I.
Dear Belle,
I'm so sorry. I'm so, so sorry.
I won't be coming back to school.
Please be safe. I've written to Blaise as well, but promise me you'll look after one another. I couldn't bear it if anything happened to either of you.
All my love,
Daphne
Belle sends Anatole and Amand home to Rennes rather than allowing them to come to King's Cross with her. She's never fought with Anatole before, not really, but she fights with him on this.
If she is so unsafe among her father's people, how dangerous is it for Anatole or Amand? No. She cannot allow it.
Madame Sofia, at least, seems to understand what she and Blaise are trying to do. She agrees to keep Maman away, and promises to keep her safe.
Belle wishes she might have a similar promise from Susan Bones, for Daphne's sake.
For a brief, foolish moment, Belle thinks the barrier at Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters isn't going to let her through.
Ernie is waiting for her on the other side. His face is grim, and he's flanked by Hannah and Zacharias.
Only Hannah and Zacharias.
"A year defined by absence," Blaise says quietly, exchanging brisk hugs with Ernie and Zach and kissing Hannah's cheek. Belle offers hugs all round, but dares only a quick brush of her mouth to Ernie's - already, she can feel that they are being watched.
The lack of Daphne at her left hand feels like an amputation, and she lets Ernie take her trolley. She links her arm through his, though, huddling close against his side, and wonders if she really is as mad as Auntie Bella, to have come back to school.
It is downright bizarre to see Ginny Weasley without any of her brothers, but here she is, with only her parents for company.
Belle does not like Ginny, but she does like Ron, and she has nothing but respect for how fiercely Molly and Arthur Weasley love their children.
"Weasley," she says, still holding tight to Ernie's arm even now that they've gotten her and Blaise's trunks onto the train. Blaise is so close on her other side that his arm is brushing against hers, Hannah just as close to Ernie, and Zacharias is shifting watchfully around them, as if he can't quite keep still.
"Black," Ginny returns, hands stuffed into the pocket of a battered jacket that clearly belonged to one of her brothers at some point. "Didn't know whether or not to expect you back, all things considered."
There are beautiful long feathers peeping through the crown of Belle's milkmaid braids, pinfeathers sharp through her skin at her temples, and her palms are itchy with heat - she'll have to warn Ernie about that. Ginny Weasley's shoulders are high and tight, her jaw locked hard, and Belle doesn't even want to argue with her about anything. Maybe there is a first time for everything.
"I couldn't keep away," Belle says, and means it. "What else would I do with my time?"
Ginny has never smiled at her. She has never smiled at Ginny.
There truly is a first time for everything.
She and Blaise settle into a compartment with Ernie and Zach and Hannah. It's near the middle of the train, between all of Slytherin and everyone else, and Ginny Weasley settles into the compartment in front of theirs with Neville, Loony Luna, and some other Gryffindors; Seamus Finnegan - but not Dean Thomas - Parvati Patil and Lavender Brown.
"Absence," Blaise says again, dragging Hannah's legs up into his lap so she can lay her head in Zach's lap and cover her eyes with a small towel. "Empty spaces."
"Han's got stress headaches," Ernie confides, gathering Belle close under his arm and scowling magnificently at Burnley, who is in third year in Slytherin, as he walks past their door. "It's going to be a year of it, I think."
Ernie likes her skirt.
"I'll get you in a full kilt yet, de Poitiers," he says, turning her this way and that by the hips, grinning and trying to catch her for a kiss while she does up his tie. "It suits you."
It feels so strange to change into her uniform without Daphne. It's the first time since her very first time on the train that she's been without Daph, and it's the first time since second year that she hasn't arrived at school with Daphne's fishtail plaits in her hair.
It's the first time since second year that she hasn't been able to use the time it takes to French plait Daphne's satiny, waist-long hair to steady her nerves for the school year.
"I miss her too," Blaise promises her, not looking - she's glad of that. She might cry if she has to see his grief as well as bear her own.
Blaise is attempting some sort of healing charm for Hannah's headache when the train stops. They haven't been travelling for nearly long enough to be at Hogsmeade, and Belle immediately feels sick.
But she must be brave.
She and Blaise step into the narrow corridor, only to be met by Ginny Weasley and Neville Longbottom.
"Nice summer, Bellona?" Neville asks, turning back his shirt cuffs before taking his wand from behind his ear.
"Charming," she assures him. "Yourself?"
"My grandmother knitted a cardigan for me," he says, pulling the tail of her plait out from under her cloak. "I didn't even know she could knit, but it's actually very nice."
"No one down behind us is in any danger," Ernie says, poking his head around the door. "Zach had a nosy when he went to the loo, says it's all Slytherins. Should be we head up?"
"Sounds like there's something about two cars up," Michael Corner calls back from the compartment ahead of Neville's. "Come on, let's get a move on."
Belle is wearing the bracelets Daphne gave her under her blouse. She hadn't expected to need them before they even got to school.
It is Death Eaters, because of course it is.
Belle forgoes her wand in the first assault in favour of tearing off the nearest mask and clawing the face underneath it. An old man. Theo's father. Oh, Theo.
"Down!" Ernie shouts, swinging - is that a Beater's bat? - to take old Nott out of the reckoning. The crack of it reminds Belle of Kreacher's Apparation, which makes her want to laugh.
But now is not a time for laughter.
Screams are ringing down from further up the train, and Ginny Weasley takes off in that direction. Belle and Ernie take advantage of the distraction she causes by exploding two windows onto unsuspecting Death Eaters to toss Theo's father out the open door.
The carriage he was terrorising is full of first years, new little children who don't even have house colours on their brand-new uniforms. Three girls and two boys, all of them rigid and wet-faced with fear.
"Oh," Belle says. "Oh, please, here-"
She hands her handkerchief to one boy and digs into Ernie's pocket for his hankie for the other, and then she uses the hem of her cloak to clean the faces of the three girls.
"My name is Belle," she says, smoothing back one of the girl's pretty auburn hair from her round little face. "And this is my Ernie. If you are ever scared, shout for one of us. If we cannot help you, our friends can."
"You're a Slytherin," the dark-haired girl with the sharply blue eyes says, curling away from Belle. "You're one of them."
"I'm a Slytherin," Belle agrees. "And I'm a Black, if you know what that means, but I am not one of them."
She taps her temple, where her pinfeathers are showing fluffy and downy.
"They wouldn't have me, even if I wanted it," she says, and the suspicious little Gryffindor-to-be settles a little. "Remember our names - Belle, and Ernie. Ask for the Dueling Club, yes? We will help."
Ernie lays a Shield Charm over the door when they return to the corridor, and Belle lays one over that.
There are more first years to help, but these ones are safe and they wave as Belle and Ernie depart.
By the end of it, the train is moving again and none of the little ones are hurt.
Belle's got two broken fingers and a split lip, and Ernie's got a black eye so massively swollen that even Hannah's special charmed-cold cloth isn't helping. Blaise looks unhurt, but that's only because bruises don't show up as clearly on dark skin, and Zach's been clawed right down his neck by someone with nails as sharp as Belle's own.
Hannah, hobbling on a very swollen knee, is fussing at them all. Her stress headache seems to have abated, and Belle wonders if perhaps her headaches are less stress and more fearful inactivity.
"I looked in on the Gryffindors and the Ravenclaws," she says, applying what smells like dittany to Zach's neck - for once, he is not complaining even a little. "They're all in much the same shape we are - poor Madam Pomfrey won't know what hit her, when we get to school."
Belle rubs the arnica cream Amand tucked into her trunk into the bruises blooming on Blaise's shoulder with one hand, and Ernie splints the broken fingers on her other hand without a word. Not one of them is sure what to say, really.
Hagrid is waiting on the platform for the first years, waving a warm welcome to them despite how shockingly still Hogsmeade feels.
Belle darts around the little ones to tug on Hagrid's hand, and even his smile feels muted.
"They attacked the train, Hagrid," she says. "If the little ones are upset, don't mind it - they're just scared."
"That's not the worst of it," he says, squeezing her hand gently. "Go on, stay with Blaise and young Macmillan - go on. Mind how you go, now."
She pulls him down to kiss his cheek, quick as she can, and darts back to Blaise and the others. Ernie has her under his arm before she can blink, and she doesn't know whether to kiss him or slap him for being so protective.
