Chapter 1: A Queen
My life had always been falling apart. It would always be in pieces. Loveless. Each time I felt the slightest bit of warmth, it would melt away from my reach, and leave me in the cold. The Ice Queen of Slytherin House, Bellatrix Black.
Smiles are reserved for happiness, and happiness had long since been abandoned. When my cousin ceased to love me, when my life became obligation and tradition and loyalty to the people that hurt me most, rather than a life. That was when happiness left. Or was it?
They say it is odd that a cold person like me relies so much on flames when dueling. Flames are destructive. They burn. The cold can burn too. It can engulf you in ice, rather than gold and crimson flames, and it can kill you subtly if it turns black on the path in front of you. I was ice, and my heart was stone. They killed my ability to love, my family did. All that was left of them was my sister, in my eyes. The rest were even crueller, even colder than I. They did this. They were the ones to turn me to ice. They made me forget love, or prevented me from ever knowing it.
My cousin, Sirius, I loved him like a brother but he hated me with all the fire of a Gryffindor's soul. He would never love me like he once had, when we were children.
They wonder why I turned to that man, of all people, but it is because he cared. He loved me. I was his favourite lieutenant. He showed me kindness, and warmth that reached through my fortress of ice to pull me free. He saved me from the brink, from the edge of life. I was ensnared in a loveless marriage yet I had found love in the arms of darkness. In the arms of My Lord, the Dark Lord Voldemort, or as I would call him, Tom. He taught me more spells than Hogwarts had ever contained, and he taught me how to love.
I was at last somewhat happy, but my cousin. My cousin in his foolishness was knocked through a shimmering curtain of forgotten shades, never to see the light again. His curse had ricocheted, off of the obsidian walls and my shield charm, and he slipped away...
Then the war came. A glorious battle, and I fought with all my strength for the man I loved. Alas, it was not enough. I died that night, shattered. The Ice Queen of Slytherin took her final breath that night, and lay in shards of black ice as he ran to protect her. My lord, my Tom, the one person who made me human, and then he forsake humanity. He wanted to kill, to kill each and every enemy holding a wand. But most of all, he longed to kill the spawn of James and Lily Potter. He wept, I saw, from beyond the veil; I could see everything. My Lord wept for me, his lover, his most trusted lieutenant. That night, he too joined me. More and more souls poured every minute, and in the flood I caught sight of his shade, as he had once looked. Tall and handsome, a chiseled jaw, those eyes that could mesmerize anyone... his wavy brown hair and a condescending smirk. Not Voldemort. Just Tom.
Perhaps I could be happy now, in this greyness, this limbo behind the veil of death. I was no longer ice, and in death I felt more human than ever before.