I.
Rennes is nothing like Paris, or Valence, and certainly nothing like London. Bellona is sad to miss her summer with Ukki in Taivolkovski, but it's worth it to have Blaise and Daphne with her. It's blindingly sunny and gorgeously warm when they arrive, and it's only as they're walking through the doors that Bellona thinks to ask if Daphne speaks French.
"Enough," Daphne promises. "My grandmother was from Toulouse, I won't get lost."
"Ah," Amand says, grinning huge beneath his hideous sunglasses. "But do any of you speak Breton?"
Bellona is almost fluent, but she knows that neither Blaise nor Daphne speak a word, and she can see on Anatole's face that he's guessed as much.
"Oh, wonderful," Anatole says, in French. "Now we have a way to make fun of you without you ever finding out."
Bellona sent Blanchefleur off to the address her father gave to her, with a letter answering every question he asked her and asking just as many in return. She's hungry to find the parts of herself that she has never seen in Maman or Anatole or Grand-mère or Ukki in this stranger, to recognise the parts of herself that aren't Veela in someone who is still hers.
But for now, there is Rennes, and there is Amand guiding them into his beautiful home, and Anatole being knocked on his backside by Amand's sister's enormous dog seeking treats.
"This is much better than my mother's plans," Daphne whispers. "She thought I ought to spend the whole summer with Pansy. Can you imagine?"
Bellona can't, nor can Blaise. Pansy Parkinson would want Blaise if he hadn't so firmly flown his colours in Bellona's favour from the first day of school, but she would never have wanted Bellona.
It isn't a coincidence that the only girl in their class who Pansy has ever reallybefriended is Millicent, who has a face no prettier than Pansy's own. Daphne is the prettiest girl in their whole year , aside from Bellona herself, but she is very firmly old English money, and very firmly pureblooded, and that means Pansy makes allowances for Daphne that she will never make for Bellona.
Oh well. It is truly, deeply tragic that Pansy Parkinson will never wish to braid Bellona's hair and share secrets over sweets, but Bellona will learn to live with that grief.
II.
Her next letter from her father is not a letter at all. Instead, he presents himself on Anatole and Amand's doorstep, disguised by Polyjuice Potion and looking sick with nerves.
When the potion wears off, Bellona scours his face for traces of herself, and finds her eyes, her nose, an echo of her thick, heavily curling hair - but her chin, her cheekbones, they are more Maman than they are her father, and looking at him, she thinks that she might be less like his mad cousin than everyone says.
"You are so beautiful," he says, his voice caught down in his throat with tears. "I had no idea, I swear-"
She edges closer, and does not fight the tears that rise when he gathers her into his arms. She has dreamed all her life of knowing her papa, and it is thrilling to find that he is as desperate to know her as she is to know him.
Blaise and Daphne hover at the door, wary and protective, and Bellona loves them more than anyone else in the whole world in that moment. Blaise has shadowed her from the moment Anatole allowed her father into the house, watching him the way everyone else at school watches all Slytherins, and Daphne's wand is suddenly holstered on her thigh in a combat harness, instead of tucked absently into her hair as it usually is.
Bellona's wand remains in her hair, hawthorn near as bright as her silver ribbons against the black, because she does not feel threatened. Anatole has pinfeathers showing silver-bright at his temples, and the furniture is singing in a high undertone that means Amand is stressed, but Bellona looks at her father and sees more of herself than just those snatches of her face in his. He is restless, right down into his heart, and she knows how that feels. She recognises something of the terror of entrapment that drives his eyes to flick-flick-flick around the room, catching here on windows and there on doors.
She is a Veela who cannot fly. Who in the world knows so well as she what it is to be trapped?
III.
Her father is more haunting than man, and as she coaxes secrets from his reluctant tongue she begins to understand why.
She has half a mind to write to Professor Lupin - Remus, as he insists she call him, and she supposes that she will since he is no longer her teacher. She thinks that her father might be more at his ease if he had someone familiar to speak with, instead of unexpected reflections of himself in her, and strangers in everyone else.
At least he gets along well with Amand's sister's dog.