Her broken fingers are on the same hand as Umbridge's scars. Toujours Pur.
"Starting as they mean to go on," Zach says, holding the carriage door open for them. "Come on, get in - the sooner we get there, the sooner we'll know."
Professor McGonagall is sitting not in the headmistress' seat, nor in the deputy headmistress' seat. She is sitting further to the right of the teachers' table than Belle has ever seen, flanked by Professors Slughorn and Sprout, with Professor Flitwick close at hand.
Snape - the worm, the traitor, the snake - is sitting in what should be Professor McGonagall's chair. To his left and his right are a man and a woman, as much alike to one another as Appollonia and Artemisia, with vicious eyes.
"As your headmaster," he intones, garbed and gowned like a Morrigan, "I would like to introduce your new Muggle Studies teacher, Alecto Carrow-"
The woman smiles, and her teeth look sharp.
"-and your new Dark Arts teacher, Amycus Carrow."
The man's smile is crueler than the woman's, and wider.
Belle and Blaise have space enough for three or four people on either side of them, but even so they hear the rumble of excitement that rolls through their housemates. Just Dark Arts? The scars on Belle's hand are stinging at the very thought, and Blaise edges a hair closer to her.
"And now," Snape says. "The sorting."
The fierce little girl from the train, Edgely, Anna, is sorted into Gryffindor, and Belle watches her take note of Neville and Ginny Weasley. Good. She is a clever girl. They will need a lot of clever girls and boys to get through this year.
"Won't have as many smoke breaks this year, I s'pect," Ernie says while they're having a fairly brazen smoke just around the corner from the main doors. He's on his third, Belle on her second, and the smell of smoke is going to cling to their uniforms for days. Good. Just to spite Pansy, who always complains about Belle's filthy habits.
"We'll manage," she promises. "I- Ernie, you know that they're going to target me-"
"Don't you dare tell me to keep my distance, de Poitiers," he warns her. "Don't you insult me like that. We're all in this together, so you're stuck with me whether or which - and if I stay close, you get to kiss me. Your choice."
"Oh, Ernie, please be serious."
"I generally am, Belle. I talk a great deal of tripe, but never about the important things. So we'll have what smoke breaks we can, and you won't object if I stand up for you. Deal?"
"Then you'll let me protect you?" she snipes back. "When they try to hurt you for my sake?"
"You've a very high opinion of yourself, de Poitiers," he says, pulling her close by the waist. "But yes, Bellona - I trust you. I trust how strong you are. Sometimes I think I trust it better than you do yourself."
Professor Sprout - why is it always Professor Sprout? - clears her throat not ten minutes after they've stubbed out their last cigarettes, and pointedly doesn't comment on Ernie wiping away Belle's lipstick.
"Word of advice, Macmillan," she says, holding out her hand for the box of French cigarettes Belle promised her at the end of last year as payment for her enduring silence on catching them out after curfew. "Have Black wipe off her lipstick first, save you the bother afterwards."
The seventh year girls' dormitory is the finest Slytherin house has to offer, and so it is very fine indeed.
It feels utterly miserable without Daphne.
Madam Pomfrey is admiring of Ernie's work in splinting Belle's fingers, and less impressed with Belle's work on finding all of Blaise's bruises.
"I can't find them if he doesn't tell me he's been hurt," she grouses, flexing her newly-healed fingers and refusing to leave Blaise's side even when Madam Pomfrey tries to shoo her away. "As if I wouldn't take care of him!"
"I don't doubt that, Miss Black," Madam Pomfrey says, slapping her hands away so she can get to Blaise's shoulder. "But you've got to bully him into admitting all of his injuries, isn't that right, Mr. Zabini?"
"You wound me, Madam," Blaise says, wincing at whatever it is she's doing to his bruises.
"Oh no, dear," Madam Pomfrey says. "That'll be the Death Eaters."
II.
Muggle Studies is now compulsory, and Belle does her best to remain pointedly inconspicuous. She knows her history. She knows what Grindelwald did to any Veela he laid hands on, and she does not doubt that "Professor" Carrow would do the same to her.
She and Blaise sit in the back corner, behind their jubilant classmates. Crabbe and Goyle gurn and cackle their way through the Introduction to Muggles lesson Alecto Carrow gives, and Pansy and Millicent shriek with laughter every time some stupid, easy joke about the inferiority of Muggles is made. Draco and Theo and Tracey are less enthusiastic, perhaps, but they still chuckle their way through the class.
The Ravenclaws, with whom they share this experience in learning, are silent. Tony Goldstein is red with fury, and Lisa Turpin - a half-blood, so far as Belle can remember from what little she knows of the girl - has gone so still that she's almost disappeared.
"Tell the others," Belle murmurs to Tony as they make their escape from Carrow's classroom, "that we're going to have a start-of-term meeting as soon as I can arrange a classroom."
"Believe me, Tony," Blaise says. "We want all of this as little as you do."
"Alright," Tony agrees - cautiously, but he does agree. "Let me know when you do. I'll get word out."
He turns up the stairs as Blaise leads Belle down, and she knows he's suspicious.
"How are you going to get the Club back running?" he asks, looking down at her with narrowed eyes. "As if Snape will allow it."
"Won't need him to, if the four heads of house agree," she says. "And I supply Sprout with good cigarettes, have you to sweeten Slug, have never once handed in my homework late to Flitwick, and am McGonagall's chosen heir."
"Good old Slug," Blaise says. "He might even source us a classroom to use."
"I won't let the little ones be completely defenceless, Blaise. Not if I can help it."
They've almost caught up to the others now, and so must keep quiet - but Belle is sure that this is the correct course.
"Did you hear, half-breed?" Pansy calls over her shoulder. "We're all to be made prefects - well, all of us but you."
"Even me, Parkinson?" Blaise asks mildly. "I'm not sure what evil I've committed to deserve such a prize, but I'd rather ask forgiveness than reward."
She's never been so glad to see Professor Slug. Pansy looks almost as angry as Tony Goldstein did.
Wait a moment.
"Why in the world are you here, Parkinson?" Belle demands. "You barely passed Potions at OWL, so even with your great love Snape sitting in the headmaster's office-"
"Oh, I'm only visiting ," Pansy says, suddenly sugar-sweet. "Just to speak with Professor Slughorn a moment, to pass on the message that he ought to… Remember his priorities. That's all."
"Professor Slug is a fine teacher who needs no advice from you, Parkinson, nor from anyone who would trust you with a message!"
"Thank you kindly, Miss Black," Slug demures, stepping smartly between Belle and Pansy. "Parkinson, Bulstrode, Crabbe, Goyle, get to class - Black, Zabini, Malfoy, Nott, Davis, into the classroom. The others are waiting for you."
The classroom is smaller than last year's, because they are missing five people. No Daph, no Susan, no Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Instead they have Padma Patil whispering with Michael Corner and Terry Boot, and Ernie and Hannah looking as forlorn as Belle and Blaise feel in Susan and Daphne's absence.
Draco, Theo, and Tracey move to the table furthest from Belle and Blaise's, and it is all so very strange. Very quiet, too, without any Gryffindors.
"Let me make myself abundantly clear," Slug says, dusting off his expansive lapels. "I'm old, and less interested in self-preservation than I once was. Any of you seeking help, feel free to seek it in my office."
When he finally looks up, it is at Draco. Belle never once thought to be frightened of Slug before, but there is something previously unseen in him that makes Alecto Carrow's open, stupid threat feel entirely toothless.
The Carrows are many things, but they are not toothless.
III.
It is right after breakfast, on the morning before the first meeting of the quietly reinstated Dueling Club, that Belle is crossing the entrance hall with her broom over her shoulder and Blaise at her side.
It is only because Blaise is at her side, and thinks to take her Firebolt from her, that it survives the day.
Filch, who has recently put Belle in mind of a more malevolent Kreacher, is chasing a gaggle of first years up the stairs into the castle. They are running ahead of him, shrieking in panic and fear.
They are doing this because he has a whip.
Belle grew up with stories of bullwhips and Thestralwhips and even, sometimes, the vicious steel-barbed and -weighted chain whips they use on Hippogriffs. She knows what a whipcrack sounds like, and has heard it against skin and feather and once against chainmail, because Tante Invidia has never forgotten the war. There are still places in France where it is unsafe for a daughter of Valence to venture, and those horrible people love their whips.
