One: After the Battle
They had won.
Somehow he had pulled victory out of the jaws of defeat and ended up with the Boy-Who-Lived dead at his feet.
Others soon fell. The Mudblood. The Longbottom boy. Sweet Ginny Weasley who had raged at Harry's death, and the rest of her pathetic brothers. McGonagall, Slughorn, Pomfrey, Flitwick… One by one, until no one remained.
Voldemort sighed. It was all over now. Governing will be easy with no opposition. Rookwood can handle the bureaucracy, Nott will oversee the International issues and Lestrange will handle the mudblood issue.
The Great Hall was quiet, unlike the flurry of sounds it had witnessed just a few short hours ago while the battle was raging. Voldemort walked among the corpses of fallen enemies and servants alike, no difference in how they were treated post-mortem. His Inner Circle was behind him, awaiting orders.
"Nott, send word to the foreign ministries. Tell them that the British Civil War is over, and we've emerged victorious. Rookwood, deal with whatever paperwork they send over. Rodolphus, organize the taskforce we discussed. Bella will give you the instructions tomorrow."
A pin could have fallen on the other side of the Great Hall and you would hear it such was the silence around the men in the room. Rodolphus looked wide-eyed the Dark Lord; Nott and Avery look at each other, unsure of how to proceed; Greyback was watching with a smirk on his face, and Rookwood was confused by the awkward moment.
They all turn to look towards the end of the Great Hall, where Voldemort knows - knows - Bellatrix' body is. He feels the control he holds over his emotions - few that they are - slip. He feels his palms sweat, his breath shorten, and his heart race. How had he made that mistake? How could have he forgotten? How-...
"Uhm- My Lord," Nott clears his throat, "Bellatrix. S-She's dead, My Lord."
"Indeed?" Rookwood, who hadn't been in the Great Hall when the Weasley Matriarch and Bellatrix had dueled, expressed his surprise, "Bellatrix fell?"
"Aye." It's Fenrir that answers, "Quite the show too."
Voldemort feels his hand clench involuntarily at the dismissive tone in the werewolf's voice.
"A pity. She was a fighter unlike any other."
"Leave."
The Inner Circle look towards their Lord at his unexpected order.
"My-My Lord?" Avery tries to understand.
"You have your orders, I said: Leave ."
His Inner Circle, the second most powerful people in the country now, scamper out of view. Tails between their legs afraid to provoke the Dark Lord's infamous temper and end up a lifeless corpse like Bellatrix. When finally alone, Voldemort walks the end of the Great Hall toward where her body is.
She was beautiful. He noted. As beautiful as she had been when she was young, albeit in different ways. Long gone were her porcelain skin, her shiny hair, and her flawless figure and their place were the wrinkles and scars of a life lived, a wild mass of black hair that had been spread out across his pillow more times than he could count, and an emancipated body that told the story of the warrior she had been. Beautiful.
Just as he about to touch her, he heard the doors of the Great Hall open. He looks up to see the Malfoy clan pass through the doors and then, they catch sight of him. They almost backtrack towards the exit to leave him alone, that is until Narcissa sees what he has been looking at. Until she sees the body of her eldest sister.
The rapid way grief covers her face would be almost comical if it were anyone other than Bellatrix. As it is, Voldemort barely has time to step away from Bellatrix when Narcissa sprints towards the lifeless body of her sister, needing to see her for herself.
"No-no-no-no!" Narcissa's desperate cries as she clings to her sister would be heartbreaking if one ignored her part in her death, "Please- please, Bella. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. "
Voldemort watched impassively, unwilling to get in the middle of the grief-stricken woman just yet. He is surprised, however, when Draco kneels beside his aunt and gives her a kiss on her forehead as if he hadn't thrown his wand towards the Potter boy as soon as former Boy-Who-Lived had woken up.
"Enough!" Voldemort snarls. With a flick of his wand, both Narcissa and Draco are flung backward and away from Bellatrix. Lucius, the coward, looked petrified while Draco and Narcissa looked confused and desolate.
