Note:

Thank you so much for reading! I know that chapter one was quite abstract—in this chapter Persephone will be out and about more, and we should get a better grasp on the world she lives in. Enter Narcissa, Bellatrix, Lucius and, of course, the Dark Lord.

I haven't made any major edits to the original writing from two years ago... I hope nothing gets overly abstract. If you are at all confused or curious, please don't hesitate to reach out. I always love reading and responding to reviews!

Thank you, une-papillon-de-nuit for following and favoriting, and thanks to yadiburia0112, as well, for following.

Two: Cripple

November 1995 – The Malfoy Manor

today is a clean day, which means i go outside. i know this because footsteps are coming and He has not come in a long while, likely days, and he does not make footsteps.

when the door opens i think it is my brother here to retrieve me. it has not been a clean day in too long and i can hear he is trying to not cry in the pitch darkness when he frees my wrists with the cold key, never touching my skin because he knows he will sting it. he lets the metal slip from his fumbling fingers onto the floor with a cold clatter and he searches for it until he finds and pockets it. i crane my neck to search the clay void of his face in the black. but it is not him.

'Persephone,' says my mother. that is my name. 'Are you awake?'

'where is my brother?' i ask. she breathes in painfully and my heart convulses a moment. but i gather myself, make myself not feel.

'Do you want your blindfold?' she asks. but she knows i will refuse to speak until she answers my question. 'Draco is at Hogwarts, dear.' her voice trembles.

'oh,' i say, and nod in the dark. my voice sounds strange to my ears, vile, it hurts to use. Draco is at school, at the request of our Lord. he is a prefect this year.

i remember a clean day before the term began, when we sat out on the bench in the summer gardens in the blaring sun with flower scents blowing across our skin in the wind, and he told me the message he'd received from the headmaster. i knew he could not have cared less, but the news of his new position had served as ample distraction.

'Do you want your blindfold?'

'yes, please.'

'Alright, dear.' her hands are wispy and they flit around me quickly as she ties the familiar fabric over my weak, deprived eyes. she is afraid of touching me. i wish Draco were here, and not her. he would not move and speak so sadly. he would hide himself for my sake. but with her i can barely breathe. i want her to go away.

she asks if i can stand. 'i can,' i say, and i do. slowly, with help from the wall. my hands feel skinless against the stone.

'I brought a shawl for you.' my arm stretches out and she drapes a thin fabric over it, which i place around my nakedness. my shoulders barely move. i feel their blades poking out from my back like dead wings. i imagine myself. hands like needles, skeletal body. bruises obscuring my skin, a new color entire, like a stormy sky, like art. narrow wrists like rods, metal-gnawed flesh. my body feels nothing. i am on my way. coming to dust. fear none, though i shake and my knees will not hold long.

she leads me through the door and i find the familiar railing, cold, sharp, dagger-like on my palm. one step. another. my legs shake and halfway, i have to crawl for the weakness, the pain. my muscles are elastic, disintegrating. my mother stands just beside me, patient, wordless, breathing, body taut in its desperation for relaxation. she knows nothing of this pain. or perhaps she does and i am being cruel.

i shake and think i leave pieces of myself on the stairs, but then i am at the top and i am standing up and i close my eyes behind the blindfold because there is light from somewhere and i am not ready and i am shivering.

'It is okay,' says my mother, but she talks to the air, her voice high, the way voices get outside on freezing nights. outside. soon. soon. now we are in the main room and i feel the black ancient paint of the floor and build the space with its candle sconces and heavy dust-laden window drapes up inside my mind. heavy air, heavy fast breathing, too warm. 'Do you want to try opening your eyes?'

hands move of their own accord, like birds, caged, fused to my body. the lids of my eyes are down. it is easier, in the room, closing them, than opening them, waiting for light that will not come, feeling the odd air against them, freezing, going blind. i feel the lights of the candles above my small frame on my eyelids. so small i am, now that i am in the large room, so short and so thin and like a wraith. a sliver of bone, hair weighing down the crook of my neck, a rushing heartbeat. i open one eye and then the other and blink fast, the room out of focus. then the lights come and there are candles and there are shapes on the ceiling and my eyes are looking further and closer than they have in too much time, and i think i may be on the floor, my head light, my perceptions careening.

