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31_days2005-09-06 12:55 am
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[6 Sept] [Harry Potter] Black, Bellatrix
Title: Black, Bellatrix
Day/Theme: 6 Sept – Hogwarts, A Life
Series: Harry Potter
Character: Bellatrix Black-Lestrange
Rating: PG-13 for implied violence
She was born on the 13th of April, 1959, at 10:59 in the morning, to Orion Julius Black and his wife, Clytemnestra Marion Black, nee Greengrass. The weather that day was fair and calm, unaware that it had just birthed a tempest. Three days later, at the official naming ceremony where her father accepted her formally into the family, she was christened Bellatrix Morgause Black. In a letter to his brother Alphard just a few weeks after Bellatrix’s birth, Orion wrote, “A more beautiful child I swear there never was. I can not bring myself to feel sorrow that she was not a son, not when she smiles at me so.”
Bellatrix was preceded in her family by Andromeda Grace, born 24 March 1952, and followed by Narcissa Helene, born 22 August 1960. Even from her earliest years, Bellatrix was known to be her father’s favourite, the brightest star of an ancient and noble house. Bellatrix grew up most often in the company of her cousin, Sirius Black, only eight months younger than herself, and was noted in her childhood for mischief and a very boisterous manner. Between 1963 and 1970, the Black household went through a remarkable eighteen governesses, due no doubt to the combined efforts of Bellatrix and Sirius to drive away every one of them. One, a Miss Cordelia Havershim, who was employed by the Blacks in the winter and spring of 1969, wrote in a letter to a friend, “I cannot determine which of the two is worse. They could be twins by both look and temperament. ... I have never seen a girl with such a propensity for trouble as young Miss Bellatrix. She rides winged horses without permission, engages in footraces and fistfights, and is forever tearing her dresses by climbing trees and fences. Yet for all that, she is a lady – or can be when she wishes. Already she is near-fluent in Italian and French, she dances light as a flower petal on a breeze, and speaks – when she decides it worth her effort – with as much poise and grace as a woman twice her years.”
In June of 1970, an event occurred which tore the Black family apart: the now-famous rebellion of Andromeda by her marriage to Muggleborn Theodore Tonks. This action was viewed as a betrayal by the entire Black family, but young Bellatrix is reported to have taken it hardest. Her then-Latin tutor, Marcus Endree, wrote to his wife, “The past week has wrought such a change in my dear pupil. She hardy speaks, but to recite her lessons, and I fear she has not been eating. Though her father acts as though Andromeda was never born, surely Bellatrix acts as though she has just died. I have never seen one so transformed.”
It was not until September, and the beginning of her time at Hogwarts, that Bellatrix regained her famous spirit. Like everyone else in her family, she was sorted into Slytherin, and then quickly tried to reign there as she had at home. Lucius Malfoy, in some of his earliest memoirs, recalls his first impression of the young and headstrong girl. “Upstart! My father had warned me of the Blacks and their arrogance, but I had not thought to see such impudence from a first-year. It makes sense now, of course; Bella could never be but as she is, but then I thought her the worst sort of wretch. I confess to knocking her off her feet that first day, to try and instill her with some sense of respect; I regret to report it had little to no effect.”
Bellatrix’s great feud in her House, though, was with the man she would later marry: Rodolphus Lestrange, a year above her. Those two landed each other frequently in detention, as Bellatrix’s childhood experience at pranks and troublemaking were put to productive use.
The following September, Bellatrix’s cousin and childhood playmate came to Hogwarts, and surprised everyone by being sorted into Gryffindor. This began to split the erstwhile friends apart, as Sirius’s Housemates were not the sort of people Bellatrix could approve of. Though through his first two years, they tried to keep up their previous relationship, by Sirius’s third year, the strain had grown too great. Sirius and his friends, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew, became the sworn enemies of Bellatrix and her set, which included both Lestrange brothers, Maximilian Avery, Severus Snape, her cousin Magdalena Warrington, and Demetria Wilkes. The battles between the groups at school no doubt foreshadowed their later and more deadly war.
