microfic - bella killing sirius 🥰 | 1.5k words | warnings for um. death. obviously. but also for confusing narrative style ❤️
for the light of my life @quillkiller on this most auspicious day
Bellatrix laughs as Andy - the woman who looks like Andy, except for the purple hair, and the dirty blood - falls backwards away from her. She’s never going to get into the Duelling Club at Hogwarts if she keeps leaving her left side open like that; she’s lucky she has Bellatrix there to teach her.
The woman - her sister, blood-traitor, spawn of a mudblood, fighting on the side of the Order - doesn’t get back up again, limp body tumbling down the steep, stone steps. Bellatrix hasn’t lost a duel since she was thirteen, she holds the Duelling Club record for most consecutive wins - she’s the best person that Andy could have come to for help - she wasn’t going to be beaten by some filthy Auror brat.
Turning away from the unmoving body, Bellatrix runs deeper into the fray, moving towards the raised dais with its stone archway. It’s chaos, flashes of spellfire shooting across the room in all directions, red, purple, white, green, shouts and crashes and explosions as spells miss and damage the room, or as they hit their mark and damage the enemy.
She deflects a curse on instinct, swinging around to face the direction it had come from - a familiar face, her baby cousin - “Bella, will you duel me now?” - a traitor and a coward and unworthy of the name of Black.
Bellatrix returns fire. She’ll go easy on him, because Sirius is just a boy, mock-duelling with a borrowed wand and the small repertoire of spells that he had learned from her or from his parents, but he had always been quick on his feet, good at skipping out of the line of fire - she would make a proper duellist of him yet. She should kill him, for having everything and for running away from it, for turning against her, against his family, cursing their name then having the audacity to use the spells that she had taught him to fight for the wrong side of the war.
It’s the first time that she's seen him since he was disowned, in the middle of Diagon Alley, fighting with the Order of the Phoenix, and she should kill him. It’s the Yule holidays of her seventh year at Hogwarts, Sirius is nine and determinedly dodging her spells, one of their favourite games. They’re both somewhere else, screams and despair and a spinning, ungraspable whirlpool of memories, standing on the raised stone dais now, close enough to hear the whispers from the tattered veil hanging in the archway - soft, insidious, beneath the clamour of the battle.
Sirius throws a spell back at her, bouncing on the balls of his feet, “Hello cousin.”
Bellatrix grins as she dodges - Sirius is always so energetic, so eager to fight with her in a way that even Andromeda never is, let alone Narcissa or Regulus - so desperate to draw her blood, the same blood that runs through his veins, the same blood that he had forsaken, singling her out on any battlefield in the same way that she always did with him. He had run from everything that she had ever wanted - the Black heirship and the power, the esteem, which that entailed - as if it was nothing, as if she didn’t dream about commanding that level of respect, or awe, or fear, as if she hadn’t been scrambling every day of her life to try and get as close to it as she could. Sirius had run away from it, run away from her, and now he was a part of the Order of the Phoenix and she should kill him. She could kill him, the Black Heir, laughing as he narrowly avoids getting hit with a stupefy - he’s only nine, it’s not like he could really defend himself if she started firing off some of the more lethal spells she knew.
She had taught him how to perform the severing charm just the day before, lending him her wand - walnut and dragon heartstring just like the one that had chosen him when he turned eleven - he’s using Cissy’s today, struggling a little against it’s unicorn hair core, mostly relying on his ability to jump out of the trajectory of spells.
The two of them are volleying spells back and forth - ones that she had taught him and ones that the Dark Lord had taught her and ones that he had learnt without her somewhere - dodging or shielding or deflecting, spells barely grazing each other, she always knew that he would make a fine duellist - she had made him into one. They duel like this every time they see each other, during her holidays from Hogwarts, then during his holidays from Hogwarts; she had watched Sirius turn into a threat - she had taught him how to be a threat.
Bellatrix laughs as he manages to shoot off the severing charm that she had taught him - three different lethal curses in quick succession, a determined kind of acrimony about him, not surprised to see her fighting with the death eaters, in the same way that she isn’t really surprised to see him with the Order. She lets it hit her - blocks them all with a complicated shielding charm and throws back a confringo that explodes the cobblestones beneath his feet - still laughing as he cheers about how he’s fatally wounded her, feeling a sting from the shallow cut on her arm - he’s determined as ever but there’s less anger now; he’s playful, grinning when a curse singes the ends of his hair.
She knows she shouldn’t kill him - she isn’t sure if she could kill him anymore, he’s going toe to toe with her in a way that he’d never been able to when they were kids - she doesn’t think she really wants to kill him, her favourite cousin, more just the things that he represents, the signet ring on his finger that gives him an authority, aged nine, that she doesn’t have, can’t have, at nearly double his age - she thinks she wants to kill him now, though, now that he’s betrayed her, found a new family of mudbloods and blood-traitors and abandoned the role that she’s always craved. Bellatrix fires a stunner at him - puts up a hasty shield against his entrail-expelling curse, another one that she had taught him - the two of them laugh as he ducks it, the red light whizzing over his head - “Come on, you can do better than that!”
