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stephanometraTitle: Make Peace When This Is Done
Pairing: Bellatrix/Rodolphus, but a very gen sort of Bella/Rodolphus if that makes any sense
Rating: PG or something. I'm bad with ratings.
Warnings: None. Pretty much worksafe.
Wordcount: 2033
Author’s Note: Minor characters! Fanaticism! Bellatrix/Narcissa subtext! Hooray! Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durins_bane_616's request at hp_angstfest: 6. Bellatrix the night after she hears of the Dark Lord's demise. theamazingtish is the best beta ever and absinthe_lust is the best fest!mod-cum-cheerleader ever. Oh, and title is from a Coheed and Cambria song. (/emofag)
-
Fifty-one. Fifty-two.
Humming tunelessly and silently counting the strokes out of long habit, Bella sits at the dark cherry vanity, watching her husband in the mirror as she drags the brush through her hair.
Sixty-seven. Sixty-eight.
Rodolphus catches her eye and smirks, laying aside the book in his lap and slouching elegantly in the leather wingback chair. "Is that really necessary, Bellatrix?"
She smirks back. "Always, dear." Seventy-three. Seventy-four.
He crosses the room and drops to his knees beside her, slipping one of the straps of her black silk chemise down her arm and pressing a kiss to her shoulder. "Quickly, then," he says, dragging his tongue over her collarbone.
She slows her strokes ever-so-slightly. Eighty-five. Eighty-six.
"Bella." He catches her left hand in his and tugs her backwards against his chest, almost toppling her from the brocade-cushioned bench.
She continues to brush. Ninety-two. Ninety-three.
He breathes filthy words into her ear and nips at the lobe.
She stifles a moan. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine.
His forearm suddenly heats against hers, the Mark flaring sharply to life. A split-second later, her own is grinning red and livid against her pale skin. Pure, sudden agony slams into her, and she doubles over from the pain.
The last thing she sees before she loses consciousness is her own reflection, ghost-white and terrified, and the strident sound of the mirror shattering into a thousand pieces entirely drowns out the quiet noise the hairbrush makes as it hits the carpet.
-
She wakes with a start and sits bolt-upright in her seat, wincing as the movement sends shards of glass flying.
Instantly Bella cradles her left arm against her chest, and she stares in dismay at the faded figure of her Master's Mark, scored by half a dozen shallow cuts but otherwise dull, lifeless. She turns, left arm still curled against her body, and sees Rodolphus prone on the floor, the beginning of a nasty bruise coloring one of his cheekbones.
He must have hit the bench when he passed out.
Passed out?
She tries to turn him over but only ends up overbalancing herself and falling to the floor. Scrambling to her knees, she grabs his left arm and wrenches it around at an angle that would no doubt be extremely uncomfortable were he conscious.
Snake and skull gaze back at her in shadowed outline, but nothing more, and she drops his hand as if it burns her.
Wild-eyed and panicked, Bella looks about for her wand. She finds it under a large piece of ruined mirror and cuts her hand as she snatches it up. She rises unsteadily to her feet, unmindful of the glass crunching under her feet and her blood staining the carpet.
"Rodolphus. Get up. Enervate. Get up, get up get up get up. Enervate!"
He comes to and looks up at her with his eyes full of what looks suspiciously like fear.
"We're going," she says, bending to grip his bicep before Apparating them both away.
-
Without the Mark to guide her, she travels blind, allowing her memories of meetings and revels and Summonings to choose her path by emptying her mind of other thoughts.
The big house in Little Hangleton is dark and deserted.
The tiny church in Dorset where her cousins had been Marked is silent, the candles snuffed out and the altar cold.
The private salon in Knockturn Alley's best brothel is charming as always, but empty of anyone she cares to see.
Other scenes fly by, and Bella detects not even the smallest hint of her Master's power, feels not even the barest awareness of Him on the edge of her consciousness. The repeated Apparitions make her weak, even after Rodolphus stops sapping her magic and strength as Side-Along dead weight, but still she keeps going.
Her adrenaline runs out when she arrives in Grandmother Rosier's rose garden – sprawling and overgrown now, left to grow wild as the family mourns for Evan – and letting go her white-knuckled grip on her husband's arm, she falls to her knees on the flagstones.
She shivers with shock and cold, wishing she had thought to throw on a robe over her insubstantial nightgown before leaving, and her wand clatters to the ground.
Rodolphus crouches and picks it up, brows furrowing when he sees it covered in blood. "Bella, love," he says, taking her wand hand in his as he whispers a charm to heal her lacerated fingers.
