Several hours following the defeat of Lord Voldemort...
A celebration had taken hold of and brought together the Wizarding World: Lord Voldemort was dead. Though such a triumphant event – anticipated for the better part of two decades – had finally come to pass, a murky and baleful temper was still present if not strengthened by the day’s success.
The heavy stillness of the room that held this darkness was saturated in tension, confusion, and silent chaos. Wax candles of midnight black clad in elegant fixtures of wrought yellow gold adorned the walls enfolded in maroon. The flickering candlelight revealed irregular fragments of the long room while leaving sinister corners still cloaked in shadows. The occupants stood in close huddles of three or four, their communal despair being their only consolation. If one looked into the room, they would not find a single unique individual save for their height or frame, as each of these mourners wore matching floor-length robes of deepest ebony, the hood draped over their head leaving their faces indistinguishable.
A crack would sound every so often, so loud that those not deeply immersed in their own misery would jump in surprise and take a defensive stance, only to find another has joined their throng of bereavement. No one dared to speak. They would wait, wait for the authority they had been conditioned to follow blindly; it was all they knew. So easily they had forgotten that they had been summoned to this dreary place, the searing burn of their left arm leading them to believe it was taking them to their master, only to find themselves immediately drowning in the thick air of loss: loss of direction, loss of purpose, loss of self.
It was hard to say how long they had been standing there, waiting, always waiting. When another crossed the threshold and entered the room, her dark heavily-lidded eyes scanning the area erratically, it wasn’t until she spoke that they even acknowledged her presence.
“Loyal servants,” she raised her deep voice to the tomb of stillness, and several heads turned to her direction. “It is with a heavy heart that have I called you here, mere hours following our darkest.”
“You summoned us?” an abrasive voice growled from one of the shadowy corners.
Belletrix’s glare snapped to the direction of the voice, her upper lip curling to bare her yellow teeth, damaged from years spent in Azkaban.
“Do you dare to question me?” she jeered, and then raised her left arm vertically above her head, her own black sleeve falling to gather at her elbow.
As eyes rose to take in the black marking that stood out dark as ebony against the ivory skin, hoods fell to reveal astonishment and gaping mouths. A few ripped back the fabric from their own arm to check their Mark. It was there, exactly the same as what shone before them on the arm of their Queen. They had heard the rumours of Lord Voldemort’s death, but only a few hours later they felt the burning call once again and made haste to find out if it could be true. Once they found themselves in that room, the confirming whispers of his demise reached their ears, and so they remained, unsure and lost.
The skull that now adorned their arm was larger than it had been, the snake conspicuously replaced with a dark raven, its wings spread within the skull’s gaping mouth. Few had bothered to look at their Mark when it had summoned them, the scorching sensation their flesh had endured countless times before felt no different, and consequently failed to notice that the blaze they felt had changed it.
A pass of power, but must they obey? How had this happened? These thoughts plagued their minds, but could they resist the natural gravitation they felt through their Mark, the growing admiration spawned by fear spreading within them. The weakest fell to their knees first, anxious to follow, to have a sense of purpose again. Bellatrix smiled wickedly, continuing to wave her forearm around the room as more submitted to her influence.
“What are we to do, my Queen?” asked a timid woman with a flat face vaguely resembling a pug surrounded by thick dark brown hair falling flat around her shoulders.
Finally letting her arm fall, Bellatrix stepped towards the woman slowly, and everyone seemed to hold their breath. Her small brown eyes widened for a moment and she looked up from her place on her knees, panic flickering across her face. She tensed as Bellatrix bent down to bring her own pale face closer.
“Where is your lovely daughter, Parkinson?” she said sweetly.
“Sh-She has not been inducted yet, b-but is anxious to obey,” Mrs. Parkinson sputtered, directing her eyes downward in obvious embarrassment.
“Very good. You will then bring her here on her seventeenth birthday, as is your responsibility since your husband is still in the Order’s custody,” Bellatrix commanded as she straightened to a standing position. She then raised her voice to again speak to the crowd as a whole, almost all on their knees. “You will all bring your children here if they are of age, or else their induction will become a part of their coming of age celebration.”
Murmurs of agreement filled the room, even from those who had secretly hoped to have been able to give their children a choice in joining the ranks. Bellatrix hardly felt it necessary to explain to them that the first step in retaliation is to strengthen their numbers, and therefore everyone would initiate their child or else face the consequences. Filling their ranks was a given, especially since the number of Death Eaters she had thought to be loyal to the Dark Lord and his cause seemed so few, at least fewer than she remembered. As she scanned the room, her eyebrows contracted in outrage as a realization dawned on her.
