Introduction

I took some time to think about everything that's happened in my life, about who I am- about who I was- and who I always wanted to be. The changes seem slight after sop long to contemplate, but at the moment the effect was life -altering. And now, after sleepless, thoughtful nights, there is no way to deny that those were the best years of my life. Still, I wonder if I'd be better without those years.

There were moments that are so well preserved, it seems that some hand has painted them on mu eyes so that I never forget. Although it's impossible to categorize the moments, they stand as memories of the happy times, and the sad times, blurred together into neutrality.

It's hard to explain what it was like, the overflowing stream of emotions. I can hardly believe it some days, and as no one else remember, it's easy to doubt my mind. Yet, if I can preserve what my faded eyes saw, or believed they saw, perhaps I can preserve reality, despite how insignificant it has become.

I didn't sit down to write the story of my life, and I don't know if I have the time to finish. I sat down to write out the moments of my life I want to keep before they vanish forever. I want to die remembering that my life was more than the wasted years the world remembers me for.

So now, after many years, I can proudly present "The Years of the Hourglass". Even if only my eyes grace this page, if the words are burned with my body, at least then they will have some meaning. Thank you.

~Bellatrix Black

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The Years of the Hourglass

Book One: The First Years
Chapter One

I suppose I should start from the beginning, about who I began this story as. I was born Bellatrix Black, and was raised in the Noble House of Black. I attended Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for seven years, after which my life becomes something of a mystery, even to me. My cousin, Sirius Black, attended Hogwarts with me; we were in the same year, though there were few other similarities between us.

He was a traitor, and I never forgave him for that. Not even when I killed him; he deserved to die, for being what he was. His mother disowned him during the summer before our sixth year, and he took up residence with the Potters from then on. After we left Hogwarts, we didn't meet again until the day I killed him. I still don't feel any shame for that.

Unlike him, I was in the House of Salazar Slytherin, as my family has been for generations. He, was in Gryffindor. I think it was because of that, more than anything, that I grew to hate him.

When we were kids, we were friends, if you can call us that. Our family didn't believe in such things as love, or friendship, and on many accounts I still agree with them. Yet, unlike my parents, I grew to love more than just the comfort of the dark magic, or the warm feeling of the power rising over me. I grew to love another human being, and they never forgave me for that.

The first time I saw him was in passing, a simple glimpse; I don't even think he noticed me. After that, I was entranced with him. His crooked smile, his dark eyes that drowned my consciousness and stole away my breath, even The slight unbalanced gait to his walk. It wasn't that he was perfect, but that his imperfection spoke to me in a way beyond words.

I spent my days following, watching him from a distance, always too afraid that he might notice me. In the night I sat alone, watching the stars. When I dreamed, I dreamed of him. He became my obsession, my drug. All my physical demands were washed away by the thought of his skin pressed to mine.

I lived like this for five years, if you can call it living. When he finally noticed me, we were in our sixth year at Hogwarts. He was by far the brightest student in the school; every one knew it. No one dared intimidate him anymore, as though they feared him. I couldn't understand, not when I knew he'd never hurt me.

He approached me one day. I remember, as if it was yesterday, the way I shook, the way I mumbled, the way I feared him and yet loved him at the same time. He spoke quietly, my heart pounding so loudly in my head that I barely heard him.

I nodded, smiled, the books in my arms spilling onto the floor. I felt humiliated; the way my mother would have screamed and cursed had she known what happened still haunts me. Then it was over. He smiled, put my books back into my arms, and walked away. I stood there watching until Sirius ran into me -for the third time that day- and knocked my books all over the floor again.

The next day, he came up to me again. I was sitting outside beneath a large oak tree watching the wind blow ripples across the lake. He sat down beside me, watching the lake for a moment before he reached out, and took my hand in his.

His touch was warm; it always has been. Part of me had thought it would be cold, like ice, yet it wasn't. We sat there, watching the rippling water until the sun set behind us, the lake moving like a rippling sheet of gold.

He stood up, smiled, and walked away as before, without a word. I watched him leave, then pulling my robes tighter around my shoulders, settled back against the tree to watch the lake. I didn't go back into the castle that night.

The next few weeks were the same. He only confronted me once in public, and that was only with a slight smile and a wave of the hand. Otherwise we met, I thought by accident, outside on the grounds. We sat, staring off into the distance, never speaking, hardly moving, but we were together, and that was all that seemed to matter.

When summer came, I dreaded leaving the castle for the first time in my life. At home I sat in my room, listening to my parents argue about Narcissa, my older sister who hadn't come home since she left school three years ago, and my younger sister, who like Sirius, had become a disgrace to the family.

They didn't matter to me any more; only he did. I wanted his letters to come, but I knew he'd never write any. I felt sickened some times, knowing I was wasting away, waiting for someone who didn't belong to me in any way. Yet I knew somehow that he cared. Maybe that was why I continued to wait, all those weeks, just to see his face again. Deep down inside, I knew he cared. More importantly, I knew he cared about me.

End of Chapter One

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Chapter Two

We went into our seventh Year, and it was like everything had changed. The feeling that he was more important than the world, or that the world could not exist without it. It was gone.

I still liked him; that was obvious, but I wasn't obsessed. It was like my drug had been taken away from me, and I suddenly lost the craving though I wouldn't object to a taste of it every once in a while.

For a while I thought I was the one who changed; it certainly looked that way. But no, we had changed. We weren't the same people any more; he wasn't the person I'd fallen in love with. He was gone.

When he passed me in the halls, his face was blank, emotionless. When he spoke, there was no intonation. He was stronger in his magic, there was no denying it, but it was passionless. I doubt I was the only one who notices, but I know I was the only one who cared.

I tried to talk to him, to get him to talk back, but he ignored me like he ignored every other person in the world.

We went on like this the entire year. Things were distant between us as though we had built a rift, and we were both standing on opposite ends of the bridge, waiting for the other to cross. At the end of the year, we all went our own ways; I went home, and I suppose he did, too. I never asked.

Narcissa herself was engaged to Lucius Malfoy, a gift my parent had kept from me until the days before the wedding. I told her what he was, what his father was, but she never listened. My parents were proud, and though I was thoroughly disgusted, I let him taker her away. I doubt she could sink lower.

My younger sister was kicked out a few days before the wedding. I guess our parents had had enough of her, of her shame and lack of devotion to the darkness. I never asked. We think she wandered over to the Weasley's; the oldest had been in the Seventh Year when she started, and they'd always been nice to her.

I found a job shortly afterwards working for Borgin and Burkes down in London. The rest of my time was spent at home either delving into dark magic or taking care of our aging house as Kreacher, unlike his mother, quite often blatantly refused to take my orders.

Sometimes, when I was sitting alone in my room, I would think about him, and I'd wonder if I'd ever see the man I loved. I remember laughing a few times, other times crying because of it, and then I'd go back to cleaning to take my mind off of it.

My parents, aging though still determined to control the House of Black, married me to Lestrange when I was 18. I refused to leave the house I had grown up in now that it was often empty with my parents often disappearing for months at a time.

We were both young; I think he was 21 at the time. He moved into the house and helped me maintain it, but other than that, I rarely saw him. He was working in the Ministry of Magic at the time as there were few other places he could find work. My work at Borgin and Burkes kept me away from my family, and though I was often truly grateful for that, I never wanted to leave the house. I stayed, I think, mainly because I'd spent my summer's dreaming of him in that house, and I was afraid that if I left, I'd loose the rest of him.

Narcissa rarely visited, as though her hatred of the house contrasted my longing, and after her first son died so tragically, she was never the same again.

The next time I saw my childhood love, I was working at Borgin and Burkes, four years after leaving Hogwarts. Tom, the only other employee besides the owners, left two years before, and since then we'd hardly had any customers. He walked in, ordered something from Borgin, and left. He caught my eye and looked quickly away. Then he walked out the door. I didn't see him again for almost four years. We were 25.

End of Chapter Two

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Chapter Three

Darkness. I lived in it, I worshiped it. It was my only companion on some nights, and on others it was what brought the world to me. It was my protector, my savior, my friend. But there was a time when it was my enemy, when I hated and despised everything about it. When I feared it more than I feared death, failure, or anything else.

When I first discovered this sacred haven, I thought it to be the death of me. I thought that all these horrible beings lived in there, that if I ventured in alone, I would never return. The Dark Lord was the one who showed me I was wrong.

He brought me in, wrapped me in His comforting shadows, and opened my eyes to the wonders of the night. I never left Him, after that. He was the only companion I could trust for years, not because I feared the rest of the world, but because I knew that unless they too walked these dark paths, they were nothing more than traitors, and vermin. They've come to fear the only part of the world that has ever belonged only to us. Instead they walk in the open where our enemies slowly conquer the world. They are fools to think they can live in the light.

In time, I began to find faith in others. I began to realize that they needed to come to the darkness. I brought them in, let them discover our safe net, and in time, they too began to realize the wonders of our world. It was then, while I served as a savior to so many, that I found my childhood love once again.

He was as beautiful as I remembered, and as dark as well. He'd aged well, some could say. At 25, he looked no older than 18, except for his eyes. They were old beyond his years. When he looked at me that first moment, I saw the eyes of an old man, eyes that were nearly blind to everything besides what he held dear. I wondered at that moment if he even saw me.

I was wandering that night, looking for a certain person; I can barely remember the name now. I saw him, his eyes met mine, and I swear that time stopped. The next thing I knew, I felt his breath against my neck, his arms around me, and his sweet voice in my ear.

"I missed you," he said, his voice unchanged. A spark ran though my body, starting every never on fire.

"I missed you," I whispered back, clinging to him as though my life depended on it.

After that, I remember little else. All I know was that, for the first time in many years, I didn't sleep alone. And for the first time in my life, I knew that it was the first of many nights where I wouldn't need to fear, where my life would have some constant that I could lean on. I felt happy. I wish we could have stayed like that, forever.

End of Chapter Three

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Chapter Four

While it lasted, I think I was the happiest I had ever been. There was nothing else in my life except for him; his taste, his touch, his smell-- sometimes, when I'm all alone, I think I can still smell him in the air, as though he's standing right behind me. I'll turn around then remember I'm all alone. The smell becomes a poison I breathe in then choke and feel as though I'm dying all over again.

I would wake up in the morning, his arm over me, and he'd already be awake. That was so picturesque, so... romantic. To wake up and have him all to myself; I felt like I was the luckiest woman alive. I made sure he was all mine; I had this strange idea that deep inside of him he hated it, but I didn't want to believe it.

Then, suddenly, it was all over. There was no big flash to indicate it, no sign. It was just over, and there was nothing I could do about it. One morning, he walked out the door, and he was gone. Nothing strange, nothing unusual. He simply never came back.

