest honor and respect. How strong must she have been, to withstand the curse so long, long enough to bear me five healthy children?
There is a part of me that believes that the line of the Blacks should end with my children’s generation. Alas, it is too late; the children are born and growing, and someday will wed. All I can do is ensure that my sons’ wives are made of stern stuff, are strong like my Ursula, and not frail creatures that will shatter early.
I must develop a spell to find worthy wives for my sons and their progeny. It must be able to search within their souls to find what will be needed: intelligence, emotional fortitude, and most of all some essential kernel of sanity.
Andromeda sighs and shuts the book; a flurry of dust whirls around her. “So all I have to do is go crazy and I won’t have to marry him.”
“I am sorry, Miss Black. I know no spells that can change the character of your soul.” McGonagall bows her head. “You cannot escape who you are. I have never been able to escape who I am, except when I take the form of a cat--“
“That’s it!” The book crashes to the floor in a maelstrom of dust.
McGonagall looks up and peers curiously over her glasses. “What’s it?”
“I’ll become an Animagus. You can teach me, can’t you? And I’ll turn into…into something…and my soul won’t be human anymore and even old Phineas will have to admit I don’t have what it takes.”
“Miss Black...based upon what you told me earlier, you have less than a year. It took me five years to master the transformation. I’m very sorry, but I cannot see any way that you can succeed in this. It is more likely that your attempt will prove fatal.”
Andromeda bites her lip and draws a deep breath. “Well, I won’t marry him, so at the end of the year I’ll die anyway if I can’t find a way out. I might as well die trying.”
IX.
Winter passes, and spring and summer. Andromeda moves all of her things into Dorcas’s flat and takes a job as a waitress to pay her share of the rent. When her former peers come to eat in the café where she works, and don’t meet the eye of their server long enough to recognize the face above the stained apron, she sometimes feels like a princess in exile, Cinderella disguised in rags.
But there is a sense of peace that descends upon her when she takes a candle onto the fire escape after work every night and reads the books McGonagall lent her. The moon watches, waxing and waning and waxing again, and gives her faith that she too can so easily slip from one state to another.
And on her days off, when she wanders Diagon Alley (and sometimes even the Muggle streets) alone, there are times she wants to break into song right there on the sidewalk. It’s only just occurring to her that she is free now, that there is no one to answer to. And the sun--the sun! It’s nothing like the oblique shafts of light that dart furtively across the floor at home. It warms her skin and seems to smile at her.
And there are nights--when Dorcas giggles and takes her hand and pulls her into some dark pulsing Muggle club--when the spinning ball of mirrors casts fairy lights against her face--when Ted Tonks walks her home and they stagger stoned together under the open sky--she could almost swear she’s clad in stars.
X.
"Stupefy!"
She wakes for a moment to see Bellatrix smiling down at her. “You didn’t think I’d let you escape so easily, did you? I’ve come to take you home.”
Andromeda struggles, but her hands and feet are bound. “You care this much about this bloody wedding? Just let me die in peace, for Merlin’s sake.”
“What I didn’t tell you, you little fool, is that you’re not the only one who has to suffer for your disobedience.”
“What do you mean?”
“Father will die if you don’t go through with this.”
“What?”
“Unless you manage to prove unworthy, little sister. I’m actually quite surprised your little disappearing act didn’t do the trick, but you still have the ring on your finger, so you’re getting married. I might be willing to let you throw yourself off the cliff, Andromeda darling, but if you think I’m going to let Father die for you…”
Then Bellatrix casts Imperius, and Andromeda sinks back into the fog.
She wakes on her feet. She is dressed in thin dress robes that do little to keep out the chill autumn wind. She opens her eyes and sees a long red carpet laid out before her. Above her, the sky is the color of slate. To either side, benches are filled with well-dressed witches and wizards, all of them looking expectantly at her.
The wedding!
At the end of the carpet, she sees her father waiting. He’s gaunt and flabby at once, and his eyes as they meet hers were haunted and lost. Beside him, her sisters stand in bridesmaids’ robes: Narcissa ignoring the proceedings and smiling at someone in the crowd, Bellatrix’s mouth curved in horrid mockery as she waits for Andromeda to march down the aisle.
Now or never.