Still - he does talk to her. It takes more coaxing than she has ever managed before, patience more than she thought she possessed, but she does it. She listens to terrible nightmares and glowing dreams, and finds herself jealous of the eager way he talks about his precious godson. Blaise and Daphne agree that he ought to keep himself a little more in check when he talks of Harry Potter so enthusiastically, but Anatole is a little less harsh.
"Perhaps, chouette," he says, tossing more apples down into her waiting basket from his perch high up in the tree at the foot of the garden. "Perhaps it is simply that he knows what he will be to the Potter boy, but he does not know what you want of him."
His hair is still half feathers, but the hawk-curve is gone from his nose. He trusts her father a little more now than he did a week ago, and has probably written home to tell Maman as much.
Bellona follows Anatole back into the house with her basket of apples balanced on her hip, and wishes Maman were here. Oh, she would drive Bellona's father into a row within an hour, Bellona's knows, but Maman has a knack for driving out secrets too, and that is what's needed now. She's sure of it.
She won't write to ask Maman here, though. She's afraid of scaring her father away, and it's only been a week.
IV.
When Bellona was a little girl, Grand-mère used take her and Jeanne up onto the highest level of the roof and point out bright constellations in the endless sky. She would tell them stories in her deep, smoky voice, fingertips pressed to her throat whenever she paused to think and remember, and then she would gather one of them under either arm, kiss their brows, and sing them to sleep.
Anatole painted their favourites onto the ceilings of their bedrooms, changing them whenever a whim took Bellona or Jeanne decided that a constellation of nobler origin was more suited to her. Bellona's room in Valence, where she has not been in so long, still has the Pleiades lovingly picked out in silver-gold-white against the inky skies of her ceiling. Tante Metis had laughed a little, because what were Bellona's Pleiades against Jeanne's Sagittarius, or Artemisia's mighty Orion, or even Apollonia's wily Ophiuchus? Maman and Tante Leto had scolded her soundly for that, for Bellona and Jeanne had only been ten years old then, and it had been unkind of Tante Metis to be so sharp, but Grand-mère had walked from one bedroom to the next, looking thoughtfully up to the ceilings as she went, and had paused with Bellona, to stroke her hair and sigh.
Bellona thinks of this, lying between Blaise and Daphne on a blanket in Anatole's beautiful garden, looking up into the pink-polluted night sky above Rennes, and begins to cry. When she was little, she did not fit, but she knew why she did not fit. She understood that she was wrong because she was not wholly Veela, with her dark hair and her big feet and her broad shoulders.
She does not belong at school because she is partly Veela, which feels a cruel irony. But she has Blaise, who understands what it is to be half a thing, and Daphne, who as she removes herself more and more from her mother seems to become less and less what she was. At school, it does not matter that she is an outsider within her house of pedestal-dwellers, because she has found her place.
Here, in Anatole's house, with the people who know her best of anyone in the world, she feels as though she does not belong, and it is all her father's fault. She wonders if that is unfair, and does not care. He spent half an hour telling her stories of Harry Potter's father after dinner, before catching himself mid-sentence and fleeing to the spare room Amand made up for him when he arrived, and Bellona has been fighting back these tears ever since.
"Why does he not want me?" she asks, and Blaise and Daphne each turn toward her, laying warm arms across her waist in comfort. "Why am I not enough?"
V.
Bellona and her father have an awkward goodbye the day before she and Blaise and Daphne are due to depart for Paris, where they will spend four days with Maman before continuing on to London. Bellona has her suspicions that Sofia Nikolaevna will also be meeting them in Paris, and that she and Maman will try and convince Mrs. Greengrass to take tea with them in London.
Maman has been… Better. She has been making great efforts on Bellona's behalf, and making it easier for Daphne to remain her friend would be a great effort indeed.
But her father - well. He kisses her cheek, and holds on tight, but he seems unsure what is appropriate, and that makes her feel unsure. Daphne is ready the moment she steps away from him, curling her arm around Bellona's waist, and Blaise straightens to his full, sudden height and scowls at her father, not even wishing him farewell.
"I'll write," he promises. "Please, Bellona, I- I'm sorry."
She smiles, just as she used when Grand-mère denied that Jeanne was capable of bullying her, and waves him away. Amand wraps her in his skinny arms then, smelling of cinnamon and sweet apples, and pulls her into the kitchen. Nothing ever hurts in Amand's kitchen, and she forgets to cry.
