My wedding day. The happiest day of my life. Then why did I feel like my world was ripping apart? Why was a sorrow so heavy pressing down on my heart? I looked in the mirror, at the painted, stylized image of Pureblood perfection that I was today.
It wasn't me. I wasn't getting married. The real Bellatrix Black was not marrying Rodolphus Lestrange today. The real Bellatrix Black had already pledged her life to another. Tears began to track down my cheeks, though I knew a Pureblood did not cry. I was alone, and I was losing my everything today. I was losing the only person I had ever loved, my lord and master. Today was the day I married another, and lost my love forever.
Did
I disappoint you or let you down?
Should I be feeling guilty or
let the judges frown?
What could I have done? I had no choice, no say. The marriage was forced upon me on my twenty-first birthday because I had not married another. Could not marry another. Could not even show my love to anyone save the one who I loved. What kind of a future did a relationship like that have?
'Cause
I saw the end before we'd begun,
Yes I saw you were blinded and I
knew they had won.
And now? What could there be now? Love lay in ruins around me, my hands bound by the laws of marriage. I could not have him, not any longer.
So
I took what's mine by eternal right.
Took your soul out into the
night.
He's trusted me, more than any other follower. And trust had been important. He trusted almost no-one, and yet he trusted me, enough to indulge his greatest weakness, enough to dare to love.
It
may be over but it won't stop there,
I am here for you if you'd
only care.
He could have stopped this, I thought bitterly. He had the power, the influence. He could have commanded Rodolphus, my parents. He could have demanded I remained unmarried. But yet he did not. He let me go. After all he'd given me, and I'd given him, he let me go, lost to a loveless prison.
You
touched my heart you touched my soul.
You changed my life and all
my goals.
He'd changed everything about me. He had made me his, and I had let him. I had allowed him to take me and sculpt me into what he wanted me to be, because I loved him and love can make you do anything.
And
love is blind and that I knew when,
My heart was blinded by you.
I hadn't seen anything save him. I had killed for him. I would have died for him, still would. I would still do anything that he commanded of me. I would die for him with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart, knowing I was serving the one I loved.
I've
kissed your lips and held your head.
Shared your dreams and shared
your bed.
The times we've shared, secrets by necessity, had been the best moments of my life, the only times I could look back on with a smile on my face.
I
know you well, I know your smell.
I've been addicted to you.
I
know him, I think, better than any other. I can see when he is
angered, when he is happy. I can sense his rage and know how to
soothe him. It is rare for him to give away such power. I am the only
one who knows him well enough to possess it, the only one he has let
inside his shield.
Goodbye
my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
And now. Now I had to leave him. I had to marry, and lose him forever. Viciously, I scrubbed the tears from my eyes as my sister came to find me. They were ready for me now. I had to go, and marry, and feign love, and happiness when I was empty inside.
You
have been the one.
You have been the one for me.
He had been my life, my world and now I was to lose him, forever. I felt as if a huge chasm was splitting my heart in two at the thought. No more moments with him with none other around. No more subtle touches, murmured words. No more secret kisses, hidden weakness from the world.
I
am a dreamer but when I wake,
You can't break my spirit - it's my
dreams you take.
They wouldn't break me. I would marry. I would remain cold, austere, a pureblood to the last. But they had taken all the love from my life. They had killed me.
And
as you move on, remember me,
Remember us and all we used to be
The doors opened in front of me, revealing a sea of plastic, false smiles. Garish decorations, overly bright colours, blinding in their intensity. Sickening. It was nothing to compare to the midnight shadow of my love for him. This was fake, a spectacle and a farce. What I had with him was real, or had been. Now it was gone forever, extinct.
You've
seen me cry, you've seen me smile.
I've watched you sleeping for
a while.
He'd seen parts of me that did not exist to the rest of the world. He had seen the grief, the pain, the loss. He had seen the joy, the ecstasy and the happiness. He knew me.
I'd
be the mother of your child.
I'd spend a lifetime with you.
And yet now I could not. I was doomed to spend a lifetime with another, watching the one I loved but unable to show him my love. The wedding march had begun, inaudible over the song inside me.
I
know your fears and you know mine.
We've had our doubts but now
we're fine,
I reached the altar, wreathed in greenery. A cage, I saw it as. It would lock me into a life without the one thing I had ever loved. Anger and sadness warred for dominance within me while a fake smile plastered itself across my face.
And
I love you, I swear that's true.
I cannot live without you.
Maybe
I would be breathing once I had married Rodolphus, but I would not be
alive. Life without love was not life; it was existence, survival,
nothing more.
Goodbye
my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have
been the one for me.
The
vows passed quickly. I said my bit, acted the Pureblood bride,
pleased with my parent's choice. Happily married. A lie.
And now I lay in bed, next to my new husband. He was nothing compared to my love. He could not compare to the magnificent heights of pleasure I had reached through love.
And
I still hold your hand in mine.
In mine when I'm asleep.
Sleep. Dreams. I could return to him in my dreams, away from my husband. I would be away from all grasp of rules, decorum, everything. I could be free in dreams.
And
I will bear my soul in time,
When I'm kneeling at your feet.
He is still my master. I still serve him. He still sees the love in my eyes. I do not know how he hides the love in his from the rest of the world. They think he is incapable of love. They are wrong, so wrong.
Goodbye
my lover.
Goodbye my friend.
You have been the one.
You have
been the one for me.
There is none now who can love me true. There is no love in my heart that is left. All is his, taken, muted and destroyed by loss. I have no love left. And without love, I have no life.
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow.
I am Bellatrix Lestrange. Empty. I am the shell of the woman who dared, once, long ago, to love and be loved by Lord Voldemort.