Disclaimer: This disclaimer joke stopped being funny several chapters ago. I bear no responsibility for my inability to write well. J. K. Rowling bears responsibility for creating such an engaging world that I write about it anyway. It's all your fault for encouraging fanfiction, Jo. (If you're reading this, although I'd be very surprised if you were, I would like to take this time to announce that you are utterly and completely brilliant, and my plotting is far too slipshod and my prose far too purple for me to ever be able to equal you. In fact, I worship you. Why do you THINK I'm wearing this outrageous habit? Ten points to anyone who gets the "joke".)
A/N: Ladles, jellyspoons, and Ronald Bilius Weasley, I apologize for the hiatus. Don't talk to ME about road trips, Internet withdrawal, bad hotel food, getting damn sick of Pizza Hut, entire towns that smell strongly of manure, and/or ensuing writer's block.
We now return to our regularly scheduled carnage.
I would like to thank tarak795 for inspiration for this chapter. No pigeons were harmed in the writing of this chapter, although my dear sweet mum was rather unsettled.
I would also like to call your attention to the fact that the rating is now M. (For new readers or the inattentive, the rating was originally T.) Frankly, this stuff is starting to disturb ME a little, so I figured it was warranted.
The Story So Far: Bellatrix, after a week at Hogwarts with everything going swimmingly, writes home to Narcissa to inform her that nothing much has happened. This is while Rodolphus has convinced himself that he's in love with her, Umbridge has gotten her into detention, and the other Slytherins are all quite scared of her. Yeah...She is forced to put up with Rodolphus being a boring conversationalist while she mails the letter, and relieves some stress by torturing a pigeon. Everything is going fine. Dun-dun-dun-DUUUUUUN.
In This Chapter: A pigeon dies, by popular request. Bellatrix contemplates mortality. A bad plan is made and executed, and then becomes a plot point. The other Slytherins show up again. Bellatrix has normal human social interaction thrust upon her. The first story arc plotted out in advance starts to get going.
Warnings: Pigeon death. Purple prose. Mild swearing in the A/N. (The reason I didn't mention this before is that I am vicious and sadistic. For further proof, observe that this fanfiction is about BELLATRIX (expletive) LESTRANGE.) Repeated use of a Wizarding racial slur. Squicky violence. (Skip the first bit if it makes you feel better.) Slytherite not being funny in the A/N. (The horror!)
It was an art, wasn't it? Almost a science? Doing what she did? The bloodstains, they splattered in such a messy, uncontrolled way as the pigeon thrashed and writhed, as it tried to delay what was so right, so inevitable...did pigeons have minds? Did they weep at the inevitable tragedy of death, all that is born must die, sob sob? Did they understand her intentions, read something from her eyes and the twist in her smile and the cast of her face that terrified them and let them know just what was in store for them? And did their brothers and sisters and children remember, did they, did they revile her and fear her and warn their children against her, or were they too stupid? But they felt pain. She was sure they felt pain. Pain, polished and raw, hot and cold, so overwhelming that you'd go numb trying to process it all, consuming the spirit, bringing the mind to the fever pitch of insanity, and then she blew them apart and sometimes they stayed alive for a few more seconds and suffered horribly. Oh well. They were pigeons, after all, weren't they? Who cared about a pigeon but the pigeons themselves? She couldn't tell them apart, maybe they were all the same one, putting itself back together when she was gone and following her and getting itself killed again. Maybe they knew how worthless they were and death was some sort of mercy to them.
"Pretty." They had opened it up. It hadn't quite died yet, and everything was still working. Pumping and bulging and wobbling. It made Bellatrix sick to watch it, blood was fine, beautiful, even, but this was different, repulsive, filthy, she didn't want to look at it. A machine made of flesh. Base, animal, gory. Was that what humans looked like inside, were they even half so revolting? Even her...? If she pricked her finger, she would bleed, when she put her fingers against her wrist she could feel bone and muscle and pumping blood. When she died her body would putrefy and stink and dissolve in the most hideous way possible. Even the purebloods didn't last, she had seen her grandmother Lucretia Rosier when they put her in the ground. A rotting corpse, that was all that was left of her, wasn't it? Dead, filthy, disgusting. And she had been so beautiful, she had been like Bellatrix, pureblooded and powerful and beautiful as well. Death made monstrosities of all, it dragged you down to the level of the Mudbloods, there was nothing good about a corpse. And how could Lestrange possibly find the filth and gore of even a living body beautiful? If he opened up Paternoster the Mudblood, would that be beautiful too?