There was nothing I could do, of course, but I didn't realize it at the time. I searched everywhere, even to the near ends of the earth; it was like he vanished into thin air, and I kept calling to the winds, somehow knowing, that I was calling to no one.

For a while I thought a part of me had died. I tried to kill myself so many times I can't even remember, and each single time I failed horribly, as though fate was trying to keep us apart.

None of my family cared about my seemingly unending grief; Narcissa came to congratulate me on getting rid of him. You can still see the mark I left as I sent her out the door, though she claims it was from a heroic battle against the Muggle-lover and his group of mediocre traitors. I could never break it to her that it never happened; she needed something to be proud of, as her marriage was never something she much cherished.

It was in those shadows I cherished, that I was hurt the most, spending my time in memory. After that moment I decided that there was no place safe, but I could be more alone in the darkness. So I retreated there, leaving everything behind except for my magic which was the only thing I could find to live for in my loneliness.

My magic grew. I was so powerful, which some would think was strange because the magic is supposed to decrease when you've been so emotionally destroyed. But mine proved them all wrong, and I soon began to realize that I was meant to be alone. I could have championed all the other Death Eaters, but I didn't; I was alone, and I didn't want to be anywhere near what could remind me of him.

It was while my magic was growing, while I was the strongest I'd ever been, that The Dark Lord came for me in the shadows that caressed me not as strong as my love's had been, but they made up for his absence. I was alone, helpless, and His call was so tempting, I couldn't resist. Next thing I knew, I was swept up into the wonder, the power, the pain.

End of Chapter Four

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Chapter Five

From that moment on, I was never again alone. When I slept alone, he was there somewhere in the darkness, and knowing that made me feel safe unlike I had felt in years. While I was at his side, I completely forgot my lover, forgot him until I found myself alone at night, sobbing into my bed sheets.

Once, I remember it vividly, something jerked me awake, and a feeling crawled across me; I was afraid. I felt as though someone had died right there in my arms. I was sitting there, sobbing when I felt his hand on my shoulder, his breath on my neck. I jumped, only to find the Dark Lord standing behind me; the lights had gone out.

"It's okay," he said quietly, and his voice, as though laced with drugs, silenced my tears. "There's nothing to be afraid of. You can go back to sleep."

I remember looking into his eyes and seeing all my fears vanish before me. Before I knew it, his hands were on my shoulders once again, the touch like ice, but I was addicted. I felt his touch, and like a child, I wanted more. And like the ever so caring parent, he gave it to me. That was the first of many nights where I would not have to sleep alone.

During the day, it was different. He was different. At first I was hurt, and I nearly left him and his cause, but after a single night of being so alone in the nothingness, I came crawling back to him, and he accepted my plea. He was distant, but he had to be. I came to understand that. He commanded respect, and that respect would be broken if there was any crack across his marble exterior. I suppose that was why he intrigued me so.

My power was strong, and he knew it. At that time, I could have destroyed him and the Death Eaters, but I didn't have the heart to do so. I was still broken, and I needed him even if it was only to keep me from thinking about the one I really loved. As the Death Eaters grew in number, so did his power, but he was still limited by his humanity. It was I who told him the source for his final Horcrux--I'm still uncertain if that was a mistake or not.

I had forgotten my marriage to Lestrange long ago, but it suddenly called me back. He had joined the Death Eaters, under pressure I still believe, and never rose far in their ranks. I saw him for the first time in years, from the cover of the shadowed woods as he was walking along the path. I gasped, and he stopped, looking around. I swore that his eyes stopped right where I was hidden. What seemed like years later, he shrugged and walked on.

The first thing I did was go to the Dark Lord. I remember he was alone, entranced in thought, but I hadn't noticed it then. I begged him to keep Lestrange away from me, told him that I was ready to do anything just to keep him away. I didn't want to go back to the life I had finally left behind me.

"You have nothing to fear from a weakling like him," he told me. "Always remember that you are more powerful than any man. They can only hurt you if you let them."

I was so confused by this that I ran out of the room before he had even finished. It was only later that I remembered; not once had his eyes met mine.

That night when he finished with his work, I was still awake, sitting on my bed, rocking back and forth while clinging tightly to the covers. I can barely remember what had scared me so, but I remember that my fear was greater than it had ever been.

Kneeling down, he put his hands on my shoulders and pressed my head to his chest. He muttered something, but I was so afraid that I was unable to make sense out of his words. I slowly ceased my rocking, my hands loosening their grip on the sheets. My knuckles were white from gripping so hard. His voice had a calming effect on my mind. I soon began to breathe as though I had been holding my breath the entire time.

Suddenly, he tensed. I could feel the muscles in his arms tighten. His grip on my shoulders clenched until it was painful. He rose, flung the window open, and disappeared into the night.

I sat there shivering for hours until I heard a noise from downstairs; the sound of a door being slammed against a wall then swinging back on its hinges. Someone walked up the stairs, taking at least two of them at a time. The footsteps stopped outside my door, and for a moment the only sound was of the curtains whipping with the wind. The door swung open slowly, and the last thing I remember seeing was Lestrange's face, full of rage. The rest I, thankfully, have forgotten.

End of Chapter Five

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Chapter Six

I lived in limbo; half of me was scared to death, the other half of me felt like it was on top of the world. One moment, I was living like there was no tomorrow, the next I was cowering in the shadows, wishing that I had some semblance of a god to pray to. He'd come to me, wipe away my tears with a kiss, and then leave, and moments later, I'd find myself surrounded with the same old fear.

After that night, I didn't see Lestrange for nearly a year. For a while I thought he'd died, that He had killed him, but as soon as I thought I could live again, I would feel his cold hands, ripping, tearing at me, and I knew it was false hope. I lived with his scars, and though I tried as hard as I could to forget him, they haunted me forever.

I liked to think that the Dark Lord was the only thing that kept me from falling apart, from loosing everything. When I was with him, there was nothing else; I felt loved, adored, respected, and above all else, safe. If only those moments hadn't been so short.

It was only when my life was beginning to fall into place that the pieces were scattered to the far ends of the earth; I have yet to find them all. It was just when I thought that I'd never see him again, that he'd vanished- I was too afraid to say died- that he came back as though nothing had happened. He came through the door the same way he left it, but what he found was not what he'd left.

Before the shock had worn off, the only words I could manage to mutter were "please, no", and even after I had regained myself, that seemed to be the only thing I could say. I almost expected him to run towards me, throw his arms around me, and break the awkward silence. I even thought he might turn around, and leave, thinking that perhaps he had come to the wrong door. Instead, he simply stood there, a sad look in his eyes.

"Bella," he said. Had I been less afraid, I would have noticed the sadness in his voice, the way his words faded into the distance. Instead, I heard only sound, felt only the chill of the wind from the open door.

"Bella, listen to me." He stepped closer, and I automatically stepped back until I could feel the wall against my back. "Bella, please. I don't have time for this." He took another step towards me, and taking my wand in my hand, I focused my eyes on his chest; I couldn't seem to look at his face. "Bella!" He started toward me, but I pointed my wand at his chest, and he fell back. I was acting on impulse, my mind blank, and my actions meaningless. "Bella..."

He reached out for me, then stopped, and let his hand drop to his side. I gripped my wand tighter, taking it now in two hands. I felt sweat drip down my face, contrasting with the cool wind coming from behind him. The silence lasted for what seemed like hours, the only sound being the curtains flapping in the wind, and the sound of my heavy breathing.

Finally, he spoke again. I could almost feel his eyes trying to meet with mine, and I turned my head away; there were tears running down my cheeks, but I couldn't feel them. "Bella, I--I need your help. I've done--I made a mistake, and... I can't tell anyone else; they'll kill me, He'll kill me! I just..."

I'd never seen him this way, and deep inside of me, there was a sense of pity, but it found itself unable to reach the surface. He stood there, looking at the floor, as though waiting for me to say something; I hadn't heard his words, only the sound of his voice had registered in my mind. It was only later, when the words came to my mind.

"You..." I tried to speak, but I couldn't find words; they slipped away from me as my hands dropped to my side, my numb fingers releasing their grip on my wand so that it fell to the ground. "I... We..." I felt paralyzed, unable to speak, unable to move. I felt his hands on my shoulders, then the feeling of his hands wrap around me; I could almost taste the familiar smell, and I gave a slight shudder as the recognition worked its way through my brain. Then, my mind overloaded with sensory recognition. I felt his lips on mine, and my brain, unable to handle any more, shut down.

End of Chapter Six

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Chapter Seven

I can't write anymore, not tonight, not this... it's sacrilege, a horrible lie that wants desperately to be told, to be released from the hidden--locked-- storage--I can't find the key-- even though it knows that the truth it contains will destroy everything it loves, everything it stands for, everything it worships as it stands godlike before me, waiting for me to find the answer inside myself, to ask the questions I need to ask--it wants to know the truth--before I can open it and let it go, release it into a world that doesn't know it exists, a world where it and everything it belongs too are forgotten, buried in sand that trickles down the river, from a lake that I remember from long ago, a time I'd like to forget, but keeps pushing past the sand, keeping the encroaching land at bay, even though I beg for sanity to take hold and keep away the nothingness, the cold, the despair, the ever growing darkness that slowly takes over, absorbs all reality until all is indiscernible, all exists within the same shade, hue, tonality of darkness-- I want to light a candle to see what will happen, but I'm too afraid--but it's so unreal, so unlikely that I can't bear to let it take over me, so I shut my eyes to darkness and create a blindness that achieves the same, but doesn't, but at the same time, I'm still alone in a darkness where he can't find me, where He will leave me, where he cannot follow for he knows the truth, he knows what I plan to release, the secret I plan to share but he is not afraid, he wants the world to know so much that the passion burns within him--I feed off the warmth--as the bearer of light, the holder of the truth is pushed away by the unreality where nothing but me and my fears exist, where I'm afraid to go and afraid to leave, where I think that I am safe, and know that as soon as I let go, I'll be lost, and the sand will be swept away by the wind, a wind replaced by the rain that devours any remnants, which will then be replaced by the growth of trees, of new life that knows nothing of what held that sacred place before it, and will always be oblivious to the past, focusing rather on a future that I will not be a part of, not while I am buried beneath the sand, digging, hopelessly, for a way out, even though I know that I will never get out, that I am stuck here forever, separated from the one I love, the one's who love me, for I don't believe that I have room left in my heart to love after having lost it so many times, to the ones who would steal it from me to keep us apart, to keep my secret from being told, because they too know the truth--only he does not--only they are more afraid then I am, they are so afraid of being wrong that they refuse to see, that they refuse to let it take control of them so that they can become its servants, even though it would give them all that they want--we are so alike, me and them, we want the same thing, we are afraid of the same thing, we even dig for the same reason, yet, they too are being buried by the sand, though they don't know that they cannot succeed, that they will be covered up to the point that their existence is meaningless, just as the existence of every person will be meaningless, except for him which is why he doesn't know the truth, because he doesn't need to, he lives on without it, continuing without knowing that the rest of us are suffocating below him--we live on only in his memories, I'm afraid he's burying his memories with me, as he lays me down to sleep for the last time, letting go of me despite how much he loves me, because he doesn't know that as soon as I vanish from his memories, as soon as the last remnants of my existence are swept away, it will be as I never existed, just as we will never exist, just as she and he will never exist because of this--my children--they too will never exist because he's too afraid, the nothingness is threatening his peace of mind, his future is clouded by the thunder that rolls over him, raining down on his thoughts until they too are muddied by the all encompassing mix of everything that leaves the rest of us blind, but leaves him hopelessly staring into the brilliance of the falling leaves, each one symbolizing a you, a me, and each one crumbling to nothing at the touch of his fingers, the addicting touch that I can't have enough of, despite that it's killing me, I'm dying now--taking away my life, and poisoning my mind so that I believe I am more alive than I've ever been before--he doesn't know what he does to me--and I'm not going to tell him, because it's too much, to see him in pain, especially when I'm the one whose loosing control, not him, no, he is in control, he can stop this, but he doesn't know, he's oblivious to the fact that he's killing me, killing us, killing any chance of a future together, all of us, because he loves me, too much, and I love him, not enough.

