DISCLAIMER: The ideas are mine. The characters and everything that is in the Harry Potter Universe belong to J.K.


"Colloportus," Bella whispered, pointing her wand at the door, and there was a satisfying click as the bathroom door locked behind her.

She stood in front of the full-length mirror on the wall and took off her nightgown. It had become almost a ritual to her by this point. She examined her stomach. She looked the same at first. Then she turned to the side. There it was. For the first time, she noticed something different. A definite roundness in the lower part of her abdomen. She turned to the other side and looked at her reflection again. It was subtle, but it was definitely there.

A cold shiver ran down Bella's spine and she felt numb all over. The girl looked away from the mirror and sat down, hiding her face in her hands.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

"Be quiet!" Druella shouted.

"I am trying to explain –"

"I don't need to hear any explanations from you!"

"But you don't understand! I spoke to –"

"What you learned from a stranger inside a public house is of no consequence! A muggle public house! You disobeyed me! You fraternized with a stranger, a male stranger, unchaperoned! If Abraxas hadn't found you and brought you home to us, we don't know what might –"

"What was he doing in a muggle public house if the place is so disgusting?"

"Be quiet! It is not for you to question the coming and goings of an adult man! You are a child! He is your future father-in-law! Do you have any idea of the magnitude of the scandal, had he chosen to break your betrothal to Lucius? You've exposed our entire family to ruin!"

"But I –"

"You have no sense of morality or propriety, Andromeda! You are a rotten child, and I don't know what to do with you. Have you no thought for your family? For your sisters? If you are ruined, do you know what could happen to Bellatrix and Narcissa?"

"Well, I am sorry he didn't cancel the wedding because I have no intention of marrying Lucius or anyone else at the moment! I wish he had called the whole thing off!"

Bellatrix heard a loud noise. Druella had slapped Andromeda round the face.

"Don't you dare talk back to me! I may have failed in my duties to you up until now, but I promise I will put some sense into you if it's the last thing I do in my life!"

Andromeda was mercifully quiet.

"Your father and I give you everything! Everything! You have the best clothes, the best of everything, the most expensive things that gold can buy and what do you do? You don't even thank us! No, instead you turn your back on your family and you go fraternize with strangers in that decadent little town. How could you do this to us?"

Andromeda didn't answer. Her mouth still ached from the slap she'd received.

"What do you think would have happened to you if those men had known what you are? Do you think they would have welcomed you as one of their own? You know nothing of life, you stupid, spoiled little girl."

"I was waiting for my friend..."

"Friend? What friend? How could you possibly have friends in that -"

"Well, I have friends there. I don't hate muggles as you do!"

"And did you tell your so-called friends about what you are?"

A heavy silence followed those words. Druella laughed coldly.

"You are not so stupid after all, are you? Do you have any idea what they would do if they found you out? They are muggles, you are a witch. To them, you are freak! They would have arrested you and raped you and in all probability killed you before we would ever know you were gone."

"It is not true!"

"You think the world is a fairytale because of those worthless Muggle Studies classes. I am writing to Hogwarts in the morning to make it clear that your father and I do not approve of you taking that discipline and we want you out of that class!"

Bellatrix closed her eyes. She had been sitting in the corridor, pulling her knees to her chest and listening as her mother dressed down her middle sister in the next room. Druella was far from finished, but she couldn't listen anymore. Bella decided to stand up and walk away.

She hated when her mother talked to Andromeda like that. Druella wasn't particularly kind to any of the girls. Sometimes, for instance, it was like she didn't even notice Cissy existed, but that neglect was nothing compared to the way she treated Andromeda. They never had conversations, they had arguments. Whenever her mother so much as looked at the girl, some new piece of criticism came to her mouth. She called Andromeda horrible names, pointed out every single one of her shortcomings, and constantly reminded her of how much she owed her parents for the roof over her head and the food at their table.

Once or twice, Bella thought about asking her mother why she hated Andromeda that much.

Not that Druella thought she hated her daughter. In her mind, she was an excellent mother to an ungrateful girl.

Besides, it wasn't like Andromeda was a saint. If she hadn't continued to sneak out to visit the muggle village just outside their property, none of this would have happened.

Bella sighed.

