house of black

chapter 2: blood is thicker than water

The Black Family Estate, Summer 1961

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Summer in Avebury was always a marvellous time for the Black sisters. Their mothers' growing paranoia regarding the house staff's blood purity was a luxury which allowed the girls far more free time than was good for them. Their father was working longer and longer hours to get away from their mothers shrieking and this also impacted on the girls mood. The longer he was away the less lashings they were likely to get if he deemed them to be misbehaving.

On this particular summer's day Bellatrix was determined to go on an 'adventure'. That's what she had called it anyway. Newly turned eleven with a vicious temper and not enough patience she stood waiting at the front door for her sister. Her black unruly curls fell into her face in a frustrating manner, and had she had a knife close by enough she likely would have just cut them all off in pure anger.

But she was distracted momentarily by the jingling of her youngest sister's necklaces coming down the stairs. Narcissa, only a child of six (though she was almost seven, as Bella told everyone) was clearly destined to be the most beautiful of her sisters. Her golden hair flowed down her back in soft neat curls as opposed to Bella's tangled ones. Her eyes were bright and her face pale as she raced to join her eldest sister in a light blue cotton dress that, in Bella's opinion, was not appropriate for adventuring.

"Are you quite ready Cissy?" she asked her younger sister who nodded eagerly.

"Yes!" she squeaked back happily, turning around to show Bella the dress in all its glory. Their father had it made for her. Bella had no interest in dresses herself, but if she did, she would want a gown like that.

"I think it will get ruined in the forest, but nonetheless.." she antagonised.

"Bella you don't really think so, do you?" Narcissa asked, panic-stricken.

"If I didn't think so why would I say it?" Bella argued with her.

"I don't know Bella, perhaps to upset her." Came the voice of their other sister, nine year old Andromeda from the top of the stairs who sounded rather fed up with her older sister's antics.

Bellatrix rolled her eyes openly at her. Narcissa, too young to understand her elder sister's arguments, stepped towards the stairs and turned around again.

"Do you like it 'Dromeda? Do I look wonderful? Father said I look like a Princess in a story book." she said to her elder sister.

"I like the blue Cissy, it matches your eyes." Andromeda said sincerely. She herself wore a simple linen dress with brown flowers embroidered on the ends. It had been Bella's when she was younger, but Andromeda always liked to alter the dresses as much as she could so that they could be properly hers.

"What if a Prince wants to marry you and he's ugly?" Bella said to Narcissa as a way to regain  her attention. "What if he's old and smells terrible- like grandmother's soup? Would you still want to be a Princess then?"

Naricssa's big blue eyes widened. "Don't say that Bella! That's not what Princes are like!" she whined

"However would you know?" she said with a smirk. "You've never met one!"

"Because Papa said he would find me the Purest Blood Prince to marry when I am older, and we'll have our own house, just as big as this one and fill it with a hundred Pure Blood Princes and Princesses." Narcissa recited dutifully.

Andromeda nodded at her statement, she had heard it a hundred times and although she wasn't as set on the castle and finery as Narcissa was even in her young age, another person's company and games to enjoy with them didn't sound too bad.