Chapter Thirty-One: The Prisoner and The Prophecy
The black haired witch jolted awake as violently as if she had been electrocuted. She clutched her head, her fingers getting caught in her wild, tangled, chaotic curls.
"The prophecy!" She croaked as a wave of horrific pain ripped through her skull."It's come true!"
As if operating on automatic, Bellatrix Lestrange rose from the floor of her cell and walked to the tiny, barred window and ran her hand along the wall beside it until she felt the unmistakable magical vibrations. Then she slammed her fist through the thick stone wall and, with blood dripping down her hand, she pulled out the wand she had smuggled into Azkaban and hidden there.
"Hello, old friend." She greeted her wand, and then ran her tongue down the length of it, licking it like the mad woman everyone said she was.
"Do we sneak out like my scared little baby of a cousin?" She asked her wand, staring at it earnestly, as if waiting for a response. She put it up to her ear, as if she were listening to it, a wicked grin spreading across her pale, thin face. "Yes...yes...that sounds like like it would MUCH more fun."
If anyone had been with Bellatrix in that moment and seen the look on her face, they would have run screaming from the cell - or, they would have tried to, anyway, but they wouldn't have lived long enough to make it to the door.
No one and nothing on earth, except for maybe Voldemort, was more dangerous than a smiling Bellatrix Lestrange.
She kissed her wand, licked the blood from her wounded hand, and then skipped happily to the door of her cell. She had fourteen years of pent up rage to unleash on some poor, unsuspecting Dementors.
"REDUCTO!" She shrieked, flourishing her wand and causing the door of her cell to explode. With a hysterical, maniacal laugh she skipped out of her cell and began dancing down the hall, past the cells of the other prisoners, blasting Dementors away left and right with a flick of her wand and torturing and killing prisoners while she was at it.
As Bellatrix danced merrily through the halls, murdering prisoners and Dementors alike and casting Reductor curses as she went, gleefully blasting the walls of Azkaban to rubble, she thought about how much of a disgrace her cousin Sirius really was to their distinguished, noble bloodline - sneaking out with his tail between his legs like the boring coward that he was, when he could have torn the whole fucking fortress down stone by stone and burned it to ash in a blaze of glory.
She knew that was what she was going to do.
Her cousin had always had a knack for wasting every chance he'd ever been given. That was how he'd ended up losing James, after all. Poor little baby Sirius was left all alone while James went off and married Lily and...
Bellatrix felt pain twist like a knife in her chest, almost causing her to stumble.
"REDUCTO!" She screamed, flourishing her wand and pointing it skyward.
As the walls of Azkaban came crashing down around her, Bellatrix began whistling a menacing little nursery rhyme as she continued skipping toward the cell of her husband, Rodolphus.
"REDUCTO!" She shrieked again, blowing the door of his cell off.
"Darling!" Rodolphus cried, with a look of shock and fear in his eyes. "I should have known you were the cause of such destruction!" He chuckled nervously. "Are we breaking out, luvvie?"
Bellatrix slowly looked him up and down and then snorted derisively. "'We'?" She laughed. "There is no 'we,' sweetie, there never was. I'm just here to repay a debt." She sneered at the man who had wasted far too much of her life.
"A...a debt?" Rodolphus chuckled nervously as he trembled with fear. "Oh, no, that's quite all right my dear, no need, no need!"
Bellatrix turned to her wand and gave it a loving lick. "What do you think, old friend?" She asked the inanimate wooden object as if it were a person. "Do you think we should repay the debt? Or should we just leave this...fool to die?"
The cell shook as the walls of the fortress continued crumbling down around them while she waited patiently for her wand to respond.
"REPAY THE DEBT! REPAY THE DEBT!" Her useless husband screamed at her in terror.
Bellatrix looked at her wand, which she had been listening to intently as Rodolphus screamed, and cocked her head as if she were puzzled. "Repay the debt? Are you sure sweetie?"
"YES!" Rodolphus, begged in a hysterical shriek.
