Chapter 1
Azkaban, 1993.
She discovered herself laughing. She seemed to have been doing it for quite a while. Her throat was raw, and the sides of her mouth had split and bled from opening it too wide. She closed it and made the unpleasant discovery that a string of saliva was hanging from her lips. She dabbed at it carefully.
Someone in a cell nearby was screaming and wailing about something or other. It was boring to listen to, whatever they said. Worse yet, her fingers had gone numb from the cold.
Her lucid moments were always interesting. She supposed that they came when the dementors moved far enough away from her cell. Or, more likely, she simply possessed better mental fortitude than most prisoners. She’d never been a wimp, and she had no plans to become one. She rubbed her hands together, trying to get some blood into them, only to discover, with great annoyance, that her fingernails were caked with blood. Perhaps she’d been clawing at the walls again. She’d like to give her maddened self a piece of her mind. She rolled her shoulders back, turning to survey her cell, when she saw something that made her freeze in her tracks. Someone was in her cell.
Obviously, someone was not in her cell, but this someone seemed as real as herself. The apparition had all the trademarks that real, non-hallucinated people tend to have, including all three dimensions.
At first, she couldn’t place who this vision was supposed to be. It was, curiously, a teenage girl, with ridiculously curled blonde hair and a self-satisfied smirk. The apparition of a girl perched on the stone bench of the cell, and had the gall to glance disdainfully at the filth on the rocky floor. Her disdain was infuriating, since the bitch was wearing kid gloves, and proper robes—hey, actually, she was incorporeal! —so, she definitely had nothing to complain about. The girl tossed her curls back and surveyed the prisoner, rubbing her thumb and forefinger together as she did so, like some strange tic.
“Looking worse for wear, I see.”
And it clicked. She knew at once who this apparition was.
“Skeeter,” she greeted icily.
The apparition of Rita Skeeter smiled smugly.
“Black.”
--
Hogwarts, 1968.
It was ten minutes past midday when the vanishing charm wore off. The student body of Hogwarts was leaving their classes, heading to the Great Hall for lunch, when they discovered the halls of the school littered with leaflets. While most were on the ground, many had found their ways into the visors of suits of armour, been stuck to the ceiling, or plastered onto windows. The new caretaker, Filch, had accidentally discovered one of the invisible leaflets before its vanishing charm expired, and students reported him furiously running down the halls with his arms outstretched, determined to find these invisible acts of treason.
The creator of these leaflets had timed it very well. A lunchtime release allowed for the student body to properly peruse the papers, poring over the words and gossiping enthusiastically with their schoolmates about the juicy contents, and whom the author may be. Someone at the Ravenclaw table had the idea of casting a type of revelio charm and was emphatically jabbing their wand at the paper. To their left, a gaggle of Gryffindors were hooting and calling out to their friends, jubilant at the gossip. The Hufflepuffs were eagerly passing out extra leaflets to their peers, making sure everyone could have a read.
At the Slytherin table, Bellatrix Black did not seem the least bit intrigued. She sat, almost boredly, eating a corned beef sandwich in small but savage bites. Her fellow Slytherins would attest to the fact that corned beef was a favourite of hers, since she never ate it at home. She sat with her characteristic ramrod-straight posture and prefect badge gleaming on her chest, not bothering to make conversation. Conversely, to her left, fellow sixth-year Dottie Hipswich had gotten her hands on a leaflet, and was gasping at what seemed like every phrase, desperate to share.
“You’ll never believe it, Bellatrix! It says Elsa Erskine didn’t just choose to leave last year—she got expelled for stealing Slughorn’s felix felicis! And–oh my” —here, Dottie was temporarily overcome with glee, eyes bulging almost out of her head— “she used the potion to get it on with Wilfred Byam! That minx!”
Bellatrix raised one perfectly manicured eyebrow and took another bite of her sandwich.
“And Seth Overcliff… no way! And Lacey Chrysipps! That makes so much sense—oh, of course she did!”
Dottie was gasping at such a rate she seemed to be at risk of asphyxiating. Her eyes, which were darting fervidly all over the paper, contributed further to her demented appearance, making her appear on the verge of an epileptic fit. Then she read something so shocking that it took all the air out of her together.
“No way,” she said, in a hushed voice. “I should have known there was something off about him!”
Her eyes darted to look at Bellatrix, who rolled her eyes and finally graced Dottie with some attention.
“About whom?”
Dottie flipped the leaflet around dramatically, jabbing a finger to the particular passage.
“The new caretaker—Filch, I think—he’s a dirty squib!”
