Who: Narcissa, Bellatrix and Remus Where: Shrieking Shack When: Recently What: Remus meets the Black sisters Warnings: high tension but that's about it
The autumn was well on its way around Hogsmeade, and hard on its heels would come the sort of northern winter that Bellatrix wanted nothing to do with. Even during the day, the sun was becoming thin, keeping any warmth to itself, and she knew that warming charms on her dress wasn’t going to be enough soon. She had very little choice though, spending the days through the door wandering outside as she had no money and nowhere to go. Cissa was doing what she could to help, but even so… Bella was feeling the strain.
Nothing was the way it should be. And perhaps if it was only one thing - or two - perhaps that would have been alright. But with everything changed, and none of it for the better, Bella was quickly being pushed to a point that seemed almost inevitable. Why should she even attempt to change her ways (as Cissa kept saying she should), if people already thought she was a monster. She didn’t feel like one, but they treated her like one. If she was going to bear the punishment, why not do the crime? If it was inevitable, why shouldn’t she talk to Tom? The one person other than her sister to treat her with any sort of respect or kindness since everything began.
Bella sighed to herself as she sat on a bench at the outskirts of Hogsmeade, staring at the beat up, run-down shack there. Wand up her sleeve, journal on her lap, she shook her head and watched the leaves falling from the colorful trees.
Cissa found comfort in small things. She painted Hogwarts that loomed in the distance, ventured down to Hogsmeade to shop and even tried to brighten up the interior of the Shrieking Shack the best she could. She was tired of being reminded of Death Eaters, but learnt quickly that her past would always linger around her like heavy, smelly smoke from a pipe and there would never, ever be a true escape. Narcissa adapted quickly, as natural mothers always do, and began taking her family under her wing. Perhaps it would have been better to cut and run while she still could, give everything to the Order and hope they treated her with mercy, but she saw Bellatrix as more than just a killer. Snape as more than just a greasy haired boy.
Draco, however, didn’t need much protection. And, perhaps that was why she had focused her efforts elsewhere? Or, perhaps it was merely a small attempt to make sure history wouldn’t repeat. She tried not to think much about it. Basket full of food and supplies, she walked out of Hogsmeade and smiled at her sister sitting on a nearby bench. “You look wary!” Cissa teased, though her own face reflected the same. The girl wasn’t in her usual fine, fitted robes and instead stuck with the oversized boyish robes that James Potter had given her. She was even wearing his socks decorated with Quidditch things like a ten year old child would have enjoyed. Cissa, after all, found comfort in small things.
“I spent the last of my money. Next week we must meet up with Draco and get this money thing sorted out.” Cissa said with certainty, taking the leadership role here when she never would have in their youth. She plopped down next to Bella without an ounce of her refined Black grace and sighed. “I am not looking forward to any of it. I want to live a humdrum life here forever. Perhaps I’ll become a professor.”
“Wary?” Bella responded, pulling her musings down from the leaves. “No, simply thinking.” Her gaze continued its downward trek over whatever it was that Cissa was wearing. Her eyebrow inched up in judgement, though her own outfit was hardly the height of fashion. Or even cleanliness, especially toward the bottom where autumn mud gathered on the fabric. She didn’t quite know the sorts of domestic charms that would keep her from looking too shabby, having relied on the family’s house elves to keep her in proper Black form. It meant that, beyond simply the muck on her dress, other small things about her had begun to show. She’d broken two nails several days back and had simply bitten them down until they stopped catching on things. Her hair, with a mind of its own at the best of times, was showing signs of curling frizz when she went too long without Cissa helping her brush it out. Being outside in the wind and autumn damp only set it firmly on a course to curl up around her face in a halo of dark, frothy waves.
The mention of being out of money only made Bella nod silently. She had come to terms (or at least begun to) with their situation, the fact that Cissa only had so much money on her, and that it was being used quickly in the care of more than one person. She sighed again and leaned close when her sister sat. The role reversal of “big” and “little” sister had struck her as well, but as it was one of the least alarming things about their current situation, she made no comment on it. There was also the fact that, somehow, Cissa seemed to know what the situation required, no matter how strange things became. “I hope he remains as reasonable as he has seemed so far. And that family can trump the sorts of things I hear people say.” She caught the “we” in the statement, and though she didn’t say anything in the moment, a quiet, dark part of herself wondered if they wouldn’t have more luck at it were Cissa to go alone.
