three little words ; 𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐦𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐞

16. Bellatrix

Bellatrix's POV

When the war was over, Bellatrix—well, her ghost—had looked for her sister, but, to her surprise and fury, they'd fled after Draco had stepped forward. She remembered feeling hopeless. Without her family, she had no one. And the Dark Lord had perished.

When she made her way to Malfoy Manor, it was Narcissa who opened the door. So frightened to see her sister dead, she let her in, sobbing so hard that it gave Bellatrix a headache.

"Stop crying, Cissy!" she snapped.

Her sister stopped immediately, but her occasional sniffles continued.

The next Malfoy she saw was in the kitchen, her precious nephew, Draco. He had his sleeves rolled down, as if he was ashamed of his Dark Mark. She didn't blame him; she was proud of him for following in the family's footsteps, but she could tell that he didn't like it. She knew he'd made friends at Hogwarts, and no matter how much she wanted that school to burn to the ground, she hated it a sliver less because of it.

"Hello, Draco," she smiled. The most genuine smile she could, of course.

He gave her a small smile, his eyes wide with shock, and hurried out of the kitchen, his head ducked to avoid her gaze.

"Bella, we need to save you, we need to revive you," Narcissa said, wiping her tears.

"It's fine," Bellatrix insisted, "I deserved it anyway."

"No one can deserve getting blown to bits!" Narcissa gasped. "We'll get you better, you'll live again, I promise you..."

Her sister kept talking, scrambling around the kitchen, searching for what, Bellatrix didn't know.

Finally, after minutes of dashing around the large room, Narcissa found what she was looking for. She pulled out a handkerchief, folded carefully and precisely.

"What in the bloody hell is that going to do?" Bellatrix scoffed.

Her sister looked up at her with a glint in her eyes. "Wonders," she said. She unwrapped whatever the cloth was hiding, fold by fold, and eventually came to the center.

There, reflecting the sunlight off of its surface, the Deathly Hallows symbol etched in it, sat the Resurrection Stone.

"Where did you get that?" Bellatrix hissed.

Narcissa held it up like a trophy, which, in this case, it was. "Some of the other Death Eaters went looking for it after the war, in the Forbidden Forest, where Potter dropped it. That was when he went to his death, but did just the opposite of die." She pressed her lips together in a thin line.

Bellatrix watched in awe as her younger sister flipped the stone thrice in her hand. Muttering words she couldn't hear, her body grew heavier until she was on the ground, supporting her weight. She was no longer see-through, no longer a ghost.

Bellatrix Lestrange was alive.

She sucked in a deep breath of fresh, cold air and smiled cruelly.

"I'm back, bitches."