Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns all. *Bow down.* I own nothing except this humble fic. ‘Nuff said.
A/n- This is simply a letter fic. It is not meant to be interpreted as a true story, as I cannot imagine Bellatrix and Narcissa actually reading the letter. Hear that people? It’s a letter fic! Slightly AU because Andromeda and Alice probably weren’t in the same year.
Dear Narcissa and Bellatrix,
How did it happen? How come you two, the ones Mother said were going to do something in life, are nothing? How come you are the hated scorn of the Wizarding world? Why are you evil? And why am I, the silent one, the one Mother predicted would do nothing, out there, free, living the life many people dream of? Can you remember when we were kids? We’d play together, just like any sisters. You two were my best friends. Of course, that was before the words, “pure-blood” entered our vocabulary. Still, despite our many fights in the years before we went to Hogwarts, you were still my sisters, my only friends, my protectors. I never imagined you’d grow up to do the things that you’ve done.
I remember playing with our dolls when we were little girls. Bellatrix, the leader, would tell us which dolls to play with, and where they lived. Narcissa, you would make up fluffy romances and melodramas for our dolls to take part in. I was the dreamer. I would give our dolls a past, present and future, though I never acted out our little doll plays. As I grew older, I wrote down our doll dramas and recorded the disastrous results of our productions. Bella and Cissy, you were the hams. Everyone told you that you would be actresses one day. I was the silent and quiet writer.
As we grew, nothing changed. Bella, your willful ways impressed anyone who met you. Cissy, you developed a charming attitude that wrapped all you knew around your little finger. I never impressed anyone. While you two worked your way into the hearts of our friends and family, I watched from the outside, silently scribbling my thoughts in all sorts of journals and diaries. As a result, everyone you two charmed thought you would go out to do great things in life, while I was nothing special. They were wrong. Though you would call what you have done great, I disagree.
I don’t know how old we were when our lives changed forever. Bellatrix was nine, I think, I was eight and Narcissa was only six when we stopped playing with dolls. I remember drying your tears, Cissy, while fighting back my own, the day you told us you were too old to play, Bella. The next day, you came to us, with your nose high in the air, to tease me and Cissy about our doll-playing pursuits. That day, you taught us a new word- “pure-blood.” I don’t know how you learned its meaning; perhaps Mother told you. I’d always had a feeling I’d known what “pure-blood” meant, and had never liked it. But its new use, coupled with the words “half-blood” and “Mudblood,” brought chills to my bones. Bella, you certainly didn’t mind taunting people because of their ancestry, and Cissy, you never remembered a time when Bella didn’t judge all she knew on the word “pure-blood.” Bella, only I realized you were slowly but surely becoming a monster.
When I realized, Bella, the horrible path you were treading down, I was scared. Cissy was too little to stop you from verbally and physically berating all whose blood was not pure, and I was too frightened. I knew Mother or Father would encourage your repulsive behavior, as well as the rest of the family. It was up to me to stop you, and I couldn’t. I tried to open my mouth, to tell you of the wrong you were doing by judging people by their parentage. But the words stuck. In my head, I had always planned out what to say, but when it came time to say them, I couldn’t. Even though you treated half-bloods and Muggle-borns horribly, Bella, you were fine to me. My life was a quiet sanctuary, though I knew if I fought back, my life could be hell. I held my simple, easy life, where you and I barely spoke, but had no arguments, too dear to me to interfere. Bella, don’t you see I was scared? I kept my words and my cowardice to myself. The only time they ever flowed out is when I opened my old, dusty, leather-bound diary and poured my heart into it. The fate of the Wizarding world was in my hands, but I did nothing. Every day, I inwardly curse myself for the mistakes- and the silence- of my youth.
The summer you came back from your first year at Hogwarts, Bella, was when I realized I had stalled too long. You were uncontrollable, and nothing could be done. During the year, Cissy and I had grown quite close- remember, Narcissa? Though the dolls remained in their spot on the shelves, you and I enjoyed our flights of fancy. I even managed to kid myself that we were a normal wizarding family, that Cissy and I were normal sisters, and that there was no invisible ice between me and our other sister. How wrong I was. Bella, you came back even more changed than you were when you left. You impressed upon us tales of you hurting other students because their parents were Muggles, stories of older students engaging in repulsive matters like teasing mischief with disastrous results, and even a hint of Dark Magic abound in the halls of Hogwarts. I thought it couldn’t get worse, but it did.
