You

Hermione’s door clicked open, Bellatrix grimaced at the rancid smell that omitted from the place.

The lights were off and as she gently clicked the door shut behind her, she noticed the state of the house was perfect.

Pristine wooden flooring, a shaggy red carpet in front of a brown leather sofa. A small kitchen area to the side with spotless linoleum tiles lining the walls.

A door to the left of her led to what Bella assumed was the bedroom and she was quick to enter.

She let out a groan as the smell worsened.

The bedroom was quite small, neatly done bed with red blankets and golden pillows.

Bellatrix first rummaged through the bedside table.

After her ‘talk’ with Rodolphus, Hermione had been different.

Dejected.

Bellatrix had tried to speak with her but she didn’t respond. Tears streaming down her face silently.

After a while, she finally said two words.

“My parents.”

And Bellatrix felt she was too late.

She didn’t know what they talked about, what that meant or what made Hermione the way she was but she had a feeling it was nothing good.

Nothing was ever good with Rodolphus.

Every time she thought about it, she hated herself more and more.

She hated herself for not doing anything sooner, for spending years with Rodolphus and not batting an eye at his actions.

For selfishly staying with him, for letting him ruin her, for letting him ruin Hermione.

For not hating him.

Even now, she didn’t hate him. She couldn’t.

She loved him.

It wasn’t the same way she loved Hermione or her family.

She loved him because of what they went through together.

He had been there for her through thick and thin, for the worse and she hated herself because when it finally got better, when they moved to the fucking suburbs and were supposed to have their picket fence life, it didn’t work out.

The bad inside of you never goes away.

It had been with her since she was born.

Her mother and father told her that daily, told her the evil she had inside her. How she was worthless, crazy, bad.

It’s not like they had been wrong. It was obvious.

In the way Cissy and Andy used to play with the other kids while Bellatrix only caused pain.

How she’d scratched Tammy Thompson’s eve and left her with retina issues.

How she ripped Lucius Malfoy’s teddy to shreds.

How she’d tease Cissy to tears and how her sisters, her family were scared of her.

How they’d tremble whenever she got angry. As if she was a monster.

As if she was worse than mother and father.

Sometimes Bellatrix thought she was.

They only ever got angry at Bella, only ever got violent with her.

Maybe she was just so unlovable, her parents couldn’t take it. Neither could her sisters.

Then Rodolphus came along.

Pathetic, sniveling Rodolphus Lestrange.

Kind, considerate Rod.

Her captor, jailer, Rodolphus.

He loved her so much she wanted it to stop. He loved her so much it hurt. He loved her so much it was all consuming.

All she could think about, in the dark corners of her room.

All she could think about in classes, stealing glances across the tables at him.

All she could think about, staring at Sirius’s body bleeding under his fists.

All she could think about, in the glass walls of the cage.

He loved her. He loved her. He loved her.

He doesn’t love her anymore.

Bellatrix doesn’t remember a time in her life before him, everything else is just a blur.

She was scared, terrified of the idea of him leaving.

The only thing that could love a monster was another.

After he left, she would have nothing.

She would be nothing.

He would take Delphi, he was too calculating for that.

Hermione would be gone, her sisters would be horrified at what she’d done, what she’d witnessed.

She’d be all alone again.

All alone in her bedroom, shaking from anger and sadness.

All alone in the cage, numb with emotion.

Numb with love.

It was too much.

She stopped herself from thinking, nothing good ever came from it.

If she thought too much she would change her mind, she’d leave the trembling girl down there and play pretend till Rodolphus tired of her.

She couldn’t do that.

So she took the letters, the papers, bills, anything she could find that would indicate the Grangers residence.

To make sure they were still alive.

The smell worsened with every step and Bellatrix noticed the rancid stench made the perfect wallpapers peel near the ceiling.

Without any inhabitants, spiders gathered in the corners, webs hung around the roof and that fucking smell made Bellatrix’s stomach flip.

It was all consuming.

As she readied to leave, she noticed scratch marks on the cupboards of the kitchen area.

