Title: Like Stars Explode
Author: la_dissonance
Characters: Bellatrix, Andromeda, Narcissa
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Chan, dubcon, incest, underage (17/16/13)
Themes/kinks chosen: Red wings, ritual sex (sorta kinda), symphorophilia (a bit)
Word Count: ~2100
Summary: Tradition says this day is all about fecundity and welcoming, but Bella just wants to taste a little destruction.
Author's notes: This is officially the most overworked 2000 words I've ever written, and it's all thanks to r_grayjoy's gentle prodding that it ever got finished at all. Like since mid-July overworked blkjsdkf. Lots and lots of hearts to icanhaspancake for the beta! ♥

Bella trails her fingertips across her sister's chest, following the contours of her ribs. She draws out a shiver, circling the hard peaks that will soon be breasts. Fingernails skate across an areola and make Cissy wince.

They offer her wine, purple-red and thick, tasting of comfort and oblivion; she refuses.

Andie takes the decanter instead, and gulps from it. The work of despoiling has never come naturally to her, but she's here, and all is as it should be. A drop falls from her chin and turns into a stain on the sheets. Bella is transfixed with the way the wine soaks in and spreads, following the criss-cross of the weave until it's gone too far in too many directions, turning pale and dry in the summer heat. Andie doesn't notice; she only wipes her mouth and then licks the extra from her hand.

The wine is strong. Bella tastes it as she sucks at Andie's lips, but neither hold her attention for long. This is Cissy's morning.

They're in the attic, which had been their nursery until they all grew too old for it. It was here that Bella first discovered the dark thrill that came with pulling the wings off flies; where a year later she stood over Cissy's cot as the baby slept, thinking it would be no harder to put her hands over the tiny face until Cissy stopped moving than it was to crush the tadpoles in the pond out back. She dotes on her, their mother told her friends, and Bella contented herself with fantasies.

The sisters lie on a dusty mattress transfigured wide enough for the three of them, crackling yellow sheets now milk white and peachskin soft. The air up here is full of dust motes, and the pale gold morning light comes through the low windows at a strange angle, making the dust glitter and lighting their naked skin where the shadows should be.

Bella follows the contours of light and shadow with her mouth, rediscovering every inch of Cissy's skin. When they were little they used to bathe together, the elf drawing a bath large enough to fit all three, and Bella knew her sisters' bodies as intimately as her own, and cared as little for them. But Cissy's body is no longer that half-remembered baby body; it's all points and lines now, ribbons of muscle flowing under the skin, taut hollows, downy hair, delicate membranes where the pulse shows through.

The scrutiny makes Cissy squirm; for all that she's been expecting this, she's not used to it.

Andie takes another swallow of the wine, letting the heavy glass of the decanter hit the table with a clumsy thud, and then she's following Bella's lead, touching, exploring. Bella twines her fingers with Cissy's and flattens her tongue against a print Andie's wine-soaked lips leave in the centre of her stomach.

Bella wants to catalogue Cissy's body forever, wants to touch her until she'll be able to navigate by feel, in the dark, with eyes closed. But it's almost time. Bella can smell it, can feel it in the way Cissy shivers under her touch; she knows it. Andie put together charts of the stars and the moon, triangulating from age and weight and the length of Cissy's fingers and putting it all through a table she'd taken out of her Arithmancy book, but the date and time it had produced had only confirmed what Bella had already known. She could smell it on the clothes that Cissy left behind when she bathed, could feel it in the pull of the moon; some sort of ancient magic boiled through her blood and called out to its own.

Cissy makes a tiny sound and shifts into their touch. She is impatient. She's been impatient for years now; Bella started bleeding at eleven, Andie at the same age two years later. Cissy is now nearing fourteen. True, Bella might have said something to help lift her growing despair, but she kept silent, knowing that things long-awaited are all the sweeter when they finally arrive.

"Soon," Bella croons.

It makes Cissy whimper again. Bella traces patterns over Cissy's fragile throat, across her clavicles and down her reedy arms. Was Bella herself ever this small and narrow? She can't remember. Like Andie, she's built along more generous proportions; it seems like she's always had long limbs and strong thighs, heavy breasts and wide shoulders. For all that she's poised on the cusp of womanhood, Cissy looks like a child in comparison, bone-white skin stretched over a frame as fragile as glass.

The wine has hit Andie by now. She grins and her long fingers slide between Cissy's legs; Cissy spreads them and whispers "Finally."

"There's a good girl." Andie's words are soft around the edges, slightly slurred. "Open wide, soon you'll be one of us. It's good luck if you let us in. You'll have lots of strong heirs when you marry."

Something in the words amuses Andie, and she giggles. Bella wonders if Andie actually believes in the old magic, but it doesn't matter. The old magic is only a convenient excuse for Bella; she's not here for strong heirs or to forge a blood bond that transcends any ties her sisters might make in their marriage beds. She's here for that dark thrill, to make blood flow and to lap it up, to hold something fragile in her hands and crush it.

Bella crouches between Cissy's pale thighs and takes her with her mouth, licking over wet folds and slick fingers alike. Cissy's cunt is small, like the rest of her, and the hair is fine and wispy, as if it hasn't fully come in yet. Maybe it hasn't. She tastes like sweat and sun-dried cotton.

