nineveh_uk (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nineveh_uk) wrote2007-03-08 02:44 pm
nineveh_uk) wrote2007-03-08 02:44 pm
Entry tags:
Potter-fic
It is years since I read the essays in Tolkien's The Monsters and the Critics, but there is one line that has stuck in my mind since first reading, the last line of his description of eucatastrophe, when he writes in italics of the figure in the ballad "he turned and heard her." I can't remember the rest, only enough of the dim pattern that the five words still send shivers down my spine. All of which is a way of saying that the following is entirely the fault J.R.T. Tolkien and the Guardian Family supplement of the previous post.
Potter-fic: Andromeda, Bellatrix, PG at most.
He turned and heard her
Andromeda cut carefully around the newspaper article and folded it into the envelope with a note of half a dozen words before fastening it to the leg of the waiting owl. She would never be certain whether Bellatrix received these things she sent, but the owls (guaranteed delivery or return) did not come back, and once she had received, borne by a heavily struggling bird in the teeth of a winter gale, a parcel containing an old and glorious feathered cape of their grandmother’s, fought over long ago in the dressing-up box. Only the two of them left now with Narcissa gone, and for all that forgiveness was irrelevant, Andromeda thought she could almost have given it to Bella for telling her the truth of Narcissa’s death when Nymphadora would not. Her own child, a Ministry apparatchik - but that was unfair. The Blacks were loyal, and Nymphadora, for all her denials, was a Black. There was proof enough in her being an only child; all that was allowed to the cadet branch.
They had been the Black girls, the family pride, three pairs of cool appraising eyes looking out from their house upon the world. How much time had she wasted in self-pity, thinking herself cast out when the others, too, had been alone? No psychic link, no hormonal sympathy (the wizarding world had not grasped hormones, being quite happy to use bodies without knowing how they worked), only the certainty that she would have thrown herself in front of any curse for her sisters – any curse of her sisters - and that it did not matter whether they would do the same for her. Only, looking out of the windows on dark evenings with Ted at work and the house elf in the kitchen and the place so quiet, what she would have given for half-an-hour with them again, half-an-hour of that time that she had thrown away, wanting one lifetime of love, and not understanding that she needed two. It wasn’t hard, in such moods, to understand old tales of necromancy, full of horror as they had been even though one knew, theoretically, that it simply couldn’t work, one understood the will. To stand in black in a graveyard, on mother’s grave, wet grass showing footprints, blood poured on earth, and a name cried to the heavens. Whose name?
Bellatrix! Bella, I am here. A prayer whispered in the darkness, at your sister’s grave, in the laboratory on a Sunday, in the bathroom in the middle of the night, in hotels by the sea, at night in the garden, calling the cat indoors. The cat is mousing, and does not wish to come. Why wait out here? For the same reason you find yourself watching the fire. So that you are here if she calls you, because you cannot go to her.
The night is not silent. A train rumbles down the line a mile away. You hear the crack of someone shooting rabbits.
‘Bellatrix.’
‘Andromeda?’ A whisper in the trees, and then again. ‘Andromeda!’ That voice, black smoke and blood. Do not turn round. It isn’t true. Someone called Bella long ago, from a stone-flagged terrace outside a house now ruined twenty years. She turned to hear it and the darkness swallowed her. Do not turn round. Except that someone is standing behind you, taller than you, her scent the same familiar neutral nothingness that is your own, and the reaching hand that dare not touch without permission … You turn round.
You had thought there would be a roar of clouds, a rending of the sky, not the mild familiar crack of apparation so easily mistaken in the Muggle world and Bellatrix standing there, black-robed, black-haired, eyes wide and uncertain in a face that looks no older than your own.
'Sometimes,' Bellatrix says, and there is a tremour of a smile beneath the words, 'I think you ought to be ashamed of marrying a journalist.'
So you know it is true, that it is Bellatrix who has come and holds her hand out tentatively, because she doesn’t know what to do, and because she is older than you, and more talented than you, and in some ways so completely useless, it is you who steps forward to embrace her and cry that she is real, that she is really here, and her hands fold awkwardly around your back, and the weight of her head is on your shoulder, and it is so long since you felt this, your own flesh and blood, and whatever she wants, if you never see her again, you would fall on your knees that you have had this.
Potter-fic: Andromeda, Bellatrix, PG at most.
