Disclaimer: The habanera from Carmen belongs to JK Rowling. Bellatrix, Sirius, Voldemort and any other Harry Potter characters are the property of Bizet. Would I lie to you?
A/N: This was supposed to be longer, in particular with a more satisfying conclusion, but the novel I've started (see my profile page) is like a giant black hole (except that time runs more quickly instead of slowly as the stress-energy tensor increases in value). Enough of that, on with the story.
Spot the historical reference for a virtual biscuit! Or you could just click the little blue "Review" button.
Yes, it's another A/N: terrorofthehighway pointed out that there are a lot of foreign words without translation. They don't really matter except for perhaps the verse of the Habanera, which is just there because I liked the irony of someone who cannot love (well, according to canon) dancing to it. Translation is roughly:
Love is like a rebellious bird
That no one quite knows how to tame.
Try to call it, you won't be heard
If to refuse you is its aim.
L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
"I will not tolerate this from you Bella!"
Bellatrix winced at the use of her hated nickname and immediately regretted it. Bella. It made her sound like a child--
"Well, you are acting like one, young lady! If you want me to believe you to be worthy of your full name, then you must stop this vile outburst of temper!"
If only Mother weren't so skilled at Legilimency, she might not poke her nose in where it didn't belong. What she didn't know couldn't harm her.
"I do know! It's foolish to wish for what one cannot have and I will not be placated if you persist in your flimsy, useless Occlumency! I am your mother and don't you ever think you'll get away with any flirtatious behaviour by trying to block my Legilimantic skills!"
"Yes Mother."
"Don't use that ungrateful tone with me!"
"Certainly Mother. I apologise."
She forced a smile onto her face.
"It's just that," here the young lady paused to insert a dramatic sigh, "all these exams are very trying and the stress doesn't help, which half the time I think is from over-studying, not not doing enough," she added another careful hesitant breath, "So perhaps a night off would be to my advantage and settle my nerves."
"Well, since you are clearly so highly strung, perhaps you may have the night off."
Bellatrix didn't dare to breathe, lest it somehow show the triumph she felt. Outwitting her parents at last.
"So you may make your appearance at the dinner and have an early night instead of staying for the ball. Of course you will abstain from the aperitifs in case any of the eligible young men present an offer to dance with you."
Eligible pureblooded heritage didn't stop Bellatrix from swearing silently.
"And even if your father and I consider you to be well enough to make polite conversation for an hour or so after dinner, I won't hear of any dancing, particularly with that awful Lestrange fellow."
"Yes Mother."
"If he's so awful, why must I marry him?" she amended mentally.
"Because he has lots of connections dear. Inside information, that's what matters these days."
Her mother refused to elaborate, so Bella was chaperoned off to her bath feeling puzzled as well as angry.
"I can't believe you're up here studying!" came a voice from the doorway.
Bellatrix grinned.
"Cissy! Still trying to avoid Nott and Avery? You'll have trouble in that dress."
Her younger sister, Hogwarts sixth-year and barely sixteen-year-old rustled into the library and stared at the variety of seating near Bella's reading desk.
"I think I'll just stand in this one. Mother will have a fit if I crush it. How did you get out of wearing something that looks like-"
"The result of sticking a small colony of love-starved, over-energetic silkworms on a Möbius strip?"
"Humph. I was going to say a misplaced engorgio on Lucius' hairdo, but I prefer your insult."
"How is he?"
Bellatrix gave up on trying to decipher her notes and turned her mind to cataloguing, via gossip, the strengths and weaknesses of every male pureblood in her age bracket.
"Still being reticent about asking Father for my hand. Unlike Nott, Avery, Wilkes et al.," her sister replied. "I hear Rodolphus 'ze Strange 'as finalised everyzing viv Fazzeur," she continued in an atrocious French accent.
"Yes," scowled Bellatrix. "Marriage on the Nones of September, to be announced on the Kalends. Honeymoon from the Nones to the Ides. Somewhere called Garmischpartenkirchen. Possibly involving off-piste skiing, setting off avalanches and other romantic activities such as getting mown down by Muggle snowboarders."
Her sister giggled.
"At least you'll get rid of some Muggles without raising suspicion. There's nothing magical about scum being buried alive in snow. Well, there is, but you know what I mean."