VI.
Everyone seems to expect her to know Fleur Delacour, since they are both French, and both have Veela blood. This would be considerably less annoying if she didn't know Fleur, but they are both of French Veela stock, and that is a much smaller pool than Bellona would like anyone to know. The de Poitiers of Valentinois have been established and settled longer than any other Veela clan in France, and she studied well under Grand-mère when the history books were brought out. She knows that it will not take much to remind these wizards and witches that she and Fleur are not entirely as they are, and that they do not like what Fleur and Bellona are, and has the history to prove it. Perhaps it is just as well to band together, just in case.
"I used think it was a joke," Fleur says with the air of someone who would love a cigarette. "But we really are better looking than them."
We being French people, them being the English. Bellona thinks to remind Fleur that she is half-English, but the curl of Fleur's lip tips her off - a tease. Bellona smiles, because she has known Fleur Delacour a long time, and Fleur's teases have always been meant without malice.
"Tell me, Belle," she says, linking her arm through Bellona's and tugging her across the lawn toward the lake, "Do they treat you well here?"
"It is easier for me than it would have been for you," Bellona says. "I'm not as lovely as you are-"
"Pah!"
"- and I'm only obviously Veela-blooded when I lose my temper."
Fleur grins at that, and Bellona notices a fifth-year Ravenclaw boy walking into the wall of the castle.
"I was shy of it, once," Fleur says, "but then I knocked out the teeth of an older boy who thought that my Veela blood meant I would welcome his attentions, and people stopped thinking me weak for being so beautiful."
"I threw a cauldron of acid over a girl last year," Bellona confides. "We share a dormitory, and she's already been giving me the cold shoulder."
This makes Fleur laugh, and every boy within ten yards turns to look.
"Before I go home this year," Fleur says, chucking Bellona under the chin, "we will make sure that you no longer bow your head when walking these dusty halls, no?"
VII.
Bellona has seen Harry Potter fly before - she has never missed a Quidditch match, and she flew against him last year - but that was nothing at all. Not compared with how he flies against the dragon.
There is something mad in him, an insanity that she thinks must come of being raised by Muggles, and she swallows down jealousy like bile at the thought of how excited her father will be to hear about Harry's exploits in the Triwizard Tournament.
She will not wear one of Draco's Potter Stinks badges, but she cannot quite bring herself to shout for Harry, either. If anyone, she would cheer for Fleur, but she is not stupid enough to be disloyal to Hogwarts in this.
She cheers for Cedric Diggory. He is exceptional wizard, and has always seemed perfectly pleasant, from what little Bellona knows of him. It is easier to cheer for someone who is not more beloved of her father than she is.
Harry Potter proves himself mad by sitting down opposite Bellona in the library while she is waiting for Blaise and Daphne three days later.
Hello, he writes on a fresh sheet of parchment, and his handwriting is appalling. I'm Harry.
She only barely keeps from laughing at that, for fear of Madam Pince.
I'm Bellona, she writes back. How can I help you?
He writes down a time - half past six - and a place - Hagrid's hut - and gives her a bright, uncertain grin, before standing up and dawdling back to the table where Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley are waiting for him. Bellona and Hermione have been exchanging short, tentative letters ever since the end of last year, and they smile whenever they pass in the halls now, and sometimes even say hello. She doesn't know Ron Weasley at all, but no doubt Bellatrix Lestrange helped murder some of his family, so he probably doesn't like her.
Blaise and Daphne arrive before she can think much more of it, but she decides that it can't hurt to visit at Professor Hagrid's hut this evening, around half past six. He has a lovely old dog she can bring treats to, if nothing else.
"Why would Potter want to meet you there, of all places?" Blaise asks, nose wrinkling at Harry's awful handwriting. "Is it neutral ground?"
"Hardly," Daphne says scornfully, tucking Harry's note into the back of Bellona's Potions book. "Dumbledore sent Hagrid to fetch Potter from his Muggle family, the two of them are thick as thieves - it's safe ground for Potter and his friends, in case we're dangerous."