Belle hates whips. More even than she hates bullies, she hates whips.
Filch seems unsure of how to proceed when she steps between him and the first years, and the lash intended for a little Ravenclaw boy's back instead catches on her forearm.
She rolled up her sleeves to eat breakfast, and regrets it when the thin leather wraps hard and vicious around her arm. She's never seen her own skin tear before, and thinks she could do without seeing it again.
"You horrible little bast-"
"Enough, Black."
She didn't notice Snape's arrival, and is sorry for it. Had she seen him, she would have pushed him in front of the whip instead of taking it on her own arm. She cannot imagine anyone in the world who would deserve it more than him.
"He was whipping them," she snarls, slightly concerned that her arm might be broken, because she can't feel her fingers. Mercifully it is her right arm, so she can still draw her wand with her left hand and point it into Filch's ugly, frightened face. Good. Good. Let him be afraid - they are at war, and he has chosen his side. Belle will make certain that he regrets it, if that is what it takes the keep the little ones from knowing the kind of fear she suffered under Umbridge's rule. "They are children."
"You've been warned," Snape drawls, motioning for Filch to drop the whip. He does, and scuttles away, and Belle gets it very hard not to hex him. "Detention, Black. A week, starting tomorrow. And no magic to heal your arm."
He sweeps away then, and she spits in his wake.
"Connard," she hisses, and one of the first years gasps. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I- Blaise, could you?"
"Run along, now," Blaise encourages them - Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, probably on their way back in from Herbology and harassed by a disgusting little cretin. How dare he! "I have her, don't worry."
"Why did he say no magic?" one of them asks, edging around a little to watch as Belle carefully unwinds the whip from her arm - definitely broken, she thinks, damn it all. She's never broken a bone before, but this feels like the grinding pain Jeanne described when she snapped her shinbone on a bad landing last spring. "This is a magic school. Why would he say no healing magic?"
"Because he is not a very nice man," Belle manages, pain flooding her arm as the blood rushes back in - and out, through the sliced and torn skin. Blaise is quick to wrap it in his scarf, sacrificing the beautiful silver-and-green pashmina Daph chose for him in Mlle. Lelong's for the sake of sparing the first years' the sight of this mess . Oh, it hurts - it hurts so much that she feels a little dizzy, and does not wish for the children to see any part of this. "Please, though, do get to class - who have you next?"
"Professor Slughorn, for Potions," a Ravenclaw says. "With the Gryffindors."
"Professor McGonagall, for Transfiguration," a Hufflepuff says.
"Small mercies," Blaise murmurs, guiding her arm. "Tell Slug and McGonagall that Zabini and Black held you up, alright? And tell them why, too. Especially tell Slug what's just happened, please."
"He's head of Slytherin, isn't he?" asks one who hasn't yet spoken, looking just as suspicious as Edgely, Anna had. "Are you Slytherins? Why did you do that if you're Slytherins?"
"I've never met a cynical Hufflepuff before," Blaise snips back, using his green-and-silver Slytherin striped tie to hold Belle's arm up, looping it carefully around her wrist and then around her neck in a makeshift sling. Oh, her arm is really hurting now, and if these nosy little brats don't leave soon she might cry. She hates crying, particularly in front of people outside of her family, and she would very much like to only have to worry about upsetting Blaise instead of being embarrassed by these staring eleven-year-olds. "Now go, run - you can ask us all the questions you want if you come to the big Transfiguration classroom after dinner tonight for Dueling Club. Ask Slug and McGonagall, they'll direct you, and if you don't want to ask them, ask Hannah Abbot or Anthony Goldstein."
"And what about you?" the sharp-eyed one asks, with a scowling sort of curiosity that reminds Belle of Hermione. She misses Hermione, and hopes very much that she's safe.
"Hospital wing," Belle says, shaking her arm a little and regretting it immediately. Perhaps not broken, but something is definitely where it shouldn't be because her arm grates in a deeply dislikeable way . "And then Charms - have you had Professor Flitwick yet? Yes? Then let us go, because he does not approve of tardiness."
But she winks, and even the wary one smiles. They have more than enough to be afraid of this year without her adding to their burden.
Madam Pomfrey is incandescent with temper when Belle reveals her arm - swollen, bleeding, and stiff with pain, but not broken. Just a little fractured, apparently.
Her anger is not for Belle, of course, but for Snape. Poppy Pomfrey is a Saint Mungo's trained healer, a gifted practitioner of her art who has chosen to devote her working life to the wellbeing of the students of Hogwarts. She is a sensible, practical woman whose manner reminds Belle a little of Tante Leto's, and apparently she'll be damned if anyone stops her from caring for her charges to the best of her abilities.
This is the best Belle can make of Madam Pomfrey's raving, shouted to the ceilings as she gathers all the supplies she'll need to heal Belle's arm without one spell to knit the skin and another to knit the bone.
"I'm sorry, Miss Black," she says, laying some kind of sticky netting over the broken, stitched-together skin before wrapping it in soft white bandages. It stings mercilessly, but Belle bites her lip. Madam Pomfrey has enough to worry about without thinking that Belle is hurting because of her ministrations. "This is the best I can do."
She wraps two neat splints into the bandages, too, to hold Belle's arm straight so that the little fractures will heal in line. It's all excruciatingly painful, and Belle squeezes as hard as she can to Blaise's hand to stop from crying. Blaise, bless him, keeps his arm firmly around her shoulders to hold her in place until Madam Pomfrey is finished her work.
"I'll have a word with Professor Slughorn, see if he can't find something non-magical for the pain," Madam Pomfrey says, "and I'll see you back here tomorrow morning after breakfast."
"We have Professor Carrow after breakfast in the morning," Blaise says, taking the sling Madam Pomfrey offers and arranging it neatly around Belle's arm. He makes sure that the knot behind her neck is over her blouse collar, and then he drapes her cloak carefully over the lot. "For Dark Arts, Madam Pomfrey."
"Damn it. Whoever you have after that, unless it's the other monster, you come to me and I'll excuse you, understood? We need to keep those wounds clean - there's no telling how long that horrible little man had that whip sitting in a dusty drawer."
Belle has never had much dealings with Madam Pomfrey until this year, unless it was while visiting Harry on some of his many holidays in the Hospital Wing. She thinks that she might come to like her very much.
Belle has never once been late for Charms before, because Professor Flitwick does not like it when his students are late, and Belle - despite all her complaining and bravado - doesn't like to disappoint her teachers. And besides, she likes Charms almost as much as she likes Transfiguration and Defence Against the Dark Arts, so she has never had a reason to be late for class before.
Professor Flitwick raises his head, eyebrows first, when Blaise opens the door to let her through. Even Pansy has nothing to say when Belle's cloak slips back to reveal her sling, though, and Blaise hovers close at her back as if he thinks someone is going to attack again.
"Might I see, Miss Black?" Professor Flitwick asks, holding out one delicate hand. "What in the world have you done to yourself? A tumble from your broom? Whyever are you in a sling?"
"An interception," Blaise says, adjusting their brooms over his shoulder and scowling absolute murder at their classmates as a whole, daring them to sneer, to mock, to laugh - but no one is laughing. . "Or an intervention, I suppose, sir. Professor Snape did not approve, and forbid Madam Pomfrey from healing it magically."
"No magical healing?" Flitwick demands, running his hands just above Belle's arm. When he puts hand to bandage, he handles it with incredible gentleness despite the angry quiver of his muttonchops. "No magical healing," he scoffs. "Well, this doesn't count as healing-"
Whatever he casts has no incantation, but it stops the itchy burning of the sticky netting on broken skin.
"-because I say it doesn't. No need to fear infection for the time being, Miss Black. Take your seats, and we'll continue the lesson."
Blaise guides her to their seats, behind Neville Longbottom and Seamus Finnegan. Seamus takes their brooms while Blaise helps her organise her cloak and satchel, and tucks them into the gap between his and Neville's bench and Belle and Blaise's desk without a word.
Professor Flitwick continues with their lesson, but is subdued. The absence of his usual enthusiasm is more frightening even than the presence of a whip in Filch's grimy hand.