“Where is Avery? And Greyback and Yaxley?” she exclaimed, only mentioning a few of many faces that were missing. Brutal punishments already racing through her mind for their disobedience, her nostrils flared in fury.
“They all lie dead at the house in Cornwall!” a small voice in the back squeaked, and all eyes turned. Alecto Carrow attempted to shrink into the wall behind her.
Bellatrix swiftly closed the distance between them, and Alecto squeezed her eyes shut and scrunched her face to ready herself for the impending pain. When nothing happened, she snuck a peak through one cautious eye to find a wand in her face.
“Speak! What do you know?” Bellatrix barked, causing Alecto to jump and cower ever closer against the wall.
“I... I...” Her beady, sunken eyes darted around the room, taking in the curious faces all looking to her. And then her eyes landed on the face in front of her. Bellatrix’s once striking beauty, with her high cheekbones framing a classically beautiful face of porcelain skin, her shining black hair, and her seductive stare, could no longer be found as beautiful. A woman ruined by greed and supremacy, a mad gleam in her wide eyes, a permanent snarl pulling at her upper lip, her hair a frizzy unkempt halo, held her face inches from Alecto’s, awaiting an explanation that would impress her.
“The Dark Lord had brought in the Weasley girl, and left her with Snape!” Alecto blurted out. “Then Snape tricked us all into drinking mead with him, only it was poisoned. I pretended to drink it out of respect; I don’t much care for mead. When everyone dropped dead around me, I knew I should pretend to be dead as well. I heard him perform the death curse on Greyback, and then he killed Nagini and took the Weasley girl away.”
Her breathing had elevated with her rising heartbeat, and she awaited her Queen’s reaction. Bellatrix hissed through her teeth, a deep rage bringing her eyebrows together, contorting the frightening aspects of her face further.
“I knew it. I knew Snape couldn’t be trusted. And after I told my Lord so many times–” She stopped suddenly, a wave of a foreign sentiment washing over her features, and her voice shook. Taking a step back, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When her lids rose a moment later, the instant of weakness had passed, and there was nothing to find but composed fury within the depths of black coal. She focused her lethal stare on the Carrow in front of her.
“And you waited this long to tell me?” Bellatrix seethed, her eyes narrowing and her wand coming up to rest against Alecto’s throat.
“Oh please, Dark Mistress, please spare me! I was frightened of Snape discovering I was alive!” she cried, dropping to her knees and clutching Bellatrix’s robes.
A disgusted snarl ripped from Bellatrix’s throat. She quickly stepped further back, out of Alecto’s reach.
“Crucio!”
As Alecto writhed and screamed, the surrounding Death Eaters watched on, some with disgust, some with rage, but none with empathy. Later that night, within her private quarters, Bellatrix had placed Alecto’s punishment far from her mind. Once seated upon her bed, she glanced briefly towards the door that separated her chambers from Rodolphus’s to see that it was shut, and then retrieved a withered piece of parchment from her bedside table, worn with creases from being folded and unfolded over a period of years. Having kept this treasure hidden on her person when she had been taken to Azkaban, she had been able to pull it out whenever the despair had become overwhelming, granting her a moment’s peace and a surge of resolve.
She opened what used to be a sketch of a handsome man with jet-black hair and dark eyes. She had taken to making physical “corrections” with the small pieces of stone littering her cell, drawing in slits over the perfect nose, reshaping the full lips to become a lipless mouth, and always adding to the eyes. The cat-like pupils she drew in weren’t enough to capture the entrancing effect his eyes had on her, but she would continue to add a curve here and a shadow there. To anyone else, the eyes looking back at her would look positively mad, but to her they possessed power, control, and superiority.
Lovingly tracing the outline of the gaunt face with her pointer finger as she had many times before, she whispered to it in a honey-sweet voice.
“We will make him pay, my love. We will make him suffer. Then we will finish what you started.”
She raised the parchment to her face, rested her lips against the indentations her primitive drawing utensils had made along the curves of the snake-like mouth, and then pressed the drawing against her chest. She lay down, strategy and revenge sifting through her mind as she drifted off to sleep.
