I.
Blaise's mama has a house in St. Petersburg, in the hidden district tucked between Vasileotrovsky and Petrogradsky, overlooking the Neva. It is beautiful, elegant and fantastic in that particular Russian flavour of Baroque, and very well suited to Madame Sofia Zabini. Sofia Nikolaevna has opened her home to Bellona, and Blaise has opened his world, and she has never felt so welcome outside of her own family before.
"The house has been in Mama's family for years," Blaise says, as they wander among the Muggle shoppers on Nevsky Prospekt, just for a change of scenery - they're leaving the day after next to spend a week with Daphne's family in Cheshire, and then Anatole and Maman are bringing them to Paris for a week, and then it's back to school. "I don't think her family is originally from Petersburg, but they've weathered the Revolution and all the mess since."
"Maman's family were in Paris when the Nazis came," Bellona confides in return. "Grand-mère was only a girl, she always says, but she remembers it. She remembers la Louvre being emptied."
"Where in France did they run to?" Blaise asks, in that quiet, intent way of his. "Mama's family fled to their land in the Ob Valley - not far from Novosibirsk."
"Grand-mère spent time in Gascony, I think," she says. "And in Denmark, after the wars. That is where she met Ukki for the first time."
"Did they marry?" Blaise asks. "Your grandparents, I mean."
"Veela do not marry," Bellona says. "Well, not often. And Ukki is even less the marrying sort than Grand-mère, I think."
"Mama has been married… Seven times, I think."
Bellona draws to a halt, her hand tucked into Blaise's elbow pulling him short.
" How?" she demands. "Your mother does not even look old enough to be your mother, Blaise!"
Blaise's grin is as bitter as Bellona knows her own can be, when asked about her too-beautiful mother, and she wishes she could take it back.
"Mama," Blaise says, "is far older than she looks."
Bellona has never believed that Sofia Nikolaevna is quite so human as she says - why should it be surprising that she is also not quite so young?
II.
Daphne's parents are quiet and elegant and hold themselves utterly aloof from Bellona and Blaise - none of this is surprising. What is surprising, however, is how Daphne's delicate little sister fights to maintain a distance from Bellona and Blaise, even as she fawns over Theo.
Theo, who was granted permission to visit at Daphne's, but was refused the right to travel to St Petersburg, or to Paris. Of course.
"Forgive them," Daphne begs. "Well, forgive Astoria, at least - she's only a little thing, she doesn't understand."
Bellona thinks that Astoria Greengrass understands all too well, and she knows that Blaise agrees.
Theo, who confessed to having spent his summer so far at Malfoy's , says nothing, looks at no one.
Theo will not be Bellona's friend for much longer, she doesn't think. He always was fickle. He always was too desperate for his bitter old father's pride.
"What did you have to promise your parents," Blaise asks, "for them to allow us to visit?"
Daphne's cheeks glow bright, furious pink, and she is as determined to avoid Bellona's eye as Theo.
"I'm spending next week at Pansy's," she admits. "But I won't enjoy a minute of it, I won't!"
Blaise nudges very slightly closer to Bellona, and she feels very sad. Ukki will be disappointed that she is down to a single friend.
III.
Blaise surprises Maman when he speaks fluent, accentless French as they wander the Arrondissement.
"I much prefer this to Diagon Alley," he says. "Mama can't abide shopping in London. She finds it vulgar."
Blaise's father was an Englishman, sort of, because his grandmother was English - from Sussex, she thinks. But his grandfather was only born in England. Blaise's great-grandparents came from Angola, when it was still Portuguese, and so his name will never appear on that blasted, beloved Sacred Twenty-Eight of theirs.
Bellona's could, were she to keep to her papa's name. But she cannot do that - even if it would not see her strung up by the families of his supposed victims, she is Maman's daughter before she is Sirius Black's, and she will keep Maman's name.
"Maman would agree," Bellona says, wrinkling her nose at Maman across their beignets. "London is very… Grey."
"London is very boring," Maman corrects. "Perhaps it is different for the Muggles, but I cannot see how - Muggle or wizard, they are all English, are they not?"
Maman loves Blaise, partly because he is so very charming, mostly because he is Bellona's friend, and she always plays up her oh-so-French loathing of the English just to see him smile and roll his eyes - just as Sofia Nikolaevna plays up her disdain for the West, just to hear Bellona laugh.
But to London they must go, and so they rise the next morning at an ungodly hour, and use the Portkey Oncle Anatole procured for them, and together they disappear from Paris and reappear in London - from warm August sun to dreary August humidity.