End of Chapter Seven


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Chapter Eight

The fear took over me; I was so afraid that we would be caught, that this would be the end, that I don't think I thought of anything else. We were together, the one thing I had wished so desperately for, and I didn't know what to do with myself. Half the time I wanted nothing more than to get close to him, and the other half I spent lying awake, my head on his arm as he slept peacefully, afraid that if I let my eyes close, I'd open them to find myself alone again.

Lestrange was gone; I didn't see him again, and I nearly forgot about his existence. His last visitation had left me with scars deeper than those I hid from him, and although I was content to lose control to him, when my mind took over, I could feel Lestrange instead of him, feel invisible blows until he covered them up, and pushed my fears away. I couldn't tell him about Lestrange, I couldn't let him know that I had been so weak, but secretly, I had a feeling that he knew.

The Dark Lord also left me alone, pretending as though our rendezvous had never happened, and that our relationship was as it should be. I was thankful for that; he knew that I was happy again, or at least as close to happy as he had seen me. Inside, I was as broken as I had been when he found me. I had been pieced together many times since then, but I was broken time after time, each time losing another part of myself to the darkness.

I had gone through this before. My life was making sense again, and it would for the time being. I knew the pattern. I would come together again, believe that it would last like this forever, and then it would all fall apart. I hoped that it wouldn't be this way, but somehow I knew. I wasn't able to keep it together, not even when I was with him.

It took me a while but I began to notice the change in him. While he pretended to be happy with me, pretended that he was in control of everything, I knew that wasn't true. He was sad, depressed, as though a part of him had died. I wanted to bring that part back to him, but he wouldn't let me close enough to feel his scars, and as I wouldn't let him feel mine, I suppose that it was fair.

The darkness that I had seen in him before had grown, as had his power, but that didn't seem to matter to me at that moment. I cared about his existence, about how he was, not about his power. I had left the darkness behind, not for the light, but for the warmth of his love, for the closeness of another person, for someone to stay with.

When my morality finally took control over my mind, I knew that I had to know the truth, had to know what had happened, why he was so changed. I went to ask him; he had left me earlier that morning, he never said why. I hunted him down, found him, and at the same time I found the truth.

He was with the Dark Lord, which I found strange, as He rarely left our location, not at this time of day, and not in this place. We were exposed, and all three of us felt it; I could see the same tenseness in their postures that I felt when I tried to breathe only to find that I'd been holding my breath.

"I did as you asked," he said, not bowing to the Dark Lord, but looking him deep in the eyes I had fallen in love with what seemed like years ago. "Now, can we be at peace? I was gone far too long."

"Yes, you were. I didn't think that you'd take this long." The Dark Lord's voice was smooth, calm, but there was a note of not control but of fear in it. I was shocked, but I couldn't move. There was no spell on me, I could feel that, but my own will was holding me down.

"It was more difficult than I'd imagined." He sighed and, hanging his head, turned his back on the Dark Lord. "It was far more difficult than I'd thought. I nearly lost control, I nearly failed. She was the only thing that kept me going, and now that I have her again, I'm going to lose her."

"I promised this was it, didn't I? You two can be together after this." I wanted to scream, but I still couldn't move. I was surprised the Dark Lord didn't notice my presence, but only thought his ignorance meant something else.

"No, we can't." He turned around again, and I could see tears in his eyes, though he'd never let them fall. "They're after me; they don't know that I did it, but they're searching like mad. I heard the truth, which was the easy part. You told me to follow through with it, and I did that within the month. I didn't think they'd find out so easily; they're sharp. Even... They are too good for me when they're all together. I'm going to get caught; it's just a matter of time."

"Evans." The Dark Lord heard the start in his voice, but rather than laughing as he would have done with any other man, he shook his head, and put a hand on his shoulder. "She knows, doesn't she? She knows we're after her. You couldn't hide it in your eyes. Despite how far away that life is from you, a part of it still tortures you. You're with the one you love, but you can't forget the past, can you."

"I want to! I want to forget it! For her!" He was shouting, and the tears were falling freely now. "I had a future! And now, it's gone. I'm going to die, and she's going to fall apart all over again." He sighed, and though the Dark Lord tried to speak, he put his hand up, and He fell silent. "Protect her for me, will you? Don't let Lestrange near her again."

"Of course."

"You didn't let that happen. I understand."

At this point, when I thought that I was going to lose him forever, that my life was going to fall apart again, I found my control again. I found myself running, and as soon as he was in my arms, I found my voice too.

"No, you--you can't let this happen. He's--he's staying right here! I said he's--"

"I know, I know." The Dark Lord's hand was cold on my shoulder, and although it brought a spark to my heart, it reminded me of Lestrange in a way that drove the warmth out of my body. I was shivering on the warm summer's night. I felt his arms around me, and clung to them because they were the only thing keeping me alive. "We are not going to let him die, I promise that. However, we can't simply let this go; they're going to hunt him and the longer the search the closer they get to us."

"Then we'll go away, we'll--we'll go where they'll never find us! Like we always wanted to!"

"No, Bella." I felt his lips touch my forehead, and all chance of speaking back was gone. "We can't disappear, not this time. We're needed; we have to fight if we're going to have any chance at a future."

"Then, then--," a horrible thought entered my head. Horrible not because of the fear, or because of how gruesome it was. But because it was so delightful despite all of that. "Then, I'll go for you. I'll take the blame."

"No!" They both shouted at me, begging me not to do this, but for once I ignored them both, because I knew that I was finally doing something right with my life.

"I'll take the blame, and that will leave you to finish up. You have more to do with your life--"

"So do you!"

"No," I said, wiping a tear from my eye, and pulling him closer. "My life is meaningless if you're dead. If you're captured, they'll kill you. You've done too much, your value is too great. I have no record. It'll be a first time offense. They can't kill me for that."

"But..."

"We'll be able to be together afterwards, you see! We can both do something for the cause. I'll do what you cannot."

"Bella." This time it was the Dark Lord, and although I was so set on this horrible future, I somehow had to stop and think when he spoke. "The charge will be enough for them to kill you. But only if you take it alone; with another, it'll look as though you're weak enough to need help. You won't be as much of a threat."

"The only ones I'd want to share this with are you two and neither of you will ever set foot in Azkaban! I can promise that." I wanted to tell them that I'd rather take it alone, rather face death than be forced to watch either of them die, but I couldn't push past his reason.

"Then there's only one other--"

"No!" he shouted. "Not him! You know what he did to her."

"It would make the most sense." Like me, he wasn't able to push past the Dark Lord's reason. His voice held more power than we did combined in all our strength. It was awing and fearsome, and I think that was the only reason we listened to him. "They work together, as a couple; people would expect that from a husband and a wife."

We stood in silence for a while. I was treasuring this last moment where we were together, where the greatest three were gathered for the last time. I knew I'd never feel this safe ever again.

"Bella," he whispered, his mouth pressed against my ear. "I don't know how to repay you. I'd give you my life--"

"And I'd never accept it." He smiled, and kissed me lightly. I wish we could have stayed there, pressed together, for longer, forever perhaps. "Just promise me one thing."

"Anything," he replied, following his sweet voice with another kiss on my neck. When I think hard enough, I can still feel his lips on my skin, my body remembering the feeling as though it knew it would go without it for so long.

"Come back for me. Don't leave me there."

"I'd never leave you there; you don't belong there." He kissed me again and this time, as I turned to face him, I felt his arms encircle me, pressing me closer, and I knew that he was trying to preserve the feeling as much as I was. We knew we wouldn't have another chance like this for, perhaps, forever.

End of Chapter Eight

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Chapter Nine

We said goodbye that night. There were no words between us, no final apologies. It was a simple farewell that has so permanently ingrained itself into my memory that every time I close my eyes, I can return to that moment and enjoy its simplicity completely. I took that moment to memorize his perfection and take in every facet of his being so that I had something to keep me company while I waited for him. I didn't want my memories of him to fade, ever, so I locked them away, not as a happy memory the Dementors could destroy, but a simple memory that to anyone else would be no simpler than a generic day.

When it was over, I took one last moment to look into his eyes and preserve their perfection, their beauty, and, in essence, his soul that, at that moment, I felt he had completely dedicated to me. The color was so calm, not the piercing that I had experienced in his anger so often before, but a shade that told me he was content with the world, and despite everything, he still loved me. Even though there was so much else in my world, so many things I needed to worry about, right then, I cared about absolutely nothing else because I knew he'd come for me.

It was with a swift kiss and a whisper in my ear that it all ended. I felt his hands let go of mine, his body disentangle itself from mine, and then nothing else. I didn't even feel the ground as it rose up to meet me; nor did I see the swish of his black cloak as he fled into the trees because in my mind, I was still there with him, and there was nothing else.

How long I stayed in that place I cannot say. When I finally returned, or perhaps it would be better to say, left that place and came to this reality, there was nothing to remind me of his presence save what was in my head. For years, my mind became an ironic safe house.

I began life again, a different life it felt, because it was strange and belonged in no way to me. I went about my way, as did every one else, rarely aware of their looks and glances and performing my duties as the loyal daughter. I don't even think I missed the usual special treatment I had been so used to in my former life, but then again, I don't think I noticed much of anything for a long time.

It was only when it was over, when my only salvation was defeated, that I noticed any change in my life. His disappearance was a shock. How could it not have been; yet it didn't defeat me, didn't cripple me like it should have. I simply followed orders, orders that I feel now were given known fully in his future demise.

