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The Three Men Bellatrix Lestrange Loved
I
The first man that Bellatrix Black ever loved was her father, for isn't every girl's first love supposed to be her father? After all a father is supposed to be the first man that would hold you, that would show you love and care for you.
Bellatrix's father, though, was not exactly the loving type. He was a stern man with a loud voice that could take control of a room simply by stepping into it and often had no time for his three daughters. But she loved him fiercely anyway. Everything that Bellatrix loved, she loved fiercely. She either loved something with her whole being or she didn't love it at all. That was the way that she always was, and the way that she forever would be.
She knew that she was his favorite. Bellatrix was the son that he never had. Nacrissa had always been far too prissy and girly to even try bonding with their father, she had always been closer to their mother. And Andromeda, well, she always had her nose stuck in a book so she wasn't any fun either.
Although her father did not spend as much time with her as he would have if she had been a son (he did not love her enough to consider her an equal), but he spent enough time with her and talked to her often enough to drill into her head all of his beliefs and pureblood mania.
"Purebloods are best," he would tell her and she would shake her head furiously. "Don't let anyone ever tell you differently. You would not want your blood to be dirty now, would you?"
Bellatrix, of course, nods and agrees with him, because he is her favorite parent and the one she loves most.
She can't tell, of course, how much this is polluting her mind and how one day her loving him will be her ultimate downfall.
II
The second man that Bellatrix ever loved is someone who she never thought that it would have been possible for her to love. It isn't that he's a muggle born, oh no she could never love a mud blood, or ever a half blood, but it isn't someone that she would have grown up dreaming about.
The boy's name is Frank Longbottom, although he isn't exactly a boy anymore. He's tall and handsome, and very much a pureblood. He challenges her in ways that she didn't ever expect that a Gryffindor could.
He's funny, talented, and above everything else he isn't scared of her. That last fact alone is enough to intrigue Bellatrix, because most boys in her year are scared to death of her, especially that tosser Rodolphus Lestrange.
Bellatrix enjoys fear, in fact, most of the time she relishes in it. But with Frank Longbottom, things are different, so very different, because for once she thinks that she's found an equal.
It's hard falling in love with him, but she manages the feat somehow. She had never felt like this for anyone before and the overwhelming emotions are so new that she doesn't know what to do with them. Bellatrix ordinarily thrives on emotion, but this is different, other.
He never even knew she loved him. But she did, and fiercely so.
He loved someone else, however. A little girl named Alice that is not nearly as good as Bellatrix. Pureblood she may be, but she is not as talented or as beautiful. Frank brushes her off for this small Alice, and Bellatrix does not like this one bit.
So it feels oh so good to finally see the fear in his eyes all those years later when she points her wand at him and calmly say, "Crucio." Because even though he doesn't know it; she won. She always wins. She loved him first.
III
The last man that Bellatrix ever loved was Tom Riddle, or as he was known to her, Lord Voldemort. He was cruel, malicious, and cold hearted. He was the exact opposite of Frank Longbottom and that is perhaps why she fell in love with him to begin with.
After she married Rodolphus Lestrange, and after her love for Frank cooled her heart began to yearn for other person to love. Her father was dead and Frank was as good as after marrying that Alice girl. A heart like Bellatrix's cannot stay empty for long before it bursts.
So to fill it she begins to love the most evil dark wizard of all time. He is everything that she is, and what she isn't she shall strive to be. He never loved her. He was too intent on destroying death for that ever to become a problem.
She was so sure, though, that if he tried to he could have loved her. They would have been perfect together, two cuts of the same cloth. They believed in the same things and had the same morals. He was the most beautiful man that she had ever seen. Until he wasn't. Until he became a monster. But for some reason, that made her love him even more. No one could understand her logic, not even herself.
But that's the thing about love. It comes from the most unexpected (or sometimes expected) of places. It comes in all shapes sizes and forms, and doesn't always end happily. Bellarix had to leared that the hard way.