After the Ball

Bellatrix

I could have danced all night!

I could have danced all night!

And still have begged for more.

I could have spread my wings

And done a thousand things I've never done before.

I'll never know what made it so exciting;

Why all at once my heart took flight. I only know when he

Began to dance with me I could have danced,

Danced, danced all night!

Bellatrix did not usually dance. It was not that she was no good at it - wholly untaught she might be, but her sense of rhythm was no worse than that of anybody else - but that good as she might be with a talented and sympathetic partner or in a free and casual fling, she was far too unapproachable to attract a partner, and neither free or casual at any time. Crippling embarrassment had never been her style, and Bellatrix had made it known so long ago that she simply preferred not to dance, that when she might have wished to she no longer had the choice. That night, however, had been different. Avery had plucked up his courage and asked her, and she rather liked Avery and certainly she admired guts and it had meant nothing and she had dared to say yes. Oddly, it remained the most daring thing she had done that night. Then there had been Rodolphus Lestrange. Certainly Lucius had fixed that, but Bellatrix had suggested it to Lucius herself, and hadn't Rodolphus said afterwards that he would ask her off his own bat next time, and he had, and that had worked very well. Everything had begun that night at the Notts' wedding, standing outside the ballroom on the terrace and drowning in the scent of wisteria. Then he had spoken to her, the Dark Lord come to her out of the shadows, and that night they had made their bargain that he would teach and she would choose to serve. They had kept their promises. He had taught and she had learned. He had had so much to offer and she had taken all. Everything Andromeda would learn in the time-hallowed halls and dungeons of the Scholomance, Bellatrix, sole apprentice to her master, learnt to do better, faster, stronger. She moved her hand, her lips, and the magic bloomed around her. Suddenly all her talent, all the power she had ever felt inside her if she could only find it, all her strength and skill was hers to command, magic to match her desire, all hers, all his. There followed the two best years of her life.

*

In her seventh year at Hogwarts, Bellatrix was made Head Girl as her younger sisters had half-predicted, and within a month the whole school wondered how such an enormously successful appointment might have been in doubt. Of her erstwhile competitors for the position, Sophronisba Hallow would take out her bitter disappointment in her career as a small-minded pen pusher at the Ministry, Crux Croaker was openly relieved not to be saddled with disciplining rancid Gryffindor brats, and Wilkes had quite honestly long since decided that if she were offered the position she would not take it; If they offer it to me instead of Bella, she said to Severus Snape, bending over a cauldron in an empty dungeon one summer evening, it won't be an honour worth having. With her duties as Head Girl and her studies in the Dark Arts, Bellatrix's other work might have suffered, yet now she knew how to channel her powers and wasted no time in futility, as all her magic came under her control, the rest was even easier. She flew through her N.E.W.T.s, received an award for Special Services to the School for rescuing a group of second years on a nature trip from an errant Hebridean Black dragon, and received her first ever Valentine's cards. One of them, hand made and rose-scented, her sisters guessed to be from a greatly daring Severus Snape. As to the other, they had no idea.

Nothing could dampen Bellatrix's spirits. Growing fear and suspicion in the Wizarding world was nothing to her who knelt before its master. With her brimming handful of N.E.W.T.s she joined the Ministry's ambassadorial staff, one of a group of young witches and wizards sent out to embassies around the world to aid in the cultivation of international relationships. Careful thought brought her to Christiania, joint capital of Norwegian and Swedish wizardry, neither too foreign nor frightening, with a language easy to learn and a liberal attitude to the arcane arts. Lucius Malfoy, who had spent two years in Buda-Pesth at a safe yet convenient distance from his mother in Vienna, sent her a list of things she would need and not think to take. She read it out to her family over breakfast:

Cauldron and basic potions kit (don't tell anyone you've got them or they'll all try to borrow)

Small MUGGLE Norwegian-English and Swedish-English dictionaries (order from Flourish & Blotts)

Extra pairs of gloves

Broomstick and saddle-bag for weekend trips

Hogwarts winter cloak

Chocolate

With Andromeda and Narcissa she raced around Diagon Alley buying new robes, ink and parchment, a travel guide to Scandinavia (with a fold-out colour section on essential cultural events including the Sami Necromancy Festival), and plenty of chocolate for the journey. Even their parents' giving permission for Andromeda to spend a week's holiday with Ted Tonks and family could not dampen her spirits too greatly.

