FIC: "Family Ties" for charlotteschaos
Title: Family Ties
Author: ???
For: charlotteschaos
Pairing: Bellatrix/Tonks, Bellatrix/Rodolphus, Tonks/Lupin
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 3654 words
Warning: off-screen torture
Disclaimer: I look in the mirror, and I don’t see success. So this canon can never be mine.
Summary: Andromeda used to send letters to Bellatrix. Sometimes Bellatrix would read them, and sometimes she would throw them in the fire, but Bellatrix never abandoned her sister. She just stopped holding her.
Notes: Thanks for the experience of writing this.
Dearest Bellatrix,
I believe that you will throw this letter into the fire when you see the returning address, so it will hurt nothing for me to tell you all that is on my mind.
I still love my family. I still love the smell of history in our walls, in the hall that holds the heads of our house elves, in the brittle parchment of our library. The Black family name still means the world to me, and the pure blood will continue to flow through my veins. Mother kept us from the sun so that we could see that blood. I have betrayed no one.
I have only betrayed old fashioned ideas that pure blood is better than anything Muggles can create. They are quaint, a little erratic, a little impatient, and, of course, completely clueless. But Ted is a wizard. And his family is completely accepting of our culture. Ted will never completely understand our world, with a foot in both, but he is open to being taught, and I enjoy the little quirks of his Muggle world. It is not inferior any more than the fairy is inferior to the doxy. We are different creatures - that Muggles can even produce wizards and witches from their simple trees is a miracle to me.
If you have not thrown the letter away by now, you will have after the last paragraph.
I love Ted. I do not care that his blood is diluted with Muggle blood because he kisses just like any other wizard. I do not care that he says strange things that I do not understand because sometimes we do not have to talk. He is my husband, Bellatrix, and I swear, if you or Mother or any other member of our family or group of friends tries to hurt him, I will burn down our house, burn down all that history, and do not think I cannot get past the wards protecting Grimmauld Place. You know well enough what I am capable of. You taught me, after all.
My dear sister, although you will have disowned me with the others, I still love you as my flesh, my blood, my life.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
Bellatrix stared into the fire. She was curled into the corner of the sofa like a cat - she fit into about half the cushion, although at her age, she should have begun to feel less comfortable so tightly coiled around herself. But her body was skin and bones now - all she felt was her pelvic and tail bone press painfully against the cushion. The fire was warm, even hot at her proximity, but all that she felt was the bucket of ice in her stomach.
She failed her lord. She was not trusted. She helped shatter the Black name. Not that the others, her sisters, her cousins, had not helped. But Mother trusted her to be the Dark Lord’s weapon, to bring honor to their blood. Now her parents were dead. Andromeda married a Mudblood, and Mother burned her from the family tree. Narcissa depended on that sly halfblood who claimed he had the Dark Lord’s ear and tongue more than Bellatrix - and she could almost believe him now, stuck within her shell of a home without an assignment. Nothing after the Ministry. Sirius was dead, the filthy blood traitor, and Regulus was dead for daring to stoop to treason after swearing his life to the Dark Lord. She was supposed to be the Dark Lord’s favorite. And all she could do was feel her skin drip with sweat, perhaps melt.
Rodolphus stroked her hair from behind the couch. He would not be smiling, he would not think she was sweet. But he touched her now and then. Had to touch her. After Azkaban, he could not get enough of touching her. Bellatrix would hold him, but she was hollow without the approval of her lord.
She thought of Narcissa’s weakness for her son. If the Dark Lord cared enough to look into Bellatrix’s mind, he would see treason, and Narcissa would risk her own life for the life of their whole family, for the possibility that the Dark Lord would concentrate all his frustration and ire upon the Black family and their alliances.
She thought of the shame that was Andromeda’s decision to copulate with that blood bastard.
And although the Dark Lord rewarded her with her life for killing Sirius at the Ministry, he clearly questioned her potential for the cause if he trusted Snape over her. That simply would not do. Her hand caught Rodolphus as his fingers tangled into a knot in her hair, and her mouth turned downward in a smile.
***
Dearest Bellatrix,
You could always sneak out of the house without even Kreacher knowing. We have done it so many times before, I would guess that the only reason why you persist in your petty prejudice is because of Ted. You could come to the baby shower. But you won’t.
I already know that our child will be a witch. I have never felt such a surge of magic as when I first thought I felt her move. She will be a beautiful baby, Bellatrix. She will be of Black lineage, even if she has the name of my husband. Our blood and his name - they will be joined. Just the thought of it makes my skin tingle. The pleasure of this creation cannot be told. But neither you nor Rodolphus are the sorts to raise children, am I correct? You would never have any patience. Mother never told you to continue the family line.
