8 November 1981
Burnham House, Whalley
"Expelliarmus!"
"No! Not Neville! Not Neville!"
"Avada Kedavra."
Bellatrix incanted the spell with preternatural calm. Voldemort had already snapped Alice Longbottom's wand in two and thrown it onto the floor beside Frank Longbottom's body. Now there was a flash of green light that smacked into Alice Longbottom where she stood in the sitting room. She was trying to make a mad dash toward the nursery, but she wasn't going to make it there. Voldemort stormed quickly over her body after she fell, and he didn't spare a glance into the eyes of the small child, Neville, as he aimed his wand at him and incanted in a snarl,
"Avada Kedavra!"
There was a blinding flash of green light, and then it was done.
It was done.
Frank and Alice Longbottom and the little boy, Neville, were dead. James and Lily Potter and their little boy, Harry, were dead. And even Andromeda and Ted Tonks and their girl, Nymphadora, were dead. Nine victims in nine days, but all of them necessary. All of them related to a prophecy foretelling Voldemort's downfall.
"Let's go, Bellatrix," Voldemort said loudly. "Morsmordre! Back to Malfoy Manor!"
At the Manor, Bellatrix trotted quickly behind him, and he said over his shoulder to her,
"Send an owl to Castle Lestrange. Have your owl pack some of your belongings into an Expanded suitcase and have it sent here at once. Go, Bella. Now! Up to the owlery. Go!"
Bellatrix didn't question him. She just ran up ahead. They hadn't had time to talk properly since before he'd been meeting with Rodolphus, since before they'd tracked the owl and found Andromeda, since before they'd found and killed the Longbottoms. Now Bellatrix ran ahead to send a message to her House-Elf, and Voldemort knew exactly what he wanted. What he needed. But first, there needed to be a meeting.
He peeled back his sleeve and pressed his wand to his Dark Mark, Summoning all of his most important Death Eaters. One by one, they started appearing in the gardens behind him, and he continued up into the manor. They followed him, walking quickly behind him as he hurried into the meeting room.
"Save this seat," Voldemort ordered before Avery could sit beside him. He waited in silence, knowing he was making his Death Eaters uncomfortable, until Bellatrix came dashing into the room, having come from the owlery. Bellatrix collapsed into the seat beside him, blowing curls out of her eyes, and the others eyed her curiously. Voldemort finally said calmly,
"Andromeda, Ted, and Nymphadora Tonks. Frank, Alice, and Neville Longbottom. Dead. All with the Dark Mark above their homes."
The others squirmed, their faces happy. Everyone knew those were enemies, even if they couldn't comprehend the details of the prophecy. They knew that it was a good thing for the Potters, the Tonkses, and the Longbottoms to be dead. This was a high time for their master, for their movement.
"I require a brief respite after all this," Voldemort said, folding his hands on the table. "I'm sure you understand why. I've done a lot of…"
Killing.
"Work," he said. "And our enemies will try to engage us now more than ever. But now is the time for us to go underground, to be undiscoverable for a while. I want all of you in hiding for a few weeks, except for those of you managing to work at the Ministry or live in the open. I will be going on a holiday of sorts. Abraxas Malfoy and Lucius Malfoy, I will be in touch with you to stay apprised of the situation here. Rodolphus Lestrange… that situation you and I discussed is in full force. Are there any questions?"
No one dared raise a hand, but Yaxley said cautiously,
"Congratulations, Master."
"Thank you, Yaxley," Voldemort smirked. He nodded and said, "Let's all be cautious for the next few weeks. We'll plan on our next strike soon enough. Dismissed. Bellatrix, stay."
She seemed to understand now. She had a suitcase coming from her House-Elf. Her husband had been cryptically notified that she would not be coming home. And Voldemort was putting everyone on hold until he could get some rest. Well, of course he needed rest after all of this, he thought to himself. Didn't she understand that? She did seem to. She stared at him as the room cleared out, and once everyone had gone and the doors shut, she asked,
"Where are we going, Master?"
"The Isle of Mull, off the west coast of Scotland," said Voldemort. "I've maintained a residence there for years. I go there alone; I've never taken anyone there. It's a quiet place where I like to watch whales."
"Whales," Bellatrix smiled, and she asked, "You can see them from the shore?"
"You know I can fly," Voldemort teased her. "I see them from above. Not in November, usually."
"Master," Bellatrix breathed. He seemed a little ashamed then, and he said,
"Be aware, this house is just a little terraced house along the shore, a place I commandeered from the Muggles living there, and -"
"I'm sure it's just fine, Master," Bellatrix insisted. She rose from her chair and said, "I'm exhausted from everything we've done. Aren't you? Maybe we ought to go to Mull, My Lord."
The house was painted light blue, and as Voldemort walked up to the front door, he mumbled to Bellatrix,
"It's got spells and wards to make the Muggles forget that nobody's ever here."
"Brilliant," she whispered, holding her suitcase beside him. He opened the front door and pushed inside, and he flicked his wand at the illegally converted lights - electric to candlelight.
