Author's Note: This is the beginning of a new thing for me. The story is going to follow Bella from her childhood to her imprisonment. It's not a oneshot.
Bellatrix Black was like a storm. She was furious and loud, a whirlwind of emotion and noise, springing on the unsuspecting. She had darkness and light inside her, and from the time she was little, they struggled.
Most people were unnerved by Bellatrix. By the time she was seven, she spoke with an adult vocabulary, and was in perfect control of herself. It was only shen she let her guard down in front of a few, very rare, people that her true self emerged.
Most people saw Bellatrix as the crazy one. She was unafraid to speak her mind, and she acted like a boy sometimes. She had no sense of pureblood propriety, although she was fiercely proud of her name.
Most boys found Bellatrix attractive and terrifying at the same time. She was an unearthly beauty, but the spark in her eyes, the curl of her lip, was too extreme for most boys.
Bellatrix was all about extremes. Her dark, wild curls made a dark background for her thin, pale face. Her eyes were another story. They were such a dark blue that they were almost black, but the spark that danced in them constantly reminded you of their true color.
She was thin, skinny. Her mother preferred the term slender, but Bellatrix knew she was thin. This thinness contrasted greatly with her wild, voluptuous curls that fell in voluminous waves, twisting with half curls, to her waist. She took pride in her hair, and knew that this was part of what made her so unerringly beautiful.
Her hands were quick and small, but her fingers were long for her hands' size. Her stature was ordinary, maybe a little on the tall side, but the length of her limbs seemed to make her taller. Her hair only added to this illusion.
Bellatrix was marked as the odd one, the different one, from the time she was two and chose to sit on her mother's lap while she was in a conference with the Dark Lord instead of going to play with the other children.
She had many talents. She was intelligent, and a brilliant dueler. She could fly well, and her spells were very strong. She was witty, and had a sort of allure that hung around her. She was the youngest Black daughter, and she flaunted this fact. Her sisters babied her, and then, when she made it clear she was not a child, they respected and listened to her.
Narcissa might have been the belle of the family, but it was really Bella that drew eyes and, as she grew, respect.
No one could have predicted her path, or foreseen her fall into darkness.