Family Album

When Rabastan Lestrange was asked by the chaps at work when he was thinking of leaving home, he was wont to reply that being in the rare and privileged position of loving, respecting and liking his parents, he had absolutely no immediate intention of depriving himself of the pleasure of their company and the comforts of their house. Having not married young, Rabastan was set to join the comfortable majority of witches and wizards who wed in their fourth decade, when one had a much greater choice available than one's own school year and those on either side. For those persons less willing to wait until their late thirties, there was the further alternative of what one might politely term introducing new stock, but obviously that was not an alternative for Rabastan. So it was that in his early twenties and with a demanding and exciting job with the British branch of the Kobold Schweiz banking house, Rabastan Lestrange was enjoying a bachelor life at home, and on the 23^rd of December, he was throwing a party.

His parents had gone off to Rabastan's paternal grandparents already, expecting their sons and daughter-in-law to Floo in on Christmas Eve, and in their absence Rabastan had undertaken an expedition to the cellars, cracked open some of the best, and invited his friends to come, eat, drink and be merry. He looked around the crowded rooms. They were doing him proud.

'What you have to understand,' Wilkes was saying, as the crowd around her listened in fascination, 'what you have to understand is that it's all about quality. Keeping up the purity of the line. Let just anybody breed and all sorts of defects start to crop up. It has to be kept under control. Indiscriminate reproduction is all very well for crude working stock, but we've got to keep up the pedigrees.'

Rabastan helped himself to another glass of tokay, half-listening despite himself to the gory details delivered by that familiar treacly voice.

'Pour me one, would you?' Narcissa handed him a glass. 'Thanks. I know it sounds disloyal, but sometimes I wish she wouldn't be quite so graphic.'

Rabastan nodded. 'It'll certainly haunt my dreams. I did not need to know that much about house elf cloacal ducts.'

'Not very festive, is it? Still, they seemed to be enjoying it. Or possibly they're just mesmerised.'

The night wore on. Everyone stayed just the right side of rat-arsed, the glasses largely unbroken, and the conversation just clean enough for mixed company. Severus Snape had managed to bow out of a game of spin the bottle with surprising grace, and teamed with Laurie Nott was losing badly at bridge. Rabastan circled the party, enjoying its success. A hand caught at his elbow.

'Good party.' Bellatrix smiled down at him. 'Nicely in order.'

'Thanks for your help. All those disapproving glares at the just right moments.'

'It was nothing.'

'All the same, I didn't really fancy an orgy in my parents' house. What if the house elves couldn't get the carpets clean?'

Bellatrix laughed. At Hogwarts, Andromeda had always said she was a prude, and in some ways she was, terribly, but it could be quite useful. Rabastan had long been resigned to the fact that he'd never had a chance with the witch who had become his sister-in-law (a fact that still amazed him at times, though he supposed that Rodolphus was charming, and handsome, and rather taller than he, and perhaps from Bella's perspective the other thing was an advantage) and determined only to make sure that they liked one another. As an enemy, she didn't bear thinking about.

'Hey, Rabastan!' Lucius Malfoy's voice called from across the room. 'Get over here and listen to what Evan has to say about developments in Bulgaria.'

'No shop talk!' Rodolphus's voice rang out. 'Don't you dare encourage them, Rab. C'mon, Lucius, have another glass. Brandy, was it? And Evan, shut up about Bulgaria and tell us about that Delacourt girl we saw you with at the match last week.'

