Aptitude

It was her first term at Hogwarts, her first week. An Indian summer hung heavily over the Scottish countryside, and the wide open windows of the stifling Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom gave no relieving breath of cooler air. She had expected something more exciting of this classroom, expected mysterious instruments chained to their cases, or perhaps unpleasant-looking weapons hanging on the walls. She had expected to feel at home. Instead, there were rows of desks, a dusty mobile tinkering over the doorway, and blackboards all around the walls. It was without a doubt the most boring room she had seen in the castle. There was even a spider plant trailing over the windowsill. But if the students awaiting Professor Vindictus's arrival were bored, hot, and fidgety, they did not show it. The double class of Ravenclaws and Slytherins (oh, thanks be for the Ravenclaws; imagine this class with the Hufflepuffs, there'd be lives at risk) sat quietly at their desks, wands out before them, awaiting the creak of the door.

It opened.

'Good morning, students. You may put your wands away. Or hold them quietly; as I'm sure that some of you at least still find them new and exciting enough to be even less attentive when you cannot see them than when you are buffing off the fingerprints.' Professor Vindictus strolled to the centre of the room and leant back against the large oak desk. He was a slightly squat, balding, pink-faced man whose looks and amiable voice belied his name, teaching his last year at Hogwarts before the enormous success of his best-selling Curses and Countercurses would enable him to retire to a climate less hostile to his rheumatism.

'You look surprised, students.' He smiled genially. 'Did you think I'd have you hexing each other before the lesson were out? I'm afraid not. Defence Against the Dark Arts is a rich and varied branch of magical art. Yes, it demands skill in hexes, in jinxes, curses and countercurses and even, occasionally, brute force - I myself once staved off a werewolf with a very good uppercut - but above all, it demands thought. Thought to know which hex or curse or jinx to employ. Thought to know, students, for you are but young students, when to run, for I myself am only here to teach you today because when I was seventeen years old I knew to run.' His voice became slower, softer, and his smile sank to a gentle line. 'Thought to understand what it is that some of you will inevitably face, and must overcome.' And Bellatrix thought, staring through her heavy fringe at the short, square-shouldered man, he means something else now. Something other than a wizard with a jinx, a curse, or a hex, something that we might face, something worse, though what is worse than the threat of the Dark Arts?

'So students, let us think. What are the Dark Arts?' Vindictus asked briskly. The children stared blankly ahead, Muggle-born and pure-blood clueless both, if in different ways. What are the Dark Arts? Words on a time-table, pages in a book. Stuff Mum and Dad practice behind closed doors. Old heirlooms in a case with an unpickable lock. What are the Dark Arts? A girl sitting to the right of Bellatrix a few seats further towards the front put up her hand. She was leaning back in her chair, her long plaits dangling, biting her lip in a half-smile.

'Yes, Miss - '

'Wilkes, Professor.'

'Miss Wilkes. Tell us, then, what are the Dark Arts?'

'Things we need to defend ourselves against, Professor.' A sudden sound rushed round the room as twenty-five students wondered what happened when a first year cheeked the author of Curses and Countercurses, but Vindictus merely nodded his head sharply and said,

'Well done, Miss Wilkes. The very heart of the matter. Five points to Slytherin. The Dark Arts; things we need to defend ourselves against. Magic things that hurt us. Things that can only cause harm. Things that, even when not explicitly forbidden in law, are not used by any honourable witch or wizard. Things that lead one into Azkaban. The Wizarding world's prison,' Vindictus explained, as a small number of students looked around blankly at their suddenly bone-white classmates. 'Those of you of Muggle parentage can ask your comrades after the lesson. There's nothing you need to know that they can't tell you.' He breathed out loudly through his nose. 'We were discussing things, but what things are these? Now, who here has an older brother or sister?' Over half the students put up their hands. Vindictus looked around, his gaze alighting on a solid boy Bellatrix vaguely recognised from New Years parties with her parents' friends. 'You must be a Lestrange, Rodolphus's younger brother, yes?'

'Rabastan, sir.'

'Tell me, Mr Lestrange, has your brother ever jinxed you? Tried the jelly-legs curse when you threatened to tell your parents that he'd teased you? I know your sister has, Croaker,' he said to a girl from Ravenclaw, 'I remember her turning up after Christmas with those spots your mother gave her. And yet neither your mother nor your sister nor Rodolphus Lestrange is in Azkaban. Hexes, jinxes, and curses are all legal, although they may be distressing, even cruel, even fatal, in certain circumstances. Yet they are not Dark Magic, and why is this so?' He did not seem to expect an answer.

'I shall tell you. They are not Dark, these things we use to harm, because that is not their only use. They are a practical magic, drawing on skills you will learn in Charms and Transfiguration. They may be used in self-defence, they last only a short time, and any witch or wizard with a modicum of training may employ them, whereas the Dark Arts generally require something more, certain skills ... a special ... aptitude ... and even then they are seldom without consequence for the wizard. Whereas you may, and surely will, use what you learn in these classes with great inventiveness on jinxing older siblings in the corridors, although I do advise you not to get on the wrong side of our esteemed Mr Filch.

