Beauty

I have always loved beauty.

Maybe you have spoken to my sister, Narcissa, and she has told you that I love only destruction and carnage. She would be wrong. Maybe you have spoken to my invisible, forgotten, dead sister, Andromeda, and she has told you that I am incapable of love and that destruction is buried so deep as my very genes. She would be wrong as well.

Beauty has always caught my eye, but then again, beauty has always caught the eye of the Blacks. When I was born to my Momma and Poppa they named me Bellatrix, the root of which means beautiful. My skin was pale, even then, and my hair was as black as ebony. But unlike the child that the barren queen wished so fervently for my lips were not blood red. They were colorless, and have remained so to this day.

Momma always says that it makes beautiful. It makes me just as much an Ice Queen and pale, blonde Narcissa. Her name has to do with beauty too, and she thinks that that's just perfect. Narcissa cares as much for perfection as I do for beauty. Momma always thought that our bond was so beautiful...and perfect.

However, when I was a young girl, no more than five, I discovered a form of beauty much different than Narcissa's. I had been walking in the snow with my youngest sister, Andromeda, when we came across a rather gruesome scene. My Poppa and two of his close friends had been hunting in the backgrounds of our home, and they had managed to bring down a deer. They had cut open its flank in a truly primordial fashion. I suppose its blood was meant to be used in some sort of potion, but they hadn't done a good job of capturing it, and the red, thick liquid had drenched the pearly white snow.

I don't remember much of what happened after that. Andromeda screamed and ran, of course, like any young girl would do, and my Poppa looked up, startled. When he saw me frozen in my place, however, snow whipping about my new black cloak, he smiled wickedly. He knew from my bewitched black eyes that I, like he, loved the site of red on white, of blood on delectably pale flesh. The contrast was true beauty, and from then on I was taken with the mix of two colors, one so nonexistent and the other so life giving.

Of course, my Poppa was all too glad to endorse my..."unhealthy"...habits. Soon after the deer incident he gave me a dagger with a hilt made from the horn of the slain deer and three rubies set into it, an object with a private symbolic meaning that only the two of us would ever know. Then he bought me white pets, sealing their fates as doomed. My Momma always screamed when she found their lifeless white bodies, stained with their own blood and sometimes a bit of mine. She screamed at my Poppa for ruining her firstborn, but her cries fell on deaf ears. My Poppa had all ready taken an interest to me that was visibly absent with my little sisters.

One day the little birds and kittens and stopped coming. I remember that summer night, when I was barely fifteen, waiting for a house-elf to bring me a tiny white mouse or dove, and I remember my rage in finding that I would have none. My Poppa always said that my rage was a beauty all of its own. It would seem almost fitting then that at midnight that fateful night it was my Poppa who appeared in the doorway of my bedroom. He wore no shirt, his pants were charcoal black, and he had slit himself down one cheek. His blood, a shade or two darker and thicker than was normal, trickled in a beautiful stream down his pale skin--the same pale skin I had inherited from him!--and onto his broad shoulders.

"Beautiful Bella," he breathed, and every word he might have said was said in that short compliment. That night I stopped slitting the bellies of little animals and began slitting the belly of my Poppa. We did other things too, things that your dirty mind will have to imagine, things that I shall not put into words.

I will tell you this though: What I did with my Poppa, it was a beautiful thing.

It was inevitable that my Momma should find out about our...relationship. I was seventeen then, and I had matured into a beautiful young woman. My Momma saw none of this, though. All she saw was the freak her daughter had become. She had come to love only perfect Narcissa, and my Poppa had come to love only beautiful me. It was a fair trade, I suppose, though, when I reflect on our poor, broken family, I wonder how lonely little Andromeda must have felt.

She caught us together, him half-naked and myself with a dagger in my hand, cutting him across the arm, and she screamed. Dear darkness but did she scream herself hoarse, her lungs contracting horribly, and she felt all the pain she had brought upon me with her scornful glares. I would say now that that moment was beautiful, but I believe that I shall borrow Narcissa's term and say that it was perfect.

That was the last of my "sessions" with my Poppa. I cannot truthfully say that I was disappointed, for I was expanding and readying for new things. I found a husband soon after that, for my Momma would not allow my presence in her home. I found a man who loved blood and all that involved in gaining it. His name was Rodolphus Lestrange, and his lack of good looks was made up for in his want of blood. My sister Narcissa never was the wiser as to my hasty departure from our home, or the reason I settled down with such an imperfection as Rodolphus, but like the perfect sister she is she accepted it blindly.

