Bellatrix

Bellatrix

By lady_isabella (and E.A. Poe)

"One of true wizard blood doth not yield him or herself to the shades, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of a feeble will."

* Lord Voldemort

Oh yes - yes, I remember how, and precisely where I first became acquainted with the lady Bellatrix. Long years have since elapsed, and my memory is sometimes feeble on account of the years of suffering in the prison of Azkaban. But on some points the remembrances return to me as sharp and vivid as the cut of the keenest knife. I first met her as a schoolmate, in the large, old institution of Hogwarts. I knew of the family from whence she came, and its ancient, impeccable lineage. Oh Bellatrix! Bellatrix! Though I, your Rodolphus, was buried in studies of a nature more than all else adapted to deaden impressions of the outward world, it was by that sweet word alone - by Bellatrix - that I would rouse myself and join the company of those whom I would otherwise shun, in order to bask in the pleasure of your presence.

There is one dear topic, however, on which my memory fails me not. It is the person of Bellatrix. In stature she was tall, somewhat slender, and, in her latter days, even emaciated. I would in vain attempt to portray the majesty, the quiet ease, of her demeanor, or the incomprehensible lightness and elasticity of her footfall. She came and departed as a shadow. I was never made aware of her entrance into my closed study save by the dear music of her low sweet voice, as she place her marble hand upon my shoulder. Yet her features were not of that regular mould found upon a classical statue, for there is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion. Her skin rivaled the purest ivory, and her hair fell in radiant, luxuriant tresses of raven-black. Her eyes, I must believe, were far larger than the ordinary eyes of our own race, and with such languorous, heavy lids as would have one believe that she was eternally in an ecstatic flush of delight; halfway lingering between this pale world of our own and the realm of dreams. So sensuous, so deep and endless were those dark eyes of my beloved's that I oft felt I might stare into their depths for the rest of my existence and still feel that I had not gazed into them fully. The expression of the eyes of Bellatrix! They became to me twin stars of Leda, and I to them the devoutest of astronomers.

Of my beloved wife's nature, it is most accurate to say that she was possessed of an intensity in thought, action and speech. Of all the witches whom I have ever known, she, the outwardly calm, the ever-placid Bellatrix, was most violently a prey to the tumultuous vultures of stern passion. And of such passion I could form no estimate, once it was engaged in the cause that put fire in our lives. That cause, of course, being none other than the service of the Dark Lord Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken. Had He been a man of lesser power, might or ability, I might have been jealous at the wholeness of spirit that my bride gave in service to His commands. But His might and the grandeur of His cause o'ershadowed both myself and my love, and we gave ourselves unreservedly into its duty, even when such duty and obedience placed us into Hell upon Earth.

I have spoken of the learning of Bellatrix: it was immense, and the power she wielded in her wand was such that I have never known in a witch. In the classical tongues she was deeply proficient, and this knowledge provided her entrée into the darkest wisdom of the ages, of which I was but as a child groping benighted. How terrible then, how excruciating I found it, to see that intellect and spirit battered upon in all those years upon years of our captivity! To see the youth and ethereal vitae of her soul sapped by the bleak atmosphere of our mutual prison. My hope for a renaissance of her energies came when our Dread Lord secured the alliance of the Dementors - formerly the guards of our prison and now our means of release. I saw in her the old fire when He Who Shall Not Be Named called upon us to accompany Malfoy, Crabbe, Rookwood, Nott, Jugson, Dolohov, Mulciber, Macnair, Avery and my own brother Rabastan on a mission to the Ministry of Magic Department of Mysteries, in order to wrest a precious Prophecy from the clumsy hands of the cursed Boy Who Lived and his playmates.

But alas, the ruin of that mission heralded the start of a grave blight in the health and spirit of my dearest wife. Even as she and our Lord assisted in my escape from the Ministry forces that would have sent me back to the Isle of Azkaban, I could see weakness in her eyes, caused by the breaking of her spirit at not being able to please our Master with the rescuing of the Omen he sent us to retrieve. We fled our English homeland, and took up residence the wild, mountainous land of Romania - far from the reach of the Aurors who searched to apprehend us.

Bellatrix grew ill. Her wild eyes blazed with a too, too glorious effulgence; the pale fingers became of the transparent waxen hue of the grave, and the blue veins upon her lofty forehead swelled and sank impetuously with the tides of the most gentle emotion. I saw that she must die, and I struggled desperately in spirit with this dire Grim. And the struggles of my passionate wife were, to my astonishment, even more energetic than my own. There had been much in her stern nature to impress me with the belief that, to her, death would have come without its terrors; -- but not so. Words are impotent to convey any just idea of the fierceness of resistance with which she wrestled with the Shadow. I groaned in anguish at the pitiable spectacle. I would have soothed - I would have reasoned; but, in the intensity of her wild desire for life, -- for life - but for life - solace and reason were alike the uttermost of folly.