'You are alright,' says my mother.

across the room bangs open an immense door and storming over the painted floor comes aunt Bellatrix with her lightning storm of crow-black curls and crazed eyes like beads. 'Do you like it?' she giggles, her hands on the sides of my face, her rancid breath in my nostrils. aunt hates me and wants me to die because she is envious. my mother does not move, she is a statue beside me, she is the color of marble. 'Do you like it!' she is screaming now. high-pitched like a glass shard across my arm. she wishes her voice could slice me. she would speak slowly, watch me bleed. i might not mind it. 'Do you like it when he fucks you? Sounds like it, when you scream. How does he do it; how does he touch you?' her wand threatens to pierce the skin of my neck, and she shakes from some terrible inner cold. i look at the ceiling. her breath is rotten. 'Like this—'

'Bella,' says my mother. the reprimanded recoils as though she's been slapped and she smiles and whimpers with those giant eyes. her footsteps echo throughout the room as she runs off, whimpering and wailing. undoubtedly she will moan to my father that my mother has injured her.

my mother exhales once her sister has gone. 'Let's go get you clean,' she says to me, but i can only shake my head. outside. i need outside first. 'Dear, you'll be too cold.'

'there are coats,' i say. i will wear a world of coats to go outside. my eyes water.

and i do get to go outside before bathing. wearing not quite a world of coats, but enough to make me appear slightly globe-ish. this is uncomfortable in a frightening way, given that my body itself is concave. my ankles feel too narrow, even in the smallest pair of boots. my mother stops in front of the front door and waits for over a minute, looking between me and the knob. 'Are you sure you won't need the blindfold?' she says. i nod. 'You don't have to make it all the way to the river, dear.' but i do need to. 'We can go out a second time after this, if you'd like. How about just standing still a while?' but i have to walk. i have to move and breathe and feel that my body still works.

'just open the door, and i will do what i can,' i say, which is what she wants to hear, and makes her nod, though her eyes stay beady and wet, as they always have been. she opens the door.

outside, there is no sun. the sky is bathed in a flat white and the air is a heavy foggy cold. but still my eyes sting, almost blind from being so long shrouded in the dark. the light hurts so badly i cry, but without sound, so my mother will not see and drag me back inside. wind scrapes around the sharp corners of the roof and windows and knocks tree branches together, the wood so old it could be mistaken for stone if not for its creaking. the cold clenches around my neck but the wind does not touch the ground and my hair is left eerily still. i stumble and shiver and cough, yet still i walk, my mother trailing behind me.

each time i venture outside, i must re-learn the landscape, teach myself that my eyes are reliable, and that this is not a dream, but real existence. real trees. real air. real ground giving way just slightly beneath my boots. real leaves coming down to the ground, the real sound of the rageful river just beyond the next hill. few leaves remain on the trees, but those which do are crimson or turned gold by light from a source unknown, jewels standing out on abandoned chains or bands of chilled dark metal.

air floods my lungs, and i have to remember to sip from what is around me, never gulp, or i will cough and see stars and my mother will not be able to carry me all the way back.

by the river, i sob and scream while the current foams and takes away the falling leaves and whines among the stones, stifling my sound. it hurts to stand so i lay down and it hurts to lay down, too, but my legs are not so painful this way. my mother stands behind me and does not dare to touch me as i lay on my back and look through the dark latticework of tree branches at the washed-out sky. i think about my soul.

