NOT FORGIVEN NOT FORGOTTEN

"Tonight, we're going to celebrate."

"For sure! The end of the Potters, there will be nothing left to stand on the way of the Dark Lord."

"Nor in ours."

Laughs. Sound of chinking glasses, then a taste of champagne. Partying. Someone taking a deep breath in her hair. And suddenly, a burning, monstrous pain in the fore-arm. Half-choked screams of pain. Breaking glasses, the pain forcing them to kneel, strong beyond their imagination. And then, nothing. Hoarse breaths in the sudden silence. The first voice (her voice): "What's... what happened?" And abruptly, understanding falling on them like lead.

"Nooooooo!"

Bellatrix straightened up violently from her bunk, choked with sobs. Don't... don't think about that... He would come back... the Dark Lord would come back... He would get her out of there and she would see him again... he'd thank her for having kept faith in him, he would be proud... some day... never... She tore off the Azkaban prisoners uniform she was wearing then her bad grey linen pants, and her underclothes. The cold of night on her naked skin woke her up completely, like a slap in the face. Come on, girl! You've been holding on all those years, there're not many people alive to say so. If you can't bear it anymore, then yell! ...Yes, remind him that you are here with him...

"Hey! Cousin!!!"

Her voice resounded in the following silence. She waited... Nothing came. Funny, no answer. She repeated her scream. Always silence, broken only by the sudden sobs coming from the near-by cell. When she was shouting, everybody was waking up, to listen to what would follow. Bur the usual answer was still not coming. Third attempt. Silence...

Had he gone mad, at last? Had he ended it up by killing himself? It would be too good. She could already imagine him, hung to his own clothes, or his skull broken open out of banging his head against the walls. She had already seen that... But the noise would have woken her up... The sound of breaking vertebras could awaken the whole story of the jail. So what? Even in madness, this kind of habit could not vanish. Even Rabastan, as desperately mad as he had been for long already, would always laugh when hearing Sirius' answer. But now, no answer. The silence, heavier than usual, fell on that part of Azkaban. Rabastan started sobbing again. She could not inflict him that too. She had understood. She took a lower, hoarser voice and shouted:

"YOU SHUT UP!!!"

In the shadow, she heard the weak laughs of Rabastan, but before she had finished the smile which was still coming to her face out of habit, she felt her inside freezing again: she had heard the sound of sliding cloaks in the corridor... So he had escaped... He had made it. So it was possible... one day, she too, would get out... and she'd kill him...

The sky was darkening and outside, a gloomy snow was slowly falling, flickering in the wind that was blowing into the room through the tiny pane- less, shutter-less window. Some flakes were falling upon the kneeling naked woman's back. In a corner of the cell, a bunch of clothes was lying, cold since the morning.

Six months ago, she had first been feeling the Dark Mark in her fore-arm burning. For six months she had been waiting for someone to come at last. For six months, she hadn't moved from her cell. The Dementors had strengthened their guard all over the summer, but she had been able to bear it for almost every night, the tattoo on her fore-arm was gently burning her. She had begun again to count the days, just like at the beginning of her detention. Good sign or bad sign? At least, it showed that she could still think about the outside world, that she wasn't mad yet. Maybe she was, after all... Would she kneel naked in a cell with a temperature of –10°C as a sane person? Well, at least, it kept her awoken, and she wasn't dreaming what THEY were making her to dream. She knew that she would end it in giving up, that she would get dressed again, shivering, and eventually lying down, desperately seeking for warmth. There, they would be waiting for her; she would see what chilled her far more than the cold of this beginning of January: the disillusion of her first weeks in Azkaban, after the trial, when she had understood that no one would come for her, nor her sister, neither her former friends, no more those she had known at school than those she had met by the Dark Lord's side; the child she had lost, silently, in the cold of her cell, months after her arrival, the child no one had known anything about, not even Rodolfus, the surprise she had wanted to keep for just later on and which, eventually, had never come, the child SHE had killed, out of pure vanity, because she had refused to admit to herself the faintest weakness, the faintest flaw when she had entered Azkaban. Others had done it before, using pregnancy not to go to Azkaban, but not her, she'd rather die, she'd rather make what could have lived die, and this she had done... They were there now, she felt them waiting outside the door, eating her, devouring her alive, having their pleasure in that, enjoying that, her suffering, her inability to repel them, to free herself from them, her loneliness, her...