She gathers into the forefront of her mind everything she’s been reading, everything McGonagall told her, and closes her eyes to block the expectant guests from her vision. She breathes in, breathes out--
--and takes flight, the ring falling forgotten to the carpet, her wings carrying her up, above, toward the moon and the sun and the stars.
XI.
She’s never able to figure out, later, what bird’s shape she assumed, and she is never able to perform the transformation again. She tells McGonagall, of course, knowing the professor would wish to add this peculiar case to her cache of knowledge.
Years later, she reads tales to her daughter--Sapsorrow, Donkeyskin--and tears of joy well in her eyes at Nymphadora’s innocent wonder. They’re only tales to her, and that is how it should be.
The End
Author: kethlenda
Rating: R
Pairings: Andromeda/Bellatrix, Andromeda/Ted implied, and various other Blackcest and whatnot
Warnings: incest
Summary: this is nothing she has ever wanted, and nothing she will ever be able to escape.
Word Count: 4,174
Notes: Written for the "Sapsorrow" prompt at hp_fairytales.
I.
Mother is dying, and Andromeda is ready to hex Father into oblivion.
Weak bastard, she thinks, though one certainly doesn't say these things in front of the weak bastard's dying wife no matter how true they are. Only a weak bastard would sequester himself in his study and make love to his brandy snifter while his spouse of flesh and blood needed him. I can't bear to see her like that, Romy, he'd said the other night. It hurts too much. Never mind how much it might hurt to pass from this world without so much as a comforting word from one's husband.
Bella, too, is away, doubtless performing some menial task for the man she calls Master. Cissy, being only seventeen, is still away at Hogwarts. And so Druella Rosier Black is alone, but for her middle daughter, on the dreariest afternoon of a dreary fall. The light that seeps through the moth-eaten curtains is feeble enough that Andromeda wonders whether afternoon has turned to twilight when she wasn't looking. Rain spatters ineffectually, noncommittally, against the warped panes. Bloody hell. The least you could do is storm like you mean it.
"Are you sure you don't want me to call a Healer, Mother?"
Mother coughs out a bitter, dry laugh. "I've seen them all. They take my gold and prod me in unmentionable places and then tell me there's nothing wrong with me."
"There's got to be something I can do." Andromeda doesn't believe the Healers. There is something wrong--though she knows not whether it's an illness of the body or of the spirit--and it's killing Mother. Andromeda can almost see the Grim in the milling clouds. She can read the truth in the lines of Mother's face, lines that should not be there at such an early age.
Mother reaches out from under the covers and grasps Andromeda's hand. Mother's hand is gnarled and bony, traced all over by blue veins. A ring clings tenaciously to her fourth finger. Mother's wedding ring, fashioned in the shape of a serpent biting its own tail. Somehow this one relic, this token of commitment and duty, still fits. Mother's other rings have long since been relegated to the jewelry-box, having become too large for her wasting fingers.
"Don't worry about me, Romy." Mother's voice is a rasping near-whisper now. "The God's honest truth is, I'll be glad to be free of all this." She gestures in circles, indicating the house, the family, the world.
"I love you," says Andromeda, because there's not much else left to say.
Mother's cracked lips smile for a moment. She closes her eyes and breathes one last rattling breath. Andromeda holds on to her hand as the cold claims it. The snake looses its grip on its tail and the ring falls quietly to the sheets. A strange ring.
Andromeda rises, puts the ring away in the jewelry-box, and leaves the room. There are owls to write, and in the study a brandy-soaked widower to face.
II.
It is soon discovered that Druella Black has bequeathed all of her jewelry to her three daughters, to be divided among them as they see fit.
Mother is scarcely in the ground a day before Bella insists on seeing the treasures. Bella has never shown much interest in girlish baubles before, but Andromeda assumes that Bella in her own selfish and petulant way is showing her grief. Surely it's only that she wants something to remember Mother by.
Narcissa cannot quite conceal hungry eyes at the mention of jewelry, and Andromeda concedes that this truly is the best time to go through the box. Cissy will need to return to school in a few days, and God help the woman who dares to distribute jewelry in Cissy's absence.
Rooting through Mother's personal effects in the bedroom where she died feels a little too macabre to all of them, so they take the box to the red-draped chamber that was Bella's when she was a girl. There is something precious, something long-forgotten that courses through Andromeda's blood as they climb together into the canopied bed and pour out a king's ransom onto the duvet.
