Fire

Chapter 1: \"Happy were those who dwelt within the eye of the volcanoes.\" Lord Byron, Darkness


The night she was born, there should have been a storm.

If not a storm, then some natural disaster to foreshadow the woman she would eventually become. It would have been appropriate for the earth to be lashed by the pounding fury of Mother Nature, to have some dramatic, violent natural disaster swirling in the air to herald her birth. So that all would look back on the day of her birth and remember what the world had brought forth.

There was none.

She was born in August, in the middle of summer when the land was hot and dry. There was no comfort to be found from the relentless heat and stillness of the late-summer sun. It was the kind of dryness that in the right conditions and with the barest of sparks would cause a fire to rage across the land and consume whatever impeded its implacable march of destruction.

Perhaps it was that the heat and stillness of the summer wrapped around her when she came forth into the world. Her soul was like the land — still and quiet but with the promise of utter destruction under the right conditions.

All it would take was a spark.

*****
As a child, she had never been afraid of the dark.

Sometimes she would have terrible dreams and wake up covered in sweat. She would crawl into bed with her older sister, Andromeda, and she would ask Bellatrix in a concerned tone if Bellatrix had suffered from a nightmare. Bellatrix did not know how to tell Andromeda of the dark and forbidden joy of her dreams, in which she suffered from the delight and terror of her own madness.

Andromeda, the sister who was goodness and light, whose last name was not a testament to the condition of her soul, as was Bellatrix’s — she would never understand what it was to fear something and yearn for it at the same time. Andromeda existed in a world that broke new and promising with the rising of the morning sun, all of the horrors of the night before banished with the coming dawn. Bellatrix feared that world; she preferred the darkness settling around her like a warm blanket.

Bellatrix’s first sign of magic came when she was a young girl, and her parents were entertaining the Parkinson family. She and the youngest girl, Posey, were playing with dolls in garden. Screams brought the adults running into the garden to see a smoldering pile of ash and a shrieking Posey, pointing at the pile with tears running down her face. Bellatrix had been standing off to the side, her little chin raised in the air and a scowl twisting the features of her small face. When the adults had asked Bellatrix what had happened — Posey was still incapable of speech. — Bella had tossed her rich, dark hair and informed her parents that Posey had refused to allow her to play with the doll.

So Bellatrix had burned it in a fit of rage over being denied. “If I could not have it,” she said loftily, “then neither could she.” Her parents were torn between horror at what their child had done and pleasure that her gift had finally manifested. The Parkinson family had no such quarrel of emotions, and they had left in a huff. She had been punished for her destruction of the doll, and she had protested loudly and cried in outrage. She had skipped, however, when she had been sent to her room. At least that dreadful Posey won’t be over anymore. And indeed she was never to return to Ravensden. Bellatrix had a gift for causing conflict; this was neither the first time she had ruined the delicate give-and-take of friendship nor would it be the last.

Bellatrix was in trouble often, and when she would fight with her parents, they would notice the flush that burned on her skin, the way her eyes burned with a dark inner fire. Bellatrix often felt as if her body was struggling to contain some burning destiny, and it was unable to bear the stress of such an endeavor. Orion and Ariana had named her after a star, and she yearned to reach such heights and burn as brightly as her namesake. Bellatrix knew that stars eventually exploded when they were consumed from within by a fusion of elements, and those elements were too complex for the star to contain. One day this too would be her, and she had long ago accepted it. Before she burned herself out, however, she was determined to take her rightful place in the darkness of the night sky.

Her sisters were different from her in a way she could not fully explain. Andromeda herself burned with an inner fire, but hers was for noble pursuits of truth and justice. Bellatrix respected this about Andromeda even as she accepted her role as the antithesis to her righteous sister. Her parents thought they were alike in that they were loud, passionate and full of the fury of their own convictions — but they were wrong. Bellatrix’s younger sister, Narcissa, was more like her than Andromeda ever would be. Narcissa was quiet, subdued and remote — but Bellatrix saw a matching darkness in her younger sister’s eyes and knew they would be linked by this darkness for the whole of their lives. She had told her once, in a rare moment of sisterly confession, to guard that secret lest their parents recognize it and seek to change Narcissa as they ever were attempting to do with Bellatrix.

Bellatrix did not see this strange darkness in Andromeda’s eyes, and this is why she pushed her sister so relentlessly. Andromeda’s eyes shone with a purity that would never sparkle in the eyes of Bellatrix or the youngest Black daughter. This made Bellatrix nervous — this would drive her sister from her, this obsession with clinging to the light.

