His most loyal, his most faithful servant

Chapter 3: Bellatrix Lestrange

In the privacy of her room, behind the barrier of an Imperturbable Charm, she'd wept bitter tears of misery - because she'd disappointed the Dark Lord, she'd angered him, but it's not the pain, it's the humiliation of public punishment that really hurts. It hurts that the Dark Lord had lost his temper with her, his most loyal, most faithful servant - the only one entrusted with the secrets of the Horcruxes. But it was some consolation to know that while she lives the Dark Lord won't share those precious secrets with another servant, not even with Snape, so eventually she'd drifted off to sleep - but she'd had some kind of unpleasant dream about the Dark Lord and the two half-bloods, Potter and Snape, and a very unpleasant dream it was, too, because somehow they'd all become mixed up together. She'd woken feeling foggy and confused, and all she could remember was the foul slander that had spewed from Potter's unworthy lips in the Hall of Prophecy, his dad was a Muggle – or has he been telling you lot he's pure-blood? A blasphemous lie, and one that she'd never repeat – and the others, the ones who'd been captured in the Department of Mysteries, would do better never to repeat it, either, now that they're out of Azkaban.

Azkaban! Even without the Dementors, Azkaban is a horrible place, and she'd risked Azkaban again, too, she'd duelled against half the Order that night, while Snape kept well out of it, and how could he have allowed Potter to bring all his nasty little friends with him, wasn't that his job – to keep an eye on Potter? And what did Snape say, you weren't a lot of use to him in prison, but the gesture was undoubtedly fine! Oh, she'd nearly hexed the loathsome half-blood when he'd said that, because only someone who's never spent a day in Azkaban could think that fourteen years in the place is a gesture!

And the worst of it was that the cringing little rat Animagus had cheated her of the honour of restoring the Dark Lord to a body - if only she'd been the one to give the flesh of the servant, willingly given, she would have been dearer to the Dark Lord than a daughter, and Snape would never have been able to come between them! But surely the Dark Lord will never forget that she was the only one who tried to find him when he fell? And if Frank and Alice Longbottom had known where the Dark Lord was, she would have made them talk, and she would have made Alastor Moody talk, too – if she'd been given the chance. But Snape had cheated her of that, he'd thrust himself forward, interfered, taken all the credit, in exactly the same way that he'd cheated Draco out of the glory of killing Dumbledore ...

Lying alone in the dark – their marriage had been well and truly over even before Rodolphus went back to Azkaban, and now he's amusing himself with one of the young female camp-followers, not that she cares, she's not like Cissy, she doesn't need a man to take care of her – she'd brooded over what had happened on the Astronomy Tower. Draco had done all the work, he'd got Death Eaters into Hogwarts when even the Dark Lord had thought it impossible, and Snape hadn't even fought against the Order – he'd come in at the end, when Dumbledore was disarmed, helpless, an easy kill! And Draco could have done it, Draco would have done it, if Snape had given him a chance, but Snape had pushed Draco aside - the cunning opportunist had killed a broken-down old man, and now he's basking in the Dark Lord's favour! And the Dark Lord doesn't seem to care that his favourite is a lowly half-blood, he seems to find it amusing, he calls Snape my little half-blood ...

And today the filthy half-blood had pushed her aside, just as he'd pushed Draco aside – he'd taken over the interrogation of Moody just as Moody was about to talk – and how dare he make those sneering references to the Longbottoms! She'd got nothing out of them only because they had nothing to tell ... and Snape should be ashamed to mention them, anyway.

She'd remembered Alice Longbottom, the son is the spitting image of his mother, it's astonishing that she hadn't recognised the boy at once in the Department of Mysteries, and Snape hadn't fancied plain, plump, round-faced Alice - no, it was the red-haired Mudblood that he'd lusted after. If the Dark Lord had chosen the Longbottoms' child, Alice wouldn't have had the choice to die for her son, the Dark Lord would never have hesitated, he'd have killed the mother as well as the child - but the Dark Lord had been minded to spare Lily Evans because he'd promised the Mudblood witch to Snape as his reward for bringing the news of the prophecy.