All of a sudden, it stopped, they turned away from her, they spared her. She straightened, shaking, breathing with difficulty, wrapping her thin, torn blanket around her. She looked up and only then she swathed silvery light bathing the corridor. Curiously, she didn't feel the cold anymore. On the contrary, the air seemed to warm up. She realized that a new strength, such as she had not been felling since she first entered the jail, was flowing in her veins. She literally jumped to her feet, staggered, as drunk, walked to the door, and what see saw by the door-hole astounded her: the Dementors were beaten off by a troop of silvery forms, they were fleeing in the corridor, they were now out of sight. That was that, she had just gone crazy. But it looked so real... Well, let's believe it, it was the best of the choices she had. She didn't feel the power of Dementors anymore. A fire ball crossed the corridor, blinded her and exploded at the end of the corridor. She heard voices, others that the prisoners'; sure, strong, vivid voices:

"Track them down and convince them to follow us, they will come!"

"Let's find Travers and Mulciber!"

"Rodolfus! Algernon! Antonin! Bellatrix! Rabastan!"

She uttered a cry. She had recognised Narcissa's and her husband's voices.

"Bella, called a lower voice, is that you?"

She tried to answer but she only could cry again, her throat too tight. The Dark Lord! He was there! He had come for her!

"Ma-...Master..." The door opened.

Mechanically, she waved her hand and turned the shower-tap on. Mechanically but firmly; it wasn't time to let herself go anymore. The water was warm. She had thrown her clothes into a corner of the bathroom. She couldn't remember how long ago had she had her last shower. She didn't dare look into the mirror, she already knew she was repulsive with thinness and filth. She entered the shower. She felt each drop rolling on her body, heavier, turned into mud. Rodolfus and the others had been led to another part of the manor. She had hardly recognised her man and she knew this was mutual. He was thin too, just like her, but he still was well muscled; his face was emaciated and darker than ever, his eyes barely visible and his hair floor-long, just like hers. Scary... All had seemed violent to her as she had entered the manor: the Apparating arrival, the energy she had to spent for each step, to stay straight, not to crawl, the lamplights, the smells she hadn't been smelling over the last thirteen years, the music sounds, the laughter, the warmth of those rooms she had been knowing from childhood; nothing had changed if one ignored some details that showed that years had passed. Narcissa, by now thirtyish, whom she had left a young women, a young mother, had led her into the bathroom, just minutes ago; priority to womenkind, of course... Now, the soap smell was overwhelming her and she realized her own smell which she had tried to forget over there. Massaging her body, she realized too that she had not one curve left, not one of these nice forms because of which she had been given the title of Miss Pure Blood at the age of 17, on the day she had discovered why Andromeda was always so strange: she had seen her leaving the party and go to this Tonks Mud Blood. Of course, after that, Andromeda had never come back and their father had gone himself to 12 Grimmauld place to wipe her name from the family tree tapestry. She got out of she shower; for the first time in years, she felt light, purified; she'd always try to have this feeling in Azkaban, stopping eating, having cold, but as soon as this pleasure simulacra would begin to settle down, the Dementors would come. Some terry towels were piled up on a finely worked stool. So, nothing had changed at all. Narcissa was still living with her rich husband, in their rich manor, on their rich situation. Nothing had moved, and of course not them. The door was fearfully knocked at.

"Bellatrix, Narcissa's voice called, may I come in?"

Walking straight to the door, still streaming with water, the woman appreciated fully the contact of the smooth carpet under her feet. She opened the door out; forgotten, all the lesson she had learnt from childhood "be always polite, be always calm, always moderated, you will be the pride of your family..." Her family? There it was, her family, standing in front of her, with a prudish exclamation on her lips, stupidly standing there, dressed in beautiful, ironed clothes, and this flabbergasted horror in her eyes and what the Hell was she holding? Without her meaning it, Bellatrix let the words out:

"What's THAT?"

Suddenly, she wanted to slap in the face with all the strength she had this neat, ironed, delicate, coward woman, her sister, standing there, wriggling in shame and embarrassment. She already knew what she was like, that even washed, she was scary, but please Narcissa, stop acting the prude!

"Er... Here! I brought you some clean clothes so that... well, the others are downstairs, and... everybody's rather impatient to... well, to see you... all of you..."

"What do those gits care?" Bellatrix said in a hoarse voice. "What were they doing, when we were over there? Hiding in their houses, in fear of a bunch of Mud-Blood after they had been the strongest for the last twelve years!"

"Bella! We've just set you free!"

"Set me free! And you expect me to be grateful, don't you? Oh, Narcissa, dear Narcissa, I can see that you're still the same, always seeking for recognition, for gratitude for all your deeds, and applauses too, but still just as coward. Six months ago, I swear I would have admired you... but you have always been on the best side for you, you and your husband, and all the others, haven't you? The Dark Lord vanished, you hid well, you had much fun acting the tidy home-mother. I despise you, Narcissa, and I despise your husband, and all the others who haven't done anything before it gave them an advantage over. And I won't go and see those traitors! And I won't wear your dress! And I will hang around naked in the corridors if I fancy it!"

