[HP] The path to hell (Heavenly Bodies)
Title: The path to hell
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: Bellatrix/Narcissa, Narcissa/Lily, Lucius/Narcissa
Lengtht: 2,222 words
Summary: "Let me tell you three versions of the myth of Narcissus."
Warnings: mildly graphic sex, incest (duh), overabundance of mythological references
Author's Note: This is part of the Heavenly Bodies serie, which I mean as an ensemble of tied but independant stories about the Black family, from 1968 to 1998.
Thousand of thanks to bwinter for the beta ♥
Bella mocks her blonde hair and her flowery name. Changeling child, she calls her, not a proper Black. She scoffs at her vanity and her pretty dresses, always inviting her to a fist fight in the mud. Cissy used to screech in response, but she learns. Learns to ignore Bella’s baiting and remain cold and composed. Bella taunts all the more, devilish and stinging, and there’s a play in there, a cruel affection that is Bella’s signature mark.
“Am I really a Black?” Cissy asks Andromeda once.
Andromeda doesn’t laugh. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
“I don’t have the name of a star.”
“Stars or flowers are both youths transformed by the gods to hide them away from the sorrow of the world. It’s all the same,” she explains.
Cissy doesn’t relent, “But Narcissus was such a stupid boy !”
“Was he, really?” Andromeda smiles her mysterious smile and bends down to whisper into Cissy’s ear, “Let me tell you three versions of the myth of Narcissus.”
1.
Narcissa was beautiful. She’d always been told so. It wasn’t that her sisters weren’t pretty, too, with long legs, black curls, and thick lashes. It was that, all that Narcissa was, was beautiful. She wasn’t strong like Bellatrix, because everything was easy. She wasn’t clever like Andromeda, because everybody listened with a smile no matter what she said. She didn’t have friends like Sirius, she had admirers and toadies. She was never obedient and respectful like Regulus, because everything was forgiven of her, anyway. But she was beautiful. Everybody said so.
She liked prettying up, too. She liked dressing up in satin and linen, the soft texture of silk gliding over her skin, the practiced folds of velvet falling to her ankle. She liked admiring the gradients of gold and amber, and the glints of aquamarine over white skin. And putting up smooth, shiny hair in a roll, with just a lock to accent her nape.
It felt fitting and orderly. Safe. Like a barrier against cold wind and bitter dispute. She and Mother had done this, when she was a child, she remembered. Before Mother had died, and Andromeda had ran away.
She lost hold of a perfume bottle and it broke down on the floor. Narcissa made a scowl that disfigured her face in the mirror. She did hate a mess.
Boys always made a mess. She was not very fond of them. They never remembered manners or how to behave in a graceful way (especially Sirius), and they looked at her avidly as if she was beautiful for their express pleasure. She smiled at them, cruelly, and asked ridiculous things of them. And they did them. Behaving like servants because they wanted to possess her. This she found ironic.
Bellatrix was no better than men. She liked the boys’ games, the violent and dirty ones, and she wanted like a man. Here, and now, and give me, give me, give me! No sense of subtlety or patience. She did have cunning, though, and never shied from the means to get what she wanted. Repeatedly, she would chase away the boys buzzing around Narcissa, and corner her in corridors. And she wanted, and wanted, and wanted all across Narcissa’s body. Narcissa shuddered and let her do, wicked tongue and wickeder fingers that slithered between her legs. She thought of Bella’s chipped and dirtied nails down there, and it was such a mess, but at least Bella was family so it was a beautiful mess. And maybe, just maybe, Narcissa was a little bit afraid of Bellatrix, and it was so much easier to get what she wanted from her, afterward.
Narcissa was beautiful. Everybody told her so. Which meant do what I want, and don’t do, and be what I want, and don’t be. Narcissa lived surrounded by mirrors, but Narcissa had never seen herself. Maybe she didn’t exist.
