“Thanks,” Bellatrix said. “Anyway, ask away. What do you need to know?”
“I want to confirm some stuff I heard as rumors,” I said. “Because I’d rather confirm from you that the information I was given is correct. Was your mom arrested for smuggling illegal potions between here and Desert Plains?”
“She was,” Bellatrix said, looking at the floor. “She had been doing it ever since I was a little girl. She was caught when I was four, and I was taken to live with my aunt. My mom was sentenced to fifteen years but died after eleven.”
“I’m really sorry,” I said softly.
“Thanks,” Bellatrix said. “I barely remember her, which is what hurts the most.”
“She had her appeal denied?”
Bellatrix nodded. “Yes. It was the right thing to do. When I was younger, I thought the world was out to get me and to get my mother. I thought she had been unfairly maligned and that she was locked up for something she didn’t do, but I eventually came to understand the reality: my mother was an addict, she had a problem, and she funded her addiction by committing illegal acts.”
“I’m sorry that she wasn’t able to get help sooner.”
“Me too,” Bellatrix said. “My aunt tried to help her. She registered her in a recovery program. She always tried to do the right thing by Mom, but the reality was Mom needed to take steps to help herself as well, and she wasn’t ready to take those steps. So she continued down her destructive path until she was finally arrested.”
“Do you know who was the judge who oversaw her appeal?” I asked quietly, and Bellatrix nodded.
“Yes. I know it was Rudoldir. That was actually how I got this job. He heard that I was looking for a job and trying to live a normal life after a year of intense therapy. He went to my aunt, and he offered me this position.”
“How did that make you feel, working so closely to the man who refused to let your mom out of prison where she eventually died?”
“At first, I didn’t want to do it,” Bellatrix replied. “It wasn’t that I had it in for Rudoldir or anything like that, but I just didn’t want to be associated with anyone who had anything to do with my mother. At that point I had come to accept who she was and what she had done. I didn’t blame him for his decision; I never did. But I also was trying to separate myself from her life.”
“So what changed your mind?”
“A chat with my therapist. She explained to me that just because my mother didn’t live the perfect life – or even a good life – didn’t mean that I should shun her or her history. She said that I could choose to do so if I wanted to, and that was absolutely my right, but that if I wanted to remember her, then I could do that as well. And I thought about it, and I decided to take the job. It helped that Rudoldir only barely knew my mother. That way I could feel a connection even at work, but it wasn’t a strong one.”
“Did your feelings change when you started working here?”
“Honestly, Rudoldir being my boss helped me to understand that my mother did deserve the sentence she was given. There was still this little part of me that resented him for not declaring the sentence to be incorrect, and deep down I wanted him to be terrible so that I could use that to justify the part of me that wanted my mom to have been innocent. But he was very kind, and he was fair, and I quickly realized that to him, being just and being fair were the two most important things. I eventually came to realize that he would have done his best to give my mom the right sentence. He was really a good elf.”
“So you didn’t have any resentment for him having been the one to refuse your mom’s appeal?”
Bellatrix shook her head, and then her mouth dropped open as she realized what I was asking. “Oh goodness, you think I might have killed him!”
“I don’t think anything,” I replied hurriedly. “I just need to look at all of the possibilities.”
“Yeah, I guess I can understand that,” Beatrix replied. “But I’m telling you, I had nothing but respect for Rudoldir. For him to have sought me out when he found out that I was looking for a job and to have offered me this one was wonderful of him. He was very understanding when I had bad days and encouraged me to take time off if I needed to see my therapist on short notice and that sort of thing.”
“Did he ever tell you why?” I asked, and Bellatrix nodded.
“Yes. I asked him one day, why me? When there were so many other fairies, many far more qualified, why did he seek out the insolent, badly-behaved daughter of a criminal? He told me that his one regret from working as a judge was that he could never truly fix anything. He was always involved in determining punishment – whether the punishment that was applied was correct – but there was never any focus on rehabilitation. So when he quit that job and came back here, he wanted to make a difference. He heard about how hard I was working to overcome a childhood that was fraught with problems and decided that he wanted to do what he could to reduce the trauma I felt the only way he knew how, which was by giving me a job and giving me the time and space I needed to continue healing. He was really wonderful.”
“I had no idea he was that amazing,” I said, overtaken with a wave of sadness at the realization that an elf who had cared
