Baby Bella - Chapter Two
I just changed a few details, mostly in the last section or two, lookat the end for a synopsis of changes.
Well, I finally got around to finishing off the second chapter, thanks to a few reviews and a PM that kicked my butt into gear, and typed it up. Merry Christmas all, I hope it's a good one.
As Harry dragged his trunk from the carriage to Hogsmeade Station, he worried. What the hell was he supposed to do with a three year old little girl? Really? What? Especially on whom had murdered his godfather? Then again, she didn't remember that, now did she? She didn't remember a single bleeding thing past her third birthday. Oh bloody hell. Harry stopped dead in his tracks, causing a third year girl to run into him, before she glared at him and walked on. Did anyone think to explain to her why precisely she was now under his care? Probably not, knowing the incompetence of the Ministry. If nothing else, this past year had highlighted that particular aspect of the Wizarding World for him.
So. It appeared as though he'd be dealing with a traumatized, three year old girl, who committed murder, but can't be charged for it, because she doesn't remember it, and even Wizards won't convict a three year old, and she was in his care. Oh joy of most joyous joys. How to explain this one to his Aunt and Uncle?
And he probably should stop calling her a murderer, even if it was only in his head.
Finally arriving at the station, he decided to take a leaf out of Hermione's book for once. He would find out what she had been told, what she knew, and what she expected of him. That would hopefully cover everything. At least, until they got to London. That was a completely new story.
Looking up at the red robed man beside her, Bellatrix Black was rather sad, especially for such a normally perky, happy little girl. After she had somehow gone from going to bed at Aunt 'Burga's and Uncle Orion's to standing in front of the angry boy with his wand out, and the tired man in raggedy clothes that neither Mother nor Auntie 'Burga would ever approve of on anybody, the raggedy man had just picked her up, her, Bellatrix Elizabeth Anne Black, of he Noble and Ancient House of Black! He'd just picked her up, without so much as a by your leave, and not even asked! Didn't he have any manners, at all?
And then!
Then the raggedy man, ignoring her many protests, had taken her up some really, really, really, really, really, super long stairs! And after that he had taken her to see this weird lady in her dressing gown and with a funny looking thing in her eye like Great Grandfather's portrait had in his painting. And after all that craziness, they had ignored her! They just started talking about all sorts of weird stuff like a veil that kills people, and someone called Sirius being thrown in, and murder, and someone named Harry Potter! Who was Harry Potter? The Potter family had no one of that name! The House had been nearly decimated in some War ages ago by a man with a funny name, Grinnywall or something like that, so the only people in it were Aunt Dorea and Uncle Charlus!
Then they said this Harry person was her new guardian! Why did she need a new guardian? Guardians were people like family, or friends, or godparents, that took the place of family members. Her Mother and Daddy and everyone weren't dead What about Auntie Burga and Uncle Orion? Or Uncle Alphard? What happened to her sister? Where was Andy? What happened to them? Were they dead? Was there a fire? A flood? Or lightning? Or assassins? Or Muggles?
No one would tell her anything! And the lady put a silencing spell on her so she couldn't even ask!
Then she was stuck in this little gray room on a very, very, very uncomfy chair, forever before a man in red robes came in and started asking all sorts of weird questions. Things about her life, and her, and then stuff that never even happened! What did they think she was a Seer or something? That was a gift of the Trelawney and Lovegood lines, not the Black family red robed man. And who calls them self You Know Who? Really? It was a silly stupid name that would get way too confusing after a while. Cause, what if you don't know who? She didn't! And then the weird man said the funny named man was actually called Voldemort, but that was even sillier!
People in red robes were weird. Really, really, stupidly, annoyingly weird!
All she wanted was to go home, either to her house with Mother and Daddy, or to Aunt Burga and Uncle Orion's house. She wanted to go and sleep in her bed, with her blankets, and her night gown, with her toys. Not in the lumpy bed in the gray room that was too quiet, and had a wall made of bars, and a door to match! She wanted her room with her books and her toys and her family, and she wanted it NOW! And she wanted Kreacher! Kreacher was always nice to her, and gave her treats and said nice things. Maybe he'd tell her what was going on. But then the red robed man put a silencing spell on her, just like the dressing gown lady, so she couldn't talk, and it wasn't fair! Mother and Daddy only did that when she or her sisters were rreally, really, really, ever so bad! And she'd been good! Mother and Daddy had warned her that Father Christmas wouldn't come if she was bad! So she'd been trying extra, extra hard!
And why wouldn't the red robed man tell her his name? Didn't he have one? Stupid red robed man. Fine, if he wouldn't tell her his name then she wouldn't lower herself to associate with him!
