A/n - Rewritten but truly, one cannot refine shit into something good.

/o/o/o/

The rooms that served as our cells we often dark but also filled with an electrified silence that put the nerves on end. Inside our lightless prison nothing flourished or pulsed like it had on the outside, there were little signs of life within our cages. The thick walls seemed to be floating apart from us yet they were our most dedicated enemy, though like most other sensations at the time that was just a hallucination, a tremor of the madness which was to come.

Once every so often we be taken away individually and questioned then tortured, as nonsensical as it seems once we had given them all our answers. Those were the times when death seemed more welcoming than anything else one could bring to mind; I just wanted to rest for a second and not have to continue living under those people. The will to survive had faded inside of me, more like it had rudely trampled on and every time I closed me eyes I would wonder, is there a point to opening them again?

And then something happened which changed everything. She became my mistress of suffering who would pluck me from my cage and thrill my nerves for endless hours. She was peculiar even among her own crowd - she was strange for certain but also fragile and maybe a little bit dotty. During our sessions in the torture room I saw a tragic smile edge onto her face on occasion like she somehow regretted her actions or felt a tinge of remorse.

Of course that was absurd, I knew it was a mind game and she trying to elicit a reaction of some sort. If any of this tipped her moral compass even a little she would free us or at the very least stop tormenting me with her poisonous smiles. She did nothing of the sort however and to my horror our little meetings became more intense and difficult to forget.

Soon she switched to more personal punishments putting down her wand in favor of whips and hot metal. Her mark is visible on my body, a brand in her eyes I would think. In the ceaseless hell of our prison my body betrayed me to her. There were no lies in the torture chamber and soon I recognized arousal on her features during our sessions which sent my mind into spirals of fear... and excitement.

When she would put her face close to mine and gently run a blade down my thigh my body would tingle and the rare times when I would look up during her show of dominance our eyes would lock. The first time I looked into her eyes I was frightened because I had expected to see nothing, after all a monster has no emotion but I was so horribly wrong. In her eyes I saw an expectant glow and a definite sign of cognition.

The one thing I feared the most - the one punishment I knew I didn't have the power to endure was being sexually violated. And her eyes sang the song that made my fears come alive.

My companions were not so lucky as to have a tender judge. Their bodies held marks much graver than mine and if I were able to I would bare all their suffering alone if that meant they would be blessed with the mercy I had been given but did not deserve. Luna died there, with us beside her. I became obsessed with her in her last moments, she knew her life was coming to it's end yet she smiled for us. The pain stole away her beauty but she still had one last smile to give us. I had no idea what it must have been like for any of them, to know the true hurt and degradation of this hell. At the time, I would have preferred it to her bloody mind games.

Luna's death inspired dreams in me something which I had not seen in a long time. They were nightmares actually where Luna died over and over in front of me and each time her death face was different, somebody else I knew dying before me. Luna was a vessel in my dreams and if I had been able to decipher their meaning earlier perhaps things would have turned out different.

The dreaming stopped when the reality of her corpse in our prison finally caught up to me. Those bastards didn't even have the decency to bury her and give her peace, instead they used the rotting shell as a tool to subdue us. Many times as I sat gazing at the pile which was once my friend I would realize Luna was gone, she could never be returned to us and that there was now a Luna-shaped hole in the world. Truth as pure as death was not easy to deal with and under it's weight madness can bloom quickly.

The next time I saw my mistress she did not immediately assume reign of my body. Like always I was brought to the chamber and instructed to sit, I always thought it to be a sick courtesy allowing the victim to sit and be comfortable during torture. From my seat I saw her lift a small knife from the only other piece of furniture in the room, a small table which held the knife and a few other... tools.
Her eyes found mind and I could see the insanity in her but only for a second which was soon replaced by the same predatory, lustful gaze. As I watched in anxious horror she placed the blade on her forearm and made a thin incision. Then she made no other movement just watched me watch her blood slid from her veins and onto the dirty floor. I was transfixed for a moment and imagined that I was the one who hurt her but soon I grew impatient of her trickery and confounding display. Luna popped into my mind and I felt a swell of questions buzzing between my ears waiting to explode in a deadly chain reaction.

"Why is Luna gone but not me?" I spoke quietly leaving my eyes on the tiny pool of her blood. There was no emotion in my voice, how could there be, and my eyes reflected the longing I knew were behind those words.

She did not respond, in fact she made no movement, she just kept gazing at me until there was a subtle change in her posture. My eyes were still riveted to her blood sinking into the dust but I was aware she was moving to place the knife atop the rotten table. The light in the room seemed to have changed quality then, becoming thicker and it suddenly felt so cold that I expected to see my breath. Her footfalls were very quiet, the only sound I could gather was the soft swish of her clothes as she strode over to me.

When she was before me I felt her fingers slid under my chin with a surprising tenderness that I was too weak disregard let alone resist. Our eyes met. It was not a battle or a display or anything which would have been easier, she just looked at me. That was when I became aware that we shared many things in common. A lack of all those little things that urge us live and be brave and good. We shared a desperate nothing. The best parts of ourselves were missing and I accepted that truth when I didn't look away.

Perhaps it was a spell but I understood then that I could never leave this place as who I was before, maybe I wouldn't leave period but that's not what I suspected - what I had come to understand.
Wordless still she circled around me and placed her hands on my shoulders. I closed my eyes and thought about Harry and Ron and everybody else, they must think we're all dead by now I mused. We had all been here a long time, longer than I care to admit, and not once were there attempts to liberate us.

They had abandoned us, abandoned me. I was betrayed by my best friends and left to rot. I was so tired and if anyone cared to look, they would not find me... only a being that looked similar. In the stillness of my torture chamber my mind hummed to life once again but this time it was full of plans for vengeance and a deep sorrow which held the capacity to destroy anything that stood in the way of my goals.

At some point in my ruminations I had decided that I would become a Death Eater along with my mistress.

I felt her fingers ghost over my thin shoulders and up to my neck in a slow caress, I leaned into her touch and sighed. I felt a wisp of breath roll across my face as Bellatrix Lestrange whispered softly in her raspy voice,

"Wise choice Hermione."