character death.
V
The cuts were fresh, and stung.
"It will go away," Voldemort had said.
When she shifted her jaw, she could feel the cuts on her cheek stretch a little. The same applied to her back, arms, and legs whenever she moved.
She was still skinny, but it was different now - she was skinny like she had done it on purpose, like she had starved and vomited herself empty to attain the hollow stomach and the ribs that stuck out like bony fingers. Her hair was light brown and shining and wavy, and she tossed her head a lot to show said hair off.
Her face was different. Everything was.
She had gone to empty out her vault. The goblins at the bank barely asked questions - if you showed up with the key, then that was that. She looked like she was a ministry official, out to empty out the funds from the account of Bellatrix Black. That was all. Nothing wrong with that.
Even though, if there had been something slightly off, the goblins wouldn't have concerned themselves with it. They were indifferent; it was useful.
Bella dared not touch the Lestrange funds. That was Rodolphus' money. It was his inheritance. Bella knew she was being foolish in refusing to take that money as well, but she couldn't help it. She wasn't a Lestrange by blood. Besides, Rabastan - if he ever got out - might need a little extra money.
The key was warm in her back pocket.
x
Heat can indeed do strange things to your head.
Heat can make someone feel strong, especially after a long, cold winter. Heat can make you feel weak, as well - it can burn at you, squeeze at your insides, drag its teeth down your spine. Heat can speed things up, but it can slow things down. Heat can make time become nonexistent, and heat will make it slow to a crawl just to frustrate you.
Heat was insanity. The cold was insanity as well, but everything was different when it was cold. Heat was strange. Heat could drive you mad.
x
Bellatrix had gone shopping.
She'd taken some gold and exchanged it to muggle currency, and then she had had to buy things. Clothes, of course - good quality, durable clothing, clothing she could do things in. Several types of shoes, several hats, gloves, anything - different outfits for different personas.
And of course there was everything else.
All she'd had to do was ask and Voldemort had told her - how to get weapons in London, how to get into the underbelly and the black market. And besides all of that there were a few standard items she could pick up anywhere and use to her advantage.
There were shopping bags in her back seat, but in the trunk there was a cricket bat, a sledgehammer, a machete; throwing knives and daggers and ice picks and chisels. There were also a few guns, the names and styles of which she did not know - but the dealer, a very nice chap indeed, had been quite helpful in teaching her how to load, reload, aim, fire, and keep everything in good condition. Of course, he also enjoyed getting his hands all over her in the teaching process, but Bella figured that since he was the sort of person with a short lifespan, he might as well get a few thrills in before someone ripped his face off.
She was back at headquarters again. Bella decided that she loved her car very, very much. It was going to help her do everything. She got out and began to lug all of her things in, minus the menagerie in her trunk. She wordlessly made several trips up and down the stairs with her bags, and then locked her car, went back into her room, and began to get dressed.
x
When it came to the war, Voldemort arranged everything into chains.
Certain events would be strung together, and then Voldemort would use the prior information to attempt to visualise what was most likely to happen. He linked the chains together into a web, and every minute of every day when something of import happened he would collapse these chains and put them back together.
That was what he had been doing in the backyard when Bella had interrupted him.
But that was fine, as the current chain of the greatest importance involved Bellatrix.
Bellatrix was very important to him. She wasn't like Lucius, who did what he knew needed to be done, but never what he felt.
Bella lived in constant danger since she was driven - not by her head but by her heart.
She was very valuable.
She never questioned Voldemort. Never. She trusted him, she loved him, and when he said something she never raised her eyebrows at it. Bellatrix was the person who always believed Voldemort's lies - so much, in fact, that he found it difficult to deceive to her.
He didn't want to destroy something so rare.
Bellatrix was powerful, and she was very skilled, and she was moved by what she felt needed to be done. She was so wonderfully volatile that she would finally be the one to help Voldemort accomplish all he needed to for this war - pure chaos among his enemies.
A death in any of the rival organisations caused a stir. But Bella would not stop at one death. Bella would knock off as many she could.
She had the feeling behind her. And Voldemort had taught her well. He had helped her master spells, had helped her dive into the Dark Arts - had watched her somewhat childish fingers, delicately tracing symbols of magic in the air, shape into the long fingers of a tall, beautiful woman of brute force. She was a terrible, frightening weapon, and she was his.
Voldemort was carefully rearranging the chains in his head. Every single one of them was probable, and important. But most of them, thanks to Bellatrix, were about to take second place.
Voldemort went out to enjoy the sun again, and to think.
And he thought, what a beautiful day it was today.
x
Bellatrix's new wardrobe consisted mostly of black - part of it was style, part of it was stealth, and part of it was the fact she was in mourning. It was only right, she decided.
