AN: Enjoy!

Chapter 9 - Living with Bellatrix

Walking on the narrow cobblestone streets surrounded by two to four floors tall old buildings made of bricks, Harry felt as if he had travelled a century back in time. It was an old neighbourhood inspiring a sort of vintage classiness. Dean Village district of Edinburgh was exactly the kind of place where Harry imagined that someone like Bellatrix Black would live: old, quiet, quaint.

"Read this," she said and handed him over a small piece of paper.

She looked at him with eagerness, anticipating the awe on his face after witnessing the effects of the Fidelius Charm for the first time.

"Wow...!"

Bellatrix laughed in delight, very satisfied with his reaction. However, Harry's amazement was directed not at the fact that a house with its own courtyard had sprouted seemingly out of nowhere but at the building itself.

"A castle?! Miss Black, you must be filthy rich!" he exclaimed, trying to emulate an ordinary boy of his age.

"It's Bella to you, not 'Miss Black'. Don't make me twist your ears." she chided him. "But yes, my family has always been wealthy. This mansion was left to me by my late aunt Cassiopeia."

It was not an exceedingly large building as it had only two floors (the ground floor included) but its French gothic architecture made it give off an imposing feeling. A washed-off brick facade, tall and narrow windows, pointed arches above entrance doors and a tall roof as well. To a young boy, it looked almost like a small castle. (1)

"Well then, go on, go on." she encouraged him and pushed him from behind.

When he made the first step through the large gothic wrought iron gates into the courtyard, he could clearly sense the numerous warding spells that had been placed on the propriety.

'With how heavily warded this place is I think even someone like Dumbledore would not dare step in lightly.' he mused. 'Is this Bellatrix paranoid? No normal people would make a fortress out of their home.'

He realized that he knew nothing about this version of Bellatrix. What made her the person she was nowadays? How come she had become one of Dumbledore's trusted friends? How was she not crazy like in his previous world? Why was her name 'Black' instead of 'Lestrange', did she never marry?

"Give me your wand for a moment please."

Harry involuntarily looked at her sharply and took a step away from her. He realized that he made a mistake by overreacting but it was a done deal. Bellatrix studied him carefully and the expression on her face softened.

"You have nothing to worry about, dear," she said in a gentle voice. "Nobody will harm you here. My home is the safest place in Europe. Nothing short of a nuke would threaten this place. I only need your wand to key you into the wards."

She thought that the reason for his jumpiness was the attack on his person earlier that morning. She had no way of knowing that Harry was still rather vexed at the thought that he was going to live with an alternate version of the woman who had murdered his godfather. But then again, the other Bellatrix would probably not know what a 'nuke' was. Nor would she speak to him in such a gentle voice. But when he handed her his fir wand, Bellatrix let out a yelp of pain and dropped it on the floor.

"This nasty little thing!" she cussed. "Looks like your wand took quite the liking to you. Wouldn't let me even hold it, let alone cast any spells with it."

She winced as another shock travelled through her arm when she picked up the wand again but she withstood the pricking sensation and quickly muttered a few incantations. She looked relieved when she was finally done with it and gave it back to him.

A flood of warmth coursed through his body when the wand came back into his possession, not unlike the first time when he bought it from Ollivander's shop.

⁂

The interior of the house reminded Harry a bit of Grimmauld Place but nowhere near as gloomy or as dank. If anything, it was rather similar to the Slytherin common room with its old, vintage furniture. However, it was not dark, more than enough light came through the tall windows and from the numerous gas lamps on the wall and chandeliers hanging from the tall ceiling.

Bellatrix eagerly gave him a tour of the house. Although he was not a big fan of this old style - especially since he was coming from a world 30 years in the future - he could recognize high quality and taste when he saw it. The Blackthorn (Belatrix's house) looked like what Grimmauld Place could have looked like without decapitated heads of House Elves, mold, dankness, gloom, and darkness.

However, when she opened the door to his bedroom, Harry was caught completely off-guard by the contrast between how his room looked and the rest of the house. Blue wallpaper on the walls, a large window with bronze curtains, a dark blue carpet on the wooden floor, and a rather large bed with dark blue canopies. To the right of the bedroom, there was a brown wardrobe with dark blue edges and a desk with a lamp and a chair with blue cushions on the left.

"You made this for me today?" he said visibly surprised.

"Do you like it?" she asked with a smile.

If someone told Harry that Bellatrix had been initially reluctant to take him in, he would not believe them. She had prepared a room just for him. She had changed the furniture, the curtains, the wallpaper and decorated the entire room in the colours of the Ravenclaw House - all of that in less than a day!

"It's brilliant. I love it, thank you!" he said sincerely. For her to put in so much effort for his sake, a stranger, Harry could not help but be moved by her dedication.

"I'm relieved that you like it," she said half-serious half-joking. "It's the first time I decorated a room for a boy your age, I wasn't sure if an old woman like me would get it right. Alright, you can go ahead and take a shower and get changed. Once you're ready, come to the kitchen for dinner."