"You dare come before me after what you've done." Voldemort spoke as he moved closer to the family, "You," he points at Lucius, "who deserted me not once but twice. And, you," he swivels towards Draco, "who could not kill a dying old man and who dared to give your wand to your Lord's enemy. And you," His red settle on Narcissa. "you who lied to my face and set in motion the Battle that killed your sister and almost killed me."
The trio is quiet. Unwilling to speak. Afraid to even think.
"Be lucky that Bella considered you, family despite all your faults." He speaks slowly. Making them understand that the only reason they weren't all writhing on the floor was their familial relationship with the woman he had-.
The woman that had shared his bed.
He closed his eyes trying to erase in the image of her lifeless body out of his head. She that had fought for him when the fighting was supposed to be over the minute Boy-Who-Lived had died. But it hadn't. Because the boy had never died. Because someone had lied to him, Bellatrix had fought when she shouldn't have needed to. If only someone - Narcissa - had told the truth.
He opens his red eyes and with quick wand draw, he points the wand at the Malfoy clan.
"Avada Kedavra."
Lucius Malfoy falls to the ground, his blue eyes never to see again. Narcissa and Draco hold back their cries of terror at the sight even as they fall to their knees beside him, hoping against all hope to find him alive. They clung to his rapidly cooling body, and bury their faces next to him. Voldemort finds the scene pitiful. The only thing stopping him from killing all of them and ending the Malfoy line then and there is the need he has for someone of a noble family to support his claims and his agendas.
Voldemort takes one last look at the Great Hall that had been the place of his victory, he takes in the putrid smell of the decaying bodies, the blown out windows letting the wind in and rubble covering every surface. His gaze then settled on her prone body, left aimlessly spread out after Narcissa had been thrown backward. He makes a decision.
Narcissa with tears running down her face - for her husband, for her sister - looks over at the Dark Lord. She looks on as he ever so gently lifts her sister into his arms, takes the time to adjust her as if she could feel any discomfort in death, and prepares to carry her out of the Great Hall. As he turns around, Narcissa rapidly turns her gaze back to her husband, lest he catches her looking.
As Voldemort takes his best lieutenant out of the massive graveyard that had become the Great Hall, he spares one last look at the Malfoy clan. He feels no regrets for killing Lucius. Bellatrix had never liked him, anyway.
Two: A Normal Meeting
It had been a month since the final Battle and things were going swimmingly. The ministry was theirs, mudbloods were nowhere to be seen, International ministries had congratulated him. Everything was according to plan.
Rookwood, Nott, and Greyback had their plates full of new cases and laws to pass. Rodolphus, the only member of the Inner Circle with nothing on his plate was growing restless. Everyone could see that he was a powder keg ready to explode at any minute. The rest of the Inner Circle just hoped they weren't anywhere near him when it finally happened.
"Someone needs to oversee the implementation of the M.U.D. act-" Voldemort spoke absentmindedly while looking at the reports, "Bel-" he turns to his right and has to conceal a frown at Bellatrix' absence. That is until he remembers why she hadn't been to the meeting in a month, "Belrose," he tries for the man that been his scapegoat for the past month, "you're in charge of that."
Death Eaters hadn't even blinked. It had become normal to hear the Dark Lord talk to Bellatrix, having apparently forgotten her death. Voldemort however, still hadn't gotten used to messing up every other day, "Dismissed." The Death Eaters also already used to quick dismissals after the Dark Lord's slip up, left without any more prompting, knowing that delaying would earn them nothing more than Crucio.
As they left him alone, Voldemort started pacing the room trying, once again, to figure out what exactly was wrong with him. He had never acted this way towards a fallen soldier. He had never felt their absence as keenly as he did hers. He had never looked for them in every crowd. He had never called out their name after their deaths. He had never grieved.
Voldemort stops his pacing, the epiphany clear in his eyes.
Was that it? Grief? Was he grieving her? Was that what it was? The hollowness in his space, the feeling that something was missing, the glaring hope he felt whenever a black-haired woman had her back turned towards him? Or was he just losing his mind?