There was another girl at school who was beautiful. Everybody said so, even if she was a Mudblood. Even Sirius’ Blood Traitor friend admired her. But she was smart, too, and strong-willed, and she had many friends and was always mindful of rules and righteousness. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair! So Narcissa decided to teach the Mudblood girl a lesson about what being beautiful meant.
She schemed and bribed and crawled her way up the Gryffindor Tower, and came in the girl’s room she knew was empty of anything but a sleeping Lily Evans. Sprawled on the blankets, red hair turned to dark burgundy in the night’s glow, pale face smiling. Smiling, and Lily opened her eyes and said :
“I was waiting for you.”
“Quiet”, Narcissa said, her wand in hand as she strode to the bed. “Don’t say anything.”
“Anything”, Lily agreed, still smiling. She was pale and beautiful, and arrogant like no Mudblood ought to be, but uncertain too underneath that bravado. It was like kissing a mirror. Cold lips, cool flesh. Or maybe it was hers which were so cold that Lily’s were burning. They fell over into the bed, nothing but long limbs and graceful curves, and beautiful, beautiful things that Narcissa loved so much. It didn’t feel like a mess at all, but it did feel like drowning.
Later, much later, Lily whispered. “I’d seen you watching me. I’d been watching too.”
“Why?”
“Because. You never say more than you have to say. You never do more. While I always have to prove myself, to show them I’m capable even if I’m Muggleborn. I always have to be nice with everybody. I always have to do more.” She made a grimace. “You never even bother. I always have to be perfect. You, you’re perfect no matter what you do. I wanted to see what it was like to have such a Black queen in bed.”
Narcissa laughed quietly.
“Aren’t you tired of putting on a show all the time?”
“Yes”, Lily said, “but here, we can be ourselves.”
So they could.
Although they both had other loyalties and ambitions, they were free with each other to be selfish, and to take from each other. And seeing Lily twist in pleasure and cry out delightfully was not a indulgence that Narcissa was willing to refuse herself.
When the time came, they said goodbye without bitterness. In many ways, Narcissa pitied Potter who would never know Lily as she did, the Lily who was vicious, fierce and ambitious as well as kind and brave.
Lucius was everything that Lily wasn’t. Brilliant but icy, cruelly arrogant yet gentle.
He took her on a date one night, when she was eighteen and barely out of Hogwarts. They talked of History and politics, gossip and frivolities. It was a very engaging and fascinating evening all around, so it was only once she was back home that she realized he’d never once told her she was beautiful.
Some mirrors, she thought with a shiver, people can see through.
2.
Once Narcissa had tried to explain to Lily what it was that was dying, that Lily was helping to destroy. It was not a cruel death, surely not! They were bribed with all the privileges and all the adornments to keep quiet and smiling in their gilded cage. But it was death all the same, a slow and agonizing slide toward oblivion, as more and more of them, rude and vulgar and disgraceful, joined their rank and their ways slowly replaced theirs.
She’d tried to explain to her that Pure Blood Wizards might be proud and bright and powerful, but they were also brittle, and few, so very few, and that whole Muggle world surrounding them, ready to sweep them away if they let it do so.
I know that, Lily had said, protesting, I know that. But why do you think of us as enemies? We’re not. We want to be part of your world. Why won’t you let us?
You can’t help it, Narcissa had answered, feeling oddly tender in the lingering mellowness of orgasm, it’s in yourself. Hand pointing to her heart, curving onto her breast.
Blood?, Lily had said, eyes flashing bitterly.
Milk, she’d answered.
Milk, and tears, and kisses, and a thousand gestures of caring branded onto her flesh, as she was branding them now, handling Draco’s little, tiny body, cleaning him, feeding him, teaching him to speak his first words and the first games of spells and magic.
Nurture, through which all children educated in the Muggle world failed, bringing instead their twisted fashions and silly customs..
That’s not death, Lily had argued, again and unrelenting, that’s just change. Renewal. Replenishment.
