Tapestry

“Upon the conduct of each depends the fate of all.” —Alexander III of Macedon

Clotho: The One who spins the thread of destiny.

“In here, Mrs. Tonks.”

The guard spoke in a quiet, hushed tone as Andromeda made her way into the small antechamber. She pulled her yellow cloak closer around her body, eyes wary as she stepped into the cold, white room. There was a table in the center with two chairs, and a woman sitting ramrod straight, dressed in blue, occupied one of the high-backed, metal chairs.

The guard murmured something politely and stepped out of the room, leaving Andromeda alone with the woman she had not seen in over two decades.

“Hello, Narcissa.” The words caught in her mouth, as if she were speaking a language foreign to her or forgotten long ago.

“Andromeda.” Narcissa's voice was as chilly as the Spartan white room in which they sat, not a hint of warmth to be found.

Narcissa's face was as cold as marble and just as unforgiving—Narcissa Malfoy would not even rise to greet her sister, nor would she look at her for more than the briefest of moments. A quiet look of rage passed over Narcissa's face before it was banked, and Andromeda sighed and took her seat across from her at the table.

They sat in silence while a million unspoken words hung in the air between them, forever to remain unsaid. Andromeda's hands were knotted in her cloak, and she slowly started to pull a loose thread from the soft yellow fabric, twinning it around her finger in agitation.

Narcissa narrowed her eyes as she spied her sister's nervous gesture and smoothed the perfection of her own robes, not a thread misplaced. They were made of the most expensive of silks—she would never have worn anything frayed out of her home.

The door opened, and the guard brought her in, wrapped in a simple black cloak. Andromeda saw her eyes—those beautiful, limpid dark eyes—and tears pricked her own as Bellatrix stared at her without recognition. Her cheekbones looked painful they were so sharp, and nothing of her once lush beauty remained.

“You'll have about twenty minutes,” the guard said, and pulled a wand out. Even Narcissa drew in a breath as the guard spoke something over her sister, some words of protection and binding, before leaving them alone.

“So you've both come, then.”

Andromeda winced at Bellatrix's voice. It was harsh and horrible, as if pulled from the depths of her black soul and dragged over glass on the way up to spill out of thin lips twisted in ire.

“Of course we've come.” Andromeda wanted to make her voice soothing, but she couldn't. Her sister was a tattered remnant of what she once was—a gruesome contortion of thin bones wrapped in unrelieved black. Andromeda noted Bellatrix was pulling at the fabric of her cloak—pulling the loose threads and sharply tearing them off, throwing the strands on the floor at her feet.

Silence descended once more in the room, and Andromeda closed her eyes as the tears threatened to spill. “Why, Bella?” she whispered, trembling, wrapping the loose thread from her robe over and over her fingers, cutting off the blood, welcoming the pain.

“Oh, for god's sake, Andromeda.” Narcissa stood up, graceful, continuing to smooth her robes with long, careful sweeps of her elegant hands. Her diamond glittered in the harsh light of the room. “Now is not the time for such asinine questions. She has no answer for you. Bellatrix lost her mind long ago, didn't you, sister ?”

“I've lost nothing,” Bellatrix said in that same terrible voice, and Andromeda could not look at her. She focused instead on the yellow cloak, on the ceiling, at the patterns in the cold tile of the floor beneath her feet.

“Just your soul, eh, sister?” Narcissa's laughter was brittle, harsh.

“Yes, Narcissa. Just my soul.” The emptiness in Bellatrix's voice caused shivers down Andromeda's spine, and she wondered what had happened to them, the Sisters Black, that they would have ended up like this.

What joke have the fates played on us all? I loved them both, long ago, more than anything.

Andromeda shook her head sadly as she looked at them. Today she would lose one sister forever, but they had both been lost to her years ago, so she did not know why it should hurt so much still.

Andromeda had married Ted Tonks because she wanted to escape the world her parents and her sisters were so eager to embrace—a life of hypocrisy and hatred. If her parents could only see the wonder and the beauty that life had to offer, not only the narrow confines of the life they approved of.

“My family will love you,” she'd said to Ted. He'd believed in her sincerity, because she had thought she would be victorious, in the end. “They'll see how much you love me and they'll understand.”

Her wedding gift from her family had been silence.

She had crafted her own destiny as a Tonks, away from the pureblood mania her family was so eager to embrace. She had borne a child, a beautiful daughter, and sent them an announcement that Nymphadora Tonks had entered the world a healthy, loved child; she had sent them an invitation to the quaint little church where the christening would be held.

Her daughter's birthday gifts had been silence.

The Black family had a thing for tradition. Silence was all they would ever gift her with.

Sirius had once told her before his death that she had been taken off the tapestry in the house on Grimmauld Place. It was then that she had put her past to rest, then that she had embraced fully her new life and her new family.

Her name had been removed, but her thread had continued elsewhere. There was a new tapestry now, the name Tonks embossed in gold thread at the top, and it would flourish where another name would end on the one that hung, covered in dust, in Black Manor.

**********
Lachesis: The one who endures.

Narcissa turned away from the table and stared at the wall, willing herself not to turn, not to embrace either of them. It would serve no purpose, and those days were long behind her.

