For fear of facing yet another lawsuit, I must inform you that I do not own the Harry Potter series, after which I can inform you of the next significant lesson of Harry and Bellatrix. This time, he was attemtping to learn the Killing Curse, but to no avail.
"No, no, you're making the most common mistake," Bellatrix said, grabbing Harry's wand arm and repositioning it. "Stop aiming at the victim."
Harry made a sarcastic face. "Well, then, how am I supposed to hit him?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at the 'victim', a wax dummy. He was grateful that it looked like a familiar Death Eater, for he was half expecting Bellatrix to have him aim curses at a replica of Remus Lupin.
"Aim through the victim," she corrected. Harry was surprised by how much her instructions sounded like playing tennis. "Try again."
"Avada kedavra!" Harry shouted, flinging feeble sparks of magic at the dummy. Bellatrix shook her head. Time and time again, she'd told him, you have to mean them. As one may imagine, aiming curses at a wax figure who posed no threat was significantly different from trying to kill real, live Death Eaters, and Harry was having trouble imagining one in the place of the other. "What's my motivation?" he asked.
"Augustus Rookwood," Bellatrix said, pointing at the dummy. "You'll miss at first, but don't worry, you've got to get the wand motion right before you can start killing things. Right now, you're a bit rigid, it looks like you're trying to Stun," she continued.
If Stunning had been mentioned by anyone other than Bellatrix, Harry would have been fine, but coming from her, it was a bitter reminder. Unable to hold back the words, he said quietly, "That's how you killed him." He regretted saying it the moment it had come out. Hearing it, even from himself, made his eyes well with tears, and as he tried to blink them back, he felt a hand on his shoulder.
"I'm sorry," Bellatrix said flatly, "It was an accident. It's awful, I wish we could have reconciled--maybe then, it wouldn't have ended that way--"
Harry was no longer listening, having stopped at 'accident'. "You could have Stunned him anywhere but in front of a mysterious...thing...right in the Department of Mysteries," he began, in a low voice at first, then transitioning into shouts as his voice trembled with anger. "So, it was all an accident? Why won't you take responsibility for your actions?"
"Harry, please! I'm trying, I just haven't come to terms with--"
"Yourself?" he asked. If she was going to start crying, she held it in well.
"I never wanted Sirius to die," Bellatrix slowly choked out.
"Well, he did," Harry spat, turning around. Bellatrix was uncharacteristically quiet. Moments passed, and she still had no retort. When he turned around to face her again, her wrist was twinging, sending a shudder up her arm, through her chest, and into her neck.
"I have to go," she whispered. "He's calling..." Harry siezed Bellatrix by the shoulders in a desperate attempt to shake her into realization, forgetting all of his previous hot-headed anger. As it dawned on him just who was calling her, he cringed in horror: if she went back to Voldemort's side, she could reveal Harry's weaknesses, whereabouts...everything. But why would she choose that path after all the help she'd offered him?
"Bella, snap out of it!" he called to her as if signaling someone in the distance. She smiled with twisted ecstasy.
"I have to go back," she droned. "It's an addiction...the power..."
"Whatever happened to world conquest?" Harry asked in a desperate attempt to bring her back to her original state of near sanity.
"Feeble childhood dreams as compared to the rewards...I'm his most loyal...most faithful...I have to...I'm trying, My Lord..."
There is a deep, dreadful sort of fear that one may feel once or perhaps twice in a lifetime, when the person in question becomes a victim of painful or menacing circumstances he or she can do little or nothing about. You may feel this way if you have woken up on a Muggle surgery table while undergoing an organ transplant, become trapped in a sinking vehicle, or, like Harry, if a poential love interest of yours has had the sudden urgge to make an escape to rush to the side of your arch nemasis. Unable to think of a better temporary solution, Harry continued to shake her back and forth, but she was squirming out of his grasp. Seeing only one option, he drew his wand, and declared out of sheer and utter desperation, "Crucio!" Nothing. Mean it, Harry, he told himself. But how?
Easily. Despite this resolution, he had to force the anger and hatred into himself, ignoring the pity he felt for Bellatrix. This was, after all, a one-dimensional curse, so he tried to see her through the eyes of a one-dimensional man: a cold traitor was all she was in this view, an enemy, the killer of Sirius Black... "Crucio!" This time, she fell to the ground, writhing and screaming. Harry dared not lift the curse and let her Apparate. As if this was not difficult enough, the phone rang seconds later. He craned his neck no keep a clear view of Bellatrix as he picked up the phone, delighted to hear Hermione's voice on the other end, even though she sounded urgent.
