Things I did when I should have been doing work/homework.
It's a new wee!Bella memory. Admittedly it gets lazy toward the end...but what do I do that doesn't?
The accused stood in a neat row of six, twelve feet barely gripping the ledge as the incongruously gentle evening breezes threatened to blow them all, too soon, into the hungry black abyss.
The line-up began as follows, from left to right: Mister Puddles the Kitty, Bartholomew Bear, a fluffy pink dragon brilliantly dubbed Pinky, a unicorn who had recently been rechristened as Marmalade, and last but not least, a delicate porcelain doll in blue and brown riding gear, who would have answered to Lady Beatrix Paisley, were she not depressingly inanimate and lifeless to begin with. They were standing two each on the frame of three wide windows opened on a chilly night. When possible, their hands - or hooves, or whatever - were bound behind their backs.
The executioner, likewise, was something peculiarly extraordinary: no tall man in a hooded cloak, but a small, slight girl in a nightgown. She had the air of an aristocrat as she studied her captured charges; her chin was high, her eyes showed no signs of pity, and her arched brow seemed to be always in the middle of questioning why, exactly, any other being deserved to be in her presence. Her hair, an untamed mess of copious, thick black curls, threatened to dwarf her frame, were her personality not so evidently bigger than the two combined. In short, Bellatrix, at eight years old, was no one to be trifled with.
She had stolen "the accused" from her sisters' rooms, being no longer possessed of any of her own toys. Most had experienced death by fire, until her parents had the fireplace in her room bricked up, and then there had been one or two dismemberments. This fresh scenario she had ripped from the pages of one of the history books in the estate's library, where she spent many of the hours during which the rest of the household happily slept. Bellatrix had never required much sleep; yet still, in her many waking hours, she was overwhelmed by energy.
She took a particular interest in the history of treatment of suspected witches by the Muggle world, this section naturally comprising a large quarter of the deeply prejudiced Pureblood family's stock. She learned at a young age, as illustrations of hangings and burnings and drownings danced through her mind, to see herself and her family as part of a people under siege by a world of inferior beasts whose numbers were growing at alarming rates. They were like royalty being attacked by the poor and degenerate and mad, cloistered away in their castles sipping tea when the threat was ever-present, just outside the windows, just beyond the grounds.
Bellatrix had recently come upon a photo of the Chateau d'Amboise and found it particularly striking. What she most liked, of course, was the story of how treasonous dissenters had once been hanged from its balconies - which is how Marmalade and Mister Puddles found themselves in their current predicament.
It had taken Bella some time to learn how to make the nooses properly, which is exactly why she'd avoided hanging for so long. Neither her fingers nor her temper ever adapted well to little, delicate things. But she had succeeded at last, and now six perfectly tied ropes wound tightly around the necks of the doomed.
"You stand accused," Bella began, walking back and forth behind them, "of being non-magical. This is a crime for which the only punishment can be death. You may take comfort in the knowledge that your displayed corpses will serve as a warning sign to those who would give comfort to others like you, either in word or deed." She had practiced this speech extensively, and drawn several parts from her readings. "Have you any last words?" She stopped for a moment, arching her thin, black brows even further, as though awaiting a response. "Then I will begin, and you will end." Bella smiled, pleased with herself as always. Then she raised a gilded fireplace poker from the downstairs study and prodded the backs of each of the damned six.
Bartholomew Bear, Lady Beatrix, Pinky - they all, each one, tumbled forward into the void. The ropes caught and they bounced back upward to astonishing heights (on account of not weighing very much at all). They continued to bounce and flutter for some time before finally coming to a quiet rest against the outer wall. All except Lady Beatrix, who wasn't properly fitted for such play, and whose head was promptly parted from her body. Both head and body fell downward, and likely found their grave somewhere in the rose bushes.
A soft but insistent knock at the door took Bella from her reverie.
"Yes?!" she snapped, not deigning to turn her head in the direction of the knock.
"Mistress Bella," called a tiny, weak voice, "I come at the request of Mistress Bella's mother to see that Mistress Bella has had her evening bath."
Bella sneered and closed her eyes. She let out an exasperated sigh.
"You may return with the message that Mistress Bella has not, and will do so when she bloody well pleases."
There was a lengthy pause before the voice summoned the courage to speak again. But this was not without, first, another knock.
"WHAT?!" Bella screamed.
"Boffin apologizes for disturbing Mistress Bella, but he has been instructed to ensure that Mistress Bella has bathed."
"Then you can stay out there 'til you ROT!" Bella screamed back. Outside, another breeze lifted and spun the recently executed toys. She found her attention suddenly drawn to the rope left vacant by the very vexing Lady Beatrix. It could be easily expanded, fastened to another, and tightened.
She turned her head, now, toward the door, her hair falling and settling over the left half of her face.
"Boffin?" she called lightly. "I promise I'll bathe if you play a game with me. Just one little game."
--
The missing elf was discovered stiffly bobbing against the side of the house, strung to Bella's window, among the other toys, the next afternoon. The household resided in a stormcloud until the House-Elf Relocation Office could supply a fresh one. Bella let the new creature be, but she never looked at it without imagining its tiny, spindly limbs writhing. It was a heady thing, executing the living. Her taste for it, and use of a magical life form, though a lowly servant, only further proved the material point: that from her infancy, the philosophy and history and blood supremacy, all of it, had been little but a convenient, pretty path to satisfying an incomparably violent nature.
