Last Moment

Last Moment

This isn't your friend.

She hasn't been that girl in almost twenty years.

Trixie wouldn't be duelling with your daughter and the two girls you think of as your own almost-children; Trixie wouldn't worship a madman bent on killing the boy you think of as another son; Trixie wouldn't laugh as she killed her niece with one spell.

No.

This is Bella---a cold, cruel, calculating shell of a woman. Where Trixie was warm, if a little indifferent and aloof, this stranger is hard and angry; the result of thirteen years in Azkaban and almost thirty with that brand on her arm.

You can't lie to yourself, though. You always knew that there were two halves to Bellatrix Andromache Black.

Lestrange, now---She's Bellatrix Lestrange.

Trixie skipped and sang Muggle songs she'd heard on the wireless as she wandered the halls of Hogwarts during prefect duties. Trixie carved your name onto a table leg in the Slytherin Common Room "so you can tell your children and leave them guessing as to how it got there", flirted and laughed with Arthur during the Yule Ball in seventh year when Dumbledore suffered from a "hysterical fit of festivity", bought you your family clock as a wedding present, and shared her slice of cake at your brother's wedding to her cousin Lucretia when you were both seven, just after your horrid Auntie Muriel snatched your own slice off of your plate because you'd been growing "plump".

Bella taught you to duel in empty classrooms during the free periods after your Ancient Runes classes. Bella had odd scars on her wrists and arms during fifth year (that you learned only much, much later were self-inflicted), drank straight firewhiskey out of a flask hidden in her schoolbag, convinced you that charming Nathan Summers was "beneath you" because he was Muggleborn and tricked you into ditching him on your first and only date in Hogsmeade fourth year.

Trixie was your confidant, your companion, your closest friend. Bella was your enemy, your version of a lesser evil, every dark place within your soul personified and in human form.

And you hated her for it.

You know that girl of your shared youth no longer exists; her mind and body are too warped by time and hate and some sort of generic insanity to ever be that laughing, gorgeous girl again.

Bellatrix laughs and sends a curse past your daughter---missing her only by an inch---and something else (some sort of primal blend of rage and anger and mothering attention and a sense of overwhelming hatehateHATE) bursts forth from deep within your soul, so deep and so loud that you can feel it resonating throughout your entire body.

"NOT MY DAUGHTER, YOU BITCH!"

Bellatrix turns as you run towards her, grinning so widely as your cloak falls and your wand is raised that she looks almost like she did all those years ago, training you to block curses and jinxes in the empty Charms classroom when you should have been doing your homework.

"OUT OF MY WAY!"

Ginny falls away, sensible Hermione and dreamy Luna in her wake, but Bellatrix stands tall and regal before sending a curse at you, the red light soaring past your ear as you fire right back.

Bella snarls and sends back another, and another, but you parry and block and cast a few of your own until you feel the magic in your bones beginning to sizzle and spark inside of you, sending a strange sense of heat throughout your body and into the floor upon which you both stand.

The stone flooring beneath your feet heats up and begins to shake and crack; and as a few children run forward to help you, all you can do is scream at them to get away.

"No! Get back! Get back! She is mine!"

Bella laughs at this, at your desperate attempt to save the innocent from the wrath that is aimed at you.

"What will your children do when I've killed you?" shrieks Bellatrix, her voice high and mocking but her tone deadly.

Your try to shut out her voice out, try to focus on your footing and blocking the last jinx and keeping her at bay, but the words sink in anyways.

And all you can think of is Trixie holding Bill at his christening. Of Trixie begging you to come with her to the fertility clinic and clutching your hand tight enough to break your fingers when the Healer told her that she would never have children. Of Bella screaming and ranting and raving and practically foaming at the mouth when you told her, quietly and discreetly, that you were pregnant for the fourth time. Of the strangely intriguing green skull-and-snake that crept out Bella's sleeve as she picked up Charlie and stroked his red, red hair. Of Bella sending back the charred ashes of the invitation to the twins' baptism with a note that read "rot in hell, blood traitor" written in her tiny, curving, instantly recognizable script.

"When Mummy's gone the same way as Freddie?"

Bellatrix sneers and your blood boils. Fred's face is in your head, as clear as Bella's before you, and all you can see are your fallen almost-children (SiriusRemusNymphadora), your entire family (ArthurBillCharliePercyGeorgeFredHermioneGinnyLunaHarryRon), laying dead at the feet of Bellatrix and her Dark Lord, and a white-hot sensation burns through your wand arm.

"You-"

She turns, and the curse soars past her.

"-Will-"

The wall behind her cracks.

"-Never-"

Bellatrix ducks, and laughs maniacally.

"-Touch-"

The stone gargoyle crumbles to the ground.

"-Our-"

She raises her own wand, ready to kill.

"-Children-"

Bellatrix laughs shrilly, hysterically, endlessly; self-assured in her imminent victory over her former friend.

"-Again!"

The Avada Kedavra curse hits her directly in her heart.

She was still laughing.

Bella's eyes bulge slightly; staring at you with an expression of utter disbelief....you are the last person she sees before her body crumples to the ground, dead.

All you can think of later on, when the dead of both sides are gathered and placed in a room off of the Great Hall, is not of your fallen son, of your almost-son's survival and victory , or even of Arthur's warm, familiar mouth over yours when he kisses you feverishly in your old dormitory.

All that is in your mind is that when she fell, when she looked at you for that last time, she was not Bellatrix Lestrange, or Bella Black, or the favorite servant of Lord Voldemort.

In that final moment, all she was---all that you could see---was Trixie.