[HP fic] Sins
Title : Sins
Lenght : 700 words
Characters/Pairings: Bellatrix/Andromeda
Warnings: Mythological references like whoa.
Author's Note: Happy birthday, kethlenda! I hope you like this little gift.



She was waiting for Andromeda in the bedroom, quiet and dark, sitting on the bed. The shadows were kind enough to hide the worst of the years and the worst of Azkaban. It was been eighteen years since last she had seen her.

"Hello Bella," Andromeda said, as she sat besides her.

Bella turned to look at her and laughed dryly. It was the same hollow, reckless sound it had always been. The same as Sirius' laughter. She found the thought stealing breath from her throat.

"I've seen your daughter tonight," Bella said, as if resuming a conversation. "She looks very handsome. Although, not very stable on her feet." She smirked. Her teeth glinted in the moonlight, making her look vicious and beautiful like a fierce animal.

"If you ever touch my daughter again," Andromeda said, "I'll hunt and kill you."

Bella laughed again.

"Your own sister, Andi? You wouldn't. What is it that you used to say?"

"No man is so accursed as the kinslayer," Andromeda recited. There was no softness in her voice.

"Yes, exactly." She looked at Andromeda with a sneer. "Did you think I would stop at one more sin?"

Had Andromeda thought so? Yes, she had. She'd prayed for it, too, fifteen years earlier, when they had found Regulus' body.

"How sweet of you, but-" Bella bent down toward Andromeda to whisper at her ear with a warm, poisoned breath, "there is one sin even worse. It is the eating of the dead. Do you remember? You told me all about it, the banquet of Tantalus and the curse of the Atrides. It was my favourite story."

Death Eater, they called themselves. They who bowed only to one Lord.

Andromeda put her hand around her sister's wrist, steeling herself. This was not a time for games and tales. "Why are you there, Bella?"

Bella looked at her without smiling. Maybe the moon was brighter, because Andromeda could suddenly see the lines and the waste left by fourteen years of prison in despair. Oddly, Bella still looked striking, as if her beauty was made for ravage, and stood stronger, brighter in the mid of desolation.

"They took my husband away, your daughters and her friends. Took him back to the hellhole."

Andromeda lost her patience. "Get away from here, Bellatrix, before I forget that you're my sister."

Bella's laughter, then, was quiet and bitter. "Are you the only one allowed to care for her husband, Andi? Will you be the righteous one, then? Electre bright and angry calling for the just revenge of murder? Will your little Nymphadora be the lucky Orpheus, to be hunted away by the Kindly Ones until she goes mad?"

God, no. Not that.

"You're the one who killed blood." Andromeda didn't know if it was for Sirius or for Bellatrix that she grieved so much.

"Traitor blood," Bella replied automatically.

"Blood nonetheless."

"I didn't mean to!" Bellatrix cried with anger. "I would have done it, though. I would have! But that idiot couldn't even dodge a blasting spell, and-"

Andromeda laughed suddenly, struck with the absurdity of it all.

"Hush, sister." She reached for her sister's face and wove her hands into her hair. "I would bury you both and grieve for both of you, against the will of either Lord or Ministry." She said, staring into her sister's eyes. "But Sirius left no body and you're still alive."

Bella relaxed under her caress as she always did as a child.

"Then you will bury me, promise me Andromeda."

"I promise," Andromeda said gravely.

Bella fell down onto her lap like a big, boneless cat while Andromeda's finger wove themselves deeper and deeper into the tangled curls.

Bellatrix said not another more word, all through the night. Not even when her hands danced across Andromeda's breasts and tights, rough and impatient, nor when Andromeda's tongue slid inside her sex to taste the flavour of kin. Another sin between them, much sweeter than all the others.

In the morning she was gone, and it was the last of her Andromeda saw of her until the end of the war.

Which was another story.