Summary: There is a piece of Voldemort that Mrs. Lestrange owns. Four
snippets of a lifetime.
# # # # # # "In ordinary ways, you're extraordinary it seems." - Darling Violetta # # # # # #
// Miss. Black //
When he sets his mind on sentimental topics, he likes to think his mother was a lady very much like Bellatrix Black.
She's young yet, with barely a foot outside the prison of her school but he's never met a more captivating woman. He's consistently setting himself up for disappointment on her behalf, but even when she fails she pulls it off with the poise of royalty and grace of the indomitable. His frustration is real enough but she's beginning to see his anger is a rehearsed act.
She bears the pain of his disappointment, fingers splayed at her sides as though an invisible table will hold her steady as she sways with the effort of remaining on her feet. Eyes crossed with red lines and broken capillaries, sunken into tired caverns, she throws her shoulders back and meets his eye. She is unwilling to accept defeat, and when she repeats the words he loves to hear it is with a slur in her voice because he's killing her with his wisdom, "Teach me." And it's almost a dare.
She's not the first to call him 'Master', to call him 'Lord', but she is the first to say it with her speech drowned in stilted passion that makes his mind forget he earned the titles. The first to make him believe he woke up one morning with this power, knowledge, ambition and there existed no coercion or resistance, the world was already his and the proof was written in the stride of his step, the tilt of his chin, the fire in his eyes.
In the catch of her voice.
Voldemort nods coolly, "Certainly, Miss Black."
In the continued presence of Bellatrix Black, he forgets his place, his body. He meets her halfway and then grows bored with the medium and pushes deeper into her than skin will allow. Wears her as an expensive garment, strips off everything unique and stunning about her, and fills with something akin to pride when she remains unchanged in her splendor.
He's branded inside of her in far more ways than an image flawing the flesh of her arm, and when he sends her to his bed she scowls ferociously at the reprieve, because she knows him well, and knows he doesn't pander to the whims of compassion. The only reason he could possibly have for stopping this particular lesson is that he sees her as too weak to accomplish it. She barely makes it up the stairs as she wavers in extreme exhaustion.
She sleeps alone in his room as he holds her back in the fear that under his continued guidance, she might break.
He's always known how to make people love him. No one has ever figured out how to make him love them back. Such is living in a world of façades.
It was politics, it was power, it was a fight to prove her worth, to assert authority and now it is love. Unconditional love is what ties her to him now. She would claim him as her own even if he lost his power and was of no more use to her. If she knew he had betrayed her trust, that he was not *pure*, she would still return. He's inside her blood, inside her soul, and she would burn the world to ashes to ensure he never leave her side.
Bleakly he wonders what it is that ties him to her.
Bellatrix fills him with the oddest sensations, and he dwells on them in the nineteen hours she remains unconscious. Fearing for the safety of another, of a someone who, without question, can hold her own and protect herself with a skill very few can rival.
He remembers little of the people and creatures he's met throughout his life. Their memories are photographs with quickly sprawled notes on the back, area of expertise and certain quirks in personality. They are pushed out of sight into the dusty storeroom at the back of his mind. That is all they are, a snapshot shopping list of qualities to be forgotten until the next trip to the market. They are alive, but they are not real. Not to him. He supposes they would probably feel cheated to learn this - people try so hard to impress him - but there's simply no room inside himself for considerations to be granted to others.
Miss Black possesses no specific extraordinary talent, no bizarre gifts to allure, but she manages to fill him with an odd sort of inner warmth. The instinct is an old emotional process, long ago beaten but never truly dead. She sparks a sensation that he cannot precisely define because emotions are something he's thrown away, and it's simply been *too long* to remember exactly.
He wonders what she is, to make him feel this way.
// Bellatrix //
"You will be happy." From him, the words are almost a threat.
Her gaze flickers down, unwilling to meet his eye. She nods slowly, replying, "He's a good man." She needn't see his amusement for it to be contagious and incorrigibly corrects, "By any standards I would set up for a man, he is worthy."
Voldemorts eyes caress her face, and in her lap, her intertwined fingers clench in fear of shaking, "You will love him," he says with confidence, and already the emotion is a fact inside her head, "You're mother made a fine choice. Yes... You will love Lestrange."
