Lovely Bones

She watches him with sadness.



They say, when you are mad, you no longer feel the sadness, or loss, or grief... oh no, that is not true, she thinks. You feel them. You just no longer care. You no longer care, because you have found a way to cope.



He sits in silence.



She casts a spell and strips him of his clothing. He makes no protest, and utters no word. She shakes her head disdainfully. Of course he doesn\'t. Ron Weasley has no soul, no mind. The Dementors wiped his body clean of any such things.



How sad, Bellatrix thinks.



His body is repulsive. True, it is young, and muscular, and the smell is... fine...and the face – the face is the kind that the girls would die for – and the freckles that pepper his face and his body are supposed to make him look endearing. But they don\'t. She despises his appearance.



She runs her long fingernails along his body, leaving red scratches on his skin. He shudders at the sensation, but makes no sound.



She slaps him. He flinches, then his face freezes in the position it had just turned to.



She spits at his feet.



“How do I loathe thee, let me count the ways,” she whispers darkly. Oh, and she could, she could name ten million thing that is wrong with his body, ten million ways that this body fails to satisfy her. But ultimately, it all comes down to just one thing. Just one thing: He is not Tom.



Oh, how she loves the Dark Lord, how she could count the way in which she loves him; and the ways in which he would never return her love.



She glares at Ron with darkness gathering in her eyes. “Nothing that a vial of polyjuice won\'t fix,” she tells him meaningfully. She produces it, and places a single hair in it. And then, she spells it down her victim\'s throat.



His body transforms – and she gazes at him, the exact physical copy of Tom Riddle, flawlessness and perfection, sitting in front of her. She kneels at his feet, and lays her head in his lap. Her hands run all over his body, and she inhales his scent, absorbs his touch, revels in his nearness.



And then, she lays his hand on her hair, and begs in a whisper,



“Forgive me, My Lord... for disappointing you. For failing you so many times. For having been unable to earn your love.”



His hand is motionless and still. How she wishes his fingers would move, and caress her hair, offering even a resemblance of absolution she years to receive. But that is something she would never have – not from the Dark Lord, and not from his copy that she had created out of her soulless man-slave, and a vial of polyjuice.



Her eyes half-shut, she recites from memory:



How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.



But then, her voice breaks, and she is unable to continue. So many emotions run through her: grief, sadness, jealousy, shame... and desire; desire that does not diminish with time, but only grows stronger every day, consuming her mind and soul, like a Dementor\'s kiss, wiping everything else in its wake.



Captivated by her own desire, she watches him in adoration, until the effect of the potion wears off, and the beloved form begins to change into the loathsome shape that inhabits her household.



Ron Weasley sits on the chair, staring blankly ahead, unaware that anything had happened, unaware of anything that will ever happen to him.



“We should do this again,” she tells him dryly. “But not too soon. I don\'t have too many of Tom\'s hairs left, you know. I have to pace myself.”