The reason she had gone knocking on Andromeda's door that morning was that she needed to talk. She was going to tell her sister everything. She needed that. When they went back to school, she was going to need help. Andy would be able to help her.

But Andromeda, of course, was nowhere to be found.

That wasn't, in itself, unusual. Andromeda had been sneaking out of the house since she was a toddler and in fact, once, she'd spent an entire night away from home. Andromeda had told Bella the full story shortly after it happened, but their parents had never found out that she'd been in the muggle village down the road. No. This was the first time they'd learned anything about their daughter's escapades.

She'd been unlucky. Abraxas Malfoy had recognized her at the pub where she'd been waiting for that friend of hers. Bellatrix knew he'd probably been closing the deal on some piece of art or another. The Malfoys had had dealings with muggles in the art world for ages. But when he recognized Andromeda, the wizard had brought her straight home.

There was no hope of talking to Andromeda today. Bellatrix doubted the shouting would be over anytime soon.

Whenever she tried to confide in her sister, something prevented her from doing so. Why? Why did Andromeda have to be so wild all the time? Why did Andy insist on giving her mother opportunities to say those horrible things to her? Why couldn't she just be her sister for a change?

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

As the weeks went by, Bella started to feel better.

It happened gradually. One morning, in the first days of August, she woke up when the sun was already rising on the horizon. Her body felt calm. For the first time in months, she didn't feel the urge to run to the bathroom and vomit. Her stomach wasn't seizing. She felt fine.

The next day, she was ill again. Then she was fine for another couple of days. It wasn't long before she realized that an entire week had gone by and she hadn't been sick once. That morning, she simply turned around and went back to sleep for another hour.

Bellatrix hadn't noticed how tired and forlorn she'd been until she started to feel better. She started eating better. She wasn't dizzy or light-headed anymore. She felt in control of her body again.

One day, Uncle Orion brought the boys over for a visit. Bella, her sisters, and her two younger cousins, Sirius and Regulus, spent the afternoon by the lake in the southern part of the property. They played Gobstones for a while, then raced each other to see who would be the first to reach the farthest margin of the lake.

Bella won. The girl had longer legs than the younger children, and quicker reflexes as well, from years of Quidditch practice. She felt good! For the first time since the Easter Holiday, Bellatrix felt like herself.

When she reached the finish line, there was a big smile on her face. Bella closed her eyes, enjoying the warm feeling of sunshine on her skin. Her father and uncle were swimming on the other side of the lake. Andy and Sirius jumped in the water as soon as they reached the finish line, and Cissy stayed back with Regulus, laying on the grass to catch her breath.

It had been such a long time since Bellatrix had played like that! She wondered why people stopped playing when they grew up. It certainly wasn't because it wasn't fun anymore. Those few minutes, when she was running, were the first time she felt truly relaxed in a very long time. For a few minutes, she forgot everything that had happened since Easter. She forgot about Rodolphus and her O.W.L.s, about Andromeda's questionable choice of friends and the arguments they'd had at school. She even forgot about the terrible secret she'd been hiding under her t-shirt.

Until she was pushed in the lake, that is.

Bellatrix was so distracted she never noticed when Sirius sneaked up behind her and pushed her in the cool waters of the lake.

"Sirius!" Cissy reprehended him, but the boy was doubling over himself with laughter.

"Bella, are you alright?" asked Andromeda, swimming to where her sister was and trying to help pull Bellatrix up.

Bella emerged from the water and pushed her sister away.

"Get away from me, you told him to do that, didn't you?" She looked at Sirius, who was still laughing his brains out and pointing at her from the margins of the lake, "I told you I didn't want to get in the water!"

"Why did you do that, you big idiot!" Regulus said, kicking Sirius in the shin.

"You're the idiot!" Sirius replied, pushing Regulus on the ground.

"Boys!" Orion's voice thundered from where he was in the other side of the lake. The sound of loud voices had attracted the parents' attention "What's going on?"

"Sirius pushed Bella in the water!" Regulus shouted back. "And then he pushed me!"

"I did not!"

"Did too!"

"You're not in the lake are you, midget?"

"I am not a midget!"

"Tattletale."

"I am not!"

Sirius pushed Regulus in the water, right in front of Bellatrix as she tried to get out of the water.

"There. Now I pushed you in the water! See the difference?"

