THE GRAVITATIONAL PULL OF A SUN
Author: Queen Nightingale
Rating: M (For Safety)
"A man can no more diminish God's glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word, 'darkness' on the walls of his cell." ~ C.S. Lewis
She stands there, sucking on her cigarette, the dark sky sparkling with thousands of stars beyond the Astronomy Tower. You move closer, and you see her fragile frame, her matted hair, her dark brown eyes – all shaking with pent up emotion and tears.
She snarls at you, but doesn't bother to turn around.
"What are you doing here? Come to see your little Bellatrix weep?"
You smirk, the darkness shadowing your mouth, but you don't bother to reply. You merely lean against the cold, unrelenting stone wall, watching her back heaving up and down, taking in huge gulps of air.
In another world, you think to yourself, your eyes fixated on her trembling stance, this would look like a romance novel. One of those filthy muggle ones – with just yet another beautiful boy and his characteristic swagger, leaning suavely against a wall, and with just yet another beautiful girl staring out into the night sky, with nothing on their minds except gravitational pulls, moving them together like two orbiting Suns.
Which doesn't make any sense, you automatically correct yourself in your head, your Divination knowledge rearing its nasty head, since Suns can't orbit around each other.
Bellatrix softly exhales a cloud of smoke, and you turn your attention back to her.
She's bent over the railing of the tower, her elbows propped up on the iron safety bars, her eyes closed and her head tilted back, the pale skin on her neck exposed to the soft starlight. A faintly glowing cigarette dangles between her elegant, refined fingers and burgundy painted nails, and as you glance at her, she turns her head towards you, sneakily eying you up behind thick, dark lashes. Your gaze drops to her dark red pout, and she lets out an inelegant snort, startling you, and turns her attention back to the stars. She starts to talk, her eyes still fixated on the blanketing night sky.
"Do you think I am beautiful, Rodolphus?"
You pause for a second, hesitating slightly, and then speak up, your voice a fluid wave compared to her husky tone.
"You are beautiful in the way that death is beautiful, Bella. You can't avoid it."
She grins at you, pleased. You move closer to her, and imitate her stance at the railing, glancing down from the staggering height, warily eying up a group of giggling first-years chasing each other below you.
You feel, rather than see, another shudder wrack Bellatrix's body, and you turn to her, opening an arm to let her in.
"Come on, poppet," You try to soothe her, her dark curly hair softly tickling your face as she nestles into your arms, "What's wrong now?"
"Those fucking mudbloods," Bellatrix replies, muffled, but each word sounding like a curse. You grin with your canines at the way she pronounces each swear word – harsh and seductive, the way they were meant to be spoken.
She suddenly twists in your arms, and is face to face with you. Your arm still grasps her waist, and her lips are mere seconds away from yours.
"You'll never leave me for one of them, will you?" She says, her mouth panting hot, sweet air onto your lips, her arms reaching up to tangle in your brown hair, her hand trailing down the inclines of your smooth, aristocratic face.
"Of course not," You honestly reply, your eyes searching her widened black orbs for answers. After a few seconds, she backs away from you, and you nearly let out a groan as you watch her turn her attention back to the night sky. That was the problem with Bella – she was an eternal tease.
"Andromeda ran away with the filth."
You freeze, the words slowly sinking in, along with the implications for Bella's family.
"No."
She turns and glances back towards you again, then takes a drag on the forgotten cigarette she had been carefully holding.
You turn away from her, and rest your arm against the cold stone wall, your head hunched between your shoulders, as shock rings through your body.
It's late when you finally get back to the Slytherin common room, weaving through secret passages in order to cut down the time you spent at the Astronomy Tower. Bellatrix's small hand is tightly grasped in your own, and the two of you flee like shadows through Hogwart's personal underworld.
You whisper the password to the portrait as you stealthily climb into it, pulling Bellatrix behind you when you see Riddle elegantly reclining in a velvet green chair by the fireplace.
Riddle turns in his seat, and languidly notices you. The firelight casts dark shadows on his face, drawing his handsome face into monstrous proportions, but even the darkness can't hide the regality of his pose, the contained power.
You don't like the way that you feel Bellatrix tense behind you, the way that her body seems to almost moan with longing, pressed against your muscled back, as soon as Riddle's gaze lands on her.
"Lestrange," Riddle drawls, fingering his wand and bowing his head slightly in acknowledgement. You bristle at the lack of respect from the sixth year, but you calm when you feel Bella's fingers tracing small patterns on your back.
"Riddle." You barely incline your head in response.
"Was there another meeting?" Riddle asks quietly, his face framed by dancing shadows, "Is that why you two were out so late?"
Bellatrix quietly hisses behind you, a warning, but you already know that Malfoy and his goons didn't schedule one.
"You know the answer to that as well as I do, Riddle," You smoothly reply, a façade of ice on your face, "There was no meeting tonight."
Riddle slowly rises from his seat, and you feel Bellatrix's pulse seemingly jumpstart.
"Well that's good," He replies, standing up, his thick black hair blending perfectly with his green and silver robes in the firelight, "I wouldn't have wanted to miss one."
You stand there, stoically silent, glaring at him, until you feel Bellatrix move out from behind you.
