Recondita armonia

Author's note: Written for scarletladyy in OwnFicFest 2009. Originally for the Omniocular June 2007 'Mentors' Challenge, Prompt #24: Black sisters being taught how to be proper ladies. Title comes from Puccini's Tosca, and translates to 'Concealed harmony'. The duet referenced is Franz Schubert's 'Fantasia in F minor, D940, Op. 103'. Many thanks to Rosamund for helping me through the tough bits and beta-reading.

i. Allegro agitato

Bellatrix never took to the piano. In retrospect, this was less of a surprise than might have been initially supposed. When permitted, her fingers sped across the keys, ignoring missed notes and chords, and ultimately producing a cacophony of notes none could quite comprehend. Uncle Alphard, by far the most lenient of the adults, pronounced it 'modern' with what was nearly a stifled smile. Bellatrix, sensing the general disapproval, flounced into the next room.

"And I thought Madame Irina would help," her mother sighed. "She did, all things considered. Bella was quite frightened of her."

"I like her," eight-year-old Andromeda interrupted, however meekly. "Bella plays too fast. She doesn't stop to learn the notes properly. That's what Madame Irina says."

"Always too fast," sniffed Aunt Walburga. "Let me take Bellatrix in hand, Druella. I'll have her behaving in weeks."

"You're welcome to her," Druella Black declared, with an expansive gesture of her perfectly manicured hands. "I've no idea what to do with her."

And so Bellatrix gave up piano lessons in favour of 'instruction' from Aunt Walburga, conducted by way of lessons three times a week. These included detailed analyses of all the various artefacts strewn throughout 12 Grimmauld Place and surprisingly free access to Uncle Orion's library, but also involved interminable lectures (the term used very loosely) about the Black family and its heritage, and equally endless visits with older relatives where Bellatrix had to sit still and straight and drink tea and make insipid conversation. The only exception was Great-Aunt Elladora, who slurped her tea and related the pratfalls of the many house-elves who had served her and ended their days with their heads mounted on the wall of her second-best parlour.

"Your aunt, Bella, thinks it's a waste," she said crisply. "Don't you, dear?"

Aunt Walburga made a noncommittal sound. Bellatrix smiled wickedly. "That's only because Kreacher will do anything at all to keep her happy."

"That is training, Bellatrix. Nothing more. House-elves are like any other animal. If you don't train them properly when they're young, they'll be worse than useless." Aunt Walburga never called her anything but her full name, and there was a small part of Bellatrix that rather relished what she felt to be more grown-up treatment.

"I never saw the point," Great-Aunt Elladora remarked between sips of tea. "Why bother training them when it's so easy to replace them?"

"We'll simply have to disagree, then," Aunt Walburga concluded. "Bellatrix does seem to be making progress, don't you think?"

It was another thing to get used to: being talked about as though one wasn't there. Bellatrix fought back her scowl, choosing instead to concentrate on taking the daintiest bites possible of her cake.

"Yes, quite. I will admit, I never thought anyone could do it. Just like me at her age," Great-Aunt Elladora reached out and pinched her cheek. "Only far prettier. When do you start at Hogwarts, Bella dear?"

Startled, Bellatrix glanced up. "Next year, I think. Right, Aunt Walburga?"

"Yes, next year. And you'll be in Slytherin, obviously."

Bellatrix had no doubt of that. Aunt Walburga had made it clear that all Blacks went into Slytherin. It was simply the way things were. The Sorting Hat barely touched her head before it sent her there under the unsurprised eyes of Headmaster Armado Dippet. If she had been close enough, she might have heard the rueful sigh. "Another generation of Blacks."

Her lessons did not stop simply because she had left for Hogwarts. During each and every holiday, she would spend at least ten days with Aunt Walburga, who worked her just as hard as any professor back at school. Andromeda and Narcissa joined her for dancing lessons (it seemed silly to incur the expense of musicians for just one at a time) but for the most part it was just Bellatrix and her aunt. Merely a mention of something learnt at school or the other students led to extended digressions on the subject of disagreeable families and who was or was not a permissible acquaintance for Bellatrix Black, eldest daughter of this generation.

It would be far worse for her cousin Sirius. That much she knew well, as he was the eldest boy, for all that he seemed no more than a baby to her. That was before he hid one of her mother's prized mimbulus mimbletonia in her school trunk and it exploded, leaving green sludge all over her things. Unfortunately Aunt Walburga had to see her chasing six-year-old Sirius through the upstairs corridor, slinging Bat-Bogey hexes at him. One hit, and still he turned and laughed at her, bat-ears flapping ludicrously. "You can do better than that!"

