Subverted Expectations

When she got to the library, Green was already there waiting for her, even though she had purposefully arrived at the library ten minutes early in order to get there before her.

There were several reasons for doing this- for  one, it meant she got to choose the table and which side she sat at, which wasn’t really very important but she always sat in the same spot. She had also wanted to be there first to assert dominance- if Green walked into the library to see her already waiting for her, it would put her on lower footing from the start.

The other reason for her early arrival was that Andy had been unusually unbearable today, and she’d decided to leave the Common Room early, but that had very little to do with Green.

Thankfully, Green had only ruined one aspect of her original plan. The other girl had either run across a random spot of insanely good luck, or she was paying far more attention to her than she let on, because she was sitting at Bellatrix’s usual table, on the opposite side of where she always sat. A perfect set up.

It still didn’t make up for getting there before her, though- now that Green was here to see her arrive, she would know how early she’d been, and she wouldn’t want the other girl to think she was desperate, or anything.

But there was nothing else to it but to waltz over to her as confidently as possible, all swaying hips and hunter’s prowl, as if that would somehow remedy the situation. Green startled when she sat down, so she counted that as a victory.

“You didn’t get started without me, did you?” she pouted, knowing full well that Green was doing her Potions homework, and didn’t have anything remotely related to a Charms project on her desk, not even her textbook. 

“Of course not. But speaking of, how long do you think this’ll take? I looked over the guidelines, and according to Flitwick we should have started a few days ago,” Green worried, sweeping her previous work off of the table and pulling out her Charms book.

“I’m above worrying about things like guidelines,” she huffed. Those were for lower students, the ones that had only barely passed their Charms O.W.L.’s or were perhaps fine at test taking but terrible at practical projects. She had never had to worry about getting work done on time- she was too smart for that.

(Of course, this often resulted in her sitting in the Common Room, plowing through a month’s worth of work in one night, but she could get it done, and it wasn’t like she normally slept much anyway. This was why she hated group projects- she actually had to do it relatively on pace with the teacher’s recommendations, because her partner was usually Rodolphus, who could not stay up all night to do schoolwork and also wasn’t smart enough to do it all in one night anyway, or some other unlucky bastard that no one else had wanted to work with. Despite her popularity, Katherine Connors of Gryffindor House was often the unlucky one, as she was one of the dullest people she had ever met in her life. She’d bet that was why Green had decided to work with her in the first place- Connors had been her only other option.

That, and she was succeeding at reeling her in. Of course she was).

“Well, then,” Green huffed back. “I assume that means you won’t want to do the whole thing tonight? What time do you want to be done?”

A smile tugged at her lips. “Oh, I’ll need to leave by seven thirty. I have plans tonight.”

—-------------------------------------

She saved herself thirty minutes to get ready, so she looked ready and appropriately dressed by the time she needed to floo back home to meet with the Dark Lord. By ‘appropriately dressed’ she, of course, meant that she’d applied several layers of makeup to make herself appear older than she actually was, was wearing the tightest corset she owned that was still durable enough to withstand a fight (she didn’t know what they would be doing yet), and had donned a pair of boots that were a whole two inches taller than the ones she normally wore (which were three inches tall already, but she was so used to wearing heels that the two inches really wouldn’t make much of a difference). 

When she finally stepped through the fireplace of her family home, she walked in on an unexpected scene. The Dark Lord was there, of course, but so were about a dozen other men, including her father, all down on their knees in a half-circle  as the Dark Lord paced in front of them.

She froze, unsure of what to do- for once, she followed her father’s lead and lowered herself to the ground, a sick feeling spreading into her stomach. Was she late? Had they all been waiting for her? How long had they all been here?

“Bellatrix,” her lord finally said coldly. “Kind of you to join us.”

Shit. 

“I’m sorry. I-” Excuses died in her throat as her father shot her a glare. “It won’t happen again.”

“All is forgiven, Bella,” he nodded gracefully. “But now that we have you among us, we must get started. We have a lot of work ahead of us, after all.”

—------------------------------------------

“What sort of plans?”

She frowned at the curious look on Green’s face. She wanted her to ask questions, but not that kind of questions. “None of your business. Slytherin things.” In a way, that wasn’t even a lie- the Dark Lord and most of his followers were Slytherin alums, after all.

“I see,” Green said, lips pursing disapprovingly, as if she cared what she thought of her and what her friends chose to do after hours (if she were actually doing something with her friends, it would definitely be against school rules. It wouldn’t be fun otherwise).

“Whatever, Green,” she sighed. “Let’s get started, shall we?”

“Right. Now, I was thinking that we could-”

“Okay, not that fast. I still don’t know what this project is, you realize.”

Green gaped at her. “You didn’t read the syllabus? I’ve known about this project from the beginning of the year!”

“I don’t believe in syllabi.”

“Well, you’ll have to now.”

“Why can’t you just tell me what we’re doing? You love talking, don’t you?”

“I’m not going to do all of your grunt work for you, Bellatrix. Just read over the project description and let me know when you’ve finished it, I’ll- finish off my own planning.”

