Pattern and Chaos

Pattern and Chaos

By Lola Ravenhill

Prologue

"I want to believe that the dead are not lost to us. That they speak to us as part of something greater than us - greater than any alien force. And if you and I are powerless now, I want to believe that if we listen to what's speaking, it can give us the power to save ourselves."

-Fox Mulder, The X-Files

Bellatrix Lestrange stood on the sidewalk, staring at the building on the other side of the street. Her job was to watch the family in that house, a wizarding family taking refuge in the muggle world. And then later that night, when it was the appropriate time, she would enact her Lord's wishes upon that family, blasting them out of existence. 'Stupid muggle-loving fools,' she thought, a grimace upon her face.

She was disguised well enough so that the wizards inside the house wouldn't even notice her. However, the non-magical muggles would see her plain as day. They didn't enter into her thoughts as a consideration. Let them think she was some freak in a robe. They were the freaks. The muggles would have no idea how powerful this black-haired woman standing in their midst was. They didn't know what she had done in the past, and didn't know that she could wipe them all out with a flick of her wrist and a wave of her wand. They didn't know of her noble, pureblood family, who were more than these mere muggles would ever be.

It was this arrogance, however, that would lead to her downfall, like so many other witches, wizards, and muggles gone before.

Bellatrix was a woman intent on her job, and so didn't notice the chilled breeze blowing around her, odd for an August day. She didn't notice anything until something with the probable force of a Hungarian Horntail slammed into her chest, jerking her back against the brick wall. As she skidded down the bricks, her robe getting snagged, she felt warm wetness pouring down her chest and back, and looked down to see copious amounts of blood now adorning her garments. She came to a stop, slouched against brick and sidewalk, no one noticing her predicament. But even if a muggle had called an ambulance at the first moment she'd hit the wall, she would still not have made it. Her wound was one designed to be fast and fatal.

A muggle pathologist would have recognised the wound pattern (if the body had not been reclaimed by the Dark Lord's people as quickly as possible) as one strongly resembling a gunshot wound, from angle of entry and exit, and the resultant internal damage. However, the pathologist would not have found any traces of gunpowder or powder burns. In fact, the pathologist would have found nothing to say that a gun was ever there at all, aside from how Bellatrix's fatal wound looked.

Bellatrix took a shallow breath, struggled to pull air into her weakening lungs. There was a wet, rattling sound, and a trickle of blood began to fall from her mouth. She knew she was in deep trouble. This was not the ending she had envisioned for herself. Actually, she had not envisioned an ending at all. An alluring possibility the Dark Lord held over their heads was the idea of immortality, that ultimate last barrier to true power. But apparently, it was not to be.

The last thing Bellatrix saw, before the darkness obscured her vision, was the swirl of a white skirt out of the corner of her eye. And after that, nothing, just darkness.