A/N – nearing the end! Only a maximum of two more chapters. So here is chapter 8 – I'd be very interested to hear whose side you are on after reading it, as I had to argue two points of view between Voldemort and Bella and I don't know which one is more convincing! Thanks for hanging on this far. Enjoy

–Dommy-

Disclaimer – Harry Potter not mine

A cold cell

The cell was a room with no aspirations. It knew what it was: there was no carpet, no luxury to pretend that it was anything other than a holding pen. Just like Azkaban. Bellatrix shivered on the pallet bed, her bare feet cold from the stone floor. There were no candles, no fire and no windows. Instead the walls glowed an eerie blue, filling the room with a meagre light. They'd taken her wand away, and a charm had been cast on the room which made her feel sick whenever she tried the simplest wandless magic. She still wore only the thin nightdress, and the goose pimples prickled over her bare arms. There was even a Dementor outside the door, adding to the cold.

How could he do this to her? Her own Lord, for whom she had endured the horror of Azkaban. He had sent her back to it. He had betrayed her. He wanted to destroy her. Miserable and frightened, Bellatrix fought the tears that threatened to spill. I endured fourteen years of this!

It was just one year, Bellatrix Black soothed, and she recalled happy memories of Harry. They were false; she knew that, but they were preferable to recalling the loneliness of those many dark hours and the despair of knowing how close Rudolphus was and never being able to see him.

Rudolphus. That was what had broken her. It didn't matter, really, that Voldemort turned against her. There was no love lost between them now, and he was justified in seeing her as a threat (although she'd never felt that to be further from the truth, huddled in the cell). But Rudolphus? Her husband? The man she had gone to Azkaban with. Did he truly not remember the dim gloom, the gnawing emptiness and eternal cold? How could he condemn her to it? How could he have thrown her so casually into this hell? Bellatrix hugged her knees and sobbed. It was all wrong. It had all gone wrong, and she had no way of going back.

This isn't how it was supposed to be, she wept. None of this would have happened if the Dark Lord hadn't found out that Harry was a Horcrux. She'd still be a favoured Deatheater, her loyalty undivided. Rudolphus would still be there, with his warm, comforting presence to snuggle next to in the night instead of the cold stillness she was locked in with now. Lucius would not have attacked her. Her baby sister, Narcissa, wouldn't have screamed, or been thrown to the floor. Wouldn't have had to see her husband turn his face away from her. And she, Bellatrix Lestrange, would not have been reduced (reduced!) to plotting with the son of a mudblood to destroy Lord Voldemort. Tired and confused, she cried herself to sleep under the thin grey blanket on the bed.

She was woken by the grinding of the door as it opened, and sat up, instantly alert. Voldemort stepped into the room, his face a ghastly death mask in the dim blue light from the walls, and the very sight of him reawakened the fire within her. She knew who she was; for once she truly did. Her name was Bellatrix and she would not be treated like this.

A wave of the Dark Lord's hand conjured a wooden chair for him to sit on, and he sank down slowly, facing her.

"Now look what we have come to," he said quietly, his voice emotionless. She didn't know if 'we' was only her, or the both of them. Thrusting her uncertainty aside, she threw off the grey blanket and stood to face him.

"Why am I here?" she demanded. "How dare you treat me like this?" Voldemort's face darkened.

"Do you forget who I am?" he asked, his tone poisonous. "How dare you speak to me with that tone! Crucio!" She fell to the floor, screaming, as the hideous pain ran like hot lead through her bones. Voldemort held the spell for a considerable length of time. At last he released her, and she struggled to stand, panting, and aching with every heaving breath. "There'll be more of that if I ever catch such a devil of a temper in your eyes again," Voldemort warned. Bellatrix flung her head back, teeth gritted.

"Then torture me again, my lord, and again, until I truly do go insane! It's not a far step after all you've done."

"Do not tempt me," he threatened. She laughed bitterly.

