Red and Green

Disclaimer: I do not own anything. This is because I am a FAN--hence, fanfiction.

A/N: This is a oneshot I wrote at a friend's request, as a Chrismahanukwanzikuh gift. Do not expect quality, as I am a procrastinator and I waited until the last minute, thus this has not been beta'd. Read at your own risk.

Summary: Bellatrix Black has a bad day--or maybe a very good day. Very slight BtVS crossover. If continued, this could be the beginning of an AU Marauder universe.

If there was one thing Bellatrix Black knew, it was that she hated Mudbloods. She hated the lowly, filthy, unnatural, scheming little hangers-on to the wizarding community, who polluted true magical families with their Muggle blood. They were worse than Muggles, who were just pathetic, really. And more than any other Mudblood, she hated Lily Evans.

Brave, brilliant Lily Evans, the darling of Gryffindor House, who was the ultimate teacher's pet. Even Professor Snooderton, the grumpiest Care of Magical Creatures teacher in the history of Hogwarts itself, adored her. Bellatrix loathed her--which was why she'd tried to set fire to her wand sleeve during class. Evans had promptly put it out, but, in doing so, set fire to Bellatrix's own robes. She'd shrieked and carried on and tried to hex Evans again and been stopped by Black (no relation!) and Potter and, unfortunately, earned herself a detention. With Evans. (And Black and Potter, but really, who cared about them?)

Bellatrix sat at the edge of the forest near the caretaker's hut, and scrubbed her empty Grindylow aquarium harder, glaring at the taller girl's back. She hated that Evans was taller. She hated the way she always wore her hair down (how common!), and they way even the meager star- and moonlight glinted off of it, creating the illusion of flames. She hated the way her robes slid down slightly on one shoulder, exposing more pale freckled skin than anyone wanted to see (really), and the way she let Potter leer at her like that. Bellatrix put her weight behind the arm holding the wet, soapy rag, straining with all her might against the resistance of the glass wall--

And suddenly the resistance was gone, and so was most of the glass. Her arm burst through the aquarium wall, and Bellatrix felt a line of white-hot pain sear the side of it. She hurriedly withdrew her arm, wincing as another line of pain scored down it. Blood ran, thick and fast, quickly soaking through her robe. The glass had sliced a long line almost from the inside of her wrist to the inside of her elbow, and again almost across her arm halfway down. Bellatrix stared, transfixed. She didn't think she had so much blood...

Soon, she registered voices, and someone's hands bound her arm tightly, wrist to elbow, with part of someone's torn blouse. Bellatrix blinked up at someone's face. Freckles, so many freckles, even on her lips, and those wide green eyes...Lily. Lily Evans. The freckled lips were moving. Evans was speaking.

Bellatrix blinked again. "What?"

The green eyes were concerned. "I said, I sent James and Sirius to get Madam Pomfrey. Are you all right?"

James and Sirius. Pervy Potter and no-relation-Black. Bellatrix came back to herself with a jolt, yanking her arm away from Evans with no regard for the stabbing pain.

"Get off me, Mudblood," she hissed. Lily--no, Evans, damnit!--held both hands up in a gesture of surrender and stood up. Bellatrix rose as well. At least, she tried to. When she swayed dizzily, Evans grasped her elbow to keep her upright, and Bellatrix didn't pull away. Letting Evans cling to her would hurt her dignity less than fainting would.

She opened her mouth to complain bitterly about the confiscation of their wands when another voice from the direction of the Forest cut her off.

"Pretty, pretty little witchies, all alone without your sticks and stakes," someone giggled, emerging from the darkness of the trees. The two sixteen-year-olds turned as one to view with horror the yellow-eyed woman walking towards them. Bellatrix instinctively took another step closer to Evans.

Safety in numbers and all that. Naturally.

"Well, well, aren't you two just the perfect pair? You'll make a lovely desert," someone sneered from behind the eerily smiling woman. A tall man emerged, eyes glinting yellow. His hair was as white as Lucius Malfoy's, but obviously bleached, and he seemed to have more holes in him than a pincushion. Bellatrix swallowed, eyeing the ridges on the foreheads of both the man and the woman.

Vampires. Honest-to-Goddess, real life (or unlife?), vampires. She'd heard of them, of course, but never actually come face to face with them.

"What do you want with us?" Evans demanded, stepping in front of Bellatrix, who barely managed to keep from gaping at her. Was the girl insane? Why wasn't she running? For that matter, was Bellatrix insane? She could've ran and left Evans with the evil, bloodsucking denizens of the night at the first sign of them.