And she could, although she never had the chance to prove it. Her aunt marched her into the parlour and delivered a blistering lecture on proper behaviour. Sirius would be punished, she promised, but it was Bellatrix's responsibility to be a good example to the younger ones.

When she returned to Hogwarts for her third year, her looks and evident talent caught the eye of Rodolphus Lestrange, two years above her. The Lestranges were 'new money' and provoked a disagreeable sneer from her mother, but Bellatrix clung to the growing friendship. He didn't treat her like a porcelain doll, she said. He showed her all sorts of interesting things and she liked him.

When she was sixteen, she attended her first ball. It was the annual Midsummer's Eve gala at Malfoy Manor and Rodolphus Lestrange refused to dance with anybody else. But it was the tall, slender, dark-haired gentleman who stood apart and watched her that caught her eye. Was it her imagination or was there a glint of red in his hooded eyes? His gaze made her shiver but she kept her cool with an ease that Aunt Walburga would have admired and waited for Rodolphus to introduce them. Just like a lady.

"So this is the young lady you've told me so much about, Lestrange." He had the most unnerving voice, sharp and caressing at once. Bellatrix lowered her eyes, feeling the heat rise at her neck. "Bellatrix Black. The name suits you admirably." He lingered on the first two syllables--bella, bella, mia bella--and though she did not know it then, she was lost.

She returned to Aunt Walburga's lessons with renewed interest, longing to know everything she could about the Dark Arts. About genealogies and histories and secrets, and how to keep them, although that last set of lessons she never quite learnt to satisfaction. Bellatrix Black, named for a warrior star, would never be a lady, but she learnt how to serve with all her heart.

ii. Andante cantabile

Andromeda, despite her proclaimed liking for Madame Irina, found that after about five years of lessons, her interest waned. Although her teacher had not sighed over Andromeda as she had over Bellatrix, Andromeda knew well that she simply didn't have the talent. What she did have, Madame Irina pointed out, her thick accent oddly softened, was expression. Uncle Alphard, trying to cheer Andromeda up, quoted some writer on the subject of not playing accurately but with wonderful expression, and Andromeda retaliated by flinging a Bat-Bogey Hex at him, slamming the lid of the piano, and storming off.

Her two young cousins were old enough to be interesting and she had taken to spending far more time with them than with the piano, which she left to Narcissa. Sirius caught her eye after the incident with Bellatrix--indeed, she might even have accidentally left the greenhouse door unlocked before that particular mimbulus mimbletonia went missing--and pleasantly surprised her by surviving a gruelling interrogation from Aunt Walburga without giving her away.

All the same, she had the suspicion Aunt Walburga knew who was responsible, as that redoubtable lady kept particularly close watch on her afterward. Thankfully, she departed for Hogwarts within a few days alongside her furious elder sister who had somehow managed to miss what Aunt Walburga had not.

"The little brat!"

"Oh, Bella, it was just a silly prank," Andromeda said through a mouthful of pumpkin pasty. "You sound like Narcissa."

It was the perfect thing to say. Bella wrinkled her nose and opened her Potions textbook, and Andromeda was left to her own devices.

Perhaps it was because she was the middle daughter, or perhaps Bella had exhausted all of Aunt Walburga's energy, but, regardless of the reason, Andromeda spent her summer holidays much as she had as a child. Indeed, unlike Sirius, she barely needed to try to sneak away whenever she felt the urge. There did seem to be advantages to having Bella as one's elder sister. One immediately became a saint in comparison.

Up to a point.

It was during her sixth year at Hogwarts that Narcissa approached her with the duet. Andromeda had returned to the piano intermittently during the holidays, prompted by the irresistible melodies that drifted through the house whenever Narcissa played. As she studied the secondo score, she eyed her sister dubiously.

"I think you've overestimated me."

Narcissa gave her a secretive smile. "I think you'll rise to the challenge."

And, just as easily as Bella had once read her--less so now, as Andromeda grew warier of her sister's taste in company--Narcissa had Andromeda sitting at the piano for hours on end, picking her way through the spiderweb of notes. Not, she admitted, that she begrudged the distraction. Especially when they returned to school and it gave her a tailor-made excuse to avoid anyone and everyone. In particular one Ted Tonks.

Even if he did see through her almost as well as Narcissa did. "You're always running off."