She's known Rodolphus her entire life, their parents were well known acquaintances and she grew up in his backyard, in his school, and she likes him. She does. He's amusing and handsome and he never disappoints. But she's not entirely sure she can love anyone so human.
Not anymore.
On some level, Voldemort finds himself pushing for this marriage. Rodolphus is indeed quite worthy of the sharp warrior he created, and he longs to see that which they will create. Not merely under his leadership, but together. Already, he considers Bellatrix's first born as his own and all that he has lavished upon her, that he could not have done from her very birth.
In her mind, she entertains the idea of the Dark Lord Voldemort being the one to give her away on her wedding day and not her blood father. But then, they both know he will not be there for the ceremony. It would be a senseless risk for all involved if he were to show himself, much less show himself as ally to her family or to the Lestrange's. He will not venture near the high scale celebration sure to take place and catering to fantasies is a waste of precious time.
"I know," she responds at last. Her voice is soft, but when he looks at her with skeptical curiously she knows the role and this is her element, "Well," she shrugs, unclenching her fingers and folding her hands in her lap, crossing her ankles in an unconcerned fashion, "when are you ever wrong? I've no reason to not believe in you." His eyes narrow but he's slightly in love with the way she's smiling.
She doesn't know where his decisions are leading her and cannot recognize the woman she's turning into. It's thrilling, and it's terrifying. The scales tip, rarely balanced. She cannot remember who she was before and wonders who she will be tomorrow.
// Mrs. Lestrange //
She kneels on the floor beside his seat to look up at him, smiling a stilted superior smile as though she adored the vantage point. He stares at her, can't stop looking at her, cataloging the passionate ferocity that rests unsatisfied in her dark eyes.
She's a minefield and it doesn't really matter what map he follows to get through the conversation, she is type to be dangerous no matter what the circumstances.
But they no longer hold their wands against each other, each counting on the day when she can disarm him. They no longer lash back with heated debates, Mrs. Lestrange fighting against whatever side Voldemort was for, for merely the satisfaction of trying to give him cause to falter. They no longer duel, because it was never real. Because they compliment each other in all areas and their battles are always staged.
He long ago won her undying loyalty, he has taught her his doctrine and gave her his skill.
And in return, she staked a flag into his heart and claimed a piece of himself as hers.
His fingers run through her hair, down the curve of her jaw and her eyes alight, "It's done, then?" he asks.
Yes, there is a piece of Voldemort that is no longer under his command, no longer his to own. A piece of his very essence that belongs to Mrs. Lestrange and which she guards possessively, "Fortune willed they accept your hospitality, my Lord." She responds with a hint of bitterness, that the mission he had delegated her had made her feel cheap. There were far better uses she could be placed to than envoy.
She's feeling rather fierce, however. Vastly aware that she's - they're - on top of the world, and it makes no difference if it's a world made up of cemeteries because it belongs to *them*. He's the reason, the cause and she's drunk on him.
The people walk about with ashen, worried expressions, avoiding eye contact in a pre-emptive strike against conversation. She positively delights in playing along. Some insist on pretending they still live in their old world. The before world. Other's continue on, trying their best to appear unfazed by the changes, believing those who accept and adjust will survive to the new world.
Her world.
"Perfection." He says, and her smirk turns into a shark grin as she twists his words using the subtly of her own expressions to make his statement of satisfaction an adjective for herself and not the situation.
Dates and years wither away, because it's impractical, simply absurd to believe she's known Voldemort for six years.
She won't acknowledge a day in her life where he wasn't a constant.
// Bella //
Her head is bowed, hooded eyes sweeping back and forth across the floor as chaotic thoughts wage a war inside her skull. She barely catches his shadow departing in the flickering light of the room and terror slams through her nerves that he will leave her, when it's his memory that kept her alive for so long in dungeons of her fiercest nightmares.
"Wait!" Her voice is high pitched, cracking around the word.
There isn't a part of him that wishes to be breathing the same air as his beatifically broken Bella, but his stride comes to a slow stop. He can imagine the agony of a father worrying why his daughter is out past curfew, because he's plagued with the dismay that in his absence, Bella was beaten. Overpowered in some way that neither will admit save to themselves, but which the pitch of her voice testifies to. To release Bella from the suffering injected into her veins, all he has to do is leave.
