Bellatrix changed her mind overnight. She no longer cared that she had gaps in her memory. There were so many other things to occupy her mind. She had classes and a seemingly endless supply of homework to deal with everyday and she spent her nights reading the Dark Arts book and attempting to teach herself Occlumency.
She got used to this schedule and time passed by so quickly after that. Before long snow covered the Hogwarts campus and Bellatrix went home for the holidays.
The Black family Christmas party was not as painful an event as Bellatrix had anticipated, mostly because she was still considered a child and too young to attend beyond making an appearance. Other than that she just had to ignore the noise and the familiar power-hungry feeling the entire house gave off.
The adults had put her in charge of babysitting her sisters and her baby cousins, Sirius and Regulus. The children had been ordered to stay in the guest room and quietly amuse themselves. Bellatrix stayed there just long enough for her appreciation of their innocent and adorable natures to vanish. Then she transfered her task to Andromeda who gladly accepted it, probably as a chance to play house realistically, and she tiptoed out of the room.
Bellatrix sneaked across the hall to the library. She had never paid much attention to anything in this room aside from books of childhood stories. But she was not a child anymore and she had more important concerns now. Unfortunately, though, a twenty minute search brought no results.
But of course... Bellatrix realized. Cygnus Black obviously wouldn't keep his Dark Arts books in the family library. She slowly and quietly made her way downstairs, carefully avoiding party guests, and then into the study down the hall.Once there, she snatched a book at random off one of the shelves, not even bothering to look at its title, and stealthily went upstairs to her room with it tucked safely under her arm.
Bellatrix spent the next two hours lying on her bed, hunched over the two Dark Arts books, the one she'd acquired from the Hogwarts Restricted Section three months ago and the one she had just stolen from her father's study. She was comparing the two of them, looking for any new information or some clue as to where her "friend" who had given her the first book would have placed another like it as he had promised to do.
She found herself intrigued by a chapter in her newest book that was called "Sectumsempra" and pulled out her wand to attempt that spell. The book hadn't given her an incantation, but she guessed, correctly, of course, that it was the same as the name it had been given. She waved her wand at nothing in particular as she said it aloud, because the book had not informed her of what kind of results she could expect from her first attempt.
What resulted was a large gash running diagonally down the wall opposite her. No matter, she could just have the house elves replace the wallpaper tomorrow. In the meantime, she was just happy with her successful execution of the Dark cutting charm.
But Bellatrix was still curious. She thought about it for a moment, then laid her left arm flat on her bed and waved her wand over it in a slashing motion as she repeated the incantation again. A large, deep and angry-looking gash appeared there, half-way between her wrist and elbow. She screamed, more from shock than pain and clamped the hand on her injured arm over her mouth when she realized someone might have heard that cry. No one disturbed her for more than a minute, so she set her arm back down, flat on the bed again.
Bellatrix noticed that she had also slashed holes into the blanket on either side of where her arm was resting. She smirked at that, then turned her attention back to her injury, she watched the blood spill from it and onto the white blanket below. Morbidly intrigued by that for a moment and then biting her lip as she turned back to the book for more information, Bellatrix did not even notice her father entering the room until he said her name disapprovingly.
At that, Bellatrix conjured a quick but strong shield charm around herself and looked up at him with a hateful expression.
"Your shield charm is not necessary," he assured her. "I have no intentions of harming you now or ever again. You've already proven yourself."
"What do you want then?" Bellatrix asked, trying not to sound too rebellious. She obediently but warily waved her shield charm away.
"You're supposed to be watching the children," he answered her with his typical emotionlessly commanding tone.
"And you're supposed to be socializing at the dinner party," Bellatrix countered, her face showed neither the fear nor the respect that he seemed to have been expecting from her, only anger.
"Don't you dare talk to me like-" He stopped suddenly, seeing the hole in the wallpaper and the gash on Bellatrix's forearm. "What did you do?" The fury on his face did not waver, but, for just a moment, she saw a look of loving concern in his eyes that she had never seen before. Then, he spotted the book and noted the page she'd been studying.
He waved his wand over her injury and wordlessly healed it. "That was your first attempt, correct?"
Bellatrix frowned then nodded.
"If you had used any more power than you did, it wouldn't have healed instantly. Please keep that in mind... You're my firstborn, Bellatrix. Curiosity is understandable but I don't want to see you getting hurt."
"Isn't that a bit of a double standard, Father?" Bellatrix challenged. "You've been practicing the Dark Arts since before I was born."
"I have been studying the Dark Arts not using them. My passion is learning about them in theory but I would never use Dark Magic on another person and certainly not on myself. What were you thinking?"
Bellatrix ignored his question and instead, furthered her argument against his hypocrisy. "You'd never use Dark Magic against another person? You put the Cruciatus Curse on me, several times. There's no Darker Magic than Unforgivable Curses!"