Bellatrix proved an excellent student at such subjects which interested her. Her marks in Charms, Potions, Astronomy, Transfiguration, and Defence Against the Dark Arts were always high, and if she did not excel at History of Magic or Herbology, certainly she did not struggle, either. In her third year, Bellatrix took up Divination, Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy. At the O.W.L. level, Bellatrix received Os in Charms, Astronomy, Transfiguration, Divination, Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy, Es in Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, and History of Magic, and an A in Herbology. She continued all subjects except History of Magic and Herbology into the N.E.W.T. level. Bellatrix also placed on the Slytherin Quidditch Team as a Chaser in her third year, and in her fifth year was made Captain. As her enemy James Potter came to captain the Gryffindor team, the traditional rivalry between the two Houses became rife with even more tension. Rather famously, in the Gryffindor-Slytherin match of 1975, the record for most fouls during a single game was nearly broken. The game lasted for six days, and ended in no fewer than sixty serious injuries, most of these inflicted by the brothers Lestrange, the Beaters for Slytherin. The match might have ended earlier but for Potter’s staunch refusal to catch the Snitch while Slytherin’s Chasers still held the lead. The game finally ended with a score of 1750-1740 Gryffindor. Bellatrix is reported to have broken Potter’s nose four seconds after landing her broom.
It is unknown precisely when Bellatrix began training for the Dark Lord, but it may be assumed to have been somewhere in her sixth year at Hogwarts. Lucius Malfoy took credit for recruiting her, and indeed Bellatrix wrote in a letter to her sister in the summer of that year, “Mr Malfoy and I have had quite a pleasant time in Italy – and productive as well! I am glad for the opportunity he has presented me, though if you ever tell him I said that, I vow you will regret it.” This cryptic glance at her activities is all the information we have on Bellatrix’s turn towards the Dark Side, as she rarely put her exploits into writing. Certainly in her seventh year, she demonstrated not only interest in, but surprisingly proficiency at the Dark Arts, and was cited several times for severe infraction of school rules. In December of 1975, Gryffindor Head of House Minerva McGonagall wrote, “I have had to discipline Miss Bellatrix Black again, for no amount of punishment seems to make the slightest impression. I discovered her in one of the dungeon passages, along with her cousin Miss Warrington and both of the Lestrange boys, tormenting a second-year Hufflepuff with the use of Dark magics. The poor boy was bound to the wall as the older students took turns practising on him. When I stopped them, Miss Black threw one of her temper fits. She’s getting to be truly uncontrollable, and I fear the day she ceases to heed any instruction whatsoever.”
At the same time she took this frightening turn, Bellatrix was also undergoing the traditions of any pureblooded woman of high birth, of being courted and having a husband chosen for her. Bellatrix in her youth was reported to be exceedingly beautiful, and what photographs we have support this evidence. Her suitors were many and included, at some point or another, nearly ever pureblooded male of stature within several years of her age. Philip Holgrave wrote in 1975 of her “Incomparable Beauty, too wild to be anything but admired.” Raphael Eldridge tells of her dark, curly hair, full and lustrously falling nearly to her waist, and of her famous midnight coloured eyes. Rodolphus Lestrange, who does not seem to have formed a firm opinion on her until the altar, spoke half-admiringly, half-despairingly of “her dusky skin, far too deep in hue for a proper woman, and yet somehow entrancingly exotic.” Even Lucius Malfoy, who would be husband to her sister, was at one time Bellatrix’s suitor. He gave her the epithet “the Black Rose,” by which she would later be known, calling her “both dark and fair, the most tempting bloom in the garden – but also, I feel, with the sharpest thorns.”
Recent discoveries in the records of the House of Black show that Bellatrix was actually betrothed to her cousin Sirius, though whether either of them were aware of this formal inclination of their parents is left to speculation. Bellatrix’s father Orion and Sirius’s mother Elaine seem to have been the champions of this match. With Andromeda disowned and the Black family clinging steadfastly to the practise of primogeniture, the Heir of the House would necessarily be Bellatrix’s eldest son. Orion and Elaine seem to have intended to keep the wealth in the family name by marrying Bellatrix to another Black. This might have been the course of events, had Sirius not himself left the family in 1977. After disowning him, Orion and Elaine abandoned the endeavour, rather than attempt to betrothe Bellatrix to the still-younger Regulus.
