Serena Snape: Love of Magic

December 23, 1976 - Serena Pov

In the end, we spent all night and all morning searching for creatures for Bellatrix to drain their souls from, we knew where most of the places where the creatures Bellatrix wanted as her familiars lived were, so using my portals to get close and have Bellatrix drain them completely was pretty easy and quick.

We were able to get a wide variety of fantastic animals for their repertoire, we were now close to Hogwarts, in the forbidden forest and it was approaching lunch time.

"No, no matter how much you keep insisting, the answer is no." I growled in Bellatrix's direction, she rolled her eyes.

"It will only be one, I promise," Bellatrix added and I glared at her.

"I'm not letting you go suck the blood of a unicorn Bella, I have no idea how its blood would react to your vampirism, let alone the curse for even killing a unicorn, so no." I firmly refused, Bellatrix rolled her eyes.

"You're really taking all the fun out of this. Bella, don't slaughter the giants. Bella, no more dragons to spare. Bella, don't impale the werewolves. Bella, leave the abraxans alone. Bella, stop chasing the thestrals ." Bella said mockingly as she mimicked my voice, my eye twitching violently.

"The colony of giants, they are the last colony that exists in the world, I was not going to let you extinguish a race, and I also let you kill that half dozen giants who were affiliated with Voldemort!"

" The damn reserves improved their defenses after our last raids, now they'll go crazy over the missing adult dragons, and don't even think about it if Gringotts finds out we stole their Ukrainian." Ironbelly , you already have four, you don't need any more !

"And I didn't say no to werewolves, just not at the moment, I want to see if you make them your familiars during the full moon and they can keep their transformations permanently."

"The Abraxans are from Beauxbatons !! And I don't know what you want them for, just like the Thestrals ! " I exclaimed in her direction, Bellatrix shrugged while crossing her shoulders.

"I wanted a flying horse, the abraxans weren't enough." she said simply, I could feel my face twitch.

"Yeah well, you did get a couple of thestrals , I didn't even know they bled! But you didn't have to go after the whole pack! " Bellatrix snorted and looked away.

"I don't know what you're talking about," Bellatrix said innocently, I growled in her direction, "Besides, stop worrying so much, we left the Dark Mark in all the places that could have discovered us, they'll blame Riddle ," Bellatrix added, I sighed tiredly.

"Well, still , it's already noon, go suck the blood of some acromantulas and let's get back to Black Manor." I groaned frustratedly, Bellatrix wrinkled her nose in disgust

"I will not drink spider blood," Bellatrix replied, "you made me drink that troll's blood, and I still hate you for it, it was the worst blood I have ever had the displeasure of tasting." Bellatrix visibly shuddered, I felt my cheeks flush.

"Well, it was just lying there, it was a waste." I tried to appeal to her, Bellatrix growled.

"No spiders, or anything that looks disgusting." I sighed, but nodded at Bellatrix's words.

"Well then, let's go to Black Manor, I'm tired of flying around the world." I sighed tiredly, Bellatrix seemed to want to say something, but I glared at her "and no, you can't go marry some centaur, let's go already!" I replied forcefully, Bella pouted.

"Fine, but not to Black Manor, open a portal to our mansion, I want to test my familiars and put a time bubble, we'll be there for a while." Bellatrix said excitedly, I moaned in pain, great, I would be her damn scapegoat again, I sighed surrendered.

"Fine, whatever you want." I opened a portal to my pocket dimension, specifically to the training room, Bella immediately crossed it and I followed behind her and immediately enveloped us with a time bubble.

It had been just a few days since our first training, and we had been doing it daily after that. And we had both improved greatly from how we started. Bellatrix now had souls to burn, so she allowed herself to be much more reckless than she had been before, and she had already been doing so because she was now almost suicidal in her attacks, which worked awfully well.

I had also started taking lessons with Koro -sensei, but there hadn't really been any significant change in just a few days so it was a work in progress.

I on the other hand had started consuming metals to eat and decanting my metal minds constantly, so I was always enhanced in some way, stronger, more energy, better senses, healing always on, and I could detect magical pulses, it was still disconcerting to hear drums in my head, but I was starting to differentiate the different noises that caused the variations.

But most importantly, I had managed to constantly maintain my La Verità state in a diminished form for over 24 hours in a time bubble without losing control of it, and now the one I used in public, I could now appease lust with good feelings, it sounded cheesy, but it was actually effective to use love to subsume lust, instead of counteracting lust, lust was used to amplify love which left it buried.

me shudder at the mechanics of how it worked, it was cheesy, but I couldn't deny that it was extremely effective.

