Thy right hand, O LORD, is become glorious in power: thy right hand, O LORD, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.
-Exodus 15:6
I don't know how I stand this. I don't know how I manage to get up every morning, to force every bone, sinew, electrical impulse of the mind to channel this excruciating power. It feels like burning the veins and arteries and soft tissue from around my heart, then exherting so hard it bursts clean out of my chest. As soon as the wound re-heals I have to do it all over again. And again.
Mostly, I direct the fire from the palms of my hands, though in theory it can come from any point of my body. Once I made the mistake of shooting it from my mouth like a dragon. Agony. It was days before my tongue grew back.
I didn't realise this power came at a price. It seems the human body really wasn't designed to shoot jets of enchanted fire up to lengths of 50 feet. I can only stand one attack at a time, and I can only keep the flames out for two minutes at maximum before the pain becomes physically unbearable. If I stay for any longer than that, the fire gets out of control and starts to spring out in little flames all over my body. I face the very real danger of burning myself alive. It seems ironic that the very thing that is going to protect the rest of the human race is what could probably kill me. Or, indeed, that the power that harms me is what I rely on to heal me. These burns, these gaping holes of charred flesh, only stay open for a couple of hours. Then, the spirit of the Heliopath starts working its magic and my wounds cover over with tender white waxy skin. This is what my mother went through when she was pregnant with me; this is how I saved her.
The first time I managed to do this, at five months pregnant when it was still comfortable to stand and my back didn't ache so badly, I wore the pain as a badge of honour. Look at me, look how I suffer for my power, look how I've earned this. It's worse than Azkaban. At least then I felt I was suffering for a worthy cause, that when I broke out I would be rewarded beyond measure. All I feel now is alone and struggling against an unstoppable force. I may have the potential to kill Voldemort, but what if a two minute blast at him isn't enough? I can't stand any more than two minutes and I can't attack him for hours afterwards - the power seems to sink back and coil into a ball at my very core, and I havn't the will or energy to draw it out again.
Yet if I do kill him, what will become of me? I am to suffer the greatest tragedy in the wake of the Dark Lord's death. I can only guess this means I'll be killed myself. Weak from the Heliopath's power and having just murdered the master of many ruthless Death Eaters, without any followers of my own to help me, it will only be a matter of hours before they hunt me down. By then, I'll welcome the relief. Even if I lived, nobody's going to celebrate the work of a Death Eater, especially that of a Death Eater like me. They won't know I ever left him, the papers will probably put his death down to an accident I made. Some contrived story, fed to them by Lucius or another man in power.
Never more have I wanted to chose the other path open to me, the path that will let Voldemort survive, let him carry on with his plan to create the super-race. I could still Be Somebody. I could still be free. But to me, it's like choosing between a long death and a short. Eventually they'd catch up with me, and I'd end up the same. Perhaps I'd have bought myself a couple of months, started a life in which I made the decisions. But I don't start things I can't finish.
Lucius's letters, after the first, were just as vague and uninformative. I tried summoning him to me, looking into his mind, but all I found was a mist-covered well, a well too dark and deep and ever-changing to glean any real truth from. Such is the state of the spellbound.
He knew she was burning the bodies he was instructed to bring home. He knew she thought I could be killed in a similar way. Why, I asked him? And how is she controlling the flame? None of my questions could be answered. I bided my time. There was no urgency to bring her here, where she could potentially cause the embarrassment of being able to damage me. It was best to keep her where she thought she was safe, wrapped in secret, a place she would not run from. I did not want the child now. It had missed its opportunity to gain a perfect existence. The times to perform any of the alteration spells were very specific, and the child had already missed two. It might as well be killed at birth.
As I sent the Death Eaters on new missions, as I carried on with my normal murder of faceless dissenters, I thought of Bellatrix as a mother. It was one of the few things I could not perceive, Bella giving herself to another. Nor could I envisage her killing him. Not because she would feel any remorse or pity; Bella is of the impression that everything she does had purpose, that she never makes mistakes. It is this pride that would prevent her from killing her own. Her ego is too great to destroy even a small part of itself, even a part contained in the body of another. I, on the contrary, would have no problem with the murder of my child. My own ego works in quite a different way. It is intolerant of anything that can match its ability.
Which brings us back to the matter of Bellatrix's death. Lucius, in his dim coded monotone, managed to inform me that she is of great power, but she is weary. Pregnancy is as gruelling as it looks, especially in these late stages. She can hardly stand, he writes. He can hear her groan in pain behind closed doors. I think of her, burying her face into her pillow, trying to stopper that shameful primal emotion she had thought she would never feel. Narcissa would know. Like the princess and the pea, however far she was from her sister and however small the agony, Narcissa would know the pain she experienced, and try to ignore it. Narcissa was not what she had been. I had had the perfect vantage point in the shadows, those years ago when I groomed Bellatrix to be a Death Eater. Their relationship, on Narcissa's part, had started as just another little favour for Daddy. I believe he wished Bellatrix to be an active follower of mine, though the exact reason he was so assertive in his wishes is unknown. He was a petty, proud man. He probably wanted a share of the glory himself, like Rodolphus. Women always marry their fathers.
