The Men
It was around midnight when they finally arrived in the city.
The night was cold and misty, and the surrounding clouds were pregnant with the warning of a midnight storm. The streets were void of cars and fairly empty of people. It was like London knew to stay inside tonight lest something bad happen to them. And that “something bad” came in the form of two young Death Eaters who stalked the dark streets, shoulders back and chins high, guns and knives and more tucked into their suits.
They arrived in a flash of light, landing in an empty alleyway. The bright flash would have been enough to draw the attention of anyone nearby, but it was the men themselves who might have warranted further inspection had anyone been around. The first man was tall and blond, with warm brown skin and bright brown eyes. Everything about him was elegant from the tight twists in his hair to the soft slope of his nose to the delicate pout of his lips. There was something ethereal about him as if he had the thankless grace of a fallen angel. The second man was more severe than the other – all hard angles and precise lines; his nose was sharp, his jawline was sharper, and the slightly crooked twist of his mouth housed a lashing tongue and perfect teeth, all cast into shadow by the dark hair adorning his head. The pair were as beautiful and deadly as pit vipers, and they wore it carelessly.
They were about two blocks off from where they were supposed to be.
“You fucked it up,” the first Death Eater accused, already stomping off into the night. Lamp posts lined the streets, and the man became illuminated by the glow when he reached the main street. The second Death Eater huffed but followed after his partner, chasing him down, the briefcase he carried swinging at his side and crashing into his knees as he hurried to catch up to the slightly taller man.
“I didn’t fuck anything up,” the second Death Eater defended himself heatedly. “I was just holding the briefcase. It was incorrectly programmed by that bitch up front.”
“Alecto?” the first Death Eater asked, clarifying.
“That’s the one.”
The other man snorted. “She’s probably smarter than you’ll ever be.”
“I resent that,” the second Death Eater snapped. He considered smacking his partner with the briefcase, but the equipment was both expensive and fragile, and he didn’t want to be held responsible for breaking it. “Besides, if she was smarter, she wouldn’t have landed us two blocks away from where we’re supposed to be.”
“Shut up,” the first said sharply, annoyance crackling off him.
Smartly, the second man shut his mouth with a snap as his teeth hit each other.
The first Death Eater was right; it’d been the second man who’d messed it up. He'd gotten distracted while focusing on the location, and they were lucky they weren’t in a completely different city or century. Being two blocks off was nothing compared to the two decades they could’ve been off. That would’ve been a miserable Apparation back – the embarrassment would’ve been too much for him to handle, especially if the more powerful Death Eaters were there to see him fess up to it. Now, he could argue his case a bit better. And this mistake was less likely to be noticed than two decades would’ve been. This mistake was less likely to be punished.
It wasn’t a long walk to the hotel. They ducked through the shadows, lingering only in the gaps where the light of the streetlamps didn’t quite reach; they didn’t want to risk someone seeing them out so late. Two men in suits and a single briefcase between them walking the empty streets in the middle of the night suggested something strange was going on.
Two blocks over, their destination stood proudly.
The lobby of the hotel was a bright smudge of white light in the distance, and the Death Eaters squinted as they grew closer as their eyes adjusted to the glow.
“It’s like looking into the sun,” the second Death Eater muttered.
The first hummed in consideration. “Remember Las Vegas in 1931? All the neon everywhere?”
“God, don’t remind me,” the second said in a groan, practically feeling the burn of his retinas once again. They’d been sent out to Las Vegas in the middle of their neon revolution, and he swore up and down that the bright lights still flashed in front of him whenever he blinked. That'd been an interesting few days. He'd been to Vegas on several occasions now across different times, but he much preferred the 50s when the city was in its prime.
“That was definitely brighter than this,” the first continued, pausing to glance up the street in case any cars were coming. The second carried on, not quite caring if a car were to come blazing down the street. They were lucky; the road was as empty as the rest of the streets had been so far.
A soft bell announced the arrival of the two Death Eaters when they pushed open the front door.
The front desk clerk looked up, smiling cheerily when she caught sight of the men. “Good evening,” she called out, voice serene and dripping with sweetness. The second Death Eater immediately didn’t like her. Kindness like that always seemed superficial, and in his experience, it usually was.
