Chapter Text
“Oi! Prewett! Ready to lose today?”
Molly Prewett glared from across the Great Hall. “Ready to get your arse kicked, Black? We’ll wipe the floor with you.”
Bellatrix only grinned and stuck her tongue out at her, her childlike personality shining through (even though the girl was, in fact, 15 years old).
Minerva smiled from her place at the head table (secretly, behind her glass of pumpkin juice- she couldn’t let her students know that she found their bickering entertaining, else they’d never stop). Somehow, she would miss this, next year when Molly graduated Hogwarts. The two girls never paid attention to each other unless it was a game day and the Slytherin and Gryffindor Quidditch Teams were versing each other, but when that happened it could result in a screaming match across the Hall. They almost always got detention.
Thankfully, it seemed that today that wouldn’t be happening, as Molly started out of the hall, flanked by Arthur Weasley and Frank Longbottom. She turned her attention back to the day’s Prophet (Rita Skeeter’s dream work place), where headlines about the up and coming Dark Lord were plastered on the front page-
“Ow!”
Her head snapped up in time to see Molly stumble forward and Bellatrix cackling from where she’d stood up at the Slytherin table. Why couldn’t she just have one peaceful morning?
“Fuck you, Black!”
She sighed, ready to get up and hand out yet another detention, as well as, perhaps, a large deduction in house points (they would win them back, anyway, in the upcoming match). Molly Prewett pointed her wand at Bellatrix….
…. “You- Will- Never- Touch- Our- Children- Again!” Molly Weasley screamed, accentuating each word with a new spell. Bellatrix just cackled, the sound sending shivers down Minerva’s spine even as she dueled Voldemort, the sound reminiscent of the way she used to laugh and yet so different, twisted and cruel in a way that fifteen year old Bellatrix never was.
And then the laughter stopped, and something thudded to the floor, and Voldemort screamed , and she and Kingsley and Slughorn were blasted back. She skidded to a stop near the wall, and heard a shouted “ Protego” , the voice sounding so much like Harry that she looked up-
And her gaze stopped. Not on Harry, who she could hear, now, it must be him, but the words were blurring together in her ears because her child was lying on the cold floor of the Great Hall, hair splayed about her, eyes staring unseeing at the ceiling. No….
She got up, or tried to, and arms pulled her up from behind and brought her nearer to the wall, why were they doing that, didn’t they know that she needed to help her, didn’t they see , didn’t they see that she needed her help? The image of the Bellatrix on the floor blurred into her slumped in the Hogs Head, eyes glazed, her lying in the hospital wing after Molly Prewett sent a bludger at her head during a Quidditch match, her collapsed on the floor of the dungeons, face worryingly pale, after yet another winter break- or was it summer this time?- left her injured and weak and small.
She tried to break out of the grip holding her, but it was too strong or she was too weak, so she stayed where she was even though her child needed her help, needed her to come fix it even though, now, some things weren’t fixable, she was stuck and unable to help her just like when she’d been a child and her father had been too powerful to-
Her insides froze up as those still blank, unseeing eyes moved to look at her. “Why didn’t you help me?”
No…
“Why did you never help me?” She flinched back, staggering now towards the wall and missing the arms that had been holding her, and the body jerked up as if pulled on marionette strings, starting towards her-
She awoke with great, gasping breaths, bedsheets twisted around her legs. She sat up, taking several steadying breaths, and glanced at the clock- three in the morning.
As much as she knew she probably should, but there was no way that she would be going back to sleep tonight.
10 minutes later found her in the Great Hall, staring at the spot at the Slytherin Table where Bellatrix had sat, every single day of her Hogwarts career, often kicking younger students out of the way so that she could claim it. She still had no idea why the stubborn girl had always insisted upon sitting there. Should she-?
Glancing around as if wondering if she would get caught, as if she were still a schoolgirl, she headed towards the table and sat down.
Well. You could see the entire hall from here without straining your neck too much- but you could do that from almost every seat at the Slytherin table. She tried to picture what the Great Hall had looked like back then, tried to imagine the young Bellatrix Black looking out at all of the students. She- wait. She ducked down and looked at the bottom of the table where her fingers had dragged over and- yes, there, the initials B.B. engraved into the table. If she weren’t missing her so much, she would be infuriated that Bellatrix had taken it upon herself to deface school property in so juvenile a matter.
But, instead, the whole idea just made a wave of sadness well up in her, and she sighed, getting up. This was stupid. Reminiscing on the past- what good could it do? What good could it do to sit there and think about lost young children who had all sat in this Hall, who had lived and loved and learned and died-
No. Enough of this. She was, she decided, going back to her room and perhaps starting on some paperwork, letters still to be sent to young children coming to Hogwarts along with reassurances that the threat had passed, that they were no longer in danger, that the monster had gone.
At the entranceway to the Great Hall, she paused, and looked back once more. An image of a girl taunting Gryffindors from across the hall, a girl bragging about Quidditch moves to her friends (and, often, anyone who would listen), a woman who lay broken on the stone floor, arm outstretched, the mark of a madman etched onto her skin.
And then she blinked, and there was once again an empty hall in front of her. She shook her head, and headed out of the Hall and to her rooms.
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She needed a break.