"Oh, you're disgusting, Lestrange, I can't stand to touch you." He glared at her. It was a new thing, having him annoyed with her, not furious, not raging like a madman, just annoyed. Almost as if he had begun to dislike her when she let her hair down a little. She had been so cold and dismissive to him, and he had been fascinated by her, and now she grated across his nerves. How ironic. Charming, in a way, or at least amusing. And if he hit her, that would be even better...he didn't hit her, he wouldn't, she hadn't cut deeply enough yet. And now she didn't have time, her energies were better focused on the pigeon, before it quietly slipped away and died without too much fuss. He did know what he was doing in that respect, at least. Both of them had blood on their hands, sticky and dark red, blood up to their wrists. Bloody red dabs on their wands and on the sleeves of their robes, smearing everywhere, probably it would give them both away and sell them into the hands of Dumbledore himself. Her family knew, anyway, they had seen the smears of blood on the cobblestones, all that was ever left except maybe a few feathers. And Lestrange's family probably knew, you could try to hide it all you liked but sooner or later someone would find a red stain on your robes, the mark of a killer, a torturer, and inevitably...a Dark wizard. Oh, but she wasn't one, not yet, not a Dark witch yet, she hadn't studied enough, hadn't learned enough, that was why she was here, to study what old Dumbledore hated the most right under his nose, she didn't know the Dark Arts yet. But she would. And for the moment...the title "pigeon killer" would suffice. Would the other Slytherin girls understand? Gossipy, brassy Rita and beautiful, idiotic, cutthroat Juliet and tetchy Evelyn and her dear little Agatha? Would they understand? What about Avery and Wilkes and Rosier and the one she didn't know? Would Rosier, for instance, understand what she did and why?
No doubt the others wouldn't either. It was the sort of thing, wasn't it, that could be so hard to explain in polite society, a secret little vice that was only spoken of indirectly or wordlessly, by your relatives, as some sort of proof that you were soft in the head. But Lestrange understood, and she understood. She understood the feeling, the way the blood rushed through your veins and brought you to the top of the world, where they all crawled on their knees and begged for mercy, and you were vicious and petty enough not to give it to them, and they all died horribly in some sort of regrettable tragedy. The need for it, the anger and the disgust and the lust to command. And she had a natural gift for destroying things...for taking a perfectly good pigeon and reducing it to a smear of blood...for breaking the minds of people like Abby Paternoster. And Paternoster was, after all, in her mind, just a pigeon...
Lestrange backed off a little, moving away, lowering his wand, to let his dear Bella have the final shot. And she did, of course, she had been doing it for years. Her head was pounding, there was red behind her eyes. She held her wand oh so carefully and took aim, letting her whole mind flow into that little red-gray body. She couldn't really control it, not when it got this far, it was the magic flowing out on its own now, almost like a random childhood spell, but it did what she wanted it to do...Splat. There was nothing much left of it now, feathers that would blend in with the feathers of the owls, a puddle of blood that could easily have some more feathers shoved over it, a few blood spatters on the owls, nothing anyone would notice. She turned to Lestrange.
"Go ahead, what are you waiting for, do something to hide it! Or do you want us both to be caught?" The urgency in her tone was a put-on, a sham, she wasn't worried at all, but she did want to see him panic. Except, of course, that he didn't panic, almost out of spite, she thought. No, he just swept a few feathers over it, and the blood soaked through them at once.
She hadn't thought this out very much.
"What? What are you doing? Do something!" Lestrange just looked at her blankly.
"This is something." Some little part of her mind was so grateful that she didn't know how to kill a human.
"Something better, perhaps, if you think you can?" She was so ANGRY all of a sudden, she didn't deserve to be caught because of something so stupid. An idea was starting to take shape in her mind.
"Like what?"
"Shut up, be quiet, I think I know..." It was a bad idea, of course, but what else was there to do? First, she piled as many feathers over the bloodstain as she could find, gray and brown and white, forming a little heap. A few spots of blood still soaked through, but not as many. Then she knelt on the ground and began to look. Feathers...feathers...sweeping them all aside. It was filthy work, the feathers were getting smeared with the blood from her hands and her fingers were getting smeared with...she wasn't going to think about that. Finding the rat bones was almost a relief, shoving them randomly at the bloodstain, twisting the feathers into something that might look plausible as a kill site if you knew absolutely nothing about owls...maybe some owl had been sick and its pellets had been bloody. Yes. That would have to do. She wiped off her hand on her robes, inside her sleeve where it might not show, and then she grabbed Lestrange's shoulder and they ran for it.
