A/N: The credit of the Harry Potter plot and characters belongs solely to J.K. Rowling. I own nothing of it but my own words.

Bellatrix Lestrange is one of my favorite "mad" characters, and I hope I've done her justice.

Ruthless: In Defense of Bellatrix Lestrange

When Bellatrix woke, she was wearing clean, white robes in a clean, white room. Across from her, however, was the dirtiest, most disgusting creature of all.

"I grew up not knowing to shake my ketchup," said Ted Tonks, sitting, calm as you please, opposite her. "My family never did it. I reckon nobody ever told my parents any different either."

Bellatrix lunged at him, spewing an incomprehensible series of words and phrases: "Master," "Filthy, disgusting," something about "deserve" and "peace in death," with a good few spats of "Mudblood" mixed in for good measure.

They seemed, however, to be separated by an invisible but impenetrable screen so that she could not harm him, and she was lacking a wand with which to kill the roach.

"For me, it was normal to eat ketchup with the liquidy bits. The right way, even," continued Ted as though she'd made no movement or interruption whatsoever. "It wasn't until my first sleepover that that habit was, luckily, corrected."

"Your point being, Mudblood?" drawled Bellatrix in her masterfully bored tone.

His muddy brown eyes pierced into her as he answered, "We don't question the things we grow up knowing."

We all assume Harry had the worst childhood, sequestered in a cupboard under the stairs, mocked and insulted, practically enslaved, and perhaps he did, but people forget the pressure of the aristocratic purebloods. Bellatrix grew up in a house of shadows and mutters and unjustified arrogance. She grew up in a house where upturned noses were praised and teary eyes were indicative of the weak. Where affection was unheard of and "Toujours Pur" something one ought to be proud of. There was no Mum and no Dad. Her mother made bitter tea with a taste that stuck with you long after you drank it; her father threatened misbehavior with Unforgivables. When Bellatrix played war, Mudbloods were the villains, whose sole purpose and reason of existence was to be defeated and stomped out, like an infestation of termites. She grew up knowing her family tree like the back of her hand, that a person's ancestry would always, always be more important than their character and, more importantly, defined their character. That power meant more than compassion, and emotion had no place here. Most importantly, she grew up knowing that approval meant love.

Bella and Andy and Cissy, they grew up idolizing their parents, supporting everything they stood for. And Bella, being the oldest, felt a certain amount of responsibility to set a proper example for her younger siblings. So it was she who taught Andy and Cissy which forks and spoons and knives to use at which times and how to play very, very quietly so as not to disturb Mother and Father. It was she who taught them the difference between Mudbloods and purebloods and why the latter were far superior. It was she who would wipe away their childish tears and tell them that the powerful never, ever cry. And sometimes, it was she who took the blame and the beating for the errant broken vase. (Sometimes, in Bella's more improper moments, she could be persuaded into having snowball fights and building forts and stealing food from the kitchens before dinner.) (But she'd never admit to it.)

By age eleven, Bellatrix was a miniature version of her mother, though much, much prettier and a bit less composed. She strode onto the Hogwarts Express with her chin so high she could see the roof, and she hexed another first year (obviously a Mudblood) for looking at her wrong. It was never a question what House she'd be in. She made friends with the right sort of people and scoffed at the lessers, just as she'd been told all her life. She blazed through classes with skill that (begrudgingly) impressed her teachers and left her classmates (terrifyingly) defenseless. And when her sisters joined Slytherin as well, it meant she'd done her job right.

Sitting across from a Mudblood too stupid to shake his condiments, Bellatrix remembered her first ketchup moment. She was newly fifteen and Andy twelve, and the latter had forced her down to the kitchens after curfew. Practically bouncing up and down, Andy (to the dismay of the House Elves) got down a nice big teapot (not the pretty porcelain ones Mother owned, but a sensible ceramic one) and made tea. And when Bella cautiously but politely sipped from the cup, it tasted nothing like what Mother made.

"See, Bella?" exclaimed Andy with her bright eyes and wide smile. "Tea doesn't have to taste mean!"

And she was right. Gone were the biting daggers Bella had come to expect, poking and scalding her tongue. Instead, the taste of chamomile and honey, sweet and smooth, soothed her throat. And something about it didn't taste right.

"Who taught you this?" she asked slowly, venom dripping from her words.

Andy, too excited about her discovery, didn't seem to notice. "My friend Ted! He shows me things from his home all the time! Did you know Muggles have these writing utensils called pencils, and you can erase your mistakes with them? And they have this wonderful thing called film, and if you go to a cinema it'll tell you a story! And the tea! Ted says his mum makes it better than him, but I don't see how that's possible, and —"

"This friend of yours," Bellatrix sneered, anger radiating off her, is a Mudblood?"

Andy hesitated. "Well, I talked about it with Ted, and he reckons he prefers the term 'Muggle-born.'"

