Nightcall

Hermione could hardly eat with Bellatrix watching her. Instead she sipped her wine tentatively. The taste that roved across her tongue was sour and pungent and heady.

“Is the food not to your liking? I can have Kreature make something more palatable.” a thin sneer appeared on the older woman’s face.

Hermione shook her head abruptly.

“No, it’s perfect. I just– I’m just a little,” she broke off, unwilling or unable to say the word she was thinking.

“I frighten you,” Bellatrix finished for her, her eyes perfectly impassive, as though the thought did not offend her.

Hermione shook her head.

“No, not exactly. I’m just– you make me nervous, for some reason,” she managed, coloring slightly. She liked this– being vulnerable with Bellatrix. Speaking her mind, even though it also felt viscerally uncomfortable, as though all of her thoughts and feelings were on display.

“Obviously,” Bellatrix shrugged, “Authority figures make you antsy, perhaps.” She smirked.

Hermione swallowed, her fingers tearing at the cloth napkin in her lap under the table.

“No, it’s not that. It’s you. Something intrinsic to you,” Hermione shuddered, wondering where this looseness of speech had come from, “I don’t have a problem with authority.”

Bellatrix raised her eyebrows, skeptically.

“The teacher’s pet, the perpetual people pleaser, the brightest girl to attend Black Hall since perhaps myself, some twenty years ago, doesn’t have a complex around power imbalances? I find that hard to believe.” The smirk broadened as she spoke.

“You seem to assume a great deal about me, Professor,” Hermione murmured, looking down at her untouched plate of food.

“I’m not assuming. I’m going off of carefully ascertained intelligence. Do you think I’d let you anywhere near the Manor if I hadn’t received an exhaustive profile from Draco leading up to your stay here, pet?”

Hermione glanced at the older woman sharply, questions ricocheting through her mind.

“And you trust Draco’s profile intrinsically?” she forced herself to ask.

Bellatrix shrugged again, a graceful shift of her angular shoulders.

“I know that he has never invited anyone else into our home before,” she muttered softly, “You must have bewitched him, body and soul.” There was a sarcasm to this last sentiment, and Hermione scowled.

“We’re friends,” she began, annoyed at having to rehash this.

“Ah, but Granger, you don’t understand. The Blacks do not have friends. Not properly. There is only family, and outsiders. By bringing you here, Draco has made a bid on your behalf, in the hopes that you might, somehow, become the former. And I am, by nature, suspicious. I want to know why. To understand exactly what he sees in you. To glean exactly what it is you have to offer.”

Hermione opened her mouth and shut it again, perplexed.

“He just asked me to house sit,” she managed at last, “Perhaps we’re taking things a bit out of proportion.”

Bellatrix simply stared at the girl, her gaze impenetrable.

Hermione swallowed, raising her glass to her lips for something to fill the uncomfortable silence.

“You’re so young,” Bellatrix muttered at last, more to herself than to Hermione, “He, of all people, should have known better. What is that boy playing at? And my sister, entertaining him.” She paused, frowning slightly.

“And here I am, humoring them both,” she smiled bitterly, her long, lacquered nails tapping against the wooden dining table.

“I’m sorry?” Hermione pressed, confusedly.

The older woman looked briefly stormy, before schooling her expression.

“Perhaps you’ve bewitched all of us, Mis Granger,” Bellatrix mused quietly.

Hermione flushed again, embarrassed.

“I’m not bewitching. I wish you’d stop saying things like that,” she choked. Across the table the older woman was watching her carefully, like a prize hawk might appraise a bird of prey.

“You know, don’t you, that even sublimation and submission are methods of aspiring to power?” Bellatrix asked softly.

“You think that I’m submitting? To who?” Hermione asked, distracted.

“I’m thinking that you’ll do whatever I tell you to do,” Bellatrix murmured, her voice feather light.

Hermione’s eyes jolted to meet the older woman’s gaze.

There was a threat in those words, but also, a promise, and it made Hermione’s blood turn to fire in her veins.

"Go to bed, pet. If you're not going to eat your dinner," Bellatrix said at last, dismissing Hermione with a wave of her long fingers, "I'm tiring of this conversation."

Hermione stumbled to her feet, her mouth impossibly dry.

"You're so strange," she blurted out, before she could stop herself. Perhaps the wine had gotten to her, made her reckless, "I can't tell what it is that you want from me."

Bellatrix ignored her.

"If you could tell, there wouldn't be any fun in it, would there Granger?" Bellatrix growled, her eyes flickering up to meet Hermione's in the candlelight.