Wont Be Alone Again
After the Hogsmeade trip, finally, something changed between her and Emma Green.
They still weren’t snogging, but surprisingly, she was fine with that. She’d been discovering that generally being around the other girl was enough to quiet her head down, and with Green now willing to have a mostly amicable conversation, she was already feeling loads better.
It had started the day immediately following their conversation at Hogsmeade- Bellatrix honestly hadn’t been thinking very much about Green, having had other things on her mind (the Dark Lord had written to her again, and her sisters were both mad at her for some reason), but once they’d gotten to Charms, she’d been able to put everything else to the back of her mind.
Because Green had walked into the classroom, hesitated for an agonizingly long moment, and had then strode across the room and sat down right next to her.
The looks on her friends' faces had been priceless, and it was a testament to how surprised she had been as well that she had barely even noticed.
They hadn’t said anything- just did their work in silence. But Green had been glancing her way the entire period, and that had been enough of a victory.
It meant she’d taken her bait. It meant she was interested.
This was only further driven in at dinner that night, as she sat at the Slytherin time a little ways away from her sisters, who were huddled closely together and muttering amongst themselves. Normally, she might have joined them, but she was a little preoccupied at the moment.
Green kept looking at her. She was shy about it, sure- whenever she saw that Bellatrix noticed her, she blushed and looked away, which was actually kind of adorable. Not that she would ever tell her that.
But she was looking.
She spent most of the meal thinking out her next move. Continuing to pursue Green now ran the risk of making her seem desperate, and that was far from the image she wanted to give off. But if she stayed too aloof, Green would think she had lost interest and give up.
She supposed it all depended on Green. The ball was officially in the other girl's court now- what she did with it would determine what Bellatrix could do next.
If Green kept trying to get close to her, she would allow it to happen as naturally as she dared to. If she decided she still didn’t want anything to do with Bellatrix, she would just have to try again with a different approach. It was an ever changing field for her to navigate.
Honestly, it was kind of exciting. Maybe she’d been missing out.
“Hey, Bella. Why’re you glaring at the Gryffindors?”
Was she? She hadn’t even realized that her face had slipped into a deep frown as she thought about what to do with Green. She supposed she shouldn’t be glaring at her anymore if she wanted her to think she liked her, so she made an effort to soften her features.
“Er- Bella?”
Oh, right. Someone was talking to her.
“Just lost in thought,” she told Rodolphus, who at some point during her musings had apparently sat down next to her without her noticing.
“Yeah, I could see that. What’re you thinking about?”
“None of your business,” she sighed.
“Alright, alright,” he chuckled, sliding away from her on the bench. She really didn’t understand why he insisted on speaking to her- most of her other classmates were too scared of her, which was exactly how she preferred it. Rodolphus wasn’t that bad, though, she supposed- when she thought about him (which wasn’t often), it was never anything negative.
He was probably the closest thing she had to a friend besides her sisters. That was an astonishingly low bar, as the only other person who tried to talk to her was Rita Skeeter, and neither of them liked each other, but it was still surprising that he spoke to her at all.
Well, if he wanted to try to get involved with her, she really couldn’t care less- he was tolerable, and it wouldn’t hurt her image to be seen associating with him.
She glanced back towards Green, only to find her getting up from the table with the rest of her friends. As she gathered her things, Green looked her way a few times, but once she was walking out of the hall, she didn’t look back.
Ah, well. There was always tomorrow.
Unfortunately for her, the next few days continued in much the same way- Green dancing around her, hesitant to make the first move but growing ever so slightly closer. It was painstakingly slow, and three days in Bellatrix lost patience.
That day, after Potions, she nudged Green just as she was about to leave. “Walk with me to Transfiguration.”
“Oh! Okay,” Green said, brow scrunching up in confusion.
As her friends looked back at her, she waved them on, and when they hesitated, Bellatrix sent a dagger-like glare their way. They scurried down the corridor.
Astonishingly, it took Green until they were nearly halfway to Transfiguration to say something. “So- how have you been?”
“Fine,” she shrugged.
Green hummed and kept walking in silence, glancing her way every few steps. “We, er, have a project coming up. In Charms? Do you have a partner yet?”
“No.” She generally worked with Rodolphus when it came to partner assignments, but he hadn’t taken N.E.W.T. level Charms. When he wasn’t in her class, she just waited for the unlucky outlier to get stuck with her.
“Well, most of my friends have already paired off, so,” Green prompted.
Well, if she was going to make her do all of the work….
“Excellent. You’ll work with me, then,” she said definitively.
“Right. Okay! We can meet up sometime this week? If you’re free, I know you have Quidditch-”
“Friday after classes end. I’ll be in the library.”
“Great. I’ll join you there.”
“Fine by me.”
Yes.
—---------------------------
It wasn’t until the next day that she really registered that she hadn’t spoken to either of her sisters since they’d been out shopping for robes. With Andy, this wasn’t exactly unusual- talking to her last weekend had been more of a fluke than the norm. But this was strange for Cissy.
She knew it wasn’t because she was too busy to- even when she was at her most distracted, she and her sister talked to each other fairly regularly. But there had been nothing but radio silence from her youngest sister all week.
At breakfast that day, she decided to bring it up. “Are you mad at me, or something?”
Cissy looked up. “No,” she said stiffly.
“I can tell you’re lying,” she frowned. “What could I possibly have done?”
“Don’t be like that, Bella,” Andy said.
“Like what? You-”
“Just stop, you two,” Cissy groaned. “You were getting along fine on Saturday, weren’t you? Can’t you just keep doing that?”
“Andy’s the one antagonizing me,” she scowled.
“I am not. You’re the one being a huge bitch.”
“And how, exactly, am I doing that?”
Andy opened her mouth to retort, but Cissy looked at her pleadingly, and she closed it and inhaled deeply through her nose. “Cissy is mad at you because you ditched us on Saturday. To be honest, I’m not too happy with you either, though Merlin knows that’s not the only reason.”
She looked to Cissy for confirmation- she was looking very intently down at the table, which was all but a verbal agreement from her. “Oh. I- ah, didn’t realize it was that big of a deal.”
“It wasn’t,” Cissy grumbled. “It was just nice that we were all getting along, and- it doesn’t matter, okay? It’s whatever.”
She wasn’t entirely sure she believed her- no one insisted that something didn’t bother them that many times unless they were bothered by it- but if Cissy wanted to drop it, she wasn’t going to push the issue.
“Alright, then.”
Andy huffed and turned away from her. Well, if she wanted to keep being stupid, she wasn’t going to go chasing after her. She’d made it perfectly clear how she felt, and she wasn’t Cissy. She didn’t need her to hold her hand.
She put the incident entirely out of her mind when the mail came in and she spotted her own owl, knowing it would be from the Dark Lord, as no one else ever wrote to her. She perked up, waiting for it to land.
The moment it did, she seized the letter out of its claws and scanned over it, a smile creeping over her face. Another invitation for Friday night- he didn’t specify what they would be doing, but she couldn’t imagine that he would disappoint.
He never had before.
Friday was a big day for her, then- she would be meeting with Green in the library, and then going to meet with the Dark Lord. Excitement sparked in her brain, almost setting her on edge but in a perfectly delicious way.
She grabbed her quill, and wrote out her reply, the only thing distracting her from that giddy feeling being Green entering the Hall.