Thus determined, the haughty little Pureblood girl crossed her arms, raised her chin, and turned smartly on her heel to face away from the stupid red robed man. She should call the Aurors on him!
Filled with trepidation, Harry made his way over to where he saw a rather irritated little girl, who he vaguely recognized as Bellatrix, standing by a rather irritated Auror. She didn't look very happy, which would only make matters worse for him. Great. Fantastic. As if his life could get any worse.
Sighing, he reached the Auror and asked dejectedly, "I suppose you're here to drop her off?" The Auror simply nodded. Okay then. He turned to the little girl and told her, "Come on then, we need to find a compartment." When she didn't respond, he looked directly at her and saw her mouthing a rather irate string of words, but no sound actually coming forth. He turned back to the Auror. "Please, tell me you didn't Silence her?" At the Aurors nod, he groaned, and cancelled the spell on his ward.
Thus burst forth a rather angry tirade from the three year old. "-you? And where's my Mother? And Daddy? What did you do to them? And where is Andy? Or-" She stopped short, apparently realizing she was audible again. "I can talk! Thank y- hey!" She got an angry look on her face. "You're the angry boy with the wand! You were in the weird place with the sparkles and the raggedy man! Who are you?"
Blinking rapidly, due to the girl's high pitch and rapid speech, he replied, "I'm Harry, and since my Godfather apparently made me his heir, I am your guardian. Now please, just be quiet so we can find a compartment." He then picked her up and proceeded to carry her while dragging his trunk to the train. It was rather awkward to try, but he didn't trust her to follow him.
They reached the normal compartment at the end of the train. He supposed they could have gotten one towards the front, but that would give more students the chance to gawk, and spread rumors, and he really, really didn't want to deal with that at the moment. He just wanted to get through this train ride, and then he'd deal with his Aunt and Uncle and... something. Hopefully his friends would find him. He set the girl, who was being rather quiet, on the bench, and shoved his trunk onto the overhead.
Sitting down across from her, he asked the girl, "So, what should I call you then?"
She looked at him oddly, before stating imperiously, "I am Bellatrix Elizabeth Anne Black. My sister calls me Trixie. Andy can't pronounce Bellatrix." Dropping the haughtiness, she whispered mischievously, "But I like being called Bella. Daddy calls me that, because he says it means beautiful, and I'll grow up to be a beautiful young lady. I hope he's right."
"So you want to be called Bella then?"
"Uh huh!"
"Okay... Bella... I need you to tell me, what do you know about what's going on?" He asked seriously.
"Well, I know I was going to bed at Aunt Burga's house after my birthday party, and Andy, my baby sister, and gotten spit up all over my brand new dress, and I was mad and started crying, so Mother sent me to bed, and then just when I fell asleep I woke up with you pointing your wand at me, in too big clothes, like when I play dress up with Mother's robes, and then the raggedy man -he needs new clothes by the way- took me to see a weird lady with something like Great Grandfather's in her eye, and there was a gray room and an uncomfy chair and questions and red robed people, and nobody would tell me anything and and uncomfy bed, and I want to go home!"
By the end of it all, she was starting to cry and had crawled over to him and was now bawling into his robe.
Of course, this is when Hermione, Ron, and Neville showed up. Hermione started to inform him, "You forgot your letter and Ginny and Luna will be here in a..." She trailed off, before scooping the distraught little girl into her arms, "Hey, it's okay, calm down, shh... shh..." She rocked her a bit while the boys looked on in shock, until Bella had stopped bawling and was only sniffling occasionally. Then she looked back up at her friends rather surprised faces. "What? I did this all the time with my little sister Ophelia."
"You have a sister?" Ron asked.
"Yes, she was born in our second year, didn't I tell you? I suppose with being Petrified and then the school year ending, and then the whole debacle with... Sirius... it kind of got forgotten. Now, who is this little sweetheart?"
"I'm Bella." the little girl's reply was muffled from her head being buried in Hermione's robes.
Hermione stiffened. "Bellatrix Black?" she asked with a forced calm.
"That would be her. She was telling me what has been happening from her point of view since she ended up like this when you all came in."
The others, Neville and Ron particularly, didn't really know how to react to this, and fell silent for a while. About twenty minutes later, Ginny and Luna finally showed up, to find a... tense atmosphere, to put it mildly. Neville was glaring at a sleeping Bella, whose thumb was in her mouth, while clenching his hand into a fist, Hermione still held Bella, looking distinctly uncomfortable with the silence, and Ron seemed nervous, almost afraid of coming near the little girl, while Harry just looked exhausted.
