The Black Sisters - Tumblr Posts
Here's some of my other headcanons for the Marauders girls' relationships with food/their body! Part 1, where I explain myself and go over Lily, Mary & Marlene, is here. This time it's the Black sisters because, to me, the Black sisters all had a very complicated relationship with their body and body autonomy because of how they were raised.
Narcissa: I've always hc all three sisters as having grown up doing ballet, but to me, Narcissa is the only one who actually loved it and continued doing it in her teenagehood. Her ballet teachers monitored her weight very closely, and she wasn't allowed to go above or below a certain weight. Because of this, I think that all of her life she obsessively tracks her weight and forces herself to eat when it's too low and starve when it's too high. Into adulthood, she feels like she has to keep everything under control and her weight is one of the easiest things to control to her so stepping on a scale, to her, is sort of a comfort, a reminder that she does have things under control.
Bellatrix: Bellatrix took the phrase "your body is your vessel" a little too seriously. Like Marlene, if she closed her eyes, she couldn't picture herself, but unlike Marlene she doesn't fear mirrors at all, but she loves them. She spent hours staring at herself, nitpicking what's "good" and what's not. She views her body as a means to an end, she knows what clothes and what makeup will make her look more innocent or more desirable and she uses it to her advantage, but it is not her. She doesn't view her body as a representation of herself, but as a tool.
Andromeda: Andromeda, unlike Bellatrix, sees her body as something she must protect at all cost because it is her. It is her human form and who she is. Her sister used her body to do/get anything her mind wanted, she didn't care about the damage, but Andromeda cares too much about the damage. In the same way that she would have never did something damaging/disgraceful to her body, she would never put something in her body that she didn't see as healthy. She refuses anything with sugar and any processed foods because to her eating that "unhealthy" stuff, is disgracing her own body, therefore herself. I think as a child she was pretty loud and her parents put her under the Imperio curse to just calm her down for a few hours, and as a result of that trauma she became afraid of losing her body autonomy. She must have control over her body, otherwise she gets crazy panic attacks.
Pls somebody tell me they'd like me to make a post about the Black sister's relationships I wanna yap about them so baaad
Part 3 with Dorcas, Pandora and Alice is coming soon btw :)
Now I want to read a fic about the Black sisters!
Hey lovelies!
I am so sorry that I’ve been away for so long :0 and I know it’s so unsatisfying that I did almost 30 days for inktober and on the 31 I just forgot 🫣😂 But I mean that’s life. Hope you’ve been doing good! I saw some lovely messages slip into my inbox🌻💚 thank you all for your patience with me :3
About this work: Every time I try something slightly different it’s just default -the black sisters. Really enjoyed this different approach! (Also did a Draco and Luna one so look forward to tomorrow)
Hope you all have a fantastic weekend 💚🌻✨
The Black Sisters
Bellatrix "I'm not homophobic but Alice needs get the fuck away from Cissy or I will crucio them" Black
Sirius "I'm not homophobic but James needs to stop looking at my brother like that" Black
Hi, want some sad black sisters/Andromeda Black headcanons?
When Ted died in Deathly Hallows, I'm pretty sure people were informed about it on Potterwatch (the secret radio).
Which could mean that Andromeda and Tonks (I'm NOT gonna call them by their first name, it feels like deadnaming to me) also found out that way.
My hc is that they were listening to the radio every day hoping that Ted is still alive. And one day... They heard he was not.
Can you imagine the absolute horror and grief they felt in that moment? Cause I can't.
The urge to write about the years slightly above the marauders . . . The Black sisters . . . The Lestranges . . . Ted Tonks & Frank Longbottom . . .
