My submission for the Hogwarts Forum: Transfiguration- write about a character pretending to be someone they're not.

Written for the Great AU competition (Voldemort Won AU), the Colour of the rainbow competition (purple- write about a family of the Sacred 28), the 2017 Multi-School Competition (prompt: expelliarmus), Eurovision Song Contest (prompt: alive), Tv Show Episode Monthly Competition (Eyes of the Beholder: Write about a situation that isn't all it seems), and the Daily Character Appreciation Challenge (Andromeda Tonks.)

In Azkaban, everything is dreary: the cell walls, the stone floor, the gap in the wall where a window once was.

You dream about it sometimes, about everything turning to gray and all the warmth leaving the world. It has been ages; you lost count so long ago that it seems like time has frozen, that it's been years since you've truly been alive.

When you were seventeen, you took Ted's hand and asked him to run away with you because you couldn't stand to live in a place as cold as your childhood home. He had taken your hand then, promising a future. He had delivered it to you also, as much as he could. None of this is his fault.

But now, you realize how naïve you were to think you could escape the darkness of your past.

X

Azkaban has a routine: breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the prisoners. Dementors in between.

It never ever changes and there is some sick part of you that hopes it does. You know there's no way it's going to get better but you've become angry lately, and you think you may just be able to handle it if it gets worse because then you'll at least have a chance to escape.

When you were sixteen, you held Ted's hand under the desk in a Defense against the Dark Arts lesson while the professor talked about how the presence of Dementors makes you relive your worst memories, how they can drive a person mad.

What kind of a difference does it make, you wonder, if you were already insane to begin with?

X

You almost married Rabastan Lestrange when you were young and trapped, a little girl still under her parent's roof and command. It's been years since you've seen him but you remember: the smile that looks feral, hair brushed so flat it looks fake.

He runs Azkaban with an iron fist now and you've never seen him look anything but polished until now, until today. He looks hungry today, eyes a little too sharp.

Something has changed.

X

It's no surprise when your sister comes in, flouncing right past the guards, with barely a nod of acknowledgment towards Rabastan.

They call you mad once upon a time because you picked your love over family but it doesn't matter because they're all hypocrites anyway. Haven't you seen how they treat their own-

"It's been a while, sister," Narcissa says, leaning against the bars outside your cell.

"Not nearly long enough, dearest Cissy." You say back and smile at the way she flinches.

X

It's been sixteen years apparently. You've lost sixteen years to this hell, to rotting in a jail cell while the outside world burned.

Narcissa tells you this over a cup of tea while you sit in the kitchen of Malfoy manor, eyes solemn and jaw set.

'When in doubt, make tea,' your mother used to say and Narcissa always wanted to be just like your mother, and look how gifted she's become at imitation, a true Black, oh why could you learn from her example your mother used to ask-

X

Muggles and Muggleborns are dying and no one lifts a hand; the half-bloods have fled. And you?

You're the biggest blood traitor this world has, a symbol in the midst of humanities dying embers.

X

You're grimy and filthy and you see Lucius Malfoy poke his head in and grimace at your appearance, but it doesn't matter anymore.

Nymphadora is dead. They killed her: the death eaters, the cowards, those who didn't lift a hand to save her.

For that, they will all pay.

X

They dress you up in silk and the finest of jewelry.

Once again, you are playing a role. Everyone knows you haven't been a Black since the day they burned you off the family tree and you burned down the family home.

You've always been more dangerous than you think.

X

"Why have I been released?" You ask Narcissa when Lucius is gone.

Your sister's smile is tight when she answers. "The Dark Lord has decided that you are to be an important part of the future of magical Britain."

"And why do you think the Dark Lord needs me for that?"

Narcissa's face crumbles and you pale.

"I'm so, so sorry, sister. I tried, I promise."

And then she's gone in a flurry of robes, leaving you in a manor that is so very much still a prison.

Trapped.

X

It's Lucius who tells you, eventually, and it is not conscious but a drunken whisper.

You are seated in the kitchen long after the sun has set when he stumbles in, intoxicated like the world is ending.

(Perhaps it is)

"Bellatrix?" He mutters, slurring the syllables. "I thought they killed you, those filthy blood traitors!"

And then it clicks.

X

Staring down at Lucius, you feel like screaming. It's obvious in hindsight- you have no family, no name, and no inheritance. But Bellatrix?

The Dark Lord's most faithful, the most sadistic Death Eater to ever live: she's needed, necessary to this vision of the future, to the war.

You may not have anything to do with your family anymore, but you share Bella's appearance, her blood.

You are similar enough to pass as her.

X

You decide in a split second.

"Well, of course, I'm alive, you fool!" You snap and you feel like her for a second; wild and mad and unhinged.

He doesn't even answer, just collapses in the foyer. You smirk.

You are not allowed out of the heavily warded manor under any circumstances, but Bellatrix has had unrestricted access for years.

And surely, after sixteen years of Azkaban, you can pass for her.

X

In the end, it's all too easy.

You find her room and her hairbrush and after that, you breathe easier. The manor wards are tied with your magical aura, after all, and any parts of her have hers.

Still, it makes you feel filthy, carrying the remains of a woman who used to call herself your sister until she decided you weren't her family anymore. Then, she tossed you into an Azkaban cell.

You're not sorry for any this.

X

You should know better but you wait for Narcissa to return anyways.

She almost faints when she sees you, seated at her kitchen table. You have your hair wild and loose the way it hasn't been for years and you're a carbon copy.

You don't wait for her to answer, just speak your mind the way you haven't been able to for years, "Did you know what they were going to turn me into?"

Narcissa is silent for a few seconds before answering, "Yes. There was nothing I could have done to stop their plotting, after Draco-"

Narcissa stops talking and sighs, a painful kind of sound that made its way into your tired bones. "Andy, they killed my son. They took him and made him a Death Eater and now he's dead, and Lucius might as well be dead too!"

Narcissa collapses as she says the sentence, voice rising into hysteria. "I couldn't lose Lucius, Andy, but I didn't have anything left and when the Dark Lord told me Bellatrix was dead, I was ready to sacrifice anything."

"Including me," You state and she wilts.

"Yes, Andy. I'm sorry."

"What would have happened to me?" You ask, indulging your morbid curiosity.

"He probably would have made you into her, somehow. Andy, I'm not sure, I didn't want to know. But he didn't want the public to know she was gone and you were so convenient."

You nod grimly. Your sister has always been the odd Black; neutral instead of picking a side in this war, looking out of place in family photos with her almost yellow hair.

Now, however, you see it: she is just like the rest of you. Just like Bellatrix, for who you have a much stronger spell than Expelliarmus for; Sirius, who was just as reckless as his mother; Regulus, who died doing what he thought was right. Like the rest of the Blacks, who valued family honor over anything else.

It's just time to see who she considers family.

"You could still call the Dark Lord if you desire to," you say levelly. "I would stand no chance against him."

For a second, time seems to freeze. You stare at each other, and neither of you dares to breathe until she runs to you, plants a kiss on your cheek, and offers you a wand.

"Stun me," Narcissa says, urgently. "Do it and run; you can pass for her. I can't afford to lose anyone else."

"What about you and Lucius?" You ask.

Narcissa's eyes harden. "Go."

"Stupefy," you whisper and she falls.

X

When you were seventeen, you stood in the nooks of the Astronomy tower and told Ted you were leaving your family.

"Give them hell for me," He said then, planting a kiss on your cheek.

Now, you disappear into the darkness of the outdoors outside the manor in your dead sister's clothes and vow to make him proud.