The room was cold and she saw her sisters pulling at their robes—Bellatrix shredding the coarse, inexpensive fabric of her prison-issue black cloak with long fingers. Her nails had been clipped, though Narcissa knew it was not of her own volition. Bellatrix had always favored those long, cat-like nails.

Bellatrix liked things that could scratch, things that could make you bleed.

Narcissa's heart sped up in her chest and she felt sick to her stomach. She wanted to press her forehead to the cool cement of the nondescript walls and cool her heated flesh. She needed to be calm and collected, but it was a struggle.

At her sister's answer of just my soul Narcissa pressed a hand to her mouth and tried to stop the bile that rose in her throat from escaping, tried to stop herself from vomiting on the floor of the small, cold room where she felt like a prisoner unable to escape the ghosts of her past. She reminded herself she was a Black and a Malfoy, and she would do nothing to humiliate either noble house of which she was a member.

When she turned around again, she was under control, her face composed. She'd been schooled in the art of appearing unemotional and unaffected, and it had served her well as Lucius' wife. She knew Andromeda was looking at her as if she were the most heartless bitch this side of the Atlantic, but Narcissa did not care.

She'd learned this facade when they had taunted her at Hogwarts. It had been her only defense when they laughed at her in Slytherin House, when the news of Andromeda's marriage had been spread around the school and flung in her face.

Narcissa Black had been forced to suffer the shame of her sister's betrayal, every day, in school and at home with parents and a sister destroyed by what Andromeda had done.

Bellatrix had married but it was obvious her devotion would never be to the Black family, although she spoke of purity and cleansing the Wizarding world of those unworthy to share it with them. Narcissa was left with a family mired in tragedy and scandal to try and rectify. She was the last chance for respectability for the House of Black.

Toujours Pur. It was her mantra, her guiding force, her raison d'etre.

Andromeda's marriage meant Narcissa's path in life was clear. She was to continue the line, to add a name in golden thread on tapestry that hung in Grimmauld place. She had to bear the child that would carry the blood forward, that would guarantee the thread would continue and weave into the fabric for a new generation.

That she loved him was only blind chance. She had no choice, and she hated Andromeda for hers.

****
Atropos: the One who cuts, who ends.

They stared anywhere but at her—Andromeda playing with the loose threads of her robe, Narcissa's palms moving slowly up and down the blue silk she wore. Nervous gestures, but Bellatrix appreciated it. She was glad she made them nervous, because she always had. Comfort in familiarity, or something.

Bellatrix pulled at the cheap fabric adorning her body, wondering what they would do if they saw the bruises beneath the cloak—the marks where she had been hit, the torture she had endured. It all blurred together in a haze of pain and despair and she could not think of him , of the man she had loved, for he was paraded around in front of her—a slack-jawed, lifeless thing , a shadow of what he once was—to the accompanying jeers of the guards.

“They say it hurts, you crazy bitch. I hear he thrashed on the chair when the Dementors took his soul. I hear there was applause from the crowd. They liked it, and they'll stand for you, I bet they will. I think he might have screamed, too. Maybe for his mother! Do you think you'll scream, when it's your turn? I hope you do. I hope I get to hear it. They'll put it in the paper, I bet. Here's his picture! Why don't you sleep curled up with that, since you can't ever have him again?”

They'd shoved it at her, and made her look at the picture; his last moments, struggling as the Dementor appeared to take his soul, captured on the Prophet in all their lurid detail. He'd screamed, but it had not been for his mother. It had been her name, Bella , over and over again, until he'd gone quiet.

The guards took the paper away when they found her sleeping with her head next to the picture, only to hear his voice saying her name—his screams singing her to sleep.

Nor could she think of the other , the man she had worshipped and adored—the one to whom she'd laid down her soul gladly for the promise of redemption that he offered. No, she would not think of him , dead at the hand of that worthless child on a moonless night, his body burned and now only ashes on the wind.

She started to scratch her arm, to tear at the long strands of her hair that fell forward in her face. It might be the last time she could feel pain, and she wanted to savor it.

***
She'd worshipped Andromeda, she'd loved her sisters more than life. When Andromeda left for school before her, she was inconsolable. She dressed in Andromeda's favorite dress robes and slept in her sister's bed, her scent clinging faintly to the pillow.

When Andromeda had left her and their family so she could be with that—that creature—Bellatrix had screamed and locked herself in her room. She had thrown the beautiful crystal swan her sister had given her for her birthday at the mirror. She had taken the shards of glass and sliced her own arm, watching the blood run down her flesh until she'd passed out from blood loss.

They'd found her collapsed on her floor, dressed in green with the dark red stain of her blood covering her arms, her face.

When she married Rodolphus, she had told him they would not have children. She would leave that to Narcissa, to continue the line. Andromeda had been removed from the tapestry in Black Manor, and Bellatrix took a furious pleasure in knowing her thread would not be removed, but that it would simply end.

Rodolphus had told her that she would change her mind, but Azkaban had made it an irrelevant issue. They had never had children; the spawn of their marriage was their mad desire for pain and their servitude to Voldemort and his wishes. Death and terror were the only products of their union, but she had loved them nonetheless.

