Quote Me if I'm Wrong

Chapter Nine: Sticks and Stones

Friends are God's apology for relations. -Hugh Kingsmill

I hold very few things as truths in life.

Life itself is not even one of The Seven Truths: hate, fire, blackness, dishonesty, lust, envy, and death.

When you hate it is with an action of pure nothingness, a blaze of emotion so overcoming that it blinds your head, fills your spirit, and can often become what defines you. I know hate, all purebloods do. We hate with a passion burning as the flames. That passion is all of us, you hate, or you are a fool who trades in your hate for a love that is hate. Love is hate, and that is why I am a believer in birth control potions. Hate is a truth you can not always rely on, it can be altered. Hate is a truth puppet to the heart.

Fire...is the source of the flames of hate, the smoke curls and blackens the heart, harden the soul, not to mention the intoxicating musk that rolls from the waves of intense heat. When the last embers of flame fall away you still have the remainders reminding you of the truth. Coal and soot are pure and powerful, black as night, penetrating as day.

My obsession with the truth in charcoal remains started far back in school. I would reach my hand into the raging flames and pull out a red-hot burnt end of coal; I don't know what possessed me to outline my eyes in the color of oblivion. The burning of my bottomless eyes surrounded in waves of deepening color made me stick out...it revealed to the world my Blackness...

Not that I was hiding my past, but the eyeliner just announced to those who didn't know my intentions. Few didn't know who I was, people would part in the halls for me. Some in fear of my infamous fire, others in sheer intimidation. Intimidation thanks to my name, Bellatrix Black oldest Black daughter, intimidation of my gift, of my raving blue black hair, pale skin, and endless eyes. Others, Slytherin mostly, drifted in respect. But every so often a Gryffindor would step aside on my behalf, others would stick a foot out, but some knew who I was, the younger cousin of the Marauder, Sirius Black.

My loving, dear, sweet, cousin, the only one ever to challenge me. Yes me, challenge me. People could see the connection and anger brew between us, but few ever thought that I would be the last he ever dueled. Few. I was one of them, secretly I always harbored a hope that I would be the one to put an end to him. Not that I ever mentioned that desire to him, it would have been far too honest to go up to him and say I hate you and I am going to kill you.

A truth you can find in dishonesty is something noble heroes and such do not understand. Honest people are constantly telling the truth of a factual based version of such. Any good Black will tell you that you can always count on a truly dishonest persona to always tell a lie, or a completely false story. There is craft in lying, you have to make the story sound pleasing to the ear, sugar coat it so it is palpable.

Being dishonest is nothing more than acting, something both lions and snakes excel at. Lions push under our noses these brave faces of nothing less than complete courage, yes Gryffindors, let us you hear your roar. And after you roar we'll his right back. I suppose dishonesty is a trait that rides alongside any Slytherin. We twist the bloodlines, mangle the heritage, and for what? Personal gain, if a Slytherin wants something they will get it no questions asked. I wanted no competition form my relatives and look, my cousin is in the limbo between life and death, my Aunt had an unfortunate accident, and my sisters and husbands have the glow that rides along with meaningless stupidity.

I will give Sirius and his mother their due credit, both were amazing magicians, were, if they hadn't let their differences burst between them they may have formatted a rebellion. I think Andromdea might deserve some points too. She was always the brains of the operation, her name carried the legendary reputation as the girl who wrought the plans for our Slytherin gang. Lucius, Severus, Cissa, and Rodolphus owe her so much more than we will ever give her, greed is also a truth, it just lies at number eight on the list.

However Ann surrendered her hate to love and she lost any right she had to call her self a rightful Slytherin.

There was a time when the three Black sisters were the true femmes fatal, it was never a day we didn't hex an older student, abduct the Head Boy, craze Charisma, cause a Firstie to wet himself, or screw each others boyfriends. Charisma was always such fun to terrorize, or she was until Lucius drove her over the edge, the edge of a very high tower. Oh he didn't kill her, but the words and taunts we spoke to her certainly collaborated with the other circumstances to help in the execution of her execution choice. As students you could say that the three of us personally interviewed the male population of Hogwarts, or tendrils reached all the way into the lions' den.

There was hardly a conquest we couldn't achieve (a trait we passed proudly to Draco), couldn't reach. If I couldn't snag him because Lucius and I had prior arrangements then Ann was sure to go after him with her long red hair and odd violet eyes, and when the men still didn't fall prey we would send in our big gun. Narcissa, should I say big frontal assets? There were two boys we never got, Potter and Lupin, we couldn't get either, not for lack of trying. We couldn't do our own cousin, there's enough inbreeding amongst the purebloods as is, and no human would do Wormtail. Ew!

It was a game of truth we wove around those boys, lust being a truth to be reckoned with. Lust is an undaunted force, the language, the speaking eyes, suggestive whispers, sweaty palms, panting breaths, and lust leaves you craving for more. A state parallel to that of truth. What you want to hear, what you have experienced, always leave in their trail a path of want...want is the roots of lust.

There were moments that The Sixth Truth would drive and grind at lust, (not unlike pelvic areas of men and their women). Envy can if allowed pulsate at the salty fibers of lust and passion. It doesn't give a particular matter what you envy, what jealousy runs you amok, but envy can worm through any barrier laid by emotion.

People have envied Black power, my power and the gift of my cousin, an envy that could produce fear, and fear leads to the truth of terror. Then there is the every envied Black beauty. A simply complex beauty that lies in the curves of Cissa's luminescent skin, in the waves that used to run over Sirius's face, in the control of my eyes. Black beauty, pure as ice floods our veins whether we freeze them in hate or heroics. Envy is a truth as impure as the rising blood that bubbles in the sky every morn at dawn when the orb of life rises in the sky and the bumps of night bump away, lest the vampires become dust.

But I realize that all these traits can be outwitted by charm, magic, and by human nature. Hate can be conquered by the fable of love, look at what happened to Ann. Fire can be put out by a basic wave of water, dampening the spirit of the coal. Blackness can be eroded away by the poisonous influence of a Potter, of love, by even hate. Look once again to my sister, or to my late cousin. Dishonesty will lie in the face of darkness, yet cower in the bleeding shadows, lust is a period that last only a few blissful moments and can not always be supremely fulfilled. And envy can be rusted away by insistence and experience, what you have felt you are less envious of, thus ruining the truth.

Death is the only and final truth that I revere. Even my master hides in the face of death, and only immortality can overcome all truth. All of us mere mortals will in time have to answer the knocking of truth on the door of our bodily systems. One day blood will cease to pump, air will not fill our lungs, and in the place of lively hood only empty shells will remain. Everything in this world shall fall prey to truth, no matter where we hide, who we seek, nor what we flee, we shall answer the call.

When I answer the call of truth I will feel the cold earth clam over my body, my epitaph will read nothing sentimental, for love is an illusion for the seekers of the lightening truth and truth is anything but not a burden to bear.

Bitch.

One word is all that's necessary, and I will thank my friends for that remembrance. Because my family would rather have me thought of as a good Death Eater, the only female Death Eater, rather than who I really am. I'm Tom Riddle's bitch, so what.

I find it lucky, better be the whore to the man who will defy the truth than to a man who will never be able to lie in the face of an honest end.