Regulus was not a good swimmer, and he flapped his arms about everywhere, struggling to stay afloat.

"Sirius stop!" Bellatrix demanded. She pulled Regulus up to the surface with ease. "Shh, it's okay, Gul, I got you. Cissy, help me."

Cissy got closer to the edge of the lake and helped to pull Regulus out whilst the boy caught his breath again. He had swallowed some water but was otherwise unharmed.

Sirius jumped in the lake holding his knees up to his chest, splashing water everywhere.

Bellatrix was furious.

"This is not funny! You know Regulus can't swim!"

"I bet you'll think this is funny!" He said daringly and started splashing water on Bella's face with both his hands.

"Stop it!"

"It's just water," Sirius continued, laughing, "what are you, a sugar quill?"

"I just didn't want to get in!" Bellatrix said, her voice an octave higher. "You had no right!"

Regulus started to cry.

"Sirius Orion Black, what did you do to your brother?" his father thundered from where he was, "Stop that immediately! Don't make me come and get you."

"Sirius, stop," Andromeda said quietly, reprimanding her favourite little cousin. Sirius stopped laughing right away. He always respected what Andromeda said. Then she turned back and waved. "It's okay, Uncle Orion! We got this!"

"Stop crying, Gul, it will be okay," Cissy said, passing an arm over the little boy's shoulder.

"Why did you do this?" Andromeda asked Sirius in a lower voice.

For the first time, he seemed a little embarrassed.

"It was funny…"

"No it wasn't," Cissy said, crossed, giving Bella a hand while her sister got out of the water. Bella's clothes were soaked, dripping copious amounts of water on the grass, while the girl rolled her long dark hair in a bun.

"You could have hurt him, you know he can't swim," Andromeda pointed out.

"Okay, okay, I'm sorry Regulus," Sirius said, counterfeited, "I'm sorry, Bella."

Bellatrix, however, was not listening. She stood with her back turned to the lake for a few moments then she started running towards the house without any further explanation.

"I said I was sorry!" Sirius sounded puzzled and indignant, but Bella was too far away to listen to him.

Bellatrix ran into the loo and locked the door behind her. Her heart was beating really fast. It had taken her a moment to notice that her soaked T-shirt was tight against the contours of her body, revealing the noticeable curve of her lower abdomen. That was the reason she didn't want to go into the water in the first place. She was afraid someone would notice it, that someone would find out!

Bellatrix leaned back against the closed door and slid down, landing on the cold porcelain floor. Before she could do anything to stop it, copious tears were running down her face. She was embarrassed and scared and she didn't even understand why she was sobbing so painfully in the immaculate bathroom floor.

The girl closed her eyes and breathed slowly, trying to catch her breath. She twisted her hair in a bun and, when she calmed down a little, Bella felt the cold water dripping from her hair on the back of her neck and sliding down her back. She had her legs drawn close to her body, forehead propped on her knees, a bundle of acute angles, curled around itself. The place where she sat on the cold porcelain tiles had become a small puddle of water, and she felt the fabric of her soaked t-shirt and shorts hugging her skin with a hundred different wrinkles.

It had been days since she looked at herself in the mirror. It's not like she needed another reminder of her condition. There was still a part of her (a non-insignificant part of her) that hoped, against all logic, that it would all go away. That one day she would wake up and be back to her normal self; that her parents would have found a reason not to go on with her marriage plans; that she would be free again.

That uncomfortable hard ball in the middle of her body, however, told her otherwise. She had noticed that recently. Whenever she got frightened or confused, whenever her emotions overpowered her, Bella's abdomen seized and protested, making itself noticeable, if not to anyone else than at least to herself, in a most uncomfortable manner.

Taking a deep breath, Bella pushed herself up into a standing position and removed the wet t-shirt. She turned sideways and studied her reflexion on the mirror.

The curve on her lower belly had definitely become more pronounced.

Bella panicked. Her wet t-shirt was so form-fitting, it couldn't possibly have hidden that bump. Her father and uncle were too far away, she supposed, but Cissy and Regulus had seen her from the side when she came out of the water. What if they had noticed her belly? What if they told their parents? What if her parents told the Lestranges everything?