Innocence. That's what it is. It reminds me of when we were little, and playing at princesses. Or pirates, perhaps. She half-smiles, seeing those memories again through the shadowed glass of long troubled years and the fetid fog of a hundred other scenes played out in this bed.
Bella's lips are pursed, her eyes predatory. She studies each piece intently, sometimes murmuring an incantation or two over it. There is something she is looking for, but when Andromeda asks her, she denies it.
Narcissa has already found a dozen things she adores, and has put them all on at once, so that she glints and twinkles like an empress. "Why didn't Mum ever wear any of this? It's brilliant!"
Andromeda finds again the strange serpent ring. "Do either of you know anything about this?"
"Her wedding ring," says Bella.
"I know that--but I mean, is it enchanted or something? It stayed on her finger even though her finger was thinner, and then the moment she died, it fell off."
"Of course it's enchanted. Aunt Walburga has one too. It's some kind of spell to help the Blacks find worthy wives."
"Too bad there's no spell to help the wives find worthy husbands."
Bella laughs. "I doubt that crossed old Phineas Nigellus’ mind. Anyway, though, I think there's one for every man in the family. He's supposed to find the woman it fits."
"Like the glass slipper."
"Right." Bella slips the ring onto her finger. It stays loose, the snake's head and tail never drawing together to close the circle. "See? If the woman is unworthy, it doesn't work. No doubt I'm tainted by my lack of wifely virtues. Here, let me try it on you."
Andromeda jerks her hand away, but Bella strikes serpent-quick and seizes it, shoves the ring onto her fourth finger. Andromeda watches in horror as the snake curls inward, as the tail locks into the mouth with a sickening click.
"Get this thing off me! I can't marry my bloody father…"
Bella's laughter shakes the mattress. "You have to, now. Aunt Walburga told me so. The ring is a magical contract. It can never come off, and if you don't fuck him within a year, you die."
"You're lying." Andromeda doesn't really think Bella is lying. She wishes she could think that. She runs out of the room, past Narcissa's gaping stare, through the gauntlet of Bellatrix's cackling laughter.
There has got to be a way out of this. And I'll damn well find it.
III.
She stays at Dorcas's flat for a few days, trying not to think about the ring. Dorcas asks. Andromeda mumbles something about family heirlooms. Dorcas doesn't ask why Andromeda is upset, and Andromeda is grateful Dorcas is willing to chalk it all up to Mother's death. She doesn't want to talk about it. Not yet.
When she does go home, Bellatrix is there, with the smile on her face that Andromeda knows never bodes well for anyone, except perhaps Bella herself.
"You look like you've just caught a particularly juicy mouse," mutters Andromeda. She tries to walk past her sister toward the family library, but Bella insinuates herself between Andromeda and the doorway.
"Where are you going, Sister? Or perhaps I should call you Mother now?"
"Go to hell."
"I talked to Father about what happened."
"And he told you it was a mad and disgusting idea, and that he'd help me break the spell, I assume?"
"He told me he would do whatever was necessary to get a son."
Andromeda has become accustomed to being disappointed by her father, but this new betrayal knocks the floor out from under her feet. "I'm not going to be his broodmare. Bugger off. Both of you."
Bella licks her lips and traces a spiral on Andromeda's breast through her robes, pausing to scratch at the nipple that has grown hard under her fingers. Andromeda curses her traitorous body and tells herself she needs to twist away. Instead she leans in, closes her eyes. Bella pinches her nipple cruelly. "I don't see why you're so full of Muggle morals of a sudden. You never seemed to mind me in your bed."
"That's different," groans Andromeda, though she's not entirely sure how, and grasps at straws, at tiny distinctions, while Bella's other hand lifts Andromeda's robes, teases between her thighs. "You're not my father. You didn't make me. And you're a woman--we can't have children, there's no risk of…things being wrong…"
"It's your duty," Bella whispers. "If it hadn't been Father, it would have been one of the boys. One of us had to do it."
"You're so keen on it," says Andromeda, willing her body to stop writhing against those wicked hands. "You do it."
"Nonsense. I've got my Lord to think of. Cissy, she's the pretty one, we'll marry her to some rich fool--you're the perfect choice."