"This is lovely," Bellatrix hummed. The sitting room to the left had golden walls and grey furniture, and to the right was a dark blue dining room. A bright white kitchen was beyond the dining room, and a bathroom was beyond the sitting room. Voldemort walked up the stairs, and Bellatrix followed him. He showed her the two spare bedrooms, the one outfitted in shades of blue and the one in black and white. Then he took her into the larger master bedroom, which was a dark hunter green. Slytherin green.
Voldemort turned to Bellatrix and set down his own suitcase as he informed her,
"I have never brought anyone else here before."
"That's what you said, My Lord," she nodded. "I am honoured to be here with you."
"I need to rest," Voldemort said quietly. "We both need to rest. Killing takes a lot out of you. Aren't you tired?"
"I'm a little weary," Bellatrix admitted, "but I don't mind. Not one bit."
She was incredibly pretty right now, he thought. He sighed and felt death on the both of them. He thought of the spacious shower-bath in the master bathroom and suggested,
"Bathe with me, will you?"
Bellatrix's eyes went wide, but she nodded and began to strip off her clothes. She unlatched the wide belt around her narrow waist and then peeled off her velvet tunic. She stripped down her leggings and underwear and kicked off her high boots. She stood before Voldemort in a black bra and black knickers, and he said quietly,
"Stop. Stop for a moment."
She paused, and he marveled at the shape her bra gave her breasts. Shapely round mounds that spilled out over the top of the bra… he gulped as he started to flush between his legs. Bellatrix took slow breaths, and with every one, her breasts seemed to look more beautiful. She just stared and stared at him, and finally Voldemort stripped off his robes one layer at a time. He stood before her in his underwear, feeling very vulnerable with his erection, and he informed her,
"You're beautiful, you know. And you killed so magnificently for me. I felt… strongly… about you. In those houses."
"Did you, My Lord?" Bellatrix's eyes went wet, and she reached to unhook her bra. She peeled down her knickers and approached him nude, and she whispered, "I felt very strongly about you myself, whilst we were fighting."
"Fighting. Is that what we were doing? Killing. We were killing," Voldemort corrected her, and Bellatrix curled up half her mouth as she put her hands on his bare chest and kissed the spot where his hair covered his sternum.
"Killing," she whispered, nodding. Suddenly thoughts of a shower went out the window, and Voldemort decided he could not wait to take her. He shoved his underwear down and growled at her,
"You killed like a genius. Like a bloody fucking genius, Bellatrix."
She laughed a little and shrugged. "I learnt from the best. The very best, Master."
"Get on the bed," he insisted, and she seemed breathless then as she hurried to scramble onto the green quilt. He quite liked the sight of her on her hands and knees, and he mumbled,
"Stay like that."
She glanced over her shoulder at him, smirking like a vixen, and when he approached her, he put his fingers between her legs and felt wet. She was wet for him; she wanted him. He twisted his fingers into her body and pumped them hard, and she cried out, collapsing down onto her elbows and burying her face in the pillows. Voldemort played with her clit using his thumb, reaching around her body with his left hand and squeezing hard at her breast. He teased her nipple, teased her clit, and all the while he pumped his fingers as though she needed each thrust to breathe. Finally he felt her twitching, felt her coming around his fingers, and he groaned loudly at the sensation of her orgasm. She'd come so easily, as though the very suggestion of touch from her lord and master was enough to send her over the edge. Perhaps it was. Perhaps she adored him so ferociously that all she needed from him was a few pumps of his fingers, a few flicks of his thumbs, and then she would come. Well, good. It felt good.
He replaced his fingers with his cock, shoving into her and listening to her scream into the pillow where he usually slept here. He rammed himself into her so hard then that he felt sweat at his hairline. He growled and grunted, squeezing at her little waist and hearing her moan against fabric. She was wet, hot, tight around his shaft, around his tip. It felt beyond anything he'd ever experienced, and he was going to finish before he knew what was happening. But he hammered away, grinding into her harder and harder until the bed was creaking and moaning just as loudly as Bellatrix was doing.
On instinct, he spanked the cheek of her backside a little, and that did him in. He felt his orgasm smack him like a cold ocean wave that suddenly went hot. White hot, good, good in his veins. He couldn't breathe through it, through the pumping of his come in spurts into her body, through the way his body was tingling from head to toe. He stayed inside of her for a very long while, trying to catch his breath, and at long last he heard Bellatrix's muffled voice ask,
"You mentioned something about bathing, Master?"
Bathing together after sex, as it turned out, was even more pleasant than bathing together before sex. They were sated; they were comfortable. She rubbed the soap all over his skin and scrubbed at him with his sponge, and he used a wide-toothed wooden comb to pass her TanglAway Serum through her clean curls. It felt profoundly intimate, and somehow Voldemort didn't mind that bit of it. He liked that bit of it. He liked standing in the shower with Bellatrix, clean and satisfied. He liked lying in the green bed with her in his secret house on the Isle of Mull.
And as he lay on his back, staring at the ceiling with her curled up beside him, remembering the sight of her face in the green glow of Killing Curses, he realised that he absolutely, positively, could not let her die.
She needed a Horcrux.
Author's Note: Ah, yes. The one part of my Bellamort stories I'm willing to let be "repetitive" because I always do it a bit differently - Bellatrix getting a Horcrux. How will it happen in this storyverse? Also - side note - the Longbottoms are dead! Eek!