Lilith called out into the night and received no reply. So, she did not call out again, instead, she submerged herself in the dark. Her head hung about her neck, as though a branch, replete with fruit. She cradled it in splayed palms, and her hands, like clots of damp soil, bore the stooping bounty that rested upon it, heavily. Still the earth that played host to infinite life, lay dormant under the moon's cool rays for the daylight walkers were asleep, in beds of sediment beneath the bank, or that of feather and twig. But Lilith, a nocturn, by nature rather than choice, slept beneath the sun, while fruit that rested vulnerable on the woodland floor, decomposed and sank into it. The succulent apple wept sweetness and the insects that gorged on it, were overwhelmed by the juice, often. The ant corpses would be corralled by the spider, as bleak day gave way to night, but for now, the night observed Lilith, as silken threads constricted about the bulbs of them. She looked up into the sky, but still, she did not speak, for she understood that there was nothing she could say, that the night did not already know.
She walked down stream, bare foot, under the gaze of the stars, while the urban drone pulsated a distant call. To Lilith, it seemed a call to arms, for survival amidst the concrete groves and brick fortresses that beckoned her. She remembered the lamp light artifice that plagued those dwellers of impermeable ground. Here, knee deep in water, the city spittle merely blurred the stars. Lilith remained unseen. Only night, watched her unruly pursuit: to meld with vague water. Lurking there, she found no fish, though the water rose downstream and became deep enough to swim comfortably. It was then that Lilith felt the roar of humanity draw nearer; she cut her losses, treaded back to where she left her cloak. Wet feet slapped into the silver jazz shoes that complained of loose thread. Lilith pulled the floor-length robe on to her pale shoulders, the velvet, midnight blue, was embroidered with silver stars. She had once worn it in polite company, but now the hem of it was torn and dead leaves collected inside it as it trailed across the ground.
A bird called and split the sky with irritant songs of dawn. Lilith knew that the light was coming.
She ran; fields passed her by. The sun impending, she traversed woodland. The day would soon be there, but Lilith would be gone before it arrived. By the lake, her home reclined, solitary and burdened by her impatience for housework, a hollow in the earth. She opened the door and closed it before the sun could touch her.
When Lilith awoke, her fingers slid across the surface of her side table until they were met with the cool obsidian of her wand. She pulled it into her chest and held it there while she watched the last rays of orange that fell through the curtain, cascade into vermillion and vanish. Lilith pulled herself out of the warmth of her bed and pressed her bare feet firmly into the wooden floor until she stood and stretched. Her fingers sparked as she did so and her eyes glowed, cat-like in the darkness. She crossed the bedroom to a low doorway on the far side of the room and stooped. Lilith liked to wash her face the muggle way, breathing indulgently as the warm water rolled down her nose and chin. She peered at herself in the bathroom mirror for a moment. She charmed her hair, removing the debris of her nightly swim from it, and her face to balance her skin tone. After that she placed her wand on the sink, curled her eyelashes and applied a rich indigo eyeliner, a velvety lipstick in a muted pink and finally mascara. Lilith purred in pleasure upon viewing her reflection and spun on her feet. She threw her hands into the air and small flecks of gold flew all about the room and settled as a flurry of gold leaf snowflakes onto her naked frame. She ran her fingers through her hair and smiled a predatory smile, bearing her gleaming white canines in bliss.
Then, slinking back into her bedroom, Lilith pulled on a figure-hugging black robe and over it a purple tunic studded with amethysts. She placed her wand in her robe. Shoes, tall square toed ankle boots with small cobalt clasps. Lilith poured floo powder into her palm and walk out into the evening. She breathed the dusky air deeply, greedily, her shoulders relaxing into the cold. Since the fireplace was located outside of her home, ivy climbed into the dips and slates of wrought iron. It was slick with dew. She crouched beneath the mantel piece and threw the powder to the ground at her feet. "Knockturn Ally!" Lilith called out as she spun into the dark, leaving the trees trembling behind her.