Bellona quite likes the idea of being dangerous, and thinks she might wear the griffon-claw earrings Tante Leto gave her for her last birthday tonight. No one likes it when she wears those.
Blaise and Daphne agree that of course she cannot go alone, and so it is that she crosses the lawn to Professor Hagrid's hut flanked by her friends.
There are two white owls perched on the roof. One is Blanchefleur, and the other, Bellona thinks, must be Harry Potter's. She wonders if her father has something to do with that, and steels herself before knocking on the door.
Daphne's hand is warm when it presses to the small of her back, and Blaise's is firm when it settles between her shoulder blades. She can do this, if she has them with her.
a)
Hagrid has been unsure about this whole plan, and truthfully, Hermione hasn't been entirely certain about it. She wouldn't have gone along with it at all, had Harry not been so adamant, and even that stubbornness of his has her worried.
Why is he so determined to become friends with Sirius' daughter? Hermione made what overtures she dared make to a Slytherin at the end of last year, and she and Bellona have yet to get beyond polite enquiry in their letters to one another. Ron thinks the whole thing is bonkers, but feels badly enough about not believing Harry over the Goblet that he's not going to say a word - maybe after Christmas, he'll get his spine back.
Harry seems to think it'll be a simple matter of putting a mug of sugary tea in her hand and deciding that they're close. Hermione has noticed that things often tend to sort of work for Harry, in the end, but this is different. She may not be part of Malfoy and Pansy's gang, but Bellona is still a Slytherin. Harry is the opposite of a Slytherin, and opposites don't usually attract.
"Hello, Professor," Bellona says, smiling up at Hagrid. "May we come in? Harry invited us on your behalf, I'm afraid."
Her accent is softer than Hermione thought. Ron startles beside her, looking thoughtful, and Hermione watches him and Harry for a moment while Blaise Zabini and Daphne Greengrass offer hellos just as polite as Bellona's to Hagrid, and are shown in to his home.
"Oh!" Daphne says. "I didn't know you baked, Professor - are those rock cakes? My grandmother makes ones that look just the same!"
That softens Hermione a little. There's no sarcasm or cutting in Daphne's voice, as she's come to expect from Slytherins, only a shy sort of friendliness that isn't at all what she thinks when she thinks Slytherin.
"Do you know," Ron says, still looking thoughtful, "I don't think I've ever heard any of you speak outside of class before."
Blaise settles him with a long-suffering look, but he's smiling a little to soften it.
"In our defence," he says, "you Gryffindors are very clannish."
"And you Slytherins aren't?" Ron shoots back, crossing his arms.
"Touché," Blaise says. "Let's start again, then - Blaise Zabini. A pleasure to meet you, my friend."
Blaise holds out his hand. Ron shakes it. Hermione hadn't expected even that much.
VIII.
Bellona meets her father a second time just before Christmas, and wonders why it is so much easier here, in a cave above Hogsmeade, than it was in Anatole and Amand's house.
"When I was a boy," he says, poking at the sausages sizzling in a little tin tray over a cheerful, spitting fire, "my parents were rubbish. They were everything bad about Slytherin, and they passed it on to my brother."
"Toujours Pur," she says, and hates it. It echoes too much of Jeanne's cruelty, of the careless menaces of her aunts' sharp tongues, of Maman's sighs . "They would have hated me, then?"
"They would have refused to acknowledge that you existed," he corrects her, producing fluffy white bread and a pat of bright yellow butter from his little case. "They tossed me out when I was sixteen, and I was older than that when you came along."
His smile is rueful, and very familiar.
"I know a little about being an outcast," he says, passing her a sausage sandwich and pouring her a cup of hot, sweet tea. "Although it was a choice for me. I know it hasn't been for you, sweetheart."
They eat their sandwiches and drink their tea, and then Bellona draws a neatly wrapped package of macarons from her cloak. Her father laughs to see them, and pours her more tea, which he sugars liberally as she unwraps the macarons. They seem so out of place in this terrible home of his, but that makes a funny sort of sense.
"I'm sorry for how I was, during the summer," he says suddenly, while Bellona's teeth are stuck together. "I know I wasn't- I wasn't what you'd hoped for. Harry gave me a proper talking to over that, and Remus sent me a strongly worded letter."