Rodolphus did not remain my main passion for long. There's always a better man out there, and soon enough one came along. His lust for blood was gargantuan they say, and his love for the death of mudbloods and muggles would grow to be legendary. At first he told us to call him Tom Riddle, but soon he become to be known as...Well, his name in unspeakable, to all who have heard of him, such is the fear he invokes in others.

Our Dark Lord, we call him, and in turn, he calls us. I am among the few women he has found pleasing enough to become a Death Eater...And pleasing is a word that has so many meanings.

I served my Lord faithfully, without question. Often our blood would mingle, palms slashed so beautifully, and I would be as close to sated as I'll ever be. But alas, nothing beautiful will ever last, and in the October of nineteen-eighty my Lord met his downfall in the form of a tiny bloody rug rat. I was there, I was sharing his pride in destroying the one thing that could ever stop him, and I was there when the Killing Curse backfired, destroying his body and throwing every Death Eater alive into a very...precarious...position.

We had given everything to this man, our most powerful Dark Lord, and now the world saw him as a nothing. We, his faithful servants, his minions unto death, scattered ourselves like sand in the wind. Some staid ultimately faithful to our Master, and some chose to pretend that he had never happened.

I, of course, was one of the most faithful, and I, along with my husband, brother-in-law, and a young novice of a Death Eater, sought out a pair of married Aurors, Frank and Alice Longbottom. If anyone should know where my Master was it would be these two. Unfortunately...we got carried away. My brother-in-law, Rabastan, thinks that the sight of writhing, screaming, tortured bodies is much more beautiful than blood. He made short work of Alice Longbottom, and then he watched as my husband and I cut Frank Longbottom.

"Vampiros," he whispered, fascinated by our quick, graceful, beautiful motions. "Vampires!"

The Crouch boy, not the innocent, sickly creature his mother so believed him to be, cackled in the corner. He had found the Longbottoms' son, whose name escapes me, and was dangling the child out the window. The little boy wailed, and his wails sent great shots of triumph through us all.

"This is what happens to those who defy our Dark Lord, muggle-loving scum," I hissed in Longbottom's pain-contorted face. The Crouch boy guffawed. He didn't stop cackling though, that time, and when the dozen or so Aurors sent to capture us burst through the door the Longbottoms' kitchen they took him away in peals of laughter. Since then I have learned that Sirius Black, my blood traitor of a cousin, was brought to Azkaban in much the same state of mind.

Of course, I was sentenced to like in Azkaban, and my beauty began to melt away. Like all prisoners in Azkaban, my fourteen years spent there took a terrible toll. Both my husband and his brother died, from what I was never told. I became a ghost of the woman I once was. My beautiful looks fell to disrepair, and my thick black hair became matted like a rat's nest.

However, I staid sane. Every singly Death Eater admitted to Azkaban staid sane. It's a fact that the stupid fools at the Ministry of Magic have not yet clued in on. They should have, though, by now. We staid sane because we all knew that our Dark Lord would return. We all knew he'd be back one day, and that he'd free us. Oh, it might not have been soon, for even our powerful Master needed to recover, but we knew that, once freed, he'd reward us beyond our wildest dreams.

We were not mistaken.

It seems ironic to me that the very person to bring him back was the very person that destroyed him. I so wish I could have been present at my Master's rebirth. I so wish I could have been there and watched Harry Potter die! But his death was not destined to happen that night. The vexation of a boy escaped, and it wasn't until recently that I came face to face with him in the Ministry's Department of Mysteries, while trying to gain a certain...prophecy.

He's an underfed little fuck, that snipe of a brat. It might be the only good things that his muggle filth relatives will ever do, mistreating that boy. The moment I saw him I wanted to wipe that sickening, determined expression off his face. In the years to come, I will admit, he might become...beautiful.

I didn't want that to happen!

I wanted to slice his arms and chest and legs and face open with my dagger. I wanted to steal his beauty and watch his filthy blood pool around his body. I wanted to make him scream, scream like I did so many nights in my tiny Azkaban cell, and I wanted him to feel death without dying.

