
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/56969.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      Multi
  Fandom:
      Harry_Potter_-_Rowling
  Relationship:
      Bellatrix_Lestrange/Sirius_Black, Sirius_Black/Remus_Lupin
  Character:
      Bellatrix_Lestrange, Sirius_Black, Remus_Lupin, James_Potter
  Additional Tags:
      Incest
  Stats:
      Published: 2005-02-03 Words: 2946
****** Purgest the Primal Guilt ******
by SullenSiren_(lorax)
Summary
     "It didn't matter that Bellatrix lied as well as she breathed – all
     that mattered was that she knew the lie he wouldn't be able to tell
     from the truth."
Notes
     I haven't the faintest idea where this train wreck came from, but it
     demanded to be written once it appeared in my subconscious. Since
     writing it seemed the easiest way to get it the hell out of my brain,
     this is what I did. I apologize to anyone who is squicked. The title
     I took from the poem "O Martyred Spirit", by George Santayana. Big
     thanks to aliaspiral for the beta. Any continued errors are either me
     not listening to her, or me adding things with all new mistakes. I am
     just *that* talented.
                           Purgest the Primal Guilt

"We have done it again we are
Still living. Sit up and smile,
God bless you. Guilt is magical."
-- James Dickey, "Adultery"
 
She wasn't supposed to be there, but then he knew that she rarely did what she
was supposed to. It was a family trait – one of many he was all too familiar
with – and she could rarely surprise him simply because he never made the
mistake of considering her predictable.
He was in the library when she sank into the chair next to him, too-familiar
dark eyes watching his with a predatory glint. She smiled, sharp and crooked
and beautiful – echoes of another in the angle of her mouth – and whispered in
his ear. "I know what you are."
He tried to ignore her, but it was impossible. There was something primal and
irresistible in the Black family – something that made them shine a little
brighter than the rest of the world, made them difficult to look away from. She
wasn't Sirius – but she drew him as well, in a lesser, darker way. "What do you
want, Bellatrix?"
Her smile grew and she shifted, all elegant length and dark hair and red, red
lips. Remus could recognize desire, and he saw it in her. He knew it was a
game, but her hair looked soft and familiar and if he hazed his eyes just
slightly she could be a blurred copy of Sirius.
She played her fingers across the table. "Werewolf. Beast. Half-blood." She
leaned forward and her breath was hot and languid against his ear. "My cousin
couldn't hold his tongue. Couldn't wait to tell the family what a *bad* boy
he'd been. Playing games with a half-blood Gryffindor werewolf. You're his best
attempt to annoy his mother yet. She screamed for hours." She licked her lips,
tongue darting against his ear for a moment, and then sank away.
His cock throbbed and his heart broke because he'd always wondered if Sirius
was fucking over his family when he fucked Remus. It didn't matter that
Bellatrix lied as well as she breathed – all that mattered was that she knew
the lie he wouldn't be able to tell from the truth. Bellatrix licked her lips
and there was a promise in her eyes – both threat and invitation. "Wouldn't it
be a shame if the rest of the world found out about all the ways you're a liar,
Lupin?"
He understood the threat. Some days he thought that secrets and lies were all
that lay beneath his skin, and there was more than one Bellatrix could bleed
from him and let the world see. She was, in her way, as much a rebel of her
family as Sirius was. She'd just gone a different way. They were so alike,
these Blacks, with their obsessions and fierce loyalty, their temper and their
thoughtless cruelty.
It wasn't until the end of last term, and the Shrieking Shack, and the morning
when he'd woken with blood that wasn't his in his mouth, and a piece of black
robes with green fluting on the floor that he'd admitted to himself that Sirius
could be cruel.
It wasn't until this term, when he'd felt a faint rush of pleasure at the
awkward silence between Sirius and James and the sorrowing looks Sirius gave
them both, that he admitted that he could be just as cruel.
Bellatrix's presence hummed beside him and he gritted his teeth, wishing – not
for the first time – that he wasn't prone to weakness around the Black line.
That the smell of them and the hum of energy and focus beneath their skin
didn't stir his blood and heighten his senses. "You're not supposed to be here,
Bellatrix. You've graduated. Shouldn't you be following your new master around
like the bitch you are? Has he gotten you a collar and leash yet?"
"Interesting choice of word, coming from you. Bitch. Is that what you wish I
was, Lupin? Your bitch? Is that what my addled cousin was? Or were you his?
Which one of you was on your hands and knees when my cousin was fucking his way
into his mother's bad graces?"
She made him angry, and he knew that was what he wanted, but he couldn't help
it. She slid a foot up and down his calf and he shoved her violently away,
damning Sirius and all his kin. "Get the fuck out of here."
She looked up at him from where she'd fallen, and he saw the truth of her. He
saw danger in her. He saw obsession and hate and a willingness to do anything
to get what she wanted. "I think I'll stay. You ought to be glad. You wouldn't
even have to close your eyes to make me into what you want."
