This story was written for the 4th Round of the Seventh Season of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition. I'm writing as Chaser 3 for The Tutshill Tornados.
Name of Round: Don't Take Things Out Of Context!
My task this round is as follows: "This is a peculiar theme." Spy
These are the prompts I'm using to as a chaser to score some extra points:
4. [quote] 'I reserve actual terror for only the most special of occasions.' — Monstress, Marjorie Liu & Sana Takeda
5. [song] Real Good Life — The Mowgli's
10. [word] Aromatic
Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Harry Potter.
Thanks to all my betas!
WARNING: Incest, time travel, bullying.
Title: The Blackest Love
Word Count: 2962 (Google Docs)
~End of Author's Notes~
It was little more than a dank, dusty room in the corner of a forgotten inn. Delphini had been in there for a week, and the owner hadn't bothered her. Perhaps because he was dead. Perhaps she ought to feel guilty for that, but such shame had never been part of her life. Perhaps he'd live, perhaps he'd die. Who knew what would happen when she turned back the hands of time?
The True Time Turner had begun its life in the hands of Theodore Nott, passed through a couple of Malfoys, and now hung around her neck. This wouldn't be her first visit to the past, but it would be her last.
She'd been foolish before; she saw that now. If she wanted to change her circumstances, feel the warmth of her parents, she didn't have to come back to the future at all. She could live her life alongside them and bring to bear all her knowledge of the future. What she would do was steer them through currents of time.
Finally, it was time. Delphini had prepared herself for the Hogwarts curriculum, a set of Hogwarts robes, and identification fit for the 1960s, and a fresh batch of amortentia. The scent that filled the air was a heady mix of smoke and ash, strong coffee, and a metallic tinge that reminded her of what she was doing this all for in the first place: blood.
With an unshakable grip, Delphini turned back the clock.
The Hogwarts Express was, and Delphini hated to use the word, magical. The bustling students, the chatter that filled the air, and the trolley witch patrolling the halls. It was like visiting a life she'd never had, of a Delphini whose parents had survived, caring for her all her life. She yearned for nothing more than a hand on her shoulder, a mother's kiss on her cheek, and yet…
She had to wait. Be patient. She had years before the First Wizarding War, until she got to meet her father, and a couple of years to get to know her mother before that.
Delphini found a booth to herself, near the back of the train. She wasn't going to cause any trouble at Hogwarts, not with Dumbledore at the helm. She was just Delphini Crona, an exchange student from Beauxbatons, as sweet a student as they come. And how fortunate was it that one of the fifth year Slytherins had to take a year off to recover from an unfortunate dismemberment? How lucky, that said Slytherin had freed a space in Bellatrix Black's quarters?
Delphini's silent congratulation of herself was cut short by the opening of her curtained-off booth. Her eyes darted to the source of the sound and found a face she hadn't been expecting to see, not yet.
"Well, well, well,"—came a self-satisfied sneer—"If it's not the new witch come to stink up Slytherin." Her eyes were hooded and dark and set right on Delphini as she walked inside. There was a sliver of surprise in them, one that matched Delphini's own. Bellatrix looked so familiar, just enough that she could have been mistaken for a mirror on a blurry day, and so beautiful. "Delphini!" she snapped, as she slammed the door closed behind her. "Right?" Her thin lips contorted into a grin.
"That's right." Delphini nodded, smiling sweetly. Bellatrix was just like her photographs; wild, dark, and untempered, and it took all of Delphini's nerve not to embrace her right there. "Delphini Crona. It's so nice to meet you."
"Hm? Yeah, it must be." Bellatrix didn't take a seat, just loomed over her. "We don't let mongrels into Slytherin normally, you see. And you look a lot like one of 'em.." She ran her tongue over her teeth.
"My blood is just as pure as yours," Delphini said. She couldn't tell Bellatrix everything, not right away, but if her mother were to shun her from the start… No, she wouldn't be heartbroken. She'd work harder to earn it. "I promise."
