Fire

Chapter 5: “For I see what I destroy, sweet reflection knife into me, for I see what I destroy.” — Vienna Teng, My Medea


They did their best to avoid each other after the incident in detention, but Rodolphus found himself staring at her when she was not aware of it. It wasn’t due to some newfound liking he had for her following their steamy encounter; he still despised her. Rather he awoke at night in a sweat remembering her writhing beneath him, first under his curse and then under his rough possession of her. He scowled.

They had not repeated their little experiment in potions, and he had not breathed a word of it to anyone. Somehow, however, his subsequent interactions with women were lacking, and it was yet one more reason he disliked Bellatrix. She had released something inside of him — some sadistic impulse he had not known he possessed — and his sexual encounters, although pleasurable, were simply not as fulfilling.

School was ever a chore, and he was waiting impatiently for the days when this would be behind him, and he’d be free to get on with his life. Rodolphus was impatient with the childish way they were treated at Hogwarts; for the millionth time he wished he’d gone to Durmstang instead. Perhaps he’d send his own son there.

At the thought of children, Rodolphus scowled harder and shoved his long-fingered hands through his untidy dark hair. He looked around his House table as they all sat in the Great Hall having dinner, trying to imagine if he would end up wed to any one of the young women seated there. He could not imagine marrying a single one of the witches in Slytherin, even though he was fairly certain the future Mrs. Rodolphus Lestrange would be from that House. His eyes touched briefly on the younger girls, but he had no real knowledge of anyone younger than sixth year. He saw Bellatrix’s younger sister. She was blonde; it was hard to believe the two Black sisters were related. He noticed she was giving him an even look from dark blue eyes. She shifted her gaze and looked away; Rodolphus noticed she was almost as silent as he was. Unwillingly, his eyes strayed to her dark-haired vixen of a sister.

She was saying something in her dark grosgrain voice and twirling a strand of her raven hair around one of her fingers. He had noticed she was incapable of sitting still. Unbidden came the thought of her moving wildly beneath him, and he flushed. It was, as much as he hated to admit it, the most intense sexual encounter he’d ever had. Too bad it had to be with someone I utterly loathe.

Bellatrix looked up and caught him staring; they exchanged a look, and the usual antagonism flourished in their gazes. Although he hated to look away first, he had something important to do and did not want her to see him sneaking off from dinner and going outside of the castle. Therefore, he focused his gaze on his plate and tried to ignore the sound of her laughter. After all, that night he had something far more important that would require his concentration, something which would affect him more in his future than mad Bellatrix Black and her cruel smile and limpid black eyes.

Tonight was the meeting, and tonight, he would see if his destiny lay with the wizard who had vowed to cleanse the Wizarding world of dirty blood. Oh, he knew men like Lucius Malfoy thought this meant mixed-bloods and the like, but Rodolphus had only one thought in his mind when he imagined whom he would purge were he given such power. The mottled cheeks and bloated features of his father’s face rose in his mind, and at the thought of the man writhing on the ground under the Cruciatus, Rodolphus Lestrange smiled sharply, that spark of cruelty that had lain dormant within him until he’d had Bellatrix stirring restlessly within him. No longer would mere images be enough to satisfy him. With one last lingering look at the raven-haired witch, he excused himself from the table and left the Hall.

*******

Licking her spoon thoughtfully, she watched him leave with a speculative look on her face.

Where on earth is he off to? Bellatrix had seen his smile. It had looked pleased, and she was not at all certain she trusted that look on his face.

Bellatrix had mixed feelings about her encounter with Rodolphus. On the one hand, she remembered their tryst with a delicious thrill she would kill someone before admitting to. On the other, she despised him even more for the intimacy they had shared. At night, she would curse him in her bed even as she remembered their furious passion, and her hand would slide down her body to gently stroke herself. As she brought herself to orgasm, she would bite herself to no avail — no matter how many bloody teeth marks she left on her own skin, it did not come close to replicating the experience.

She took other lovers, but it was not the same. Bellatrix found sex boring with those she chose to give her favors to — pleasurable but fleeting and never with the intensity and brutality she’d shared with Rodolphus. Her pride would not allow her to ask for a repeat performance, no matter how much she might have enjoyed it. She suspected it was the same with him; she often caught him watching her with a gleam in his dark eyes that wavered between fury and lust, and that look was enough to send her running to the girl’s room or anywhere she could find a moment of privacy to touch herself and remember the glorious violence of their encounter. It was a look he had been giving her across the Slytherin dinner table before he smiled in that disconcerting fashion and left the table.

Bellatrix made one of her usual, split-second decisions and decided to follow him.

