And Ophelia Wept
Lunatic With a Hero Complex
Beautiful, he whispered. Powerful. Faithful.
His favorite. He loved her. He could give her respect.
He was clear and steady figure in a sea of changing morals. He cared about her, about the woman that was inside the Black name. He would make her a goddess among wizards.
That was when she was sane.
Now. Life was a broken windowpane of shards of love and points of reflection. Everything was constantly in the foreground, pain, betrayal, loyalty, devotion. But the one thing that ruled and lorded above all other petty emotions was madness. A clean fine madness, fully developed and beautiful in its sheer pedigree. It coated everything else in a sharp clarity that made every indecision, every shock, the breaking of the world. But like most grand things, it needed a focus. And it had found that focus in her devotion to her Lord. Madness enjoys steadiness. And her Lord was steadiness incarnate, always the same, never wavering. So she served him.
And she grew madder by the day.
And then he fell. And she was tried. And she stayed loyal. And she was locked away.
And all left to her was her loyalty…and her madness.
The loyalty that pillowed her metal cot when the dementors swept by and she was reminded constantly of how despite her faith and despite her proper manners, it was always Cissy that got the praise, and Cissy that got to live on the outside world with her rich husband and tiny itty bitty son.
She'd wanted a son, she'd mentioned it to Rudolphus once, in passing, and he'd laughed as if it were some great joke. She hadn't mentioned it again. Perhaps they weren't aware of what a fine mother she could be. The things she could teach her children. The great tales of her Lord's take over. The depiction of the final battle between the all powerful Lord Voldemort and the puny remnants of the spineless wizarding world. And how her Lord, being the merciful man that he is, had spared the last of the opposition, even allowing some of them to work for him, in the smaller odd jobs of the new ministry.
She knew it was the stuff that made fine children and proper heirs, these tales of loyalty and the triumph of power.
But children were a thing of the past now for Bellatrix. How one could conceive a child with nothing to mate with but thin air was beyond even her extensive knowledge of the black arts.
But she knew it was not over. Her Lord would return. And she would be rewarded beyond measure.
That boy, that annoying, stubborn, weak, and presumptuous little boy. He speaks her Lord's name with absolutely no respect, and then dares, Dares, to cast Cruciatus on her. As if he had the ability to do anything but tickle her knees. She would see him killed. And not swiftly, but slowly. Letting him watch each part of his body as it descended into the fire she would create for it. He would utter her Lord's name with respect by the end. But she would need time.
He'd left him. Alive. He'd fled from the ministry, and she couldn't figure out why. It would have been so easy for him to finish the boy. Just destroy him while none of the aurors could get to him. But he'd fled, and Albus Dumbledore had won.
Harry Potter lived.
And Bellatrix couldn't figure out why. He should be writhing under her tender ministrations right this very second. Screaming out for his dead mother, begging her for mercy that was not there.
But he lived.
She felt torn. Her madness had always run one direction, serve her Lord. That was what it felt most strongly. But she just did not understand. And it was making her mind creak and groan like distressed timber.
Her madness was a river. The Amazon. And now, it was splitting, thousands of tributaries running in every direction. Conflicting emotions drove splinters through her consciousness. She wanted to both drift off away from the strangeness of this world's fighting, and she wanted to charge into battle immediately. She wanted to rebel, and she wanted to worship. She wanted to sing, she wanted to cry, she wanted to hate, she wanted to love. Her mind was cracking. And she didn't know what was going to survive, and thanks to the severity of her madness, she really did not care.
Her Lord was the only person she still was able to speak to. Everyone else suffered the fifty-fifty chance of either injury or being ignored altogether. She did not know who to blame. So she blamed Harry Potter. She wasn't quite sure how it was his fault, but she knew it must be.
She would fight him, till the last breath, with no clear thought as to why he must die, only that he must, that in the end it would be better for her. The body parts that surrounded her on the battlefield like the entourage of a queen seemed to speak to her. Whispers and divine mutters of the beauty of the blood and carnage. And yet, the longer she let them whisper, the deeper her Amazon divided. Soon, it would break her mind, like the Amazon broke apart forests.
She met Harry Potter on the battlefield before her Lord did. And she faught him with every bit of knowledge and strength passed down the Black line to her. She was merciless, and she giggled and flirted with the boy.
And yet…when the sword of Godric Gryffindor finally slid into her lungs, she felt only calm and relief, like river water slipping into the dry cracks of a long forgotten cave.
She had been beautiful once. She had been smart and witty.
She had been sane.
But now, all she desired, was to float down the river, and sing her song.