You've woken the demon in me
Date: Thursday, 8 March.
Time: From dusk the previous night until early morning.
Location: Lestrange Estate.
Characters Involved: Bellatrix Lestrange, and NPCs Leopold de la Mar and Tristan Abner.
Rating: R
Nobody had truly expected Bellatrix Lestrange in attendance of the memorial festivities, did they? Did anybody really expect her to celebrate the defeat of her lord?
It was a blasphemous holiday. A mockery. Even as a “cured” woman, the thought was vile. The thought of sitting in a banquet hall gorging herself on food while celebrating the people she wished dead turned her stomach in the most unpleasant ways. She didn’t need to be near them to feel hate, nor did she need to see them with her own eyes to be able to see herself ripping them apart with her mind’s.
A parade! The fools had had a parade! Even from the solitude of her estate she swore she could hear the music. It drove her insane. The waiting room was in shambles as a result, the red armchair by the letter desk had been put through the window, tables and lamps had been overturned and broken. She hadn’t been back to the room at all since the last bit of glass had been shattered and imbedded in the wall. Even the house elves had hidden, and remained so. They’d brought the chair in, and patched up the window, but didn’t venture to clean the mess. They’d known better.
Bellatrix had figured Lucius for his attendance at the festivities. His dreadful son too. After all, he had a face to put on for the public, and office to serve. And his dreadful son… he had helped hadn’t he? She cursed them both even for the thought of attending. Narcissa was a fool, marring such a weak man, for creating an even weaker offspring. To think that he was the only blood son left to the Black family…
Disappointing indeed.
In all her disgust, there was still something in the repugnant festivities that even Bellatrix couldn’t deny an attraction to. While the mass of the wizarding world gorged and indulged themselves in celebration of a wizard they should have been worshipping, they truly believed that they were safe. It was an idea that Bellatrix turned over in her head as she sat on the balcony of the master suite-- the room she had once shared with her husband. The sheep of the world would revel in their safety, while those that were smarter would warn them of such gluttony. They would never listen.
Bellatrix reveled in their sense of safety for a different reason entirely. She reveled in it because it was false. She reveled in it because it would make their destruction that much simpler.
As she sat on the ledge of her balcony, protected from the rain by a menagerie of spells, she turned the crystal wine glass in her hand. The fragrance of the Bordeaux, nearly as old as herself, filled the air around her. Beside her on the ledge sat the decanter that belonged with the set of fine crystal, containing what was left of the bottle. The deep red liquid, still as it was in the flared container, looked almost like blood. Wine, however, would never taste as sweet.
That afternoon Bellatrix, with her then-full decanter, had watched the storms roll in over the back of her estate. The rains had started only at dusk, the thunderous rage engulfing the once quiet land as they beat themselves against everything they could touch. It was then that the screams had started once more. Not even the rhythmic drumming or the growl of the angry sky could stifle the noise that sounded sharp enough to cut skin. How truly glorious such a sound was.
Nobody had expected Bellatrix’s attendance at the commemorative festivities, but they had expected Tristan Abner. Even she had remembered his pitiful face, the way he had fought so gallantly in the battles. A hero, he had been called, like so many others. A fool. She enjoyed listening to the screams of the mudblooded member of the Order of the Phoenix. He’d had it coming.
She had sent Leopold out almost a week ago to collect him, specifically. He’d had made the mistake of wishing Bellatrix a merry Anniversary eve. It was a joke to be sure, and one that he’d paid for a hundred times over that first night, chained in her second basement. It was disgustingly easy, Leopold had said of his capture. Another victim of that false safety they were celebrating. She left the former auror in the hands of her dearest follower during the day, joining them only at night. His screams echoed best at night.
The crystal wine glass, with its narrowing neck before the flare of the lip, slipped through the loosening grip of Bellatrix’s long, spidery fingers. She watched it fall as though it were in slow motion. It shattered on the terrace below in a mess of red. The beauty of the mess was admired for a long moment, the echoes of Tristan’s screams ringing in her ears. Only after that moment did she turn, swinging her legs back over the balcony’s ledge to the safety of a solid floor. She left the decanter as she crossed the balcony and back into the bedroom, her black dress moving around her like a constellation of flames, licking the ground in which she had just walked. She ignored the house elves and the portraits of the more notable members of the Black and Lestrange family as she walked the all-too-familiar route through the house to the basement. Night had finally fallen.
