There was something liberating about being out at night; alone, hidden and free to menace, to observe and plot. She would tread the deserted courtyards- from corner to corner they swarmed with students by day- by nightfall they were void of all life but her own. She would walk the barren bridges, venture into the forbidden forest, sometimes she would perch on a spectator's bench on the quidditch pitch, the silhouetted highlands towering in front of her and the flutter of wings from the not-so-distant owlery behind her, while the moonlight spilled across the field in an eerie luminous streak.
She would make her way to the boathouse and watch the sun rise over the black lake while her fellow students slept soundly in their beds, each sun taking her a day closer to an impending new chapter of her life, or she would drift into her deepest and darkest thoughts under the tedious ticking in the clock tower. Sometimes she would journey as far as Hogsmeade, safe in the knowledge that no other living soul could have any inclination as to her presence.
She went to places she should never have gone to and did things she should never have done; from the growing of dangerous ingredients in a hidden shed in the herbology grounds, to the creation of highly hazardous potion concoctions in an unplottable storeroom in the dungeons. She frequented the restricted section in the library, spending hours reading over prohibited material under the dimmed light of her wand, savouring each snippet of information for future use. Under her bed she kept a tin box, the clasp was cemented shut with several locking charms and inside it lived an ever growing collection of pages of loose parchment. She had never explained to her dorm-mates what was written on the pages. They knew it wasn't their place to ask and besides, they were quite sure they already knew what the scribbles were: they were her list of spells, most of them jinxes, hexes and curses gathered from here and there over the years, from banned books, from irresponsible older students, and perhaps most alarmingly the spells she had created herself from trial and error, now perfected, tested and absolutely lethal . These, all of them, had amassed into a dark arts encyclopaedia of sorts, a labour of countless hours that counted amongst Bellatrix Black's most cherished possessions.
The privacy of the dark hours saw her put her spells into motion against the creatures of the night- doxies, fairies, any creature who gathered in large numbers and whose absence was less likely to be noticed.
By barely eighteen she had already mastered the fiendfyre curse, not only was she able to cast fire with enviable precision, she had also taught herself to control and extinguish it, a skill reaching far beyond her years. She looked on with glee as the fire she summoned sent throngs of bowtruckle scattering from their habitats- the undersides of fallen tree trunks in the forest- clambering and yelping to escape. Once they had she would waste no time in using the flagrante curse to scald the surface of whichever tree branch they had found refuge on. She honed her patience, watching and waiting to strike, wand poised and ready for the tiniest and most discreet movement.
She invented her own torturous curses- her favourite so far was the Pruritum curse, an itching spell that caused her victim incredible itching in places that couldn't be scratched- behind their eye sockets, deep in their ear drums, under their fingernails.
The cloak didn't belong to Bellatrix- she had never owned one of her own, but by the beginning of her seventh year at Hogwarts she had become increasingly determined to obtain one, having pondered for hours at a time during the summer break over just how useful a tool it would be in her hands.
As she rode the Hogwarts Express into the new September term for the final time she sat silently and moodily in one of the Slytherin carriages, her acquaintances chatted and joked with each other while Bellatrix, deep in thought about the matter of the cloak, stared out of the window. A draught blew in from the cooling Autumnal air outside as the train gained speed but she didn't notice, she chewed thoughtfully on her thumbnail and combed her mind for ideas. Masses of trees and moss green fields rolled past as she sat there, buried deeper in thought by the minute and losing all track of time. The journey was long and the other students, inside the carriage and out, were growing unsettled and boisterous.
To Bellatrix's knowledge there were two people at Hogwarts who owned invisibility cloaks. One was a peculiar fifth-year Ravenclaw student, Xenophilius Lovegood, the other was a Hufflepuff pupil, the same age as herself, by the name of Walter Applebee.
Taking the cloak from the Ravenclaw student would be a considerably difficult task, the boy was known to store it in a different place each and every day, paranoid that it would be stolen he never left it in the same place twice. Even if someone was to find his cloak it was said to contain a floating charm that enabled only the rightful owner to take hold of it, if anyone else tried to lift the cloak it would hover out of their reach until they were left grappling and jumping fruitlessly in the air. For all his eccentries he was quietly clever and sharp in his wits, he had placed practically fool-proof measures in place to guard his property.
