Bella likes music.
Ever since she was a child her life has been accompanied by music. She remembered the piano being played a lot in the house where she grew up. She, too, played a little, some jolly tunes, something in D major, and the sound would not leave her head while she ran out into the garden, playing with her sisters. The Rage Over A Lost Penny seemed to resound in the air when she finally caught Andromeda, who was hiding behind the rose bushes. Their laughter slowly drowned out the music.
The evening Bellatrix entered Hogwarts for the first time, magic was in the air. It was almost like Dvorák's Slavonic Dance N° 8; a powerful feeling overcame her and she was beaming with light, radiating it. Something was running through her veins apart from a witch's blood and Bella knew that it was going to make her great. Something or someone out there was waiting only for her and she could hardly wait. And this time not even the sound of the people around her could quieten the orchestra in her head.
Albinoni's Oboe Concerto in F major was played when Rodolphus took her to the Yule Ball. The third movement, as she recalls. He was a good dancer and spun her around until she was dizzy. Her green dress glistened in the candlelight, all eyes were on her. Bellatrix felt like a queen. After all, the music was majestic.
Yes, Bellatrix likes music, but she always skips the second movements. For her, music has to be fast, music has to be passionate, powerful and grand. Because she also is all of these things.
So it was Brahms going through her head on her wedding night. Violin Concerto in D Major, the lonely violin singing fiercely when they started to undress each other, then the whole orchestra joining them in their act. It was that melody Bella later hummed when she was falling asleep next to her husband.
Her first night at Hogwarts was never forgotten but it was only when she met Voldemort that she realized it was him who had been waiting her for all along. When Bellatrix was given the Dark Mark on her left arm, she knew that she had fallen in love with her Lord as well as with the 4th of Beethoven's 6 Bagatelles. It was wild, forceful and twisted in a way Bella could understand, for she herself had become that way.
Then suddenly her Lord has disappeared; gone, vanished, maybe even killed. But it could not be. The Aurors! They were behind it. The Order of the Phoenix, maybe. She had to know what had happened to the Dark Lord. Bruch's 1st Violin Concerto in G minor was in the back of her mind that evening, when she captured Frank and Alice Longbottom. Raging mad she used the cruciatus curse on both of them over and over again. They screamed and screamed but Bella could not hear them. The screeching violin in the first movement was too loud. She could only see the spark of life slowly fading from their eyes, leaving them useless.
She and Rodolphus were sent to Azkaban for their crime. A life sentence, but after one year in prison, it didn't seem to bother her anymore. If her Lord was dead, nothing mattered anymore, yet, if he lived, he would come and free her. It was just a matter of time.
There was no music in Azkaban but the sound of Beethoven's Great Fugue in her head, the most amazing piece of art she had ever known, a quartet in which the instruments seemed to play against instead of with each. It sounded exactly like that inside her mind while she rocked back and forth to the imaginary rhythm.
Her Lord did free her and several others of his follows but Bellatrix would never be the same again. The music inside her had changed; the sweet, childish tunes were forgotten completely and replaced by something dark, sinister and crazy. Like Mahler's Quartet for Strings and Piano in A minor that she would hum complacently every time after she had completed a task for her master.
It so happened that on the day Bellatrix Lestrange was killed during the Battle of Hogwarts, the song that was playing in her head was Dies Irae from Mozart's Requiem. Bella had always thought it to have a very powerful sound, quite suitable for a battle. Yet, she had never imagined to be hit by a Killing Curse, silently singing about Judgement Day. . .