In August of 1978, Bellatrix was formally engaged to Rodolphus Lestrange, and they married on 1 May 1979. Many wondered at the match, knowing what animosity the two had always held for each other, but some noted there had always been passion for each other among the feuds. No one was more sure with this assessment than Orion Black, who proposed the match to Rodolphus’s father, Robur Lestrange, in a letter: “I can think of no two people who would suit better. I could not in good conscience yoke my favourite daughter to a man weaker than her; she does need some handling, and your son in the only man I have ever seen brave enough to try. She would utterly destroy any lesser man, and I do not feel this healthy. As for Rodolphus, he deserves a wife of spirit, not some simpering wretch without two thoughts in her head. Agree to this match, and you and I both shall have strong, intelligent grandsons and beautiful, talented granddaughters. I need hardly mention that my Bellatrix comes attached to a sizeable dowry.”
Though the match was made, Orion’s hopes for grandchildren were foiled, as the couple was childless. Bellatrix conceived only once, directly following her wedding, and miscarried in her second trimester.
By far the dominating trait of Bellatrix’s life was her role as one of the deadliest and most capable Death Eaters. The exact date she took the Dark Mark is unknown, but it was almost certainly in the summer after she left school. Hand-trained by the Dark Lord, she became one of his most capable operatives and most trusted advisors, noted for her penchant for – and some would say obsession with – the Cruciatus Curse. Her sadism lent itself naturally to a proficiency at curses, and Bellatrix was feared as a duelist for her almost impossibly fast movements and her ability to defend herself while still on the offensive. Aside from this, her great intelligence allowed her to become an accomplished Occlumens, and her proficiency with languages helped her to correspond with allies of the Dark Lord on the Continent. Bellatrix is most famous for the crime that got her committed to Azkaban, the torturing of Frank and Alice Longbottom. She, her husband Rodolphus, his brother Rabastan, and the young Bartemius Crouch Jr, were all arrested following this crime. Their brutal interrogation of the Longbottoms lasted for nearly a week, and by the end, the notable couple had been driven to insanity, and were committed to St Mungo’s. It required two dozen Aurors to bring down Bellatrix and Rodolphus, the last two of the four to fall. Though only the Longbottom case was ever proved, Bellatrix is considered to have had a hand in the following crimes: the murders of Jane and Abigail Derwitt, the kidnapping of torture and Henry Farden, the destruction of two Muggle office buildings, the fire at the British wizarding embassy at the Italian Ministry of Magic, the murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett, the murder of Joseph Antales, conspiracy with Dark wizards in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Russia, the murder of Harrison Thomas, illegal importing of Class XXXXX magical creatures, illegal consorting with vampires, the torture of Dennis Havington, the murders of Lucille and Marion Hartis, the murder of Terence Aleton, the murder of Danaë Morda, the torture of Julius Tanner, and the murders of her own sister Andromeda and her cousin Regulus, who had turned traitor to the Death Eaters.
At her trial, Bellatrix stood proud and unyielding, declaring her fervent loyalty to her fallen Dark Lord. Several reporters marked this in her: Daniel Meers, of the Irish Wizarding Post, wrote, “Bellatrix Lestrange hardly seemed a criminal, but comported herself as an empress holding court. No remorse, no shame in those fathomless eyes, but only pride and fury.” Penelope Herver, of Exeter, remarked on her resilience against the Dementors: “It was not that she hardly noticed their presence, but rather that she almost seemed to command them, as though they were her personal escort, the retinue of a queen, and not her captors. It caused shivers to see this, to think that the woman was so far gone as to be impervious even to the disturbance of the Dementors.”
Bellatrix spent nearly fourteen years in Azkaban, and was part of the mass breakout in January 1996. Thereafter in June, Bellatrix was the sole person to escape the battle at the Department of Mysteries, reportedly taken away by her Lord. Later information revealed that on this date, Bellatrix was responsible for the death of her cousin Sirius. During the following summer, Bellatrix was presumed responsible at least in part for the destruction of the Brockdale Bridge and the murder of Amelia Bones. After the Dark Lord’s fall in June of 1998, Bellatrix impressively and famously performed the Killing Curse on herself rather than face recapture and return to Azkaban.