Professor McGonagall stops her in the hallway on the way to lunch. Belle half expects to be chastised for spitting at Snape, or for intervening in business not her own, but McGonagall has always been a surprising sort of woman. She takes Belle's satchel off her shoulder and passes it to Blaise, who does not complain about being made a packhorse.
"I heard about your excitement this morning, Black," she says, carefully guiding Belle's arm from her sling and lifting it by the elbow to examine Madam Pomfrey's work. "I've already told Severus I'll be taking your detentions, so I hope you've not been given anything to dull your spellwork."
Professor McGonagall mutters what sounds awfully like a healing charm, and the dull ache of Belle's arm eases a little. She shifts her wrist a little, and there is no grating.
"Transfiguration," she says, eyes bright behind her glasses. "Transfiguring broken things fixed doesn't count as healing magic."
She also slips something small but heavy into Belle's outermost pocket.
"From Professor Sprout," she says. "She and Filius both are quite grateful for your intervention, you know. It was well done."
"Anyone else would have done the same, Professor."
"No," Professor McGonagall says, looking first Belle and then Blaise firmly in the eye. "No, Miss Black, Mr Zabini, they would not. It was a good thing. I only wish I could award you points without them going to Slytherin."
"You're still sure we may use your classroom tonight, Professor?"
"Of course, of course, as promised."
"That's enough, ma'am," Blaise says, putting Belle's satchel back over her left shoulder. "There's nothing more any of us can ask for for now."
"Well said, Zabini," McGonagall says, patting his hand on Belle's shoulder. "Now go, go on to lunch."
Belle's always heard that the best ought to be saved for last.
Professor Slug catches her in the doorway of the great hall. He's absolutely puce, and that same shocking, cold fury she saw before Potions is back on his friendly, warm face.
"Arm, please, Miss Black," he says, and she obligingly rests her elbow in his palm, sling and all. " No healing magic," he thunders, startling a quartet of second year Gryffindors, and Neville Longbottom, all coming into the great hall behind them. "I'll show that brat no healing magic!"
"Sir-"
"You object, Miss Black?"
She does. She understands that Snape hates her particularly, of everyone in the school with two magical parents. She understands that in Harry's absence and with Neville's strange new nonchalance, he's lost his favourite targets and so must bully elsewhere.
She understands that no one can safely stand up for her, because she's worse even than the Muggleborns. Only a half-breed is worse than a mudblood, as far as she can tell, and she's not only a half-breed but a blood traitor along with it, and a known associate of Harry Potter.
"It's not worth it, sir," she says, aware of how many people are staring now. People often stare at Belle, until they become used to her pinfeathers, but this is different. This is more dangerous even than that, and the quiet blooming around them threatens to crack like the whip that started all of this mess. "It doesn't hurt so badly now, sir, please - it isn't worth it. I can still write, and Professor McGonagall has taken my detentions-"
"Yes, well," he says, looking flustered now. "I threatened her ginger newts if she didn't."
Blaise tries very hard not to laugh at that, and only most succeeds.
"So long as I can write and fly, sir," she says, "I'll be fine. I promise."
"I'll make sure she doesn't do any heavy lifting, Professor," Blaise assures him, still with both their brooms over his shoulder - they'd intended on going out to check the Quidditch pitch after lunch, but Belle is a little warier of doing so now.
"Please, Professor," Belle pleads, taking her arm back and pressing her left hand, her good hand for now, to his satin-faced lapel. "I'm an adult - I can handle the likes of this. Let me bear the sharp end of their tempers so the little ones might be spared."
Slug deflates, and Belle only sees it because she can feel the fight leaving him, under her hand.
"In a proper world, dear girl," he says, "those are not accounts that would need balancing."
IV.
Belle has replaced her ugly white sling with black damask, taken from the bundles of fat quarters Mlle. Lelong gave her with a speculative smile, by that evening. This is the very first thing that Seamus Finnegan comments on when she and Blaise arrive in Professor McGonagall's classroom for Dueling Club that night.
They can barely get through the door. She wishes so much that Daphne could see this, and know how important her little meetings are. How important they've become.
"Here, de Poitiers," Seamus calls, perched in one of the high windowsills with all his housemates arrayed around him, like King of the Gryffindors. "How come none of us get fancy duds like that when we make arses of ourselves?"
She waves an enthusiastic middle finger across the heads of all the anxiously gathered younger ones, earning a nervous trill of laughter.
"Alright, alright," she says, pushing through the thronging crowd to get to McGonagall's desk, onto which she climbs via McGonagall's chair, with the help of Blaise's hand to keep her balance. "Welcome all of you to Dueling Club - welcome back, most of you, and welcome along, the new ones among you."
Blaise takes her bag and tucks it under the desk with his own, and then he leans back against the edge with his arms folded. From here, Belle can see the tangle of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs who escaped Filch's wrath this morning, and Edgeley, Anna surrounded by a knot of other Gryffindors in brand-new robes.
No first year Slytherins, but that's to be expected.
There are familiar faces too, plenty of them, and each person who she recognises has a stranger at their side. Padma Patil is sitting almost directly opposite Seamus atop a high sideboard, immaculate and watchful as she always is, with Tony Goldstein and Terry Boot and Amanda Brocklehurst around her. Michael Corner is talking to Zach, both of them stern-browed, and Hannah and Ernie are fussing with a gaggle of what Belle thinks are second years who all have the slightly shell-shocked look of having had their first encounter with Professor Sprout's beloved Mandrakes today.
And Tracey Davis is there too, sitting with three other Slytherins. Hector, who's taken to wearing a scarf to hide the slightly-shimmering marks of his grandmother's father's gills, and Zoe Accrington and Graham Pritchard. Zoe only came last year because she hates Astoria Greengrass and knew joining the club would annoy her, and Graham came along because he was outed as a half-blood when someone - Astoria, goodness, she really is more trouble than she's worth - found a Muggle book in his bag.
But they are here. Four Slytherins to make a neat half-dozen with herself and Blaise. That is far more than she expected.
Everyone is looking back at her, even Ginny Weasley.
"Most of you will know that my name is Belle," she says. "Belle Black, or Belle de Poitiers - I answer to both. I am a Slytherin, to confirm for you first years who do not trust me because of the green on my robes, and this morning I broke my arm trying to stop Argus Filch from whipping some of you into the castle."
No one says a word. They are all still looking at her.
"I am not Daphne," she says. "I am not friendly, or sweet. I do not know the theory behind the spellwork as well as she did, and I don't much care about it."
"She's actually very clever," Blaise says helpfully, rolling his eyes. "Go on, Belle."
"Daphne started this club because she wanted us all to work together," she says, painfully glad for Blaise's nearness. She cannot remember a time she was ever scrutinised so closely, save in the first few days after her relationship to Papa was revealed to the whole school. "I want to keep it going in the hope that we might all keep each other safe."
"And why should we listen to you, Black?" Ginny Weasley asks. Belle clenches her fist to keep from snapping, and regrets it - the broken skin all over her arm pulls painfully, and she's a little worried that it's bleeding again.
"Well, Weasley," she says. "I don't see you offering to stand up here."
"Besides," Blaise says. "Belle and I are Slytherins, something none of you see fit to let us forget. Even if Snape hates Belle more than he hates, oh, you, Weasley, he's not going to toss us into the lake for fraternising with Muggleborns."
"Or half-breeds," Belle agrees, "given that I am a half-breed."
Money changes hands in the tangle of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws, and Belle only barely manages not to roll her eyes.
"We're also adults," Blaise points out. "The duty of care for all of you lies on all of us, you see. Us seventh years have an obligation to stand between you, who are children, and the bullies and bastards, who are mostly adults. Belle just takes that a touch more literally than the rest of us do."
Neville and Ernie both laugh, and that breaks the tension. Ernie winks, and Neville smiles, and Belle takes Blaise's hand once more so he can help her down from the table.
"The most important thing we can teach any of you," she says, "is a Shield Charm. I'd like all of you little ones to pair off with someone older - I apologise in advance to whoever is left with Ernie."
"Excuse me!"
Tracey is sitting on the edge of her bed when Belle arrives in the dorm that night. Pansy and Millicent are still downstairs, and the empty fifth bed feels even more like a slap than usual.
"You're quite good," Tracey says. "At teaching, I mean."
"You're quite good at surprises," Belle says. "I didn't expect you at Dueling Club."
"I don't expect you did," Tracey says. "But it felt like time to pick a side."
