To tell the truth, half the story is made up of little bits and pieces of information that, I hope, help to explain the characters a bit more. And yes, Lucius is a major controlling force in the story, because he is mean to me and likes to take over, especially since he is involved in no other way other than having been a prat in the past at the same time Severus and Bella were prats. Smashing.

Also, doesn't like to include brackets or whatever the hell you call them in my story, which I think is rather idiotic, but whatever. Weepy look, unhappy sulk, etc.

-

Excerpt from Chapter 3: The Right Hand of "The Death Eaters: An Investigative Study", by Anita and Derrick Rodriquez, published October 2003.

Lucius Malfoy is theorized to be the backbone of the cult; the right hand man to You-Know-Who and key player in both the first war and the beginning of the second. Investigation has proven that Malfoy was behind nearly twelve recruitments into the Death Eaters; the twelfth was attempted in joint partnership with Walden Macnair (see page 56), which failed. Malfoy was one of the first supporters, and was said to be on intimate terms with the Dark Lord, who was, rumour has it, present at Lucius' birth and naming ceremony.

Lucius Malfoy was 'energetic, beguiling, and charming to the point of bedazzlement' (A. Tonks, Interview #103), and was highly thought of on all sides until his surprising arrest in early summer of 1996. He was jailed after a series of trials in December of that year, and was also pronounced healthy and sane and with full knowledge of his actions by investigators, thus rendering him incapable of receiving treatment at the Longbottom Institute. (In fact, only two Death Eaters were pronounced capable of treatment: Bellatrix Lestrange (see page 42), and Antonin Dolohov (see page 89).)

Lucius Malfoy was moved to and from three high-security prisons during the years of 1998, 2000, and 2001, respectively, as well as having undergone massive security measures due to various difficulties with prison guards, eight jail breaks, and one attempted suicide.

Directions

Severus woke up with Bellatrix leaning over him, her hair a wild mess about her face.

"Do you know what's odd?" she said. "Sounds. Ever think about it? How we take sounds… and our brain applies it to an action, or an object."

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"You know," she badgered, backing away as he sat up in bed, and nearly tripping over her own feet. He wondered if she'd slept at all, or how long she'd been hovering over his bedside, breathing in his face. "Like, I heard a motorbike outside. It was a sort of rushing sound… and I knew it was a motorbike, because I've heard it before, but it's not the exact same sound but I knew anyway…"

"Have you slept?" he asked.

"You're not listening to me," Bella said.

"Yes, I am," Severus said, "and though the words change, I always know your voice from its irritating whine. Get out and fix yourself up, you look like a mess."

"I always look like a mess, Professor, sir," Bellatrix said haughtily, before turning on her heel and flouncing to the bathroom. "And I'm using your toothbrush, git!" She added through the open door.

She was, Severus reflected, the main reason he never had women over.

.x.

Severus was not a very social person - he never had been. But there was something about Bellatrix Black that dug right under the skin, and stayed there. She would either contaminate you, and eat you alive, and you'd hate her for the rest of your life, or she'd grow on you, like some sort of weed, and even when she broke your heart and tore you up and made you cry you'd still welcome her back.

Severus had been infected with the latter.

He sat down in the kitchen and she crawled into his lap, all angles and bones and long legs, and her hair tickled his neck. Her body was warm against his chest, lean and lanky under her worn down Muggle clothes.

Many people did not like Severus, because there was not much to like; but Bellatrix liked him, for some strange reason, even though in the past she was often maddened, and screamed at him at times, eaten down by her own hysteria. Perhaps the doctors had cured that; perhaps not, but Severus wouldn't have minded either way. Bella had adored him, and made him smile; and sometimes she even impressed him, which was a shocking thing with Severus, who sometimes suffered from some sort of severe superiority complex - that's what all his past partners from his various relationships had said, anyway.

"Hey, Severus," Bella said after a moment, shifting until they were nose-to-nose, "What happened to my husband?"

"He's dead," Severus said, flatly.

Bella's jaw made a little shifting movement. "Oh."

Then she sighed, and laid her cheek against his chest. "I'll deal with it after," she said, matter-of-fact. "We leave today. And we'll have to visit someone before we go."

.x.

She'd never been to Antonin's yet, though she knew his address after looking it up, so Bellatrix had actually expected to take the underground instead of Apparating - it was risky, Apparating without knowing where you were going, exactly. Severus, however, destroyed the idea by offering to drive, which Bellatrix had heartily ended up regretting by the time she'd stumbled out of her seat and onto the sun warmed asphalt in front of Antonin's place.

She'd been in a car before, back when she was younger, but she had expected Severus to drive sensibly, since he was, usually, a sensible man. But Severus appeared to take his habits from Lucius (who drove like everyone on the road was personally insulting him), and so therefore seemed to be eternally suffering from an emotionless form of road rage.

Bellatrix made a retching sound.

Severus slammed his door and moved over to her, helping her onto the pavement. He was dressed severely in a long, black trench coat - Severus had suffered from a Goth phase when it cropped up in the 80s, and despite all denial, seemed to have never grown out of it. Bella had to admit, though, that he had to be one of the only full-grown men she'd ever seen look good sporting chains and fishnet, which was primarily what he wore whenever he was in the company of his goddaughter.

"I am Apparating back to your place," Bella said, pale. "That experience was both terrifying and somehow very nostalgic."

"Oh, it wasn't that bad," Severus said.

"You ran five red lights," Bella said.

Severus shook his head. "Only four. I counted."