She turns and looks at him, eyes anguished and hollow. "Why can't I find Him?"
"I don't know." He sighs.
Bellatrix picks up her wand and turns it over in her hands. "I must have angered Him, Rodolphus. What have I done?"
"Maybe he merely doesn't want to be found."
She starts to sob hysterically. "But why?" she wails, distraught.
He gathers her into his arms, stroking her hair. "I don't know the mind of the Dark Lord, Bella."
"When did I fail Him? How?" she demands through her tears, words muffled against his shoulder.
He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and holds her more tightly. "Hush," he says, kissing the top of her head. "Wherever he has gone, he will come back for you."
She shakes her head and buries her face in his dressing gown, trembling with despair, but after a moment she quiets and lifts her head.
Rodolphus stands and pulls her to her feet. "Come now, that's a girl," he says, embracing her again before Apparating them both home again.
-
The sitting room's Floo is open when they reappear there, and Narcissa's face in the flames looks frantic and terrified as her eyes dart around the room. "Bella! Thank all the gods!"
Bella allows Rodolphus to gently guide her into a chair before he bends down in front of the fireplace. "Narcissa," he says.
The blonde regards him coolly from the fireplace, her instant composure a jarring contrast to her panic of a couple seconds ago. "You look terrible, Rodolphus."
He snorts. "What do you want?"
"How is she?"
He snorts again. "That's a phenomenally stupid question."
"I'm hardly an invalid, Cissy," Bella chimes in at the same time.
Narcissa presses her lips together in annoyance and pulls back from the fire.
Rodolphus turns back to his wife, but his sister-in-law appears in front of Bella's chair with an irritatingly quiet pop and a swirl of dove-grey robes before he gets there. Bella moves aside for her sister to squeeze in beside her; Narcissa holds her tightly and whispers soothing platitudes into her hair. Bella looks at Rodolphus and holds his eyes for a moment, but he turns away and goes for the liquor cabinet.
Bella knows without being able to see that he's going for the absinthe. He can't stand Narcissa under the best of circumstances, she knows, and probably feels that le feé verte is the only thing that can make their current situation anything remotely resembling bearable.
"Put it down, Lestrange," Narcissa says sharply. "Get robes; we're leaving."
He bristles at her tone, but then Bella looks at him entreatingly, and he fetches clothes for both of them anyway.
-
They Apparate to Malfoy Manor – or more properly, Narcissa Apparates carrying both of them as passengers, as only a Malfoy by birth or marriage may bypass the strong anti-Apparition wards surrounding the estate – and find a small crowd already gathered in the drawing room, most of them clustered around Lucius, who sits imperiously in a high-backed chair.
All of the faces are familiar to Bella, from her brother-in-law Rabastan brooding in a corner to Rookwood puffing nervously on a pipe to the Crouch boy fidgeting on one of the brocade-upholstered sofas.
It's a smaller group than in nights past; she notes that Snape is conspicuously absent, as is the rat – although those two never appear at the same meeting, anyway – detracting from numbers already decimated by Aurors’ wands and Azkaban sentences.
"We have to decide what is to be done," Lucius says as they enter the room. "We must –"
"I should think it would be obvious what we must do, Malfoy," Bella interrupts. "We must find the Dark Lord. All other concerns are secondary."
Lucius looks at her impassively. "Bellatrix," he says, "if you’ve any insight as to where he might have gone, or know of any way to locate him, then by all means, share it. We've been to the old haunts; we've scried for him with the most powerful location charms Augustus knows. If he has willingly left us, he obviously does not want to be found."
She opens her mouth to speak, but really, she’s nothing to say. She looks at the floor.
Lucius sneers. "As I was saying, we have to present a united front. Tomorrow’s Prophet is going to declare for all the world that the Dark Lord is finished, and we shall be finished with him unless we do something!"
"And what do you suggest we do, Lucius?" Travers demands. "With the Dark Lord missing, the Ministry will have us all in chains, you know they will, and not all of us have the means to buy our way out of them."
"Some of us couldn't buy our way out even with the means to do it," Crouch mutters.
There is a murmur of general assent from around the room.
Disgust washes over Bella in a wave. "And thus perishes the glorious Cause, is that it?" She waves her arm madly, indicating the entire room. "Here you sit, dissembling, when your Lord has need of you!"
Rookwood stands. "If you want so badly to go to Azkaban, Bellatrix, I assure you that it can be arranged!"