Before he can go any further, the door to the room opens. Voldemort looks up to see Rodolphus Lestrange enter the room. The men look at each other for a while, their shared pain making the moment less awkward than it should have been. Nevertheless, it doesn't take long before Rodolphus breaks the silence.
"You need to stop saying her name." Rodolphus trembled, his hands shaking from lack of anything to drown his sorrows in.
"Excuse me?" Voldemort is so stunned at Rodolphus forwardness that he forgets to react about how insolent Rodolphus is being.
"You need to stop saying my wife 's name at every meeting."
"She was your wife in name only." Voldemort hisses, "She was more mine than she was ever yours."
"I loved her!" Rodolphus tells him." And you took her from me more times than I can count! Now you know how that feels!"
Voldemort doesn't even have to use his wand, his body despite appearing weak possessed a deceptive amount of strength. His clenched fist connects with the face of Bellatrix' widowed husband. Rodolphus sways slightly, not having expected a physical attack, he spits out the blood that filled his mouth where a tooth had gotten loose and fallen off.
"You could follow her you know? You're not impossible to kill." Rodolphus, lip split, and face swollen spoke with little care of how his Lord would react. Rodolphus simply didn't care anymore.
Voldemort strides forward and raises his wand ready to deal the final blow to the man that had stood so many times between him and Bella. Voldemort was finally ready to do what he should have done the second he realized he had wanted Bellatrix and she had been married.
"She loved you unlike any other." Are the last words Rodolphus speaks before a familiar green light invades the room.
Three: Traitor
There were very few people left who would dare oppose him. He should have known that one of the Blacks would manage to survive long enough to mount a resistance against him. They were tricky like that, and they were all vindictive unlike any other.
He should have been more careful with Andromeda.
He takes in the sight of the middle Black sister as his followers make her kneel before him. She had changed in the year since his victory. Her once full frame had thinned down to a scarily familiar silhouette, her light brown hair had a few gray strands in them and it was messily pinned up atop her head, her face drawn into a disgusted scowl.
He suppresses a shudder at such an expression in such a familiar face. Still, her similarities wouldn't save her for much longer. He sits in the Headmaster's chair at Hogwarts, the castle having left abandoned after the devastating Battle. Abandoned that is until Andromeda had taken it for herself and her little resistance.
"So, you thought you could dethrone me?"
Andromeda remains impassive, her eyes burning with hatred for the man who had taken everything from her. Daughter. Husband. Grandson.Andromeda's eyes sting with tears of hatred. Sister.
"Your death will be quick. Simply for your association with my most loyal."
Andromeda growls.
"She loved you, you know?" Voldemort speaks, trying to gather a reaction out of her.
"LIES!"
Andromeda yells, her black eyes crazed with grief and a madness characteristic of all the Blacks. Her wild, brown hair breaking free and swinging around with every shake of her head. Voldemort tries to ignore the similarities between the two sisters. Never had they seem so alike as they did right now. The hair, the eyes, the lips, the body… It was all too much, especially today of all days. Today which marked the first year of her death.
"She did. Despite your throwing everything away to be with that trash you married."
"LIES! LIES! LIES!"
Andromeda continues to chant and struggle against the bonds keeping her in place. The Death Eaters in the room move to restrain her. But she is a Black and she is - was - Bellatrix' sister. She is not easy to contain, sprouting curse after curse, her voice getting more and more shrill as person after person, tries to restrain her. The familiar, loud, irritating sound of her screeching voice combined with his Death Eaters panicked shouts about keeping her in place make Voldemort snap.
"Bellatrix, enough!"
Everyone freezes.
Voldemort, his back still turned from Andromeda and everyone else in the room, speaks "Leave us." The soldiers hesitate for a single moment before vacating the former Headmaster's office. As they are left alone, Andromeda rises from her knees with a little difficulty. She, however, doesn't try to remove her restraints, she knows her end is near and she's close to being with her family again.
"Our parents always confused our voices too, you know?"
Voldemort snorts. "I have no paternal affection for either of you."
"No. You just fucked my sister a couple times." Andromeda obscenely comments. Voldemort turns around, his red eyes furious, "Ah," Andromeda smirks, "More than a couple times, then." She lightly comments, "You are exceeding easy to read, you know that? Or is it just because I've succumbed to our madness and you can't tell us apart anymore?"
