The swordfishes
"I, Rodolphus Lestrange, take you Bellatrix as my wife, to love and honour you for all my life, in health and illness, in wealth and poverty, in good and bad fate, till death part us."
These words have engraved in my heart and soul; a mark stronger than our Lord's one; a mark that warms and strengthens me; an indelible mark that faces storms and gales. A mark branded inside me since the first time I saw you: you were barely fourteen and you proudly strutted through the school's grounds, you were like a heron rising on the water, harsh, prickly, green, nonetheless… nonetheless you had a lucent beauty like a black diamond, with those Gothic Madonna-ish features of your. And you were young, too young for me, a last year prefect: you were so pretty when you looked at me vexed and embarrassed by my gallantries; and how tender your blushes were; the way you lowered the eyes and avoided me, wondering why one of the most popular student of Hogwarts was interested in a fourth year; and how many times you had been about to curse me and had hardly held back!
The memory of your red cheeks still makes run a shiver in my whole body, just like when I asked you to the graduating ball: your eyes, like black ripe cherries, they were wide open and your lips, like rosebuds, they were slightly opened, to show your astonishment; then you lowered your eyes and nodded, hiding a small smile. I remember that evening and your light and gracious way to dance; the way your body perfectly fitted mine, as if your mother has given birth to you to be in my arms. I remember your kiss, shy and clumsy, first of many others; and I remember your amazed moan when, for the first time, I tasted the honey of your mouth.
I didn't wasted time, fearing that somebody could take, and in the morning of the summer holydays' first day, I was before your father to ask your hand: he watched me frowning, vexed that yet some one wanted to take away one of his princesses. He told me that you were a mere child, too young to bear the weight of a family; and I replied that I would have waited, waited that he gave us his blessing, waited that you would have become the wonderful woman you are. He told me that I could have found an other, an older and more beautiful girl; and I replied that neither Circe nor Medea nor Morgana would have been able to sway my mind from you.
And I waited. For three long years we had to be satisfied with brief and rare dates at Hogsmeade; with the evenings spent saying nothing before your house's drawing room's fireplace among Christmas decorations; with the happy walks through the Tuscan country when, in summer, you reached me in my family's villa. The same villa that that bright day of middle July saw us realize our dream: you weren't anymore a heron, but a black swan gliding elegant and regal on the water.
I remember that day of our honeymoon, when we had the whim to have a walk among Muggles: we walked hand in the hand on Messina's coast and you saw a man on the bluff shaking a white flag. You curiously approached him and asked what he was doing: he showed us two black shapes in the water and then a boat. He told us he was indicating to the fishermen where the swordfishes were; that if they were able to catch the female, then also the male would have been captured, because he would never have abandoned her and he would always have stayed with her. We watched the boat that drew near the black shapes; we saw the harpoon graze the sea surface and sink in the flesh of the smaller fish; we saw her writhe and swim toward the bottom, in the desperate attempt to free herself, while the other swam at her side, as if he shivered with the wish to help her but didn't know how. When the water became red, you turned your head and told me to go away, with an unusually sad voice; I followed you, but at a certain point I turned my head and saw the fishermen heave aboard their prey, while the other swam at the boat's side, as wanting to offer himself to the harpoon.
That was our golden age: we were happy and in love in a protracted honeymoon, with the only thorn of that lost and never more conceived child. A wonderful period that ended the night when you told me that, if I joined the Dark Lord, you wouldn't have waited at home but you would have been at my side, even in the battle: you became cold, hard-hearted, a different woman from the Bellatrix I knew and loved. But that Bellatrix went back in your wife's smiles, in your pouts and in yours ecstatic serenity of the early morning after a whole night of lovemaking. They were wonderful moments, in which we deluded that nothing had changed; moments of quiet happiness that broke when the Dark Mark burned our flesh: and then we had to leave everything behind and hurl us in the battle, battle in which I protected you while at my right you fought with enthusiasm, for let out your anger and pain.
Then the day when everything ended, when it was announced the Dark Lord's fall: my brother Rabastan, Barty, you and I were in our living room, unable to accept he wasn't among us; and the idea that he could be, alone and weak, some where born in our minds, followed by the decision to find him and refresh his power. For the whole afternoon we did and undid plans, suppositions, until we decided to go to the Longbottom, have the information we wanted and then leave for the continent. You had never been so merciless, so deaf to the prayers, so irrational even after the umpteenth proof that they knew nothing. But then I understood, I understood that it was against the injustice of life that you fought, exacerbated by a destiny that had denied us the same joy it had gave to the Longbottom, that your mind was always with that lost and never more conceived child.
We noticed too late the Aurors' arrival, too late to Disapparate without a trace: the battle was hard, they were ten and we only four, tired after three hours of Cruciatus Curse. Rabastan was the first to fall, hit by three spells at the same time; then it was Barty's, attacked from behind with Stupify. And finally you, a simple spell deprived you of your wand: two Auror grabbed you, and while you tried to free yourself, your mask slipped away. You looked at me with wide eyes, dry tears shone on your face.
"Go Rodolphus, don't think about me!"
But I didn't and I rushed against them because I didn't want them to hurt you, because I didn't bear the idea of another man touching you, because my life is nothing without you.
And now we are here, before this court that judges us, without ask us the reasons of our actions: but would they understand? Would they understand what we have in our hearts? And you sit with you head high and the impudent face, cold like an ice queen adorned with chains; and I know that deep inside you couldn't forgive me to have chosen to stay at your side, to be here when I should have been out seeking our Lord; but you also know that, in my place, you would have done the same. Because our love is stronger and greater than our devotion to the Dark Lord, because we are like the swordfishes, Bellatrix, and we prefer die rather than live without the other and we will stay together, despite everything. Till death part us.
THE END