Just Like Old Times
Now:
With frustration, and an odd sense of guilt Bellatrix brushes off the incident with Alecto. She isn’t sure why she even bothered, it’s not like Alecto will ever manage to reach the amount of power that she has. No, there can’t be two favorites.
She continues forward past the apparition perimeters before quickly flashing back to the Lestrange castle. It's one of her most prized possessions, perhaps more grand than the Malfoy Manor, the Lestrange castle has held the most prestigious meeting with the Dark Lord, and is polished from the inside out in a dark, lavish interior.
As she walks in she is meeted with two disgustingly warm smiles. It’s the Nott family… They must be here for an attack, with Bellatrix’s task out of the way nothing is standing between them and a nice little… friendly visit between them and some mudbloods families. It's a good time passer. To be honest though, Bellatrix didn’t know why she still allowed the company of these two, they were too happy, and they have been ever since they had their heir Alexander Nott. That little boy had been so scared of Bellatrix when he was younger, but sadly outgrew it.
“Hello,” Tiberius greeted Bellatrix with another big smile.
“What do you need?” She asked getting straight to the point, they were in the way between her and some mu–
“Well we heard that you were headed… out and would like to accompany you.” Tiberius’s wife Christina put in. She was a beautiful woman with some guts. That’s why Bellatrix let them stick around. Bellatrix giggles a creepy smile crossing her face.
“Yes!” She shrieks, “Yes you should come.” She giggles once more skipping over to them. Belltrix’s sudden mood change seemed to have thrown off the couple making them look almost uncomfortable.
“Brilliant,” Christina forces her smile.
“Just like old times,” Tiberius exclaimed, and with those words they disappeared off the ground just as Bellatrix was feeling an odd moment of recognition.
29 Years Ago:
The first years were escorted back to the separate common rooms by the prefects given that no one knew where they were in the huge castle. However, while other houses veered off a couple stairs down the Slytherin group just kept heading further and further down.
After what felt like ages, they hit the bottom of the castle… who knew the castle had dungeons?! It was dark and dank with a slight smell creeping out from one of the large wooden doors. When they finally came to a stop Bellatrix and her friends looked exhausted (not to mention slightly annoyed), Bella was practically asleep on Alecto’s shoulder and the rest of their group was in similar states. As they walked through the passageway there wasn’t a sudden warm blast of heat, a welcoming glow, or even a happy atmosphere, instead they were presented with a cold stone room, no different than the rest of the dungeons. Bellatrix couldn’t help but feel a bit disappointed as she looked around.
A large fireplace was centered in the middle of the room, with chairs, couches, desks, tables all gathered neatly around them. There were plants draped from shelves, which gently cascaded down the edges of the wall but that was the only thing that seemed to add a friendly spark. But, with the lack of windows, the entire place was illuminated in a pasty yellow and it was suffocating in Bellatrix’s opinion.
“Welcome to your home for the next seven years!” The prefect smiled, opening his arms in a wide welcome. “Now I bet you are all probably exhausted so I will let you explore the common room in the morning, for now if you follow that hallway,” he pointed to a passageway branching off from the rest of the room. “You will find two staircases, left is for boys and right is for girls. Please go to your respective dorms, your trunks will be waiting. Now off to bed!” The prefect walked away toward another part of the common room, leaving the first years standing in a clump, still too shocked to move. Eventually one person made a move toward the rooms and everyone followed, they were like a pack, scared to be left behind and gobbled up by some unknown threat.
As they continued down the passage the faint sound of water hit Bellatrix’s ears.
“Do you hear that?” She whispered to the people beside her–at this point she had lost track of anyone around her, and was too tired to really care.
“Sounds like water…” someone muttered back, and when they turned the corner, in between where the two staircases split a small waterfall flowed from the ceiling into a basin at the bottom.
“Woah,” someone said, it sounded like Adia. Everyone seemed to nod in agreement before splitting into groups to go up the stairs. Alecto, Adia and Bellatrix followed to the right. Climbing the stairs till they found their dorm. And yet, as other girls branched off, they continued going up.
“I swear to god if ours is at the top, I’m gon–” Alecto’s threat was cut short by a large yawn.
“That's a very dangerous threat…” Bella laughed quietly.
“Oh shut it and move!” Alecto nudged Bellatrix to keep moving.
Finally they found their dorm, it was indeed the highest one much to their frustration. As they filled in they immediately all fell into bed, falling asleep almost immediately. After all, they were just eleven, and now at almost 10:45 pm they were exhausted.
