Bellatrix was furious the next day. She cornered Andromeda and Narcissa, who were packing for the return to Hogwarts the next day, and demanded to know if they'd tampered with her letters.

"Letters?" Andromeda said, keeping her face blank.

"Well, a letter. Annabella says she sent me a letter yesterday, but I never got it. Is this a stupid joke?"

Her face was rather pinched and pale. Narcissa bit her lip, but Andromeda silently begged her not to admit to anything. Her little sister was a bad liar, but she hoped she'd stay quiet. Calmly, she folded the robes the house elves had left on her bed and put them into the trunk. "We never saw any letter for you, did we Cissy?"

Narcissa blinked. "No," she said. "No letter."

Bellatrix huffed.

While Bellatrix was in the library, Narcissa and Andromeda snuck into her room and opened the heavy doors of her wardrobe. Her clothes were mostly the exact same as her sister's – elegant robes picked out by their mother, in varying soft shades. Andromeda pushed some hangers out of the way while Narcissa kept watch at the door, and there at the back of the wardrobe was a whole new world.

The clothes hung up here were certainly not any bought by their mother. Usually they were stuck in boring little-girlish robes, but Bellatrix had proper adult gowns. She had a long black one that swept the ground and was sure to look wonderful with her pale skin. She had a low-cut red one that made Andromeda and Narcissa blush and be sure their mother wouldn't approve of. She had a range of these, and not cheap ones either, proper high quality, the type their mother might order from a boutique. And there, right at the end, was a shimmering green one. It was beautiful and clearly extraordinarily expensive – Andromeda felt like she was sullying it just by looking at it, and when Narcissa reached out to touch the soft fabric, it was like touching an artwork in a museum.

"It's beautiful," Narcissa whispered, and then bent down. "She has shoes too, Andy. And a mask."

Narcissa unearthed several shoeboxes, along with an elaborate mask, the kind you might wear to a ball. Cygnus and Druella had had a masquerade ball long ago, when the children had been far younger. Andromeda remembered sitting with Bellatrix in their nightgowns and watching the guests arriving through the banisters. Narcissa had been very little then, perhaps only two or three. Some of them had been wearing terrifying masks, but this one she held was small and pretty, just enough to cover the eyes. It was beautifully painted with soft strokes around the holes to simulate eyelashes, and gold swirls.

Narcissa wasn't interested in the mask. She was more concerned with opening the shoeboxes. Most of them were flat, but she marvelled at two pairs of high heels. Andromeda knew Druella wouldn't let Bellatrix wear high heels until she was older. Unease prickled on her skin, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to shut up the wardrobe again.

It didn't matter how neatly they put her things back. Bellatrix came into the library like a raging bull that evening. Thankfully, it was only Andromeda there.

"You've been through my room, haven't you?" She demanded. "And you took my letter! How dare you! Give it back!"

"I burned it."

"You did what?" Her eyes were red, like she'd been crying, her hair in disarray.

"He was saying all of these strange things, Bellatrix – how could you go out with him like that? He's creepy."

"He is not! He's a perfect gentleman, and he asked for me," despite her anger, Bellatrix's voice held a note of pride. "He asked Father if I could do a special task for him. Father was honoured."

"He - he's whoring you out!"

It wasn't a phrase she knew particularly well, but Bellatrix turned red with rage.

"He would never do anything like that! The Dark Lord respects me. But because of you, he's angry at me. He thinks I didn't come on purpose."

Andromeda was shocked to see tears bloom in her eyes. "I'm sorry," she said meekly. "I just wanted to stop you from going."

"He hates me now," she said tearfully. "He said he thought he could trust me, but I've let him down."

"Didn't you explain?"

"I tried. The Dark Lord doesn't care for explanations. The only thing he cares about is that I betrayed his trust."

"Maybe it's for the best," she tried.

"The best?" Bellatrix snapped. "You're still just a little girl, aren't you? You don't understand what you've done. If he stops talking to me, I will never ever forgive you, Andromeda Black. You'll be as good as dead."

︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵　　‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵

To make matters worse, Druella was constantly at her these days too, mostly about maturity. Now that Andromeda was thirteen, she said, she was too old to sit with Narcissa at dinner, meaning that her little sister was left on her own. Now that Andromeda was thirteen, she was scolded more than ever for biting her nails, because apparently it was a childish habit. And now that she was thirteen, Druella was wondering if something was wrong with her development because she still hadn't started her monthlies or had much to show off in the chest area. Normally her aunt Persephone would come to gossip with Druella, but she had become a recluse ever since Aurelia's death. So instead her grandmother, Roseanne, came and scrutinised her. "Perhaps she's a little backward," she suggested, while Andromeda stood awkwardly on display in the parlour. "By the time I was her age I was already engaged. She still looks like a little girl."

Andromeda blushed hard. The tissue in the bra experiment had long since been abandoned, mostly because it was uncomfortable and scratchy, and when she moved she could hear it crinkling. It wasn't fair. Perhaps there really was something wrong with her. Roseanne peered at her. She only had a few tiny wrinkles by her eyes, artfully covered. Her grandmother wasn't that old, certainly not as old as some other grandmothers. She didn't know her exact age, but as Druella was now thirty three (Andromeda had never been told, but she'd had Bellatrix at seventeen and Bellatrix was almost sixteen now), she guessed her to be roughly in her mid forties. She knew that her mother's eldest sibling, Cornelius, had been born when her grandmother had just turned fourteen. That was only slightly older than Andromeda, and the thought of having a baby horrified her.

"Do you think I should take her to a healer, Mother?"

"Perhaps you should. And while we're on the subject, Bellatrix is getting quite long in the tooth. She's almost sixteen now. When I was sixteen I had two children."

Her grandmother, Andromeda had long since realised, was a presence to be suffered. She constantly compared her grandchildren to what she had been doing at their age, like it was their fault they hadn't married at thirteen and had all seven children birthed by the age of twenty two. Even Druella found her irritating, and did her best to answer her. "Mother, I want Bellatrix to have a proper education first."

"Education? Bah, you never did your final year, and look at you. Such a big house, a husband, three children – you're happy, aren't you?"

"Yes," Druella said flatly. "Very happy."

Her mother didn't notice her tone and rattled on. "And I was only at school for a year and a half, and yet I have a wonderful life. A word of advice, Andromeda," she said, leaning over so Andromeda could see the red lipstick on her teeth. "Choose looks, not books. You always have your head stuck in some book or other, and it isn't good for you."

"Yes Grandmother," she said stiffly.