Author's Note: Just a quick drabble to distract me from an essay. This is for the Animal challenge (my animal was a dragon) and the Bellatrix challenge (where I was supposed to write Bellatrix in-character...hope I succeeded with that!). Please let me know what you think in the reviews! :)
Untamable
It is horribly cold, Rodolphus thinks bitterly, but they're standing outside, staring up at the great beasts flying overhead. Bellatrix looks untouched by the cold, a fierce Black warrior, and the look on her face as she looks at the dragons is unreadable.
"They're beautiful," Rodolphus offers, placing a possessive hand on his wife's shoulder.
She moves away from him, almost imperceptibly. "They're wild."
Rodolphus nods. "I've always wanted a dragon to guard our manor. Wouldn't that be wonderful? The fierce Lestrange Manor is guarded by a fierce dragon."
Bellatrix doesn't look at him. "They're untamable. You can't bring a dragon into your home and expect it to obey you."
Rodolphus frowns slightly. "I don't see why not. I can hire a dragon trainer."
Bellatrix makes a sound of impatience, and spins around to face him, her black curls streaming behind her. "You can have all the money in the world, Rodolphus, and you still can't tame a dragon. It would never be yours. It can never be yours." She turns back to the dragons and sighs. "Dragons aren't meant to be chained down. They're warriors. They're meant to be wild and free and reckless and happy."
Rodolphus shrugs. "I still think it would be impressive," he mutters petulantly.
Bellatrix doesn't respond, just stares up at the dragons, with an almost greedy expression crossing her face. It mingles with the desire that was already on her face, the desire that Rodolphus has seen a thousand times before, but never directed at him, always towards the Dark Lord. Rodolphus feels as if someone has punched him in the stomach as he watches his wife (his wife!) stare longingly at the dragons, in a way that she has never looked at him. He's below dragons, apparently, on the list of what Bella desires. He doesn't understand, and he is beginning to think he can never understand.
~*~
And so he watches as Bellatrix fights, sparks of light illuminating her face, laughing defiantly in the face of danger. He watches as she dances recklessly among the corpses of the people she has slain, laughing wildly, her jet black hair flying around her. And he watches as she is taken away to Azkaban, laughing madly at her captors.
She is taken from him, he thinks wistfully, as he sits in the courtroom in shackles and watches her black curls disappear around the corner and listens as her laughter grows faint. She is gone from him, and he has no claim on her now.
But maybe, he realizes, maybe she was never his to begin with.