Whatever Cissy was expecting, it's not this, because she bucks and tries to squirm away. "I thought you said it was almost – Bella, you can't." There's worry in her eyes, like she thinks if this thing she's been waiting for doesn't happen right now, it never will. Like Bella could stop it from happening simply by being in the way.

Being looked at like that sends a thrill shooting up Bella's spine – in Cissy's eyes, she knows everything, is capable of anything. Bella lets the feeling sink into her bones and just stares at Cissy, silent, until the look of worry turns to uncertainty. Cissy wasn't there when Bella did this with Andie, of course, and she doesn't know if this is how it goes.

"There, there, Cissy," Bella says. "You don't really want me to stop."

"I –" she starts hesitantly, then shuts her mouth. Her eyes flick between Andie on one side and Bella between her legs, and she seems to be collecting herself, fighting against the mental fog of too many new sensations all at once. She always had been a wilful child, not letting anyone make her decisions for her. Except now she is on shaky ground, ground where Bella is the proven expert. Her words come in a rush. "I want you to do whatever you need to do for the ritual to be complete, whatever you'd been planning to do."

"Good girl," Bella croons, and drops her face back down to Narcissa's cunt.

The flush on Cissy's cheeks darkens at the praise, and she lets her head drop back to the pillow, shifting to get comfortable in their sticky tangle of limbs.

Cooling charms don't last long in this heat, and the weather hasn't broken in days. They're all waiting for a storm.

Andromeda's still idly fingering Narcissa, more as if she just likes the feel of it than as if she's going anywhere with it. Bella moves her hand out of the way, and continues what she'd started . She flattens her tongue over Cissy's clit again and again, which makes Cissy whine and shake, but she doesn't protest again.

The blood is singing through Bella's ears, a heady rush of white noise that drowns out the sounds of the room. It's calling to its like, and Bella can almost hear the answering call. Soon.

It's easy to make Cissy come like this, new and untouched as she is. She gasps out a startled sound that could nearly be mistaken for pain, and her hips buck, her pubic bone connecting painfully with Bella's upper lip.

Bella doesn't withdraw then, just holds Cissy down with fingers digging into her thighs hard enough to bruise, hard enough to keep her from stirring before movement is even a faint idea in her mind. She's like some small trapped animal, Bella thinks, spread open and panting and vulnerable. Her eyes are blown dark from arousal, and Bella imagines it could just as easily be fear.

Gripping Cissy's legs, Bella spreads them wider, almost to the limit of what the supple young tendons can stretch. This is Cissy at her most open, her most fragile, and still she doesn't protest. When Bella buries her face between the splayed legs she can feel last faint shocks of Cissy's orgasm still rippling through her at intervals, and there is new wetness that coats her inner lips. Bella inhales deeply, and can smell a new sharpness beneath the tang of Cissy's arousal – iron, copper, salt, elements taken from the earth to be given back when life was over. She licks Cissy from her oversensitive clit down to her entrance, and Cissy gasps and quivers. All Bella can taste is red.

Suddenly she can't get enough. She sucks first one fragile lip into her mouth, then the other, before flicking her tongue against that small orifice, dipping inside. The taste is everywhere, overpowering; Bella wants to take it into herself and remember this forever, the perfectly-executed death of something small and innocent. It's a rush more powerful than anything sexual could be, because there are no beginnings here: only ends, and Bella is the one who holds those threads in her hands, deciding when they'll be cut off.

She lets go of Cissy's legs then, moving up her body so she can kiss her. The lingering taste is slow to register, but once it does Cissy tries to push Bella away, making a small grunt of dissatisfaction. Bella captures her fragile wrist and pins it to the bed, forcing her way into Cissy's mouth and making her understand the finality of this, the magnitude of what Bella has done here.

Bella can feel Cissy trying to sweeten the kiss; she's not fighting anymore. Some distant part of Bella's brain recognizes this as a good thing – even if she doesn't understand, even if she hates it, Cissy still wants to go along with whatever Bella starts; nothing that's happened here has shaken her faith that Bella's way must be the right way. But the blood is still pounding in Bella's ears, making it hard to hold onto such a rational thought. Now that she's had a taste of it, Bella needs more; she can't be still until she's lashed out with hands and wand, smashing and killing and crushing.

With one last bite to Cissy's swollen lips she tears herself away, snatching her wand up from the dusty table by the door and Summoning her discarded robes. This isn't the place to indulge the whirlwind that's gathering speed inside her, not around family.

"Bella, where are you going?" Cissy's voice is tremulous and her face is a mask of hurt confusion. Her body reads like a catalogue of illicit desires played out: thighs smeared with red and bruises already starting to form on her delicate skin. Bella can't look at her.

Next to Cissy, Andie has fallen asleep with an arm curled around the empty decanter, her hair sticking to her forehead in damp tendrils. She's not likely to offer Cissy any comfort now, but neither is Bella. Bella needs to get out, and she needs it now.

Once in the darkened hall, door closed on the dusty sun-drenched attic, Bella thinks she hears her name called out, a pathetic little whimper. Her step falters, but she keeps walking. Her sister's vulnerability is something best forgotten, no matter how many traitors and muggles it takes to bury the memory. The flies and the tadpoles never did lose their shine, after all, even after Bella discovered the baby in the cradle.