Bellatrix was tired.
She was so sick of it all. She just wanted it to stop.
She knew what they called her behind her back and out of earshot of her family, lest they get hexed into oblivion. But she knew anyway. They weren't as good at hiding it as they thought they were. They're simply jealous, she told herself. But of course, that wasn't the whole of it.
Black death. Black Death. She had been kissed by it since she was a babe in Druella's arms. Nobody let her forget that she made her first 'kill' as a precocious baby, barely a year old when her magic manifested itself and she somehow exploded a twittering sparrow that wouldn't keep quiet. Bloody Sirius had given her a book about sparrows as a birthday gift once. The black eye he sported for a magnificent week after that still brought a satisfied smirk to her lips. A twisted parody of Midas, everything she touched turned black. Including, worst of all, her "pureblood duties."
Some said it was deliberate. Others, that such blackness could leave no room for the light of life to grow. And yet others said it was a curse she brought upon herself, a wretched vengeance, a cruel denial of a shared flesh and blood that Nature wrought upon her, to besmirch the noble name of her House as she too stained her hands black with the lifeblood of what Nature had birthed.
Well, none of them have the right of it, she thought. What do they know? It's not like Rod minds. Much.
Bellatrix sometimes wished a hole would open up in the ground and swallow her, so she wouldn't have face the stares anymore. But I'm probably too tainted for that to happen either.
And what would happen to your sisters? There's no use dragging yourself down, and them along with you, she told herself sternly.
I'll just have to embrace it then.
