Smiles
It's a dark and rainy December night, the kind of night scary stories are made of. The wind is strong and loud, blending in perfectly with the taps of the rain. The dark of this night is everywhere and shadows are nonexistent and so is the moon.
There is a house in an old wizarding community with a single light on. The other dozen or so houses are pitch black, but not this house. The single lighted room is on the second floor, at the very corner of the house's structure, slightly obscured by an ancient and tall swaying tree standing before it.
Even from afar an outline of a person (the gender inextinguishable) could be made out, the person's back to the window.
Long moments pass and the person doesn't move. The person stands with their back to the window, their long and wet cloak clinging to their tall, slender form.
The winds pick up and the rain starts splaying sideways from the velvet sky, and as a particularly howling bout of wind shoots in the direction of the house, pounding on the lit window, the person at last moves.
The person, a woman – a woman with the aforementioned tall and slender form – turns around to face the window. Her cloak hood is up, and it comes down just enough so that there's a shadow over her eyes, concealing half of her face from sight. It's the only shadow for miles on this dark night.
Her shadowed eyes stare out the window of the house, and she looks down at the sea of blackness as raindrops fall into it, smiling. She hasn't been able to stop smiling for quite a long time by now; why, it must've been at least an hour since she's started.
'Such an interesting night this has turned out to be,' she thinks pleasantly. 'Such an interesting – wonderful – blissful night.'
Memories are fading and nightmares will never be dreamt again; bad days of childhood are gone – erased from the earth as if they've never happened. It's good this way; it's better if they've never happened.
"Some memories are the things nightmares are made out of," her father's words echo in her ears.
'It's the last time it will…never. No, no…never!' She tells herself. She's sure of it.
But she's wrong; at that moment a flood of memories – nightmares, whatever one prefers to call them – comes flooding back, crashing into her and capturing her for a second in that moment of the past.
…Footsteps down a hallway, wails and sobs and shouts, and there's a salty taste in her mouth from the tears down her cheeks. She's desperate and she's almost at the door – she can see its brass handle come into view as she turns the hall corner. She reaches for it – again, desperately – but there's a yelp of pain that escapes her as a brusque fist grabs hold of her hair.
"You want to go inside?" Her mother's whisper is cold, sending a shiver down her spine. "You want to go inside?" she shrieks, into her ear. She shakes her fistful of her daughter's hair; the eight-year-old stumbles and staggers. "Then you'll go inside, you wretched little misbehaving wench!"
The door bursts open, and her mum shoves her inside. She stumbles and staggers some more, and there's the slam of the door that makes her jump. She turns around, tear-stricken face gleaming in the light, coming face-to-face with her maker – her mother.
What happens next can be heard from halls down. More cries and sobs and shouts and screams and pain.
Later on she'll sit down at the dinner table, still shaking, and she'll be a good little girl; she'll eat every bit of food on her plate and she'll keep her elbows off the table, and she'll give dad a great big kiss on the cheek when he comes home…
A choked moan brings her back from the memories of the past; things that happened twenty plus years ago, and her shadowed eyes shine with life again.
She turns from the window and looks down at the floor. Not for the first time this December night does she smile.
"Painful," she says nicely. "Painful, I know. I'm sorry, mother. I'll help you."
Her smile widens and her kind tone deepens.
"I've missed you," she says softly, kneeling, looking down at her prey. She caresses her cheek lovingly, bloodying her own hand. She doesn't care.
Blood doesn't bother her anymore; she's gotten used to it long ago, during childhood when skin would tear and cry what her mother said to be 'red tears'.
Many things don't bother her, at least things that would disturb a common passerby: blood, screams, torture, murder – pain. It has become her life's work. And she's rewarded for it, everyday and soon she'll be happier than anyone. He's promised her, and the Dark Lord's words are the only truth in the world, she's convinced. She'll be happier than she ever was as a child…soon…He's promised.
Another strangled murmur of pain is heard. She only continues to smile, withdrawing her caressing hand from her mother's cheek.
"I'm sorry, mother – it's painful, I know," she says again. The gory sight before her is pleasing. The slow, leisure, merciless retribution she is collecting is very sweet.
She's wearing the kindest smile a person will ever see, and ironically enough the kind smile seen ignites the eeriest chill by sense and feeling. She takes out something from her cloak, something already dripping and bloodied, and of course she's smiling.
Sometimes the filthy Muggle way was so much more thrilling.
"I'll help you. You've helped me," she coos to her mother. "And I know it's painful, but I will help you, mother. A promise. A swear – a swear on your grave."
The wind has changed directions and so has the rain, as if planned and synchronized. It is no longer blowing towards the house, but now in the opposite direction – toward the empty road, and the rain is falling straight again and it's still heavy.
As the wind distances the house does, shrinking slowly from view and the lit window becomes smaller, and yet the figure in the window is still seen, arm raised with the bladed object in her hand, and as Bellatrix lowers it with swiftness and pleasantness a final yelp of torture is heard over the rain and over the wind.
- Fin -
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