"Truly you should not need further temptation, my lord, when you throw me, me! your most faithful, into a cell so like Azkaban." Her words hissed through her teeth. "The world may believe that Bellatrix Black only spent one year in that hole, but you know and I know that it was fourteen years which I suffered for you! I wish it was just one year, since that is all you are worth!"

"Watch your tongue, Bella!" Voldemort cried angrily. "It is surprisingly eager to confirm your guilty treachery!"

"Treachery?" she screamed.

"You plotted to destroy my Horcruxes, and then me," Voldemort whispered, his eyes cold with anger. "Fortunately your co-conspirator still remembered where his loyalties lie." Bellatrix's heart missed a beat, and then another, as questions whirled around her. Harry? Harry? He had betrayed her. But why? What had Harry Potter to gain from helping the Dark Lord? It was only Harry Black who could want to aid him, but she'd destroyed Black, hadn't she? Had she? Had he been pretending? Was he still caught in Voldemort's spider web of lies?

"Your informant lied," she tried, but Voldemort shook his head.

"You are the one lying Bella. I can always tell." Her pride rushed back fiercely to her.

"And is there any reason I should not have attempted to bring you down, my lord? After you deceived me, stole my husband from me and crippled me?"

"Only a child would have allowed such things to turn them," Voldemort said calmly. "If you had thought at all you would have realised the validity and necessity of my actions."

"Your actions hurt me!"

"Now you are being petulant! They were not designed to hurt you. I tried to make you happy!" he shouted.

"I loved…" Bellatrix began, but he cut her off.

"Yes, you loved. You loved Rudolphus, but I gave you Harry. I tried to fulfil that ridiculous need of yours, to placate your flaw. But you wouldn't have it! Love has blinded you to what needed to be done! And now see how you have sunk because of your love!"

"I loved you!" Bellatrix spat at him, and she tried desperately to summon her strength and curse him even without a wand, for his foolish and callous throwing away of her. The charm on the cell was too strong to allow it, and a numbing sickness spread through her, causing the world to spin. In desperation Bellatrix stopped her attempts and instead leapt at Voldemort. She had no idea what she'd do, but she needed to hurt him to make him understand her misery, to make him understand how much he had hurt her! He caught her with his magic before she even reached him, and threw her across the floor, skidding on the cold stone. She looked up from the now familiar position of lying before him to see him standing over her, his eyes blazing with uncontrolled fury.

"If that is what your love is worth, woman, then keep it and may it go to hell with you!" he shouted. He raised his wand, hatred burning in his terrifying face. "Crucio!" Bellatrix shrieked as the spell raced through her, her ruined body jerking and kicking. Surely this was it! He would send her to her death in this fiery hell! Just as she felt certain she would now die he lifted the spell off her. Bellatrix's sides heaved, and she threw up, the vomit splattering over the stone flags. Voldemort's face twisted in disgust and he made as if to look away.

"No!" Bellatrix howled. "Look at me, you monster! See what you've done!" She pulled herself upright and tore the flimsy nightdress off over her head. Voldemort regarded her nakedness with a calm detachment, as she ran her hands over her smooth belly. "Lady Black believed she had a baby, but look, no stretch marks!" Bellatrix screamed. "And look!" She ran her hands over her gaunt face. "Look what Azkaban did to Bellatrix Lestrange! It wasn't one year; it was fourteen and see how changed I am!" The tears flowed down her grimy cheeks. "See what I have endured for you! And you thought nothing of tearing apart the one thing that was left to me as whole! You took my mind!" She thrust her left wrist at him, the acrimonious Dark Mark blistering the white skin. "Then take it back, Voldemort!" It was the first time she had ever addressed him by his assumed name, and the word burnt like acid on her tongue. "Take your wretched cancer off me!" He continued looking at her with calm impassivity.

"No, Bella, you will wear that still. As a reminder of the path you chose. I never demanded that you swear loyalty to me, but I did demand that you keep that oath. You chose to join me. You chose to leave me." He turned away from her, his voice sad. "It has been your hand in everything, not mine." Bellatrix sank back down onto the floor, her heart failing her.

