And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free

-John 8:32

*

I'm at the deepest I've ever reached. Like scraping through the earth to its centre, to crushing, compacted, pure liquid fire. Unimaginable pain - I've drilled a hole through skin and bone and soft spongy flesh, through parts of myself that should never be penetrated. It's as if I'm funnelling my soul straight from all these ruptured membranes, onion layers of myself, and shooting it from my palms to be absorbed into the atmosphere, lost forever. I feel I will drop dead at any moment. My melting eyes stream, my skin bubbles like cellophane near a flame, my hair stands on end like a black lightning bolt. I'm coming apart. Any minute I'll silently explode, a supernova flattening out across the empty death of space, creating a million new stars.

Just as the splits begin to appear, just as I feel my edges blurring against the pain, a mighty contraction brings my cells crunching together. It's like being enclosed in a celestial fist. I am the universe now, with every big bang comes an expansion, then contraction. I am kept whole only by pain, be it in the body or in the soul.

I've been standing here since I can remember, I'm in an alternate dimension, a fireball under a purple sky. Nothing else matters now, nothing but concentrating my power on the one who deserves death the most. My own death in the process is of little consequence. The circle of followers - I cannot see their faces, only hear their chant - shoot any number of killing curses at me, but they ping away like pebbles against iron. I am transformed now, unstoppable. He probably thought he was clever, bringing me here. He probably thought I would be too weak to fight, that this would be easy. He was wrong. These contractions are real, they strip me down, release the fastenings on the gateways to my core. The baby moves inside me, and for once I welcome it with the sweetest of temperaments. Having a child brings you closest to your own mortality, brings you closest to your power. I thank Voldemort. He has brought about his own downfall. If I just keep going, if I just keep pushing, letting the fire flow, ignoring the pain, ignoring the fluids running down my legs, ignoring the smell of charred flesh and screeching spells and laughter-

One person's laughter is uglier than the rest. Uglier, even, than my own primal screams. I force my eyes to open, to focus through the stinging tears and smoke and see the truth. He looks back, a man engulfed in flame, a man at the centre of some divine force field. His insane smile is distorted by the roaring flames and shivering liquid air, but in his eyes lies pure, unwavering triumph. I am falling, imploding, gateways shutting down, fire spluttering. We both know who's won. We both know who is really the universe, who holds the power. What hope did I really have? An untrue prophesy, an untrue sister. Power that, at it's height, cannot even kill the laughter at Voldemort's lips.

Yet still I live, for few frail seconds, in the hope that we are both wrong, that all I need to defeat him is one final surge forward. I reach within myself for my redemption, and find none. The pathway is sealed. The contractions continue, but the belief I held has been dissolved from just one look into his eternal eyes.

I am spent, empty. The fire regresses to my hands and flames drip from Voldemort, dying in the grass like swatted insects. Death Eaters' shrieks grow loud and insistent, the sting of their spells tangible. In a moment what little power I still possess inside my hollow shell will have drained away. I will be hit, my legacy in ruins. For a few precious seconds, I watch the scene from above. I am half standing, a bloody mess that was once a woman, a tidal wave of smoking mud spreading out around me. A ring of identical faces surround, firing spells as if echoing yelled orders. The superficial aesthetics scraped away, with only their consciousness lucid enough to defend them, they are presented only as ruined extensions of Him. Mutations of power. Crippled slaves.

It is this vision that lends me the last of my reserves. A great wash of pity, buried and unused for many years, engulfs me and sprays from my body at its own accord. Small jets of flame shoot from my skin in all directions, claiming a follower's life from every part of the circle except one. It cannot touch where I feel no pity, where only my hate can penetrate.

Maybe Voldemort carries almost an immortal protection, but his supporters are only human. I catch a glimpse of a face, one amalgamated face, and the horror and pain and beauty that lights it from inside. And then it's gone. The last thing I see, as I lie collapsed in the mud, is the ash of the dead floating freely in the sunlight.

I feel comfortable, almost serene, standing over Bellatrix in this fashion. It feels like old times. I am masterful, inhuman, ever-powerful. At the back of my mind, something rebukes me. You're playing a mime. Face up to the truth, nothing has changed. You can't kill her like this. She deserves more.

Bellatrix lies flat on her back, arms stretched out at either side, eyes closed, moaning in pain. Damp black hair plasters her face, dark gashes across her palms bleed profusely. This image reminds me of something. A book I threw away in revulsion, a painting that hung in the orphanage which illuminated at night. Somebody who died, long ago.

I flex my fingers and aim my wand determinedly. All I have to do is say the words. That is all I have to do to end it, return to my original state; return to my perfection. My head hums with a thousand notes of protest, my hand shakes like a white flower burst into bloom. She moans again, screws her face in agony and falls limp. This isn't Bella; it is somebody thoroughly without the will to continue. This person hasn't even the conviction to open her eyes, let alone deliver a baby. She will die, whether it be at my hand or not. And I, in shame and confusion, chose not.