Bellona wishes she could see Remus' letter, if only to know what his temper looks like.
"Why would Harry speak to you?" she asks. "For me, I mean - I gather he writes to you often."
"Sometimes," her father admits. "But he thought I was being selfish, you see. He has strong views on how parents should behave, I've found."
Harry Potter, who never knew his parents, has fought on her behalf to make her father be better. Oh. She doesn't know what to do with that.
The Yule Ball will, of course, be a disaster in social terms, because no one in England knows how to be charming, and the Bulgarians are going to be Slavic, and the French students will be, well, French.
Bellona's robes are the deep red of low-burning embers, with a handful of bright gold slashes in the swirling skirts. Daphne helps her braid her hair with the long strings of amber beads Ukki and Aleksi sent with her robes, and then she pins it all up high atop her head, the way Maman and the aunts wear their hair for formal occasions. Her arms are bare save for a deep gold bracelet high up on her left arm, sent by Grand-mère from the vault in Valence, and she wears the most comfortable dancing slippers she owns, ignoring Pansy's constant titters at their well-worn condition.
Pansy has obviously never been to a ball before. Poor girl.
Daphne's robes are a gorgeous shade of purple, like a sunset, and they form a beautiful foil for the long, smooth fall of her pale hair. She looks more Veela than Bellona, and for once Bellona does not feel jealous of this.
She has the earrings her father gave her, and feels jealous of very little. Garnets set in gold, very simple, and very beloved.
Blaise is striking as only he ever seems to be, with his beautiful mouth and his laconic eyes, and his nearly-black robes, which shine dark electric blue in the right light, make him lovely in the same otherworldly way of his mother.
He offers them each an arm, and together the three of them step forth from the common room and begin the long walk to the great hall. Draco and Pansy are just ahead of them, Draco wearing what seems to be a very expensive cassock and Pansy in something revolting and very pink, and Bellona can hardly keep from laughing at how unlike what they are expecting tonight will be.
Wizards in England have very little to do with anyone but other wizards. Things are a little different on the continent - Bellona sees Fleur with a pretty Ravenclaw boy, and smiles at the hungry way her friend is watching the dancefloor - and Bellona is ready to upstage Pansy as she has never had the chance before.
The incident with the cauldron of acid doesn't count.
Harry has one of the Patil twins on his arm - Parvati, probably, since she's in Gryffindor and Harry is only vaguely aware that the other houses exist off the Quidditch pitch - and he smiles at Bellona as Professor McGonnagal harrasses him into place with the other champions. Parvati follows his gaze and scowls mightily, and Blaise and Daphne laugh.
"Theo thinks I ought to kiss you tonight," Blaise tells her as they spin easily around the floor - who else can compare? Oh, plenty of them have had dancing lessons, but that's not the same as being able to dance. "He said as much while we were dressing."
"And what do you think?" Bellona asks, already knowing the answer. She loves Blaise as much as she loves Anatole, or maybe even as much as she loves Maman, but it is not the kind of love that Theo thinks it is. Theo might know that, if he spent a little less time with Draco.
"I think I'd rather not," Blaise says, smiling. "I don't know that I'd like to kiss anyone particularly, but I know I don't want to kiss you."
Fleur cuts in then, flashing a dazzling not-smile at Blaise as she turns Bellona into something that isn't a waltz, not quite, and she's harrumphing by the time Bellona's caught her balance.
"These boys," she says, in a weary sort of voice, "are useless for anything but kissing."
Bellona laughs at that, long and loud, which in turn makes Fleur laugh. People are staring, and for once, Bellona doesn't mind.
Pansy makes some snide comment about what a Veela-girl should look like, when they're all walking back to the common room late that night, and Bellona barely hears it. Pansy's hair has gone frizzy and is half fallen out of its elaborate arrangement, and her disastrous robes have become a mess of creases, and she looks awful. Bellona's hair is still precisely as Daphne left it, and her own robes - made for dancing, not to be painted into a family portrait - are still elegant and lovely.
She and Blaise and Daphne lead the way into the common room, and are already away to bed when the inevitable argument begins. Pansy really did think Draco was going to kiss her tonight.
b)
Belle Black hexes Pansy Parkinson during their first Care of Magical Creatures class after Christmas, and Ron decides then and there that he's going to become her friend.
