Entry One
Prompt: The Lies of Dark Magic

Black​

“Bellatrix! You either squash the beetle or you let it go."

Bellatrix, tongue poking out the side of her mouth, had been tuning out her mother’s voice for some time already. It was delicate work removing the leg of a beetle without killing it. Exoskeletons, Bellatrix had read up on them.

“Why don’t you tell me about your friends at Hogwarts instead, my beautiful.”

Seconds passed. Then Bellatrix looked up, her eyes bright and triumphant. There was a brittle, shiny black leg in the pincers in her hand. She felt a surging sensation inside. Fingers trembling, she placed the leg on the table.

“You need that for a potion, don’t you?” her mother said hesitantly.

Bellatrix laughed, her eye caught again by the squirming, five-legged beetle she was keeping in place with her wand, which was almost vibrating in her hand. Incredible how much power such a small act could carry. The beetle was close enough to its severed leg that it could probably see it. Smell it, at least.

“Do you – do you like the girls in your dormitory?”

Bellatrix knew where this was going. There had been letters home from Professor Slughorn vis-à-vis her accolades. They all knew she was in the right, of course, knew why she had done it. It was only to be expected; two of the girls in her dormitory were half-bloods. Slughorn had insisted on a couple of weeks’ detention for her, unfair as it was. Neither of the low-born girls had been maimed for life, and the castle could do with one less pet cat, surely.

“Carys Selwyn and I are on speaking-terms,” Bellatrix declared, nose demonstrably in the air, “she is the one with the twin brother. Georgiana Nott has the bed next to me, and she is desperate to become my best friend.”

Bellatrix tossed her head at the memory; Georgiana had insinuated she would do anything Bellatrix told her to do as long as she got in Bellatrix’s good graces. Careful what you wish for.

“I’m glad you’re making such suitable friends,” Druella said carefully. She wasn’t quite meeting her daughter’s eye. Was it to be seen as a provocation?

“I like the boys in my year much better,” Bellatrix said, smug smile tugging her lips. Druella went through several expressions: worry, dislike, comprehension. Finally settling on indulgence.

“So did I, beautiful, when I was at Hogwarts. So did I.”

Bellatrix’s eyes flashed with aggression. Not the response she wanted to laugh in her mother’s face for, nor the one she had prepared a retort for. In fact, it sickened her to be compared to her mother. Bellatrix was under no illusions; Druella wasn’t even close in status to herself. Nobody was, but her mother wasn’t on the same quidditch pitch, let alone team.

“I’m sure you had to do all sorts of things to move up in the world, mother,” Bellatrix said, and she barely managed to suppress the laughter that wanted to follow her statement.

“The Rosiers are purebloods through and through,” Druella said reflexively, but she did look shaken. “They form half your ancestry, beautiful.”

Bellatrix did nothing to hide her sneer, and her mother looked away from her. Bellatrix was all Black in her looks, in her talents, in the way her mind worked. She didn’t bother pointing that out, her mother surely knew it.

Bellatrix turned her attention back to the beetle. It was still writhing. Bellatrix raised the pincers and grabbed another leg.

“We need to go pick up your sisters, beautiful.”

“Must I come?” Bellatrix asked with a frown. This was a delicate operation, and with the shock factor subsiding, she just wished to be left alone.

“Oh yes, you’re coming with me,” Druella said, glancing back at the beetle and its missing legs. “Your potion can wait for this evening.”

“What potion?” Bellatrix muttered, and her mother pretended not to hear her.




They did side-along apparition to get from St John’s Wood to Islington. Bellatrix, though nowhere near apparition licence age, forced their reappearance to happen on the other side of the street to where her mother had attempted to apparate them. She carelessly hid her laughter behind her hand when her mother stumbled, almost fell into the road, gasping for breath and feeling herself as though checking for any bits she might’ve been left behind.

Grimmauld Place 12 was ugly as sin on the outside and rather fascinating inside. Bellatrix eyed a new addition to the severed elves’ heads with approval and she carefully avoided the mirror in the hallway. Anyone with half a brain could tell it would steal the beauty of anyone that spent too long gazing into it.

Walburga greeted Druella like a crup might a favourite chew toy. With the wit of the Blacks that Druella so conspicuously lacked, it took her less than a minute to insult Druella’s robes, jewellery and hairstyle on top of insinuating that Druella’s mother had had untoward dealings with a troll.

Bellatrix laughed heartily at that last bit.

“Your sisters are upstairs,” Walburga told her, looking like she hadn’t yet decided if she should approve of Bellatrix’s apparent disdain of her mother, or judge her for it. Bellatrix suspected that judging was what came easiest to her auntie.

Bellatrix climbed the stairs gracefully, her shoulders pulled back, her aunt’s eyes no doubt lingering. She had always known she was special, knew she had everything and more. It was rare she met others who could say the same. And aunt Walburga did not have any iffy relatives in her direct ascending lines.

A live house-elf was decorating a Christmas tree on the next landing. Bellatrix touched the wand in her pocket and watched one of the fragile, steely-grey baubles fall off its branch and hit the floor with a tiny, helpless scream. The house-elf moaned in despair and scrambled to the floor, long large-jointed fingers picking at the glass and adding a tinge of scarlet to the dull, dead, razor-sharp shards.

On the second landing a door had been left ajar. Raising a quizzical eyebrow, Bellatrix noted a not-too-popular ancestor of hers, Phineas Nigellus Black, who was busy in his portrait tending to his goatee.

“Who’s out of bounds now, old man?” Bellatrix said, but after several seconds she had to acknowledge he wasn’t going to respond.

On the topmost landing and in a right old mood, Bellatrix stopped and stared haughtily into the first bedroom. A tiny black-haired boy was on the floor with Narcissa; both busy preparing dolls and toy dragons for a small stage with red curtains around it. Bellatrix could see a neatly quilled script on the parchment next to Narcissa. Sneering, she turned to the other door, which was closed. Intrigued, Bellatrix leant her ear to the door. Her excitement quickly turned to disgust and she burst inside, wand in hand.

Andromeda was on her feet, but not fast enough. Bellatrix had leapt onto the offending music-emitting machine and stamped on it. The black disc inside broke under her feet, and for good measure she pointed her wand at it, harnessing the livid, shocked feeling inside before watching the wreck go up in flames.

“You have no right to destroy my things!” Andromeda yelled, digging into her robes for her own wand.

Laughing, Bellatrix pointed hers at her sister. The shock was gone from her system, but the fury and the ticklish feeling of power were going nowhere if not into her magic.

“This is what happens to witches who soil themselves with muggle things.”

A flick of her wand and her little sister was screaming her head off, her robes and hair on fire, her hands melting away the more she tried to pat out the flames.

“Oh no, you’re watching this, Sirius, this is a lesson as much for you as it is for –”

Her young cousin, who had turned away from the burning figure, had not done so to hide. With a shout he had ducked down only to fling himself on Bellatrix, small hands battling for her wand. Bellatrix kicked him off her but she also got rid of the flames. Andromeda, hair gone and most of her skin ruined, gulped a moment for air with her torn lungs. Then she suddenly bore no trace of flames having ever touched her.

Bellatrix lowered her wand. Magic was so, so easy. All you needed was to feel it.

“Look,” she said impatiently over the horrified sobs and hiccoughs coming from her sister, “it was just a joke. Good as new, no harm done.”

There was a beat of silence, even from Andromeda, as both she and Sirius seemed to contemplate the state of things. Then Andromeda ran for the door and exited. They could hear her stumble down the stairs, crying out for her mother.

Bellatrix sighed and sat down on the bed in the corner.

