a oneshot for the bellamione discord, though I might make other chapters some other time.
I'm alone.
It's an odd thought, invasive and nearly overwhelming with its intensity. It echoes, round-n-round-n-round in a way that's impossible to ignore. It settles, heavy, right alongside the constant ebb and flow of other ideals, nearly intangible strands that had once always translated into more wild heat or maddening fury and never something so comprehensive. It's startling, unsettling, and more than enough to tighten her throat when she'd opened her mouth to spit more vitriol and hatred toward imagined visions.
I'm alone.
It comes again later, when things are quiet and solemn, and she is outside of the grasp of the guards and within the confines of the incredibly small and cluttered room she is housed in. It calms the rushing thud of her heart, slows the blood in her veins, and leaves a strange twisted nausea in her guts. Of course, I'm alone, her mind echoes back, this is my cell, and only mine.
As it had been the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that.
As it had been every year after the Dark Lord had been killed by a boy and Molly filthy fucking Weasley had done something meant to kill but had only wounded. And why did she still live, she wondered, when so many others had been herded off to darkness and what Bellatrix suspected was execution. Is that why she was alone? Because there had once been so many of them, all brethren of violence, when now there were none?
Or had she always been alone, scuttling on her knees, kissing the hems of her god and being kicked in the face for her trouble? Where was He now?
Ashes on Hogwarts' ground.
But the familiar sense of rage didn't reach her at the thought, just an odd pulsing grief at so much loss time, and effort, and magic. Her magic. Her time. Her beauty. Her sanity-
I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy, I'm not crazy-
But they said she was, beyond her bars. They spat, and they whispered, and they screeched. The guards were rough, the doctors apathetic, but she was just fine with that sort of abuse and the verbal taunts because she was-
Alone.
Rodolphus was gone, carted away in his rags with his stiff expression and thin-pressed lips.
And Cissy had left too, marched from her cell with her head held high and the terror of prison expressed by the tremble of her hands.
And her sniveling little nephew who didn't even look her way when he was dragged, all tears and burnt wealth-spun robes on a far too thin frame.
And they hadn't come back. Not for her and she couldn't be sure if they were dead and gone or free and if she'd been left to rot.
And the idea of that hurt too, that her Cissy would leave her behind after she'd writhed on her pretty little floors for their Lord once that boy had escaped and that wittle Mudblood had managed to squirm out of her grip-
She noisy slurped snot from a dripping nose and turned her gaze from the bars, away from the flickering hallway light and toward the torn Prophet shreds around her feet scattered around the shattered artifacts of what had once been a simple little table and chair. At least this prison was furnished-had been furnished.
But why?
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Yule came and went, and in-between the constant shift of her mentality she thought it again:
I'm alone.
And there were no presents, no visitors, no warmth. Just darkness in a cold cage with the still broken furniture and the scent of the dry and far too hard cauldron cakes that had been tossed in as a joke from Guard Number Two.
But the thought only brought a sinking sense of emptiness. Yes, she replied to that tiny voice, I am alone. No purpose. No war. No Dark Lord. No family-
And she hoped, if Cissy was alive, that she was at least warm. And if she was dead, then she was dead, and had no need for wood or fire.
Wouldn't that have been nice.
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When the Prophet was thrown in her room, between gleaming bars, the front page has some interesting news:
Draco Malfoy once convicted Death Eater, to wed Astoria Greengrass-
But she doesn't read the rest. Instead she looked at her grim-covered wall from her taken corner, where she's been sitting day after day after day with only the voice of the shadows and the March chill to keep her company and she thought:
What year is it?
Instead of 'I am alone'.
Because, she already knows that.
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She's lost her sense of time. She's aware of that just as strongly as she's aware she's losing herself. There was once a time she closed her eyes and it was cold. When she opened them again, to clarity and the rough touch of a guard ripping her from her cage, it was warm.
A part of her is to numb to be concerned. It's tired. Very tired, and it wants to sleep and to forget that she is… alone. That there is nothing but the sneers of those who think her too weak and cowed to be dangerous, and the wicked tongues of the wizards and witches who tend to her daily observance.
