Chapter 4: Things That Scare Me

July 1998

Slytherin Manor

Master Bedroom

(Bellatrix)

Voldemort entered her swiftly that night. She felt a familiar warmth in her lower region that spread quickly up through her chest and centered in her cheeks, flushing them deep crimson. Suddenly everything was hot to the touch. She reached up and grabbed onto his chest to pull him down closer to her. She pressed her lips against him, brushing them in all their fullness up to his throat and then the base of his chin and let them rest there momentarily, shrouding his face with steamy breath.

But then Bellatrix felt different. What had been so hot seemed to be freezing over like ice. She stared at the spot in the center of his chest that she'd just kissed and found herself wanting to sink her teeth in to it. Wanting to draw blood. Wanting him to hurt. She shook her head of it as she felt him moving further inside her.

She knew Voldemort liked to read her thoughts while they were intimate, but Bellatrix was scared of what he might find out and felt her own mind battling against his to regain control over itself.

She felt the pressure of his hands against her breasts as she slithered out of her corset like a snake, their bodies feeling cold as icebergs against each other.

~"You've nothing to fear, Bellatrix….if you've nothing to hide."~

Bellatrix struggled to push the voice from her mind and the memory of all it carried with it: a dark place full of secrets, where she is dead and never coming back…

~No! You're alive, idiot! You're alive! You're with him!~ She shouted to herself inside her head.

Bellatrix tried to get as close to Voldemort as she could and every time he touched her made her shiver, like she was being held for the very first time.

He went deeper and she pushed against him, trying to bring the warmth back. Wanting the warmth back so desperately she felt tears in her eyes that he mistook for her own distance from ecstasy.

Voldemort gave a small gasp that she wouldn't have even heard had she not been paying attention. He came inside her and she felt a familiar rush, an explosion of her senses...but all so cold.

And when they collapsed against each other, bodies clinging together with sweat, she wasn't sure if he was giving her life or killing her all over again.

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Bellatrix is falling.

...Where she lands, she lands, but remains suspended in a gray smoky haze, like the kind that rises from a fire except the fire is above her somewhere and she cannot feel it. She remembers hearing once that hot air rises, but cold air sinks and tries to use this simple phrase to rationalize everything even though nothing makes sense.

…"You've been keeping secrets, Bellatrix," Dumbledore's voice calls out through the darkness.

"Leave me alone," she replies harshly. "I lived. You died. I beat you. There's no reason for you to be in my head anymore...you're ruining everything."

"Am I now?"

Bellatrix wraps her arms around herself, disconcerted because she can't see him.

"Yes!" She shouts. "You're messing it all up so I can't be happy with him because I have to worry about what you showed me, what you told me…"

"I don't much know what you're talking about. I merely passed on a message. My power here doesn't extend me the ability to interfere with you and your...life, as you correctly pointed out you got back."

She still didn't believe him. "Then why are you still here bothering me?"

"To bring you to someone else."

Before she can process any of this, she is falling again.

She is back in Potions class, only this time when she smells the Amortentia, the scent of blood overpowers her, scorching her senses like hot iron. The other usual things are there, too, buried deeply beneath the blood she craves most of all.

She drinks from a goblet full of spiraling liquid that tastes so sweet.

"Bellatrix."

She looks up. "Nagini?"

She is looking at the snake's eyes, then she is looking -through-the snake's eyes and she is the snake, slowly being overpowered by the weight of her own coils all around her. But at the same time, she is truly a woman for the first time.

She is the snake lying in a place that feels like a bed because it's soft, but firm in the sense that she knows she isn't falling anymore. She cannot see but she hears voices around her.

Wait, Misty,"someone says. "If she means so much to you...what are you willing to give up in return, to spare her life?"

Then she hears Voldemort and feels him draw nearer to her even though she is the snake.

"Anything? That's what you want me to say, isn't it?"

"I don't want you to say anything...it's what I need to save her."

"What do you need?" Voldemort asks and Bellatrix feels the snake's heart beat faster as it rises into her throat and catches there.

"Blood."