It’s loud, cacophonous with the battle raging all around them - blood on the cobblestones of Diagon Alley, some of it hers, some of it his - Cissy’s complaining that she’s bored and wants to go outside - the whispers emanating from the crumbling stone archway are getting louder, seeping their way into Bellatrix’s head - and Sirius’ voice rings in her ears, echoes around the room.
She flings another spell at him, grinning as she watches him determinedly move through the wand movements for diffindo again - he laughs as she stumbles, as her shield collapses under the force of his reducto, as he gains the upper hand - concentrating on pushing his magic through Cissy’s wand, not paying close enough attention to the spell she’s just cast - Sirius deflects the curses she hurls at him, sends a barrage of spells back at her - he’s laughing, cocky as always, as her spell hurtles directly towards him.
It hits him right in the middle of his chest.
It’s quiet, suddenly.
Quiet as Sirius’s laughter cuts off. As his eyes widen in shock. As he falls backwards, slowly, as if some invisible weight were making him heavy, as if some invisible force were gently lifting him away. She looks at him and his face is gaunt, an underlying emaciation that no amount of hearty meals can hide, she sees the same whenever she looks in a mirror, right down to the tired, but ever determined glint in silver-grey eyes.
Bellatrix watches Sirius sink into the tattered veil - watches him fall to the floor of the duelling room in Grimmauld Place, for a second she imagines that he might be dead, what it would feel like to kill him - watches the grim smile on his face as one of his spells meets its target and her vision goes black - the veil flutters, those insidious whispers seem to pause for a moment, then rise to a roaring crescendo as his body disappears.
She screams along with them, triumphant - she hasn’t lost a duel since she was thirteen, Sirius has never once beaten her, always ending their duels on the floor - she’s killed Sirius Black, and everything that he represents, even if he had spurned the signet ring and the esteem that came with it. Bellatrix walks across the room to enervate him - wakes up in Malfoy Manor, Cissy leaning over her and asking if it was true that Sirius was a part of the Order now, if he had really beaten her in a duel - turns away from the whispers and the archway and the duel that she had won, skipping back up the stone steps, laughing as she hops over Andy’s - the mudblood’s - body.
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If Dream of the Endless had access to the Am I The Asshole subreddit "Am I the Asshole for condemning my lover to Hell?"
"I was informed quite recently by a friend that this is a good place to receive unbiased judgement on past actions of mine that were not well received by people. As there are few beings I trust to ask for unbiased, well-meaning judgement from, I turn to the internet.
After a recent excursion to Hell, my raven saw fit to inform me that condemning a past lover to Hell might be seen, in my raven's words "as a dick move." My sibling, who has seen fit to give a mortal the tools to imprison me for a century and has made an attempt on my life, has criticized me before for the decision I made to condemn my lover to Hell.
Our story took place 10,000 years ago. She was a mortal queen and very beautiful. She was desired by many, but she refused them. One day she laid eyes on me, not knowing who or what I am, and decided that I would be her lover. She pursued me, and eventually found me in my realm. We began to get to know each other. She truly loved me at first. And I loved her. No one had ever loved me enough to go to the lengths she had to find me. I offered to make her the queen of my realm. But when she truly began to understand what it is that I am, and that I would not abandon my realm to be her lover, she became fearful. I did not want her to leave me, so when she ran, I ran after her. She hurt herself in the hopes that it would make me disgusted with her and leave. When she saw that she did not scare me away, she allowed me to heal her. We made love all through the night.
In the morning, her city was destroyed, for the First Circle had decreed that one of the Endless cannot love a mortal. We had both known that. She had tried to put an end to our relationship before it was too late, but in the end our desire for each other had overcome all else.
In her despair, she killed herself. I was distraught, I would have made her my queen. But she chose death over me. She chose to abandon me, she chose to abandon hope, for death. Still, I would have forgiven her for that transgression. I would still have her as my queen. I would still love her.
But she rejected me. Even though she loved me, she would rather die than be with me. So I told her that I would offer my love a final time, but if she once again would choose death over me, that I would condemn her soul to Hell.
She did not answer at first. She said that we were never meant to be together and that darker things would come to be if we tried to be together. I asked her once again as she was making the journey to the Sunless Lands. She told me to leave her. I asked her for the last time. She refused me and I condemned her to Hell.
She sought me out, only to reject me. To reject dreams by killing herself. She loved me and yet would choose to die rather than be with me. She would choose Hell rather than be with me even though she sought me first. I felt that my actions were justified. She was not moved by the pain that her actions caused me. What could I have done except punish her for her callousness?
I felt I was completely justified in my actions until very recently when I saw her in Hell. I had not thought of her in a long time, though I still loved her. But my recent experience of being imprisoned for a century had changed me in ways that I have only recently admitted to myself. For the first time I wondered if perhaps my original judgement to condemn her to Hell was made in error. So I am turning to here at the recommendation of a friend. Am I the Asshole?"
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