There were many sensations to be expected when one attended a funeral. Grief, sorrow, compassion… those were all perfectly acceptable things to experience at a funeral.
Arousal, Lord Voldemort thought, was probably far less acceptable.
For some reason, his mind was busy cooking up thoughts of Bellatrix, and every time he glanced over to her, she looked so damnably pretty in her black lace veil and simple caped dress that he firmed up by the moment. He scowled and desperately tried to listen to Pollux Black talk about his wife Irma.
"She was a woman who knew right from wrong," Pollux was saying solemnly in the formal dining room of the Black home at Grimmauld Place. "She was a woman who became a true and shining member of the House of Black, who brought pride upon our noble family…"
The burial ceremony at the Black family's country home had already taken place, followed by a sorrowful reception. Now, Irma's closest family members had gathered at Grimmauld Place - Irma's ancient mother-in-law Violetta was seated beside Cygnus Black III and Druella Black. Beside them was Narcissa Black, and beside her was Walburga Black with her two sons, Sirius and Regulus and their father Orion. Bellatrix sat beside Voldemort, who, as the Dark Lord, took one end of the table. The widowed Pollux took the other. There had been many dozens at the more public funeral, but this was an intimate affair.
They had eaten a delicious fudge cake and had conducted toasts in Irma's honour. Now Pollux was going on and on about his wife. Finally, at very long last, Pollux sat, and everyone began talking in quiet conversations. Voldemort shut his eyes as Bellatrix got swept up into a conversation with her young cousin Regulus. He tried desperately to rid himself of the feeling sweeping over him.
He was entirely too old for this. This - a spontaneous erection spurred on by uncontrolled lust - was the burden of pubescent boys, not Dark wizards. He was in his forties. He had grey in his hair. But his wife was still weeks away from her twenty-first birthday, and she lit fires in his veins that he couldn't quite put out.
"Bella," Voldemort whispered, softly enough that only she could hear him. She flicked her eyes away from Regulus, and she seemed to immediately read the urgency in his eyes. She frowned a little and feigned a shaking sigh as she told Regulus,
"Sorry. I just… this is a difficult day. I could use a little… excuse me. My Lord, would you…?"
"Yes." Voldemort rose, prompting everyone else in the dining room to do the same. Bellatrix walked very briskly from the space, and as Voldemort followed her, he heard Narcissa say,
"She doesn't want to cry in front of anyone, I'll bet."
Voldemort followed Bellatrix out into the ground floor corridor and around the corner to a little library. He shut the door and moved quickly to lean back against the books. He wrenched his eyes shut and whispered,
"For fuck's sake."
"My Lord, what's the matter?" Bellatrix asked, and he blindly reached for her hand. He smashed it against his crotch, and she gasped when she felt that he was hard. She started to drag her fingers along his rigid length, worming her way beneath the layers of his robes until she was stroking him through the thin linen of his trousers.
"What's got you like this?" Bellatrix asked in a purr, and Voldemort choked back,
"You."
"Me? I didn't do anything." She was taunting him now. He should scold her for taunting him, he thought. But her hand felt so good on him, and he found himself whispering almost apologetically,
"Sometimes it just happens. I mean to say, very young men sometimes… this hasn't happened in decades, but you, Bella… you… oh."
She was stroking him very purposefully now, and his eyes sprang open to see an unquenched thirst in her wide black eyes. They flashed red for a brief moment, and he grunted.
"Let me help you," she whispered, her thumb drawing lines around his tip through his underwear and trousers. Voldemort bucked his hips against her a little, and Bellatrix licked her lip like he was a dessert to be devoured as she mumbled, "Just let me get on my knees. It'll only take a moment."
"Bella." He tangled his fingers in her hair, and she leaned forward and let her breath be hot and slow through the chest of his robes. Her hands were drawing him ever nearer to that phantom edge, even through the fabric, and he informed her,
"If you don't stop, I'm going to finish right here."
"There are spells to clean up that sort of mess, My Lord." Bellatrix raised her eyes to him and leaned harder against his chest. Her fingers flew up and down his shaft, lingering around his tip through his underwear and trousers. Closer and closer he came to breaking, everything going hot and tight inside of him. His breath was just a series of erratic, shallow pants now. His fingers tightened in Bellatrix's hair, and he let his eyes flutter shut.
Suddenly his instinctive Legilimency made him very aware of a soul, a mind, just outside the door.
"Bella, stop," he whispered, feeling the mind grow closer. He panicked then, wrenching Bellatrix's hands away and shoving his robes closed as he hissed, "Stop, stop, stop!"
The door opened, and Bellatrix gasped as she whirled around, still flush up against Voldemort's body. They were both panting now, both red-cheeked and breathless and obviously flush with want. At least, Voldemort thought, Bellatrix was standing in front of him, blocking his father-in-law's view of Voldemort's blazing erection.
"Cygnus," Voldemort said, hearing the shake in his own voice. He could tell at once that Cygnus Black III knew approximately what he'd walked in on. Bellatrix wasn't distraught and she wasn't crying. She was cradled up against her husband, against the Dark Lord, both of them looking and sounding like they'd been mid-coitus. But Voldemort insisted,
"Bella wasn't comfortable being emotional… in front of the others."
"Oh. That's all right, dear," Cygnus said to his daughter. Bellatrix asked softly,
"Did you need something, Daddy?"
"I… erm… I had just come for a photo album. You know, the one from your Gran's seventieth birthday party. It's only… Sirius and Regulus were so young then; it was six years ago, so they barely remember. I was going to show them the photos."