She races to him, in a swirl of black her robes whip madly against her skin, restraining her movement and causing her to falter, her shoes clank loudly against the floor as she moves to stand before him, quickly falling to her knees, her forehead hitting the cold stone of the ground with a knocking dull sound, her long hair fanning out at the frantic motion and resting against the brink of his robe.
"Bella..." his voice is predatory and seductive, "Stand up."
She hesitates. Malevolent, dangerous, dark Bellatrix Lestrange, who's arrogance comes to an abrupt halt in the presence of this creature who was once her teacher, who was once a man.
He towers over her when she raises to her full height, and her eyes cannot settle on any specific part of him, scanning over his face in frenzied regard. She wants to crawl inside his skin, underneath the peculiar metal of his flesh and look out at the world from his eyes. To be his hands pulling at her hair, pressing her into the floor, digging his nails into her flesh from a viewpoint she can never have in a situation she will never experience.
His arms instinctively wrap around her waist, a foot slipping behind him to keep their balance as the full weight of Bella slams into him, her body crushing itself against his.
Her lips snare him with a passion he unmistakably classifies as love, she bruises his mouth with the hot burden of her wild intensity.
He's surprised by the unadulterated act, and yet, is not. This woman is a creature who doesn't walkthrough the fire and come out unscathed. She takes slow strolls and comes out of the licking inferno blistered and fragmented, mocking the righteous flames.
Coming from Bellatrix, love is almost worth consideration.
Beneath her heart, he places his wand.
She crumbles with a hitched scream laced in masochism, his eyes devour her as he uses his power to cast a curse to crush her, and she laughs when the immediate pain vanishes because it was an Unforgivable. She laughs because she's frightened, in agony, and forgives him even the Unforgivables.
Emotion slams through him in a tidal wave of torment and he's hated before, but the sensation of it never ceases to make him feel alive. Like he could light the world on fire with the power of his hatred. It's an emotion directed at Bella, certainly, but it's a vengeance he will take out on The Ministry, on the Aurors. On the fools of justice and morality who shattered that intangible piece of her that he cannot piece back together and make whole once more.
"Forgive me!" Her emotions swing like a pendulum, tears in her eyes, "Forgive me, forgive me, my Lord, my Master, I didn't..."
And for a moment, he cannot bear it.
# # # # # # "In ordinary ways, you're extraordinary it seems." - Darling Violetta # # # # # #
// Miss. Black //
When he sets his mind on sentimental topics, he likes to think his mother was a lady very much like Bellatrix Black.
She's young yet, with barely a foot outside the prison of her school but he's never met a more captivating woman. He's consistently setting himself up for disappointment on her behalf, but even when she fails she pulls it off with the poise of royalty and grace of the indomitable. His frustration is real enough but she's beginning to see his anger is a rehearsed act.
She bears the pain of his disappointment, fingers splayed at her sides as though an invisible table will hold her steady as she sways with the effort of remaining on her feet. Eyes crossed with red lines and broken capillaries, sunken into tired caverns, she throws her shoulders back and meets his eye. She is unwilling to accept defeat, and when she repeats the words he loves to hear it is with a slur in her voice because he's killing her with his wisdom, "Teach me." And it's almost a dare.
She's not the first to call him 'Master', to call him 'Lord', but she is the first to say it with her speech drowned in stilted passion that makes his mind forget he earned the titles. The first to make him believe he woke up one morning with this power, knowledge, ambition and there existed no coercion or resistance, the world was already his and the proof was written in the stride of his step, the tilt of his chin, the fire in his eyes.
In the catch of her voice.
Voldemort nods coolly, "Certainly, Miss Black."
In the continued presence of Bellatrix Black, he forgets his place, his body. He meets her halfway and then grows bored with the medium and pushes deeper into her than skin will allow. Wears her as an expensive garment, strips off everything unique and stunning about her, and fills with something akin to pride when she remains unchanged in her splendor.
He's branded inside of her in far more ways than an image flawing the flesh of her arm, and when he sends her to his bed she scowls ferociously at the reprieve, because she knows him well, and knows he doesn't pander to the whims of compassion. The only reason he could possibly have for stopping this particular lesson is that he sees her as too weak to accomplish it. She barely makes it up the stairs as she wavers in extreme exhaustion.
She sleeps alone in his room as he holds her back in the fear that under his continued guidance, she might break.