No bc now all I wanna do is rant about the misogyny in this fandom. Which like my last post was about golden trio fans but like,, marauders fans aren’t exempt from that?? If anything they’re just more sly about it. Like yeah ok there’s sapphic ships, by why is it that when I go through their tags on ao3 they’re always just the supporting relationship for the mlm couple?? And yeah ok you won’t straight up hate a female character for getting in the way of your gay ship, instead you’ll kill her off, make her the surrogate, maybe you’ll keep the straight ship together but only after the other half to the mlm ship died so he’s left depressed and never getting over him and she’s left to be a rebound for the rest of her life making everyone miserable!! or you’ll throw her in a relationship with the closest woman so you can’t be called out for fetishising gay men.
Basically what I think I’m trying to say is there’s people in this fandom who I feel like use sapphic ships to try and compensate for their weird obsession with gay men and it doesn’t sit right with me.
Before I finish this rant though I feel like I need to say that I’m aware this looks very targeted at jegulus fans, but this applies just as much to wolfstar as it does jegulus. I’m also not saying that everyone who ships them are fetishising gay men or are misogynistic. Ship who you want, it’s not who you ship that I’m judging it’s how you treat the female characters that might get in the way of said ship.
do you think andromeda was a parlor girl?
I’ve always had it in my mind that Narcissa was a parlor girl. Then I got this ask and really started thinking about it. And I realized, yes, of course Andromeda was a parlor girl. And clearly Bellatrix wasn’t. Bellatrix never needed anyone but herself. She didn’t always know what she wanted, but she knew how to get it. From her parents, from the school, from the people around her and under her. She didn’t need sisters. She already had two,and while they had their uses, more would only get in the way. She had no interest in being beholden to anyone. (At least until the day she met a manwith powers she wanted, wanted, wanted and feared in equal measure.)
Andromeda yearned. Always had from a young age. And even when she wasn’t quite sure what it was she needed, she knew want. For a while she even let herself think that maybe Ted was what she wanted—the source and solution. But he was only a symptom, a point along the path that she truly wanted-escape. Without the sisterhood, she wasn’t sure she ever would have had the courage to take that step, to bind her life to Ted and leave everything else behind. (Only Ted ever felt like home, Ted and a cozy parlor tucked deep into the lowest spaces of Hogwarts. She loses both, in the end.)
But like a proper Slytherin, she always knew what theultimate cost would be—for love, for her own choice, for freedom.
Of course in the end, she lost more than parents andsisters. She paid dearly for that taste of freedom and self-definition. She paid it and lived it and wouldn’t change it. There was no point in hoping for that anyway.
Narcissa was the one who was weak enough to hope. Ambition ran in her veins just as well as her sisters—the Black sisters were raised on ambition. She wasn’t as focused as Bella or as independent as Andromeda, but she still knew she had to mold the world to her vision. There was a moment when that view was broad and boundless, when Andromeda held her hand out and offered an invitation, a membership that could have shaped her world in fathomless ways.
Narcissa accepted, of course, because one never knew where membership could take one and open doors were often more useful than closed ones.
Only Narcissa shut down the possibilities offered by the sisterhood after watching her sister lose everything, get herself ostracized over a boy, a foolish choice. And so she closed her heart against her sister with strange and dangerous ideas, and a sisterhood that frightened her, that did not always know its place, and set her eyes on a path in the middle of her two tumultuous and churning sisters.
Andromeda might have married to escape, but Narcissa married to be exactly where she was. It was her right. To be admired and well cared for and perfectly in balance on top of a world of order and tradition. If the sisterhood taught her anything, it is her right to self-definition.
What her full potential as a sister could have been, no one will ever know. But there was the tiniest glimpse if you paid close enough attention, the moment she looked the Dark Lord in the eye and lied. Lied andremade the entire world in an instant. She made it hers.
