"Oof." Bellatrix grunted as she swung up onto a very thick branch. She curled her leg up and lifted her weight, the sole of her boot scratching along the bark. She heaved herself up and stalked toward the trunk of the tree, startling a little when a voice from far below demanded,

"What the blazes are you doing up there?"

"I'm climbing, Master." Bellatrix grinned down from halfway up the ancient oak tree. Voldemort looked mildly concerned then as he said,

"I went inside to make lunch and came outside to see my wife behaving like a squirrel."

She laughed a little, sitting down on the branch and swinging her legs rather playfully. "You could always fly up here and fetch me."

"I think I'd rather stay here in case you fall," he replied seriously, but Bellatrix assured him,

"I've been climbing trees since I could walk, My Lord. I'm not going to fall."

To prove her point, she leaped down onto the branch below, eliciting a little sound of horror from her husband. That made her laugh harder than ever. She reached for a thinner branch and wrapped her little hands around it, making sure her grip was steady before pushing her feet off the bark and swinging.

"Bellatrix!" Voldemort did not sound amused, and Bellatrix knew better than to mock him. She glanced down and carefully chose a landing point, a thick branch not far from the ground. She gingerly released her hands and crouched down onto the branch, then leaped down onto the patchy grass below. She could feel Voldemort's heart thudding in his chest, and she couldn't help but smirk a little and shrug.

"I'm good at climbing."

"I see that." Voldemort's throat bobbed, and he stared up at the tree as he said, "It's a thing children do, isn't it? Climbing trees? I saw other children doing it in parks sometimes when I was young."

"I suppose you sat morosely on the park bench, glaring at them." Bellatrix knew she was taking a risk in saying that, but Voldemort nodded, putting his hands on his hips and letting out a long breath.

"Where'd you learn to climb trees? Your grandmother's house, I suppose?"

"Yes. It made my parents and my grandmother very angry when I'd start climbing. They'd usually punish me afterward," Bellatrix noted rather sadly. She had a vivid memory of her mother slapping her clean across the cheek when she'd come down from the giant pine tree in her grandmother's gardens. Voldemort winced at the memory, cleared his throat, and joked rather anxiously,

"I don't suppose this creaky old body of mine would be much use climbing these days. Anyway, I've got lunch ready if you're hungry."

"I am, as it happens." Bellatrix rubbed her hands together to brush off the detritus of the tree, and she said, "One works up quite an appetite climbing."

Voldemort gave her a pleased little look. "Then climb away, little squirrel, and I'll stand below and catch you if you fall."

He reached for her hand, and the moment she took it, all discomfort and anguish from the night before dissolved into the air. All she felt was love for him, in all of love's forms. She feared and adored him as her master, as the Dark Lord. She admired his power and his authority. And she was in love with him as a man, as her husband, so deeply that it ached a little.

"I know exactly what you mean," he said with a nod, and he led her off to where he'd spread out a tartan wool blanket on the grass. Bellatrix grinned when she saw that he'd prepared plates of food for them already and covered them with protective bubbles he'd Conjured. He Vanished the bubble covers and handed Bellatrix a plate and a fork. She breathed in the scent of the sausage rolls, of the biting vinegar on the salad, and she hummed happily as she tucked in. She sipped the elderflower wine he gave her, and by the time he held up a plate of blueberry mousse tarts, she complained,

"Oh, I'm so full. Perhaps just one."

She felt his eyes studying her as she chewed the tart, and she knew he was relieved to see her eating. He'd been so frightened, she could feel now, during the times when she'd been almost starving.

"Not almost," he corrected her aloud. "You were starving, and I was terrified."

"Well," she said with her mouth full, swigging down some elderflower wine, "I'm not starving now, Master."

"Thank goodness." He popped a mousse tart into his own mouth and sipped from his wine. Bellatrix was drowsy from all the food, and on instinct, she lay down on her back on the blanket and shut her eyes.

"Thank you for lunch, My Lord. The sun feels so good," she murmured. Then, out of curiosity, she asked, "Will you please show me a memory?"

"A memory of what?"

"Anything," she replied, and suddenly she could feel embarrassment around the edges of his mind. He was thinking of something, unable to stop himself.

'Travers and Rowle… I'm going to go ahead and place you in departments that…'

Voldemort should have been listening to Rookwood as the Death Eater explained new Ministry plant placements, but he was distracted. Bellatrix Lestrange had worn a low-cut black silk blouse to the meeting today, and where she sat beside her husband, she looked radiant. She had shiny red lipstick on and was showing off the way her breasts gently swelled. A single teardrop black pearl hung from a silver chain around her neck, drawing Voldemort's eyes straight to her chest. He stared for a long moment until he realised she was staring back. He flicked his eyes up to hers, and she gave him a little smile that was at once shy and very knowing. She adjusted her blouse, pulling it up a little, and Voldemort's cheeks seared hot.

'Will those placements suit you, My Lord?' he heard Rookwood ask, and he yanked his eyes away from Bellatrix, willing away the scarlet patches of heat on his face. He nodded.

'That will be just fine, Rookwood.'

Bellatrix smiled where she lay, her eyes still shut. She reached for Voldemort's hand and laced her fingers through his.

"I remember that very clearly," she said. "I dressed more modestly after that for meetings."

"That was… it was only a month or two before the Christmas party where…" Voldemort trailed off. He didn't need to finish. Bellatrix knew he'd had his eye on her long before he'd ever asked her to dance at that party. She squeezed his hand a little and mused,

"I wonder what things would have been like if you'd gotten to me before Rodolphus."

