It took her a moment to realize the door had been opened, drawling her sudden sharp attention. Andromeda had been acting strange lately, and had taken to prying. It wasn't that Bella minded talking about her little projects but Andromeda had been asking the wrong sorts of questions, even if Bellatrix didn't quite understand why they were the wrong questions. She didn't second guess her intuition, though. Even if she didn't fully comprehend what informed her impulses, but they'd served her far too well to be troubled by that.
Apprehension left her shoulders when her eyes fell on Sirius. Every time she looked at him he seemed to get taller; it seemed much faster with him than it had with Cissy. His hair was still a bit too long, but Bella thought it suited him. She considered telling him that this was a room where children didn't belong, just to see if he'd rise to the occasion. But then she'd have to make him leave on principle. Glancing around the room, she supposed there wasn't much that was all that dangerous. Bellatrix didn't believe in coddling children, and conveniently Sirius was usually a bit more clever than boys his own age.
"Shouldn't you be at breakfast?" Bella asked through a hint of a smirk.
Setting down her quill, she wondered if Regulus would be tagging along behind him as he often did. He didn't follow Sirius everywhere but it was close enough. He'd have a hard time of it, she suspected, when Sirius left for school. Maybe she could convince her aunt to let Regulus stay on after they dropped Sirius off at the train station.