Well, in theory. She was still feeling a bit lightheaded...

"I thought it was obvious." The man grinned, displaying yellowed, jagged teeth. Bellatrix shuddered.

Evans, amazingly, sneered at him. "Did you wait for the big, bad wizards to leave you the easy pickings?" Out of the corner of her mouth, she hissed at Bellatrix, "Run! Get help!"

Before the Slytherin could adequately process this astonishing development, the male vampire had rushed Evans, and was holding her in the air by the throat as she futilely kicked and flailed. The woman quickly moved in front of Bellatrix and somehow caught her eyes. Bellatrix didn't even twitch. All she could see were the catlike irises surrounding the deep, dark pupils of the demon... Unconsciously, she swayed back and forth in time with the woman.

The woman giggled, breaking the trance as abruptly as Bellatrix had broken the aquarium.

"Spi-ike," she sang as Bellatrix staggered backwards. "Let her go."

"The hell, poppet?" the other vampire, apparently 'Spike', said, somewhere between anger and confusion.

"Death and pain, Spi-ike," she replied dreamily. "They bring pain and death and sadness and this one--" she pointed to Bellatrix, "--is dark chocolate laced with sweet, tangy, poisonous blood. Let them live and hurt, please?"

"Aw, baby, I was just getting into--"

"Spike." There was no pleading in the vampire's tone this time. The blonde swore, and Bellatrix heard a thump behind her. The two left as swiftly as they had appeared, melting into the shadows of the Forbidden Forest.

Bellatrix turned to see Lily Evans sprawled on the ground, even paler than normal. Ominously pale. Without thought, Bellatrix dropped down beside her and held her hand just above her mouth and nose to feel for her breath.

Nothing.

Stuffing her panic into a dark corner of her mind, Bellatrix thought faster than she had in her entire life. There was a thing she'd heard of--read of, really, in books where a witch and wizard had somehow lost their wands and been tossed overboard on a pirate ship and the witch had drowned... Maybe...

She counted and pushed down, just like she'd read. She tilted Lily's head, burying fingers in soft hair, and breathed into her mouth, counting in her head. She did it again. And again. And, finally, when she was about to give up, something happened--not at all like what she had suspected to happen. Though the same thing did usually happen in the books.

Hands came up and buried themselves in Bellatrix's hair, holding her still, and Lily pushed back against Bellatrix's lips with her own (freckled!) ones. Bellatrix's brain shut itself off, and she melted. The next thing she knew, she was sitting in Lily Evans' lap, breathing hard, staring up into her wide green eyes. Stupid height, anyway. Bellatrix's gaze dropped to the redhead's lips. She could see the freckles even more clearly now...

"Oy! Evans! What'd Barmy Black do to you?" Potter's voice.

Bellatrix rolled off of Evan's lap and to her feet, suppressing a growl of frus--righteous indignation! Yes. That was it. She glared at Potter and Black, who were closely followed by Mme Pomfrey. She opened her mouth to rebut their grossly unfair accusation--never mind that she'd attacked Evans not twenty-four hours earlier--and was, yet again, cut off.

"She saved my life." Evans's tone brooked no argument. "We were attacked by vampires, and one of them was choking me, and she somehow got rid of them and gave me CPR when I stopped breathing."

There was much collective gaping at Bellatrix, who somehow maintained her glare despite the surprising intervention of the the Gryffindor. Eventually, the others got over their shock and the entire group headed back to the castle. Pomfrey asclepio'd her gashes and advised her to drink something sugary, and promised to send something to eat and drink up to her dormitory.

When they were almost at the castle, Bellatrix began to lag behind. How would she explain the disappearance of the vampires? She didn't have her wand, so she couldn't say she'd dusted them that way, and no one would believe that she could take on two vampires, by herself, with a tree branch. She frowned, so deep in thought she didn't even notice Evans coming up beside her.

"She was only half right, you know," Evans whispered into her ear, nearly giving Bellatrix a heart attack.

"What?" Bellatrix demanded under her breath, utterly confused.

"I'm not dead yet, so you can't be poison," Evans smirked at her, and, to her horror, she found herself blushing. "But you do taste like dark chocolate." She sped up and joined the others before Bellatrix could even form a coherent thought.

In fact, Bellatrix's thinking continued to be somewhat impaired for the rest of the night. All she could think of, all she could picture in her mind, were a pair of wide green eyes and hair as red as fire--or heart's blood.

FIN a.k.a. for the love of God and all that is holy, somebody stop me.