"Are you threatening me?" Bella shrieks, shrugging off Narcissa's restraining hand on her elbow.
"Your fanaticism is dangerous, madam, and I'll not suffer the dementors because the likes of you refused to go to ground!"
"You dare call me betrayer, Augustus?" Bella's voice is low and dangerous.
He takes a step back. "That isn't what I meant!"
"Isn't it?" She rolls up the wine-red velvet sleeve of her robe, displaying the faint shadow of the Mark on her forearm. "This is my bond, Rookwood, and I honour it, as I do Him who laid it in my flesh."
"Bella, stand down!" Narcissa interjects. "No one is questioning your devotion to the Dark Lord."
"I question yours! All of you! Scheming to save your own pathetic little necks when you should be wondering how to save His!"
Nott speaks up from the corner. "That was uncalled for, Lestrange!"
She scoffs. "You sicken me," she says, gesturing again at the entire assembled company. "How dare you call yourselves Death Eaters! How dare you bear His Mark, if it means so little to you!"
"Some of us have families to consider, Bella," Narcissa says quietly, breaking the shocked silence of the room.
Bella turns to her sister with an incredulous look. "What did you say?"
"Look at us. Where would our sons and daughters be if we went to prison? We would lose a generation, dozens of children, to the tender loving care of the Ministry, raised to revile their parents and despise their heritage. Would you condemn your nephew to that fate?"
Bella is silent, dumbfounded.
"It's a price I cannot pay, Bella. Please understand."
Taking a step backward, Bella says, "I don't believe this."
"Understand, Bella."
"I will not!" Whirling, Bellatrix strides out of the room, pausing at the door to say, "When He returns, He will punish the whole craven lot of you!"
"Bellatrix, wait!" Barty Crouch jumps to his feet. "Where will you go, where will you look?"
She looks him up and down, assessing. "Does your father know where you are?"
He shakes his head vigorously.
"Then come with me, and find out. Come, Rodolphus."
The boy hastens to follow her from the room, Rodolphus falling in behind him. After a moment, Rabastan hauls himself to his feet as well, and takes his leave with a polite nod to Lucius.
She turns in the corridor, looking at each of the men in turn. Four, she thinks. Four of them, and an entire world to search.
Four would have to be enough.
-
Readers who don't leave feedback make me a sad panda.
Pairing: Bellatrix/Rodolphus, but a very gen sort of Bella/Rodolphus if that makes any sense
Rating: PG or something. I'm bad with ratings.
Warnings: None. Pretty much worksafe.
Wordcount: 2033
Author’s Note: Minor characters! Fanaticism! Bellatrix/Narcissa subtext! Hooray! Written for
durins_bane_616's request at hp_angstfest: 6. Bellatrix the night after she hears of the Dark Lord's demise. theamazingtish is the best beta ever and absinthe_lust is the best fest!mod-cum-cheerleader ever. Oh, and title is from a Coheed and Cambria song. (/emofag)Fifty-one. Fifty-two.
Humming tunelessly and silently counting the strokes out of long habit, Bella sits at the dark cherry vanity, watching her husband in the mirror as she drags the brush through her hair.
Sixty-seven. Sixty-eight.
Rodolphus catches her eye and smirks, laying aside the book in his lap and slouching elegantly in the leather wingback chair. "Is that really necessary, Bellatrix?"
She smirks back. "Always, dear." Seventy-three. Seventy-four.
He crosses the room and drops to his knees beside her, slipping one of the straps of her black silk chemise down her arm and pressing a kiss to her shoulder. "Quickly, then," he says, dragging his tongue over her collarbone.
She slows her strokes ever-so-slightly. Eighty-five. Eighty-six.
"Bella." He catches her left hand in his and tugs her backwards against his chest, almost toppling her from the brocade-cushioned bench.
She continues to brush. Ninety-two. Ninety-three.
He breathes filthy words into her ear and nips at the lobe.
She stifles a moan. Ninety-eight. Ninety-nine.
His forearm suddenly heats against hers, the Mark flaring sharply to life. A split-second later, her own is grinning red and livid against her pale skin. Pure, sudden agony slams into her, and she doubles over from the pain.
The last thing she sees before she loses consciousness is her own reflection, ghost-white and terrified, and the strident sound of the mirror shattering into a thousand pieces entirely drowns out the quiet noise the hairbrush makes as it hits the carpet.
She wakes with a start and sits bolt-upright in her seat, wincing as the movement sends shards of glass flying.