'Most importantly, however, our hexes and jinxes and charms leave the victim free. A victim, yes, but free, because he knows what you have done. He may not enjoy having tentacles instead of legs, but you do not ask him to enjoy it, neither in his mind, nor for the rest of his life. A jinx, a hex, a curse, each fulfils your will, but no more than that. These are what we shall learn in these classes, and these will not take you to Azkaban. It is difficult to define the Dark Arts. Sometimes it is reductive even to try. Let us remember Miss Wilkes's words. The Dark Arts, students; things we need to defend our selves against. Not only against their action, but their use.'

'What about Memory Charms?'

'Miss - '

'Black, sir. The Ministry uses Memory Charms, but you have to be really careful casting them and Dark wizards can use them too, and they don't wear off, and the person doesn't know you've done it. Why aren't they Dark Magic?'

'But they are.' The class sat up straight, their glances turning from the Professor to the skinny girl with her thick dark hair and the heavy features that she had yet to grow in to.

'They are? Then why aren't they called that? Why does the Ministry use them?'

'Sophistry.' Vindictus looked around the class. 'That is, specious reasoning, oversubtlety, trickery. Taking the liquorice when your mother forbade you to have a sweet. Memory Charms may indeed be used for very great injury, but they may also be used for good. Performed on Muggles, they have no side-effects and aid us in concealing our world. Healers may use them to ease distress, and they have other purposes. In short, they are useful, and so we use them, and say that in doing so with good intent they are not Dark. But this is sophistry, and each of you should think if you are ever tempted to learn and use a Memory Charm for a purpose less than fair that you walk upon a very narrow ridge, over a very long drop. Five points to Slytherin, Miss Black, for a most interesting thought.'

Sophistry: that was what he had called it. Sophistry. Specious reasoning, trickery, fancy talking around the edge. It was what he had practised, too. All that talk about hexes and jinxes and harm and Azkaban when it was plain what Dark Magic was. It was the arbitrarily forbidden. It was what your parents talked about behind closed doors. It was things that the grown-ups knew about. It was whatever the Ministry didn't want people to do; whatever it was convenient for them to forbid. Consequences for the wizard! Oh yes, that was the Ministry threat, and the consequence was a trip to Azkaban. Bellatrix lay in bed, in the high airy dormitories of the Slytherin girls that were reached by five steps up from the dungeons that somehow carried one to the seventh floor. Her great-great-grandfather Phineas Nigellus had been Headmaster at Hogwarts, and he had written the book on Dark Arts hexes - it was in the library at home - he had not been forbidden to practice 'these most subtile arts of Wizardry' and he had not gone to Azkaban. Azkaban. One of the Muggle-born Ravenclaws had asked the Wilkes girl about it as they left the classroom.

'I don't know,' Wilkes had said, all the cockiness gone from her voice. 'People don't talk about it.' And then she had gone on because she had to, because it was Azkaban, the place that wizard children drove themselves into nightmares by daring to imagine. 'They say it's worse than being dead, because you want to die and you can't. You're just there, and you want to die and you're going mad and you know it's happening, and you can't die, and you just know.' She was shaking now, her arms hugged across her chest. 'You just know ...' She had walked away down the corridor to lunch and the rest had trailed after in silence. But Bellatrix lay in her bed and was warm and not at all sleepy, and she was not afraid of Azkaban. It was a frightening place, of course, but she was not afraid. It would be like being afraid of drowning while standing on a mountain peak. One knew it could happen, of course, and it was a very dreadful thing, but so far away; how could one be afraid of something so far away?

If Dark Art were against the rules, it was only because the rules could change. Phineas Nigellus had been Headmaster at Hogwarts itself. Sophistry. Memory Charms, like the Ministry had used on Aunt Elladora. Sophistry. Doing what was convenient for the Ministry, which gave no answers and no reasons and threatened them with Azkaban. Sophistry.

And aptitude. Bellatrix remembered her first stirrings of magic when she was a little girl. Taking her father's wand and pointing it at Narcissa in her cradle. Don't want a sister, she had cried, don't want to help, want a dolly! Then she had waved the wand like Daddy did. There was a flash of light and then silence, and baby Narcissa lay in the cradle gurgling and kicking her toes, but her Black family beauty was changed to golden hair and bright blue eyes, and their mother stood with her hands over her mouth in shock and then pealing with laughter, glowing with pride. Their father had reached out a hand to Bellatrix as if steeling himself to set it in the fire and led her from the room, her mother's laughter echoing after them.

No-one could change Narcissa back. They said it was too great a risk for the baby, because they did not know what spell little Bella had used, but now Bellatrix knew; she had used the Dark Arts and her parents knew it too. No-one could change Narcissa back because there was nothing to change her to. Bellatrix's magic had obliterated it. There was no Narcissa but the golden baby girl with her sunny curls, and Bella had made her so. Bella had aptitude. Lying in bed in her new nightgown, Bellatrix decided. She had aptitude. She would learn.