He turned and heard her
Andromeda cut carefully around the newspaper article and folded it into the envelope with a note of half a dozen words before fastening it to the leg of the waiting owl. She would never be certain whether Bellatrix received these things she sent, but the owls (guaranteed delivery or return) did not come back, and once she had received, borne by a heavily struggling bird in the teeth of a winter gale, a parcel containing an old and glorious feathered cape of their grandmother’s, fought over long ago in the dressing-up box. Only the two of them left now with Narcissa gone, and for all that forgiveness was irrelevant, Andromeda thought she could almost have given it to Bella for telling her the truth of Narcissa’s death when Nymphadora would not. Her own child, a Ministry apparatchik - but that was unfair. The Blacks were loyal, and Nymphadora, for all her denials, was a Black. There was proof enough in her being an only child; all that was allowed to the cadet branch.
They had been the Black girls, the family pride, three pairs of cool appraising eyes looking out from their house upon the world. How much time had she wasted in self-pity, thinking herself cast out when the others, too, had been alone? No psychic link, no hormonal sympathy (the wizarding world had not grasped hormones, being quite happy to use bodies without knowing how they worked), only the certainty that she would have thrown herself in front of any curse for her sisters – any curse of her sisters - and that it did not matter whether they would do the same for her. Only, looking out of the windows on dark evenings with Ted at work and the house elf in the kitchen and the place so quiet, what she would have given for half-an-hour with them again, half-an-hour of that time that she had thrown away, wanting one lifetime of love, and not understanding that she needed two. It wasn’t hard, in such moods, to understand old tales of necromancy, full of horror as they had been even though one knew, theoretically, that it simply couldn’t work, one understood the will. To stand in black in a graveyard, on mother’s grave, wet grass showing footprints, blood poured on earth, and a name cried to the heavens. Whose name?
Bellatrix! Bella, I am here. A prayer whispered in the darkness, at your sister’s grave, in the laboratory on a Sunday, in the bathroom in the middle of the night, in hotels by the sea, at night in the garden, calling the cat indoors. The cat is mousing, and does not wish to come. Why wait out here? For the same reason you find yourself watching the fire. So that you are here if she calls you, because you cannot go to her.
The night is not silent. A train rumbles down the line a mile away. You hear the crack of someone shooting rabbits.
‘Bellatrix.’
‘Andromeda?’ A whisper in the trees, and then again. ‘Andromeda!’ That voice, black smoke and blood. Do not turn round. It isn’t true. Someone called Bella long ago, from a stone-flagged terrace outside a house now ruined twenty years. She turned to hear it and the darkness swallowed her. Do not turn round. Except that someone is standing behind you, taller than you, her scent the same familiar neutral nothingness that is your own, and the reaching hand that dare not touch without permission … You turn round.
You had thought there would be a roar of clouds, a rending of the sky, not the mild familiar crack of apparation so easily mistaken in the Muggle world and Bellatrix standing there, black-robed, black-haired, eyes wide and uncertain in a face that looks no older than your own.
'Sometimes,' Bellatrix says, and there is a tremour of a smile beneath the words, 'I think you ought to be ashamed of marrying a journalist.'
So you know it is true, that it is Bellatrix who has come and holds her hand out tentatively, because she doesn’t know what to do, and because she is older than you, and more talented than you, and in some ways so completely useless, it is you who steps forward to embrace her and cry that she is real, that she is really here, and her hands fold awkwardly around your back, and the weight of her head is on your shoulder, and it is so long since you felt this, your own flesh and blood, and whatever she wants, if you never see her again, you would fall on your knees that you have had this.
no subject
The glassy hill I clamb for thee,
The bluidy shirt I wrang for thee,
And wilt thou not wauken and turn to me?
He heard and turned to her.
It's the Black Bull of Norroway - and like you, that line haunts me. The fic is rather haunting, too...
no subject
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The sense of isolation rang very true - probably due to your other fic, it's something I always associate with the Black sisters. Do you think Narcissa will die in DH? It does seem unfortunately plausible.
no subject
I don't know whether I think N. is likely to die - it's certainly on my list of credible possibilities, and I can see how it could work, but I don't think I know enough to tip the balance one way or the other.
no subject
no subject
no subject
And thank you, and I hope your heart mends :-)