She put on thick, heavy black jeans, a black sleeveless shirt, and a black turtleneck sweater. She took off her gold wedding band, because with gloves on it would be a hindrance and with gloves off it would be a clue to her identity. That's what she told herself, even though she knew she would soon reveal her identity anyway to make her point. Truthfully, she found it somewhat disgusting to dirty the ring her husband had given her with his murderers' blood.
She wasn't worried about getting too hot in her clothes since she would be working indoors and at night. Besides that there were dozens of mysterious, dark-haired women in the city, and she wanted to blend in. All the normal, sundress-wearing girls were suspect when night fell.
She had on heavy-duty work boots, which would be loud, but she didn't need stealth. She wasn't sneaking in - she was charging in, bold as brass.
She had her gloves on, and a few knives strapped to her wrists and ankles, and her hair was in a bun, out of her face. She had stuck her wand in a sheath she had bought in Diagon Alley and had strapped it to her waist, under her sweater.
She checked her watch. Seven thirty.
She went downstairs, and into the kitchen. She'd have to eat before she left.
Voldemort was there, like usual, consuming massive amounts of rice and soy sauce. There was still some grass in his hair. Peter was there as well, but he wasn't eating.
"Do you have our file on Kingsley Shacklebolt in there?" She asked, and pointed at the small stack at Peter's elbow. He licked his thumb, separated it from the other sheets, and handed it to her.
She folded it up and stuck it in her back pocket. "This is all I need for now," she said. "I'll come back tonight for the rest."
"Eat something before you go," Voldemort said.
Voldemort was forever eating. He had once told Bellatrix that he had been hungry for most of his life, ever since he'd started practicing magic. Magic did something to him, burned away at him until he was slim and brittle looking and pale as a ghost.
Bellatrix sat down beside him, and took comfort in his presence. When she stood up to leave after not eating anything, he said nothing to dissuade her.
x
It was nearing sundown when Bellatrix stopped her car in front of Kingsley Shacklebolt's house. She hoped he was home.
She got out of the car and went around to the trunk, and opened it. She looked around, making certain she was alone. Then she took a black duffel bag and put some rope in it and a few other things as well, but she doubted she'd need them. Then she took up the cricket bat, and went up to the front door.
She set the bag down on the step behind her, made sure it and the bat were out of immediate sight, and knocked.
She waited for the door to crack open several inches.
Then she shoved the tip of the cricket bat into the crack, levered it open all the way and slammed her shoulder to the door, forcing herself in. She had been wearing her fake face again, just to make sure Kinglsey opened the door for her, but once she was indoors she let it drop back to her real face, the face of an escaped Death Eater.
Kingsley was a very competent man. This was why Bella wasted no time. She simultaneously kicked him in the shin and swung the bat in the air, feeling a rush of satisfaction when she felt it connect with the man's head.
She watched him tumble to the ground, halfway between reaching for his wand. She took the wand and threw it away, still unsure as to whether she should break it sometime. She retrieved her bag and closed the door behind her after making sure no one on the street had seen her enter. Then she cocked her head and listened.
No one else in the house. Good. She hurried upstairs to check, and then back downstairs, giving the house a once over, checking for escape exits. She locked the front door after some debate, figuring that it was better to be trapped inside than to have any of Kingsley's friends let themselves in.
She rolled him into the nearest room - the living room, it turned out to be - and, after fetching a chair from the kitchen, proceeded to tie him to it using the coil of rope she had brought with her.
Then she took another chair, set it in front of the unconscious Shacklebolt, and sat down. She set the cricket bat on her lap and the duffel bag on the floor behind her.
Then she waited.
And while she waited, she was thinking.
She thought, this man had a hand in her husband's murder. She also thought that Kingsley Shacklebolt was a very strong, stubborn individual, and she was unlikely to get any information out of him. He was too noble, too righteous - he'd die for a cause.
She couldn't hate him for it because she was the exact same way.
Bella was a hypocrite most of the time, but only when she wasn't aware of it.
She bit her lip and closed her eyes for a long time. When she opened them Kingsley Shacklebolt was awake. His eyes were very piercing, which she did not like.
"Lestrange," he said.
Bellatrix smiled, painfully. She jigged her knee a little. "Hello." She said.
He said nothing more.
Bellatrix cast around for something to say. Lucius was the one who was good at these things, not her. Lucius was the one who could do some of the most amazing things with words, could wring secrets out of someone like water from a sponge. Alas, he wasn't here. She'd have to do this on her own.
