Voldemort endured nights of rolling seas on the ferry to Iceland. They backtracked to Denmark and then sailed on, a ship full of Muggles and one anxious wizard, and by the time that Voldemort Apparated across the north of Iceland to Neskaupstadur, he was exhausted. But he had to press on. Bellatrix needed him, or she would die, and without her, he would be nothing.
He stood on a craggy black shale cliff overlooking the cold sea, and he shut his eyes for a moment. He reached out into the ether, trying to feel for her, but the only thing he could feel was sleep. She was suspended still, he knew, by his Draught of Living Death. Voldemort opened his eyes and pushed off the rocky ground, soaring down over the edge of the cliff and landing on the beach, which consisted of black rocks, oval and smooth. His boots crunched on the rocky beach as the waves crashed up against them. Voldemort scowled, remembering his terror as Bellatrix had sunk deeply into the sea, her splintered soul trying to destroy itself.
"Lord Voldemort," said a voice, and he whirled at the sound. A broad man with wild white hair in twin beaded braids pulled his fur cloak more tightly around himself and nodded. "I had a feeling you'd come. Damned wife of mine is a Seer, you know, and she told me a year ago… The Dark Lord will come for the sake of his life, for the sake of his Only, his Treasure, his All."
Voldemort gulped and nodded. "Hrafn Valsson. Will you help me?"
"Well, that depends," said the Icelander, glancing out to the sea. His white hair whipped along with his furs as he said thoughtfully, "What he seeks to preserve will itself unthread, unless to his Self she is bound, she is sealed. Margret had all sorts of prophecy about you."
"She sounds like quite a witch," Voldemort said. "I look forward to meeting her."
"I'm afraid that's quite impossible," Hrafn said, still staring at the sea. "Margret died six years ago."
"But how…" Voldemort scowled. How could a dead woman prophesy? Hrafn smiled just a little and suggested,
"Come inside for some schnapps to warm up, and we'll talk… Lord Voldemort."
Voldemort followed Hrafn Valsson toward a cavern, burrowed beneath a craggy cliff over which tumbled a feeble waterfall. The cold water clattered down onto the rocks below, and the kelp there told Voldemort that the tide came at least this high. Voldemort followed Hrafn beyond the waterfall and up into the back of the cave, climbing the black stone stairs that had been built into the place. Up they went, and back into darkness. Hrafn Valsson pulled out a ragged-looking wand and mumbled,
"Lumos."
Voldemort illuminated his own wand, careful not to fall as they went deeper into the cavern. Finally they came to a little stone structure, a house with open windows and a warm-looking interior. As Voldemort went inside, he discovered a cosy sort of cottage, with stout handmade furniture and a smokeless magical fire burning in a stone fireplace to warm the place up.
Voldemort snuffed out his wand's light and tucked it away, and he waited until Hrafn Valsson gestured to the pine wood table. Voldemort sat, and Hrafn went into the tiny kitchen, pulling out a stoneware jug and two mugs that appeared to have been handcrafted from clay. He poured some dark, strongly aromatic liquor into each, and he set them on the table and sat. He lifted his mug and said meaningfully,
"To the witches who make us go mad with desire," he said, "the witches who cause us to give of ourselves."
"To those marvelous witches," Voldemort nodded, and he drank. The liquor burned like mad, so he set his mug down and folded his hands on the table. Then he asked bluntly,
"Is your wife a ghost?"
"No. She is… simply dead," Hrafn corrected. "She crossed over into peace years ago, but I talk with her all the time in my head. You think me insane for this, I'm sure."
"I don't," Voldemort countered. He pursed his lips and guessed, "You're bound to her. Your souls are bound together, and not even death can undo that. Have I got it right?"
"You're missing the nuance of the experience," Hrafn said, "but, yes, you've mostly got it right. Why do you need to save her? What has she done?"
"She… we… have made Horcruxes." Voldemort decided that this was no time for secrecy. Hrafn Valsson seemed unsurprised, and he nodded.
"So her soul is desperate. Trying to latch back onto itself. Is she still alive?"
Voldemort's eyes watered a little, and he sipped just a little schnapps before he said, "I've got her at a secret home of mine in suspension. Draught of Living Death. She jumped off a roof and tried to drown herself."
"I see." Hrafn nodded and rose from his chair. He went to the other little room and pulled open a drawer. He took out a wooden stick with a quill-like nib and a sheet of parchment. He came back into the kitchen and sat again, and he began writing. As he wrote, he asked,
"You're both skilled with Legilimency and Occlumency, I hope?"
Voldemort cleared his throat and nodded. "Yes."
"Good." Hrafn scribbled away and said, "You'll be able to close yourselves off if anything gets tiresome, then. Once you're bonded, you'll be able to direct thoughts at one another with ease, to have whole communications inside your mind. Your heartbeats will link up, so if she's off running somewhere and you're sitting in an office, you'll feel exertion. Excitement."
"I see," Voldemort nodded. He paused then and asked, "The effects on… intimacy?"
Hrafn smirked but didn't look up from his parchment. "Now that I do miss. It gets… good. Almost too good. You won't want to shut each other out. Your desire will feed hers, and vice versa. You'll have to struggle to limit yourselves."
"She's barely eaten," Voldemort noted. "Her body rejects the idea of food."
"No," Hrafn said. "Her soul rejects the idea of food. She'll be fine now."
He set down his nibbed pen and blew on the ink to dry it. He pushed the parchment across the table to Voldemort and said,
"This is the Icelandic wizarding way. We'll practise pronouncing the spells before you leave. It's best you do it whilst she's still suspended in sleep; it's easier for you to carry it out that way. When you wake her with Wiggenweld Potion, you'll be bound."
