IMPORTANT:I'M JUST POINTING OUT I HAD NO REVIEWS ON LAST CHAPTER. THAT HURTS, PEOPLE. PLEASE SUPPORT A STRUGGLING WRITER? *BEGGING FACE*

When Professor Snape requested that Crucie would meet him after class, she already knew what it was about, and she had decided to take it gracefully. Putting her robes in order she followed him to a statue of a huge and ugly gargoyle.

"Sugared Butterfly Wings."

Snape pronounced the words with the greatest disgust, and the gargoyle turned to reveal a staircase. A little later they found themselves in the office of Albus Dumbledore.

"Miss Black is here, as you requested. I shall be going now."

"Good, Severus. Thank you."

Snape nodded curtly and left again. Crucie looked around. There were intricate little machines on spindle tables everywhere, a cage with a huge fiery coloured bird in it, and a whole lot of portraits. She noticed the Headmaster was looking at her.

"Crucie... Miss Black… or Miss Lestrange, what do you prefer?"

"T-The latter, professor."

"Well then, Miss Lestrange. Do you know why you're here?"

There were many reasons possible, now that Crucie thought about it. She went with the most probable one.

"I… It's about the cursing, right?"

Dumbledore slowly nodded, but said.

"I have to do something first… Please wait a moment, I will be right back."

The moment Dumbledore left the office, all the sleeping portraits woke up. They all babbled through each other, until one brought order.

"Ah, one of my family members… again. It's been a while since the last one. I think it was that worthless great-great-grandson of mine…"

Crucie looked at the portrait of an eccentric man with a turban and a rather displeased expression on his face.

"Err… Excuse me sir, but I don't think we have met before…"

"It's Phineas Nigellus Black, young lady! So… Bellatrix' daughter huh?"

"Yes…"

"It's polite to introduce yourself too, you know."

"I'm Crucio Carina Lestrange, Sir."

"Let me guess. You're here because you've decided to live up to your name."

"Not… not on purpose…"

"As long as it were a couple of those no-good mudbloods I don't really care… Our friend Albus here however won't be so lenient I think…"

The other portraits indignantly interrupted Phineas.

"You are such a prick, Phineas! I'm so done with your attitude! You could at least try to show a little respect!"

"Shut up Newton, at least his children don't look like a hippogriff had them for lunch and then threw up!

"Take that back, Elizabeth! I swear you are going to regret those words if its…"

"Lizzie, stop being a pureblood bitch and get back in your frame…"

"I'm not going to let people insult me like that! You are so…"

"How dare you call me that you insolent blood traitor!?"

Crucio watched with astonishment how the portrait wall became a mess, with different portraits trying to get into the frames of others while yelling insults. The only portrait that somehow stayed out of the fight was the instigator of it, Phineas Nigellus Black, who looked awfully pleased with himself. Being stressed enough as it was, Crucie yelled,

"STOOOOOOP!"

All the portraits stopped bickering (and in some cases physically fighting) to look at her.

"Seriously, I may get expelled and thrown in Azkaban and all you can do is fight over… over what exactly? Don't you have a portrait here because you're useful to the headmaster?"

"We have a portrait here because once we were headmasters and –mistresses ourselves… Our use to the current one is not really questioned."

A 17th century headmistress remarked. Crucie frowned. Phineas pointed his attention back to her.

"So, I do wonder how you can cruciate someone 'not on purpose'… I'll believe that when I see it. Did your wand arm suddenly have a life of its own perhaps?"

"I… I didn't use my wand. And okay, it was on purpose, but it's not like I hate someone or something, I just felt like it so I did it. It's hard to control sometimes."

Phineas shook his head and clacked his tongue in disapproval.

"Tsk Tsk Tsk. Not very Black of you, so little self-restraint…"

"I know…"

Crucie blushed in shame. She had successfully avoided getting scolded by Salazar Slytherin, but instead a whole wall of portraits was now looking down on her in righteous disdain. She heard a female portrait remark.

"Let her go to Azkaban, good riddance…"

"Who said that!?"

"No one insults my family, Heliotrope!"

"You've disowned every decent member of your family Phineas, it's not like there's much left to insult."

The portraits started bickering again, and this time Crucie just let them. Elizabeth Burke on one side and Newton Scamander on the other formed the frontlines. It was clear the twosome wasn't new to throwing hateful comments at each other. Elizabeth excelled at insulting Scamander's descendants, while he clearly was one of the more physical approaches, threatening to break Elizabeth's nose. Phineas' portrait in the middle looked perfectly content to be in the crossfire, and threw Crucie a knowing look. It was on that moment that Dumbledore returned.

"Silence, ladies and gentlemen."

Immediately the portraits stopped their childish disagreement, but they didn't stop sending glares of intense hate to each other. Dumbledore smiled softly at Crucie.

"I have heard quite a bit about you, Miss Lestrange… The latest being your aid in the defeat of our uninvited Halloween guest... Severus has also informed me this help was somewhat accidental."

Crucie nodded, feeling quite ashamed. Dumbledore was so imposing; he had that effect on people. Something about him reminded her of Rowena Ravenclaw.

"Lemon drop?"

She shook her head, and Dumbledore just took one for himself, before continuing his explanation.

"You are the first of your kind, so to say. It is quite possible that you will pass your talent on to future generations… I'm quite… Would you forgive me my curiosity, Miss Lestrange?"