I found Lestrange, who had acquired his accomplices in hopes of alleviating the punishment on us, or perhaps in hopes of dooming me and him to suffer in company that wouldn't object to our awkward relationship. We turned ourselves in, or rather, allowed ourselves to be caught. They never would have found us otherwise.

From then on, my memory begins to fade, blocking out not the horrific moments, but those that mattered not to me because they did not concern me. They concerned a fictional character I had created and allowed myself to portray; one who attacked and tortured because it was what she loved to do, because she was crazed, and because there was some horrifying darkness that compelled her to do so within her soul. She was not me and I was not her, and I never allowed myself to confuse the two.

The few moments I do remember were those when the men I loved were questioned, ridiculed, and dismissed as unimportant. I believe they reacted wrongly to my outbursts, my rage at their insults, but I could not defend myself because I was not myself. I was her.

When they declared my sentence, I heard only the shouts of those around me condemning me for a crime that was not my own. But I didn't have to fight to control myself because I justified my actions in my love for him. My shouts and anger were those of the woman I had created. The reactions they so vehemently described were those of a woman I despised to the very fiber of my being because she was everything I was not. It was only when they took me out of that room and dragged me to the cell which I would call home for years to come that I took off the mask, allowed myself to be me, and cried for him. My only joy and fear was that I was now alone and completely dependent. I sat down, huddled in the darkness, and tuned out the screams I would soon mock, enjoy, and then make my own; and I waited…for him, for love.

End of Chapter Nine

End of Book One

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Book Two: Imprisoned

Chapter One

Despite the horror surrounding me, I continued to exist. I did not live, for in no way was I alive. I simply existed as does a wolf in a forest that is not its home, yet it finds what it needs to survive, and thus it stays. It is not where it wants to be, nor where it belongs, but it still exists because it has a purpose somewhere else.

It was that purpose that kept me from going insane, from loosing all traces of humanity like those around me did. I saw Lestrange fall into madness, saw those I had condemned to this fate fall down and die around me, but I felt nothing. I created a void within myself to block out all emotion, to destroy it before it ever had a chance of taking over me; in essence, I was afraid to be afraid, because then I would loose control.

It began as any other disease. At first, he would beg for food, beg for what he had taken for granted in his other life. Then, he would eat nothing, surviving on the stale air around us, because he had given up on all hope.

What began as simple mutterings of a rich man thrown into a poor house with no possible escape, turned into the ravings of the same man who now saw richness where it did not exist. It ended with screams that were unjustified, screams that bore no resemblance to anything before or after, because they were screams that did not belong to him. It was as if he had lost his soul and a tortured being had entered his body. He screamed at invisible pains, then cried out names that meant nothing to him.

When he had completely lost himself to this other being, when I could no longer see the man I once knew inside of him, the disease left his wretched body behind. There was no soul left in this man, no semblance of what he had once been. The hollow shell remained bearing the marks of a disease that consumed all of those around me, yet never infected the smallest traces of my being. While his corpse, still breathing and beating, existed beside me, in my mind I destroyed it as the disease had destroyed his soul. He no longer existed; Lestrange had died.

That was the only way I kept myself. I refused to loose control and let the horrors of the place take over me. I entered expecting nothing, and was therefore not disappointed at the lack of luxury surrounding me. When I heard the screams, I told myself that they were the screams of the weak, those who could not control themselves; I made myself believe that I was stronger than them, so that I would not fall prey to their insanity. In my mind, I was surrounded by weaker beings, and while I looked as degraded as those around me, I knew I was stronger than all of them.

My skin wasted before my eyes, my hair growing long, even the color of my eyes seemed to fade as though the lack of exposure to light was dulling my sight. The rest of my senses seemed to fade as well, like my sense of touch, which diminished as I lost feeling of my body, replacing it with a numbness that consumed me. It felt more comfortable to be numb than to be exposed to the emotions surrounding me, lest they affect me and make me weak.

My hearing also faded, until I could no longer hear the screams around me, until there was only a light humming in my ears, penetrated now and then by a harsh new sound that I quickly diluted into something softer for my faded world. Similarly, I also could no longer smell or taste the world around me, for it had become a neutral place, tasting and smelling like the gray pallor of the walls.

It was only my sight that seemed to stay, but that was perhaps because there was never a single transparency to the colors; they changed as the people around me did. Each new addition would bring something bright and vivid from the outside would, and I would take it in visually, remind myself that such colors could exist in the world. Then, as they faded towards death, the colors would fade until they were like everything else around me. Once they passed away, or faded into insanity, they were replaced by a new being that brought new colors to my eyes, and each time it was like I had never seen color before. I was so captured by the variance, that I consumed myself in the newness.

It kept me sane to remember the outside world existed, even if I would not allow myself to remember any aspect beyond one individual. I wanted my world to exist primarily of him, so that when I left the prison, and secluded myself in my own little world, there would be nothing except for me and him. The rest of the place didn't matter, because we would only be together someplace besides here, and that thought, that he would never set foot in here, allowed me to keep the location of our place a mystery to myself.

As my memories began to slip away from me, I knew that there was little I could do to hold on to them all, for my willpower was beginning to fade. So I let them go, concentrating on the ones I wanted to keep, and forgetting those that didn't matter. I fought each night to keep my memories of him, to preserve them forever so I didn't have to lose him again. It was only later, when my mind was allowed to rest, that these memories have flooded back to me, though there are gaps I feel will never be filled in.

This was how my experience was, in prison. Most of it was generalized; serving as one long memory to the point it exists as one very long day. It is those few days that stand out, that separate themselves from the rest, that formed new memories, pushing out the old ones, and clinging on, refusing to let go. They haunt me, and yet also remind me that I was strong, and that I also refused to let go of myself, to lose control.

End of Chapter One

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Chapter Two

The first night, or rather moment, that stood apart from the others was the death of the child. No, he wasn't a child, for there was no youthful innocence left in his being, no trace of a child; in my mind I saw him as a demon because there was no other way I could explain what he was. His hatred of his father, his love for causing unjustified pain, and above all else, the anger burning in him. I could feel the fire radiating off his being but rather than lap in the luxury of such warmth, I shuddered and pushed it away. It wasn't fear, for I could no longer feel such emotion, but rather disgust at what he was that repulsed me.

During the first night we spent in captivity, unlike the others who screamed in fear and pain, he screamed in anger and frustration, venting at any being that crossed his way. While the others cowered in the corners, he beat against the bars, vowing punishment on those who dared lock him away. Most of all, though, he cursed his father’s name, and while I had despised my father on many levels, I found his hatred insulting.

At our trial, where I masked my identity in another woman, I was able to notice his behavior. My disgust was portrayed in snarls and incoherent shouts the press categorized as the behavior of the insane. I didn't care. He knew what I thought of him, and in that moment that was all that mattered.

As time progressed, he too was infected with the disease. His screams of pain were horrifying, not because he infused them with his own anger, but because they showed the lack of child within him. He was stripped away to the core of his being, and there was nothing there but a burning fire that lacked any source of ignition. When he cried out, his shouts were guttural, as though he had been broken down to the basic parts of his being.

When the disease was finished with him, as it finished with all men, it left a wretched being behind who had changed beyond recognition. The soul-less creature who had entered was now a statue, never moving, barely breathing, but still alive. He seemed more alive than when he had entered, as though he had been taught some lesson and had changed his ways, but his body unable to handle life without the fire had collapsed and refused to move.

He sat there, staring into nothingness, for days on end. The only movement he ever made was when his parents came to say goodbye, and he breathed for the first time in weeks. Even after they left, he continued to breathe as though their presence served as a drug with an aftereffect he couldn't control, but soon stopped again, his body resuming its statuesque composure.

He died shortly afterwards. It wasn't dramatic, or noticeable. They simply came in and took him away with the rest of the dead.

While his death had been quiet and overlooked, his time in prison had left a profound reminder of his presence. The corner he'd occupied, where he'd sat staring into the nothingness, remained empty. Though there was no noticeable difference, it felt wrong to breathe the air that'd sat around him, to touch the stones his rigid frame had leaned against in his final days.

I'd hated it, but after he'd died, I found that there was a hole within myself that his anger and hatred had somehow filled. That chasm was left empty, and though I tried to fill it with the numbing water, the soil kept sucking it dry leaving a bigger hole. I was no longer able to fall into the faded world I had created, and like an addict thrown into the world without the pills, I found myself in the vibrant world without a way back.

The search began calmly like a search for lost keys in the dark, or misplaced papers on a crowded desk. While the world around me had been bare at first, I began to notice its nuances, the slight cracks and the dents in the bars, any sign of weakness in the demon that held me captive. I looked for a way out, to escape from the colors, the sounds, even the smells. My brain couldn't handle the variances, but it refused to collapse in on itself.

An old woman joined us, dying not from the disease around us, but from some foreign contaminant that I envied and prayed would infect me as well. I begged her for her illness, that she would ease her own burden and allow someone else to understand her pain. But even in her faded senses, she could tell why I wanted it, and she refused.

When she died, I raided her body, looking for anything that could allow me to pass as quietly as she had. All I found was a bloodied sewing needle and a bag of powder that smelled foul yet calmed my crazed mind. It didn't take me long to figure out how she'd endured the pain of her disease, and once I'd felt the drug burning through my system, slowly devouring all feeling and sensation like fire--painful, then calming as there was nothing left to feel-- I was addicted.

My faded world wasn't returned to me, but I had found another world that created a similar affect my brain could manage. The allover numbness was uncomfortable, as were the sensations when the fire cooled off leaving burnt, tingling skin behind, but I was too desperate for the numbness that I forgave all the negatives of my high.

Had I been able to notice the world around me, I would have seen other prisoners clinging to my arms, begging that I share my secret with them, but I simply clutched my hands around my tools, and refused to let go.

It didn't take long before my body created an immunity to the drug, and although I could no longer feel it burning through my veins, overtaking my senses, I continued to push it into my system in hope that I'd find some remnant of its power in the overdose. When I was out of powder, I searched for something else to feed my craving, not caring if it was the same effect, or if it was slowly eating away at my insides. There was nothing, but I was still so desperate that I began to look elsewhere to find another faded world.

In my search I began to notice the cell around me, the facets that distinguished it from the gray pallor I had once seen. Blood covered everything; drawn into designs on the walls with fingers, streaked across the floor with hands, splattered against the bars from the crazed minds reaching for their beloveds. While there was no noticable light source, the cell was never dark. Day and night existed in the same grayness, as did summer and winter. Time seemed to have no power here; it was as insignificant as the other trifles of the outside world.