She misses it, the fear. There was once a time when she hadn't minded the hatred, but without the promise of her Lord's return she can feel it, like an extra smothering cloak, weigh heavily over her raw and irritated skin.
Seclusion is so… damaging. And she misses the notion of touch. Of something besides rough gloved hands that yank her forward and chains that bind her in place. They want to keep her alive, reluctantly, but she finds it difficult to function.
The agony of the Dementors - and just the thought of them still sends shivers across her flesh - at least kept such needs at bay. When there was only terror and emotional pain there wasn't room for anything else.
Now there's all this… space in her head where her devotion used to be and all these memories and-
"Time to go, 93."
The guard with the acid tone is given a two-finger salute. Her tongue doesn't work quite right, it's been a long time since she's used it to speak, but she does snap her teeth at his outstretched hand. That earns her a harsh slap.
But the ringing in her ears is just like sweet music. Familiar. Comfortable. Expected. Much better than her own thoughts.
She'll take that, at least.
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The Mudblood is climbing the Ministry ranks.
She heard that on the wizarding radio a guard had held when he'd been walking down the hall, as if he was the one with the promotion and not his filthy hero.
Bellatrix isn't sure how she feels about that. How she should feel. There isn't much point to her anger anymore - though it is always the first thing she can reach, bubbling and coiled. She feels like a tricked fool, consumed by the lies of her family and the weakness from the…
From Him, who she can no longer think of as her Lord. He is no longer her ultimate sense of capitalization, he devolves in her mind as she swallows the truth of that. She'd taken his curses, and anger, and failures into her being and had been nearly crushed by the power of them. And yet, his own battle had been cut pathetically short by a child. She had, at least, been downed by an adult. A housewife, but an adult. Though her pride was wounded she was not dead.
And, honestly, she isn't sure which is worse. To be caged again, or unfeeling.
She has wasted her greatness on the worthless and she is-
Alone
Because of it.
She swallows a lump in her throat but cannot stop the first tear. Nor the trembling in her fists, which open and close with the combining storm of her emotions.
Why? Why? Why?
The bed is her victim that night, a shattered mess of wood and slates and an explosion of stuffing from the mattress. She hardly sleeps in it - had hardly slept in any bed after the hard floors of Azkaban for nearly fifteen years - but a part of her does regret it's destruction once she's calmed, sweat-slick and panting.
It was the only thing she'd had.
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"What year is it?" She croaked, surprising herself with her own rust-coated voice.
The guard at her cage only sneers, "Doesn't matter, for the likes of you."
And then he moved on, further and further away from her cell, and she is sickened by her sudden… craving for the sound of his voice. So. she wouldn't feel so…
She breathes in a frenzied matter. She won't think it again. She won't submit to this weakness.
But Merlin, she is starting to hate being alone.
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They never came to clean up the mess. In all honestly, she isn't sure what she'd do if they entered her cell. But, even the House Elf who brings her meal leaves behind the shattered woods and mattress stuffing, and she has taken to building herself a nest out of her own garbage.
W-what else is there for her to do?
She should be… proud of her service to the fallen lord, but each year - and it has been years, hasn't it? - that goes by shatters her illusions. Her beauty is fading, and her eyesight is no longer as sharp. Her body aches sometimes, a random occurrence due to improperly treated hexes and crucios, but her mind has never felt so… clear.
When she sleeps she dreams of… she can't be sure. Home? Maybe? Her childhood? The Mudblood that writhed under her - and oh, how she misses that sort of… power, the sort of horrible control all Blacks covet - but she can't describe how they leave her feeling.
Defeated, is the first word that comes to mind.
And, she wants angry to be the second.
But it's not, nor is it the third or fourth or fifth. There is nothing after defeat. Nothing after the shame and the loss of so much time. Only the darkness of her cell and the broken, brittle wood.
She decides to make a shapeless person out of the leftover mattress stuffing.
