Disclaimer: The ideas are mine, the characters belong to JK...
N.E.W.T. classes were hard.
Professor McGonagall was the first of their teachers to bring up the matter of non-verbal spells.
"I told you when you were in your very first lesson that Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you would be learning at Hogwarts. Now that you have reached the N.E.W.T. level, it bears repeating. The magic you will study will be more powerful and the consequences of your mistakes will be that much greater. From now on, we will delve into complex transformations and switches, conjuration spells, trans-species transformation and human transfiguration. You will attempt these spells if and when I decide you are ready. Anyone disobeying this order will leave my class never to return."
Her green eyes roved over the faces of each of the students as if she was daring them to make a sound. Nobody did as much as to look at each other.
"If you apply yourselves, however," the teacher added, holding her wand at a ready position, "the rewards will be that much greater."
With an almost musical gesture, the Transfiguration Professor conjured a beautiful water fountain that seemed to appear, as if out of thin air. The fountain was huge, almost as tall as the room itself, golden and beautifully decorated with intricate images of merpeople and other aquatic creatures. Before they had even had the time to take in the magnificence of the fountain, though, the students watched as the small objects in their desks – feathers, ink pots and pieces of parchment – were transformed into living fish of several colourful varieties, that proceeded to jump into the waters of the fountain almost as soon as they'd sprung into existence. The small objects then reappeared on top of the desks of their respective owners, along with plates of freshly baked cookies, all along the fish continued to swim and jump in the waters of the fountain.
A few of the students couldn't refrain from letting out "ahhs" and "oohs" of admiration. All of them looked forward to being able to do magic like that themselves.
Professor McGonagall then walked around the fountain, picked up one of the cookies at the table of a Gryffindor girl sitting at the front and took a bite. Then she used her wand to conjure a beautiful crystal glass filled with water and drank from it. She took a seat at the edge of the fountain and looked back at her class once again.
"You will have noticed that I did not need to use any words to produce these spells. Non-verbal magic is an essential element of advanced transfiguration. It enhances your connection to the source of your powers and allows each witch or wizard to tap into the magical energy of their minds. Do any of you have any questions?"
No hands were raised.
"Very well. Longbottom, distribute these to the class," she said, handing a box full of slugs to a Gryffindor girl at the far right of the class. "Each of you will be given a slug. Your task is to make the slug disappear, using the vanishing spells you mastered for your O.W.L.s except that this time you will do so without speaking."
One would have thought that the class would have been silent like never before, given the nature of their assignment, but the opposite ensued. As soon as the Longbottom girl finished distributing the molluscs around, the class became a cacophony of chairs scratching the floor, books being pushed aside and a plurality of whispers and frustrated interjections. Many students were simply whispering the incantations instead of saying the words aloud. Turpin kept poking her slug as if the gesture could have made any difference, and several students were pressing their lips tightly to avoid the temptation of speaking out loud. Bagman's slug kept falling over the edge of his desk – he pointed his wand futilely at it for so long with no results that the animal had time to slide through the entire length of the desk all the way to the other side.
Professor McGonagall walked between their desks, offering helpful advice here and there and admonishing students for speaking the incantations out loud.
Bellatrix found the task remarkably difficult. Evanesco, she kept repeating in her mind, trying not to become discouraged by the slugs lingering presence on the top of her desk. It was only a few minutes before their time was up that she finally managed to make the mollusc disappear, a feat that rendered her five points for Slytherin, even though the slimy trail left by the animal was still on her desk after the animal was gone.
"Well done, Black," Professor McGonagall offered the girl a rare smile. "That's enough for today. Your homework is to practice non-verbal vanishing spells during the week. Use invertebrate animals as it can be much harder to do with vertebrates. Additionally, you will read the second chapter of A Guide to Advanced Transfiguration and write a hundred and fifty centimetres on the theory behind non-verbal magic.
The class let out a collective moan in protest. They had never had that much homework in the first week before. Professor McGonagall pretended not to listen.
Bellatrix wasn't listening either. When the professor had given her those points for Slytherin, she felt that soft fluttering in her belly again, like a soap bubble gently landing on her skin. It took all her self-control not to take a hand to her abdomen then and there.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Over the course of the first two weeks, it became clear that Professor McGonagall wasn't the only one who expected them to study non-verbal magic. Charms and Defence Against the Dark Arts also started with non-verbal spells, and all of their classes seemed to have become significantly more difficult than ever before. If the sixth-year students had thought they were in for a calm period with no exams between their O.W.L.s and N.E.W.T.s, they were very much mistaken.