Those around me had either given up the will to live, and were curled up waiting for the end, or were fighting desperately to hold onto what remained of their humanity. Their features were faded making no individual distinguishable from the rest. The skin was gray like the walls around us, the lips faded making us look less alive than the dead with their blue lips and flushed skin. The eyes were like those of the blind, faded but still retaining a hint of their former color, and it was the same with the hair that had grown long since it had been cut away when we'd entered.

Though food had not touched our lips since our arrival, no one starved to death. Had food been presented before us, it was doubtful that any would touch, or even taste it, for that was not what our bodies craved. All were thin, skin and bone, and looked easily breakable, but we somehow survived, continuing our wretched existence even if we begged for it to end.

What we craved, what sustained our existence was the search to end it. There was no physical pain, only what the disease created in our minds, but we feared infection to the point we'd rather die than suffer like that. To be so close to death, yet have it unattainable was the pain we suffered. We knew that we'd never be alive again, not like we'd been before, so we dedicated our time to finding another way out.

It was this search I now found myself obsessed with. At first I'd attempted to cover myself in a blanket and keep this world out, but I was now immersed in too deep, and rather than drown into the ocean of my mind, I fought to stay afloat where the remnants of the outside world were real, and the possibility of having an eternity of peace was too wonderful to resist. Although I'd condemned this search at first, that was because I'd held on to the idea that we would be reunited someday. Now that I realized that was no longer a possibility, I devoted myself to the search because, someday, we'd be reunited for an eternity together.

The nuances I'd noticed in my search for another drug I re-investigated in my new search, attempting to create 'the tool', our own Holy Grail. The crumbling walls provided the materials I needed, both the forge, the hammer, and the coveted instrument. My lack of skill proved insignificant because in my desperation I worked constantly, stopping only if the guards ventured too close.

Once I'd actually created 'the tool', I was so cautious to actually use it that I could only sit and stare at it, wondering if this would bring about the end, or merely cause pain. When I felt the clammy hands of the others, grappling for 'the tool', I overcame my caution, and plunged it into my chest.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of pain; the only sensation I had was the feeling of blood covering my body, cold. I was so shocked by this, that I couldn't move, not even to look at the damage I'd caused. It'd been so long since I'd felt warm or cold that I was unsure if it was real.

The pain slowly began to catch up with me as though the drugs I pushed into my system had made my reactions slow. When it finally hit, it was like I'd been thrown into a wall that pushed the rock deeper into my chest. I heard myself cry out, felt my hands reaching for 'the tool', pushing past the others who were stretching for what I'd accomplished. The feeling of the cool rock in my hand, covered in blood, calmed my mind, and I stopped my screaming. I'd done it, I told myself. Taking 'the tool' in my hand, I pulled it out of my body.

Hands reached for it, and I let them take it, knowing I'd hear their screams in moments as they realized what they'd done. I sat there, drowning out their cries, seeing only a single face, hearing only a single voice, feeling only a single pair of hands wrap themselves around me, and take me home. It was over. I was at peace.

End of Chapter Two


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Chapter Three

I remember the first thought I had once my consciousness took control over the darkness. "This is wrong," I told myself. I tried to reach for the blanket covering my eyes, to pull it away so I could see whose hands were touching me. I could feel their fingertips running down my arm, cold, like water; I had been expecting a different touch. My arms wouldn't move. Though I could feel no restraints holding me down, I could not move any part of my body. I was frozen, and afraid.

The hands left my arms, and went to my face, the fingers touching my eyes as though to coax them open or to wipe away my tears. Every time they touched me, my mind raced, trying desperately to pull myself away. I soon gave up all attempts at movement, trying instead to block out the feeling, to concentrate on the touch I'd been waiting for.

His warmth burned away the cold, turning the water to steam that evaporated until I could no longer remember their presence. He was all that mattered; he and I existed together in the same place, somewhere that belonged to us alone so that we would never have to be apart again. I focused on his hands wrapping around me, encompassing me in a blanket of warmth and comfort. I'd gone so long without feeling that every fingertip, every movement sent sparks tingling across my body.

I lay there, wrapped in his arms for what seemed like forever and yet a single second at the same time. I was so afraid that he'd leave me to spend an eternity alone, with those cold hands, that I could hardly appreciate the moment for what it was. My greatest fear was that I'd open my eyes to be back in the cell, alone, with only a scar to prove this moment happened.

When he finally spoke, the words meant nothing to me. The sound of his voice was enough to send me overboard; my breathing was loud, my heart racing, even my skin was on edge. The shock waves that rippled through me caused my paralyzed body to twitch, reaching, grasping for more. The melodic sound was more beautiful than my mind had preserved, more alive than anything I'd heard in prison. I had become so used to the dull, gray, neutral setting that his vibrancy was alarming, addictive. Once my mind had accustomed to the sensations, it began to focus on preserving this moment so that, in case I did wake up, I would be able to close my eyes and remember why the search was so important.

As he stopped speaking, his arms wrapping around me tighter, his lips pressed against my neck, I knew suddenly that he was saying goodbye. I didn't know what it meant, if he was gone and I was not allowed to follow, or if we were not to spend eternity in the same place. My only care was that it was wrong, and there was nothing I could do about it.

Tears poured from my eyes, and I felt the sudden deep desire to hold him, to tell him what he meant to me, to explain why I'd done it, to promise him I'd wait, but I couldn't. It hurt so bad to be weak, to be unable to say goodbye. I wanted him so badly, even just a little taste to preserve in my mind while I waited, but fate seemed more determined than before to keep us apart. He kissed me on the lips, then let go, his warm hands guiding my head back down to sleep. He was gone.

When my eyes actually opened, I barely had time to register my surroundings before the pain hit. I could feel everything, the ground below me hard, the stale air inhibiting my panicked breathing, the pressure of the world like needles in my chest. Biting my lip so I wouldn't scream, I tried to calm my breathing and my heart, which was pounding loudly in my ears.

I slowly opened my eyes again, ignoring the searing pain as my eyes adjusted to the light. I knew at once that I'd failed, and the disappointment hurt more than the physical pain. The gray walls of the cell surrounded me, the light fading as my eyes adjusted to the neutral color I had adapted to. The only changes were the overwhelming smell of blood, and the pain in my chest that I'd been unprepared for.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw one of my companions slide back to their corner of the cell, probably after noticing that I was alive. They didn't show concern over my state; they'd been waiting for me to die to steal any more secrets I had hidden on my person.

I lay there, staring into the nothingness for a while, my mind trying to go back to where I'd been, with him. My memory was already failing me, preserving only fractions and moments of the experience. I could feel his hands on me, but they didn't consume me in warmth. I could hear his words in my ears, but they didn't make my entire body spasm in relief. And in my attempt to preserve those sensations, I'd lost so much else of my memories that I could hardly remember the world outside of him. My life consisted of him and this prison, nothing else.

When I found the strength to sit, I pushed myself into my corner, each breath ragged as I tried to control the screams that were edging to escape. The scent of blood I'd smelled before, I now noticed was emanating from me, for I was covered in it. It had poured out of the wound in my chest, which was now a gaping hole much like the one I'd envisioned in myself long before. It had not healed, but as if it'd bled all the blood in my body, it stood there now useless except to remind me of the consequences of my search.

I knew that I shouldn't be alive; according to all reason, I should be dead, but something was determined to prevent that. Whether it was this place, or the cruel hand of fate that never turned the roulette my way, I could not say. All I knew was that I was not in complete control, and I hated it.

Left with nothing but the pain, I took a long time thinking about the search, about how important it was to me, and if I was willing to risk the pain again. While I'd failed, in my failure I'd come to understand that there was some power that was determined to prevent us being together.

If this action had been justifiable before, it was now all but certain that this was the path I must take. I was now more desperate than ever to be with him, to have our eternity together that I would fight against fate, destiny, and whatever invisible bonds that held me in this cell. I knew that he would disapprove of me taking my own life, but my existence was so far from life that I felt he'd understand my pain, and allow me to find peace in this dark alley.

I began the search again, looking past the obvious, looking for something I'd be able to keep secret, that would guarantee the end. My devotion had never been this great to a single cause before, not even as a Death Eater, for I'd been devoted to the men I loved, not their cause.

Power was no longer so significant to me, even though mine hadn't slipped away in the nothingness. Perhaps it was because I held so little interest in keeping it that the Dementors hadn't been able to steal it away; I had no fear of loosing it, and it brought little more than sad memoirs to my mind.

The search changed me beyond recognition. I no longer knew myself, or the woman I'd been before. I wanted so badly to end it that I didn't need to know whose body was serving as my vessel that I would bend and break to find a weakness. I was disjointed from who I was, existing inside each moment, refusing to look beyond the search. If I hadn't been so separate from the world, I might never have succeeded.

End of Chapter Three

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Chapter Four

Seeing him--a blank face and a familiar darkness to his eyes-- caused a sudden jolt in my heart that I hadn't felt since we'd parted. In that moment, if it had been possible for me to die, I would have. Instead, the curse I was imprisoned in prevented me from combusting, or even from self-destruction.

I felt stretched, pulled at every seam to the point I wished that I would be splintered into a million pieces. A fire sparked to life, it's source unknown, starting in my chest, and growing until I was its center, seeing the world through the flames. My twisted view through slowly melting eyes were focused on him, trying to preserve him again incase it was a dream. I remain unsure if it was reality, or a mirage caused by a desperate longing.

As entranced with his presence as I was, in some part of my mind I knew from the stiffness of his walk and the way his hands were clenched into fists, that he was struggling to hide how much he hated being there. I also knew, more consciously than the former, that the deliberate way his eyes didn't meet with mine was because he too knew that his emotions would take control. Whether that was out of fear, or because he didn't want to expose us, I never knew.

Because fate was determined to make me suffer, they stopped right outside my cell door, the others positioning themselves in just a way that he was directly in my line of sight. I tried to close my eyes--to take away his temptation--but my need to see him, to preserve him was far greater. As long as I didn't look at his face, I was able to maintain a relatively calm composure.

Eons passed where my single focus was memorizing every facet of his being, imaging his skin beneath his robes, fantasizing his long fingers gracing across my skin. I could barely feel the other memories fading from me, slipping away while I was distracted. It was only when my mind reached its limit, and both my conscious and subconscious contained only thoughts of him, that I realized what I had done.

At that moment, the world seemed to vanish. Not only was I blind, but the light sounds of their speaking I had disregarded left the world, creating a still and silent atmosphere around me. While there was no ground beneath me, and no air around me, a feeling of stillness and nothingness was evident. I tried to make a sound, to scream out to what I had lost; calling back my memories could in some way bring the rest of the world back to me, I thought.

As sounds began to once again filter into my world, they were harsh, guttural, and wordless sounds. They came from no individual, and also not from a collective either. They were simply sounds, registering in my overflowing mind as humanoid. If they were my shouts returned to me, or a reply to my cries, I was unable to determine which.