“A professor?” The comment caught her off guard, and Bella leaned away enough to turn and look at Cissa fully. There was a sharp, appraising sort of look before she shook her head. “Whatever would you teach?” It came out almost with a laugh - what would her sister teach? - though she hardly meant it as the insult it seemed.
Cissa lightly touched the frizzed ends of her sister’s hair and then brushed it aside, leaning her head on her shoulder. “Muggle studies.” She said deviously with a smirk, all sisterly teasing as she laughed and then nudged closer. “I shall be the Arts teacher.” The youngest Black sister said like she was the authority of learning and nodded her head with resolution. “Teach the students how to charm paintings to move. Show them how to use proper coloring.” And, Cissa could see her daydream future out in front of her now. Arts professor with her hands always colored with different paints that no one forced her to wash off. She closed her eyes. She imagined eating at the Great Hall again. It was perfect.
“Perhaps I shall simply become a professional artist.” Cissa mused, yawning. “I could paint you. I think plenty of people would love to have a dark beauty fiercely looking at them over a fireplace.” The blonde girl looked up and smiled at Bellatrix until she looked back at her. A young woman who could easily put on her mothering robes when the time called for it, but a little sister nagging for attention deep down.
The delicate touch to her hair earned a smile from Bella, as did the heavy rest of blonde head on her shoulder, but the words caused her face to wrinkle up yet again into an expression of exasperation and disgust. “Ugh! Again with the mud--gles. Honestly Cissa, it’s like you have no shame any more.” Her voice skipped and caught on the single word, but she made no remark on it. Neither did she pull away, instead reaching down to hold her sister’s hand at the daydream weaving of a new possible future.
“You would want that?” Bella finally asked, face open and curious, the what-ifs and maybes all things that she couldn’t remember her sister ever having been interested in. It was so recent in her memory to recall a young girl that was focused on marriage to a well-named pureblood, and the life that would follow from such a union - money and power and prestige. But if what Cissa said was true, she’d already had that marriage, and had apparently come to want something very different. “You really have changed, haven’t you?” The question was soft and a bit wistful - gentle, which was a word that few would likely ever use to describe anything about Bellatrix Black. “I think there is a very small call for portraits of me at the moment, darling.” Her sister’s light eyes caught her own, and she smiled slightly before she leaned down to press a fond kiss against a fair-haired temple. “But you’re welcome to, if you’d like.”
Remus had left the safety of the Three Broomsticks behind with the express intention of learning the state of the Shrieking Shack. Dolores had kept him from the door the past two moons, but he could already tell that wasn't going to work as a permanent solution. As each new moon approached, he became more and more agitated, and he supposed it to be a result of not letting the wolf out. He would need to find a safe place, and he would need to do so soon. The new girl he shared space with, he could hear her, and she could hear him, and he hoped it might make things easier. But, regardless, a place needed to be found, and he could think of none better than the Shack. After all, it had been outfitted by the Headmaster for this express purpose, even if it hadn't been used for that purpose throughout his latter years at school. But things were different now. James had Lily, and Remus was no longer certain of James' judgement, even if he once again trusted James' loyalties. They didn't have Wormtail, which was a blessing, but Padfoot couldn't be expected to control the wolf alone, no matter that the wolf considered the shaggy black dog a member of his pack.
Remus approached the Shack from the back, and he ducked beneath the fence of wood and wire. His tawny hair was messy and snow dotted, and his robes were the same perpetually shabby brown they'd always been. The corduroy and grey beneath was very much from his time, and it was as worn as all the rest. Smallish and unimpressive, was Remus Lupin, and he'd rather grown accustomed to being the one always tagging behind, and he likely ought to have been tagging behind someone then. But times had changed, and he crossed the snowy field with his hand in his pocket, and his wand securely between his fingers.