Instantly Bella cradles her left arm against her chest, and she stares in dismay at the faded figure of her Master's Mark, scored by half a dozen shallow cuts but otherwise dull, lifeless. She turns, left arm still curled against her body, and sees Rodolphus prone on the floor, the beginning of a nasty bruise coloring one of his cheekbones.
He must have hit the bench when he passed out.
Passed out?
She tries to turn him over but only ends up overbalancing herself and falling to the floor. Scrambling to her knees, she grabs his left arm and wrenches it around at an angle that would no doubt be extremely uncomfortable were he conscious.
Snake and skull gaze back at her in shadowed outline, but nothing more, and she drops his hand as if it burns her.
Wild-eyed and panicked, Bella looks about for her wand. She finds it under a large piece of ruined mirror and cuts her hand as she snatches it up. She rises unsteadily to her feet, unmindful of the glass crunching under her feet and her blood staining the carpet.
"Rodolphus. Get up. Enervate. Get up, get up get up get up. Enervate!"
He comes to and looks up at her with his eyes full of what looks suspiciously like fear.
"We're going," she says, bending to grip his bicep before Apparating them both away.
Without the Mark to guide her, she travels blind, allowing her memories of meetings and revels and Summonings to choose her path by emptying her mind of other thoughts.
The big house in Little Hangleton is dark and deserted.
The tiny church in Dorset where her cousins had been Marked is silent, the candles snuffed out and the altar cold.
The private salon in Knockturn Alley's best brothel is charming as always, but empty of anyone she cares to see.
Other scenes fly by, and Bella detects not even the smallest hint of her Master's power, feels not even the barest awareness of Him on the edge of her consciousness. The repeated Apparitions make her weak, even after Rodolphus stops sapping her magic and strength as Side-Along dead weight, but still she keeps going.
Her adrenaline runs out when she arrives in Grandmother Rosier's rose garden – sprawling and overgrown now, left to grow wild as the family mourns for Evan – and letting go her white-knuckled grip on her husband's arm, she falls to her knees on the flagstones.
She shivers with shock and cold, wishing she had thought to throw on a robe over her insubstantial nightgown before leaving, and her wand clatters to the ground.
Rodolphus crouches and picks it up, brows furrowing when he sees it covered in blood. "Bella, love," he says, taking her wand hand in his as he whispers a charm to heal her lacerated fingers.
She turns and looks at him, eyes anguished and hollow. "Why can't I find Him?"
"I don't know." He sighs.
Bellatrix picks up her wand and turns it over in her hands. "I must have angered Him, Rodolphus. What have I done?"
"Maybe he merely doesn't want to be found."
She starts to sob hysterically. "But why?" she wails, distraught.
He gathers her into his arms, stroking her hair. "I don't know the mind of the Dark Lord, Bella."
"When did I fail Him? How?" she demands through her tears, words muffled against his shoulder.
He makes a strangled noise in the back of his throat and holds her more tightly. "Hush," he says, kissing the top of her head. "Wherever he has gone, he will come back for you."
She shakes her head and buries her face in his dressing gown, trembling with despair, but after a moment she quiets and lifts her head.
Rodolphus stands and pulls her to her feet. "Come now, that's a girl," he says, embracing her again before Apparating them both home again.
The sitting room's Floo is open when they reappear there, and Narcissa's face in the flames looks frantic and terrified as her eyes dart around the room. "Bella! Thank all the gods!"
Bella allows Rodolphus to gently guide her into a chair before he bends down in front of the fireplace. "Narcissa," he says.
The blonde regards him coolly from the fireplace, her instant composure a jarring contrast to her panic of a couple seconds ago. "You look terrible, Rodolphus."
He snorts. "What do you want?"
"How is she?"
He snorts again. "That's a phenomenally stupid question."
"I'm hardly an invalid, Cissy," Bella chimes in at the same time.
Narcissa presses her lips together in annoyance and pulls back from the fire.
Rodolphus turns back to his wife, but his sister-in-law appears in front of Bella's chair with an irritatingly quiet pop and a swirl of dove-grey robes before he gets there. Bella moves aside for her sister to squeeze in beside her; Narcissa holds her tightly and whispers soothing platitudes into her hair. Bella looks at Rodolphus and holds his eyes for a moment, but he turns away and goes for the liquor cabinet.
Bella knows without being able to see that he's going for the absinthe. He can't stand Narcissa under the best of circumstances, she knows, and probably feels that le feé verte is the only thing that can make their current situation anything remotely resembling bearable.