She grabbed the edges of the sink with both her hands, supporting the weight of her body in trembling arms as she dropped her head down and fought a violent wave of nausea. Bella struggled to breathe. Her heart was racing so fast she thought someone else might hear it, and her knees had turned to jelly.

The hard ball in the middle of her body seized uncomfortably again.

Calm down, she thought to herself, trying to regain control. Cissy and Regulus were too young to understand, even if they had noticed anything. Besides, they probably weren't paying attention to that part of her body. No… If any of the grown-ups had seen her, she would have been in trouble, but those two were just kids. They couldn't know… She would be fine.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

At around midnight, Bellatrix was awake, lying on her stomach in bed, the blankets drawn in right over her head like a tent. The girl had lit her wand with a simple Lumos spell and she was using it as a flashlight while she read a small leather-bound notebook.

Prior to her coming back home for the summer, Bellatrix had searched Hogwarts library extensively, trying to learn more about what was happening to her. The books she'd found at the school had been useful, to a point, but only because she knew so little to start with. She had never been interested in that sort of thing before. She thought it could wait until she was older. Until she was married. She thought she didn't need to know. Not yet. She thought she could afford not to know yet.

It was not as if she had never been curious. She had been. A little. But she was too embarrassed to ask any questions, and there wasn't really anyone to ask.

Her ignorance, however, had cost her dearly. There were spells Bella could have performed to prevent her from ever finding herself in this predicament. That's the first thing she learned from those books. If only she had known…. But they didn't teach those things in school. It was not a topic of conversation. Even the books she'd found weren't particularly informative. They mentioned the existence of spells and herbs with contraceptive properties (she even had to look up the word), but there was no mention of the incantations, no descriptions of wand movements. Nothing like the detailed instructions in her Standard Book of Spells.

She wasn't surprised. Bella had realized long ago that the knowledge stored in Hogwarts' library was censored. Someone – the muggle-loving headmaster, she assumed – made sure that certain books were not available to the students, even in the Restricted section. Most students went through the entirety of their seven years at the castle without ever realizing that – and you never would if you restricted your readings to what was taught in class. Bellatrix, however, had started to further her studies on the Dark Arts when she was thirteen years old and at that early age, the library failed her for the first time.

There was a time, her uncle had told her when there was an Elective on Dark Arts at the school. Not anymore, however. Not since shortly after Dumbledore had become headmaster.

Most of the students in her year had no idea what the Dark Arts were all about. The name had such a negative connotation! Defence Against the Dark Arts was compulsory, but that was a joke, not a discipline! Her class had spent the better part of last year studying obscure foreign creatures and memorizing the ABC of combat. Avoid getting hit by your opponent, Be aware of non-verbal spells, Cut and run if the other guy is too powerful… That last one was actually a joke but it was easier to remember than whatever was written in the textbook.

None of that nonsense had anything to do with actually facing the Dark Arts.

Bellatrix was convinced that no one that had not studied the Dark Arts had any hope of defeating them. And because most people avoided that type of magic like spiders avoid basilisks, she was always at an advantage.

The Dark Arts were like fire and ice. Ephemeral and eternal at the same time. They could bring out the worst in a witch. They could bring out the best. Their mastery required scholarliness and recklessness, faith and incredulity, hope and despair. Everything. And nothing.

For someone like Bella that was extremely alluring. She was young. Ambitious. Powerful. Excited about her intelligence. She wanted to know it all.

Practising the dark arts had a cost. Most wizards were afraid of that. Most wizards thought that meant something would be taken from them. That was too simplistic. Her colleagues were content to wave their wands and watch pretty lights emerging from the other end. They wanted to use their power to make things levitate, summon objects to where they were and take care of their basic human needs. Bellatrix knew there was more to magic than that. And powerful magic – truly powerful magic – always had a cost.

True courage, she thought, meant understanding this and being willing to pay that cost. Slytherin understood that. It was all over his teachings. True courage meant not running away from the maximal expression of your own power. Take that Gryffindor.

When it came to studying the Dark Arts, the Hogwarts Library proved to be a disappointment. She found the books she needed to further her knowledge at her family home.

The library was a legacy from generations of Blacks that proceeded her. Each had made contributions to the archives until the library had grown to the point where it rivalled famous wizarding collections such as the one in the ground level of the Ministry of Magic, or the Prewet collection at Mould-on-the-Wold, in Cotswolds.