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They take her in her sleep, bundling some black thing over her head then half-carry, half-dragging, her from her nest of broken things. She flails as much as she is able but it's just a waste of energy. If she's to be taken to her death, then so be it, but she does mourn the loss of her shapeless doll. Who will care for her little Delphini?
When the bundle-bag is lifted from her head she's set roughly into a chair and the heated glare of the overhead lights are enough to make her flinch and hiss. She has no want to be blinded before struck. She wants to see the guard that snuffs out her spirit. At least it would be something other than constant grey and dirtied stripes. But, instead of the point of a wand - or the whispers of the Veil - she is greeted to the sight of copper skin and Ministry robes.
And a full head of unbound hair.
"Muddy," Bellatrix wheezed, her gaze narrowed and watered from the swinging lights.
"Ms. Lestrange." The Mudblood answered, her tone decidedly empty and far too even. There's a new strength in her posture, the sort of easy confidence gifted to those who held power. She can see it, even with a blurry gaze, that this is not the same girl she held beneath her. This is someone new, evolved.
She isn't sure why she smiles, something wild, but she does. For the first time, in a long time, she can feel… something. "I've missed you, Mudblood."
There's a harsh bark of 'bitch!' from the guard at the back of her chair and the grip of the second one is harsh as he grabs a bundle of her unwashed hair and shoves her face down onto the metal of the table before them.
"I'm sure you have." The Mudblood mused, voice even and patient over the sound of Bellatrix chair scraping the tile floor. "But it took me some time to get here. The goblins don't much care for me."
The statement had no context, but Bellatrix would take what she could get. She'll play this game, because there is nothing else to do. "I suspect they don't like it when filthy little fingers pluck what don't belong to them."
Though she can't see it she can imagine the girl and her unkind smile, "No, they do not."
There's a sound of movement nearby, and the guard at her back released her head - but not before delivering a little push to reiterate his presence and power over her. She snorted against the metal in front of her, "And why would the Minister's muddy pet come to visit little ol' me?"
"Well," Granger spoke, nonplussed by Bellatrix attempts to gain more emotion from her, "I've come to pick up my property."
A creeping sense of… falling pushed at her. "Property?" She dared to look at the guards at her back, both wearing matching expressions of cruelty.
"Property." Granger chirped, a sliver of excitement coloring her otherwise monotone words. She took a moment to set a ring before herself, and despite its shrunken size, she recognized the gleam of it. "Some time ago, Mr. Lestrange was brought here. Not for similar reasons, of course, but for business all the same."
Bellatrix swallowed bile. She knew how this story ended.
"I was with the Minister and Head Auror Potter, at the time." And Granger paused, her gaze invasive, but Bellatrix gave her no reaction. The fact that the boy had been elevated after the dark one's defeat was not surprising. "And he decided to attack his escorts. He stole a wand from a witch he'd wounded and tried to attack us, for his lord, he'd said."
Granger tapped a well-manicured nail upon the table, and the sound echoed about Bellatrix skull. "You killed him." Bellatrix said, hating her interest. "Is that what it is?"
"I conquered him," Granger corrected with a haughty sniff. "He died from the stress of it."
The rolling laughter of the guards at her back sounds like a chorus of high-pitched whistles. Something is… wrong here. The Mudblood was not a killer, all those years ago, and the way she'd said conquered was terribly off. Conquered… like she'd peeled open his chest and stitched him back into something else. Someone else. It was a phrase she'd never heard uttered so wickedly before, and while the process of destroying and absorbing another pureblood house was not an unknown one, she didn't realize that-
"Magic moste ancient has recognized me as Lord and Head of the Lestrange House and all the responsibility that comes with it. We are, for all intents and purposes, very very married." Granger spoke carefully, meticulously, with the gleam of the starving in her gaze. The sort of passion that made her pupils dilate to a liquid amber as she nibbled on her bottom lip.
Bellatrix vision blurred, eaten at the edges by black, "Magic recognized you-"
"-Me, yes. As the conqueror of House Lestrange. As your husband. And I will be, Bellatrix. My Bella, because you owe me your suffering, your pain, and a bit more than even that."
