Swordfishes

Swordfishes

"I, Rodolphus Lestrange, take you Bellatrix as my wife, to love and honour you for all my life, in health and illness, in wealth and poverty, in good and bad fate, till death part us."

These words are engraved in my heart and soul. A mark stronger than our Lord's one. A mark that warms and strengthens me. An indelible mark that faces storms and gales. A mark branded inside me since the first time I saw you. You were barely fourteen and you proudly strutted through the school's grounds, you were like a heron rising upon water, harsh, prickly, green and nonetheless... nonetheless you had a lucent beauty like a black diamond, with your Gothic Madonna-ish. And you were young, too young for me, a seventh year prefect. You were so pretty when you looked at me, vexed and embarrassed by my gallantries, and how tender your blushes were... the way you lowered your eyes and avoided me, wondering why one of the most popular student of Hogwarts was interested in a fourth year girl. And how many times you had been about to curse me and you had hardly held back!

Your red cheeks' memory still makes run a shiver in my whole body, like when I asked you to the graduating ball: your eyes, like black ripe cherries, they were wide and your lips, like rosebuds, they were slightly opened, to show your astonishment. Then you lowered your eyes and nodded, hiding a little smile. I remember that evening and your light and gracious way to dance: how your body perfectly fitted mine, as if your mother has given birth to you to be in my arms. I remember your kiss, shy and clumsy, first of many others. And I remember your amazed moan when, for the first time, I tasted the honey of your mouth.

I didn't wasted time, fearing that somebody could take you, and the very first day of summer holydays, I met your father asking for your hand. He glanced at me frowning, vexed that yet some one wanted to take away one of his princesses. He told me that you were a mere child, too young to bear a family's weight. And I replied that I would have waited, waited that he gave us his blessing, waited that you would have become the wonderful woman you are. He told me that I could have found an other, an older and prettier girl. And I replied that neither Circe nor Medea nor Morgana would have been able to sway my mind from you.

And I waited. For three long years we had to be satisfied with brief and rare dates at Hogsmeade, long evenings spent saying nothing in your house's drawing room among Christmas decorations, our happy walks through Tuscan country when, in summer, you reached me in my family's villa. The same villa that that bright day of middle July saw us realize our dream: you weren't anymore a heron, but a black swan, elegant and regal, gliding on the water.

I remember that day of our honeymoon, when we whimsical had a walk among Muggles: we walked hand in hand on Messina's coast and you saw on the bluff a man shaking a white flag. You curiously approached him and asked what he was doing: he showed us two black shapes in the water and a boat. He told us he was indicating where the swordfishes were. He told us that, if they caught the female, also the male would have been captured, because he would never have abandoned his mate. We watched the boat approaching them; we saw that harpoon graze the sea surface and sink in the smaller fish's flesh; we saw her writhe and swim toward the bottom, in a desperate attempt to free herself, while the other swam at her side, as if he wanted to help her but he didn't know how. When the water became red, you turned your head and told me to go away with an unusually sad voice. But I lingered, I turned my head and I saw the fishermen heave aboard their prey, while the other swam at their boat's side, as if offering him to them.

That was our golden age: we were happy and in love in a protracted honeymoon, with the only thorn of that lost and no more conceived child. A wonderful period ended when you told me that, if I joined the Dark Lord, you wouldn't have waited at home but you would have been at my side, always.
You became cold, hard-hearted, a different woman from the Bellatrix I knew and loved. But that Bellatrix went back in your wife's smiles, in your pouts and in your early morning's ecstatic serenity after a whole night of lovemaking. They were wonderful moments, in which we deluded that nothing had changed. Moments of quiet happiness that broke when the Dark Mark burned our flesh: we had to leave everything behind and fight, and I protected you while at my right you fought with enthusiasm, to let out your anger and pain.

Then came the day when everything ended, when the world announced our Lord's fall. My brother Rabastan, Barty, you and I were in our living room; unable to accept he wasn't among us. And the idea that he could be somewhere, weak and alone, bloomed in our mind with the decision to find him and refresh his power. For a whole afternoon we did and undid plans, suppositions, until we decided to go where he may have gone before his fall.
You had never been so merciless, so deaf to prayers, so irrational even after the umpteenth proof that the Longbottoms knew nothing. But then I understood, I understood that it was against the injustice of life that you fought, exacerbated by a fate that had denied us that joy, that your mind was always with that lost and no more conceived child.

We noticed too late the Aurors' arrival, too late to Disapparate. The battle was hard: they were ten and we only four and tired. Rabastan was the first to fall, hit by three spells at the same time. Then Barty was attacked from behind with a Stupefy. And finally you, a simple spell deprived you of your wand: two Aurors grabbed you, and while you tried to free yourself, your mask slipped away. You looked at me with wide eyes, dry tears shone on your face.

"Go Rodolphus, don't think about me!"

But I didn't and I rushed against them because I didn't want them to hurt you, because I didn't bear the mere idea of another man touching you. Because my life is nothing without you.

And now here we are, before this court judging us, without ask us our actions' reasons: would they understand? Would they understand what we have in our hearts? And you sit with you head high and an impudent face, as cold as an ice queen in chains. And I know that deep inside you couldn't forgive me to have chosen to be at your side, to be here with you. But you also know that, in my place, you would have done the same. Because our love is stronger and greater than our devotion to the Dark Lord, because we are like swordfishes, Bellatrix, and we would die rather than live without the other and we will stay together, despite everything.

Till death part us.