Lan-guage!
I swear I'll kill you:
spring 1978
-
There's a woman stalking down the hallway with wild black hair and short black robes, and Lily, heading away from the Potions classroom with the boys, has never seen Sirius look anything as furious, terrified, and something almost feral that she can't name as he does now. He glares ferociously at the woman, stepping forward angrily and pulling out his wand.
"Can it be—my little cousin?" The woman has a taunting, lilting voice as she smirks at Sirius. Suddenly Lily understands why he disowned his family.
"Come any closer to my friends, Bellatrix Black," he spits, "And I swear I'll kill you."
The dark haired woman laughs, licking her lips and leaving her own wand pointedly in her belt. "With all these witnesses, Siri?" She leaves the last syllable hanging mockingly. "You'd be carted off to—Azkaban."
James, Remus, and Peter lunge for Sirius' arms in an attempt to keep him from hexing his cousin then and there, but he shakes them off angrily, crying, "You don't understand what it's like for your whole family to have this huge chip on their shoulder against you like this!"
Bellatrix smirks. "Feeling remorseful, cousin?"
"Never," he replies, pulling back his wand. "C—"
"Whatis going on here?" McGonagall hurries down the hallway, lips pursed as she glances from Bellatrix to Sirius. "Ms. Black, I believe I recall you graduating several years ago; is there a reason for your being in Hogwarts now?"
Bellatrix gives the professor a look to match the one Sirius is giving her. "I'm here to speak to Horace Slughorn, as a matter of fact. These children accosted me on my way."
"I'll accost you!" Sirius raises his wand again, but McGonagall's terse glare stops him cold.
"She accosted Sirius, if anything!" Lily retorts angrily, speaking up for the first time. Bellatrix sneers at her, then turns on her heel and sets off down the hallway. McGonagall begins to stalk after Bellatrix, but turns around first and touches her hand to Sirius' shoulder in uncharacteristic affection.
"Headmaster Dumbledore or I will speak to you later," she tells him softly, and then her wand is out and Lily would have no desire to be between her professor and Bellatrix at this moment.
"Bellatrix is fucking mental," Sirius mutters, kicking at the floor and watching the two women exchange heated words further down the hall. "My whole family is fucking mental. How the hell did they get me?"
For once neither Lily nor Remus reprimands him for language; instead, she and James move to one side of him and Peter and Remus to the other. The four of them keep him between them like that as they walk to class, protecting him in the only way they can from his cousin and family and the twisted world that somehow brought about Sirius Black.
Hopefully Bellatrix was in character and wasn't too random - the idea was, she was in Hogwarts to work on recruiting Slughorn for the Dark Lord's side. (lol, it's bad when I'm so used to not being able to use his name that I don't even in A/N's!) The spell Sirius was about to use is open for interpretation.
