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Hogwarts, 1964
The Slytherin common room was crowded. As moments went, it wasn’t the best, but Bellatrix was impatient. She didn’t even have the distraction of the giant squid pressing its many orifices up against the window, which everyone always dropped everything to watch, no matter how old or sophisticate they thought they were. Oh, well. Hesitation was for Hufflepuffs.
She marched up to Selwyn, who was standing by the notice board in the process of applying a Sticking Charm to the parchment listing Quidditch team trials and fixtures.
“I want to try out for the team,” Bellatrix announced.
The captain turned and looked down his nose at her. She was tallish for a girl her age, but he still had a distinct height advantage due to being several years older. And male.
“Do yourself a favour, Black, and don’t bother,” he said, sounding bored. “We never take girls.”
“Why not?” she demanded, bristling. Not that she was surprised. “There’s no rule that says you can’t.”
She knew for a fact that she wasn’t really a team player. She was quite good at Quidditch; at least, no worse than any of the other current members. But she could just tell they didn’t want her, or any other girls, and that was enough incentive for her.
Selwyn rolled his eyes. Some of the older girls claimed they found him attractive, but she didn’t see it. She thought he looked like something off the Care of Magical Creatures syllabus.
He glanced around, checking he had an audience, and puffed up his chest.
“No, there isn’t. But we still don’t. You’re too small; you’re too slow... I don’t know. Whatever. You don’t have balls; you can’t be on the team. Take it up with Slughorn if it bothers you. See what he says.”
“Yeah, like that ever achieved anything,” Travers muttered from the sofa behind him.
She treated him to a glare and stormed away, but not before shooting a cascade of burning sparks at the paper fluttering against the common room wall he’d just put up. All the older boys laughed, so she took the spiral stairs down to the girls’ dormitories at a stamp and had to resist the urge to set fire to someone else’s bed.
Half an hour of seething later, she had a plan.
* * * * *
The following Saturday, the stand was packed full of nauseating girls cooing over the boys in their kit. Prospectives jittered against their broomsticks while current team members strutted around them on the grass, which was practically wilting under the fog of testosterone.
At least Andromeda wasn’t there making a fool of herself with all the rest; she was probably using the opportunity to try breaking into the Restricted Section of the library again. (Although, as a first year, her little sister was far too young to be thinking about boys, in Bellatrix’s opinion.)
She had had to badger her father into buying her a broomstick without telling her mother, although he’d turned out to be surprisingly amenable once she’d argued a good case and he’d decided she was serious about wanting one. Honestly. They’d named her ‘Bellatrix’ and then been shocked and surprised when she developed a host of warrior-like tendencies. Why shouldn’t a girl want to hex the shit out of things and play Quidditch, anyway? She was so fed up of being forced into pretty dresses of her mother’s choosing and taking Stinging Hexes to the back of the hand for ‘forgetting’ banal social etiquette. She was fairly sure Andromeda felt the same, but her middle sister played the long game. She was patient and put on a passable face, only to sneak off later and read the most inappropriate books she could get her hands on. And Narcissa was too young to do anything other than exactly as mother told her. Perhaps she’d develop a spine once she started school and escaped from the oppressive atmosphere of the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black.
Bellatrix stood under the shadow of the entrance through the stands, the wooden beams arching above her like a giant’s ribcage. Well, this was either going to go exactly as planned, or she’d end up in the Hospital Wing. Either were common occurrences for her, and either were acceptable outcomes.
Selwyn was bullying people around- she figured he probably didn’t get to do it in any other avenue of his life, and was making the most of his sliver of authority- and she recognised half the team. Travers played Keeper; Selwyn, a boy called Bletchley, and her cousin Evan Rosier were the Chasers. She didn’t know the Seeker, or the two Beaters.
She shouldered her broom and walked out onto the pitch. She noted the long queue of hopefuls waiting to give their names to Travers, who was waving around a crumpled bit of parchment with a harassed look on his face, and marched straight past them.
Selwyn, the lumpy idiot, turned around from a conversation he was having with the Seeker in a swirl of green and silver. She ignored the heckling and unimaginative, gender-specific insults from the line.
“Told you she’d turn up,” the other boy said, and laughed. “You owe me five sickles.”
Selwyn cursed under his breath. Like all those pathetic people who craved undeserved attention, he appeared fully aware of the dozens of eyes now glued to him.
