Chapter 1: Her Highest Honor
Summer, 1994
Azkaban Prison
High Security Isolation Ward
"Bellatrix. Bellatrix Lestrange…."
Bellatrix shifted uncomfortably on her cot. 12 years in Azkaban and she was losing her damn mind.
"Bellatrix...it's time for you to reunite with your master…"
She reached a hand up to straighten out an uncomfortable crook in her neck, continuing to ignore the voices she was hearing. She'd always refused to be that prisoner to let herself go batshit crazy even though she knew there'd be a certain freedom in doing so...she always wanted to be able to maintain that she was stronger than that.
"Bellatrix! Look at me this instant!" The voice grew suddenly more insistent, so Bellatrix squeezed her eyes shut, hoping to block it out. And then something happened...a senesation she hadn't felt in thirteen years.
Her Dark Mark was burning.
"My Lord," she whispered to herself, savoring the way the mark felt against her skin at that moment-like standing too close to a fire.
"Yes," rasped the voice inside her head. She'd never realized going crazy could happen like this, in a single anti-climactic instance. It always seemed (with other prisoners anyway) that it happened more gradually over time, like a slow decaying of the mind followed by a rejection of reason.
"You aren't going crazy...at least, not in the way you think."
"What is this?" she whispered into the open air even though she knew no one was listening.
"What you've always wanted, isn't it? To be closer to me than any other servant?"
No. It was too tempting. Some sort of trick. The dementors forcing her to relive her own deepest desires only to snatch them away...or just a fantasy in her mind. When other prisoners went crazy, did the voices in their heads talk back to them? Answer their questions?
"Wasn't it you who always said there was no limit to my power?"
Not being able to squeeze her eyes shut any tighter and getting a headache from the flashes of light she saw as a result of her efforts, Bellatrix snapped her eyes open and shot straight up on her cot. It wasn't that she expected to see him there...but even after years of dreaming of him, she'd never been able to replicate his voice in her mind so accurately.
And of course, once her eyes adjusted to the different kind of darkness, all she saw before her was her empty cell.
"Trust me, Bellatrix. It is imperative that you do so or the plan for my return may continue to be delayed or even halted." He-it-sounded so insistent then, that she couldn't help but believe for even a second. Even if it was all a delusion, it was the happiest she'd been in years. Perhaps this was why so many of the others succumbed to going insane in here sooner-to experience the happy delusions.
"My Lord...it can't be...after all this time?"
"But it is." His voice, though clearly coming from inside her own head, was intoxicating and warm all the same.
"Where are you?" she asked out loud. If she could only keep the delusion going, keep it feeling real, maybe she'd be able to endure the rest of her life sentence here after all.
"You keep thinking this is all in your head. You're not wrong."
"But..."
"Here, let me give you a hint," said the voice. And then Bellatrix's arm moved. It was a bit like an involuntary jerk, but more than that. Her left arm picked itself up and wrung itself out in the air.
But she didn't do that...had no reason to move her arm like that.
And then her legs moved. Bellatrix stood up, walked the perimeter of her tiny cell...all without consciously making herself move.
"My Lord...are you...possessing me?"
"In a manner of speaking. I exist temporarily only as an incorporeal form, requiring a host to move about the physical world. So for the time, you can think of it as...I'm sharing you."
A sudden rush of adrenaline coursed through her at the mere idea of what the voice was suggesting. Her master, the Dark Lord, not only returning from his long absence, but choosing her as his vessel. The Dark Lord...inside of her...in such a way that no one else had never been, would never be allowed to be. Yet it was still so outlandish that she couldn't quite comprehend the incredible possibility.
"I don't doubt your power, master," she whispered. "But I doubt my strength. How am I to know it's really you with me and not some sort of delusion or trick brought on by my being isolated here for so long?"
The voice she wanted so desperately to believe was the Dark Lord went silent and for a few minutes, Bellatrix was alone with only her mixed-up thoughts. Had her doubt and attempt to return to reason chased away the temporary insanity that had overtaken her? Or...what if it really was the Dark Lord after all this time and she'd driven him away with her attitude? What if he chose another servant to help him return, taking her questioning as some form of rejection or weakness in her character? The second that horrific thought entered her mind she immediately decided she'd rather be crazy.
"It would be my highest honor,"said the voice in a wandering sort of way, as if it was returning with less conviction than before.
"What?"
"That's your answer to the question I posed to you the night we met at the recruitment event when you were fifteen years old. You were so young. I asked you why you wanted to serve me and you responded-"
"...it would be my highest honor," she finished. Her eyes had begun to well up at their corners, but she still was not convinced. The voice had yet to say anything to her that she didn't already know.
"Exitus Acta Probat, the tattoo script on my right shoulder," the voice continued. Meaning…"
"The result validates the deed," said Bellatrix. But she knew that, too. How often she'd stared up at him, studied his body, tried to memorize every detail.
"And I received it at the Torch Quill, in Knockturn Alley the summer after my fifth year at Hogwarts, after I killed my filthy muggle father. While receiving the tattoo, I thought of the idea for…?"
"...The Dark Marks. It is you." An indescribable feeling of warmth flooded through Bellatrix's body at that moment, such that she thought she could withstand a hundred more dementors. Though it also came with something like shock. After all this time, nothing happening, waiting for a sign...coming so close to giving up completely, afraid to think maybe he really was...dare she even think it...dead? And now...
"But master, I have so many questions," she said quickly. "What happened that night? Where did you go? And how are you here now?"
"We will have time for all of that later, when I can exist properly in my own body and we can discuss everything freely. For now, though, it is absolutely essential that we stick to the plan."
"And what is the first step in your plan, my Lord?"
"Getting you out of here."
