-- Burn Now --
(What Was Once Breathing)
1994 Triwizard Tournament
Bellatrix was sitting among the other clueless spectators - unaware that something had gone horribly wrong in the Triwizard maze - when she felt her Mark burn.
It's burning, it's REALLY burning... she thought to herself in disbelief. He's calling me.
Technically he was calling all of his Death Eaters to his side, but in her mind the others were irrelevant. All that mattered was that her master was calling for her and she had to find some way to get to him. She'd have to sneak out of the castle grounds somehow before she would be able to apparate to where he was.
Meanwhile in a faraway graveyard, the Dark Lord scowled at the small gathering of followers who had shown up. Many of his followers had died or been thrown in Azkaban (or been thrown in Azkaban, then died). Still more had turned traitor and renounced the Dark Lord and were now afraid to return to him. Snape would report to the Dark Lord later at a time when his absence from the school would not be conspicuous, so as not to blow his cover as a spy.
But that still left one person unnaccounted for, one that Voldemort was disappointed to find had not shown up. He would hate to have to kill her.
As he addressed his minions, and throughout his duel with Harry Potter, the Dark Lord could not help wondering in the back of his mind where Bellatrix was.
In the end Potter escaped. After his embarassing defeat, Voldemort dismissed his minions.
He was about to leave the graveyard himself when he heard hurried footsteps behind him.
"My lord!" a panicked voice called out. A breathless, distinctly feminine, panicked voice.
He turned and saw Bellatrix running toward him. She stopped a good three feet in front of him.
"I'm sorry," she gasped out, not stopping to catch her breath in her rush to explain. "I would have been here sooner... but I was at the school... to watch the tournament... I had to sneak out of the castle... before I could apparate..." She stopped talking and drew in several deep breaths before speaking again. "I'm sorry, my lord."
Well, now he knew the answer to the question that had been plaguing him. His most loyal follower was still loyal to him, after all.
"It's alright," he said, closing the distance between them. "What matters is that you made every effort to return." And she hadn't witnessed the Potter boy overpowering him, for which he was grateful.
Unlike the rest of his followers who'd shown up today, Bellatrix wasn't dressed in her Death Eater robes. She was wearing a simple gown made of scarlet silk that showed off her figure without being too revealing. Over it she wore a thin cloak of delicate black lace - which he figured was purely ornamental because he didn't think that it could possibly keep her warm. He had almost forgotten how beautiful she was. It had been thirteen years since they'd last seen each other. Her hair was longer now - she used to keep it at shoulder length and now it fell halfway down her back - but otherwise she didn't appear to have aged a day since the last time he had seen her.
But his words did not placate her.
"I'm sorry," she continued to apologize. "I wanted to look for you, I tried, but I had to look after Draco, and I couldn't-"
Taking her chin in his hand, he tilted her head back and sealed his mouth over hers in a hard kiss, effectively cutting off the flow of words. She froze, too stunned by his actions to do anything else.
"Enough," he said firmly, after breaking the kiss. "You do not need to apologize. You did what you could. You've raised Draco well. He is loyal to the cause and in a few years he will make a fine addition to my Death Eaters. There is only one thing I would ask you to do for me now..." He trailed off, awaiting her response.
"Yes, my lord, anything," she breathed, still light-headed from the kiss.
"I want you raise more children."
Her brow furrowed and he could see that she was confused by the request.
"Whose?" she asked, nonplussed. She didn't know of any other orphaned pureblood childen. (Well, Lucius was still alive so Draco wasn't technically an orphan, but still...)
"Your own," he stated flatly, as if the answer should have been obvious.
"My husband is dead," she said, frowning. "And there aren't really many pureblood wizards left who are unmarried, on our side, and not in Azkaban..." She would know. She'd spent a lot of time considering potential breeding partners. So far she'd figured out that her search was pretty much hopeless unless she wanted to risk trying convert a blood traitor back to the dark side, or else wait for a suitable male to be released from prison. "Unless..." She looked up at him coyly through the screen of her eyelashes and put forth hesitantly, "My lord... if it was yours..."
The words were hardly out of her mouth before his lips locked over hers again. Bellatrix was a temptation that had always proven hard for him to resist, but he had never caved in to this particular desire in the past - mostly because she had already been married to Rodolphus before the Dark Lord met her. But things were different now. Her husband was dead. And it had been too long since the last time Voldemort been with a woman, too long since the last time he'd had a corporeal body and could feel these sensations.
She wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing herself closely against him as she eagerly returned his kisses. Not breaking the kiss, he backed her against the nearest headstone and lifted her up onto it, pushing her skirt up around her waist.
And there, on his filthy muggle father's grave, he laid claim to the pureblooded dark beauty who would do anything for him.
-tbc-
A/N: I decided to go ahead and jump forward in time without going into any more detail about Draco's childhood, as you can see. Yay, this chapter turned out long XD
Reviews are love.