Bellatrix rolled her eyes and shoved past, going up the steps to the house, which was rather normal-looking, as houses go. She rang the doorbell, and waited. Severus stood at her shoulder, looking around.

Antonin answered the door, and didn't look surprised. He, like Bellatrix, appeared to have wasted away; his body was lean and sinewy, starved. He was also deathly pale, with a long face that could be considered attractive from certain angles but was, all told, a very generic face for all of that.

"Hello." He said.

Bellatrix scratched the back of her neck. "I need to talk to you." She said.

"Yes," Antonin said. "I thought you might." He held open the door, and admitted them both. Then he led them to the kitchen.

Most people led guests to the living room, or any other sort of room for entertaining visitors; but over the years the Death Eaters who had made up the Inner Circle had ended up inviting each other into the kitchen, in keeping up old habits. It was something that tied them all together, whether they stayed faithful or turned traitorous or were only there because they had nothing better to do.

In the beginning, the Death Eaters had consisted of three levels. The first level encompassed them all, from the highest to the lowest, who never interacted with each other, their identities masked from their fellow members. The second level was called the Inner Circle, made up of the Death Eaters that had been among the first to join the organization - the Inner Circle knew each other, from school or otherwise, and their identities were not hidden. And then the third level was known of only to those within it, made up of the key few individuals of whom Voldemort entrusted with the most vital of information; not even Severus had ever been clued in on it.

Years ago, after the Inner Circle had participated in a group raid, instead of going to their respective homes they retired for the next six hours, sometimes deep into the early hours of the morning, to one of the other member's homes. And there they would sit, in the kitchen, speaking with one another. It was a form of nostalgia that every Death Eater, even Severus, could never really banish.

You couldn't help feeling, sitting in a kitchen with several other people who had fought with you and believed with you and killed with you, drinking tea or perhaps something a bit stronger, as if you actually belonged.

Antonin had been in the second level, and so he had taken up the tradition of the kitchen.

"Tea?" Antonin asked.

"No," Bellatrix said. Severus merely shook his head. "We have somewhere to go. I just need a map."

Antonin looked puzzled. "A map?"

"Yeah." Bellatrix said. She nibbled her pinkie nail. "The one the Dark Lord gave you."

"Ah." Antonin looked like a mix between shaken nerves and relief. "That's upstairs. But it's not a map, it's a set of directions."

"We'll wait." Severus said.

Antonin left the kitchen, and went upstairs; Bellatrix scuffed the heel of her worn-down sneaker on the shiny floor and tried not to look nervous.

"Directions," she said.

"A map would have been impossible, I think," Severus said, "After all, who can map the Forbidden Forest? It's a rather illogical piece of land."

"I'm bad with directions," Bellatrix said, "I nearly failed my Astronomy OWL because I kept forgetting how to assemble my telescope."

"Wouldn't you have figured it out by fifth year?" Severus asked, raising an eyebrow.

"No," Bella confessed, "Because Lucius did it for me every time during class, but he couldn't when OWLs came along. Hi, Antonin," she said, when Antonin appeared in the doorway, with a much-folded piece of paper clenched in his fist.

"Do I want to give you this?" Antonin asked, warily.

Bellatrix shrugged one shoulder, and smiled. "Does it matter?" she asked.

She held out her hand. Antonin gave it to her.

"Thank you, darling," she said, and kissed Antonin on the cheek, "I'll come back when this is all over."

.x.

Severus drove home, while Bella, true to her word, Apparated. When he walked through his front door he found her in the living room, struggling into her robes.

Her time as the Dark Lord's Heir had passed, yes, and she was no longer a Death Eater - the circle had been ripped and torn and shredded, like pages in a history book. But she still had her robes, robes that she loved for their meaning and their memory, and their usefulness could not by disputed, not even by Severus, who hated them.

She had abandoned her jeans her and shirt, and Severus came in to help her, pulling her long hair out of the way of the fastenings. The robes hung on her skinny frame, and it was only with Severus' help was she able to magically tuck in the folds, and lace up the back, and fit the sleeves around her wrists and hands.

The last time he had helped her into any of her clothing was on her wedding day, when she had been struggling to get into her dress. He'd walked into the tent - Bellatrix had demanded an outdoor wedding - and she had been sitting there in a daze, half-clothed, shredding the dress between her slender hands, littering the ground with scraps of ivory lace.

Clothes do not make a man, nor a woman - they do, however, add to them. Clothing was only fine if the wearer knew how to wear it properly; and thus it was that Bellatrix Lestrange was, indeed, one of the most faithful followers to her lord when she wore her robes, and was someone to fear, and respect, and even adore. Her chin came up, and her lazy, childlike manner was more like a falcon's, more predatory; sharp and angular and quick.

She was a Death Eater no longer, but she was still a dangerous woman, for all that. In her youth she was headstrong, but temperate; she was the material of the ultimate murderer, driven and focused, and was not hindered by the difficult habit of looking through the victim's eyes. But Bellatrix was not cold-blooded - she was righteous.

She never really grew up either, owing to much of her life in captivity; but she was still mature, and she still knew all that she had known those years ago, when she came into houses uninvited, and slaughtered the families within, and cast the Dark Mark into the sky. She was good at it.

She was very good at it.

Severus began to braid her hair. Bellatrix tugged on her sleeves, relaxed, never realising before how tense she had been.

"Think I'm evil, Severus?" she asked.

Severus didn't look up from his work; just twisted her hair into the plait. "No."

-

Questions? Comments? Stupid mistakes I made that you need to inform me of? Tell me to stop writing? Click away at the review button, my dears.
And I have a thing for Goth!Snape. Sad, I know. Mmph.