That she loved me I should not have doubted; and I might have been easily aware that, in a bosom such as hers, love would have reigned no ordinary passion. But in death only, was I fully impressed with the strength of her affection. Let me say only , that in Bellatrix's more than womanly abandonment to a love, alas! All unmerited, all unworthily bestowed upon me, I at length recognized the principle of her longing with so wildly earnest a desire for the life which was now fleeing so rapidly away.

At high noon of the night in which she departed, I gathered her in my arms, holding her with all the strength and expression of devotion that mere man may aspire to. And yet as I did, a ferocity of feverish strength came upon Bellatrix, and she wrenched herself from my embrace to cry unto the heavens.

"O Merlin!" half-shrieked Bellatrix, extending her arms aloft with a spasmodic movement. "O Powers from whom our beings, our magic, our spirits spring forth! - Shall this dread fate be undeviatingly so? Shall this terrible Conqueror not be conquered? Has not our own Dark Lord rebelled at the inexorable Veil and returned time and time again to rise in life anew? For one of true wizard blood doth not yield him or herself to the shades, nor unto death utterly, save only through the weakness of a feeble will."

She died; -- and I, crushed into the very dust with sorrow, could no longer endure the lonely desolation of the dim and decaying manse we had inhabited within the Carpathian Mountains. I had no lack of what the world calls wealth. Bellatrix had brought me far more from her inheritance as a daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. After a few months of weary and aimless wandering, I returned to my homeland under an assumed name taken from a far-gone ancestor on my mother's side and purchased an abbey in one of the wildest and least frequented portions of fair England. The gloomy and dreary grandeur of the building, the almost savage aspect of the domain, had much in unison with the feelings of utter abandonment which had driven me into that remote and unsocial region of the country. To the ignorant eye of the lost muggle traveler, the exterior of my new abode was scarce more than crumbling ruins. But within, I allowed the excesses of my distraction to run rampant - gilding the gothic arches and wild cornices in precious metals and stones, running abandoned with the most gorgeous and fantastic of draperies. The most exotic carvings and decorations to be found in the Occidental and Oriental worlds I chose to fill my surroundings with, taking my designs from the furious ecstasies of my dreams. The lands around the abbey also, I filled with dangerous and unusual beasts rarely seen even by the keenest magi-zoologists so that my home might teem with monsters just as my mind seemed similarly populated. Within this time - this period wherein I gave myself over to the most boundless fits of extravagance, I was seized with a spirit of mental alienation that inspired me to lead from the altar as my bride - as the successor of the unforgotten Bellatrix - the fair-haired and blue-eyed Mistress Eleanora McCormack, of Portree.

Where were the souls of the haughty family of the bride, when, through thirst of gold, they permitted to pass the threshold of a structure so garishly bedecked, a maiden and daughter so beloved? Into halls such as these I passed, with the Lady of McCormack, the unhallowed first hours of the first month of our marriage - passed them with little disquietude. That my new wife dreaded the fierce moodiness of my temper - that she shunned me and loved me but little - I could not help perceiving; but it gave me rather pleasure than otherwise. I loathed her with a hatred belonging more to demon than to wizard. My memory flew back (oh, with what intensity of regret!) to Bellatrix - the beloved, the august, the beautiful, the entombed. I reveled in recollections of her power, of her wisdom, of her lofty ethereal nature and her passionate, idolatrous love. Now, then, did my spirit fully and freely burn with more than all the fires of her own. I would call aloud upon her name during the silences of the night, as if, through the wild eagerness, the solemn passion, the consuming ardor of my longing for the departed, I could restore her to the pathway she had abandoned - ah, could it be forever? - upon the earth.

My renewed ambitions caused me to return headlong into my studies, plunging into an exposition of the darkest, most arcane and depraved necromancies known to wizardkind in search of a spell, a ritual that might conjure forth the undying spirit of my soul's true mate. At the same time, about the commencement of the second month of my marriage to the fair Eleanora, this new wife of mine was attacked with sudden illness, for which her recovery was slow. The fever that consumed her rendered her nights uneasy, and no potion, no charm or talisman could calm the maddening hallucinations that accompanied the worst of her maladies. There was a brief period of respite and convalescence ere a more violent disorder again threw her upon a bed of suffering.

Her illnesses defied alike the knowledge and great exertions of her Healers. I could not fail to observe an increase in the nervous irritation of her temperament, and in her excitability by trivial causes of fear. She would speak of sounds, of maleficent whisperings unrecorded by others - even the ghosts (of which there were no small number that inhabited the colonnades of the abbey) denied that they had murmured their spectral voices close by the declining witch. So too, did she complain of sensations that touched, prodded, pricked and whispered at her and so disturbed her desperate attempts at comfort.

