you're too young & eager to love

Freeform has been running a marathon of the Harry Potter movies this entire weekend. As a result, this happened. It isn't what I wanted to write - I envisioned a much larger piece, sort of those 5 Times type of pieces - but my fuel started to fade.


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Beelll-aaa

Her name is the rounding of the lips at the start of the B, the tap of the tip of the tongue on the teeth for the second syllable, and the curving, lilting, succulent end. Bella.

It’s the sound of a snake hiss in her ear, and if she were a different woman, then she might have the sense to shiver. Instead, she feels her spine stiffen and straighten, her shoulders mold into metal, and her chin tilt up beseechingly. She can see Lucius’ lowered head on her right and sense her husband’s tightened demeanor on her other side, like a pit of vipers has awoken and curled around their bodies, constricting and contracting. She wills herself to stand apart, to stand straight, and her will has never betrayed her before.

The man before her, if he can still be called one, is tall but it’s the shadow he casts that makes him all the more imposing. The darkness does not dampen him but magnifies him, his snow skin and the gaunt skull face, the crimson slits of his eyes. She tries, but Bellatrix cannot meet those eyes, so she finds herself fascinated by his spidery fingers, so long and tapered. Elegant almost. His nails are sharp and blue tinged – the blue of corpses, the blue of death. She has the strangest urge to press her mouth to those fingers, to whisper her lips across the slopes of his knuckles in humble deference.

Voldemort laughs, a whispery, husk of a noise, and she does shiver at this.

He knows, she thinks suddenly, he knows my thoughts.

“Oh, and much more, my child... So loyal already, are we, Bella? So eager.” The Dark Lord’s sibilant voice slithers from his lipless mouth, amused, as he stalks forward. There’s an elegant nature to the way his black robes move around his skeletal body, a predatory, feline quality to his confidence.

By impulse or fear or a combination of both, Lucius and Rodolphus retreat, their backwards steps a sure sign of their weakness. They have only stepped aside a little – if she were to reach out her hand, she could take her husband by the wrist, but she doesn’t. There is no strength to be found there, no solace to offer. And Lucius, on her right still, has no consolation for her. He would rather bask in the wake of her limelight, as she rises like some dark, furious phoenix, and cling to her more delicate sister than find warmth in Bellatrix’s carrion comfort. She has seen them wanting, the two of them, with their egos hiding their cowardly natures, their malcontent greed a flickering flame quick for the snubbing.

No, there is no threat in them. No true courage. No true devotion. They are pawns, and so they are useful as soldiers, but they are not her equal. She has never had an equal.

Until now.

This is her initiation, and Bellatrix is unafraid. She feels enlightened. Euphoric with the sudden clarity of all her life could be, of all the darkness she could shed upon the world, all the pain and suffering and deep cleaving hurt. She feels the strength that is her magic and her fury. She sees it, all of it, reflected back at her in the Dark Lord’s sly, cat-like pupils.

He smiles, and the crack of his mouth curving is the sound of so much despair. She can feel the closeness of him, the rustle of his robes close to her arms and hands. It is not warmth that embraces her but dampness, the thick, palpable murk of basement horrors and decay. “Yes,” he whispers, peering down at her, into the pit that is her soul. “You will be my most faithful. With you, I will wreak such striking havoc and split souls.”

Voldemort reaches out one of his beautiful ivory hands and presses the tips of his fingers to her chest, his nails sharp on her skin, sinking in to where her heart beats madly.

After this, it will never beat the same.