Well. There isn't a great deal Belle can say to that.
"Do you need help? I know that you and Daphne usually did one another's hair, and with your arm- with being laid up- well. I thought I might offer my assistance. You've such a lot of hair that I imagine it must be difficult even with two hands, never mind one."
"Pansy will turn against you if she sees us being… Genial."
"Pansy will have turned against everyone by the end of the year, I think," Tracey says, and Belle wonders if things might have been different if she and Daphne had dared to trust one more person, instead of allowing Theo's betrayal to sour them. "Now, comb or brush?"
V.
Belle's still wearing the sling, mostly for effect, when she calls the first Quidditch practice of the year.
"Tryouts are open to everyone in second year and above," she announces to the common room at large, pinning up the huge notice Looney Luna helped design at the end of Dueling Club last week. It completely covers the dour poster warning them all to remember to whom they owe their loyalty, and the stupid poster Pansy hung up to advertise her horrible Death Eaters-to-be club. "I expect to see a great many of you on the pitch tonight."
"Short notice, Black," Vaisey says. "Trouble getting the pitch?"
"Everyone else has to have tryouts too, Otto," she reminds him. "You'll be along?"
"Wouldn't miss it, captain," he promises her with a sharp, mocking salute. There's worse than Vaisey - Crabbe and Goyle, for example, and stupid Harper - and she knows that he takes Quidditch almost as seriously as the madman, Oliver Wood, did. He's very good, too, and she hopes that their shared love will keep the peace between them, and render her with if not an ally, then at least a neutral party when Draco's idiots inevitably try to steal her captaincy.
Draco himself seems to be disappearing, somehow. He only comes to half his classes, and never seems to be in the common room, and Blaise says that he often doesn't sleep in their dormitory.
"Here," Blaise says, reaching over her to pin the top corners down properly. "You'll be able to manage?"
"The day I can't stay in the air is the day I die," she says firmly. "And besides, Madam Pomfrey wants me to see her at lunchtime, she thinks I should be healed up by now."
"You'll be distraught if she tells you to give up on the sling," he says. "You'll have to start doing your own hair again, and no one will hold the door for you."
"You'll hold the door for me."
"No one aside from me will hold the door for you."
"Thank goodness that some of the teachers in this school have sense," Madam Pomfrey says, unwinding the last of Belle's bandages for the last time. The uneven, broken spiral left by Filch's whip is still livid raspberry pink against the pale skin of her forearm, but it's whole, at least. No healing magic was allowed, but Madam Pomfrey has brought her in three times a week for the past two weeks, and applied some sort of foul-smelling ointment that's healed even the deep divot of the tongue of the whip in the innermost part of her arm, right below her elbow.
"Professors McGonagall and Flitwick did very good jobs," Belle agrees.
"And Professor Slughorn," Madam Pomfrey agrees, because who else might have brewed the ointment but Slug? "I hope Pomona did something to say thank you as well - this could have been very nasty indeed, you know."
Belle smiles and says nothing about the beautiful leaded glass lighter Professor Sprout gave to her, via Professor McGonagall. She suspects that Madam Pomfrey would take a similarly dim view to Maman's on Belle's smoking.
"If I find you putting yourself between danger and children again, Miss Bellona de Poitiers - or Black? I'm not sure which you prefer?"
"Either or, Madam Pomfrey," Belle assures her, flexing her fingers. "You were saying?"
"Yes! Well, if you catch another whip, I'll congratulate you on sparing the children but I won't be at all pleased to see you back here, understood?"
"I'd best learn some healing magic, then," Belle says. "Thank you for your care, Madam - I know that you have been particularly busy so far this year."
It isn't even Halloween, and according to Tracey Davis, who is the nosiest person Belle has ever met, there have already been more students admitted to the hospital wing than stayed under Madam Pomfrey's watch in the whole of the previous school year.
Belle and Blaise don't wear their Quidditch robes for tryouts. Neither does Vaisey, but Crabbe and Goyle and Harper all turn up in their emeralds, and something in her gut rumbles at the sight. She and Blaise and Vaisey are all wearing jerseys and jeans under their shinpads and boots, and Belle has her old goggles hanging loose around her neck and her old, raggy gloves hanging from her belt. In Racing Rhône crimson and Lokomotiv Novosibirsk ultramarine, she and Blaise probably look more out of place than those brutes. Even Vaisey's Fijian gold looks startling compared with the array of dark woolly jumpers their nervous would-be teammates are wearing.
"I was wondering," Vaisey says, bracing his foot on the ball trunk to tighten his laces. "This Dueling Club of Greengrass' that you're keeping on with - are you still accepting new members?"
"Otto," Blaise says, sounding delighted. "I had no idea that you were such a rebel. Did you know this, Belle? Imagine! First Tracey, and now Otto - we'll have a dozen traitors by Christmas!"
"Don't be unkind, Blaise," she scolds him. "We're meeting on Thursday evening, if you're interested, in the big dungeon. Professor Slug has been most accommodating."
Otto Vaisey's father runs the biggest livestock import/export company in wizarding Britain, and his photograph is on display in Slug's office. Belle took a long while to warm to Horace Slughorn, but the more she comes to know him, the more she thinks that he might be the very best of their house.
She thinks - she hopes - that Otto Vaisey might be more a Horace Slughorn than a Severus Snape. Tracey Davis seems to be, and Belle thinks - hopes - that there might be more of them who'll creep to her and Blaise's side, if only to get away from Pansy.
"I'll be there," Vaisey says, "and, word of advice, de Poitiers? If we want to make a go of it this year, we need new Beaters - Crabbe's almost blind in one eye, and Goyle's got vertigo. My sister has it from Lucille Crabbe. Says they spent all summer trying to work around it, but they're too stupid to think about glasses or balance potions."
The image of Vincent Crabbe wearing little round glasses like Harry's makes Belle snort, and then it makes her laugh.
"Alright then, Otto Vaisey," she says. "Alright, let us begin - any gossip that might give me an excuse to be rid of Harper?"
Vaisey grins, warmer than Belle's ever seen.
"I'll ask my sister," he says. "The easiest way to be rid of him might be to try out for Seeker yourself, though."
Belle ends the night as Seeker.
She can imagine the letter she would have written to Papa, to share this news.
Belle ends the night as Seeker, with Blaise and Otto Vaisey and Theo Nott as Chasers, Pritchard and Braddock as Beaters, and fucking Astoria Greengrass as Keeper.
"Just because Daphne can't fly for toffee doesn't mean I'm the same," Astoria says, with the same waterfall of glossy-fair hair and the same bright pink blush high in her cheeks as Daphne's, with the same haughty dignity turning up the same narrow nose. "I- have you heard from her? Since Mother and Daddy- since she got that letter from home?"
"We live together," Blaise says shortly, leaning just enough to touch his shoulder to Belle's. "Please don't insult us by pretending not to know that, Astoria, and certainly don't pretend concern. You're a good liar, but not that good."
VI.
Belle's next round of detentions is courtesy of Professor Carrow, frère. Dark Arts as a class is never fun, not even with the Hufflepuffs as classmates, but their last class of October is an exceptionally bad example.
"Happy Halloween, children!" he crows, kicking the classroom door shut behind him and cracking all of his knuckles. "We're going to have an especially fun class today!"
Ernie, who has thrown caution to the wind this year by wearing his green-gold-and-magenta kilt as part of his uniform, likes to show his disrespect by sitting with his boots resting on the edge of Belle's desk. Usually she doesn't mind overmuch, if only because he has such exceptionally good legs, but there's something about the set of Carrow's hulking shoulders that has her nervous.
"Drop your feet," she hisses, slapping at his ankles. "Ernie-"
"We'll need a volunteer," Carrow says. "No, two volunteers. Macmillan, Black - you're both already putting on a show. Get up here."
Belle has been volunteered three times already, and each time has necessitated a visit to Madam Pomfrey for minor but much-needed triage - so much so that Madam Pomfrey has given her a small first-aid kit to keep in her satchel. She has largely escaped the sort of backlash she expected, truth be told, because none of the teachers save the Carrows and Snape seem to bear her any ill will, but she does keep throwing herself between her housemates and the rest of the school. Her housemates do not appreciate such interference.
