Chapter 10: Behind the Mask
(VoldeTORTE)
A/N: Tried to conjure all the awkward memories of my own high school senior prom when I was writing this chapter-I hope anyone whose ever been to a prom with a date they don't care for and then attended an afterprom rife with drunk awkward teenagers acting stupid will appreciate this chapter lol but for all of you who've waited so patiently for real bellamort to start, wait no longer-because it's here! You really didn't think a character like Voldemort would turn into a cute romantic overnight, did you? Well maybe now he'll finally realize he's been a stupid boy lately and couldn't see the one who was meant for him right under his nose (if he had a nose, that is) anyway, enjoy! :)
~Sun Dance~
p.s. anyone who finds themselves thinking "Voldy can't possibly be college-freshman-at-his-first-party-level awkward" I cite the hug at the end of Deathly Hallows
Finally, the night of the Halloween Ball arrived clear and moonlit. The main dining room of Malfoy Manor had been magically expanded to three times its usual size and filled with round tables covered in shimmering black tablecloths. It was at one of these tables that Voldemort sat now, facing a tiny place-setting placard that read "The Dark Lord" on it in fine silver script. This table, for the Dark Lord and his inner circle of best and favorite Death Eaters, stood at the head of the room beneath a large floating black masquerade mask. The seats on either side of him were set for Bellatrix and Narcissa, with other place-settings at the table marked out for Severus, Lucius, Travers and Sedona, the Knockturn Alley bartender he was bringing as his date.
"How are you finding things, my Lord?" Narcissa Malfoy asked, swooping down upon him in an acid-green masquerade mask trimmed with white and silver. Her characteristic long white-blond hair was curled into soft ringlets by magic and trailing down the back of the green sequined dress robes she was wearing.
"Everything is quite...enchanting," Voldemort replied, saying the first word that came to his mind. And really it was. It wasn't as conventionally Halloween as when Bellatrix held the Ball last year and he saw his own corpse fall from the ceiling about halfway through dinner, but maybe it was for the best. The ceiling this year, he noticed, was covered in a shining silver mist flecked throughout with gold and navy blue.
"I'm a basilisk," Narcissa said with a smile as she sat down at her place on his right-side and Voldemort tried to smile back, but really he thought she looked nothing like a basilisk. Technically, though she didn't know it, Narcissa was kind of Voldemort's date for the evening and he thought maybe he should say something to her-the kind of thing someone might say on a date-but nothing was coming to mind. After all, he hadn't been on a real date since his school days and hadn't known quite what to say then, either.
"The food is...remarkable," he said stiffly, but Narcissa only raised an eyebrow quizzically above her mask.
"My Lord...I thank you, but the food hasn't been served yet."
"Oh...right…"
Voldemort was saved the trouble of explaining himself, when Narcissa suddenly dropped the silver napkin she was folding in her lap and gave a startled gasp. Voldemort followed her eyes to the two people entering the dining room.
One of them was unremarkably and unmistakeably Severus in his usual robes, even with the plain black mask he was wearing over half his face...but if he hadn't already known the identity of Snape's date for the evening, he too would have gasped like Narcissa when he saw the woman who entered the room beside him. She was also wearing her usual black, but her dress looked like the night sky splashed with diamonds in the shape of stars. Her hair was messy as always, but smooth tonight and strung with more diamonds, these in the shape of spiders bewitched to scuttle through her curls.
Her masquerade mask was thin and only covered to where it rested on the bridge of her nose, but eight black and silver streamers hung from its sides, cascading down to her chest, presumably to represent the legs of a spider.
He tried to take his eyes off of her for even a moment to focus back on Narcissa, but he watched her all the way until she sat down at his left-side with Snape beside her, shrouding him in the smell of roses.
"My Lord," she nodded curtly in his direction and folded her hands in front of her, looking thoroughly bored. He felt a surge of respect and admiration for her course through him. He knew she didn't want to be here with Snape, but here she was, behaving herself alongside Severus...because he'd asked her to.
Narcissa and Lucius stood as the room continued to fill with Death Eaters and their dates and welcomed everyone to the third annual Death Eaters Halloween Ball before they gave the summons for the house elves to bring out the appetizers. No sooner had she said so, than the small plate in front of Voldemort filled with bouillabaisse and the little bowl, with tomato soup. Finding himself unable to breathe in the smell of Bellatrix's perfume any longer through his nostril slits, he rose from the table with the intention of going and getting drinks from the imperiused Stan Shunpike, who was managing the bar.
