Rebellion
for safari, the silver to my au
spring.
She meets Edward at Hogwarts, and she decides she has to have him.
Because that's what she does, isn't it; she sees the pretty things and she takes them, and nobody tells her no because she's royalty, don't you know, she's the raven-haired beauty who sits on the Black family throne and looks down at her sisters with eyes that glitter like gemstones, and she is envious of no one. Bellatrix is going places, that's what they all say, and she feels like a princess because that's how they treat her - or maybe it's more like a goddess, because they fear her as much as they love her.
(She wouldn't have it any other way.)
She meets Edward when she's thirteen - he's the serious Hufflepuff fourth-year with the sandy hair and the wide turquoise eyes, the one who's always going to Hogsmeade to post his letters the muggle way. She knows her mother would never approve (because Bellatrix is supposed to marry Regulus Black someday, didn't you know?), but that almost makes her want him more, doesn't it, because it's the forbidden fruits that taste the most like honey.
She knows she's supposed to flirt, and she tries, she honestly does. She ties her hair up in a swirl of black tendrils and draws black rings around her eyes and dabs red across her lower lip (and she knows she isn't as pretty as her sisters, she knows it, but they say confidence is key so she lies to the mirror and whispers beautiful). She's seen her friends reel in boyfriends by pretending to need tutors in Charms or Potions, but she'll never stoop to that as long as she lives. She is Bellatrix Black, heir to the family fortune, epitome of strength and power - which is why she walks up to Edward with powder and paint all over her face and asks him outright whether he wants to kiss her.
(Rejection, it turns out, feels like a stab wound.)
When she tells the story later, she turns it around and says Edward was the one begging her for a kiss. It makes sense, doesn't it? A peasant chasing after a deity? And of course she turned him down, she explains with a wave of her hand, because he's a mudblood, he's nothing, and she'd rather die.
So the rumors spread, and people talk, and for some reason it's Edward everyone sympathizes with - because people love an underdog, and the boy with the turquoise eyes is far more defenseless than Bellatrix Black. Bellatrix is just too proud (that's what her fellow Slytherins say when they think she can't hear), she has such impossible standards (she has never let anyone see her cry, not even her mother), she can't bear to be with someone who will do anything but worship her. It's going to be her downfall.
But Bellatrix doesn't care what they say (yes, she does) so she rolls back her shoulders and keeps her eyes straight ahead and ignores Edward with all of her might for the rest of the year. The rings around her eyes become darker and thicker; she forgets what she looks like without makeup, and when she's home for the holidays Narcissa runs screaming at the sight of her.
This is me she tells her mother. This is what I want to look like.
And her mother sighs like she's giving up and walks away.
(Bellatrix sometimes wonders how far she'll have to push her mother to get her to say no.)
autumn.
Andromeda starts at Hogwarts when Bellatrix is fourteen, and suddenly Bellatrix's entire identity is a tangled mess.
Because she's made her own reputation here, but Andromeda is tagging along and ruining everything. So now Bellatrix is caught between School Bellatrix and Home Bellatrix, Queen Bellatrix and Rejected Bellatrix, and it's all too much, especially when her eyes still shift toward Edward even as she tries not to think of him. (Especially when Mum's defeated sigh echoes in her head until it's driving her i-n-s-a-n-e.)
One day she just breaks and stands in her dormitory and screams and screams until her voice is hoarse, and that's when she decides she doesn't want to be her anymore.
So she drops the end off her name (it's just Bella now) and she takes off the makeup and pulls her raven hair back into a nice, neat ponytail, and in the second month of term she finds turquoise-eyed sandy-haired Edward in the library and asks if he might tutor her in Charms.
I'm rubbish at Charms he says, and the stab of rejection buries itself in her heart again, until he says maybe you could tutor me.
She sits in the library with him until late, and their conversation drifts from Charms to other things, like family (Edward has two brothers) and magic (Bella's best subject is Transfiguration) and hopes (he wants to be Minister of Magic someday) and dreams (she thinks she's dreaming now) and wishes (he doesn't ask before he kisses her) and the future (can he see her tomorrow?) and the truth (she wants him) and secrets (nobody can know).
When she goes to sleep that night, Bella dreams of the two of them dancing.
And suddenly life is a blur of stolen kisses and pretty lies, and it's the most thrilling thing she's ever done.