I will tell her about the sister I lost, Bellatrix. I have not forgotten you, even if this letter will be burned as you have seared me from your mind, as Mother has blasted me from the family tree. I do not mind so much her anger - I made my choice. But I never meant to lose you.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
She had managed some pink last week when she was feeling a little cheerier, maybe wishing that she could be her stronger self again. She saw her mother in the mirror these days, sometimes Sirius, but mostly her mother. And whenever she saw her mother, she saw Bellatrix Lestrange.
Tonks did not mean to distance herself from her mother just because she had looked through the Death Eater reports and saw the moving pictures of Bellatrix prior to her incarceration for Death Eater activity. Her mother had told her stories about the good times that she and Bellatrix had when they were young - she kept saying that Bellatrix was out of her mind, that Bellatrix was not good with children and could not be an aunt, that Bellatrix was sick and could not come see her. It was only when she saw the black and white and red photos of what Bellatrix left in her wake that Tonks understood what her mother loved and from whom her mother protected her.
She appeared on her parents’ doorstep after reading about Bellatrix Black, now Lestrange - Merlin, she knew that name better than Black. Her hair was blue then, and her eyes were solemn, eyebrows drawn together, when her father answered the door.
I need to talk to Mum.
Andromeda explained that she loved her sister, that the stories she told were true. Tonks could only shake her head and fail to understand. Then again, she was an only child. Maybe she could not comprehend the love between sisters in spite of faults. And she wondered whether Bellatrix loved Andromeda back in spite of betraying her blood line.
Tonks sighed as she shrugged out of her coat and spelled on the lights. She was careless. Moody had always told her how to enter her house, but she was tired, she was distracted, and she had forgotten to look for another living presence that was not her two cats.
Bellatrix waited by the kitchen counter, and her wand was trained on Tonks’s chest. Bellatrix knew what she was doing, and she was quick.
“Stupefy.”
***
Dear Bellatrix,
Nymphadora was born last week. I did not expect you to come bless the birth, but I could not help but look for you, hope for some word. She has your mouth and your chin. Or maybe mine. It can be hard to tell between us sometimes, especially when we were young.
The birth was fine, I am doing well, although Nymphadora seems to cry all the time. Still, she is a healthy baby with a healthy set of lungs. It sets me on edge - Ted is better with her when she cries like she does when she is hungry. He has a better instinct, I suppose. But she is a beautiful baby, and I wish you could see her.
I do not know why I continue to send these letters. You never read them. But I must or else feel like I have lost you completely. And I cannot bear that.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
An Enervate made her awake as abruptly as she had fallen to the floor. Bellatrix watched the girl wince at the bruise above her head. She watched as the girl realized that her hands were tied behind her back. She watched the dawning comprehension rise over the girl’s face at the knowledge that she was naked. Bellatrix smiled. Already she was feeling better. Her lord liked the torture and death of Aurors, and he rewarded highly for the deaths of Order members. She licked her chapped lips as she ran her eyes over the line of the ropes. Tight around the shoulders and chest, framing her breasts and knotting between them, down between her legs on either side of the labia. Almost like she was ready for slaughter. Except Bellatrix was not ready. This was the only daughter of her beloved sister - this was family time.
“Do you know what it is like to have that which you love ripped away from you… because of love?” Bellatrix asked.
Tonks did not say a word.
“Our lord does not approve of love,” Bellatrix continued, taking a step toward the girl. “He believes that it is weakness.”
“That’s not true,” Tonks said. She tried to be forceful, but her voice cracked.
“Isn’t it?” Bellatrix asked. “After all, you are alive. Is that very fact alone enough to indicate my own weakness at seeing her face in yours?”
Tonks’s eyelids were heavy as her mind tried to pull her into unconsciousness, away from this horror. Her Auror training knew that instinct, and she fought against it.
“People like you cannot love, Aunt Bellatrix.”
Bellatrix’s knuckles hit her cheek sharply, but she did not appear to be angry. Her tongue touched her fingers as if tasting the pain. “Your misconceptions are amusing, and they will get you killed. I love my lord. I love my husband. And I love my sisters. You love your parents, you love your employers, you… loved… our foolish cousin. And you love…” Her fingernails raked lightly over Tonks’s scalp pinching at the base of her skull. “You love a man.” Those fingers caught a lock of pink and pulled sharply. She held the strands before Tonks’s eyes. The pink was bright against the mousy brown of her natural coloring. “Tell me, nightingale, have you fucked him?”