Her older sister's reply was pre-empted by an unsettling quacking noise, making Narcissa look around nervously.
"They're not here again are they?!" she exclaimed.
Her sibling tried not to giggle and reached for a nearby letter opener.
"I don't mind them. It makes the manor a bit more gemütlich."
Concentrating on her quarry, Bella missed her sister's rapid exit under the pretence of welcoming the first guests. The quack-rustle-squeak was getting louder...she swung back the handle and let fly--
Thunk!
A silver blade pierced the mahogany panelling just before hers and slightly to the left, and The Noise stopped swiftly enough that she knew the creature was dead.
"I always thought gemütlich was a combination of charm and homely warmth, not something with an unspecified number of limbs and a tail," countered a flat contralto behind her.
She almost forgot herself, wishing that it wasn't forbidden to murder a guest already within the apparition boundary of a pureblood manor.
"Sirius," she snarled, not moving, not looking at him, not kicking her chair back and turning to slap him and spit in his face, like she so desperately wanted.
"Hand the dagger back, will you?" he continued.
"I'll hand it into your chest," she spat, but rose and yanked both blades out of the wall. "Why are you here pestering me?"
"Pestering?" he laughed, moving to shed his dinner jacket -- at least he was wearing decent attire this visit -- and dump it over the back of and himself into her newly-empty chair.
"You never called it pestering when I visited you before, cousin dearest. Especially in that dress."
"You never opened your mouth-"
"Really? I think I did," he grinned lasciviously.
"Not for the purposes of conversation at any rate," Bellatrix continued stonily, ignoring the blatant invitation to sit on his lap by lurking next to the closest fireplace.
"Touché. Some things never change, do they? You're still possessed of a scathing tongue and a house full of unidentifiable creatures, Cissy is still trying to pretend she hates Lucius, and our fathers both hoe into the drink as soon as their nagging spouses appear."
"You changed," she half-snarled. "You left and you left me and now I have to marry bloody Lestrange and watch as you disgrace the name of the House of Black!"
"There's no call for that!"
"There damn well is! Can't you see what you would have become?" Something vile and thorny clawed its way up her windpipe as she tried to continue. "You were the only chance we had, cousin." She fixed her eyes on the shadows flowing along the corridor, at once caused and banished by the flames that refused to warm her, despite her proximity to the fireplace. "Intelligence, magical prowess, eloquence, courage-"
"Yes, yes. You forgot 'strength of conviction' dear," he half spat, "So don't spout Dark values at me, I was lectured on them enough by Rigel."
A snort of contempt escaped her lips at that.
"Rigel? Your father doesn't have a moral bone in his body! Have you seen how the lecherous toad behaves around his own nieces?"
Sirius tipped his head back and laughed, stretching out his limbs to prop his feet on a corner of her desk. Gods, he'd had another growth spurt!
"Hypocrites, the lot of you."
He snatched up the tome from the desk, leafing though it and creasing the pages.
"You? Healing?!" More laughter spilled from his mouth. "I can't think of a worse career. If I didn't know you had a sense of irony I'd say you only enrolled because you had the marks. You love harming things almost as much as you love yourself!"
Bellatrix' nostrils flared as she stared at the flames.
"Come here and repeat that to my face," she snapped, snatching her wand off the mantelpiece and ignoring the tinkle of crystal as the Floo decanter smashed onto the carpet.
Smiling, he tipped his feet off the desk and strode forwards, clothes dangerously close to the flames as he leaned against the fireplace.
"I think, cousin," he murmured, face closer to hers than before, "that you would be a wonderfully evil bitch, if only you could stop yourself from pandering to your parents' wishes and revolving your life around the approval of proper society."
Half-incoherent with rage, Bella could barely master her emotions enough to match his smile and the closeness of his body before she prised his hands from the mantelpiece, nearly throwing him into the flames.
"Perhaps you're right Sirius. But I don't do healing to show off my marks, I do it because I like dissecting things. As I will dissect you if you ever come back to me."
Laughing, she shoved him into the fire, snapping "Grimmauld Place!" as the flames blazed green.