If I hadn't lost my sanity in Azkaban then I think I might have lost it there, staring at the thin face of the boy who ruined everything! I taunted him, of course, and Lucius, my brother-in-law by his marriage to my sister, chided me. He was the "brains of the operation", and he was already fed up with my...morose...attitude. I quieted down then, but the night was far from over.

Eventually an inevitable fight ensued. A group of adults from the Order of the Phoenix came bursting in to save the idiotic smites that were children. I was surprised, but not disappointed, to find myself facing Sirius Black, my cousin.

So the rumors were correct...Albus Dumbledore (may he rot is hell) is hiding my convict of a cousin. Before I knew it we were throwing curses at each other, both of the magic and swearing kind. He taunted me as I had taunted his godson only moments before.

"Is that the best you can do?" he'd cry in his crowing, teasing way. His teasing angered me, a king of anger that was not the beautiful kind my Poppa had loved.

The fight lasted maybe two minutes before I won. With one last curse I killed my cousin, the last of the true Blacks, and watched, in beautiful triumph, as he fell back into the veil of death. The Potter boy panicked, of course, and he pursued me. Surprising how much my rotten cousin had an impact on that boy...If anyone Sirius loved had been hurt than he would have murdered them. It was also quite laughable that the boy thought he could challenge me, Bellatrix Lestrange, to a duel. As much as I wanted to hurt, to torture, to kill that blasted little fuck I knew it wouldn't please my Master, whom would all ready be so...furious.

Despite my resolve not to flight the blight, he came after me, and the hate that powers every Death Eater took over. I taunted him again, and, though I hate to admit being surprised more than once in a night, he surprised me by using one of the Unforgivable Curses on me.

Of course, it didn't hurt. Though I fell backwards it was no more than a jab of pain, rather like stubbing ones toe. I jumped up and fired a curse at the Potter boy. He ducked out of sight again, and my curse missed its target.

We fought on. It was unlike any fight I had ever fought before, such was my anger, and then fear when I found I had failed my mission, but never has anything been more of a blur. Do you wish to know the main points? The things I have been told? Very well.

My sister's husband is in jail. I had the honor of telling her Lucius's fate. She cried of course, and I wondered why I hadn't cried for Rodolphus when I heard that he was dead. And then, of course, it all made sense.

I am a Death Eater. My world is my Master. I hurt only for my failures to him. I weep only for his downfalls.

But my sister, she is a wife. Her world if her family. She hurts for her loved ones' pain. She weeps only for their deaths.

And Lucius may as well be dead.

For the first time in so many years that I cannot remember I wanted to cry too. I wanted to remember what it felt like to love someone with a soul. I wanted to be human again. I wanted to never have seen that felled deer. I wanted never to have known the beauty of blood. I wanted to understand, not just logically, but emotionally how my sister hurt. I wanted to take away her pain, to share her burden, to be a real sister and not some ghost of a woman.

For the first time in so many years that I cannot remember I remembered that, before I vowed to give my life to my Master I vowed to give my love to my sister. I can't say in all honesty that I cried that night. I can't say that I made one last vow to change for Narcissa's sake either. In fact, it wasn't until sometime later that I actually made good on my first vow.

Narcissa's son, Draco, had come home, and he was in a mood that could have raised hell. He stormed around the house, breaking whatever got in his way, whether it be living or a piece of art. His mother wasn't doing much to stop him either. She staid in her room, dressed in her underclothes, sobbing and moaning about the imperfect turn her life had taken.

I had to stay locked in my small suite, both as a punishment and a safety percaution. It was a dark set of rooms, and per my order house-elves delivered small white to my door on the hour. But knowing my sister was in pain I could not enjoy the white of red, the drip-drop of rich blood. Finally, when my nephew's raging crashes grew closer to my room, I stepped out of my door, right before his pale face gone red. He froze when he saw me, for his father had no doubt told him stories of "crazy Aunt Bella", but he soon regained the Malfoy air of cold calmness.

"My mother," he said softly. He didn't finish the sentence, but I knew what he meant.

"She's hurting," I told him, as if he didn't already know. "Come. We shall ask her to dine."

We both made for her rooms, located two floors above mine, and when we reached the doors I could hear chocked sobs. Sensing it was a son's duty to confront her Draco straitened up, like a man, and stepped through the doorway.

