Her Destruction

"Oh, Bella...what have you done?" I gasped...half in exasperation, half in amusement. Bella laughed...her high, beautifully wild laugh. "Nothing, nothing at all, dear sister...Sirius won't care. He'll just laugh...don't worry, you'll see."

In the end, Sirius did care that Bella had let slip that he had been dating Muggleborn Ophelia Jones...but he was the heir of the house of Black and was let off quite easily...and within a week, all was forgiven between Bella and Sirius.

That was Bellatrix's weakness. She could get away with anything...anything at all...or so she liked to think. It was partially true too...she was so beautiful...boys did her bidding without having to be asked twice. Mother hated her, it was a mutual feeling between them, but I suppose Mother was also afraid of Bella. Narcissa more or less didn't care. ...And I, for Bella...I would've done anything.

...But Bella was wrong. She couldn't get away with everything.

Quidditch...throwing the quaffle at the goalposts...the best Quidditch player could make every goal...five, ten, twenty times in a roll. But sooner or later...he has to miss...just once...even if he does everything possible to prevent it. He's just putting off the inevitable...and sadly, he'll miss the one time it matters most. And the higher the pedestal...the harder the fall...the more times he makes it...the harder that one miss will be.

Bella learned that...too late. She learned too late that being a Black couldn't save her from everything.

Regulus learned...and paid the price of his life. Narcissa...never quite the brave one, kept out of the spotlight. Sirius and I learned. ...And we all knew Bella would realize too...but we didn't know when.

She was always the center of attention at Hogwarts...Queen of her inner circle of elite Slytherins...with 'Cissa and me her only equals. She cut a swathe through Hogwarts...leaving a trail of scandal, broken hearts, and drama behind her. Prefect, Head Girl...she graduated at the top of her class...although she never took the time to touch a single book. Studying was beneath her and her Slytherin brilliance.

She married Rodolphus Lestrange. No one was under the illusion that she loved him...it was all an arranged marriage...a Black-Lestrange union and alliance.

And then...she met Lord Voldemort...and he enticed her with the promise of power beyond anything she could have ever learned at Hogwarts or under the guidance of Dumbledore. She joined his leagues willingly...rose through his ranks of followers...and with the first fall of the Dark Lord, was thrown into Azkaban. I thought she would've done what Malfoy, Avery, Nott...and the others had done and gotten her way out of Azkaban. She certainly possessed the cunning and the power to do so. It surprised me, reading the Daily Prophet...that my sister had willingly gone to Azkaban rather than denounce the Dark Lord. When he rose to power again, Bella joined him once more.

She really did think that they would win the war. She really did think that the Dark would prevail over the Light. Well...the Light didn't prevail over the Dark...but the opposite didn't happen either. When Lord Voldemort was defeated by a now full-grown Boy-Who-Lived, my sister still would not denounce her former master to save herself.

I knew what was coming...we all knew what was coming. The trial...the questionings...the reports...the verdict, and my sister, my perfect Bella did not deny anything.

Even so...the end result was a shock...Bella was given the choice of death or life imprisonment...as expected; she chose to die instantly and painlessly rather than suffer for the rest of her life.

The owl, announcing the time and date of Bellatrix's execution, asked if I wanted to send any last letters to her. By then, I had not talked to or seen Bella for years. I vividly recalled the last time I saw her in person...my nineteenth birthday, when I had announced to her, in private, of my engagement to Ted...my plans of running away and eloping. I had pleaded with her to understand, to help me if possible. I remembered too, the way she had turned away from me...the way she had scornfully replied, "Andromeda, you fool...have you forgotten the values of the Black family? Have you sunk so low as to believe in love? Have you forgotten the loyalty you owe to our family? Leave, Andromeda, leave now...you are no longer a part of the Black family."

I had left that night...and with the owl sent to me from my parents, was assured that I had been formally disowned, my name blasted off of the official family tree.

...But the ties of the Black family go deeper than that...beyond documents or signed papers. My loyalty to my sisters and my cousins would never be broken...as I knew Bella's loyalty to me would not either.

And yet, through all of these years, she did not once show any sympathy, any mercy to me. She did not once attempt to try to contact me...although I always waited...

...So I sat at my writing desk in my home in Glasgow...my fingers twirling my quill around...a blank parchment in front of me, staring ahead, yet seeing nothing.

What would I write? What was there left to say? Years' worth of words lost between us...the silence...and yet, the bond was not broken...it would not be broken even in death. It was our curse and our gift...the curse and the gift of the Black family. Loyalty to each other would never be forsaken...but in the end, that was what had broken us apart, our loyalty and our love for each other.

I closed my eyes, reminiscing...Regulus, dead. Sirius...killed by Bella. Bella...now faces her own death. Narcissa, safe and alive...but is ultimately unhappy. ...And me, the middle child, Andromeda Clytemnestra Black Tonks, the one who had run away from her own family...where was I now? I was nothing without my sisters. And yet, I had fared the better for being disowned.

What was there to tell Bella? ...That I could not ever forgive her for what she had done...for the numerous killings and tortures she had committed...for killing my beloved Sirius? That I would never forget how she had turned her back on me when I needed her most? That yet, through this all, I was still loyal to her, that I was grateful to have been her sister; that I had never and would never stop loving her? How could I express a lifetime of hatred, love, distrust and hurt feelings in one letter? How?

Yet, I still knew that despite all, she had remained loyal to me, as she was taught to from birth. All of the people she had killed, she had never touched my family or me...except for Sirius...

I set my quill to parchment...

Bella...

You remain in my thoughts, always and forever.

Your sister, for all eternity,

Andromeda Tonks

It was enough...she would understand.

---

The day of the execution came...and I didn't want to go. But I felt that it would be my one last favor to Bella to attend...to be with her in her last moments of life.

Narcissa came too, and when we saw each other, we embraced...our old rivalries...everything forgotten. We would never be as we had once been, but under extreme circumstances, we would unite once more...one last time. I took my seat in the front row and looked toward where Bellatrix was seated, awaiting her own execution. Despite all that Azkaban had done to her, she was still obviously beautiful...I met her gaze and she smiled her secret half-smile, still arrogant and playful. It was as if we were teenagers once more, as if I was her best friend and dearest sister once more...and she was about to put on another show to amuse us all. Except this time, there would be no appreciative laughter from admirers.

This was Bellatrix's fall, and she knew it as well as anyone. This was the one time she had aimed at something and missed, the one time she could not get away with everything...and she would pay for it with her life. She knew this, and yet, she was still as calm, cool, and proud as ever.

There was quite a large crowd gathered for Bella's execution...many of which were beyond jubilant to watch Bella be killed by the Avada Kedavra curse she had used on so many of their loved ones.

...But my mind was a blur. Sirius and Regulus were both dead...when Bella left, there would only be 'Cissa and me. Just the two of us left out of the noble house of Black. We would not cry or sob; our breeding would not allow it. Instead, we stared ahead...unseeing...

The moment of Bella's death came...and I closed my eyes. I could not bear to watch it.

As the flash of green light came...

"Oh Bella, what have you done?"

And I could almost hear her wild laughter...

"Nothing, nothing at all, dear sister."