Bellatrix's grin faded, but her mouth still hung open. She clicked her tongue.
"Really?"
"Really." Delphini smiled and let a hand fall to her lap. Her mother was a predator, and she was sizing up her prey. But Delphini was okay with that—it was everything she loved about Bellatrix, and if she had to fight her to earn her respect, she would.
"I don't believe you," Bellatrix said with a shrug. "But fair's fair. Let's take a look!" Her wand was already in her hand. Delphini couldn't help but admire the swiftness, the certainty of the curse forming on her mother's lips, and the fury in her eyes. She was a ferocious dueler, but Delphini knew she was better. The wand shot out of Bellatrix's hand before she could finish her incantation, her body thrown back against the door, and her limbs pinned tight.
Delphini rose, wand in hand, and took in the sight of the helpless Bellatrix. Even bound, her limbs were twitching, fighting, like they were going to tear out of their intangible restraints and throttle Delphini. Her chest heaved, her mouth twisted into something halfway between a smirk and a grimace, and her eyes came alight with a mixture of fear, fury, and fascination.
"That was close," Delphini said, as she stepped right up to Bellatrix, so close that she could smell the coffee on her breath. Apparently, she liked it as black as her name. "I almost had to break a sweat."
"How did you do it?" Bellatrix snarled. "I'm the best duelist in our year."
"It looks like that's no longer true," Delphini smirked as she lifted her wand and dragged its tip down Bellatrix's jaw. The same strong jaw she'd inherited. "Do I have to make it clear I don't want any more surprise attacks?"
"What'll you do if I do it again?" Bellatrix asked like she was teasing a child rather than the girl who'd just thoroughly defeated her.
"I don't know. Maybe I'll cut off an ear." Delphini jabbed her wand into Bellatrix's neck. "Or curse you into a cripple. Or make you dance until your feet are flayed by the cobbles."
Bellatrix let out a shrill cackle, her head thrown back and her hair bouncing with her exhaled breath.
"Aww. And that's scary, is it? Works on your French girls?"
"Oh, no." Delphini smiled. It was so wonderful to hear her mother's laugh in person. "I reserve true terror for only the most special of occasions." With that said, she flicked her wand and turned her back to return to her seat. She heard Bellatrix's feet hit the floor, the guttural noise in Bellatrix's throat, then she spun around.
Bellatrix's lunge was halted by the back of Delphini's hand. The sound of the smack bounced off of the windows of the carriage, and Bellatrix sprawled across the table, chuckling to herself as a red handprint marred her pale cheek. She gazed up at Delphini—cool and composed, with a malicious little smile—and bit her lip. They stared at each other for just a moment, then Bellatrix grabbed her wand and strode away.
Delphini trembled as she sat down. Bellatrix was everything she'd expected her to be. Beyond that, Delphini felt she understood her father a little more. If that was what he felt like when he earned Bellatrix's respect, when he made her quiver at the sight of his cruelty, then she understood all too well what had drawn him to her mother in the first place.
The train carried her the rest of the way to Hogwarts undisturbed. She was introduced alongside the first years, to the polite applause of all but a few grumbling Gryffindors. She was to spend her time with Slytherins, as dictated by the Sorting Hat, but she only cared about one: Bellatrix Black.
Delphini made the decision to sit by Bellatrix for dinner and found the beginning of everything she'd ever wanted. Their quarters were occupied by another two girls, Carmelita Travers and Violet Nott, but they were barely a nuisance. They ran their mouths now and then, but Bellatrix could silence them with little more than a glance.
That was the best thing about the time Delphini got to spend with her mother, when she got to see her for the kind of woman she truly was. Confident, powerful, and irreverent of everything save for the blood that ran in her veins, and that which flowed through Delphini, whether or not Bellatrix knew it. As far as Delphini could see, she was the only woman Bellatrix ever paid heed to, which filled her heart with a wonderfully warm feeling.