'Honestly, darling,' her mother sighed to Bellatrix over her protests, 'Andromeda's seventeen - it isn't as if she were proposing to marry the boy! And even if she were, don't you think it's better to be civil about it? Then at least she'll come to us when she wants a divorce. You take on far too much responsibility. I think it's high time you went away and didn't have to worry about your sisters. Enjoy yourself - you're only young and carefree once, my dear.'

So enjoy herself Bellatrix did. Christiania was wonderful. Her work at the Ministry was satisfying and rather fun, and in the interests of cultural understanding, as she informed her somewhat dubious superiors, she joined a group of young Norwegian witches and wizards who were interested in the Dark Arts. Lucius Malfoy came to visit for a weekend, and they all went up to the Jotunheim to see the Ice Giants and Bella even had a go at ski-ing. Narcissa and Andromeda marvelled at letters full of Astrid and Idun, Harald and Naakve, and wondered if this were really Bellatrix dashing around so much and even, a photograph in a newspaper clipping reported, wearing robes cut three inches below her collar bone. At Christmas, Bellatrix recounted a comic misadventure in a Muggle shop from which she had required rescuing by Astrid after she tried to pay with a fifty-pound note, having forgotten that Muggle countries used different currencies. They had had to cast a Memory Charm on the shopkeeper, who had hit back with a shield charm and revealed himself to be a wizard anthropologist, borne no hard feelings, and taken them out to lunch. Together the sisters attended Christmas parties, and as older witches and wizards congratulated Narcissa on the letter she had had published in Arithmancy Today, Bellatrix and Andromeda stood by to be told how proud their parents must be of their daughters, and what was Andromeda thinking of doing when she left school, and what a success Bellatrix was making of Christiania.

'Not thinking of tempting any Norwegian wizards to come back with you, my dear?' asked Madam Hallow, and Bellatrix, who eighteen months previously would have answered with pursed lips and a chilling negative, laughed and said that she'd think about it, but on the whole she wasn't over-keen on blonds.

Bellatrix was not thinking about it. One of Harald's friends had asked her out, Bellatrix realising the fact with horror only as she was halfway to the theatre with him to see a performance of the latest critical hit, The Selkie's Bride. She put on a decent show of oblivion and was able to chat energetically about the production so that the evening wasn't too gruelling and he was actually perfectly nice, only she wasn't interested in the slightest. She didn't want anything like that; she wasn't going to stay in Norway, after all, and she hadn't time for distractions, not with her work and study, the long hours of discipline, of memorising spells and chanting incantations. Naakve's grandfather had a tremendous old mansion out on the fjord with a library full of aged tomes with spines of cracked leather and pages that wept when one attempted to read them, and he welcomed the young witch who came and read them so seriously, the house elves bringing her coffee and Danish pastries in the office next door. She even tackled some of the books in Norwegian, armed with a dictionary and consulting the old man before she tried any experiments. In his distant youth he had been a duelling champion in the Swedish army, and retained his old-fashioned ideals.

'Swift and certain,' he would say, 'that's how to duel. The best should win with no more than a Stunning spell. Oh, you must learn the fancy enchantments, too, but you should use the easy ones. I duelled with the Tsar's army on the steppe in winter, when the light from our wands splintered off the falling snow and the rivers froze beneath our feet as we rode across. Those were the days, my dear, when wizards fought.'

