Rudolphus had always liked Bellatrix. She had always been beautiful to him. He found her insanity very pretty… she only got prettier after leaving Azkaban, when her desperation was almost palpable. It was easier to talk her into bed when they'd been first married, but after the Dark Lord rose again, it became a better game. Bella was so in love with a man she couldn't see had never loved anybody. It was cute, really.
Rudolphus had never cared that Bellatix would never love him; he found it was simply part of her charm. His bloodline, and his enjoyment of the pain of others, was all that kept their marriage together. Rudolphus wasn't deluded like so many other Death Eaters. They believed that they alone knew the Dark Lord's secrets, that they alone were his most trusted, most beloved. Bellatrix was one of the worst for that. None of them could see that the Dark Lord saw them as fodder, that maybe even his pureblood beliefs were less than true. If the Dark Lord truly cared for the Purebloods, then he would not send them out so carelessly, or kill them out of his own annoyance. But the Dark Lord didn't care, and it had always been clear to Rudolpus.
And yet he had joined the Death Eaters. In truth, he cared little about Pureblood supremacy, though he never would have married a half-blood or a mudblood. In fact, if it hadn't been Bella, he wouldn't have married at all. He joined the Death Eaters because with them he could act on his violent urges. He didn't have any illusions about where his personality came from. Muggles called it genetics. Muggles also called it inbreeding. Rudolphus was a product of the idea of Pureblood Supremacy, which made him very powerful, but also very mentally unstable, and easily susceptible to illness.
Even after leaving Azkaban for the first time, Rudolphus continued to be a Death Eater, again enjoying the suffering of others, at the side of his beautiful wife. But that was how they'd gotten in Azkaban in the first place, the torture of two Aurors. Really, it was like looking in a mirror, watching a man and wife who went into the same profession for a war, but then it was a mirror, and opposite. How the man had begged to not let his wife got hurt. They hadn't known anything. Of course they hadn't, they were too low on the scale to know anything. He still didn't know why his dear little Bella thought they would know anything. He hadn't asked, he'd just enjoyed.
But then they'd been arrested, and locked up with the dementors. You couldn't have a single happy thought with the dementors around, but that didn't mean that Rudolphus didn't have very persistent and very sane thoughts. He remembered the torturing of Frank and Alice Longbottom. Of course the dementors stripped away all the fun from the memories, but he had to thank the disgusting hooded ghouls for one thing: they helped clear his mind.
It had never occurred to him before how annoyed he was that Bellatrix had to be tricked into anything. It had never occurred to him before that he actually wanted something to love him. He realized that what he wanted was a child, something that had to love him because it needed him. When they were broken out of Azkaban, Rudolphus knew exactly what he wanted.
Persuading his dearest Bella had been easy, the conception had also been easy. The birth hadn't been, especially since watching the processhad been very, very interesting. But then the baby was born, and she was so quiet. No matter what the healers did the baby wouldn't cry at all. The bruised her, and yet she wouldn't cry. She wasn't mute, she could make little cooing noises, but she wouldn't cry.
Rudolphus had named her: Tacita, Tacita Lestrange, for his quiet little girl. And he had loved her, and maybe for a short time, she loved him as well, but then the war ended and he was sent right back to Azkaban (sans dementors). Bella had wanted Tacita to go to Narcissa should something happen to them, but Rudolphus vetoed that when Bella died. He sent her to Vega, his brother's widow. It seemed less cruel, somehow.
He wanted to see her again, but it took so long for the bureaucracy to move enough to allow Vega to bring her. She looked so much like her mother, with her third black hair, though she had his lighter brown eyes. He knew he loved her when he saw her. Yet, at that time the girl had looked at him like he was a stranger. He never did get what he really wanted.
Tacita had one memory of her father, just one. She was seven years and twenty-eight days old, and her Aunt Vega told her they were going to Azkaban to see her father. She'd seen pictures of him, seen pictures of her father. Aunt Vega told the most graphic stories about their lives and adventures. Aunt Vega was so proud of them, though secretly. Aunt Vega hadn't been a Death Eater, and it was terribly unpopular to be one, or to be related to one. Aunt Vega had to be silent about her continuing allegiance, but she taught her niece everything she could about Pureblood Supremacy.
So when Rudolphus's request was finally allowed, Aunt Vega dressed Tacita in a cute, itchy little spring green dress, curled the girl's hair, tied it back with a ribbon that matched the dress, and took her on the boat out to Azkaban. Tacita remembered that it was December, nearly Christmas, and it was very cold out on the ocean. She also remembered walking through the halls, seeing people who she'd only heard or read about, Death Eaters and ministry officials from the Dark Lord's regime. Then she was standing out in a very small courtyard.
She remembered how thin he was. He looked freshly cleaned; like he hadn't bathed in a long time and then been scrubbed viciously right before she and her Aunt Vegahad showed up. His clothes were like all the other uniforms that belonged to the prisoners. She remembered the silence in the halls. There were silencing charms, and charms that kept the prisoners from seeing outside their cell, though anyone could see in. She'd been told that it was to simulate life with dementors, except without the dementors.
Her father looked so thin, his face was gaunt, and he seemed very ill. She'd been young, but he'd told her when she asked. "It's all genetics, dear. This is the price we pay for our power. Inbreeding causes illness." That one answer affected her more than the entire rest of the visit. She didn't remember much of what was said. She remembered getting hugs and kisses from the man who was her father. She remembered feeling strange because she didn't understand him at all. She didn't know what to do with someone who was her father, but whoshe didn't know. She remembered him saying her loved her. She remembered her aunt taking a picture of them together. That was all she remembered of him. She remembered more about the prison than about the man who was her father.
He died a month later, naturally weak to illnesses, worn out from prison, and under-cared for by the guards. Tacita felt nothing when she heard he'd died, but she'd gone and looked at the picture her aunt took for the first time since it had been taken. She hadn't even looked at it when it had first been handed to her. Three-and-a-half years later, the picture sat pressed between the pages of her favorite book, near the top of her trunk as she sat on the train to go to Hogwarts.
"You have to be in Syltherin," Aunt Vega said. "I was in Slytherin. Rabastan was in Slytherin. Your mother was in Slytherin. Your father was in Slytherin. It's in your blood, you have to be in Slytherin."
Those words rang in Tacita's ears as she sat on the train, silent and still, staring out the window. Those words rang in her ears as she boarded the boats, making her journey across the water to Hogwarts. Those words rang in her ears as she entered the Great Hall, and heard the Sorting Hat sing its song. Those words rang ears when her name was called and people started to murmur, wondering if she was at all like her famous mother who had been killed in that very hall almost ten years before, wondering if she was like the woman who'd tortured Professor Longbottom's parents. Those words rang in her ears when she sat down on the low stool and the Sorting Hat fell on her, down to her nose.
"Ah, another Lestrange. It's been a long time. How about Slytherin, like your parents?"
Those words rang in her ears as she gave her reply. "No, I'd rather be in Hufflepuff."
"I see, then…HUFFLEPUFF!"
'I suppose Aunt Vega's going to be very angry when I tell her,' Tacita thought as she made her way to her seat at the Hufflepuff table, to the sound of very quiet applause.