Sometimes it hurts to even look at them. It's like looking at the sun - they are great, powerful and it feels like their presence is essential to keeping her alive. They burn so brightly, an eternal, glorious blaze that she wants to bask in forever...
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BELLATRIX'S POV
SEPTEMBER, 1962.
The weeks leading up to Bellatrix's departure had been fraught with tension. The hallways of the manor, normally filled with bickering or laugher, were dominated by oppressive silence.
Druella had fretted over every tiny aspect of Bellatrix's possessions. Each and every single one of them had to be of the highest quality. Anything less would be unbefitting of a Black. She had dragged all three girls out to Diagon Alley, where they scarcely talked to each other - Narcissa and Andromeda had, however, reacted somewhat happily when Bellatrix received her wand from Ollivanders. It wasn't a particularly pretty wand, gnarled, dark and long, nothing like their mother's ornate pale holly wand, but it was powerful. It was the kind of wand that spoke of strong will and some moral stain so dark it tainted the soul.'Unyielding,' Ollivander described it as.
Bellatrix adored it, cooing over it and waving it around excitedly, wielding it with a staunch pride. She wasn't entirely oblivious to the way her mother looked at her wand - Druella's was prettier, dantier, more befitting of a lady, and Bellatrix's looked like it was forged with the intent to maim. And yet, it was remarkably easy for Bellatrix to disregard her mother's disapproval. Her sisters seemed just as excited as she was about having access to real magic - to be able to perform spells properly, rather than simple magical outbursts that had a tendency to be destructive.
The Black siblings and their mother had traipsed around Diagon Alley in relative discomfort. Diagon Alley itself was a queer place. It wasn't the first time they had been there, but this trip in particular did carry some significance with it - the whole place was just too loud, too overwhelming, and they were too quiet. The knowledge that Bellatrix would soon be leaving had somewhat shifted their dynamic. Neither Narcissa nor Andromeda could bring themselves to truly feel completely happy for her. Their whole lives thus far, the three of them had been intertwined, practically one person in three vessels. And now, Bellatrix leaving them for such extended periods of time would disrupt that.
The Black sisters had a strange relationship. Bellatrix considered herself their caretaker - she was the oldest, so she was the wisest, in her own mind at least. She had always been their father's favourite of the three, and a Black in every way that mattered - blood, looks and attitude - she was the heir he had been denied on account of having no sons. Narcissa and Andromeda were always different to her, somewhat softer in all aspects. Narcissa had inherited their mother's fine platinum hair, whilst Bellatrix and Andromeda were similar in their wild, unruly dark curls - Andy's were always a shade lighter, though. The youngest two were always unflinchingly polite in front of others, and flawlessly able to put on a facade in high society.
Bellatrix was seemingly being the only one to inherit the infamous Black family temper in any significant way, and though her sisters could be just as vicious at times their displays of anger were nowhere near as infamous as Bellatrix's. She was the one who had a tendency to destroy. Even in her first true act of magic, she had torn something apart - a chandelier. She had reduced it to mere fragments of its original beauty, and had never learned how to put things back together again.