She arrived in the city, under the purpling sky, veiled by smouldering industry, and found a honeybee corpse laying immobile on steaming asphalt. Her foot hovered over it. I ought to make sure it is dead, she thought, rather than suspended in a purgatorial state of surrender. I know that, should a boot find me, hover above me, shuddering, that I would lay still also, mimicking a death that I wish to find so I might be reborn.
The bee twitched. The sky pulsed and spit, seemed to Lilith to move toward her, to wait for her slip up. Devour me, she thought, growled, and paced down the ally. All those who passed her, found her eyes and bore their own into hers, beneath hat rims, below browbones. She knew why.
Lilith stepped quickly toward her shop, a tiny premises a few doors down from Borgin and Burkes. The shop front read 'Heart of Persephone' in gold, yet the years had warped the wooden window frames and panes of glass trembled in the autumn breeze. Lilith unlocked the door with her wand, closed it behind her and lit the candelabra in the shop window. She creeped over to her desk, stooping once more to account for the sagging ceiling and sat in waiting, for she knew that Bellatrix would arrive soon with word from The Dark Lord- the stars had warned her. Lilith looked down at her forearm… and the candlelight died.
She smiled to herself, 'So soon, my Lord?'
Before Lilith he stood, Nagini at his side. Bellatrix walked behind her desk chair. "Lilith." He bowed his head.
Lilith rounded the desk and knelt before her master. He stroked her head with his hands of ice. She shuddered. "We have much to discuss."
Lilith rose eye to eye with The Dark Lord himself. "Yes, my lord. I have consulted the ephemeris." She whispered and walked behind her desk, looking down at the astrology chart she had constructed some days before. "Although," she spoke slowly, "I gather that… you cannot stay long."
Bellatrix hissed. Lilith smiled and whipped her body around to meet the woman's dangerous gaze, "long time, no see- Lestrange."
Bellatrix walked to the side of her lord. "This is not a social call Lilith- we have come-"
"I know why you are here," Lilith spoke, "but the news is not pleasant."
Bellatrix pulled an armchair out of the corner for her master. The Dark Lord sat opposite Lilith's desk. Lilith too, sat, as did Bellatrix.
"Tell me Lilith, of the Prophecy." The Dark Lords gaze flooding her senses. Lilith pushed him out of her mind with ease and flattened the chart before her and studied it playfully, tracing her fingers across it deftly to display the justification for her words.
"My lord, only the boy can retrieve that," Lilith smiled and looked up to meet her master's eyes, "you know this."
The Dark Lord sat back into his chair, observing Lilith with his usual disdain. Bellatrix slumped on the desk to the right of him, her masses of raven curls, pulsing in the draft of the poorly hung door. Her gaze upon Lilith, unmoving.
"He will come." she continued, "You will penetrate his mind- torture a loved one, perhaps-" her finger traced the chart to the position of Saturn. "a father figure, someone who he regards as an authority?"
"Sirius." Bellatrix interjected in a hushed tone. She turned to her lord.
"Continue Lilith."
"He will arrive with friends, my lord. Other… children"
"How many?" The Dark Lord hissed.
"I cannot tell for sure," Lilith regarded him, knowing better than to challenge the question. She sighed, as her master raised a challenging eyebrow and complied with his demand, "Could you give me one moment?"
The Dark Lord bowed his head "One moment, don't test my patience witch"
Lilith paused and closed her eyes momentarily, searching her consciousness, pushing past her feelings of hatred for the man who utilised her talents without sensitivity, courtesy, as though they were commonplace. She could see the prophesy glowing dimly amidst the Department of Mysteries, firstly there was no light, then shadows, lit wand tips. There were eight wands. She heard a distant whisper that she knew to be her own: "No more than eight- less possibly." Lilith felt for her body but could not find it as she felt satisfied with her prediction- a flash of green appeared before her suddenly, and a stone arch, the face of Bellatrix Lestrange and Lucius Malfoy then Potter himself, as a snake constricted around The Dark Lord. Lilith tried to find her way back out of the vision, clawed for her physical body and cursed herself as she felt the pain of the soul that she had possessed in order to retrieve the vision. She heard shouting, a girl screaming, a muggle born girl. It's me. Lilith felt blood rising in her cheeks and an untamed mess of hair sticking to her forehead, obstructing her view, her eyes were fixed on a tall slender woman in midnight blue, she moved with feline stealth, wand tip raised. That's me? Who have I connected with? They're only children. A distant scream beckoned Lilith back to her dreary shop front and she pulled away from the muggleborn's body with some difficulty. She sighed when the cold air hit her skin once more. She returned to the material world, shaking uncontrollably.