Crucie nodded. Perhaps if he thought she was interesting he wouldn't condemn her to… that place.

"Tell me, what do you feel when you use your talent?"

"It's… If it's been a while it feels like tension being released from a tightly pulled rope. In general it just… makes me feel satisfied, content. Round peg, round hole, that kind of feeling. It just feels… right."

"Have you ever experienced doubts of some sort, concerning whether or not you can simply exercise your talent like that?"

"Doubts? Why? I… Well, lately perhaps a bit, because everyone's bitching about how torture is like the most horrible thing since World War II, but generally not."

Dumbledore seemed simultaneously surprised, delighted and concerned with her answers; Crucie didn't know how those twinkling blue eyes could contain so many different emotions at the same time. He asked about a lot of things, and Crucie saw no need to be dishonest. No sense of self-preservation, perhaps… Or maybe just the knowledge that this man would see right through her anyway should she lie to him. She didn't tell him much about her parents though, mostly because she didn't know all that much but also because she had to protect her family, what family she had left. Most of his questions did point out to her how little she actually knew about her own condition.

"That pendant, Miss Lestrange… It was your mother's, wasn't it?"

She nodded.

"Your father gave it to your mother after the Yule Ball… it was his engagement gift, I guess."

"My parents were already engaged back then?"

"Oh yes, arranged marriage and all. No one thought it would work out back in those days… your father was a very stiff and reserved man, while your mother was rebellious, a wildcat. Their parents had decided over their heads to unite houses, and it seemed that your parents were merely victims of a business deal."

"But… my parents loved each other…", Crucie weakly objected. She noticed she used past tense and immediately corrected herself. "And they still do, I'm sure of that."

Dumbledore nodded.

"I said no one thought it would work out… It didn't seem like it would, Bellatrix even instigated rumours herself that she had cheated on your father hoping his parents would annul the engagement…. yet no such thing happened, and against all odds they fell in love after all. No one could believe it, but from that moment on your mother wore that pendant every day… She never regained a good relationship with her parents though, the way they had tried to trade and barter with her virginity had clearly hit the wrong spot with her."

Crucie was delighted to hear about her parents' past… She also felt like she was intruding though, since she didn't suppose her parents would have wanted her to know those personal details of their engagement. Suddenly the letter Bellatrix had sent her became clearer too; how she didn't want to impose her will on her daughter like her parents had done… Crucie had suspected back then it had to do with politics and pure-blood-status, but now she read it as a reference to her mother's once-unhappy marriage. The conversation was becoming small-talkish, and Crucie was getting enough of it; she liked to hear about her parents, but that didn't take away her lingering fears. Eventually she asked, keeping her voice as steady as she could.

"Professor Dumbledore, will you send me to Azkaban?"

The headmaster raised an eyebrow.

"Miss Lestrange, I don't know where you get the idea. You are a student of Hogwarts, an underage one at that, and you have committed no punishable criminal offences."

"Punishable criminal offences?"

Crucie echoed. Dumbledore nodded, sending her a warm smile.

"There is this funny legal quirk in wizarding law, something we inherited from the muggle system. Does the phrase "sine lex nulla poena" mean anything to you?"

"Without law no punishment."

For once Crucie was grateful that uncle Lucius had insisted she would learn Latin…

"Very good, Miss Lestrange. Always nice to see students know their Latin. Anyway, that phrase is a basic part of our laws; it means one cannot be punished for a certain act if there is no law describing said act as a crime. You are the first person to experience your particular problem, so however amoral and dangerous your actions may be there is no law that states using a natural torture talent is a punishable offence. With other words, as long as you do not use your wand or pronounce the curse you should be relatively safe."

He looked very severely at Crucie.

"I hope you realize this does not place you in a situation of complete freedom; it is merely a protective matter. Wizarding law is a complicated network of laws, legal subscripts, decrees, and declarations… If people want to condemn you they sure will find a way and I can't vouch for the public opinion in your case."

Crucie bit her lip.

"So it comes down to me having to stop torturing people."

Dumbledore looked a bit saddened now.

"I don't even know if you can, Miss Lestrange. But a solution will be found. Now… I have a few books you may be interested in. If you are worried about the legal status of yourself, they may clarify things a bit."

The books he handed her were called "Legislative Guide To The Proper Use Of Magic", "Magical Misdemeanours in Modern Law" and "Magical Moral Perspective".

"I think I have taken up enough of your time, Miss Lestrange. You can go."

Holding the books and in slight confusion Crucie made her way out of the Headmaster's office. Wasn't he going to punish her? She was a bit unsettled by it all, and decided to crawl up in her dorm and read Dumbledore's books.

(Author's Notes)

So... Important. IMPORTANT. If no one reviews I won't update this story anymore. You have no idea how much I hate seeing not a single review, and that's what happened last chapter. If no one reads this, I feel like I'm totally wasting time writing it. So please, please PLEASE review!

If you don't like it anymore at a certain point, just let me know what it is you don't like... I can never get better if no one gives me advice... Please?

Also... Dumbledore hopes he can "reform" Crucie by making her see her own actions as wrong through self-study. I leave it to you to guess how well that will go. The portraits... does anyone else think Elizabeth Burke and Newton Scamander really need to get together? I feel sexual tension there xD

I'm nearing the end of the "first book". Advice needed! Write the next as a sequel, or add it to this story? (it can be read separately, but I would advise to read this story first for details)

PLEASE REVIEW!