Belladonna

It was a rough time to be living in Europe back then in the 1930’s and 40’s. Grindelwald would terrorize everyone who did not go with his believes. And although the Rizzos were the typical upper class-pure blood family, they were not Grindelwald’s followers. There was no such trouble with it, except by the fact that this dark wizard managed to take over the Italian Ministry of Magic. He went over every family that was against him. Therefore, the Rizzos had to run away from Italy before Grindelwald’s followers came for them.

It was a very obscure night in 1938 that would haunt the Rizzos forever. The followers forced themselves into the old castello of the family and went for their servants, their animals, all their treasures. With the sole purpose of taking everything from them. But Braulio Rizzo, the head of the family, knew exactly what they were going to take away from him right in front of him and his wife. They forced their three kids to go into their knees. They were going to execute them right there for their parents to see and suffer.

And it was also a message for the other pure blood families: follow Grindelwald or this will happen to you.

It was the end for the Rizzos. However, just when they were about to execute Braulio II, their eldest, Idalia Di Mercurio could not take it anymore. Some people say that there is not a stronger bond than the one between a mother and her children. Maybe that was what happened that night in the bedroom of the Rizzo marriage. Because the locals tell the story of a woman expelling sharp flames out of her chest, protecting herself and her two sons and daughter.

The followers fell to the ground, completely burned out, lifeless. But her family was safe, as if the wild flames that touched them were just a sweet, hot breeze. Saved, it is what Signore Rizzo thought immediately. Or at least it was it, until he turned right and saw his wife laying on the marble floor too. She did not seemed hurt, only tired, powerless. She needed to rest and as her eyes were closing forever, she begged her husband to leave. To take their kids away.

There was no time for resting nor for saying goodbye, more enemies climbing up the stairs ready to assassin. No time to lose, he grabbed the kids and disapparated from Italy. The safest place to go to was England. Not only was the Ministry against Grindelwald, but they also had a little cappagna where they could stay. It was located in a very small, fishing town in Devon, called Clovelly.

Sure, it was nothing like what they were used to have back at home. They had to live in a very small cottage, missing their people, their landscape, their commodities. In some way, the only thing they had left was their name. But more importantly, those kids were missing their mum. It was a whole new life for those magical children to have. And somehow great things were just about to come for them.

Ofelia was the second to be born. The only girl between Braulio and Filipe. It was not easy to be the only woman in a house where there was so much work to do. After her mum passed, she had to take care of three-year-old Filipe, while her papà had to work hard for them to get what they already own. But maybe what it crashed her the most was when her older brother left to Hogwarts. She missed him more than anyone because the age gap between them was only two years. She was also worried. Anyone could comprehend that after what happened that night, the Rizzos became a little apprehensive of strangers. And maybe (although she would only admit it to herself) she was a little jealous too. Her brother could learn magic, have a wand and meet kids his age. While she was stuck at that stupid cottage with nothing but endless choirs.

Rizzo meant curly hair. That was probably the only characteristic that Ofelia had from her father. As a difference from her brothers, she had golden hair like her mother. Pristine skin like anyone in Northern Italy and crazy crimson lips because she was always biting them. Lovely, big brown eyes that sometimes seem to have rare orange sparkles in her iris when she would get mad. And every time that her papa looked into them, he would see her mum’s eyes. The servants back in the castle used to call her Belladonna because from such a tender age, everyone could see that she would become a beautiful woman one day.

That is how she got her own nickname. Her papa and her brothers would call her Bella, which in their language meant beautiful.

Time went on and although they did not move to a new castle, money started entering their home again. They certainly were not rich by the time Ofelia entered Hogwarts, but they were managing just fine. They did not had a house-elf though, so the work still was made by her, but now it was not as challenging as it was before. The cottage was fixed now and well-painted on the outside. Even Clovelly was not such a horrible place to live in after all.

However, nothing excited Ofelia the most like finally attending a magic school. She always thought that she would learn magic in Beauxbatons. But since everything had change for her, Hogwarts did not sound so bad after all. She was very happy of visiting London, of finally being in an actual city. Buying her school stuff was obviously great, being the wand the peak of it. But nothing was as amazing as getting up on that train heading the old castle in Scotland.

“Ready, sorellina?” Braulio made their way through the train to get them to their own carriage.

Braulio was a good brother. He was a little protective of her, but he still wanted to watch her shine because he knew how bright she was.

“Come here” he indicated, letting her get in first.