Bellatrix idly swirled her spoon around her near-empty crème brulée dish, watching the guests busy stuffing themselves. Or in Lucius Malfoy's case, trying to stuff her sister, she amended, watching Cissy lick the crème anglaise off the spoon he was proffering her with as much of her tongue as possible. Rastaban looked hopefully in her direction, but she kicked him under the table. Her tallest and sharpest stiletto heels collided satisfyingly with a muscular leg, causing the younger Lestrange brother to start upwards in his chair, look hastily about himself and wince. The tall gentleman next to Rastaban flicked a glance in her direction without pausing for breath, then continued his detailed exposition about the injustice of muggle Monty someone-or-other triumphing over a wizarding tactical genius called Errrrvin in a desert somewhere. Despite herself she let out a soft giggle. The poor man was doing quite well sandwiched between her father and her soon-to-be brother-in-law and was proving a splendid distraction for her parents, who had failed to notice Lucius and Narcissa's culinary foreplay.
"If I tried that on you we would both be murdered," commented Rodolphus.
"Not if I Avada'd you first," she replied. "Order crème brulée for me once on out honeymoon and I'll shove the spoon down your throat."
"My, my, not even slightly interested in the prospect of sticking your tongue in my direction?" her fiancé parried.
"Only if it's laced with arsenic. Speaking of arsenic, why hasn't Abraxas poisoned his wife yet?" she continued in a less hostile tone.
Rodolphus picked up his glass of dessert wine and sipped slowly, watching the colour change as if the liquid were on fire. He put it down carefully amongst the detritus of a four-course dinner and just as deliberately wiped his mouth and returned the napkin to his lap, folding the linen with excruciating precision.
"I see. You're thinking," she murmured.
"Deliberating - I think," he returned with a smile. "To answer your question I think the will might prove a problem. The inheritance will all go to Lucius, who will soon give up his status as a minor, leaving the family fortune forever out of avaricious Abraxas' reach. Or it may simply look extremely suspicious, considering that that was almost certainly the way his wife bumped off her first husband."
"Don't start giving me ideas," Bellatrix replied, straight-faced. "Anyway, by whom has poor Rastaban been usurped as the guest of honour?"
She motioned with her spoon at the thin man who was now eliciting sympathetic murmurs from his nearby diners about whatever sociopolitical woe he'd been blathering on about. Rodolphus stared.
"I thought your family invited him?"
"Well I've never seen him before. I assumed he was another Frog from Beauxbatons or something."
"Comment on my descent like that again and I'll call you un Bifsteak for the rest of the night," he retorted. "If he's not a guest of the Blacks nor of the Lestranges maybe he is one of Andromeda's...friends," Rodolphus finished dubiously.
Bellatrix knew exactly what he meant. Andromeda's choice of friends at Hogwarts had been abysmal. God forbid if he were the elder brother of some Mudblood tart in Ravenclaw!
"Thank you all for your gracious attendance tonight! The goodwill, the wit, the knowledge and above all the enthusiasm passed on to such a young couple as Andromeda and myself is not something we will forget--"
"Mon Dieu, someone stop him! My brother could talk the pants off Professor Dumbledore if someone let him!" Rodolphus whispered in her ear.
"Don't be so mean-spirited! You blathered on for just as long when we announced our engagement!" she retorted, trying very hard not to cringe at the idea of their Transfiguration professor with his trousers down.
"I did not," her fiancé snarled back in a whisper.
"You two bicker like a married couple already," heard Bellatrix.
She eyed the not-so-handsome stranger warily. It had been his voice, yet his lips hadn't moved, nor were either of his hands touching a wand. Show-off. She glanced at her youngest sibling, wondering how to tell her to shut Rastaban up without leaning over Regulus. Poor cousin, he'd be going through this in just over a year and had been besieged by girls who'd barely registered his existence before Sirius had been disowned. Suddenly clapping broke into her reverie. She blinked and glanced around. Apparently Andromeda has seized a pause in her fiancé's speech to start applauding, followed swiftly by the other guests at her table. Even Mother looked relieved.
"Ladies, gentlemen, madames et messieurs I invite you all to dance the remainder of the night away or retire for coffee and cognac if you prefer, but above all enjoy yourselves!"