Every woman Bellatrix killed had worn her sister's face. Every man was the filthy Muggle who had stolen her away. Every child bore the name she saw on the engraved announcement her parents had thrown in the trash and Bellatrix had discovered.

Nymphadora.

Blood traitor. Never sister.

Filthy Mudblood. Never brother-in-law.

Abomination. Never niece.

Death. Never life.

****

“It's time.”

The guard interrupted the quiet of the cell, not surprised to see the three sisters on separate sides of the room. Andromeda noticed she'd weaved a pattern with her loose thread of her dress—over her hands, entwining her fingers together, over the simple yellow-gold band of her wedding ring.

Narcissa was unmoved; cold, remote, nodding and moving towards the door. Not a strand of her blonde hair was out of place, she looked perfectly collected.

There was a pile of black thread, something that looked like hair, and spots of blood on the floor where Bellatrix had stood.

Narcissa and Andromeda looked at each other in the hallway, and a wealth of shared memories passed between them as they walked behind the guard, leading their silent sister through a set of polished wooden double doors, with ornate gold handles, into the madness of the room where it would end.

Being young, playing in the gardens at Ravensden.

Andromeda, sharing her dolls, serving tea. Always the one who solved the quarrels, who soothed the myriad of little hurts they would inevitably collect. She was a mother, even then.

Narcissa, who loved to chatter about parties and assign the dolls a seat depending on what they were wearing, on which was the prettiest. She was the perfect society wife, even then.

Bellatrix, who would capture butterflies and pull on their wings, laughing as they fluttered ineffectually in her grasp.

She was a murderer, even then.

They went into the room and the crowd started jeering—Andromeda found she was pressed next to her sister as they were jostled by the mob. The guards took a moment to restore order and they were forgotten, and their sister was laughing as they pushed her towards the chair.

Andromeda looked down and saw Narcissa had grabbed her hand, and was squeezing. “Andy,” she said, voice so soft Andromeda could barely hear it over the roar of the crowd. A name she had not heard in years—it used to make her cry when Ted spoke it, so he had stopped—spilling so easily from her sister's lips, it made Andromeda's throat tight to hear it.

Andromeda shuddered, tears pricking at the back of her eyes as she watched them bind Bellatrix in the chair. “Cissa,” she said, hand tightening on her sister's, feeling the cut of Narcissa's diamond on her skin.

Bellatrix looked up at that moment and saw them there, huddled together and holding hands in the midst of a fuming, angry mob, and she started to laugh. “Destiny, my sisters!” she howled, as the judge whitened at the sound of Bellatrix's voice and accompanying mad laughter. “Tell your husband I'll see him in Hell, Narcissa!”

Narcissa laughed quietly, without mirth; she did not respond.

The crowd shouted for the proceedings to begin, and the judge rambled on over the din as he read her crimes. Andromeda did not listen this time, just as she had ignored the litany of her sister's madness during the trial. She did not look at Narcissa, who held her head high and viewed the scene with nary a change of expression.

Andromeda stared down at their clasped hands instead.

The Dementor glided in, terrible and making a high-pitched clicking sound, and the crowd fell silent—the air seemed to have been sucked away and the room was suddenly colder, as if a cloud had passed in front of the sun. It approached the chair where Bellatrix was bound, and Narcissa moaned, low in her throat, but made no other sound as the crowd cheered.

Andromeda thought of the tapestry, which hung in Grimmauld Place. My thread is gone but it continues on another, and I am proud of that. My sister Narcissa's thread will continue as she has a son. Bellatrix's is forever ended, a short, jagged bit of golden thread all that will remain of her after today.

The crowd was jeering, laughing. Narcissa choked next to her; her hand was bruising Andromeda's own. Despite her obvious distress Narcissa watched the proceedings where Andromeda could not, thought the running commentary of the people next to her let her know that the Dementor had lowered its hood and leaned over the form of her sister to administer the Kiss. Bellatrix Lestrange did not scream, in her last moments, but rather laughed—then the sound stopped abruptly, and the crowd gave a clichéd, collective gasp.

Andromeda looked up at that, but the sight before her made her want to vomit—the black-robed Dementor, leaning obscenely over her sister, pulling her soul out for the unholy crimes committed in Voldemort's name.

Andromeda turned her head and saw someone in the crowd that surprised her; her daughter, the Auror, watching with a trembling lip and a determined expression. Nymphadora did not look away from the fate to which her relative had been sentenced, brutal though it was, even though Andromeda was well-aware her daughter could not stomach the sight of a person in pain.

Perhaps in her, the tapestry is complete. My daughter has my courage to spin her own destiny, this I know. Even now she has her Aunt Narcissa's poise and elegance in the face of adversity. She has her Aunt Bellatrix's loyalty, but she has the sense to know where to give it.

Andromeda watched her daughter, filled with pride, even as the tears fell down her face, even as her sister Narcissa disentangled her hand and left her there without a word, even as the empty shell of Bellatrix Lestrange was led past her with eyes blank as colored glass, her soul gone forever.

She waited and found her daughter, and hugged her tight, and finally let herself sob for what she had lost.