A/N in italics: I know that I''m never going to finish these, but you may like them. If you really want, you can finish one.
To start, a relatively recent but unfinished drabble collection.
"Bella, dear, you're cousin Sirius!" Clytemnestra waved Bellatrix over to see Walburga's new son.
The boy turned his face away unremarkably. "How cute," said Bella finally, realizing she couldn't insult the slobbering thing in front of its mother.
Andromeda and Narcissa soon appeared to coo over him in their little girlish way. Bella slipped off to rejoin her game of tag. What was the point of anything to young to look at you, let alone understand a word you said? Graham had already recruited Eddie Macmillan to replace Andromeda, so their game could go on as if uninterrupted.
"Not it!"
"Wingardium Leviosa," Bellatrix pronounced.
"Wingardium Leviosa," repeated Sirius, age ten.
"Good. Try the wand now."
"Twist and flick," he reminded himself. Then, using her wand, "Wingardium Leviosa!"
Cygnus's pilfered owl quill twitched, rose a fraction of an inch, then settled back down on the table.
"Good, Sirius!" said Bella, excited. Sensing his strong disposition, she'd always treated him with a little more respect than the absolute zero she usually gave someone his age. This display was proving her right.
He looked at her smugly, and she had to admit he had a reason to.
"Not so fast, kid. Again. Better."
"Hey, Bella!" Sirius caught her after Christmas dinner. "I practiced!"
He'd be something one day. Because she noticed him first, of course. "Really?"
"I got Mum's wand when she was asleep. I can do it right now. With small stuff, anyways."
She followed him into the empty library and handed him her wand, pointing to the quill on the table. Soon, there was a pile of things on top of the bookcase, including a cushion and a hardbound book.
Even though he got stuck on the globe, she gave him what he'd been fishing for all afternoon.
"Good job, Sirius."
Once, a few weeks after Bella left, a heavy, approximately square package came for Sirius, suspended between three brawny-looking school owls.
As Sirius is starting school next autumn, I though I'd pass these on.
Bellatrix
And then, snidely:
The very best the Hogwarts booklist has to offer.
"I expect you'll thank your cousin," said Orion. Ordinarily, he wouldn't approve of used books, but any influence his favourite niece could have on his son pleased him.
"I will!"
By the time he needed a wand, he found his father's set rather conspicuously on the hall table. Reducto was his first attempt.
By the next summer, he still couldn't use Reducto on anything more than a piece of kindling, but his Lumos lasted for five minutes and he was eagerly anticipating someone to try disarming. It was obvious that his parents knew what he did on the lawn, but they condoned it silently, thinking their son another in a long tradition of purebloods who flouted the ruled. His new favourite game was Imperio, which went something like Simon Says.
The next time he saw Bella, he tried disarming her. "Expelliarmus!"
She tripped backwards, just a little, then actually gave him a hug.
Dear Bella,
I got Gryffindor. Don't get mad please. It said I have to learn a lot about how to be in Gryffindor but I'm more brave than anything really and I asked for Slytherin twice.
Sirius Black
Bellatrix was not shocked. The hat told her the same thing, and it apparently wasn't giving the students a say any more.
You're fine, as long as you're sure never to learn the 'things' it's talking about. Cunning is overrated. I wish more people than you knew that. You have my books, so show the blood traitors what Blacks can do.
BB
"I hope, very dearly hope, that you have a reason for this." Bellatrix said.
"I, uh….sorry," said Sirius. Of all the people, it was his cousin whose good opinion he was most afraid of losing. And, unfortunately, it was hers that was most easily and permanently tarnished.
"Gryffindor I can understand. James Potter I can't. "
"He's just a friend from school."
"A blood traitors family. Never again." Her voice went from cold to vicious, and she Disapparated.
The next time Sirius saw James, James offered him a licorice and he punched him. He didn't explain why for seven years.
***
Lucius's first real exposure to Deatheatering. Written April of 2008.