When she was in Azkaban she'd blamed Pettigrew for the Dark Lord's fall, she'd thought that the rat was a double-agent, that he'd led the Dark Lord into a trap, but now she knows better, she knows that it was all Snape's fault, because if Snape hadn't wanted James Potter's wife as his plaything, Harry Potter would have died that night and the Dark Lord would be ruling now - and why Snape has never been punished for that, she can't understand.

Harry Potter, the only remaining obstacle between the Dark Lord and his rightful place as lord of the whole of the wizarding world – according to the prophecy Harry Potter will have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord, but she'd seen no sign of that in the Atrium of the Ministry of Magic. The boy's Cruciatus Curse had been pitiful, and he hadn't even attempted the Killing Curse against Snape during the flight from Hogwarts! Well, it's her job to hunt down Harry Potter and bring him to the Dark Lord, and she will succeed.

But it's galling to think of how little progress she's made, her visit to Little Whinging hadn't been a success - not that she expected to find Potter at Privet Drive, the boy is not unintelligent and he must have known that he wouldn't be safe there from the Dark Lord one minute after he came of age – but her orders had been to kill every living thing in the house and set the Dark Mark flying over it, and she'd been foiled. The place had been deserted ... and the old Squib had known nothing, not even where the Muggle relatives had fled to.

The raid on the Weasley wedding is another painful memory - she'd burned the Burrow to the ground, but the guests had included the entire Order of the Phoenix and half the Auror Corps, including some of the Azkaban garrison who'd been given leave to attend. The fighting had been vicious, they'd suffered heavy casualties and the Dark Lord had not been pleased.

And it burns to think that her loss had been Snape's gain, because the attack on the Burrow had been timed to coincide with the raid on Azkaban, a double blow against the Ministry and the Order. Oh, she'd made it easy for Snape, she'd done all the heavy lifting – she'd cleared the way for his triumph at Azkaban, and Snape had been rewarded for that! The Dark Lord had promised the half-blood everything that had belonged to Lucius - but surely that doesn't include Narcissa, because what kind of a pure-blood witch would lower herself to mate with a Muggle, or the spawn of a filthy Muggle?

Then she'd remembered the shame that Andromeda had brought on the family, she'd fought her sister's half-caste brat in the Department of Mysteries, she'd fought with her again at the Burrow, but she hadn't managed to kill the little bitch. It's some comfort that she'd killed the blood-traitor Sirius, and she would gladly have killed Regulus, too, but Snape had cheated her of that pleasure, the Dark Lord had given Snape the job of executing Regulus.

Stupid, weak, unworthy Regulus, he'd taken the Dark Mark and then he'd turned against the Dark Lord - not that Regulus had lasted long, the Dark Lord had known that he'd turned traitor. And what a fool Regulus must have been, he knew that the Dark Lord is the greatest wizard, the most accomplished Legilimens the world has ever seen, didn't he realize that the Dark Lord can't be deceived?

She'd repeated to herself, the Dark Lord can't be deceived, but she'd known that they were empty words, the Dark Lord had sent Snape to spy on Dumbledore because he was a master of Occulumency ... and she'd didn't trust Snape, oh, he's inveigled his way into the Dark Lord's favour, but she'll never trust him, she'd never trust the loyalty of a half-blood!

She'd wondered, not for the first time, did Snape hear only the first few words of the prophecy? Because in all his years at Hogwarts, he'd never raised a finger against Harry Potter ... he'd claimed that he feared to touch the boy while he was under Dumbledore's protection, and she could believe that, the coward had never dared to raise wand or hand against Dumbledore until Draco found a way to bring Death Eaters into Hogwarts, but Snape had done nothing to hurt Potter on the night that Dumbledore died. It is forbidden to kill the Boy Who Lived, the child of the prophecy is for the Dark Lord alone, but Snape had the chance then to really do some damage to the boy – but he'd done nothing, nothing ...

She hadn't believed Snape's story that he'd thought Potter could be a great Dark wizard – but now she wonders whether there could have been some grain of truth in his lies. Does Snape know something about Potter, something he'd dared to keep from the Dark Lord? Could he be keeping his options open, could he be secretly in contact with Potter? And if she can bring proof of his disloyalty to the Dark Lord ...