Too low, small and sharp to be human. They got deeper and deeper into the oak around a certain locked cupboard.

That’s when the stench was the worst.

Bellatrix gagged, pinching her nose as she approached the pantry door.

It clicked open, a wave of sickness fell over her.

Flies fluttered around the small room, flying in and out of the ajar door with incessant buzzing and on the floor was a curled up lump of orange.

A cat. Dead.

Its food bowl drained, its water bowl empty and the well loved fur now matted and dingy.

The red bowl red ‘Crookshanks’ and Bellatrix felt as if she had hit rock bottom.

Her cat. Hermione’s cat.

Hermione had told her about it. Rodolphus told her he was feeding it.

He lied.

It was curled up, dead on the floor in the pantry, alone and forgotten.

Bellatrix thought it was the worst way to die.

He was a well loved cat. Fat and pampered, now starved and neglected. All alone.

The days he must’ve spent clawing at the door, waiting for his owner. Clawing at the cupboard, desperate for food.

Until he curled in front of his empty food bowl to die.

It was fitting.

Bellatrix felt as if she had more in common with Crookshanks than she ever did with anyone before.

Well loved, then neglected, then dead.

She was looking into her own future.

She was looking at a dead cat.

She was looking at love.

Where it got you, where it killed you.

Bellatrix put the cat in a plastic bag and deposited it in the green bin on her way out.

No funeral or mourning for this corpse.

-

Time stood still.

Hermione sat still.

Knees to her chest. She often found herself in that position.

She wondered. Like she always did.

If her parents were dead, what would she go back to? A town that would look at her like a victim? Like a criminal?

Her plan to lure Penelope Clearwater into looking for her had failed miserably.

Rodolphus told her with glee she thought she was a fraudulent scammer.

So getting out of the glass cage would only lead to a jail cell.

She didn’t think she had anything left.

She was so close, so so close to leaving just what? A day or two prior?

Now, she was stuck.

She was helpless and stuck and she fucking hated that stupid radio Rodolphus left playing on the desk.

‘I think we’re alone now,

There doesn’t seem to be anyone around~’

Hermione wanted to smash her head into a wall.

Hermione wanted to leave.

Hermione wanted to stay.

Hermione didn’t know what she wanted anymore.

There was nothing she could do. She wasn’t the one on the outside, manipulating her closest friends into hating her.

Making her parents shut their eyes for a final time.

It wasn’t like she would ever be welcomed back with open arms, but it made her sad.

Obviously it would, her parents were fucking murdered but she felt surprisingly numb.

She felt she should be worse, inconsolable.

But she wasn’t. She was silent and her parents were murdered and Ron was dead and Remus was dead and she was never going to leave.

And she didn’t know how to feel about that.

A small voice in the back of her mind told her she could leave. All she needed to do was let Rodolphus shower her with affection.

It wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

People were kidnapped and trafficked, tortured and here Hermione was complaining about a man who only wanted to love her.

He never touched her without consent, never really scarred her or hurt her permanently.

Maybe she was being selfish. Maybe she was being difficult.

What was there to complain about?

She loved Bella before. She had fallen hopelessly in love with the older woman, that didn’t have to change.

She could love Rodolphus.

She just didn’t want to.

And that was selfish wasn’t it?

She was causing so much pain, harm and death because she couldn’t suck it up and love a man who acted for what he believed was love.

He couldn’t be faulted for that really.

It was just his own . . . View.

On what was necessary.

What scared Hermione about being down here was the lack of control, of knowing.

Whatever she was told was gospel, she had no way to prove it right or wrong.

Whether Bellatrix was really going to let her go was uncertain.

Rodolphus was the constant. The certainty.

He loved her. He would have her. Simple.

Hermione shuddered.

The scariest thing by far, was how the cage made her rationalize what happened to her.

She was scared she was starting to sympathize with the man who murdered her best friend.

She was scared Bellatrix was playing an elaborate trick on her to make her develop Stockholm syndrome.

She was scared she would do what he told her she would on the first day here.

She was scared she was starting to learn.