"Oh. All right." Bellatrix took a half step away from Voldemort, but he wrenched at the back of her robes and held her to keep her covering the evidence of the erection that still hadn't quite faded. Cygnus looked very embarrassed and then gestured to the bookshelves.
"It's… erm… it's behind you. I'll just… Accio Seventieth Birthday Photo Album."
A thick leather book came flying from over Voldemort's head, and Cygnus caught it. He made a move to leave, but then he thumbed through the photo album and carefully approached his daughter. Voldemort tightened his hand on the back of Bellatrix's black dress, and she took the half step back so she was right in front of him again. Voldemort had never been more grateful for their height difference; she didn't even reach his shoulder, so he could just stare over her head at Cygnus.
"S-See?" Cygnus asked anxiously, pointing his finger to a page he held open. "Here's you, Bella. In the gardens at the country house. Wasn't she lovely, My Lord?"
Voldemort frowned, for Bellatrix was being deliberately precocious in the moving photograph. She was holding a daisy, standing on a neatly manicured lawn as the skirt of an off-the-shoulder dress blew around her legs. Her curls blew, too, and she smirked. She'd been this age when she'd been with Cato Burke. She did look like a child, though a child on the cusp of womanhood. She looked like a girl who didn't yet know how to be an adult, how to be grown, though she clearly wanted to be taken seriously as a seductress, as a threat. But she was just a child. Somehow, it put Voldemort's mind at ease, thinking she'd been that skinny, doe-eyed little creature when she'd had a childhood romance with his newest Death Eater. What sort of substance could have existed in that sort of thing? None. He'd been agonising over children.
"Well, My Lord?" Bellatrix asked, looking up and giving him a meaningful little smile. "Wasn't I lovely?"
"You have been been unfathomably lovely, Bella," Voldemort said, losing himself for a moment in her eyes as her father cleared his throat and shut the photo album.
"Right. I'll just… I'll go show this to Sirius and Regulus," he said, and Voldemort nodded as he kept staring at Bellatrix.
"Shut the door behind you, Cygnus."
"Yes, Master," Cygnus replied. Voldemort called after him,
"My condolences, by the way. On the loss of your mother."
He kept staring at Bellatrix, and at long last, there came a quiet reply.
"Thank you, Master."
Once he'd gone and the door shut, Bellatrix's face broke into a wide grin. Then she started to laugh a little, and finally she was cackling, fisting her hands on the chest of Voldemort's robes as she whispered,
"Oh, we're awful. We're terrible."
"Stop laughing," Voldemort commanded, though he couldn't help smiling himself. "This is… we are at a funeral, Bellatrix. You stop laughing right this… oh, just kiss me."
He bent and took her face in his hands, touching his lips to hers and deepening the kiss as she let out an eager little moan. He pulled away from her, and she promised,
"I'll take very good care of you later. At the Manor."
"At the Manor," he repeated. He sighed, wondering whether to tell her the truth. He'd tracked down the wealthy Muggle who had bought the Riddle house. He'd Imperiused Frank Bryce, the caretaker. He'd cast all manner of spells and enchantments around the house to make Muggles ignore its existence entirely. Voldemort met Bellatrix's eyes and said seriously,
"I need my own base. I can't be living in an apartment in someone else's manor. It's fine if meetings and such happen at Malfoy Manor, but we need our own home."
"We do?" Bellatrix seemed surprised, and she blinked a few times. Voldemort nodded.
"There is a manor house that I've obtained. It… erm… it needs some renovation. You can help with that; you've a good eye for aesthetics."
"A manor of our own?" Bellatrix smiled and reached up to push his hair from his forehead. "Where is it?"
"It's…" Voldemort hesitated, remembering the way he had accidentally let slip to her earlier about growing up in the orphanage. He gulped hard, thinking about how she'd lit him aflame with want just by existing, the way she'd been able to laugh at her own grandmother's funeral with him. He adored her, every little bit of her, and for some reason he was no longer afraid of her knowing… everything. He would never tell another soul any of this nonsense, but her… she could know it all, somehow.
"The manor belonged to a wealthy Muggle family," he said. "The Riddle family. It's on a hill outside Little Hangleton."
A little bit of realisation came over Bellatrix's face as she put the pieces together. She knew the village name; that was where her Horcrux was hidden. She was intelligent enough to figure out the rest. So he was unsurprised when she whispered,
"Your father's house."
"I killed him in that house," Voldemort said rather impulsively. He studied Bellatrix's face for shock, for horror, but she just nodded and said,
"That's why it needs renovation, then? It's been uninhabited?"
This was why he loved her. Because she could know this - that he'd murdered his Muggle father and had hidden their Horcruxes in his mother's dilapidated family shack - and she wouldn't think anything less of him. Bellatrix would worship him no matter what. She wasn't like the others. Voldemort dug his teeth into his bottom lip and shrugged.
"It's actually… it's quite a nice house, when it's fixed up properly. And I want it, because that wicked, awful Muggle man was the sorriest excuse for a father that… anyway. I killed him and his parents in the drawing room, and after the maid found them… the caretaker kept the grounds up, but the inside needs a little help. It could be grand. We'll work together to fix it up. I want it nice. I want it hidden. It is mine."
"Of course it is yours," Bellatrix nodded. "Everything is yours, Master."
"You most of all," he nodded, reaching for her hands and brushing his thumbs over hers, "and, tonight, at least, we'll still be in the Manor. And I will require some attention. Now. Let's go back into that dining-room, shall we?"
Author's Note: Oh, these two just can't keep their hands off each other… even at a funeral. Poor Cygnus. Haha. What will the Riddle House look like after HGTV: Wizarding Edition? Mwah hahaha… thank you for reading, and PLEASE do leave a review if you get a quick moment. Thank you!