When she left the room and closed the door after her, Harry let himself fall on the bed on his back and groaned tiredly. Maybe because of his young and tender body, or maybe because of all the excitement that day and because of the nightmare, Harry was both physically and mentally exhausted.

Half an hour later, Bellatrix came to check up on him and knocked on his door. Not receiving an answer, she entered his room. Her sharp face became gentler at the sight of the scrawny boy deeply asleep. He had not even taken off his glasses.

She sat at the edge of the bed and took off his glasses and put them on the nightstand next to the bed. She also untied his shoes and took them off. Then, she levitated him briefly with her wand, just enough to pull the covers from underneath his body. Lastly, she covered him with the blanket, tucking him in.

Bellatrix had been reticent when she heard Dumbledore's proposition but after meeting the boy, she found herself wanting to protect him. The pitiful sight of him after he had been attacked coupled with the fact that he was an orphan sparked a feeling of sympathy for him in her. The fact that a child as young as him was also so polite and considerate was like icing on the cake. She raised her hand and brushed his tender cheek gently. Thoughts of adoption were too early and may never happen but she resolved herself to at least take care of this boy as well as she could.

⁂

Living together with Bellatrix Black had been much more relaxing than Harry had initially thought. A female House Elf named Niki took care of all the chores and cooking around the house and Bellatrix herself was working six days a week, leaving for her job at 9 in the morning and returning at 5 in the evening, like clockwork. However, Bellatrix made time every day one hour to talk with him. It had been very awkward for Harry when she had tried to make small talk with him for the first time. Mentally, they were of the same age but Harry had to pretend that he was 11. It was hard for them to find a common ground. However, when Harry expressed his interest in warding techniques and spells - as a proper nerd would - their conversations significantly improved.

"Playing fetch with your owl again? Only you'd teach your owl such weird tricks." Bellatrix's teasing voice came from behind, startling the boy and the owl who had been playing together.

"It's not fetch, it's hunting! She's not a dog, Hedwig is much smarter!" he retorted and the owl hooted at her too seemingly offended.

It was December. After living together for two months, Harry and Bellatrix had gotten much more familiar and comfortable around each other.

She smiled as she watched how Harry was using his wand to levitate a fluorescent ball of fabric at high speeds through the air and the snowy owl did her best to catch it. When he abruptly changed the flight course of the ball to the opposite direction, Hedwig barked at him irritated. His laughter made her even angrier and the owl dived down towards him. Harry burst into delighted laughter, just like any other eleven-year-old boy, as he started running away from the owl who was trying to hunt him now instead of the ball. Hedwig always got angry when they played this game and he changed the flight pattern of the ball unnaturally, in a way that other birds would be unable to replicate in reality.

Soon, Harry stumbled and fell in the snow and had to curl up to protect himself when Hedwig landed on him and started nipping at every inch of exposed skin that his thick winter clothes left. But he suddenly turned around and caught the owl in his arms and pushed her into the snow with him too.

"Haha, caught you!" he laughed while Hedwig flapped her wings and struggled to escape.

After teasing her a bit more, he let her go and Hedwig flew away from him in an instant. She landed on a nearby tree and started preening her feathers and shake herself to throw off all the snow on her.

Had he been in his original body, with his mental age, Harry would never engage in such childish plays with an owl. But he had missed Hedwig a lot after how she had died to save him from Voldemort's Killing Curse. He loved the owl to death. Furthermore, being in the body of an 11-year-old boy had influenced his behaviour significantly. His Occlumency was not quite as good as it had once been due to all the hormones going wild during puberty - hence also the reason why he occasionally had dreams of his past life - and he felt more mischievous than he had ever felt in the past, even as a child. No Voldemort to weigh on his mind this time around, no Dursleys and no hunger, no deadly threats to his life, and no prophecy pressuring him. For the first time in his life, he felt free, with no care in the world. Nowadays he found joy even in the smallest things in his everyday life: like playing with his owl, or eating a delicious pie, or flying on his broom, or even listening to some piano music played by Bellatrix once in a while. He was content.

When Bellatrix came to pull him up to his feet, Harry grinned evilly. An unexpected Trip Jinx made the elegantly dressed woman all of a sudden fall face-first on the ground.

"Bwahaha!"

Lifting herself up, her hat had fallen off her head and there was snow all over her face, head and neck.

"You cheeky bugger, you'll pay for this!" she yelled, even more irritated at how he was laughing his ass off at her rather than at the fact that she got pranked.

Harry rolled aside and jumped up to his feet when a snowball even larger than his own body had almost buried him beneath, courtesy to a flick of Bellatrix's wand.

"To slow! Age catching up with you, auntie?" he said teasingly, wand ready in his hand too.

"Auntie? You call this drop-dead gorgeous lady an auntie? You little runt!" she said and all the snow six feet around her was levitated in the air above her.