He was out of breath when they got back to the Slytherin common room, he was panting, red-faced, even though they had slowed down once they were well away from the Owlery. They must be such a strange sight, she was still gripping his shoulder tightly and breathing just a little harder than she should...All of the other first years were sitting there, staring at them, as well as who knew how many other assorted Slytherins. Avery was there, putting the last touches on his essay, folded over the parchment with such a serious expression on his thin face. Rosier and Wilkes, oh, they went everywhere together, were playing chess (Wilkes was winning). Evelyn was slumped in one of the chairs, her cute little niece Agatha perched on her lap, chattering away happily with Juliet the half-blooded twit. And Rita was...where? Bellatrix's eyes flickered around the room, but Rita was gone, absent, doing whatever she did. Good riddance, too, she could be such an annoyance. There was no one else there that Bellatrix knew...she hadn't made a point of getting to know anyone, what was the point, really?
Maybe Narcissa would have, or Mother dear, or Uncle Orion Dearest Dolt. But no, she knew eight of the ten first years, nine counting herself, of course, toad-faced Umbridge, who she had seen occasionally since the first night, Paternoster the Hufflepuff, who she had seen several times a day, with Paternoster always worse off for the encounter, and a few others by sight, but the fifth year in the corner, for instance, could have been from Mars for all she knew or cared. People annoyed her. Stupid, stupid, stupid, all of them were, all that they were, meaningless words and trite friendships and no brains whatsoever. The way ninety percent of the upper class had been for a hundred years. But the other ten percent changed things.
There was a second year sitting in the chair she wanted, closest to the fire. A look proved insufficient to dislodge him. Grabbing his arm and pulling, struggling, and kicking, however, proved quite sufficient. It was a good chair, still warm from his touch, soft and comfortable yet high-backed and straight enough for her to look dignified. Almost more a throne than a chair. She was the queen, looking out over her pathetic subjects, who dropped to their knees and groveled before her. Too bad things didn't work that way in real life. You could get little worms like Paternoster to respect you without effort, but surrounded by those of equal birth, respect had to be earned... She glared at her fellow Slytherins. Agatha gave her a heartbreakingly CUTE smile back. Hard to believe the girl was eleven. The others all avoided her gaze. As if they were embarrassed to look, as if they respected her or feared her or knew something about her. Or knew something. What was there that they could possibly know? She was being stupid...Like Narcissa...
Agatha broke the awkward little silence, looking straight at Bellatrix, then away, then back again from the corner of her eye, as if she was nervous about something.
"Miss Black? What have you been doing, Miss Black? I'm sorry if I'm intruding, but I haven't seen you all morning and I was worried..." She trailed off, looking embarrassed. Was she faking? No, she wasn't, she was like Narcissa, with everything that implied.
"Detention. I've been in detention. Do you know what that is, Agatha dear? It's when you--" Rosier snickered, covering his mouth with his hand in an affected way. Wilkes kicked him under the table. Agatha, meanwhile, was nodding seriously.
"Yes, I think I do know, but thank you for being nice enough to tell me, Miss Black." Nice? Agatha thought she was being NICE? Was the girl stupid, or just deluded beyond comprehension?
"She isn't being nice, Aggie, not that YOU need telling," Evelyn said, topping her world-weary tone off with an eye-roll. Bellatrix wondered what she was talking about. Agatha was an innocent, wasn't she? "You know," Evelyn added, speaking now to the room in general, "detention might be good for her. Someone should teach her that other people don't play nice." Nobody spoke for a minute, perhaps contemplating whether they would 'play nice' or not.
"Wow, YOU sound like a Slytherin," someone in a dark corner of the room commented, to general consternation.
"Sound like a Slytherin? She IS a Slytherin, you dope! So are you!"
"Yeah, well, most of us don't have our heads up our--"
"That's enough." Bellatrix's hand clenched on her wand. The voice, everyone knew that voice. The door to the seventh year girls's dormitory, near the end of the room, had opened while nobody was looking, and Umbridge was strolling down the room to meet them, Rita Skeeter walking a few paces behind her looking supremely self-satisfied. Bellatrix could feel all eyes on her...what was going on? Had something happened that they hadn't told her about? Oh, yes, this was Slytherin, they'd probably set her up...