"Might I get anything to drink for any of you?" he asked the Death Eaters sitting around the table. Travers and Sedona, who were already drinking from two large tankards of mead, shook their heads and Severus muttered something about "not drinking tonight…" Bellatrix, however, looked up at him expectantly.
"Do I even have to ask at this point?"
"Cinnamon Firewhiskey?" he prompted and she nodded...suddenly making him think of something. The second night he visited the swamp witches who made love potions-something he'd said-no, something he'd smelled. "I can't distinguish...this last...It's a drink, I think. Cinnamon something…" No. It had to all be a coincidence.
As the dinner wore on, Voldemort found himself more and more looking forward to the party portion of the evening-not because he had any desire to step on the dance floor, but because he didn't think sitting between Narcissa and Bellatrix could get any more uncomfortable. As he dug into his steak and kidney pie, he kept smelling the two women's perfumes sliding under his nostril slits and blending together in a way that was starting to give him a headache. The heavy rosy smell of whatever Bellatrix was wearing mingled with the airy gardenia scent emnating from Narcissa and the resulting mix smelled like a Herbology greenhouse.
He was trying not to ignore Narcissa, but conversation just came more easily with Bellatrix. While the youngest Black sister was talking with Lucius, Travers and Sedona about something Draco was up to at Hogwarts, Bellatrix looked around the room and would occasionally whisper in his ear jokes about who couldn't keep what in their robes.
"Look at Dolohov," she whispered and Voldemort followed her eyes to the dimwitted Death Eater who was already quite drunk and standing by himself near the bar, swaying slightly from side to side and apparently hitting on Yaxley's date, a young redheaded woman who was crossing her arms over her chest and looking, even through her mask, like she wanted to hex something off Dolohov that shouldn't be talked about in civilized company.
"I'm impressed by what you've done with the place, who knew you could fit all these tables and a full bar in this room looking at it from the outside," Travers' date was saying.
"Yes, all owing to the spellwork of these two. Hard to tell the assets of a room when you've only seen it the size of a broom cupboard," said Lucius, gesturing to Bellatrix and ruffling the back of Narcissa's hair as he spoke. Travers started laughing snarkily.
"You'd know all about ass...ets, wouldn't you, Lestrange?"
Bellatrix choked on her firewhiskey and Voldemort noticed he was gripping his fork a little more tightly than he needed to. So much for civilized company.
"That's quite enough of that," he growled under his breath and Travers shifted in his seat. Bellatrix looked at him curiously, but kept on drinking from her goblet and he was fortunately spared from having to offer an explanation.
Finally, after what seemed like enough hours had drug on to last four Halloween Balls, Narcissa stood up and with a few flourishes of her wand, the tables vanished and all the Death Eaters were left standing on a shimmering black dance floor. A few of the tables and chairs remained, however and slid across the floor to the far wall, where another flourish of her wand left them laden with desserts and bowls of candies.
Bellatrix nudged Voldemort in the side as the music started playing (an old Weird Sisters hit called Thirsty Like The Vampire).
"Check out the the ceiling this year...I think it's some of my best work." She smirked and Voldemort looked up. Where the ceiling had before been filled with mist, the mist had become clouds shooting off bolts of blue lightning to the beat of the music. Save for the lightning, the room had gone completely dark.
"Aren't you going to dance with your date?" he asked and both she and Severus's eyebrows rose over their masks at the same time. He stepped a few paces away from her and then wandered off to the dessert table and remaining chairs as if he were actually concerned Voldemort might make them dance together. Bellatrix, seemingly fearing similar, set off in the direction of the bar leaving Voldemort to wonder where Narcissa had gotten to.
He didn't have to wander long-for a small crowd of Death Eaters had gathered around she and Lucius dancing wildly to Crazy Comet 260. It was the time of the night the Death Eaters looked forward to the most-the time to get incredibly drunk off of all the free liquor and dance until the wee hours of the morning.
He strolled over to the bar, past Bellatrix and Sedona, laughing and taking shots and again approached Stan Shunpike for a firewhiskey (no cinnamon this time), thinking a few more drinks might loosen him up enough to approach Narcissa and tell her about the prophecy.
An hour later, Voldemort was mildly regretting his decision to stay at the bar. He was never one to drink much, not caring for the ability impairment, and as such hadn't had this much to drink since his sixth year at Hogwarts, after Slytherin won the Quidditch Cup.
