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Written for Hogwarts assignment; Healer Studies Task 4; Write about someone suffering from long term spell damage.
Word Count - 460
Beta'd by Sam
A Semblance of Peace
His hands trembled against his thighs. He didn't even notice it, hadn't noticed it for a long time because it was just what they did now.
They did it in the same way that his eyes rolled uncontrollably, and in the same way that he drooled when he wasn't concentrating on keeping his mouth under control. They did it in the same way that his legs collapsed underneath him at random intervals, and in the same way that a loud bang would send him spiralling into a black hole of panic and anxiety.
He rested with his back to the wall, the only place he felt safe, even in his own home. He'd felt safer in his Azkaban cell, but he hadn't been asked if he wanted to leave when the Dark Lord had stormed the place to win their freedom.
He didn't get asked about a lot of things.
Bellatrix was his keeper, his carer, considering how damaged he was.
That she'd caused the damage was apparently neither here nor there.
Rodolphus wasn't considered a real person now. He wasn't trusted to know his own mind, when he couldn't control his own body.
…
"You're a useless, lazy, lump of a man," she screeched, her wand grasped tightly in her hand. He knew the curse was coming before it left her lips, but he had no way to prepare himself.
No matter how many times they played a variant of this scene, the pain still managed to shock him as though he'd never felt it before.
Pins and needles extended throughout his body, and the feeling of hot knives slicing across his skin on his chest had him gasping out in pain. He could hear somebody talking, but it wasn't until the spell stopped that he realised it was himself.
"Listen to you, begging me, like the pathetic little mouse you are. You disgust me."
She left him alone on the floor of his bedroom, a trembling mess of sweat and tears and blood.
…
When the battles were over, when news of Bellatrix's death found its way to the manor, Rodolphus wasn't sane enough to hear it. He was found, curled in a trembling ball on the floor of a bedroom, surrounded by his own waste and vomit.
There was little brain activity to be found when he was tested by Healers.
Arguments were made for him to be placed in the medical unit of Azkaban, or even put into the long care unit of St Mungo's hospital.
It didn't take long for it to be decided that it would be kinder and more humane to execute him for his crimes in the war.
To give him a semblance of peace that he'd clearly never had in life.