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Unmatched Patience	By : McGonagall Category: Harry Potter > FemSlash - Female/Female Views: 4220 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series, and I wish that I made any money from this. I don't.

Chapter List
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Chapter 4

Bellatrix Black never had been the most kind of all her pupils, but as she returned for her seventh year at Hogwarts, Minerva noticed something vastly different. She couldn’t pinpoint it, though. The encounter between her and the then seventeen-year-old had rummaged through her head often and most especially when seeing her and teaching her – it had clouded the whole of the last month of the year prior. The summer holidays had proven to be needed to come to terms with it, to convince herself it had been only normal, that she had reacted that way on the sexual stimulation – especially since she had not been intimate with anyone in many years.

It would only be fourteen years later Minerva finally accepted to marry Elphinstone Urquart. Of course, she never loved him as a lover. She had gotten to care for him very much through the years and was genuinely upset by his passing, though – but she had never really loved him like Dougal. In the end maybe he was only her best option? Minerva was honest with him about it, but he never actually seemed to mind.

When September arrived again, Minerva had learned to see all more in perspective once again. She could look at her pupil without being reminded of that time after class so pointedly, without a rush of shame and confusion filling her head, no longer being able to tell what was either left or right anymore.

In the second week of that first month, as she stood watching her seventh year Ravenclaws and Slytherins copy the text from the blackboard, a hint of black caught her eye, and she fleetingly wondered if it had really been there or if she only had imagined, because when she looked closer, it seemed to be gone. She chose to rely on her instincts nonetheless and as lesson ended, asked Bella to stay. Minerva’s heartbeat elevated slightly at that point.

She knew that the time of polite questions had passed, so as Bellatrix reached her, Minerva spoke, “I would like to see your left arm.”

“Why?” Bellatrix countered in a snappy, defensive and unkind tone.

“I won’t ask again,” Minerva replied.

“You never asked to begin with!” Bellatrix bit, but did as she had asked. She was more than curious for the elder witch’s reaction. She doubted that the prim Gryffindor would know what it really meant or who it belonged to – who she belonged to now. She rolled her sleeve higher blindly and watched Minerva’s face closely. Her eyes momentarily widened but she said nothing upon seeing the skull and snake that had been tattooed on her arm over the summer holidays. Her lips pursed for a moment, Bellatrix thought, though.

“What’s that?”

“My master calls it his Dark Mark.”

That seemed to confuse and irritate Minerva even more. “Your master?” she repeated. She had no idea of what was going on, but seemingly a lot had changed over the holidays. That little something Minerva had still often caught in her dark eyes then had gone now, she realized – the very last shred of kindness and good nature maybe? She didn’t particularly like the term ‘master’ and certainly not how it rolled from Bellatrix’s mouth.

“My master,” Bella confirmed. Of course, she was intelligent enough not to reveal more than that, let alone the cause Lord Voldemort strived for… The cause which she had signed for now, too. Minerva always wanted the best for everyone and equal rights. You could bet she wouldn’t applaud it. She most likely wasn’t Pureblood herself either. Otherwise, she would have known of it… and she knew of no McGonagalls in her extended Pureblood family. “It creates a connection of sorts between me and him,” she said. “We share… things, you see. We share quite a lot of things – our view upon how a perfect world would be like, for instance.”

“Who is your master, Bellatrix? What happened?”

Bellatrix heard the confusion and the worry in her soft voice. It made her impossibly mad somehow. “You happened!” she screamed, her voice sounding strangely inhuman suddenly. Then she pointed at the bench at the end of the wide classroom. “You could have saved me when you lay there from both this and the rest of my fate! I was never good enough, though. So why the hell should I keep fighting?”

“I don’t…”

“Of course…” Bella muttered, her voice laced with pure venom. “Whatever happens from now will be your fault – whatever I will do under his command. I was destined to be this. Have you ever heard of self-fulfilling prophecies, my dear Minerrrrva?” she purred, stressing the ‘r’. It made her skin crawl. She couldn’t ponder about Bellatrix using her given like that, taken by how it rolled off her tongue and everything else that had.

“Miss Black…”

“You’ll know when it is too late. Remember the moment when you pushed me off that desk,” Bellatrix said. “You might have been the one I listened to and obeyed for the rest of my life, but you said no! I never was good enough for you. No one is good enough for you, and that’s why you’ll become an old spinster.”

Nostrils flared in fury, Minerva replied, “You are my pupil. I am your professor. We crossed a line… and no matter what happens, a pupil and a professor are not supposed to cross it like that… to have what you seem to want with me.”

“I don’t want anything with you. I want you – nothing more, nothing less,” Bella spat. “We have crossed it. You can’t just get in the line again without looking back – not without feeling the consequences!”

Minerva didn’t even have a chance to give any detention, for Bella had left in seconds, leaving her behind stunned. She sat at her desk, running through the words over and over again… and getting none the wiser – until months later maybe. She lost all sense of time as she sat there, not showing at dinner in the Great Hall.

A knock from the headmaster upon the door to her classroom shook her from her reverie, at eight in the evening. When she still hadn’t shown anywhere by then, he had chosen to look for her in the castle. “Minerva. Are you all right?”

As her eyes connected with those of her superior, old professor, she… broke. Great reluctance mixed with intense relief ran through her as finally, she shared the reasons for her absent behavior… begging him not to judge her, not to blame her. Albus neither judged nor blamed her, which helped.

Albus, unlike Minerva, had a very good idea of who Bellatrix Black’s master was. He had never really thought of Tom Riddle as entirely honest or anything – even as a little boy, he had been the one other children were always frightened of. Then in later years, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore watched as he sank further into the depths of darkness. He tried to talk to Tom multiple times of course… but it had always been a monologue, in which he said all was fine and that he did not need to worry about anything.

Bellatrix’s ‘initiation’ confirmed what he had always feared would happen: Tom Riddle gathering a group of ‘followers’ over whom he could rule and whom he could use… He tried to find him, of course. There had never been a doubt about his intelligence, though… and while in the end Albus was most likely not to be beat, he remained one step ahead at all times for a little while… for longer then hoped.

He would have opted to ask Bellatrix as a very last resort, but… it so happened that she didn’t return after Christmas. New thing they knew: weird stuff began happening, Muggle-Borns began disappearing... It had been set into motion.
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Unmatched Patience