Bejeweled

Remus’s hands were still shaking when he returned through the portrait hole. He knew he shouldn’t have done that. He should have kept it together. But so soon after the full moon he couldn’t hold the wolf back, not when she was saying such vile things. 

Of course he knew her beliefs, he knew she used that terrible slur regularly, knew what her family had drilled into her since she was born. But Sirius had the same family and he wasn’t so eager to join the side of genocide. 

Remus would never get close to someone with her beliefs at all, but he thought that he could be civil. Make small talk once a week, get through it without incident. But it was one thing for her to hold disgusting beliefs and keep them to herself while around someone who obviously did not share them because they had to have some sort of working relationship; it was another for her to gleefully share how she wanted to murder his friends. 

He’d started to think it was some sort of weird game, that she was enjoying riling him up, just to back down before taking it too far, but apparently it wasn’t. She’d started with something horrible and then dove into the deep end without hesitation. Was she so into blood supremacy that she simply couldn’t hold it back for even a few hours? 

“Why are you back so early?” Lily asked as he passed her in the common room, on his way up to the boy’s dormitory. 

”She’s horrible!” Remus exploded. “She’s a terrible, horrible, awful person and I hate her!” 

”Woah, what happened?” James asked as he and Sirius came over to where Lily was sitting, previously studying, and Remus was now standing. 

“Sounds like Bellatrix being Bellatrix to me,” Sirius muttered. 

“Basically!” Remus exclaimed and then let out a long sigh. “She’s just…so excited about all that blood purity shit.” 

”Woah, Moony said ‘shit’. Must be real bad,” Sirius tried to tease him. 

Remus just glared at him. He shook his head and then rubbed his eyes firmly with his palms. “She can finish the stupid rounds herself, I’m going to bed.”

~ 

Bellatrix stayed frozen against that wall for longer than she would like to admit. It felt like she was swimming through time, her brain replaying the scene over and over again as if trying to decipher it. 

Not that she needed to decipher why he’d done it, Lupin had been perfectly clear about that. No, she needed to decipher her own reaction. Why hadn’t she fought back? Why hadn’t she shoved him off of her? Why didn’t she scream at him for daring to touch her? Why hadn’t she cursed him into next week? 

Why did she feel bad about what she’d said? 

Why had she liked his hand around her throat? 

After what felt like both minutes and hours Bellatrix started walking again, finishing doing rounds by herself without processing any of what she was seeing. Anything could have walked right in front of her and she wouldn’t have noticed. 

Remus was pleasant. He was nice to talk to during the multiple hours it took to walk the entirety of Hogwarts castle. They’d done that two times before this, and it had been nice. But he was a half-blood. He was a Gryffindor. She had no reason to care about what he thought of her. 

She wanted him to like her. 

Not fancy her of course; ew, she already had the love of her life. But enjoy her company, think vaguely positively of her. Not…become so enraged by something she said that he shoved her against the wall and threatened her. 

Not that she was completely opposed to part of it, but that was something else entirely that she didn’t have the mental space to analyze at the moment. Nor did she want to, honestly. 

But why did she genuinely feel bad for upsetting him? For saying what she did? It was true—sorta. She hadn’t actually been thinking about that while she’d done her rounds the week before, but which mudblood they’d kill first was a normal topic of conversation among her friends. They’d laugh and debate the pros and cons of each one. Which ones were annoying, which ones were too hot to kill, normal stuff. But…was it normal? It wasn’t like they talked about which of them would be arrested by the Ministry first. 

Of course that wasn’t something they’d have to worry about for long, not once the Dark Lord took control of it. But still. She supposed she wouldn’t like to hear that about her friends, or, heaven forbid, her sisters. 

Oh shit, she had been wrong. 

Not just for pushing him when he was clearly not in the mood; not just for pushing past the line with him, but for saying it around him at all. That was a conversation to have with her Slytherin friends, with the future Death Eaters, not with him. Yeah, it was kinda his fault for befriending mudbloods, but he was a half-blood after all. 

A half-blood she wanted to like her.