Unlike James, you see, Remus had not forgotten. He'd spent the summer before ending up in this odd world with the werewolf colony, watching while they were courted by Voldemort. Unrespected weapons that he was loading, as one would load a muggle firearm. The war had officially been declared before his first year at Hogwarts, and he'd very much grown up as a child of that war. His mother had been a muggle, and he was a halfblood, and the Werewolf Registration Act meant he had twice the reasons to fear the battle to come, and here he was, having learned that all his worst fears had come to be. James could believe in change, perhaps, because he'd never feared, not like Remus had. Remus knew things. He knew that, by the time he finished school, the Malfoy family was Voldemort's strongest support, and had been for years. He knew, too, that Bellatrix married young, while declaring her love for Voldemort, her voice loud and the madness bright in her eyes. He knew Andromeda had never stomached the thought of him, a pureblood in her feelings about werewolves, if not about muggles, but he knew she wasn't like her sisters. He didn't know what to make of Severus, but thus far he hadn't seen anything to make him believe Severus would change loyalties for the love of Lily, but perhaps Lily not dying changed Severus in ways none of them would care for. He knew James was too trusting, and he suspected Nymphadora was as well. And he knew Sirius never looked before he leapt, even when he ought. Regardless, he knew truths that were not things of the future, and he knew them like he knew that he was better at the dark arts than he was at anything good and bright.
He stopped in front of the old Shack, and he tipped his tawny head back. It looked older, the Shack. It looked like it might not withstand an evening with the wolf, and his strange eyes narrowed as he sniffed the air. Even with the ozone and snow, he knew people had been there. He sniffed again. Two people. Sniff. Women. Sniff. But something of James lingered too, and then he knew.
Feeling betrayed, Remus drew his wand, and he kept it close to his leg.
Narcissa laughed softly, a gentle and musical thing and eventually sat up to look at Bellatrix. “I have.” She nodded as if they were sharing gossip and slowly got to her feet. “You haven’t changed a bit and for that, I’m grateful.” There was brightness in her eyes as she buried away memories of an older Bellatrix with manic laughter, blood thirst and a disregard for anything except the Dark Lord. Narcissa picked up the basket of goods, blinked out the visions of the past and held out her arm for her sister to loop hers with. “I’ll paint you right now.” Cissa demanded. “I’m certain I can charm some of those old rags hanging about the shack into something more presentable to drape your shoulders with.” She started up towards the shack with Bellatrix, speaking as though they were children intending on playing dress up.
Then, a thin frame of a boy came into view and Cissa pulled her wand out of her basket. “Who’s there?” She called, squinting in an attempt to recognize the boy as she protectively held her sister closer. A couple more steps and Remus Lupin’s worried face came into view. Narcissa felt her nerves come alight. If it had only been her, she could have easily defused the situation with Remus. Bellatrix, though, was like a dangerous creature no one believed to be tame except her. “Oh, hello.” Her tone was politely strained and she lightly ran her long fingers through her blonde hair. “Sightseeing, are you?” Narcissa attempted to joke. These mischief boys liked jokes, didn’t they?
“Haven’t I?” Bella said softly, studying the look that crossed Cissa’s face. “Not at all?” She wondered what her sister’s thoughts were, wondered if they were memories that she should have shared. But she laughed, something quiet and true as she linked arms with a muttered “this robe, honestly”. It was almost an automatic response to the outfit, lost quickly in another laugh about the thought of rags ever being proper draping material. “It will all turn to dust the second you try, darling, I’m certain of it.” The term of endearment was warm, completely lacking the mocking edge it so often had when she spoke to others.
Narcissa’s suddenly drawn-up guard caused Bellatrix to stop, tugging her sister back half a step as her own fingers twitched for the wand that was tucked up her sleeve. The boy’s thin face held no familiarity other than a passing itch of thought that she should recognize him. The forced lightness to Cissa’s voice where there had just been warmth and teasing made her tense and wary. She angled the two of them so that her body was just slightly in front of her sister’s. She’d had enough recent practice at waving off hexes that were aimed her way. “Narcissa?” she whispered, eyes not leaving the young man, especially once she saw his own wand was drawn and at the ready.
Remus had gone along with a great many things in his life, even though he knew he ought not to. He'd stood by while James and Sirius were dreadful bullies, and he hadn't stepped in when he should have. He regretted those things, and he wondered, standing there, if he would live to regret not immediately raising his wand and hexing Bellatrix in some permanent way. Only eighteen, but he knew killing curses, and he knew worse. What's more, he was good at them, and he knew it without even having tried. And the wolf in him was angry then, territorial, and the glint in his eyes should have indicated as much, should have hinted at the need for wariness then.