Tonks reared back her head and spit, hitting Bellatrix’s mouth. Looking into Bellatrix’s eyes was like looking into a well in twilight. Looking into Bellatrix’s eyes was like looking into a mirror.
“So young,” she murmured, wiping the spit from her lips and covering two fingers with the moisture. “So young, an up-and-coming Auror on the A-list. You think that you have transcended your blood, but I can smell your impurity. And that impurity will stop this success - you’ll die before you’ll ever have your department’s full approval. Such an impertinent girl, I can already tell. Like me. You are a bastardization of me, Nymphadora - you’re nothing but a shadow, and a shadow cannot live when the host steps into the darkness.” Bellatrix grasped Tonks’s chin between her skeletal fingers. “Your mother was poised on the edge of joining the Death Eaters, did you know that? Your father wooed her away, but she admired my choice. She admired my Dark Mark and hoped to become like me one day. You look like her, like us. So maybe you have fulfilled her place. For an Auror is only a thin line from Death Eater, Nymphadora.”
Her wand caressed Tonks’s belly, sometimes poking painfully into her navel. Tonks twitched away, looking for her wand. She wasn’t exactly a genius with wandless magic, but she wasn’t pants.
“My name, Aunt Bellatrix, is Tonks.”
“The Mudblood whelp?” Bellatrix said, smiling. “Crucio!”
***
Dear Bellatrix,
Nymphadora has been accepted to Hogwarts. I imagine the family was on tenterhooks to hear that she was a Squib. But that bit of metamorphosis last week got her in this year, just as Ted and I expected. I think it is fantastic to have such a precocious little girl - if messy - in Hogwarts now. Transfiguration should help her control her transformations, and when she learns… her career possibilities are endless. They’d even forgive her clumsiness, I’m sure, when they see what she can do. I know I sound like every other mother now, and I cannot help it. I love her so much. I only wish she could have known the Bellatrix I remember. She reminds me of you sometimes. Gestures, questions. She asks about you, wonders when Aunt Bellatrix will come to visit. I have not the heart to tell her that you would kill her on sight.
I should stop writing to you now - Ted tells me this connection between us is dangerous - because I know what you do. I know the ones that you’ve killed. I know your type, I know your signature. You cannot hide from me Bellatrix, and the only thing stopping me from telling the Aurors is that they already know it is you. I cannot tell you to get out while you can because your hands are covered in blood. There might have been a time when you offered me that communion and I would have accepted, and that thought turns my stomach in more ways than one. But I am here now, and you are there. The chasm between us continues to grow, and all I can do is write letters that will never be read, for the sake of what was.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
“You’re good for a young Auror,” Bellatrix said, propped up on the sofa arm, playing idly with her wand. “But you know I’ve broken more experienced Aurors than you. You’re no more than a child.” She pressed her wand against Tonks’s cheek and licked the salt from the tip.
“What… what are you after?” Tonks kept thinking of Remus, then her mother, then Remus, hoping that he would have come back to apologize or say something, stutter something, anything, just to have someone there with a wand who could maybe give her hers…
“Maybe I just enjoy pain. I plan to kill you when I’m bored.”
“You came after me,” Tonks rasped. “You’ve never done that before. You always went after Sirius.”
Bellatrix’s laugh was edged like a blunt knife. “Our dearly departed cousin. He deserved a much more painful death, but I did not have the time to spare as I do with you.”
“What, you don’t have enough mayhem and confusion to ensue?” Tonks asked, trying to struggle through her bonds now that the Cruciatus tremors had mostly passed. She did not expect claws to rake over her right breast, nicking a nipple. Tonks did not scream - she had screamed too much before - all she could do was sigh.
“I wanted to meet with my dear sister, but I decided instead to take the thing that she loves the most. And since it isn’t me anymore…” Bellatrix grabbed Tonks by the ears and forced her to look up. “You seemed the perfect candidate. She could never stop writing about you, always Nymphadora this and Nymphadora that, moaning about how she wished she could be with me but never willing to fulfill the requirements to have my company. She had me, the perfect me, the ideal me, through you. Lovely nightingale, you were her Bellatrix surrogate.”
Tonks felt Bellatrix’s hands slide down around her neck and over her shoulders. Her thumbs stroked where the rope chaffed against Tonks’s skin.
“You’re insane. I’m never like you.” Tonks could not even find it in her to be angry or indignant. “You don’t even know me. You made sure.”
