Title: a cry for distant things
Disclaimer: -disclaimed-
Pairing: Bellatrix/Voldemort (one-sided)
Summary: There are times when Bellatrix yearns for a fate that is not her own.
AN: The title is taken from Federico Garcia Lorca's poem The Guitar, as translated from the Spanish by AS Kline (please see the poetry in translation website if you wish to read the full translated poem).
Hope you'll enjoy reading this piece.
Bellatrix watches as Narcissa sits her infant son on the blue silk of her lap.
"How is Draco?"
"He's good," Narcissa says, beaming down at her son. "He'll be a credit to the family in time to come."
"I'm sure he will," Bellatrix says. She checks her watch; she rises.
"Won't you stay for tea, Bella?" Narcissa asks, finally tearing her gaze away from the laughing child.
"Not today. The Dark Lord has summoned us to a meeting."
"Lucius told me," Narcissa says. "But I was hoping that you –"
"The Dark Lord hates tardiness, Cissy," Bellatrix says, her dark eyes now pools of molten lava, the springboard of ancient stars.
And so she goes, briskly walking out of Malfoy Manor, apparating just steps beyond its intricate gates.
:::
Rodolphus snores in his sleep.
A child wails somewhere.
Bellatrix rubs her temples, breathing in and out. Nothing works, nothing sends her back to the land of dreams. I hate children, she thinks. I hate people who snore. How could a man so pure of blood, so eager to aid in the Dark Lord's elegant schemes be so uncouth in manner, how could her husband snore?
Bellatrix tosses and turns in her barren marriage bed, till at last her self-control breaks. She hits Rodolphus with her elbow, and he awakes, and stops snoring for a while.
:::
He is dead, he is gone, they say. Bellatrix knows better. The Dark Lord can't be dead – she wills him not to be dead. She cannot believe that he might be dead.
Instead, Bellatrix clutches her husband's shoulders. "He isn't dead, Rodolphus. We have to find him!"
"We will, Bella. But I can't think how those filthy aurors managed to -"
"Yes, the aurors. We'll interrogate some of those filthy muggle-lovers. They'll tell us, yes they will."
They come across an unlucky couple – the Longbottoms. Bellatrix stares into their round, placid faces, now full of fear and white with an unimaginable terror, and raises her wand.
"Tell me where he is! Tell me he's not dead!" she screams.
Of course, they don't tell her that, or anything at all, and she raises her wand again.
"Crucio!" she screams again, her voice an evil wind in the still, silent room.
:::
Years later, Bellatrix looks at Draco, now seventeen and taller than herself, and wonders what her child might have looked like if she – if the Dark Lord had ever – ever seen her as a - no, she cannot think the words, cannot say them even in the dark, unknowable recesses of her heart.
To have a babe with rippling dark hair, and stately eyebrows, and – no, she dares not imagine further. She knows the Dark Lord is unassailable on this count, knows he lacks an appetite for human bodies, knows he exists purely within the sphere of magic and power – and yet…
Bellatrix looks again at Draco, at his flaxen hair and bright eyes and wishes, for once, that she had been able to get into the Dark Lord's bed just once.
:::
The night before the Battle of Hogwarts, Bellatrix presses for an audience with Voldemort.
Disgraced though she is, Voldemort deigns to meet her, and she kneels and presses her lips to the hem of his robes.
"My Lord," she says, "we have failed you."
"Yes, you have."
"I will not disappoint you from now on – you know how faithful I have been, how I –"
"I know."
Bellatrix looks up. "Am I forgiven?"
"You are. You kept faith, and I forgive you that little breach. But Lucius is not. And remember, my vengeance shall not spare you if you fail me once again through incompetence. Do you understand?"
Bellatrix looks into the slit-like eyes, and thinks back to the dark, handsome young man who had preached his doctrine of pure blood superiority decades ago. She thinks back to the clandestine talks he had given, to Voldemort's intoxicating charisma, to his never-ending decisiveness.
She aches inside, thinking of the child that never was, wishing horribly to be within Voldemort's very arms.
And yet she smiles, and leans closer to the Dark Lord, and whispers, "My Lord is gracious. I understand completely."