Aptitude

Bellatrix did not learn. She practised and practised, but she did not learn. She had aptitude, it seemed, but no capacity. Bellatrix was by no means a dull student, was clever enough to have easily held her own in Ravenclaw, and if Defence Against the Dark Arts was not her best subject, she was never less than third in the class, but outside it, she could not learn. By the time she was fifteen, she knew her way around both the library and Madam Pince, and there was an awful lot of Dark Magic in books that did not have to be sneaked out of the Restricted Section, if one knew where to look and how to read between the lines. She could transfigure most animals with only minor mishaps, her Charms were second to none, and her Polyjuice potion transformed her so convincingly into Professor McGonagall that she had the keys to the chained books out of Madam Pince's office and had transfigured copies out of a bar of coal-tar soap before anyone could have guessed they ought to stop her. If sometimes her jinxes backfired or her Arithmancy calculations put the defeat of Grindelwald somewhere next Wednesday, her teachers merely told her to pay more attention next time. They remembered those other occasions, when little Bella's first attempt at a Stunning charm sent Wilkes to the hospital wing to lie unconscious for a week, and when the contempt in her cry of Riddikulus! left the rest of the class without a practice Boggart. Then the professors would narrow their eyes, award ten points to Slytherin, and hope that no one outside the staff-room had noticed that Bellatrix Black had power, and that that power was manifest in a certain aptitude for the less benign uses of magic.

They saw no sign that Bellatrix herself was aware of it, but then Bellatrix had learned discretion. Besides, she had nothing to show. She read the books. She made notes and practised wand movements, she trained her voice as some of the spells demanded and bled her arms as other required, she watched the moon at midnight, sent herself to the hospital wing with a dose of deadly nightshade and it was all to no avail. She sat under the beech tree by the lake and could not use Avada Kedavra on an earwig. Squirrels were impervious to Imperius. No love potion sneaked into his firewhiskey would persuade Filch to kiss his horrible cat. Oh, she could do the usual jibes and hexes, but as far as the serious Dark Arts went, Bellatrix Black might have been a Squib. Might as well have been a Muggle. Except that Narcissa was at Hogwarts, too, her golden hair shining in the candlelight of the Great Hall, and living proof that however hidden it might be, Bellatrix had aptitude.

It was very well hidden. In the corridors her younger cousin, Sirius, and his Gryffindor cronies hexed and jinxed her from behind the pillars, and although not a single one of their spells had ever penetrated her shield, neither had she managed to do anything fitting in revenge. Bellatrix supposed that she was quite fond of Sirius, in a way, even if he were a Gryffindor. She knew that her family must have been horrified when her owl arrived to tell them of his Sorting, but her father's letter in reply had been swift in reassurance. We must not let our just pride in Slytherin, he wrote, blind us to the worth of the other Houses. Ambition is not the only virtue. Bravery may seem crude compared to cunning, but it can be most useful, when properly directed. Bellatrix wasn't sure that anyone would ever properly direct Sirius. He was brilliant, handsome, funny, daring and quite often obnoxious. He and his friends were the toast of the year and increasingly knew it. She was also pretty sure that her good-looking, laughing cousin was ... well ... not exactly flying with the Cannons, and she didn't see her uncle laughing when he found out. He would certainly find out, at least when Sirius realised it himself. Clever the boy might be, but nobody would ever call him subtle.

Bellatrix needed another approach. She was seventeen, there would be NEWTS next year, and then she would leave Hogwarts and her education would end. Bellatrix was not ambitious - not conventionally so. Andromeda had her obsession with Experimental charms, Narcissa would plug away at Arithmancy and Ancient Runes and get married, but Bellatrix was the eldest and she knew her duty. She would have a couple of years - her mother had suggested a stint on the Ministry's ambassadorial staff, like Lucius Malfoy - and then she would come home. She would work for the Estate, and she would inherit the Estate, and that would be all. There would be no more of the Dark Arts for her. All that she was would go to waste. She might be a powerful witch, but what did that mean? All she would have was no consolation for what she would lose, and she couldn't save it alone. There was nothing at home to help her. She had perused the family library thoroughly enough in the holidays to know that, not when her talent, her aptitude, had failed. She would go home, she would work, eventually she would marry, she would never know what she might have done, what she might have been, what she might have shown the Ministry about sophistry and convenience. She would have nothing. She trembled on the edge of the pit, of deeps that waited, vast and dark, of nothing that ever mattered, but she wouldn't fall. She flung out her arms and closed her eyes and kept her balance and kept trying, again and again and again. She persisted, she practised and practised and though she always failed, sometimes, when she was particularly angry or tired or happy - there seemed no reason to it - but sometimes she seemed to feel a strange sensation in her chest, as if her heart had beat suddenly outwards, and although she had no idea what it was she knew she had felt it before and it gave her hope to keep trying, to practise and fail and to fail again.

Then in the Easter holidays of her sixth year at Hogwarts, the Black sisters went to the Nott wedding. It seemed as if everyone Bellatrix knew from home was there, even witches and wizards with whom her own branch of the Black family would commonly have little to do; Andromeda's sour looks had vanished as she enthused to Arthur Weasley about the wonders of Muggle technology. From her vantage point on the terrace, Bellatrix watched as the guests wandered through the gardens. She had spotted all of the Lestranges, Mr and Mrs Crouch, Avery, even Professor Dumbledore, who was evidently working very hard at avoiding all signs of childish mischief. At the service itself she was almost certain that she caught a glimpse on an unmistakably hook-nosed Snape. He had vanished afterwards, and of course Severus had not been there, but the Notts had been honoured nonetheless. Mr Malfoy and his son were present, too, the pale pair looking extremely elegant in their black robes. Bellatrix watched as Mr Malfoy was cornered by Uncle Alphard and Lucius sauntered away across the lawn to talk to the eldest Rosier girl. The Notts knew everyone, almost too many people, she sneered, as if they felt a need to put themselves about. They had even invited that slightly creepy Russian named Kar-something who was constantly twiddling his goatee. Sirius, who had recently taken to demonstrating his Gryffindor bravery by defying his mother and reading Muggle books, said that the gesture was Freudian, whatever that meant.