there is no true dark here, like in the room. only its opposite, and yet i am shackled. i want Him. in this light i see Him and remember from before, from time gone, remember the words around Him, when He was monstrous, His name a curse. i shiver. hating and wanting Him. inside me, in the room, in the dark, His taste, the taste of poison, sour bile. illness danger. thrilling. i feel the prey that is my body, the permanent grime of it. and, still, i want, i lust. this light should be far more than enough. this evil in me should be erased. why do i hunger when i possess no stomach to hunger with?

it is a while before i can stand, and my mother has to hold my hands because my knees will not hold. our return to the house is slow. the air does not move except for high above in the sky where it smears the clouds over themselves evenly and turns the world grey and heavy. my ankles and my body tremble. i wonder if He will come.

inside, i allow my mother to draw me a bath. i remove my layers and layers of clothing while i still shake from the weather and i wince when the fabric makes friction against the sores of my skin. i do not look at the skeleton of my body in the mirror, though it is tempting. i can imagine my hollow cheeks, the blades of my breastbones poking through sharply beneath my thin neck. knobby elastic body. an overused toy. a distraught china doll, ready to shatter.

the water is not too warm, not too cold, but not quite just right. i step into it and it is immediately dirty. i keep my head above the surface and don't look through the milky griminess at my legs, afraid of what i may find there. my mother sits on a stool in the corner, pretending not to watch me, but she does. she drains the water and fills the tub again, over, over, until i am too clean to believe and the water does not change color when i touch it. over my head she pulls one of my dresses from before, knitted, warm, and tolerably itchy around the shoulders. she also brings my favorite socks, equally warm and reaching up to my knees, bunching up around my diminished calves.

my mother is perceptibly warming, allowing herself the illusion of normalcy in all things surrounding me. allowing herself to believe i am back for good, back and normal and the way i was before any of this took place, when He was in hiding, when i was her little girl, her princess. i have seen her do this to herself eleven times before and not once has the illusion lasted. the change in her is rapid, desperate. she only hurts herself more. but i do not question the fantasy. i allow her her warmth, her imagination. and she only grows more gentle, more at ease, more hopeful. until i ask for my father.

her face falls. 'He is in the attic room. He has been feeling ill,' she says. i know she is lying. he is hiding away, ashamed of himself. he will recoil from me, i know.

'i want to see him,' i say. her smile from before is contorting into a grimace.

'Alright,' she says at length, the word scraping the sides of her throat as it comes out. she sucks on the inside of her cheek and i wonder if the sharp edges of the word made her bleed. words have done that to me before. for a moment, i almost wish i had never brought up my father. for a moment.

the halls of this house are wide and isolating. there are so many doors, some of which my brother and i have never looked past. as children we ran about, heedless of our mother's warnings not to trip on the carpets, and we would stand for hours in front of the locked secret doors, fiddling with the knobs and guessing at what might be inside until our father passed and we went along, pretending to have never been interested. now, i hope i never find out what lies in wait behind those locks.

we are on the stairs approaching the room housing the attic ladder, my father's preferred hiding place, when my legs first give out. i seem to clap in half like a split plank, my calves making hard contact with the next step. my bones groan but i make no sound. my mother hauls me up by my armpits and elbows. there have been far too many stairs. i wonder if he will even look at me when i finally stand before him, and i can tell by my mother's trembles that she wonders the same. 'If you don't feel strong enough, we can go to your room and you can sleep a while,' she breathes, though we are nearly to the top of the stairs to the hall where my father is, confirming my suspicions. i cannot say anything to that, so i look ahead, grasp the railing, and soldier on, upward.

he is sitting on a stiff-backed chair with his head in his hands when i tap the whining door open. his white hair cascades over his lap and his eyes are set outside the drafty window, seeing nothing. 'Lucius,' says my mother. his neck straightens and he turns his head toward her voice, but does not put his eyes directly on us. my feet shuffle forward.