'Our madness' , Voldemort notes. Seemed like Andromeda, much like Bellatrix and unlike Narcissa, had never stopped seeing herself as a Black. Curious. But not curious enough to let her insolence slide.
"Avada Kedavra."
When death finally comes, Andromeda greets it with a smile.
Voldemort barely sparing a look at the fallen witch, waves his wand and banishes her to her family's graveyard. She was still a Black after all. Then he was finally alone in the office of his former enemy. Or at least that's what he thought.
"It was almost magnanimous of you to spare her pain, Tom." A voice well-known to Voldemort dared to speak. The Dark Lord sighed, he had forgotten about the bloody portrait, "Are you going soft after all these years?"
"Not at all, Albus" Voldemort responds, "What does it matter if she suffers? Her followers are dead, there would be no reason for her torment."
"Ah, her resemblance to dear Bellatrix must be mere coincidence."
Voldemort's eyes narrow, "They are nothing alike. Perhaps similar in looks, but even in madness Bellatrix' mere presence had irradiated power, while Andromeda's irradiated only desperation."
"You speak highly of her," Albus notes with a foul smile on his face.
"She was my only equal. As smart and as powerful, but not as ambitious. Bella was content in following me. Never to surpass me and only to serve me." Voldemort's wistful voice could have knocked Albus over with a feather.
"You loved her." The portrait breaths out the words, not really forming the syllables such was his amazement at the epiphany.
"Love? No." Voldemort answers from the Headmaster's chair, the glass of a golden brown liquid swirling in his hands, "Love is banal, bland, pitiful. What and Bella and I-... Well, we're much grander than the simple, pathetic love of common mortals."
Albus almost snorts. The phrasing, the words, they were almost romantic, if they hadn't come from a maniac who wouldn't know love if it bit him in the ass. Albus spends the rest of the afternoon just looking with his dull blue eyes at the brooding Dark Lord, not daring to say another word.
Four: Night
Voldemort, startled out of his slumber, abruptly sits in his bed, gasping as he tries to gulp air back into his lungs as fast as he can. His heaving breath and Nagini's hissing the only sounds in the otherwise empty wing of the Mansion. He frowns as he tries to remember his nightmare, his eyes clenched trying to conjure up the memory. He shakes his head as nothing comes to mind. Raising a hand to rub his sleep-heavy eyes, he takes one last steadying breath.
Bellatrix, uncharacteristically, hadn't even moved throughout the whole thing.
"Bella, I'm getting up." He sighs, "Tea?"
No answer comes.
Well, of course not. She was dead.
Voldemort reaches out and grasps the sheets from the side of the bed that Bellatrix had occupied not that long ago.
He had always detested pointless touching. Only her fingers, and her hands and her body being the rare human contact he had allowed and even that in small, controlled amounts. And Bellatrix had been much the same when it came to sleeping, hating to feel anyone touch her while she slept; unsurprising really, considering the noble upbringing she had experienced were married couples who slept in different wings of their lavish mansions, meeting only a couple days a month to perform their 'royal duties'.
So no, they hadn't slept in each other arms like those insipid romance novels Bellatrix claimed she hated. But they weren't like other pureblood pairs who slept apart either. No, for as long as he could remember he and Bella had shared the same bed. Not touching, not talking most of the time, but feeling content in each other's presence through simple things. The dipping of the mattress, the occasional stealing of the covers, the natural heat their bodies gave.
Rarely had they touched when not necessary. Save a few occasions. The night she had come back from Azkaban and had clung desperately to him, refusing to let him go, causing them to spend an uncomfortable sleepless night. And when he had had a nightmare - rare as they were - like the one he just had, caused by a lifetime of terrible memories of the Orphanage and the twelve years he spent as a weightless body. She had been there with a simple hand on his arm, eyes filled with sleepy drowsiness, make-up free and with a cup of tea in her spare hand.
