A TALE OF THREE SIBLINGS (BLACK SISTERS)

Three pureblooded young siblings who, though all traveling the same path, choose to  lead their lives in different directions. The Peverell brothers? Yes, maybe, no. It’s the Black sisters.

First to choose is Bellatrix, the firstborn daughter. She, like Antioch, chooses the Elder Wand, the power, the fighting. She is the one who sits at her trial and thinks it a throne. She is the one who brags, who kills. She shares her name with the Amazon Star, sitting on the left shoulder of the great Orion. She is the duellist. She is the obvious one.

And then we have Andromeda, the second born daughter and turncoat. She, out of the three sisters, chooses love above family. She is the one with lost loved ones weighing her down, with Ted Tonks ghostly hand in hers, with her daughter’s pink hair in her eyes and her son-in-law’s shaky laugh echoing around her. She is the one who, more than anything, wants them back. She is not dead, not yet, but half her family is gone and the other half disowned her, so her heart is. She is Cadmus, the sibling who requested the Resurrection Stone. She is the one who desperately wants things back the way they were.

And last we have Narcissa, the youngest of three, in the style of Ignotus and his Invisibility Cloak. Like her Peverell counterpart, she is the exception of the three; out of the whole House of Black, she is the only one not named after a constellation or star. She is the one who guides her son in escaping his death sentence. She is the one who bends down, whispers to a living boy, and then looks the Dark Lord in the eye to say No, not this one. He’s dead. She is the one who knows how to fool death. She is the one who walks among the Death Eaters for years but never joins their ranks. She is the one who greets death like an old friend.

Together we have a tale: it is a story we have seen before. It is a tale of death, and love, and abandonment. It is not a happy story. It is not a redemption tale. But it is familiar. It is a Tale of Three Brothers, written again in the whip of Bellatrix’s curses and Andromeda’s tears and Narcissa’s refusal of death.

(Because the sisters can be the brothers, too.)