"No man knows when his hour will come; As fish are caught in a cruel net, or birds are taken in a snare, so men are trapped by evil times that fall unexpectedly upon them."
- Bible
Bellatrix Lestrange (née Black)
She blinks. The shackles cut deep into her thin arms, marring her pale skin with their rusted, jagged ends. They used to hurt, when her skin was still plump and soft, but now they made her numb. She felt almost empty, if she did not feel the cutting on her wrists.
Red would well up, a stark pattern against milky, pale skin. The first time it had happened, she'd bent her head forward and gasped. Her eyes had found the Dark Mark, and she'd hesitantly run a tongue along it, scared of what might happen. Would it hurt? It did not, for it was a mere tattoo now. The Dark Lord was gone. No, she had scolded herself. He'll return. He'll rescue her.
Those cloaked demons, swish and swirl around outside and it chills her to her bones. They lean forward, through the bars and it feels as if they suck on her memories. She can feel them slip away, as she desperately tries to hold onto any memory. Anything at all, anything to remember if – when- she left.
One springs up, for a fraction of a second, and then dissolves. She whimpers as she hears screams and shouts and she tries to suppress them.
One day, she will go crazy, as those voices make a home in her mind, filing it. She will walk and torture beings and she'll be his best right hand woman. But for now, she can only mindlessly cackle and clang those shackles, which dig deeper into flesh, keeping her conscious.
"Love, unrequited, robs me of my rest: Love, hopeless love, my ardent soul encumbers: Love, nightmare-like, lies heavy on my chest, And weaves itself into my midnight slumbers."
- William S. Gilbert
Rodolphus Lestrange
He groans, trying to sit straighter. He cannot see anything, in the darkness. It is a new moon, fitting with the darkness in his mind, as not a single stream of light filters the bars. He can hear the waves crashing and he can smell the wretched sea. He can smell the sweat and filth of his robes, which have not changed in thirteen years. He can feel the layer of grime on his skin and the chill on his bones, with a thin layer of skin stretched across it. He hears her, sometimes, screaming nothing in particular and he can only hope to comfort her.
He has no shackles, and he is allowed to throw himself at the bars and reach out in the direction of her cell. Sometimes, only rarely, she reaches back and their fingertips are so close, he can sense them, but not touch them.
He can only shake his head, in despair, as he hears her voice. He tries not to think of it, the emptiness.
He tries not to think of the fact that, when he longs to clasp her fingers around her, she looks back with empty, crazed eyes saying, "I swear, I felt it move, the tattoo. I swear. Here, touch it," she says, as he tries to touch her skin, not the blackness on it.
When he tries to sleep at night, find a peaceful darkness, he tries not to chant, "Bella, Bella," as he hears her softly chant, "He'll return. The Dark Lord will return."
He groans, trying to escape and ignore the burning emptiness in his heart, which has only lit rage instead of razing memories.
" Every pulpit is a pillory, in which stands a hired culprit, defending the justice of his own imprisonment."
- Robert Green Ingersoll
Lucius Malfoy
He coughs, choking on his spit and regret. He is new to such filth and pain, and he cannot imagine spending another day among vermin. He calls out, everyday, demanding that they free him, as other deranged prisoners around him chuckle and jeer.
"Prissy cat's been put in a cage," they say, and he can imagine his unshackled hand, whip out a wand and curse there non existent brains out.
He tries not to remember good memories, he knows. He knows, that if he thinks of anything good, then he'll lose it to those floating scavengers.
He wills himself not to think of her soft blond hair, and her gentle fingers clasp his wrist. He tries not to think of his pale, perfect son, smile at him and revere him.
He can only hope, something he is not used to doing (Malfoys don't hope for what they want, they get what they want, his father has said once), that they are moving on fine and are not punished for his sins.
He feels the Dark Mark burn on his skin, and he winces, not knowing the heinous task, being completed under duress miles away, in an abandoned house.
He coughs, choking again, not knowing that when he is finally free, he will greet a wife, broken in a way, beyond repair, and his son, not so pale and perfect anymore as he walks around as a new Death Eater.
"Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plenitude."