For 25 years - he always chose to ignore the time they'd been apart - she had lain beside him. Always at his right. Always in near proximity to her wand. Always ready, should anything happen to them. Always protecting his back, should he ever need it.
Voldemort eyes sharpen at the memory and as a rage unlike any other fills his very being, he springs into motion. He rises rapidly, throws on a robe and almost runs downstairs to the Mansion's basement, towards the dungeons settled deep in the earth. Soon he reaches the last cell in the deepest, most remote part of the dungeon, he blows the door open and stalks into the tiny room. There in that dark, damp, hot cell is the mangled body of the Weasley Matriarch.
Molly, so unbelievably tired she could barely lift her head, trembled when she saw him. He had never once come over in the two months since the end of Battle and the beginning of her imprisonment, but she had known it was only a matter of time. She knew why she alone had been spared. She had taken something from him, and she would pay the price. For his part, Voldemort can't even look at her without his magic barreling out of control. As the bars of the cell next door explode with excess energy coming from him, he takes a last steadying breath before speaking.
"You-" Voldemort swallows the foreign emotion that threatened his throat, "You will know pain unlike any other."
"My children are dead," Molly answers back, her voice hollow, her fear gone, as was everyone she had ever cared about, "there is nothing you can do to me that's more painful than that."
"Oh, but there is , Mrs. Weasley." He snarls the name, the syllables coming out in a parselmouth-like fashion, as he stretches out the 's' in the words.
Despite herself, Molly feels a shiver running down her spine.
Voldemort smiled a twisted smile at her fear, and seized the opening he saw in her eyes. As fast as a snake he approaches the fallen, chained woman and with his long, white fingers grasps her chin and forces her to look in his wretched face. She tries to avert her eyes, again and again, seeing in those terrifying red eyes the same pain that is surely mirrored in her own face. Loss. Pain. Grief, beyond measure. He just grasps her chin tighter, his long nails penetrating the skin in her cheeks and causing a trail of blood run down his smooth, white hand.
"Look at me," he raps out, his voice never rising higher than a whisper, "I said, look at me," Molly opens the eyes she hadn't even noticed she had closed, "Listen to me carefully. Are you listening?" When she doesn't answer, he grasps her face even tighter until she nods, "Good, because I need you to listen carefully." He takes a deep breath, "I will make it my life's mission to make sure you live every day with the pain of losing your rabble of godforsaken children." Molly lets a few tears escape her eyes, "I will force you to relive each and every death again. And again. And again. Until you break." He takes steading breath feeling his emotions spinning out of control, "And then, I will mend you. Care for you. Unbreak you. Just to do it all over again."
"Please, please." Molly pleads a merciless man.
Months of physical torture hadn't broken her, but this, this would break her. Just imagining it made her want to give it all up and die. But he wouldn't let her. He would never let her die, never, ever. She was his until the day he decided otherwise.
"That spell - that Petrificus Totalus you used to kill her - is going to cost you. For the rest of your life."
Voldemort finally let go of the woman's chin and turns to leave the dungeons, his steps echoing out of the room until the door slammed closed, leaving Molly in darkness. Chained to the ground, with blood and a hot trail of tears streaming down her cheeks and into her neck, Molly's sobs were the only sound in the otherwise empty dungeons. Everyone else was dead. There was no one left to fill those dungeons. Everyone who had ever opposed Voldemort was dead, gone, and resting wherever they were.
But not Molly.
Molly would live past her years, well into her two-hundreds. And every day for those interminable years, the Dark Lord himself, the ruler of Britain, would personally come into her cell and show her the deaths of her loved ones. One by one. Every day. For two-hundred-years, without fail.
And all that over a haphazardly thrown Petrificus Totalus .
One: Surrender.
He doesn't remember how long he's been alive. He has lost count. It has been at least a thousand years, of that he is sure. He has seen empires rise and fall. He is pretty sure he used to rule an empire. But he doesn't remember anymore. He has traveled the world a hundred times over. Had hundreds of different bodies. All unfeeling carcasses, no matter how beautifully sculpted or how hideously thrown together it was. He doesn't remember his first one, nor his hundredth. He lost count of that too.