"How much?"

"Enough to fill her up and make her whole again."

She can't listen anymore after that-the snake has one thing on her mind and Bellatrix can taste traces of it in her mouth, but she knows it isn't enough.

Bellatrix awoke choking on the bed. She sat up on an angle and coughed profusely into the palm of her hand, trying not to wake Voldemort and panicking all the same.

But as the small jagged object lodged in her throat fell into her hand, she saw that it very clearly was not blood. She'd tried to swallow her own wedding ring.

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"Narcissa. Open this door. I know you're home." Bellatrix pounded again on the heavy front door of Malfoy Manor until it creaked open and a faint sliver of torchlight cut into the black night air.

"Bellatrix! What's the matter! It's 4 in the morning…"

"I know. But I really need to talk to someone...someone who isn't Voldemort that I can trust...and right now, darling, that someone is you," she explained breathlessly and her sister pulled the door open the rest of the way, beckoning for Bellatrix to come inside.

"To what do I owe this very early pleasure?" She said as she stifled a yawn behind one of her hands. Narcissa's blonde hair was pulled up in a messy bun and she was wearing a long silver sweater over her night dress suggesting that Bellatrix had drawn her little sister from sleep, something she regretted but couldn't help.

"I've been having dreams-crazy dreams. It started the night...the night I died."

Narcissa's smile faltered.

"Oh. Well, let's go talk in my parlour . Lucius and Draco are sleeping, but I can get our house elf to bring you something if you'd like."

"Just...just a glass of water, please."

They settled into Narcissa's sitting room, a small space set alongside the kitchen at the back of the Manor and set up like an office, only more comfortable. The room was lined on three sides by windows looking out into the back gardens where Bellatrix and Voldemort were married seemingly a century ago. It was furnished entirely in lavender and silver, one of Narcissa's favorite color-combinations, and adorned with velvet-backed armchairs, floral ottomans and vases of her own home-grown gardenias and purple pansies.

Slinky the house elf brought them drinks-water for Bellatrix and a small tumbler of Chardonnay for Narcissa. And once Narcissa settled herself into one of the velvet-backed armchairs and put her feet comfortably up on the coffee table, she rounded on Bellatrix.

"Alright. So these dreams. Always the same one or different ones?"

"Up until tonight? Always the same one," said Bellatrix honestly. Up until tonight, her dreams had been the same-Dumbledore coming to her through a smoky mist and showing her a scene in front of what was formerly Wool's Orphanage in London, where Voldemort's mother delivered not one baby, but two. Then he brought her to a place she'd never been, where a witch with long blonde hair and a shroud of beads made a prophecy about Voldemort needing to reunite with his brother in order for the war to be won...

~Death will be the winner in their war

Nothing noble in dying

Unless brother and brother are to reunite once more

For ideology, for faith

For another war

For who can make beautiful a sad man?~

...But tonight was different.

"And then?" Narcissa prompted.

"Cissy...I was the snake!"

"Snake? Bellatrix...please calm down and tell me what's going on."

So over the course of the next hour, Bellatrix told her younger sister everything. She didn't realize at first how little Narcissa knew...so she had to go back to the beginning-to Christmas Eve, when Voldemort first told her about the prophecy, his need to feel love and of course, his Horcruxes. It all felt like a huge betrayal of Voldemort's trust at first, but got easier as she went on. Narcissa was her sister, after all. And if they couldn't trust each other, they couldn't trust anyone.

"So by the night of the battle, his Horcruxes had all been destroyed?"

"Yes. Nagini was the last one."

"So that's why you had to-"

"Yes. But I knew it was coming and so did he. After all, the Seer had foreseen it long before."

The two sisters were quiet for a moment after that. Bellatrix knew Narcissa didn't like talking about that night and Bellatrix didn't like talking about it much, herself. Narcissa sipped down the last of her wine and set the tumbler down on the coffee table before wrapping her sweater more tightly around her and meeting Bellatrix's eye.

"So...if you really were dead...then how is it you're here now? How is it you...came back?"