Bella hit the counter with such force that the tea spilled and the remaining House Elves ran for cover. "How can you do this, Andy?" she hissed. "To Mother and Father, our family! Think of what people will say!"

Andy, timidly, began drawing circles in the ground with her foot. "Do you ever wonder," she began, "if Mother and Father might be wrong? About all of this, this blood purity" — Andy wrinkled her nose — "and 'Muggle-borns are lesser' thing?"

And Bellatrix, briefly, wondered what she'd done wrong, how possibly her sister had found it within herself to sympathize with the ant instead of introducing him to the boot. But she looked at her sister, with her bright eyes and (once) wide smile and thought, anything that makes Andy this happy can't be bad. Even . . . war generals must understand the other side before defeating it.

So she said nothing and stalked away. And when she saw her little sister, so obviously corrupted, and laughing with a boy in yellow-trimmed robes, she said nothing. And when she saw, years later, them kissing in a long-abandoned corridor, she said nothing and walked past, head held high and hands shaking, ever so slightly.

It was malicious little Lucius Malfoy who ratted them out. He'd been ogling at Andy's gentle beauty for years, made petulant from his numerous rebuffed advances, and really, it was only a matter of time before the truth was revealed.

Andy thought it was her.

"You just couldn't leave well enough alone, could you, Bella? Couldn't stand the thought of your little sister, happy with a Muggle-born! Well, guess what? I am!"

"You're not my sister," sniffed Bella haughtily, just as she'd always been taught. "You haven't been for a very long time."

And it was true. If Bellatrix hadn't had reason enough to despise Mudbloods before, one had stolen her sister.

That summer, Bellatrix watched Andromeda Black get snubbed off the family tree, and she mourned the girl she'd taught everything. The girl who would always trip in Mother's high heeled shoes and would sometimes (all the time) slop bitter tea down her chin, that was her sister, and she was well and truly dead.

But appearances were more important than reality, she'd grown up knowing, so that September she went back to Hogwarts and denied ever being related to Andromeda. She could finally fit Mother's sweeping gowns and she wore them proud, under her silver and green robes, all sharp angles and deadly glares and undeniable beauty. She let handsome Rodolphus Lestrange hold her hand in the corridors because he was a good, pureblood young man, and that mattered more than anything, and she hexed Mudbloods a little meaner than before, a little more permanent. She cast Unforgivables like her father always threatened, and she meant them.

Bellatrix graduated Hogwarts and got home to find a man, a revolutionary, in her parlor that claimed to be able and willing to change their world, to finally rid them of their Mudblood problem, and she thought, here's a man who knows what he's doing, so she shook his hand firmly and introduced herself.

She'd marry Rodolphus and fall in love with this man who called himself Lord Voldemort, because appearances are important but power and approval mean love, and that's what her Lord offered. She'd see her baby sister marry that Lucius Malfoy in a very loveless union because Cissy knew just as well how to survive. She'd take the Dark Mark, feel it burn into her skin and think, this is what power feels like, and she relished it. (Cissy never took the Dark Mark because she knew how to survive.)

She'd hear rumors about a woman named Andromeda Tonks and a baby named Nymphadora and she'd snarl and find a stupid little Mudblood to suffer.

She'd remain dedicated to her Lord long after everyone else had died or turned their backs (including cowardly Malfoy), and she did everything she could to bring him back because that's what you do for the people you love, and she loved him beyond all else. She'd spend fifteen long years in a cell for that love, and she escaped a little less sane and a lot less beautiful. (Imprisoned in Azkaban, she wasn't faced with the memories of the horrible things she'd done. No, instead she relived her sister's betrayal, because that was the thing she truly regretted.)

She'd serve her Lord to the day she died, and she'd never look back. She'd die defending herself and her Lord, his last and most loyal follower, and Molly Weasley would kill her because she understood that obsession was not love and that family was worth everything (Bellatrix had not loved her family for a very long time).

She'd die with many, many notches on that old crooked wand of hers, of things she'd done and, worse, enjoyed. She thought herself a success, a pride to the family, for living up to everything Mother and Father had taught her, for being just as dangerous as they'd made her.

This is no fairytale, and Bellatrix no hero. There is no happy ending, only a deserved one. But Bellatrix was never one to question the things she'd grown up knowing, and so she'd die with her ketchup unshaken.

I hope she got a chance for redemption, even in death. I hope Ted Tonks took her under his wing and reformed her, that he introduced her to his lovely half-blood daughter who hated her name and was clumsy just like Andy, and I hope they changed her mind about things. I hope, by the time Andy finally joined them, Bella was waiting with open arms and two mugs of sweet tea. I hope she finally understood that love was not a synonym but a language all its own, that she loved her sisters and grew to love the niece she'd killed but never known. I hope she apologized, one day, to Frank and Alice Longbottom, who'd regain their sanity in death, and that she'd trade in her mother's daunting, sweeping robes for a hand-knit jumper. I hope, one day, that she thanked Hermione Granger for undoing her work, and that she finally, finally forgave herself.