“Like I said, no harm done. Unlike the harm that’s done to witches and wizards who partake in muggle things. Like their music, which is what Andromeda forced you to listen to. You didn’t like that horrid sound, did you?”

Sirius was still breathing irregularly, but under Bellatrix’s gaze he pulled himself together and stuck his nose in the air.

“Muggles sound like wolves the way they howl out of tune.”

Amusement tugging at both their mouths and Bellatrix noticed something she hadn’t before. Sirius looked just like her. Almost a miniature version. Same eyes and skin and hair, but more importantly, the same unflinching look.

“What would you have done with my wand if you’d’ve gotten it from me?”

Sirius hesitated, then he said: “stuck it through your eye ad straight into your brain.”

Bellatrix felt the smile on her face grow. A new feeling was swelling inside her, new and startling and was that pride?

“I think it’s time I taught you some magic.”

His grey eyes gleamed.

“You can already feel it, can’t you? Just like any real Black can. I’ll teach you, bet you’ll take to it like a grindylow to water.”




“I was even among the group who broke into the Slytherin Common Room last week,” the boy told her proudly. He’d had more than a few, they were in the Hog’s Head after all. Still, that was no excuse for the picture he was painting.

“I noticed there was something missing,” Bellatrix said. She had to put her bottle back on the table, her hands were shaking so much with fury.

“Did the fit Prefect, whazzername, notice? That we took her knickers?”

The Gryffindor boy was not bad-looking, and he certainly was exactly the type of indiscreet Bellatrix could use. His left eye was drooping a bit and he couldn’t stop grinning, not even when he had another swig of his goblin-made ale.

“Oh yes, I know for a fact she did. She was fuming, asking everyone if they knew who’d taken her period-knickers.” Bellatrix watched dispassionately as some wetness dribbled out of the boy’s mouth, his jaw going slack with confusion.

“Her period… Hang on, what do you..?”

“But we all know Gryffindors have their kinks,” Bellatrix continued, signalling for another beer from the barman. Most places she wouldn’t have to signal, she’d thought the staff would be grovelling at her feet by now. But the white-bearded bartender didn’t give the impression of having all his gobstones in order.

Other places, too, would never dare request she pay for anything. She was a Black, wasn’t she, and not just any Black. Then again, she wasn’t paying now, was she? He was. He was going to pay for a lot. “Blood comes with the territory of being brave, no?”

He still hadn’t quite gotten it.

“You took something else related to bravery and blood,” Bellatrix continued, and it was a rare instance of her lowering her voice.

Another beer floated over, and Bellatrix snatched it out of the air and placed it in front of the big, drunk Gryffindor. Such a silly boy. His frown turned upside-down in no time, as did the bottle against his lips.

“Some of the other Slytherin girls were thinking of returning the favour. Sneaking in, stealing your underwear, that sort of thing.”

“Why would girls want to do that?” he wondered.

Bellatrix didn’t know, had never given the matter any thought. Indeed, you might be right in thinking there was lots of finicky interaction between sexes she had never spared a thought.

“Point is we need the password.”

She could tell immediately that her approach had misfired, and she glared angrily as he giggled into his fresh goblet.

“I wasn’t born yesterday, you know,” he told her amiably and even attempted to pat her cheek. She shied backwards and stared haughtily at the offending hand. “We had to use some ingenuity to get into your Common Room. You’ve got brains, haven’t you? Use ‘em.”

He looked around like he was expecting someone to pat him on the back, then got up and stumbled in the direction of the toilets.

Bellatrix glared after him, then jumped to her feet.

The men’s toilets were absolutely disgusting. Holding her nose, she traipsed around the largest of the puddles to get behind him. He had a hand on the wall, steadying himself, and was humming some lame quidditch chant to his penis.

Bellatrix grabbed it around the base and body-bound all except his head.

“Merlin’s beard! Bellatrix, is that you? What are you doing?”

“Password to your Common Room, now,” Bellatrix said dispassionately and pinched him.

“Ouch! Er, it’s ‘Yule log’!”

“It’s really not,” Bellatrix said and squeezed him.

“Is, too! Please! I promise.”

Bellatrix let him go and walked over to the wash basin. Thinking better of it, she used her wand instead to clean her hands. Looking up and into the mirror, she saw he was watching her again. A mix of fright and awe was competing to be front and centre of his face.

“You know, if you’d given me a tug without the body-bind I would’ve told you, anyway.”

Bellatrix, storing away this piece of information for the future, pointed her wand at the Gryffindor and said “Stupefy!”




Bellatrix strode into the Common Room slightly out of breath. She should’ve incapacitated him further, it always took longer than expected to travel between Hogsmeade and Hogwarts, even though she could count on Slughorn giving her free passage out of his fireplace.

“You said you’d do anything, right?” she said, stopping in front of a girl with dark braids.

“Of course.”

“Then I will borrow Aled for the evening.”

Georgiana’s face went slack with surprise. Aled Selwyn was with the rest of the boys in their year, playing exploding snap dangerously near the fireplace. If Bellatrix hadn’t already had a full calendar that evening, she might’ve helped an ember or two get closer to the cards.

Georgiana stared at Aled for a moment, then she looked over to his twin. Carys was busy on the other side of the room with the mountain of homework McGonagall had set them.

“He’s your boyfriend, isn’t he?” Bellatrix asked impatiently. If she’d thought Carys could be of use, she would obviously have gone to her and not Georgiana.

“Fine. Meet you outside the Common Room?”

“No, you get him to meet me outside the Common Room. You’ve got homework or some embroidery to do, I’m sure.”

Georgiana blushed and looked as though she regretted telling Bellatrix about her favourite hobby.




Bellatrix stalked through the corridor, her nose in the air and with Aled on her heels like a drooping shadow. His instincts were begging him to hide in much the same way Bellatrix’s were telling her to act like she owned the place. Curfew was to keep the plebeians in check, if someone like her was out at this hour then obviously she had good reason and mustn’t be disturbed.

Disturbed, or, indeed, tutted at. Several portraits shook their heads at them and told them to hurry back to their Common Room. Still others hurried out of their frames, pretending they hadn’t seen Bellatrix. This was common at other times of day, too, they all knew who she was and had probably heard about what happened to the portrait of Phineas Nigellus when he made an off-the-cuff comment to a portrait that had reported back to Bellatrix’s dear father.

“What will we do if there’s someone still up?” Aled hissed once they’d reached a stretch void of portraits.

Bellatrix smiled broadly and made no reply. She hoped there would still be someone up.

“I think you need to remember that they’ve stolen something of ours,” she said without lowering her voice. “Filthy commoners. Half-bloods and blood-traitors and mudbloods vastly outnumber the decent people.”

“I think half-bloods can be… I mean…” Aled swallowed audibly, two steps behind her. “It’s not strictly ours, though, is it?” he continued at a horse whisper, falling behind, changing the subject. “It’s the Bloody Baron’s, but I don’t see what use he could possibly have of it? Surely his hand would go straight though it?”

“It was hidden in our Common Room,” Bellatrix said coldly, coming to a stop in front of the ugliest woman in the entire castle. “I’m surprised you didn’t know that. Your father, surely, must have discovered the secret room in our Common Room.”

There was no reply, but Aled was panting, clearly much more out-of-shape than he looked.

“Password?” the huge lady in the portrait in front of them asked. She had an even more carrying voice than Bellatrix.

“How disappointing,” Bellatrix muttered, then more loudly: “Yule log”.

“I can already smell it!” the Fat Lady twittered and swung open.

Bellatrix watched the hole in the wall that was revealed with narrowed eyes. Nothing much seemed to be moving on the other side.

“You go first,” she told him callously.