So although it was completely, utterly insane, she'd got out of bed, dressed in her robes, and Apparated to that stinking river bank, because she couldn't live with her feverish suspicions a moment longer. And the long walk up through the Muggle slums had done nothing to cool her blood, she'd taken one or two wrong turnings, but she'd remembered the street, Spinner's End, and now she's tapping on the door of the squalid Muggle hovel he lives in, and he's not happy to see her, is he? There's a flicker of fear on his face, is he hiding something?

She walks through the door, looks contemptuously around the dingy little sitting-room, how he wallows in his Muggle filth – Snape is not even wearing robes, and he's been watching that flickering box that so fascinates Muggles, disgusting - and then she sees the wine bottle and the two glasses. For a moment she's amused, because she's obviously interrupted some sordid little intrigue, he must have packed the girl off upstairs when he heard her knock – and then she realises who it must be, and she's enraged, because Cissy has lost no time getting into bed with Lucius' replacement as the Dark Lord's right-hand man!

She demands to know where Narcissa is, she'll hex her sister for this, because this isn't just about family honour, this is an unforgivable personal betrayal ... and then it's as if a dam has been breached, she's completely out of control, she can't restrain herself any longer, she's shouting at Snape, a half-blood is just one step up from a filthy Mudblood, how dare you besmirch the Dark Lord's robes with your unworthy lips ... and she doesn't trust him, she's never trusted him, no half-blood can be trusted ...

She pauses for breath, he's smirking at her, what's he saying, of course all pure-bloods can be trusted, look at your own family - Andromeda, Sirius, Regulus ... she feels a thrill of fear at the sound of Regulus' name, is Snape threatening her? She'd said too much to Regulus, dropped too many hints about the Horcruxes - and Regulus was a traitor, maybe even a spy for that Muggle-loving old fool Dumbledore. Now she's unnerved, what does Snape know about Regulus? And if the Dark Lord thinks for a minute that she's been careless with his precious secrets ...

And then she knows that the time has come to sort it out between the two of them, once and for all, because she can't let Snape go running to the Dark Lord with a pack of lies about her, and she's not afraid to duel with him, no daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, toujours pur, is afraid of a mere half-blood!

She pulls out her wand, feeling a sense of fierce joy, because she's been spoiling for this fight for a long, long time - and Snape is whipping out his own wand, he's going to make a duel of it, excellent, because the Dark Lord will want to see this memory, the Dark Lord will want to know how Severus Snape died ... and she's going to give Snape a traitor's death, she's going to kill him the way that he killed Regulus, use the Cruciatus Curse to hurt Snape so much that the convulsions will break bones, rupture internal organs, and made blood pour out of every orifice.

But something goes terribly wrong, the curse rebounds on her, the force of her own spell slams her against the wall - and it feels as if her very bones are on fire, her eyes are rolling madly in her head, the crucio hurts so much, the pain is so intense, so all-consuming, that she just wants it to end ... and she's not even aware that she's screaming.

Then the unbearable pain of the Cruciatus Curse is gone, replaced by the relatively trivial pain of half a dozen cracked ribs, someone is shouting stop, and she can taste blood in her mouth, she's lying on the floor, shaking uncontrollably with the after-effects of the curse and looking up through a kind of mist at Snape ... and there's someone else in the room, a youth with unruly black hair and green eyes – Potter? And then she knows, and the knowledge is sweet, because she's been right about Snape, the filthy half-blood is a traitor!

But Potter isn't doing anything, he hasn't raised his wand ... what's wrong with him, hasn't the little bitty baby Potter got the guts to make an easy kill?

Potter's face is white, he looks like he's fighting down the urge to shout, or to vomit, his wand is trembling in his hand – it's laughable to think that this is the boy who will have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord! And this ridiculous child in flannel pyjamas a size too small for him is the so-called Chosen One!

She twists her neck, looks at Snape, so this is the master that he's chosen, what an idiot, Snape has betrayed the Dark Lord for the sake of a gormless teenager who hasn't the nerve or the ability to cast an Unforgivable Curse! And Snape is looking dismayed, he's looking afraid, he's beginning to realise the mistake he's made ...

She laughs at him, "You've got a problem, Snape, the boy doesn't seem able ...", but before she can even finish the sentence, before she can say, triumphantly, "You're going to have to do it yourself, Snape," the blast of green light hits her squarely in the chest.