"Cat got your tongue, my Lord?...or maybe...someplace else…" Bellatrix sidled up beside him at the bar as Stan slid her another shot. The heaviness of her rose perfume settled around him again and he breathed it in, letting it fill him. She leaned over to get her drink and the bare skin of her arm brushed against his robes. No...he told himself...that's not how the night is supposed to go…
"You could try to have some fun," she whispered into his ear with breath that smelled like peppermint and alcohol.
But then he stood up, having just spotted Narcissa. The figures around him blurred as he strolled across the dancefloor towards where he'd seen the glimpse of green.
"Aah, Cissy. Just the witch I wanted to see," he said in his best attempt at a serious tone despite the fact that it looked like there were two Narcissas standing before him, waving her wand over a spilled bowl of candy corn at the dessert table to clean it up.
"Since when do you call me Cissy, my Lord?" She was smiling at him in the crooked half-smile way characteristic of her older sister.
"Where is Lucius?" he asked.
"Oh, he went off to have a cigar with a few of the others in the drawing room. Are you quite enjoying yourself?"
"This is a delightful ball. Might you have a dance with Lord Voldemort?" He extended his hand in the way Lucius had done after dinner earlier, but Narcissa only stared at it like she'd never seen a hand before. Finally, just when he was to give it up for lost, she let out a shrill laugh and closed her slender fingers around his own.
"Wow, the Dark Lord asking me to dance. An honor, surely," she said, and he allowed her to lead the pair of them to the center of the dance floor as I Put a Spell On You echoed through the room.
I put a spell on you
Because you're mine
He let his arm close around her waist as he pulled her closer to him, trying to figure out if he liked the smell of gardenias as much as he liked the smell of roses. The room was spinning with them as he continued to let Narcissa lead the dance. Never having been much for dancing, Voldemort was consciously trying not to step on her feet.
You know I love you
I love you
I love you
I love you anyhow
And I don't care if you don't want me
I'm yours right now
It seemed like she was trying to keep space between them and Voldemort wanted to show her that it was okay for her to feel the way the prophecy dictated she had to feel. He ran his fingers up the length of the back of her neck and very gently pressed her chin to his shoulder to show her it was okay to rest it there.
I put a spell on you
Because you're mine
Because you're mine
Because you're mine
The song ended and Voldemort attempted to dip Narcissa, an effort that led to her scrambling to stay standing as Voldemort nearly dropped her. He caught her with one hand and pulled her up towards him again, placing upon her neck his first kiss in decades. He was surprised then, when Narcissa pulled away from him so abruptly.
"My Lord...what are you playing at? Are you drunk?" Her blue eyes flashed with concern and Voldemort nodded.
"But only just. I wanted to talk to you, actually."
"Can't it-"
"It's important," he urged her, and still clutching his hand by the end of his fingertips, she led him out of the dining room and out into the hall.
"Is everything alright, my Lord?" she asked, but Voldemort was trying to examine her in this new torchlight. She was very beautiful, he realized. Paler than Bellatrix, skinnier and a bit taller-her hair blonde and straight where Bella's was black and wild, her eyes blue where Bella's were brown...but beautiful. He tried to think of her in isolation of Bellatrix, but he was having a hard time not thinking of both Black sisters simultaneously in his mind. Both of them were beautiful.
"I know you have feelings for me, Narcissa. Feelings that exceed those that should exist between master and servant," he said, but Narcissa only gasped and took a step away from him.
"No, my Lord...I'm sorry...you've got it wrong…"
"You dare call Lord Voldemort wrong?" he growled, astounded at her nerve. But tears, that mysterious substance that had for so long eluded him, sprang to her eyes.
"I'm sorry, my Lord, but there's something that you need to see…" she murmured as she lowered the shroud around her mind, already so much thinner than her sister's.
*Bellatrix Lestrange lays crying on a sleigh bed, wrapped tightly in green and white blankets and struggling to catch her breath.
"Love who? Bella what's going on?" asks Narcissa, sitting on the bed beside her sister.
"The Dark Lord. I need to be with him to feel complete. There's a piece of me that's missing, a part of me that has always been missing...
"It's only lust, Bella. You just...with Rodolphus gone, it's only natural that you have needs...You're projecting your needs onto the Dark Lord." Narcissa's tone is even and rational where Bella's is wild and desperate.