She looked up at Bellatrix, gauging a reaction. Bellatrix did her the honour of raising not just one, but two whole eyebrows.
“And, of course, now everyone’s wondering who the author is. I think—and I’ve thought long and hard—it’s got to be quite a few people, because one person simply couldn’t know all this. Right, Bellatrix?”
Bellatrix, not bothering to question how Dottie had thought “long and hard” about something that had happened thirty minutes ago, was focused on something near the back of the Great Hall.
“Was it you, Bellatrix? No, actually, that doesn’t make sense. You’re not really the subtle type.”
Dottie frowned petulantly at Bellatrix, who was still focused on something other than the gripping conversation that Dottie was providing.
“I remember when you found out that Bainbridge called your sister a tease,” Dottie reminisced. “You just hexed him in the hallway and said he looked like a ran-through house elf.”
Abruptly, Bellatrix stood up. Swallowing the final bite of her sandwich, she grabbed her silver-buckled book bag and left Dottie. Her eyes were still trained on that something at the back of the hall. Dottie sighed, momentarily disappointed, but was then quickly taken up by the intrigue of the leaflet.
Meanwhile, Bellatrix’s pace was picking up. It was unusual for her to rush anywhere, since she generally preferred a haughty glide. Ahead of her, someone darted around the corner. Bellatrix followed, as both descended to the Slytherin Common Room in the dungeons. Passing the indoor waterfall, they entered the Common Room. Bellatrix, not bothering to greet anyone, swiftly made her way to the sixth-year girls’ dormitory. As she reached the end of the passage, the door slammed shut. Huffing with dry laughter, Bellatrix wrenched the door open with such force that it slammed against the wall on the other side. There she stood, arms crossed, looking smugly at Rita Skeeter.
Rita, slightly out of breath from the chase, tossed back her brassy blonde curls. This had very little effect, since her hair was styled within an inch of its life, and could hardly move. Bellatrix had explicitly communicated her derision for Rita’s fringe, which she curled into a spiral on her forehead. She had a point; it really did resemble some sort of pastry. Rita tapped her fringe gently, making sure it was still in place, then cleared her throat.
“Black.”
“Skeeter. Looking a bit flustered, aren’t we?”
Rita opened her mouth, then closed it. She was sizing up the taller girl, trying to work out exactly how much Bellatrix knew. Bellatrix was very happy to clue her in.
“I saw you lurking at the back of the Great Hall. Usually, you’re right in amongst the riffraff. You are partial to gossip, after all.”
Rita huffed. “You know I wrote it?”
“You’ve been unofficially providing gossip for years. It took you long enough.” Bellatrix strode into the room, dropping her book bag on her desk. She smirked. “You were being such a pussy about it.”
“I thought you didn’t like vulgarity?”
Bellatrix sat on her bed, leaning back on her hands and tilting her chin up to look up at Rita, very pleased with herself. “Pussy as in pusillanimous. Get a grip—or a half decent vocabulary. Aren’t journalists expected to have those sorts of things?”
“You think I’m a journalist?”
There was a hint of pride in Rita’s voice, as she looked at Bellatrix, lounging on the bed.
Bellatrix snorted. “Yes, I’ve promoted you from nosy bitch.”
“Again with the vulgarity, Black.”
“Well, I dislike being wrong more.”
Rita had forgotten her embarrassment at being found out. Though she wouldn’t show it, she knew Bellatrix was impressed. The knowledge gave her a little glow in her chest.
“And it would be wrong to call me a nosy bitch?”
“To say it out loud, yes. But I’ll think whatever I please.”
“You can keep thinking about me, Black.”
“Oh, I will,” said Bellatrix, now tilting her chin downwards to smirk at Rita through her lashes. “I’ll call you all manner of things.”
Rita, momentarily lost for words, had to make do with an eyeroll. Bellatrix stood up, walking over to her desk, where she began to unpack her book bag and repack the textbooks for her afternoon classes.
“And, the thing is, Skeeter: Elsa Erskine isn’t coming back to Hogwarts, so she can’t refute anything. Oh, I do believe she was expelled. But Byam’s self-conscious enough—or desperate enough—to tell everyone that he did have a fling with Erskine. You’d get to exercise a nice bit of creative licence—elaborate a bit, so to say.”
She flung her book bag over her shoulder, looking to Rita for a reaction.
If anything, Rita looked proud, as she suppressed a smile. “What an accusation.”
Bellatrix laughed—properly this time. “I look forward to your next article.”
She strode out of the dormitory, her inky black ringlets bouncing with every step.