I have carved you on the palm of my hand
I will never forget you;
I will not leave you orphaned
I will never forget my own.
- Hymn, Carey Landry. Based on Isaiah.
*
After it was over, he turned to me in the darkness and I could feel his leer. He was drunk on me, drunk on my power, my beauty, my faith. He'd never felt fire burn so brightly through his body, the flesh wounds I inflicted with contaminated snakebites. He begged me to strike deeper.
Our Marks had made the connection, locking our flesh as tightly as the teeth of a zip, grappling a balance between attraction and repulsion, a pair of violent dogs on heat. I could feel my skin contort, fit around his own Mark like a vicious mouth. I was a vampire. I drew his thoughts and feelings and all his memories like a tide of blood. I churned them inside and made them my own, I tore them apart and held them up in grotesque show, my eyes never wavering or leaving those of my Master as we regarded each other through the strips of flesh held aloft in my showman's hands.
Rodolphus was a gatekeeper. He was the ignorant necessity in bringing the Dark Lord and I in true union, a petty, physical annoyance bumbling beneath me. My real partner was wound tight inside my body, a snake binding bones and organs, coiling around my brain with a delicious, fruity crush. I could feel everything immaterial to the lord's dark order wrung from my mind in a gush of poisoned juice. Left dry, the corpse of the truth was all that remained. From then on my only thoughts were directed to that. There was nothing else left to think about.
I watched them sleeping on the bank, long, white, shining bodies entwined, stray fallen leaves plastered to their skin like stars. I had put wand back in my pocket some time ago, let all ideas of malice meander instead of converge into action. The scene before my eyes was too curious to interrupt.
This girl, this dark haired, glitter eyed, scheming girl transfixed me. One so young with such calculated plans was a rare, impossible gift I could not let come to harm. For, though the boy was obviously ignorant to her intentions, I saw them clear as scent. I watched her trap him into thinking he had orchestrated the lovemaking, that it was a wild blessing they had stumbled upon a secluded Eden, that it was a coincidence that at the height of his attraction to her he would get the opportunity to act on it. Yes, I watched and I marvelled and I admired. When they fell asleep with their toes trailing the cold water and chinks of sunlight dappling their bodies, I considered snatching her away and bringing her up as my own. I would nourish her cunning, I would show her the depths of a Darkness she had only sat and watched her reflection ripple upon. But then, from the depths of the darkness in my own mind, a quote from a book taught (and left) in my childhood emerged.
Permit the children to come to Me; do not hinder them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.
She would rebel. She was at a volatile, egotistical age. After a while she would reject my nurture, go in search of her own power. She would become a rival…she would become an equal, staying to learn my secrets then leaving to use them against me. I could not abide this. I would have to let her go and experience Life, let it grind her down and sap her strength until she felt she needed a Master. Being a Death Eater is not entirely about power and loyalty, it is also about feeling comfort, shielding yourself from the outside world by drowning in order and all that is seen to be sinful. What can hurt you if you have already done your worst? The weakest of characters will become followers. The strongest will become rivals. Bellatrix Black, unlike all other Death Eaters, was born a rival. And if she were ever to learn this, to tap back into her undaunted childhood power, I would have more to contend with than all the Dumbledores and Potters put together.
When I was 18, there was Narcissa. Sirius was a forgotten memory, dust swirling in an abandoned cellar, a part of my life left behind a door I had locked myself. And, as if stepping from the wings, the indifferent girl who had lived a room above and only regarded me to pass the salt became my Sister.
We were the toast of London, parties only starting when we descended the stairs surrounded in sparkling clouds of anticipation and frenzied men. She, the cool, arrogant, cut-glass princess with I her wild and filthy partner; together we reeled them in, digested and discarded. It felt like living.
This was a new kind of corruption, a new source of amusement and deception and wickedness. I did not want to become part of the kingdom anymore. I no longer felt clean and pure when standing in the sunlight, or when I walked upon the edge of a stream. Instead, I flourished under neon bulbs and acid coloured alcohol, I pockmarked candyapple dance floors with lethal heels, I danced to the sound of screams high from illegal spells.
All with Narcissa, the link between us unbreakable.
The Riddle House has never been a shelter for Healing. In all of its huge, sprawling rooms, its secret underground luxuries (the bathroom, among others), no emphasis or welcome has ever been given to the art of selfless Good.
I am nauseated at the sight of Wormtail's podgy, blundering hand repairing my most beautiful of creations and filled with rage that I commanded him to do it. But it must be done, a battered mother is not a healthy vessel for the child. Not a child as vital as this.
He leaves when he sees my figure paused at the doorframe, hurries past me, clumsy and sweating. I slam the door contemptuously so it catches him of the way out, listen to sobs he tries to muffle as he pelts far from my wrathful presence. It is saddening that the most incompetent of my followers is the only one who can Heal.