None of them grieved when they were told that the first Potion class of the year wouldn't take place until the third week of September, because one of the third-year students had spilt a corrosive draught in the dungeons and it would take Professor Slughorn and the caretaker's combined efforts for at least that long to make the room usable again.
The hardest part of the start of term for Bella, however, was dealing with the aftermath of the potion she'd taken.
She took the potion on Wednesday and spent the next day in bed. On Friday, shortly after the end of her first Transfiguration class, she started bleeding.
It wasn't much, just a few spots of blood on her underwear, and for a while, she wondered if the potion was having some kind of delayed effect after all, but an hour or two after the bleeding started she felt the baby moving again. On Saturday she didn't bleed at all, then on Sunday, it started again, this time along with some pain in her lower belly. The pain was distracting, more than anything else, and it made that much harder to take care of the mountain of homework she had to finish for the next week. The worst part of it all, however, was that it was intermittent. She was never sure of when the bleeding and pain would happen, which meant she often had to make excuses to run to the loo and check her clothes.
On the second Wednesday of the school year, she lay awake on her bed for a long time with a hand on her stomach, the dark-green-velvet curtains closed around her bed for privacy. The baby hadn't moved at all the whole day and Bella didn't know what that meant. The movement was so soft, it was possible she simply hadn't been paying attention. On the other hand, something might be truly wrong. She wanted to not have to deal with this anymore, but she didn't want to hurt the baby and she couldn't figure out how it was possible that she could be feeling all of those things at the same time. Her heart was racing and she felt a lump in her throat. What's wrong with me, she thought to herself, I want this to be over. I want this to be over, I want this to be over, she repeated in her head, her hand firmly placed on the protrusion of her belly.
It was nearly two in the morning when she felt that now-familiar flutter under her skin and was finally able to go to sleep.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
When Bellatrix woke up on the second Saturday of the year, she felt good. She was dreading the prospect of getting on a broomstick for Quidditch Practice at eight, but there was no getting out of it. Bella had already skipped the try-outs and the first practice session of the year and she was all out of excuses. She was worried but she did make her way to the field.
That first lap around the Quidditch pitch flying on her broomstick, however, made Bella feel better than she had ever felt since the first day of the school year. She didn't even mind so much when she discovered that the team's new keeper was Rabastan Lestrange, Rodolphus' younger brother.
Flying felt as natural to her as breathing. Bellatrix enjoyed the feeling of the wind in her hair and the way her broomstick responded to the slightest movements of her hands. She'd been afraid her… condition… would have robbed her of this as well, but no. Flying was the one thing that felt as good as it had ever felt. Since it was a practice session, Bella was wearing her regular uniforms, but now she would have to arrange Quidditch robes with slimming charms as well, she considered. She was so distracted by her own thoughts that she was almost hit by a bludger. In her effort to escape, however, she dropped the quaffle and missed the shot.
"Pay attention to the game, Black!" Elliot, the team's captain, admonished her. "Team, take five! Beaters with me."
She watched as the beaters flew towards the place where Elliot was so he could show them some of
his new strategies. She didn't even notice someone else was flying towards her.
"Hmm, Bellatrix? I wanted to talk to you-" Rabastan started.
"I have nothing to say to you, Lestrange," her voice sounded like ice cracking on the surface of a frozen lake.
"Please, let me-"
"Did your brother put you up to this?" She turned her broomstick to face the boy in such a fast movement that her body slid down the seat of her broom almost until she reached the metal attachments of the bipod. She looked like she might shoot sparks from her eyes. "Tell him to leave me alone."
Rabastan's eyes, however, had travelled from Bella to the seat of her broomstick and again to the girl's face.
"Ah, Bellatrix?"
"Don't call me that. I don't care what your brother told you, you do not get to call me by my first name."
"Rod and I—"
"Better yet: don't talk to me at all. Get back to the game, Lestrange."
"But you-you're bleeding," Rabastan whispered urgently, indicating the streak of blood that stained the seat of her broomstick.
One of the chasers flew by them with the speed of a bullet, sinking the quaffle into one of the baskets. Apparently, their short break was over. Elliott sounded exasperated.
"GET BACK TO THE GOALPOSTS LESTRANGE!"
