There's a particular colour that Caucasian skin goes when it's been kept in jars for a long time. If it's been soaked in chemicals and suspended in liquid, whether for study or experiment or nostalgia, the purpose doesn't change the result. The colour is always the same. A pale peachy green, a washed out, almost translucent pink. Sometimes as its hanging in its special cocktail, it starts to disintegrate just a little. Going a little fuzzy around the edges, like an olive left in a martini over night or a pickle left just a bit too long in its jar. The spell that Mrs Carrow had used produced the same effect. Magic could do wonders, but it could only go so far. The tiny bodies floating on the shelf in the basement had grown translucent and pale and slightly green over the years. She would take Alecto down here and point to them one by one. "This is your family, Alecto, these are your brothers and sisters." They would stare at them for a long while in silence until her mother finally spoke again. "You are special, Alecto, you and Amycus. You lived, you were perfect, you survived. You were the strongest. You were the best." It was an unusual kindness, these words. And Alecto was too small to notice the wide pupils and the red veins in her mothers eyes. Too young to know that it wasn't healthy to see her mothers bones through her skin, ribs and hips and elbows poking out sharply, jutting and harsh. These were normal things. Her father liked to have special time with Amycus and her mother kept a collection of her still-borns and miscarriages. When she was older, Alecto came down to visit them. Pure Blood was sacred, and she treasured every one of her siblings however strange they were. Large foreheads, twins that shared three legs and two arms, tiny curled shrimp-like creatures and anything in between. Some spun slowly in the enchantments, some swayed but they were all suspended with a soft dull light casting eerie shadows. She would make up stories and names and try to guess how many months her mother had carried them for. She imagined what she would have looked like in the womb. What Amycus had looked like. Had they held hands, perhaps curled around eachother? That seemed right. Perhaps the position they slept in every night was how they would have layed in their mothers stomach. And why had they survived and not these Carrows? There was no answer except that they deserved to be here. They were born, important and noble and special. She mourned them, she often wanted to reach out and cradle them, she felt that she, as the biggest and strongest needed to protect them. They were family after all, lifeless and deformed, but family.
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