“Is this where we check in?” the first man asked politely as if he wasn’t aware of how hotels worked. The innocent act always worked better for him than it did for the second man. It must have been his big brown eyes, the second thought. No one looked into his gentle eyes and realized the violence they’d seen. The second’s eyes had always looked gaunt, a dark blue that could rival the storm clouds in the distance for who was the most foreboding. His dark gaze suggested tragedy whereas the other man’s spoke of warmth.
The clerk nodded. “Yes, I can do that here. What’s the name of the reservation?” She looked at them strangely, suddenly noticing the obvious lack of luggage or bags save for the briefcase. If she found it suspicious, she said nothing, which was probably a mistake.
“Barty Crouch,” the second Death Eater provided, following the instructions Alecto provided when she’d told them where to go and what to say. He’d been a little surprised to learn he’d be using his full name instead of a fake one, but he hadn’t protested for once, merely thought it was an interesting choice.
The front desk clerk scrolled for a minute.
“Junior.” His lips curled into a smirk as he spoke, relishing the drama of it all.
The belated addition of his title cleared things up for her. “Ah,” she said, nodding. “Here it is. We have you down for a room with two beds. Is that alright?”
The first Death Eater, Evan Rosier, cut his gaze over to his partner, Barty. The men silently communicated their distaste for sharing a room, but there wasn’t much they could do. Besides, they’d shared rooms before. Barty just knew that their mutual nightmares often kept each other awake, and the few hours they managed to sleep in between their own night terrors were disturbed by the other's suffering. Barty’s nightmares were courtesy of a tumultuous childhood; Evan’s were a mystery, one Barty desperately wanted to pick apart and understand but knew all too well just how invasive it would feel for him to know. The nightmares – the waking up screaming, the sheets twisted between fists, the sobs that tore through chests – disrupted everything. In their profession, sleep was a necessary thing, and withholding it didn’t bode well for their chances of doing this task quickly.
Of course, they still weren’t fully what this task was. It was a last-minute assignment, which meant they didn’t get any time to prepare; usually, they at least got a vague overview of what Death Eater duties they would be completing, but they hadn’t even gotten that. All would be explained when they got to the room, no doubt, and the case files were sent through, but it didn’t keep Barty from wondering. He preferred to get his information quickly and early, and proceedings like this always killed him a little bit.
“Yes, that’s alright,” Evan finally answered, making the decision for both of them.
The clerk nodded, clicking around on her computer. She finished checking them in, taking far too long in Barty’s opinion, then finally handed them two room keys. They were in 621, on the top floor of the hotel.
“Isn’t the Dark Lord rich?” Barty asked while they waited for the elevator. He was a brash man, unwilling to lower his voice or dilute himself. His words probably carried through the empty lobby and reached the ears of the front desk clerk, but he couldn’t bring himself to mind. It wasn’t like she would understand what he was talking about, and she definitely wasn’t in a position to figure it out.
Evan frowned. “Yeah, why?”
“And the Graveyard. That's pretty lucrative, is it not?”
“It’s too dark out for your riddles.”
“I just mean,” Barty said, “that there’s no way we’re too poor to afford two rooms. It's a shitty hotel. We're top-ranked, Ev. Some of the best he’s got working for him. Then they just turned around and gave us a single hotel room. What's next, just one bed? A fucking couch? God forbid, a motel?”
“Budget cuts,” Evan answered, voice laced with a lazy distaste. “I heard Corban talking about it; he had one of those fucking prototype briefcases or whatever, the ones from early development. Said it glitched out on him twice and nearly electrocuted him. Nearly isn't really good enough, though, now is it? I wish that thing was even older.”
Barty sighed as the elevator doors opened. “I guess we can’t all get what we want.”
Evan and Barty were not fans of Corban Yaxley and his partner Augustus Rookwood. Publicly, they were nice to them. Privately, they talked about various ways they would kill them without anyone else noticing their disappearances: Barty would shoot them point blank, but Evan would draw it out a bit more to really make sure they suffered sufficiently. Hypothetically, of course. Two, a fellow Death Eater, hated them as well, though he never was as willing to tear them apart as Barty and Evan were. He always said he couldn’t bring himself to bother with such petty things.
They stepped into the elevator, eyeing each other warily when a man they hadn’t caught sight of darted in with them. His hair was dark, and there was an unsettling hardness in his eyes as he regarded Evan and Barty coolly.
Barty pressed the button for the sixth floor.
