This is kind of Bellamione. What can I say? I'm a sucker for powerful lesbians. Was that wrong? That felt wrong. Whatever. Along the road, I slid back into my headcanon for cannibalistic death eaters- but only metaphorically! So, a win. A little dark, a little romantic, a little sad. Anyway, enjoy.
She is hollow.
Shadows have crept into her ears and replaced her blood. When she moves, she is like air, drawing grace from her emptiness.
Moon-pale skin, punctured by the black holes of her eyes and carved in half by the bitter curl of her lips.
When she opens her mouth to laugh- a crazed, aching sound- her rotten teeth are a picket fence around the darkness of her throat.
Hermione meets her eyes for the first time, and she is startled by how hollow she is.
Her face is in constant motion, assessing and teasing and moving from face to face, seeing everything, soaking up the cruel voices that swirl through the room.
She wears her insanity like a summer dress, loose around her dancing body, but Hermione can see what she really is. She is hollow.
It is not a sudden affair, but from watching, Hermione can see how it has happened.
Voldemort. His words, his spells, they carve a delicate line below her lips with surgical precision. He waves his wand, and she curls in upon herself, refusing to beg, refusing to surrender to her master.
He peels her open. She throws herself at his feet with her chest cracked apart and he drinks her blood and bites her heart as if they are not hers.
"It must hurt," Hermione snarls. She is hurt, too, but she is young, smart and afraid, and that will pull her through.
She sees how she moves. Jagged, cutting, like she's fighting someone with every step. Her arms slice the air, her wand a cutlass, her wild, silver-shot hair tumbling over her deranged face, and she duels like a savage, but this is not her tribe.
The men with skulls for faces seem to enjoy hollowing her out. They pour themselves inside the caves they tear into her skin, they fill her with poisonous words about what it means to be pure.
Hermione may know nothing of purity, but she knows when innocence has been stolen.
Voldemort has killed her and robbed her grave for the body. He has reanimated her with lightning and agony, with wild eyes and a laugh that chills Hermione's bones.
But still, she... feels.
Hermione tries to enjoy peeling her open. But her eyes are hollow. And Hermione knows something about emptiness.
Bellatrix preaches sin, that mouth alight with danger curved around the words she half-believes. Hermione watches how she is punished, with waving hands and the flashes of pain that make her scream for people she's never met. Hermione wonders if she has ever been loved.
Bellatrix is hollow. And that's why Hermione can never resist filling her back up again.
Yay, vignettes! Yay, Bellatrix! Yay, Bellamione!
Yeah, okay, the postscript doesn't fit the vibe of the story. I had a mood change.