Something cold pressed against my arm--the first sensation of temperature in my new memories--but I couldn't move away. As the cold began to flow through my body, the shock, and confusion took over me. The newness of the feeling was amazing, but as soon as I began to absorb this into my being, the memories I had just lost the world for began to fall away. The world began to come back, each new sensation bright, alarming, new.

My sense of touch, and smell were the first to come back to me. The putrid smells I had grown used to were now potent and overpowering, and the ground before me was hard, uneven. Something sharp was digging into my spine. Next was my hearing, which too was loud as though the world was shouting in my ears. The words, as I supposed them to be, were nonsense. Finally, my sight was restored, and while I supposed my speech as well, I was in such shock that I didn't bother to find out.

Determined to maintain some of the memories I was still loosing, I stopped the world at that point. I knew I'd have to find another way to bring them back to me, but at risk of loosing the world again, I thought better of expelling these new sensations at once. Lying there, feeling the world around me, I had an instantaneous sensation that, in this world of the living, I was more dead than those around me.

I was not breathing, and while I hadn't really breathed since we'd parted, this was the first time I noticed it. The grayness of the world around me seemed vibrant, the slashes of red staining the walls providing such a contrast, I had to close my eyes. The world refused to blur, to fade, to become that nothingness. I didn't think of it until afterwards, but being alone in the complete still nothingness, I had been calm, and suprisingly emotionless.

The cold touched my arm again, but this time I was able to attribute it to something besides a temperature. A hand was touching me, gripping my arm in a fierceness I was half afraid I might recognize. Determined to keep this hand disconnected from a particular being, I kept my eyes closed, trying to pull away from the stronger grasp. Another hand, belonging to the same being, pressed against my cheek, and while my determination was fighting to keep the hand like ice, my longing subconscious turned the cold to fire.

Somehow I kept myself from crying--I do not know how--and even stranger, I was able to keep my eyes closed, and my composure rigid. Had I lost this self control, our secret would have been ruined, and all his attempts at hiding himself would have been worthless. There were background voices, still speaking in a foreign language, but the voice closest to me was speaking in such a way that I could have sworn I was the only listener.

"She's alive, somehow. I'm supressed she held on that long; she hardly made a sound. If the other prisoners hadn't made such a fuss, she might have died."

There was a babble of sound behind us, and the hand took a tighter grip on my arm. "And you want to waste time dealing with a death? I thought you said we were on a tight schedule--"

"That's not what I meant," he said between their interrupting sounds. "If I may, I'd like to stay here; make sure she doesn't die, you know. You have more pressing matters, sir."

No other sound penetrated my thoughts from then on. The fact that he was there, that he would stay there, that we were to be alone; if my heart had been beating, it most certainly would have stopped then and there. Possibly forever. My hand involuntarily twitched in excitement, followed by a gasp of another being trying to hold back the emotion. Time passed, an uncalculatable amount, before either dared move again. Though my eyes remained closed, I felt when his eyes looked away from their retreating backs, and to my face. A light was radiating from his eyes, piercing my lids, passing through my eyes into my brain; blinding all other thoughts.

"It's ok," he said, his voice penetrating the light. "They're gone. You can open your eyes now.

The sole thought that somehow managed to worm its way past his magical presence was 'you don't belong here.' I wanted so desperately then to keep my eyes shut so that I could imagine us somewhere else. My body, however, working according to his command, disagreed. Contrasting the light his eyes were making in my mind, the actual world was dark, and my unfocused eyes struggled to clear the blur.

"Bella..." He was trying to repress the worry he felt, hold back the deep desire to run his hands all over me, ignore the rapid beating of his heart. I knew this not because I had to contain myself similarily, but because his eyes betrayed him. They told me everything: how he'd nearly died seeing me in pain, how even in this semi-life form the dead looked more alive, and more importantly how his mind was running through plans of how to get me out without betraying our facade.

"Bella, can you hear me? Bella, listen to me. I only have a few minutes before they return; I doubt the Minister trusts me as well as he says he does. What I have to tell you--"

I shook my head, put my hand on his. I didn't want to waste time talking; I needed him, his perfection, his body. I needed it inside of me, to consume me as it had before. I wasn't afraid this time, not if I could preserve my favorite part. In short, I wanted him to kill me.

"Please." Barely audible, or even recognizable, my voice had nearly vanished from lack of use. It hurt to speak, but looking in his eyes, I knew that it wasn't necessary. He looked at me, shocked at first, and then a weak smile formed on his face; preserving that favorite smile took away earlier memories--my childhood.

He leaned forwards and kissed me; my family flashed, and then was gone as though it'd never been. His body pressed against mine--Lestrange--his breath on my neck--the devil child--his hand on my chest--'the tool'. Piece by piece my memories began to slip away until there was nothing left. The world began to vanish, taking everything until there was only us. Where no longer mattered, nor did when. Everything but the present was ripped away, his eyes burning away the fear, the sadness, the hope, all the emotions I'd been holding back. The knowledge that I was going to die then no longer mattered. I'd done it.

While the search had mattered so much while I was imprisoned, finally accomplishing the sought-after goal made it more worth the effort than when I'd been "alive". The power of love, so shunned by the Dark Lord, was now apparent. In itself it was more appealing than all the magic in the world.

At some point I died, but the change was so subtle, so minute that I didn't realize it. There had never been anything as wonderful as that moment, lasting forever, creating emotions I hadn't been capable of feeling in years. I began to understand time again, but it was so irrelevant, I quickly disregarded it. The only aspect that mattered now was the concept of forever.

End of Chapter Four

End of Book Two

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Book Three: Reborn

Chapter One

It's found me, it's back. The darkness is now in control, absorbing into every fiber of my body and distroying the remnants of me. I no longer exist. I am in every way dead, trapped by the nothingness. I can't move, I can't feel, even as a being I have this consuming nothingness pressing down on my skull, obliterating all senses and feelings.

He was ripped away from me, sucked into darkness and eaten alive; his screams, his pain caused me to cry to the first time in years. The levees of my eyes that had been holding back the torents of water were now full, and breaking into nothingness, the ocean poored down my face. Now, bare and dry, the levees repair themselves, prepared to hold back another thousand tears.

I hate myself: every strand of hair, every piece of flesh, every drop of blood. I hate it, the mocking image of me it has become. The scars on its body are echoes of the ones that bleed, incinerate, break my being into the nothingness. As it consumes me, makes a space in its collective for me, my brutish acts of resistence become their entertainment. They enjoy my pain, they take pride in seeing me suffer. I exist for them.

You lie! Liar! You're dead, aren't you! You're not here, this isn't real, this is my world! The voice startles me, ripping my heart out of my chest. The numbess is penetrated by a sudden fear, digging into my chest as a crude representation of the 'tool' I'd attempted suicide with.

Go away, leave me alone! I don't want you anymore! I don't love you anymore! The lies spew from my mouth, creating sounds that are barely recognizable as words. Not since my death had I spoken a single audible word; my voice like my body had been stolen away from me. These harsh gutteral sounds don't belong to me. Some tortured animal must be emitting them; the lack of humanity is far beyond what I had been striped of before my imprisonment.

Let me die! Let me go; leave me here! I belong here, you don't! You can't die! The lack of sound cuts off my ranting. I feel alone again, despite that there remains a new being questioning me, demanding my reply. The voice is unhuman, belonging to something warped, twisted, freakish. I don't want to meet it. I want it to die.

That's not me! She's over there; I'm no one! I'm dead already. Dead, dead! The voice is looking for me; I lie. I don't know what else to do. I don't think it believes me; the voice comes closer, whispering into my ear. I try not to think, I try to ignore them. I fail.

Stop! Please, just stop! I don't want to; I won't! There's something cold on my arm--fingers: gripping, dragging--that must belong in someway to the unhuman voice. I try to pull away before I remember I cannot move; my body still does not belong to me. The mere sensation of cold in itself is alien. My being has no body, no feeling, no sensation of warm or cold can penetrate my airy substance.

Let go! Don't touch me! Get away from me! In my mind, I tell it to go and die, wondering if it's a spirit, or if its corporeal body can manifest it's power into this realm of the cursed and bodiless. It's pulling at me, draggin me from this spot; where to, I cannot say. There is no sense of where here, nor a sense of when, yet my mind makes the attempt to calculate both.

I've given up shouting. I have no more words; no more sounds would be a more correct phrasing. I'm not even sure if I've been speaking, or if those thoughts translated into something beyond the horrid guttural sounds I refuse to atribute to myself. It's taking me away--somehow away can exist in this uncalculatable amount of space--and for some reason I protest. Why?

We continue like this, it dragging me through the nothingness. The others are nowhere to be found which, while unusual, is indefinitly preferable. The voice continues speaking to me, calling out the name that belongs to the body we left behind; I think to tell it, but I can't. I don't want to. I'm so happy to be leaving the nothigness that I don't care if I wasn't the one it planned to take.

The darkness begins to fade; shapes separate themselves from the neutral blackness, distances become recognizable, the hand gripping my arm forms into individual fingers, the ground slipping beneath me is different from the sense of movement I'd been feeling before. There's a sky; a beautiful sky; a midnight sky of swirling dark blue, with stars shining down, the full moon illuminating the shadowed world around me. I've never seen anything more beautiful than the heavens at that moment.

"Bella...?" I wait a second, then turn to face him, reluctant to let my eyes off the sky. "It's Him. He's here. He came for me. He saved me. He...

I throw my arms around him, and my legs which had stopped him in his tracks now buckeled beneath me; he catches me as I know he will. There are no words to describe this, nothing that can explain exactly this moment. All I know is that I'm not happy, I'm not alive, I'm not free. I have nothing more than what I did when I entered prison, perhaps less; I'm still in my half-alive state, if that; my fate is still bound to his. But I am. I exist. I can see.

The return of my senses is most pleasurable. In prison, the world faded, turned into a neutral grayness that diluted and poisoned my senses to the point that I could not longer tell the difference between black and white, hot or cold, loud or soft, love or hate. I am a newborn child witnessing the world for the first time, unable to take it all in at once it's so overwhelming. I want to stay there forever, appreciating the world.

Grabbing my hand, with a slight smile on his face, He leads me away. I don't resist; it's away, I don't care beyond that.

"Bella." His voice distracts my thoughts, and I turn to face him. Every factor of his being that had healed my wounded heart so long ago, now fills the emptyness of my mind; I hardly hear what he's saying. 'Bella, I don't want to do this. But there's a war, and... I wouldn't ask this of you if I didn't mean it. Of course I meant to save you, don't doubt me. But... Well, I need your strength, your power. In short I need you."

If he had known that those were the same words going through my head at that time, I doubt he would have asked. But the war doesn't matter to me, the fear doesn't bother me; I've been through enough that, while the complete numbness is gone, my sense of fear no longer exists. It can't in such a brilliant and beautiful world.