"Harry, Dumbledore wants to see you at Hogwarts," she said. "It's odd, because school doesn't start for a few weeks--"
"Hermione! I'm glad you called," he said, as warmly as he could in the tense situation.
"Dumbledore wants to see you," Hermione repeated.
"Stupefy!" Harry shouted across the corridor at Bellatrix, rendering her unconcious, as his Cruciatus Curse had worn off. Regret washed over him as he realized he could have just Stunned her in the first place, sparing her the pain of torture. What about Bella? he asked himself, having no intentions of leaving her unattended during her relapse. "Hermione, can you come over and look after Bellatrix?" he asked into the phone.
"Oh, for the love of--she's still in your house?" Hermione screamed. "Do you think you can just leave her?"
"No, I think she's trying to get back to Vold--" Herry tried to explain. Hermione gasped loudly. "Please, Hermione, just Stun her, keep her unconcious, and don't let her escape!" Harry pleaded. The dial tone rang through his ears; Hermione had hung up. "Bella," he whispered desperately into the air. "I thought you'd changed." He said this with honesty, for of the many things she was: cruel, impatient, addicted to torture--Harry hadn't counted being a Death Eater ever since she'd admitted deserting under the influence of Veritaserum.
"No one...no one stops being a Death Eater," she rasped, barely holding on to conciousness. Where had he heard this before?
Sirius.
The door to 12 Grimmauld Place swung open, a flustered Hermione slamming in shut once she was inside. "MUDBLOODS!" screamed the portrait of Mrs. Black. "CREATURES OF FILTH! EMBODIMENT OF SHAME!"
"Mudblood," Bellatrix whispered hoarsely.
"Don't say that," Harry ordered. Bellatrix remained silent as Hermione rushed to Harry's side, her bushy hair uncombed, having come in a rush. Harry nodded with gratitude and turned to leave, when he heard a faint tinkling of glass on the ground. Bellatrix had rolled a small vial full of a misty, silvery substance across the floor, and it colloded with Harry's shoe before he left. He lifted it with curiosity and pocketed it, looking towards Bellatrix for an explanation.
"I want to change," she admitted, "And I don't. I thought I could...Harry, if I lose myself, look at the memory..." Harry nodded, picking up his broomstick and heading out. "Help me. I don't want to hurt anymore. Keep me here, you Mud--" Remembering Harry's command, Bellatrix stopped mid-word.
"Harry, I'd hoped to give you private lessons this year. I tried to retrieve you at your aunt and uncle's house, but you weren't there. The last I heard, you were brooding alone in Grimmauld Place." Harry's eyes darted around, from an empty portrait on the wall to where Fawkes the Phoenix perched. He was glad to be back at Hogwarts, but speaking to his headmaster made him nervous. "Is there any specific reason I've had to relocate the Order?"
"I just needed to see to some things," Harry explained, though it wasn't much of an explanation. He reminded himself a little of Bellatrix, the day she'd broken in, with her crypticism. The only difference was that Harry hadn't greeted Dumbledore with a Crucio in the face. "I'm already taking lessons, thanks, I'll consider it," he continued, trying to distance himself from Dumbledore, who more likely than not wouldn't approve of him learning the Dark Arts from an escaped convict. "It was nice talking to you, Professor, but if lessons are the only thing in question, I think it's time I left."
"Harry," Dumbledore said, gesturing for him to stay. "You've never been a very good Occlumens. What exactly are you hiding?"
Oh, shit! Hary thought. Clear your mind, clear your mind, don't think, nothing, nothing, nothingnothingnothing... Still, his thoughts strayed to Bellatrix, her relapse, her memory in his pocket. Stop thinking! he commanded himself. Her beauty, her laughter, the threat she posed with a wand...
"Harry, I'd really rather you tell me." Harry's features were blank in his unsuccesful tries at clearing his mind. He clenched his wand within his pocket and stood up to leave, determined to keep his thoughts private. "Legili--"
"Cruci--"
"Expelliarmus!" shouted a panicked female voice, cutting across Harry's reckless spell. Nymphadora Tonks's ehes were wide and frightful, her breathing unstable as if she'd just witnessed murder. "Harry, what on Earth were you thinking?"