Ernie has escaped such a treat thus far, because until this week his family remained very quiet and very pure-blooded, far away from London in Cromarty. However, his grandfather spoke up against the planned policy to take wands from every Muggleborn the Ministry can lay their hands on in the Wizengamot on Monday, and Ernie has been braced for retribution ever since.
And so - retribution.
"Come on, Scotsman," Carrow says. "Up you get, half-breed - top of the classroom, if you don't mind."
Ernie offers Belle his hand, and carefully steps between her and Carrow before walking the length of the classroom. Belle's skin itches with the weight of everyone's stares, and she takes a deep breath before following.
"Now," Carrow says, addressing only the Slytherins. "As a special treat today, and with the blessing of our Dark Lord himself, I thought we might explore something a little more exciting. A little more… forbidden."
Belle touches Ernie's elbow. She doesn't dare anything more.
"Macmillan will be our willing subject," Carrow says, completely gleeful. "And Black here will prove the efficacy of our experiment."
Blaise is rising from his chair at the back of the classroom, trailed by all of the Hufflepuffs and Theo and Tracey as well - forbidden. A forbidden spell that needs to be proven effective, and needs another person to prove it.
Theo lunges forward over his desk and catches her around the wrist when she starts forward, and he and Tracey between them drag her back when Carrow raises his wand.
"Ernie- No, this is- You cannot do this!"
"I'm a professor, brat," Carrow says, ugly lip curling. "So shut your whining mouth and keep it shut."
Ernie adjust his stance a little, standing more between her and Carrow, and she nearly knocks Theo when Carrow says "Imperio!"
Ernie goes to his knees. His face and his neck flush crimson. His hands claw at the ground, and the tendons in his neck rise sharp under his skin.
And then he goes very still. And the colour fades from his face. And he rises unsteadily to his feet.
And Theo and Tracey don't let go of Belle's arms. She would be surprised, but Tracey's cautious friendship and Theo's studied neutrality have helped more than she can say in the common room. Belle can feel the feathers peeking through her hair around her headband, so perhaps it isn't over-cautious of them to try and restrain her - she feels absolutely sick, as she only otherwise does during a fight.
But of course, this is a fight. She just never expected to be fighting Ernie.
"Here we go," Carrow says, delighted. "Turn around, Macmillan."
Ernie turns. His eyes are unfocused, filmy, somehow.
"Raise your wand, boy."
Ernie raises his wand. His Shield Charms have always been mediocre, are still lacking, but his offensive magic is exceptional.
Daphne's bracelets, high on Belle's arms under her sleeves, feel heavy. One more thing to owe to Daph, if ever Belle sees her again.
Ernie raises his wand. Belle's Shield Charm has never failed against Ernie's spellwork before.
Carrow makes sure that no one interferes. Pansy helps him, Pansy and Millicent and Crabbe and Goyle, and Belle works very hard at not screaming. She knows that Ernie will be sick over what he's being made to do, and she won't add to all of the guilt he'll already choke himself on.
But his offensive magic is exceptional. Daphne is an excellent teacher.
His offensive magic is exceptional. His cheeks are red again. His offensive magic is exceptional. The veins at his temples are bulging fit to burst. His offensive magic-
Belle screams.
Ernie's offensive magic is exceptional, and then he drops his wand.
"Belle?" He touches her, his hands darting feather-light against her arms and her back and then away, as if she's burning hot. "Oh, Belle, no-"
"Help me up," she says, grabbing him hard by the elbows. "Ernie, help me up."
He helps her up. She bit her tongue and the inside of her cheek, and her mouth feels swollen and clumsy. She spits her mouthful of blood right into Pansy's face, and then she turns to Carrow.
"I may be a half-breed," she says, hoping her teeth are bloody, just for the look of it. "I may even be a bastard, but at least I'm not a monster."
He has the same crooked teeth as Marcus Flint, and his eyes cross the same way as Flint's did, when she kicks him as hard as she can between the legs.
Professor Slug is waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs, when Ernie and Blaise help her hobble down toward lunch.
"Smith ran ahead to warn me," he says, watching Ernie curiously when he flees, shoulders hunched and head down. "I'll speak to Pomona, ask her to speak with Macmillan, perhaps arrange for him to speak with Poppy - you, my dear, will be spending your next few evenings in my company. How do you feel about correcting first year homework?"
There is no backlash whatsoever for a teacher using an Unforgivable Curse on a student.
Belle calls an extra Dueling Club meeting that week.
VII.
"You know," Slug says, nudging a tin of toffees toward Belle. She's warned all of her family off sending her care packages, and she knows that herself and Blaise both have been in severe sugar withdrawals without Amand's caramel cakes.
She takes two toffees. Slug always has the best sweets, anyway.
"Sir?"
"I've never been sure if I should talk to you about them," he says. "I've asked Minerva - I know the two of you get on well. You're very alike in a lot of ways, you know, you and Minerva."
"What did you ask her, sir?"
He takes a toffee. Belle takes a third, and is rewarded by the appearance of a tin of iced caramels on the table.
"If I should talk to you about your father, my dear," he says, "and your uncle."
The caramel sticks in Belle's teeth.
"I taught them both, of course," he says. "I spoke with Harry about his mother, a time or two, and young Blaise, I knew his papa. Brilliantly clever young man. I was very fond of Afonso."
"Blaise is very like him," Belle agrees. "Or at least, he sounds it, from what Sofia Nikolaevna has told us."
"Blaise is stronger," Slug says, with a confiding air. "It was his mother that gave Afonso a spine. Blaise has his kindness, though. His gentleness."
"And me, sir?" she asks. "What do I have of my father, do you think? Or my uncle?"
"You have your uncle's skill in the air," he says, nudging the caramels closer to her. "And his caution, I think, until your father's complete lack of caution takes over."
"Most people would say that that is my mother's fire," she points out. "My Veela temper."
"Most people are idiots," Slug says evenly. "And most people did not know your father, my girl. I very much did. Your father was never quite as angry as you, but he never had cause to be. James Potter made certain of that. And you've never been quite as mean as Sirius was. I suppose I must thank your mother for that."
"Mean, sir?"
"Your father and Harry's," he says, and pauses. "Well. They were very clever young men, dear, but they were bullies for many of their years here. Never dangerous, but unkind. You don't have that in you."
"Oh. Ah, thank you?"
"You noticed, of course, that I was not as warm with you last year as I was with many of your classmates?"
"I assumed it had to do with my father, sir."
"It did," he agrees, with a directness that surprises her. "I believed that he was a murderer. Minerva set me straight after we lost Albus- ha! Look at that scowl! That's inherited directly from your father."
"Professor McGonagall told you the truth, sir? About Papa?"
A tin of pink powdered bonbons appears on the desk.
"She did. I owe you a considerable apology, Bellona."
"I likely would have felt the same until I was told the truth, sir."
She takes a bonbon. Strawberry.
"Your father was one of the bravest young men I ever met," Slug says. "Aside, perhaps, from Remus - he wrote to me. Remus. Addressed himself to me as your godfather."
"Self-appointed, sir. I was something of a surprise for him, on his first day teaching my class."
"I can only imagine," Slug laughs. "You're the very image of Regulus, aside from your eyes, and perhaps your nose. That I must also thank your mother for. It makes you much prettier than your father was."
Belle spends seven evenings in Professor Slug's office, correcting first year homework and eating sweets.
No, that's not quite right.
Belle spends seven evenings in Horace Slughorn's office, safe from the retribution of people who hate her for her mother's blood. He shares sweets and treats with her because he has guessed, correctly, that she is not eating properly because of the strain of this school year. He sends her away with a neatly wrapped parcel of treats every evening, telling her to share it with Dueling Club. He guides her through correcting the uncertain essays offered up to him about proper potion-brewing safety by an array of eleven year olds with handwriting and spelling of wildly varying quality. He fills in the gaps in her knowledge of her father, offering insights and stories that no one, not even Maman or Remus or Dromeda, have shared.
She calls him Slug, right to his face, and he seems delighted by it.
Crabbe, Goyle, and Harper present themselves in their emeralds for the first Quidditch match of the year. They're still riding the Nimbus 2001s Draco's father bought the team five years ago, as though Nimbus haven't continued the series all the way up to a 2006 now. The 2001 is practically obsolete now, and all three are showing a great deal of wear - Belle wouldn't be caught dead on a broom like that.