“But ‘project descriptions’-” she pitched her voice higher, mocking- “are for boring people like you.”

“Oh, why do I even bother.”

—---------------------------------------------------

As it turned out, they weren’t going on a raid like she’d expected from the amount of people she’d shown up to. Instead, the Dark Lord had them searching down solutions for a problem he was having- a magical problem.

A warding problem.

He hadn’t phrased it as a competition, of course- not really. But he hadn’t exactly encouraged them to work together- and she hadn’t expected him to. It wasn’t a race, but everyone was going to treat it like one anyway.

See? All Slytherins. 

Bellatrix, in this respect, was lucky- she was the closest to her school years, being the only one still in  school. Actually, most of the men in the room had children at Hogwarts or close to going. Normally, she might actually be outclassed just through experience alone, despite being far more intelligent than any of them. But she was taking Ancient Runes right now. This looked more advanced than what they were learning in their classroom, naturally, but she found the course material easy and frustratingly simple. 

Besides, her Lord had, she was sure, looked at her specifically when he’d wished them luck, He wouldn’t have invited her if he didn’t think she could do it- he probably expected her to be able to do it.

She delved into their family library with more gusto than she’d approached any project for years.

—-------------------------------------------------

Having read the syllabus, and now with a better understanding of what they were supposed to be doing, Bellatrix eventually let Green lay out her idea, because frankly, she didn’t care enough to come up with anything herself.

Not that she wouldn’t be able to. She was usually forced to come up with ideas for the projects she did with anyone else, because whoever it was was always incompetent.

But, as much as she loathed to admit it, she at least trusted Green’s academic prowess enough to let her choose what direction they took this in. It wasn’t like she cared, anyway, and this way was less work for her.

“So- why don’t you work out the Arithmancy, and I’ll look up any other possible ways to apply the spell, and we’ll go from there?”

“Alright,” she shrugged. “Admitting that I’m better at Arithmancy than you?”

“No,” Green almost growled. Then she hesitated, making a clearly conscious effort to soften her features. “I mean, we’re both good at this subject. I just figured you’d prefer that, but if you’d rather do a deep research dive….”

Bellatrix could think of a million things she’d rather be doing, especially for something as trivial as a school project that was only worth, according to the syllabus that she’d just been forced to look at for the first time all year, five percent of their grade. She enjoyed reading the things she was interested in- she didn’t enjoy researching, not in the way Green clearly expected, which included several sheets of parchment, three different quills, and a library reference sheet.

“Whatever,” she grumbled, rather than admitting that Green was totally right.

She thought maybe the other girl got the message anyway. Damn it- if she wasn’t careful, she would actually get to know her well enough to read her, and that was the last thing she wanted.

—----------------------------------------------------

“Hey, can I borrow that?” she asked as innocently as she could. This was very hard, as she had never been ‘innocent’ in her life, but the man (she recognized him, vaguely- hadn’t he been arrested a few years ago? Great company her father was keeping nowadays, but he’d always been a criminal at heart) bought the act, not bothering to look past her school girl status.

Too bad for him. The book he’d just handed over to her was, she was sure, a key to solving their problem. 

She spent the next three hours devouring book after book, and if this was a test, then she was certainly winning. Having not been able to find anything that they could make any sense of, every other person had given up or taken a break at some point throughout those hours. 

Not her. She was nothing if not determined- she wasn’t going to stop until she either found something helpful or determined that there simply was no solution (which was kind of possible, and again, if the whole thing was a test she was acing it- but she was also pretty sure she was onto something). 

She could only hope that he took note of that. People didn’t tend to see her ability to focus on one thing for hours on end a positive thing, as the only people who’d ever noticed were Andy and Cissy, the former of which thought it was ‘bad for her’ and ‘you should sleep, Bella’, and the latter of which was always badgering her for attention, which she didn’t exactly have much of when she was in a mood like this.

But she had a feeling he would appreciate it. He always appreciated the things about her that no one else ever had before.

—-------------------------------------------------

“Are you done yet?” she sighed, pushing aside the parchment she’d just finished working on.

“I should be, but- oh! You’re done!”

“You don’t need to sound surprised,” she huffed. Honestly, just because she didn’t bother paying attention in class didn’t mean she didn’t know what she was doing- in fact, she rather thought it meant the opposite.

(She thought it was telling that she could answer questions all the time without listening to a word the professor said- but Green could do that too, she was just too uptight to tear her eyes away from a professor for more than two seconds).

“I’m not! I mean, I wouldn’t have asked you to do it if I didn’t think you could,” she defended. “That was just fast. None of my friends have ever been able to keep up with my work pace, my whole life.”

She perked up at the mention of Green’s life before Hogwarts- the other girl was famous for not letting anything slip, which she knew because she’d asked around (casually, of course, so as to not arouse any suspicion that she might be more interested in Green than any other student in her year). “I thought you were homeschooled,” she teased.