Pansy was being nasty about Hagrid, of course, because of that article the Skeeter woman wrote, and Belle Black took out her wand, calm as anything, right there in the middle of class, and a pair of horrible big horns sprouted over Parkinson's eyes.
It was beautiful, in a twisted kind of way. Fred and George are delighted when he tells them later, and even they admit that maybe Belle Black might be okay, if she has approvals from Ron, Harry, and Hermione.
Ron pays a bit more attention after that. When they were in first year, he tried very hard not to pay her any attention, because she's just as pretty as Fleur Delacour - she's just not as Veela about it. But now, he sees the way she steers clear of Malfoy and Crabbe and Goyle, and sticks with Zabini and Daphne Greengrass.
Just Zabini and Daphne Greengrass.
Ron gets why Harry's trying to make nice with her - she's Sirius', which makes her family in a sideways sort of way, and maybe there's something in that unity nonsense Dumbledore's always saying. Hermione's a bit more suspicious, which makes sense given that she's Muggleborn, but Ron thinks they're likely safe enough with Belle.
She's more half-blood than anyone else in the school, after all. Not like she can really say a word about someone like Hermione.
IX.
Bellona sits with Professor Hagrid during the second task, and is treated to a fascinating, surprising wealth of knowledge about every kind of animal she could think to name. Blaise is on her other side, a little slack-jawed with shock, but Bellona is thrilled. Professor Hagrid's methods have always been a little wild, but he knew to excuse Bellona from his very first lesson because hippogriffs and Veela have uncertain relationships, and she's now convinced that he knows just about everything about the care of magical creatures.
He might also be the kindest person she's ever met.
His coat has more pockets than she could count, and he's constantly producing sandwiches wrapped in muslin and biscuits in paper packets and, memorably, a raw steak wrapped in wax paper. Everything but the steak is offered around to everyone nearby, and Bellona is gifted with honey-roast ham, sweet relish, tomato, and finely sliced onion on crusty, nutty brown bread. The best she can do in return is offer him coffee from the enormous flask Blaise and Daphne helped her carry down to the lakeside, which he accepts with a huge smile and a nudge of his massive elbow to her side.
It's a lovely day, even if Harry's continuing absence under the water is made worse and worse by first Cedric Diggory's reappearance, and then Viktor Krum's.
Fleur's is the worst, because Fleur is in such a panic that Madam Pomfrey has to be sent for. Gabrielle remains at the bottom of the lake, and what these stupid teachers and politicians don't know is that for Fleur, the fear of Gabrielle's loss is far realer than Cedric Diggory's of Cho Chang. Little Veela girls have a history of disappearing, and no Veela girl's name is ever forgotten. Fleur must be thinking that Gabrielle's name will be next, because Bellona has thought it and cast it aside - surely the hostages are not truly in danger? Surely Professor Dumbledore would not allow any of them to be harmed?
Still there is no Harry, and Professor Hagrid is vibrating with worry.
"He'll be fine," Bellona says, thinking of the disjointed story her father told her of his escape from Hogwarts last year. "Harry always is."
She cheers for Harry. Blaise and Daphne do as well, and they are the only Slytherins who do. Not all Slytherins are the children of Death Eaters, but enough are, and they tend to bully those who are not. Harry Potter will never be beloved of Slytherin, no more than Severus Snape will of Gryffindor.
But Bellona cheers for him. Harry is brave and has a good heart, and he deserves to be cheered for. He deserves to be treated as a champion just as much as Cedric Diggory does, and so she stands, and she cheers, and she holds Professor Hagrid's hand while he wipes his eyes with a pink handkerchief with white polka dots, and lets go so he can blow his nose.
"You cheered for me," Harry says, grinning up from under fourteen layers of blankets and Professor Hagrid's coat. "I don't think a Slytherin's ever cheered for me before."
X.
Cedric is dead.
Harry had to carry Cedric's body back from wherever the Cup brought him, and somehow, people are shouting at Harry.
Bellona writes to her father, begging him to be ready to be Harry's steady rock, and then she marches to the hospital wing - without Blaise, without Daphne - and demands that they let her in to see Harry.