It was easy enough to suppose he’d gone back down to the dungeons, so she wrapped her cloak around her and hid in the hallway. While there, she pressed herself against the rough stone, wishing he was pushing her into it and cursing herself for the thought. When he emerged several moments later, wearing a black cloak with a hood pulled up to cover his dark hair, she was almost buzzing with excitement, anger and lust. She followed him down the hallway and was surprised to see him veer off and go out of the castle.

Not that she, Bellatrix, hadn’t been outside the castle after dark. It was expressly forbidden — the only reason she did it, actually. Nature bored her to tears unless something violent was happening with it, so it was certainly not to stargaze. But for some reason the idea of Rodolphus doing so infuriated her. Perhaps I am just infuriated by everything he does. A rush of warmth flooded her; she smiled like a cat in the darkness. Well, perhaps not everything … Shaking her head briefly, she refocused her attention on the figure in black moving hurriedly through the night.

Rodolphus was headed to the Forbidden Forest, and she watched him disappear into the dark thicket of trees that marked the entrance.

Bellatrix had never ventured into the forest at night, and her blood throbbed with excitement at the thought of following him. She pulled her hood up to cover her hair and crept silently after him. The path he took was twisted and varied, and she had to stay far enough away that he would not hear her following behind him. Presently she stopped and hid behind a tree as she heard a murmur of voices and saw the group of cloaked men in a circle in the valley formed between two sloping hills. They were muttering some strange incantations,

“Ah, Lestrange” a voice drawled, and Bellatrix recognized the smooth, chilly tone of Lucius Malfoy.

Great. The Ice Man himself is here. Bellatrix found Malfoy a dead bore — handsome, surely, but entirely too self-contained for her. She could not fathom any reason why Rodolphus was meeting Lucius. He was older than the both of them, and she did not recall them being all that friendly at school other than being housemates and on the same Quidditch team. Lucius had been a chaser, as she remembered, but the two had never seemed close. Malfoy had been something of a loner, his icy good looks obscured by his solitary personality.

Just like bloody Narcissa, she thought, and rolled her eyes at the thought of her sister. Narcissa would never wonder off into the Forbidden Forest at this time of night but not because it was against the rules. Bellatrix could imagine Narcissa, sitting ramrod straight in a chair in the library, reading a book and saying in a bored voice, “I don’t fancy being eaten by anything, Bella,” and ignoring her. The thought made her smile briefly in the darkness. Narcissa was one of the only people in the world Bellatrix thought of fondly. She turned her attention back to the two men standing on the rise of the hill.

“I am pleased to have been invited, Malfoy,” Rodolphus said.

Malfoy clapped Rodolphus on the back — an unusual gesture for a man who rarely touched anyone — and drew Rodolphus into the circle of figures standing down in the small depression. Bellatrix could hear the slight rushing sound of water and figured there must be a creek close to where they stood. When Malfoy and Rodolphus’ voices faded off into the distance, she cautiously moved from behind the tree and crept closer to watch.

The sight of the robed and masked man who stood in the center of the circle made Bellatrix catch her breath. Something about the absurd sense of the grandiose about it all — a circle at night in the Forbidden Forest, so close to the school grounds, men dressed in black surrounding a figure in white mask — appealed to her immensely.

Is this some private club? Why would Malfoy be here, then? Perhaps it is some secret society to which Rodolphus belongs? There was a thought she might be able to get her nemesis expelled if they were indeed up to something. The idea had merit, and she crept a bit closer, straying to stay close to the trees and not be seen.

The murmur of voices was hard to make out. She heard something about the Dark Arts – ah, so it was that kind of club then – and a wizard, and many of the robed members were bowing to the central figure in the circle. The whole thing had begun to bore Bellatrix most dreadfully until, quite suddenly, the figure jerked its head towards where she hid in the trees, and she thought she saw an odd flash of red for a moment before the strangest feeling assailed her.

The figure could not possibly see her in the darkness unless he was availed of the most amazing eyesight, yet it seemed as if he looked right at her, and she felt this imaginary gaze right down to the center of her soul. Something inside her — some hunger sated only by the violence of Rodolphus’ brutal possession of her — stirred restlessly. Who can that be, to effect me so with a glance?

Bellatrix Black did not know that she stared into the face of her eventual destiny or that she was as visible to the man in the mask as if she’d been standing right before him. All she knew was a terrible, horrid sense of curiosity to find out more about the man and the strangeness of the gathering in the moonlit forest. Nothing had been done — no curses thrown, no hexing, no bizarre or arcane blood rites that would have enthralled her further — but something had been awoken inside of her as she watched Rodolphus Lestrange murmur and bow to the man in the mask.

Bellatrix Black had, unknown to her, found her spark.