Bellatrix tenderly caressed the priceless scroll with her trembling bony fingers. It was her last and only hope to escape this accursed prison, which Underdark has become to her for the last 12 years. It had cost her an arm and a leg to get her hands on this precious parchment. Almost literally in fact: her enchanted staff, her Boots of Speed and most of her other magical possessions of any value. Normally any sane mage or wizard would try to copy this scroll into his Spellbook immediately, but it wasn't an option for her, since she didn't have one, not anymore! Bellatrix shot one last hateful look at the greedy duergar, who was browsing his new spellbook with interest. Oh how she despised them all! Drow, svirfnebli, duergar, all of them. She was practically radiating power and they still looked down upon her just because she was a human! Hell, she was towering more than a foot over most of these pathetic creatures, how could they possibly look down upon her? And yet they still managed to do it somehow. Okay maybe the magical slave collar which indicated her as the property of House Baenre didn't exactly help her image, but still after so many years she would think they would get a clue that she wasn't someone to be messed with.
But it didn't matter now. If she failed this time she wouldn't need her spellbook anyway not for a very long time at least. Bellatrix was living on borrowed time, she was dying. More than a decade spent underground without any exposure to sunlight has finally taken its toll on her. Pale as a corpse, she was suffering from unknown skin disease that even thrice damned priestesses of the thrice damned Spider "Bitch" Queen had no idea how to cure. Of course they didn't have an idea how to cure it, blasted drow hardly needed any sunlight themselves. In fact they absolutely loathed it. Most of them never ventured to surface and those few who did, did it at night during raids to pillage, to kill and to replenish slaves or sacrificial victims. Bellatrix didn't have such a luxury. She was bound to the City of Caverns via her collar and was kept on short leash by the Matron Mother of the house which owned her. She was too valuable asset to risk. Well at least she was provided with a steady supply of Greater Restoration potions, which could cure virtually anything and were ridiculously expensive. They did little good to her in terms of fighting disease, but they at least made her feel better and removed the nastiest symptoms. She was still deathly pale though and felt that she wouldn't last long. That's why it was imperative for her to attempt to cast the spell wasting a scroll in the process, instead of getting a new spellbook and try to copy it. It was also too advanced for her and she was painfully aware that she didn't have time to achieve the necessary level of expertise in order to master it properly.
It was such a shame really. She had only one attempt at this and "Wish" was deviously tricky spell. It more often than not backfired on inexperienced magic practitioners. She reckoned the story she heard from Gromph how one silly human mage wished for a Staff of Magi only to be teleported in the presence of its current owner, the Archmage of Menzoberranzan himself. Naturally Gromph wasn't impressed and the poor soul was sacrificed to Lloth in record time.
Bellatrix sighed and started to chant. She had no alternatives in this matter really. The Gate spell she tried half a year ago failed miserably, even though it was specifically designed to travel between the planes or summon planar beings. So she concentrated on the task at hand and when incantation was finished and precious scroll vanished from her hands, she desperately wished to return to her beautiful homeworld. She closed her eyes and visualized her parents' home where she grew up, Slytherin common room at Hogwarts, her majestic bedroom at Lestrange Manor, England in general with its dreadful weather. Hell, she wished so desperately to flee from this place and return home, that even sharing a cell with Sirius at Azkaban didn't sound as such a bad idea considering the alternative. The next moment this thought crossed her mind she realized her mistake and opened her eyes. And sure there she was, at Azkaban sharing a cell with her pitiful cousin who stared at her as if he has never seen her before.