Before she could even reach the basement, she knew what Leopold had been doing to entertain himself. The quick rise and fall of Triastan’s whimpering was enough to tell the secret behind the closed door. She could even hear him crying. It was magnificent to her that even after six days he still cried.
Bellatrix turned the doorknob without knocking. Her fingers curled over the top of the door, pushing it open as she ducked to enter the chamber. It stayed there for a long moment as she leaned against the door, the full folds of her dress blocking most of the light from seeping into the adjoining basement. Her eyebrow rose slowly at the sight before her, but not to cast skepticism or a lack of appreciation at the sight before her. Amusement, simply. Men hand never been of particular interest to Leopold, but Tristan wasn’t truly a man, was he? No, he was a thing. A vile, insulting thing. It was the thought that clung to Leopold as he thrust himself violently into it again and again. He was so much like so many of the Death Eaters Bellatrix had known-- he took a certain physical joy in the screams of others, in the sight, the taste, of blood. Leopold had long been through taking the rejection of Bellatrix when he sought relief of the hardness of such joy he would find himself with. Now he took out the anger of his continued rejection on his victims, finding a much more pleasurable solution in satisfying himself. And Bellatrix watched.
Leopold hadn’t bothered to undress him. Not tonight, or the days before. There hadn’t been enough of his clothing left to obstruct his urge. She would wager there was even less remaining than when he started, ripping away the fabrics of what had once been rather impressive dress robes to let his merciless hands at flesh that had not yet been cut or scarred. His knuckles were white as his nails sliced themselves into the skin of Tristan’s sides. Tristan’s cries of pain had dissolved into the tears of his humiliation. They grew louder as Leopold’s hips moved faster. The look on the young man’s face was a thing of beauty-- his sharp green eyes aflame with all the hate he’d kept in himself, his face contorted with all the pleasure to be found in sexual perversion. It was the only time Bellatrix considered him truly beautiful.
With a violent twitch of his hips he was done. The loud throaty moan reverberated from the walls, the sound of true pleasure. Just as quickly as Leopold was done, he shoved Tristan away and down to the floor. His eyes found Bellatrix only then, though he knew she had been watching him. There wasn’t an ounce of remorse or embarrassment on his face. Only pleasure. It made Bellatrix laugh.
She moved into the room then, shutting the door behind her. Days of bloodshed took its toll on the fragrance of the room. It was stale and filled with decay. She walked right up to the body on the floor, the hem of her dress flirting with a pool of blood that had dried. With her foot she nudged him onto his back. He had been a proud man when they first brought him down to the room. Now he was a crumpled excuse of a man, broken, bloodied, and dirtied. The remnants of his clothing that still clung to his skin had been pasted there by a mix of sweat and blood. Skin that was bared by the holes created by their spells and tools were stained with an aging red. His lips were chapped and cracked, telling of days without water. It was amazing he was still alive at all. The little red dots that haloed his eyes told of the many times he’d almost died, pinned against the wall with Leopold’s hands around his neck.
"He’d be a great work of art," Bellatrix mentioned, sighing through her words, "If he wasn’t so pathetic." Leopold agreed with the nod of his head as he zipped himself up. At the gentle nod of her head, Leopold retrieved his wand, muttering the spells necessary to keep him still on the floor. Leaving is side just then she retrieved the dagger she’d left imbedded in the wall the night before.
"You had to have a parade, didn’t you?" She asked, looking down at Tristan once again. She knelt beside him, staining the black threads of her skirt in a fresher pool of blood. She could hear the squish, felt the dampness against her knees, and ignored them both. Her fingers fanned out over his chest like the grips of a shadow, pushing what fabric was left to the untouched flesh aside. A quick flick of her wrist would render a cut across his chest, deep and curved, almost horseshoe-like. "Ignorant fucks." She would wait until he stopped writhing before making another cut, the right side of the skull’s silhouette. Bellatrix was by no means an artist, but there were some things you could recreate solely on the basis of seeing them every day. The dark mark was one of them. It was something she’d known intimately. "One day you all will learn..."