He saw desire in her and understood it no more than when he saw it in her
cousin's eyes. He saw secrets and old hatreds burning there too. And he saw
Sirius. He picked her bodily up from the floor and pushed her roughly against
the nearest bookcase. She laughed – triumph in the sound – and he pushed his
hips harder against hers, tightened his grip in her hair, on her neck. He could
feel the skin beneath his fingers pulse and imagined the pale, perfect skin
purple with the bruises he left on her. Marked. Her tongue snaked inside her
mouth and he could feel the heat and want of her. He pulled away for a moment
to look at her and she looked back with her heavy lidded eyes. "Why?"
She smiled – Sirius' smile. The smile he'd worn when Severus stumbled into his
attention, when Peter did something stupid – the smile of the superior Black to
the lesser being. "Does it matter?"
"No."
She licked at the corner of his mouth and he felt a growl rise in his throat as
her fingers grabbed at his cock through the fabric of his trousers. "Neither do
you."
It was a lie. He did matter. He mattered because she wanted what she knew
Sirius couldn't have – not anymore. He didn't know how much she knew, but Bella
was far from stupid. She knew that much. She wanted to have what her cousin had
wanted.
Maybe it was more. Maybe she wanted to break what she saw as Sirius' favorite
toy.
And she was a twisted bitch. She'd get off on the idea of fucking a beast. He
knew that's all he would be to her. Bellatrix reveled in doing what she knew
was wrong. Sirius had told him that – a quiet, embarrassed conversation over
whiskey when they'd talked about their first times. Bellatrix had taught her
cousin of primal things and sweat and heat and danger in the feel of skin on
skin, everything about that first time had been wrong.
It was why Bellatrix had made it happen at all.
"How do I measure up to your cousin?" he asked hating the way his voice rasped
as he tried to scrape her skin away with his words, make her raw and ashamed
like he was.
She grinned, feral and unscathed. "You should know better than I do. I had him
before he grew into it."
"You're disgusting."
"You're a rabid dog who'll end up dead before he's thirty. You'll rot away and
eat a few friends and eventually you'll play with something sharp in a warm
bath, because that's how the weak always end it." She grinned. "Or maybe Sirius
will catch you. Wouldn't that be ironic? My dear cousin, returned to the warm
bosom of his family, bringing down the freak of nature he used to –"
"Shut your fucking mouth."
"Give me a reason to, Wolf."
He did. He fucked her – rough and fast - against the wall in a dusty corner of
the library. She came fiercely and utterly silently with his cock still hard
inside of her. She dropped to her knees and he saw the glint of her teeth as
she sucked him off, tasting herself on him. She watched his face as he came and
he watched hers without ever seeing her.
It was the first time.
He promised himself it would be the last, but it wasn't, and he'd known it
wouldn't be when he made the promise. It became a game for both of them. She
came to him infrequently and never with any warning. He fucked her against the
walls of the Quidditch shed, in the prefects' bath, in the alley behind the
Leaky Cauldron while a black dog he didn't know watched from the shadows.
James and Sirius made up and Remus grew tired of fighting, so he let Sirius
make it up to him too. He forgave, but he couldn't forget, and he couldn't stop
the hard, cold center of him from being angry. Sirius, catching the subtle
nuances of human behavior for perhaps the first time in his life, sensed that,
and was content with their tentative and renewed friendship.
Remus was not, but he wouldn't be the one to make it more again, not when he
couldn't look at Sirius most days without a flash of betrayed anger. Perhaps
that's why he kept playing at their game. Her game was to catch him off guard.
To make him hate and want her and to leave knowing he'd be ashamed of what he'd
done.
His was to push beneath her pale skin and find where the blood pulsed so he
could poison it with words. He never won his game.
He would taunt her, hating himself as he did. "Wonder what LeStrange would
think of his pureblood fiancée now?"
"Back against the wall and legs in the air – you should have been a whore
Bellatrix, it's all you're good for."
"Inbreeding shows, Bella. You're looking haggard already."
It was never cruel enough and she never cared. She'd smile her poison-apple
smile and lick her lips and hiss a few words that would send his world into the
pained tailspin he could never bring about for her.
He was rough and thoughtless and she never protested – she relished the
bruises. When she went down on him it was with the same fascinated
shamelessness Sirius had done it with. Neither minded their teeth well and when
they scraped down his length his world exploded in a mix of pleasured pain that
left him reeling.
They never spoke outside of whispered threats and insults. There was a silent
accord between them. Mutual loathing mixed with twisted desire and a strange
stillness that he never understood. She was waiting for something, always. He
felt a chill dread when he let himself wonder what it was.
When he saw the Dark Mark branded on her arm he twisted it in front of her and
took her from behind so he couldn't see it, and she laughed and called him a
child – believing what he couldn't see couldn't hurt him. He'd lifted his wand
to her head and she'd laughed at him without sound. They both knew he couldn't
kill her. Not like this. Across a field of blood and battle – then he could.
Here he never would.
It was, perhaps, the most telling difference between them.