Just the sweeping wave of seasons turning flowers into fruits, and green leaves into red gold.
It might have been Lily’s spring, but it was Narcissa’s autumn. So she kissed her good bye and drank pomegranate juice with Lucius at the wedding and let Lily marry her Potter fool.
The Narcissus was a flower sacred to Hades. There would be sun enough, in the underworld, to bear the cold season.
But now everything was gone. Lily was dead, and Voldemort had vanished. And gone all their hopes as well, she could tell by the faces of all of the remaining Death Eaters gathered in dead silence and disarray at the news of the Dark Lord’s disappearance.
She could hate the Dark Lord for that too, for giving them hope, giving them that light to cling to when there had been none. He had only ever given them a choice in their way of dying - more fools them for not realizing it. Bellatrix, earlier, had already chosen, stalking out with a cascade of scathing words for their cowardice and faithlessness, and taking in her trail a few of her favourites. Narcissa had said no word to stop her - hadn’t known anymore if Bellatrix would have listened to such words coming from her.
She ached at the thought of everything that she had lost, all the bright ones taken. Regulus, Evan and all the other youths - barely more than children - killed in the war. Andromeda and Sirius, who had left without looking back. And Lily, oh Lily, whom she had loved and hated like all the beautiful, deadly things that she was wont to love. But Narcissa was proud, too, and showed nothing of her grief.
And she would lose more tonight, she thought, and in the coming days But not everything, not if she could help it. So she cradled closer her sleeping child, taking a step toward her husband.
They were lost, but they would follow Lucius’ lead, she knew, their eyes would rekindle easily at the slick clarity of his words. If only Lucius’ pride would bear it. She put her free hand on his shoulder and gazed into his eyes. He looked so defeated and hopeless. Men, who would break and give away at the first storm. “Stay,” she said, knowing that he would not refuse her. “When they come, tell them you were under Imperius. Surely, we’ve put enough people under that curse that they won’t be able to laugh it out. If they can’t separate the victims from the culprits, they’ll let everybody free. They’ll want to forget about it all and go back to their snug lives.”
“And what will we do, then?” Eyes narrowed, calculating.
“We wait. We bid our times. We endure.”
No winter lasted forever. And in between, maybe, they could learn to change.
She tightened her hold on Draco, once more.
Maybe some things were worth changing instead of dying for.
3.
When they took her husband to Azkaban, Narcissa realized she’d been wrong all along. Lucius had never fallen before, she’d never reigned in the underworld. She’d never even known what hell was. Now, at last, she was on the way.
When Draco came back with a blot on his flesh and a mission in his feverish eyes, she truly knew despair.
She put on all the beautiful silk, bright jewels and attributes of seduction that were hers and went to her sister. Bellatrix had stayed in Azkaban, in the citadel of despair. She’d always been the Dark Lord’s favourite, she was the true sovereign of hell. She would know, she would help.
Bellatrix removed every one of Narcissa’s clothes and jewels and got her on her knees. Narcissa, who’d never knelt to Bellatrix, who’d always stood proud and unflinching while Bella thrust her fingers into her quim. Narcissa knelt, and licked, and sucked Bella’s body, Bella’s wet lips, and Bella’s red clit, until Bella purred with contentment.
Tell me, tell me sister, tell me how to save my son, my beloved, my precious bright one?
Bella wouldn’t know that, but at least she told her what was Draco’s mission and all the missing facts falling into places.
So Narcissa walked down another level, down the sticky maze of the Spinner’s End, and knelt in front of an ugly Half-Blood man. She begged and she cried until her pride was as naked and forlorn as winter.
She’d been a daughter once, she was now a mother. There was nothing she wouldn’t do.
