) Chapter Three – Detention (

When Bella was assigned by McGonagall to be Sirius' partner in detention, she knew the fates were against her. Of all the people who were being punished because of the Hogwarts Express incident, any of them—Lestrange, Avery, or Potter—would have been better than Sirius.

Well, maybe not Potter. But definitely Avery, and she would even have preferred Lestrange's snobbery to Sirius' leering.

And so she found herself in the most embarrassing, the most abhorrent detention she had ever faced: cleaning dinner dishes…with Sirius…in the kitchen…among the house-elves…without magic.

"You know, gluing your mouth shut wasn't actually one of the punishments," Sirius said conversationally, drying off a dish Bella had just handed him.

Bella hadn't said a word for the half an hour since they'd started, only ignored him haughtily and focused on washing. He had tried to make conversation a few times, all to no avail. This time was no different.

He grinned. "You really hate me, don't you?"

She rolled her eyes and sighed. "I hate you as much as I hate the Giant Squid. Meaning, I couldn't give a damn."

"That much, eh?" He seemed even more pleased.

"Oh, just shut up."

And surprisingly, he did.

The next evening after dinner, the two of them were at it again, scrubbing away while the house-elves hopped around them, happily cleaning the kitchen up. Sirius was being uncharacteristically mute, and Bella was desperately bored. She kept checking the clock, but the time crept by without Sirius' distracting comments.

She glanced over at him. He had a content, self-satisfied look on his face. He had to be doing this to annoy her, he just had to.

She refused to give him the satisfaction that she'd given him a moment's thought, so she said nothing and continued to clean, until the hours slowly melted away and she could escape to the familiar dungeons where she could chase away thoughts of Sirius by inventing new spells with her Slytherin cohorts.

"So, how's detention with the Traitor going?" Lestrange said, plopping down on the leather couch next to Bella.

It was Friday evening, right after they'd returned from their detentions. She was reading up on spells from a book she'd nicked from the Restricted Section of the library. She glanced over at him.

"Fine."

"Bet you wish you were working with Avery or me, huh?"

"If you say so," she said, turning a page of the book.

Lestrange reminded her strongly of Sirius, but was starting to annoy her even more—in a bad way.

At least Sirius knows how to keep his mouth shut these days, she thought. In fact, Sirius had been so quiet this week that she'd been racking her brain thinking of a way to start conversation without making it look like she wanted to talk.

Lestrange glared at her as she read the book on the uses of the Imperius Curse. "Well, just so you know, Quidditch practices are starting soon, so you'd better try to stay out of trouble so you don't get any more detentions. It'll be hard finding another Beater, especially one as vicious as you."

She eyed him. "Same to you, Captain."

Silence followed as she continued reading.

Lestrange tried again. "I wonder who they'll find to be Seeker for Gryffindor now that Channing is out."

Bella turned the page.

His voice started to betray annoyance. "You know, you're probably the rudest girl I've ever met."

"You're breaking my heart."

He studied her disbelievingly, unable to fathom a girl who didn't swoon under his gaze. Finally, he pulled himself off the couch, muttering just audibly enough so she could hear it:

"Bitch."

The weekend seemed long, almost indecently long. Saturday and Sunday dragged as Bella got ahead in her homework and practiced the Imperius Curse with—and on—Severus Snape. The boy was greasy, annoying, and pathetically enamored with Lily Evans, but Bella could ignore all that because Snape was good, very good, at spells. They didn't do things to each other that were too damaging while under Imperius, but enough that they could sufficiently practice the nuances of making another person do what you desired.

The two days felt peculiarly empty without the nightly detention with Sirius. As much as it would have pained her to admit, over the past week she had come to anticipate—to almost look forward to—her time with Sirius. It was a battle of the wills: who would break first and speak? A tension had built around them even in the cheery kitchen, a tension that Bella hated…and reveled in.

So when Monday night's detention rolled around, she was almost cheerful. She smiled at Sirius when she walked in, making his mouth drop open with shock.

"You're in a good mood," he said, watching her warily. "You're not going to hex me, are you?"

"Would you like me to?" she asked slyly, surprising even herself with her flirty tone. She flipped her hair over her shoulder and studied him with mild interest.

He blinked his eyes, but quickly recovered and matched her tone. "It depends on what you'd do to me."

She couldn't back down now, not when she'd started the bantering. Besides, she was enjoying herself way too much. She looked him straight in the face (when had he become so handsome?) and said, "What would you like me to do?"

His eyes widened for a split second, betraying his shock. In true Sirius form, he recovered quickly. He studied her for a moment with a delightfully cocky expression, and then threw his rag into the sink with a splash. He closed the distance between them in one step and smashed his mouth against hers.

Bella was so shocked that she froze up, eyes bulging. Her mouth had been just the slightest bit open, making her feel vulnerable as Sirius pressed his face to hers. After a moment she recovered herself, pushing him away and giving him a sharp slap for his trouble.

"How dare you?" she shrieked, cheeks flushed. Her heart was pounding heavily in her chest; if she had looked closely, she would have seen that Sirius' breathing was just a bit faster than before. For a split second, Sirius had a stunned expression, but he covered it up with an unconvincing smirk.

"I knew you'd want me."

She nearly choked on her scoff. "Want you?"

He turned away and continued washing the plate he had been working on when she'd entered, ignoring her.

Feeling deeply unsettled, Bella watched him a moment, scoffed again, and started her detention duties.

Neither said anything for the rest of the time, but more than once Sirius caught Bella watching him, and each time he'd reward her with a sly wink.

That night, Bella had dreams. Not just the normal dreams about joining the secretive order of the Death Eaters after graduation and becoming the elusive Dark Lord's right hand, but about…Sirius. He made a grand entrance, and as with dreams that one isn't controlling, it took her a while to realize who it was. When she realized that it was him, she jerked awake with a start and looked around her dorm.