Umbridge walked over to a sixth year girl and smiled unpleasantly. It was the sort of smile Bellatrix couldn't help but admire for its effect on people. The poor unfortunate girl went white. "Dolores, I swear, I didn't do anything! I swear--" Umbridge's smile brightened. Bellatrix longed to hit her, to jinx her...the revulsion she inspired was that strong.
"Precisely. Professor Turkle has asked me to inform you that you have detention with her in five minutes. Apparently you have not done your homework in a month. Tut tut. Oh well, we cannot all be academic achievers, can we? However, our kind professors do expect us to pass our classes." She waved a hand dismissively. The girl's face contorted.
"That's not fair! Turkle's an old hag, she only likes her grandchildren anyway! I heard from Evaric she told that Findlay kid that if he signs up for her class in third year, she'll give him perfect grades no matter what! Is that fair, I ask you? Is that--"
"If you had spent less time gossiping, you might well be passing Professor Turkle's class. You may very well be late for your detention now, so I would advise you to resume the matter later. Goodbye now." The girl scampered off, the blood rushing to her face turning it a nice shade of crimson. Umbridge shrugged, giggled in a way that grated across all of Bellatrix's senses, and began circling the Slytherins, making soft comments to a few of them, merely smiling at the others. It took less than a minute for her to reach Bellatrix's fellow first years, who were sitting more or less near each other.
"Sit up straight, Jonathan." She tugged sharply on Avery's collar, and he jerked up. "Please don't glare at me in that unbecoming fashion, Edmund. The same goes for you, Evelyn." Wilkes and Evelyn muttered apologies. "Rodolphus, you have something red on your hand, your hair looks as if it has not been brushed for a week," (Bellatrix suspected that it hadn't been.) "and your posture is a disgrace. You really ought to do something about that. And Bellatrix..." All eyes turned to Bellatrix again.
This was it, wasn't it? Umbridge had something against Bellatrix, didn't she? Ever since Bellatrix had insulted her in front of the rest of the first years? Oh, she had a gift for attracting attention, some sort of natural charisma. Sometimes it worked against her. Actually, it worked against her most of the time...call it a personality that would not stay in the background, a desire for respect, for prominence, disdain for those above her. Whatever you wished to call it. It had still gotten her into trouble. Was the blood on her sleeve visible at all? She didn't dare risk a glance.
"What do you want?" A girl near Bellatrix hissed, "were you brought up by PIGS?" Umbridge glared at them both.
"I wanted to talk to you...alone. Please don't make me reconsider." So she had attracted some high-flown attention after all, unless Umbridge planned to do this with all ten first years...She followed Umbridge out of the room, through a maze of corridors, and finally into a little alcove with two benches and a fountain. What a lovely little place in which, no doubt, to be yelled at. Merlin.
A/N: Dun-dun-dun-DUUUUUN! Or something.
...I guess the moral of the story is, "do not make Dolores Umbridge mad or you will live to regret it"? Actually, Bellatrix has a talent for making people hate her. Which is, on the whole, not undeserved.
Professor Turkle and her dear grandson Findlay may well return in the future.
Next Chapter: Umbridge Says Stuff! And Does Stuff! Aren't You Excited?!
And now...I shall answer the reviews. Dun-dun-dun-duuuuun. Or something. Or not.
Lioness-of-Tortall-7: Incest scares me rather a lot. Which is largely why I put it in. In my mind, the Lestranges are kind of the creepy weirdos of Wizarding high society. Not surprising, really, considering that they were willing to let Rodolphus marry dear Bella. Possibly only because Rabastan was a boy, though. (hands you brain bleach) Heheheh.
Sienna Rhiannon Chase: Please don't kill me for describing the pigeon's death in glowing purple prose. It died a noble death, so that the readers could read about it and rejoice. Or be sick. Depends.
Pet monkeys: Thank you. I like compliments. Compliments make me happy. Abby Paternoster apparently makes readers very happy. She was originally going to return in this chapter, but then I decided that what I had planned for this chapter was stupid and put in something else. Probably the original scene will pop up later on, very thinly disguised, in order to prevent me from actually having to think of more plot. I am a twisted and insidious person.
tarak795: Well, I can draw stick figures. Just kidding, I can draw more than that. Although not MUCH more. I tried illustrating Act Five two weeks ago, but, to put it bluntly, it sucked.
Review. Or...something. Stuff...ness.