"So you want me to sacrifice my life so you won't have to sacrifice yours. How noble." Andromeda wants to slap the smirk off Bella's face, but her body's need strangles the anger, just for a moment, and she comes hard against Bella's hand, biting her lip to keep from crying out.
Later, alone and trembling in the library, she realizes what the difference is. As much as she loathes the part of her that desires Bella, that keeps slinking back to those perilous arms, it is still a part of her, something that some twisted shard of her soul wills. And it is something she has always assumed, always taken for granted, that she will outgrow and leave behind with other childish things, if not this year then next.
But this--this is nothing she has ever wanted, and nothing she will ever be able to escape. To become her father's bride would be to turn the family tree back upon itself, to make a circle of Andromeda's life as implacable as the one around her finger, to sublimate all that she is and become naught but a link in the chain, a vessel for the blood of the House of Black.
She does not accept.
IV.
She stumbles into Dorcas's flat at half past three in the morning, eyes dry and tired from hours of poring over Father's mouldering books. Dorcas is awake, waiting for her.
"What's wrong." It's not a question.
Andromeda bursts into tears. As she drinks the "medicinal" firewhiskey Dorcas administers, she tells her the whole sordid tale.
"So what you need," says Dorcas, "is to become unworthy, right? It would let go of you then."
The idea is so simple and shocking and obvious, a lightning bolt hurled from heaven. She'd scanned half the books in the library hoping for some potion, some spell, to release the coils of magical contracts, but simply making herself unsuitable to wear the ring? "I never thought of that."
Dorcas pours again. "The question is, what would some sick fuck--oh, beg pardon, some revered ancestor of yours have charmed the ring to recognize?"
The answer comes without hesitation. "Pure blood."
"So you need to be Muggle-born."
"Doesn’t help. I can't--oh." Hope flares in Andromeda's mind, a flash of clarity in her half-drunken misery. "Someone else's body. Polyjuice."
Dorcas smiles and raises her hand. "I volunteer. I think I can spare a hair or two…"
V.
The moon waxes to the full and wanes again into darkness. Dorcas's flat reeks of cabbage. Andromeda is restless with impatience and anticipation, and she marvels daily at Dorcas's endless patience with her wild swooping moods.
As Dorcas drops her hair into the glass, turning it a deep blood red, Andromeda closes her eyes and offers up a prayer to anyone who might be listening. She takes the glass and raises it in a toast to her friend, and drinks.
Her body shifts and flows into Dorcas's form. She fixes her eyes on her finger as her hands become smaller, more delicate. She watches as the ring loosens around her finger.
She waits for the clink of metal on the tile floor. She feels, instead, the serpent tightening, swallowing its tail deeper into its horrid maw, adjusting to "Dorcas's" finger. She sinks to the floor and pounds on the tile with Dorcas’s fists.
VI.
She stays on at Dorcas's, leaving only to slip into the Black house late at night to search the library again and again by candlelight, poring over Phineas Nigellus’ crabbed scrawl. His journals are part diary and part grimoire, filled with records of his experiments in magic, but there are several volumes missing, and in the remaining books she finds no footnote, no scrap of marginalia that might provide her with a countercharm or the knowledge of what flaw, what imperfection would render her an unworthy bride.
She passes Father in the halls from time to time. She is thankful he makes no reference to the ordained wedding, but worried at his increasing dissolution. He is usually deep in drink, and always sad. Some nights he seems not to recognize Andromeda at all.
Bellatrix is seldom at home, and Andromeda doesn't want to know what she does under cover of darkness. One night Andromeda does see Bella, and wishes she hadn't. Bella smiles knowingly and asks Andromeda if she's chosen a wedding gown yet, and if it will be white. Andromeda wrenches away from Bella's red lips and redder talons, and flees to her sanctuary in Muggle London, shabby and run-down but safe.
Safe, that is, from everything but the fate that awaits her. Fate recognizes no walls or locks.
VII.
The first scent of winter is in the air when Andromeda goes to visit Professor McGonagall. She can't quite articulate why she chose McGonagall. It's some hazy logic that tells her that Albus Dumbledore is the most powerful wizard in the world, but that she doesn't want to talk to a man about the problem, so she'll do the next best thing. She'll go to his right-hand woman.