The only bad thing was the secondary things of the transformation itself, not counting my La Verità clothes, which Aria had completely consumed, there was still a complete change in my figure, I was taller, curvier, and my hair grew to my waist.

I have the robes to thank, so no one had actually seen my body (at least not since last year with the marauders and the incident with Bellatrix in the Great Hall), or would see it in the near future if I was lucky, still, everything can be answered by puberty, so I wasn't worried.

I was actually happy, I now had a respectable, nice to look at chest and waist and not the almost complete flatness I had before, so it was an improvement, although I could save myself from cutting my hair every time I transformed. The only thing I couldn't change were my star eyes and the black stars below on my cheeks, there were many stars that gathered together to form spider webs under my eye, even while I tried to suppress my power as much as I could.

But it wasn't really important, oddly enough, no one cared, even the Blacks hadn't commented at all on all my additions to my face, I was certainly not the first, nor the last eccentric witch in the world, so as far as one's appearance was concerned, they were quite tolerable, now, if they questioned things like the quality of the clothes, they didn't even notice if the clothes were Muggle style, but if the clothes were second hand or poor quality, it was stupid.

"Very, well, as always?" I asked quietly, Bella smiled widely in an eerie way, then exploded into darkness and her newly acquired familiars began to form.

Really, Bellatrix didn't need Control Art Restriction System and Cromwell Invocation, she didn't have anywhere near the amount of souls Alucard had, and even if she did, I wouldn't put a limiter on her, it was stupid to even think about it, but...

My stomach started to drop as I watched all the dangerous beasts emerge from Bellatrix, Dragons, Giants, Runepoor and a dozen other creatures between XXX and XXXXX, I even had half a dozen Death Eaters from the Hogsmeade raid with their wands out, this… may have been a bad idea.

The roars of the dragons made my entire skeleton tremble, I began to move as fast as I could.

------------------

"That was hell." I moaned tiredly as I caught my breath, I was actually very grateful for the Brass, without it to absorb the heat from the dragon flames, I would have been burned many more times than I would have liked.

Although I can't say the same for being mutilated in other ways by all the half-zombie creatures.

I found out the hard way that they were actually immortal just like Bellatrix, we both realized that their familiars could also regenerate easily and the only way to kill them was to hit them in the heart or completely destroy their heads, but Bella could use her soul exchange of immortality to sacrifice other less 'important' souls to keep her familiars immortal.

It was so unfair.

Still, they were definitely clumsier than their real versions, oh, they were still a huge danger, the dragons with their dragonfire were dangerous enough as it was, but the Death Eaters really weren't on the same level as I expected.

And that was because Bellatrix had to forcibly dominate unwilling souls to become her unwilling familiars, but that took away most of their reasoning, rendering them half-useless at any kind of wit or strategy.

But it really wasn't a problem when you had enough familiars to completely fill the training room and were constantly attacking the enemy without letting them rest for any reason, even such weak attacks became increasingly annoying in large numbers.

"You need to improve." Bellatrix smirked at me, I raised my hand and extended my middle finger in her direction as I caught my breath.

"Just die, it's complete nonsense, your relatives," I said angrily, Bellatrix snorted amusedly.

"That's the idea, we need to go find more familiars, … or go to worlds with more monsters that I can make my familiars with." Bellatrix said excitedly, she was practically salivating at the thought of continuing to get more familiars to literally form an army "but seriously, you need another template or something if you don't want to be left behind, we have the necessary credits." Bellatrix added and I made a face.

"Actually, I was thinking of some ideas," I said honestly, Bellatrix looked at me curiously, "but mostly it was to counteract immortalities, like ours."

"Why would you want to do that?" Bellatrix asked as if I was stupid, I rolled my eyes.

"You fought me, tell me, do you really want to face someone like me without any preparation?" I asked rhetorically, Bellatrix paused for a few seconds before grimacing at the image and I nodded "Yes, it's horrible just thinking about it, really... it's not something that's going to happen commonly, immortality through regeneration is not as common as longevity, but I want to be prepared." I added.

"But you can't deny it with aluminum? Hemalurgical aluminum removed the powers, right? Or maybe steal it with an atium pickaxe? " Bellatrix asked with a frown, humming in consideration.

"Mmm, it's hard for aluminum to actually do anything, it's only useful in the Cosmere because of the way aluminum itself interacts with the magic of the universe, but in other worlds, other magic systems or supernatural things, it couldn't possibly be the same." I thought out loud, Bellatrix nodded absentmindedly. "Now, I wouldn't know where to stab someone immortal with atium to steal their immortality, the heart is a safe bet, but it's unlikely I could do it in combat." I wrinkled my nose.