OH MY GOD!!! ×i just watched a video by some guy about Bellatrix and he's totally right about her. The main reason she was SO loyal and SO obsessed with Voldemort was because he was probably the only one who was giving her attention, in any way. Andromeda got negative attention for running away with Ted, and Narcissa got positive attention for marrying pure blood. But Bella got neither, so when Voldemort started to make her feel special and different, she immediately flocked to him. It's just like a cult leader would do, they find vulnerable people who are insecure, or ignored, or traumatized(not saying she is all of these, I think her vulnerability is just from her state of mind, her unstablness), and make them feel valuable an indispensable. This causes them to never be able to leave, Bella knows that if she left him, she would be ignored once again. Even when he's not good to her, at least it's some form of attention. Everyone was so proper in her family too, she was probably outcasted a bit, she saw this man who matched her perfectly and felt connected to someone for once. Don't get me wrong, she very much believed in him and his beliefs, she wasn't a pure victim of manipulation, it's the very fact that she felt seen by him and his beliefs that she was loyal to him. She picks him because he's the only one who understands her truly
True Black sister Angst is Narcissa losing both of her sisters because there is no way in HELL Andromeda would've agreed to get back in contact with her. And I think Narcissa knows that too, she's too prideful, beliefs aside, she would've never tried to reconnect with Andromeda because she knows the door would be slammed right in her face.
I think if any Black Brothers' reconciliation were to occur, their younger age would play a part, their childhood memories are fresher, and they've spent more time together than apart.
But the Black sisters, by the time Sirius and Regulus break apart (16 and 14), were fully grown women who lived long enough to accept that Andromeda was not coming back (esp if they caught wind of Tonks' birth), she has her own family now, and it's not Bellatrix, and Narcissa. Their memories of being little girls are more distant than ever.
I think of it like this: Narcissa and Andromeda lived long enough to be able to make the decision on whether they wanted to be estranged or not without their family's influence, Regulus and Sirius didn't (though mostly Regulus lol).
the black sisters as the fates or the moirai is such an obvious yet scarcely explored parallel. three sisters bound by their eternal duty, destined to thread life, to twirl and strain and extinguish the existence of all beings. a sister who implants the seed of life, one who navigates it, and one who cuts it inevitably. andromeda for the new life she offered herself and her family, narcissa for carrying and witnessing the lives of everyone around her ( her parents ( she made sure she fulfilled the expectations of her house ), her own family ( lucius including when he went to azkaban the first time and draco), her sisters, harry, regulus probably, etc…) and bellatrix for spreading death and being the only one of the sister whose death we know of. the three of them present a glorious portrait of the moirai, showing their implication and perhaps explaining their link and connection to all of the characters.
blood of the covenant/water of the womb
The Black sisters are so tragic.
I mean, imagine:
As kids, Narcissa is the baby sister that the elder two dote on, while both Narcissa and Andromeda look up to Bellatrix, the proud, beautiful, powerful, accomplished, perfect eldest sister, who has always known who she is and where she's going, but especially Andromeda, since they look so alike she's always been encouraged to act like her too but since Narcissa doesn't have the stereotypical Black looks and her parents didn't follow the Black naming scheme she's encouraged to be her own person a little bit more.
At Hogwarts they're all Sorted into the same House, Slytherin, which only increases their bond. Bella does really well at school, probably the top of her class, which makes Andy, who's only a year or two behind hyperaware of where the bar is. She walks, talks, and dresses like Bella.
Until
Andy follows in Bella's footsteps (who's probably Head Girl by now) and becomes a prefect, but she gets assigned to do rounds with a Muggle-born Hufflepuff. And despite everything she'd been taught, everything she knows to be true, she finds herself falling for him and the worst part is she can't tell anyone, even Bella, the one she has always been able to confide in, always reassured her and set her on the right path.
Meanwhile Druella and Cygnus are arranging Bellatrix's marriage to Roldophus, someone she doesn't even like never mind attracted to but because she's the perfect Black and the perfect daughter she has to do it. And Andromeda sees and fears how she could get trapped, too, how there's another Lestrange boy in her year.
Meanwhile a strange foreign Dark Lord comes to dinner and he's so different to Roldophus and all those other men who think because she's a woman she must be weak and she's just a vessel for their pureblood children. And despite the way she shouldn't feel this way, Bella doesn't care. He listens to Bella's opinions and he takes her seriously and he sees her magical talent and her thirst to prove herself and he's not scared of her in the way others say that she's 'too intense.' And when he offers to train her, and adds that he never does this, she says, one better, I'll follow you.