"I wasn't asking YOU." Bellatrix spat, and then turned back to her wand. "Yes...yes...I think we WILL repay the debt." She nodded in agreement with the piece of wood. "You're right, he does deserve it."
"Oh Bella! Bella! Thank you, thank you, thank you!" Rodolphus cried, jumping to his feet with a happy smile of relief plastered on his face. "You know, I always told people you weren't really as crazy as everyone said..."
Bellatrix smiled charmingly at him and Rodolphus was too grateful to notice the look of pure hatred in her eyes.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!" She screamed, killing him on the spot.
"He never did know just when to shut his mouth, did he, pet?" Bellatrix drawled to her wand with a wicked grin on her face, as she skipped out of the cell.
Bellatrix couldn't help but laugh maniacally as she blasted and burned her way through the fortress, killing and cursing as she went. Rodolphus had always been a fool, but she couldn't believe the idiot actually thought either option would have guaranteed his survival.
That had never been in the cards.
Men. They were so fucking stupid.
Bellatrix began whistling her evil little nursery rhyme again as she finally reached the last cell, the one no one was supposed to know about - not the prisoners, not the wizarding world at large, not even the ministry.
It didn't get more top secret than this.
"REDUCTO!" She shrieked, blasting away the door and part of the wall.
As she looked in at the thin, sickly looking man huddled up in the corner of the cell in fear, Bellatrix smiled.
"Baaaaartyyyyyyy..." She sang the name in an eerie sing song voice.
The man's head whipped around to look for the source of the noise and his tongue darted out, licking, searching, like a reptile's. When he saw Bellatrix his expression changed, the terror replaced with a wide, wicked grin.
"Come on, idiot, we've got work to do." Bellatrix winked.
Barty Crouch Jr. got to his feet shakily and Bellatrix couldn't help but notice that he was moving slowly, carefully, as if he were in pain.
"They're still torturing you?" She asked, in a tone that might have been mistaken for sounding motherly, if it weren't Bellatrix Le-fucking-Strange we were talking about here.
"Of course." He laughed bitterly. "Father's orders."
Bellatrix reached out a hand to help him, putting her arm around him and helping him walk. Barty smiled gratefully at her and winced in pain as they made their way through the crumbling wreckage together.
"Now there's a man who didn't suffer half as much pain as he deserved." Bellatrix spat viciously.
"I did my best, Bella dear," Barty laughed with genuine amusement, his tongue darting out in reptilian mirth. "But you're right, I'm no match for you." He winked.
"No one is." Bellatrix sighed wistfully, staring off into the middle distance for a long moment before snapping back to the reality of the hell they still needed to escape crumbling all around them. "Now, let's burn this fucking prison to the ground."
"You always did know how to have a good time, didn't you, Bells?" Barty winked, his tongue darting out again and licking the side of his mouth.
"Well, someone has to, sweetie." Bellatrix smirked flirtatiously.
And with that, she held her wand aloft and uttered the ancient curse, so evil, wicked and dangerous that it's incantation cannot be put into print.
As the fiendish, magical, fantastic fiendfyre beasts roared out of her wand and set everything aflame, Bellatrix Lestrange laughed the laugh of a mad woman - howling with such exquisite lunacy that poor Allen Ginsberg found himself rising from the grave once again to give her a round of finger snapping beatnik applause.
Bellatrix shrieked a curse as she continued to howl with laughter and turned the recently arisen corpse of Allen Ginsberg into a zombie - sorry, Inferius, which is basically the same thing, let's be real - just for the fun of it.
She grabbed Barty's hand and they ran stumbling and shrieking with laughter out of the burning, crumbling prison like two naughty children, Inferius Ginsberg trampling along with them like something out of Night of the Living Dead, still snapping his reanimated corpse fingers as he shuffled, stumbled and lurched along after the two infamous wizard criminals, all three members of the party hell bent on murder and destruction.
The world had no fucking clue what it was in for.