A Case for Patience

It was cold, and dark. Damp, freezing fog crept through the bars of the tiny cell.

Azkaban was always a place of despair. The Dementors clouded everything, made one relive his very worst memories and thoughts.

The prisoner huddled, shivering and soiled, in the corner, his mind dissolving with every moment in his own personal hell.

He could hear screams, could see shapes writhing in agony. He could see himself, a tall man, standing over his victims, his eyes cold and ruthless. Another shape stood behind him, a shape he knew well.

"That's right," her sultry tones purred into his ear. "Let them shriek, let them scream. Let them die, the filth."

He could feel a part of him wish to refuse, to vomit at the sounds of pain, but he turned to look into her dark eyes as his wand invoked ear-splitting cries in those she wished to see suffer. He would do anything for her, and it would cause his doom.

"Good," she purred, her hands snaking around him from behind, controlling him as effectively as a puppet as her fingernails lightly scraped his stomach through his robes. "You know I like that."

He did. She had always liked the pain of others. And he could always earn her approval. She was beautiful, clever and sadistic, and he worshipped her. He couldn't not.

But her heart belonged to another, one other. A man who was more demon than human, with red eyes and a snake-like visage.

But if he did well, did what she wanted, she would have to love him, wouldn't she?

He shuddered convulsively on the floor. He could see the shape of a Dementor glide past his cell, it's shadow moving across his pale and clammy face, blocking the weak light of the partially covered moon.

He wouldn't be in here, if he hadn't done what she had told him, if he hadn't been so desperate to please her. But he couldn't stop trying to make her love him. Whenever she looked at him in approval, or her hands touched him, even the slightest brush of her skin, his heart would skip and he would know that he'd follow her into Hell itself.

Which he had. But even now, they were together. But she showed no approval, no love. She had hissed at him, years ago, shrieked, mocked his need for assurance. But she was here.

She had been angry, all the time. She didn't get depressed. She was angry, or hysterical. He knew that her heart was broken. The person she worshipped, as he worshipped her, was destroyed, though she refused to believe it. He loved her so much that he was in Hell for her, because she wanted to bring back the one she loved.

"You are a pathetic excuse of man," she sneered in his mind. "I have never loved you, yet you still follow me around like a lost dog. Pitiful." She pitied no one.

He shivered again and raised his head. He knew his mind was going, apparitions plagued him night and day. His victims screamed inside his head, the Dark Lord threatened him, with her at his side. She was always there, in his mind. She purred at him and stroked him, told him to do evil things, or cursed his dependence. She tortured him night and day.

As much as he saw her and spoke with her in his head, he had not truly spoken to her in years. Her cell was next to his, they were in this hell together. But after her screaming, her rages, her hysterical rants and shrieks of anger and frustration had finished with, a year after their imprisonment, she quieted. She just sat in her cell, back straight and proud, hair bedraggled and brittle, grime covering her face and her eyes closed. She never even sobbed in her sleep, like all the rest. When he had asked her if she was all right she didn't answer at first. He had been terrified that she had died. If she died, he would follow her. To Hell. But eventually she had spoken.

"Time," she had rasped.

He didn't answer, not knowing how. They had all the time in the world, more than they wanted.

"Time," she said again, stronger, "will solve our problems. I am waiting."

Waiting for what, he had asked.

"For the Dark Lord," she said, and a terrible smile flashed briefly across her face. "He will come for us, and we shall be rewarded for our loyalty. He will come back to us. He will set us free.

"Time will solve everything. We shall be patient."

Those were the last words she spoke to him for twelve years.

Few prisoners survived as long as they. And many that did barely remembered their own name.

His wife, his beautiful Bellatrix, seemed lost for many years. But she was just biding her time, and would be rewarded for her patience.

Rodolphus Lestrange saw her shift in the next cell. He had barely seen her move in the last few years, except in a mechanical way to do things that were necessary, such as eating, and shuffling around in the cell in the night to prevent her muscles from being completely ruined.

But now there was an excitement to her movements. An urgency.

He heard a quick intake of breath.

"Bella?" he whispered, but no sound came out. Other than muttering to himself, he had not spoken in a long time. He tried again. "Bella."

"He's back," he heard her whisper, and didn't understand.

"HE HAS RETURNED!" she shrieked in triumph. No one except Rodolphus even noticed her shrieks, or her emergence from her almost catatonic state. She was in a place of lunatics, used to the shrieking of those surrounding them, and Dementors, who caused it.

"His mark, Rodolphus, his mark," Bella hissed at him in delight. She pulled up her sleeve, displaying her Dark Mark, which was far clearer than he had seen it in thirteen years. He pulled up his own sleeve, and saw the same thing branded on his own skin.

Bella's delight was practically shining from her. "It's time," she told him. "We will be gone from here, and we shall make those who put us here pay."

She was beautiful, even begrimed and in a crazed and vengeful delirium. She hadn't looked this alive in over a decade.

A short time later, both marks burned black. Rodolphus gasped and clasped his forearm in pain. He heard others around the prison shriek, clearly experiencing the same from their marks.

Bella just stared in insane delight at her burning skin. "He summons us," she breathed. "He wants us by his side. If I had my wand... But no, he shall come for us, when he can. He shall come. I always knew he would come."

She began muttering to herself, her face lit with the fire of hope and joy, though her smile was terrifying to behold.

The Dementors swooped down to her, sensing her happiness waiting to be stolen. But she seemed beyond their affects. Bellatrix Lestrange had a Dream, a dream beyond the hold of despair or even delirium. The evidence of her dream's imminent realisation burned on her own arm.

Her love, devotion and patience was what had allowed her to survive Azkaban, even though she felt none of those things for the man who had followed her into Hell, and had survived it because he refused to leave her there. Even though she had not even acknowledged his presence for over ten years.

But all the doubt and self-loathing he had felt, all the guilt, had melted away the minute she had smiled again, however insanely.

He would do anything for her, always. She would love him someday.

He just had to be patient.

Aesop: This tale shows how time solves difficult problems.

Author's Notes: This is the first installment of my Harry Potter based Aesop's Fables. I will be working off either the morals of the stories or the titles, depending on which inspires me better. Not all of them will be as dark as this, but they will pop up occasionally. I'm going through them in order, so next is Friend or Foe? which certainly sounds interesting... Aren't you a little curious as to who I chose to be the star of that?

Feedback greatly appreciated. I want to know what I did right, what I did wrong or even simply whether or not you liked it at all.