JADIS (knifed) wrote in raveled, @ 2016-12-28 14:12:00 |
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I am a miser of my memories of you And will not spend them. -- For someone who will go down in history for her madness, Bellatrix Lestrange has an advanced understanding of the mind. After all, she has been taught by the greatest Legilimens who ever lived—who ever lives. At the beginning, the Dementors affect her less than others. After all, a life steeped in Dark Magic tarnishes your soul. She feels no remorse for what she's done. She doesn't stop eating from anguish. She avoids the warm, comforting trap they offer other prisoners of drowning in sorrow until your heartbeat slows. And yet—a tarnished soul is still a soul. She's only human. At the beginning, she gives them her uncomplicated happiness: childhood holidays to France and Spain, compliments, moments of laughter in dappled sunlight. This, she thinks, will be enough to tide them over until the Dark Lord comes for her. But the days turn into weeks, and He doesn't. There's never a moment of weakness in her absolute belief that He will rise again and come back for them. It just might take some time. And the Dementors clamor, hungry. Happiness lives in layers. Piece by piece, she peels it away and offers it up. -- When they write about it, they'll quibble over terms like narcissism and egomania, psychopathy and sadism. Your mind can be a refuge, Bella, the Dark Lord once said. But her mind is no refuge. Pandora's box is child's play—here there is a cliff that she balances on, and the gaping, yawning abyss of wildness below. The lid was always fragile, and now the hinges are broken. Unhinged. Her greatest fear has always been just this: being shut away, being abandoned, being forgotten and ignored. No one has ever told her that silence is powerlessness, because no one has ever had to; she feels it in her bones. For a long time, she laughs. She's always laughed at the wrong moments, unable to stop even with her mother's red handprint curling on her cheek. She tries to mark the passage of time by the glimpses of her reflection in rainwater, the decay of her hands. There's nothing funny about having been beautiful once, but it makes her laugh anyway. What the world has taken from her isn't funny, either, but the thought of what she'll do when she's out makes her laugh all the same. She misses the slick feeling of blood between her fingers. Other inmates scream from despair, but Bellatrix screams to remember that she still exists, and that her voice remains a part of her that can't be contained in four walls. -- There is one moment, or perhaps many moments over many years, when she gives up the rest. Her memories of the Dark Lord must be protected at all cost. The certainty of your destiny and a sense of purpose aren't always tied intimately with being happy, which confuses the Dementors as they press against the bars. What else do you have for us? She hasn't seen Rodolphus in a while (maybe weeks, maybe years), and that makes it easier. She gives up their trip to Egypt, the smell of books, the dogs, their first chess game and their five hundredth, the thrill of a shared hunt. She gives up the feeling of his hands tracing over her spine. She gives up companionship, the comfort and security of teamwork. These were all things she liked having, she tells herself. She doesn't need them to survive. She keeps the sorrow of her failures—how she couldn't save Regulus or Evan or Barty in the end. She gives up her father's laugh and keeps the grim injustice of his death. She gives up Narcissa's kindness and keeps the bitter burn of her selfishness. She keeps all that's left of Andromeda: a tangled knot of pain and betrayal, fury and loss. Each year, her anger grows sharper and more honed. After all, Andromeda left her first. She realizes now that caring for anyone or anything except the Dark Lord—even a little bit—was nothing but weakness. When He rises, she will not make that mistake again. -- This is what Bellatrix is left with after fifteen years, on the night when the Mark burns again: She is a Black. She is destined for greatness. And her Lord will come for her. When He does, she falls to her knees at the moment of deliverance, at the amazing grace. "I never faltered," Bella says. Her voice is hoarse, her words spoken through a thick veil of tears. He takes her ruined hands, draws her to her feet. Between their fingers sparks her favorite memory: a girl in a room full of books, both of them hearing her thoughts: You may have hundreds of Averys and Lestranges and Notts, but there will only ever be one of me. "I knew you wouldn't, Bella." We alone were faithful. We alone tried to find you. Or, perhaps: I alone was faithful. I alone tried to find you. And then, she is free. Outside her cell, the sky is thick with stars. Scrambling over the rocks, Bellatrix knows that there has never been happiness in the world before this instant. She laughs. There is a brief moment where she pauses and tries to think about what she's given up, but it's gray and hazy, already too far away. |