Apparation No. Twelve

Author: Minervacat
Fandom: Harry Potter/Buffyverse
Pairing: Narcissa Malfoy/Lilah Morgan, Bellatrix Lestrange/Drusilla, Andromeda Tonks/Anya.
Rating: R
Spoilers: Vague but not world-ending for OoTP and HBP and the Black family tree.
Disclaimer: Dude, JK and Joss have so much more money than me. I'm just screwing around.
Summary: anyone else got any good ideas or will we just lay low until the black smoke clears: a story about the Black sisters.


i dressed myself up in tin plate armour but you got me in the end

Narcissa Malfoy's life is safe; that is why she married Lucius. Not for love, this is no kind of life to burden yourself with love, but because she knew that he would keep her safe. All these years, a loveless marriage but she was safe and Draco was safe, and that was what mattered.

She has never been stupid, she has always been clever, and that has been the downfall of many men and a handful of women.

Lucius' solicitor has not underestimated Narcissa; she is, as Andromeda might have called her, when Andromeda still spoke to them and they to her, a bitch on wheels, and she has drawn her guns before she even entered Malfoy Manor.

"Lilah Morgan," she says, and she looks at Narcissa in the same dismissive way Narcissa looks at Mudbloods. "Wolfram & Hart."

Narcissa has remained willfully ignorant all these years; of anyone's body but Lucius', and his only for the purposes of providing him with a son and heir, of their finances, Lucius' business ventures and his friends, his colleagues and his enemies. She has sat at dinner parties and made small talk until she is blue in the face, but she knows nothing of what her husband does in the day to day of their lives, and Narcissa prefers it that way.

They cannot punish her for things she does not know; even with Veritaserum, she would still know nothing. Narcissa is safe because she is stupid; she is stupid because she is clever enough to know that this is what will save her, and maybe her son.

Lilah has the airs of a woman in a man's world, and an American accent; she has a team of goblins who bring box after box of magical contracts, expense reports and statements from Gringotts' inside them. Narcissa has had 16 years of ignorance, and an American woman with a suit at least two seasons out of style is blowing all that straight out of the water.

"Why are you here?" she asks Lilah, finally, ten hours into a harrowing maze of things Narcissa would really have rather never known.

Lilah shrugs one elegant shoulder and crosses her legs, skirt sliding up to show a gartered stocking and a ghost-pale thigh. "Your husband's not important enough for the Senior Partners."

Lilah Morgan has long legs and large, pale breasts, and she shudders underneath Narcissa's mouth and hands, long fingers tangled hard in Narcissa's hair. When Lilah puts her own mouth between Narcissa's thighs, Narcissa wonders why she has denied herself this pleasure all her life. Cleverness has not gotten her killed yet, but maybe someday it will, and maybe, for once, it isn't worth the safety.

Narcissa has built herself a prison as surely as the Aurors have trapped Bella in Azkaban; if it is the cost of keeping herself safe, she will tear each stone down with her bare hands.

She tells Lucius' solicitor this, and Lilah throws her head back and laughs.

i'm gonna haunt you in your ashes and your smoke, like the punch line to a joke

Bella models her madness on that of others; she is not unique inside Azkaban, her descent is like every other crash and burn around her. Dark nights, she almost doesn't fight to keep her mind from the Dementors. There are nights when Bella almost gives herself up to the cold, the dark, the depths of everything that traps her here.

Some nights, she lets the madness take her over.

And some nights, the screamers are quieter; the night is silent with grief and the unspoken madness that overcomes them. Bella catalogs her memories on these nights; the memories that Azkaban has let her keep, until now.

She remembers nights of terror, hers and others. Azkaban has left Bella death, fire, the feel of her husband's heavy hands on her thighs, the bird-light weight of Cissy's bones beneath Bella's own hands. And blood, it has left her blood, on her hands, on her clothes, and on the mouth of the maddest woman Bella's ever met.

This, she remembers - hiding amongst the vampires, Bella's dark looks and pale skin enough for them to pass, if no one looked too closely, and licking blood from the teeth of a woman too beautiful to be real. Face like a china doll, and when Bella closes her eyes - she never closes her eyes in Azkaban, but if she did - she hears Drusilla's laughter, her voice singing lullabies to the dolls she carries everywhere.

