A/N:

I stayed up way too late writing this. Why is it that my best ideas often come at the most inopportune times?

No betas for this! All mistakes are mine :)

Word Count: 2124

Disclaimers/Warnings: blood, arson

Summary: Bellatrix didn't descend into madness. She chose to walk into it, head held high, holding onto the last scraps of her conscience until the very end. OOC Bellatrix, Canon-divergent

Prompts:

Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Assignment 1

Dark Arts with Professor Bex

Task 5: Write a story about a canonically dark witch or wizard doing a good deed.

[January Monthly] Breeding Program

Kneazle

[January] Writing Club

Founder Says

Helga Says...Something Fluffy

"I promise you everything is going to be okay."

"No Good Deed"

Bellatrix had once believed she had inherited the Black family madness early in life. It would have been the only excuse she had to throw herself at the charismatic man that her father had introduced her to. Her father was so proud of her first mission Muggle hunting after she had taken the Dark Mark. Pride was something he had never shown her before, perpetually disappointed that he had only beget daughters while his sister and her husband produced two sons to continue the family legacy.

Cygnus' daughters were a disappointment to him ever since they were born female.

But Bellatrix saw this sudden pride and grabbed that good feeling, holding onto it like the grasp of a Devil's Snare. She could do well by him, prove to him that she could be just as good as her male cousins.

She had already been Bellatrix Lestrange for nearly a year before her second official raid on a Muggle home. She hadn't been sure how they had received this information, but this was supposedly the home of a budding Mudblood. The parents were disgustingly Muggle, non-moving pictures lining the stairway leading upstairs to the bedrooms. Her husband Rodolphus and brother-in-law Rabastan were with her, their bloodlust visible.

"According to these pictures, there's only one child. A newborn," Rabastan murmured as they gathered in the living room.

"A set of parents, however," Rodolphus replied. He turned to his brother to start issuing commands. "Rabastan, find the wife and drag her down here. Bella, locate the child and take care of it. We don't need more filth polluting our world. We torch the place when we're done with it."

"Hello? Who's there?" A light from the hallway downstairs caught their attention, one they hadn't noticed before. Rodolphus drew his wand with a wicked grin on his face.

"Leave this one to me. Go," he commanded. Bellatrix swallowed thickly before nodding. She followed Rabastan up the stairs and they peeked into the first room on the left.

A bathroom.

The next on the left had a stenciled name on it, and Rabastan barely spared it a glance before continuing down the hallway to where the master bedroom was. "Make sure it hurts," he reminded her, and she nodded, not trusting her voice.

Bellatrix creaked the door open and her breath caught at the sight before her. Haloed in the moonlight laid a child in her crib. The babe must have been only a few months old, and already had a full head of curls, curls that mimicked Bella's own. This tiny little thing had already shown magic so early in her life?

A muffled scream from down the hallway and heavy footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, followed by Rabastan pounding on it. "Hurry up!" he called out before his footsteps headed down the stairs, a loud thump following him from where he must have dragged this poor child's mother.

Bellatrix couldn't help but stare down into the crib of the baby girl before her.

The child slept soundly, and didn't even stir at the noise.

Could this child have a better life than her? Did this child deserve a better life than her? Bella's breath caught in her throat.

It could only be attributed to her family madness that the idea suddenly sprang to mind. It wouldn't have even come to mind had the child in the crib not resembled her own baby pictures from when she was born.

"The coloring is just a little too light…but that can change," Bellatrix whispered to herself. She couldn't save the parents, but she could save the girl, give her a chance to be better than Bellatrix ever couldn't. In this moment, it didn't matter that this was a Mudblood, the spawn of two filthy Muggles. No, this little girl was a blank slate, and in another world, Bellatrix could have stolen her away, raised her as her own.

"Don't worry, little one. I promise you, everything is going to be okay," Bellatrix whispered, reaching out to tenderly caress the baby's cheek as a scream rang out from downstairs.

Biting her thumb hard enough to draw blood, Bellatrix drew runes first on the frame of the crib, then on the sleeping baby's forehead. When she had married, her mother had given her instruction on the Black family rituals for keeping their children safe, under the assumption that she soon would be heavy with her progeny, doing her duty as a pureblood wife.

Casting a spell at the child to keep her asleep, Bellatrix then performed the short blood adoption ritual. The prick of a finger here, an uttered oath there, and the deal would be done. Without the adoption ritual, this protection spell wouldn't work otherwise. It wasn't the full ritual, however. That required a potion and bathing, and Bellatrix didn't have time for that. She had been a runes savant back in Hogwarts, not that her father had cared. Her slight alterations to both the adoption ritual and the protection ritual should be enough to keep this child alive.

The adoption ritual would make the girl a Black by blood, and keep her safe from whatever her husband and brother-in-law had in mind for her. From Rodolphus' orders, Bellatrix was obviously supposed to dispose of the child. But…but she just couldn't...not when she saw so much of herself in the infant.

The protection circle that Bellatrix was currently drawing up would protect the girl as much as her magical might could muster. Bellatrix drew the runes for fireproof, hexproof, curseproof, safety…everything she could think of to keep the child safe. Only a member of her family, the Black family, could see into the circle. Everyone else would see desolation. Bellatrix intended on coming back later that night to retrieve the child, drop her off at an orphanage, or even take it home herself and confound her husband into thinking it was their child. He had definitely been handsy enough since their wedding to make it a believable story. The only downside to this protection circle was that if it was challenged too much, the caster would suffer in place of whoever it was protecting.

