Circle
Bellatrix Black/Lord Voldemort |
romance |
PG-13 |
History of a relationship, through snippets of different point of view. |
note on the point of view of each snippet
In the beginning external narrator
A son for the Dark Lord Bellatrix, first person narrator
Warmth Lucius, third person narrator
History becomes us external narrator
Epilogue is just another word for beginning ominiscient narrator, with double alternative universe
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In the beginning
“You are made for greater deeds, Bella.” Her head didn’t move, and he knew he had been right. “Greater than being married off to somebody you don’t respect.”
“Why are you saying this, my Lord, when you’re sponsoring the marriage? Why him, and now. I can- I cannot be of much use to the cause as a simple childbearing servant to a man who probably doesn’t even like human beings for sex.” Her voice was made of lace, and even the small faltering mid-sentence hidden emotions had provoked had the right to be, in the economy of her silence. She still wasn’t facing him, but she had called him her Lord, and that was remarkable enough to encourage him to speak.
“I doubt he is interested in anything related to- to relationships. He can be a good master for-”
“I am a Black. There’s nothing in the Dark Arts, with due respect, that I don’t know.” She faced him, eyes ablaze and skin slightly reddened, the brink of tension edging in the look she faced him with. “Of course you can still teach me plenty, but a Lestrange-”
“You will do as your family told you to. And this will be your way to fool them into thinking you’re just a girl, and not the heir. Deceive them, and you’ll have a place that won’t know any coercion-”
“-but yours.” She dared to touch him on the chest. “I respect power.”
“Then it’s not coercion.”
“You tongue is venom. But you are my Lord, and you’re right.”
A son for the Dark Lord
The first one was Regulus. He was like the Deer King of the ancient fables, young and powerful and still so fragile, his mouth like an open cup I drank water from, pure and desperate, even before his crash. When I let him die- for this one charity was requested- I knew the end was near for our family, left in the hands of the two of us, the sisters, going to be hidden in the shadows of another name.
The second one- for not even the lure of what wasn’t forbidden but risqué had made me pregnant- was Barty. So similar, yet more faithful to my Lord than my little cousin. In a way younger- as nobody was backing him up, as later we’d knew for real, he was like a lost child and like an adult at the same time. My Lord showed him to me one night, and I knew his choice was made. Nothing, again, came out of those moments where, in truth, we weren’t two but three in the act. This one was the difference- they tasted more or less the same tune of pureblood to me, without being the shushed pleasure I could just hint to my imagination (having him, having him for real)- but while I knew Regulus, and he knew me and there was no space for anybody else there, now it was as if my Lord was taking the limbs of that man to build himself a-
I had asked him why shouldn’t he try the direct way, and have a heir of his own flesh. “There’s no seed to sow, and my line comes to an end.”
“Then we’re similar.” It was my answer, months later, in a moment of clarity, in Azkaban.
Warmth
The room is basking in the warmth of the fireplace, and for a moment Lucius thinks about punishing the house elves who put so many woods to burn. “I asked them to warm the room. She’ll be cold, and we need to discuss how best answer to the present situation. I have my right hand back, Lucius.”
She’s not your right hand, unless you think about what do you do with your right hand in the classical solitary bed, dark of the night scenario, thinks Lucius, behind what little he knows about Occlumency and a little gamble over the Dark Lord’s diverted attention. “Yes, my Lord.”
Narcissa steps into the room, bringing some food. She touches Lucius’ shoulder as she makes as to come out. They hold gaze, and he almost forgets about Bellatrix and his loss of importance into his Lord’s eyes. “She’ll be here in a moment. I had to find something fitting- even if she’s not the woman you may remember, my Lord. Azkaban-”
Lord Voldemort nods. He thanks her with a polite word, and then she comes. Lucius feels pity despite himself- Bellatrix is thin, and even the robe Narcissa adjusted for her can’t hide the loss of the curves that graced once her youthful body. She’s not the majestic statue anymore, but again, they all had changed, and above all the Dark Lord.
“You may leave.”
Lucius leaves the room behind the turmoil of emotions Narcissa can’t block in anymore. The only glimpse reaching to him through the padded door is a voice. “My Lord-”
She’s still strong.
The Malfoys bury the memories of fifteen years in the privacy of their bed, balancing this present to the point of shared pleasure.
History becomes us
She falls back against the good leather of the sofa, in the apartments Narcissa gave her mid-October. She doesn’t laugh, if ever. She’s alone, like she never was before, he husband a relic lost somewhere in hiding. She doesn’t care.
“He’ll do the job, or-”
She hides her shape under more voluminous robes. Her fingers are a white stain on that fading old black velvet, a velvet almost tarnished if compared to the vivid red of the leather. He touches her left hand, sitting next to her, startling her a bit. Her eyes are a question, and then she brings his fingers to her mouth. “My Lord. My one and only Lord. My Master and-”
He feels the strange heat of her lips- not quite warm as he suspected them to have been in the past. He tastes them, no solution of continuity between her act and his answer, just the rupture of old rules they had brought on for a while- but everything changed excwept, it seems, he knows, this focus of their relationship.
She’s far too pale under the velvet, but so he is, and compared to his skin her body is made of dying marble. And if she had far too many lovers at his request, he left that part of his humanity with all the others, in the informal image of his youth. Nobody but her, he thinks as he buries consciousness and body inside her, nobody’s but hers.
Epilogue is just another word for beginning
I’ll begin from the bad news.
In a world, everything goes bad. Potter defeats the Dark Lord, Bellatrix dies or simply fades away, deprived for the second time of her Lord- she commits suicide before they can take her to the physical Azkaban, because in her mind she’s already there, one thought pounding at her temples- he is gone, he is gone. Who knows, maybe Potter becomes Minister and begets a rich handful of Weasley, and old followers of the Mark become his acolytes, because after all power is power, and even if Potter wouldn’t recognise it (as Dumbledore did before him) he’s still guilty when he uses it.
See, maybe things aren’t so bad- the convolutions of history may bring some ironical surprise.
In another world- you’ll have it, by now, I suppose. Lord Voldemort wins and raises his consort to a similar, if lessened, height. Our Lady of the Dark, surrounding like a corona the shade of his sun, her children his followers, her wraith his will, her blood lost but for the few descendants of her sister’s child.
They rule forever.
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