A.N: My entry for the "Three Prompts" Competition by alohamora080 on the HPFC.
My prompts; "Bellatrix Lestrange", "Anniversary", "Well, this is where I live."
{Prison doesn't matter to me, if you'll be by my side}
oOo
1966
I was fresh, fragrant and free. I thought I knew the world at the mere age of eighteen, barely legal, only free of The Trace for about a year. I wanted to feel things I'd only heard stories of; I wanted to see the different faces of the world; meet the different personalities of the people I knew were out there. I only dabbled in Dark Magic back then, we saw it as a bit of naughty behavior; The Dark Lord was a brilliant wizard at this point, I have no doubt, but I wasn't as preoccupied by him, back then.
Of course, there were some of us at Hogwarts who agreed with the mysterious Lord Voldemort and his ways. We became a group in his favor, and we would eventually serve him to the end of our lives.
But at the age of eighteen, I didn't see myself becoming a Death Eater, no matter how much I offered myself to the Dark Lord, and I loved every minute of servitude. I felt destined to travel; fly through the night skies as smoke on the air, learn as many dark and deep spells, brew the most poisonous potions, and practice the deadliest curses from around the world that I could bear to speak. I wanted to swim in black lakes and wander through the forests in Albania. Most of all, I wanted to feel passion.
The man I would soon come to love offered to accompany me on my travels around the world. Rodulphus was eighteen too; we graduated together. I found myself attracted to the blunt featured, broad shouldered man some point throughout my final year at Hogwarts.
He was one among the crowd that were fawning over the blonde haired angel that was my sister, Narcissa. I loved Narcissa like anyone can love their own flesh and blood, but it was always a cause of distress and upset to me when boys were more interested in her, than me. I may have grown up into my thirties to be stone-hearted and uncaring of the rest of the world other than the Dark Lord, but I was a child once, like anyone else. A teenage girl; living in the worries that consisted only of pimples and what boys thought of me.
Narcissa was slender and thin, whereas I was shorter and slightly curvier than necessary. Narcissa's hair fell in sleek, blonde tones down her back, but mine was more like our sister Andromeda's, frizzy and dark and out of control. Narcissa was blue-eyed and her lips were soft and pink, her skin lightly tanned and her cheeks rosy. My eyes were as dark as my hair, my lips too full, and I was as pale and sickly-looking day in and day out. Narcissa lavished in the sun, but I preferred to stay up in the night, reading restricted books by candlelight and shying from the outdoors through the day.
But Rodulphus hadn't been interested in Narcissa. When he first came over to me in the library, he was talking aimlessly about the next Hogsmeade trip. I put up with him as politely as I could for a short while (a very short while, judging by my fast temper), then reacted. "If you want me to ask my sister to go on a Hogsmeade date with you, it's a waste of time. She's going out with Malfoy now, surely you knew?" I narrowed my eyes at this particular Lestrange brother. They were quite good friends; we Slytherins were all pretty close. Rodulphus' eyes widened slightly, and he ran a hand through his hair, which was a little too long for his eyes.
"Bella, I'm not asking about Narcissa," he said softly, trying to keep his voice as low as possible. The vulture-like librarian was hanging around behind one of the nearest bookcases, her sharp ears on alert. "I wanted to ask if you'd like to come to Hogsmeade with me."
After that, we became quite inseparable. We never established a relationship with each other at Hogwarts, unlike Narcissa, who, as soon as she left, had Lucius Malfoy waiting at the gates with the biggest, most sparkly engagement ring; a cluster of huge (and expensive) black diamonds. They were married within the year, much to the delight of our father and his sister; two who were extremely pleased with the blood-statuses of the Malfoy family. I grew far too attached to Rodulphus; he became a beacon of light in my otherwise dark world. While I had, and was given everything I ever wanted, being a daughter of the noble House of Black, there was no light in my life, nothing to strive for but continuous, endless darkness. I eagerly agreed for Rodulphus to accompany me on my trip, even though I was battling a constant inner conflict at that time. I was desperately attached to Rodulphus – I wanted to feel him, hold him, and kiss him. Sometimes when we weren't together, or if he spent more time with his friends than me, I was finding myself dissolving into embarrassing tears in the dead of the night. I wanted Rodulphus with a passion that overwhelmed me, but at the same time, I desired my independence; I was strong-willed and fierce, I was Bellatrix Black – I didn't need to be the object of a man.
But I wanted to travel and I wanted the company, the company of Rodulphus more than ever.
1968
We were reckless.
I was still young, but I was no longer as innocent as I once felt. We explored the width and breadth of America, and found ourselves drinking most our nights into a stupor, dabbling in muggle drugs and falling into bed together, melting into a haze of heated kisses, losing track of whose legs and arms belonged to who. I would wake up in wet sheets, trails of last night's eyeliner staining the pristine material. Rodulphus would always be laid on his front, his arms under his pillow, and his back as broad and covered in long, thin red scratches. There would be traces of his skin under my fingernails, I would soon discover. One morning I awoke first (as I always did) to find a tattoo on his left shoulder blade. It was an image of a bird; a large, beady eyed black crow, and I knew it was for me.