The party rolled on. Young Avery was doing a rather neat quickstep with Tamar Waldegrave to celebrate their bridge success as Crabbe rattled away on the pianoforte. He was really rather good, Rabastan reflected; clearly brains had little to do with piano-playing. He and Rodolphus between them had managed to keep the talk away from business, overtly at least; Rabastan had noticed his sister-in-law having quite a number of subtle little conversations as she leant casually against various bits of furniture. A small crowd in the games room was playing blazes, someone, somehow, had got hold of a banjo and was accompanying Crabbe, and in the hall a pair of stockings dangled perilously over a lampshade. For a brief, irrationally envious moment Rabastan wondered whether spin the bottle had degenerated into strip poker. No - he recognized the little holly motif embroidered around the ankles - they were simply Narcissa's, and Narcissa was well known for a deep and abiding loathing of hosiery that left the houses of friends and family liberally festooned with discarded bits of silk. He tucked them away in her cloak pocket as he passed the cupboard. Severus Snape appeared beside him.

'It's proving quite the night. Thanks.'

'Pleasure.' A thought struck him. 'What are you doing for Christmas, Severus? Off to your parents?'

'Hardly.' Rabastan winced. How's that for a social slip, my boy, he thought, resolving to give himself a good mental kicking when he had a moment - or at least to leave off the tokay. The smile on the sallow face before him flickered, then recovered. 'Actually, I've been invited to dinner at the Royal Society of Potion Masters.'

'That's terrific!' Saved, thank goodness. 'You'll be the youngest there - and by forty years or so, I'd imagine.'

'Thirty-seven. I confess; I looked it up.'

'It's impressive, anyhow. I ...' The doorbell rang. 'I'd better see who it is. You didn't hear carols, did you?'

Snape shook his head.

'That's all right then.'

The shadow of a dark figure was visible through the mullioned windows on either side of the door. Snape wandered tactfully off down the hall. Lucius Malfoy, from his vantage point on the other side of the hinges found himself uncommonly impressed when the young wizard's stride didn't even hesitate at Rabastan's next words.

'My Lord. What an unexpected pleasure.'

The arrival of the Dark Lord Voldemort was not in fact the sort of damper on the mood that Rabastan had expected. The Dark Lord merely took a glass of Madeira and settled himself to talk to Avery, who was unfortunate enough to possess a similar interest in magic relating to serpents. Rabastan's thoughts were arrested by a hand upon his shoulder.

'Be my partner?' enquired that fabulous voice. Wilkes's long hair gleamed dark golden under the lamps.

'Of course,' he replied, and took his place at the bridge table. Narcissa dealt. Behind her, he caught the flick of Bellatrix's black robes as she left the room.

They won, incredible, but Rabastan suspected that the Malfoys had their minds on other things. Wilkes had Floo'ed home, not quite enough of an apparator to try it after an evening out, and he had shut the door on the blond heads disappearing sedately down the street. The Malfoys were off to Vienna in the morning, he recalled, to stay with Lucius's mother, the Black parents being on an extended tour somewhere in the South Seas. Low voices still mumbled from the games room, Rodolphus among them. No Bellatrix. She was probably moving to usher out the last few guests. He could hear her voice now, murmuring softly through the drawing room door that stood ajar, outlined in a rectangle of warm red light. Something - some hitherto unknown instinct of divination, or the highly developed one of self-preservation - stopped his hand as he reached out to push it fully open. He walked on past down towards the kitchen, filled a glass of water, and padded stealthily back behind a chuntering house-elf. He stopped, narrowing his eyes to peer through the gap at the hinge.

