Written for Lamia of the Dark's request in Estella May's Request Challenge at xoxLewrahxox's forum. Phew, that was a long one! Many thanks to Lamia for the prompt, because I had more fun than should be legal writing this.
Prompt: red, lace, raven.
Exactly 1700 words.
Cygnus Black's study – a man's room – was the object of his eldest daughter's obsession. At parties the men would be invited to drink and discuss there after dinner, while the women retired to the pale blue, rococo drawing room. Bellatrix hated the women. They never said anything of interest to her; instead they spoke in cold, sneering tones about anyone who wasn't present. Of the three sisters, only Narcissa liked their talk. She sat primly on her chair, looking as cold and detached as the elder women she so admired, every so-often adding some details about the girls she knew – men and their affairs were never spoken of in the drawing room.
At first, Bellatrix attempted to take refuge in Andromeda, who was equally unimpressed with their chatter. But while Bellatrix offered a thousand means of escape, all culminating in the two of them sneaking up to the attic where they could rummage in the ancient, unused artefacts stored there – and where Bellatrix could creep over to where the men's voices would float up to her eager ears, Andromeda only told her, time and again, that if she left she would go to her room to practice her dancing.
And so Bellatrix was eventually forced to give up on including Andromeda in her fantasies. But no amount of disparagement from her sister could quell her desire for her father's study and all it represented. So one evening, while the women sat in a half-circle around the fire, swirling their wine – or in Narcissa's case, grape juice – and dripping poison from their thin, cold mouths, Bellatrix spoke.
"Maman?"
The interruption was genteel and soft, but it disrupted their flow, and all the women's icy eyes were turned to the young girl sitting stiffly on an ottoman.
"Yes, Bellatrix?" There was no mistaking the note of displeasure in Druella's voice.
"I'm very sorry to interrupt, but I'm not feeling very well. Might I be allowed to take my leave early this evening?" Bellatrix spoke the words she had been taught to say.
"Of course, dear." Her mother said.
Bellatrix stood and made her way around the room, murmuring polite 'good night's and pressing fluttering kisses to each of the women's cheeks before curtseying to the room at large and leaving. Off the carpeted area, her shoes clicked softly on the granite floors as she moved to the door, opened it softly and closed it with a gentle snick.
Free from the frigidly oppressive air of the drawing room, Bellatrix felt some of the tension in her person drift away to settle elsewhere. The hallway was as magnificent as all the rooms of the house, with high ceilings and a distinctly baroque style. On the walls were a multitude of paintings and tapestries, many made by long dead ancestors and depicting scenes of dragon hunting and young women with unicorns. Bellatrix moved past these quickly. On any other occasion she would have lingered a while before her favourite tapestry, of a woman with black hair and beautifully forbidding features on the back of a Norwegian Ridgeback. Bellatrix Black the first, for whom she had been named.
But this was no common occasion, and Bellatrix felt speed to be a necessity, so she hurried up the wide marble staircase, not bothering to hold onto the gold handrail, as she'd been taught. She rushed down the upstairs hall, darting all the way to the back of the house and into the unused box room, where, in the far corner, was a tiny set of stairs. With a deep breath, she marched through piles of boxes and mounted the five steps. She was met with a small wooden door, which she pushed open, hoping no one would hear the creaking. She was faced with more stairs, which she mounted quickly. And, finally, she arrived.
Pushing open yet another door, she found herself in a room of immense proportions, littered with ancient, unused objects. The light came in through the wooden slats of the round windows, illuminating dust motes and bathing everything in gold light from the setting sun.
On a small wooden table stood a stuffed raven. Bellatrix's desire to see what the men were doing was momentarily quelled by the strange, dead bird. It peered at her with fake glass eyes and wobbled as her steps sent tiny tremors through the table. She moved over to it, unsure whether it was dangerous to touch. But her curiosity got the best of her, and she sent a white finger forwards. The bird fell over on contact and sent up a plume of dust, but there seemed to be no adverse effects. So Bellatrix picked it up, cleaned it of many years worth of dust and cradled her newest possession in her arms.
"I'll name you Bellerophon." She told it, moving away from the table to find the ideal spot for eavesdropping on the men.