Lilith opened her eyes and spoke before she knew where she was or what had transpired in her absence. "I see six, My Lord. Three Mars, Three Venus." Bellatrix was holding Lilith's head in her lap; her face, that of intense concern. Her eyebrows were furrowed, her lips, parted. Lilith's eyes lingered there as she panted and swallowed, resting her hands on her hair that had returned to her own caramel, straightened, perfect- she realised that Bellatrix's wand tip was at her throat. Lilith slapped her hand away, humiliated, and dusted off her amethyst tunic. She sat on her desk chair and looked again at the chart, distracted by the images she had just witnessed.
"Thank you, Lilith, we will outnumber them." The Dark Lord spoke finally and stood, but Lilith felt the shadow of the vision pulling at her consciousness with his words.
"My lord," Lilith spoke. The Dark Lord inclined his head impatiently, "I sense great pain- you must weaken the boy; he has the power to overcome-"
"To whom does this pain belong?" The Dark Lord hissed.
Lilith paused, considering a lie but deciding against it, not wanting to be the materialisation of the deception symbolised by the snake that she had just witnessed. She spoke simply, despite her internal rage: "You, My lord."
There was a pause in which Nagini began to coil around Lilith's chair. She smiled bitterly where any other witch might have faltered in the knowledge that, unlike so many in the service of The Dark Lord, she was not so easily replaced. Bellatrix smiled also, thinking in her ignorance, that Lilith may pay the price for implying the weakness of The Dark Lord. Lilith growled at her as Nagini coiled around her neck, pinning her to the back of her chair. Lilith did not flinch for she was tired, drained, and her powers were returning slowly, coursing through her body like thousands of exhilarating pinpricks.
"How do we weaken the boy, Lilith?" The Dark Lord spoke.
Lilith placed her palm face up on the desk and waited. "Your hand Bellatrix?" The witch turned to her lord without hesitation as though for permission. He bowed his head forward and she placed her left hand into Lilith's. Her ivory skin was soft, translucent, fragile as tissue; Lilith absent-mindedly stroked her thumb over it and looked into her dark eyes, penetrating her mind with just a touch. Bellatrix flinched, then drew her wand and battle scenes flicked through her head, seconds later, Lilith let go of her hand and spoke coolly to the dark witch: "It is simple… You have to kill Sirius." Lilith turned to her lord, "without his death, your victory is impossible." Bellatrix whipped her hand out of Lilith's grasp and rubbed it with her other hand, her head still spinning.
"Thank you, Lilith-"
"There is more," Lilith interrupted the Dark Lord, "You need not torture Sirius to lure Potter into the department, only penetrate his mind so that he believes it to be so."
The Dark Lord smiled dangerously. "Always so intent on minimising suffering" the Dark Lord mused, "I wonder how long this weakness will persist?" The Dark Lord took his leave along with Nagini. And Lilith sighed as the snake released her body. Bellatrix stayed…
"Tea?" Lilith offered, breaking the silence left by The Dark Lord's absence.
Bellatrix laughed bitterly.
"Some things never change" she whispered as Bellatrix kicked her old armchair. Lilith levitated the tea tray into the study at the back of the shop. "Sit." She ordered. Bellatrix didn't move from where she stood near the door. Instead, she watched Lilith her wand resting contemplatively on her lower lip, as Lilith locked the door, and re-lit the candelabra in the shop window.