“Right, Black, this time I am not messing around,” he said, his voice growing gruffer. As though that would intimidate her. “You are not trying out. Get off my pitch or I’ll hex you.”
He had his wand in hand. Bellatrix sized him up. He was sixth year, and she was only third, but she reckoned she could take him. She had worked out that if you opened with a Stinging Hex across the kneecaps, it tended to throw the other person’s aim right out (an unintentional insight gained from her mother’s strict schedule of punishments for minor infractions, but Bellatrix was nothing if not a fast learner).
The rest of the team were gathering around him, including her cousin. She assessed them all quickly; even the Seeker was a lot bigger than her.
“We. Do. Not. Take. Girls,” Selwyn said slowly, craning his neck down towards her. “And especially not ones who look like a bundle of sticks held together with raggy black string.”
Bellatrix rolled her eyes. Typical. She didn’t give a skrewt’s blast end whether or not they thought she was attractive. And, judging by the laughs around her, they were all on the same intellectual level, which was pre-wand age.
“There are girls on the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw teams,” she said.
“That’s why they’re third and fourth in the league!” someone shouted, to more laughter.
“If Hufflepuff didn’t take girls, they would only have half a team,” drawled Bletchley, the third Chaser.
“Enough!” roared Selwyn. “This is a bloody waste of time! Get off the pitch, Black, or I will hang you upside down from your broom and send you on a lap of the stands!”
The balls box was to his right. She had enough of a reputation already that none of them would want to be the first to lay hands on her once she started moving. As plans went, it was a little half-baked. Like most of her plans, to be honest, but she had found that sufficient aggression always filled the gaps.
Bellatrix dropped her broom on the grass, sidestepped Selwyn and made it to the box unimpeded, because none of them were expecting it. She kicked at the catch, hard enough for it to pop open with a brassy little ping, and the lid flew back.
Quidditch balls were always eager to get out of the box; she had banked on that.
All four of them released.
“Oh, for Slytherin’s sake,” someone groaned. There was a murmur from the stands.
The Snitch whirred away and the Seeker went straight after it automatically, like a greyhound but slightly less intelligent or streamlined. The Quaffle rose lazily and floated back down again to land on the grass nearby. The Bludgers shot out in opposite directions, one nearly taking the skin off her ear.
Now everyone was running around in confusion, which suited her. She walked up to the Beaters, both of whom were head and shoulders taller than her, and one was twice as wide.
“Give me a bat,” she demanded.
The thinner one on the right snorted. “Fuck off,” he said.
The one on the left, who had a shaggy mess of black hair, rearranged his blocky face into a considering expression. But not an unfriendly one.
“Alright, then,” he said, and held it out.
“Wow, really, Lestrange?” the other boy sneered.
Bellatrix took his bat and turned. One of the Bludgers was speeding towards her, causing a whole group of prospectives to dive out of the way.
Selwyn fired a jinx at her, which she deflected. The other Beater crumpled with a high-pitched scream, hands clamped over his groin, the bat he wouldn’t give her tangled between his legs.
The Bludger was approaching. She swapped hands so that the bat was in her right. In terms of speed and angles, Quidditch balls were much easier to judge than spells. Really, it was just duelling with a semi-animate object. And that was hardly a challenge at all.
As Selwyn stormed towards her, spitting out juvenile insults, she calculated her angle, lined up the bat and hit the Bludger with all her strength. It struck him point blank in the face.
He spun on his heels, blood exploding from his nose, and hit the grass like a tree being felled. There was a moment of silence, before girls started screaming in the stands.
There was chaos. The rest of the team were yelling, two of them drew their wands on her, and people started running about everywhere.
A white-faced Bletchley knelt over Selwyn and shouted, “Fuck, it smashed his cheekbone as well as his nose!”
Then he turned to the side and vomited. Beside her, the Beater who’d given her his bat dived onto the second Bludger as it returned. He pinned it to the ground and started wrestling it into the box.
Eventually, someone grabbed the other one on its rebound. The Seeker looped back, Snitch in hand, just as the nurse came sprinting across the pitch, white robes whipping around her, and a contingent of teachers behind her.
“So, who’s acting captain now?” she asked, swinging the bat idly at her side.
From the badly-concealed expression of panic on his face, it was Travers. He opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, looking to the other team members for support.
“I want her on the team,” said the Beater who’d given her his bat. “That’s how you hit a Bludger.”