She got her oath, wove her magic, felt the binding. Something to hope for. She brought lilies to Lily’s grave, and remembered. The narcissus was the first flower to appear under the snows. So she hoped, and waited for spring.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairings: Bellatrix/Narcissa, Narcissa/Lily, Lucius/Narcissa
Lengtht: 2,222 words
Summary: "Let me tell you three versions of the myth of Narcissus."
Warnings: mildly graphic sex, incest (duh), overabundance of mythological references
Author's Note: This is part of the Heavenly Bodies serie, which I mean as an ensemble of tied but independant stories about the Black family, from 1968 to 1998.
Thousand of thanks to bwinter for the beta ♥
Bella mocks her blonde hair and her flowery name. Changeling child, she calls her, not a proper Black. She scoffs at her vanity and her pretty dresses, always inviting her to a fist fight in the mud. Cissy used to screech in response, but she learns. Learns to ignore Bella’s baiting and remain cold and composed. Bella taunts all the more, devilish and stinging, and there’s a play in there, a cruel affection that is Bella’s signature mark.
“Am I really a Black?” Cissy asks Andromeda once.
Andromeda doesn’t laugh. “Why wouldn’t you be?”
“I don’t have the name of a star.”
“Stars or flowers are both youths transformed by the gods to hide them away from the sorrow of the world. It’s all the same,” she explains.
Cissy doesn’t relent, “But Narcissus was such a stupid boy !”
“Was he, really?” Andromeda smiles her mysterious smile and bends down to whisper into Cissy’s ear, “Let me tell you three versions of the myth of Narcissus.”
1.
Narcissa was beautiful. She’d always been told so. It wasn’t that her sisters weren’t pretty, too, with long legs, black curls, and thick lashes. It was that, all that Narcissa was, was beautiful. She wasn’t strong like Bellatrix, because everything was easy. She wasn’t clever like Andromeda, because everybody listened with a smile no matter what she said. She didn’t have friends like Sirius, she had admirers and toadies. She was never obedient and respectful like Regulus, because everything was forgiven of her, anyway. But she was beautiful. Everybody said so.
She liked prettying up, too. She liked dressing up in satin and linen, the soft texture of silk gliding over her skin, the practiced folds of velvet falling to her ankle. She liked admiring the gradients of gold and amber, and the glints of aquamarine over white skin. And putting up smooth, shiny hair in a roll, with just a lock to accent her nape.
It felt fitting and orderly. Safe. Like a barrier against cold wind and bitter dispute. She and Mother had done this, when she was a child, she remembered. Before Mother had died, and Andromeda had ran away.
She lost hold of a perfume bottle and it broke down on the floor. Narcissa made a scowl that disfigured her face in the mirror. She did hate a mess.
Boys always made a mess. She was not very fond of them. They never remembered manners or how to behave in a graceful way (especially Sirius), and they looked at her avidly as if she was beautiful for their express pleasure. She smiled at them, cruelly, and asked ridiculous things of them. And they did them. Behaving like servants because they wanted to possess her. This she found ironic.
Bellatrix was no better than men. She liked the boys’ games, the violent and dirty ones, and she wanted like a man. Here, and now, and give me, give me, give me! No sense of subtlety or patience. She did have cunning, though, and never shied from the means to get what she wanted. Repeatedly, she would chase away the boys buzzing around Narcissa, and corner her in corridors. And she wanted, and wanted, and wanted all across Narcissa’s body. Narcissa shuddered and let her do, wicked tongue and wickeder fingers that slithered between her legs. She thought of Bella’s chipped and dirtied nails down there, and it was such a mess, but at least Bella was family so it was a beautiful mess. And maybe, just maybe, Narcissa was a little bit afraid of Bellatrix, and it was so much easier to get what she wanted from her, afterward.
Narcissa was beautiful. Everybody told her so. Which meant do what I want, and don’t do, and be what I want, and don’t be. Narcissa lived surrounded by mirrors, but Narcissa had never seen herself. Maybe she didn’t exist.