"Put it down, Lestrange," Narcissa says sharply. "Get robes; we're leaving."
He bristles at her tone, but then Bella looks at him entreatingly, and he fetches clothes for both of them anyway.
They Apparate to Malfoy Manor – or more properly, Narcissa Apparates carrying both of them as passengers, as only a Malfoy by birth or marriage may bypass the strong anti-Apparition wards surrounding the estate – and find a small crowd already gathered in the drawing room, most of them clustered around Lucius, who sits imperiously in a high-backed chair.
All of the faces are familiar to Bella, from her brother-in-law Rabastan brooding in a corner to Rookwood puffing nervously on a pipe to the Crouch boy fidgeting on one of the brocade-upholstered sofas.
It's a smaller group than in nights past; she notes that Snape is conspicuously absent, as is the rat – although those two never appear at the same meeting, anyway – detracting from numbers already decimated by Aurors’ wands and Azkaban sentences.
"We have to decide what is to be done," Lucius says as they enter the room. "We must –"
"I should think it would be obvious what we must do, Malfoy," Bella interrupts. "We must find the Dark Lord. All other concerns are secondary."
Lucius looks at her impassively. "Bellatrix," he says, "if you’ve any insight as to where he might have gone, or know of any way to locate him, then by all means, share it. We've been to the old haunts; we've scried for him with the most powerful location charms Augustus knows. If he has willingly left us, he obviously does not want to be found."
She opens her mouth to speak, but really, she’s nothing to say. She looks at the floor.
Lucius sneers. "As I was saying, we have to present a united front. Tomorrow’s Prophet is going to declare for all the world that the Dark Lord is finished, and we shall be finished with him unless we do something!"
"And what do you suggest we do, Lucius?" Travers demands. "With the Dark Lord missing, the Ministry will have us all in chains, you know they will, and not all of us have the means to buy our way out of them."
"Some of us couldn't buy our way out even with the means to do it," Crouch mutters.
There is a murmur of general assent from around the room.
Disgust washes over Bella in a wave. "And thus perishes the glorious Cause, is that it?" She waves her arm madly, indicating the entire room. "Here you sit, dissembling, when your Lord has need of you!"
Rookwood stands. "If you want so badly to go to Azkaban, Bellatrix, I assure you that it can be arranged!"
"Are you threatening me?" Bella shrieks, shrugging off Narcissa's restraining hand on her elbow.
"Your fanaticism is dangerous, madam, and I'll not suffer the dementors because the likes of you refused to go to ground!"
"You dare call me betrayer, Augustus?" Bella's voice is low and dangerous.
He takes a step back. "That isn't what I meant!"
"Isn't it?" She rolls up the wine-red velvet sleeve of her robe, displaying the faint shadow of the Mark on her forearm. "This is my bond, Rookwood, and I honour it, as I do Him who laid it in my flesh."
"Bella, stand down!" Narcissa interjects. "No one is questioning your devotion to the Dark Lord."
"I question yours! All of you! Scheming to save your own pathetic little necks when you should be wondering how to save His!"
Nott speaks up from the corner. "That was uncalled for, Lestrange!"
She scoffs. "You sicken me," she says, gesturing again at the entire assembled company. "How dare you call yourselves Death Eaters! How dare you bear His Mark, if it means so little to you!"
"Some of us have families to consider, Bella," Narcissa says quietly, breaking the shocked silence of the room.
Bella turns to her sister with an incredulous look. "What did you say?"
"Look at us. Where would our sons and daughters be if we went to prison? We would lose a generation, dozens of children, to the tender loving care of the Ministry, raised to revile their parents and despise their heritage. Would you condemn your nephew to that fate?"
Bella is silent, dumbfounded.
"It's a price I cannot pay, Bella. Please understand."
Taking a step backward, Bella says, "I don't believe this."
"Understand, Bella."
"I will not!" Whirling, Bellatrix strides out of the room, pausing at the door to say, "When He returns, He will punish the whole craven lot of you!"
"Bellatrix, wait!" Barty Crouch jumps to his feet. "Where will you go, where will you look?"
She looks him up and down, assessing. "Does your father know where you are?"
He shakes his head vigorously.
"Then come with me, and find out. Come, Rodolphus."
The boy hastens to follow her from the room, Rodolphus falling in behind him. After a moment, Rabastan hauls himself to his feet as well, and takes his leave with a polite nod to Lucius.
She turns in the corridor, looking at each of the men in turn. Four, she thinks. Four of them, and an entire world to search.
Four would have to be enough.