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As the days flew by Bellatrix seemed to relax, she got used to the early schedule, the workload, and most of all the freedom. Every day she and her friends would head up to breakfast a little bit early to get past all of the moving stairs, and through all the small hallways that were in between them and the Great Hall. They sat together at the Slytherin table laughing and eating, earning occasional glances and glares from other people. It's not their fault everyone is always grouchy in the mornings! So Bella and her friends ignored them…
Breakfast was one of Bella’s favorite parts of the day, it was the start of a new day with her friends, eating the delicious displays of food across the table, but also at least once a week she got letters from her sisters.
They were both doing well, hiding in their rooms until dinner and playing rounds after rounds of gobblestones. In return Bella filled them in on all of the gossip here at hogwarts. It wasn’t much, and of course the two girls at home had no idea what any of it meant, but they were just happy to hear from their elder sister.
However Bella didn’t tell them that most of the ‘gossip’ that she had written about never happened, they were mostly exaggerations. No Adia wasn’t bombarded with love notes everywhere she went but she did get told she was pretty once. No Alecto didn’t beat up someone new every day but she did quite often get into fights with other students. It was things like that, small white lies that made Bellatrix’s life seem more interesting than it actually was. Because Andie and Cissy probably wouldn’t want to hear about all of the spells and information she was learning, well at least Andie wouldn’t… Andie had never really liked magic, which was understandable growing up in the Black household. To them it was something that caused pain, not beauty, something that was mean and harsh not lovely and sweet. It was what it had always been for them, but now after seeing all of the beauty at Hogwarts Bella had a new mindset, and she couldn’t wait for her sisters to see it too.
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Later one night, after classes and dinner the group of friends could be found huddled in the common room right next to the fireplace. Adia was resting her head on Alecto’s left shoulder while Alecto was next to Aycumus… but honestly Bellatrix couldn’t distinguish the difference between one hand and another in her mind they were just a huge mass of limbs cuddled together in exhaustion.
Meanwhile Tiberius and Bellatrix had taken up the two singular chairs beside the couch and were engaged in a… friendly game of chess. Over the weeks their relationship had come to a truce. They still thought that the other were stuck up pricks with sticks up their asses but it was an improvement. Their fighting had gotten on too many nerves and they were eventually banned from the group till they figured it out, but still their relationship was still dry. That was, until about midway through the exceedingly boring game of chess Tiberius broke the silence with a tired grumble.
“I'm tired of chess… We’ve already played it like ten times this week.”
“Really?!” Bella muttered frustrated, her concentration for one was broken, but mostly it was the sound of his nasally voice that made her tick. “You always gotta go ruin the game. I told you I would play chess with you if you shut up. It’s not my fault you’re not up to the little snuggle fest over there and the fact that you suck at chess.”
“Well it simply shows how many friends you have back at home…What you’ve never stepped outside before?” He retorted,
“Wow, so creative, not like I said practically the same thing at the beginning of the year.”
“Yes Bellatrix I want to be just like you, I love you so much that I’m just gonna copy every word that you use!” He rolled his eyes, “I was just saying that I am bored of chess and would like to move on to something else and you just had to go make it a huge deal…”
“Fine, then let's do something different,” Bella suggested, this boy was going to kill her. “Any suggestions?”
“Not a type of board game or anything you might think, it involves magic!”
“Wow no way it’s not like practically everything in this school is magic idiot.” Bellatrix replied sarcastically.
“Shut up and follow me,” Tiberius chose to ignore her comment, so with nothing better to do Bella followed Tiberius out the door of the common room and through the dungeons. The back of her mind was a bit suspicious that he might be leading her to a long and painful death but if so Bella wasn’t at all doubting her ability to kick his ass. She was after all–so far–the top of her class and year.
Another task completed
The spells were pretty easy to learn in charms, especially ones like alohomora, or
wingardium leviosa. But charms wasn’t her favorite class or classes… There were two that stood out which she especially loved–Herbology and Transfiguration.
She knew that she would love Transfiguration for a while, learning how two things could very much look the same but be completely different was astounding to her, also… what happened to the animals or items that they transformed, would they just become that new object for the rest of their lives? Or… that question was too confusing, making her head spin in circles.
But Herbology was the wild card. She had never really been in contact with plants like they were here, sure she had played in some fields with her sisters but she had never come in close contact with actual, magical plants! The different secret traits of every plant was incredible! A super innocent looking one could be deadly, or the other way around. Herbology was a completely underestimated ability that not many people tended to pay attention to, and that's sorta what she loved about it. Even though there were so many people in that classroom with her, she felt like it was her own knowledge…
The rest of the classes were fine as well, pretty easy, but not nearly as interesting–and they assigned a lot more homework…
Bellatrix continued to follow Tiberius until they were outside, she really didn’t know why she was still following him, but in her mind, a little adventure never hurt anyone and it was a miracle they hadn’t been caught out of bed already, so she assumed Tiberius knew what he was doing.