Narcissa had not liked Bellatrix as a child. She associated her with danger and kept well away, choosing instead to let the clouds of isolation bloom around her, to keep away from harm by hiding within herself. She may have spent her whole life like this. It is how she spends her time these days. She reverted back to the old ways the moment Bellatrix was imprisoned. Without her, she freezes, sinks so deeply into the glacier of her own self-importance that nobody would care enough to break their way through.
Narcissa remembers her relationship with Bellatrix as a time when she was not herself. She treats this as a token of both love and loathing. Love because it was, and will be, the only time she felt anything that was not covered with a veneer of frost and distain, and the only time this feeling had been reciprocated. She loathes the memory because it is gone forever, because Bellatrix did not allow her to be herself, made her feel too deeply for another person, gave her a taste of what the world is like for other people and then left her to deal with her loss forever.
I imagine that seeing her sister again has dragged up a lot of old conflict and resentment in Narcissa. She looks at Bellatrix, who is so eager to unite and so desperate for support, and turns away and leaves her alone, as Bella once left her. She wants a way to stop the suffering, to break from this limbo of neither having the guile to bring her to me or the valour to explain her feelings. I pen a letter to Narcissa in my finest hand, and I present to her a way.
She smiled at me tonight. After months of clipped remarks and cold silences, she came into my room and placed her hand on the hillock in the blanket that covered my 8 and a half month bump. Said it wouldn't be long now. Asked me what I was going to do when it came.
I studied her for a while, the shape of her face highlighted by the moonlight flooding through the curtains. So frozen, so beautiful. She could be preserved for hundreds of years and she wouldn't change.
I told her I didn't know. In a rare, candid moment between sisters, I told her I hadn't let myself think that far. I hated this baby had been forced on me against my will, hated the circumstances it had been conceived in. I didn't think I could ever look at it without remembering and hating. I was almost sorry it had escaped the treatment of spells that would ensure it would be a perfect follower, that I couldn't just have it taken out of my hands. Now I had to make a decision. Would I abandon it? Kill it? Look after it myself? I had never wanted children, even when Rodolphus insisted on trying for one. For the Dark Lord, he said. The irony of my life astounds me.
Narcissa's caring demeanour slipped a little at the point. Her lips pursed, her forehead wrinkled and I knew she was thinking of her own child, Draco. She had painfully refused him coming home from Hogwarts at Christmas so my stay would go undetected. I had offered to put him under Imperius, then perform a memory charm on him at the end of the holidays, but my offer had been flatly denied. It was hard enough to live with Lucius already under my spell, who had to be instructed even to kiss her. I don't think she could have bore another zombie member of the family. Instead, we spent Christmas as every other day; me out in the snow practising my incineration on cats and dead bodies brought home by Lucius and trying not to burn down any trees, Narcissa inside, alone. Probably wishing me dead, but not taking the necessary action to make it so. I know as well as she does how easily she could have it arranged.
I'm not sure how long we can hold out with this relationship of ours, even after tonight's truce. My plans have changed. Now that I've discovered the implications of my powers, it hardly matters when I attack Voldemort. Since it is too late for the child to be given the perfect follower's spell treatment, I doubt he would try to avoid killing it anyway. Waiting for it to be born, recovering and then going to Voldemort will mean I stay for Easter, which means Draco remains at Hogwarts, which means Narcissa's animosity will swell to bursting point. Yet, I cannot fight him in this condition. I am too exhausted, too in pain from back ache and spasmodic contractions. Sometimes I lose my balance and fall into the soft April earth, have to wait for Narcissa to find me and help me to my feet. I look down at my angelic shape pushed into the black soil and think how this isn't right. The sky is where my mark should be.
I pressed my hands to the bump, trying to fit them into the invisible outlines her own had left. I closed my eyes tight, so tightly the tender flesh squashed to bruise. I felt buried deep in space, airless screams swallowed before they left my lungs. At that moment, I was as alone as I could ever be. The pressure of the dropped baby's head and the painful kicks against my ribs increased the sentiment.
And then she handed me a drink. I gulped it down, desperate to be full, and it felt as dark and warm and sweet as her unfamiliar smile. That'll knock you out for a couple of hours, she said. I watched her watch me fall asleep.
Goodnight, Bellatrix.
Her cheek glittered, as if set with a tiny, well cut diamond.
This is how it should really be.