One night, near the closing of October, Eleanora pressed the distressing subject of her disembodied tormentors with more than usual emphasis upon my attention. She had just awakened from an unquiet slumber, and I had been watching, with feelings half of anxiety, half of a vague terror, the workings of her emaciated countenance. When she called for the succor of wine, I hastened across the chamber to procure a decanter of vintage that had been ordered by her Healer in the efforts to fortify her ebbing strength. But, as I stepped beneath the light of a burning sconce, two circumstances of a startling nature attracted my attention. I had felt that some palpable although invisible object had passed lightly by my person; and I saw that there lay upon the golden carpet, in the very middle of the rich luster thrown from the sconce, a shadow - a faint, indefinite shadow of angelic aspect - such as might be fancied for the shadow of a Shade.

I did not speak of these things, however, to Eleanora; having found the wine, I recrossed the chamber and poured out for her a gobletful, which I held to the lips of the fainting lady. She had now partly recovered and took the chalice herself; and as Eleanora in the act of raising the wine to drink, I saw - or may have dreamed I saw - three or four large drops of a brilliant, ruby-colored fluid into the basin of the goblet. If this I saw, not so did Eleanora. She swallowed the wine unhesitatingly, and I did not speak of what might have been the merest delusion brought on by a morbid fancy of the mind.

Yet, I cannot conceal it from my own perception that, immediately subsequent to the fall of the ruby-drops, a rapid change for the worse took place in the disorder of my wife; so much so that, on the third subsequent night, she breathed her last and was prepared to be interred in the sepulchre. I sat alone with her shrouded body in that fantastic chamber that had been her bridal-bower, watching the reflections of the fireplace blaze move against her cold, linen-draped form. As I called to mind the circumstances of the former night, I looked into the portion of the room where I had seen the faint, unearthly traces of a shadow. It was there, however, no longer; and breathing with greater freedom, I turned my glances again to the pallid and rigid figure upon the bed. But then rushed upon me a thousand memories of my life with Bellatrix - and with such came back upon my heart, with the turbulent violence of a flood, the whole of that unutterable woe with which I had regarded her thus enshrouded.

It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier or later (for I had taken no note of time), when a sob - low, gentle, but very distinct - startled me from my reverie. I felt that it came from the figure that graced my bed. I listened in an agony of breathless terror - but there was no repetition of the sound, and I could detect no motion from the figure lying there. And yet, I could not have been deceived; I had heard that noise, however faint, and my soul had awakened within me. I rose, crossed to the still, shrouded figure and turned down the cloth that covered the late witch's face, while holding up a lantern in order to see the features more clearly. At length, I was convinced that a slight - very feeble, and barely noticeable - tinge of color had flushed up within the cheeks, and along the sunken small veins of the eyelids.

Could I have been precipitate in my orders to have Eleanora prepared for the grave? The Healers had pronounced her dead. There was no breath in her, and a cold stiffness had come over her fever-wasted frame. Was the blush I was seeing painted on by a wish-laden brain? I turned away, disgusted with my own weakness that taxed my senses and made liars of them. And yet again - yes, again! - I heard a soft hissing issuing forth from the region of the bed. I lifted my lantern, turning the fullness of my gaze upon the figure there, and I saw - distinctly saw - a tremor upon the lips. There was now a partial glow upon the cheek, the throat and forehead, which replaced the cadaverous pallor that had marked the body of my second bride. A perceptible warmth was returning to her, there was even the slightest pulsation at her heart. She lived! My lady lived, of that I was as certain as that of life in my own frame.

And then...once more, the figure was still, and the marblesque semblance of death returned. Again I doubted the evidence of my own eyes, chiding my credulity that things could be any other than what nature demanded. A bleak depression fell upon me, and I languished upon the floor at the foot of the deathbed. The skies outside through the windows dimmed from a blackened curtain to a grey-streaked sky, neither day nor night.

It was then that the figure stirred, even as I crumpled morosely upon the floor did the draped woman's frame relax, then stirred again and lifted itself up from the bed to totter forward upon the floor. As I stared, I dared not breathe, not speak or tear my eyes away from the charneled figure before me. Could it indeed be the living figure of Eleanora before me? Could it indeed be Eleanora at all - the fair-haired, blue-eyed Eleanora McCormack of Portree? Why, why should I doubt it? But had she then grown taller since her malady?

I was seized with an inexpressible madness as I took in the image of this impossibly upright, sepulchral figure. One bound, and I had reached my feet and was rushing towards the enveiled form. Shrinking from my touch, she let fall from her head the ghastly cerements that had confined it; and there streamed forth into the rushing atmosphere of the chamber, huge masses of long and disheveled hair that was blacker than the wings of midnight! And now slowly opened the eyes of the figure which stood before me. "I have not been deceived!" I shrieked aloud. "For never - never can I be mistaken - these are the full, black, heavy-lidded eyes of my lost love - of the lady - of the Lady Bellatrix!"