She slammed the door right in front of her sister's nose and stood there, shaking with rage, turned around, and scanned the bathroom, as if looking for someone to torture and kill. Abruptly, she caught the eyes of her replica into the mirror above the washbasin. She had prepared herself for this moment but, for some seconds, she was unable to move. She was lean and gaunt as if made of a bunch of ropes with a water-shining black veil in the top of it. Except for her hips, visible through her skin and her sex hidden in its little black forest, one could barely have recognised her as a woman; one could have doubted that she was of human kind or even alive so skeleton-like she was. The wounds, the bruises she had received (or inflicted to herself) were forming brownish, bluish or yellowish marks on an almost grey skin. Two flat bags of skin that once had been two beautiful round breasts were now hanging on to her chest.

Petrified, she heard the door being again knocked at, and little traitorous Narcissa calling her by her name. The door opened; the other delicate, curved, young, beautiful, alive woman entered the bathroom. It would be so easy to throw herself on her, right there, right now, and kill her, strangle her, not see this beautiful desirable body move. She gazed at Narcissa from top to bottom, the silvery blond, silk-smooth hair, the delicate face, the skin, so thin it chilled her, the little apple-round breasts and the so thin waist... not so thin that before, though... what had happened? Narcissa, realizing the hatred flaming in Bellatrix's eyes, the same hatred she had been seeing on the last night before her sister's being arrested, when she had begged her not to go, that it was foolish, that it would lead to nothing, and when Bellatrix had slapped her in the face, so violently Narcissa had fallen to the ground, thanking Heavens she had already given birth and cursing it not to have Lucius by her side to defend her, walked back to the door, not daring mutter apologies. She saw in the eyes of her sister that same strange look she would see in Lucius' when they were alone in their bedroom. She saw them scanning her down, with an embarrassing pause on her chest, then abruptly gazing at her belly. The eyes went cold, hard and then blank, as if they were all of a sudden seeing something else, another world to which Narcissa had no access. As she saw this mad-eyed skeleton which was her sister walking toward her, Narcissa had a move backward but eventually, she just took a step. For Bellatrix did not attack her or even touched her; she crumpled up, knelt to the ground, knocked out with the thing that Narcissa could not see, would never accept to see: Her sister, who had always succeeded everything she had done, who was the heroic figure of the family, and later in life, the first to join the Dark Lord's inner circle, who was now about to be rewarded for what she had done for him, was envying her...

The whole gathering was listening and waiting. The silence was growing heavier and heavier as the minutes were passing by, and fear too was settling down. Avery above all remembered all too well the night when the Dark Lord had returned, and others, more recent occasions. All of them were dreading what was coming, for they all remembered what Bellatrix had said at her trial, and they knew that she would not keep more quiet in front of them than in front of her judges. No one had the power to make Bellatrix Lestrange keep quiet... except for the Dark Lord, of course... but it was most unlikely that he would do so, this time... The dark-wooded double-door of the Malfoy's living-room flung open. For one second, because of the air stream, the candle lights flickered. Some members in the audience held up their breath, fighting against the urging desire to look away from the tenfold horror standing in front of them. During the escaping in Azkaban, they had always found something else to look at, it had been all the better; but not anymore... The Dark Lord, who until then had been motionless on his arm-chair like a horrible Egyptian god statue, stood up, clumsily followed by the rest of the still sitting Death-Eaters.

Bellatrix blinked. The room, strangely bigger than in her memories, was full with lights and people. Fifty men and women at least (and even some youths); fifty traitors, anyway... Again, she felt her temper rising. She would have given anything for having her wand back (of course, it had been destroyed, but any wand would be good) and being able to curse them all, with a curse that would hurt them deeply in their beautiful bodies, in their quiet minds, in their unhurt flesh, to make them undergo everything she had suffered, everything they had fled from, yes, give anything for a wand in her hand, for waving it, so that none in the gathering and Narcissa the last, could stop her. Her jaw contracted so that every on could see a double muscle thicken in what was left of Bellatrix's skeleton's cheek. In spite of the dress she had eventually accepted to wear (one of those that Narcissa had been refusing to throw away for years: her maid dresses, old vanity) and of the shower, she barely looked more human than she did when her sister, her sister's husband and her cousin Nott had opened her cell door for the Dark Lord. Her pointy bones, barely covered with some thin muscles and dry, grey skin, were visible under the silk of the dress; her hair, that everyone in the living-room had know arrogant with abundance, curls and shining were hanging, untidy and dull around her head, almost feet-long. The Dark Lord was now facing the audience.