"Oh my, it looks like the Nargles got here." Luna commented airily. "Neville, the Wrackspurts will come too if you don't calm down. They're finally leaving Harry alone, it wouldn't be a good idea for you to get them now." Then she sat down by Hermione and took Bella from her, being careful not to wake her.
Ginny just sat between Harry and Neville and looking between the two, asked, "Do I really want to know what's going on?"
"Well, I am now the guardian of a three year old Bellatrix Black." Harry replied.
The train ride to London was rather quiet after that. Luna's comment had managed to calm Neville a bit, so he wasn't clenching his fist or glaring any more. Instead he was rather restless and kept looking at the door while crossing his arms. He also seemed to have opted to simply ignore the girl and was talking with Ginny about Herbology. Something about it's correlation to potions and the household uses of common herbs. Hermione was reading a book, and looking occasionally over at Bella, while Ron just sat looking uncomfortable, Harry looked out the window, and Luna was singing lullabies to Bella.
Finally reaching his breaking point with the tense, awkward conversations, and glares and tension, Ron exclaimed, rather loudly, "So! Hermione, why don't you tell us about your sister? You haven't said much before now."
Looking similarly relieved at the break in tension, Hermione responded, "Well, her name is Ophelia. Ophelia Anne Granger. Er, She's almost three, will be in July, and Mum says she's showing signs of being highly intelligent. Mum asked me if I knew if she was going to be a witch, but I don't know if she's likely to be magical or not. The research on the subject is sporadic at best and often contradictory. Plus, the last time any research was done, or published at least, was over 200 years ago, when the standard of living was, admittedly, rather low. At least, it was for Muggles, especially in comparison to today, and I don't know if that could have an effect. So she might be. I don't know what to hope. If she is, she will hopefully come into the Wizarding World at a point when everything has improved, and hopefully Voldemort will be defeated. If she isn't, I'm scared she'll be targeted anyways, just because she is a Muggle. I just don't know.
"But I'm worrying. You wanted to know about her, right?" the others in the compartment nodded, needing a bit of a distraction from the elephant in the compartment, namely the little girl who was sucking her thumb and listening quietly from Luna's lap. "Well, she's a sweetheart. She's got these greyish eyes that I swear look green at times, like my mother's father, and she's blonde like my Dad, but Mum says it may darken when she get older. It's also really curly, but it's not bushy like mine. Mum says that's why my hair was always short when I was little. Taking care of a little kid's hair is always hard, apparently, because of all that restless energy and sugar intake from processed foods, and, anyways... Mum says it's always bad, but it's worse when the hair seems to fight back." She smiled, "I love her, she's just a little darling, and she absolutely loves Crookshanks. Although, admittedly, I don't think Crookshanks is quite as fond of her. She like to drag him around by the middle, and force him into her room for 'tea parties' with her bear and dolls. It is adorable though. I've considered getting a camera like Collin's just to record it."
"She sounds like a sweet kid." Harry commented.
"I wanna meet her!" Bella piped up. No one -save perhaps Luna- had realized she had woken up during all this, and been listening to Hermione talk about Ophelia. She turned to Harry, "Pleeaase Harry! I wanna meet her! She sounds nice not at all like Rita. Molly's okay but she's bossy and even if she wasn't I almost never see her. So can I please, please, please meet her? I want a friend! Pleeeeaaasse." The girl pleaded.
Harry didn't know how to respond to this, and looked at his friends who looked were of absolutely no help. "Umm," he replied, "Err... why don't you ask Hermione? It is her sister after all!"
Hermione glared at how her best friend threw her under the bus, so to speak, as the little girl turned her dark eyes to the brunette. "Umm," she stammered. "How about I ask my Mum and Dad, yeah? I don't know what they might have planned. I can write Harry with an answer, does that sound okay?"
"Yeah!" Bella yelled, before jumping over to give Hermione a big hug. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!" She sat back on Luna's lap, and smiled at Luna, saying, "I'm gonna have a friend!"
Harry didn't know how to feel about that statement. After all, she was a Pureblood, like Malfoy, heck her sister married Malfoy senior, and from what... Sirius... had told him, the Black family was of a higher circle. Why wouldn't she have friends?
"Hey, Harry?" Ron asked.
"Yeah, Ron?"
"What are you going to tell the Muggles? It doesn't seem as though they'd be too happy with you bringing her home."
Before Harry could reply, Bella asked, "Why would we live with Muggles? One of the people in red robes said I was living with him because he's the new Lord Black. That means we should be living at Gri- Gr- huh. I don't remember the name. We're supposed to live at The house Uncle Orion and Aunt Burga live in. It's, it's in London... I think... but it's the ancestral home! We can't live anywhere else, it's tradition!"