She loved her job dearly, loved the children dearly, always had and always would. But today- the one year anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts- their antics were beginning to get to her. (And, of course, matters were not helped by the fact that she had gotten almost no sleep the night before, plagued by nightmares, and that either the sleep deprivation or the stress or something else was making her see Bellatrix everywhere , in the halls, in her classroom, on her couch. Would her ghost ever leave her alone?)
There would be a service later that day- a memorial would be erected on school grounds, near the forest, names etched onto it, for flowers to be left and for a place to cry. She wasn’t entirely sure if she would be able to keep a strong facade for her students- she had known and taught almost every person who would be represented on that memorial, after all. (Some names, of course, would not be appearing on that memorial, one of which lingered in the back of her mind as a near constant presence.)
Yet she got through it without breaking down- though, of course, some of her students did not (thankfully, Madam Pomfrey had vials of Calming Draught ready to go), as well as others who attended- Harry, who was as much dear to her heart as Bella had been (even though Bellatrix was, perhaps, more her child than any other student would be, though that was something she was maybe not ready to think about yet), broke down in tears, leaning against Ginny Weasley as he sobbed; the Weasley family stayed huddled together the entire evening; and Hermione Granger had to excuse herself halfway through the ceremony (Rita Skeeter was there, too. She knew she was thinking the same thing she was, facing the same struggle- makeup could only do so much to cover up bags under your eyes, after all. She wondered if she saw Bellatrix’s ghost everywhere, too.)
She did the same, afterwards, muttering excuses to leave the room- they let her go without comment, likely sensing that this was taking a heavy toll on her- and headed down to the memorial on her own.
It was a beautiful sight, though of course it left a bittersweet feeling. Relatively simple, it stretched up to about 7 feet of marble (reminding her, painfully, of Albus’s grave- she really should visit and leave flowers once she was done recovering from this) and had small engravings wrapping around it. A garden had been planted around it- neatly kept for now, though she was sure it would become overgrown in time (Neville Longbottom had designed and brought it to life. She had never seen Pomona look prouder).
There was a pathway up to the stone, and she walked up it and knelt down in front of the memorial. Lavender Brown… Remus Lupin… Nymphadora Tonks….
She wondered, suddenly, if anyone was taking care of Bellatrix’s grave. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she were to visit- what if someone saw her? She felt a twinge of guilt at the thought. So what if someone saw her visiting her child’s grave? Besides, she wouldn’t be grieving Bellatrix Lestrange, but Bellatrix Black.
Still, no one would know that, exactly, and she didn’t know what they would think if they saw her there (though if Narcissa and Draco Malfoy or Rita Skeeter or, much later and very inebriated, Andromeda Tonks had noticed a tabby cat prowling around on the day that Bellatrix was put to rest they hadn’t said anything. How could they? They had visited her too.)
“Professor?”
She was ripped out of her musings by the voice behind her, and she turned around to find-
For a moment, just a brief moment- whether because of her previous thoughts or the out of control hair and tired eyes or something else- she saw Bellatrix standing there, and she almost cried for joy because even though she knew it was impossible her child was back….
… and then the image faded, and Hermione Granger stood before her, hands clasped in front of her, and she let the disappointment fall over her even though this was not the first time that had happened today.
“Hello, dear. How are you?”
She stepped closer. “I- better now, actually. Are you alright?”
Was she? She would normally say yes, brush it off, because she was fine , really, and there was nothing to be concerned about. But today, when everyone around her was grieving, and she kept seeing her child- who was left, unvisited and alone, in her grave- her child, who she wasn’t able to grieve without a lingering feeling of guilt when a substantial number of the names on this memorial were her victims, when the girl sitting next to her, now, had been hurt perhaps irreparably by her, she was not really ok.
“I don’t- not particularly. I may have to take the day off tomorrow.”
“You should. Rest a bit, you look tired.” No, she wouldn’t be sleeping tonight. Not when Bella’s voice was echoing around in her head. “Do you, er. Want to talk at all?”
She sighed. Of course she wanted to- but she never could. What would she, of all people, say if she told her that she was still grieving someone that she saw as a monster?
“No, I- no. I think I’m going to go inside now, though. Lay down for a bit.” Maybe she would take out Fluffy. It was that kind of night- the kind where she could think of nothing but Bellatrix, and needed any reminder that she had lived in that castle, in that room, once, and had been innocent and young despite all of the hurt.
“Alright. Want me to walk you up?”
“Yes, please.” She shouldn’t ask that of her, not when she was facing her own grief, but she wasn’t sure if she would be able to make it up to the castle on her own.
And so they headed up together, past the entrance where she had dragged a half conscious, very drunk Bellatrix into the castle, past the Great Hall where she had watched her prepare for Quidditch matches and laugh with her friends (and was that her imagination, or was that a beetle lurking around the doors to the Great Hall, looking in at the tables?), and up the stairs into her room.
“There. Do you need anything else?”
“No, thank you, dear. Let me know if you need anything, alright?”
Hermione nodded, smiling tiredly, and made her way out of the room.
She sighed, and sank down into her chair, very much feeling her age as she closed her eyes and tilted her head back to rest on the back of the chair.
“Mum?”
She jumped, eyes snapping open, and her child was laying on the couch across from her for just a brief second before she blinked and she was gone. She rubbed at her eyes, and got up.
It was time to go to bed. Maybe, she thought, it would be better in the morning.
The ghost in the back of her mind begged to differ, but she brushed it off, letting herself have the hope that one day, the everlasting grief would disappear.