Ofelia seem a little confused by her brother’s perfect English. At home, they would only communicate through Italian. So although she was fluent in English, she still had a very marked Italian accent when speaking. It did make sense though that he got rid of his accent. People would make fun of Irish people for their’s, imagine an Italian one. Hogwarts reminded her of home, Ofelia immediately thought when she saw the castle on the distance. Of course the castle was like ten times bigger, but she thought the architecture was pretty similar. Though she got distracted from the view because two stupid boys in her boat were playing with the water.

“Stupidi” she murmured for only herself to hear.

The ceremony seemed a little odd with a talking hat singing about the virtues of each house like it was some kind of contest between them. Then, she realized that it was in fact a contest, as Headmaster Dippet soon explained each house would get points through the year and finally win the House Cup at the of it.

“Rizzo, Ofelia.”

She was called and everyone felt really interested about that name. Sure, the history was what drove all the eyes into her climbing to the podium. But it was her beauty that kept the viewers invested in the show.

“What do we have here…?” the hat spoke into her ears, inside her mind. “Such a curious mind here, mhm… Very bold, 'been through a lot. But where should I put you in…? Smart, bright woman. Craves knowledge…, but because you know that knowledge is power.” It stopped for a couple of seconds and then it yelled the sorting for the whole school to know. “SLYTHERIN!!”

She felt really important and huge when everyone clapped for her and as her brother made space for her in the table, right next to all his mates in the third year. Imagine how proud she felt when she was the first student of 1940 to be sorted into Slytherin. The first Slytherin of thenew decade.

But that emotion brushed off the second someone called Minerva McGonagall decided to go up and steal her thunder. That was not really what it happened, but it was definitely how our dear Belladonna saw it. The Sorting Hat could not decide in which house to put her.

“Apparently we have the first hatstall in years!” announced the Headmaster making the crowd cheer in excitement.

“Che cazzo é uno hatstall?” questioned Ofelia.

“Hey! No Italian!” yelled one of her brother’s friends. “That’s cheating!”

“Evanderson is right, Bella, you need to speak in English from now on” her brother said to her, as if he was the holder of the truth.

“Who put you in charge?”

The thing with the Rizzo siblings was that although they were as close as siameses, they would still get on each other’s nerves. And soon Ofelia learned that Slytherin was a very machista type of household, which made his brother had to constantly be proving himself to his mates. He was the heir and some day he would be the head of the family. Of course, he could not take his little sister running over him.

“Do not talk to me like that or else…” he grab her by the elbow just like her father would do when she was misbehaving.

Although Ofelia was not someone to be intimidated by her brother, she was someone that knew when to shut up. Not because she thought her brother would do something to her, but because she did not wanted to make him a fool of himself in front of his upper-class friends.

So she did shut up, just for that girl Minerva to be finally sorted into Gryffindor.

“Bloody Gryffindors…” another of Braulio’s acquaintances murmured.

That was when not only the creak between both houses became knowledge of the young lady, but it was also the birth of her own personal rivalry with the hatstall girl. It was not that McGonagall had done something specific, Ofelia just thought that she would be her own rival for robbing the spotlight from her. But also what she noticed was that Minerva was hell-a beautiful in a complete different way that she was. Ofelia was this angel-kind of beautiful, the blonde-hegemony type. No one could deny that she was gorgeous. But Minerva was the contrary. She had straight black hair, tied into a perfect bun. And some strange dark blue eyes that had some kind of cat-like shape that made her look mysterious and wild.

So we could say that in a way or another, since day one, Bella spot her eyes in Minerva McGonagall in one way or another.

Slytherin Common Room was too dark for Ofelia’s taste. Not that she did not appreciated all the classy, sophisticated style, she just liked to see the sun in her window when she would wake up. And, well, the whole place was literally underground, in the freaking dungeons. Green was cool though, it was her favourite colour. Something that she liked was that her room was spacey and her bed was Victorian style. There was a huge black closet in one side of the room. But she was not sure how much she was supposed to use from it, as there were two other beds in the room. She just took out her uniform for the next day and lay it on top of her trunk.

An hour later, someone came through the door interrupting Ofelia’s reading. She did not enter alone, a very lookalike, last-year boy entered with her to kiss her goodnight and then leave. Her brother, she supposed. The girl did not say hi to her. However, it kind of look like she was shy and that was her case. Then, another girl entered the room all alone with a lot more attitude that the raven-hair one.

“Oh, Black! I can’t believe I get to share a room with you” the curly dirty blonde said, as if it was such an odd situation to share a room with the shy girl.

“I guess…”

“You must be Rizzo” said the dirty blonde, clearly looking forward into starting a conversation with her.

It sounded weird to be called by her last name.

“Yes, Ofelia Rizzo” she presented herself. “What are your names?”