"And my Yami Yami no Mi? It can nullify powers." Bellatrix asked as her hand turned

" mmmm , it would work, maybe with most immortals, my powers are negated by your fruit so I couldn't really heal while you were touching me, but it's still very restrictive, it relies a lot on direct contact." I wrinkled my nose "though… maybe it would work just as well, it's unlikely that someone truly immortal would actually dodge something they know can't harm them, if you catch them off guard it could work perfectly."

"Then we'll put it down as a maybe." Bellatrix wrinkled her nose. "So? You said you had some ideas, what are they? " Bellatrix asked. I grimaced.

"The first thing that came to mind was Emiya 's template , specifically I thought of Unlimited Blade Works" I sighed, Bellatrix's eyebrows raised, after buying Kazikli Bey from her, we had seen all the Fate series to get a lot more context, so I was familiar with many of the weapons and concepts of the nasuverse "I first thought of Medusa or Medusa Lily, both have Harpe and are very good immortal killers, but I remembered that UBW has Harpe , traced, and not just Harpe , there are many other weapons of which it has a record, Gae Bolg also places curses on wounds so that they cannot be healed normally, and if we could somehow get them, Gae " Buidhe of Diarmuid much better."

"and there's also Rule-Breaker if I'm not mistaken, right? Immortalities can be caused by really strong curses, it might work too, and if it doesn't work with that particular one, it would work in a lot of other situations" Bellatrix shrugged and I nodded "then why haven't you bought the template? " Bellatrix asked confused, I puffed out my cheeks and looked away.

"I'm a witch." I said childishly as I looked away, Bellatrix stopped and looked at me in disbelief.

"You're joking with me," Bellatrix said incredulously, I felt my cheeks heat up and crossed my arms.

"I'm a witch." I said again, this time more firmly, I could feel Bellatrix's gaze boring into my head and I heard her grit her teeth.

"You're telling me … that you won't buy the template, because you're a witch, but when I said the same thing to Kazikli Bey, you just ignored it… but now you're giving me the same excuse as me?" I flinched at the anger in her voice and squirmed in place, but I didn't turn to look at her, she clicked her tongue "If you don't do it, I will" I quickly turned to see her with my The Company phone and paled.

"What… are you doing?" I asked carefully, she raised an eyebrow in my direction.

"buying Emiya's template for you." My eyes widened and I stormed off in Bellatrix's direction, she easily dodged me.

" Bella, don't you dare! " I exclaimed as I jumped in her direction again trying to stop Bellatrix from finishing the purchase, I reached out to grab her but she stretched out her arm with the phone and used the other to keep me away.

"Stay still! It's just a template! Also, if you're so worried about not being a witch anymore, don't worry, what Emiya does is still magic!! " she exclaimed and I stopped momentarily, technically... what Bellatrix had said wasn't wrong, both Emiya 's projections and her Reality Marble , Unlimited Blade Works are high level Magecraft , but… they are still weapons.

"Okay! I'll think about it! " I said quickly, Bellatrix stopped and stared at me, I made a face "seriously, I'll think about it, I want to check out some stuff, buying Emiya 's template is reduced, I don't know if it will come with any Noble Phantasms on it, it would be a complete waste if I didn't." I said quickly, Bellatrix frowned and handed me the phone.

"You better not be lying to me," Bellatrix threatened, and I grimaced.

"Of course not." I sighed tiredly. "I really want to find out what parts of the template remain first. I don't want to go to the Nasuverse world for Noble Phantasm, not in the short term, and not in the long term either." I said with a grimace. The last thing I want is to meet someone like Zelretch while I couldn't defend myself. "Although..." I began timidly. "Don't you want the template yourself? It would be the bes- "

"No." Bellatrix glared at me as she cut me off, I sighed, at least I tried "I already have my Noble Phantasm." She crossed her arms "Besides, you're better at magic than I am, between Baiser and Ancient Magic you have more raw magic than any of us, your projections would be stronger." I grimaced, she was right, but I didn't like it. I sighed once more.

"Okay, okay, I'll think about it, but we don't need it right away yet, so I'll take my time." Bellatrix narrowed her eyes, but nodded at my words.

"Yes I see you're avoiding it, I'll buy it while you're sleeping, whether you like it or not" Bellatrix said firmly, I sighed, I really couldn't help it now, great.