An avalanche of cheering and applause greeted Andromeda's proclamation as she and Rastaban walked onto the dance floor.
"You can't leave your sister there all night, can you?" murmured Rodolphus in her ear.
Bellatrix sighed, casting a filthy glare at her mother while her back was turned.
"I'd love to dance, but you know that not only do I have two left feet when not duelling, I also have two medical exams approaching. My mother will have a fit."
"You need to do something more interesting with your life. Where's that spark of adventure I keep seeing in your eyes? Carpe diem!"
"Seize the day? You know what Horace really meant in that poem?" Bella asked in mock-seriousness.
Rodolphus laughed. "Spend every waking hour in shameless pleasure-seeking!"
Bella rolled her eyes at him before trudging back to the library.
If Bellatrix had been less focused upon listing the veins terminating in the superior vena cava, she might have had some warning of the clink of silver on china that would change her life. Instead she gave the intruder into her sanctuary almost ten minutes in which to observe her instead of passing her by.
"I do believe you have prevented me from dancing for the entirety of the evening," the intruder commented baldly.
"I do believe I don't care," muttered Bellatrix, still staring at her cardiovascular diagrams.
She was rapidly succumbing to the temptation to throw her books into the flames and become a hit wizard with Magical Law Enforcement.
"You're a very callous young lady," the guest replied.
He was still lazily stirring his coffee, making an extremely irritating noise with the spoon.
"If you're trying to tear me away from my books by driving me to distraction, there are many far more pleasant ways by which you could achieve the same outcome," she snapped back.
"Implying that Monsieur Lestrange has remained unafflicted by the green-eyed monster?"
Bellatrix had the distinct suspicion that his gaze was fixed on the dinner jacket resting on her chair. Awkward didn't begin to describe the situation.
"Othello, hmmm? I can't see you as Iago really. You're far too educated to sneak around canals eavesdropping on ladies like Desdemona."
"So an expensive education is mutually incompatible with spying? At least on members of the female population," he parried.
"Evidently not in your case," the young lady snapped back.
"Physical, verbal and social abuse from someone to whom I haven't been introduced! You are an unusual aristocrat, aren't you?"
"What, one that intends to study and gain employment instead of sponging off her inheritance?" Bellatrix sighed, hinting not-so-subtly at her medical books. Hardly pro-
"Hardly proper Slytherin behaviour, is it?" he said.
Somehow his voice made even the 't' sibilant, curling into her ears and sliding through her mind. Her breath seemed tainted with a cloying, unfamiliar substance, yet all she could consider was that perhaps baiting the unknown gentleman was foolhardy in the extreme.
"Unfamiliar, is it?"
His voice was growing steadily, subtly louder and Bellatrix was certain that if she turned around now he would be right behind her, despite being unable to hear his footsteps.
"Tell me then, Miss Black, have you not felt fear before?"
She remembered a filthy, world-weary old crone rising from the floor in Defence class, poor in gold and magic and life, with her eyes and her hair and her face-
"So you have then. Interesting that you fear yourself, or..."
"Or what I might become," she mouthed, having no energy to spare for the words. His mind was inside her own somehow, she could feel his shadow weighing on her limbs, if she just moved her neck slightly to the left those long fingers would caress--
"Do you dance, Miss Black?" His voice had metamorphosed again into something light and amused.
"What?" Bellatrix blurted out.
"Do you dance?" he asked again.
"I try not to," she snapped again, but somehow the acid raised against Sirius would not appear. "Moreover, were you not bemoaning your inability to dance as a substitute for introducing yourself?"
"I never did," he replied.
Yes, he was still lurking behind her, still reading her books over her shoulder. Still reading her mind?
"Introduce yourself, or make snide comments?" returned Bellatrix.
Gods, why didn't he just go away, so she could concentrate on attaining some semblance of a normal, enjoyable life instead of spiralling dangerously close to the marry-fornicate-give birth-raise offspring-die rich cycle that had been the boring province of all Black ladies since the 12th century. She refused to do the latter, yet she couldn't bring herself to do the former either. Not unless she excelled.
"Is that because you are unwilling to tarnish the reputations of your parents and the name of Black?"
