A one-shot for the 34 stories, 106 reviews challenge on the HPFC forum.
Round Three: Bellatrix/Voldemort.
This also fits the Secrets challenge on xoxLewrahxox's forum (the middle part especially, which is meant as an explanatory part to cut the scene right through, in case it's a bit unclear)
Title inspired by the Charlotte Gainsbourg song The Operation.
Secrets
Write a fic with a word count of more or less an exact multiple of 100 words dealing with a HP character (or characters) and a secret of some sort. They can be sharing secrets, keeping them, discovering them, or anything else you like, as long some sort of secret is involved.
"Morsmordre!"
She stood under the eerie shine of his hovering green symbol, Bellatrix Lestrange. The shadows painted her skin with odd colours, a dance of wilderness on her too-thin face, nearly as white as his was. She breathed into the night air deeply, feeling the magic pulsing around her.
Beautiful.
A hissing whisper demanded her attention, and she spun around swiftly. Her dark eyes drowned in scarlet, and her breath was lost – for a moment.
They were to be a secret.
In the light of day, they were servant and master. She knelt at his feet, obeyed his orders and spread his terror, one amongst the crowd of the infamous Death Eaters. (Faithful. Most faithful.) He stood cold, white and distant, untouchable. Eyes deep and dangerous, cold voice soft and cynical.
Merciless.
At night they were the devil's creatures, dancing and killing in blinding blasts of light, passionate. His Mark hovered in starry skies and bit at the fragile flesh of her arm, and it all took her breath away. In the ethereal glow of the green and red curses (unforgivable) sometimes she caught his eye and read cold passion there.
(She hadn't known there was any such thing as cold passion before.)
In some of these nights lay their secret. They weren't nights of peace. How naive was this notion that the worst thing the Dark Lord could do was killing. No, at night in the intimacy of dark bedrooms, a wholly different game took place.
Their dirty little secret.
They both knew she belonged to him. That was a blunt enough fact, the only condition that made the game possible. Some wouldn't have called it a game. They only didn't get the Dark Lord's mind. He toyed with her under pale sheets, twisted her mind and possessed her body. She made him all the more powerful, for he held her life and death, the fragile strands of her sanity in the palm of his hand. He made her his until she didn't know herself anymore, didn't know there was a world outside of him, scarcely knew her own name when he whispered it tauntingly.
Then he left her. Alone in cold sweat with nothing familiar to cling to, her world icy and foreign and horribly devoid of him, Bellatrix was consumed by wild fears and the iron taste of madness.
He watched her go under.
They were alone in the cold starry night, his Mark hovering overhead. She stood there with her heart beating hard, a slight flush on her cheeks, just gazing at him. With a casual sweep of his hand, he gestured her forward.
No life was breathing around them.
She walked in silence, the night's chill seeping in her bones, a knot forming in her throat. In the shadows around them black forms were hovering. Cloaked guardians she knew all too well. He did not tell her to stop and so Bellatrix walked among her tormentors, the Dementors' eyeless sockets seemingly following her, drawing her in. Her heart fluttered madly and hurtful images flew past her dazed mind as a wild anxiety took over. She wasn't rational enough to have only one dreaded memory anymore.
They reached the Manor, him still following behind her. She walked up the path, the cold corridors, slowly ascended the stairs. She hovered there, unsure.
He seized her wrist and led her to his chambers.
Inside, Nagini slid past her ankle, hissing nothings. The cold, hard touch of serpent skin made her shudder violently. She was frenzied and iced over and he deprived her of the fabric that had been shielding her, scarcely brushing pale skin as her robes fell with a hushed whisper. He wanted her offered and helpless before him.
Bellatrix's heart was hammering like a mad thing in her chest. He was standing in her back and she did not turn her head to look at him. She stood, cold, bared of her pride, the slightest instinct of self-protection a forbidden insult. He did not touch her yet. His snake was still hissing somewhere. He waited and watched her, sensing whirling distress in her mind, smelling it in the air, potent and intoxicating, coming off in waves.
Bellatrix trembled, thin and humble and desperate for his touch. She felt his wand against the small of her back, gently pushing her forward. She took two rigid steps and let herself fall against the four-poster bed.
His hands wrapped around her narrow waist and his cool lips ghosted over the back of her neck, her hair brushed to the side by a wordlessly summoned breath of wind. She shuddered and shook under his touch as his tongue traced down her spine with agonizing slowness.
He withdrew, and she rolled over breathlessly, facing him.
His kiss sent her head spinning, his hands on her body set her on fire. He settled under her skin, explored her, made her cry, made her beg, and finally, possessed her.
It seemed to have lasted an era. It seemed to have lasted a handful of elusive seconds. He lay on top of her, letting her feel his weight, his warmth, the magic his very flesh was saturated with, that made her own pale skin tingle. He straightened up and stared down at her. Thin, weak, needy, offered. His.
Entirely, beautifully his.
He waited and watched her as her white limbs relaxed and her dark eyes drifted shut. He listened to her quiet breaths and just as they were getting slower and deeper he got up to leave. He saw her eyes fly open shockedly, saw the pain, the fear, the loss in her confused eyes. Aware enough to understand, but not enough to comprehend, to accept – and he smirked slightly while dressing again with haste. She reached out feebly, but then withdrew her hand as though scalded, and he wordlessly retreated.
He liked to punish her for being a distraction – no matter how slight, or how delicious. No matter how secret.
(or how broken)