He's always known how to make people love him. No one has ever figured out how to make him love them back. Such is living in a world of façades.
It was politics, it was power, it was a fight to prove her worth, to assert authority and now it is love. Unconditional love is what ties her to him now. She would claim him as her own even if he lost his power and was of no more use to her. If she knew he had betrayed her trust, that he was not *pure*, she would still return. He's inside her blood, inside her soul, and she would burn the world to ashes to ensure he never leave her side.
Bleakly he wonders what it is that ties him to her.
Bellatrix fills him with the oddest sensations, and he dwells on them in the nineteen hours she remains unconscious. Fearing for the safety of another, of a someone who, without question, can hold her own and protect herself with a skill very few can rival.
He remembers little of the people and creatures he's met throughout his life. Their memories are photographs with quickly sprawled notes on the back, area of expertise and certain quirks in personality. They are pushed out of sight into the dusty storeroom at the back of his mind. That is all they are, a snapshot shopping list of qualities to be forgotten until the next trip to the market. They are alive, but they are not real. Not to him. He supposes they would probably feel cheated to learn this - people try so hard to impress him - but there's simply no room inside himself for considerations to be granted to others.
Miss Black possesses no specific extraordinary talent, no bizarre gifts to allure, but she manages to fill him with an odd sort of inner warmth. The instinct is an old emotional process, long ago beaten but never truly dead. She sparks a sensation that he cannot precisely define because emotions are something he's thrown away, and it's simply been *too long* to remember exactly.
He wonders what she is, to make him feel this way.
// Bellatrix //
"You will be happy." From him, the words are almost a threat.
Her gaze flickers down, unwilling to meet his eye. She nods slowly, replying, "He's a good man." She needn't see his amusement for it to be contagious and incorrigibly corrects, "By any standards I would set up for a man, he is worthy."
Voldemorts eyes caress her face, and in her lap, her intertwined fingers clench in fear of shaking, "You will love him," he says with confidence, and already the emotion is a fact inside her head, "You're mother made a fine choice. Yes... You will love Lestrange."
She's known Rodolphus her entire life, their parents were well known acquaintances and she grew up in his backyard, in his school, and she likes him. She does. He's amusing and handsome and he never disappoints. But she's not entirely sure she can love anyone so human.
Not anymore.
On some level, Voldemort finds himself pushing for this marriage. Rodolphus is indeed quite worthy of the sharp warrior he created, and he longs to see that which they will create. Not merely under his leadership, but together. Already, he considers Bellatrix's first born as his own and all that he has lavished upon her, that he could not have done from her very birth.
In her mind, she entertains the idea of the Dark Lord Voldemort being the one to give her away on her wedding day and not her blood father. But then, they both know he will not be there for the ceremony. It would be a senseless risk for all involved if he were to show himself, much less show himself as ally to her family or to the Lestrange's. He will not venture near the high scale celebration sure to take place and catering to fantasies is a waste of precious time.
"I know," she responds at last. Her voice is soft, but when he looks at her with skeptical curiously she knows the role and this is her element, "Well," she shrugs, unclenching her fingers and folding her hands in her lap, crossing her ankles in an unconcerned fashion, "when are you ever wrong? I've no reason to not believe in you." His eyes narrow but he's slightly in love with the way she's smiling.
She doesn't know where his decisions are leading her and cannot recognize the woman she's turning into. It's thrilling, and it's terrifying. The scales tip, rarely balanced. She cannot remember who she was before and wonders who she will be tomorrow.
// Mrs. Lestrange //
She kneels on the floor beside his seat to look up at him, smiling a stilted superior smile as though she adored the vantage point. He stares at her, can't stop looking at her, cataloging the passionate ferocity that rests unsatisfied in her dark eyes.
She's a minefield and it doesn't really matter what map he follows to get through the conversation, she is type to be dangerous no matter what the circumstances.
But they no longer hold their wands against each other, each counting on the day when she can disarm him. They no longer lash back with heated debates, Mrs. Lestrange fighting against whatever side Voldemort was for, for merely the satisfaction of trying to give him cause to falter. They no longer duel, because it was never real. Because they compliment each other in all areas and their battles are always staged.
He long ago won her undying loyalty, he has taught her his doctrine and gave her his skill.
And in return, she staked a flag into his heart and claimed a piece of himself as hers.