Fleur is behind the first screen, and she blows Bellona a kiss as she passes. Viktor Krum is behind the second, and he is sleeping.
Harry is behind the third. Bellona does not look toward the fourth.
Harry is sleeping, surrounded by Weasleys and Hermione Granger, and the warm brown of his skin is ashen, greyed with pain and fear. The way it clings clammily to his bones reminds her of Maman after she has transformed, when her face has become human and lovely again, but her skin remembers being something else.
There is a dog, behind Hermione Granger. Bellona doesn't dare move closer, not with Ron Weasley's mother eyeing the green-and-grey of her hat with wary distaste, but she waves to her father.
"Sirius," Professor Dumbledore says - Bellona had not even noticed him, nor Professor Snape standing at his side. "If you would."
Her father is a man in a moment, and he sets himself between her and Professor Snape as if on instinct.
Ah. Professor Snape looks so fantastically full of hatred that she can now fill in the gaps in her father's stories of his escape. She can also understand why Professor Snape has never, in four years, awarded her a single point.
Mrs. Weasley is screaming. Bellona's father keeps his arm across her, guarding her, and puts her hand on the crook of his elbow.
"Papa," she says, "please."
He subsides. Harry is awake, Bellona notices, and she looks to him and to Ron Weasley and to Hermione Granger rather than watching the grovelling Professor Dumbledore is forcing on her father.
Hermione is watching her back. Or rather, Hermione is watching the way Bellona is holding onto her father's arm, and the way he's curling himself around her. Bellona knows what they look like, because she has seen Tante Leto stand this way with Jeanne, or Tante Metis with the twins.
She has stood like this with Maman, sometimes, when someone dares threaten or insult her. It seems only right to face a threat like Professor Snape with Papa before her.
"If the Dark Lord has returned," Bellona says, sitting in the window with Papa's arms wrapped tight around her, "is it war?"
"It will be," Papa says, kissing her temple. "But we will fight him every step of the way."
Bellona curls closer to him, cold under her skin, and wonders how she is to fight. She will not see a monster like this Voldemort rise - she has seen the scars that Grindelwald left in Europe, in her family and in families like hers right across the Europe. She knows that families here are just as badly damaged by Voldemort's terror, and would spare people the pain she sees in Grand-mère's eyes whenever her sister is mentioned, or Ukki and Aleksi's silences whenever it is their mother's birthday.
People came from all over Europe to fight Grindelwald. A shame that Albus Dumbledore did not come sooner from England. Perhaps he will stir himself earlier for this war, and tarry less than he has in the past.
Papa kisses her temple again, and sighs.
"We fought the last war so our children would never have to fight," he says. "I'm sorry that we failed you, Belle."
c)
Harry is saying goodbye to Ron and Hermione when Bellona Black appears, tugging on his sleeve and smiling. He doesn't think he's ever seen her smile before, not really, so he smiles back.
"Papa promises that you won't be left with your family all summer," she assures him, glancing over his shoulder to the Dursleys. Her family - her mother, obviously, because Bellona's the image of her except for her colouring, and the uncle she always talks about - are standing a little way away, out of place in a wholly different way than the Weasleys. "He says Professor Dumbledore's intentions are to be trusted, but if it seems that this is not so, write to me. Blaise and Daphne and I are spending the summer together, but my uncle, Anatole-"
Here, the very handsome man standing with Bellona's mother waves.
"- will fetch you, if you need help."
"Thank you," he says, for want of anything else. Bellona's distrust of Dumbledore is something he's noticed more than once in the time they've come to know one another, and he's wondered about it sometimes. "Bellona-"
"Write to me even if you are not in mortal danger, Harry Potter," she says with a fresh smile. "Your owl will find me no matter where I am."
"You travel much over the summer, Belle?" Ron asks, throwing his arm over Harry's shoulders. "Didn't think you rich types did much at all on holidays."
"I'll be moving around a lot this summer," she says. "My grandfather's house, my grandmother's, Blaise's mother's, and perhaps even Daphne's parents' house, if her mother can suffer a dirty half-breed like me near her beautiful home."
Bellona's eyes are dark, like Sirius', but they're bright like nothing Harry's ever known. She looks very dangerous, and he's glad that they've become friends.