Bellatrix listened and learnt. In March, Idun's student society ran a duelling competition open to guests and Bellatrix entered, winning - despite an obeyance of the restriction on the use of the Dark Arts that was far more scrupulous than the majority of her fellow competitors - by a considerable margin. Astrid's father was one of the judges, and invited her to join the small group of Norwegian witches and warlocks involved in the Durmstrang Dark Arts summer school in June. Bellatrix considered that she might ask her parents if they would mind her spending a third year away. It was inconceivable that she be already halfway through her stay. In July, she went home for a month's holiday, and Andromeda announced that their parents had given their permission to her marriage with Ted Tonks.

*

That was why she remembered those two years, in Azkaban. All that passion and delight, all roaring forward to such a terrible, terrible end. All that glory and liberty and laughter come crashing down. It was her fault. She had foreseen it and failed to avert it. She ought to have spoken to their parents sooner; her mother wouldn't have listened, but her father might. She had known it wasn't infatuation, known that Andromeda could be stubborn enough, stupid and selfish enough to so something so wrong. She had worried about Narcissa instead. Smiled at Lucius Malfoy and warned him off a while. She had helped Andromeda feed the rats in the little shed down near the greenhouses and waited for the theoretical interest in the less orthodox divisions of experimental charms to turn into her own passion. When Andromeda announced to her horrified Head of House that she had been offered a place at the Scholomance on the strength of her independent N.E.W.T. study, Bellatrix hoped anew that her sister would come to her senses. The tutors at the venerable college of the Dark Arts had been impressed by a project that had required her to learn and calibrate her abilities in the use of the Cruciatus Curse independent of all aid. They were even more impressed to learn that a second group of rats was being tested on its learning abilities before and after subjection to Memory Charms, and coming off rather worse. Those were the ideas the sorcerers of the Scholomance admired, those challengers of received wisdom, seekers after uncomfortable truth. Bellatrix did not know when her master had planned eventually to approach Andromeda, only that he was too late. Andromeda had gone. Her sister, wonderful, brilliant, ruined and lost and Bellatrix had not been there to stop it. She had been Head Girl, might have kept them apart, and had not done it. She had gone to Christiania and revelled in work and long dark winter nights, casting spells beneath the Northern Lights to communicate with the dead and she had missed her sister's doom.

The Dark Lord forgave her. He had forgiven her everything then: her arrogance in success, her frustration when thwarted, her hopeless, guilty weeping over her young cousin's abdication. The Dark Lord had been kind to her. He had taken her in his hand when she was lost and alone, despairing of the life she ought to have, and he had given her everything, his forgiveness not least.

That had been long ago, before she had failed. Things were different now. Now she was afraid of him. She had been so in the past, of course, thrilling at his power. He was her master; the Dark Lord, the most powerful Wizard of modern times, it was right to be afraid of him, to stand in awe before that glance that pierced her through, that saw her every thought, that could trace the pure blood in her veins; she honoured him by being afraid, and by liking it. It had taken her a long time to understand. From the first moment she met him she had felt it, that little black flame dancing in her heart full of wonder at power and art, and the fear was all part of that, part of the excitement, the desire and slowly as he taught her she came to comprehend that to honour him with fear was no failing on her part, but true apprehension and honour of what he was. She was his pupil, his servant, and her fear was his fee. Fear and love lived in her in equilibrium, as it should be, and in return he honoured her.

But that was before. Now she stood before him, and she trembled. It was all she could do to stand; her legs shook and she knew that his will alone supported her, gave her this dignity she did not deserve. Even so she trembled, and he did nothing to quell her fear. There was no excitement here, no power, no exhilaration, no dancing on the edge of the precipice. She didn't care. She should be afraid, she should be reduced to this abject figure, dirty and shaking and exhausted, her hair straggling over a face that sweated with cold, weak from the spells that had struck her and the shock of that terrible, terrible moment when he had appeared. She had failed and her Lord would kill her. It was what she deserved. She had been strong - she was strong - she had endured so much in his service and for so long, she was still a witch whom all must fear to meet, but now with him she knew that she was nothing. She had failed him, condemned him to years of suffering in the wilderness. She deserved death. She was afraid of the dark and she had been taken out of it and she was still there. Finally with her lord returned her comrades had dared the Dementors out of a greater fear. Now she was warm and dry and fed and ought to have been comfortable for the first time in years and she was terrified, because he was here.