"Mother?" Draco was suddenly uncertain, and his uncertainty reminded me of a house-elf.

"Yes, dearest?" Narcissa was in a weepy mood. She was as unhappy as her son was uncertain.

"The house-elves prepared dinner. You didn't show up, and we thought..." Draco trailed off. Through some mother-son connection that I could never understand Narcissa seemed to know his unspoken thoughts.

"Thank you for telling me, Draco, but I do not think that I'll be joining you tonight. I...I have some things I need to go through." She smiles sweetly, softly, a smile I know she will only ever give her baby.

Draco breathed in and acquired a face that implied he wanted to push her into joining us. I knew better than that. "Don't go bothering your mother," I told him in a hissing voice. Draco looked at his mother as if to say, Mother, will you tolerate her behavior to me? but she didn't stop me from shoving him into the hallway. Once we were down the halls a ways I said to him, "I have other ways of reaching your mother. Come. We need to find a house-elf."

We found a house-elf in record time. It was cleaning the remenants of one of Draco's fits, and it dropped its small broom and dustpan when it saw the young master and his scary, crazy aunt approaching.

"Ollie is sorry, Young Master Draco, that she is taking so long to clean this mess, but Ollie is trying." It quaked, and I wondered just where Draco had learned to treat his house-elves. Probably from his father, I thought.

"Ollie, is it? Well, Ollie, go to the kitchen and make a pot of minestrone. Don't look stupid like that, elf, it's a soup. Ah, yes, you remember which one? Well then hurry! I want it ready in an hour!" My tone was so commanding that the house-elf thought not to question that I was no Malfoy. It hurried down the darkening hall, and, as my commands had stated, within the hour we returned to Narcissa's room, armed this time with three bowls of minestrone.

When we stepped into her bedroom she did not notice us. She was heavily absorbed in an old album, filled with pictures of more beautiful, and perfect, days. We were by her bedside when she finally looked up. She had done it quickly, and her eyes focused on Draco. When she saw that it was not her husband her eyes dulled. Draco was too nervous to notice this. It was he who had been elected to speak again.

"Mother? Aunt Bella--She and I told the house-elves to make your favorite, minestrone." He had three bowls of soup balanced on a silver tray. "Can we eat with you in here? We'd like to...keep you company."

"Just like our old house-elves used to make," I croaked.

Narcissa smiled weakly, but this time she did not ask us to leave. "Oh, I suppose..." She let us sit around her, and in silence we ate our soup.

It might have been like old times, only in the old times Blacks would never eat in a bedroom. We might have been like any other mourning family, except the Blacks would never be like any other family. Draco slurped his soup, like my Poppa used to, and I let myself imagine how much better he would be if only he were a Black. After a half-hour we finished our meal. Narcissa summoned Ollie the house-elf and another male elf to clear our plates. It was only then we stood, and it was only then we spoke.

While both Narcissa and I had been fighting inner demons during the meal so had Draco. Maybe he had finally accepted his father's imprisonment and that Lucius would never come home. As young as he was, and as much as he wanted to be the one being comforted, the man in him took control. "I'll see us through this, Mother. I won't let you down." Tears came to Narcissa's eyes, and I knew that Draco could never let her down.

Finally I said what I knew I had to say. I meant not all of it then, but I knew in time I would with all of the thing that had replaced my heart. "Remember, Narcissa, that I may be a murderer, but I was your sister before that, and I'll never forget that."

I followed my nephew into to the hall, and the two of us shared a moment with my sister, his mother, as we gave her a parting look. She looked at us too, her face confused and yet admiring, and I knew she saw something in the both of us that only she would ever see. Then we nodded at each other, went our separate ways, and were once again alone with our thoughts.

Only now I didn't feel so alone. I walked down the hallway, until I came to a long, floor-to-ceiling mirror. I looked at it, trying to see myself through my sister's blue eyes. I stared for the longest time, and then, during the wee hours of the morning, I remembered that my sister...she had looked at me with blind love.

And then I looked again. And this time I did not see the scrawny, boney, gaunt skeleton of a witch, but a woman with a will to live and with untold fire. And for the first ever I realized the true meaning of beauty, as my sister might well be realizing the true meaning of perfection.

Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.

I may not be beautiful, as no light will ever shine in my heart, but I am loved, if only by my sister, and for now, for me, that is enough.