"I have already explained my purpose with that for you. But in case you've forgotten, it was to teach you loyalty, strength, tolerance, and most importantly, respect. Perhaps you need another lesson."
"No!" Bellatrix raised her wand and straightened her body into a defensive position.
Her father stared at her for a few seconds before lowering his wand and nodding approvingly. "You can keep the book, Bellatrix. But you should know that the Dark Arts are illegal, not to mention dangerous."
"I know that!" She shouted, then lowered her voice, remembering the family's precious reputation. "I'm not a child anymore, you can stop treating me like one."
"Well, since you're an adult now, would you like to go to the dinner party?" The offer was sarcastic and Bellatrix scowled disdainfully before answering.
"No."
"Then go watch the children."
"Can't one of the house elves do it?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I told you to watch them."
"Fine!" Bellatrix dropped both of her Dark Arts books into her school trunk and locked it before resentfully returning to the guest room. Andromeda greeted her there with a relieved "Oh, good, you're back," comment and by dropping one-year-old Regulus into her arms.
Bellatrix stared in disgust at the sleeping infant she was holding. She instantly decided she hated children. They were weak, helpless, and just plain pathetic. She hated to think there was ever a time she'd been as small and vulnerable as her little cousin was now. If she wanted to she could hurt him, even kill him, if she felt like it.
As if he had heard her thoughts, Regulus chose that moment to awaken and begin crying and screaming. Bellatrix stared hopelessly at her sisters. Andromeda stared back at her in disbelief but Narcissa quickly volunteered, "I'll take him." She gently lifted the baby from Bellatrix's arms and took him soothingly into her own. He instantly quieted down.
Andromeda hadn't stopped staring at her. Bellatrix decided she didn't like the look on her sister's face. "What?" She demanded.
"You're just so different, Trixie," Andromeda's voice was shaky. "You haven't written to us like you promised to. Cissy and I haven't heard from you since you left. You always took care of us, but now you won't even hold Regulus for two minutes. And all through winter break, you've been so distant and...and..." She trailed off in search of an appropriate word.
"Mean," Narcissa supplied.
"I've just grown up a lot this year, girls," Bellatrix explained for her sisters. "And I realized I might want to do something with my life other than get married and take care of screaming children."
"Trixie..." Andromeda began to protest. But Bellatrix ignored her because her two-year-old cousin, Sirius had grabbed hold of her skirt and started tugging impatiently on it.
"What does he want?" She turned to Narcissa for help, because Andromeda was being a pain at the moment.
"Well, we sort of told him you could do magic."
"I can," Bellatrix couldn't understand the guilty tone of Narcissa's answer. She motioned frustratedly for more information.
"We said you'd make some fireworks or something. It got him to be quiet for a little bit, so, could you...please do something?"
Bellatrix frowned, but agreed. She lazily sent multi-colored sparks from her wand, brightened and dimmed the lights in the room, and even cast a patronus. Her patronus still had not taken on an animal form no matter what happy memory she tried with it, but the wispy, smoke effect that resulted instead still sufficed for entertainment purposes.
"Happy now?" She inquired of her cousins and siblings ten or so minutes later when she'd grown bored with her own magic show in spite of the fact that all four children were staring at her in amazement.
"Yes," Andromeda enthusiastically answered on behalf of the entire group.
"Good," Bellatrix commented sarcastically. "I only live to serve."
The remainder of the holidays passed by without anything interesting happening. Bellatrix repeated her performance for the children at their family's New Year's Eve party. This time they were at the original family home: 12 Grimmauld Place, cosily settled in the tapestry room. Sirius and Regulus were obviously amused but both fell asleep before she finished.
Narcissa and Andromeda told Bellatrix that they had forgiven her for whatever they thought she had done to offend them. The three of them quietly spent the rest of the night munching on a pile of pumpkin pasties that Bellatrix had stolen from one of the party tables, using a Disillusionment charm on herself in order to sneak in and out of the room, and then just giggling and talking like they always did.
Bellatrix was glad that she could leave them on that happy note. "Be good," She told her sisters, when it was time to say good-bye. "I love you and I'll see you soon." Finally, they let go of her and she boarded the Hogwarts Express once again without looking back.
(A/N: This is my favorite scene so far. I hope you liked it too. I'm taking the opportunity now to apologize for my overly-Americanized poseur British writing, normally it's okay but definitely not ENGLISH english, I'll randomly throw in words like "bloody hell" or "shepherd's pie" and it does bother me, so, like I said, I'm genuinely sorry. Sometimes I just can't resist, I fake the cute accent too, you probably want to kill me now... but anyway, back to the story, the next chapter is up now, hopefully that brings some redemption...XOXO -Lia.)