That summer, Bella, you took Cissy away from me, and placed her under horrible influences. I don’t know how you did it, but by the end of the summer Cissy was your clone with blond hair. My fears deepened tremendously. The day you came home for summer holidays, Narcissa was my best friend and closest companion. The day you left, she wouldn’t look at me. Why? I still wonder that today. I think that all along, Cissy, you suspected me of being less than approving of Bellatrix’s deadly cause. I remember once, Narcissa, you told me in a fit of rage, that I was a traitor to the cause of the pure-blood wizard. As I cried later in my room, sorrowed by the knowledge I did not protect my younger sister from the ideals my older sister worshiped, I wondered what was the cause of a pureblood. You would argue it is the purification of wizard blood. I call it a cause of tears, of destruction, of death. Yet, it could not be denied. I was, in your eyes, a traitor to the pure-blood cause.
When I headed to Hogwarts at the end of the summer, I grew even more a traitor to the wizarding cause, though I spoke not a word against my family. Like my cousin, the audacious and rebellious Sirius Black would be years later, I was sorted into the house of Gryffindor, unlike the rest of the family, who had been Slytherins for centuries. At the feast I did not consider it a cause of celebration, like Sirius did eleven years later. Though I was glad not to share a house with you, Bellatrix, after that dreadful summer, I knew when I came home for the summer holidays my welcome would not be warm. I knew no one in Gryffindor except our cousin Sirius, who was so loud and arrogant he annoyed me more than he pleased me, though his heart seemed to be made of gold. If I had been sorted into Slytherin, at least I would have been in the same house as you, Bellatrix. I know you would have accepted me into your social group if I was a Slytherin, and I would rather be friends with a group of people I hated than have no friends at all. However, I needn’t have worried about making friends. In Gryffindor, I met my best friend, Alice Jennings.
For the first time in my life, I was truly happy. Alice and I were not the most well-known nor the most popular girls in our school, but we had each other. As we grew up together in the halls of Hogwarts, people often asked me what was it like to be friends with Alice Jennings, who most people considered the biggest nerd in the school. I told them that Alice wasn’t a nerd, but a person more kind, sensitive, and more fun to hang out with then they would ever be. There was no way I could be embarrassed by her lack or popularity, because I was too happy with my life as it was. Narcissa, Bellatrix, there was nothing you could do to change that- or so I thought.
As you must remember, when I came home during the summers, I would write nonstop. I would scrawl in diary upon diary and write multitudes of letters to Alice every day. Although summer wasn’t the best time of the year for me, I enjoyed the rest of the year. Alice and I laughed and cried our way through Hogwarts together. Though the threat of Dark Magic hovered in the horizon, we knew we would be safe as long as we were behind the stone walls of Hogwarts. Bella, Cissy, I never thought of you much at that time. I was too self-absorbed and satisfied with my life to care about the sisters I never saw. I couldn’t bothered to be worried about you when I had my friends; how could they hurt me when I was with them? I didn’t realize how wrong I was.
As Alice and I entered our seventh year at Hogwarts, a magical thing happened to each of us at the same time. We both fell in love. Alice went on a date with her fellow Gryffindor prefect, Frank Longbottom, and ended up in love, and I met a Ravenclaw boy, Ted Tonks. Ted seemed simple and unintelligent on the outside, but deep in his soul, I knew him to think complex thoughts and have daring dreams inside. No one ever understood me as he did- to him, I wasn’t a quiet girl who loved to write but an adventurous woman with a heart of gold but a soul of spitfire. No one ever saw me like that before, not even my best friend. Certainly, I wasn’t viewed like that by our family, and the thought made me sad. I hate to tell you, sisters, that I knew the least-friendly girls in my dormitory better than I knew you. The Black family couldn’t make me happy, but Ted could.