There was another girl at school who was beautiful. Everybody said so, even if she was a Mudblood. Even Sirius’ Blood Traitor friend admired her. But she was smart, too, and strong-willed, and she had many friends and was always mindful of rules and righteousness. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t fair! So Narcissa decided to teach the Mudblood girl a lesson about what being beautiful meant.
She schemed and bribed and crawled her way up the Gryffindor Tower, and came in the girl’s room she knew was empty of anything but a sleeping Lily Evans. Sprawled on the blankets, red hair turned to dark burgundy in the night’s glow, pale face smiling. Smiling, and Lily opened her eyes and said :
“I was waiting for you.”
“Quiet”, Narcissa said, her wand in hand as she strode to the bed. “Don’t say anything.”
“Anything”, Lily agreed, still smiling. She was pale and beautiful, and arrogant like no Mudblood ought to be, but uncertain too underneath that bravado. It was like kissing a mirror. Cold lips, cool flesh. Or maybe it was hers which were so cold that Lily’s were burning. They fell over into the bed, nothing but long limbs and graceful curves, and beautiful, beautiful things that Narcissa loved so much. It didn’t feel like a mess at all, but it did feel like drowning.
Later, much later, Lily whispered. “I’d seen you watching me. I’d been watching too.”
“Why?”
“Because. You never say more than you have to say. You never do more. While I always have to prove myself, to show them I’m capable even if I’m Muggleborn. I always have to be nice with everybody. I always have to do more.” She made a grimace. “You never even bother. I always have to be perfect. You, you’re perfect no matter what you do. I wanted to see what it was like to have such a Black queen in bed.”
Narcissa laughed quietly.
“Aren’t you tired of putting on a show all the time?”
“Yes”, Lily said, “but here, we can be ourselves.”
So they could.
Although they both had other loyalties and ambitions, they were free with each other to be selfish, and to take from each other. And seeing Lily twist in pleasure and cry out delightfully was not a indulgence that Narcissa was willing to refuse herself.
When the time came, they said goodbye without bitterness. In many ways, Narcissa pitied Potter who would never know Lily as she did, the Lily who was vicious, fierce and ambitious as well as kind and brave.
Lucius was everything that Lily wasn’t. Brilliant but icy, cruelly arrogant yet gentle.
He took her on a date one night, when she was eighteen and barely out of Hogwarts. They talked of History and politics, gossip and frivolities. It was a very engaging and fascinating evening all around, so it was only once she was back home that she realized he’d never once told her she was beautiful.
Some mirrors, she thought with a shiver, people can see through.
2.
Once Narcissa had tried to explain to Lily what it was that was dying, that Lily was helping to destroy. It was not a cruel death, surely not! They were bribed with all the privileges and all the adornments to keep quiet and smiling in their gilded cage. But it was death all the same, a slow and agonizing slide toward oblivion, as more and more of them, rude and vulgar and disgraceful, joined their rank and their ways slowly replaced theirs.
She’d tried to explain to her that Pure Blood Wizards might be proud and bright and powerful, but they were also brittle, and few, so very few, and that whole Muggle world surrounding them, ready to sweep them away if they let it do so.
I know that, Lily had said, protesting, I know that. But why do you think of us as enemies? We’re not. We want to be part of your world. Why won’t you let us?
You can’t help it, Narcissa had answered, feeling oddly tender in the lingering mellowness of orgasm, it’s in yourself. Hand pointing to her heart, curving onto her breast.
Blood?, Lily had said, eyes flashing bitterly.
Milk, she’d answered.
Milk, and tears, and kisses, and a thousand gestures of caring branded onto her flesh, as she was branding them now, handling Draco’s little, tiny body, cleaning him, feeding him, teaching him to speak his first words and the first games of spells and magic.
Nurture, through which all children educated in the Muggle world failed, bringing instead their twisted fashions and silly customs..
That’s not death, Lily had argued, again and unrelenting, that’s just change. Renewal. Replenishment.
