𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐡𝐞𝐫 | b. black

✧.*┊xi. sad beautiful tragic

CHAPTER ELEVEN
sad beautiful tragic

.·:*¨༺ ☾ ༻¨*:·.

𝐈𝐓'𝐒 𝐁𝐄𝐄𝐍 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐘-𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐘𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐒. Twenty-five years since Juniper Harrison's fifth year at Hogwarts. Twenty-five years since her heart was stolen and later broken by Bellatrix Black, who had been in Azkaban since the end of the first wizarding war.

Most people tend to shut down after heartbreak. They stop caring for themselves and distance themselves from others, but not Juniper. She was always fueled by ambition, and once she got over the initial hurt of Bellatrix leaving her to go down a dark and dangerous path, she took all of her anger at the older witch and channeled it into her studies. She graduated at the top of her class with high enough marks to pursue Auror training and later joined a secret society called the Order of the Phoenix, which Dumbledore had formed to help fight the Dark Lord, Voldemort.

Now, after fourteen years, he had returned, and the group was reassembled. It was very small, of course. Most of the original Order had been murdered by Death Eaters. Frank and Alice Longbottom, who Juniper liked quite a bit, had been tortured to insanity for information after Voldemort's disappearance the night he tried to kill Harry Potter.

It was Bellatrix who had done that. It was a rather awkward meeting when Juniper showed up with a few other Order members to take her away to Azkaban.

Bellatrix Black had done terrible things, but still, not a day went by that she didn't cross Juniper's mind.

"She's thinking about her again, isn't she?" Ted asked as he watched Juniper viciously shooting arrows at targets she had scattered all over the back yard. High in trees, on top of fences, low on the sides of the house, and spread out around the grass. Each one hit the bullseye perfectly.

"Yeah." Andromeda sighed sadly, watching the angry look on her best friend's face as she fired another arrow. "She always does this when she does. I think it's her version of a rage room."

"Shit!" Juniper cursed when the string of her bow broke, snapping against her fingers. She shook the pain off and tossed the bow aside, kicking the trunk of a tree in frustration.

"Auntie June?"

Juniper's brows furrowed at the sound of her goddaughter's voice. She looked around the backyard before lifting her gaze up the tree she had just kicked. Dorothea was sitting high up in it reading a book.

When Ted and Andromeda got married, they asked Juniper if she would be the godmother to their children. Naturally, Juniper said yes. They had two beautiful daughters, Nymphadora – who preferred to go by her surname, or Dora to those who were close to her – and Dorothea. Tonks had just qualified to be an Auror the year prior and joined the Order of the Phoenix with Juniper. Dorothea had just finished her third year at Hogwarts and would be returning for her fourth at the end of the summer.

"Thea, hey." Juniper quickly wiped away a frustrated tear that had fallen as the petite brunette climbed down from the tree, a paperback copy of Little Women tucked under her arm. "Have you been up there the whole time?"

"Yeah." Dorothea nodded. She leaned back against the tree trunk, running the pad of her thumb against the pages of her book, enjoying the feeling. She looked past the woman's shoulder and saw her parents watching them from the window. Ted and Andromeda quickly pulled the curtains shut so that she wouldn't see them, making the smallest of amused smiles twitch on her lips. "Mum and Dad are watching you, by the way."

Juniper glanced over her shoulder. She could see the slight silhouettes of people moving behind the curtain. "We should be heading inside, anyway," she said, taking out her wand and giving it a wave to clear the backyard of her archery equipment.

Dorothea pouted softly, not wanting to go back inside just yet. It was a lovely summer night, and she was enjoying the view of the sunset from the tree, but she knew better than to argue against the adults. She followed Juniper inside and into the kitchen, where Andromeda was preparing dinner.

"Thea, honey, have you packed yet?" Andromeda asked as her daughter took a juice box out of the fridge.

Dorothea poked the straw into her juice and sipped it with a frown. "Packed?"

"For Sirius's," Andromeda clarified. "We're spending the summer with him, remember? We leave in the morning."

Dorothea went pale. "I-I thought that we were just going for a visit. You didn't say—"

"I told you he had invited us to stay with him at his family's old manor."

"Right, yeah, I remember that. But you didn't specify that we were going to be there all summer. I-I don't have enough time to organize my trunk with everything I need, and don't get me started on the books, I mean, you won't even be able to lift the thing, a-and—"

"Thea, take a deep breath," Juniper said gently, placing a light hand on her shoulder. "I'll help you pack, okay? You don't need to stress about it, alright?"

"Alright." Dorothea took a deep breath, lifting her hand up to rub the stone on the amethyst necklace that her older sister had given her. "But it has to be packed my way. I have a specific way of doing it."

"Make sure she doesn't try to pack all of her belongings," Ted called after them as they left the room.

"But I need everything, Dad! I need to be prepared!" Dorothea called back as they went up the stairs. She looked up at Juniper. "Surely you understand, too, right, Auntie June? You're always prepared."

"Yes, but one can be overly prepared, Thea," Juniper stated as they walked into her room.

The walls in Dorothea's room were covered with vinyls from different Muggle singers, pictures of her family, and posters from her favourite movies that Juniper had shown her. One corner of her room had a bookshelf filled with stories from Muggle literature. A fuzzy purple rug covered the floor next to it with a couple pillows and stuffed animals. Her record player sat on a small desk beside it, her Walkman, headphones, and cassette tapes underneath in a crate.

"Just pick out a little bit of everything, okay? We can narrow it down to just a few extra things besides the essentials so it all fits in your trunk," Juniper said.

"Okay," Dorothea replied as she opened her wardrobe to begin picking out the clothes she wanted to take.

"Want to listen to some music while we pack?" Juniper asked as she walked over to the record player.

"The Beatles," Dorothea said, placing some neatly folded clothes into her trunk. "Please," she added so she wouldn't sound rude.

Juniper put one of the Beatles' records – Let it Be – into the record player before getting to work helping her goddaughter pack. It was the perfect distraction to keep her mind off of her and Bellatrix's sad beautiful tragic love affair.

It had been twenty-five years. That was more than enough time to forget her.