He looked like he was going to protest, but something in her eyes made him swallow his words back down and climb into the portrait hole.

Bellatrix climbed through herself a few seconds later, wand in hand and fully prepared for battle. There was a sleeping girl in a chair by the fire, seven or eight books open all around her. Bellatrix stunned her with a flick of her wand.

In the end, they didn’t have to go into any of the dormitories to root through hiding places. The Bloody Baron’s dagger had been left out on the mantelpiece, flanked by trophies won by particularly sporty or clever Gryffindors.

Bellatrix took the dagger reverently, feeling residual magic pulse in the metal. Blind rage of the kind the Baron had used to propel this weapon into the girl who had broken his heart. The sort of feeling she could use. The kind of feeling anyone wielding her calibre of magic inevitably used.

Bellatrix smiled broadly. Aled was back by the portrait hole, his look of relief undisguised. He’d’ve been no use to her if there’d been a battle. But she was still holding out hope for him.

Nodding to tell him he could climb back out, she waved her wand and set fire to the curtains.




The alarm was raised much quicker than Bellatrix expected, or indeed hoped. They were less than halfway back when the sound of running feet and shouting voices filled a corridor not far from them.

Weighing her options, Bellatrix forced open the nearest door and pushed Aled inside. She locked the door behind them. A spare classroom with a plentiful covering of dust on all surfaces. Making him walk backwards until he hit the pulpit was fairly amusing. She was holding the Baron’s knife in her hand. Her knife, now.

“Oomph.” Aled sat down with a thump. “Why me?” he asked quietly.

She took a very deliberate step closer, the type of move that meant stepping into his comfort zone and thereby ridding him of it. She could see his Adam’s apple bob up and down like a first year on a virgin broom flight.

“Tell me, how much has your father told you about his work with Lord Voldemort?”

Aled looked away from her with a frown. He shifted as though contemplating moving, before realizing he was boxed in.

With her free hand, Bellatrix lifted his chin and brushed their lips together. This time he didn’t look away.

“I’m sure he’s talked about it. Now, Aled. Here’s what’s going to happen.”

She used her knife to cut away a button from the front of his robes. One and two and one more. His chest was rising and falling so rapidly she began imagining what it would be like if he did it just a smidgen too deeply. A little nick of her knife and there could be blood running all down his body.

“You’re going to answer all of my questions,” she explained, just as new footfalls thundered by outside their door.

Aled gasped, and Bellatrix watched the knife go in.

“Careful, now.”

The noise became distant, then disappeared.

“I want to leave.”

“Really? What will Georgiana say?”

“What do you mean?”

Bellatrix smiled. She wondered if the girl in the armchair would make it. She had never lifted the stunning spell, so probably not.

“If you go now, I’ll need to tell her we shared a little kiss in here.”

Aled’s lips noiselessly mimicked her. “Kiss?”

“I don’t think she needs to know, but it’s up to you.”

A pause and then a nod. A trickle of blood was joining the sparse hair on Aled’s newly exposed chest.

“I’ll want to see more of you,” she continued, mouth nearly on his again and this time he tried to kiss her. “No, you do as I say.”

He groaned, there was more blood than she’d anticipated now. But no matter.

“You tell me about Lord Voldemort and I’ll make sure you won’t regret it.”




“What’s that?” Sirius asked.

“This?” Bellatrix asked, holding up her knife. When he edged closer, she withdrew it and placed it securely in her belt. Her movement was unusually gentle, not unlike a new mother handling her first-born. “You know how we’re better than anyone? Everything about us, but especially our magic.”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me what you’ve learnt about our magic.”

Sirius, rather like he was reciting from a book, said: “Black magic is superior to everyone else’s. Other people have to study, but we’re born with it. We can also use not only our brains but our feelings to make our magic stronger. This is most easily achieved by causing others pain and misery.”

“And what happens if you push a muggle child over?” Bellatrix asked, her eyes gleaming.

“I point and laugh,” Sirius said, wicked smile making him look so much like her.

“Because he’s a muggle.”

“Sure, but mostly because falling over is silly.”

“No, you point and laugh because it is a muggle, and the muggle is getting hurt,” Bellatrix said sharply. “And what then?”

Sirius glared at her. Wondering whether he could get away with not answering, no doubt.

“You use that feeling to curse the muggle. Muggles are scum. Muggles, mudbloods, blood-traitors, half-bloods. They’re not like us, they’re diseased and pathetic. They multiply like rabbits, too, as if they think they can take over with sheer numbers…”

“You were supposed to tell me about your knife,” Sirius said. There was something insolent about his tone of voice, for a second she even wondered if she’d seen him roll his eyes. The little shit. There would be no more important lesson in his life than the lessons she taught him.

“The people who are the best at magic use their emotions when they cast spells. Particularly curses. You understand?”

“Mhm.”

“Some strong wizards have used objects other than wands when casting curses. In the right hands, these objects can do great things. The knife is such an object.”

“What curse has it done?”

“It’s done murder,” Bellatrix said, her smile broadening.

Sirius frowned at her, it was as though she’d given him the wrong answer. Her? The wrong answer! An unexpected fury rose within her.

“You’ve not been speaking to Andromeda, have you?”

“No,” he said, but she could tell he was lying. Little children are atrocious liars.

“She will be cast out of this family soon enough,” Bellatrix sneered. “Rotten to the core, always has been. She’ll poison you too if you’re not careful.”

“I want to go downstairs,” Sirius said and got up. He had barely taken a step towards the door before the lock clicked decisively shut. “Bella? No, I want to go downstairs!”

“Shh, little one, we don’t want your mother to hear, do we?”

“Why not?”

“She’ll be thinking you’re a nuisance, that’s why. She already likes Regulus better, haven’t you noticed?”

And that was when she struck gold. She could see something vital in him crumble and fall apart. His fists hung loosely by his sides; his eyes downcast.

Maybe he wasn’t that much like her after all.

“I know what we can do,” Bellatrix said, her body filling with a tickling sensation of magic that crackled by her fingertips. “But you need to promise me that you’ll never, ever tell your mother about it.”




Years passed, but as was only right for the weekend before the Christmas holidays, it was snowing in Hogsmeade.

Bellatrix sat on a low stone wall near the entry gate, watching the students descend. Rosy cheeks and sparkling eyes, black cloaks with bright wool piled around their shoulders and hiding their hands from the frost. Some of them gave her curious looks, others turned their faces and pretended they hadn’t seen her. She was pleased to conclude that her legend lived on. Not many people got expelled from Hogwarts. She wouldn’t have changed a thing about it, though. That little mudblood had had it coming. Unforgiveable curses, what a quaint little subcategory it was. The charges had been dropped, no doubt her darling daddy or perhaps her grandfather had stepped in. Nobody could hold a Black down. Well, Dumbledore had tried, of course, but Bellatrix had been ready to leave school anyway. She’d learnt what she could from it, and by all accounts the place was going to the crups, anyway. Dumbledore flat-out refused to forbid mudbloods from enrolling.

If he only knew how much she thrived outside of school. How many mudbloods she’d already seen to. Her first few years as a woman of leisure. Her and her knife. Just as she’d hoped, it had caught the attention of a rather special someone. Someone who, in strictest confidence, had told her he collected memorabilia of a similar nature, too.

But today she was here on a different agenda. And now she could see her agenda. He was walking straight towards her.

“Rodolphus!” she said, jumping gracefully off the wall before stopping to let him come to her. He had stars in his eyes as he looked up at her, chubby, with a flimsy moustache and acne adding an extra dash of colour to his cheeks. He looked younger than he was, which was the best thing about him. That and his knack for the cruciatus curse.