Slowly, with all her will, she lifted her face to meet his eyes.

'Master,' she offered.

'My Bellatrix.' That soft, dry voice, gentle as she had first heard it in the cool of the evening long ago, mocking, kind. She drew in her breath, the warm air harsh in her ragged throat. Still with her eyes on his she pushed back her long hair over her shoulders. The Dark Lord watched, his face unreadable, but she knew what she must do. She knew what she owed him, his most loyal servant.

'Kill me.' It was what she deserved. She had failed, but still perhaps he would be merciful after all she had suffered. His wand hand would rise and the spell flash forth in the green light of the killing curse, a kindness compared to what the Ministry would do to her. Despite herself, she shuddered.

The laugh broke from him in a thin shiver. 'Is that what you want?' His hand had not moved and his wand, held loosely in his fingers, still pointed at the floor.

'It is what I deserve. I have failed you.' Failed her, Andromeda, with her half-blood daughter; had Nymphadora's mother taught her the killing curse? Would she use it? Andromeda had refused. The Ministry had wanted her to go out with the Aurors when Crouch gave licence to use the Unforgiveables, but Andromeda had refused.

'Yes,' he said, raising his empty left hand, his eyes leaving hers to trace the long thin fingers and the lines on the white palm. 'You have failed, and failure indeed deserves punishment. But to fail, Bella, demands that one try.

'You, Bellatrix, have always tried.'

Tried... Yes, she had tried. She had tried so hard, brewing nightshade in deserted classrooms, cursing animals on the edge on the Forbidden Forest; that night in the graveyard, so frightened, as she bent to summon the dead. A golden ballroom on a cool Spring evening. A night at the theatre in Norway with a handsome young man. Pleading with her mother, desperate, broken-hearted, But Mummy, you can't let her, she mustn't, you can't, you can't. Three sisters, three weddings, Bellatrix begging at each one, come back, it isn't too late, come back. Patience that almost broke her heart, flashes of light and pain, a man and woman screaming, a high dark room, rank upon rank of witches and wizards staring down at her, the Dementors with their wet hands on her arms. How she had tried, how she had shouted and cursed and the fire had burned in her veins.

'Some,' said her master, 'seemed less inclined for trial. They shall be punished. But you,' and now he smiled at her and she wanted to weep because she was so weak, but she must not disappoint him, she must not fail him again, 'you tried, because you remembered what I promised all who entered my service. I promised that I should reward you and I shall. I shall reward you beyond your wildest dreams.'

So the blow fell. With sudden and urgent force it struck so that despite her pride she would have stumbled if his will had not supported her, would have screamed if any air had been left in her lungs. He knew! All her dreams, all her fear, her failure, her fright in the dark. Of course he knew; he was the Dark Lord who knew all. Thirteen years of fear and dreams and he could punish her with more. What dreams they had been, what riches of terror and horrors he had to work on, to take her beyond, but she could not move, could not have fled even had she wished it, and besides, she knew her wildest dreams, that they had happened long ago and there was nothing he could do to make them worse. Nothing he could do to save her sister, not any more. Her eyes still locked on his, Bellatrix only whispered,

'But you can't...' And as he looked at her then she saw it in his eyes. The lightening flash of anger directed elsewhere, and the pity, the sorrow felt for her, all felt for her his favourite and best that he had concealed for sake of her pride, for the pride that had brought her to him and sustained her in the dark, and at last there was hope and nothing to take it from her. They would rise again, greater and more terrible than before. The others would see they were wrong. They would see her, all of them. His eyes blazed red and she trembled.

'How shall we punish them,' he hissed, 'how shall we punish them, who made my Bellatrix afraid to dream?'