Rabastan, however, wasn't listening. He noticed the way Bellatrix's eyes travelled from the stain in her broomstick to the other players flying about, and then to the people watching the practice session from the stands. There was no mistaking the fear that overpowered her. She hadn't noticed the blood until he pointed it out and now the girl seemed frozen, unable to speak, even to sneer at him again. He knew something was very wrong.
She starred at the red stain on her broomstick now, and Rabastan watched as the girl tried to slide to the front of her broomstick again in a clumsy effort to hide the blood underneath her. Halfway through, however, she seemed to remember that he was right there and she looked at the boy again, staring him in the eyes with emotions that he could not even begin to understand.
Emmett shouted his name again and Rabastan heard as the Captain made a large turn in the sky and started to fly towards them. He had to do something. He had no idea what was going on but judging from the way Bella's arms started to shake even as she held on to the handle of her broom, Rabastan knew no one else could see what he had seen. She needed his help.
Bellatrix didn't even realize what he was going to do until his broomstick had practically crushed against hers.
"WHAT DID YOU JUST DO?"
"GET OFF HER, LESTRANGE!"
"BELLA, ARE YOU OKAY?"
It happened quickly. One minute he was hovering a few feet away from Bellatrix, the next he was zig-zagging through the air, his broomstick charging against Bella's. Rabastan did not crash against her, but it looked like he did and by the end of it all, nobody could tell exactly how the boy had ended up dangling from his broomstick, holding on with only one hand.
"LESTRANGE?"
"I'M OKAY!" Rabastan shouted back, mustering all his strength to pull himself up and mount the broomstick again. Even after he managed that, the broomstick seemed to make a couple of swishing movements to buck him off. "I lost control of my broom," Rabastan explained, and he didn't need to shout because most of the team had gathered around him by them.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU LOST CONTROL? ARE YOU A FIRST-YEAR?"
Elliot didn't seem to be aware that there was no need to shout.
"You're covered in blood!" Stewart noticed.
"It's my nose," Rabastan said, cleaning up his nostrils with the sleeve of his rob and dying them with a long stripe of blood. The blood had dripped all over the front of his robs and his broomstick but it wasn't just that. Something had scratched the side of his face when he swung off his broom, and the cut was also bleeding.
"That's what we get for letting a baby into the team."
"Shut up, Flint!"
"I'm sorry, Black, I lost control of my broom. Did I hurt you?" Rabastan started, then he faked a horrified expression. "Oh, no, I got my blood all over you. Elliot, I think we should go to Madam Pomfrey."
"Go," Elliot said, resigned, "before you can do any more harm. You too Bella, better get that checked out. The rest of you, BACK TO PRACTICE"
"Come on," Rabastan whispered as soon as the rest of the team started to fly the other way, "we should get out of here."
"I can't go to Madam Pomfrey," Bellatrix retorted, and bit her lower lip almost as soon as she let the words out.
"Let's just get down."
Rabastan thought it best not to ask why was it that the girl couldn't see Madam Pomfrey. She was blissfully calm enough to get out of the field with him, and the boy intended to keep it that way.
"I'm sorry I got so much blood on you," he said, finding it difficult to stand the silence while they were approaching the locker rooms. "I used the hard edges of my glove but I didn't expect there to be so much—"
Bellatrix didn't say anything. In fact, she remained silent when they dismounted and when they walked side by side the short distance to the Slytherin locker room. She only spoke again when they got to the door and Rabastan walked in behind her.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"I just—I want to help."
"I don't need your help."
"But you're hurt!"
"I am not hurt! Go away! And if you tell anybody about this—"
"I could go get one of your sisters."
Bellatrix seemed to consider that for a moment.
"It's Saturday, Cissy is doing detention for not handing in some transfiguration assignment."
"I can get Andromeda."
"No, she doesn't— I don't even know where she is!"
"I can look!"
"No, I don't want Andromeda to see this!"
They looked at each other for a moment. It was the second time in just a few minutes that Rabastan had the impression that Bellatrix had said more than she wanted to say.
"I'm going to stay out here," he said quietly. "I'll make sure nobody else goes in."
Bellatrix stared him in the eye for a few seconds. She turned around and walked inside the locker room without another word.
"Scourgify," Rabastan whispered, pointing his wand at his own clothes and making a smooth sinuous motion. The blood vanished. The boy leaned back against the outer wall and slid down slowly until he was sitting on the ground. The door didn't face the pitch, so he couldn't watch to the end of his team's practice session, but that was okay. They thought he was at the infirmary anyway, and he had a lot on his mind.