"What will become of me?" she whimpered.

"You will be executed," Voldemort said softly. "Publicly, so that all can see what becomes of Deatheaters who plot against me and who spread malicious lies and thoughts. You may scream the truth as much as you like. No one will believe you." His shoulders sank slightly, as if under some great weight. "I will ensure that it is swift," he said, his voice strangely soft. She lifted her head in surprise, but he did not look back at her as he swept out of the room.

Several hours passed, during which Bellatrix redressed herself and sat on the narrow bed. The horror of approaching death would have been bearable if she knew when she was to be executed (after all, what else was there left to her now?), but the suspense caught like a massive lump in her throat. When the door did scrape open again she leapt up in terror, and started shaking as Rudolphus walked into the room.

"Rudolphus," she whispered, her voice hoarse from the screaming earlier, but he stopped her with a motion of his hand.

"Save it, Lestrange. I'm just the guard. Your son is here to visit you." Behind him the person she wanted least of all to see entered through the door and carefully shut it behind him. Rudolphus conjured up a chair and parked himself beside the door. "Five minutes," he warned, his wand pointing openly at Bellatrix as she sat herself back down. Harry took a few tentative steps forward. Bellatrix regarded him with unbridled hatred.

"Go away. I do not want to see you." Harry ignored her words, glanced at Rudolphus, and then stopped in front of her; at enough of a distance to be able to spring back should he need to. She noticed that one of his hands was clenched tightly shut, with black soil showing through the gaps in his knuckles.

"Do you remember Sirius, mother?" he asked coldly. "Because I sure as hell do." She gaped at him. He'd betrayed her for a dead man? True, she'd forgotten that he might harbour bitterness over the death of his godfather, but had it really led him to ally himself with the Dark Lord? Harry smiled oddly. "I often think of going back to that day and changing it," he said sadly. "But I guess it would mess up too much other stuff. It happened and we can't alter that." He laughed. "Tell me mother. Is there anything you wish you could undo?" She stared at him in annoyed confusion.

"Clearly I would not place myself in my present position," she said acidly. He frowned.

"So you did this yourself then? It was all your fault?"

"Don't be a fool!" she spat, unsure of what he was playing at or even who he was at the moment. Black or Potter? Harry cocked his head, considering.

"It seems to me that you must be feeling pretty desperate now," he said calmly. "I mean, facing execution and all. It must be small comfort to know your treasonous plans would never have worked. They were far too late to stop the tide, you see. There's nothing you can do, because it was never your fault." Bellatrix blinked. He was talking gibberish, surely.

"If you don't have anything useful to say, leave me," she snarled. Harry sighed.

"Someone must have let the Dark Lord know," he said carefully, as if explaining to a child. In the corner Rudolphus pricked up his ears.

"Know what?" he demanded. Harry twisted his head, face open and innocent.

"About her guilt," he replied, instantly. "About everything leading to this sorry affair." His voice turned bitter. "To think. My own mother!" In a sudden fit of anger he hurled his handful of earth at her, the dirt hitting her in the face and catching in her hair. She sneezed at it and raised a hand to wipe it out of her eyes.

"Get out, ingrate!" she howled. "I tried to help you!"

"And now only you can help yourself!" he mocked, as he turned away from her. Rudolphus stood up with him, and together they left the room.

Grumpily Bellatrix brushed the soil off herself. She didn't understand why he'd bothered bringing it with him. Did he hate her so much he'd premeditated throwing it at her? She opened the front of her nightdress to pick out the scratching particles, and as she looked down a glitter of something on the bed caught her eye. Her breath caught, and very carefully she reached down and smoothed aside the ruckled blanket. Her heart didn't dare to beat.

Harry's hand hadn't only held dirt.

Gleaming on the thin grey blanket was a tiny time-turner.