“Do you really think Selwyn will take her once he comes to?” demanded Bletchley, who had vomit down the front of his robes.
“Selwyn’s a bullying twat,” the dark-haired boy said. “Don’t pretend you haven’t wanted to do that to him all season. And Rosier would make a good captain if Selwyn resigns in a huff.”
There was a murmur of agreement, and some of the faces were growing less hostile; Evan Rosier’s in particular as he started making calculations.
“That was a bloody good shot,” the Seeker admitted, dismounting with a little skip that he managed to make look relatively graceful. “And if she starts hitting the Gryffindor team like that, we’re likely to secure the trophy this year.”
Further muttering ensued. Bellatrix stood there calmly, letting it play out and ignoring some of the high-pitched heckling from the stands.
“We’ve never had a girl on the team,” Travers protested.
“Don’t think of me as a girl,” Bellatrix suggested sweetly. “Think of me as a small, flying bundle of aggression and pure evil.”
Two of the team laughed besides Evan, who had clearly decided her little display would work to his benefit. That was Evan: always the opportunist.
“Can you actually fly?” Travers asked desperately.
Bellatrix rolled her eyes. “Any idiot can fly,” she said, holding back a gesture at the last minute that would have indicated the assembled Quidditch team in front of her. That wouldn’t have been helpful.
“The Hufflepuff team is proof of that,” said the Seeker, which did her a favour and got a few laughs.
“So, are we agreed?” Evan asked, with a toss of his perfect golden curls that caused a sustained sigh to ripple through the stands. “Shall we mutiny?”
“Well of course, you would want to,” Travers snorted. “But, until Selwyn quits, I’m acting captain.”
“Hex the bitch,” the second Beater whimpered, still rolling around on the grass.
“Shut up, Allen,” said the other, and gave him a little kick. “You were a crap Beater anyway. And she’s definitely got more balls than you now.”
The others were more or less murmuring a consensus. Travers threw his hands up and capitulated like the coward he was.
“Fine. We’ll take Black. But we’ll suspend trials until Selwyn comes to and we find out if we need to replace him as Chaser.”
Bellatrix smiled. “You’ll have to get me new robes,” she said. “I’m not wearing his-” she flicked her wand lazily in the direction of Allen, who flinched- “because I think he just shit himself.”
There was a chorus of laughter.
“You know what?” Evan said, good-humoured at the thought of his upcoming promotion. “I don’t think we’ll struggle not to think of you as a girl at all.”
Travers slouched over to the waiting hopefuls and broke the news that trials were over for the time being. Bellatrix noticed that he beckoned over two teammates for moral support. She wondered idly if he’d still be Keeper after Evan took over.
Evan himself went up to the frowning teachers as Madam Poultice levitated an unconscious Selwyn away. He started spinning a convincing tale about an accidental strike in the former captain’s direction, and didn’t they know how volatile Bludgers could be? Bellatrix decided her arrogant cousin was growing on her.
The pitch slowly began to empty. Glowing a little inside, she wandered over to the ball box, which the dark-haired boy was securing. Nobody else had thought to do it. It was practical of him; she liked that.
“Do you want your bat back?” she asked, and held it out.
He grinned, sweeping back a lock of hair with an unaffected gesture. She didn’t like it when they preened and, to be perfectly honest, he didn’t have much to preen about (and seemed refreshingly aware of it). But she didn’t often encounter boys who took her seriously.
“You can keep it,” he said, then turned to the other- former- beater. Allen had finally made it to his feet and just cowered when he took the bat from his largely unresponsive hand, before slinking away.
“I’ve got this one,” her new friend said. They strapped the bats into the underside of the lid, and he closed it with a heavy wooden thunk.
He turned, and held out his hand.
“Rodolphus Lestrange,” he said, and she finally placed him; she knew the name of course, and remembered he was in fourth year, which was why they hadn’t really interacted before.
They shook hands. His large fingers dwarfed hers as they closed and squeezed; his grip strong and borderline painful, but not deliberately so. Just unaware of his own strength, in a bumbling sort of way.
“Bellatrix Black,” she said without wincing. The lock of hair fell straight back over his equally dark eyes.
“Oh, I know,” he said, laughing good-naturedly. “I think we’ll make a good team. I’m looking forward to beating the shit out of people together.”
She gave him a genuine smile. “Me too,” she said.
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