i.
Bellatrix Lestrange is just turning five when she gets her first kiss. It's her birthday, and anyone with any self-respect has turned up at the Black Manor to celebrate. Cissy is curled up by the fire, pouting, her arms crossed across her chest in a typical three-year-old pouting manner. Dromeda is off somewhere with Mummy, baking Bella's birthday cake. And Daddy's nowhere to be found.
It's half past noon when Bella's door creaks open, shedding light onto the tenebrous room. Cygnus Black is standing in her doorway, a statuesque man with thick black hair and a muscular frame. Bella looks up at him, her wide, dark eyes curious. His chapped, grayish lips pull back into a sick grin, revealing yellowed, broken teeth. He scoops her in his arms, her lacy black dress becoming rumpled in the process. The little girl's thin eyebrows furrow in confusion as her father presses his cold, dry lips to hers, because surely her daddy shouldn't be doing this. She'd only ever seen her daddy kiss her mother, who he loved, right?
Nobody hears little Bella Black's screams as her father steals her innocence.
She thinks that that might have been the day she went bad.
ii.
It's ten years later, and that horrible, horrible memory is engrained in Bellatrix's mind. Her Slytherin roommates whisper about her midnight screams, ripping through the curtains like blades, slashing them apart and making sure nobody sleeps. She hasn't kissed anyone since, and doesn't plan to anytime soon. She's too busy making a name for herself as the badass Slytherin girl who everyone is too afraid of to hate, but nobody really likes.
Maybe that's why it shocks her so much when Rodolphus Lestrange, a muscular seventh year Slytherin, approaches her at dinner one night and asks if she'd like to "accompany" him to Hogsmeade that weekend (always the gentleman, Rodolphus was). She reluctantly agrees, her upper lip curling at the sight of a man who reminds her so much of her father, wishing that something'll come up and she won't have to go.
Much to her disdain, Cissy forced her out of the common room, downdowndown the endless steps, out of the castle, and into Madame Puddifoot's where Rodolphus was waiting, a bouquet of roses clutched in his hand.
She crushes the roses in front of him, tossing them away, a smirk dancing on her thin, painted-red lips. In shock, he follows her out of the café almost resembling a stray dog that's finally found food.
It's after she's gotten a few firewhiskeys in him that he pulls her into a bathroom stall at the Three Broomsticks and roughly kisses her, so drunk that he can't even think. She can feel her heartbeat poundpoundpounding against her ribcage, and she wonders why she doesn't do this more often, this silly kissing thing.
iii.
The next kiss she remembers is at her wedding. She's nineteen and he's twenty-one and this is really wrong, marrying someone you don't love, but they're both pureblood and she can't turn out like Dromeda, can she? She can't be another disgrace to the Black family tree, but this entire wedding is just a hoax, one big lie, and she can't stand it. But there's a war going on and it's her duty to serve her family.
"Do you, Bellatrix Black, take Rodolphus Lestrange to be your lawfully wedded husband?" the frail old Minister of Magic asks, his wispy white beard drooping onto the old pages of the book in his hands.
She hesitates for a fraction of a moment, considering saying, "I don't."
"I do." And then his lips are on hers and she can't help thinking that she's the biggest liar in the Wizarding world.
iv.
Her lips taste like copper, and she can feel the Mudblood's agony coursing through the blood flowing into her mouth. She drops the girl's arm, licking the scarlet liquid away from her lips, laughing maniacally. It's her fourth kiss, and Merlin, does it feel good as she watches the hopeless little piece of filth writhe in pain beneath her. The bitch had stolen her sword, and now it was time for revenge—revenge on the Mudblood, revenge on her father, revenge for those years and years locked away on that damned island. It was time for revenge.
v.
"You've been a most loyal servant to me, darling Bella."
His words ring through her ears as she battles that ginger bitch. Curses are flying back and forth beside them, illuminating the night with passionate sparks of color. Her teeth are gritted as she flashes between those last few moments with her master and the battle at hand.
His long, bony fingers are skimming across her cheek, pretending to memorize the landscape of her face.
"Expelliarmus!"
His smooth, noseless face is looming closer through the blackness.
"Imperio!"
She can see the glint of his scarlet eyes only a few inches away.
"Crucio!"
His skinless lips are upon hers, moving in sync with one another.
"Avada Kedavra!"
There'll be no more kisses for Bellatrix Lestrange.
A/N: I'm reposting this from my old account. c: