Author's Notes: Written for the first Archery assignment for Camp Potter – write a 2K or longer fic about waiting.

)O(

Bellatrix was never a patient woman, not even when it would serve her best, and never was she so painfully aware of her own impatience as when she was waiting for her Master to come for her.

The early days were the easiest – the first few weeks after Bellatrix was sent to Azkaban passed quickly. She sat with her legs folded under her next to the door, kept her chin high and an expression of disdain on her face so that anyone who might pass by could see that she was still in control of herself, and that they would suffer when she was freed.

But after that first few weeks, her inner strength began to wane.

She had expected the Dark Lord's return to be quick, even without her helping it. Lucius Malfoy was still not in Azkaban, after all, and he had been nearly as close to the Dark Lord as she. Why was he not doing everything in his considerable power to resurrect their Master as soon as possible?

She could only assume that he was doing whatever he could, and that it was just taking a little longer than expected – after all, who knew how complex and delicate a business resurrecting a man was? – and so, though mildly frustrated, she continued to wait.

Weeks turned into months, and when the first year turned, she let herself become angry.

There was no excuse for Lucius taking so long. It could not take more than a year to bring the Dark Lord back to his power, not if he was trying. And there were others still not in Azkaban as well – even if Lucius was not doing everything he could, why were none of the others?

For the first time, Bellatrix flung herself against the bars in a vain attempt to break them. They did not even shift against her weight, and yet she battered against them until her body was bruised and streaked with blood, and then she sank to her knees and slammed her hands against them still, willing them to break so that she could be free and go find the Dark Lord herself. If no one who was free would do it, then she would have to, if only the bars would break…

They did not break, of course, and Bellatrix was eventually so consumed by exhaustion that she could do nothing but drape herself against the bars and let out dry, shuddering sobs. Dementors moved past her, and the misery she felt when they were near was almost unbearable.

After that outburst, Bellatrix controlled herself more carefully. She knew the Dementors fed off her misery, and she knew that she would have trouble holding onto what sanity she still had if they were always around her, always enjoying her despair. She would continue to wait. Perhaps the process for bringing the Dark Lord back to power was more involved than she had expected, or perhaps the Aurors were still monitoring those who had been accused of being Death Eaters, and they had to work discreetly in order to avoid being caught and having their work go to waste. Bellatrix could understand that – Lucius Malfoy was, after all, a bit of a coward; he would naturally want to be careful. Very careful. Irritatingly careful.

So she would wait a little longer. Someday, she would speak to Lucius about the importance of being swift, and she would make him pay for the time she spent in Azkaban, but there would be plenty of time for that when she was free.

Then little Barty Crouch died.

His cell was near to Bellatrix's – not close enough that she could see him or speak to him, but close enough that she could watch when the Dementors bore his body out. There was a man from the Ministry of Magic accompanying them, looking grim. Bellatrix reached out through the bars and clawed at his robes. He twitched them away, looking disgusted.

"What happened?" she demanded, her voice rough from disuse.

"He is dead," the man from the Ministry said flatly, then he turned away from her and left her, trembling, without another word.

She wanted to say no, but she couldn't speak. Barty Crouch couldn't be dead. He was so young – and he had only been there for as long as she had; why was he dead so soon?

Why had the Dark Lord let this happen? Crouch had been one of his young favourites – he had confided in Bellatrix that he thought he had great potential, perhaps more than any of the others who had joined the Death Eaters of late. How could he have let their imprisonment go on so long that he had lost him?

Bellatrix cried that night, silently and without so much as opening her mouth, just letting teardrops splash down her cheeks. But she also stiffened her resolve – the Dark Lord had already lost one faithful Death Eater to Azkaban. Bellatrix doubted that Rabastan Lestrange, sickly little creature that he was, would be able to last much longer, and once he was gone, it would only be a matter of time before Rodolphus gave up his will to live as well. The Dark Lord could not lose all four of his most faithful servants to Azkaban. If all the others died, she would still have to be strong, and have to be ready to fight when the time came.

And so Bellatrix took to pacing her cell by day, unwilling to let her body become weak from disuse. She muttered under her breath, reciting spells that she had learned, poems that she had had to learn when she was a young lady growing up in an over-cultured household, articles about the Dark Lord that she had committed to memory before she became a Death Eater. It was something to do with her mouth and her mind, and if she appeared crazy to others – well, that was preferable to actually losing her mind, which she had no doubt that she would do if she was imprisoned for much longer. She slept on the ground, her head resting against the bars so that if that night was the night, she would be ready.

But the Dark Lord didn't come. In the mornings, her neck ached from the position she spent the night in, her cheek had thick strips of red, scratched skin where the rusted bars chafe it, and with every day that passed, a little seed of doubt grew in her heart – doubt that her Master would ever come for her.

The Dementors hovered around her, preying on the fears that she tries to keep hidden even from herself.

What if he never came? What if she had been wrong - what if they had all been wrong - what if the spell that had backfired really had destroyed him?

Bellatrix knew more of her Master's intentions regarding immortality than most of the other Death Eaters did, and she had always had confidence that all the precautions he had taken to preserve everlasting life - some precautions which he had told her about, and some which he had kept secret even from her - would be enough to keep him safe under any and all circumstances. But what if there had been something particular about what had happened that night at Godric's Hollow, something that had managed to break through his many layers of protection, something that really had brought about his end?

No, she could not let herself think that! Whenever those thoughts became closer in her mind, she felt the edges of madness approaching her as well. She could not think about anything else once those matters occurred to her, and as soon as she began to consider that her Master really was dead and gone - that the Dark Mark on her arm would never again burn with his call - that she would spend the rest of her numbered days within this cell, waiting in vain for a Lord that would never come to save her - she inevitably ended up sitting on the ground, rocking back and forth, clutching her head and whispering to herself - no, it couldn't be true, it couldn't.

Then she would realize what madness she was allowing to attack her, and she would stand up and begin to pace again, reciting things under her breath to keep the thoughts at bay.

But it could not work forever, and there was a time - many years into her stint in Azkaban, long after Barty Crouch's death, long after she had given up hope that Lucius Malfoy and those others lucky enough to have not been imprisoned were doing all that they could to find their Lord - when she simply stopped trying.

She lay on the thin plank that served as her bed and stared up at the ceiling above her. Counting the spiders that built their webs over her head replaced reciting poetry in her mind, and eventually, even counting the spiders felt like so gruelling and futile a task that she could no longer do it, and then she simply watched them build their webs and whispered up to them that they were lucky - they could leave the prison at any time they wanted, go out onto the beach and wait for a visiting boat, scuttle aboard and go back to the mainland, and no one would ever search them out and send them back. The spiders were lucky - luckier than her, at any rate.

She took then to crushing them whenever they came far enough down the walls to be within her reach - crushing them in fits of fury that they were free and she was not. Seeing their legs splay out beneath her finger and feeling their little shells crunch beneath her touch was the closest thing she could get to the rush of euphoria she had once felt when she was outside, when she could torture and kill at her Master's word, do all those things that she took such intense pleasure in...

But Bellatrix grew tired even of killing the spiders. She grew tired as well of torturing them, pulling their legs off one by one to see them twitch - something that she had done to pass time when she was a very little girl. Doing that reminded her of her family, and she wondered what those members who were still alive - and had not been disowned - were doing while she rotted within the prison. Why had Narcissa never come to see her - nor her parents? They had known how she supported the Dark Lord, and supported him alongside her, though never to the extent that she had managed. Why were they not there as well, telling her that they were proud of her for giving her life to such a worthy cause? Why were they not sharing information from the outside world? Oh, what she would have given for a glimpse of the Daily Prophet, just long enough to see if there was so much as a hint that her Lord was rising again...

It was thirteen years - thirteen long years, thirteen years which left daily scratches gouged into her walls while she counted off the nights, and the corpses of a million dismembered spiders lying around her - thirteen years before she felt her Dark Mark burn.

It had been so long that Bellatrix barely remembered what the feeling was. All she knew was that she was lying on the floor beside the bars, idly stroking one fingernail around the skull and wondering if it was her imagination, or if the lines had become darker since she had last looked, and then a sharp, hot pain went through her arm and she was doubled over, clutching it, and a scream escaped her lips. And all around her were screams as well - some that she recognized, even. Bellatrix had quite forgotten what that pain was, and for a moment, she thought that she really had completely lost her mind - or perhaps that she was dying, and the screaming she was hearing were the demons that were coming to collect her - but then she looked down at her arm and saw the Mark burning bright and black against her skin, and her cry of pain turned to one of delight.

She stumbled to her feet and flung herself against the bars of her cell again, not trying to break them as she had all those years ago, but pressing into them so her cry would carry as far as she could possibly let it, and she screamed out into the prison, "He is risen! The Dark Lord is risen, and he is calling for us!"

)O(

Fin