When the Hogwarts library failed her a second time, Bella turned to her family's library again.

This time, however, the girl had a much harder time finding what she was looking for.

What she wanted… What she needed was a plan. There had to be something she could do to alter her situation. Bella had already started to realize time was not on her side. She was not ready for this, and she didn't think she was going to be ready for this. But she couldn't have been the first to deal with this type of thing, could she? There had to be someone else…

There was. Her great-aunt Dorea Black. Bellatrix found the answers she was looking for inside her diary.

Dorea had become pregnant when she was sixteen years old. It was an accident, but it was different from what had happened to Bella. It happened at Hogwarts.

He was her boyfriend at school. He was intelligent and sweet and the green of his uniform highlighted the colour of his eyes. The first time they had sex happened in an empty classroom on the fourth floor of the castle. Everybody else was watching the match in the Quidditch Pitch. It's not like they had planned it. They were just snogging at first, but one thing led to another, and before Dorea realized they were both on the floor of the classroom, their clothes lying around them. It was only later when she was writing in her diary about it that she thought of what might have happened if Peeves had come inside.

That wasn't the only time it happened. There was the time they cut Potions and stayed in his dormitory when all the other students were in class (boys can't come into our dormitory, but we can go into theirs, Dorea had written in her journal, excitedly, who knew?). The time the hid in a broomstick closet on the third floor. The time they did it behind one of the larger greenhouses after their last Herbology class.

Dorea wrote about it like it… Like it felt good. Like it was fun.

Bella had never known that sex could be like that.

The problem was that one of those time Dorea had gotten pregnant. She decided to have an abortion.

There was a potion that could do it. Dorea had copied down the recipe in the pages of her diary, and she added helpful notes on the corners of the page. It had been painful, she wrote. But it worked.

Bella would never be able to do it while she was still at the Manor. Dorea mentioned some awful side effects. She wouldn't be well for a couple of days. There would be blood. When she was back at Hogwarts, at least, she could hide.

Besides she didn't have the ingredients for the potion yet.

Bella had read the diary twice already, but she read some of it again that night, after copying down the list of ingredients she would need on a piece of parchment. Prior to her taking that potion, Dorea worried about a hundred different things. She seemed to have accepted the reality of what happened much sooner than her grandniece did. It was not until Bella read a paragraph in which Dorea worried about not being able to lay on her stomach (the only position in which she could think properly) that Bella realized she herself was lying on her stomach now.

The girl sighed. She slid the old diary back under her pillow and rolled over to lay on her back.

It hadn't even occurred to her that she shouldn't lay in that position anymore. She was so clueless! It was embarrassing…

Eventually, Bella started to feel sleepy. She hadn't felt like anything was wrong when she was laying on her stomach before. But what was the worst thing that could happen? Perhaps when she woke up she would discover that the whole… situation… had taken care of itself.

Wouldn't it be wonderful, she wondered, moments before she fell asleep. Wouldn't it be wonderful if everything went back to normal when she woke up? If the past few months had been nothing but a dream? There would be no more worries. No more nightmares. No more pain…

No more fear.

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\

The next day, Bella carried a stack of shirts and robes with her to the bathroom. She tried them one by one and examined her reflection in the large mirror. Even from the side, she looked perfectly normal. The clothes were loose around her middle, and she seemed as tall and lean as she always had.

The last thing she tried on were her school robes.

Bella buttoned down the white shirt of her uniform and examined her reflection again. She turned to the side. Even from this angle, no one could possibly tell.

She pushed her abdominal muscles forward, inflating her belly, and watched the subtle rise of her white shirt just above the waistline of her skirt. Bella regretted the gesture immediately. She started breathing really fast. The girl sat down and looked away from the mirror, trying to remain calm. She looked down at her belly. Whatever curve she had noticed before, it was completely concealed by her shirt. For the moment, everything would be fine.

Bella had a whole other month before she had to be back at school. She was terrified to even think about what she would look like in her uniforms then.


Author's note: This story has been Beta-Read by davros fan and by TheOnlyCeeCeeJ.Davros fan and I in particular had a lot of fun one afternoon refining an extra scene...

I look forward to reading your thoughts on this story... Please, do review

Live Long and Prosper _\\/