When Ted proposed to me at the end of our seventh year, I didn’t know what to do. If I would marry a Muggle-born like Ted, I would risk losing the little family I had. For years, I had striven for acceptance within the bonds of the Black family, and to marry Ted would ruin any friendships I had formed within our family. Yet, I was sorry to admit I didn’t feel comfortable in our family. For the first and only time in my life, I decided to do something daring. I said yes to Ted. Sisters, you must remember how angry Mum and Auntie Aphrodite, who had two young boys at the time, were. I cannot describe the sorrow in my heart when I saw Auntie blast my name off the sacred family tree. Though you were my flesh and blood, I wasn’t fit to be with you anymore. My whole life, wherever I went, I had striven for acceptance and found it. To see myself being unaccepted, even by the most loathsome of families, tightened around my heart like an iron fist. I closed my diaries that day, and screwed the top on my jar of ink. From that day on, I didn’t write again, until now.
I thought my life couldn’t get worse. Married life was nothing like I had imagined- it was full of never-ending chores, eating alone each night, and long evenings worrying as Ted got home from work, late. When I had my daughter, I realized I had sentenced myself to the life of a boring housewife. Nymphadora was a difficult child, and I hated myself for oppressing her like I did. I knew I had to raise her to be a good witch, and to fight against the forces of Dark magic. I had failed with you, Narcissa, and hadn’t even tried with you, Bellatrix, but I thought if I raised Nymphadora right I would somehow change the world, and reverse the evils I had committed when I had let you two become horrible Dark wizards under my nose. Everything was going normally, but then in the slight span of a year, two terrible things happened.
On a dark Halloween night, Lily Potter and her husband James were murdered. Cissy, Bella, I don’t need to say anything more because I am sure you are familiar with the story of Harry Potter. Although I had only met the Potters once, because they had been in school about ten years after I graduated, Alice, who was a member of the Order of the Pheonix, knew them well. I remember comforting Alice, who was distraught. She later confided in me that a prophecy had been made that could have referred to either her son, Neville, or Lily’s son, Harry. She felt guilty, because she could easily have died that night, but I felt worse. I don’t know how you two were involved in the deaths of Lily and James Potter, and frankly, I don’t want to know. However, I know that you must have helped tear apart the lives of the Potter family, and my guilt was almost unbearable.
Bellatrix, you must remember what happened the night Death Eaters appeared at the door of Alice and her husband Frank Longbottom. How could you not- I mean, you tortured them into insanity! The guilt I felt as I visited Alice in the hospital, though she did not recognize me, was unbearable and unimaginable. It was my fault, all my fault. I had not raised my wand and performed the terrible curses that disposed of my best friend’s mind, but, Bellatrix, I as good as did. If I had told you Dark magic was wrong when we were little girls playing with dolls, Alice and Frank would still live normal lives. When Alice was still with me, I felt that my cowardice and silence as a child would mean nothing to us as we grew older. I was wrong, wrong, wrong! The silence I was well-known for as a child inhabited me once more.
My daughter, Nymphadora, seems to hate me, and I hardly wonder why. Nymphadora is a loud fighter, and has dedicated her life to helping the Order of the Pheonix battle against Voldemort and the Death Eaters. She lost a friend, our dear cousin Sirius Black, at your hands, Bellatrix, and often asks me why I am normal while my sisters are so horrible. She wants to know why I did nothing to stop you two from becoming the evil villains that you are. I wish I could tell her, but words cannot describe why I am “good” and you are “evil.” I suppose the strength of my heart versus the weakness of yours’ would be a good argument, but I cannot honestly tell Nymphadora I am stronger than you, Bellatrix and Narcissa. The reason you two are where you are today, and I am in the position of writing this letter, is because I am a coward. But how do you tell your only daughter that?
Look at me, sisters, look at me! Our lives are all wrecked beyond repair! Narcissa, you have a foul husband and a bully of a son. There is no doubt the power to commit horrible felonies is in your hands. Bellatrix, I have lost count of the lives you wrecked. Let’s start with the Longbottoms and end with Sirius Black and those who knew him. You have surpassed the mark of evil, yet you are still my sister. And look at me! The only real friend I’ve ever had is insane, and I have no family, a daughter that despises me, and the guilt of all those lives destroyed at my hands! I want to know, why are we like this? How did it happen?
Your sister,
Andromeda Black Tonks
A/n- Please review!