"Surely you've a home to go to. James' cottage?" he suggested, his voice calm and mild, despite the truth of the anger contained within his wiry, small and unsubstantial frame. He directed the comment to Narcissa, because he could smell James all over the youngest Black girl, and he could smell hints of the cottage and Sirius' protective charms as well. His gaze shifted to Bellatrix then, hard and knowing, forgiving nothing. "Your insults from the scroll, do you care to repeat them to my face?" he asked calmly, toeing a line he knew he should not toe. The words held snarl and sadness and knowledge.
Narcissa had thought she could have dissipated the tension. After all, she had learnt the skills needed to keep the Dark Lord happy, so how difficult was an angry little werewolf? There was an attempt at a smile, but the comment about James and the cottage put her on edge and every hope of keeping this civil started to crumble. She wrapped her fingers around the sleeves of Potter’s robes and clenched onto the fabric. What had otherwise given her comfort was now some kind of mark that Remus could point at. Narcissa turned her face away as if he had physically stung her and tried to even out her expression. “James lent me these.” Was all she said, neither confirming or denying the part about the cottage despite feeling so exposed.
Finally, the youngest of the Black sisters turned to look at Remus again. She sniffed. Her shoulders squared, her back straightened and her eyes set dead onto the werewolf’s gaze. “This is my temporary home. Our home.” Narcissa pulled closer to her sister. “And, whatever my sister said to you was surely in self defense. I told you she is adjusting to her new life here. And, you have no right provoking her.” Her voice didn’t fluctuate in tone as many young women did. It simply grew louder and harder. This instinct to be protective of her family warming her skin from the inside out.
Bellatrix was torn. The boy in front of them barely looked strong enough to hold his wand, much less attack either of them, but there was something dangerous to the angle of his slight shoulders, and it made her reach over to pull Narcissa farther behind herself. Her own posture was poised, tense, ready to act the second she needed to. It wasn’t until he spoke about the scroll, her words, that she made the connection. “The wolf?” Her eyebrows inched up, having expected far more from his appearance than what was before her. She had seen Fenrir Greyback once when she was much younger, from far away, remembered the way his eyes rested on her and the way he made her stomach turn and sent her to linger close to her parents until they returned home. She’d never wanted to see him again, nor any other werewolf, but now here was this boy in front of them, making Cissa turn away, making her voice hint at hurt. And hadn’t she so recently promised to not abide such things?
She hardly wanted to think of the shack as her home, but Bellatrix did have to accept that it was the closest thing she had to one at the moment, until the two of them figured out how they were to survive elsewhere. More than that, it was a place that Narcissa had put effort into, made somehow better and hers. She listened to her sister’s words, saw the proud, tall line of her spine out of the corner of her eye (the sort of pride only a Black could possess), but she kept her gaze on the boy. Her wand was a hard line along the inside of her arm, waiting to be drawn down to cast any sort of spell needed, but she volleyed with words first, quieter than Cissa’s, but no less haughty and forceful for it. “You are not allowed to speak to her that way.” She would grudgingly accept any words said about herself, even knowing how few of them were true at the moment, but if he continued to say such things to her sister, she would find a way to remove his tongue. Either by magic or by physical force. The threat of which, while unspoken, was easy to read in her posture.
"Your sister," Remus said, his gaze not leaving Bellatrix, even as he obviously spoke to Narcissa, "was not defending herself. She was saying what she believes, and however much you want to change her, you can't. She still says the things she said ten years ago, when she was my age and joined Voldemort with more manic glee than anyone had prior," he explained, his voice calm, almost scholarly, even in his anger. There was even a small bit of a smile there, a sorry one, and perhaps it was indication of the kind of man he would grow into, should he be allowed to. "James is trusting by nature. I'm not," he explained. "And you haven't taken into consideration that in our time, you're both much older than us. We know precisely what you did at eighteen. The both of you," he said, a quick glance back at Narcissa. No, she'd never taken the Mark, and a quick glance at her arm said as much, but she'd stood by while Voldemort killed in her home, and she'd done nothing. "You remember everything, or so you've said. If Voldemort had won, would you be claiming you wanted to change, yourself?" he asked, just as calmly, because fear - he was sure - had changed Narcissa's loyalties, and fear could easily change them again.