It was blood he had seen on Bellatrix's broomstick. There was no doubt in his mind about that. But if she was hurt, why wouldn't she want to go see Madam Pomfrey, he wondered. Perhaps, Rabastan pondered, she was just embarrassed. It was possible that she had gotten hurt in a silly way trying to dodge a bludger or something, and didn't want everyone else to make a fuss about that. It was possible that she knew how to fix whatever it was that was wrong. Bellatrix was a N.E.W.T. level student, and everyone in school knew she was one of the best in her year. She probably knew exactly what type of spell or potion would make things better and she didn't need Madam Pomfrey.
Yes. It was entirely possible that Bellatrix knew exactly what was wrong, Rabastan thought.
But then why wouldn't she want me to call her sister, the boy wondered. He couldn't figure out a good answer to that.
Rodolphus should be there, he considered, but even as the thought occurred to him, he knew his brother would be the last person Bellatrix would want to see. Rabastan was not a little boy anymore.
He knew exactly what had happened when Bellatrix had visited his home last Easter, and he saw the way the two of them provoked each other when they were at school. He didn't blame Bella. He blamed his father. His father brought out the worst in Rodolphus. Rabastan wished Bellatrix could see that.
When Bellatrix finally left the locker room, her eyes met his for a moment.
"This never happened."
And before he could say anything, she walked away.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
That night Bellatrix decided to stay in the common room for a while, reading. She had continued to read Dorea's journals during the past few days. After the incident with the potion, there was nothing else that was particularly relevant to her present situation, but Dorea had been an interesting girl. President of the Hogwarts Potioneer's Society, Captain of the Quidditch team, twice decorated as the most improved student in the duelling club. Not to mention her unexpected knowledge of secret passageways to get out of the school to visit Hogsmeade and her many adventures with boys.
Bella had reached the point in her journals when Dorea was eighteen years old, in her final year at Hogwarts. She wrote much about her classes and the types of magic that excited her the most. She used to correspond with many of the great potioneers of her day and she attached the letters they sent her to the pages of her journal. At first, Bellatrix couldn't believe that people like Hector Dagworth-Granger would be that interested in the ideas of an eighteen-year-old girl, but there the letters were, and in them, the wizard discussed his plans for the Most Extraordinary Society of Potioneers with her teenaged great-aunt!
Bellatrix had just finished reading the most interesting entry about the time Dorea had gotten in trouble with bowtruckles in the forbidden forest when she turned the page and found nothing. The next page was blank. She was only halfway through this journal and she thought Dorea might have skipped a couple of pages by accident so she kept turning pages, but they were all blank. There was nothing more to read.
Bellatrix closed the small leather-bound book and look out the window, into the depths of Hogwarts' lake. She didn't have to try too hard to guess what had happened. That last entry had been written in June. The last month of Dorea's seventh year. Bellatrix knew from the family tapestry at aunt Walburga's place (not to mention the extensive lessons on her family's genealogy when she was little) that Dorea had gotten married shortly after that to a pureblood wizard named Charlus Potter. There were no more of her journals at her family's library. This was the last one.
That was it then, Bella's thought. Dorea had gotten married and stopped writing the chronicles of her life. In spite of everything that her aunt had told her when they last spoke, it seemed like upon getting married, Dorea had in fact ceased to be a Black. She had certainly disappeared from the family library, Bella thought.
Then the girl was overcome with an inexplicable feeling of grief. She remembered everything she had read about her great-aunt these past few days. She had gotten to know her, and care for her as one cares for a character in a favourite book. Like she was a close friend. She had been such an interesting person, she had accomplished so much in such a young age, and yet, when she got married, that person died. It was impossible not to grieve her loss.
Bellatrix remained in her chair a long time, struggling with those thoughts, trying not to think about how she was probably going that same way very soon. When she finally stood up to go to bed, she noticed that someone had been watching her, though.
Rabastan's eyes met hers for a fraction of a second before he turned around and ran to his own dorm.
A/N: This story has been Beta-Read by davros fan and TheOnlyCeeCeeJ.
This chapter is loooong overdue. I apologize. I will do my best to post the next one more promptly... I very much appreciate the reviews and a special thanks to M. who has been reviewing every chapter so far... it's really motivating and I appreciate it...
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