Walter Applebee, on the other hand, was somewhat more complacent about his cloak. He counted on the steadfast security of the Hufflepuff common room- no outsider had gained entry to their common room in almost a thousand years. But inside the safety of the room he was said to leave the cloak hanging over his bed canopy, relying on the trustworthiness of his fellow Hufflepuff's not to help themselves to it without his permission.
"Fulbert the fearful! Again?" - An ear splitting voice finally succeeded in interrupting Bellatrix's train of thought.
She snapped her head towards the culprit, ready to unleash her rage at being disturbed, but she quickly softened upon realising it was her youngest sister, Narcissa.
Narcissa was a second-year student and she would never have been given the privilege of sitting amongst the oldest Slytherin's if it hadn't been for the fact she was Bellatrix's sister. The seventh-year Slytherin's secretly found the little girl standoffish and burdensome, she wasn't an easy child to like, on that they could all agree but they knew better than to say so. They had no choice but to tolerate her journeying with them.
"That's the third one of these I've got" the youngest sister complained, she held a chocolate frog card in her hand and turned her nose up. "I need Gwenog Jones, not three of this fool", she had ripped into and discarded the wrapping of a handful of the eatable treats in search of the one remaining card she needed, the one that stopped her collection from being complete. Her face distorted with rage and disappointment with every duplicate card she uncovered.
Bellatrix looked over her sister's shoulder. Beside each other they looked- at first glance- like polar opposites, as different as night and day. Bellatrix's flowing black hair contrasted strongly against her sister's white-blonde bob, but upon closer inspection the similarities started to appear. They each had the same porcelain skin, ghostly pale without a blemish. They wore matching scowls and had an identical air of haughtiness about them.
"Gwenog Jones is the only one you still don't have, isn't she?" Bellatrix said patiently. Narcissa looked at her and nodded fervently. Where Narcissa was concerned Bellatrix often displayed a softer side of herself, an aspect of her character rarely seen by anyone else. Narcissa, it seemed, was the only person Bellatrix truly cared for. Her remaining sister, Andromeda, wasn't extended the same affection.
"Well now, we can't have your collection being incomplete, can we?" Bellatrix said, "hmm, no, that'll not do". There was something suddenly menacing about her tone. It had been many years since she had collected chocolate frog cards herself, they were deemed a childish pastime that most of the Slytherin's in the carriage had long since grown out of. Except for one, and he sat directly opposite her now- an addict to chocolate and sweets in all shapes and sizes- Bertie Goyle.
Bertie Goyle guiltlessly consumed sugary snacks from morning to night, his waistline had expanded steadily during his years at Hogwarts. He had a particular appetite for chocolate frogs. After devouring each one he kept the cards safely in his possession, ever ready to use them as a bribe to trade the younger and more gullible students out of items much more expensive and useful than the cards he offered them, some of which were dog-eared, ripped, or even faded beyond recognition.
"Goyle?" Bellatrix said icily, the carriage fell quiet.
She held her chin high and her eyebrow's higher, giving off an effortless sense of authority.
Goyle looked up. An uncomfortable frown covered his plump face. He caught Bellatrix's gaze briefly before quickly looking away again.
"You've always got chocolate frog cards. Don't even think about denying it" she said. "Let's see them"
He mumbled inaudibly, hardly daring to look up. His latest stack of cards were visible in his breast pocket, smudges from the chocolate that had accompanied them also decorated his shirt.
"Let me see them" Bellatrix said, more sternly than before. The other students in the carriage were now sitting rigidly, content not to speak.
Before Goyle could respond, Bellatrix had pulled out her wand. She pointed it at directly at him. Her top lip curled and her eyes narrowed. He felt the colour drain from his face- an unwelcome panic threatened to overwhelm him. Bellatrix had always had a ferocious temper; she had always known how to throw her weight around and she was certainly prone to flying off the handle and frequent bouts of histrionics, but in the past year she had undeniably grown more and more sinister. Right now there was something haunting about her- in her eyes, her face, her expression and her mannerisms, right down to the sound of her voice and the way she held her wand. While she had intimidated him before and made him genuinely nervous on occasion she had never instilled the type of dread in him as she was capable of lately.
He could tell from looking at his friends faces around the carriage right now that they felt the same way.
And then, amidst the silence, through the bitter tense, Bellatrix- much to the others surprise- started to laugh- a disturbing, mocking cackle. The students shifted uncomfortably, they had been startled by the unexpected shattering of the silence. Even Narcissa jumped.