Day/Theme: 6 Sept – Hogwarts, A Life
Series: Harry Potter
Character: Bellatrix Black-Lestrange
Rating: PG-13 for implied violence
She was born on the 13th of April, 1959, at 10:59 in the morning, to Orion Julius Black and his wife, Clytemnestra Marion Black, nee Greengrass. The weather that day was fair and calm, unaware that it had just birthed a tempest. Three days later, at the official naming ceremony where her father accepted her formally into the family, she was christened Bellatrix Morgause Black. In a letter to his brother Alphard just a few weeks after Bellatrix’s birth, Orion wrote, “A more beautiful child I swear there never was. I can not bring myself to feel sorrow that she was not a son, not when she smiles at me so.”
Bellatrix was preceded in her family by Andromeda Grace, born 24 March 1952, and followed by Narcissa Helene, born 22 August 1960. Even from her earliest years, Bellatrix was known to be her father’s favourite, the brightest star of an ancient and noble house. Bellatrix grew up most often in the company of her cousin, Sirius Black, only eight months younger than herself, and was noted in her childhood for mischief and a very boisterous manner. Between 1963 and 1970, the Black household went through a remarkable eighteen governesses, due no doubt to the combined efforts of Bellatrix and Sirius to drive away every one of them. One, a Miss Cordelia Havershim, who was employed by the Blacks in the winter and spring of 1969, wrote in a letter to a friend, “I cannot determine which of the two is worse. They could be twins by both look and temperament. ... I have never seen a girl with such a propensity for trouble as young Miss Bellatrix. She rides winged horses without permission, engages in footraces and fistfights, and is forever tearing her dresses by climbing trees and fences. Yet for all that, she is a lady – or can be when she wishes. Already she is near-fluent in Italian and French, she dances light as a flower petal on a breeze, and speaks – when she decides it worth her effort – with as much poise and grace as a woman twice her years.”
In June of 1970, an event occurred which tore the Black family apart: the now-famous rebellion of Andromeda by her marriage to Muggleborn Theodore Tonks. This action was viewed as a betrayal by the entire Black family, but young Bellatrix is reported to have taken it hardest. Her then-Latin tutor, Marcus Endree, wrote to his wife, “The past week has wrought such a change in my dear pupil. She hardy speaks, but to recite her lessons, and I fear she has not been eating. Though her father acts as though Andromeda was never born, surely Bellatrix acts as though she has just died. I have never seen one so transformed.”
It was not until September, and the beginning of her time at Hogwarts, that Bellatrix regained her famous spirit. Like everyone else in her family, she was sorted into Slytherin, and then quickly tried to reign there as she had at home. Lucius Malfoy, in some of his earliest memoirs, recalls his first impression of the young and headstrong girl. “Upstart! My father had warned me of the Blacks and their arrogance, but I had not thought to see such impudence from a first-year. It makes sense now, of course; Bella could never be but as she is, but then I thought her the worst sort of wretch. I confess to knocking her off her feet that first day, to try and instill her with some sense of respect; I regret to report it had little to no effect.”
Bellatrix’s great feud in her House, though, was with the man she would later marry: Rodolphus Lestrange, a year above her. Those two landed each other frequently in detention, as Bellatrix’s childhood experience at pranks and troublemaking were put to productive use.
The following September, Bellatrix’s cousin and childhood playmate came to Hogwarts, and surprised everyone by being sorted into Gryffindor. This began to split the erstwhile friends apart, as Sirius’s Housemates were not the sort of people Bellatrix could approve of. Though through his first two years, they tried to keep up their previous relationship, by Sirius’s third year, the strain had grown too great. Sirius and his friends, James Potter, Remus Lupin, and Peter Pettigrew, became the sworn enemies of Bellatrix and her set, which included both Lestrange brothers, Maximilian Avery, Severus Snape, her cousin Magdalena Warrington, and Demetria Wilkes. The battles between the groups at school no doubt foreshadowed their later and more deadly war.