The mark was something she’d take all night to complete. Each new line was accompanied by something else-- a curse, the cold pain of any number of tools, or Leopold’s unrequited need. By the time dawn approached Tristan had lost consciousness for what Bellatrix wagered was the final time. He wasn’t dead, but so much of his blood stained her floor, her dress. She wore it proudly, like a child who’d played in the mud in Sunday’s best. When she stood for the last time, her eyes stayed on the boy’s chest. Most of the skull she’d drawn there with the tip of her knife had dried, the crusty blood from the wounds snaked down the sides of his chest. The snake and the jaws it had immerged from still bled, soaking the surrounding skin with angry red. A proud smile curled her lips as she dropped the knife onto his chest.
"Make sure no one sees you, and be back before dawn." Bellatrix said as Leopold lifted the body from the floor. Tristan weighed barely anything anymore. A roll of parchment had been left on the table near the door amongst the scattered blood-stained tools. She picked it up after wiping the blood off her fingers with a clean bit of her skirt and tucked it into Leopold’s pocket. "Make sure that stays with him, will you? It’s important." She offered him a wink before holding the door open for them. It was the only time she would do so. As Leopold disappeared up the stairs she followed his path slowly. It would deviate at the top of the stairs, where she would seek out the comfort of the ledge of her balcony once again and the decanter she knew would still be there, a fresh glass sitting next to it. She’d reclaim her seat there, the bloody fabric of her dress clinging to her skin, and wait for the dawn.
Tristan was left on the front steps of the ministry, just as Bellatrix had requested. It was a carefully constructed scene that Leopold created in the darkest hours just before the sun broke-- his form lying exposed on the cold marble steps, only the last shreds of clothing remaining on his skin. The most important touch, before he would attach that roll of parchment was that Tristan was still alive. He unfolded the small square Bellatrix tucked in his pocket, laying it on the mudblood’s chest. Leopold wouldn’t be so kind as to leave it laying there. No. The dagger that had so artfully carved the skull and snake in his chest would be plunged into it, careful to only barely touch the most important organs protected by the cage of his ribs. It wouldn’t kill him just yet, but slowly, giving him a chance to spill what was left of his blood on the ministry. "Happy Anniversary" the parchment read.
Before he left, Leopold dropped his own particular "fuck you" he’d been working on all week. It was doll-- it’s head wiggling with the violent reverberation of being dropped. "I’ll be back" it hissed to the cold morning air in a voice everybody would remember.
There they waited, Tristan and his Voldemort joke, for the first screams of the morning.
Time: From dusk the previous night until early morning.
Location: Lestrange Estate.
Characters Involved: Bellatrix Lestrange, and NPCs Leopold de la Mar and Tristan Abner.
Rating: R
Nobody had truly expected Bellatrix Lestrange in attendance of the memorial festivities, did they? Did anybody really expect her to celebrate the defeat of her lord?
It was a blasphemous holiday. A mockery. Even as a “cured” woman, the thought was vile. The thought of sitting in a banquet hall gorging herself on food while celebrating the people she wished dead turned her stomach in the most unpleasant ways. She didn’t need to be near them to feel hate, nor did she need to see them with her own eyes to be able to see herself ripping them apart with her mind’s.
A parade! The fools had had a parade! Even from the solitude of her estate she swore she could hear the music. It drove her insane. The waiting room was in shambles as a result, the red armchair by the letter desk had been put through the window, tables and lamps had been overturned and broken. She hadn’t been back to the room at all since the last bit of glass had been shattered and imbedded in the wall. Even the house elves had hidden, and remained so. They’d brought the chair in, and patched up the window, but didn’t venture to clean the mess. They’d known better.
Bellatrix had figured Lucius for his attendance at the festivities. His dreadful son too. After all, he had a face to put on for the public, and office to serve. And his dreadful son… he had helped hadn’t he? She cursed them both even for the thought of attending. Narcissa was a fool, marring such a weak man, for creating an even weaker offspring. To think that he was the only blood son left to the Black family…
Disappointing indeed.
In all her disgust, there was still something in the repugnant festivities that even Bellatrix couldn’t deny an attraction to. While the mass of the wizarding world gorged and indulged themselves in celebration of a wizard they should have been worshipping, they truly believed that they were safe. It was an idea that Bellatrix turned over in her head as she sat on the balcony of the master suite-- the room she had once shared with her husband. The sheep of the world would revel in their safety, while those that were smarter would warn them of such gluttony. They would never listen.
Bellatrix reveled in their sense of safety for a different reason entirely. She reveled in it because it was false. She reveled in it because it would make their destruction that much simpler.