The premises were comprised of only two rooms. The shop front, and a study at the back. The walls were uneven, as was the ceiling, they were painted entirely in black and huge antiquarian star charts were hung over them, covering the scrapes and cracks of hundreds of years.
Lilith sauntered into the study, carrying the light with her. "Suit yourself, Bella." She placed the candelabra on a side table in the study along with her wand and sipped her tea.
"You haven't called me that for a while." Bellatrix spoke dangerously from the darkness.
Silence followed.
"Why didn't you visit when you got out or- or at least told me where you were- you know that I would have travelled-"
Bella entered the room and sat before Lilith in the same place she had always sat, in an emerald leather armchair that the witches had collectively stolen from Malfoy manor in their twenties. Lilith smiled at the memory. We were a wicked pair. Lilith thought. The pride of Slytherin to this day. Bellatrix agreed arrogantly as she remembered the look on her newlywed sister's face, and the manor in flames behind her. Lilith watched the smirking Bellatrix elongate her body and stretch out like a cat over it as though reclaiming it for her own. Lilith knew then that she wouldn't receive an answer. She had imagined this moment so many times before.
The Forest of Dean seemed to shudder, as though suspended in unquiet water, yet the sun shone through each untidy branch and quivering golden leaf. Lilith watched from her window as it rose its head. She shut the curtain and burrowed beneath the sheet of her bed so that her red nose and ears soon shone no longer with cold. Her home warmed beneath the gaze of Apollo, and soon she was unconscious.
It was the low hoot of an owl that stirred Lilith from her divine, unbroken, sleep. She slowly opened her eyes and gathered her thoughts, watching as the owl's beak chipped away at her window frame. She found it fascinating: the total and utter lack of consideration for a witch's home. Perhaps I ought to pop it in my cauldron she mused as she made her way toward it and undid the latch. The bird proudly put forth his leg and attached Lilith found a small scroll tied with black cotton. She unfurled the parchment in her palm, it read:
Lily, find me next nightfall at the Department of Mysteries. For the prophecy, we will fight. Burn this.
Bellatrix. Lilith thought. Oh, the games you play…
Her mind trailed back to the time she last saw her in her study only days ago. It felt as though so much had been left unsaid. Lilith understood that the distance between them would not be easily traversed with sorrow in her heart. Bellatrix was no more the child she had befriended in Hogwarts, than the woman she had loved before the time of The Dark Lord's rise to power. Her senseless devotion to his regime was what drove her to imprisonment and out of Lilith's arms and her absence cast Lilith's life in shadow. The witch would walk the streets at night, unable to rest, pondering a way that she might be able to free her, but soon Lilith realised that she did not know a thing about action, about resistance and ambition, she predicted, watched, immersed myself in the spoils of the earth- at least it was this perception that was imperative to her survival…
Bellatrix was out of her reach and her skin lost the glow of youth, she left London, continued her life as an astrologer and seer and never left Persephone's Heart again.
Meanwhile, Bellatrix was subject to much harsher terrors, the cruelty of the ministry. To lay there, in the rotting underbelly of Azkeban, among cheap scoundrels and unsound killers. Bellatrix was not so. She was a witch with all the buoyance of youth, the pride of her family name and the quickest of wits. The brightest witch of her age and the most adept with a wand, Bellatrix was royalty to Lilith, she was her light.
The years passed, sapped and tugged and scraped the very life force of the woman and yet his was not her downfall, what truly pushed Bellatrix to the brink of a neurotypical mind was her undying will, never to surrender. She never stopped fighting. Her insides were raging even as the shackles about her wrist and feet and neck, were tainted with fresh blood. Her heart was pulsing, beating at the door to the barred cell in which she was shown the face of hell.
How can I expect her to love me? When, year after unmoving year, Bellatrix has been faced with nothing but the sorrow of humanity, the rejected and demented and the misunderstood? While I wonder here, nocturnal and stirring as though continually waking from hibernation that will never settle.