Just the sweeping wave of seasons turning flowers into fruits, and green leaves into red gold.
It might have been Lily’s spring, but it was Narcissa’s autumn. So she kissed her good bye and drank pomegranate juice with Lucius at the wedding and let Lily marry her Potter fool.
The Narcissus was a flower sacred to Hades. There would be sun enough, in the underworld, to bear the cold season.
But now everything was gone. Lily was dead, and Voldemort had vanished. And gone all their hopes as well, she could tell by the faces of all of the remaining Death Eaters gathered in dead silence and disarray at the news of the Dark Lord’s disappearance.
She could hate the Dark Lord for that too, for giving them hope, giving them that light to cling to when there had been none. He had only ever given them a choice in their way of dying - more fools them for not realizing it. Bellatrix, earlier, had already chosen, stalking out with a cascade of scathing words for their cowardice and faithlessness, and taking in her trail a few of her favourites. Narcissa had said no word to stop her - hadn’t known anymore if Bellatrix would have listened to such words coming from her.
She ached at the thought of everything that she had lost, all the bright ones taken. Regulus, Evan and all the other youths - barely more than children - killed in the war. Andromeda and Sirius, who had left without looking back. And Lily, oh Lily, whom she had loved and hated like all the beautiful, deadly things that she was wont to love. But Narcissa was proud, too, and showed nothing of her grief.
And she would lose more tonight, she thought, and in the coming days But not everything, not if she could help it. So she cradled closer her sleeping child, taking a step toward her husband.
They were lost, but they would follow Lucius’ lead, she knew, their eyes would rekindle easily at the slick clarity of his words. If only Lucius’ pride would bear it. She put her free hand on his shoulder and gazed into his eyes. He looked so defeated and hopeless. Men, who would break and give away at the first storm. “Stay,” she said, knowing that he would not refuse her. “When they come, tell them you were under Imperius. Surely, we’ve put enough people under that curse that they won’t be able to laugh it out. If they can’t separate the victims from the culprits, they’ll let everybody free. They’ll want to forget about it all and go back to their snug lives.”
“And what will we do, then?” Eyes narrowed, calculating.
“We wait. We bid our times. We endure.”
No winter lasted forever. And in between, maybe, they could learn to change.
She tightened her hold on Draco, once more.
Maybe some things were worth changing instead of dying for.
3.
When they took her husband to Azkaban, Narcissa realized she’d been wrong all along. Lucius had never fallen before, she’d never reigned in the underworld. She’d never even known what hell was. Now, at last, she was on the way.
When Draco came back with a blot on his flesh and a mission in his feverish eyes, she truly knew despair.
She put on all the beautiful silk, bright jewels and attributes of seduction that were hers and went to her sister. Bellatrix had stayed in Azkaban, in the citadel of despair. She’d always been the Dark Lord’s favourite, she was the true sovereign of hell. She would know, she would help.
Bellatrix removed every one of Narcissa’s clothes and jewels and got her on her knees. Narcissa, who’d never knelt to Bellatrix, who’d always stood proud and unflinching while Bella thrust her fingers into her quim. Narcissa knelt, and licked, and sucked Bella’s body, Bella’s wet lips, and Bella’s red clit, until Bella purred with contentment.
Tell me, tell me sister, tell me how to save my son, my beloved, my precious bright one?
Bella wouldn’t know that, but at least she told her what was Draco’s mission and all the missing facts falling into places.
So Narcissa walked down another level, down the sticky maze of the Spinner’s End, and knelt in front of an ugly Half-Blood man. She begged and she cried until her pride was as naked and forlorn as winter.
She’d been a daughter once, she was now a mother. There was nothing she wouldn’t do.
She got her oath, wove her magic, felt the binding. Something to hope for. She brought lilies to Lily’s grave, and remembered. The narcissus was the first flower to appear under the snows. So she hoped, and waited for spring.