His attention fully returned to Bellatrix then. "You can't tell me who I can speak to, nor in what manner. Not you of all people," he told her, and a snarl curled up the corner of his mouth. He wanted to tell them the Shack was his, that the Headmaster had equipped it for him, but he didn't. Their smell would just make him angry on the moon, and he'd be lucky if he didn't tear himself limb from limb as a result.
The question of her intentions made Narcissa sneer and her heart race with Black anger even if her mind pleaded to simply wilt like a flower. Like she had always done. For her family, for her husband, for the the Dark Lord. And, it wasn’t until her own son’s life was on the line that she began railing against everything that had promised her a gilded cage. “All I ever wanted was a family. A home. My home!” She was screaming before she knew it, the thunder of her voice erupting in every direction. “They tried to take everything from me. They twisted my husband. They almost let my son die. They turned my home into a slaughter house and then they changed my sister into a monster.” Narcissa’s face was suddenly wet and red, uglier than Remus had ever seen and twisted up with the true agony of a wife who had been on the wrong side of a war.
“They ruined everything and you, young little werewolf with all your friends, you will never know how that feels. You want the war, not us.” Narcissa hissed, pointed her wand at Remus for only a split second and then let it fall back down to her side with a sudden sob. Her body seemed to fold from the waist inward and she turned to press her face against Bellatrix’s shoulder, wrapping her arms around her sister as she continued to cry, muffled and soft. “Tell him to leave us alone.”
The heat of Narcissa’s anger, brief though it was before it burned itself out, only served to spark something in Bellatrix, something deep that pushed her to hate. Not the sort of general disdain she had for all werewolves, the dislike that was born years ago and emerged bitter on the tongue when allowed to spill out, but something for this boy specifically, who dared to make her sister rage and cry. Her own voice was tense and calm in contrast. “In your time,” she bit out, sharp knives past her teeth and glint behind her eyes. “Tell me, wolf, is this your time?” She gestured to the trees around them, taking in the world that had moved on without any of them other than the children, the world that had displaced them all.
Bellatrix's wand was suddenly in her hand with the expansive movement, though she kept it pointed down, not out toward him. “Is this the prelude to everything that’s gone before? Do you remember it being this way? The path we all took before? Because I do not. My youngest sister is the same age as I am and she has a son who is also the same age, if not older. I have no friends and no fiance and no home. I have done none of the many things that are said about me, and yet I am treated as if I have.” She began to take a step toward him, eyes alight, but the anchor of Narcissa against her shoulder kept her where she was. “This is not the same world, and yet you all insist on treating it as if it is. If that is the way you wish to live, go away and leave us out of it.” She paused, her voice dropping darker, a thoroughly dangerous edge to it that hadn’t been there before. “And don’t you dare ever make my sister cry again.” With those words, her free hand rested lightly on the back of Narcissa’s neck, fingers stroking gently, trying to calm the tears even as she kept her gaze sharp on Remus.
"We ruined everything?" Remus asked incredulously, and he jerked a shoulder toward Bellatrix in emphasis. "I was nine when she left Hogwarts, and she was already mad, and she had already chosen Voldemort. I was twelve when you made your choice," he continued, looking back at Narcissa. This war was declared official in nineteen seventy. I didn't ruin anything. I was merely born into it. So was James, and so was Sirius. I'm not questioning your actions later, not at the present moment, I'm questioning your actions now, at this age. Absolution doesn't work the way you're trying to make it work. You're trying to make it seem like you went through Hogwarts as innocents, and this was all foisted upon you. It wasn't. You're the generation that came before mine. You're the generation that started this bloody war, because you followed a monster, and she's still parroting his dogma" he said of Bellatrix, and yet his voice was calm throughout his diatribe, even and still. Because what he said was true, and James could talk all he would, it couldn't change truth. That Narcissa had changed during the war, and that now she wanted to repaint history with her wand, that he could believe. But he couldn't believe it of Bellatrix, and none of it could change either woman's past. "Decisions aren't made overnight. At eighteen, you'd already decided." Simply.
When Bellatrix clutched her wand, Remus kept his lowered. "You are deranged," he simply said, because he'd already explained, and he wasn't going to do it again at the end of a wand. "I went to school with Sirius. I know everything about your family, and I'm not James. I can't be talked into believing things that aren't true." He held his ground when Bellatrix stepped forward, but he shifted his wand from behind his robes, making it visible and evident. "This is not the same world, but we are all the same people." As for making Narcissa cry, he merely shook his head. "If she doesn't like truth, it's not my fault," he insisted, his wand not faltering. "I've been living in truths since I was four. I'm not about to stop now." He glanced at the Shack, his gaze melancholy, and then he looked at Bellatrix again. "Release your wand, and I'll release mine. Or, barring that, use it." There was a snarl at the end of that challenge, a show of teeth that was more wolf than boy, even though his tone remained scholarly and even.