"Maybe," Andromeda said through her teeth as she tried to find a way past him, "I have places to be. Things to do. Other obligations."

"You're avoiding me."

Of course she was. There had been one kiss in Hogsmeade the previous term, one foolish, ridiculous incident after she'd had too much of Madam Rosmerta's mulled mead and stumbled into a snowball fight between Hufflepuff and Gryffindor. Seizing the chance to avenge herself for years of snow dropped down her back, she'd pummelled Sirius with snowballs until he and little James Potter had surrendered. For a moment, everyone around her seemed to forget that she was a Slytherin and a Black to boot, and Ted had--well. It would never happen again.

"Andromeda Black--"

"What do you want from me?" she demanded. "It was a mistake. You can't honestly believe--"

"It isn't about believing anything," Ted said, with a slow, infuriating smile. "It's about what happened, and the fact that there is clearly something between us."

"Happened. Past tense, Tonks. There is nothing between us, and there won't ever be." Too quickly, she turned aside. "Please. I'm asking you to leave me alone."

"Is it too much to ask that you give me a chance? Or," he added, voice sharpening, "has your sister been teaching you to be a proper Black and shun filthy Mudbloods like the plague?"

"That's not fair and you know it!" Andromeda protested, heat rising in her face as she remembered young Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs shrinking as she walked past, whispers of Bella's exploits shivering in the air. "I don't agree with what she's done."

"But you haven't stopped it either. You still smile at her at home, I'm sure; you still see her and listen to her--"

"She's my sister!" Her voice cracked on the word. "She wasn't always like that. I don't know what happened, but that monster is controlling her and..."

"Your cousin Sirius thinks otherwise. He thinks she's enjoying it."

"Sirius is young. He doesn't know any better." It was cruel and dismissive toward her cousin, but she didn't care. "Please, Ted. Let me pass."

He did, waiting till she'd moved some distance away before calling, "You know it's true, Andromeda. Stop lying to yourself, and you might even get away from them before it's too late."

A few weeks later, during Easter holidays, she sat beside Narcissa at the piano for the first time, and they began to stumble through the piece. Andromeda found herself following her younger sister's lead without thinking, and, for the first time in weeks, was able to block out the recollection of Ted Tonks' words and everything they meant.

Afterward, Narcissa looked at her, curiosity gleaming in her eyes. "I told you you could do it. You're far cleverer than you think, Andromeda. But, don't worry. I won't tell anyone."

It was, in the end, the greatest gift Narcissa could have given her, although her younger sister couldn't possibly have known it at the time.

iii. Adagio sostenuto

Of the three, Narcissa was the deliberate one. She followed Madame Irina's instructions to the letter, shaping measures and cadenzas one by one until they formed a perfect tapestry of sounds. At odd hours of the day, visitors to the Black house would hear the ghostly chords and arpeggios, and smile to themselves. A perfect lady, Druella Black was known to sigh self-indulgently, and she'll go farther than either of her sisters for it.

To be a perfect lady, Narcissa learnt very early on, one needed to be virtually invisible.

While Bella raged at Cousin Sirius, Narcissa watched and kept her thoughts to herself. When her eldest sister began disappearing at night, returning just before dawn with the scent of smoke and things far worse clinging to her, she bit her tongue. And, though she did not approve in the least, she said nothing when, on a few stray occasions that made little to no impression at the time, she caught sight of Andromeda speaking to that Mudblood from Hufflepuff.

Of course, in retrospect, it had meant everything.

She had been almost forgotten in the maelstrom of rage and confusion and grief that had followed Andromeda's announcement--Ted Tonks and I were married this morning. We're going to have a child and we're going to be happy, and nothing you or any of this family can do will stop us.--shrinking deeper and deeper into herself in the far corner of the parlour in 12 Grimmauld Place. The Largo movement of the duet she had come to think of as hers and Andromeda's thundered through her head, drowning Aunt Walburga's shrieks and curses. Uncle Orion seemed to have vanished into his great, carved chair--he had said nothing to Andromeda at all, only watched her as though his very heart had broken.

Until her aunt caught sight of her, seizing on an easy victim. "What did you see? How much did you know? She can't have done this all on her own!"

Narcissa shook her head mutely, the words trapped in her throat. A thousand fragments were coming together in her mind, like scattered puzzle pieces, things she hadn't noticed at the time but that had obviously been important. Andromeda's aloofness, the fights with their mother over silly things, her taking a job at the Ministry despite Aunt Walburga's insistence that women in the Black family didn't work.