Padding softly around the vast, dusty expanse of room, she found herself once again distracted. In the middle of the attic stood another set of stairs, these ones made of winding wrought iron, leading up into a hole in the ceiling. She hesitated a moment before it. It wasn't every day that she got the opportunity to hear the men, but equally rare was the opportunity for exploring the attic.
Finally, she decided that it was still early, and the men would remain in the study for a long time still, so she told herself quite firmly that she would dart up into the room, look around, and go straight back down.
With Bellerophon held under one arm and grasping the railing with the other, she marched determinedly upwards, into a small room of windows. The cupola.
Here she found only a small writing desk, a pile of old books and a red lace bookmark. She took the bookmark. Andromeda, being the most bookish of the three sisters, would no doubt be jealous of her, and Bellatrix planned to taunt her younger sister with it, knowing that Andromeda would now be quite bitter that she hadn't agreed to accompany her.
Bellatrix scrambled back down the stairs and, in the dying light, finally found an air vent that linked directly to her father's study. The house was built so that the study took up two floors, the second being a sort of library, with only a few feet from the shelves to a railing that prevented anyone from tumbling down to the room below. And so Bellatrix found that, if she peered at precisely the right angle through the grate, she could just see the tops of the men's heads, with only a few of them obscured by the half-level of books.
They, like the women, were congregated around a fireplace, but the similarities ended there. Even the room seemed to hold a warmth and power that the women's didn't. Decorated in rich tones of red, brown and gold, and looking more sternly Victorian than frivolously rococo, everything about the room seemed to emanate power and prestige.
Bellatrix placed Bellerophon on the ground beside her and pressed herself closer to the cold metal grate. The light was waning quickly now, and a little niggling part of her mind told her she should leave before it got so dark that she couldn't see, but she ignored it. She finally had the opportunity she'd always wanted, and the threat of impending darkness was not going to stop her.
The men's voices, rich and warm and strong, floated up to her alongside the smell of firewhiskey, bourbon and old books. It was such a change from the drawing room, where all voices were thin and cold, and the room smelled of frost, wine and perfume, that Bellatrix had to bite back a gasp of pleasure. Her father's study was everything she'd imagined and more.
"…can't actually believe he'll make any worthwhile changes?" Her uncle said.
"Tell me, Orion, why you think Noirceur won't be any good, don't just ask rhetorical questions." That was Abraxas Malfoy, firelight making his white-blond hair glow.
"You saw what he did with those properties Marchbanks donated – sold 'em at half the price to a bunch of half-bloods, and then took most of that as a pay raise for him and those idiot councillors." Damien Yaxley said.
Her father cut in, "You can't actually believe that MacLennan would have done better if he were elected. You know his policy on mudbloods."
Bellatrix gaped. She knew the word and what it meant, but her mother had told her it was such a nasty thing that it was never spoken in polite society.
"Of course not! MacLennan is the worst of them all. But Noirceur isn't much better. He's a common thief!" Orion said.
Malfoy sneered, "And who would you have preferred was elected? Dear little Marianne Pippin?"
Bellatrix saw her uncle turn very white, then very red, as the men around him chuckled at a joke she didn't understand. That seemed to put an end to the conversation for a moment, then Roger Lestrange spoke, his voice dripping with adult humour.
"You won't believe what happened the other day at Borgin and Burkes." He said, launching into a story that made Bellatrix's eyes widen in shameful curiosity and set her cheeks aflame.
By the time the raucous laughter that followed Roger Lestrange's story had died down, Bellatrix found herself sitting in pitch black, her eyes smarting with exhaustion. She didn't know how she would ever find her way back down in the darkness. But tired and concerned as she was, she didn't want to leave. Everything about the men seemed perfect to her, even the things she didn't understand.
She knew, now that she was almost eleven, no one would come up to check if she was actually in bed. And this fact, coupled with the dark and her intense desire to remain listening for as long as she could, made her decide to stay in the attic for the night.
She stretched herself out comfortably, laying her head on the grate and taking Bellerophon into her arms, and continued to watch and listen until exhaustion finally claimed her, and she fell asleep.
Perhaps you're wondering why Bellatrix isn't a psycho bitch? It's because she's still young, and has yet to grow into psycho bitchness.
Do tell me what you thought of this.