Andromeda wants to know where her sister is always sneaking off to; Bella makes up a story about secret meetings in the dungeons. Mum writes to ask whether Bella is coming home for Christmas; Bella replies that she'd rather stay at Hogwarts and study. Professor Penrose is worried because Bella's grades are slipping, and would she be open to having one of his fifth years tutor her in Defense Against the Dark Arts? (And of course it's Edward, and of course her grades slip even more once their sessions start up, because Bella doesn't care about her grades, didn't you know, she only cares about her dirty little secret that will stop Mum's heart if she ever finds out.)
Because Bella is part of the word rebellious, if you ignore a letter here and there, and those hands on her waist, those lips at her neck, those sighs and moans and whimpers of please, I need it - those are the fuel behind her revolution. The Black Family princess doesn't want to marry Regulus anymore, don't you see, she wants Edward, she wants him properly, she wants him in public where everyone can see and she wants him to help her break her mother's heart.
winter.
For Christmas he takes her to the muggle ballet, and she finds herself looking forward to it.
It's The Nutcracker he says, and he whispers the story in her ear as they watch it play out on the stage, and it's beautiful, because didn't you know, darling, that muggles have a magic of their own?
There's a little dark-haired girl called Clara who gets a toy soldier for Christmas, that's what happens first. (Bella thinks Clara is beautiful.) Her little brother comes in and spoils everything - he breaks the soldier, snaps its arm, and Clara weeps . . . and Bella is holding Edward's hand without even trying to hide it, because they are surrounded by people but utterly alone in a world where nobody knows who she is and nobody cares who she loves (and she does, she really thinks she loves him).
When Clara falls asleep, her toy soldier springs to life and does battle with the Mouse King, and when it's over the soldier embraces Clara, and it's all a dream, Edward explains, it's just Clara dreaming, she's going to wake up soon, just you wait and see.
(Bella watches the dark-haired girl pirouette across the stage with her sandy-haired lover, and she prays for a happy ending.)
When the ballet is over, Bella realizes she's crying. Edward wraps her up in his arms outside the theater and kisses her hard.
What happened to the soldier she asks, even though she knows he doesn't know the answer.
It's only a story he says, except it isn't - stories are real, didn't you know? Every single one of them - so Bella decides that the soldier lived happily ever after with that sugar plum fairy who danced at the end of the show.
(She doesn't let herself wonder about Clara.)
summer.
There's a fight in the family when she won't marry Regulus, and that's when it all falls apart.
Because that's when Bella admits to her mother that she's seeing Someone Else, and that she loves him, and that no, his last name isn't recognizable or prestigious, because he's got a muggle for a father and a muggle for a mother and muggles for brothers and no, he isn't rich, but he wants to be Minister of Magic someday, and if she has to marry Regulus she just knows she's going to end up old and bitter just like her mother.
(That's the first time they tell her no.)
Her mother gives her one night to choose: Edward, or the family.
And every heartbeat is EdwardEdwardEdward, but when Bella cries herself to sleep she dreams of a Rat King who looks suspiciously like Regulus Black whisking her love out of her arms and crushing him into snow.
(When she wakes, she knows she is not Bella anymore.)
spring.
She goes back to her old name after she tells Edward it's over. Back to Bellatrix, with her long tendrils of raven-black hair, and the dark rings around her eyes; back to Bellatrix, with her haughty gaze as she sits atop the Black Family Throne.
She isn't rebellious anymore - that dies with Bella. She does what they tell her to do, does whatever anyone tells her to do, because doing things her way nearly broke her, being free almost destroyed her. It was a beautiful dream once but now it's over.
She's married to Regulus until he dies, and then she's passed into the arms of a Lestrange, and sometimes she wakes up in the middle of the night with tears streaming down her face and visions of a sandy-haired nutcracker in the arms of a sugar plum fairy named Andromeda.
(Because Edward changes his name, too - he's Ted, Just Ted, because Ted Tonks rolls off the tongue better, don't you think, and anyway he doesn't think he can stand to hear Edward on another woman's lips - and he moves on to the next Black, and this one doesn't say no.)
She doesn't speak to either of them ever again - not Edward, not Andromeda - and she pretends it's because her family forbids her, but deep down she knows it's because she's jealous.
He is the only thing she ever wanted that she didn't get to keep, after all, and it's all her own fault, isn't it.
It feels like a stab wound.
(She screams when she finds out he's dead.)
[Disney Character Competition: Cruella de Vil - write about Bellatrix Lestrange]
[Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Competition: Medusa - write about Bellatrix Lestrange]
[Twelve Days of Christmas Style Challenge: Eight different genres - Tragedy, 8/8]