Her roommates were sleeping quietly in the dungeon room around her, but her heart was pounding and her covers sweaty.

It wasn't the appearance of Sirius that startled her, but what they'd been doing. She liked sensual dreams as much as the next girl, but the thought of Sirius and her—no, it was absolutely abhorrent!

She lay back down and tried to go to sleep, but replays of her last dream kept flashing across her mind. She fought against them as much as she could, but as she started dozing off, she thought, It doesn't matter…they're only dreams…he'll never know…

During free time the next day, Bella was dreadfully tired. As she sat at the base of a tall tree next to the lake, she allowed her eyes to droop, the late afternoon sun easing her into sleep. Her homework books lay open next to her as she reclaimed some of the sleep she'd lost in her turbulent and confusing dreams the night before.

The distant sound of chatter roused her a while later. A little ways away, Sirius, Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew came strolling down towards the bank. Potter's arm was tightly wound around Lily Evans, and Sirius had his arm around a blonde Gryffindor girl. The eyes of the scattered groups of relaxing students followed the group as they strutted. As happened every year, James and Sirius were talking loudly, very aware of the admiring and jealous stares they received.

Bella's lip curled into a sneer at the sight of the fool Sirius. The idiot always had to make a show of how he could snag any girl in the school; now it disgusted her ever more than before, remembering that those vile lips had been pressed against hers for even a second.

"Always a spectacle," Snape said softly, lowering himself next to her.

She looked at him. His dark eyes were following the wonderful and popular Lily Evans hungrily, as if the very sight of her fed and sustained him.

"You never had a chance," Bella informed him indifferently. "You would do better to stop wasting your life pining for the most popular brat in the school and focus more on how you might serve the Dark Lord."

His eyes darted to her. "My service hasn't been affected, Bellatrix," he hissed. "And you would do well to stick your nose where it belongs."

He didn't get up and leave, however, because he had no one else to sit with. If he wished to stay by the lake he would be easy prey for the Gryffindor Four alone.

Snape glowered as Potter planted a light kiss on Evans' happy lips. Sirius started playing with the blonde's hair, and the sight of it gave Bella the strong urge to curse him. There they all were, so unaware, so unknowing, as the Dark Lord prepared his faithful Slytherins for the tasks he would have for them when they graduated.

"I shall particularly enjoy hexing Sirius into the next century, given the chance," she said.

"Detentions haven't been agreeable to you, then," Snape smiled, looking like he relished the vision of Bella miserably working next to Sirius.

Unlike the irritating Lestrange, Snape hadn't asked her about detention yet. When they were together, they only conversed about the business at hand. Neither cared about each other's lives, just about mastering spells that the Dark Lord's closest associates had assigned to them.

"That's putting it lightly," she snorted. "The fool is so self-absorbed he thinks even I will fall for him."

"He's more idiotic than I thought," Snape smirked. "He's made a move then, I take it."

"Unfortunately." She rolled her eyes. "I was rather startled, so I didn't hex his balls off. But if he tries again, he'll regret it for the rest of his life."

"I'm going to have to leave early today," Sirius informed Bella that evening when he arrived at detention, his robes and hair messy. There was no question about what he'd been doing.

"Yeah, right," Bella said, scraping out a greasy pan. "Like McGonagall's going to agree to that."

"She did."

"What?"

"She did. She said as long as you agreed to it, I could."

A smile grew on Bella's face. Even McGonagall couldn't say a flat "no" to the flattering Sirius! Apparently she'd thought she'd make Bella the meanie. The professor surely knew that there was no way Sirius was getting out of detention if Bella had anything to say about it.

"And what is so pressing that you think you can just skip out on detention?" she asked.

Sirius grinned triumphantly. "McGonagall thinks that," he made a pathetic expression, "I'm swamped with seventh year homework. But really, I just have a little date with Tracy."

Bella figured that Tracy was the blonde girl from earlier. "Guess again, fool. There's no way I'm going to be sitting around doing your dishes while you're snogging a dumb blonde!"

He seemed to enjoy the fact that Bella had insulted Tracy. "Snogging? Why, that's not all we do…."

"Slut!" Bella spat, banging the dishes harder than she meant to.

"My, my! It's not nice to call other girls that, don't you know?" he taunted.

She rounded on him, wand out. "I was talking about you."

He eyed her wand. "Hex me," he dared.

She hesitated.

"Hex me," he repeated.

"Yarehum!"

At once Sirius shot straight up as if he was a rocket, crashed into the high ceiling, and free-fell to the ground. As he fell, he pulled out his wand, pointed it at Bella's nose, and yelled, "Engorgio!"

She dove out of the way, but it hit her ear. She felt something growing heavy on the right side of her head, but she cried, "Everte Statum!"

Sirius rolled out of the way of the spell just as he landed, and a table exploded behind where he had been. They both had to cover their faces to protect themselves from the shattered pottery flying from the explosion. The house-elves were screeching and running around the room in a frenzy.

"Allinsortia!" Bella cried, and a large alligator flew out of her wand and charged at Sirius.

Just then, McGonagall burst into the room.

"What is the ruckus about?" she screeched.

She instantly spotted the alligator, which was snapping at Sirius (who had jumped onto the counter to avoid it), and banished the animal with a flick of her wand.

"Silence!" the beet-red professor yelled, stopping the scared house-elves in their tracks.

Bella and Sirius quickly tried to stow their wands away—but it wasn't quick enough for McGonagall, and Bella knew that she had another round of detentions ahead. At least this time she wouldn't be paired with Sirius.

But somehow, that wasn't comforting in the least.