I nod in reply. I'm not ready to speak; I don't know if I can. I'm afraid that it'll be the one part of my life I left behind, my final words... I can't think about that now. It's not important right now. Looking into his eyes, I tell him, knowing he can hear me. "It's ok. I'm not afraid. I'm with you."


End of Chapter One

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Chapter Two

I'm not ready to speak, still, not even after the world found me and dragged me back into its existence. Surounded by unfamiliar faces, echoes of something long forgotten; this world does not belong to me, and I do not belong in any way in it. This alien planet causes my heart to ache; a burning, throbbing sensation cuts into my chest, bleeding burning blood down my chest. These are remnants of a pain I cannot remmeber, nor do I want to.

Perhaps it is because the world I left behind is lost forever, or changed like the man I see before me; I think I remember Him, I might even possibly know Him, and yet I feel incapable of loving Him. He's not the same, that much I can remember. Perhaps the rest of the world is like this.

Or perhaps I lost the world in prison, left it behind and now, as my memories try to slip back to me, it's becoming something slightly familiar, but for all intents and urposes, foreign. It is in this light that I am trying to see the world. This new place, this horrifying place out of a nightmare.

I have been infomed of the world, or "reintroduced to the world" as they like to call it. Things have changed, they tell me. We don't belong here anymore, not when we're so weak. But with me back, they tell me we can win. Perhaps 'we' is the wrong word here. Perhaps 'they' would be more appropriate.

I am left alone most of the time, most probably on His orders, but either way the solitude is comforting. I was always alone in prison, whether in my mind or in reality, and the distance between me and the world has no bridge across its chasm. My mind is most often blank at these moments for I have no thoughts; nothing catches my eye, nothing seems interesting. I have one goal, one interest, one obsession.

I have been forgotten.

Late at night, I remember. He spoke to me, whispered soft words in my ear. He promised he would return for me, to save me. Instead, my rescuer is the being he promised to save us from. He'd promised to save us from this life; even the Dark Lord had promised that this would be the end. He hasn't kept his promise either.

Am I doomed to spend an eternity living at the mercy of this foolish cause? Can I not rest? To be alone in the world would be enough; to be alone, untouched by the horrors of His world, to be at peace, even if the world outside is war torn, and bloodshed. All I want now is quiet; not the quiet of prison, where behind the silence was the stench, the overwhelming sense of loss. I want silence without the nothingness, peace without the fighting. I want to be alone.

I think these thoughts, and then remember how far I am from being alive. I cannot sustain this form; I cannot conitnue to exist without him. I can hate him for abandoning me, for letting the darkness take me, for siding with our enemy. But I cannot hate him enough. My love for him erases all that hate, burns it away. And now I hate myself, because I love him, even though I should not. I am being pulled apart at the seams by these two juxtaposing emotions.

It is so that I set my course; I want to find him. What I'll do when I find him, I do not know. If my heart, or my hate win, there will still be enough room insde for me to hate myself. If he can find it in himself to forgive me, my heart will win; if he can, but the pain I have inflicted on him is too much for any man to bear. He must hate me; he abandoned me because he hates me, because he doesn't want anything to do with me. And now, I return to him, begging forgiveness, but with so much doubt, I know he'll see through me, and know. And then, then I'll be alone.

The Dark Lord can see my new determination; he says that some color has returned, that I am coming back to the world of the living. Neither of these feels true. I am no more alive. If anything I have fallen out of limbo and drifted towards the realm of the dead, and the color he sees is the blue of my lips, and the purple of my frozen fingers.

I sit back and watch the young attack, pillage, rape, destroy with the same glee I felt when I was one of them. I can no longer find it in myself to torment the world in that way; the world has tormented me beyond the limits of human mortality; it found new ways to inflict torture on me, to make me pay for what my naive actions did to it's soul. It ripped away my soul, my life, the only beings I ever loved. It has branded me with this new insanity driven my an unfounded obsession that makes no sense.

Only the Dark Lord seems to understand why I choose to remain behind; he lies for me, says that he has more important missions for me. He knows I am saving myself for him, and he has granted me a life away from His world. I only have to fulfill my two promises; one deserves his death for his betrayal, and the other is the reason my llife is lost.

Then I can go away; we can go away, leave this world behind, be together somewhere where this world has no power. He has promised this, and I hold him to his promise. It's the only thing I can count on anymore. I cannot even count on myself now, knowing that this obsession has taken my sanity away; I live inside my mind, the rest of the world has no meaning, as new at it is. I have given up on understanding this new world, it's new frailities, and powers. If I seem insane, it is because I no longer have control over myself. It is only in my mind where I have any power. I am saving myself for him.

End of Chapter Two

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Chapter Three

The night has come early that I am to fullfill my first promise; sooner than He had expected, but He refuses to let anyone see his worry. His plan has been too successfull, they're playing into his hand as might a child. Before prison I might have been concerned, that anything could trouble him so. I'm unaffected now; perhaps it is because I no longer understand the concept of fear, or because I know there are worse things than worry.

A strange creature came to me a few months ago, swearing his loyalty to me, and sputtering names that froze my hand before it could make for my wand to wipe him away, though I don't know why. Noticing my hesitatation, he grabbed the hem of my skirt, and dragged me to find the Dark Lord. We heard his story, and though parts of it seemed familiar, it was like reading a chapter out of someone else's life, a book I'd read years ago and scarcely remember. Even now, the tale is dim.

And so, with this in hand, the Dark Lord cast me into a role that belonged to the old me, with a goal that serves me no purpose, and the only price is more spilt blood on my hands. I don't have to hurt for him, at least not this night.

He sends in Lucius and the others first; they are to retrieve something for the Dark Lord, something he wants, something any Death Eater would die to lay it in his hands. Except for me. I see no purpose in dying for him. Though he saved me, I didn't need to be saved. I rather wish he had left me in the darkness, now that I can see what is in the light. And though I am rather certain that they will die for this something, I cannot find it in myself to pity them.

We stand, side by side, waiting. It seems like moments of waiting, mere seconds, but for all I know years could have passed, and I wouldn't miss them. A flame erupts in to life before us, a blue flame--I feel that I ought to know why He's no longer breathing--that disappears as it came. He takes my arm, and as one room blends into the swirl of black, another separates and becomes distinct.

If there wasn't a tapestry flapping in the wind of a short balding man, I wouldn't know we're as unwelcome as we we are. The green and black marble is calm, and the golden light from the fired lamps sparkles off the marble. Now that we're present, the room seems complete, our darkness negating the tapestry that's ripping itself from the wall, as though it too can sense the darkness radiating from us.

He starts off down a long corridor to the right, and I follow him. Our footsteps are muffled, the maze of passages reaching out and absorbing the would be sounds, devouring them as though to aide us along our way. Looking around, there are hallways that seem endless, and others that end with not a door but with a wall that isn't all there. As translucent as those walls seem, their immpenetrability radiates, fused with the feeling of their deified dark magick. They've justified this dabbling in the Dark Arts, hidding behind the protection of the Minister.

We've somehow decended several levels, though the transition was not visible. The air is thick, unused. The hallways are fewer, but the odor of their dabblings is more potent. There are no more doors disguising themselves as walls, nor any of the translucent walls from the above floors; those tricks would not fool one of enough magical caliber to survive what lay behind these doors.

The hallway we're following comes to a sudden end; the door is ajar, swinging silently on it's hinges. He takes my hand lightly as we venture into the dimly lit room, the door behind us continuing to swing perilously, though it is obvious the previous spell on it is attempting to seal us in. There are several doors , all closed, all undistinguishable from the next to a wizard under par. I sense, as does he, that the strongest magic lies behind the door to our right. I can also sense, though it is faint, that the rest of the Death Eaters are fighting behind this door, battling for control. They've separated temporarily, and while those apart are falling quickly, those who remained in the center of the power have established a strong offensive to the weaker beings attacking them.

The Dark Lord heads off in this direction, his walk more determined. I follow; some part of me remembers a time when I would have questioned this decision, this rash, seemingly careless move. Instead, I walk behind, feeling half-dragged into the conflict before me. He comes to a stop outside a door; the magic inside is pulsing, the shouts and screams of the battle strong.

"Return to me when you are finished." He keeps his eyes on the door ahead, almost flinching each time one of ours is struck down, as though he too is seeing the scene with as much clarity as I am. "I'll be waiting for you. I promise." Then he is gone. I take a haggard breath, then open the door and worm my way inside.

The main source of the magical power is in the center of the room; the theatrical auditorium hosts a large stone archway, where a veil flutters much like the banner of the Minister upstairs. Voices reach to me from somewhere deep within, but I do not recognize them. They only add to the commotion around me, faces and voices that I cannot recognize, and will not remember.

A spell hits the wall above me, diverting my focus. I stun the caster, having spotted my real target a few steps down the ampitheater. I shoot a spell in his direction, using that time to spring closer to actually battle him. Keeping with a Death Eater tradition, I allowed him to at least know his attacker before I killed him. Killing him means nothing; it's not personal, most certainly not for revenge, nor does he deserve it. I'm killing him because I have to; he has to die for me to, well not live, but to at the very least get away.

He turns to face me after stunning the Death Eater he'd been fighting. He looks relatively relieved to see me, and not in the very least surprised. He smiles lightly, then begins flinging curses at me all the while shouting to the others, I suspect. His spells are easy to block, like swatting away a fly. He has more difficulty blocking my spells, and is forced to dodge them, diving out of the way nimbly. It is only when we both stop, momentarily, and he wipes his hair out of his face, breathing deeply, that our eyes actually meet.

Memories, foreign, flood into me; I sink to my knees, my wand dropping from my hand. Faces flash, voices scream, each of these memories pushing aside the ones I had fought--died-- to preserve. I don't want them. Whatever remains of me takes control of my body, or perhaps it is more correct to say that I lost whatever reign I had over my body, retreating completely into my mind. I grab my wand, and begging flinging curses, hexs, whatever spells I know at this horribly familiar face.

I hate him, I want to kill him. Whoever he is, he took him away from me. He stole my memories. Mine, my own. Curses fly; he cannot strike back; he's retreating from my alien ferocity. Even my actions are foreign to me. I hit him with a curse, and he falls. The veil behind him wraps around his body, and drags him in. Now his voice is amongst the others. I can hear his voice, resonating in my head, his face coming to mind. I can see him, tears in his eyes, and for some reason I begin to cry. I've lost something. Not just memories of the one I love, or whatever remained of my sanity. I've lost something else, and I don't know what it is.