Their time together was the most wonderful thing. Delphini got to see Bellatrix when she was at her worst; when they cornered Mudbloods in the halls and made them cry, whether they'd earned it or not. It was a petty, simple kind of victory, but it made Bellatrix happy, and that made Delphini happy.
When Delphini didn't do so well in class, Bellatrix would pester her with a hundred questions, like she had some reason to doubt Delphini's talent. She couldn't let that doubt build and, when questioned, gave the simplest answer she could think of.
"I don't care what Hogwarts thinks of me," Delphini said, as she hauled herself up a nearby tree. "I know how powerful I am, what I can do. Their admiration means nothing." And she flew. No broomstick, no flying charm, just the technique passed down from her father to her own mind. Bellatrix never doubted her again after that.
After however many months had passed, Delphini found herself sat on her bed with Bellatrix sprawled across her lap.
"And she smiled!" Bellatrix snarled as Delphini brushed her thick, dark mane. "The smug, little worm smiled when our wands were confiscated… Oh, she'll be smiling." Her fingers flexed around an imaginary something. "She won't be able to stop."
"You're dreadful!" Delphini laughed. "Dumbledore will throw you out before you get to the second cheek."
"You'll protect me, won't you, Delphi?" Bellatrix tilted her head back to gaze into Delphini's eyes, her voice imitating an innocent child. "From the big, bad Dumbleydore?"
"Oh, look!" came the shrill voice of Carmelita, as she and Violet entered with less shuffling than Delphini had come to expect. "It's the wandless witches!"
"So it is," Violet said as she stood with her hands on her hips. "Although I think they may prefer it that way."
Bellatrix's eye twitched.
"If you say another word I—"
"You'll what?" Carmelita was the very picture of smugness. "Nothing. Not for months, anyway. Dumbledore will never let you have your wands outside of class again."
Delphi kept her gaze cool and placed a hand on Bellatrix's shoulder. She was tense, like a coiled spring. They were just words, although the fact that they'd insult Bellatrix made her more than sympathetic to her mother's anger.
"Very good." Violet nodded condescendingly. "It's best that you return to whatever you were doing."
"Yes," Carmelita said, "whatever that is."
"And what's that mean?" Bellatrix grasped once more for an imaginary knife.
"Well..." Carmelita hummed. "Cuddled up on the same bed."
"Always," Violet added.
"Holding hands."
"Always."
"Sharing whispers in dark corners."
"Always."
"This is a peculiar theme," Carmelita said with a giggle.
Delphini's throat went dry. The implication was hardly subtle. Her mother was the most fascinating woman she'd ever met, but didn't most girls think the same of their own mums? Perhaps she'd spent her whole life yearning for her parents, and that made it a little more intense. Perhaps she had become the kind of woman her mother would love to spend time with, but that was all it was. Theme or no.
"You know, Bellatrix," Violet said. "You're never going to make an heir if you're always being sapphic with Delphini."
Bellatrix snarled as she leaped off of the bed, but her righteous fury was quelled as soon as it rose. She crumpled to the floor with the wave of a wand, her head slamming into the floorboards. Delphini's gut twisted, and she rushed to the edge of the bed and looked down regardless of the wands pointed at her.
"This..." Bellatrix stared up at Delphini. "Seems like..." She groaned. "A special occasion." And then she cackled.
Delphini slowly lifted her head to the witches in front of her. It took just a second for their hair to burst into flames, for the panic to set in, for her to dart across the room and snatch the wands from their flailing hands. Bellatrix was balancing on her elbow, laughing as the stench of smoke and ash permeated their quarters. Delphini smiled too, right up until the flames licked the girls' skin—then she put them out.
Violet and Carmelita, their scalps singed and their hair burned, cowered into the corner as Delphini walked towards them. They were crying, pleading with her to not do anything more, and she was considering it when she felt Bellatrix's hands on her shoulders and her breath on her ear.
