For Lauren, her courageous battle and beautiful spirit. We owe you so much, girl.
Loud screams cut through the thick darkness.
"Masteeer! Masteeer!"
It was Bellatrix and she had shot up from the bed she was sharing with the Dark Lord yelling bloody murder in the middle of the night. The woman was now sitting on the silk sheets, breathing hard like she was being chased, her sapphire eyes scanning frantically her surroundings in an effort to figure out the date, time and situation.
Lord Voldemort had woken up too, startled and angry for being so unkindly interrupted from his four-hour night sleep. It was the first time since her imprisonment he had agreed they could spend the night literally together and he was already regretting it. The former beauty, emaciated and weak, was being tormented by nightmares due to her lengthy, most horrifying imprisonment.
Bella's eyes fell on his fiery gaze and that seemed to light up a candle in her confused and scared mind. With a dramatic wail, she flung her arms around his neck, all sense of difference in status forgotten, and started sobbing violently on his shirt. Voldemort's snake-like pupils widen and his body stiffened at once from the close contact. He made no attempt to embrace or kiss the frightened woman in his arms, only muttered blankly:
"It's okay, nobody can hurt you here. You are just fine."
But Bellatrix' sobs were decreasing in violence and frequency, and some of her mumbled words became intelligible and clear enough for Voldemort to understand them perfectly:
"You're- you're fine, oh my D-Dark Lord, you're okay- no one hurt you. You're fine."
Voldemort's face registered his surprise to the bizarreness of his lieutenant's words a moment late. He stared at her for a while, trying to read her mind both literally and metaphorically, only to find pure truth in that tornado of a mind.
With some hesitation, he wiped sweat from the woman's forehead, before taking a deep breath.
"Someone needs to sort out her priorities," he hissed in awe.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think.