A celebration had taken hold of and brought together the Wizarding World: Lord Voldemort was dead. Though such a triumphant event – anticipated for the better part of two decades – had finally come to pass, a murky and baleful temper was still present if not strengthened by the day’s success.
The heavy stillness of the room that held this darkness was saturated in tension, confusion, and silent chaos. Wax candles of midnight black clad in elegant fixtures of wrought yellow gold adorned the walls enfolded in maroon. The flickering candlelight revealed irregular fragments of the long room while leaving sinister corners still cloaked in shadows. The occupants stood in close huddles of three or four, their communal despair being their only consolation. If one looked into the room, they would not find a single unique individual save for their height or frame, as each of these mourners wore matching floor-length robes of deepest ebony, the hood draped over their head leaving their faces indistinguishable.
A crack would sound every so often, so loud that those not deeply immersed in their own misery would jump in surprise and take a defensive stance, only to find another has joined their throng of bereavement. No one dared to speak. They would wait, wait for the authority they had been conditioned to follow blindly; it was all they knew. So easily they had forgotten that they had been summoned to this dreary place, the searing burn of their left arm leading them to believe it was taking them to their master, only to find themselves immediately drowning in the thick air of loss: loss of direction, loss of purpose, loss of self.
It was hard to say how long they had been standing there, waiting, always waiting. When another crossed the threshold and entered the room, her dark heavily-lidded eyes scanning the area erratically, it wasn’t until she spoke that they even acknowledged her presence.
“Loyal servants,” she raised her deep voice to the tomb of stillness, and several heads turned to her direction. “It is with a heavy heart that have I called you here, mere hours following our darkest.”
“You summoned us?” an abrasive voice growled from one of the shadowy corners.
Belletrix’s glare snapped to the direction of the voice, her upper lip curling to bare her yellow teeth, damaged from years spent in Azkaban.
“Do you dare to question me?” she jeered, and then raised her left arm vertically above her head, her own black sleeve falling to gather at her elbow.
As eyes rose to take in the black marking that stood out dark as ebony against the ivory skin, hoods fell to reveal astonishment and gaping mouths. A few ripped back the fabric from their own arm to check their Mark. It was there, exactly the same as what shone before them on the arm of their Queen. They had heard the rumours of Lord Voldemort’s death, but only a few hours later they felt the burning call once again and made haste to find out if it could be true. Once they found themselves in that room, the confirming whispers of his demise reached their ears, and so they remained, unsure and lost.
The skull that now adorned their arm was larger than it had been, the snake conspicuously replaced with a dark raven, its wings spread within the skull’s gaping mouth. Few had bothered to look at their Mark when it had summoned them, the scorching sensation their flesh had endured countless times before felt no different, and consequently failed to notice that the blaze they felt had changed it.
A pass of power, but must they obey? How had this happened? These thoughts plagued their minds, but could they resist the natural gravitation they felt through their Mark, the growing admiration spawned by fear spreading within them. The weakest fell to their knees first, anxious to follow, to have a sense of purpose again. Bellatrix smiled wickedly, continuing to wave her forearm around the room as more submitted to her influence.
“What are we to do, my Queen?” asked a timid woman with a flat face vaguely resembling a pug surrounded by thick dark brown hair falling flat around her shoulders.
Finally letting her arm fall, Bellatrix stepped towards the woman slowly, and everyone seemed to hold their breath. Her small brown eyes widened for a moment and she looked up from her place on her knees, panic flickering across her face. She tensed as Bellatrix bent down to bring her own pale face closer.
“Where is your lovely daughter, Parkinson?” she said sweetly.
“Sh-She has not been inducted yet, b-but is anxious to obey,” Mrs. Parkinson sputtered, directing her eyes downward in obvious embarrassment.
“Very good. You will then bring her here on her seventeenth birthday, as is your responsibility since your husband is still in the Order’s custody,” Bellatrix commanded as she straightened to a standing position. She then raised her voice to again speak to the crowd as a whole, almost all on their knees. “You will all bring your children here if they are of age, or else their induction will become a part of their coming of age celebration.”
Murmurs of agreement filled the room, even from those who had secretly hoped to have been able to give their children a choice in joining the ranks. Bellatrix hardly felt it necessary to explain to them that the first step in retaliation is to strengthen their numbers, and therefore everyone would initiate their child or else face the consequences. Filling their ranks was a given, especially since the number of Death Eaters she had thought to be loyal to the Dark Lord and his cause seemed so few, at least fewer than she remembered. As she scanned the room, her eyebrows contracted in outrage as a realization dawned on her.
