"Morning." Voldemort looked up from his copy of the Daily Prophet and his cup of tea to see Abraxas in the doorway of his office. He gestured for Abraxas to enter but said, "I've got Bellatrix coming in five minutes, so if it isn't going to be very quick or very urgent, we'll have to reschedule, I'm afraid."
"Actually, it's about Miss Black. And it's quick." Abraxas paused in the middle of the office, seeming as though he had no intention of sitting down. Voldemort raised his eyebrows at him and set down the newspaper, and Abraxas waved his wand to shut the office door. He cleared his throat and said, "We had dinner last night, Master, she and I. Since you were off shopping."
"Oh? How very nice for you." Voldemort was still a little confused, so he kept his voice tight and formal. Abraxas just shrugged and said,
"You came up in conversation, My Lord, as you are wont to do. I wanted to let you know that she told me… she said that her life would be devoted to your service. And she said that she would be 'unquestioningly vicious' as your servant and soldier."
Voldemort just breathed for a moment, and then finally he asked softly, "She said that, did she?"
"Yes, Master," Abraxas nodded. He stared seriously at Voldemort for a long moment, and he sighed. "She is incredibly devoted to you. Forgive me if I have have overreached in any way by telling you this. I thought you might want to know."
"Thank you, Malfoy." Voldemort quirked up his lips a little and sat up very straight in his chair. "You've got the Quidditch match in a few days with Lucius, no? I thought I'd heard you say you were going to Leicester today to get the tickets from Avery."
"Yes, sir, if that's all right," Malfoy nodded, and Voldemort scoffed.
"Of course. If you're going, ask him how things are in the Department of Magical Games and Sports on our end. He was meant to see to it that a few Mudbloods in there were sacked. Check on that situation, will you?"
"Yes, of course, Master." Abraxas bowed his head, and then there was a knocking on the office door. Bellatrix. Abraxas smiled weakly and turned to go, and when he opened the office door, Voldemort heard Bellatrix say in a meek tone,
"Oh. Good morning, Mr Malfoy."
"Good morning, Miss Black. I was just leaving. Have a fine day; it's meant to be good sunny weather, I think."
"I'll try and make good use of it, then. Goodbye." Bellatrix walked past Malfoy, who shut then office door behind him as he left. Bellatrix came walking into the office, carrying a copy of A Devilishly Brief History of Necromancy. She sat opposite Voldemort when he gestured for her to do so. He had decided, whilst lying in his bed and staring at the ceiling this morning, to act as though nothing strange at all had happened between them the night before. So, though she was studying him with wide, curious eyes, he cleared his throat and asked her,
"What did you find most illuminating about the history of necromancy? You never studied it in school, I reckon."
Bellatrix seemed jarred by the sudden line of questioning. She set the book on the desk and said, "Erm. No, Master. Not in depth. I suppose the thing I found most intriguing was that it is a failed endeavour. People have spent millennia trying to raise the dead, and it's never worked. Not really. Even Muggles have tried, and the best they've wound up with is the legend of zombies."
"There is, of course, the story of Resurrection Stone in the Tales of Beedle the Bard," Voldemort reminded her, "but even that is an incomplete resurrection; it brings back a shadow. Inferi, I can assure you from personal experience, are quite real. But they are skeletal, mutilated shells. Corpses with no thought or emotion, not real humans anymore. Is there, Bellatrix, any real way to fully bring back a person who has died?"
"No," she said, shaking her head firmly. "No, there isn't. And there is no way to completely and truly stave off mortality, either."
That wasn't strictly true, or at least he didn't think so. But he was hardly about to divulge to her that he'd made Horcruxes for himself. So he drummed his fingers on his desk and nodded.
"Tell me about séances in the wizarding world. Can you communicate with just any spirit?"
"No," Bellatrix said again, quite firmly. "Spirits can choose to use a Seer as a vessel, either with a Prophecy or a message, but most Divination techniques that claim to call out to a spirit are a hoax. Spirits do not answer messages into the ether. And we do not really know what lies beyond the Veil."
"When I was in a small village in Romania," Voldemort said carefully, "about twelve years ago, there was a Gypsy witch who told Muggles that she could commune with their ancestors by sacrificing a chicken and using its blood as a medium to the world of the dead. I thought she was a complete fraud, in violation of all sorts of laws. Then one day, I saw her go into a trance and deliver a spoken message in Romanian, something I didn't understand. It sent this Muggle peasant woman into hysterics - her dead mother had communicated something very clear through this Gypsy Seer witch."
"But it wasn't the chicken blood," Bellatrix insisted. "She was a Seer and was exploiting that. She was still wrong to use her power with Muggles."
Voldemort smiled a bit. "Correct. Well. I think you've done a fine job with your reading. We have some paperwork to send off to the Ministry. I want to read you what I've written up, just so you know what I'm saying about you. I have it here."
He opened his leather folio and pulled out a parchment, and he ignored the way that Bellatrix's eyes were studying him so closely. He cleared his throat softly and opened a clam shell leather case, pulling out his reading glasses. She looked confused, and when he put them on, he mumbled,
"My handwriting's neat but small. They're just for reading."
She still seemed amazed that Lord Voldemort, of all people, had a pair of black glasses on, even if just for reading. He scowled; he was almost forty-two. Her father had reading glasses. Abraxas Malfoy had reading glasses. Just the same, he huffed a breath and felt embarrassed for a strange reason. He glared at her through the weakly prescribed lenses, pulled them off, and put them away, snapping the case shut. He wouldn't have her looking at him as an old man. He squinted a little at the parchment and read clearly,
"Dear Mrs Stevens: I am writing to inform you that Miss Bellatrix Black has made wonderful, demonstrable progress in the areas of temper management and social development."
