A Once and Future Queen

Her hair, once blacker than the darkest shadows that filled the cells of Azkaban, greys at the roots, drained of colour like her face. Tired eyes picked out in charcoal against a blank canvas of hollow cheeks and thin lips pressed together, any hint of pinkness forced into submission.

The curve of her buttocks is concave and the skin on them loose like a too-ripe apple. It feels fragile to the touch, like old paper it might flake and crumble into nothingness if left too-long exposed.

Hermione is reminded of the old black and white movies her mother loved to watch on a Sunday afternoon while the roast cooked. Bellatrix is a femme fatale - stunning and deadly, her colours faded but not her beauty.

Bella wears her soul on the outside. It is thick and dark like a winter cloak and she huddles into it as if it might keep her warm on these cold, lonely nights. It doesn't suit her to be so hunched, like an old woman. When the Malfoys or Lord Voldemort himself come, she strides about like she owns the world and it owes her but when she is alone or when she thinks no one can see, Bella curls in on herself once more.

Bella is a broken woman without her purpose. The others who whisper in familiar corners thinking no one will hear because Hermione is no one and who would she tell? blame it on the loss of her husband and Hermione knows that if Bella ever heard them, she'd rain fire down on them all. Bellatrix has never needed a man. When he fell not thinking his name nor suffering it to be spoken he failed and there is no love in Bella's black and shrunken heart to forgive failure.

They won without him and the monument that was erected in honour of Lord Voldemort's followers does not show his name: only scorch marks where it used to be.

There was a rebellion of course, but Bella crushed it quickly for her Lord and now she is left in her ivory tower, unwelcome amongst the new Death Eaters who seek a peaceful way of maintaining Lord Voldemort's reign. The old man's thirst for blood wains as his taste for excess - wine, food, women, boys - grows.

Bella reads stories of seas turning red with blood and soldiers wading through infidels to place their rightful king on the throne. She reads of reigns of terror and control and war. Of regimes that would have a place for a woman like her.

But they are muggle stories and she must keep them hidden, wondering how they ever defeated a species so used to masscres in the name of gods and men unworthy of such faith. But then Bella knows something now that Hermione has known all along. It's what keeps Hermione standing proud as she serves the pureblood victors and what makes Bella's heart skip a beat at the sight of her.

For every glorious and bloody crusade must come to an end and every King, every Emperor, every God will one day relinquish his throne to the next be it through death or politics.

The muggles will come to rule again and, Bella knows, she will live to be their servant - knows the future as she knows the past.

Bella is a monochrome woman now but she will see colour once more.

fin