'father?'

i get down on my knees in front of him and he stares at me as though looking at a ghost. blankly, with hard dark eyes. not a trace of a twinkling in their recesses. he has an old face. my bony hands stretch out and touch his shoulder, and i lean into his chest, trying to embrace him, if weakly. but he only stiffens, closing his eyes and turning his head. he cannot bring himself to touch me. the tapestries plastered to the wall close in. i am swathed in their ancient dust and breathing is forgotten. i feel heat gathering behind my eyes and then my saline hatred trickles out into his lap. he does not love me. he hates himself because of me.

my mother pulls me from him and speaks not a word as she ushers me out of the room and closes the door silently. we go back down the stairs. my eyes are too dry to produce enough tears, but my heart sobs. she takes me to my old room with my old bed and dresser and mirror and window. i would like to open it despite the cold but it is too old to open and so my mother takes the drapes down so the slight sun can still touch my face. i put myself into a nightgown and my hands accidentally brush my poky ribs and i cannot breathe for a minute. i am barren.

we drag my bed across the room and i lay curled up right against the glass, looking out at the gray world, at the swinging treetops, while my mother holds my hand and braids and strokes my hair and hums a lullaby. the sheets are so soft and the blankets are warm and heavy and i feel i am on a cloud. i should sink through this dream at any moment and topple back to the room beneath the ground. surely i am too heavy and grimy to remain here long. but my eyes close to the velvet of her humming and i feel small again and in my dreams there is a steady stillness. i pray this is death.

but i am woken by a shrill, traumatized cackle, when the light outside the window has faded and the last traces of sunset brush the far-off horizon through the trees. my mother has not let my side and her hand tenses, curling around the blankets at the edge of the bed. the cackle comes again, slowly morphing into a scream, and i know from the pitch and character of aunt Bellatrix's sounds from below that He has arrived. my body springs from the mattress, my sleep shaken off, a mere memory.

'Steady,' says my mother fearfully, her hand clamping down on mine. i tug myself away from her, twisting, standing and trembling down to my bones, lurching toward the door. 'Persephone,' hisses my mother. i press my ear to the crack and strain my hearing as far as it will go. but there are only faint murmurings. from above i hear footsteps and soon my father is hurrying down the stairs, through the hallway just past the door. i turn the knob and reveal myself.

his hair is disheveled and he whips around with wide bloodshot eyes at the sound of my door, pressing a spindly finger urgently to his lips and motioning to my mother to follow. she takes me by the elbow and closes the door cautiously, dragging me along. i watch father, hands raking through his hair, trying to settle himself as he descends another set of stairs. my knees buckle but my mother keeps me upright. the thought of seeing Him, just moments away, is a splint tied along my core, and i try to keep my breath from sending me toppling. my hand runs along the glossy black paint of the final banister as we descend into the great room. i can see Him, and i can see a second form at His feet, but i avert my gaze.

my father drops into a deep bow despite the situation before him, and my mother and i follow suit. i lower my eyes, watching secretly from under their lids as a second shuddering form on the ground shakes its head maniacally. the distinct whimpering and dark lightning hair is unmistakable.

'My Lord,' pleads Bellatrix, hanging onto His ankles and trembling, kissing the floor.

'Bella,' He says in a droning baritone, never predictable, and my heart skips. 'Let go of me, now.'

her face turns up toward Him and she whimpers but does not let go. 'Lucius,' demands the Dark Lord, and my father strides forward, on the cusp of scrambling, to cleave Bellatrix from His body. he carries her off, kicking and spewing profanity, through the door and into a separate room. my back aches from bending. the Dark Lord moves not, barely twisting His head to look in my direction. i can feel His eyes tracing my neck, the waves of my hair, glowing in the dim light from the half-burned candles in their sconces around the room. 'Thank you, Narcissa,' He says to my mother. i listen to her clothes rustle as she stoops lower into her bow and then turns, leaving the room after her husband and sister.

the door closes. we are alone.