The accused stood in a neat row of six, twelve feet barely gripping the ledge as the incongruously gentle evening breezes threatened to blow them all, too soon, into the hungry black abyss.
The line-up began as follows, from left to right: Mister Puddles the Kitty, Bartholomew Bear, a fluffy pink dragon brilliantly dubbed Pinky, a unicorn who had recently been rechristened as Marmalade, and last but not least, a delicate porcelain doll in blue and brown riding gear, who would have answered to Lady Beatrix Paisley, were she not depressingly inanimate and lifeless to begin with. They were standing two each on the frame of three wide windows opened on a chilly night. When possible, their hands - or hooves, or whatever - were bound behind their backs.
The executioner, likewise, was something peculiarly extraordinary: no tall man in a hooded cloak, but a small, slight girl in a nightgown. She had the air of an aristocrat as she studied her captured charges; her chin was high, her eyes showed no signs of pity, and her arched brow seemed to be always in the middle of questioning why, exactly, any other being deserved to be in her presence. Her hair, an untamed mess of copious, thick black curls, threatened to dwarf her frame, were her personality not so evidently bigger than the two combined. In short, Bellatrix, at eight years old, was no one to be trifled with.
She had stolen "the accused" from her sisters' rooms, being no longer possessed of any of her own toys. Most had experienced death by fire, until her parents had the fireplace in her room bricked up, and then there had been one or two dismemberments. This fresh scenario she had ripped from the pages of one of the history books in the estate's library, where she spent many of the hours during which the rest of the household happily slept. Bellatrix had never required much sleep; yet still, in her many waking hours, she was overwhelmed by energy.
She took a particular interest in the history of treatment of suspected witches by the Muggle world, this section naturally comprising a large quarter of the deeply prejudiced Pureblood family's stock. She learned at a young age, as illustrations of hangings and burnings and drownings danced through her mind, to see herself and her family as part of a people under siege by a world of inferior beasts whose numbers were growing at alarming rates. They were like royalty being attacked by the poor and degenerate and mad, cloistered away in their castles sipping tea when the threat was ever-present, just outside the windows, just beyond the grounds.
Bellatrix had recently come upon a photo of the Chateau d'Amboise and found it particularly striking. What she most liked, of course, was the story of how treasonous dissenters had once been hanged from its balconies - which is how Marmalade and Mister Puddles found themselves in their current predicament.
It had taken Bella some time to learn how to make the nooses properly, which is exactly why she'd avoided hanging for so long. Neither her fingers nor her temper ever adapted well to little, delicate things. But she had succeeded at last, and now six perfectly tied ropes wound tightly around the necks of the doomed.
"You stand accused," Bella began, walking back and forth behind them, "of being non-magical. This is a crime for which the only punishment can be death. You may take comfort in the knowledge that your displayed corpses will serve as a warning sign to those who would give comfort to others like you, either in word or deed." She had practiced this speech extensively, and drawn several parts from her readings. "Have you any last words?" She stopped for a moment, arching her thin, black brows even further, as though awaiting a response. "Then I will begin, and you will end." Bella smiled, pleased with herself as always. Then she raised a gilded fireplace poker from the downstairs study and prodded the backs of each of the damned six.
Bartholomew Bear, Lady Beatrix, Pinky - they all, each one, tumbled forward into the void. The ropes caught and they bounced back upward to astonishing heights (on account of not weighing very much at all). They continued to bounce and flutter for some time before finally coming to a quiet rest against the outer wall. All except Lady Beatrix, who wasn't properly fitted for such play, and whose head was promptly parted from her body. Both head and body fell downward, and likely found their grave somewhere in the rose bushes.
A soft but insistent knock at the door took Bella from her reverie.
"Yes?!" she snapped, not deigning to turn her head in the direction of the knock.
"Mistress Bella," called a tiny, weak voice, "I come at the request of Mistress Bella's mother to see that Mistress Bella has had her evening bath."
Bella sneered and closed her eyes. She let out an exasperated sigh.
"You may return with the message that Mistress Bella has not, and will do so when she bloody well pleases."
There was a lengthy pause before the voice summoned the courage to speak again. But this was not without, first, another knock.
"WHAT?!" Bella screamed.
"Boffin apologizes for disturbing Mistress Bella, but he has been instructed to ensure that Mistress Bella has bathed."
"Then you can stay out there 'til you ROT!" Bella screamed back. Outside, another breeze lifted and spun the recently executed toys. She found her attention suddenly drawn to the rope left vacant by the very vexing Lady Beatrix. It could be easily expanded, fastened to another, and tightened.
She turned her head, now, toward the door, her hair falling and settling over the left half of her face.
"Boffin?" she called lightly. "I promise I'll bathe if you play a game with me. Just one little game."
--
The missing elf was discovered stiffly bobbing against the side of the house, strung to Bella's window, among the other toys, the next afternoon. The household resided in a stormcloud until the House-Elf Relocation Office could supply a fresh one. Bella let the new creature be, but she never looked at it without imagining its tiny, spindly limbs writhing. It was a heady thing, executing the living. Her taste for it, and use of a magical life form, though a lowly servant, only further proved the material point: that from her infancy, the philosophy and history and blood supremacy, all of it, had been little but a convenient, pretty path to satisfying an incomparably violent nature.