Bellatrix proved an excellent student at such subjects which interested her. Her marks in Charms, Potions, Astronomy, Transfiguration, and Defence Against the Dark Arts were always high, and if she did not excel at History of Magic or Herbology, certainly she did not struggle, either. In her third year, Bellatrix took up Divination, Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy. At the O.W.L. level, Bellatrix received Os in Charms, Astronomy, Transfiguration, Divination, Ancient Runes, and Arithmancy, Es in Potions, Defence Against the Dark Arts, and History of Magic, and an A in Herbology. She continued all subjects except History of Magic and Herbology into the N.E.W.T. level. Bellatrix also placed on the Slytherin Quidditch Team as a Chaser in her third year, and in her fifth year was made Captain. As her enemy James Potter came to captain the Gryffindor team, the traditional rivalry between the two Houses became rife with even more tension. Rather famously, in the Gryffindor-Slytherin match of 1975, the record for most fouls during a single game was nearly broken. The game lasted for six days, and ended in no fewer than sixty serious injuries, most of these inflicted by the brothers Lestrange, the Beaters for Slytherin. The match might have ended earlier but for Potter’s staunch refusal to catch the Snitch while Slytherin’s Chasers still held the lead. The game finally ended with a score of 1750-1740 Gryffindor. Bellatrix is reported to have broken Potter’s nose four seconds after landing her broom.
It is unknown precisely when Bellatrix began training for the Dark Lord, but it may be assumed to have been somewhere in her sixth year at Hogwarts. Lucius Malfoy took credit for recruiting her, and indeed Bellatrix wrote in a letter to her sister in the summer of that year, “Mr Malfoy and I have had quite a pleasant time in Italy – and productive as well! I am glad for the opportunity he has presented me, though if you ever tell him I said that, I vow you will regret it.” This cryptic glance at her activities is all the information we have on Bellatrix’s turn towards the Dark Side, as she rarely put her exploits into writing. Certainly in her seventh year, she demonstrated not only interest in, but surprisingly proficiency at the Dark Arts, and was cited several times for severe infraction of school rules. In December of 1975, Gryffindor Head of House Minerva McGonagall wrote, “I have had to discipline Miss Bellatrix Black again, for no amount of punishment seems to make the slightest impression. I discovered her in one of the dungeon passages, along with her cousin Miss Warrington and both of the Lestrange boys, tormenting a second-year Hufflepuff with the use of Dark magics. The poor boy was bound to the wall as the older students took turns practising on him. When I stopped them, Miss Black threw one of her temper fits. She’s getting to be truly uncontrollable, and I fear the day she ceases to heed any instruction whatsoever.”
At the same time she took this frightening turn, Bellatrix was also undergoing the traditions of any pureblooded woman of high birth, of being courted and having a husband chosen for her. Bellatrix in her youth was reported to be exceedingly beautiful, and what photographs we have support this evidence. Her suitors were many and included, at some point or another, nearly ever pureblooded male of stature within several years of her age. Philip Holgrave wrote in 1975 of her “Incomparable Beauty, too wild to be anything but admired.” Raphael Eldridge tells of her dark, curly hair, full and lustrously falling nearly to her waist, and of her famous midnight coloured eyes. Rodolphus Lestrange, who does not seem to have formed a firm opinion on her until the altar, spoke half-admiringly, half-despairingly of “her dusky skin, far too deep in hue for a proper woman, and yet somehow entrancingly exotic.” Even Lucius Malfoy, who would be husband to her sister, was at one time Bellatrix’s suitor. He gave her the epithet “the Black Rose,” by which she would later be known, calling her “both dark and fair, the most tempting bloom in the garden – but also, I feel, with the sharpest thorns.”
Recent discoveries in the records of the House of Black show that Bellatrix was actually betrothed to her cousin Sirius, though whether either of them were aware of this formal inclination of their parents is left to speculation. Bellatrix’s father Orion and Sirius’s mother Elaine seem to have been the champions of this match. With Andromeda disowned and the Black family clinging steadfastly to the practise of primogeniture, the Heir of the House would necessarily be Bellatrix’s eldest son. Orion and Elaine seem to have intended to keep the wealth in the family name by marrying Bellatrix to another Black. This might have been the course of events, had Sirius not himself left the family in 1977. After disowning him, Orion and Elaine abandoned the endeavour, rather than attempt to betrothe Bellatrix to the still-younger Regulus.