"Death-Eaters!" he said to the crowd who had sat back. "This night, we see back among us the most faithful of us all; those who, only ones true to their oath of everlasting allegiance to the Dark Lord, have accepted to be locked up by Mud-Bloods, like beasts for the last thirteen years. You know their names and you have taught them to your children, and you have made examples out of them, heroes to our kind. Tonight, we have set them free and our ranks are complete anew; the HEROES are among us..."

He paused, skimming over the crowed gathered at his feet, now so near to her that Bellatrix had the impression that some of his strength was passing onto her.

"Yet" he hissed "now that I watch you, I see you looking away from your... heroes... Are they so ugly to you? Are they so scary you don't even dare look at them straight in the eyes? Or is it shame? I see you all, just like I saw you on the day of my return, in good health, magically powerful, ready to take over the world again.

"And they are here, right in front of you. What are you feeling for them?" He scanned his followers "disgust?" Lucius was unconvincingly hiding the expression one would have at the sight of a beetle in one's shoe... "horror?" Crabbe and Goyle were sitting side by side, twin-like with their big twisted faces... "shame?" Snape's cheek had just received a little amount of blood; he had been courting Bellatrix at Hogwart, and had begun to have a real success, but eventually, Rodolfus had taken over... "fear?" Avery huddled up even more in his chair. "The first feelings, I do understand them." The Dark lord went on. "Who couldn't feel these, knowing you have abandoned them, just like you abandoned your master; but fear, why fear, this I wonder... But of course, you may know what's coming now..."

He paused, a grin stretching his lipless mouth. He slightly turned to the little group at his right, who until then had been motionless and silent.

"Death-Eaters!" he said in a thundering voice "you, the ten most faithful followers the Dark Lord ever had, the most loyal he ever wished to have..." Bellatrix's mind raced. She knew what was coming. "Because of the years you have done in Azkaban in the Dark Lord's name, you may now ask me to satisfy your most urging desire. You may ask anything for the Dark Lord can grant anything." He turned to Dolohov "You, Antonin, what do you wish?" Until then held up by the others, the Death-Eater knelt before the master and said in a flickering voice:

"Give me strength, Master, so that I can serve you fearlessly until death."

The Dark lord's long, white hand waved, holding his wand, then lowered on the kneeling man who was enfolded by a violet light which vanished almost immediately; Antonin got to his feet, apparently unchanged but his gestures had refound this suppleness that had led him to share, years before, some of Bellatrix's most enjoyable nights. She slightly smiled at the thought of it... What nights it had been... Hogwart, as said all its former student, was even better by night than by day... How wonderful it was to be able to think again about happy times, nice memories and not feeling them fading away, not needing to howl, to put herself in cold, in hunger...

What was she to ask? What did she wanted most? She saw her master offering Algernon a hearing gift. She look down at the gathering; near to the first row, sitting by his father's side, her nephew, Draco, was gazing at her; her sister's son; her own child would have been a bit younger than him, but he (or she, she would never know) would have been at Hogwart by now, or rather here by her side, as proud as this nephew of hers, even prouder; he (or she) would have had her dark, shining, thick hair, and a face that would have reminded Rodolfus' face. Of course, she had never been very faithful to him (the Dark Lord was the only one she was faithful to) but she knew that this child would have looked like her husband. The infant would not have had Barty's straw hair, or Antonin's gorgeous suppleness, or Rabastan's deep green eyes; it would have looked like its father. But what mattered, now... The child had died before its first breath of air, and her cell floor had kept traces of both their mingled bloods, just like she had long kept the tiny corpse, wrapped in her handkerchief, the only item she had been allowed to keep in her cell. And one day, when suffering and sorrow had grown too much, she had crept to her narrow window, the only sky sight she was allowed to; far below, in the courtyard, the Dementors were digging a grave. Barty's cell had been silent since the day before. So, with all the strength that was left in her arm, she had thrown the little packet toward the hole. The Dementors had not looked up. For days, for months after that, the Dementors had barely passed her cell once or twice a day; she didn't need them to be emptied of any happy thought or feeling; locked up inside her own head, more surely than in any prison, magical or muggle; but she had overcome; she had not gone crazy, because she had still, deep inside, this victorious hatred exploding almost every night in a scream. He, who had refused her as a girl, and later, as a woman, he, the shame of the family and though the last of his name was still there. "And you, Rodolfus?" "Sanity for my brother, so that he can serve you just as we will all, my Lord." "So be it!" A new spell, cast at Rabastan who instantly collapsed to the ground, held back by Rodolfus, the one who had physically resisted the best. Dearest Rodolfus, that was just him, always too proud to admit he needed anything...

"And you, Bella, my Bella, the most faithful of all, whose sufferings, whose sacrifices I know, by now, you who could have avoided Azkaban but who accepted it for all that, my proud, the proudest of all, what is your wish?"

She had made up her mind.

"I want to be the one to kill Sirius Black."