Her stomach churned with something horrid, a mixture of fury and madness. The knock, knock, knocking of something so perverse that she could hardly describe it. She'd been so cold within, so conditioned to crave, that it was startling to realize she could feel something other than the mundane death of all that she was. It was nostalgic in a way, the pressure in her chest and the furious flush of her skin, and when she cackled - prompting the guards to grip her tightly, as if they expected her frail frame to leap from the chair and do damage - it was like the first rush before a riot, all nerves and overwhelment.
It was like kissing the dark lords knuckles for the first time, before pledging her allegiance.
"I'm going to plant you in a pretty little garden. My perfect pureblood wife, with her genius Mudblood husband." Granger's voice had taken on the tint of the fervent, poisoned by a familiar readiness that reminded Bellatrix so sharply of her own sadism. Something had changed in the girl, the girl who didn't even flinch as she spat out a slur she'd taken and warped into her own word of power. "And you will bow, and obey, and be rehabilitated and they will think me a god for doing so."
And then, and then-
"And when it's all done, and the crowd sees their benevolent powerful lady, I will be more than just some upstart mudborn assistant-" And the words were said with such a powerful hatred, that Bellatrix could taste it. "I will be Minister! And maybe, if you're a good girl. I'll let you off your chains."
She was alive, blood singing, hunched over in her chair as she rocked back and forth. She was torn, pulled between the need to rant and rave. To spill taught words about magic and filth, while the other portion of her, the one that yearned to be free and to feel, practically melted under the draw of even this girl's wild sparks of magic.
There was so much to taste on the air. The pain of betrayal. The loathing of the oppressed. But more than that, the girl had been so very busy, tasting of magic that should not have been touched by someone who claimed to be Light.
"You cannot contain me." Bellatrix rasped, frenzied but held beneath the guards' grip.
"I don't want to contain you." Granger said, snorting. "I'm going to break you. Snap your proud little stem in half, then have you grow again in my soil."
Then, with a dismissive wave of hand, as if they did not talk of treason and dominance, she turned to walk back and out the door opposite from what Bellatrix had come from. "Now, run along and pack. And get her cleaned up. I don't want that filth in my manor."
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It's Fall, she thinks. It's Fall, and I am falling.
For a time, pain is all that she is. Pain and fury, which bleeds into exhaustion and vulnerability. Her mind is weak in a way that is different from the pressure of Azkaban. It is weak to touch, to company, to a sense of being needed - for she was a slave to one dark lord, and now she is slave to a darker lady. The girl is impressively frightening, efficient and inquisitive and eager. She is intelligent, and while her former lord was also thus, the girl wields her intelligence differently. Methodically.
She is not damaged by lacking a sliver of her soul.
The first few weeks are… tests. There is suffocating time in dark spaces for misbehavior, that moves to little freedoms outside in the golden sunlight. She cannot touch the silverware – the knives – to use as weapons, and the Mudblood has no issue displaying her power over her often when they are wont to fight. They are both predators, hunting each other throughout the manor. Having... fun. Bellatrix tries to kill her for the thrill of it. The girl, however, is swift and cunning and quick. She is caught and often, with her own stolen wand. But the bite and taste of pain from her wordless curse leaves her singing. This is… not what she wants.
Right?
But there are times when she does catch the girl. When she holds her down and pulls her hair and prepares to scratch her eyes out. But those times are rare, and there is always hesitation in her actions. She can't. She can't. She can't.
She doesn't want to hurt her. Not… like that.
And lately, she's far too easy to disarm. Granger wears the ring and it grants her the same sort of… power that Rodolphus had but was too afraid to use. Her touch is electric, a tongue of fire against her nerves. It blankets her mind and tugs at a foreign sense of submission and, in those moments, she feels like her wife… like a woman bred to be demure and soft and easily malleable. Something wild in her, that murderous urging, is twisted and soothed until it's far too distracting. And, that's when the girl wins. That's when she's flipped over, face smashed in the carpet, and teeth are at her neck and hands balled in her hair-
"Do you think you can win, wife? When I can control you so well? When I know that darkness, that cliff? When I can push you off it so easily?"