'My Child,' He says to me. He makes masterpieces with his voice, chipping away at my body, molding me, changing me as he changed all the others, friendly serrated daggers through my middle. 'Stand.'

His arms open for me in benevolence and i shudder to a straight position, my arms weighted at my sides. 'my Lord.'

i walk forward and He wraps His cold arms around me in a beautiful lie, His lips against my hair, my forehead in the center of His chest. 'You have washed and slept,' He observes.

'i have, my Lord.' somewhere, Bellatrix wails and screams and shatters something, shouting billingsgate to all four corners of the house, but i barely hear her for my hammering pulse. His grip loosens around me and He leaves to glide across the room, staring up at one of the dripping candles. 'You look well, my Lord.'

He turns back to me, and stares down into my face, and lower, toward my abdomen. i shiver involuntarily. 'I feel well,' He says. another curve cut into my new body, another piece of my old self dusted away with the brush of his tongue. He looks into my eyes, though He does not have to. 'May I?'

'yes, my Lord.'

His hand graces my shoulder and travels down to press against my middle, leaving a searing need in its wake, which He knows. but i remain silent. His eyes close and move slightly behind their pale lids, flicking around in search of something. when i breathe, i do not move. His hand is harder now, searching for any sign of consciousness hosted by my body other than my own. a powerful magic seeps from His flesh into my veins, rushing through my heart and my every limb, through my tingling fingers, and i nearly fall but He stabilizes me, clutching my body against His own, His bones creaking with effort, a guttural sound catching in His throat. my heart speeds up and i fear i might faint, but then, with a great sweeping that leaves all the candles extinguished and His eyes glittering before me, it is over.

His thin mouth warps into a shape i cannot read. i must have failed. i must have disappointed Him. i must be barren, yet again. but then, slowly, the candles are lit again, and a laugh claws up through His throat, deep and mechanical, hard dark and rejoicing. slowly it climbs upwards to a high whine and then a shout, like deep bells ringing off the obsidian walls of primordial Hell, deep and chilling, the darkness solidifying in His eyes. His hand clamps down upon my arm so hard i think it will break and the flames of the candles flicker and an invisible presence is summoned into the room, something dark and ancestral. He shouts so my ears sting and i drink up the sound of Him.

'My Child,' He says, looking down at me. 'You have impressed me.'

His lips swoop down from on high to claim mine in a sharp kiss that makes me gasp. my knees knock together as He grasps my neck. i feel a sting where His hand left my arm, as though we had been stitched together with cold glue, the darkest magic. immediately the skin where His hand had been begins to darken, and blooms of purple and blue spring up around my wrist, a deathly corsage. He breathes his frozen soul into me and i feel a stirring within my core, my hands clutching at His holy robes as we moan.

He is victorious, and i am worthy. i am worthy.

NOTE

I want to clarify that though Voldemort possibly seemed to show signs of humanity, or at least a human sexual nature in this chapter, our narrator is very much under his influence, and not to be trusted. Voldemort takes no humane pleasure whatsoever from Persephone—if he obtains any real pleasure at all it is in the form of raw power and domination, not of love or attraction, as she might desire. So when I write something like "his hand graces my shoulder," that should not be taken as an actual tender expression, but as evidence of Persephone's deluded mindset.

I just love what I did with Bellatrix in this story... it's going to be so fun to play with her character in the later chapters, when I actually start writing, picking up from where I left off, rather than just copying, pasting and proofreading.

I have to admit from a personal standpoint, that it is very interesting to be rereading this two years after I wrote it. I quite frankly forgot it existed until I found it while perusing some old files. It's impressive to look back on how different my style was, such a relatively short time ago, and to see the way my own personal difficulties at that time manifested themselves into this story. Whatever was going wrong, art came out of it... and that has to mean something.

I hope you are well. Please leave your feedback, or message me privately!

Thank you for not plagiarizing my writing.

On_Errand_Bad

4,297 words

19 November 2020