“And that hurts, doesn’t it?” Bellatrix murmured against Tonks’s forehead. “That Auntie Bellatrix never called for her niece. Unfortunately, I was too busy ridding the world of filth while your mother screwed one. And you take his name.”
“Daddy is a good man,” Tonks said. She hissed as Bellatrix’s nails dug into her skin again. “People say I’m like him, not you.”
“Your mother said you were like me,” Bellatrix whispered. “She loved me through you. You were just the subject through which I received affection. Perhaps that is what I came for. I came here for what my sister gave you, every drop of love that should have been mine. Perhaps that is what my lord is waiting for.” Bellatrix undulated lightly against Tonks’s hip, and although she tried to flinch away, the ropes were too tight and Bellatrix clung to her with a glint of ecstasy in her eyes. “I need to be cleansed of this weakening love. Andromeda must be purged.”
“You’ve got the wrong house,” Tonks said. “And Mum knows how to handle herself as much as Daddy knows.”
“So did you,” Bellatrix said, looking to the entrance. But the niche was dark and Tonks could not see her wand. Damn it. “You let your guard down, Auror, and in these dangerous days…” She tsked Tonks gently, touching the torn flesh of her right breast.
“And you overestimate your mother’s reticence, little nightingale. I know what you are,” Bellatrix hissed in Tonks’s ear. “You can become exactly what I need, and you will.”
“Don’t you think I would have done it by now if I could?!” Tonks shouted. “I could become a three-year-old boy and toddle from these bindings.”
Bellatrix’s eyes narrowed, and she pinched Tonks’s nipple. “Stressed, dear? Is it that man that you love? They cause the worst of the pain here.” She pressed her hand against Tonks’s heart and almost tasted the pulse against her tongue. “Love can destroy your greatest power.”
“Is that why you want to fuck your sister?” Tonks spat.
“It’s nothing I haven’t done before, Nymphadora.”
Tonks’s mouth snapped shut so quickly that she felt her teeth snag on her tongue.
“And I think with enough… persuasion of a different sort than your lover could give you, you’ll give me what I need.”
Bellatrix took out her wand again.
***
Dear Bellatrix,
Nymphadora is graduating from Hogwarts today. She has been accepted as an Auror apprentice. Ted and I are ever so pleased with her progress. Were she accepted in our side of the family, she would have brought honor to our blood line. I wish that I could say that I care so much about blood when my Nymphadora has done so well, but I cannot. I cannot even be disappointed that you will not even get the chance to read this unless the Ministry allows the owl in. Even so… you are a part of my life, a part of my heart, Bellatrix, and even though you are what Nymphadora will continue to fight, I love you very much. But I cannot help you. You made your choices, I disagreed, and I will fight with my daughter to the death. I know as well as the rest of my kin that the Dark Lord will rise again. I know that you and Rodolphus and Sirius and… not Regulus anymore. But I know the rest of you wait. But we are not on the same side anymore, Bellatrix. I have a daughter now who is what I wanted, not a sister who refuses to even say my name.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
Finally, Tonks changed in involuntary desperation. And Bellatrix hesitated. For Tonks had not changed into the familiar visage of Andromeda.
She had changed into Bellatrix.
Filthy halfblood bitch. She thought she had screamed it, but her mouth had not moved. Tonks was shaking violently, sagging in her bindings, defeated. Bellatrix touched her mouth, feeling familiar contours. Except Tonks was not the withering woman that Bellatrix saw in the mirror. No, Tonks was the Bellatrix that she had once been, the woman before Azkaban.
“You’ll die, nightingale,” Bellatrix hissed, tracing Tonks’s features with fascination. “You’ll die and decay in your own home for your pets to feed upon.”
“Then why don’t you kill me?” Tonks said.
Bellatrix’s cracking lips touched Tonks’s lightly, pressed enough for it to be a kiss. She took the lower lip into her mouth.
“You taste like me, nightingale,” Bellatrix said. Her fingers brushed between Tonks’s legs where she lay exposed and familiar. Tonks flinched, and Bellatrix saw a flush on her cheek. She knelt before Tonks and flicked her tongue against her clit, drinking the resistance and uncontrollable responses from a knowledgeable tongue. “You are me.”
Tonks struggled, looked down at herself and struggled harder, finding strength in a different form, trying to change back, trying to get out of this body, feeling it burn with heat of a touch that it recognized. But she could not change.
And Bellatrix smiled, touched Tonks’s thigh, felt the flesh shiver, pushed herself standing.
“Give your mother my love,” she said, stepping back toward the entrance, “Bellatrix.”