“Where is Avery? And Greyback and Yaxley?” she exclaimed, only mentioning a few of many faces that were missing. Brutal punishments already racing through her mind for their disobedience, her nostrils flared in fury.
“They all lie dead at the house in Cornwall!” a small voice in the back squeaked, and all eyes turned. Alecto Carrow attempted to shrink into the wall behind her.
Bellatrix swiftly closed the distance between them, and Alecto squeezed her eyes shut and scrunched her face to ready herself for the impending pain. When nothing happened, she snuck a peak through one cautious eye to find a wand in her face.
“Speak! What do you know?” Bellatrix barked, causing Alecto to jump and cower ever closer against the wall.
“I... I...” Her beady, sunken eyes darted around the room, taking in the curious faces all looking to her. And then her eyes landed on the face in front of her. Bellatrix’s once striking beauty, with her high cheekbones framing a classically beautiful face of porcelain skin, her shining black hair, and her seductive stare, could no longer be found as beautiful. A woman ruined by greed and supremacy, a mad gleam in her wide eyes, a permanent snarl pulling at her upper lip, her hair a frizzy unkempt halo, held her face inches from Alecto’s, awaiting an explanation that would impress her.
“The Dark Lord had brought in the Weasley girl, and left her with Snape!” Alecto blurted out. “Then Snape tricked us all into drinking mead with him, only it was poisoned. I pretended to drink it out of respect; I don’t much care for mead. When everyone dropped dead around me, I knew I should pretend to be dead as well. I heard him perform the death curse on Greyback, and then he killed Nagini and took the Weasley girl away.”
Her breathing had elevated with her rising heartbeat, and she awaited her Queen’s reaction. Bellatrix hissed through her teeth, a deep rage bringing her eyebrows together, contorting the frightening aspects of her face further.
“I knew it. I knew Snape couldn’t be trusted. And after I told my Lord so many times–” She stopped suddenly, a wave of a foreign sentiment washing over her features, and her voice shook. Taking a step back, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When her lids rose a moment later, the instant of weakness had passed, and there was nothing to find but composed fury within the depths of black coal. She focused her lethal stare on the Carrow in front of her.
“And you waited this long to tell me?” Bellatrix seethed, her eyes narrowing and her wand coming up to rest against Alecto’s throat.
“Oh please, Dark Mistress, please spare me! I was frightened of Snape discovering I was alive!” she cried, dropping to her knees and clutching Bellatrix’s robes.
A disgusted snarl ripped from Bellatrix’s throat. She quickly stepped further back, out of Alecto’s reach.
“Crucio!”
As Alecto writhed and screamed, the surrounding Death Eaters watched on, some with disgust, some with rage, but none with empathy. Later that night, within her private quarters, Bellatrix had placed Alecto’s punishment far from her mind. Once seated upon her bed, she glanced briefly towards the door that separated her chambers from Rodolphus’s to see that it was shut, and then retrieved a withered piece of parchment from her bedside table, worn with creases from being folded and unfolded over a period of years. Having kept this treasure hidden on her person when she had been taken to Azkaban, she had been able to pull it out whenever the despair had become overwhelming, granting her a moment’s peace and a surge of resolve.
She opened what used to be a sketch of a handsome man with jet-black hair and dark eyes. She had taken to making physical “corrections” with the small pieces of stone littering her cell, drawing in slits over the perfect nose, reshaping the full lips to become a lipless mouth, and always adding to the eyes. The cat-like pupils she drew in weren’t enough to capture the entrancing effect his eyes had on her, but she would continue to add a curve here and a shadow there. To anyone else, the eyes looking back at her would look positively mad, but to her they possessed power, control, and superiority.
Lovingly tracing the outline of the gaunt face with her pointer finger as she had many times before, she whispered to it in a honey-sweet voice.
“We will make him pay, my love. We will make him suffer. Then we will finish what you started.”
She raised the parchment to her face, rested her lips against the indentations her primitive drawing utensils had made along the curves of the snake-like mouth, and then pressed the drawing against her chest. She lay down, strategy and revenge sifting through her mind as she drifted off to sleep.
Author notes: Updates will be slow since my time is much more restricted than when I wrote TBIE, but I hope this first chapter has intrigued you!
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