The one thing he knows for sure is that someone is missing. He doesn't know how he knows, but he finds himself always seeking someone on his right. Someone small, thin, fierce. He can't remember much else. But he figures he must have traveled in search of them.
His feet had led him here. To the place that used to be known as Britain.
He has been here before, in this forest. A long time ago. But the trees have grown past what he can remember and the ruins of the castle by the lake hadn't yielded anything useful about what had happened to it, why he was here and who was he searching for.
As he walks he feels something under his feet. With a flick of his wand the tiny stone that had momentarily derailed his thoughts was in his hands. It was small, but its triangular shape was odd. It didn't feel like a normal stone. It felt magical. Special. Unique.
"Well, well, would you look at that? A thousand years later and you still don't know your wizardry fairytales. How disappointing..." a feminine voice echoes around the death, soundless forest.
He looks up from the stone in his hand and to the source of the voice. He has seen countless beautiful women and has even joined their beds, but this one… This one, with her big, messy black hair, her wrinkled face, her dark, dark eyes, and smirking lips is enticing unlike any other.
"Are you just going to stand there? A 'hello' would be nice. Or is Lord Voldemort too important to greet his former mistress."
"Who's Voldemort?" His voice croaks. He hasn't spoken in years.
The woman raises her eyebrows disbelieving, "What? Are you making a joke right now? You hate jokes!" The woman looks honestly baffled, "Or have finally gotten over your daddy issues and actually go by 'Tom' these days?"
"Who's Tom?" It seemed even less familiar than Voldemort.
The woman groans and rolls her black eyes at him, "Endured a thousand years of torture and this is the welcome I get." Bellatrix snorts. "A half-broken man, who hasn't spoken in years and who can't even remember his own name."
A thousand years? He wonders. Another like him? He thought he was alone. All this time and he thought he was alone. But could it be? He had never met another immortal.
"How old are you?"
"Forty-seven. At least, I died that old."
He snorts. He can't help it. Forty-seven is the farthest thing from old in his mind.
"Come now," the woman teases, "not all of us can achieve immortality."
He draws his wand as soon as she finishes her sentence.
"How do you know that I'm immortal?" He asks, his wand raised ready to attack her should it come to that, "and did you say dead ? How are you here?"
She shrugs.
"Made a deal with the Devil."
"Stop playing games. Just who do you think you are?"
The black eyes have lost their mirth and turn to look at him as if staring into his broken very soul.
"I am not playing any games. I am the one you seek."
He stops.
He bites his lip.
Lowers his wand.
"Stand to my right." He demands.
She frowns and looks at him with a funny look on her face, but she complies nonetheless. As she takes a stance beside him, standing straight and staring straight ahead, he examines the feeling of having her beside him.
It feels nice. Right. Familiar . He hasn't had familiar is a long, long time.
"Who are you?"
She licks her lips and bites her cheek, seemingly unwilling to answer his question. He raises his wand again.
"Who are you?"
She sighs.
"My name is - was - Bellatrix."
"Bellatrix," he whispers to himself. It sounds familiar too, much more so than the previous names the woman had said. This time he speaks loud, "Bellatrix" It feels familiar, but still not quite right. He tries again, "Bella", his muscles shift lightly to form a barely detectable smile. Now, that made a whole lot more sense. "Bella, what do you want? Why are you here?"
She looks at him, her eyes lighter at the mention of his name for her.
"I am here for you. Like I've always been."
He should be trembling. It seemed like Death had finally caught up with him. But somehow he knew that she didn't mean him any harm. And he wanted her. He wanted her so badly he could almost taste her on his starved lips. He wanted her voice, her thoughts, her very being. He didn't remember her, his brain having long forgotten who she had been to him, but he had been searching and she had to be his answer. Still...
"I do not want to die." Thousands of years of living haven't dissuaded him from that.
"You don't need to." The woman - Bella - tells him, "Keep the stone with you and you'll have me."
He clutches the stone tightly in his hand. Unwilling to even give fate the possibility of losing her again.
"Come," she calls. "Show me your world."
For once, following an order didn't feel like surrender.