And to walls plastered with wanted posters.
"It cannot be," Maman breathes, fingertips to her throat. Anatole's hands fly up to catch her by the elbows, as if he is afraid she might swoon. "Surely he would not risk this. "
The wanted posters bear photographs, are haunted by a ghoul who shares a name with Bellona's papa.
"Maman?" she asks, letting Blaise gather her close, under his arm. "Maman, is that-"
"We must be so careful, ma chouette," Maman says, flicking up the hood of her cloak. "Even more careful than usual."
Draco Malfoy and Gregory Goyle are in Madam Malkin's, when Bellona and Blaise walk through the door, and they smile.
Only Blaise's hand pressed to the small of her back keeps her from fleeing.
IV.
Dementors on the train and her head is ringing with cruel laughter and the special hawk-screech of a furious Veela and all she can she is Theo's turned-away face and Daphne's shamed, shameful eyes and Jeanne's kind dismissal and-
"Belle," Blaise says, quiet and urgent, and she nods once. "Take a deep breath. You'll be fine."
Blaise speaks Finnish because one of his stepfathers was a Finnish timber magnate, but no one else in this carriage does. They can speak freely like this, and she is grateful for that little bit of peace amidst the horror clamouring inside her head.
Bellona wants to flee, to sprout wings like Maman's and fly all the way to Ukki's warm, safe, welcoming home overlooking the river. She wants to run away.
But then Blaise will be alone, and he is already an outcast simply for being her friend - Malfoy has made certain of that.
"I feel as if I will die," she whispers to Blaise, not daring to speak up even in Finnish. "I wish-"
"I do as well," Blaise says, "but we mustn't let them see."
They've always sat in the same carriage as their housemates - it's simply what the Slytherins do, although the other houses seem to behave differently - but it's different, this time. Bellona can feel something staticky on her skin, like Apollonia's temper about to burst, and she presses closer to Blaise for fear of it, and of the Dementors gliding by like shadows of death outside the carriage.
"How are they-"
"They don't care," Blaise whispers. "Or, they don't want to care, and that helps."
Bellona works very hard not to sob, and when the train finally grinds to a halt at the platform in Hogsmeade, she does not even glance back when Malfoy and Pansy and the rest laugh at the way she bolts for the carriages.
Blaise follows close behind her, and very nearly closes the carriage door in Daphne's face.
"I'm sorry, Belle, I'm sorry," Daphne says, clambering in and wrapping Bellona in her thin, strong arms. "It's so easy to be Pansy's friend, but I don't want to be Pansy's friend. I'm your friend."
Bellona curls one arm around Daphne's waist, and settles once she feels Blaise's familiar warmth on her other side. Yes, she still has two friends, and she feels a little safer for having them both.
Blanchefleur keens and wheels to greet her as she arrives at the castle doors, letters from Ukki and Isoseta Aleksi tied to her leg, and that helps, too.
Even as Professor Dumbledore speaks of Dementors and Sirius Black, known mass-murderer, as though they are matters of course, and Bellona's belly flips and turns.
V.
Professor Lupin looks as though he needs a good feed - Ukki and Grand-mère both would despair of him, and Bellona can only imagine the spread Anatole and Amand would prepare for him. Maman would despair of his threadbare, charmingly patched robes, and would take the grooming kit she keeps for visits to Taivolkoski to his unkempt beard and uneven hair.
Maman disapproves of Ukki's tendency to let his hair grow wild. Doubtless she would disapprove of Professor Lupin's apparent tendency toward the same.
But it is not his appearance that makes Bellona flinch, oh no. She knows well enough that not everyone can afford the same luxuries and fine things as she can, or Blaise or Daphne, and she does her best not to linger on such things anymore.
It is the way he looks at her, as though she were a nightmare climbing up from some deepest hell uncalled, that makes her flinch - and he notices. He is looking at her so hard that he sees the way she recoils, and he looks down, ashamed.
He calls to her, as the others are filing out of the classroom for lunch - "Bellona, a moment?"
He is taller than she thought, from the way he'd slouched over his desk. When he leans back and crosses his arms, she thinks he might be taller than Anatole, but not as tall as Ukki.
"I'm sorry if I scared you," he says quietly. "I was just taken aback."
She swallows, frightened, and manages to meet his eyes.
"You knew him?" she asks.
"Very well," he admits. "You look very like him."
No one has ever said that she looks like her papa before - it is always the mad one,Bellatrix Lestrange who haunts kind, shy Neville Longbottom. It is always the worst parts of her heritage that people point at - the mud in her blood.
