My family has a reputation for brilliance and madness. I would say that while not wholly undeserved, in truth, the masses simply do not understand the heart and mind of a Black. How could they? With the exception of a few of the oldest, best families of wizarding Britain, they have less magic in their sullied blood than we, and fewer brains in their heads, I'm certain.

Imbeciles.

What could be simpler to comprehend than a mother's love of a little boy? Did it really matter that the boy had once belonged to someone else? Someone dead, no less?

Perhaps I should start from the beginning – Merlin knows I have the time! My name is Bellatrix Lestrange, though I was born and always will be a Black. I am eldest of three, all daughters, and was naturally first to marry. I knew Rodolphus mostly from school – he was in my house, a few years ahead – and we were wed not long after my graduation. I will admit – I do not love him.

There was never any question of our marriage; his father was friendly with mine, and contracted for me in my fourth year. In truth, he would have made a better brother than husband, and a younger one at that. He has too much – dare I say it – Hufflepuff in him, for my tastes – just a trifle less imagination, wit, and talent than a proper Slytherin ought have. He cared more for Quidditch and cards than was befitting a wizard of twenty-odd years; I had hoped that he would grow up some between his graduation and mine, but that was not to be. Even now, he is less mature than I ever was, though Azkaban has a way of forcing age upon even the most incorrigible of boys.

Loath as I am to own it, I sometimes envy my sister Andromeda – her blind, misplaced willfulness, not her shockingly poor judgment. She might even have gotten the idea from the migraine that is my own marriage, though there really was no need to go as far as she did – a Mudblood, honestly! I have often entertained the fancy that my present childlessness is a reflection of my husband's mental adolescence. Why, Andromeda's dreadful daughter is at Hogwarts already! They breed like swine, the Muggles do.

Regardless, is it so surprising that my taste should run towards older, more intelligent men? He is too good for me, I know – I have always been the ambitious one – but I know also that I shall never love another. I would die for him, and I would – I have – killed for him. Indeed, it is on his account that I lie in this cold, miserable cell – for my lord, and for one little boy.