Harry woke up to a high pitched squeal and tight arms around his throat. He flailed, hands rising to pry at the bony wrists crushing his neck.
"Oh I love it! It's adorable!" It was a woman's voice, an excited high-pitch. Harry was squeezed and turned, dragged this way and that in an odd parody of an embrace.
"It's not a puppy," someone outside Harry's field of vision grunted, a deeper voice this time, definitely a man's.
At once, the hands let go and Harry dropped onto the wooden floor under him. He coughed, hands rising to rub his bruised throat as he hacked loudly.
Two dainty-looking hands with black nails came into view, resting just a foot away. Harry could see them, his eyes hidden by his fringe of hair.
"Hello?" The woman's voice chirped. She dropped down, lowering until a manic woman's face swam into view, locking eyes with Harry's own eyes. "Hello!"
Harry scrambled back. The woman shifted into a kneel before him and cackled with laughter at his reaction. Her eyes alit at once with amusement at his instinctive fear.
She was tall and thin, with long, thick, and wild black hair, casting a strong contrast to her pale face. Her cheeks and jaw were sculpted with an almost aristocratic beauty Harry almost recognized. She had heavy-lidded dark eyes, giving Harry the impression that she was looking down on something. At the same time, those dark grey eyes glittered gleefully and Harry wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know what she found so funny.
"Who-" Harry croaked, his voice hoarse.
The woman's mouth pursed in concern and, with upsetting speed, she snatched up her wand from a hidden sheath and jabbed it in Harry's direction. "Episkey!"
It felt almost like his neck and throat was filled with cotton. Harry coughed, trying to dislodge the feeling of suffocating.
Then at once, it vanished.
"Better?" The woman cooed, fluttering her long eyelashes and sliding her wand back up her sleeve. She grinned, turning to look up at the two men who were standing by the door. Harry recognised them from the orphanage.
The one on the left, the shorter and thicker of the two, had long hair and a neatly trimmed beard. His face was square, set in a resting scowl as he watched Harry carefully. His eyes glittered maliciously and he gave Harry an uneasy feeling, even though he wasn't doing anything. He reached into his coat and very carefully pulled out a long, dark rope-
"Lutain!" Harry blurted, nearly lunging for the limp figure of his familiar and only hesitating when he saw the woman looking at him curiously.
"Is that the wittle snakey?" She asked the man in a childish voice, blinking and observing Lutain's glossy dark scales.
"Let him go," Harry said quietly, while carefully considering just how hard it would be to set the room around them ablaze.
"Careful," the man warned, setting the snake down on the floor. Lutain was terribly motionless and for a moment, Harry remembered the mother snake and what David had done to her.
"It's dangerous. Killed a boy almost faster than the Lord's," his partner added. He was the taller of the two and rail thin. There was an obvious family resemblance to his partner. They had the same dark eyes. He kept his hair shorter though and he was clean-shaven.
"Really?" The woman asked, a gleeful look in her eyes as she eyed the snake in a new light. She spun suddenly, grabbing Harry again and pulling him against her chest with crushing force. "Oh you are so much better than Cissy's brat!"
Harry swallowed. If Lutain had been awake, he would at least have some sort of leverage-
"Oh!" The woman gasped, leaning back and looking like she'd just realised something. There was an almost terrifying and giddy eagerness in her eyes. "I'm Bella! You're my new brat!"
"What?" Harry hissed. Belatedly he realised he'd been speaking in Parseltongue. "Your new brat?"
The woman, Bella, gave him an over exaggerated pout. "Well Cissy has one. Why can't I?"
Harry was stunned. Was she serious?
"The brat is for the Lord."
At once, Bella snatched Harry back and pulled him closer. "Well he's not here now," Bella whined. She grinned manically at Harry. "You want to stay here! We'll have fun!"
"I-I don't..." Harry started.
"I get to teach you all those fun things! I get to teach you spells and how to fight and-" She gasped, suddenly buzzing with excitement again. "And curses!"
Curses? He had to admit, he was very interested, but... There was something about this woman that set him off, something about the two men too. He tried to recall the names of the people his parents warned him about when he was a child. "What's your full name?"
"Bella! Bellatrix Lestrange!" She giggled, running one of her black-painted fingernails through Harry's messy hair. "Can I name you Septimus?"
"What-" Harry started, for a moment his thoughts distracted from trying to remember by Bella's question. "No! I have a name!"
"He's a Potter, the other twin," the thin man said. "The one his family-"
"They are not my family!" Harry snarled angrily, temporarily forgetting just how precarious his position was.
"You were in an orphanage! I adopted you! You're mine! Done!" Bellatrix said, her expression gleeful as she settled back on her heels under her long, poofy black dress. "You'll live here!"
....
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