I close my eyes for the slightest of moments, feeling light golden air like soft hands on my skin, feeling that old metallic rush in my mouth. Bellatrix lies in an ungraceful heap below me, the breeze lifting her dark hair and blowing strands of grass against her cheek. Now my eyes are resting on her, the backdrop of the house blurs, Narcissa's spindly figure thins to nothing, the approaching Wormtail becomes little more than an inky sunspot. I wish to watch her wake without his interruption, without having to touch his Mark and summon the Death Eaters. As if hearing my bidding - she always hears my bidding - Bellatrix stirs, her face contorted with pain, her knees drawn up to her abdomen. Another contraction, closer this time. She's been having them in her sleep. Not even their pain could wake her, whilst set against the Dormancy Draught I supplied to her sister.
Narcissa would not approach me, so I approached her. Told her I'd been in contact with Lucius for months, that I wanted her to give me Bellatrix, that I knew everything. Everything? Came her written reply. I assume you want her anyway. Am I to be the first to call you a fool and escape with my life? I do not care if I am not. You aren't wholly a fool, I'll merit you that. At this time, when she is weakest and on the brink of giving birth, you are the closest you could be to victory when set against her power. So take her and do what you like. I await your instructions and death at your hand for the impertinence of this message.
I allowed myself a tight, quick smile at my own expense and replied with a package of potion that would send Bellatrix into a deep sleep. Narcissa was to choose a day when Bella was at her lowest ebb, then bring her to me via floo. Waiting for their arrival was rather like being a normal wizard waiting for Christmas, it amused me to realise.
As Bellatrix's eyes flicker open, their black opal spotlight reduced to a dull charcoal smudge, Wormtail appears at my right, his podgy left forearm proudly displayed. A wispy presence at my left conveys Narcissa has also arrived. Looking from Bellatrix, in her bemused, groping state, to the solid scalding Mark, I hesitate, but only for a second. Then I place my finger firmly in the centre of the brand and wait as my followers come to watch the festivities.
It is only a minute before the customary ring has been formed around us, leaving a clear circle of grass for Bellatrix to wake in, to pull herself to her knees and gaze around with bleary eyes. To occasionally double over so I only hear a muffle of her grinding teeth.
So, Bellatrix, I say with my voice at its highest and haughtiest, You have chosen to return!
The Death Eaters laugh, the low rumble of sound ricocheting against her skin, breaking the pale morning air with its malice.
-Did you enjoy your little holiday, Bellatrix? I've been hearing all sorts about what you got up to. It seems the Potter boy was your greatest rival. He had to be got rid of, didn't he? You couldn't have somebody walking around, containing more love than you.
She looks up through her hanging back hair like she's looking at me through poisoned ivy.
- If that's your way of provoking me, Voldemort, then you are obviously out of practise. You go to the trouble of making one of your little stooges bring me all the way here, just so you can poke your petty insults. You've lost your touch. You've reverted to childhood.
It is her turn to laugh.
I mock surprise.
- I'm not trying to provoke you, Bellatrix. Think of this as an old chat between friends. And, like an old friend, I'm interested in your travels. Tell me, at what point did you discover what you like to call 'the truth'? For those of you that do not know, faithful Death Eaters, Bellatrix's 'truth' idolises the existence of love and its opposite, hate. Bellatrix believes that she can love, that indeed, she has been loved; once, long ago. She does not think she is a fool to have loved.
I glance at Narcissa, who stands very still, very white and tall, like a silver birch on a windless day.
- The one who she owned the affections of was not created for such a purpose. Love distorted her. It changed her in ways she would have preferred not to be changed. And the absence of love left her bitter and malicious, and drove her to asking me to kill the one who had done this to her. The laughter seems to have died in your throat, Bellatrix. Do not worry. I understand. I know what it is, to be betrayed by the person you want it to be least.
At these words, her head whips up again, and she smiles at me through the pain. A devious smile, beautiful against that strained, drained face.
- Want? I thought you carried feelings equal bearing for all your followers. No differentiating. Nothing so personal as desire for another's compassion. My compassion, in particular. You aren't as immortal as you think, Voldemort. I can read your mind like a cheap Quibbler, and what I see is exactly fitting to my 'truth'. You're just the same as me, except less powerful, as I have been given the greater force - a power that has been prophesised to destroy you.
I snort and advance closer, stand above her to show that I am the one on my feet, while she cannot even stand.
-Let me see this power then. This great and divine power of yours, sent to smite me and bring peace to wizardkind. Even your power is melodramatic. As insubstantial and greeting-card as that pathetic speech you just garbled. When are you going to open your eyes and see what's real, Bellatrix? When are you going to scrape away the illusion? You live in a false world now. A world that preaches the existence of courage, and battles between 'good' and 'evil', and dreams and hope and love? You once saw so clearly. You stood by my side and blended in to me, you saw through my eyes. There is only power. Nothing else.
Yes, she replies. Nothing else.
In one lightning, agonising movement she leaps to her feet, sending a jet of fire straight towards my heart.