"Is there any downside to this?" Voldemort asked frankly, and Hrafn scoffed.
"You've carved up souls and you ask me if binding two of them together is a bad thing? No, Lord Voldemort. You'll be grateful for this. I still am grateful for it. You'll be stronger, the both of you. Now… let's teach you how to speak my words."
"Ég bindi mig við þig." Voldemort held the tip of his wand to the place above Bellatrix's heart, struggling to pronounce the Icelandic incantations correctly. "Þú ert bundinn við mig."
He pulled his wand away from her, watching in wonder as a wispy white sort of smoke came up out of her. It worked its way into Voldemort's own chest, and he felt a sudden thrumming as his heart and hers linked in time.
"Ég mun vernda þig, og þú munt vernda mig. Ég mun finna þig, og þú munt finna mig. Sál þín er mín. Sál mín er þitt. Einu sinni voru tveir af okkur. Nú erum við einn."
A dull warm pulse flushed through Voldemort's veins, and all of a sudden he could feel the core of her being. A swirling darkness tinged with passion, with energy. She was at once a force of wickedness and a gleeful light of joy. She was wild in her black, searing heat. He wondered what his soul felt like. Voldemort blinked his eyes a few times and decided to try something.
Ordinarily, only Wiggenweld Potion could rouse those who had been suspended by Draught of Living Death. And she was, indeed, deeply and almost irrevocably sleeping. His spells to keep her clean and hygienic had worked well; she even smelled vaguely of roses and mint. Her face didn't look quite as frighteningly gaunt as it had when he'd left for Iceland. She was still far too thin, but it was better than it had been. So Voldemort decided to try.
Bellatrix, he thought, straight into her mind. There was hardly any veil or wall there, nothing keeping her brain from him. Bellatrix, I've come back to you. Please… please open your eyes and see me.
He watched in wonder then as her eyes blinked open, and her lips curled up a little. She sounded a bit hoarse as she murmured,
"Master. I felt you… I feel you. I feel your heart."
"I've bound us up," he said, his voice breaking a little. He climbed up onto the bed beside her and lay down facing her. She rotated a little, and he cupped her jaw, feeling a little tingle of delight that he knew was hers. His eyes burned suddenly, and he asked, "How do you feel?"
"Better than I've ever felt in my entire life," she sad, and he could tell she was being honest. She kissed him then, tasting like spearmint from the refreshing spells. She groaned softly against his mouth, and it was immediately almost too much to bear. Voldemort snarled his fingers into her hair and thought at her,
I need you. I need you now. Please.
She was slithering out of her knickers before he knew what was happening. His trousers were being unbuttoned, his robes shoved away. He hardly had time to think about any of it before she was atop him, sinking down onto the cock he didn't realise had gone hard.
She tipped her head back, and Voldemort was abruptly aware of what it felt like to be invaded, to have one's body stretched and pushed by his organ. He gasped at the feeling, for it was so very different from anything he'd ever felt. He was aware then that her body was struggling to take him, that the stretching was almost too much to be pleasurable. He snatched Bellatrix's waist and whirled them around until he was atop her. She wrapped her legs around his waist as he began to pump his hips, and he whispered,
"Hrafn Valsson told me that some people are meant to be linked up, Horcruxes or not. It's real, being Kindred. I should have known. I should have known from the first time I couldn't tear my eyes from yours."
I should have known, came a thought from her mind, and he realised instantly that it was a reverberation of his own thought. Bellatrix reached up to hold onto the beard that was growing in, and he knew she liked it. He knew that because he could feel the purple and scarlet pulse in her mind in reaction to the sight and feel of the beard. It pleased her; it made her want him, made him seem attractive to her. He smirked and pushed his hips harder as he admitted,
"It's only grown in out of laziness. I've been… oh… busy. Mmph."
"Leave it," Bellatrix huffed breathlessly. Then she came, hard and quickly, and she yelped with surprise at how suddenly and powerfully her climax had come on. Voldemort gasped, shocked by the feel of it. Warm like a summer's evening, throbbing, ringing and blurry, clenching. He shut his eyes and knew he had finished right along with her. He breathed in and knew she was doing the same. He breathed out and felt the puff of her breath on his shoulder.
"I will protect you, and you will protect me," he murmured on instinct, repeating what he'd incanted in Icelandic on Hrafn's instructions. He opened his eyes and let himself slip out of Bellatrix, and she nodded.
"Your soul is mine. My soul is yours. Once upon a time, there were two of us, but now there is only the One."
"He had a prophecy," Voldemort whispered, and Bellatrix blinked a few times.
"From his wife. Margret."
"Yes." Voldemort's heart raced as he began to process just how neatly everything had stitched up between them. Her heart would race, too, he thought. He lay beside Bellatrix again, and she said softly,
"I'm so hungry."
He turned up half his mouth and nodded. "How does carrot and ginger soup with crusty bread sound? My specialty."
She smiled, and he instantly felt a rush of her happiness go straight through him. She nodded and whispered a thought.
You are everything.
He'd been thinking the exact same thing at the same time, so he swallowed hard and told her firmly,
"If this is what it means to save your soul from destroying you, to keep you with me, Bellatrix, then I will gladly bear the burden. Now. I am going to make you soup. Take your time getting up… you've been doing an awful lot of sleeping lately."
The End.
Author's Note: So they're really bound up now! This will be the final chapter of One is One and All Alone. The third and final installment of this series, The Night Has Gone and Taken, will begin with the next update (which will either be later today or tomorrow). If you've enjoyed Robbers' Retreat and One is One and All Alone, I'd love for you to give a read to the final story of this series. I hope to see you at The Night Has Gone and Taken. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading.