Bellatrix sighed and twisted her empty water glass around in her hands. "I don't know...but the night I died, I had the recurring dream for the first time." She told Narcissa all about Dumbledore coming to her with the vision of Voldemort's birth almost every night for the past two months. Her little sister's eyes widened in surprise with a hint of something Bellatrix recognized as fear.

"What does it all mean?"

"I don't know."

"Have you told him?"

"Obviously not! How could I? Besides...he seems to have enough to be getting on with...at least that's what I thought," said Bellatrix. Narcissa raised an eyebrow.

"Until tonight?"

"Right," said Bellatrix and she told Narcissa all about her latest dream, leaving out the bit about waking up choking on her own wedding ring because it made her uncomfortable.

"Wow," said Narcissa softly when Bellatrix had finally finished her story. The sun was starting to rise now beyond the window panes surrounding them. Other people might have been comforted, but Bellatrix had an ominous sort of feeling.

"I might not have thought it was a big deal...just a weird dream...but it started before I even fell asleep, if that makes sense. Voldemort and I were...together...and I felt like I wanted to hurt him, Cissy. I'd already started being the snake before I was even dreaming," she said slowly. The sound of crickets outside and cicadas whispering in the fountains was slowly overpowered by the chippering of birds and the distant caw of a blackbird.

But Narcissa wasn't saying anything.

"Cissy? Please don't judge me. I'm scared there's something wrong with me...like I'm not the same person anymore...even though I feel like I am...mostly."

"Oh Bella, I couldn't ever judge you. I'm just thinking," she said finally, her smile returning to her face but not quite reaching her eyes, which continued to look distant and sad.

Bellatrix looked out into the back gardens again, which glowed silvery in the early morning light. She watched two bluebirds fighting over the same worm in the dirt by the rose bushes and felt an odd sort of satisfaction when the one she was rooting for ultimately prevailed.

"Bella," said Narcissa.

"Hmm?" Bellatrix answered, but didn't look away from the birds.

"Do you think what you overheard about the blood was all part of the dream or something maybe you're just remembering from that night?"

"Oh, definitely the dream. I mean...taking blood from one wizard or witch and putting it into another...that's some nutter Muggle idea, isn't it? Voldemort would never go for it…" Bellatrix said, even though she was beginning to doubt herself.

"Not even to save you?"

"Especially not to save me," Bellatrix said with the same dishonest conviction. She looked down at her wrists where her veins rested starkly blue against her pale skin. Could it be that the blood that ran there now, was at least in some part, Voldemort's?

"BELLATRIX!" A booming voice cut through their quiet peace. The two birds outside fluttered away, leaving the worm they quarreled for squirming for its life on the dry ground outside.

"BELLATRIX!" She heard Voldemort shout again. He was somewhere in the Manor, presumably using a Sonorus charm to make his voice echo over the entirety of the grounds. Narcissa hurried to her feet and beckoned for Bellatrix to follow her.

"She's here, she's alright," called Narcissa. They found Voldemort in the front foyer wearing a traveling cloak and looking livid.

"You can't go running off like that anymore-it's not safe," he said, his voice returning to its normal volume with a flick of his wand. Bellatrix's face wrinkled in disgust. Was this what all married life was going to perpetually be like? No independence, always having to disclose her whereabouts or be yelled out like a child out after curfew?

"Not safe for us? You've got to be fucking kidding me. Besides, I wanted to see my sister and I didn't want to wake you-what's the harm in that?"

"Maybe you don't understand as well as I thought you did...your childish behavior says as much. It's not safe anymore. Not even for us. This is all so much bigger than I ever imagined."

Bellatrix rolled her eyes. There he was again, going off about his conspiracy theory he wouldn't explain to anyone.

"If you would just tell me-"

"No. That's a conversation for another day. Until then, I need you to trust me."

~Fluorescent lights engage

Blackbirds frying on a wire

Same birds that followed me to school When I was young

Were they trying to tell me something

Were they telling me to run~

A/N: no, she's not a vampire...but let's just say Voldemort may have transferred more to her than he intended, and now there are understandable complications