More heads were turning. It likely wasn’t common for older girlfriends to show up at Hogsmeade weekends.

“Bella,” he mumbled, hovering in front of her like a baby niffler hoping to be let into Gringotts.

She motioned for him to follow her and off they went. Behind an old hay shed she pinned his arms and pressed his body against the wall.

“Tell me what you’ve got planned.”

“Umm… We’re making a list, you know, like Santa, ha-ha… Figuring out who is muggleborn.”

“Shouldn’t that be obvious from the smell?”

Rodolphus’s smile froze, then he nodded. Once he was finished nodding, he looked down as if hoping there would be a glimpse of cleavage despite the robes and the winter cloak.

“You need to start targeting them immediately. As soon as you’ve got a name, you figure out how to hurt them. Hurt them without getting expelled. Discredit them to the Professors, tamper with their essays so that they fail classes, or plant blood curses that will linger a while before they take effect.”

“Huh?”

“Merlin’s beard! Well, if that sort of thing’s beyond you and your henchmen, you can just steal the mudbloods’ cats and torture them.”

Rodolphus stopped looking at her chest. He was likely attempting to formulate a response, but Bellatrix did not possess the fortitude to wait him out.

“And with everything you do, remember you need to mean it.”

“I know.”

“If your heart isn’t in it, if you don’t relish it enough, if you can’t harness the emotion well enough –”

“I know all that.”

Then he made a noise akin to a kneazle working out a week-old hairball. The flat of Bellatrix’s knife slid round and round his Adam’s apple. She was praying he’d pick the wrong moment to swallow.

Patience, though, had never been her forte.

With a sudden laugh her knife disappeared up her sleeve and she resumed her stance, legs mirroring his, her hands holding his arms up against the wall over his head.

“So tell me, who has agreed to help you?”

“Lucius is in, and Crabbe and Goyle. My brother. Some of the ones in his year, Mulciber and Avery. A younger chap called Snape.”

“Snape? What sort of a name is that? You’re not forgetting what it means to be pure of blood, are you?”

“He seemed keen to… No, I’ve not forgotten. I will make sure only the right type of people accompanies me.”

“Good,” Bellatrix said, patting him on the cheek. “Good boy, aren’t you? Maybe you have earned yourself a little reward.”




“Why didn’t you say yes?” Peter asked.

“Yeah, Sirius! That girl is fit, and Slughorn’s Christmas parties are supposed to be mint.”

Sirius pretended not to hear them. The four of them were watching the retreating steps of the cutest Ravenclaw in their year. Sirius tore his eyes away first, swallowing repeatedly over the bile forming in his throat. It was the Black in him rising to the surface, no doubt about it. Horrible, half-suppressed images flitted past, and then he could feel Bellatrix’s mouth by his ear. Left alone with a girl and he wouldn’t be able to stop himself from hurting her.

He shook his head like a dog emerging on dry land after having been thrown in a pond. Pond of deep dark thoughts, this one.

“Maybe I find all birds a bit silly,” he said with a would-be careless shrug. “Like, just look at that one.”

A small Hufflepuff girl was being hugged by a serious-looking Prefect. There were tears glittering on her face, reflecting the hundreds of floating candles in the Great Hall.

At his words not just his three friends turned to look, but so did Lily Evans and Marlene McKinnon, who were next to them at the table.

“Don’t be mean to her, she’s just lost her rabbit!” Lily said crossly.

“Why doesn’t she look in her hat, then? Don’t they always find their way back there if you lose them.”

“It’s not a magical pet rabbit, it’s a muggle one,” Lily explained with the air of someone bestowing her full daily dose of patience just on him. “Muggleborn girl, see, and muggle pet rabbits can get lost.”

“Right, well I don’t see how this concerns me,” Sirius said with a sneer. “It’s not like you’ll find me bawling my eyes out over a lost pet. Reckon the girl can just buy a new one.”

“A right Billy big bollocks, you are,” Lily scoffed and turned to leave. “Coming, Marlene?”

“Gimme one sec.”

James had quidditch practice and Sirius was annoyed enough to get up and leave Remus and Peter at the Gryffindor table. He heard them try to get his attention, but he didn’t turn around.

“You find all birds silly, eh?”

“Maybe,” Sirius said and stuck his hands in his pockets. He was taking long steps on purpose, and Marlene had to jog to keep up.

“I don’t think it’s girls you’re annoyed with.”

“How’d you reckon that?”

“Because of the way you’re acting,” Marlene said. Her voice grew fainter, she had stopped trying to catch up with him. “Acting, Sirius. As in putting on an act.”

Scowling, Sirius took a random turn into a corridor. He had a lot of extra energy in him. Might as well convert it to magic. He and his three best friends did have a map to fill out.




The raid on the Slytherin Common Room was well under way. James and Sirius had waited underneath the cloak near the entrance masquerading as stone wall until a gaggle of second years appeared and spoke the password (untainted blood) loud enough for them to hear. After that it was a waiting game, something even Sirius had become proficient at. It helped when they could use their downtime to break into the Prefect’s Bathroom and play an occasionally violent game of catch the soap. Said game may or may not be the reason James had been voted chaser of the game two years running. He was certainly better than anyone at catching the quaffle even when it was slippery from rain or mud.

Breaking and entering was a normal Tuesday night for them, but they’d only broken into the Slytherin Common Room once before. It might not be the last, however, certainly not with how easy it was.

“Piece of piss, mate,” James was saying giddily. “How come no one’s up?”

“It’s gone two already,” Sirius whispered, keeping his voice considerably lower. He was the impatient one, James the loud one. But James’s enthusiasm was catching, and he found himself relaxing.

Last time they’d broken in they hadn’t thought to stun the portraits on the wall, and they’d of course dispersed, one to alert Phineas Nigellus and, in extension, their Headmaster. Another one had scurried off to rouse the Prefects, which had ended their adventure early.

“Right, there’s supposed to be a secret room behind here,” Sirius continued in a whisper and stepped out from underneath the cloak of invisibility. The ladies in crinolines in the nearest portrait had fallen unconscious against each side of the frame, and the crafty-looking wizard in the portrait over the mantlepiece was lying on his side, drooling. Only the giant squid, several of its eyes visible in the window to their left, was watching. James gave it a cheery wave whilst he tucked away the cloak. He joined Sirius by a narrow strip of wall devoid of portraits and tapestries.

“Who told you there’s something here?”

Sirius didn’t respond and knocked gently against a rock halfway up to the ceiling. Lucky he’d had his growth-spurt last summer. The rock felt soft, almost like it was caressing his knuckles. He thought he got a brief glimpse of an alternative life he might’ve cruised through. One where he’d never caught his cousin’s attention and where he’d never felt the same need to rebel. This room, this room could’ve been his home away from home.

Then he breathed in and the reality where he barely had a home at all hit like a punch between his legs.

Doubling over with his hand over his crotch he tried to muffle his swearing. Over it there was a strained groan followed by a triumphant cry from James.

When Sirius looked up James was forcing a door fully open, the jamb of which his foot had been stuck in, preventing it from closing on the intruders.

“Knew I could trick it,” Sirius muttered and stepped gingerly forward to help his best friend steady the door. You had to hand it to the door, Sirius and James agreed, it hadn’t gone down easily. Eventually confident it was magically lodged in place (they’d placed a brick of a book into the jamb too, just to be absolutely certain) they stepped into the dark and damp hidden room. An ancient, discoloured silver candelabra ignited in the furthest corner, standing on the same table as an empty, faded velvet cushion. James and Sirius walked past a bookshelf filled with books on dark magic and blood purity, something Sirius spotted with a glance and James only after flicking through a couple of volumes.