"Just a little more."
Bellatrix and Delphini's reign of terror went on just as joyfully as before, and Delphini felt all the stronger for it. Then she felt its loss when Bellatrix had to return to the Black household for Christmas. The loss of a relationship she'd cultivated, that she'd been so desperate to cling to, left her weeping in their quarters until the day Bellatrix returned. When they were finally reunited, she almost squeezed the life out of her mother.
And that's when it really started. When Delphini realized just how much she needed her mother by her side, and to be far away from anyone else. Pangs of jealousy hit her in lessons, outside of lessons, even so much as spending time with other Pureblooded girls. What could she do but devote more of her time to Bellatrix?
What could she do but fear for the future that she'd come back in time to remake? One word spoken to Voldemort would change his plans, would change the plans of his enemies, might mean the death of Bellatrix, the loss of her most beloved person. She needed her.
"Show me something else," Bellatrix demanded one day, as they perched in the corner of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. The professor was late and the other students perfectly content to leave the terrible twosome be. "You know all the best tricks, Delphi." She ran a fond hand down Delphini's cheek. "Dark Arts even my mother doesn't know of."
"There is one thing," Delphini smirked as she grabbed Bellatrix's hand. One solution, one concrete way to ensure that she'd always have Bellatrix. "A blood pact. We can swear to never leave each other's side."
"Tell me." Bellatrix breathing grew ragged with excitement.
"We cut our hands," Delphini demonstrated by slicing open her own hand with the tip of her wand. She winced, but it was nothing she'd not felt before. "Then hold hands." She held up her bleeding palm. "And say the vow. And it's done. Just like that."
"Hmm." Bellatrix already had her wand out, her mind set, but still she lingered with that eternally playful manner. "You promise your blood's pure?"
"Would I be so good if it weren't?"
"Hmm..." Bellatrix giggled. "If it means you won't get jealous of Cissy..." She cut her hand open without caution. It was as their crimson fingers laced together, as the metallic scent filled the air, that Delphini's mind raced back to the start of her leap through time.
The smell of blood right before her.
The ash that filled the air of their quarters.
The coffee on Bellatrix's breath on the Hogwarts Express.
They were all amortentia. And the amortentia was the aromatic aura of Bellatrix Black.
Bellatrix wasn't just her mother, and she wasn't just Bellatrix's daughter. They were the perfect complement to one another, each as enchanted by the other, each filled with a longing for the other that ran as deep as the bones of the earth. She knew from all she'd heard of Bellatrix that she was an insanely devoted woman, and perhaps that was true… But directed at the wrong person.
Perhaps Bellatrix had always meant to be for her, and her for Bellatrix. Perhaps she'd ended up with the Dark Lord not for his cause, but for the fact that doing so would create the perfect person to be with. What could possibly be purer than her own flesh and blood?
Delphini thought about those ideas as their classes ended, as they returned to their quarters, as Bellatrix started talking about which of their fellow students they still had time to torment. Delphini grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her in close.
"Bellatrix," Delphini took both of Bellatrix's hands in hers. "I think I've realized something."
"So soft," Bellatrix snickered, but her eyes didn't move away for a second.
"I… I've been looking for you all of my life. And now that I have you, I don't want to let you go. Not ever again." Even if it meant giving up on meeting her father. Even if it meant surrendering dominion over all of Britain. "I want us to run away together. Away from Hogwarts, away from your family." Away from the First Wizarding War, where a single choice could throw off all of Delphinni's knowledge of the future. "Just you and me."
To Delphini's shock, Bellatrix's cheeks flushed pink.
"Let's do it," Bellatrix said. She leaned forward to seize Delphini's lips with a kiss that lasted far longer than any Delphini had ever expected from her mother. But one she needed all too much. "Anything for my Dark Lady."