Narcissa gave a frustrated scream into her sister’s shoulder as Remus ranted. “No them, THEM!” She screamed into fabric before turning to look at the stupid werewolf. “See, sister? How quick he is to misunderstand in order to justify his fear.” The blonde snarled, eyes dead set on Remus with a level of hurt that went far beyond him and his warmongering friends. She let go of her clutching hold of Bellatrix and stomped closer to Remus, disarmed but still furious at him. “Shut up, you stupid boy.” She demanded. “Them. The Death Eaters. The Dark Lord. Them.” Her voice leveled to a reasonable volume and she quickly wiped her wet face with her sleeve. “You will never be able to comprehend what I’ve been through. What I’ve seen happen to my family. You think you’re so logical, but you’re a fool. A fool who demands that my sister wash herself of her prejudice overnight or become your sworn enemy. A fool who points back at himself when we truly share a common enemy.”
She stood a little taller, but her nose didn’t upturn. Narcissa only stared at Remus to see if he could understand, finally, after all of this. Then, her expression softened and she pulled Potter’s robes around her body. “Are you merely angry at how the world has treated you as my cousin is? Do you need something to slaughter to make you feel better?” She asked him honestly and it was clear that was a solution she had grown used to seeing other people use. Twisted, angry, superior men and women who needed to bleed the life out of their sworn enemies.
Remus didn't move when Narcissa approached, though his expression turned slightly comprehending, and perhaps a little defeated. "It doesn't work how you're trying to make it work. She isn't you," he said, jerking his chin toward Bellatrix. "And your guilt over your choices doesn't change the fact that you made them, that you were already making them when you were the age you look. It doesn't change that she made her choices too. Forgiveness doesn't work like that, and trust doesn't come in a month, not after a decade of seeing what the two of you did, before ever ending up here. I comprehend more things than James or Sirius, actually, but that isn't important."
He stepped back, and he pocketed his wand. "I don't need to look for anything to slaughter, Narcissa. Your sister running her bloody mouth like she has, that's going to do it for all of us. Ask her if she's spoken to Tom Riddle. Have you? No, I know you have. I've seen you. You want us to forgive and forget, but what of Voldemort? What of the rest of the wizarding world? You're living a fantasy." He shrugged his narrow shoulders beneath that old and shabby brown cloth. "And Sirius has every right to be angry. He grew up in your family, and you can't change that by trying to shift blame onto him. He made the right choice. So did Andromeda. He has a right to be angry. Don't act like he doesn't. You want to wipe away the past, but you can't blame the people who remember it. She-" he pointed at Bella. "kills him. She kills her own niece, too. I'd be wary if I was him. I'd be wary if I was Dora. In fact, I'll be wary for both of them, because they, like James, are much more trusting than I am. Blame the wolf."
"I hope you like the lies you've woven for yourself, Narcissa. May they keep you warm, while they can," he said, his version of a farewell, though he wasn't about to turn his back on a wanded Bellatrix.
“She can be better. She can be better.” Narcissa repeated softly and shook her head at Remus. “I don’t want what happened to Severus to happen to her. He was never happy, you know. His entire life wasn’t anything except misery. And, now I see you boys speaking to each other again and I know things can’t change even if we want it to.” A heavy sigh as she shrugged her shoulders slowly and turned away from him, voice trailing as she walked back to her sister’s side. “You want us to pay for our crimes or own them and return to something you can understand. You and my cousin all want the world to be just so.” Her hand flicked in the air as if she were listening to music.
The youngest Black looked up to Bellatrix with eyes that said she wanted to kill him, but she had given a similar look when another girl in Slytherin house happened to wear the same robes she was to Herbology. There was no true blood lust behind it. Only anger and frustration. She positioned herself in front of Bellatrix, right in front of her heart and looked back at Remus for a split second. “The both of you disarm at the same time.” She demanded. Because, at the end of the day, she didn’t really trust many people either. Remus might have been playing logical, but the second Bellatrix dropped her guard, he could have easily murdered her in the outskirts of Hogsmeade.