Everyone else on the team is on Firebolts. Not even the 2006, not even the soon-to-be-launched 2007, has surpassed the Firebolt yet.
"I'd thump you," Belle says, planting herself in the dressing room door. "But I need my hands whole for the match."
They're playing Hufflepuff, and if Zacharias beats her to the Snitch she'll have to throw herself into the lake.
"You can't throw us off the team," Goyle grunts, somehow even more like a gorilla despite someone having shaved him. "We're the beaters. We are."
"No, branleurs," Belle says. "You're not - and rest assured that I've spoken with Professor Slughorn, and he's confirmed what Professors McGonagall, Sprout, and Flitwick told me. The headmaster or headmistress cannot interfere with the make-up of any house team, and so if you are here to tell me that Snivellus has ordered you replaced on my team, then you can turn around and climb back up his backside from whence you came."
Millicent is behind them. Belle hadn't even noticed her - no mean feat, when Millicent is the only girl in the whole school who stands taller than Belle. She looks just as shocked as Pansy did with Belle's blood livid on her ugly face.
"Now get out of my way," she tells them. "We have a match to win."
The whole school is in the stands - or, what's left of the school. Everyone save for a tiny knot of Slytherins behind the far goalposts is wearing something yellow.
Looney Luna is wearing one of her magnificent hats, this one a badger wearing a snake like a scarf. Even from the ground, Belle can see her. She's alone in a sea of yellow, a tiny, friendly flash of green.
Belle wonders - do they deserve even that much?
"If you're bad, Astoria," Blaise says, low enough that Belle can hear but Madam Hooch probably won't, "I'll break your broom over my knee."
Astoria scoffs. She's been very quiet at training, but she is good. She's quick and alert, and she has Daphne's shrewd eye for how others will react to things - she's a real asset to the team. Belle and Blaise both still hate her for what she did to Daphne.
Belle wins the coin toss, and they play with the sun behind them.
Zacharias blows her a kiss as they kick off into the air, and Belle laughs. Ernie, Beater's bat over his shoulder, scowls in Zach's wake, and that keeps her laughing as she soars high up above the stands. No one outside of the Slytherin team has ever really seen her fly, not except Daphne, and it feels strange to be free of the confines of the goals in front of so many people.
Tracey helped her braid her hair this morning, and it is almost as sleek as the smooth fishtail plaits Daphne always used on match days.
"I miss her too," Blaise says, saluting her on a fly-by while they wait for Madam Hooch to throw in the Quaffle. "Strange, isn't it? She's never been one for Quidditch, but it feels so odd not to have her here for the first match."
Belle drops her hand from the end of her plait, and Blaise's smile is a thin, grim little thing.
It's a pale sort of day, with the cut of frost sharp in the air this high above the ground. Zacharias is on the opposite side of the pitch in his yellow-lensed goggles, and Belle almost laughs. Her own lenses are greyish blue, and so it is that she can see the spark of the Snitch down by the tail of Blaise's broom and knows that it is not simply the flickering trail of his robes, edged in silver thread, catching the cold November sun.
She dives. She's almost at ground level by the time Zacharias notices her, and his so-steep dive toward her makes her laugh again. She pulls up barely in time, so close that her toes skim across the grass, and bolts across the pitch and sharply up along the face of the stands, past Looney Luna and Ginny Weasley, past Neville Longbottom and Hannah Abbot and Seamus Finnegan and Michael Corner and Lavender Brown and all the others.
She flies, she realises suddenly, in the moment Zacharias' turn fails and he hits the ground, like Aleksi flies. Elegantly, supernaturally so by wizards' standards, but too sharp for a Veela. That makes her laugh as well, somehow. Papa would have found it funny too, she's sure.
She catches the Snitch, golden and fluttering like an anxious heartbeat, right as Blaise scores the first and only goal of the match. A fitting opening to the season.
IX.
"Have you had a single letter from your mother?" Blaise asks quietly, ducking his head so she'll hear him and to avoid the stares of the strangers in sweeping black cloaks who have flooded the streets of Hogsmeade. "Your grandfather? Anatole?"
"I told them not to," Belle reminds him. "It's bad enough that I am drawing their eyes without reminding them that my family exists, Blaise."
They're in plain clothes today, but Belle still feels like she's in uniform. Both of them tend to wear black as a rule, but Belle's chosen instead the white cloak Anatole gave her last winter which she has never worn. It's ostentatious in a way only Anatole really gets away with, lined with thick white ermine, but it will never be mistaken for a Death Eater's robe as her high-collared black cloak might be.
Blaise's bright, electric blue cloak is not his standard at all either, completely unsubtle in a way alien to his usual elegance, but it stands out as well. All they're missing is Daphne on Belle's other side - Daphne would have been wearing purple, maybe, or the kind of shocking pink that only seems to highlight the pretty flush of Daph's cheeks.
"And besides," she says, before she can really start to feel Daphne's absence. "It isn't as though Gamayun has been shadowing the breakfast table twice a week, as he always has before."
"It's best I don't remind them of Mama's existence either, I think," Blaise admits. "She thinks she's of more use if she… Slips beneath notice."
Madam Sofia and Anatole had an awful lot of very intense conversations with la Toulousaine while they were in Paris. While Belle and Blaise were not privy to the particulars, they and Daphne overheard enough to guess that it's about a long-term project. Knowing Madam Sofia and Anatole, and knowing how deeply Daphne loves and trusts her grandmother, it is something important. Something good.
Belle only wishes her little attempts at rebellion were doing as much good. That they were doing any good at all.
"I miss them," she admits, stepping into Honeydukes when Blaise holds the door for her. "I miss all of them. I think I miss Daphne more, though."
Zach hails them from across the shop, a basket full of chocolates under his arm, and Belle has barely said hello before Ernie is slipping away.
"Ernie, come back -"
"He's been like this for weeks now," Hannah says, wearing the dark glasses that are a sign of her headaches. "He won't talk to any of us, Belle, not even to Tony or Neville-"
Blaise snorts, and Belle elbows him hard in the ribs on her way out after Ernie.
"Ernie! Ernest Macmillan, you come back here!"
"I'll catch up with you later, Belle-"
"You'll catch up with me now," she tells him, grabbing his wrist and pulling until he spins to face her. "How dare you! I am far too good looking for you to ignore like this!"
"Belle, sweetheart," he says. "I just… Can't do this now."
She takes his face in her hands, her gloves very dark against the rosy flush of his cheeks, and shakes him a little.
"It has been six weeks, Ernie," she says, as gently as she knows how. "Please talk to me. Please?"
"How can I, Belle? I hurt you."
"No you did not," she says, shaking him again. She's talked this through very thoroughly with Blaise and with Professor Slug, and a little with Professor McGonagall. She kicked Amycus Carrow with a view to sterilising him because he was the one who hurt her. He just used Ernie to do it. "No, Ernie. No, you didn't."
Ernie's honest, cheerful face folds, and Belle slides her arms around his shoulders so he can hide his face in her ridiculous hood.
Neville Longbottom is standing at the table Blaise and Zach and Hannah have claimed when Belle and Ernie eventually make their way to the Three Broomsticks, and he has a black eye with a split lip to compliment it.
"No healing magic," he says, when Belle coos her concern. "And no cast to hide a teacher's good intentions."
"Carrow?" Ernie asks, accepting a Butterbeer from Hannah with a worn smile. "Goose or gander?"
"Goose," Neville says, sipping on what smells, even from a distance, like firewhiskey. "She didn't appreciate it when I said the best witch in our year is Hermione, even when she's not here - no offence, ladies."
"None taken," Hannah says. "What did she do, Neville?"
"Threw me against the wall," he says, shrugging. "We're all doing what we can, even if that seems to mostly involve getting beaten at the moment."
Belle lingers behind everyone else, and doesn't let Ernie escape her. She keeps her arm linked tight with his, and drags her feet, and eventually, they are standing together in the lee of a spreading oak by the side of the road.
"Ernie," she says. "Ernie, look at me."
He does. He looks afraid, which is something she never expected to see. Ernie is so stalwart and unshakeable, but Amycus Carrow has shaken him.
" Ernie."
"I'm here," he promises, sliding his arms around her waist and tugging her in close against him. People are watching them, likely because the bright white and rich burgundy of their cloaks are so striking in the duskish gloom. "I'm sorry I've been acting the fool."