"I know nothing about him," she admits. "Did he…? My mother insists that he did not, but how well could she have known him?"
"Not well enough to tell him about you," Professor Lupin says, "else I wouldn't have been quite so surprised to find you in my classroom."
VI.
If Sirius Black can attack the Weasley boy who is Hermione Granger's friend in his own bed -
How is she to believe that he is a good man?
Blaise does not know. Daphne does not know. Bellona does not know.
VII.
"What do you think people will say," Pansy whispers, poison dripping from her tongue even as the poison she is supposed to be brewing in her cauldron fizzes into washing detergent. "Hmm, half-breed? What will they say?"
"Shut up, Pansy," Daphne says, a warning - but Pansy never listens. Pansy never notices the gleam of magpie-blue in Bellona's hair.
"Half an animal," Pansy sneers, "and half a murderer."
Bellona's poison is perhaps more acidic than it should have been, but Madam Pomfrey assures them all that it is a simple matter of an overnight stay to heal up the burns it caused all over Pansy's face and arms and chest.
Bellona is saved from losing points only because of Snape's reluctance to penalise Slytherin, but she does earn herself three weeks of detentions.
Pansy moves benches, in the dungeon, swaps with Theo so she's beside Draco, and there is peace, of a sort.
Professor Lupin volunteers to oversee a full week of Bellona's detentions, and Snape's face twists sourly when she informs him of this - but he does not interfere.
Pansy does not speak of half-breeds again. No one does. No one dares.
Or, well. Not during Potions class, anyway.
VIII.
Professor Lupin is a werewolf.
Bellona knows almost- human better than anyone else in Hogwarts, and needed only Professor Lupin's fear of the full moon to confirm the inkling that made her hands itch.
"Half-breed," he says over cups of hot chocolate in what is supposed to be her final detention for throwing a cauldron full of acid over Pansy, "is a word that never goes away."
Professor Lupin has told her a great deal about the man her mother fell in love with, and she is grateful to him for it. He is quiet and kind, gentle in a way that makes her think of Anatole, and she wonders why it is no normal wizard is ever so kind as those people wizards hate so much.
"I don't care what they say," she admits. "It's what they think that makes me angry."
She- she knows what Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick think. She knows they think she's dangerous, suddenly, because her probably-a-murderer papa is loose, and she will surely go to his side. It makes no matter if they think her so weak and fickle for being a Black or for being a Veela, they still think it.
She would like very much to be friends with Hermione Granger and Susan Bones, but Hermione can't abide her for being Slytherin and Susan can't abide her for reasons Bellona doesn't understand, but which probably have to do with how much she looks like Bellatrix Lestrange. They think she's just as much pondscum as Draco and Pansy and the others, and she wishes they could see past that and see her, the way only Blaise and Daphne really seem to.
"Unfortunately, getting angry makes them feel justified," Professor Lupin says, and Bellona deflates. "Bellona, I know it's hard, but you have to ignore it. You've got four more years of school to get through after this one, and there's no escaping Pansy Parkinson."
"Did everyone know your secret?" she asks. "When you were at school?"
Professor Lupin's mouth twists, memory and regret in equal measure.
"No," he admits. "No, I can't claim to know how hard it is for you on that front - but perhaps my friend's example can help you, a little."
James Potter distracted from Professor Lupin's regular ill health by being bigger and brasher and bolder than any other boy in their year, by being so bright and overwhelming that no one noticed the pale boy in his shadow
Which, somehow, translates to Belle and Blaise trying out for the Slytherin Quidditch team, after even Marcus Flint must admit that their recent run has not been up to snuff and some new blood may be necessary.
"I've missed flying," Blaise says, louche and at-ease on his Firebolt - a twin to her own, much to Draco's open fury, gifts from their mothers - as they watch the Beaters try their luck. "How about you?"
"I'm half Veela, Blaise," she says, rolling her eyes. "Of course I've missed flying."
Last year, they could use the pitch whenever it wasn't tied up by a team, but this year, with the Dementors… Well. The less said the better.
"Chasers!" Marcus roars. "Come on, arses in gear, I haven't got all night!"
Blaise shakes his head, and blows her a kiss as he flies off to settle among the morass of would-be Chasers - he will come out on top, Bellona knows it, because she's seen Blaise fly and there isn't anything to touch him in the whole of their house, except herself.
If she was as brave as Professor Lupin says his friends were, she'd challenge Draco for the Seeker's spot - she could fly rings round him with her eyes closed and her hands tied behind her back - but she isn't brave enough for that just yet. Next year, maybe, but for now, she'll face down Millicent fucking Bulstrode and her gruff confidence in front of the goals.