Bellatrix kicked a leg out over the drop to the flowerbeds, swishing the long skirts of her new dress robes. They had been ordered especially for the occasion, Narcissa watching as the older girl and their mother had a battle of wills over the neckline, the pins flying up and down until Bellatrix smiled and said that of course her mother knew so much more about these things, and she would accept her judgement. When the parcels were opened to disclose a wholly different design and a stiff note from the seamstress expressing the hope that in future her clients would agree in advance and not hex the cutting table, Mrs Black pursed her lips and said nothing; she had insisted on an expensive unravelling charm, and it was unbreakable. Bellatrix would attend the wedding looking the girl she was, and not her mother's young lady of a daughter. Andromeda also had new robes, but was rather less excited about the wedding than her sisters, sulking because she had not been allowed to bring her alleged boyfriend to the wedding. Their mother said that they were too young to be accompanied by men to such events, but Bellatrix knew better. Andromeda was a fool, quite unable to see that everyone in the family was appalled by her insistence that she was in love with that Muggle-born wizard. Tonks! What a name! He was in Ravenclaw, so it could have been worse, no Hufflepuff, and under other circumstances Bella would have admitted that he wasn't too bad. He was clever and read a lot, and had occasionally seemed as if he might be fun, but still he was a Muggle-born, a Mudblood, all well in his place, but not with her sister. Andromeda's sisters had been firmly instructed to keep the peace, but Bellatrix saw that Narcissa was as disgusted as she. To love a Mudblood ... how was it possible? Not that Andromeda did, of course. It was merely another of her jokes, if considerably less amusing than usual. Even to pretend to love a Mudblood's tainted flesh... It was degrading, it was impure, it was letting the side down, it was simply bad taste. She and Narcissa would do better.

Not that Bellatrix wanted the distraction of a boyfriend when she was studying so hard, which was well as the boys did not approach her. She had always supposed that she was not really very pretty, although her mother promised she would grow into her looks. You'll be one for men, not boys, she said, and Bellatrix was wanted neither. She didn't understand why people were so silly about love. She loved her family, naturally, even her cousins' terrifying mother, but romance was not for her. So she was friendly enough but her responses to even the most light-hearted of flirtations were tipped with steel. There was not a boy in the school who would have offered serious attentions to Bellatrix Black, though none of them could quite have articulated why. Most of the time she did not think on it. It was obvious that her younger sister was being eyed by Lucius Malfoy. Bella had no idea what Narcissa herself thought, though a Malfoy would be a very good catch indeed, and the pair would make a striking couple. Bellatrix wondered idly whether Narcissa's children would be blonde, too. No one knew exactly what the magic had done to her, how deep it had burned.

There was certainly nothing doll-like about her sister's temper. Narcissa was fierce and bright and keen, a true Slytherin girl as their parents had taught them. Her looks, which when she was younger had occasionally distressed her, she had now come to accept, even to take pride in, and that was as well, there being nothing Narcissa could do about them. Bellatrix remembered the time that she had tried. Regulus had teased her in the common room that a blonde could not be a Black, and the sobbing girl had come to Bellatrix and Andromeda and begged them for help. Her elder sisters had commandeered a bathroom to brew the potion and sat Narcissa cross-legged on the floor as they combed the sticky tar-like substance through her hair and chanted the spell to set the transformation that would deal with her hair, if not her complexion. It had not worked. They had peeled off the stained and ruined towel and washed away the residue of potion to reveal a head as shining and golden as ever. No dye would take. Sirius, under threat of death, even got one of the Gryffindor Muggle-borns to order some Muggle stuff for them to see if it might work despite the magic, but it was no use. Narcissa's hair was thick and gold and shining, and nothing would make it otherwise, and Bellatrix, despairing at her failures, saw this proof of her aptitude and allowed herself a little bit of hope.

The wedding guests milled around the gardens, strolling easily in the fresh clean air of Spring. On the top terrace above them all, Bellatrix leaned on the balustrade watching as a shrieking Sirius and James Potter chased after Regulus Black, lobbing dungbombs at his heels. She followed their helter-skelter passage to the water gardens, where Narcissa flashed white and gold in the sun as she talked nineteen to the dozen to a very intent Lucius Malfoy. She moved to point at something and Bella saw Lucius turn to look at the house and nod to her where she stood watching all alone. He spoke to her sister and then Narcissa turned, too, waving madly for Bella to come and join them. Bellatrix looked around at her parents, deep in conversation with Mrs Crouch, and raced off down the steps, her shining hair and long robes flying behind her, leaping as if she were a little girl again. The adults turned to look at her as she passed, recognising the eldest of the Black girls, such different girls, they thought, less than two years between them, but all so different, Narcissa, with her lovely face and deceptively straightforward nature, Andromeda, clever, pretty and sharp, a typical Black, and Bellatrix, quieter, more thoughtful, the powerful one, and suddenly the most beautiful. Bellatrix tore down the steps and out across the grass to her waving sister, and the watchers turned away and smiled to one another. A remarkable family, but not subtle, no, nobody could have called any of the Blacks the least bit subtle. Talented, all of them, but not subtle.