In August of 1978, Bellatrix was formally engaged to Rodolphus Lestrange, and they married on 1 May 1979. Many wondered at the match, knowing what animosity the two had always held for each other, but some noted there had always been passion for each other among the feuds. No one was more sure with this assessment than Orion Black, who proposed the match to Rodolphus’s father, Robur Lestrange, in a letter: “I can think of no two people who would suit better. I could not in good conscience yoke my favourite daughter to a man weaker than her; she does need some handling, and your son in the only man I have ever seen brave enough to try. She would utterly destroy any lesser man, and I do not feel this healthy. As for Rodolphus, he deserves a wife of spirit, not some simpering wretch without two thoughts in her head. Agree to this match, and you and I both shall have strong, intelligent grandsons and beautiful, talented granddaughters. I need hardly mention that my Bellatrix comes attached to a sizeable dowry.”
Though the match was made, Orion’s hopes for grandchildren were foiled, as the couple was childless. Bellatrix conceived only once, directly following her wedding, and miscarried in her second trimester.
By far the dominating trait of Bellatrix’s life was her role as one of the deadliest and most capable Death Eaters. The exact date she took the Dark Mark is unknown, but it was almost certainly in the summer after she left school. Hand-trained by the Dark Lord, she became one of his most capable operatives and most trusted advisors, noted for her penchant for – and some would say obsession with – the Cruciatus Curse. Her sadism lent itself naturally to a proficiency at curses, and Bellatrix was feared as a duelist for her almost impossibly fast movements and her ability to defend herself while still on the offensive. Aside from this, her great intelligence allowed her to become an accomplished Occlumens, and her proficiency with languages helped her to correspond with allies of the Dark Lord on the Continent. Bellatrix is most famous for the crime that got her committed to Azkaban, the torturing of Frank and Alice Longbottom. She, her husband Rodolphus, his brother Rabastan, and the young Bartemius Crouch Jr, were all arrested following this crime. Their brutal interrogation of the Longbottoms lasted for nearly a week, and by the end, the notable couple had been driven to insanity, and were committed to St Mungo’s. It required two dozen Aurors to bring down Bellatrix and Rodolphus, the last two of the four to fall. Though only the Longbottom case was ever proved, Bellatrix is considered to have had a hand in the following crimes: the murders of Jane and Abigail Derwitt, the kidnapping of torture and Henry Farden, the destruction of two Muggle office buildings, the fire at the British wizarding embassy at the Italian Ministry of Magic, the murders of Gideon and Fabian Prewett, the murder of Joseph Antales, conspiracy with Dark wizards in France, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Russia, the murder of Harrison Thomas, illegal importing of Class XXXXX magical creatures, illegal consorting with vampires, the torture of Dennis Havington, the murders of Lucille and Marion Hartis, the murder of Terence Aleton, the murder of Danaë Morda, the torture of Julius Tanner, and the murders of her own sister Andromeda and her cousin Regulus, who had turned traitor to the Death Eaters.
At her trial, Bellatrix stood proud and unyielding, declaring her fervent loyalty to her fallen Dark Lord. Several reporters marked this in her: Daniel Meers, of the Irish Wizarding Post, wrote, “Bellatrix Lestrange hardly seemed a criminal, but comported herself as an empress holding court. No remorse, no shame in those fathomless eyes, but only pride and fury.” Penelope Herver, of Exeter, remarked on her resilience against the Dementors: “It was not that she hardly noticed their presence, but rather that she almost seemed to command them, as though they were her personal escort, the retinue of a queen, and not her captors. It caused shivers to see this, to think that the woman was so far gone as to be impervious even to the disturbance of the Dementors.”
Bellatrix spent nearly fourteen years in Azkaban, and was part of the mass breakout in January 1996. Thereafter in June, Bellatrix was the sole person to escape the battle at the Department of Mysteries, reportedly taken away by her Lord. Later information revealed that on this date, Bellatrix was responsible for the death of her cousin Sirius. During the following summer, Bellatrix was presumed responsible at least in part for the destruction of the Brockdale Bridge and the murder of Amelia Bones. After the Dark Lord’s fall in June of 1998, Bellatrix impressively and famously performed the Killing Curse on herself rather than face recapture and return to Azkaban.