"So I don't think it's blood," she explains. "Or maybe Polyjuice doesn't really change your blood, though it really didn't feel like it was my body…"
Professor McGonagall adjusts her specs and studies the ring, turning it this way and that on Andromeda's finger. " No, I believe you're right, Miss Black. If it were designed to pass judgment on your blood, it would have an apparatus to pierce the skin."
Andromeda shudders at the thought of a biting snake ring and is heartily glad Phineas Nigellus didn’t think of that.
McGonagall murmurs a few incantations, hands tracing gestures in the air above the ring. "I am sorry, Miss Black. I have been unable to determine the exact nature of the spell that your ancestor placed on this object. It would seem, however, that it is designed to seek certain qualities in your mind, or perhaps your soul, which were the only things that remained constant when you took the form of Miss Meadowes."
Rage and panic rip through Andromeda's nerves. "What kind of soul would I have to have to be chosen by a thing like this?"
"You did tell me that the ring did not fit your sister, did you not?"
"Yes."
"So whatever trait the ring recognizes must be something your sister does not possess."
"I wish I could just nip on up to Dumbledore's office and ask old Uncle Phineas myself."
"And why can’t you?"
"Excellent point."
Professor Dumbledore is away for the afternoon, but McGonagall is armed with the password (Droobles' Best Blowing Gum) and they are able to gain admittance to the tower.
"They sleep most of the time," McGonagall warns her as they ascend the stairs.
"Still worth a try," says Andromeda.
McGonagall's fears are unfounded. Phineas Nigellus opens one weary eye the moment Andromeda races into the high round room.
"Merlin's balls, little girl. Can't a man have his rest when he's dead, and not be woken by tiresome children? I had my fill of that in life, thank you very much."
"I'm not a child," snaps Andromeda. She draws a deep breath and forces herself to calm down. Yelling at Phineas Nigellus isn’t likely to conjure up a solution to her problem. "Sorry, sir. I…I have a problem. I've got one of your rings stuck on my finger…"
"Ah, yes, another foolish little girl, wanting to escape her destiny. Perhaps you were never worthy of the ring at all, if you would so carelessly shirk your duty!"
"What makes a woman worthy of the ring?"
"Bah! I should have bewitched it to look for obedience! It might have been a damned sight more useful that way."
Phineas Nigellus harrumphs and shakes his head, then closes his eyes. A theatrical snore echoes through the room.
“He’s being less than cooperative today, I’m afraid,” says McGonagall, putting a comforting hand on Andromeda’s shoulder. “The good news is that he also left some journals here during his tenure as Headmaster. I do believe they’re shelved just under his portrait.”
Of course! The missing years. A gasp, and Andromeda is across the room and grasping at books.
VIII.
We are cursed, we Blacks. There is no other logical explanation.
Ursula is dying of causes unknown. Her flesh has withered before its time, and she appears to be many years older than her true age. This same tragedy befell my poor mother, I recall, and also my aunt. I shudder with remorse to think that I brought this upon my wife by bringing her into our tainted fold.
Mayhap my brother’s fiancée discerned this pattern long before I did. She did say, when she jilted him, that it was his family she was rejecting and not Sirius himself. God help me, all these years I have blamed her for my brother’s descent into drunkenness and his untimely death. Could it be that she was not fickle and faithless but merely showing an instinct for self-preservation? I cannot discount the possibility.
Now that I have seen the pattern, I see it everywhere. I see women everywhere in the family history who became crones at thirty and were dead by forty. Worse, I see other women who broke before the decline could begin, who went mad, who crumbled under some internal burden we men could not know. Women who died by their own wand.
Ursula, my dear, what have I done?
I know our marriage was decreed by arrangement and not intended for the pleasure of either of us, but though love eluded us, I owe her the deepest honor and respect. How strong must she have been, to withstand the curse so long, long enough to bear me five healthy children?
There is a part of me that believes that the line of the Blacks should end with my children’s generation. Alas, it is too late; the children are born and growing, and someday will wed. All I can do is ensure that my sons’ wives are made of stern stuff, are strong like my Ursula, and not frail creatures that will shatter early.
I must develop a spell to find worthy wives for my sons and their progeny. It must be able to search within their souls to find what will be needed: intelligence, emotional fortitude, and most of all some essential kernel of sanity.
Andromeda sighs and shuts the book; a flurry of dust whirls around her. “So all I have to do is go crazy and I won’t have to marry him.”
