"Mrs. Lestrange." The room seems bright. "Where is he?"
She wants to kill him, but it does her no use to be combative. The Dementors have taken that from her.
He is middle-aged, a former Auror perhaps, but no doubt now some sort of middle management. He smells of soap and new robes. He has not volunteered his name and Bella has not asked, but in her head she calls him Tom.
"Your recalcitrance does nothing for your cause."
She smiles coyly; looks up at him through lowered eyelashes. Of course, she's hardly looking her best, but she suspects that her disheveled appearance increases her allure.
He moves closer to her, and his tone is soft, as if they are confidantes or survivors of a war, not on opposite sides of one.
"Do you want to see your family again? That can be arranged." She is silent. Tom looks pained, or perhaps spiteful. "A beautiful young woman like you shouldn't rot here. I can make things easier for you. Better accommodations, food; more time away from those-things..."
She thinks of people who would give up their ideals and everything they believe in to sleep on a cot instead of the hard floor. She is not one of those people.
"Bella. Look at me." He grabs her chin as he says it, but she is angry because he dared to use that name, the Dark Lord's name for her-
She spits in his face.
He looks disappointed in her, but she is even more disappointed in him. If their places had been exchanged, she thinks, he would be on the floor screaming for mercy by now.
"What is this?" Bella is looking at a steak.
"A taste of what could be," he says, and she could almost laugh at the utter lack of originality he is showing.
She says, "I need a knife." He procures one and cuts her meat for her, like a child. While she eats he says casually:
"You don't know where he is, do you?"
Bella flushes. "Of course I do. He told me. He tells me everything."
Tom is calm, fingers his robes delicately. "The Dark Lord didn't tell you." He circles her and she sees his true cruelty, a ruthlessness almost matching her own. "He had no plan. He's gone forever."
"No," she whispers brokenly. Then she blinks furiously, but the Dementors are just outside the door and all she can feel is hopelessness.
How did you know?" she asks quietly.
"I was suspicious when you wouldn't look at me. You aren't as good as me, Bella."
She says, "If you knew, why keep coming? Why bring me the food?"
He shrugs. "You were hungry."
The man she calls Tom leaves the steak, but she throws it against the wall. "The Dark Lord will return! And he will remember his most loyal servant!" But she's falling, falling, and there are hooded figures all around her...
After that day, she begins to go insane.