She was seated on the old red sofa, one hand upturned in her lap, the other laid over a long white hand that rested on her breast, its fingers stroking her skin through the lace. Her neck was craned back over her shoulder as if she were drunk, her eyes half-closed under their heavy lids, her lips slightly parted, cheeks stained pink with wine and warmth and ... Rabastan breathed out slowly. A coil of thick black hair snaked over one shoulder, he saw the light on it shift with the rise and fall of her breathing. It was suicide, this, he knew it was. He must step away, back into the games room, to Rodolphus ... God, what did Rodolphus think? Did he think Bella was talking aimlessly to her brother-in-law out in the kitchen? And the others, did they ... ? But no, no one knew, Rabastan wasn't obtuse, last to pick up on the gossip; nobody knew. Rodolphus, perhaps, had an idea, but Rodolphus had done his duty, ensured the marriage was legal, and no doubt the rest was some civilised arrangement. Civilisation, faugh! Bellatrix leaning back upon the sofa, the Dark Lord's hand tracing her jaw-line, his other hand reaching up - God, he was tall - reaching up to pluck a berry from the mistletoe that hung above his head. He put it to her mouth and the white teeth parted, the long throat swallowed. She kissed his hand, caught it in her own and kissed the long fingers. Rabastan saw her teeth. He heard the whisper, My Lord. The shadows shifted in the room and she was standing up, one arm flung over a shoulder bony beneath fur and velvet robes, her body curving forward. Now if ever, Rabastan must move. They might walk out any moment, the Dark Lord might turn and see, but no. The red eyes were still turned away from him, and heavy lids drooped over Bella's.

There was a footstep in the hall. Rabastan's head jerked round.

'What the hell are you doing?' Rabastan could say nothing. His eyes widened and Severus stared at him fiercely before raising his wand and mouthing - and Rabastan realised that the other words had only been mouthed, too - but this time there was a flick of the wrist,

'Impervius!'

Snape's hand on his wrist, pulling him through the front door, another swish of the wand, 'Finite incantatem,' a blast of cold night air, and between that and sudden understanding of sheer bloody terror Rabastan found his attention very much back in business.

'You knew!' he gasped.

'No. But I do now. For God's sake, practice your Occlumency, Rabastan. You'll have us all down if you go on like that in front of the Ministry.'

It was late. The first waves of a potentially dreadful hangover began to break in his head.

'Wanting her, I understand. You do, too, I think. Everyone else at school looked at Andromeda, but you looked at her.'

Snape shrugged.

'Then. But that's a long time ago now. Lots of wreckage under the bridge.'

'Him though ... Why? I don't pretend to know much about women ... but my God, why? What does she see in him?'

Snape's lips twitched upwards at the corners.

'The same as you,' he said. 'The same as me. Power.'

'But like that?' Rabastan saw the white hand at the throat, the long limbs, and suddenly Rodolphus's lean form, the prominent bones at the wrist-joint, brown eyes glowing in the firelight. Involuntarily he thought, it must have been quite a wedding night, what with one thing and another.

'Just like that.' Snape opened the front door, called good-bye slightly louder than necessary, and shoved Rabastan forward into the hall. An elf caught at the handle and closed the door gently behind its master. The door to the games room opened and Bellatrix came out, followed by her husband.

'Oh,' she said, 'is Severus gone? I wanted to wish him happy Christmas. I don't think that he usually has much of one.'

'He will this year.' It was surprisingly easy to sound normal. 'He's off to dinner with the Royal Society of Potions Masters.'

'Good,' Nott said. 'He works too hard: he deserves a bit of reward. Well, I'm off. Cheerio, and thanks for everything. See you in the New Year.'

'Is he the last?' Rabastan asked.

Rodolphus nodded.

'The Dark Lord apparated, and Tamar took the Floo. I'm for bed; the old room, the old rug, and the old brooms stencilled on the ceiling. I can't believe the APs still haven't redecorated.' He turned towards the stairs and held out a hand. 'Coming, Bellatrix?'

'Goodnight, Rabastan.' Bella ran her thumb along the knuckles of the proffered hand before draping an arm around the high and bony shoulder, leaning on her husband as they made their way upstairs. Rabastan turned the key in the front door, shot the bolt home, and made his way back to the kitchen to pour some more water down his throat. Up in his bathroom, he poured it over his head as well. Passing over the first floor landing he had heard it; two sets of feet on the floor in Bella's room. Red eyes in a white face, white fingers slipping beneath the black lace collar of a set of robes, a poison berry on her tongue and her teeth biting down upon it. Power, Severus had said. A thin stream of cold water trickled down the back of Rabastan's neck, as he understood what he had known for a very long time; he was in deep over his head.