"Social development?" Bellatrix interrupted, looking a little offended. Voldemort smirked and continued,
"She makes very pleasant conversation at dinner time and is able to complete her day independently without making any trouble whatsoever around Malfoy Manor. In fact, she has been quite helpful with simple household tasks and has continued her ballet dancing in a specially constructed dance studio."
He paused then, staring at the parchment, suddenly remembering the sight of her the night before, twirling madly, pulling her leg up above her head. Standing against the wall, her mouth crushed beneath his, her hand bringing him to completion in his trousers. His voice shook a little then as he said more quietly,
"Miss Black has been working diligently on responsiveness to stimuli intended to induce a negative or angry reaction, and strategies have successfully been eliciting instead a calm and rational response."
He remembered then the way she'd simply handed over her wand when he'd lied and said the Ministry was coming for her. The way she'd promised she would go to Azkaban and then fight hard for him upon her release. He gulped hard and read the last bit of the letter.
"Miss Black has been continuing the theoretical studies she will have missed through her expulsion from Hogwarts. She has access to an extensive library at Malfoy Manor and is being assessed regularly on assigned readings. Overall, I believe that Miss Black shows sincere remorse for her crime and demonstrates an ability to be fully rehabilitated so that, at her reassessment upon her nineteenth birthday, she can be released from house arrest. Please do let me know if there is anything else required of me as her guardian prior to our meeting on the nineteenth of September. Sincerely, Tom Riddle."
He set down the parchment and raised his eyes to Bellatrix, and she looked emotional for some reason. She shrugged a bit and said softly,
"Well. That's high praise indeed, My Lord. I don't think I've earned it."
"I think you have. Abraxas told me what you said last night at dinner," Voldemort said simply, "about being my soldier."
Bellatrix nodded. "Well, I meant that, Master. Even after my house arrest is over, I know now. For years I felt aimless, like a child that no one understood. A stupid thing to say, I know."
"That is not stupid; I felt the same way as a child," Voldemort insisted. "Brilliant children are always misunderstood. They need avenues for their energies."
"Well, I think my avenue is being your soldier," Bellatrix nodded vehemently. "I want to spend my time here learning to serve you in every way that I can. If I fall in battle, I will die with a purpose. And if I manage to take our enemies so that I can propel you in some miniscule way toward power, my life will have had a meaning I never would have guessed it could have. Master."
He blinked a few times, realising that when he'd made this arrangement, he hadn't known that she would be like this. He hadn't known that anyone could be like this. He just nodded at her, somehow unable to say anything. He passed her a piece of parchment identical to the questionnaire Isadora Stevens had asked her in the office at the Ministry. It asked about food and clothes, about her physical safety. He handed Bellatrix a quill and said numbly,
"You have to tick the boxes yourself and sign at the bottom. Let me know if you can't answer one satisfactorily."
"Everything's fine, Master," she assured him, making little check marks with her quill beside each question as she skimmed them. She hesitated at the question about her sexual well-being, and he cleared his throat and said very awkwardly,
"If I have made you feel in any way unsafe, Bellatrix, then I -"
"No. You have not." She ticked that box so firmly that a little blob of ink pooled there, and then she scrawled her name on the line at the bottom of the page. She blew on it to dry the ink, and she passed it back to Voldemort. He rolled the parchments up, having already written Isadora Stevens' name and Ministry office on the outside of his letter, and he bound and sealed them. He summoned Dobby and sent the letters off to the owlery, and once Dobby had gone, Voldemort paced a little and suggested,
"You should enjoy the day. Like Abraxas said. It's warm and sunny."
Bellatrix rose from her chair and looked very nervous then, and Voldemort frowned at her.
"Something wrong?" he asked, and she opened her mouth for a moment before shutting it. She hesitated and then finally said,
"My parents are coming to visit next week, Master. Last visit before my birthday. And I they're bringing Cissy. And I was wondering if it would be possible for me to practise a dance solo and perform it for them in the ballroom here. Like a recital. It always made my mother very happy to see me dance, and I thought perhaps they might like to see me doing something… something…"
"Something that doesn't involve casting Unforgivables at other students? Dancing that doesn't involve getting booed off the stage when they know damned well you're talented?" He nodded, understanding fully. "Yes. I think a little recital is very much in order. If you've any need of… well, anything. I wouldn't know. Dobby can arrange for punch and pastries or something. It'll be pleasant. Oh, but, erm… Abraxas and Lucius will be here that day. And… me."
"Oh. Yes. That's fine," Bellatrix said dismissively. "That's only six people. That's fine. It's really just to show them that this isn't Azkaban, and that I'm happy. Just to reassure them. You know?"
"Yes." He smiled a little and felt compelled to approach her, to tuck her hair behind her ear. "I'll stay far away from your dance studio, Miss Black. Wouldn't want to ruin the surprise. I assume you won't be leaping about like a monkey with your wand jabbed out at invisible enemies."
She grinned. "Sorry to disappoint. I'll have to save that for training. This will be a bit more traditional."
"I'm sure it will fine," he said confidently. "You dance beautifully. Now, before you get to practising, go spend a few hours' in this sunshine, will you?"
Author's Note: A recital, eh? Let's just say Lord Voldemort might work up a bit of an… appetite… during that particular parental visit. Mwah hahaha.
I'm sure you've all noticed that FF is basically not functional at the moment, but I'm going to go ahead and try posting this so it's up with FF goes live again. Please leave a comment if you get a chance, if for no reason other than me knowing my readers are still with me! Haha! Thanks, all! Happy St. Patrick's Day! Beannachtaí na Féile Padraig Oraibh! (Yes, I am already completely trashed on whiskey; sorry if this chapter reflects that. Ha!)