His voice was strangely distant now, yet he was still so close. Her eyes were fixed on the shadow he cast over the desk. For all the detachment of his voice, something about her must interest him, else he would never have bothered coming here in the first place. She doubted he was in the library for the books.
"Get out of my head!"
He made no reply, but Bellatrix saw his shadow reduce in size, heard his legs fold underneath him and felt his fingers cease their idle tapping on the back of the chair.
"Or," he paused to let warmth seep into his voice again, "Or do you genuinely want to excel, because you feel it burn through your veins, the extent of your knowledge, the sharp tingle of magic you can sense in the air, the certainty that as a pureblood you have something which others do not..." his voice trailed off slyly as she turned to look at him.
The stranger's long body was neatly folded behind her chair: his weight rested on the length of his arms, balanced on the chair back mere inches from her shoulder; his face rested on interlocked fingers, so long that they reached the narrow wrist bones of the opposite hand; a strong jaw and high cheekbones divided his face into planes whiter than marble; eye sockets held limpid pools the same colour as heated metal. She was far too close, if she could notice the detail down to flecks of gold in his irises and the flare of his nostrils as he exhaled.
A twist of his arm muscles sent Sirius' dinner jacket sliding off the chair with a thump, breaking the moment. Whatever that had been, Bellatrix forcibly reminded herself. A thin cloud of Floo powder had been lifted from the carpet by the impact and made her sneeze before the wretched particles succumbed to gravity again. Her fingers scuttled over the desk before she found her wand and Conjured a handkerchief, not daring to let this strange man out of her sight. She frowned. A silvery layer of powder now lay on the carpet, except for a trail where the particles had been tinted a red, almost brown colour. The young lady inhaled through her nose, releasing the air like a wine taster with a glass of Château Petrus. Blood.
"The guest of honour seems to have bled copiously over your carpet. I daresay your mother will not be pleased," the man murmured.
His lip twitched upwards.
"You wouldn't dare tell her! It's your fault that you've injured yourself at any rate," Bellatrix pouted, sounding closer to six than sixteen.
"Oh stop whining," he snapped. "I wanted you to see what you had done, that is all. Not everyone is sheltered by the power and influence of a pureblood family."
Grey eyes flicked to red, then danced away just as quickly. There had been some slight change in his voice then. Another mystery.
"Those people, whether by birth or design, must understand the consequences of their actions. I may very well tell your mother, perhaps to teach you a lesson in manners, young lady."
"Perhaps? What else might you teach me then?"
His laugh was like quicksilver.
"The things I might teach one of your talent, given the time," he replied.
He was the snake-charmer, she the asp. Had that really been the hint of a smile on his face, or was Bellatrix imagining things?
Lazily he drew his wand from some hidden corner of his robes. Those long fingers so suited to the task flicked it upwards over the trail of blood slithering down his leg. The blood vanished, the wound healed, the wand disappeared again and her guest had metamorphosed again into something more mortal, more fallible, less perfect.
Perfect? When had that thought intruded? She didn't even know his lineage. Come to think of it, she had never seen this man before in her life, yet someone had invited him to her own sister's engagement party.
"I will teach you how to move your feet without effort, how to anticipate movement before it occurs, how to learn by doing instead of by reading." His hand snaked around and flicked her cardiovascular diagrams closed.
"You will teach me to duel properly, not the drivel we learn at Hogwarts?"
Eagerness and scorn made a curious mix in her voice.
"Perhaps, Bellatrix," he replied quietly.
Suddenly he was standing, a hand extended towards her. Those long, dexterous fingers twitched slightly as her own hovered above them. He might as well have produced a yellowed scroll and asked her to sign in blood.
"Do you want to dance, Miss Black, or do you want to dance?"
He was cold! So cold to the touch, as if he were Death itself.
"That's Madame Lestrange, thank you," she snapped.
He laughed as her hand settled on his bony shoulder.
"Not quite yet, Miss Black. Not yet."
The music filtered dimly through Bellatrix' mind. Bizet. There seemed to be no weight on the stranger's bones, no heat from his body, nothing but a kind of liquid grace.
"Even when you have given Rodolphus your name and your family, do you really think I will let you give him your soul as well, Bella?"
L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
Que nul ne peut apprivoiser.
Et c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle
C'est lui qu'on vient de nous refuser.