He never for one moment believed that Bellatrix couldn't hurt him. She hurt him
every time she left, when she whispered in his ear that in the end, Blood would
win out. It always did. "Sirius is a Black, Lupin. In the end that will matter
more than the fact that he was yours." Bellatrix lied very well. But he didn't
think that was a lie. It was what she believed.
No matter how much he tried to deny it, he knew what a Black was. And
sometimes, it was hard not to believe her.
Once he bit her – hard enough to bruise but the skin wasn't broken. The next
thing he knew she was sitting on his chest, his body bound in a hex while his
head swam in pain and his eyes burned like acid. She watched him like a child
would the magnified insect they were burning. "Do that again, and my cousin
will cry at your funeral. I will not be the animal that you are."
She left him then – hard and aching and bound for hours. Lily found him there
and he blessed and damned her silent aid and quiet lack of judgment that
confirmed his suspicions. She'd known for some time. But Lily kept secrets
well. She always had. She kept her own better than any.
She came less and less often, and the secret war he'd known about since fourth
year became public. He'd been waiting for it all along, but somehow he still
wasn't ready when Sirius walked in. Bella lay beneath him, long past the time
when the Order and the Death Eaters should be attacking one another on sight,
wanton and unashamed while he drove into her from above. She watched the
doorway for several long moments, sharp teeth showing their too-white smile
until Remus saw what she was watching.
James hovered behind Sirius in the dingy doorway to the flat the four of them
shared. They all knew it for what it was – a last ditch effort to retain the
spirit of their Hogwarts' days, when it was Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs
against the world. It was dissolving already as James prepared for his wedding,
and Peter spent more and more time at his mindless Ministry job while Sirius
and Remus walked the fragile lines of their truce through the cheap-mortared
hallways, coming and going and smiling hellos and goodbyes without really
speaking.
Remus bolted away from Bellatrix and she sat up slowly, dark hair spilling
around her – the only cover she bothered with. She looked between them with her
dark, dark eyes and Remus wondered why he'd never noticed that they were shaped
differently than Sirius'. She smiled the death-grin tattooed on her arm – his
stomach turned and he wondered why the hell he'd done this with her for so long
- and stood, reaching for her wand. "I think we're done now, Wolf. I got what I
wanted." She winked once at Sirius. "You're looking well, cousin. I'm sure I'll
see you at the next reunion. Your mother sends her best."
And then she was gone, and he knew what she'd been waiting for all of this
time. James looked between the two and raised his hands. "Remus mate . . . .
fuck me, but I'm not saying a goddamned word. You-" He shook his head and
walked away leaving Sirius and Remus staring at one another.
Remus felt the words rise up in his throat. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. It
was a mistake. I was weak. She looked like you. I wanted to hurt you." But he
swallowed them all down, and felt a wave of shame at the thin stab of pleasure
he felt when he saw the stunned hurt in Sirius' eyes.
Sirius walked over and picked up the discarded robe Bella had left behind. He
ran his fingers over it and Remus had a dizzying moment when he couldn't tell
which Black's hand it was against the black fabric. When Sirius spoke, it
centered him again. "Crazy bitch. You alright?"
And just like that the shame and the last of his anger melted away. "Yeah."
"Are you hers now? Voldemort's?"
Remus flinched. "No. She just . . . It was just something she did. I was just
something she did."
"She always did want everything that mattered to me." Sirius looked at him, and
there was pain, and accusation, and confusion in his eyes – which weren't
Bella's – but it was all right. Because he knew the same things were buried in
his eyes whenever he looked at Sirius. It made it easier, somehow. They'd both
sinned so badly they couldn't be forgiven by anyone but each other. "I'm
sorry."
"Me too."
"I love you, Moony. I should have said that before you fucked my cousin."
"I should have said it before the Shrieking Shack."
"No you shouldn't. We were fucking kids. What did we know about being in love?"
"It's only been a couple of years, you prat." The words came easily, but the
spirit behind them was hard. They were so far from easy mirth and teasing.
 
"I run on dog years." Sirius smiled, and Remus could tell he had to work for it
too – but he said it. There was a time when Remus could have cheerfully
strangled Sirius for his incessant dog puns – now they were a relief. Though
still not funny.
Remus smiled, and for a little while, things were all right again. He pretended
not to notice that he saw Sirius check his arm later that night, when he got
out of the shower. He pretended that he wasn't watching when Sirius came and
went; that he didn't see him on the streets and check to see whom Sirius was
speaking to. When they fought in skirmishes, he pretended not to notice that
Sirius never struck at Bellatrix. He pretended not to notice the way Bella
smiled at both of them – like she knew how this would end, and was waiting for
it.
He pretended that sometimes, when Sirius sank to his knees and took him into
his mouth, he didn't see Bellatrix's wicked face. He pretended that he didn't
wake up clutching the sheets from dreams where Bellatrix and Sirius stood side
by side in black robes and smiled death-skull smiles as they killed everyone
else that had ever mattered in his world.
He pretended that they were happy. Sometimes, that almost made it true.
~~
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!