When Lilith heard her voice again that night, before The Dark Lord, she could do nothing but smile, for, even in the bleakest light of abandonment and scorn, Bellatrix held her heart in her hand eternally. Upon his absence she did not touch Lilith, she spoke only little and within moments she had left Persephone's Heart again. She watched Lilith, defied her every suggestion, inclination, kindness and playful invitation. I am but a shadow of the past to her. Lilith thought, I am a vision of what could have been, of what was and should have been, her lover, devoted, just as she was mine. Bellatrix's eyes had darted about Lilith's face, where previously her soft hands had lingered and smoothed. Her hands, tense and slender, once roamed Lilith's frame freely, where now they made fists at the base of her wand. Armed, dangerous. No easy smile, nor compassionate touch could ease her conscience now. She was, just as the water of the lake that lapped near Lilith's secluded hollow, elusive as time itself.
Lilith didn't want Bellatrix to slip through my fingers again, but unlike her dark lover, Lilith was surrendered, and should water leak through her trembling palms once more, she will live to bask in the rays of another moon phase.
The time came. Night, as it always had, watched Lilith ready herself for the task ahead. She bathed in the stream not far from the hollow, viewed the lattice of purple tree branches that stretch into an orange sky with new wonder. Her body, shocked by cold was alert and attuned to the most minute stimulation. Her eyes were wide and waiting. She moved, feline, into the hollow, where she robed herself, this time in entirely midnight blue as the vision dictated. Then Lilith placed her mask over her head and tied a small pouch of floo powder to her left side. Wand in hand, Lilith rounded the door into the outside and crept into the fireplace. No words tonight, silently, Lilith felt the cool tiled ground of the department of mysteries against my palm in her mind's eye and threw the powder to the ground. The green flames roared and licked her face, body, and the witch was spewed out of a fireplace in the ministry building and across the tiled ground to the very feet of Bellatrix Lestrange. Soot coated, Lilith looked up at her gaunt face and the unruly curls that framed it, and she, in return it seemed, offered Lilith her hand.
Three Minutes Earlier -
Bellatrix smiled- She had been only moments in the Department of Mysteries when Lucius made his presence known. "Evening, Lestrange," he spoke edgily. Bellatrix had turned her head toward him though her eyes rested upon the tiled floor. "You neglect to hide your identity?"
Distain eagerly pulsated at Bellatrix's temple; Her lip curled into a smirk. "What is it Malfoy?" She moved slowly and directly toward him, her wand tip resting at the side of her mouth. "can't you bare…" she transfigured her wand into a whip with a flick of her wrist, "to look upon a woman betrayed?" Bellatrix frowned mockingly and tilted her head while her fingers wrapped around the whip.
Malfoy, pathetic specimen of a man that he was, had backed himself into a wall. Bellatrix raised her arm to strike him out of his moronic existence when suddenly, the room was filled with billowing plumes of soot and dead leaves. Green light rose to the ceiling. Lucius fled along with his band of equally fearful excuses for Death Eaters, while Bellatrix walked toward the bewitched fireplace- she recognised this strange magic. Moments later, the blaze subsiding now, a witch was flung across the room and onto the ground at her feet. She lifted her mask to meet Bellatrix's eyes and in turn Bellatrix watched her own. They were startlingly yellow, a defect left by her Animagus form, and almond shaped. They shined with mischief, and silver eyeliner. I lowered my hand.
"You know Lily? No one ever makes an entrance quite like you." Bellatrix spoke playfully and hoped she would remember the time when we arrived late to a detention with Dumbledore in which she transfigured every single object in his office into a sherbet lemon. Bellatrix's sides ached for laughing when the old mad popped one into his mouth and gave 50 points to Slytherin.
The sixteen-year-old Lilith bowed deeply, winked at me and left the office. I stood there, stunned, and I remember then that Dumbledore said: "She was awfully close to becoming a Ravenclaw, using mischief in a way that benefits all parties involved." He examined another sweetie, "Power hungry, but not malicious- perhaps the brightest witch of her age." He ate another sherbet lemon and smiled warmly. "Now that's magic." I remember turning away after he had spoken but I heard him say as the door closed behind me, "You won't find another woman like her, Bellatrix."