"Your face there, Goylie boy" Bellatrix tittered, "My, oh my…", she cackled again, "…oh, the look on your face". Then, just as unexpectedly as before, she stopped laughing as swiftly as she had started. Her expression straightened and her eyes narrowed again.
"You'd have thought I was about to perform a, you know…", she clicked her fingers as if searching for the right word, "…a what's it? Oh, I know, an unforgivable curse on you", she sat forward in her seat, "as if I would" she added with her most foreboding grin yet.
"Why so tense?" she went on, her grin grew wider. Her wand was still pointed at him. Goyle gulped and tried to conceal it by pretending to adjust his tie.
"Accio!" she commanded before waiting on an answer, once more she broke the silence so unexpectedly that not only Narcissa but Goyle and his cronies jumped too. Zoe Zabini who appeared to have been dozing in and out of sleep on the corner seat opened one eye and closed it again. The rest envied her, they wished they had thought of feigning sleep first.
Bellatrix directed her wand at Bertie Goyle's breast pocket and his newest chocolate frog cards soared into the air into a chaotic burst while she kicked the latch of an adjustable table that was folded on its hinges beneath the window, all the time without taking her gaze off him. The table, a faux mahogany plank, shot onto its legs with a bang. She lowered her wand again and the cards fluttered down onto the table's scratched surface.
"Now let's see" she said, picking up the one lying closest to her. "Gwenog Jones, was it, Cissi?"
"Gwenog Jones" Narcissa confirmed.
Bellatrix turned over the card she was holding. "Oswald Beamish" she read aloud, her eyes noticeably narrowed for the third time and she turned her nose up just like her sister. "Pioneer of Goblin rights was old Beamish" she scoffed in her thick London brogue. She quickly scrunched the card into a ball, stood up and threw it out the open window, her curly hair fluttered in the breeze before she slammed the window frame shut and sat down again. Goyle recoiled at the sight, Oswald Beamish was one of the rarest cards in his whole collection, he had only ever found two of that particular card. He watched it fly away along with his anticipated galleons.
"Herpo the foul" Bella announced as she picked up another card. She gave a nod of approval and left the card unharmed. Next came Gordic Gryffindor. She made a face and shredded it into pieces.
Goyle flinched again and again as he watched her sift through one card after the next, each time destroying any whose names and achievements she didn't approve of. He, like the rest of the carriage, looked on helplessly. He silently scolded himself for not trying to stop her, but he simply couldn't muster up the courage.
"Why if it isn't Albus Dumbledore" Bellatrix sneered with a voice full of contempt, his was the card before the last. The Slytherin's braced themselves for more ripping and throwing, instead she lifted her wand again. They shrank further into their seats. "Incendio!" she demanded, and Dumbledore's image became engulfed in flames, flickering wildly and charring the table before eventually disintegrating into ash.
"He's not as mighty as he thinks he is" she commented, more to herself than to the group. "One day someone will bring him down to size"
She placed her hand on the final card, it was facing down. Her long nails scraped against its royal blue exterior. She looked straight at Goyle again. "You had better hope this is Gwenog Jones" she said with an unnerving calm, she said it with the tone that one might use to wish a friend a good holiday.
Bellatrix slid the card across the table towards him. "Do the honours then", she nodded towards it. "Let's see"
Goyle knew who the card was, and it wasn't Gwenog Jones. He suspected Bellatrix knew as much too. To make matters worse the actual identity of the card was Tilly Toke, an early twentieth century witch who had saved the lives of dozens of muggles from a Common Welsh Green Dragon attack, and had been honoured the Order of Merlin for her efforts in the process. Goyle swallowed nervously. The others studied him morbidly, their expressions said they were thankful not to be in his place.
Bellatrix raised her eyebrows to remind him she was waiting.
He tried to conceal the shaking of his hand as he reached for the card. He hated Bellatrix for making a fool of him like this, but not as much as he hated himself at that moment for allowing her to. He slowly lifted his head and looked up.
"It's Tilly Toke" he mumbled. He overturned the card as proof and dropped it again quickly.
"Hmm" Bellatrix eventually answered, she shook her head. "Pity that" she said coldly, she turned to her little sister, "clarify for me, Cissi, was it Gwenog Jones you wanted? Or was it this blood traitor?", she grabbed the card aggressively and held it up in the air.