It's a million different little agonies, all bundled tightly around an indescribable pleasure. It's terrifying and exhilarating, the complete loss of control of her own body.
It's something she has never truly felt before.
No, that's not right. She'd come close once. When the girl had been beneath her instead of above her. When she was all pretty, coated in snot and tears, in Malfoy Manor. Bellatrix isn't sure her memories are correct, but the girl still feels soft in her phantom grip and her moans of pain are still deep and have always made her shiver. But, now the memory is heated. Covered in a film of pulsating red that makes Bellatrix squirm with a different sort of need. They've been tampered with, she thinks, but it's so hard to remember what really happened. And she is losing the energy needed to try.
She sleeps alone though, left to individual peace at night, and takes breakfast with the girl in the morning. They read and practice dull propriety while Bellatrix learns to walk hiding most of the limp Molly Weasley gave her. She takes her potions for pain - not caused by me, the girl had said – to ease the damage of past hexes and curses. And when the girl has friends come over, and they sneer she bites. Granger thinks it's all so cute and it just makes Bellatrix feel declawed, which makes her angry, which makes her hunt the girl through the manor, but then she's caught instead…
It's a dizzying cycle and she's starting to lose herself to it.
It's not love. It couldn't be. But, maybe it's intense infatuation. A building knot in her chest that leaves her breathless and bewildered. Everything that they do is blinding and vibrant, and somehow Granger has twisted her own madness into a weapon to wield her by.
She really is a growing flower in Granger's garden.
And by Spring she can't resist the girl's call to her bed…
Her touch ignites her, but more than that, Granger's bedtime stories of politicians set to be conquered, and the destruction they may wrought if they aren't, makes her melt.
Granger holds her so tightly, scratches her skin as she makes her plans. On nights when Bellatrix fails in her goal to cause pain or escape - which happens more and more and more and more - Granger uses the flesh of her back to carve her plans, whispering softly about their schedule and progress and how Draco, or some other hungry Slytherin, has finally joined her new-blood Circle…
How Cissy might visit soon to see how the therapy is going. How, if she's good, she'll convince her to bring Andromeda, and little Teddy so she could apologize and show remorse.
Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
And countless moons later, when she'd softly gasped, 'Hermione', like a prayer to the ceiling, she knew she'd bloomed.
But Hermione wouldn't plant just one flower in her garden. She can see it in the hungry look she gives the Weasley girl when she visits. In the way she wraps her sisters - one incredibly relieved and stiff, the other angry and scowling - up in her gospel. She has grand schemes, a map for the future.
She hears as much, often, in the Lestrange parlor-
"The soil was just right, you know."
The Lovegood woman is here again. She's always here. And while Bellatrix doesn't often speak, she doesn't mind Lovegood's musical tones.
"And you've come out nicely. The other seeds will too." She's sitting on Hermione's desk, the Prophet upside down in her grip, but Bellatrix can easily read the headline:
Hermione Granger Runs for Minister of Magic.
"Their petals might be a bit broken, too many weeds near the plots." Lovegood made a soft sound at an article, licked her thumb, then turned the page, "But the flowers with strong roots will always strangle them."
Bellatrix looked up from the tea she'd been stirring with her patronizingly given practice wand and searched her mind for something nasty to say, but Hermione's discipline from her teasing of the Weasley boy had left her far too languid.
So, Lovegood continued, "So what are you, then? In Hermione's garden?"
And Bellatrix meant to say, 'a witch', or maybe even a sort of flower. A strangled weed came to mind, because that was certainly how she often felt, tangled as she was in Hermione's roots. But what came out instead was something else entirely.
What was she…?
In this future she wasn't sure she wanted.
Where she was not dead.
In her new husband-witch's house?
Where she was controlled so completely, with the whips of pleasure and pain?
She smiled something wide and scandalous.
"I'm not alone."