Andromeda and Narcissa watch this strange man burn the Dark Mark into their sister's arm and they don't know what to think. Narcissa's scared Bella will put herself in danger, that she'll do too much, give too much of herself because she doesn't know when to pull back. And Andy's scared Bella's going down a path she cannot follow, because deep down she can't say she believes in blood supremacy, can't say she hates Ted and she can't figure out a way through so she leaves.
It's like part of Bella's heart has been ripped out. They were all close, the Blacks, but Andy and Bella had a certain je ne sais quoi, they were thick as thieves and inseparable. Bellatrix is the one who burns Andromeda off the tapestry, crying while she does it, the scorned love for her sister, the anger and shame that Andy chose that Mudblood over her turning that love to bottomless hate.
Meanwhile Narcissa, the lucky one, watches it all. Narcissa is the one that gets it all, she's the only one who's able to marry for love and stay with her family but there's also this Andromeda-shaped hole in her and there's a Slytherin resentfulness of being Bellatrix's supporting act.
Every night that Bella is on a mission, Narcissa stays up, even while pregnant with Draco, until she knows her sister is safe.
That fateful Halloween she waits and waits and waits but Bellatrix never comes home. When she finds out her last remaining sister is serving life she completely breaks down. Won't sleep, won't eat. The thought of leaving Draco without a mother is the only thing that helps her hold on. Regulus, Andromeda and Sirius are dead/burned off the tapestry/imprisoned; she and Draco are the last Blacks, that makes their bond even stronger, makes her scared of losing him like she did her sisters. She curses Voldemort for putting her in danger, aware of her feelings for him and that Bella would do anything for them, swears she'll never let that happen to her son.
All the while Andy raises her daughter, who hates the name she gave her in the same way Andy know she would hate the Blacks. Narcissa and Andy watch each other from across crowds; Tonks and Draco are never at school together, never know more than scattered off-hand mentions of a cousin on their mother's side. But both Narcissa and Andy fantasize of a reconcilation, of Tonks babysitting Draco while they rekindle their bond. Neither bridges the gap. That burn, that rift cannot be healed. But they still ache for each other.
When Voldemort returns that fear for Draco grows, but it's tempered with the joy of having Bella back after mourning her for 14 years -- Bella, traumatized, starved, jagged and torn up at the edges, different, but alive.
And just like knowing he was innocent kept Sirius sane, Bella's love and trust of Voldemort is what made her able to hang on. Yes, they're both drastically different physically (the snake face and the emaciation) and mentally (both shaken, less confident), but everything else can be the same. Maybe better.
But everyone is scared. It's not the same world, where the Death Eaters have control and are undefeated. Voldemort is scared of that boy, Narcissa is scared for Draco. It's clear things are not the same, things are not normal. Far from it. Fear makes Voldemort angry, and cold, and distant and nothing she does feels good enough.
And that boy -- lying hateful filthy boy -- he dares suggest that her Voldemort's filthy-blooded like him. No, he must just be taunting her, scaring her. But there are things Voldemort's said, things he's done -- she would notice, the way she hangs on every word he speaks and plays their conversations in her head over and over again in Azkaban -- Bellatrix just does her best to silence it and block it out, all these confusing things, she's a great Occlumens after all.
She'll make things certain, make things right, trim off the weakness, cut out the sickness. Like Sirius. Like that young woman with Andromeda's face and Andromeda's laugh, that filthy half-blood Andy left her to create.
Narcissa can't keep Draco safe like she, the baby sister, couldn't keep Bellatrix safe. When Voldemort burns the Dark Mark into his skin she sees her son emaciated and dead-eyed.
To assuage Narcissa's fears Bellatrix trains Draco like Voldemort trained her; but he's not the same, he's weak, he's moralistic, he looks at her with wide scared eyes and he's a failure. The glory of the Blacks is gone.