“Makes you fuming, doesn’t it?” he said, showing Sirius the illustration to a curse that would rid its victim of all its blood and replace it with mud.

Sirius, who had perused a copy of the same volume in his misspent youth in Grimmauld Place, searched within himself for the appropriate reaction, but before he’d managed to convey it James had rushed past him, book forgotten and picking up something from the unswept floor. Something that was breathing.

“Is that..?” Sirius began, then came to a full stop. A troubled atmosphere settled around them. James did his best to repair it, but there had been hard, dark magic done. Normally he’d never admit a bit of magic was beyond him. Normally, it wouldn’t be beyond him.

Sirius took the animal from him, finding the fury in him would have been enough to do any kind of magic. The killing curse would’ve tumbled out of his mouth as easily as air. But it wasn’t required. He could tell with next to no trouble what curses had been used. James watched him, all the while making odd, sniffling noises. If they’d been coming from anyone else then, well… Sirius double-checked all four limbs were there and handed over the breathing, once more clean and fluffy rabbit to James for inspection. The sniffling stopped.

“What’s this? Who’s in here?” a curious, loathsomely provincial voice said from the doorway.

“Petrificu totalus,” Sirius muttered, striding ahead with his wand out, ready to take on anyone and anything.

There was nobody there, nobody but Snivellus. And he barely counted as a person.

Sirius aimed hex after hex at his prone body, the fact that there were no groans or pathetic whimpers of pain rather dulling his interest. Almost, anyway, because then James came out too, holding the trembling rabbit.

“No, Sirius, no!”

Sirius lowered his wand with some difficulty. He barely had control over what was happening, what magic he was doing. He’d let his feelings take the reign over his magic. From James’s face he concluded that he’d gone too far again.

“I despise him as much as you do, but this wasn’t his doing,” James said and held out the rabbit. Scowling, Sirius pocketed his wand and took the rabbit. “You heard him, he asked what the secret room was. Didn’t know it was there. Couldn’t’ve been him.”

Sirius watched James lean over Snivellus and fix the damage. It wasn’t so bad, certainly not as James had no problem counteracting every hex. Although Sirius noted he left the genital warts curse in place.

“We need to leave before someone else wakes up,” James continued and straightened up. The portraits were still out cold, as was Snape.




A detour to the Hufflepuff Common Room (no password required) later they had made a small child very, very happy.

Odd the way he just felt more anger and shame after this. Somewhere at the back of his mind, his cousin was telling him a loathsome ‘told you so’.

In their own Common Room, Sirius found he was watching the windows for a means of escape, almost like he’d been locked into his bedroom in Grimmauld Place again. Blood and gore and pain and that exhilarating feeling that his magic would do anything he asked of it.

James went to the loo and Sirius found himself on the windowsill. The windows were supposed to be locked with unyielding magic, but he found he didn’t even have to use an incantation. The anger and shame and whatever else it was he felt was plenty. Then he jumped.




The eve of Bellatrix’s realization that Antonin Dolohov was not the type of man she typically associated with came when he told her the only way she could bring the knife with her to the bedroom was if he got to fuck her with it.

Bellatrix considered her options before suggesting they get drunk instead.

The part of Berlin Dolohov lived in filled her with disgust, but then he explained to her that he lived there because he loved watching the muggles around him suffer. Apparently, this was an even greater place for it than his native Czechoslovakia, or whatever they called that place these days.

Once the drink had loosened him up some he told her his magic was never better than when the living around him suffered horrifically. A man she typically associated with he was not, but Bellatrix was sensing a kindred spirit beneath the eastern European coarseness.

“I’m here on a mission,” she explained eventually. “I’ve started working for someone who is looking to make contacts in other countries. People with particular talents, but more importantly people with the right mindset.”

“And what would this person be able to offer me?” Dolohov asked. “Considering I’m already exactly where I want to be?”

“People here are already paranoid and terrified, I grant you. Easy prey, I might say. Almost… lazy.”

“Lazy?”

“What we’re offering is a challenge. A people not yet brought to their knees. Not yet terrorized beyond their wits end. Just imagine what wrecking an entire population would feel like? To scare them until they’ll lie down flat for you and let you stamp on their faces.”

There was a pause while Antonin Dolohov had some more to drink. His face remained a mask until he suddenly smiled.

“Seems I was mistaken about you. I thought your boss sent you hoping you’d seduce me into his service. Need I say it would’ve ended sadly for you? But no, he actually sent someone who knew how to negotiate.”

Bellatrix, vision flickering as her anger tried to consume her, something, anything, only acted to take a sip of her drink. She could’ve taken him, could’ve eaten him alive. She and her knife. She wondered if eastern European blood was as red as British. The only thing keeping her from finding out was the memory of her master’s voice. Softly spoken, his lips like a caress around each word.

“Help me with this, and you could be my most trusted…”

“So,” Dolohov said, grinning as he watched her, “tell me more about this Lord Voldemort.”




“Sirius!”

Sirius looked around and saw James’s grinning face framed in the open window. Sirius could see him hesitate as he tried to work out how Sirius gad gotten to where he was, on the roof of another tower. The face disappeared for a moment and Sirius sat down on the hard, snow-covered roof tiles. His legs dangled carelessly over the edge. If he’d been a muggle (and perhaps a little bit older) this would be when he lit a cigarette. Andromeda had taken him to see a muggle film once, and the tortured hero had ended up all alone in the world, just a pinprick of orange between his lips lighting up the darkness.

A rustling noise, not an owl but James, standing up on his racing broom and soaring over the castle. He jumped off the broom at the exact moment it passed Sirius, landing in a sitting position next to him. The broom looped around their tower once before settling by James’s other side, whirring a little like a contented cat settling in next to its master.

“That was smoother than the shaved backside of a gnome,” Sirius said.

“You know what won’t be as smooth?” James said with a chuckle.

“What?”

“This next bit of conversation. This is the point in our friendship where you’ll have to tell me what the hell is wrong with you.”

“You’ve got all night, do you?” Sirius drawled, but he could feel how strong the instinct to retreat was. He could snatch the broom from James, no problem. Scrawny git. After last summer he was much bigger. Fly off, leave him here, stranded.

“Yes,” James said, and it took a while for Sirius to register that there wasn’t going to be a joke following that one up.

“Well, I’m a Black for starters.” Sirius eyed the broom on the other side of James. He’d received quite a good broom himself for his twelfth birthday, purchased before his grandparents found out about his sorting. His mother had taken great pleasure in breaking it in front of his eyes that Christmas.

“And what does that mean to you?” James asked. “Don’t tell me you think it means you’re cursed or something.”

“’Course not,” Sirius said shiftily. Sometimes, and this might just be one of them, James reminded him of his cousin Andromeda. He played with some snow from the roof, fingers numbing. The curse was that he didn’t have any cigarettes. This would’ve been a lot less awkward with them, no doubt.

“You’re not that stupid, mate. You never picked the name, did you? I reckon you’re already proving them wrong. Proving them that you’re not like them. What are you worried’s gonna happen?”

Sirius didn’t leave the rooftop alone that night. Turns out there was plenty of room for both of them on James’s broom.




The compartment door slid open, and a girl stumbled in.

“Hullo, Marlene,” James said, pausing the game of exploding snap while he looked hopefully behind her. No other girl entered, though, and a second later the deck of cards exploded, although they mostly caught Peter as James’s reflexes were way too advanced for this sort of nonsense.

Nobody laughed louder than Marlene, who eventually turned to close the compartment door and (perhaps) inadvertently gave the boys a full 360 of her outfit.