Author: ???
For: charlotteschaos
Pairing: Bellatrix/Tonks, Bellatrix/Rodolphus, Tonks/Lupin
Rating: NC-17
Word count: 3654 words
Warning: off-screen torture
Disclaimer: I look in the mirror, and I don’t see success. So this canon can never be mine.
Summary: Andromeda used to send letters to Bellatrix. Sometimes Bellatrix would read them, and sometimes she would throw them in the fire, but Bellatrix never abandoned her sister. She just stopped holding her.
Notes: Thanks for the experience of writing this.
Dearest Bellatrix,
I believe that you will throw this letter into the fire when you see the returning address, so it will hurt nothing for me to tell you all that is on my mind.
I still love my family. I still love the smell of history in our walls, in the hall that holds the heads of our house elves, in the brittle parchment of our library. The Black family name still means the world to me, and the pure blood will continue to flow through my veins. Mother kept us from the sun so that we could see that blood. I have betrayed no one.
I have only betrayed old fashioned ideas that pure blood is better than anything Muggles can create. They are quaint, a little erratic, a little impatient, and, of course, completely clueless. But Ted is a wizard. And his family is completely accepting of our culture. Ted will never completely understand our world, with a foot in both, but he is open to being taught, and I enjoy the little quirks of his Muggle world. It is not inferior any more than the fairy is inferior to the doxy. We are different creatures - that Muggles can even produce wizards and witches from their simple trees is a miracle to me.
If you have not thrown the letter away by now, you will have after the last paragraph.
I love Ted. I do not care that his blood is diluted with Muggle blood because he kisses just like any other wizard. I do not care that he says strange things that I do not understand because sometimes we do not have to talk. He is my husband, Bellatrix, and I swear, if you or Mother or any other member of our family or group of friends tries to hurt him, I will burn down our house, burn down all that history, and do not think I cannot get past the wards protecting Grimmauld Place. You know well enough what I am capable of. You taught me, after all.
My dear sister, although you will have disowned me with the others, I still love you as my flesh, my blood, my life.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
Bellatrix stared into the fire. She was curled into the corner of the sofa like a cat - she fit into about half the cushion, although at her age, she should have begun to feel less comfortable so tightly coiled around herself. But her body was skin and bones now - all she felt was her pelvic and tail bone press painfully against the cushion. The fire was warm, even hot at her proximity, but all that she felt was the bucket of ice in her stomach.
She failed her lord. She was not trusted. She helped shatter the Black name. Not that the others, her sisters, her cousins, had not helped. But Mother trusted her to be the Dark Lord’s weapon, to bring honor to their blood. Now her parents were dead. Andromeda married a Mudblood, and Mother burned her from the family tree. Narcissa depended on that sly halfblood who claimed he had the Dark Lord’s ear and tongue more than Bellatrix - and she could almost believe him now, stuck within her shell of a home without an assignment. Nothing after the Ministry. Sirius was dead, the filthy blood traitor, and Regulus was dead for daring to stoop to treason after swearing his life to the Dark Lord. She was supposed to be the Dark Lord’s favorite. And all she could do was feel her skin drip with sweat, perhaps melt.
Rodolphus stroked her hair from behind the couch. He would not be smiling, he would not think she was sweet. But he touched her now and then. Had to touch her. After Azkaban, he could not get enough of touching her. Bellatrix would hold him, but she was hollow without the approval of her lord.
She thought of Narcissa’s weakness for her son. If the Dark Lord cared enough to look into Bellatrix’s mind, he would see treason, and Narcissa would risk her own life for the life of their whole family, for the possibility that the Dark Lord would concentrate all his frustration and ire upon the Black family and their alliances.
She thought of the shame that was Andromeda’s decision to copulate with that blood bastard.
And although the Dark Lord rewarded her with her life for killing Sirius at the Ministry, he clearly questioned her potential for the cause if he trusted Snape over her. That simply would not do. Her hand caught Rodolphus as his fingers tangled into a knot in her hair, and her mouth turned downward in a smile.
***
Dearest Bellatrix,
You could always sneak out of the house without even Kreacher knowing. We have done it so many times before, I would guess that the only reason why you persist in your petty prejudice is because of Ted. You could come to the baby shower. But you won’t.
I already know that our child will be a witch. I have never felt such a surge of magic as when I first thought I felt her move. She will be a beautiful baby, Bellatrix. She will be of Black lineage, even if she has the name of my husband. Our blood and his name - they will be joined. Just the thought of it makes my skin tingle. The pleasure of this creation cannot be told. But neither you nor Rodolphus are the sorts to raise children, am I correct? You would never have any patience. Mother never told you to continue the family line.