"So, did you kill my husband?" She asked, bluntly. She still wasn't sure. And surely Kingsley knew he would die or become captured, and so surely he'd answer her this simple question, since it really was of no importance.
He said nothing.
Which meant he didn't kill Rodolphus. Someone else had. If he had, then Kingsley would have told her, so she would fly into a rage and kill him and not milk him for information as to who had done the actual murder.
He didn't think Bellatrix would know this. He wasn't aware that Bella would have done the same thing in such a situation, and so he wasn't aware that he should have lied to her rather than keep his silence. And she doubted he'd have thought that far ahead and was saying nothing to trick her, or something like that.
Everyone knew Bella was mad, even Bella herself. But they thought that that meant she was stupid. But she was not.
They knew she was a tool but didn't know she was a thinking one.
"Alright." Bellatrix said. "So someone else did, I gather?"
Still, nothing.
Bellatrix was becoming mildly worried. She needed information. If she got nothing out of Shacklebolt, then she was lost. She rubbed her chin nervously.
And she realised that she really missed her husband.
And this man had had a hand in his death.
And she could get information elsewhere, after all.
She made a decision.
Bellatrix leaned forward a little. She was frowning.
"My husband is dead," she said, frankly. "And I miss him very much. I know what you are - you are an auror, a Dark Wizard catcher. Your life is framed with beliefs and morals and strict principles that keep you rigid even when the world is crumbling beneath your feet. And do you really think it's right, to go about disrupting the lives of wizards and witches? To catch them and put them in Azkaban, where they would go mad with grief and sorrow and depression and end their own lives? Is it the money? Or is that really what you call the law?
"When my Lord takes up his reign, that will all change. No longer will the law become unjust, and no longer will unhealthy lifestyles - breeding with muggles, for instance - be tolerated. There will be a new order, and a new life… but that will not bring my husband back…"
She leaned back into her chair, her eyes hooded.
Kingsley said, "You are quite mad."
"I know," Bellatrix said. "Oh, I know. You made me that way. You and your filth made me, you created me, and now you have to deal with the consequences."
The sole of her heavy boot smashed into his face and knocked him and the chair over, backwards. Bellatrix was up, and she had her bat, clenched between her gloved hands, and she slammed it, again and again, at Kingsley's prone body. He struggled - naturally - but he was securely tied, and so Bella did not fear retaliation.
She beat him, watching his skin and flesh split beneath the force, listening to bones crack. She stomped on him over and over, pummelling and mashing him with her boots, pounding him to a bruised battered bloody mess. She crushed his throat beneath her heel and slammed the bat repeatedly against his skull until it cracked and dashed his brains all across the carpet.
And then she stopped.
Her chest was heaving and there was sweat in her eyes. She let the bat fall beside the mess she had made and she picked up the duffel bag and went upstairs, trailing blood wherever she stepped. There was blood on her clothes and face as well, she knew, but the black camouflaged it well enough - and she could wash her face later, she decided.
She looked into each room until she found an office, and then she began to pile every file she could find into her duffel bag. Normal reports, secret orders, anything.
The house had been well-warded, but the spells had only been placed in the walls - once Bella got inside it was all free reign.
Then she looked into his bedroom, and went through his possessions. She found money, jewellery, some more papers, id cards. And then, finally, she found the room that held his small but useful library.
She didn't have a lot of time. She knew that Kingsley could perhaps be needed for an Order meeting, and his absence would be noted and people may be sent. She cast her eyes across the room, and found a book lying on the desk. Her eyes trailed off its cover and her heart jumped.
The book was normal enough, but beside it there was something that looked like a day journal, or an account book - maybe anything, really. But it might help. She checked around again and found a shoebox full of letters - useless or valuable, and if it was the latter, then they would be coded.
Then she took a towel from the bathroom and went back downstairs, and picked up her cricket bat. She set the bag of files down and cleaned the gore from her weapon. She threw the towel across the shattered remains of Kingsley's head, stomped on him again a few more times for good measure, and picked the bag back up and left through the front door.
The blood left boot prints all along the pavement.
She was forced to go into the backseat of the car and crawl up to the front to get behind the steering wheel to prevent laying any more tracks. She wanted everyone to think she had Apparated, not gone off in a car.
She looked out the window at the house for a long time. She would not set off a Dark Mark, she decided. She wanted everyone to be surprised at what they found.
x
When Kingsley Shacklebolt didn't show up for the meeting, Severus Snape resisted the urge to light up a fag and, instead, looked around at the other Order Members with his usual cold indifference when Moody sent Lupin and Hestia out to check up on Shacklebolt.
Severus was glad Moody hadn't sent Tonks. From a slightly parental point of view, Severus didn't want her to see whatever Bella had left behind.