Of course, she knew this was a lie, because Green was muggleborn and so would not have been taught any magic by her relatives, who wouldn’t have been magical. But that left the question of where she had learned anything about magic, because she was clearly ahead of most of the class (the one exception being Bellatrix herself) and you couldn’t catch up that much over a summer no matter how smart you were.

“I- well, I went to Muggle primary school,” she told her, apparently not caring if anybody heard her- honestly, Gryffindors were awful liars. “And I had friends before I got here, you know.”

She examined her nails uninterestedly. “I wasn’t aware you had friends now.”

“You’re not very funny, you know that?”

“Oh, bugger off.”

—---------------------------------------------------

She’d found it. She’d figured it out, and, if the lack of victorious shouting from any of the other inhabitants of the room- or, for that matter, the lack of any real effort at this point (it was coming up on five hours now)- she was the first one to do so.

Ha. 

“My Lord,” she said cautiously as she approached him- he was leaning over his own tome carefully, picking each word apart. She wouldn’t want to disturb him and make him lose his train of thought, but she’d done what he’d asked of her and she was eager to make sure she made that known before anyone else figured it out (not that she expected any of them to at this point).

“Ah, Bella.  You’ve found something, then?” he said pleasantly, as if it hadn’t taken her an entire five hours.

“Yes. Here- the necessary books are-”

“If you could write up some notes for me and leave them on my desk on your way out, that would be appreciated,” he interrupted, eyeing the stack of five books she was currently carrying pointedly.

Of course. She wouldn’t expect him to read through and find the sources himself- that would be far too presumptuous.

“Yes, my Lord,” she muttered, hurrying away. 

Once she’d put the books back down on the desk she’d been using, she was hit with a sinking feeling in her stomach. She had, in her seven years at Hogwarts, taken notes approximately zero times. That wasn’t a skill she’d ever needed to perfect- she was, after all, perfectly capable of remembering the information thrown at her for long enough to spit it back out on a test, and if she hadn’t been paying attention then she could just reread the textbook before an important exam.

But it was more than worth it to force herself to learn now, because the look on her father’s face was priceless and would be even more so when she was rewarded and he wasn’t.

She’d always known she was better than him- it was about time he figured that out, too.

—-----------------------------------------------------

“Seriously, Bellatrix. Why do you feel the need to be mean to people? You actually wouldn’t be as insufferable as you are if you learned to be nice to people.”

“Calm your tits, I was joking. Besides, I don’t care if people think I’m insufferable. Why would I?”

“Exactly. You say you have some secret good side, but I definitely haven’t seen it.”

Woah, hey. That was not where she’d thought this conversation was going to go- what the hell was Green on about? She didn’t think she’d annoyed her that much- no more than she usually would, anyway.

“You must not be looking very hard, then,” she shrugged. “And for the record, if either of us are insufferable, it’s you.”

She was in trouble now- lowering herself to playground insults? Green really did get under her skin.

But in her defense, she’d thought she’d been doing fine. Green had approached her and asked to work together, and they’d sat there pretty amicably for a few hours, and she’d even complimented her on her academic prowess. She didn’t understand why the other girl was being so defensive now.

“I think we’re done for today,” Green breathed out after a moment of staring very intently at the table. “Let me know when you’re free to finish this up. Preferably sometime before next week, alright? This is due at the end of term, and I would like to get it done before then.”

Before she’d said that, Bellatrix had thought there was no way she was upset enough to leave, but apparently, the girl’s emotions got the better of her way quicker than Bellatrix had anticipated. That was a pity- she was so smart, but she had such Gryffindor tendencies.

Well, she would cool down, and by the time she next saw her- a whole two days from now- she would be fine. It wasn’t like Bellatrix had never done worse to her before than be a little catty at a study session.

—--------------------------------------------------------

It was around three in the morning when she finally set down a few pages of notes on the Dark Lord’s desk- he, too, had continued working through the night even as everyone else had gone to bed, so it was just them in the library at this point.

Good. No one else was going to get in her way now.

“Thank you, Bellatrix. You did well today.” He smiled, and she felt her head rush a bit at the praise. “I hope you’ll continue the good work. I’ll need someone more competent than the other men here today.”

“Of course,” she smiled back, almost feeling like they were sharing some inside joke- of course, they both knew the others couldn’t do their jobs. Of course, they both knew she was better than them.

It felt like the old looks she used to share with Andy- she hadn’t looked at her sister like that in nearly a year now. 

“I expect they’ll want you back at Hogwarts, though, so I’ll have to live without your help until next time,” he sighed, nodding towards the door. 

“I’ll see you next time,” she nodded.

As she rushed out and towards the Entrance Hall so she could floo home, she let a grin slip across her face. Her evening hadn’t been going very well until she’d shown up to meet with him, and finding several other people also there waiting for her had thrown her for a loop, but this had made the entire day more than worth it.

(But- despite her bad luck with the girl earlier, and her wonderful meeting with the Dark Lord just now, she would still continue pursuing Emma Green. Of course, now it was fueled by the insult of rejection- how dare she walk away on her?

Of course, it wasn’t because she liked her).