A/N - This is a collection of drabbles based around the character of Bellatrix Lestrange written for reminiscent-afterthought's "So you think you know your character?" Competition on the HPFC forum. Each will seek to answer something about the character based on prompts from the challenge. This first one is for the prompt, "What is your Hogwarts House and what traits do you share with it?". Enjoy, and please let me know what you think!
It was only as she stood before the sorting hat in Hogwarts' cavernous Great Hall that Bellatrix began to have her doubts. All her life she had known that she would be in Slytherin, that it was the superior house and the place where she would make powerful friends who could help her for the rest of her life. And yet, in the hat's song the other houses didn't seem so bad. She was brave, she was clever, she was loyal. At least she liked to think she was.
"Black, Bellatrix."
Her legs shook as she made her way to the front and it was a struggle to keep her head held high and her face composed. What would her father say if she was not made a Slytherin? If she broke a tradition that had been going for generations?
The ragged hat slipped down right over her eyes.
"Having doubts are we?" Bellatrix jumped. She hadn't expected it's voice to be so loud in her ears. "You needn't worry, there's only one place right for you..."
"SLYTHERIN!"
Bellatrix breathed an inward sigh of relief. Removing the hat, she swept her hair over her shoulder and strode over to the cheering table on the far left. She had been ridiculous. Of course this was where she belonged. The tapestry at her aunt's house proved it; all those famous names and influential people that had come before her were the reason she was here today. Generations of magical expertise flowed pure through her veins. Other students could be brave or clever or loyal, but few had that. Which was why she was better. And this was where she belonged.