"But I'm not seventeen, I can't leave the Dursley's, right? That's what I've been told. Every year. Since first year. Being your guardian wouldn't change that."
"You didn't read all of that letter did you? There was a second sheet of parchment in it that said you were emancipated. You just need Dumbledore to tell her the address of Headquarters. They said that Sirius left you everything, right? That would include his house. I just don't know how to test it. Do any of you know?"
"Call the family house elf." Neville grunted. "If you are Head of the House, and Sirius left you his home, then it should come."
Reluctantly, but at the same time hopefully, Harry called out, "Kreacher?"
There was a crack, and the decrepit old House Elf appeared. "Master is calling Kreacher?" Under his breath, he continued, "Nasty Half blood that he is, no right to the Noble House of Black, son of a Mudblood, oh my poor Mistress, how she'd weep, Kreacher wants to go to Miss Narcissa, yes he does, with poor Miss Bella being missing. Oh my poor Mistress, how she'd weep..."
Bella, who had been silently, perhaps out of shock that this was Kreacher, more than thirty years older than she'd last seen him, and half mad at that, spoke up sharply. "Kreacher! You shouldn't say such things of your Master! It isn't nice! You always say that I should be nice! What's wrong? I've never heard you insult people like that, not even when they act like horrible meanies and yell at you! Kreacher?"
The house elf was staring in shock, shaking his head, at his Miss Bella, or what looked like Miss Bella when she was little, before the Cruel Dark Lord had risen, and taken her and Master Regulus into his service and she'd been sent to Azkaban, the horrible place, where even Kreacher couldn't go to her. But it couldn't be her, could it? But she seemed to know Kreacher! What magic was this?
"What is this?" Kreacher croaked, "Miss Bellatrix is a grown Miss, and married to the Lestrange boy, one of them, a respectable Pureblood match, yes Miss Bellatrix did quite well, but how can she be here, like a small Miss, before horrible Master was born who broke his mother's heart... Not possible, it isn't..."
"Kreacher," Harry said, "I need you to not insult people, do it in your head if you must, but I have no desire to hear you insult people I care for. Miss... Bella... had and accident in the Department of Mysteries, and became as she is now. She doesn't remember anything past her third birthday. Now, she and I may be moving to Grimmauld Place, I need you to actually clean it, and make it fit for habitation. Miss Bella will be there, and we don't want her hurt do we?"
Kreacher shook his head violently, "No, no, can't have Miss Bella hurt, Miss Bella be good to Kreacher, Kreacher must fix her room, yes he must, must make sure it is just as she likes it, Kreature will go..." With a crack, Kreacher disappeared, presumably to Grimmauld Place.
"Now to write a letter to Dumbledore." Harry said. He still hated Kreacher, and would quite frankly love to see his head on a wall, but... he had no clue how to care for a little girl. Kreacher obviously did, this little girl particularly, and thus... he was useful. The Dursleys had taught him one thing if nothing else; take every advantage you can. So he wrote a letter, sent Hedwig with it, and tried to relax until they got to King's Cross.
Neville left a few minutes later, something about finding Hannah and asking about the Herbology assignment. Ginny left not long after, when she and Ron started arguing about her dating habits. Luna just pulled out a copy of the Quibbler, while Ron borrowed Hermione's copy of the Prophet to look at the Quidditch stats. Bella went back to sleep, and Hermione pulled out her book. Harry just leaned against the window and asked Ron to wake him when the Trolley came.
He hadn't accounted for Bella's reaction to eating all that sugar from said Trolley.
A/N - Well, hopefully you all like this, and don't hate me for taking months to update. I haven't really edited this too much, other than spell check and trying to make sure it makes coherent sense. There are some shifts in POV, but this will mostly be Harry's view on the goings on. So, tell me what you think, read review, encourage me to stop procrastinating! And Merry Christmas!
~Kate
Changes: Neville and Ginny left the compartment at the end, Neville using the excuse that he needs to talk to Hannah, and Ginny because Ron stuck his nose into her romantic life again, minor grammar changes throughout, listed the activities of everyone at the end, re-did the explanation on why Harry didn't realize the full extent of getting guardianship of Bella; namely, he doesn't have to live with the Dursleys and is emancipated. He didn't realize due to dropping the piece of paper stating such and still grieving and not really thinking very much, note that isn't going to be the main focus of the story. The main focus is him dealing with, for all intents and purposes, parenting his godfather's murderer and grieving said godfather. Also tried to elucidate on everyone's reactions to Bella, in that she is essentially the elephant in the room, helped by the fact that she is exhausted and sleeping most of the ride.