Bellatrix Lestrange personality type: ESTP

Fourteen years in Azkaban usually breaks people. Bellatrix Lestrange walks out of the mass breakout in Order of the Phoenix still proud, still loyal, and still laughing. The dementors could not take the thing she lives for, because it was never a happy memory. It was a person.

I type her as ESTP. She is a creature of the present: physical, fast and hungry for a fight. She duels with a grin, taunts her opponents, and throws herself into every battle she can find, from the Department of Mysteries to the Battle of Hogwarts.

Cold, practical logic runs underneath. At Malfoy Manor she spots the sword of Gryffindor in the prisoners’ hands and works out in seconds that her Gringotts vault may have been breached, and that the Dark Lord must never find out.

Eights crave strength, fear being controlled, and meet weakness with contempt. Bellatrix sneers at her sister Narcissa’s fear, at Snape’s loyalty, and at anyone who flinches. She is an Eight with a Seven wing, and the wing adds appetite and playful cruelty. She enjoys the Cruciatus Curse, and at the Ministry she lectures Harry that an Unforgivable only works if you mean it. Her one exception to the Eight rule is Voldemort, the single person she lets control her.

That exception is the twisted heart of her. Her feelings are not gone, they are redirected into pure devotion, and she watches every meeting for signs of the Dark Lord’s approval. She never asks where any of this leads. Long-term consequences are somebody else’s problem.

Bellatrix does not grow, and that is the point of her. She kills her cousin Sirius in the Department of Mysteries, tortures Hermione on the drawing room floor, throws the knife that kills Dobby, and dies the way she lived, laughing at Molly Weasley in the final battle until Molly’s curse hits her in the chest.

Some fans type her as a Six, devoted to a strong authority, or as an ESFP, driven by passion. The Six case is real, since her loyalty is total. Still, Bellatrix shows no doubt, no testing and no anxious checking. She dominates everyone below Voldemort.