The beginning of the end: Bellatrix Black

The leaving and the left

Thursday, July 4, 1969

We sleep together. 

Or at least Cissy sleeps and I just try to un-focus from her paintings. They are all radiant and of the same style. Black picture with one bright detail. I wonder when did she get so good.

I try to sleep harder and harder but it has no effect. I think about Charming myself but decide against it. So I wake Narcissa. She isn't very happy but she doesn't slap me either so maybe it wasn't such a bad thing.

"What is it, Bella?" she mumbles with half an opened eye, trying to focus on my face.

"I can't sleep" I whisper into her ear. She gets up and asks "Well, do you want to talk about something?"

"I... uhh... there is actually something I think I have to discuss with you." now when I had the chance to talk to someone, I had no idea how to do it "I was thinking for a while that maybe... Maybe what Andromeda did wasn't so wrong after all, you know?" How do you tell someone that you want to leave?

"I don't know if I am following so just go ahead and tell me directly, would you?" she was clearly annoyed now. She had every right to do be.

"I understand that the way Andromeda left was unforgivable from a point of view but she had her reasons and I suppose. I suppose that I am not angry at her for leaving. Just for leaving us behind." I take a deep breath. This sounds wrong.

"Bellatrix. While you were grieving, do you have even a faint idea what actually happened in this house? Huh? Go ahead, take a guess!" she was furious. Dear. What could have actually happened? My mind raced through the possibilities, each graver than the previous.

Narcissa pulled up her sleeve to reveal an ugly, jagged wound. It took most of my will to keep my sanity at the sight the sight of it. The next thing Narcissa said, I had foreseen.

"She made me do it. Mother tried to keep her sanity but when another member of her family had left her, she just lost it. She cast the Imperio curse on me and made me do it." I admired Narcissa more than I ever had. She was standing in front of my, talking with pride.

Mother hadn't broken her, just made her stronger. My little sister was tougher than me. She was talking about her scars as if they were precious. And they actually were - they showed that you fought back to the pain. That you survived. That you didn't brake.

"So you can leave me, if that's what you want. At least you know where and to what conditions you will leave. You can imagine, of course, what it is Mother going to be like, when another person leaves her house."

She was right. I couldn't.

"I would never leave you alone." a promise that I would break a year later.