"Hello," She says, her eyes glinting in the firelight, "And who might you be?"
"Tom Riddle," Riddle replies, his eyes taking in her form, "Are you …" He pauses for a second for the right word, "Friends with Lestrange here?"
You wait for her response, your back arched straight, rigid, as you furiously stare at Bellatrix. She should have known better than to talk to a wizard, especially one with so much potential as Riddle, you angrily think in your head, staring at her small form. It's a pity that witches aren't considered to be as powerful as wizards, since Bella definitely defies the rule, but even so. Propriety calls for a male to introduce her to another male.
But then again, you wryly realize in your head, Bella was never one for propriety.
You suddenly feel Bellatrix's hand traveling up the side of your robe, and you turn to face her, questioningly.
"Yes," She slyly replies to Riddle, meeting your eye contact with a smirk, "We're … quite good friends."
You reach an arm around her shoulders and pull her towards you, sneering, clearly staking out your claim to Riddle, who looks moderately amused by your protectiveness. You glare at him beneath heavy lidded eyes, your trademark scowl on your face.
Staring straight at him, a conflict of emotions runs through your body. He's thin, but quite tall, and obviously handsome. Then again, most of the male older Slytherins are, so that's no surprise. You stare angrily at him, a smirking Bella nestled in your arms, wondering why Malfoy would have picked such a relatively insignificant sixth year (not even a seventh!) to join the Death eaters.
Suddenly, you feel something like a cold trickle of water traveling inside of your head, and you slam down your internal barriers, but not before the image of a naked dirty-blonde girl lying moaning on your bed appears.
You yank out your wand, and thrust Bella to the side, striding up towards Riddle and shoving it in his face.
"That was not yours to see," You dangerously whisper, keeping an eye on Bella.
Riddle laughs, and you fight the urge to punch his perfect, aquiline nose off his face.
"Well, well," He quietly says, his eyes motioning for you to put down your wand, "That's a most interesting development. Does – " He glances over at Bella, who is standing merged with the shadows – "she know?"
"About Greengrass?"
"Yes, Lestrange. About Greengrass."
"No. And you'd better keep it that way, Riddle."
He smirks, then picks up his books, his robe swishing behind him as he silently leaves the common room, traveling deep into the dungeons of the boy's dormitory.
In that one smirk, you realize that he knows you would die before Bellatrix would find out about your prior … misdemeanor. And you realize that in letting your guard down for just that one moment, you've sold your soul to the sixth year boy.
You curse under your breath, then turn to face Bellatrix, who is casually watching you. After a couple seconds, she starts to talk.
"I'm going to fuck him," She says sweetly from the shadows, a sneer slowly developing on her face, "Riddle, I mean. Does that bother you?"
A small pain jabs through your chest at her words, but you ignore it and smoothly travel over to where she is standing, leaning your arms against the wall so that she is firmly trapped beneath your body. Even though Bellatrix is a skilled witch, you spot a small flicker of fear dart across her eyes before her regular pool of dark chocolate returns. You grin like the Chestershire cat, and slowly grind your lower body in between her legs.
"Yes, it bothers me," You reply, watching her face as her lips form a perfect O, "And if you ever touch that halfblood piece of shit, I'll rip him from piece to piece, no matter if he's King of the Universe or not."
"And," You continue, your lips inches away from her neck, "If you ever say that again, I'll tell my father about your sweet sister Andromeda, and our arranged marriage on Monday will never happen."
"I think I'd like to follow him to the end of the Earth," Bellatrix replies to you after a couple more seconds, her pout turning into an open smile as you tense and growl under your breath at her.
"When he rips your soul to pieces," You retort, grabbing her hair and pulling her head against the wall, causing her to moan, "When he makes you go madly insane, I'll follow the both of you. And when you fling yourself off of a cliff for him, when you try to fly – I'll catch you, and pick up the pieces. You can follow him, but I'll always be one step behind you."
"What if I don't want to be picked up?" She says desperately, pulling your head into her neck, groaning as you softly kiss her skin, "What if I just want to drown?"
You pull back from her, and watch a tear, the only one you've ever seen her cry, trickle down her face into the crook of her neck.
You suddenly lean in and kiss her, sucking on her bottom lip, and then you come up for breath, watching her pant for air and lean against the wall for help.
And then you realize, that the two of you will never be two Suns revolving around each other, but you'll be her Moon, and she'll be Riddle's planet, and the both of you will be trapped in orbit forever, by each other's gravitational pulls.
"I won't let you fall to pieces. I won't let you drown. At least not completely. And when we're in hell together, far away from the dirty mudblood bitches and halfblood rulers, far away from these pieces of shit, we'll rule it. And we'll make these bastards pay, if just for one day, if just for one battle. We don't need wands and magic and curses to make our ideas explode."
And you lean in and kiss her again, and for a moment, you pretend that she's just another girl on the cover of a romance novel, and you're just another boy who's teaching her how to breathe. And for a second, for a mere second of your life, you taste what you could have had.
You let her go, and watch her slowly walk to her dormitory, turning around and catching your glance for just a second.
Then, finally alone, surrounded by empty green armchairs and snake statues, you weep.