Everything else is starting to go dark like the nights at Azkaban, the other memories are blurring into one, but Drusilla is clear like yesterday.

Bella licks blood from Drusilla's thighs, pale like apparitions, and a voice rings in her head, a voice from the depths of memory, cutting through the screams she hears in the here and now. Drusilla's companion, lean and leonine and light like the moon to Drusilla's night black sky. "She's madder than a hatter," he had said. "Talks to things that aren't there."

Bella remembers, remembers that this was not a warning but a benediction, and she smiled a blood-stained smile, raised blood-stained hands in a gesture that was not peace but was not war.

"Your funeral," he'd said.

Drusilla has fangs, and smooth skin, and a mind that once was clear, now was muddy with ghosts, demons and destruction. She laughs, Bella remembers, she laughs like bells pealing out in the silence of the night, and though Bella was never easily frightened - never frightened at all - the sound sent chills up the back of her neck.

Later, Drusilla had counted the stars through a solid ceiling, and Bella felt the knife edge of madness like steel and guilt and blood, all rolled into one. This is the way that people are mad.

She holds this memory tightly, the only thing left of herself in this place. When the Dementors slide past her cell, Bella throws back her head and laughs, and the laughter of the mad and grief-stricken and broken rings up as echo around her.

and as for me i don't want to get adjusted so i'll head out of this cage before they shut the gate

Once upon a time, before the world went to pieces around their feet, a woman wiser than Andromeda said, "It's all shit in the end, so you just have to decide if you're going to stay down when they hit, or get back up and get even."

Bella was the wild one; Cissy was the careful one; Andromeda has led a life marked mostly by moderation. All three of them have made choices, even if Narcissa chose not to choose. Andromeda chose, and all she has to show for it is a tiny bit of safety, and a daughter, and a burnt mark where her name used to be in the family tree.

Her name is never the same, but Anya twenty years later is still Anya; brash, savvy, tactless. "Your husband died?" she says, toying with a cup of tea. "Well. I'm sorry, I suppose."

Anyone else and Andromeda would be hurt, but Anya, Anya has never played by any human rules, Wizarding or Muggle. She is a breath of fresh air in a world that's suffocating down around Andromeda again, because Anya has seen wars come and go and, she says, "They're all the same, stupid, pointless games of men."

Andromeda tells her the stories, the terror that's clinging to everything Andromeda does every day, and Anya only says, "What, again?" She sounds bored and almost somewhere near amused.

Andromeda had the guts to turn her back on her entire family, but she's never had the guts to think of this, this war, as anything but blood and death and heartbreak. She's never been able to laugh in the face of it all, and Anya, twenty years later than the last time Andromeda saw her, still can. Always has been able to.

Andromeda is safe enough this time around; in her small warm kitchen, with an old friend across the table, she is protected from the outside. She's not important enough for Cissy or Bella to think of her, burnt out of their tapestry, out of their lives. Andromeda worries for Dora; she worries for Sirius and Remus Lupin and for Harry Potter. She does not worry for herself, particularly - she made this choice, not one side or the other, just safety. A life of moderation.

Andromeda chose this.

She tells Anya this, over tea and biscuits and twenty years of catching up. Anya's vengeance is no worse than what the Death Eaters are spreading over doorsteps every day, and sometimes they're much better.

It's December, and the snow is whipping around outside; Andromeda's kitchen is warm and light and the tea is warm against her palms. Anya tells her jokes with punch lines that don't match their beginnings. There has been a hole in Andromeda's chest since Ted died, and nothing can fill that spot, but when Anya leans across the table and kisses her - warm mouth, sweet with tea and sharp with lemon, and Anya has never been one to do anything by halves - Andromeda laughs.

*

author's notes: this is for atra, who, after i bought jell-o, took a two-year old idea and put me on the right path. three sections, each one 500 words exactly. title, summary and section breaks from thea gilmore. in order, the songs are "apparition no. twelve", "saviours and all", "the things we never said", "holding your hand" and "keep up". all five songs are on rules for jokers.

feedback always welcome.

harry potter stories