The Woman Who Killed Sirius

The Woman Who Killed Sirius

Bellatrix Black wasn't crazy; that was much too harsh a word. Slightly unhinged, maybe, and her morals certainly left something to be desired (but then, they always had), but not crazy. Crazy was for people like Frank and Alice Longbottom, who had no idea anymore that there was a world outside their childlike minds. Bellatrix knew perfectly well how the world worked. Or rather, she knew how she wanted the world to work, at least her corner of it, but that could be blamed on entitlement issues, couldn't it?

Well, it was a stretch.

She couldn't have been completely crazy, though, because even after both her cousin's stay in Azkaban and her own, she still knew exactly what everyone saw in Sirius. She couldn't have been completely crazy, because her overtly Slytherin self admired the charming, loyal, reckless man tremendously and secretly yearned to be more like him. He was happy, he was brave, he was loved--he was everything Bellatrix was not, and it killed her to recognize it. This feeling had a name--two names, actually. Jealousy and envy. She couldn't have been completely crazy, because is it not simple human nature to twist a positive feeling such as admiration into an all-consuming, powerful one, like jealousy?

She couldn't have been completely crazy, too, because she knew exactly what everyone said about her, even Voldemort, and he was one to talk. She was a tough girl who had never been known to run away when things turned difficult, but when no one, including her colleagues, took her seriously because they all thought the Dementors had sucked the last fragments of sanity out of her and she was now completely incompetent and batshit insane, well, that was tougher than anything she'd had to deal with before. Bellatrix thrived on knowing how well-respected she was, even if it was only in Voldemort's circle, and it was devastating, after Azkaban, to realize that she was no longer respected by anyone at all. She lost her pride and her sense of self all in one fell swoop, and that might have made her a little crazy. But only a little.

Was it really any wonder, then, that once she realized she could never change peoples' minds if they were already made up, she didn't try to do anything to stop the rumors? She let people think she was crazy, and she had fun playing the part that was expected of her--it was so different than what she was used to.

Becoming a people-pleaser was, perhaps, Bellatrix's greatest downfall. A defeated man (or woman) can always be recognized because they become the opposite of their true selves. Before Azkaban, before the rumors, Bellatrix didn't give a flying fuck what anyone thought of her--she knew what she stood for, and she liked getting her way. She did what she had to do to please herself...well, please herself as much as was possible.

When Bellatrix gave up and stopped fighting, that was when those who knew her best wondered how it happened that while she was in Azkaban, she became completely crazy.