“Press four, will you?” the man said, though it didn’t sound like a request.
Barty purposefully turned the other way and ignored the man, pissed off at the demand. “Non farò nulla per quest'uomo,” Barty snapped in Italian to Evan, trusting his partner to understand him after the years of lessons Barty gave him in return for lessons in French.
The man huffed and reached over, pressing the button himself. As he leaned over, a pendant tucked under the collar of his shirt slipped out, dangling from his neck. It looked expensive. Barty was almost tempted to steal it. Budget cuts would eventually trickle down to salary cuts, and he wasn’t above petty crime, especially in timelines he was unlikely to visit again. Evan must have noticed the kleptomaniac glint in Barty’s eyes because he fiercely muttered, “Ti comprerò una dannata collana.”
Barty grinned. “Dov'è il divertimento?”
The elevator came to a stop at the fourth floor, and the man darted off, sending a cold look toward the Death Eaters.
“What a dick,” Evan commented as the elevator's doors closed once again.
“Literally.”
“No, I meant you.”
“I’m your dick,” Barty teased without thinking, grinning immediately when he saw Evan’s face twist in distaste.
“What the fuck?” Evan demanded. “Don’t say that ever again. It did not sound like how you wanted it to sound. Ugh.”
“Choke,” Barty told him. “What if I really did mean it that way?” The question held more weight than the situation allowed for, but neither of them were good at picking up things like this.
The elevator slowed once more, pinging as it came to a stop on the sixth floor. The door slid open, and Evan quickly slipped out, moving faster than Barty had ever seen him walk before in an effort to ditch the other man. With a careless cackle (people were sleeping, as Evan would hiss at him later), he ran after his blond partner, catching up to him right away. He jumped and grabbed the man around the shoulders, making Evan stumble as he tried to hold both of their weights up. The briefcase smacked against someone’s leg as they grappled with each other – they were too tangled to tell who’s – and something inside rattled, which immediately stalled their fun. The tackling might have escalated elsewhere had the briefcase not reminded them where they were and what they were supposed to be doing there. Barty wanted to beat the thing against the ground until it broke into pieces.
They straightened themselves up, growing serious once again, movements stilted and awkward upon the reminder that they were working. They had an assignment. Nothing was supposed to come between a Death Eater and their assignment.
621 was only a few doors down from where they were roughhousing, and it was Evan who silently pointed to the door when he found it.
Barty scanned the keycard and the locks popped as they retracted. He grabbed the door handle and pulled the door open, allowing Evan to slip in first. Barty followed closely after him.
The hotel room was blasé; just another hotel room, almost identical to the dozens of hotel rooms Barty and Evan dipped in and out of in this same twenty years or so. Hotel rooms across different time periods were always a little different, but things had grown stagnant in this time, and Barty was used to the look of it now. There was a TV across from the two beds, and it was moving through a slideshow advertising the hotel (which Barty found redundant considering they were already paying customers of the hotel, why in the world would they need to advertise?) and occasionally cutting to a brief clip of a show that was available for them to watch. A dial phone and an alarm clock sat side by side on the nightstand between the two beds. The sheets were tucked tight, the pillows carefully fluffed, and the decorative blanket perfectly pressed. The notepad on the desk wished them a good stay, and the pen was branded. It was just like any other hotel room.
Only, the Graveyard was heavily infiltrated in hotel rooms like this, so it truthfully wasn’t like any other hotel room – looks tend to be deceiving. As Barty and Evan glanced around the room, the wall hissed and clicked, the sound barely audible to the untrained ear. Then one of the wall panels sunk in slightly before sliding away, revealing a secret compartment hidden within the walls.
Even after operating so long as a Death Eater, Barty was still mildly surprised by the scope of the Dark Lord’s power.
He crossed the room, ducking to peek in the compartment. Inside, two identical suitcases waited for him, and he reached in to grab them. This was arguably his least favorite part: other people packed these bags for him, and now he was expected to pretend it wasn’t creepy to just blindly use or wear whatever was inside without a real say in the matter.
The most important thing for Barty was autonomy.
It was always autonomy. The right to be his own person and make his own decisions and have a say in his own life.
It was his independence that his father stripped away so cruelly, and it was his independence that Barty sought when he agreed to become a Death Eater. Anything to get out of that house, to be his own person and not just live under his father’s thumb for his whole life.