"I wanted Gwenog Jones" Narcissa answered with a sickening sense of entitlement. Her voice was even colder than Bellatrix's now. The two sister's eyes burned into Goyle.
"I've got Gwenog Jones, look, I have. Somewhere" Goyle spoke up, he patted his pockets frantically while the colour drained even deeper from his face. He searched his pockets a second time but came up with nothing. "It must be in my dorm somewhere" he stuttered, "I left a bunch of them behind last year 'cause I was running late for the train home. I'm sure it's still there. I'll get it for you as soon as we reach Hogwarts, okay, Cissi?", he looked pleadingly at her. He had never felt as pathetic in his eighteen years as he did now.
"It's Narcissa to you" Bellatrix cut in, "who told you you had the right to call her Cissi?"
Goyle shrugged feebly.
"Go and call the Honeyduke's lady" Bellatrix instructed him. "You'll have to buy more chocolate frogs, as many as necessary until we find that card". Goyle's jaw dropped at her audacity. They cost eleven sickles a piece. That was the end of his plan to save the rest of his money for Hogsmeade that coming weekend. He wished his seat would eject him through the roof and out of the carriage.
"Well? What are you waiting for?" Bellatrix snapped, she motioned with her hand for him to stand up.
It took all of Goyle's strength to rise out of his seat and walk the few steps to the carriage door. Mortified and disgusted at himself, he went out onto the aisle and looked left and then right until he saw the Honeyduke's trolley in the distance. He stepped out and flagged it down.
Inside Bellatrix had sank back into her thoughts almost immediately.
She tried to figure a way through the stumbling block that was Hufflepuff's tight security. She chewed her thumbnail again and tapped her foot. Rumour had it that if anyone wished to enter Hufflepuff's common room they must first tap a particular barrel in a certain tune, a true Hufflepuff would not make the mistake of tapping the wrong barrel or drumming the wrong tune, of course, but an outsider might, in which event they would be sprayed with vinegar and denied access.
To make matters worse the Hufflepuff common room was in the basement next to the kitchens. Kitchens meant house elves. If Bellatrix was to succeed in venturing into the basement, a task in itself, she would in all likelihood be spotted either by a student or teacher, or the interfering house elf that was Dempsey.
Dempsey and Bellatrix shared a mutual dislike of one another from the very first week Bellatrix set foot in Hogwarts. She had just learned the duro charm and had subtly cast it on a Gryffindor's dinner plate while passing their table in the great hall, automatically turning their roast potatoes into stone. On her way back to her own table, while looking this way and that to make sure she hadn't been spotted she swept past a precariously balanced water jug, sending it hurtling towards the floor. But with milliseconds to spare she managed to cast a hover charm, briefly stilling the jug in mid air and preventing it from smashing, and in the process saving herself from garnering unwanted attention and of course suspicion. Just as she sat down again, unnoticed, the unsuspecting Gryffindor student- a prefect- bit into the largest potato and cried out in pain, he had cracked three of his teeth. The Slytherin table erupted in laughter. As the most obvious suspects their wands were checked first. When Bellatrix's was checked the last cast was revealed to be the hover charm she had used on the jug. She sat down again smugly. Not content with merely being satisfied at escaping the blame she went a little further.
"Maybe the house elves did it" she craftily suggested as Professor's Slughorn and Dumbledore inspected the remaining Slytherin wands, and before long her fellow students were adding weight to the claim. "The house elves are trying to choke the students!" came the cries, "the house elves are serving spoiled food!"
Dempsey, the kitchen overseer and self-appointed chief of Elf staff went into a frenzy when he overheard a group of Hufflepuff's discussing the accusation (and their disbelief in it) amongst themselves the next day.
"Dempsey and the kitchen elves did no such thing, Mr Professor Dumbledore!" he repeated over and over again when Dumbledore sought him out simply to try to settle the matter and provide the elves with peace of mind. "I am well aware you had nothing to do with the stony potatoes, Dempsey. We're quite sure it was nothing but a mischievous prank. A prank carried out by a student" Dumbledore tried to assure him, "Please, do calm down. You need not concern yourselves about the matter".
But Dempsey did concern himself. He took his role in the kitchen very seriously indeed, and any threat to the reputation of his work force was a grievous insult. Many of the house elves were given to overreacting at the slightest criticism, or the mere suggestion of it- they feared that their role in Hogwarts would be threatened and that they could find themselves evicted, despite the numerous assurances from Dumbledore that such a thing wasn't going to happen. Still, Dempsey determined to find out who was behind the despicable offense.