Somewhere, behind Aunt Walburga, Narcissa could hear her mother sobbing uncontrollably, lost in her own emotional storm. All Narcissa could do was continue to shake her head, hoping her face would convince her aunt that, no, she hadn't known anything, how could she have known anything when Andromeda had suddenly become so very good at keeping secrets?

"Walburga, enough." Uncle Orion had risen, placed one hand on his wife's shoulder. "Can't you see she's terrified? She knows nothing."

It was Uncle Alphard who led her from the room, eyes warily on Aunt Walburga until he had closed the door to the parlour behind them. "Will you be all right?"

Narcissa did not answer, casting about instead for the small second parlour where she knew the piano waited, virtually untouched since their last visit. But it was during that last visit that she and Andromeda had finally played through the entire duet without a single slip, astonishing Madame Irina, who they had invited to watch.

From behind the parlour door, she could hear snatches of conversation, punctuated by her mother's hiccupping cries.

"...can't just let her go on as she is..."

"Walburga, you're overreacting. Narcissa's never shown any sign of--"

"Well, neither did the other one, did she?" Already, Andromeda had lost her name. "Can't be too careful in these times, Orion. Druella, do stop blubbering and make yourself useful."

"But, my child, Walburga! My girl, my--"

"She's not your child anymore," Aunt Walburga said, implacable as the stones of Grimmauld Place itself. "She's nothing. A blot on the family, and we can't have that." There was a small, hissing sound, followed by Druella Black's cries dissolving into high-pitched keening. She never spoke her daughter's name again.

When Narcissa once more ventured into the parlour, a day or two later, Andromeda's name had disappeared from the tapestry depicting the Black family's lineage. Between her name and Bella's, there was nothing but a black-edged hole. It contented Aunt Walburga to behave for the rest of the holiday as though Andromeda had never existed, but Narcissa could think of nothing but that blasted hole in the tapestry, the ghost of a sister she could not forget.

She found Andromeda's part of the duet tucked carefully behind hers. There was no note inside, and Narcissa couldn't have said whether she was disappointed or relieved. She placed both scores at the bottom of her trunk, consigning them to dust.

She did not, however, give up the piano altogether. Aunt Walburga and her mother smiled graciously as Narcissa played for guests, eyes decorously lowered. When negotiations began between her parents and those of Lucius Malfoy, both she and her prospective fiancé kept their smiles to themselves, at least until Narcissa played a certain Chopin waltz that may or may not have prompted Lucius to kiss her four months earlier, and the Malfoy heir had to feign a coughing fit to keep from laughing aloud.

Madame Irina attended the wedding, along with hundreds of more illustrious guests. With tears in her eyes, she embraced the bride and whispered, "Do not forget Schubert, dushenka." When she pulled away, Narcissa discovered a small note tucked into her bouquet.

Many congratulations on your escape, Narcissa. You chose the safer route, but, then again, you were always the sensible one. All my love, Andromeda.

Lucius looked at her in surprise as tears welled up in her eyes, but she shook her head, shoving the note into her sleeve and schooling her face once more into that of a bride on her wedding day.

One not haunted by those who were not there.

iv. Coda. June, 1998.

The once-pristine lawns surrounding Malfoy Manor are crisscrossed with ruts, trampled and strewn with mud and rubbish. For the first time in weeks, however, it is silent. The damage wrought by Ministry officials and Death Eaters alike has, for the moment, faded away.

The two women stand by the parlour window. The elder, brown hair streaked with grey and white that she has not bothered to hide, holds out a handful of sheet music. "You did always like cryptic messages, Narcissa."

"I knew you would recognise it." The younger, blonde and elegant, but whose eyes hold echoes of horrors not yet extinguished, crosses the room to where a grand piano sits, miraculously untouched by the damage dealt to the rest of the house. "It's amazing, what a little misdirecting spell can do," she murmurs, words etched with disgust. "I almost want to burn the entire place to the ground, but..."

Andromeda sits beside her, all caution, her eyes flickering every now and then to the pram where a brown-haired baby lies sleeping. "I don't want to wake him."

"It never woke Draco," Narcissa replies with a faint smile. "Of course, I suspect you're out of practice."

"Not as much as you might think."

The piece begins, stumbling at first, then gaining fluency and confidence. Neither sister notices as the baby opens his eyes to watch them curiously. For the first time in many months, laughter echoes in the corridors of Malfoy Manor.

They are the two remaining ladies of the House of Black, and they do not care who sees them now.