“What are you wearing?” Peter said in wonder as he held out his smoking arm to Remus, who patted it vigorously with a plentifully dogeared pocketbook he’d had on hand.

“Ah, this old thing? It’s the latest fashion, you know.”

“Where, on Mars?” Sirius asked despite the sinking feeling in his belly. Marlene had caught his look full on and that smile of hers was akin to a kelpie looking to mate.

“All the sixth and seventh years will be doing it, too, after Christmas. To show support, you know.”

“Support of who, aliens?”

“No, support of muggleborns.” Marlene stepped over Remus and Peter, her flared lilac trousers flapping. She flung herself down next to Sirius, so close she must either not have seen the plentiful space between him and Peter, or maybe it was the new fashion she was trying out that restricted her movement in unpredictable ways.

“But we’re not sixth years, not even close,” Peter said worriedly. Likely he had sniffed out a political statement in all of this. Peter more than any of them was firmly of the opinion that politics were for grown-ups, not children.

Sirius, who’d seen a flash of a memory featuring his cousin Andromeda, sitting on her muggleborn boyfriend’s lap and wearing a muggle suit, found he was immediately taking to the idea. There was just one problem, though…

“If it’s to show support for muggleborns we should give it a go!” James decided importantly, looking around at the others. “I’ve just got no idea what it is they wear. And no offence, Marlene, but I don’t think you have the foggiest, either.”

Sirius made the mistake of looking at her clothes. The top was something knitted and sleeveless and formfitting. Pulling up a leg towards him he cleared his throat and turned back to James:

“This is when you try and rope in Evans, is it?”

“Lily actually ok’d this outfit!” Marlene said with a laugh, then she leaned obnoxiously over Sirius, reaching for the deck of exploding snap cards, which had finally stopped burning. Her breasts pushing into his arm were the softest, most vulnerable things he’d felt in his life.

“Umm?” he asked a bit later, awareness dawning that his name had been said and perhaps repeated a few times.

Marlene laughed, she was shuffling the cards next to him, cross-legged on the floor. Sirius scratched his arm and turned to James.

“Remus, here, has suggested he give us a few pointers on muggle dress,” James said, eyes gleaming behind his glasses. Sirius barked out a laugh.

“I forgot, yeah of course we should come to you for the latest fashion, Moony.”

Remus looked pink and annoyed and like the cat had gotten his tongue. He’d removed his school robes a little while ago, not as a statement of support but to be ready for the next train he was catching from King’s Cross. His muggle mother was invariably the parent who came to collect him.

“Anything but grey and brown allowed in the muggle world?” Sirius continued whilst gesturing for Marlene to deal the cards. “And elbow patches, are they mandatory?”

“Ha bloody ha,” Remus muttered, pulling the threadbare material of his brown jumper sleeves over his knuckles.

“Sorry Moony, you know we didn’t mean it like that,” James said. “You’re right, we can’t go shopping without you. In fact, what if all five of us went? We could meet up in London after Christmas? And, er, you could ask Lily if she wants to come too, Marlene?”

“I’ll ask,” Marlene grinned, reaching out for one of the five packs she’d dealt, the same Sirius had been reaching out for, “but don’t get your hopes up. Some days I actually think she fancies you, but most likely she just hates your guts.”

“Dunno what that’s supposed to mean,” James said.

Sirius watched his fingers intertwine momentarily with Marlene’s before he gave up and let her have the cards. He could just take another.

“I’ll come, but are we sure we’ll all be able to make it?” Remus asked. He was still angry and looking straight at Sirius. There was a pause during which all the other four stared at him. Marlene looked curious; James worried.

Sirius could feel his blood rising, but the memory of James out there with him on the rooftop, feet dangling hundreds of feet over the castle, made him question his anger in ways he wouldn’t have before. He wasn’t angry at Remus for trying to catch him out, nor for the dawning pity he could read in Marlene’s wonderfully attractive eyes.

“Sod my family,” he said, voice calm like he didn’t have magic crackling to burst out of him, ready to cause chaos and misery in the world, “they’re all pricks but it’s not like they’re better at locking the doors than I am at unlocking them. I’ll come. In fact, you should all come for Christmas dinner at Grimmauld Place.”

James looked like he was actually considering it, and Sirius hesitated to give him a stern look to make him understand it was not an option. Would never be an option.

“I thought Christmas was for spending time with people who care about you,” Remus said mildly and took the last remaining cards from the floor.

“I’ll ask my mother about her opinion on that, ta Remus. Anyway, who wants to see a magic trick?”

He didn’t wait for a reply, instead he aimed his wand at the portion of the cards Peter was holding. One after one they began to explode into glittering, golden red fireworks, dispensing warmth and a powerful smell of roasting chestnuts that mingled perfectly with the laughter from his friends.




“Pass the Brussel sprouts, Regulus,” Bellatrix said. Sirius glared at her. His cousin really was evil incarnate; there was no other explanation for her fondness of Brussel sprouts. Bellatrix sneered at him, an ice-cold arrogant twist of the mouth he knew well. She never spoke to him anymore, few of the Blacks did. But as he met her sneer with a good replica of his own, something he could not bear ignited in her eyes. The short-circuiting of playful childishness and sadism.

“Mhmm…” Bellatrix sucked some gravy off her finger, eyes locked with Sirius, an old stray end of uselessness assaulting him, that little voice at the back of his consciousness asking him how he had let it happen to him.

There was a loud knock on the door, and several confused faces turned in the direction of the hallway. Kreacher, who was serving turkey next to Sirius, twitched with indecision.

“Kreacher, stay. Sirius can go open the door.”

Walburga’s voice was clear and cold. She had a full crystal goblet of wine in her hand, elegant fingers tilting it a little as she sniffed its contents. Her face was stunning, even more arresting than usual tonight with the dark red lipstick and the grey pearls in her hair.

Sirius looked away from his mother, his mother who had not even bothered to look at him when she dismissed him from the family Christmas dinner. He was less dispensable than the House Elf.

As Sirius got up from the table, he noticed that Kreacher was sniggering at him. He made as if to violently trip the elf over but stopped himself at the last minute. The elf stumbled and almost fell over anyway from fright. Sirius squared his shoulders and sauntered out of the dining room; head held high. Not that anyone was likely to be watching his retreat, but still.

There was another knock on the door.

“Coming!” Sirius shouted, as loud as possible, but more to inconvenience the conversation at the dinner table than for the benefit of the mystery caller. He got to the door and pushed the heavy English oak thing open. Hopefully it was a crazy murderer come to kill every single member of his family, Kreacher included.

“Marlene!” he exclaimed gleefully.

“The very same,” Marlene laughed, throwing her arms around him. “Happy Christmas!”

“I didn’t think any of you would actually take me up on my offer,” Sirius said, hugging her back and retreating with her to be able to close the door on the cold.

“We had our big celebration yesterday, on the 24th,” Marlene said. “My Mum is Swedish, and they do the big dinner and the gifts on Christmas Eve. They all went to visit some family friends tonight, so I thought I might do the same.”

“You’re amazing,” Sirius said, quite shocked that she had thought of him.

“I know,” Marlene said happily, beginning to take off her gloves and scarf. “It sounded as if you were expecting to have a right miserable time of it, so I thought I’d better come cheer you up.”

Sirius looked behind him, towards the closed door to the dining room with it monotonous murmur of voices.

“Am I to be introduced to your family?” Marlene asked nonchalantly. Her eyes betrayed her; however, they looked hard in a way that they almost never did. Sirius didn’t think he’d seen her in a bad mood once during their time together in Gryffindor.

“We could go to my room instead?” Sirius suggested.