He didn't have to inquire very far until he learned it was one of the Black family. He wasn't surprised at all. Elladora Black, a witch who had long since died but whose reputation was still alive and kicking, was known to have started their family tradition of beheading house elves who grew too old to be useful to the family any longer. The Black family name sent a chill through every house elf from thereon after. As it happened, Elladora was a distant relative of the chief suspect, Bellatrix.
Unlike most house elves Dempsey was an inquisitive and daring creature. While the rest of his elf kin preferred to keep their heads down and out of sight, Dempsey vowed that he would from then on keep a watchful eye on Bellatrix Black and any other member of her family, especially at the dining tables. Throughout the following years he sporadically insisted on walking amongst the students in the great hall during their meals, much to the distaste of the Slytherin's and some of the teachers who thought it uneccesary, his goal was to make sure that all meals were perfectly satisfactory for the young witches and wizards and that the toil of his elves stood above criticism at all times.
"Dempsey wishes to know, is your meal meeting your standards today?" his high-pitched, peculiar voice echoed around the hall as he walked from table to table, "Dempsey wishes to know, could your meal be improved of in any way? Any way, sir, madam, any way?"
Bellatrix seethed at the very thought of him.
As the Hogwarts Express kept trundling on she was forced to admit to herself that getting through the Hufflepuff's door was going to be impossible in light of his deep seated suspicion against her. On top of that he was said to patrol the basement corridors on regular intervals, not just to fetch ingredients from the vegetable patch outside but to meticulously dust the bronze statue and framed paintings of Helga Hufflepuff by hand three times a day, a homage to the founder herself for bringing his kind to Hogwarts many moons ago- an act of compassion that they had never forgotten.
The train carriage gradually darkened as a mound of heavy clouds spread across the sky and soon rain slashed against the windows. Bellatrix was still lost in thought. She considered several options to gain access to the room, she wasn't foolish enough to use the Imperius curse inside Hogwarts, she would knew she would have to opt for something a little more tame. After some more thought and consideration she decided she had finally come up with the answer- Jairus Abbott.
Walter Applebee didn't like Bellatrix and she knew it, but he had a sidekick, Jairus.
Jairus was hopelessly handsome but hopelessly naïve. Bellatrix always thought it a shame that such good looks should happen to belong to a muggle-born wizard. The idea that those good looks could be enough to romantically attract a pureblood witch to himself, perish the thought, were enough to invoke rage in her anytime she saw him. As far as the Black's were concerned there was nothing more shameful and degrading than pureblood's who entered into relationships with muggles. Marrying outside one's pedigree was a line not to be crossed, for Bellatrix and a fair number of her Slytherin peers it was accepted as a hard and fast rule, never to be broken or even contested against. Deep down Bellatrix had feared for some time now that her sister Andromeda could some day commit that particular heinous act. It had not gone unnoticed on Bellatrix that Andromeda kept company with muggle-born's in school, or that her beliefs had mellowed since she started Hogwarts four years ago where she began to interact with and befriend them in class, much to both of her sister's rather vocal disapproval.
The Black sister's had a complicated relationship. The two eldest had never been particularly close, Andromeda had always been a free spirit- she was able to look after herself, she was sociable but independent, a free-thinker, whereas Narcissa relied on Bellatrix and Bellatrix relished spoiling her.
The nagging dread that Andromeda could one day bring the ultimate shame to their family name had, over time, played a hand in both Bellatrix's and Narcissa's attitudes regarding pureblood supremacy becoming all the fiercer. In turn muggle-born students, Jairus Abbott being one of them, became the personification of that fear and abhorrence. A number of family members who had once belonged to the Most Noble House of Black had now been eradicated from their family tapestry, they found themselves shunned and to add final insult to injury their pictures were scorched from the needlework tree as though they had never existed. Although some would say that the former members had in fact had a lucky escape.
"About time!", Narcissa's voice travelled through the carriage and Bellatrix was again jolted back into the present. Bellatrix grinned- her first genuine smile of the whole journey- as her little sister triumphantly held up the chocolate frog card she had been searching for.
Gwenog Jone's broomstick flitted around the pentagonal card, back and forth, up and down, in and out of sight, and Bertie Goyle breathed a massive sigh of relief. At long last.