A/N:Thank you Impromptu1135, PadmePotter, Syndic-Machiavelli, TomOrli BloomingWell, silver and rubies and SaintRidley for your gracious reviews on the last chapter! I took some liberties with Chapter 14; it doesn't follow the movie. And "Échappé" means "escape". For the record, I wrote it in a Medical Statistics lecture in a freezing auditorium. TWO more parts of DM to go after this!

Thanks to SaintRidley and PadmePotter who corrected my maths :P

Chapter 14: Échappé

Bella huddled on a thin mattress under a thinner blanket inside her cell. She was cradling her knees within her arms and rocking back and forth. Her hands were balled into fists for want of a wand. Deprived of all magical playthings, she had turned to words.

Words could hurt.

"O mother, O mother,
Do you like this tune?
I hear that you died
Not a moment too soon…"

Words could heal.

"Lord of Darkness, hear my prayer:
To adore your name I swear.
Don't forsake this lonely soul;
Rise again and make me whole…"

As she savoured the words, her breath formed deathly white clouds in front of her lips. Although it was the cold that initially shocked new inmates, the cold was also the first thing that they all adapted to. It had taken about a week for Bella to lose the sensation in her toes. If only she could just as easily lose the sensation in her soul – the feeling of being so empty that she could never be full again.

Fourteen years it had been.

Fourteen years of bruises from beating on the stone walls. Fourteen years of wondering what colour looked like, and being shocked by the redness of her blood when she accidentally opened a vein. Fourteen years of gruelling gruel.

They could defeat her body, but they could not defeat her mind.

Bella still slept fitfully, but she always dreamed. She sought revenge upon the Potter boy who was the cause of all her troubles; oddly enough, the Dementors were completely impotent when it came to these types of thoughts. She sought Rodolphus, out of desperation.

Itty, bitty, baby Roddy,
On the other side of the wall,
You're all I've got bloody left
The one answering my calls.
And when it comes to the dark and deft,
You understand their thrall.

Bella lowered her lips to her knuckles and shut her eyes. Of course, above all, she sought consummation with her master, to be entwined in his arms, sharing greedy kisses with him.

"Lord of Darkness, hear my prayer..."

All of a sudden, there was an explosion, and a blast of fresh sea air filled her lungs. Her pulse began to race as moonlight streamed into the room and she was blinded for a moment. Out of this light strode an erect figure in a billowing black cloak. Her salvation had arrived.

She had had visions like these before – complete with the clammy skin, the dry mouth and the painful palpitations. This time, Bella fell to her knees and crawled across the hard stone floor. She reached out for the hem of her master's robes and brought it to her lips. This was where most of her visions fell to pieces, when she would wake up with her face and fingers completely numb.

But not this time. This time, the fabric did not evanesce with her longing caresses.

Bella's saviour dropped his hood.

Nothing had changed about him since their last face-to-face encounter that fateful Halloween. The whiteness of his skin and the crimson of his eyes were as pure as the magical blood running through his veins. All the black hair of his youth had gone, and he was about as thin as her.

"I knew you would come for me," said Bella, tears running down her cheeks. Now she was sure it was real – for the first time in her memory, she felt happy. "I knew you would come and help me escape," she repeated, "I knew you would…I kept saying, I kept praying, all those nights, he will rise again, he will rise again, and it worked, it worked, it worked…all those times I chased you in – through – my dreams..."

Still kneeling, she gazed up at him. Smooth, slender fingers took hold of and lifted her chin.

Now she could see the hole in the wall from where he had flown in, and the cell that had confined her – that had been her whole world for nearly half her life – was no more. Her world, her future, was infinite, and at the same time it was encompassed in the man standing before her.

"Welcome back," said Master Riddle.