"That would have been impossible." Voldemort sounded as though he'd thought through this many times before. "You loved that boy by the time you were sixteen years old. It wasn't as though I could pursue you then, and by the time you were old enough for me to… you know, to do anything, it was too late."

Bellatrix shielded her eyes from the sun and turned her face to look at him. She felt sad all of a sudden, and she asked seriously,

"When did you first think like that… My Lord?"

He turned his eyes away from her and shook his head. "Don't."

"Was it when I was still sixteen?" Bellatrix pressed, and Voldemort shut his eyes.

"Don't."

He felt dirty enough as it was, she realised suddenly, without her doing this to him. He'd found her beautiful right on the cusp of it being objectively wrong to do so. He'd wanted her, craved her, when she'd been very young and very married. By the time he'd worked up the nerve to ask her for one dance, she'd turned twenty, but he'd wanted her before then.

"I'm sorry." Bellatrix brushed her thumb over his, and he frowned. Sorry for what? he wondered in their minds. Bellatrix shut her eyes again and soaked up the sun on her face.

"I wish I'd known… if I'd known there was any chance of you actually wanting me for your own, I never, ever would have married him," she said. "I would have waited. I would have been chaste; I wouldn't have laid a finger on anyone else until I was old enough to -"

"Please stop." Voldemort's voice actually cracked a little then, and suddenly Bellatrix was inside another memory with him.

His fingers shook a little around the glass of lavender lemonade in his hand as he stood on the periphery of the party. It was late summer, and all the Hogwarts students in the Malfoy garden would be headed back to school in just a few days. Abraxas Malfoy had thrown this soiree to bid the students farewell, all the pureblood offspring of Voldemort's followers, the teenagers who would grow up to be his soldiers. So of course Voldemort had come.

He watched as Bellatrix Black walked hand-in-hand with Rodolphus Lestrange up to the pastry table. He remembered the winter before, when he'd teased her about dessert and she'd danced the line between polite deference and flirtation.

But there was no doubt about her now. She was his. She belonged to Rodolphus in her entirety. Voldemort watched as she smiled up at her little boyfriend, giggling a bit when he popped a small puff pastry between her lips. Voldemort's chest yanked. She'd be of age in less than a month. But she wasn't of age yet.

Something had been compelling him for a while now to ask Cygnus Black if he might propose a betrothal. He had no idea why he wanted to marry the man's eldest daughter. It was a stupid, ludicrous thought that usually came to him in dreams. Voldemort sipped his lemonade and shut his eyes, unable to watch as Rodolphus Lestrange kissed Bellatrix's forehead right there in front of everyone.

"Master, you weren't… you know, perverted or anything." Bellatrix sat up from the blanket and gave him a serious look. "Don't you remember the way our eyes locked at that Christmas party?"

"Yes, of course I remember," Voldemort hissed. Bellatrix crawled toward him, climbing into his lap and holding his face in her hands. He seemed surprised when she touched her lips to his, but she whispered,

"We're bound together now, just like we were always meant to be. You weren't wrong to want me. It was your soul craving mine, that's all."

"I never had fantasies; there was never anything explicit in my mind," Voldemort said defensively. "Not when you were too young. It wasn't like that. It was a hunger, but it wasn't predatory. I didn't… there's a reason I didn't approach your father or try and break you up with Rodolphus. I didn't want to be that sort of man, you understand?"

Suddenly she could feel the torment he'd experienced just after her wedding to Rodolphus. She felt the way he'd spent her entire wedding ceremony thinking of the little girl dancing on his feet, thinking how beautiful Bellatrix looked in her wedding gown, wishing he was in Rodolphus' place, and wondering just what was wrong with him.

"Nothing was wrong with you," Bellatrix said again. "I was born too late, that's all. It feels off because of the chasm of years between us, but you needed those years. You had to work at Borgin and Burke's, to travel the Continent, to build up your base on your own. I had to come later. You had to wait for me, that's all."

You're right, he thought, nodding. Bellatrix touched her forehead to his and murmured,

"It does feel wrong for me to want you today, though."

"I am not going to…" Voldemort glanced at the place on the blanket where Bellatrix had been lying in the sun. She was hit with an image from his mind then, of the two of them naked out here on the lawn, making love on the blanket. He huffed a breath and shook his head. "Your mother died last night. However you felt about her, I won't take you today."

"Well," Bellatrix stroked at the forearms she so admired, smiling a little at her lord and master and husband, "We have to stay in hiding for some time, don't we? And this place is warded up like Azkaban. I'm sure there will be plenty of time to have sex on this lawn."

Voldemort rolled his eyes and gave her a stifled sort of smirk.

"You really are awful, you know that?"

"Mmm-hmm." Bellatrix kissed him again, much more firmly this time, and his arms snaked up and around her, holding her very close as a bird chirped happily nearby.

Author's Note: I know there was no lemon in this chapter (it's coming soon, I promise!), but I really wanted to explore some of the dynamics of the age gap in a bit more depth, especially given that Voldemort has known Bellatrix since she was a child. I wanted to cement the idea that a) he was totally not a pedophile, b) they were completely intended for one another (Kindred) and c) Voldemort experienced conflicted feelings about Bellatrix for years. I know there's been a lot of fluff ever since Druella died, but in the next chapter, we've got a very telling copy of The Daily Prophet arriving by owl, along with a letter that Voldemort never wanted to receive. Told you the world would come crumbling down. ;) Thank you for reading. PLEASE do review if you get a very quick moment.