As she sat on the ledge of her balcony, protected from the rain by a menagerie of spells, she turned the crystal wine glass in her hand. The fragrance of the Bordeaux, nearly as old as herself, filled the air around her. Beside her on the ledge sat the decanter that belonged with the set of fine crystal, containing what was left of the bottle. The deep red liquid, still as it was in the flared container, looked almost like blood. Wine, however, would never taste as sweet.
That afternoon Bellatrix, with her then-full decanter, had watched the storms roll in over the back of her estate. The rains had started only at dusk, the thunderous rage engulfing the once quiet land as they beat themselves against everything they could touch. It was then that the screams had started once more. Not even the rhythmic drumming or the growl of the angry sky could stifle the noise that sounded sharp enough to cut skin. How truly glorious such a sound was.
Nobody had expected Bellatrix’s attendance at the commemorative festivities, but they had expected Tristan Abner. Even she had remembered his pitiful face, the way he had fought so gallantly in the battles. A hero, he had been called, like so many others. A fool. She enjoyed listening to the screams of the mudblooded member of the Order of the Phoenix. He’d had it coming.
She had sent Leopold out almost a week ago to collect him, specifically. He’d had made the mistake of wishing Bellatrix a merry Anniversary eve. It was a joke to be sure, and one that he’d paid for a hundred times over that first night, chained in her second basement. It was disgustingly easy, Leopold had said of his capture. Another victim of that false safety they were celebrating. She left the former auror in the hands of her dearest follower during the day, joining them only at night. His screams echoed best at night.
The crystal wine glass, with its narrowing neck before the flare of the lip, slipped through the loosening grip of Bellatrix’s long, spidery fingers. She watched it fall as though it were in slow motion. It shattered on the terrace below in a mess of red. The beauty of the mess was admired for a long moment, the echoes of Tristan’s screams ringing in her ears. Only after that moment did she turn, swinging her legs back over the balcony’s ledge to the safety of a solid floor. She left the decanter as she crossed the balcony and back into the bedroom, her black dress moving around her like a constellation of flames, licking the ground in which she had just walked. She ignored the house elves and the portraits of the more notable members of the Black and Lestrange family as she walked the all-too-familiar route through the house to the basement. Night had finally fallen.
Before she could even reach the basement, she knew what Leopold had been doing to entertain himself. The quick rise and fall of Triastan’s whimpering was enough to tell the secret behind the closed door. She could even hear him crying. It was magnificent to her that even after six days he still cried.
Bellatrix turned the doorknob without knocking. Her fingers curled over the top of the door, pushing it open as she ducked to enter the chamber. It stayed there for a long moment as she leaned against the door, the full folds of her dress blocking most of the light from seeping into the adjoining basement. Her eyebrow rose slowly at the sight before her, but not to cast skepticism or a lack of appreciation at the sight before her. Amusement, simply. Men hand never been of particular interest to Leopold, but Tristan wasn’t truly a man, was he? No, he was a thing. A vile, insulting thing. It was the thought that clung to Leopold as he thrust himself violently into it again and again. He was so much like so many of the Death Eaters Bellatrix had known-- he took a certain physical joy in the screams of others, in the sight, the taste, of blood. Leopold had long been through taking the rejection of Bellatrix when he sought relief of the hardness of such joy he would find himself with. Now he took out the anger of his continued rejection on his victims, finding a much more pleasurable solution in satisfying himself. And Bellatrix watched.
Leopold hadn’t bothered to undress him. Not tonight, or the days before. There hadn’t been enough of his clothing left to obstruct his urge. She would wager there was even less remaining than when he started, ripping away the fabrics of what had once been rather impressive dress robes to let his merciless hands at flesh that had not yet been cut or scarred. His knuckles were white as his nails sliced themselves into the skin of Tristan’s sides. Tristan’s cries of pain had dissolved into the tears of his humiliation. They grew louder as Leopold’s hips moved faster. The look on the young man’s face was a thing of beauty-- his sharp green eyes aflame with all the hate he’d kept in himself, his face contorted with all the pleasure to be found in sexual perversion. It was the only time Bellatrix considered him truly beautiful.
With a violent twitch of his hips he was done. The loud throaty moan reverberated from the walls, the sound of true pleasure. Just as quickly as Leopold was done, he shoved Tristan away and down to the floor. His eyes found Bellatrix only then, though he knew she had been watching him. There wasn’t an ounce of remorse or embarrassment on his face. Only pleasure. It made Bellatrix laugh.
