A/N - Written for the Pairing Tombola Stall at the Hogwarts Fair on HPFC. My pairing was Bellatrix/Rodolphus which was definitely not one of the easier pairings I've ever written.


He could have loved her. Once.

He watches her grovel in front of their Lord, begging to be given the chance to end Potter. Rodolphus holds back a sneer by the thinnest of margins. She is so obvious, so transparent and it makes him want to retch. He could, perhaps, blame it on her lengthy incarceration in Azkaban, had it not been for the fact that her reverence was just as apparent before their Lord's fall.

He could have loved her had she not been so clearly pining for another man.

Their beginning was not an auspicious one. They had been thrust together by their respective parents, both set on making sure that their children made an acceptable match. It was not an arranged marriage so much as a strongly recommended one. She had been beautiful, relatively intelligent, their ideals the same and so Rodolphus had agreed. Marriages had been forged on less and he thought, with time, that they just might find their way.

He had brought her to their Lord in the first place. There were not many women in the Dark Lord's ranks, even fewer were marked and there were none in his coveted Inner Circle. Bella had shattered all of those barriers almost instantly and Rodolphus had been proud, so very proud of his lovely young wife and her impassioned devotion to their Lord.

He could have loved her. Until he realized.

He turns his head and sees Dolohov's smirk. Rodolphus longs to wipe that smirk from his face, but instead simply returns it as if what Bella does is none of his concern. That her near drooling over the man that sits at the head of the table does not bother him at all.

It is that rabid devotion, that longing, that got them sent to Azkaban in the first place. After the Dark Lord's defeat, it was Bella that had convinced Rodolphus and Rabastan that their Lord was not truly gone. She knew things, she said. The Dark Lord had a plan, he had not been killed that night, especially not by a mere baby. They must find him. She was positive that the Longbottoms knew something, that the Order was hiding their Lord somewhere.

Rodolphus had not been opposed to torturing the couple. In fact, he quite enjoyed it. However, when it became apparent that they knew nothing, when they began to bleed from their ears and their noses, Rodolphus and Rabastan were prepared to cast the Killing Curse and escape to search again another day. But Bella insisted, she swore they knew, swore that with just one more Cruciatus they would talk. She had convinced Barty to hold the curse on the woman, Bella keeping the husband to herself.

"You stupid bint," he had hissed when the Aurors came down upon them later, when they were outnumbered and outduelled and tidily trussed and taken away. Her eyes had flashed dangerously and then she had laughed, loud and long, the madness already taken hold in her before she ever set foot on that godforsaken rock.

He blames her now, now that he knows they might have found their Lord, had she not so foolishly gotten them caught. They might have been the ones to assist him in returning to his body instead of that miserable excuse for a wizard, Pettigrew. Wormtail, a fitting name for such a stuttering, twitchy coward, hiding as a rat for all those years. Rodolphus' lip curls in disdain as he sees the object of his thoughts.

He looks again at his wife, who is staring at their Lord, a look of rapture on her face. Rodolphus does not begrudge her devotion to their cause; he is just as committed after all. It is her naked adoration, the blatant lust that shines in her eyes whenever she is in the presence of the Dark Lord. And many times when she is not. She has never once looked at Rodolphus that way. It disgusts him.

He could have loved her. Once.