I will tell her about the sister I lost, Bellatrix. I have not forgotten you, even if this letter will be burned as you have seared me from your mind, as Mother has blasted me from the family tree. I do not mind so much her anger - I made my choice. But I never meant to lose you.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
She had managed some pink last week when she was feeling a little cheerier, maybe wishing that she could be her stronger self again. She saw her mother in the mirror these days, sometimes Sirius, but mostly her mother. And whenever she saw her mother, she saw Bellatrix Lestrange.
Tonks did not mean to distance herself from her mother just because she had looked through the Death Eater reports and saw the moving pictures of Bellatrix prior to her incarceration for Death Eater activity. Her mother had told her stories about the good times that she and Bellatrix had when they were young - she kept saying that Bellatrix was out of her mind, that Bellatrix was not good with children and could not be an aunt, that Bellatrix was sick and could not come see her. It was only when she saw the black and white and red photos of what Bellatrix left in her wake that Tonks understood what her mother loved and from whom her mother protected her.
She appeared on her parents’ doorstep after reading about Bellatrix Black, now Lestrange - Merlin, she knew that name better than Black. Her hair was blue then, and her eyes were solemn, eyebrows drawn together, when her father answered the door.
I need to talk to Mum.
Andromeda explained that she loved her sister, that the stories she told were true. Tonks could only shake her head and fail to understand. Then again, she was an only child. Maybe she could not comprehend the love between sisters in spite of faults. And she wondered whether Bellatrix loved Andromeda back in spite of betraying her blood line.
Tonks sighed as she shrugged out of her coat and spelled on the lights. She was careless. Moody had always told her how to enter her house, but she was tired, she was distracted, and she had forgotten to look for another living presence that was not her two cats.
Bellatrix waited by the kitchen counter, and her wand was trained on Tonks’s chest. Bellatrix knew what she was doing, and she was quick.
“Stupefy.”
***
Dear Bellatrix,
Nymphadora was born last week. I did not expect you to come bless the birth, but I could not help but look for you, hope for some word. She has your mouth and your chin. Or maybe mine. It can be hard to tell between us sometimes, especially when we were young.
The birth was fine, I am doing well, although Nymphadora seems to cry all the time. Still, she is a healthy baby with a healthy set of lungs. It sets me on edge - Ted is better with her when she cries like she does when she is hungry. He has a better instinct, I suppose. But she is a beautiful baby, and I wish you could see her.
I do not know why I continue to send these letters. You never read them. But I must or else feel like I have lost you completely. And I cannot bear that.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
An Enervate made her awake as abruptly as she had fallen to the floor. Bellatrix watched the girl wince at the bruise above her head. She watched as the girl realized that her hands were tied behind her back. She watched the dawning comprehension rise over the girl’s face at the knowledge that she was naked. Bellatrix smiled. Already she was feeling better. Her lord liked the torture and death of Aurors, and he rewarded highly for the deaths of Order members. She licked her chapped lips as she ran her eyes over the line of the ropes. Tight around the shoulders and chest, framing her breasts and knotting between them, down between her legs on either side of the labia. Almost like she was ready for slaughter. Except Bellatrix was not ready. This was the only daughter of her beloved sister - this was family time.
“Do you know what it is like to have that which you love ripped away from you… because of love?” Bellatrix asked.
Tonks did not say a word.
“Our lord does not approve of love,” Bellatrix continued, taking a step toward the girl. “He believes that it is weakness.”
“That’s not true,” Tonks said. She tried to be forceful, but her voice cracked.
“Isn’t it?” Bellatrix asked. “After all, you are alive. Is that very fact alone enough to indicate my own weakness at seeing her face in yours?”
Tonks’s eyelids were heavy as her mind tried to pull her into unconsciousness, away from this horror. Her Auror training knew that instinct, and she fought against it.
“People like you cannot love, Aunt Bellatrix.”
Bellatrix’s knuckles hit her cheek sharply, but she did not appear to be angry. Her tongue touched her fingers as if tasting the pain. “Your misconceptions are amusing, and they will get you killed. I love my lord. I love my husband. And I love my sisters. You love your parents, you love your employers, you… loved… our foolish cousin. And you love…” Her fingernails raked lightly over Tonks’s scalp pinching at the base of her skull. “You love a man.” Those fingers caught a lock of pink and pulled sharply. She held the strands before Tonks’s eyes. The pink was bright against the mousy brown of her natural coloring. “Tell me, nightingale, have you fucked him?”