Bellatrix had no worries for that. The brothers Lestrange would have their fun with the adults downstairs, she would confirm the Mudblood's death–for now that the child had been adopted, she was no longer the child of Muggles–and the three of them would leave, throwing the Dark Mark up into the air to let the Wizarding World know who was responsible for this massacre.

Bellatrix covered her lips in her blood before leaning down into the crib and kissing the baby on the forehead, leaving the bloodstained kiss mark behind. With that act, the ritual was finished and a bright green light flashed in the room. The blood marks on the baby disappeared, sinking into her skin, and Bellatrix licked her lips with a grin.

It worked. The baby would be safe. She was now hidden from the two waiting for her downstairs. She would do better than her own father, and show no disappointment in her daughter.

Half an hour later, as Bellatrix stood outside of the house with her husband and brother-in-law after they had finished their fun with the Muggles, their cooling bodies laid out where they fell in the living room, she calculated what time would be best for her to sneak back here to claim the child. A whispered incantation from one brother while the other muttered the spell to cast the aerial Dark Mark that filled the sky made Bellatrix's breath catch in her throat.

"Pestis Incendium."

"Fiendfyre," Bellatrix whispered out in horror as she stared at the torrent of flames that engulfed the Muggle abode. Her thoughts immediately went to the child she had claimed and protected, hoping that said protections would last.

Bellatrix knew instantly the moment the flames had reached the crib. Tears sprang to her eyes as her magic sprang up to defend the child. She closed her eyes, ready to succumb to the sacrifice that her magic would make on her, when the sounds of Apparition cracked a few streets down.

Rodolphus grabbed her arm the same time Bellatrix felt her magic snap, her mind quickly dissociating. They Disapparated before the Aurors could arrive, and as they landed in the foyer of Lestrange Manor, Bellatrix couldn't help but dissolve into cackles as she collapsed to the ground, her legs unable to support herself as her magic fought with itself for her to return to the child, to reach through the flames to cradle the babe close to her. But she couldn't. She couldn't do anything now.

"What has gotten into you?" Rodolphus demanded, grabbing her upper arm to haul her to her feet. She collapsed back to the ground when he let go, unable to contain the laughter that bubbled forth as her magic splintered her mind. What was the point anymore? No good deed goes unpunished it looked like, not in their family.

So this was why that ritual was used as a last resort.

If she was lucid enough in the morning, she would go back to the house and see if anything was salvageable. If she was left a gibbering mess, well, then that would mean that there was no child left for her to collect. She cackled at the hilarity of the situation.

Bellatrix always assumed she would have slowly descended into the Black family madness over time, slipping closer and closer to insanity with each evil deed she did. It was only ironic that the singular good deed she did, to try to save the life of an innocent, caused her to hurtle face-first into madness.

Sirius grimaced unpleasantly as he stared at the charred remains of the Muggle house before them. He and his fellow Aurors had Apparated in as soon as they had registered the Fiendfyre spell being cast in a Muggle neighborhood. The perpetrators–Death Eaters from the look of the Dark Mark floating menacingly in the sky–had already left, leaving them to deal with the burning aftermath and making sure that the fire didn't catch on the neighboring houses.

A muffled cry caught his attention.

"Did you hear that?" Sirius asked, brow furrowed as he looked at what used to be the stairs to the next floor up. James frowned from next to him, focusing on their surroundings.

"No, nothing. What do you hear?"

"A baby…crying," Sirius replied. James frowned.

"Are you sure?"

"I'll…be right back." Ignoring James' protest, Sirius picked his way through the debris of the house, using his wand to clear a path through the charred remains.

Deep enough in the house, Sirius came across a white wooden crib untouched by the fire. The crib itself was smeared with blood, runes shining brilliantly with power. A wailing infant laid inside of it, her face screwed up in her screams. After casting a few diagnostic spells, Sirius reached down and picked up the child, cradling her to his chest upon confirmation that the child was physically okay, just scared, and possibly a little bit hungry. A green light flashed as she left the safety of the crib, and the crib itself crumbled into ash as the last of its power bled out. The baby continued to cry in his arms.

"You weren't lying, there really was a baby!" James said as he picked his way over to where Sirius stood. He paused for a moment to pick something up from the ground before coming to stand next to his brother in all but blood.

"The crib was magically protected," Sirius commented offhandedly as he motioned to the pile of ash and splinters that laid before them. "It looks like she's the only survivor because of it."

"What are you going to do with her?" James asked.

"I'm going to find her family," came his reply. "Wards that strong on a crib never would have come from Muggles. I just…don't know where to start…"

"Well, her name would be good," James replied, holding out the piece of wood that he had grabbed. Sirius looked at the name burnt into what used to be a door.

"Don't worry, love. You're safe now," he said with a light laugh, cradling the child to his chest and bouncing slightly, in the hopes to get her to stop crying. "Hermione…weird name."

"Come on, let's bring her to St. Mungos. She'll need an official once-over to make sure she's okay," James said. Sirius nodded. He continued to stare at the remains of the crib, even as James turned away to leave the cleanup to the rest of the team.

Where had he seen those runes before?