- Oscar Wilde
Narcissa Malfoy (née Black)
She sniffles, trying to shove back down her constricted throat that lump and those wretched clear drops which well in her eyes and reflect agony. She swallows, as she softly flicks her wand. The ball of softness raises a cloud of powder and it rises up to her face. It's a sweet, perfumed powder, a one of a kind, customized one. It's delicate and sweet, with a spicy edge.
It would have women grow green with envy and men run around her, falling over each other. It sickens her, and she swats it away with her hand, as it tries to powder her nose. She tries to blame the tears on the cloud of powder.
Her eyes land on the bed behind her, as the house elf makes her side of it and the other side is still cold, untouched. As it has been for weeks. The house elf bustles around and she envies it, as it has the freedom to take its mind of things. She almost laughs and chokes at the same time. She is envying the freedom of a slave, who works for her, breathes for her and suffers for her.
She waves her hand at it and hisses. It bows and leaves, running a hand over its tired face. She wrinkles her nose and mutters a quick cleaning spell on her bed, as she always does after a house elf touches anything. She wishes they wore gloves, but the no-clothes rule refrains her. Of course, if her husband were here, she'd get what she – she stops the thought and instead focuses on the flash of robes, which had slowly walked past her room. Her heart tugs and she has to turn and stare at the snow falling outside, instead, so cold and white like her.
She sniffles, imagining those rare tears will both, bathe her husband in her longing and sorrow, and that they'll soothe the sizzling brand on her son's arm as he becomes one of them.
"Despair and frustration will not shake our belief that the resistance is the only way of liberation."
- Emile Lahud
Sirius Black III
He grits his teeth, kicking the scrap of cloth bunched at the edge of his bed. That bastard, the one who'd led them to their deaths, would now be working on the insides of his godson's mind. He feels rage bubble in him, tickling the grief which never quite leaves.
He stands in front of the picture, not having the heart to take it in his hands. James and Lily smile back, the radiant couple and he feels anger build up in him as his eyes catch Peter's picture from the periphery.
What he wouldn't give to wring his pretty neck and shove that rat's tail down his own throat. He flexes his own neck, a bit disgusted at his pleasure at the idea. He looks around his room at the gold and crimsons and for a moment, they sicken him. He walks back into the hallway of silver and green. He finds it funny that the freezing hallways, which he used to escape from, into his room of red warmth, now soothe him as that same red burns him.
He catches a glimpse of a slightly ajar door and opens it. Dust hangs in the air, floating as if frozen with the memories. He catches a ghost of himself, barely four, running around his two year old brother, who sucks on his candy on the floor, and waves his pudgy fist. His favorite cousin Cissa, giggles, trying to catch him and Andy reads a book, while Bella stands over her, making small bubbles from her wand. Always the rule breaker.
He grits his teeth, waving off the ghost of a past he hates himself for missing. He steels himself, takes a deep breath and walks down, ready to join battle and protect his godson. He tries to remind himself whose side he is on and hopes he doesn't curse the wrong people. Of course that would be possible if he could define who was wrong.
"The difference between guilt and shame is very clear—in theory. We feel guilty for what we do. We feel shame for what we are."
- Lewis B. Smedes
Draco Lucius Malfoy
His tears fall and he is too tired to wipe them away. He stands over her bed, his wand hand shaking. He gulps as sweat breaks across his forehead and he wipes it off.
He can feel the words bubble in his throat and they fall through his quavering lips, in a whisper.
"I'm sorry," they say and he wonders if she can hear them, the Bell girl who lays here because of him. Tomorrow she will go to St. Mungo's and he has to will himself to do - own up - something he was never taught to do. He swallows, staggering backwards, until he is running back down the halls to his dungeons.
He finds it almost amusing that he sleeps in dungeons, that he grew up in dungeons, rooms which were initially meant for prisoners and to torture. It seems very apt. The amount of green light hits his eyes, and they remind him of being sick and envious instead of being soothing and fresh.
He unconsciously scratches the skin around the hidden brand – he cannot touch it, or it will cause havoc- and tries not to feel paranoid. He knows the Potter boy is looking too deeply, that the Parkinson girl will one day rip his robes right off in her drive of lust and see the brand, that Snape is following him around. He slams the door behind him and his father's and mother's faces hit him from a photograph, as they stare back with cold sneers, something he inherited quite well. He misses it.
