stuffies and spaghetti
a/n: written for morsmordre's shipping week. prompt: spiral.
Crayons littered the floor of Alecto's nursery as she and Bellatrix occupied themselves with coloring. A coloring book lay on its side next to Alecto's rice machine, though the two Death Eaters were more interested in drawing their own pictures and sticking them to the walls of the Carrow-Malfoy Manor.
Alecto was drawing a picture of a Muggle man being murdered, three shades of red slashed in lines across the paper to represent blood. She drew an X over each eye and gave the victim a lifeless tongue protruding from his vacant mouth. Once she was satisfied with her drawing, Alecto turned to show it to Bella.
Bellatrix gave an approving nod as she surveyed "Three different flavors of blood?" she said. "Mmm, I'd lick that." She mimed licking the air as if she were Amycus, causing her best friend to wrinkle her nose as she returned to her coloring.
Alecto's next picture was of a Muggle writhing under the Cruciatus Curse, and the next featured a house with a string of internal organs strung up instead of Christmas lights. Maisie would want to hang them up on the wall, she thought.
But before she could start another one, a realization came to her. She'd shown Bella all of her drawings, but she hadn't gotten to see any of the other Death Eater's work. That wasn't fair at all.
Under normal circumstances, the thing to do was just ask to see it, but Alecto was a Death Eater, and such behavior was much too polite.
So she reached for Bellatrix's paper, only to stop and try to make sense of what was on it. The paper was covered in spirals of every imaginable color, all tangled together like spaghetti. Maybe Bella wanted some noodles?
"Bella," Alecto said. "Do you want me to tell mommy to make you some noodles?"
"Noodles?" Bellatrix looked confused that she'd even asked. "No, but you can tell her I'm in the mood for firewhiskey."
"Then why is your paper full of noodles?" Alecto queried. "Are they canned noodles? Do you want to get mushy?"
"Yes, but that's not the point," Bella responded, ignoring Alecto's expression of disgust.
"Then what is the point?"
There really wasn't much point to the drawing. Bellatrix just felt like drawing a tangle of spirals, so that was what she did. Clearly, though, she would need to come up with an explanation for it that Alecto would actually understand.
"I drew a picture of what goes on inside my head," Bella told her, which wasn't exactly a lie.
"Why do you have noodles in your head?"
Well, that was a question Bella could actually answer.
She turned the paper over and quickly scribbled a picture of some kind of rodent. "Because that's what happens when your home is where the rats and mice roam," she explained. "Where the waves and the biting winds play."
Now that she had her best friend's attention, she continued. "Where seldom is heard a coherent word, and the dementors give lectures all day."
Alecto frowned. She knew Bellatrix had gone to Azkaban, where the dementors lived, but she did not know it came with dementor lectures. "No wonder your head is full of spaghetti," she said.
"Yes," Bella said, "but if not for my spaghetti, I wouldn't be half as fun. But there's only so much spaghetti to go around, so please make sure to vaporize all lecturing dementors you see."
Alecto was more than happy to comply, finding some more paper and drawing the aftermath of a dementor vaporization. Despite herself, Bella found herself watching her.
Even Death Eaters needed friends, especially ones who would stay with them despite the spaghetti. And maybe she usually left Alecto's house covered in glitter, and/or after having to have a conversation with a stuffed mandrake, but, well, Bellatrix was in love with a houseplant. Who was she to judge?
-end-