And here she was, beneath her, at her mercy once more, after fourteen years. She took Bellatrix's hand and the dark witch pulled her onto her feet.
"At least you didn't all turn into chocolate frogs. I am frighteningly adept at candy transfigurations you know?" Lilith smiled down at Bellatrix who stood a couple of inches shorter than her. Bellatrix smiled almost imperceptibly but she knew that Lilith's sharp eyes would not have missed it. Lilith continued, "So, where is everyone?"
"I believe your theatrics frightened them all off."
Lilith laughed; it was melodic. "Still as spineless as ever it seems, I expected more from Rookwood and Dolohov."
How Bellatrix laughed at that. "Those two blubbered like children for months in their cell- I heard their pleading, their begging for mercy and treason against The Dark Lord. My allegiance never faltered, I took every punishment with honour and dignity."
Lilith had finished dusting herself off, she untied her perfectly straight caramel hair and let it fall onto her back and either side of her breasts. She stepped toward Bellatrix and gently placed her fingers beneath my chin, lifting my gaze to meet her eyes. Bellatrix's breath caught despite Lilith's unreadable gaze.
"Lilith?" Spoke the Dark Lord. Bellatrix stood to attention and walked over to his side. Lilith sauntered behind her, moodily and without urgency, observing the stonework of the corridor on her way.
"What is it, my lord?" Bellatrix spoke.
"I sense the presence of the boy." The Dark Lord whispered. He turned away, "Lucius," he hissed, "you must wait in the shadows for the boy and his friends, bring forth all whom have been summoned."
Lucius replied, "Yes my lord." He went to collect the scattered troops.
"Bellatrix." Her name sounded cold on his tongue, thin and broken. "You and Lucius will lead Negotiations." The Dark Lord unsheathed his wand.
"Yes, my lord" Bellatrix spoke again and knelt before him.
He pushed her aside, and walked toward Lilith with all too much purpose, who was busy making small sarcastic fireworks with her wand. He took her delicate neck in his hand and carried her by it to the nearest wall. It seemed the very fabric of Bellatrix's being, began to tear as she could only watch in horror as he held his wand tip to her throat, her feet, daggling, lifelessly.
Bellatrix hid.
"I warned you not to test my patience witch, and here you are, irrespective of my instruction, scattering my troops like ants about the ministry." He did not loosen his grip and Lilith's eyes began to close. He leaned into her. "She is my first lieutenant Lilith" he spat with scorn. "Her allegiance belongs and can only ever belong, with me. Do you understand?"
Lilith was playing dead. He smacked her back into the wall and she gasped for air, defeated, "Yes, my lord."
The Dark Lord released his grasp and Lilith fell to the ground; she broke the fall with her hands. He turned to leave her when she spoke huskily: "no cruciatus then- oh Tom, gone soft?"
The Dark Lord raised his wand without a second thought and gave Lilith what she had asked for. He didn't turn to face her. She screamed and called out for Bellatrix: whom she knew to be watching. But what could the dark witch do? Lilith knew that she would die long before defying her lord. The thought of that burned through Lilith's every cell with far more ferocity than the curse that had already taken hold over them.
When the Dark Lord was finished, and the pain diminished if not dissipated, Lilith whispered simply "You need me."
"I know," the Dark Lord spoke callously, "and you will retrieve the prophecy, or I will make you watch as I pull your lover limb from limb!"
"She's not my lover," Lilith choked back her impromptu laughter then paused, still breathing deeply to compensate for the tenderness of her body. "her allegiance lies only with you, my lord."
"You have one hour." The Dark Lord sneered. He left the corridor his footsteps cascading into silence.
Lilith lay trembling on the ground, her eyes closed- tears escaping them, she turned her head toward Bellatrix. She watched as a grin crept back on to Lilith's beautiful lips.
"You're sick Lily." She whispered.
Lilith inclined her gaze and raised her chin. "Come Bella," she laughed breathily, "we have work to do."