There was no way to outrun or dodge something like that.

"Partis Temporum!" he shouted and the large mass of snow flying at him was parted in two as if cut by the slash of a sword.

"I see, ickle baby Potter knows how to play," she said in a baby voice to mock him.

When he had first heard her talk like that to him about a month ago he had been creeped out, remembering the scene from the Ministry from 30 years before but now it had become a daily routine for them to poke fun at the other's age. He was laughing at her that she was old (she was in her 40s) and she was laughing at him that he was a little runt and using a mock baby voice to annoy him.

"The future is now, old hag. Watch and learn!"

With a swish of his wand, 10 snowballs levitated from the blanket of snow on the ground and he started shooting them at her in quick succession, like bullets, not allowing her to drop her Shielding Charm and retaliate.

Half an hour later, wet, tired, and with their sides hurting from too much laughter, the boy and the woman finally stopped their snowball fight and went inside. A few minutes later, wearing fresh, dry clothes the two of them were nursing mugs of hot chocolate in front of the fireplace in the living room, basking in its warmth as they sat huddled together on the sofa. Curiously enough, Hedwig was also inside, nestled on a perch that Bellatrix had specifically ordered for her and installed it in front of the fireplace.

Due to his mental age, Harry would never be able to call Bellatrix 'mum' but he would be lying to himself if he said she had not grown on him during the past two months. It was hard not to start liking her when he could see how much effort she was putting into accomodating his needs and taking care of him. Despite her job, she took time every day to spend with him. Sometimes they were chatting, sometimes she took him to Scottish Highlands to fly on his broom, away from Muggles, while other times she would play the piano for him. Furthermore, she also insisted that he did not spend even one knut from his own money but ask her to buy for him anything he might need. Frankly, he did not really understand why she was dedicated to him.

Bellatrix had won Harry over completely. It's because of that that when she put her arm around his back and embraced him on the sofa at that moment that he did not recoil at her physical intimacy. Inwardly, Bellatrix felt like jumping with joy. It was the first time that she had initiated a hug and she was beyond glad that he had not rejected her gesture of affection. Ever since she had taken him in, she had noticed that there was a kind of wall around him. It was not until that wall was melted that she was finally able to close the gap between the two of them.

Harry involuntarily sighed and slightly leaned in the embrace of the physically older woman. He had not been close like that to someone in many, many years.

'Strange how life works. To think that Bellatrix of all people would be the first after all these years...'

But that moment did not last for too long. After a while, Bellatrix removed her arm from around his back and sat up from the sofa.

"I'm going to play the piano. Would you like to listen?" she asked.

There was something in her voice, a sort of vulnerability that Harry had not heard from her until then.

"Of course," he replied and followed her into an adjacent room.

Harry remembered that even at Grimmauld Place there had been a piano. From Bellatrix's words, it seemed like many among the Blacks were taught how to play the piano when they were young. It was a tradition, one which Bellatrix did not dislike; quite the opposite.

The room where Bellatrix played the piano was sound-proof (a measure that she had added right before she had taken Harry in) and rather spacious as well. There were other pieces of furniture and some other musical instruments too but one's eyes would immediately be attracted by the elegant and beautiful grand piano when they first entered the room.

Bellatrix sat on the piano stool and lifted the fallboard. She closed her eyes for a few moments to concentrate and then her long and pale white fingers started dancing on the keyboard. Harry recognized the song right away - it was one of Bellatrix's favourites because she played it very often. It was a slow melody, melancholic even. It was Tchaikovsky's Valse Sentimentale.

Harry had never been a big fan of music but ever since he started living with Bellatrix he began to understand what Dumbledore had once said: that music was a type of magic beyond what wizards did. Proof of that was also that the Blacks, a family that was all about pureblood supremacy, did not reject the musical masterpieces created by great muggle composers.

That evening, the way that Bellatrix played it sounded more melancholic than usual. Almost sad. He was not an expert but he could feel the notes tugging at his heartstrings. When the song ended a few minutes later, Bellatrix quickly wiped the glistening corners of her eyes before she turned her head to smile at him.

"Thank you for listening to my song, Harry."

"Thank you for playing it for me," he said sincerely.

She rose from the piano stool and came in front of him. Then, she unexpectedly knelt in front of him and took him in her arms. It was a long hug, long enough to make him both perplexed and uncomfortable. Before that evening, Bellatrix had never tried to initiate any kind of physical contact with him yet she hugged him two times now already.

'What happened to her?'

A few moments later, he brought his hands around her and hugged her too, though hesitantly. Apparently, the fact that he had reciprocated the hug had been enough for her to tear up. She was not making any sounds but he felt one of her tears falling from her cheek onto his nape. Thoroughly confused, Harry could do nothing but rub her back soothingly and wonder if he was perhaps to blame for her sudden change of mood.

AN:

(1) If you're curious, google up "The Elms Scotland mansion". That's the building that I had in mind when I thought of Bellatrix's house.