Soon after they stepped through a passageway Bella realized where they were. It was a different view from when they came here in the daylight, but Bella knew immediately, and her suspicions were confirmed when they snuck into the greenhouse. With a partially full moon outside, silvery light was reflected through the many windows in the room and cast a glow that lit up the entire room with something almost looking like fairy dust. It was one of the most beautiful things Bella had seen during her time at Hogwarts.
“Pick your jaw off the floor and help me, you twit.” Tiberius whispered harshly, pulling Bellatrix from her slackened state. When she came back to reality she realized that Tiberius hadn’t been joking, her mouth was open like she was trying to catch a fly in it.
“At least I have a sense of beauty!” she rolled her eyes as she made her way over to his side. She pulled on gloves quickly and started picking at whatever plant Tiberius handed her.
“I do have a sense of beauty…” Tiberius muttered under his breath, stealing a quick glance at Bella shyly.
Tiberius did have a sense of beauty, and he knew for a fact that Bellatrix was the definition of it. In his little eleven year old mind Bella was his future wife. He knew the second that they were introduced, her wild messy black hair had been pulled back into what he was guessing her parents thought was the best that they could do, but still ringlets fell into her face. And like her wild hair, he liked her outlandish personality, the murderous glance in her eyes when someone stepped too close to her sisters, or when she got in an argument she just had to win it. She was exactly the type of pureblood that his parents raised him not to be, she didn’t follow the rules and had prejudice against mudbloods so maybe that's why he acted like a prick around her but in truth, he found her fascinating. So maybe he didn’t truly like her, but it felt that way, because her beauty wasn’t something that a lot of people admired.
Bellatrix meanwhile–oblivious to the internal melt down happening inside of her ‘friend’–was still picking at the plant in front of her.
“Do you now?” She asked amused by his sudden proclamation “What do you also have a crush on Adia or something?”
“Or something…” He replied sullenly, Bella was shocked by the sincerity in his voice, but it was quickly gone as he continued on. “Anyway how much have you gathered?” He glanced over at her growing pile. “Wow, that should be good.” Bellatrix nodded,
“So what are we doing right no–” she tried, still thoroughly confused about what they were doing but someone interrupted her… more like Tiberius shoved a hand over her mouth and forced her down.
“Someones here don’t make a sound,” He whispered, pulling them into a cupboard barely big enough for they’re bony bodies.
Soon enough Bellatrix realized he was right, someone walked through the greenhouse, their lantern illuminating the room with an eerie glow. They paused for a couple seconds before coming back the way they came.
“We are gonna have to be more careful.” Tiberius said quietly while pushing himself out of the cupboard, leaving Bella still sitting there.
“You never answered my question!” Bella exclaimed in a stage whisper. “What do we even need to be sneaky about?”
“We are just pulling a prank, calm down,” He rolled his eyes. “I thought you were so good at Herbology… these are puffapods?” Bella’s eyes widened with recognition. They had been learning about this in class. Puffapods were plants which sprouted beans when they came in contact with skin. They had pink and purple petals and were actually really beautiful flowers, but being in close contact with the spores of the flowers could cause dizziness and itchiness. Nothing a simple potion couldn’t fix but still quite unpleasant.
“And why do we need puffapods?” She asked once more her question of what they were doing still going unanswered.
“Just pulling a small little prank on the mudbloods here at Hogwarts…” He smirked, regaining his sassiness. “I thought you would be the best person to do it with… after all, our families aren’t so different.” At these words Bella’s heart was sent racing, she didn’t really feel comfortable pranking the muggleborns, she had never really understood the blood dominance that her parents had tried to force into her and bringing that prejudice into Hogwarts just made her feel sick.
“Don’t tell me you're trying to have a bonding experience here…” She forced her mouth to grin. It probably didn’t look realistic but luckily for the dark Tiberius couldn’t see that far.
“Nope but it looks to me like you're trying to sneak out of it… what would your parents say if you were defending mudbloods?” he replied snarkily, it was taking all of Bella’s restraint to not punch him in the face at that moment. Would he really tell her parents? Probably not, but she couldn’t take the risk, not while her sisters were still in that horrid house.
“Fine,” she said. “Lead the way.” He smiled in return leading the pair out of the room and back into the maze of hallways.
Bellatrix only managed to get back to her dorm much later that night. By much luck they hadn’t gotten caught, Bella didn’t know if Tiberius had put on some secret charm or something but they had come and gone like thieves in the night. And one certain thief–Bellatrix–was exhausted, falling asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow on her bed. She probably wouldn’t even see the chaos her night of work would bring the next morning. Purple and pink flowers blooming across the Great Hall. It would be glorious.