Good question, he asked the mousy-haired girl inside his own head. What was he thinking? He'd been trying to think of nothing, but his mind had actually been occupied with an involuntary surge of anger. Trying to find an answer to Tonks's question, he became stiff with dread, wondering if he had taken a bit of Bellatrix and Sirius's inside joke with him. No...I'm not a torture maniac, he repeated over and over in his mind. "I have no earthly idea," he insisted, "It was just about to slip out!"
"Bollocks!" Tonks shouted, kicking him in the seat of his pants out of Dumbledore's office, shocked and offended that he would sink so low as to perform an Unforgivable Curse. "Get out!"
Remembering Bellatrix's memory in his pocket, Harry struggled, as one might while falling down a spiral staircase, to say, "Wait! Professor, can I borrow your--"
"Forget it! Stay away from him!" Tonks shouted as Harry tumbled down the last few steps.
"Tonks! You're being irrational! You haven't even let him answer!" Harry called, but Tonks had already slammed the door. He shook his head in disapproval of himself. Had he really changed that much over the summer? Had he really nearly tortured his headmaster? For now, his questions remained unanswered, because he needed to find a place to view Bellatrix's memory, which she'd made seem so important just hours ago. Great, he thought, I've gone and gotten myself kicked out of Dumbledore's office, and now I need-- after passing the word in his mind, he nodded in agreement with himself--he knew a place where he could view the memory, a place that would answer any of his needs...
I need a place to view Bellatrix's memory, Harry told the Room of Requirement, pacing up and down the hall. I need a Pensieve, obviously...and it should probably be Unplottable and made so that no one can get in... The doors appeared and Harry strode trhough them, examining his surroundings with satisfaction. A Pensieve stood in the middle of the room, just as he'd asked, and newspapers were strewn on the floor. He hadn't realized he'd needed it, but it was a comfort to see Bellatrix's face staring out at him from several of these papers, her features arranged into a confident smile from behind wisps of wavy hair, even though the headlines declared a ten-thousand Galleon price on her head. Well, here goes...
He unpocketed the memory and poured it into the Pensieve, following it in, falling, falling into a dark pit until he faced a slab of rock. Standing before the rock was a young and nervous Bellatrix, perhaps sixteen years of age, and a slightly less snakelike Voldemort, Bellatrix's hand bleeding at a dangerous rate. Voldemort nodded as she pressed her hand to the wall of rock, causing it to open. Bellatrix said nothing as Voldemort led her into a boat, but she peered with disgust into the surface of a black and haunted-looking lake, vacant-eyed corpses peering back at her.
Stikk gawking, she stumbled out of the boat onto a small island after her master, looking uncertainly at a stone basin emitting a faint green glow. "You know what to do, Bella," Voldemort ordered, thrusting a goblet in her direction. She kept her face straight in an attempt not to look frightened, but as she dipped the goblet into a green potion in the basin, Harry could see her mouthing, oh shit!
The first goblet she drank made her gag, supressing cries of pain. Her expression was one of dread, as if she'd been forced to test this system before. She took a second goblet, which made her collapse to the floor. "Hell no!" she choked out, but her trembling hand reached to fill the cup again, for Voldemort was now holding her at wandpoint. Her breathing quickened, she winced in pain, and, at long last, she let out a chilling scream, closing her eyes tightly although it was obvious that she was seeing horrible images.
"Don't hurt me anymore," she pleaded, while Voldemort shoved more potion down her unwilling throat. She screamed once again, sloping a last goblet over herself, she fell over, eyes blank and dead looking. Voldemort ignored the muttering and protests of his Death Eater, taking a heavy gold locket out of the basin and looking upon it with satisfaction. He set it back down and siezed Bellatrix by the throat. She refused to meet his crimson gaze.
"Don't you think, Bella, that it would be a nice tough if the victim of this potion would need to drink water, thus invoking the wrath og the Inferi?" he asked coldly. She forced a nod, having no choice, and he Levatated her into the boat. Perhaps if he hadn't been so absorbed in observing the object in the basin, he would have heard her mutter a single word as Harry had as he looked onto her memory, unsure if she was still seeing visions or clinging to the name for comfort:
"Sirius."
Harry was thrust from the Pensieve, stopping to collect and repocket Bellatrix's memory, although he couldn't imagine why she might want it back. He crept from the school, preparing to fly back to Grimmauld Place, and hoped she hadn't been too destructive in Hermione's presence. He shuddered at the remains of the memory still lurking in his subconcious. If Bellatrix was a mystery before, she was now a psychological thriller.