Tonks reared back her head and spit, hitting Bellatrix’s mouth. Looking into Bellatrix’s eyes was like looking into a well in twilight. Looking into Bellatrix’s eyes was like looking into a mirror.
“So young,” she murmured, wiping the spit from her lips and covering two fingers with the moisture. “So young, an up-and-coming Auror on the A-list. You think that you have transcended your blood, but I can smell your impurity. And that impurity will stop this success - you’ll die before you’ll ever have your department’s full approval. Such an impertinent girl, I can already tell. Like me. You are a bastardization of me, Nymphadora - you’re nothing but a shadow, and a shadow cannot live when the host steps into the darkness.” Bellatrix grasped Tonks’s chin between her skeletal fingers. “Your mother was poised on the edge of joining the Death Eaters, did you know that? Your father wooed her away, but she admired my choice. She admired my Dark Mark and hoped to become like me one day. You look like her, like us. So maybe you have fulfilled her place. For an Auror is only a thin line from Death Eater, Nymphadora.”
Her wand caressed Tonks’s belly, sometimes poking painfully into her navel. Tonks twitched away, looking for her wand. She wasn’t exactly a genius with wandless magic, but she wasn’t pants.
“My name, Aunt Bellatrix, is Tonks.”
“The Mudblood whelp?” Bellatrix said, smiling. “Crucio!”
***
Dear Bellatrix,
Nymphadora has been accepted to Hogwarts. I imagine the family was on tenterhooks to hear that she was a Squib. But that bit of metamorphosis last week got her in this year, just as Ted and I expected. I think it is fantastic to have such a precocious little girl - if messy - in Hogwarts now. Transfiguration should help her control her transformations, and when she learns… her career possibilities are endless. They’d even forgive her clumsiness, I’m sure, when they see what she can do. I know I sound like every other mother now, and I cannot help it. I love her so much. I only wish she could have known the Bellatrix I remember. She reminds me of you sometimes. Gestures, questions. She asks about you, wonders when Aunt Bellatrix will come to visit. I have not the heart to tell her that you would kill her on sight.
I should stop writing to you now - Ted tells me this connection between us is dangerous - because I know what you do. I know the ones that you’ve killed. I know your type, I know your signature. You cannot hide from me Bellatrix, and the only thing stopping me from telling the Aurors is that they already know it is you. I cannot tell you to get out while you can because your hands are covered in blood. There might have been a time when you offered me that communion and I would have accepted, and that thought turns my stomach in more ways than one. But I am here now, and you are there. The chasm between us continues to grow, and all I can do is write letters that will never be read, for the sake of what was.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
“You’re good for a young Auror,” Bellatrix said, propped up on the sofa arm, playing idly with her wand. “But you know I’ve broken more experienced Aurors than you. You’re no more than a child.” She pressed her wand against Tonks’s cheek and licked the salt from the tip.
“What… what are you after?” Tonks kept thinking of Remus, then her mother, then Remus, hoping that he would have come back to apologize or say something, stutter something, anything, just to have someone there with a wand who could maybe give her hers…
“Maybe I just enjoy pain. I plan to kill you when I’m bored.”
“You came after me,” Tonks rasped. “You’ve never done that before. You always went after Sirius.”
Bellatrix’s laugh was edged like a blunt knife. “Our dearly departed cousin. He deserved a much more painful death, but I did not have the time to spare as I do with you.”
“What, you don’t have enough mayhem and confusion to ensue?” Tonks asked, trying to struggle through her bonds now that the Cruciatus tremors had mostly passed. She did not expect claws to rake over her right breast, nicking a nipple. Tonks did not scream - she had screamed too much before - all she could do was sigh.
“I wanted to meet with my dear sister, but I decided instead to take the thing that she loves the most. And since it isn’t me anymore…” Bellatrix grabbed Tonks by the ears and forced her to look up. “You seemed the perfect candidate. She could never stop writing about you, always Nymphadora this and Nymphadora that, moaning about how she wished she could be with me but never willing to fulfill the requirements to have my company. She had me, the perfect me, the ideal me, through you. Lovely nightingale, you were her Bellatrix surrogate.”
Tonks felt Bellatrix’s hands slide down around her neck and over her shoulders. Her thumbs stroked where the rope chaffed against Tonks’s skin.
“You’re insane. I’m never like you.” Tonks could not even find it in her to be angry or indignant. “You don’t even know me. You made sure.”