Putting the wand away, feeling the violet breeze break against my skin like a fast flowing river, I sit distractedly in the mud beside her. A circle of charred marks surround us, one for every Death Eater incinerated. I try to feel shocked, angry, a need to make Bellatrix pay for what she has destroyed. A whole army in ruins, an enormous section of my support demolished. Yet all I do feel is emptiness, in anticipation of life after she's gone. If she were to stay, I am positive we could build the Order again, that we could still gain ultimate power. A strange and horrible sensation almost knocks me from my reverie. I am wishing. I am putting my hope and trust in another, I am imagining a future different from one with myself as the soul benefactor. I realise, in a stark crash of terrible insight, that it will be worse once she is dead. I will spend my days in total isolation, without the will to start rebuilding, just my own broken mind to take refuge in. I will spend my days dreaming she is with me.

Narcissa's hand takes my own, prises it away from covering my face. I cannot look at her, but I know how she must appear. The ice has melted, exposing vulnerably, crooked lines, tender skin. Her real face. Before, Narcissa would have known the implications of touching me out of turn. That doesn't matter now. My followers fill the air, my command left behind. The future awaits as a murdered beast - the glorious reign, the millions of perfect followers, Bellatrix. Forced to live knowing what could have been, but never will be. All has perished.

- I…I don't understand. You've given up. Why won't you kill her? That's why I brought her here, that's why I forfeited any love that might still remain for me. For you, master. And now you can't do it. Why?

- She's going to die anyway. She'll bleed out, or choke on the mud.

-You didn't answer the question.

I don't reply. In a time before, Narcissa would have been killed instantly for such petulance. Now, neither of us care for our own lives enough to follow the normal rules.

- You can still save her, if you want. Help her give birth to the child. It is yours too. Even if it hasn't had the treatment, it could still follow you. A child doesn't need to be cursed to love its father.

- It was never love I seeked, Narcissa. You know that. Power is all I want.

- Maybe it was, then. You can't say the same now and really mean it. Power isn't all I want. Bellatrix showed me that. We all contain some degree of love, a need to be loved and to return it. Sometimes that can be a fatal flaw, like in the case of you or I. People like us weren't meant to ever feel like this - and if it happens, if we are unfortunate enough to meet someone with the cunning to draw it out of us, it destroys us. It is the same for an ordinary person who kills their lover in a fit of rage. Sooner or later, the guilt will gnaw them away to nothing. They end up dead, or worse.

- What are you trying to say, Narcissa?

- However much we hate her, however much we want to twist her round so she submits to how we want to live our lives, the fact remains that we love her as well. We love her so much we want to kill her, just so we can finally rid ourselves of how she makes us feel. But, of course, we can't kill her, because to love is to possess. And you would never give away your most valuable possession, no matter how much it wanted to get rid of you.

I do not protest. I sit numbly, watching the blood flowing from Bellatrix's blistered hand. It is strange to believe somebody else's truth.

- Leaving her to bleed out or choke is just the same as using a wand. You have to do something. You have to heal her, however much you hate what you have to do to achieve it. Think of the other options. This is the best. She's dying because she poured so much of herself into trying to stop you. She has nothing left to sustain herself with. You will have to halt the bleeding by pouring yourself into her.

Why can't you do it, if you love her so much? I snap, terrified and confused and cowardly.

Narcissa paused. A tear fell onto the hand that still gripped mine.

- She'll believe it if it comes from you.

He gave me a potion. Parted my lips with spindly fingers, poured something light and sparkling down my throat. It settled inside me like a butterfly drying its wings.

That will ease the pain, he said, in a voice of hushed snowy mornings, a voice I'd heard long ago from the lips of somebody else. That will ease the pain.

I closed my eyes. I waited for the pain to subside. And gently, it did, like a memory locked away. I was able to turn away from it and contemplate other things, though, as with any memory, I could never truly forget.

I spent my spell away from the world thinking of earlier times. Times where I killed or mutilated, licking the blood from my hands as I left. Times when I was happy, the cool scent of my sister clinging to the air around me. The time when I was free, in a stream I can visit only in my dreams.

Presently, an intruder invaded this private reel. An intruder who crept around the edges of my consciousness, who used a voice I couldn't discern, in my anaesthetised state, from the present or the past.

- The baby is doing well, Bellatrix. I still can't believe we managed to save you both. I still expect you to drop dead any second. I told Voldemort about the prophesy, after he had saved you. He wanted to know everything. That's what he said - Tell me everything. He felt he deserved the whole truth, after doing what he did. You two are going to have a lot to talk about when you wake up properly.

I didn't try to form an answer, simply moaned and struggled to block out this unwelcome stranger.

- Don't try to open your eyes. Just lie still and listen to me. I told him how to save you. Don't ask me why I did it. You'll work it out, in time. Perhaps you know already. Whatever it is, this is where our paths must separate. This is where we're on our own. And- and I just hope that you can remember me, sometimes, and remember that whatever father told me to do, I only did it in the end because you made me love you. I hate you for that. You were right about the truth, Bellatrix, you were right when you told me what it was to be free. One feeling doesn't cancel out the other. In the end, we have to accept we are humans, not Followers. We can kill who we like.

Like a shock of cold water, I felt a pair of lips touch my own, brittle and bitten through. Blood seeped into my mouth, spidery hands grabbed my face in feeble brutality. Even in my daze, I felt alarm, a ferverent wish for this wretched charade to cease.

Avada Kedavra, she whispered against my face.

When I regained enough feeling to open my eyes, I saw Narcissa was lying dead on the floor by my bed. Her eyes were open and the sky was a mocking, beautiful blue.