There she lies. White petals of skin torn but repairing, swollen cherry lips caked with dried blood. Wormtail cannot control the cut in her lip, if he dabs at it the bleeding becomes more ferocious. He sais we can only wait. It will be weeks before she can speak, before she can bear to break the threads of stinging scab over her mouth. Wordlessly, I stand above her.
In the same way Legilimency allows one to delve into the minds of others, I also possess the power to read another's body. This skill lacks the complexities of mind reading, it is natural, simple, allowing me to know more about the condition followers and enemies alike than they do. I often find myself surrounded by disease, virus, abnormalities, magical infections, cancers. Nothing is pure, corruption reigns in all. A corruption of the highest reigns in Bella. I hardly need to scan my eyes over the body to know that indeed she bears a child. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb.
There is no need for me to stay, I know now what I came to find out. But there she lies, asleep and oblivious, no huge accusatory eyes to follow my footsteps like dead, rolling marbles. I stay frozen, imaging myself a statue and her the stoned body crumpled at my foot. My hand, dripping icicles, drops slowly to her cheek. So soft, so cold. Smashable as puddlewater. But I wish only to feel.
Stone, metal…everything solid moves at a certain temperature. Moved by miracles.
I was, as always, linked to Narcissa when it happened. The crooks of our arms fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, we walked through mingled drifts each others breath.
It was a cold day in St. James's park . Snow lay thick on the ground like bright, ethereal icing and the dome of the sky was white and electric, as though sparks could be knocked from it. Amethyst clouds trailed low and sullenly like children sucking their thumbs, the air they floated upon thin and whistling. And in the midst of all this frozen time, two figures walked, shattering everything they passed through like sheet upon sheet of crystal.
Narcissa was always taller and almost coltishly thin. She had long chopstick limbs and high, fragile cheekbones that flushed from pure white to stain glass apples in the cold . Her hair was beaded with droplets from the moist air, framing her luminescent face in pale, angelic waves. My own hair spilled down my back, glossy and oil-black and swimming with rainbows. When I turned my eyes to look into hers, I saw they'd been cut from a different sky. I was midnight, she was January noon; ice blue and bruised with grey. Her lips, raw and flaky from the cold, felt dry on mine but I didn't care.
And that's how we stayed, an invisible layer of frost locking us in with the rest of the still, suspended world. Lucius and Rodolphus, those lovely young men chosen by our parents, were dim shadows in the back of our minds, as they always were when this happened. I didn't feel anything sexual for Narcissa. I, we, simply felt that kissing and touching were an extension of our affection. It was our bond, tugging us together. At these moments, when nothing else mattered, when I seemed to drift into the natural fabric of my surroundings, was when I came as close to remembering Sirius.
I was grasping at him, almost there, tasting his lips, when something happened. It was like a jolt went through our own comfortable world, signalling the arrival of danger and unnaturalness. We sprang apart, still gripping each other, my fingers half way run through her hair. Nobody was around, but there was definitely a presence, like inhaling smoke from a far away bonfire. Narcissa drew closer to me, her eyes large and revolving. She was vain, she was arrogant and put up a strong façade, but there was always fear bubbling just under the surface, ready to burst through at the slightest of things. I didn't understand it. I had never been fearful.
It appeared as a speck on the horizon, cutting low red flares across the snow like a rising sun. A cool, crisp wind carried its scent to our nostrils, the scent of charred skin and destruction. The speck approached us at an astonishing speed and soon enough we could see it in all its terrible magnificence.
It was at least ten feet tall, a flaming, galloping column of fire, deep dark eyes like burning coals staring out unblinking and hateful. It cut a blackened, smoking path through the snow, which was melting not only in the choking heat but in pure fear. Narcissa, her scrawny hands desperately gripping my flesh, seemed to be doing much the same.
I had only seen blurred photographs of these creatures before, only read snatches of babble from the cheap thin paper of The Quibbler, never believing or caring. I cared now. This was a Heliopath, a spirit of fire, a mythical creature that felt no pain or anger or happiness. It only felt the desire to burn, to bring desolation and death to whatever crossed its path. Narcissa and I were next and there was nothing we could do to stop it, there was no time to uproot from the ground and run. I pressed my face to hers, feeling our bones fit together, our eyelashes butterflying against each others' skin. Whispering, urgent, our voices colliding and nonsensical but desperate to express final words of truth and love, we waited for the bonfire to begin.
It never came. The Heliopath drew close enough to singe my hair and flick cinders on my robes, but swerved at the last minute. When I looked up, it had gone, leaving a ruined path of slush and a riot of relief and questions in my mind.