Death and the Maiden
Bellatrix looked forward to their first dance.
Pairing: Bellatrix/Death, Bellatrix/Rodolphus (mentioned), Bellatrix/Voldemort (implied, if you squint)
Rating: teen
Warnings: Canonical Character Death, Romanticizing Death and Violence, hinted at underage sexual encounters, first person POV
Tropes: Death and the Maiden, Personification of Death
Words: 305
Original Release Date: 17 Oct 2019
I have always been able to feel his presence. From his cold humour amongst the stones in the graveyard at the back of Black Manor to his warm gentleness at Grandfather Rosier's sickbed. As a child, before I learned that only I knew him, I used to worry my mother and scare my sisters with talk about the soothing presence who walked with me wherever I went.
I loved the autumns when we'd visit Great Aunt Lycoris's sprawling estate because he would play hide and seek with me around the scarecrows or in the pumpkin patch. I saw his face the first time when Lycoris died in a potions fire a few days before Samhain.
It was his touch I knew before my marriage to Rodolphus, taught and learned and protected in the Forbidden Forest. His touch I missed when the wide-open woods of my youth were enclosed by Lestrange's terraced house and societal expectations.
He always lingered near the Dark Lord, sometimes their visage would blend together before me, flickering from earthly beauty to eternal power. I fashioned our masks in an attempt to recreate the ethereal and infinite combinations they made together.
I killed for him. To draw him to me, to drink in his desire like lust from a crystal goblet. It nurtured me, more than a mother's milk, sustained me until I could call for him next. I flirted with him, brazen in our open affair.
The Dementors distorted my memories of him. Stole his tranquillity from me and made me afraid of the endless darkness of his eyes that I'd once found comfort in. They were bastards of his image and tormented me in his absence.
And in the Great Hall, that ballroom bathed in blood, he offered me his hand. He pulled me into his embrace, and we danced.