"Fetters by the Sea," Bellatrix/Andromeda, PG-13
Title: Fetters by the Sea
Author: kethlenda
Characters/Pairing: Bellatrix/Andromeda
Summary: Andromeda is happy with her loving husband and little daughter, but she can't forget the dark beauty who once held her in thrall.
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): incest, bondage, dubious consent, underage (nothing explicit, though)
Originally Written: 8/05
Notes: In which Kels loses her Blackcest virginity. Beta by sionnain.


Perhaps Mother and Father knew, even when I was nothing but a babe in the womb, that I would never be free of this past, this family, this love. Why, otherwise, give me a name that came with chains attached?

Andromeda. At times I knew how the other Andromeda must have felt, chained to her rock, hearing her approaching fate in the churning of the sea, unable to save herself.

I’ve cast you as the serpent, of course. Even when I thought I was free of you, there you were, just below the surface, waiting to claim the one who belonged irrevocably to you.

But that’s unfair to you. It is true you’ve become a monster these last few years. But you were no monster to me. I cannot claim I was unwilling.

So, truly, the serpent is another part of me, though I have tried to escape it. I can play the innocent maiden, chained against my will, but I slipped my own hands into the fetters. And though I live my life now in peace, in the daylight, in the warm glow of a love without corruption, deep within, I belong to the serpent still.

It was the middle of the night. I was thirteen.

I woke from a fitful sleep to a quietly spoken “Alohomora” and the creaking sound of my door opening. It was too dark to see who it was. I sat up in bed, trying to see the intruder’s face in the darkness.

Your hands were cold as they seized my wrists and bound them to the bedposts. It was a splendid bed for that purpose, all wrought iron curlicues, serpentine, entwined upon themselves over and over again. My fingers traced the patterns all through the long night.

“Never lock the door to me again,” you whispered. Those were the first words you spoke that night. But by then it was not night; the sky outside the window was fading from black to gray.

I left the door unlocked after that.

My doors are locked now. Charmed locks; it would take more than Alohomora to penetrate my defenses now.

I finally have something worth defending. Happiness. Innocence.

A little girl with dark eyes so much like yours.

And a man, a man with eyes very unlike yours. A bright and unsullied blue, like the sky on a perfect summer day. Yours were darker than midnight. In your eyes I saw a night that I prayed would come to an end, that I prayed would never come to an end.

End of term. I was fifteen. I was unpacking my school things, putting them away neatly. I have always liked things neat and tidy.

My door was unlocked. You burst in, eyes blazing with rage. I knew you were angry with me; I had known it for weeks. Your glances across the Great Hall had been smoldering with unspoken fury. But you had been too busy with exams to confront me. So, this was the moment of truth, was it?

“I. Saw. You. Kissing. That. Mudblood.” Your voice was barely above a whisper. You kicked the door shut behind you. “I could tell Father, you know.”

I gulped.

“But I think I can punish you better myself,” she said. “Put those robes down and come here.”

I married him to get away from you.

Not that I didn’t love him. I loved him and I do love him. But I also saw him as the one who could free me of the tangled bonds of love and hate and lust that tied me to you. He could show me a life where love was not obsession, where sex was not pain, where family meant safety.

He was my Perseus. He was the one who could break the chains at last.

The night before my wedding. I had been banished from the family house and was living in a shabby little flat in London. I had tried my best to make it a home, but now it was time to bid farewell to the little apartment. Ted and I were going to make a life for ourselves, starting tomorrow.

Theodore. It means given by God. Did you know that? Did you ever believe in a God outside yourself?

I had not told you when and where he and I would be married. By then, you were on a crusade against Muggles and Muggle-borns, and I would not endanger Ted or his parents.

But you must have somehow found out the date, if not the venue.

Was it superstition that led me to leave my door unlocked that night?

You were more tender than you had been before. I didn’t understand. Was I not about to commit the most egregious offense? Had I not broken your code more blatantly than ever?

But you almost seemed sad. You almost seemed to love me.

“Don’t marry the Mudblood,” you whispered just before dawn. “You were born to be mine.”

I touched your face, looked into your midnight eyes. “Bella...Please go.”

You nodded. I thought I saw unshed tears in your eyes, but I was never sure. I turned away. A moment later, I heard the door close behind you.

So. A life lived safely on the shore, now, with my Perseus. Beneath the waves, the serpent still writhes, and some nights I lie awake and hear it calling me.

The locks and chains on my doors keep me safe. Still I am fettered, yes, but these fetters hold me above the dark depths of the sea, out of reach of the monster that lurks within me. Out of your grasp. Far from your siren’s song, the song that could wake the serpent if I allowed myself to walk down by the sea and listen.

Born to be yours. But yours no longer.