I would stand up out of bed, stretch, and walk, as naked as the day I was born, to the balcony. Miami was always sunny. There was none of the dreary, drab English weather that I adored so much. But every time we contemplated going back home, we were sucked into this life once again.
Laying naked on the sunbed out on the balcony, I would feel the sun warming me from head to toe. I was already dreaming of the night that would be ahead of us. White powder separated neatly into lines. Two glasses next to a bottle of Firewhiskey. Rodulphus would be leaning over me, his breath hot and smoky, whispering in my ear. "You know you snort it like a champ," and I would laugh in response, and kiss him everywhere.
But we couldn't live this life forever. I couldn't spend my life on drugs and drink and tattoos. News of the Dark Lord was spreading, even to these corners of the Earth. I could feel a new need rising in me, a new desperation, sensation, urge to please. I begged Rodulphus on our final night if we could return, and he obliged. We were going to use side-along apparation, but at the moment we were about to turn together, Rodulphus dropped to his knee. I stared down at him, on the balcony we had spent the last several months. There were still empty bottles lying around, and I could see traces of Coke on the glass table. I stared at him for what seemed like a lifetime, staring right through his glassy eyes and into his soul.
I accepted his ring, even though I knew my attraction for him was waning.
1970
"Well, this is where I live," was the first thing Rodulphus said to me, after we married and he had carried me over the threshold into his home. He was not badly done out. The Lestrange family were as wealthy and pure-blooded as our family was. The manor was exquisite, the dark palace I had always dreamed of. But there was just one new problem. I no longer felt anything for him.
Rodulphus and I had received our Dark Marks. I used to think Rodulphus joined the ranks of the Death Eaters because he wanted to, and his brother too. But now I think he only joined for my sake. He thought I couldn't look after myself, because I'd spent every year since we graduated from Hogwarts, completely and utterly devoted to him.
Now I had a new devotion. Lord Voldemort was the wizard of nightmares, and I felt something new stirring in me. A new surge of desperation, a creature that wanted to lunge forward from my being and do nothing but rest at the Dark Lords feet for all of eternity. I was desperate to become his most loyal servant. I knew where my future lay now; I was going to become everything for Lord Voldemort.
My personality took a drastic turn for the worse. I wanted distance from Rodulphus desperately, but we still had to live together in that dreadful mansion that I had adored earlier in the year, when we first married. But now it just held all the memories of him, and all the memories of the attached Bellatrix I used to be. A stupid young woman who lay on the balcony completely naked, getting a tan, for heaven's sake.
The love I felt for the Dark Lord outweighed anything I had ever felt for Rodulphus. I was completely attached to his side; I became his right hand for anything. I got closer to him than any of the other Death Eater's ever did, but I never had to be something with the Dark Lord. I was just there to be used by him, like he used any of the other's, but I was glad for it. I relished it.
But I still had to work with Rodulphus. As much as I tried to detach myself from him, he was still there. He still looked at me sadly when we were put on jobs together. He knew I was losing my mind. I begged for a reaction from him; desperate for him to divorce, to leave of his own will. I started an affair with Rabastan; Rodulphus walked in on us while I was straddling his brother in our marital bed. I knew he was angry, but he seemed to love me too much.
Maybe his personality was addled more than mine. I didn't care. I never cared.
1981
The last time I ever thought romantically of Rodulphus, was when we were sentenced to Azkaban. It was our wedding anniversary, though I doubt Rodulphus had any idea of the dates. I scratched the days off on the wall of my cell, so I was confident of the date.
We were put in cells right next to each other, and I could hear him grunting and groaning constantly. Poor, pathetic Rodulphus – his sanity waned and weakened until I was sure he was almost dead within the first week. When the Dementors took him out of Azkaban one time, he was bleak and blank-eyed, and barely seemed to notice me sitting in the cell.
It would prove to be a long, fifteen year night in which we were imprisoned. But the Dementors didn't mess with my mind as much as they did to Rabastan, and Rodulphus. Maybe I was already crazy. Or maybe, I had sunk to such a low level of darkness that the happiness-draining powers of the Dementors, was really a new happiness for me. Either way, while my sanity became utterly lost, I still had some part of my fractured, fragmented personality in there.
When I heard Rodulphus one night; moaning my name in his sleep, I remembered that summer of 1968. I remembered when he joked about the muggle police taking us to their jail, should they find the amount of drugs we had used, once we found out that it happened to be illegal in the muggle world. I had sat on his lap, my legs around his waist, and kissed him while I still had my sunglasses on, and promised him that prison wouldn't mean anything, so long as I was with him.
Oh, how wrong I had proved to be.
I thought of that girl in the sunglasses and the stomach full of firewhiskey. The girl who preferred her birthday suit to her robes, the girl spent her days lounging under the heat of the sun, and her nights with a straw in her nostril. That fresh, fragrant and free girl, she was gone, dead, barely a memory.
I was a woman now, a madwoman nonetheless. But I would never be that reckless young thing again, no matter how much Rodulphus dreamed of me.
I wondered if now, on our eleven year anniversary, Rodulphus would still desire me.
I laughed.
oOo