"I'll forgive you," she promises him, pushing up on her toes until their noses are touching. "If you promise to come and smoke with me after dinner."
He kisses her, for the first time since the day before Halloween. She hadn't realised how much she's missed kissing him.
At dinner that night, Tracey sits opposite Belle.
Theo sits opposite Blaise.
"Every single class in the school is at best half-full," Theo says. "Even Draco's been pulled out. I don't agree with you on everything, but something has to be done."
"If word gets back to your father that you're so much as speaking to us, Theo," Belle says, queasy at the thought of causing him harm.
"Word's gotten back to me that my father has been talking to the Dark Lord, Bellona," he says, "and I've decided that I'm very angry about that. So tell me - what can be done? Or should I invite myself to dinner with the Weasley girl and her vagabond friends?"
Belle is still angry with Theo and Tracey for interfering on Halloween. Had they let her loose, she might have felled Carrow, frère, before he hurt Ernie, and all Ernie's terrible guilt might have been avoided. She understands why they did it, of course she does, but even so-
"Wait," Blaise says. "Draco is gone? I assumed he was just on one of his strange little absences!"
"Based on Pansy's lamenting, he's been taken home," Theo confirms. "And based on what my father hinted at, it wasn't his parents who made the decision."
The idea of being summoned by He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named - oh yes, even Belle knows to be cautious of his Taboo - turns all of their stomachs, and as one, they push their plates away.
"It's been unpleasant so far," Belle says, noting the gaps at each of the four long tables, noting Professors Sinistra and Burbage and Trelawney's empty chairs.
A year defined by absence. She wishes Blaise hadn't been right.
"It's been unpleasant so far," she says again, throat thick. "How much worse is it going to get?"
Ernie is smoking behind the toxic greenhouse, bundled up in a scarf that matches his kilt and fingerless gloves that are unravelling just a little, when she finds him.
"Room for one more?"
He shakes his head, but he holds up his arm anyway. The doubled folds of his cloak are toasty warm when she huddles against his side, and he offers her both cigarette and lighter without needing to ask.
"I know," she says, "that that was not you."
"It feels like it was, though," he says, very quietly. "It was my magic that did you harm, Belle. I don't know how you're so at ease with me."
"Because I know that that was not you, Ernie. I know you."
He kisses her temple and says no more. It's snowing, and it's quiet.
Too quiet.
X.
Every single seventh year outside of Slytherin, plus Belle and Blaise, is given detention on the very last evening of term before Christmas.
"De Poitiers," Seamus Finnegan calls, waving her down into the seat between him and Lisa Turpin. "C'mere, us half-bloods have to stick together."
There are so few of them. Belle and Blaise in green, Seamus and Neville and Parvati and Lavender in red, Padma and Lisa and Anthony and Michael in blue, Ernie and Zach and Hannah in gold. Harry and Ron and Hermione and Dean, Susan and Justin, Mandy and Terry.
Daphne.
Everyone who's left is a pureblood now, aside from Belle and Seamus and Lisa.
"Any idea why we've all been gathered here today?" Lisa asks, and she's - is she knitting? By hand? Belle didn't think witches and wizards did that. "It's just that I'd rather be, oh, anywhere else."
"I'll drink to that," Seamus says, taking a cigarette from behind his ear as if that will hide the anxious shake of his hands. "Got a light, de Poitiers?"
Belle's glass lighter draws a low whistle of approval, matched only when she draws a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and offers one to Lisa. Belle would never usually smoke indoors, but these are desperate times indeed.
Ernie sidles over and takes a cigarette, too. Then Tony, and Lavender, and finally Padma.
"You're all disgusting," Blaise assures them, sitting as far away as is polite with Zach and Parvati. "Needs must, though."
He and Zach both have hipflasks hidden in their robes, the hypocrites.
"I am a little concerned," Parvati says, accepting a nip of whatever hideous Welsh homebrew Zach has on hand with a grimace. "It isn't very subtle, is it? I just worry which teacher decided on it."
"Carrow," Neville says, accepting Hannah's headache cloth for his bruised jaw with a smile. "Him, not her. I heard Pugsy Parkinson talking about it on my way up from Herbology."
"If Pansy knows," Blaise says, spinning neatly to his feet, his wand in his hand as if it were there the whole time. "That means all of the others know."
"I think," Michael says, "that we should have warned Madam P, don't you?"
Belle's got her first-aid kit in her satchel, and she knows that Tony, Hannah, and Neville each carry something similar. If Carrow - either Carrow - has roped Pansy and the others into whatever this is, it will not be good.
"They'll hit the three of us first, whatever it is," Seamus says, "so everyone should stand back, I'd say."
Belle's right palm is itchy, and Seamus is tense the way Ukki goes tense right before he spreads his wings. Lisa, too, seems primed for a fight, and Belle is glad not to be alone in this.
Belle has broken Pansy's nose twice, she thinks. She has hexed Pansy, and shoved her and slapped her. She has thrown a cauldron of acid over Pansy, and threatened Pansy with her alleged mass murderer father and with her known werewolf godfather.
Pansy gets her revenge the moment Amycus and Alecto Carrow give their blessings for her to practice her Cruciatus Curse.
There are other people screaming too. Belle can hear them, sort of, over her pain and her own howling. Every single bone in her body is shattering, except they mustn't be, because a moment later they're being smashed and burned.
Pansy laughs. Belle doesn't even have a chance to throw a fireball.
All of them are shaking by the time it's done.
Belle is face down on the floor, trying desperately to catch her breath. Her legs are twitching with aftershocks of pain, and she can't really feel her fingers - less because of spellwork and more because Crabbe stood as hard on her hand as he could on his way to hurt Blaise.
She can see Seamus when she forces her eyes open. He looks dazed, completely stupefied, and his freckles seem far too dark across his nose.
"And now," Alecto says. "You all understand what we expect of you after Christmas."
"Behave," Amycus says. "And you won't suffer this again."
Pansy and Millicent and Crabbe and Goyle follow the Carrows out the door, chattering and laughing as though this was a normal class, and Belle pushes herself up on trembling arms.
She waits until the door closes to speak.
"If we stop," she manages, through chattering teeth, "they'll only turn on everyone younger than us."
"We can talk about that once we've seen Madam Pomfrey," Tony Goldstein says. "Or on the train home tomorrow."
"Happy fucking Christmas, everyone," Seamus Finnegan says, which is why they are all curled in on themselves in hysterics when Tracey and Theo bring Slug and Madam Pomfrey to their aid.
Belle and Blaise arrive at Grimmauld Place, and the bright sky blue of her front door has been clawed and scratched.
In the front hall, the charmed white carpet on the stairs is immaculate, but the wallpaper is peeling and the feather-patterend carpet leading to the kitchen door is… Soiled. Belle doesn't want to inspect it any further.
"Kreacher?"
He appears with a cleaner crack than usual, seizing the end of her half cloak in desperate fingers.
"Please don't be angry with Kreacher, mistress," he pleads. "They were so angry, mistress, Miss Bella's husband kicked Kreacher so hard he changed colour-"
"Bellatrix's husband was here?" Blaise asks, seizing Belle by the arm.
"He hurt you?" Belle demands. "Kreacher! Why did you not come to me?"
"Kreacher threw them out of the house," he says, testy where usually he would be sulky. "Kreacher was brave! Kreacher sealed the house to anyone but mistress' family!"
He looks back at the horrible ruin of the carpet.
"Kreacher did not know how to fix the mess, though," he admits. "Will mistress be staying?"
"Only for Christmas, Kreacher," Blaise tells him. "But long enough to fix the mess, don't worry."
Kreacher disappears with a pleased snap, and Blaise sighs.
"I know how to clean it," he assures her. "Mama has given me all kinds of tricks."
He tucks her head under his chin and lets her cry.
"Maybe we should have let the others come for Christmas," Blaise says. "The house feels very big, doesn't it?"
"Too big," she says, taking his hankie out of his pocket to blow her nose. "Oh, Blaise. What are we going to do?"
"As much as possible. There's nothing else we can do, Bellona."
She sniffles, feeling more miserable in her house since the first time she came here after Papa's death.
"Oh, Blaise. "
"Merry Christmas, Belle," he says, and they hold each other tight.