His fingers run through her hair, down the curve of her jaw and her eyes alight, "It's done, then?" he asks.
Yes, there is a piece of Voldemort that is no longer under his command, no longer his to own. A piece of his very essence that belongs to Mrs. Lestrange and which she guards possessively, "Fortune willed they accept your hospitality, my Lord." She responds with a hint of bitterness, that the mission he had delegated her had made her feel cheap. There were far better uses she could be placed to than envoy.
She's feeling rather fierce, however. Vastly aware that she's - they're - on top of the world, and it makes no difference if it's a world made up of cemeteries because it belongs to *them*. He's the reason, the cause and she's drunk on him.
The people walk about with ashen, worried expressions, avoiding eye contact in a pre-emptive strike against conversation. She positively delights in playing along. Some insist on pretending they still live in their old world. The before world. Other's continue on, trying their best to appear unfazed by the changes, believing those who accept and adjust will survive to the new world.
Her world.
"Perfection." He says, and her smirk turns into a shark grin as she twists his words using the subtly of her own expressions to make his statement of satisfaction an adjective for herself and not the situation.
Dates and years wither away, because it's impractical, simply absurd to believe she's known Voldemort for six years.
She won't acknowledge a day in her life where he wasn't a constant.
// Bella //
Her head is bowed, hooded eyes sweeping back and forth across the floor as chaotic thoughts wage a war inside her skull. She barely catches his shadow departing in the flickering light of the room and terror slams through her nerves that he will leave her, when it's his memory that kept her alive for so long in dungeons of her fiercest nightmares.
"Wait!" Her voice is high pitched, cracking around the word.
There isn't a part of him that wishes to be breathing the same air as his beatifically broken Bella, but his stride comes to a slow stop. He can imagine the agony of a father worrying why his daughter is out past curfew, because he's plagued with the dismay that in his absence, Bella was beaten. Overpowered in some way that neither will admit save to themselves, but which the pitch of her voice testifies to. To release Bella from the suffering injected into her veins, all he has to do is leave.
She races to him, in a swirl of black her robes whip madly against her skin, restraining her movement and causing her to falter, her shoes clank loudly against the floor as she moves to stand before him, quickly falling to her knees, her forehead hitting the cold stone of the ground with a knocking dull sound, her long hair fanning out at the frantic motion and resting against the brink of his robe.
"Bella..." his voice is predatory and seductive, "Stand up."
She hesitates. Malevolent, dangerous, dark Bellatrix Lestrange, who's arrogance comes to an abrupt halt in the presence of this creature who was once her teacher, who was once a man.
He towers over her when she raises to her full height, and her eyes cannot settle on any specific part of him, scanning over his face in frenzied regard. She wants to crawl inside his skin, underneath the peculiar metal of his flesh and look out at the world from his eyes. To be his hands pulling at her hair, pressing her into the floor, digging his nails into her flesh from a viewpoint she can never have in a situation she will never experience.
His arms instinctively wrap around her waist, a foot slipping behind him to keep their balance as the full weight of Bella slams into him, her body crushing itself against his.
Her lips snare him with a passion he unmistakably classifies as love, she bruises his mouth with the hot burden of her wild intensity.
He's surprised by the unadulterated act, and yet, is not. This woman is a creature who doesn't walkthrough the fire and come out unscathed. She takes slow strolls and comes out of the licking inferno blistered and fragmented, mocking the righteous flames.
Coming from Bellatrix, love is almost worth consideration.
Beneath her heart, he places his wand.
She crumbles with a hitched scream laced in masochism, his eyes devour her as he uses his power to cast a curse to crush her, and she laughs when the immediate pain vanishes because it was an Unforgivable. She laughs because she's frightened, in agony, and forgives him even the Unforgivables.
Emotion slams through him in a tidal wave of torment and he's hated before, but the sensation of it never ceases to make him feel alive. Like he could light the world on fire with the power of his hatred. It's an emotion directed at Bella, certainly, but it's a vengeance he will take out on The Ministry, on the Aurors. On the fools of justice and morality who shattered that intangible piece of her that he cannot piece back together and make whole once more.
"Forgive me!" Her emotions swing like a pendulum, tears in her eyes, "Forgive me, forgive me, my Lord, my Master, I didn't..."
And for a moment, he cannot bear it.