“Brilliant,” Marlene said, giving him a dazzling smile and then looking around properly at the room they were in for the first time. There was a pause as she took in the daunting amounts of polished silver, the vast number of portraits shaking their heads in disapproval at the two Gryffindors, and of course the severed house elf heads, dead still on their plaques on the wall.

“It looks… different to my house,” Marlene said.

“Up this way,” Sirius said, trying to sound comforting. It was not his forte.

The first landing contained the usual Christmas ornaments, the silver tree with the venomous emerald snakes writhing on every branch, and the sinister fairy lights that contained the ghosts of real fairies, ghosts that sparkled and fluttered and sighed, haunted little noises that made your spine tingle unpleasantly if you admired them for too long. Marlene passed no comment, and they continued up through the house.

Finally, Sirius opened the door to his room with a smile and a flourish, and Marlene laughed and stepped in. For once Sirius was glad that he was forced to keep his room tidy. He had hung Gryffindor banners from all the walls, and Mrs Potter had sent him a wonderful ruby-coloured spread for his bed last Christmas.

He closed his door and sat down on his bed. Marlene had already thrown herself on it, apparently in no need of a formal invitation, and Sirius rather liked that. She smiled broadly as she looked at the banners, but then she looked at him and he saw there was worry there, too.

“Does it feel alright for you, being back here?”

He wasn’t sure what question he’d expected her rather nice mouth to form, but he found himself watching its shape with a big frown for longer than what was wise. Girls took offense at the most innocuous things.

“I’m a Black,” he said eventually, like this was some God-given truth and she an apostle. “Wouldn’t it be a lie if I said I didn’t belong here?”

She rolled her eyes at him.


He could see a new idea strike her, her face was oddly readable. Readable as in truthful. He had long depended on correctly interpreting the enemies he lived with, and it was striking to observe someone who wasn’t hiding their true intentions in their facial expressions.

“Are they… I mean, it’s none of my business, but are they treating you ok? Your parents.”

“Why do you ask?” James was the only one who knew, knew most of it anyway, and he would never tell. Come to think of it, James was the only other person he knew who didn’t usually disguise his feelings.

“There were severed heads as decorations on your landing,” Marlene was saying, enunciating with annoying clarity, “and I think we walked past an iron maiden on the third floor.”

“We’re not good people,” Sirius said slowly. Marlene raised an eyebrow. “They’re not good people, I mean. But they won’t see any reason to talk to me unless they catch me doing something they don’t like.”

Marlene gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher.

“Unless you’ve got fags on you, or you want to shag me silly, I don’t think they’ll beat me bloody.”

Sirius grinned disarmingly at her, and she grinned right back.




Christmas came and went, then another. It was taking Sirius several tries to get the front door open. Partly it was because Grimmauld Place and all that dwelled within thought Sirius was beneath them. The taps frequently poured scalding water or a mix of slush and ice on him when he tried to shower, and the floorboards groaned in protest under him when they stayed quiet for everybody else. Never mind enquiring after the living beings in Grimmauld Place either; they despised him more.

Partly, though, it was because Sirius was drunk.

“Gotcha,” he muttered when it finally gave and let him stumble into the dank, shadowy hallway. The mirror reeled him in as though it’d caught him in a lasso, but Sirius stared back without flinching. His hair was long now, in accordance with the latest non-magical fashion, and he was wearing a leather jacket he’d found in a seedy muggle shop in Soho. They sold all sorts of things there and Sirius was planning to go back. His jeans, the mirror showed him, were torn to the point every hole was less a fashion statement and more a cry for help, and Sirius stuck his tongue out at the mirror as soon as it presented him with this thought.

It was very late, and yet there were voices coming from downstairs.

Sirius pushed on the door to the staircase leading to the kitchen. He’d been planning to sneak halfway downstairs and listen in, but of course the door wailed in protest as soon as he touched it. Shrugging, Sirius jogged down the stairs and into the kitchen, inside of which all voices had fallen silent in anticipation.

Regulus, in dove grey silk pyjamas, was standing pressed against the kitchen counter like somebody had forced him to retreat as far as he could. Next to him was a mug of cooling chocolate milk and a few feet away stood Bellatrix.

“Bedtime, eh Regulus?” Sirius said. They rarely spoke, he and his brother. Perhaps it was the drink, but Sirius hadn’t expected his own voice to be so gentle.

Regulus seemingly came alive again. Shuddering, he picked up his mug and hastened out of the kitchen, eyes trained on the floor.

“He’s very cute, isn’t he?” Bellatrix said shamelessly and sat down on the kitchen table. It was placed exactly underneath the dining room table upstairs.

“Can’t imagine what you mean. I heard congratulations are in order?” Sirius stuck his hands deep in his pockets and leant against the rough stone wall. His sense of balance really wasn’t what it should be tonight. “Rodolphus Lestrange, eh? Legal this year, and he’s told the whole school about what a great shag you are.”

“I wish your mother had spent more time cleaning out that mouth of yours. I always enjoyed looking on. In fact, I’ve got some detergent that’s specially for clearing out infestations of vermin that I could lend her.”

“That’s what you get off on, is it? Holding me down and force-feeding me poison?”

“I thought I’d showed you plenty of times what I get off on. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten our little playdates?”

A year or two ago Sirius would have run. She was miming something crude, her body splayed in a way you’d only find attractive if you’d never met her before. Sirius stood his ground.

This was when the only person who could possibly make his evening worse entered the room. Walburga had taken the stairs noiselessly, had no doubt heard the entirety of the exchange. Dressed in a black, fur-trimmed velour morning gown she looked her niece up and down, eyes full of disgust.

“Always so like your mother, weren’t you, Bellatrix? Quite the lady of the night. At first, I worried Regulus was having nightmares again, but now I see it’s just you.”

“Had some business to talk with the head of the household,” Bellatrix drawled. She was holding out her hand and appeared mostly engrossed with the state of her nails. “Donations to our cause. Orion keeps late hours sometimes, doesn’t he? Unless that’s just a nasty rumour.”

“And now I find you here with Sirius,” Walburga continued like Bellatrix hadn’t replied. “Which confuses me further. Surely not even you can think there’s something more to be gotten out of him? Wasted potential doesn’t even begin to cover whatever… this is.”

Sirius’s hands were attempting to clench into fists in his pockets, but something was getting in the way.

Bellatrix and his mother were both watching him. Bellatrix with a predatory, but now rather curious smile, and his mother with seemingly no emotion at all. It seemed he made her feel dead inside.

His right-hand fingers had closed around a crumpled cardboard packet. He wasn’t scared of Bellatrix anymore, and now she knew it too.

“You think you can walk into my house wearing that?”

“If I’m not mistaken,” Sirius began, pausing to place a cigarette between his lips, “I just did.” He snapped his fingers and sucked, enjoying the visual in his head. Perfect orange circle of light.

“It’s time for you to go,” Walburga said, and for a moment her voice conveyed that she was just another long-suffering parent of an unruly teenager.

“Me or Bella?” Sirius asked, ashing his cigarette all around him like he was sprinkling fairy dust. “It’s just that the muggle girl I was with earlier tonight told me the same once we’d finished.”

“Give Regulus my best,” Bellatrix said with a giggle, jumping off the table and striding to the staircase. “Tell him I think about him every night.”

“Explains the nightmares, I suppose,” Walburga mused. Perhaps it was this that made her pull her older son by the hair until he fell over, then stamp not an inch from his nose to kill the beautiful orange circle of light.

He had promised himself not to scream no matter what, but being hauled up five stories by his hair aided perhaps by a smidgen of magic ended up meaning that all bets were off. The destination took Sirius a minute or two to decode, but eventually the cold hard porcelain gave it away.