All the while, Narcissa's fear grows, when Lucius is imprisoned, when Voldemort's ire turns on her family, on her son, sets him an impossible task. The despair she feels, she hasn't felt for nearly sixteen years -- Bellatrix more interested in eking out morsels of approval from Voldemort and turning her frustration on Draco, and Narcissa by extension.
All the while, Andromeda's fear for her daughter grows, of the danger she puts herself in as an Auror and a member of the Order, and she's reminded of Bellatrix, of how she gives everything of herself and how Nymphadora does too, begging, begging her to hold back.
She's not good enough for him, not with the sickness, the weakness still clinging to her. Bellatrix very much wants to kill the woman with Andy's face. She's always been perfect. It's everyone else around her that's wrong, everyone else who has to go. She'll do better. Try harder.
And when the Snatchers catch that filthy boy, and he slides out of her grasp like a buttered eel, Bellatrix hits the bottom rung of the ladder of despair. She doesn't know who she is, anymore.
Voldemort's retaliation and rejection breaks Bellatrix's heart, but it hardens Narcissa's.
Bellatrix will do anything to make him happy. She finally kills the witch with Andy's face -- do you see -- do you love me now -- but he's still cold, still frightened, still different, and she despairs, but it will be all over when Harry Potter is dead and he can breathe again. They've won. It will be alright. It will go back to normal. She can have it all again -- Voldemort and Narcissa and her perfect, pruned family.
Narcissa will do anything to keep him safe. And so she chooses Draco's life, she lies, her heart in her throat, in front of her beloved sister, to the Dark Lord, with unshed tears in her eyes and Harry Potter's 'corpse' before her.
Bellatrix's death is something Narcissa knew was coming, deep down She mourned her sister sixteen years ago and she mourns her now, but it will all be worth it if Draco survives this ordeal; Potter must win, he must live, Voldemort must die. And Bellatrix will never allow this.
She wishes she could tell Andy that she understands.
What do you think it was like when Bellatrix & Narcissa reunited after her return from Azkaban?
I think they would have been obviously overjoyed to see each other, Bellatrix believed that Voldemort would return, but believing is different to knowing, and neither sister really thought they would be reunited. I think Narcissa, for definite, had already mourned Bellatrix.
However their new dynamic would probably be quite jarring and difficult to get used to at first. Bellatrix in a sense would be now the 'younger' sister, we know long-term imprisonment stunts your maturity. Despite Narcissa's greater life experience, we see that Bellatrix being the big sister is very much a part of her identity, and she can be very domineering. So there's a chance that they would clash on that, as we see, both of them butting heads about what is the right thing to do.
Bellatrix doesn't strike me as someone who talks about her feelings, not her surface feelings like immediate anger or frustration, but deep feelings of hurt and regret. Narcissa understands that, they grew up together after all, so I doubt she'd pressure her to talk about Azkaban. Narcissa is also not a feelings person in that regard, I think she would show her love for Bella by fussing over her and nursing her back to health.
By '96 (when Bella escapes) Voldemort is probably at least slightly paranoid about Harry (who's survived 3 or 4 murder attempts, depending on whether he knows about COS attempt), hence why he goes after the prophecy. This also makes Bellatrix paranoid, as we can see at the Battle of the Department of Mysteries.
Now, I don't think Narcissa is anti-blood-supremacy, she is a Black after all, but watching the Death Eaters and Voldemort go down the first time makes her disillusioned. By now I think she probably wants out a little bit, meanwhile, Bellatrix wants to be all the way in.
For these reasons, I think they're not as close post-Azkaban as they were before. They are sisters and they do love each other and they are very close. But they are definitely not the same people they were before, and nor is their relationship.
And if I say that the reason everybody calls Andromeda Andy is because of Narcissa. If I say it’s because Narcissa couldn’t pronounce her full name as a baby and she became Andy.
@aesthetic-writer18 I hope u like the thoughts
Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower Nobleflower
If you attack my son again, I shall ensure that it is the last thing you ever do
- Narcissa Black