“I am sorry, Miss Black. I know no spells that can change the character of your soul.” McGonagall bows her head. “You cannot escape who you are. I have never been able to escape who I am, except when I take the form of a cat--“
“That’s it!” The book crashes to the floor in a maelstrom of dust.
McGonagall looks up and peers curiously over her glasses. “What’s it?”
“I’ll become an Animagus. You can teach me, can’t you? And I’ll turn into…into something…and my soul won’t be human anymore and even old Phineas will have to admit I don’t have what it takes.”
“Miss Black...based upon what you told me earlier, you have less than a year. It took me five years to master the transformation. I’m very sorry, but I cannot see any way that you can succeed in this. It is more likely that your attempt will prove fatal.”
Andromeda bites her lip and draws a deep breath. “Well, I won’t marry him, so at the end of the year I’ll die anyway if I can’t find a way out. I might as well die trying.”
IX.
Winter passes, and spring and summer. Andromeda moves all of her things into Dorcas’s flat and takes a job as a waitress to pay her share of the rent. When her former peers come to eat in the café where she works, and don’t meet the eye of their server long enough to recognize the face above the stained apron, she sometimes feels like a princess in exile, Cinderella disguised in rags.
But there is a sense of peace that descends upon her when she takes a candle onto the fire escape after work every night and reads the books McGonagall lent her. The moon watches, waxing and waning and waxing again, and gives her faith that she too can so easily slip from one state to another.
And on her days off, when she wanders Diagon Alley (and sometimes even the Muggle streets) alone, there are times she wants to break into song right there on the sidewalk. It’s only just occurring to her that she is free now, that there is no one to answer to. And the sun--the sun! It’s nothing like the oblique shafts of light that dart furtively across the floor at home. It warms her skin and seems to smile at her.
And there are nights--when Dorcas giggles and takes her hand and pulls her into some dark pulsing Muggle club--when the spinning ball of mirrors casts fairy lights against her face--when Ted Tonks walks her home and they stagger stoned together under the open sky--she could almost swear she’s clad in stars.
X.
"Stupefy!"
She wakes for a moment to see Bellatrix smiling down at her. “You didn’t think I’d let you escape so easily, did you? I’ve come to take you home.”
Andromeda struggles, but her hands and feet are bound. “You care this much about this bloody wedding? Just let me die in peace, for Merlin’s sake.”
“What I didn’t tell you, you little fool, is that you’re not the only one who has to suffer for your disobedience.”
“What do you mean?”
“Father will die if you don’t go through with this.”
“What?”
“Unless you manage to prove unworthy, little sister. I’m actually quite surprised your little disappearing act didn’t do the trick, but you still have the ring on your finger, so you’re getting married. I might be willing to let you throw yourself off the cliff, Andromeda darling, but if you think I’m going to let Father die for you…”
Then Bellatrix casts Imperius, and Andromeda sinks back into the fog.
She wakes on her feet. She is dressed in thin dress robes that do little to keep out the chill autumn wind. She opens her eyes and sees a long red carpet laid out before her. Above her, the sky is the color of slate. To either side, benches are filled with well-dressed witches and wizards, all of them looking expectantly at her.
The wedding!
At the end of the carpet, she sees her father waiting. He’s gaunt and flabby at once, and his eyes as they meet hers were haunted and lost. Beside him, her sisters stand in bridesmaids’ robes: Narcissa ignoring the proceedings and smiling at someone in the crowd, Bellatrix’s mouth curved in horrid mockery as she waits for Andromeda to march down the aisle.
Now or never.
She gathers into the forefront of her mind everything she’s been reading, everything McGonagall told her, and closes her eyes to block the expectant guests from her vision. She breathes in, breathes out--
--and takes flight, the ring falling forgotten to the carpet, her wings carrying her up, above, toward the moon and the sun and the stars.
XI.
She’s never able to figure out, later, what bird’s shape she assumed, and she is never able to perform the transformation again. She tells McGonagall, of course, knowing the professor would wish to add this peculiar case to her cache of knowledge.
Years later, she reads tales to her daughter--Sapsorrow, Donkeyskin--and tears of joy well in her eyes at Nymphadora’s innocent wonder. They’re only tales to her, and that is how it should be.
The End