"You think I'd be content just to sleep with him?!" Bella exclaims incredulously. "Don't you understand that wanting to sleep with him was only part of the beginning...when I was a girl and I saw him for the first time across the Slytherin Common Room as Head Boy, I was only eleven and I longed to press my lips against his. I felt innocent and pure for the first time in my life. All the things our mother wanted me to be when she told me to be more like you…"
"Oh, Bella…"
"And then when I was sixteen and recruiting new Death Eaters at Hogwarts, I was embarrassed because we were brewing love potions in Slughorn's class and it got out that mine smelled like cinnamon and licorice wands and pine forest and….Tom Riddle's shampoo...Back then, I wanted to lie with him and press our bodies together and feel him inside of me...but don't you see? He's already inside me, Cissy. He's been inside me over twenty years and I've had to live that whole time with how badly I want to create moments with him. All of them and all of him, forever. He's already inside me and I'm inside him too, whether he wants to admit it or not. He saved my life when letting me die would have been easier-when he's had every reason under the sun to hate me, three times now. That something that's there is strangling me, Cissy. But it's also what keeps me warm at night." ****
Voldemort withdrew from Narcissa's thoughts and felt strangely empty inside. He'd been so sure, so certain that the prophecy couldn't be about her...she was too evil, too wild, too manic, too...too what exactly? What was it about her that made her anything but the most perfect candidate for Dark Lady possible? Right...the fact that he didn't know if he loved her…
"What's this? Voldy and Cissy having a party without me?" He would have recognized that harsh mocking tone anywhere.
Bellatrix stumbled down the hall towards them, clearly incredibly drunk, with tiny diamond spiders crawling down the side of her face from her hair that was slowly regaining its usual frizziness as the night wore on, yet somehow she looked more elegant than Voldemort ever remembered.
She tripped over her heels and fell forward, but Voldemort caught her with more ease than he'd caught Narcissa, as he heard the swamp witch's voice in his mind: "Find the one who feels passionately, intensely, with the core of their whole being and ask them what that's like...ask them to teach you...then feel just as passionately, in your own way."
"Voldemort…" she murmured and caught hold of his wrists.
"My most loyal," he said and then they were kissing. One of his hands found the back of her neck and he pulled her close to him like he'd tried to do with Narcissa, careful not to let his fingers get tangled in her hair. She parted his lips with her own and kissed him more deeply than he'd been kissed since he was a much younger man, pulling away only to whisper so quietly he barely heard her,
"I love you."
"I know."
"I've always loved you."
"I know."
Her lips were on his again and he succumbed to them. Everything was blurry except for her eyes-alight a seductive, fiery amber. He tried to gauge how he was feeling-and it wasn't bad. He wasn't mad at her. He hadn't disliked kissing her, but he didn't know if he'd liked it yet, either. He wanted to touch her, but didn't know if it was just all the liquor talking...or if touching her would even be such a good idea, given the circumstances. He pulled breathlessly away from her and wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his robes, leaving her looking slightly downcast before him. He was relieved to see that Narcissa had had enough tact to walk away from them at some point and he wondered briefly how much she'd seen and who'd she tell.
"She won't say anything, my sister. And nor will I," Bellatrix said, seeming to guess his thoughts.
"It's not that I'm ashamed of what happened, Bella...in fact...well, I just don't think reactions would be favorable if it got out that I drank a bit too much and kissed one of my Death Eaters-oh Bella, don't look like that...I thought you'd be more joyful. You've gotten what you've always wanted." She was looking down at the floor with her arms by her sides, not looking at him at all.
"I am joyful...really," she said, but he could tell she didn't mean it.
"Good. Now, if you don't mind given my regards to Narcissa and Lucius, I think I'm going to get going, before…"
"-anything else happens between us," she finished for him, but he'd only meant to say he needed to think on this. He didn't dislike it. He was sure of that...but then again, he hadn't been kissed like that, or close to another person in an intimate way, in a long time...and he wanted to think about what it all meant to him.
"We can pretend neither of us remember this if you want," she said coldly. He didn't know if he loved her, but he did know he didn't want her to be upset. His chest constricted, seeing her like this. But he didn't know what to say, so he settled on the truth.
"Yes, that might be best..not permanently...just while I figure things out."
A/N: After writing that chapter, I have only one thing to say: You've done your waiting. Ten chapters of it. Hopefully not in Azkaban. But it's Bellamort time, b*tches!