"I went to school with Severus, Narcissa. Sirius told me everything about Bellatrix during the war. They aren't the same at all," he said, with the newly resigned sense that Narcissa would end up reliving precisely what she didn't want to relive, simply because she wanted to have faith in someone that had been mad for much, much longer than Narcissa seemed to want to believe. “Severus, redeemed himself, or so I'm told. Bellatrix never did." And with that, he pocketed his wand. "We don't want you to pay for anything, we merely don't trust you. You want unconditional trust, and you haven't earned it. And with the things she's been saying, she's never going to. And you're defending her, and making Harry look like he's speaking for Voldemort." He shook his head, the young and frail professor, so terribly disappointed in a pupil.
And with that, he turned and gave them both his back. If Bellatrix hexed him, so be it.
The scream into her shoulder made Bellatrix start, look around to curse whatever had made the sound. But then she watched Narcissa cross toward the wolf, listened to the words thrown like knives between them. Her entire body felt tight and terrible and wrong through the discussion of things she had done, at the revisiting of what a horrible person she was. She was glad for the closeness when her sister returned to her, even if the expression on her pretty face was laced through with ugly anger. Bella raised pale fingers and pushed a bit of blonde hair back behind Cissa's ear with a gentle smile before her sister turned again, this time to protect her.
"I don't remember that. Any of it. Not the things everyone says, and not the things you say. If they're true, I don't remember a bit of it." Bella's voice had gone harp-string tight as she spoke past her sister’s shoulder toward the wolf, and her words carried through the rustle of leaves from the surrounding trees. "I remember seventh year, I sat my exams, I left Hogwarts. I became engaged as I was expected to. These things I remember." She stepped forward, around her sister and toward Remus' turned-away figure. Her wand stayed clenched in white knuckled fingers, but she never raised it from the ground. And it was a struggle. The narrow expanse of his back called, pulling at that spark of hatred that had bloomed in the pit of her awareness. Somewhere in her mind came the thought that it would be better to put him down. A dumb animal no longer able to harm anyone. Just an uppity wolf that needed to die. It was a horrifying thrill of a thought, and she pressed her free hand just below her breastbone, trying to calm a pulse that had begun to race with adrenaline and breath that had hitched with something that might have been excitement. But her wand remained pointed away. "I started no war," she continued, but the tone the words had somehow changed, her breath still catching around a racing heartbeat. "And I didn't kill Sirius or the girl. ...I haven't killed anyone."
Remus, already a step or two away, stopped. He looked over his shoulder, and his attention was directed entirely at Bellatrix this time. "For what you say to be true, then you must come from another past, Bellatrix, and I don't believe you do." He laughed a quiet, almost unnoticeable laugh at the notion that she hadn't killed anyone, that the thought even bothered her, and he realized that he had no idea who was telling the truth anymore, and who had merely convinced themselves that they were. He could tell Bellatrix had come closer, but he knew she wasn't going to hex him, not there, with her sister present, and not while she played innocent.
His parting words for Narcissa, after hearing the alteration in Bellatrix's voice, after smelling her adrenaline hitch on the air, was simple. "You say you're on our side, Narcissa. First, I argue we have no side, other than not wanting Voldemort to rise and kill again. But you might find that you end up needing to make the same choices all over again, despite how much you want to close your eyes to it." His voice dropped, and he turned away again. "I'm sorry for that."
And with that, Remus walked away, not turning to see what the Black girls were doing, through the field and past the fence, that anger he'd been keeping in check growing with each step and snarl.
Narcissa hadn’t anything to really direct her anger at since she showed up in her new body, so Remus made a nice target. He was a werewolf who acted superior. A small, ignorant little boy who thought he understood how the world worked better than she did. And, for the the first time she was here, Narcissa truly felt like turning to The Dark Lord for guidance. She’d never go through with it, not after what he had done to her perfect vision of the future, but that need for guidance when she had none. She wanted Lucius back to help her find her way even when he was lost himself.
“This is the last night we stay here.” Narcissa said coolly as the werewolf retreated, tugging on her sister’s sleeve. “We won’t live in squalor any longer.” She knew Bellatrix would agree and if anything it was more of a promise to regain the status they deserved.