She was beautiful. "Bella" is Italian for beautiful. Italian is a Romantic language, and that has nothing to with love (although I wonder if that's just a coincidence). It means it came from Latin. Latin was the language spoken in Rome. "Remus" was one of the founders of Rome. My name is Remus. I wonder what that means, if anything.
I don't think I loved her then. I know I didn't. How could I have? It didn't make any sense; she had been rude to me, anyway. But I felt something towards her. I may not know exactly what it is, but I know that it means something.
Everything means something.
That was the end of our rendezvous of our fifth year...we didn't notice one another until the end of our seventh year, when I had just begun to accept Lily and James as a couple and not my best friend who stole my ex girlfriend, or my ex-girlfriend with a heart of stone. At first I had been sure she'd leave James for Sirius, but I eventually realised she really preferred James to me. She really loved him. It was hard, but what can I say? I can't think thoughts like that, not when they're dead, not when their son is so dear to me, the only thing I have left of them.
Bellatrix left me, too....but not truly for Rodolphus. For the Dark Lord. For power, for a hunger I could not fill, a thirst I could not quench, ambition for something that I never was, never would be and never had been. She then killed Sirius.
I don't know why she did it. I have never known. I may never know. I miss him, and although that sounds so bleak, I've never been much with poetry. It's all I can say, words fall short of the hurt in my chest when I think of it. Maybe I don't want to describe it.
Another thing that makes Sirius'' death hard to take is how I sometimes get mad at him when I think about my relationship- or whatever it was- with Bellatrix. I blamed him for some of our fears, and now I can't do that. It makes me feel too guilty. So now it's all her fault. Her fault that part of me is dead, her fault that Sirius is dead, and her fault that part of Harry is dead. sometimes I blame her for Lily and James. And Peter. That's because of her, too.
I dream of that sometimes; I confront her and ask her about all the things she's done. she's in chains, not in Azkaban, or anywhere, but she's chained. I get to Peter and I start screaming at her, "Did you seduce him, then? Did you seduce him, too? Are you just Voldemort's whore now, and does he send you out to make everyone betray their loved ones?"
She squirms and struggles until her wrists are bleeding. She looks up at me with blood-shot eyes and pleads, crying: "I only ever loved you."
I spit on her and she breaks down and weeps. I pull out my wand and use the Cruciatus Curse no her, and she screams and writhes, until her wrists are all bloody from the shackles, and I know she's going to bleed to death. So does she. She crawls as close to me as possible and whispers harshly, "Remus. Remus, my wrists are bleeding. Please, please, my wrists are bleeding."
I laugh at her and she cringes. "Then die," I say shortly.
And I walk away. Except when I don't. Sometimes I start to walk away, but I hear her sobbing and I turn back and set her free, and heal her wrists, and take her into my arms and kiss her.
Suddenly we're in a room, her bedroom, like that first time, and we sleep together again, drawing the canopy around the bed.
When we wake up, it's morning. Or it should be. Sometimes in the dream we wake and it's still dark, and we're at the Department of Mysteries again. Her canopy is now that veil Sirius fell through, and she cackles and pushes me through. I fall and down is Sirius, and all the others, like faint memories, not truly there.
I shout out to her, "This is all your fault!"
And she replies, "I know it is." Usually. I can't always hear her, you know.
It's not like me to blame others for things, especially not her. I blame myself for everything, because I am the wolf, at heart, I am the bane of the earth. My condition is the stem of all my problems. I don't know what it's got to do with anything, but it has something to do with it.
My own fault, and the moon's. Her fault. I always imagined the moon a woman, a beautiful lady, when I was younger. The moon is what makes me a werewolf, the moon is silver which can kill me. Only a woman would be like that. I dreamed of her. then I came to realise that the woman was Bellatrix. She is the moon. Everything is the moon's fault. And everything is Bella's fault.
Silver kills me, it's my bane. Silver is one of Slytherin's colours.
Bellatrix is what makes me like this, insane and deranged, and she's my silver, my bane. My moon maiden.
Everything is Bella's fault. Everything is Bella's, and mine. And the moon's.
I hate my life.