Finally the next chapter – and I have already rewritten the first few chapters, so far.

Part 17

It was already late at night, the moon was bright in the sky, when Katie quietly walked through the house of Minerva McGonagall. For a long time she had been lying awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. Too many thoughts were running through her head. She was so sick of other people thinking that they knew what was best for her.

And that her father, who had never cared about her, suddenly wanted to make all the decisions for her made her so damn angry. Katie wanted to decide for herself, after all, she hadn't had a parent all these years and suddenly Severus Snape thought he had to be a father to her.

She was old enough to make her own decisions and she knew what was best for her. That's also why she had decided to look for a solution in the library of her family, the Blacks.

Oh, and why she had decided to write one more letter. The letter in the pocket of her dressing gown felt as if it weighed a ton. Katie had decided to write her mother one more time, this time asking her for a meeting.

At last, Katie needed to know the whole truth - what had really happened back then. She wanted to hear it from Bellatrix Lestrange's perspective. The whole truth.

And this she would only hear if she inquired herself and, above all, asked the right questions.

"Take the letter to my mother," she muttered as she watched the owl fly away with the letter to Bellatrix Lestrange.

She hoped she was not making a mistake. In fact, she hoped that this letter would not cause things to get worse for her. All these years she had been safe and now, suddenly knowing her parents' names, she was in great danger. No, that wasn't true - she had lived in danger since the moment she took her first breath. The day she been born.

Katie was still standing at the open window, staring into the darkness, when a pair of arms wrapped around her waist from behind.

"Can't sleep?" asked Percy.

Katie shook her head.

"Do you want to tell me what's keeping you awake?" he asked cautiously. He knew Katie still had a hard time sharing the things that were on her mind with others. In that way, she was so much like her father. But he hoped she shared her dark thoughts with him.

"Not now. Maybe later."

Katie couldn't tell him the truth, at least not yet. Percy already knew too many of her secrets. She didn't want to put him in any more danger.

Well, she wouldn't tell anyone about her plans. That she was going to meet her mother would remain her secret. Besides, Katie wasn't at all sure that Bellatrix would even agree to a meeting. Maybe Bellatrix wouldn't even read the letter.

However, Katie had been wrong to fear that she wouldn't. The owl had reached Bellatrix Lestrange in the meantime. And she held the letter open in her hands.

By now Bellatrix had read it so many times that she knew by heart every single word that was written.

"Oh, my Catelyn, don't you know how dangerous such a letter can be. You shouldn't have written to me," Bellatrix muttered, but at the same time she was happy.

She, Bellatrix Lestrange, the right hand and most loyal follower of Voldemort, was happy to receive the letter from her daughter who had been kept a secret. Ever since Severus had asked her for some blood for the potion to protect Katie, she had wondered more and more what had become of her little girl.

Now she held a letter from her daughter in her hands. For the second time.

Fortunately, she had been alone when the owl flew in with the letter. She didn't want to imagine what would have happened if someone had been with her. If Voldemort had been with her. And no matter how much she would have liked to keep this letter, she knew she had to destroy it. The letter could never fall into the wrong hands. It would raise too many questions as to why Minerva McGonagall's granddaughter wrote her a letter.

Bellatrix took one last almost wistful look at the letter before pointing her wand at it and muttering a soft incendio.

For a long time, Bellatrix stared at the fire, lost in thought. For a moment, she couldn't help but think of that moment back in the shack. It was the last happy moment in her life and at the same time it had been the worst moment - when she had given her baby away.

Sometimes this felt somehow as if it had happened in a completely different life. To a completely different woman and not to her, as Bellatrix was no longer the woman she had been at that time. Azkaban had changed her. Her belief in the right thing, in Voldemort had changed her. And yet, Catelyn would always be a part of her life, a part of the life that Belle Black had lived.

Only when Bellatrix was absolutely sure that every inch of the letter had been burned beyond recognition did she reach for parchment and quill to write a brief reply. However, the words wouldn't come. She was unsure what the proper response to such a letter would be.

Katie had asked for a meeting, with her.

For quite a while now, the desire had been growing in her to finally see her child, to see for herself whether her daughter had really inherited her wild curls, and perhaps even more, whether she looked like her, perhaps had inherited her temperament. Or if she took after Severus more - the man who had touched her heart in a way back then, the man with whom she had brought about the only good thing in her life.

"I hope it's not a mistake," Bellatrix spoke to herself as she watched the owl fly off into the night a moment later with her answer.

But it was too late for second thoughts on her part now.

Bellatrix had made a decision and would meet with her daughter and finally get to know her.

Severus hadn't told her much about her little one. Whereby, little one did not apply for a long time, Catelyn, as she still called her child in her mind, was almost grown up, but in Bellatrix's memory she was still the little baby she had held in her arms back then.

And this memory Bellatrix guarded like a precious treasure. The vial with the memory was in her Gringotts vault, no one had access to it, not even her husband. This memory was hers forever.

But just now was not the moment to wallow in the past.

Bellatrix took one last look at herself in the mirror before she squared her shoulders and left the room to show the world who and what she was.

Bellatrix Lestrange - a Death Eater.