End of Chapter Three

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Chapter Four

Another spell barely misses me, hitting the wall in golden sparks, bringing me out of the world in my mind and into the world surrounding me. I pick up my wand to run, and another spell hits, closer this time; I feel it's warmth as it flew past me, attempting to deal some of the damage it was created to do. Retreating, I fling curses in the direction of this foolish wizard, no caring whether or not they hit their mark. This is not my battle; he is not meant to die by my hand.

His curse hits its target, sending me wheeling into a wall; magic tears through cloth and skin. I look down; there will be another wound to match my suicidal attempts on my other half. Somehow I know that my shoulder ought to be burning, that the blood running down my side ought to chill my body, but these sensations cannot make it into my brain. The synapses are so far disconnected that there's not even a remnant of these once familiar feelings. I repay his insolence, my spell sending him reeling into the brick wall behind him; there's a crack, and he falls to the ground, limp.

Taking the momentary break in the battle, I turn to leave. I can hear a voice screaming to me, but it is so unfamiliar that it simply joins the rest of the screams echoing in my mind, a collection of a biographical misrepresentation of my past.

The door closes behind me, trapping the voices inside. Surrounded by sudden silence, the juxtaposition is nearly startling. The magic still pulses from behind me, the feeling of its strength fading as it misses its target, the sudden beat when its strikes true, the fading of souls as they slowly loose their strength to fuel the magic. If they knew how they sacrificed themselves to the magic, perhaps they wouldn't waste it as they did.

My body, perhaps reacting to the shock it feels I ought to be consumed by, takes control; I find myself back in the hall that is all too comforting. The tapestry has torn itself away, removing what restrains it to the presence of the demons below. As though the last vestiges of goodness have fled with his image, the room is suddenly darker, the fires burning green instead of red. Silver tints in the green and black stone are suddenly sparkling, providing the light that guides my way.

He's waiting for me, standing in the crux of the hallway. He doesn't see me, He doesn't even see the room we're standing in as welcomed guests. He see's something else, something that I am blind to, more by choice than by ability. I take a moment to watch His gaze, see how that far off scene sends more fear in His eyes than the horrible reality we are surrounded with, and then I leave. For a moment He seems to come back to life; His hand graces my shoulder before the two stages are completely blended together before their ultimate separation.

The trees, reaching up towards the slowly lightening sky, cast shadows on the ground that dance as the wind blows them this way and that, as though the choreographer cannot make up his mind. The house is empty. Quiet. Comforting.

I try to distract myself with the dance, but as the conductor continues to change his melody, the choreographer eventually abandons the piece, leaving the dancers hanging sadly, unmoving to the ever changing music.

In the silence my thoughts return to the glance He gave me as I left; the sole thought that penetrates that blanketing memory is that they've failed. Even in my depraved state, His blank stare of concentration and frustration had found some meaning in what remains of my mind. Somehow His depression meant something to me, something familiarly foreign in how it squeezed out the remnants of my compassion and poured them out for the sadness in His eyes.

I don't have to wait very long before the magic begins to pool next to me, swirling in the darkness, reaching across time and space to connect with the being that summoned it, and bridge the gap between. There's a spark as the gateway opens, a flash of intensity followed by a pulling as the caster is dragged through the tunnel by the forces that are so desperate to connect with their other half. He emerges as the magic makes its connection, and then grateful for the single moment of connectedness, fades back into the weave of the blanket, repairing itself nearly perfectly. There remains a slight tear in the fabric, a stream of magic flowing from the leak slowly, softly. It pours like a stream; graceful, beautiful, powerful as though the once raging waterfall has run nearly dry.

He reaches out for my shoulder, then stops, and drops His arm. "We failed. Prophecy's destroyed, Fudge's come back to his senses. It'll be near impossible to get near him now, now that Dumbledore's back at Hogwarts. Lucius." He takes a ragged breath, as though through clenched teeth. I can nearly feel him tense next to me. "Lucius went and got himself arrested with a dozen others. The Order got word, and, well... you know. Lestrange was with him." Old pains try to break through, but they too have become alien. "Idiot. He..." And He was without words.

"She's not me," I reassure him. As long as you know the difference, I don't care.

"You know what this means, then?"

"That they still think I'm crazy? I don't blame him. He did what he thought he needed to. Maybe you should reconsider."

"But-" He stops. He can tell I'm no longer listening, that my mind has already wandered away leaving him and his simple problems behind. He sighs frustratedly, then turns and wanders off into the forest. Again I feel the magic brewing and then dispelling leaving only a fragment of its former glory.

My purpose is nearly complete, my reason for staying behind nearly fulfilled. And yet, this close to the end of it all, there's no change, no feeling that the world is truly going to release its shackles. Perhaps it too is holding on for someone. Or perhaps that someone is holding on to it.

End of Chapter Four

~Aeryn~

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Chapter Five

Somehow, I find myself standing on his doorstep. The one constant thought that seems to permeate the fog of my mind, is the pounding question, "what will he see?". I feel like a stranger, standing here. More so than the stranger fidgeting nervously next to me. I find it hard to believe that we were once sisters. Even in her state of mind, no one would think to draw such a comparison between the two of us.

Sounds of movement catch my drifting mind; the door opens a crack, my body tensing up involuntarily, my eyes piercing the darkness for what I only half want to see. And then, before I'd even managed to calm myself, ready my mind, he's standing there, his eyes meeting mine.

Narcissa passes between us, seeking the warmth of the fire flickering behind him; me, I continue to stand there, transfixed. He leans back, as to welcome me inside, a slight smile on his face. This feels less real than the millions of times I dreamt him to life in my prison cell, the time I believed he'd come to save me when I finally used "the Tool". The fog swirled in my mind, my body taking over for the mind; I feel my feet drag me inside, my lips form words that are not mine to speak. His smile falters, his eyes do not notice the dead look on my face. He's noticed. I've changed.

Standing behind Narcissa, I can't seem to keep my eyes off him. Once again, I find myself memorizing his shape, his form, the way his robes fall gently to the ground, how he's rubbing his finger together behind his back. Despite that I have completely lost myself, I still know him.

There's a bang, and then another stranger emerges from behind the stair well. His silver hand glints lightly in the fire light; all in all, his insignificance radiates throughout the room, his worthlessness only attracting my attention for a moment as I contemplate his presence. And then, he's gone, erased from my mind; once again, my brain seems to only have space enough for one thought, for one being.

He hands me something, something red; I haven't felt a need for drink or food in so long, the names of such are lost to me. The color reminds me of blood. This foreign elixir has no taste, its sweet smell hardly noticed. In the distraction, my body has once again taken over for my mind; I hear words coming from my mouth, words that do and do not belong to me. They are the words my heart wants desperately to say, and yet does not want to know the answers, for they might kill me.

I can't even breathe from the struggle of trying to keep these words to myself. Narcissa is looking at me curiously, though her eyes still refuse to meet mine. Even he continues to look slightly to my side, avoiding making eye contact. Somewhere, in the deep recesses of my mind, I come to understand that they are afraid of me.

He's smiling, impatiently, but smiling nonetheless. I regain control over my body, my words breaking as my body attempts to fight back, refusing to cede to the weaker half.

"But you stayed--"

Even as the words escape, I know that they were wrong, that their meaning was lost on him. His face changes, from mere amusement, to anger. I retract my control, fly my white flag, and let my body take control. He argues with this body, his excuses, his reasons drilling holes into what is left of my heart. I want to forgive him, to take him back into my life, but my body, feeling so betrayed, refuses. In its exhaustion, it stops, breathing heavily, realizing that the battle was lost.

Turning to Narcissa, his eyes finally leave my direction, the piercing stare finally allowing me to clear my mind, to regain some sense of control. I have a job to do.

"You will need your wand, Bellatrix." His voice jolts me back into reality; I'd lost control again, but his voice, so calm and determined, somehow calms my mind like I'd been unable to do.

Their hands entwined, I lay mine on top, my wand tensing as it prepares to unleash its magic. As the fiery ropes bind their hands together, my mind remains entranced in the feeling of the magic, the feeling that this simple piece of wood is sucking out what remains of my life and wasting it away before me. The bond seals itself, the magic fades leaving that empty feeling once again that I've never quite learned to live with.

Narcissa puts a hand on my shoulder, as though to lead me back out, but my body refuses to move, as does my mind. She shrugs, lets go, and goes out, shutting the door behind her quietly. It takes a few minutes before I realize that we're alone, that I'd spent far too many sleepless nights thinking of what to say at this moment, yet I can't say a single word.

"Bella," he says, not in the tone I'd preserved so perfectly in my mind, but as though he was talking to a stranger. "It's late. I can make up a bed for you upstairs. Take a seat on the couch."

He puts his hands on my shoulders; my mind sparks, my heart forgets to beat as the simple sensation of touch expands my senses, absorbing every point of contact. I can no more stand than I can walk. My legs collapse under me, and I fall. I don't feel my head hit the floor, or hear his voice in my ear, asking me if I'm alright. He puts his arms around me, as though to lift me up. The contact jolts my world; my body twitches, as though in pain, I cry out in distorted sounds, my eyes blur as the darkness of my mind and reality begin to blend. The pain of sensation overwhelms me; the act of feeling, of sensing everything is too much. My eyes close, and my mind falls apart once again.



The next time my eyes open, the first sensation that makes its way to cognition is the lingering twinge of sensation, an echo of what that pain had been. The next is the shear emptiness and familiarity of where I am. The walls are empty save for signs of years of wear, despite the obvious attempt to clean away the dirt and grime. Even the window coverings seem the same, though they'd be ancient by now. I'm lying in a bed in the center of the room, and as I rise, even the creaking of the bed sounds familiar, though faint as though belonging to an entirely different life than mine.

"Are you alright?" The irony of the question throws me, and yet, despite the thousands of words that flock to my brain in reply, I can only mumble, shrug it off, like this pain doesn't bother me, doesn't drill through my fragile core.

"...I'm sorry..." he whispers. And with those two words, he said more to me than he had in all his excuses and apologies last night. I look up from the floor, and my eyes meet his. He's crying. "I--"

I can't handle this, seeing him like this, knowing that I've hurt him. My hand is on his face, my eyes memorizing his features, expelling the rest of the world so that I can attempt once again to perfectly memorize every line, and every scar. I feel his lips on mine, taste what I'd spent years dreaming of. The searing pain is overwhelming, the amount of sensation blocking out the rest of the world until there is only him.

We separate, my hands still attempting to carve his face into my memory. I have to leave, I can't stay. I need to end this, to finish what I started. This perfection, this harmony are not mine, not yet. My hands drop as I back away, though our eyes have yet to blink for to sever this bond would mean the death of us both.

"I love you," I whisper, and then I'm gone, the magic calling me back to where I belong, rather than where I want to be. I've sealed my heart. If I say nothing else, if I feel nothing else, I will be content.

I can die now.

End of Chapter Five

~Aeryn~

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