Disclaimer: Harry Potter? Not mine. Therefore, I'm not making any money of this, either.
A/N: Yet more Bellatrix fic. Set during OotP.
Snakes
Her beauty is poisonous, glittering like the skin of the snakes he loves so well.
Those smiles hide venom, and behind them lie very real teeth.
She is his favourite. Hardly for her beauty. Rather, for her ruthlessness. For the sheer joy she finds when she speaks the unforgivable curses. For the way her laughter will mingle with the screams of her victims.
She is a woman well suited to this new age.
Bellatrix will never denounce him. She will never leave him. When the rest of them have run away, cowering in rat holes, she will hiss the killing curse.
The light fading from her eyes, she will still be proud. Still pure.
He knows all that.
And when he sends her to fight against Potter and his friends at the Department of Mysteries he knows that she will not disappoint him.
He spent a lifetime taming snakes, after all.