His tears fall as he stares in the mirror, trying to bring back that cold sneer, only succeeding in producing a grimace of self pity and self loathing.
"Innocence is the weakest defense. Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and over again, "I didn't do it." Guilt has a thousand voices, all of them lies."
- Leonard F. Peltier
Peter Pettigrew
He clenches his fingers, flexing them as he walks around the house. It is cold and dark, since Snape is not here, but he does not have the courage to light his own pathway or warm his way up.
His new home here, in Spinner's End, is much better than that hole he had to live in for twelve years, with that Weasley boy. He tries not to remember the fact that here he is treated as vermin, and there he was a pet rat, who was always allowed room in a warm bed.
He parts the curtains, looking through the cloak of ran, at the whole street. A group of boys run around, laughing and splashing in puddles. He pushed back the pang in his heart, steeling himself. He catches a glimpse of two young girls running and he again tries to suppress memories.
He tries to ignore the flash of guilt and regret. He refuses to remember the look of pure betrayal and hatred he'd received in the Shrieking Shack that night three years ago. He tries not to remember the fact that a little girl, who'd always been quite nice to him and who had lived on this same street, had died thanks to him.
He clenches the fingers on his silver hand, amused that it is like his Lord, cold and bloodless. He examines the point of junction, and remembers the missing finger he'd lived without for long. He tries not to think that he is, literally, losing part of himself.
"Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."
- Rossiter Worthington Raymond
Andromeda Tonks (née Black)
She rocks the cradle, with a nudge of her toe as she sips lemon tea. The cold beats down on around her and she pulls closer the jumper, loose on her, which was his. It still smells faintly of him. Of tobacco (the good kind, the kind which reminded you of warmth and home, not drugs and being wasted) and shaving lotion. He inhales it deeply.
It is raining out, raindrops racing down her window pane, just like the race for the victory that had killed all those whom she loved. She tries to remember his embrace and the way he'd have kissed her hair. She tries to remember her daughter, running around with her shock of pink hair which she'd once despised, and now missed. She even tries to remember her handsome son-in–law, who did not quite think he was as handsome as her daughter thought. He would be sorely missed.
A sharp cry comes and she hastily puts down the cup, picking the infant into her arms. He sniffles, wailing and she hums to him, in his soft ears. He slowly calms down and she places him back in, as his eyes look into hers, detecting the grief.
She rocks the cradle, unable to look away from the shock of turquoise hair. Perhaps there would be hope someday and the courage to move on.
"There are no mistakes. The events we bring upon ourselves ,no matter how unpleasant, are necessary in order to learn what we need to learn;whatever steps we take, they're necessary to reach the places we've chosen to go."
- Richard Bach
Regulus Arcturus Black
He clenches his fingers around his wand, shaking. He can feel the chill in the air, as it envelopes him with the spray of water crashing against all the rocks. He doesn't even feel the wretched cut anymore, across his palm, only the fear and pride of what he is about to do.
He watches the young elf, with wide eyes, staring at him with reverence. He doesn't deserve it, but he says nothing. He nods to the elf to follow, whose been given strict instructions already. They stand before the basin of potion and he's ready to drink it. He scoops it up and gulps it down, bit by bit, and he can feel the terrible images fill his mind. Of adversaries he finished, of people he tortured mindlessly and in haze. They stab him, with guilt, and he cries. He hears faint sobs and sniffles but he ignores them as those images brand his mind forever. He cries out again, but the images begin to fade now, the voices still ringing in his ears.
He can hear the clatter of the fake locket as he hands the real one to the elf. The elf vanishes in seconds, and he refills the basin, not leaving a trace of his presence. His throat is parched and he leans forward taking a sip of water. There is a loud splash, strong hands grabbing him and he is surrounded by water all of a sudden.
Panic inflates in him, as he thrashes and tries to fight off the hands, but he inhales water. It sears his lungs and he cries, taking in more through his mouth. His body thrashes and he can feel the darkness coming.
He clenches his fingers, before letting his wand float. His last conscious thought is wonder, and hope that his brother would have seen him do the right things for once.
~o~