Disclaimer: World of Harry Potter does not belong to me but to the awesome J. K. Rowling.
A/n: For the seventh round of Quiddicth League Fanfiction Competition (Season 2).
Team: Falmouth Falcons
Position: 2nd Chaser
Round 7: Horcruxes
Assigned to Position: Hufflepuff's Cup
Round Prompts: (word) happy; (quote) "It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not." - André Gide, Autumn Leaves; (quote) "We accept the love we think we deserve." -Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
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Honest Hatred
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"We accept the love we think we deserve."
-Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Rodolphous thought it strange... the small things that could make someone so happy.
Watching Bellatrix, holding the small, golden cup and staring at it with all the love and adoration that one would look upon a child with... he felt something ugly, and hot stir in his stomach. He'd never before seen his wife... the woman that he so loved... look so happy. Never saw her look at him with even half as much love and affection.
Before he could stop the impulse, he snatched the cup that was entrusted into her care and gazed upon it.
In truth, there was nothing much special about the simple, golden cup. Even the embossed badger and it's significance were almost enough to make Rodolphous sneer at the inferiority of the treasure; he could gift Bellatrix with so much more...
But there was something about the cup.
Ignoring Bellatrix's aggravated and raised voice, and the clawing of her hands on his arms- he had a very high tolerance for pain- Rodolphous studied the cup that he kept out of her reach so easily; too easily really, and he would have been worried if he were not distracted by the dark item in his hands.
And it was a dark item... Rodolphous didn't think he'd ever held anything so dark before. It almost felt like the oppressive and darkly pulsing aura of the Dark Lord. It was some strange kind of echo of their Lord and Master's dark magic and Rodolphous couldn't help staring with awe, while a shiver of cold and fear raced down his spine.
Turning slowly towards his beautiful wife, he briefly studied her wild face. There was a cut on her lip that he himself had not put there during their play. Her skin was exceedingly pale, and she just felt so weak. Her muscles were trembling in the way someone who had sustained prolonged use of the Cruciatus, but still she fought him for the cup that he still held out of her reach while restraining her with one arm.
"What is this, Bella?" he asked cooly, his dark eyes staring at her intensely.
Dark and hooded eyes glared up at him. "The Dark Lord entrusted it to me. It isn't any of your concern," she replied to him in icy and imperious tones.
He could see the particular pride she felt that out of all his followers, the Dark Lord should choose her with what was clearly a very important and powerful item, though Rodolphous couldn't fathom what it was. But he knew that it was important; that it was very precious to the Dark Lord, if the torture of his wife, was anything to go by. A taste, surely, of what was in store for her if she should happen to fail him.
Rodolphous might have been proud of Bellatrix, but at that moment all he felt was something forming within him that was possessive and cruel.
Slipping his arm up, he gripped Bella by the neck and shoved her against a wall, pinning her there as she glared at him with hatred because she was too weak to really challenge him at the moment.
The hatred was nothing new. Their relationship was a strange and intricate balance between love and hate. It was something that was intense, dangerous and magnificent all at once. But it was changing, slowly... Bellatrix no longer saw him as the culmination of the all the power that she so desired in a mate. He was... inferior to her desire. And Rodolphous couldn't stand that.
He could stand coming second to the Dark Lord, because he was just as devoted as Bellatrix. His master offered to him a world that ensnared all his senses, gave him the opportunity to unleash all his malicious impulses.
What he couldn't stand, was to be so completely cast aside.
"You're a fool," he glowered at her, squeezing her neck while his other fist clenched over the unyielding metal of the golden cup. "The Dark Lord has no love to give to anyone, not even to you, my beautiful wife."
Bellatrix's eyes sparkled with malice that once enchanted Rodolphous, but now only served to raise his ire, causing his hand on her neck to tighten further.
"If that were true, why are you jealous," Bellatrix asked in rasps and gasps, grinning at him even as her hands clawed at his hand, trying to get him to release her as she took in what little breath she could through her closing windpipes.
Rodolphous was not jealous, really.
He felt disgusted with his wife. His wife, whom he'd always thought so powerful, so beautiful, so intelligent and full of rancor and fury. A woman so strong, so clever, so wilful that she was more than an equal match to him in every way... and here she stood before him reduced to nothing more than an enamored and delusional little twit.
"Jealous?" he sneered at her maliciously, squeezing her neck now, watching as her face turned purple and her natural bed-room eyes to bulge. "You're WEAK! And so far beneath me," he told her with a snarl, before releasing her.
Bellatrix dropped to the floor, her weakened and oxygen deprived muscles unable to hold her up as she coughed and sputtered for breath. Her hair curtained her from view, but he didn't care as he tossed the Dark Lord's treasure onto her lap before turning to leave.
He hadn't yet left the room when he heard Bellatrix scream at him.
"I hate you!"
Rodolphous through his head back and laughed. He laughed from deep in his center, a sound so rough and rich, that it reminded him of uncut diamonds.
"It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not; didn't you know, my love?" Rodolphous asked sarcastically, not sparing a glance as he departed.
Whatever the cup was, it meant more the Bellatrix than Rodolphous ever had. But he was long past the point of caring. If Bellatrix no longer loved him, he was more than content with her honest hatred.
~END~