Lucius sat slumped against the wall, watching the round, mirrored droplets of water dripping down onto his right foot, wondering foggily how he'd managed to get himself into something as idiotic as this. The greatest Dark wizard of the time had almost forgiven him for his disloyalty, but just as things were getting better he'd brilliantly allowed Potter to escape from the Department of Mysteries. A letter in which his wife was beginning to sound disturbingly like her half-crazed sister informed him that the Dark Lord was at that moment ordering his only son to kill Dumbledore in what was more likely a ploy for Draco's death and his father's drawn out agony than the Headmaster's actual defeat. Lucius was in Azkaban, his wife sounded like she was going to lose her mind, and his son was on the fast track to getting himself killed, all because of his incompetence.
That was what any faithful Death Eater would think--that his predicament was a result of his own dreadful folly. But Lucius was not a good Death Eater, not a subservient puppy dog existing for the Dark Lord's bidding. He knew that his greatest mistake was not failing to procure the prophecy, but volunteering to do it at all. Moreover, it was joining His service the first time, nearly a quarter century ago now, at the height of all his judgment-impaired stupidity.
He was eighteen. Eighteen and as brash, overconfident and vain as anyone who had ever lived to attest to his brashness, overconfidence and vanity. Rabastan Lestrange, the older brother of Rodolphus, his best mate, made the first connection of their age group. During his twenty third birthday party, Rabastan took his brother and Lucius aside, hustling them into a small storage room on the way to the maid's quarters. Stifling odours of moth balls, lye, and mildew pervaded the room, but when Rabastan pushed up his sleeve to show the fresh red mark, he had the younger men's full attention.
"I did it. Just then, just last night."
**
December 2008. Unfinished Ted/Andromeda at school.
The weather was miserable, even by the castle's not-normally-very-cheery Scottish highlands standards. A thick, oppressive fog obscured anything more than 10 yards away, and large globules of water created dark, slimy pools waiting to entrap the boots of anyone foolish or desperate enough to come outside. Andromeda knew she could feel the muddy lake bottom sliding down to encapsulate the Slytherin common room tunneled out beneath it forever as a fossilised relic, a modern, muddy Pompeii.
A the result of a recent push to reintroduce the "social graces" to the students of Hogwarts, every Friday at seven were dancing lessons for third years and above. Narcissa, a first year, was desperate to go, and ordinarily Andromeda would have put a hat on her and sent her instead, but the though of the common room caving in around her pushed her through the portrait and up the stairs.
It wasn't that she disliked dancing as much as that she disliked the idea, or ideology, behind the class. A group of pureblood parents, hers at the forefront, were simply trying to make their children look good next to the muggleborns, who, never having been exposed to dance or etiquette, were likely to embarrass themselves. The mudbloods were undoubtedly stupid enough to trip about for an hour looking foolish, but she knew how to dance, so it was an annoyance. It was also quite disgusting that her parents generation tried to debase the value of pure blood by stressing things as trifling as dancing and calling cards. As Bella said, it was exactly such isolationism and complacency from older wizards and witches who only wanted to live at a comfortable distance that allowed mud bloods to gain such social prominence. Wizarding society at large would have to become pureblood society, where blood purity was the mainstream, and that would not be accomplished through dance.
"Please separate yourselves! Boys to my right, girls to my left! Form four rows on each side, be sure to space yourselves out!" directed Professor McGonagall.
The school split on house lines, as it always had. Andromeda followed (name) to a spot she hoped was opposite Rabastan Lestrange, but couldn't see if it was him past the Gryffindors and Ravenclaws.
McGonagall went on to explain the box step, possibly the most boring invention ever, although the joy that she and professor Dumbledore seemed to take in the demonstration was amusing. Students were given time to practice alone, which was hilarious, and the subsequent partnerships of terrible and more terrible dancers were doubly so. She did indeed get to dance with Rabastan, but the subtle grace of there movement was dwarfed by the frightening elegance of Bella and Lucius's. The pair of them, light and dark, twirling in graceful combat.
And that was all she wrote. XD