She moved into the room then, shutting the door behind her. Days of bloodshed took its toll on the fragrance of the room. It was stale and filled with decay. She walked right up to the body on the floor, the hem of her dress flirting with a pool of blood that had dried. With her foot she nudged him onto his back. He had been a proud man when they first brought him down to the room. Now he was a crumpled excuse of a man, broken, bloodied, and dirtied. The remnants of his clothing that still clung to his skin had been pasted there by a mix of sweat and blood. Skin that was bared by the holes created by their spells and tools were stained with an aging red. His lips were chapped and cracked, telling of days without water. It was amazing he was still alive at all. The little red dots that haloed his eyes told of the many times he’d almost died, pinned against the wall with Leopold’s hands around his neck.
"He’d be a great work of art," Bellatrix mentioned, sighing through her words, "If he wasn’t so pathetic." Leopold agreed with the nod of his head as he zipped himself up. At the gentle nod of her head, Leopold retrieved his wand, muttering the spells necessary to keep him still on the floor. Leaving is side just then she retrieved the dagger she’d left imbedded in the wall the night before.
"You had to have a parade, didn’t you?" She asked, looking down at Tristan once again. She knelt beside him, staining the black threads of her skirt in a fresher pool of blood. She could hear the squish, felt the dampness against her knees, and ignored them both. Her fingers fanned out over his chest like the grips of a shadow, pushing what fabric was left to the untouched flesh aside. A quick flick of her wrist would render a cut across his chest, deep and curved, almost horseshoe-like. "Ignorant fucks." She would wait until he stopped writhing before making another cut, the right side of the skull’s silhouette. Bellatrix was by no means an artist, but there were some things you could recreate solely on the basis of seeing them every day. The dark mark was one of them. It was something she’d known intimately. "One day you all will learn..."
The mark was something she’d take all night to complete. Each new line was accompanied by something else-- a curse, the cold pain of any number of tools, or Leopold’s unrequited need. By the time dawn approached Tristan had lost consciousness for what Bellatrix wagered was the final time. He wasn’t dead, but so much of his blood stained her floor, her dress. She wore it proudly, like a child who’d played in the mud in Sunday’s best. When she stood for the last time, her eyes stayed on the boy’s chest. Most of the skull she’d drawn there with the tip of her knife had dried, the crusty blood from the wounds snaked down the sides of his chest. The snake and the jaws it had immerged from still bled, soaking the surrounding skin with angry red. A proud smile curled her lips as she dropped the knife onto his chest.
"Make sure no one sees you, and be back before dawn." Bellatrix said as Leopold lifted the body from the floor. Tristan weighed barely anything anymore. A roll of parchment had been left on the table near the door amongst the scattered blood-stained tools. She picked it up after wiping the blood off her fingers with a clean bit of her skirt and tucked it into Leopold’s pocket. "Make sure that stays with him, will you? It’s important." She offered him a wink before holding the door open for them. It was the only time she would do so. As Leopold disappeared up the stairs she followed his path slowly. It would deviate at the top of the stairs, where she would seek out the comfort of the ledge of her balcony once again and the decanter she knew would still be there, a fresh glass sitting next to it. She’d reclaim her seat there, the bloody fabric of her dress clinging to her skin, and wait for the dawn.
Tristan was left on the front steps of the ministry, just as Bellatrix had requested. It was a carefully constructed scene that Leopold created in the darkest hours just before the sun broke-- his form lying exposed on the cold marble steps, only the last shreds of clothing remaining on his skin. The most important touch, before he would attach that roll of parchment was that Tristan was still alive. He unfolded the small square Bellatrix tucked in his pocket, laying it on the mudblood’s chest. Leopold wouldn’t be so kind as to leave it laying there. No. The dagger that had so artfully carved the skull and snake in his chest would be plunged into it, careful to only barely touch the most important organs protected by the cage of his ribs. It wouldn’t kill him just yet, but slowly, giving him a chance to spill what was left of his blood on the ministry. "Happy Anniversary" the parchment read.
Before he left, Leopold dropped his own particular "fuck you" he’d been working on all week. It was doll-- it’s head wiggling with the violent reverberation of being dropped. "I’ll be back" it hissed to the cold morning air in a voice everybody would remember.
There they waited, Tristan and his Voldemort joke, for the first screams of the morning.