“And that hurts, doesn’t it?” Bellatrix murmured against Tonks’s forehead. “That Auntie Bellatrix never called for her niece. Unfortunately, I was too busy ridding the world of filth while your mother screwed one. And you take his name.”
“Daddy is a good man,” Tonks said. She hissed as Bellatrix’s nails dug into her skin again. “People say I’m like him, not you.”
“Your mother said you were like me,” Bellatrix whispered. “She loved me through you. You were just the subject through which I received affection. Perhaps that is what I came for. I came here for what my sister gave you, every drop of love that should have been mine. Perhaps that is what my lord is waiting for.” Bellatrix undulated lightly against Tonks’s hip, and although she tried to flinch away, the ropes were too tight and Bellatrix clung to her with a glint of ecstasy in her eyes. “I need to be cleansed of this weakening love. Andromeda must be purged.”
“You’ve got the wrong house,” Tonks said. “And Mum knows how to handle herself as much as Daddy knows.”
“So did you,” Bellatrix said, looking to the entrance. But the niche was dark and Tonks could not see her wand. Damn it. “You let your guard down, Auror, and in these dangerous days…” She tsked Tonks gently, touching the torn flesh of her right breast.
“And you overestimate your mother’s reticence, little nightingale. I know what you are,” Bellatrix hissed in Tonks’s ear. “You can become exactly what I need, and you will.”
“Don’t you think I would have done it by now if I could?!” Tonks shouted. “I could become a three-year-old boy and toddle from these bindings.”
Bellatrix’s eyes narrowed, and she pinched Tonks’s nipple. “Stressed, dear? Is it that man that you love? They cause the worst of the pain here.” She pressed her hand against Tonks’s heart and almost tasted the pulse against her tongue. “Love can destroy your greatest power.”
“Is that why you want to fuck your sister?” Tonks spat.
“It’s nothing I haven’t done before, Nymphadora.”
Tonks’s mouth snapped shut so quickly that she felt her teeth snag on her tongue.
“And I think with enough… persuasion of a different sort than your lover could give you, you’ll give me what I need.”
Bellatrix took out her wand again.
***
Dear Bellatrix,
Nymphadora is graduating from Hogwarts today. She has been accepted as an Auror apprentice. Ted and I are ever so pleased with her progress. Were she accepted in our side of the family, she would have brought honor to our blood line. I wish that I could say that I care so much about blood when my Nymphadora has done so well, but I cannot. I cannot even be disappointed that you will not even get the chance to read this unless the Ministry allows the owl in. Even so… you are a part of my life, a part of my heart, Bellatrix, and even though you are what Nymphadora will continue to fight, I love you very much. But I cannot help you. You made your choices, I disagreed, and I will fight with my daughter to the death. I know as well as the rest of my kin that the Dark Lord will rise again. I know that you and Rodolphus and Sirius and… not Regulus anymore. But I know the rest of you wait. But we are not on the same side anymore, Bellatrix. I have a daughter now who is what I wanted, not a sister who refuses to even say my name.
Your sister,
Andromeda
***
Finally, Tonks changed in involuntary desperation. And Bellatrix hesitated. For Tonks had not changed into the familiar visage of Andromeda.
She had changed into Bellatrix.
Filthy halfblood bitch. She thought she had screamed it, but her mouth had not moved. Tonks was shaking violently, sagging in her bindings, defeated. Bellatrix touched her mouth, feeling familiar contours. Except Tonks was not the withering woman that Bellatrix saw in the mirror. No, Tonks was the Bellatrix that she had once been, the woman before Azkaban.
“You’ll die, nightingale,” Bellatrix hissed, tracing Tonks’s features with fascination. “You’ll die and decay in your own home for your pets to feed upon.”
“Then why don’t you kill me?” Tonks said.
Bellatrix’s cracking lips touched Tonks’s lightly, pressed enough for it to be a kiss. She took the lower lip into her mouth.
“You taste like me, nightingale,” Bellatrix said. Her fingers brushed between Tonks’s legs where she lay exposed and familiar. Tonks flinched, and Bellatrix saw a flush on her cheek. She knelt before Tonks and flicked her tongue against her clit, drinking the resistance and uncontrollable responses from a knowledgeable tongue. “You are me.”
Tonks struggled, looked down at herself and struggled harder, finding strength in a different form, trying to change back, trying to get out of this body, feeling it burn with heat of a touch that it recognized. But she could not change.
And Bellatrix smiled, touched Tonks’s thigh, felt the flesh shiver, pushed herself standing.
“Give your mother my love,” she said, stepping back toward the entrance, “Bellatrix.”