“Oh, you have a cute little accent…” she sounded excited, not at all as a mock. “My name is Druella Rosier. You can call me Drue though.” She pointed at the other girl. “Walburga Black.”

The Walburga girl just waved, as she was unpacking.

“You can call me Walls if you want to.” Her voice was really soft, as if she was not permitted to speak out loud. “How should we call you? Offie? Fellie?”

She wrinkled her nose with discomfort. She was OK with nicknames, just not those.

“That sounds awful!”

“Why, what would you like to be called then?” Druella asked sharply.

“Mhm… My family calls me Bella since I was born. Nobody actually calls me by my name back at home.”

“Bella… I like it” Rosier declared. “Sounds like you are a full of yourself, but it is great.”

“Belle, I’ll call you that” decided Walburga, as if that nickname was even better.

Apparently, both of them new each other since childhood. They were not specially friends. But the Rosiers and the Blacks were close. Soon enough while the two were talking she realized what was the deal with those two. Walburga was shy and sweet, only spoken when she had to. Probably she was not allowed in her house to share her opinions or thoughts. On the contrary, Druella was kind of loud, sharing all of her thoughts at once without even considering it. But she was not sweet at all. She was rough and mean, calculating everything around her.

“So, is it true what happened to your family?” Walburga asked in a rush of boldness. “Those kind of rumours even fly over here.”

Rizzo thought that she did not want to talk about that. Not with some random girls that she just met.

“You don’t have to tell us. Sorry, I didn’t mean to be intrusive.”

But somehow, she found comfort in those words. She felt safe enough to nod with her head.

“That’s crazy!” Druella exclaimed to her gesture. But then, she realized that maybe “crazy” was not the right word to describe it.

They remained silent for a while. Ofelia trying not to think in the image of her mother slowly fading away. And the other two girls probably trying to recreate the whole scene in their own minds.

“Can you do it?” Black asked, secretively.

“Do what?”

“You know…” Druella whispered. “The fire thing.”

Now, that was a question. There was an old local story of a flame power that was passed from generation to generation in the Di Mercurio. Her family knew that that ancient power was what saved them that night. But they would never discuss that. People would get scared of strange magical powers because having a special talent did not always mean that you would use it for good. And facing the truth, the Ministry was only scared of two things: talented wizards or witches that could generate magic without the use of a wand. And a woman with an ace under her sleeve.

Ofelia would often wonder if she had some of that magic within herself too.

The girls went to sleep soon after that conversation. But our Belladonna just could not. She was looking at the ceiling, not catching zzz’s. So instead of wasting her time, she thought of going for a stroll around the castle. Sometimes in Clovelly, when she could not sleep, she would leave the house and walk down the road in the middle of the night only to help her get sleepy. She left her room in her night gown, ready for that stroll. But as soon as she got into the Common Room, she bumped into someone.

“Don’t you look where you're going, first year?” A very nasty boy spat at her.

She knew perfectly fine who he was. Tom Riddle. Her brother was like obsessed with him, every time he would talk about school at home he would blub about him. They shared a room and Braulio felt like Riddle was his best friend at Hogwarts. Well, he did not seem like he was the kind of person to have friends. Maybe he felt so close to Riddle because he was an orphan and her brother could identify with that. Or maybe it was that in the beginning nobody wanted to hang out with the kid that Grindelwald sent to murder. Braulio had to win all of his friends and they still find him to be like an outsider. Riddle was a muggleborn. And if purebloods had a problem with something, that was mudbloods.

“Me? You were literally walking around reading a book.”

“Who do you think you are talking to?” Tom placed her against the wall. “You need to respect your elders.”

“I will respect my elders when my elders earn my respect.”

She got him away enough to stand aside from the wall. She did not want to feel cornered.

“You are Braulio’s little sister, aren’t you?” She felt as if he was scanning every detail of her skin.

“Yes. But the name is Ofelia. That is O-F-E-L-…”

“I know how it is spelled, first year!”

They kept quiet staring at each other in the darkness. No longer scanning, more like a battle of seeing who could last longer staring at each other with a mean look on their faces. Eventually, it felt like Tom got enough of it, as he broke the link and step out. Maybe he got tired, maybe he decided to be the better person and not fight an eleven year-old, or maybe he just could not take those beautiful big brown eyes.

“Watch yourself, little one.”

She did not like the sound of those words. It sounded like a threat and she was not someone to play around with. So since that first night at Hogwarts, Bella already had two people on her black list. The hatstall Gryffindor girl that stole her thunder and the mean Slytherin boy that thought he had power over everyone around him.

And, for Merlin’s sake, that list would only get longer and longer with time…