At Hogwarts Bellatrix cultivated friends and enemies with a deadly skill that amazed and impressed those that knew her. She was feared because she was unpredictable and cruel, but she was beautiful, clever and wealthy, things that ensured her social status among her peers. Despite her less than admirable characteristics, she was a sought-after friend, and those who fell on her bad side treaded warily around her. Bellatrix matched Andromeda’s friendly charm and exuberant intelligence with the irresistible allure of all that was forbidden and dangerous. Andromeda befriended the friendless, and Bellatrix taunted them in the halls, her laughter ringing off the stone walls of the corridors. She was the undisputed queen of Slytherin House, and she flaunted her status at every given opportunity. She was incensed her sister was in Ravenclaw — a Black in Ravenclaw? She would atone for Andromeda’s failure by embodying all a true Slytherin should. When Bellatrix set her mind to a goal, she was successful, and this was no exception.

They were not friends at school, but Andromeda was too kind to leave her sister lingering in pain. When Bellatrix was sent to detention for one of her pranks or her horrible temper tantrums, Andromeda would sneak into whatever room Bellatrix had been relegated to and shake her head sadly. She would press a cool cloth on her sister’s overheated brow and say quietly, “Why, Bella? Why do you do these things?” The cloth was cold and welcome against her heated skin, but Bellatrix would bite her lip and stubbornly say nothing, not even thank you. Her sister ministered to her with her cool voice and a cold compress, but nothing would work to douse the fire that threatened to burst the confines of her body.

Bellatrix Black spent a lot of time alone although she had many who counted themselves her friends. She liked to walk down by the lake at night and stare into the fathomless depths. Sometimes she threw things into the water and smiled as the waves swallowed them. These things were not harmless rocks or twigs but possessions of her schoolmates that she would steal — jewelry or hairpins and the like — and then smile as a helpless house-elf was blamed for the theft. She often threw her own things in the water, too. Bellatrix did not care much for material things, and she liked the destruction of these items far more than she liked the items themselves. Sparkling jewels did not bring near as much pleasure as she received watching said jewel sink beneath the waves of the lake. She often imagined them there during the day — the sunlight picking up the intricate facets in an emerald, sparkling merrily on the bottom of the lake. Sometimes she imagined herself down there — enveloped by all that darkness and cold. The thought relaxed her and made her smile.

Her parents did not understand her; they called her “high-spirited.” She knew they placated her often in order to calm her down, and this delighted her. She was thrilled the mere threat of her wrath would cause them to bend to her will, and she used this knowledge without compunction. Andromeda was brightness personified, but she was not stupid; she saw the darkness that thrived in her younger sister, and it bothered her to see it. Bellatrix knew that Andromeda fought so passionately with her only in a desire to change her. “You have such passion, Bella; surely you understand that it should be used for the greater good? Why, you could save the world if you put but a fraction of your energy towards doing so.”

Bellatrix did not want to save anything. Andromeda’s place in the grand scheme of the universe that was their family was to do such just that. Narcissa — Bellatrix smiled as she thought of her younger sister. Well, Narcissa would do whatever it was necessary to survive. Bellatrix knew that Narcissa hated her name because it meant vain. However, it suited her blonde sister perfectly because Narcissa would ever take care of herself above all others. This pleased Bellatrix — she would have less trouble with Narcissa because of it.

Her place in their family was simple. Her fate was to destroy and to bring conflict. At this she would eventually excel in ways none of them could possibly have foreseen.

Her parents had named Bellatrix after a star, but they had given her a name that meant “warrior.” She had no war, no cause to which she could swear her service, but when she found it … the thought made her heart pound and her blood rush to the surface of her skin. I will be the most fearsome of soldiers, she would think, watching in the mirror as that tell-tale flush crept up her skin, and her eyes burned. The cause to which she would pledge herself was delivered along with a betrayal that cut so deep Bellatrix had been unable to do anything to calm herself down when she heard the news other than ruthlessly cut her arm, gaze at the blood flowing down her arm and imagine it was her sister’s.

There would come a time when someone would finally understand her, and it was only fitting that it should be someone she hated. With the exception of Narcissa — whose love would ever be directed towards herself and her own affairs — everyone Bellatrix had ever loved had tried to change her or had misunderstood her (willfully or otherwise) or would eventually betray her. It would take someone to whom she was bound by chains of mutual loathing to understand one simple fact about Bellatrix that comprised the whole of her being.

Bellatrix Black was not afraid of the dark.

She was afraid of the light.