“Why couldn’t you just be a good boy? Why did you let her corrupt you like this? And this, Sirius, if what you told me downstairs is true, this is so much worse than anything you ever did with your cousin.”

His clothes disappeared and his body froze magically in place. His scalp didn’t stop smarting, though. Blinking, Sirius looked up at his mother. She was holding her wand in one hand and a brush Kreacher used for scrubbing the floors in another. Next thing he knew the bath was filling with near-boiling water and he did everything in his power to scream.




Lord Voldemort was the most beautiful man on earth.

Bellatrix wanted to fall to her knees for him, but before she could he had indicated the seat next to him on the sofa. Trembling, she sank down. He smelled of crisp midwinter and blood.

“You’ve done well, Bella,” he said, and she had to pinch herself to make sure she wasn’t dreaming. “You’ve been better at scouting and recruiting new members to our cause than anyone else. Your dedication to the task I’ve set you is admirable.”

“Thank you master.”

“I was told you have several new potential candidates?”

“Mhmm.”

“Some I’ve been told rather – ah – on the younger side?”

Bellatrix smiled.

“I wish you to tread carefully. Some of them will have parents who worry about them.”

“I’ve always picked them with care,” Bellatrix said, but she was also eager to show she would take his smallest direction. “I’ve run into a similar issue very early on. But I learnt from it.”

“Good,” Voldemort said. “Of course, the younger they are, the easier it is to make them follow your bidding.”

They shared a look, she and him. It was a moment in time Bellatrix would never forget and one she’d always strive to get back to.

“I will let you in on a secret,” Voldemort said, cold amusement tugging at his wonderful mouth. “I’ll tell you what the biggest lie of all is.”

“Mmm,” Bellatrix said, leaning in, her eyes captivated by the shape of it. His mouth framed by that shapely hairless chin. Flawless pure white skin that age had not touched.

“You don’t actually have to mean it.”

Bellatrix’s mouth parted. So close now, she could smell his breath.

“Powerful magic and the right incantation are all you need to do dark magic.”

“Mmm.”

“It’s a useful lie, though,” Voldemort said, watching her watching him. “Let the people think you need to feel it. Keep them in the dark. They’ll think it’s harder than it is. But it’s all in their heads, unlike magic. We both know magic is in the blood.”

They stayed like that for seconds. Bellatrix found the words he’d said escaped her, but the beauty of his face did not. It was etched into her mind forevermore.

“Now,” Voldemort said, gently clearing his throat, “don’t you have a fiancé who’s missing you?”

This time it only took a few seconds to understand what he’d said. Scowling, Bellatrix rose and walked back out. On the streets of London there were muggles singing carols, and she pointed her wand at each one she saw to give them lung- or throat cancer.




Sirius was sitting on the windowsill in his Grimmauld Place bedroom watching the carol singers in the square below. His skin was still pink from washing in water too hot. He didn’t know it yet, but it would be his last day in Grimmauld Place for two decades.

He lit a cigarette, a habit that had been ridiculously easy to pick up once he tried it. A habit he needed to break, though, was to quit thinking he had to hurt people just because he was a Black. They could keep their monopoly of pain, he thought, opening the window so that he could flick some ash into the pure white snow outside. They could keep thinking it was needed for their magic, for their supremacy. He knew without a doubt it was all a lie.

 

Spoiler

Hmm. I do like that Bella is obviously a little sociopath. You don't fall back into apology, of making her this way because of some trauma: she's just a cunt, and that's really the end of it. Props for that. Bit odd that she's also sexually into children but she is technically British and part of wizarding aristocracy so I guess that's inevitable really.

I guess my main contention is while I like the parallels with Sirius - both young Black "scions" as the fanon would put it - it kind of makes the entire piece feel oddly aimless. With the Sirius POVs removed you'd have a lot more space for Bellatrix' scenes to breathe, which I do think could have been good. It'd be thematically stronger, too.

There's occasional spelling mistakes - one that stands out to me was Aled's "horse whisper", another is the nonsensical "Makes you fuming". Nothing too egregious, though.

3/5.

 

Spoiler

This is a good story but it is badly written.

Now these bellow are the sentences I don't agree with, because it suddenly it isn't completely clear that the PoV is being conserved. I understand the gist but the single pov isn't engulfing it as is, and you're shifting away from both your pov and your magicka.

These are picked up randomly and since the piece is too long for me to nitpick, I don't wanna to be too overblown.

What this lacks is commitment. It is terrible, lovely so, but for this to work you need to commit either to Sirius Bella or to Bella insanity. For me, either lacks.

The end, Sirius lighting a fag, and Voldemort commenting on magic, both feel like you're falling back to something you know rather than something that is pushing towards story forward. These feel like characters you know and feel, but never really shared with us.

It feels Bella is wroth with us rather than with herself while giving me a cancer. Commit, brother, I say, write a neurotic girl, write a complete whacko. "“Powerful magic and the right incantation are all you need to do dark magic.”"?? But I fucking want to do it. There's no truth to it, there's just my broken character.

I feel like you've missed this and I can't forgive you---sorry.

Otherwise, well written, and well thought out, but it just lacked forethought imho.

See above? The sentence doesn't work. Shame. You do know how to write though, the style's nice.

 

Spoiler

There's a lot to like here. The writing is pretty good throughout, a few relatively minor errors. Bellatrix is compellingly awful and fucked up, and while Sirius' strand of the story is perhaps a bit more familiar than hers, it's still well told. I do think though that Sirius is the problem with the entry, because it muddies the waters thematically - obviously, an enormous part of why his childhood and family are so awful is the (lies of) dark magic, but we also know, partly from canon and kinda partly from here, that the toxic pureblood attitude isn't...well, purely about dark magic. Walburga thinks Bellatrix is awful, and the worst thing we see her do isn't dark magic, 'just' (for want of a better phrase) abusive parenting. This might have been stronger with more focus on Bellatrix's side of the story.

3/5

 

Spoiler

Rating: 3/5

Spoiler

The writing here is pretty solid - clean prose, good pacing, only minor technical issues. Bellatrix comes across as genuinely disturbing in all the right ways, and you can see exactly how she becomes the monster we know from canon. She is frightening from the beginning and felt completely disturbed. I enjoy the fact that she was expelled from Hogwarts as well.

The real issue is that Sirius muddles what should be a focused thematic exploration. The story's called "Black" and builds toward Voldemort's revelation that dark magic doesn't actually require hatred - "You don't actually have to mean it" and "It's a useful lie, though." That's a fascinating concept about how ideology works, but then we've got Walburga being awful to Sirius in ways that have nothing to do with dark magic philosophy. When she's scalding him in the bath, that's just regular child abuse, not some twisted magical ideology at work.

The Bellatrix sections work brilliantly on their own. Take the beetle torture scene that opens the story - Bellatrix removing the beetle's legs while her mother tries to make normal conversation is genuinely chilling because it shows how casual cruelty becomes for her. Her manipulation of Aled ("You tell me about Lord Voldemort and I'll make sure you won't regret it"), her recruitment tactics, the way she grooms Sirius as a child - these all tie into a great character journey from disturbed child to death eater.

But Sirius's arc, while compelling, pulls in a different direction. His rejection of his family ("Sod my family, they're all pricks") and final recognition that "it was all a lie" works as character development, but it's addressing pureblood supremacy generally, not specifically the lies about dark magic that seem to be the story's central concern. Nor is Sirius' sections fleshed out enough to have the impact that Bellatrix has. What would have worked better is showing how similar they were at the beginning and how their paths made them drift to who they are today.