She quite likes the idea of being Keeper, and besides - aren't Keepers and Seekers the most common captains? Even if she doesn't challenge Draco for Seeker, she can't wait to challenge him for captain.
Daphne, sitting in the stands, cheers Blaise on. Bellona, circling over the pitch like a bird of prey, does the same.
Draco Malfoy, standing below on the ground, cringes.
IX.
Murderer's daughter.
It dogs her every step, now.
She cannot escape it anywhere.
Bellona goes to the Library to escape the whispers - she knows who revealed her truth, and because Snape is a teacher, she cannot hit him or throw acid over him or burn him - and Blaise and Daphne come with her, huddle around her and keep her hidden from the crowds of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors who drift by to stare and revile her.
"I am not him," she whispers, tears dripping onto the pages of her book because she cannot seem to halt them. "I would never-"
"Blaise, Daphne," Professor Lupin says. "Might I borrow Bellona for a moment?"
He's the only person in Hogwarts who calls her by her full name, her right name, and he's also the first person aside from Blaise and Daphne to smile at her since everyone else started calling her Belle Black.
Blaise and Daphne move far enough away that they can't overhear, but not so far that they can't watch - if Professor Lupin upsets her, she has no doubt that Daphne will hex him into next month, teacher or not.
But he will not upset her. She trusts that.
"He didn't do it," he says without preamble. "Sirius, I mean. He didn't do it. It was Peter."
"Peter?" she asks, baffled. "But Peter is-"
"Not as dead as we supposed," Professor Lupin says, grinning. "I'm no longer a teacher here, not since Severus so kindly revealed my furry little problem to the board, so, with your mother's permission, I'd like to write to you - to explain everything. Do you think she'd allow that?"
When Bellona doesn't answer, his tired, scarred face softens.
"This too will pass, Bellona," he promises. "Don't listen to them, if you can help it, and if they won't let you ignore them - well, maybe don't empty your cauldron all over them, but you do have every right to fight back."
X.
Hermione Granger catches Bellona by the elbow on Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters, looking uncertain but hopeful. Blaise looks poleaxed, Daphne the same, but Bellona feels almost giddy .
"I- that is, Harry got this, but it's not meant for him, it's meant for you," Hermione Granger says, in that particularly English accent of hers, and smiles. "If- if you wanted to write over the summer, this is my address. Um. Have a nice holiday!"
And she's gone, leaving Bellona with a thick letter and a scrap of parchment with an address in absolutely deplorable handwriting.
"Three friends?" Anatole asks, taking the trolley with her trunk and Blanchefleur's cage. Amand does the same with Daphne's, and Blaise feigns insult at being left to manage his own things - all three of them are going to Brittany for two weeks, to eat Amand's delicious cooking and spend time in the wizarding enclave in Rennes. "How exciting. Be sure and write to your grandfather to tell him."
Mortified, Bellona sits on her trunk so she can read her letter without getting lost, wondering why Professor Lupin sent post for her to Harry Potter.
But- this is not Professor Lupin's handwriting.
Dearest Bellona, the beautiful script that is near indistinguishable from her own says, and her heart sticks in her throat as they pass through the barrier.
Dearest Bellona,
I am sorry that this is coming both so late and so indirectly, but I was left with little choice. Remus tells me you have a fantastic owl, but I had no way of getting to her, so I had to cheat. I am very, very sorry.
If I know your mother - and I do, although not as well as I should - she probably told you I was an idiot for doing as I have, but you must believe me in this one thing, Bellona:
Had I known about you, I would have escaped Azkaban years ago.
Your mother returned to France when our war was reaching its darkest days, and I was glad for her - I wanted to see her safe, even if I would never admit anything of the sort to her face. Had I known she was pregnant with you when she left, I would never have let her go, but that was not to be. Perhaps, looking back, it was for the best.
His French is stilted, a little overly formal, but she doesn't care. Comfort will come from practice, and she will see to it that he has ample practice.
Remus tells me that your birthday is in May? I have thirteen birthdays to catch up on. I hope your owl is strong.
"Bellona?" Anatole says, hand to her shoulder. "Ma chouette, are you well?"
She's smiling when she looks up at him, smiling so hard her cheeks are aching even as she begins to cry.
"Look, Anatole! Look!"
The letter - pages and pages of it, covered front-and-back in that familiar-but-not handwriting - is signed Your father, Sirius.
Your father.
"Goodness," Blaise says, peering over her shoulder. "I didn't expect that. "