That sense of autonomy was vital for Barty to remain sane.
He didn’t like it when someone else packed his suitcase for him and expected him to systematically follow orders. It made his skin crawl. But he wasn’t in the position to complain; for the most part, Barty was free, and even if he had to do whatever the Dark Lord told him to do, at least it was his decision to follow him in the first place.
Barty handed one of the suitcases to Evan, tossing the other on the bed he quickly chose to be his – the one by the window, so he was near the aircon as he ran hot in the night – and unzipped it.
Neither of the Death Eaters knew anything about their assignment, but sometimes whatever was packed in the suitcases gave them a hint. Sometimes they made a game out of guessing the nature of their mission, especially on quick proceedings like this when they quite literally knew nothing. Sometimes things felt heavy, and they simply just acknowledged the items and moved on. And sometimes they already knew what they were expected to do, and there was no fun in the game once they were briefed on their assignment.
Tonight was a guessing night, a night for riddles and tricks, even if Evan thought earlier that it was too late for such tomfoolery.
“I’ve got a walkie-talkie,” Barty called out quickly. It'd been sitting on the top of the pile of clothes.
Evan frowned and looked over, holding a similar thing in his hands. “It’s called a two-way radio.”
“Do I look like I give a fuck? Walkie-talkie is more fun to say.”
Barty sorted through the clothes packed for him. He had two shirts and a pair of jeans. Several socks were balled up and shoved into the sides of the suitcase alongside boxers. There was a rain jacket, which might have come in handy, and two more suits identical to the one he was currently wearing.
“They want us to dress casually,” Evan commented, looking through a similar array of clothes to what Barty had laid out on his bed. The casual clothes were probably so they could fit in with the crowd better.
“And to split up,” Barty said. “The walkie-talkies are weird. Why not earpieces? It's, like, the same thing. We'd be able to talk long distance. I think walkie-talkies are even more noticeable, too.”
“I’ve got swim trunks.”
Barty scowled and said, “I don’t.” He quickly looked through his clothes pile again just to double-check. “What the hell?”
“Don’t think yourself into a knot over there,” Evan teased as Barty checked for a third time.
Eventually, he gave up, pushing away the odd choice to give just one of them a swimsuit, and instead dove back into the contents of the baggage.
“Oh!” Barty cried, getting excited. “I’ve got a tracker!”
“Really?” Evan said, grabbing for the blinking piece of equipment in Barty’s hand. They bent over the small screen together, watching the red dot flash as it reported someone’s location back to them. The street names didn’t tell him anything, and he wasn’t zoomed in enough to see where the tracker reported this person to be. “This is boring, B. It’s not showing us anything unusual. Dude isn’t even moving.”
“Whatever,” Barty scoffed. “It’s more than you’ve got.”
“Actually,” Evan said, lips twisted into a delicious smirk that made Barty stare a beat too long, “I’ve got something good here.”
“Pray tell.”
Evan beckoned him over to his respective suitcase.
Nestled in the bottom of the suitcase, made visible only after clothes had been shoved aside and other necessities were removed, was a book. A London guidebook. Barty frowned, upper lip curling in what looked like the beginning of a sneer but what was truly a face of pure confusion, and grabbed the book.
Evan and Barty had been to London dozens of times, and that was a known fact. It wasn’t like someone packed their bags and assumed they were naive. Barty was fairly certain they weren’t even given guidebooks usually, not even when they were going to a new city or time period, but that might have just been his experience. Still, something was strange here.
Barty thumbed through the book, and the spine fell open easily on certain pages and chapters to reveal tabs all throughout. And, on top of that, this book was annotated. Little notes were scrawled in the margins and highlighters had been taken to certain sentences.
This was no ordinary guidebook.
This was a clue, a map, an incoherent mess that would instruct their every move when they finally untangled the puzzle.
Barty had never seen anything like this before, not on any other missions. That was his first clue that this mission was important, more important than anything else, more important than some of the history-defining missions they’d completed throughout their time as Death Eaters. And stranger. Something weird was going on here, something he’d never seen before.
As Barty skimmed through the pages, Evan shoved forward and placed his finger on one of them, stopping his partner from flipping. Evan took the book back to look closer.
“Give me the tracker,” he said.
Barty wordlessly reached for the tracker, which lay on his bedsheets, and handed the device to Evan.
Evan put the book down, spreading the pages open so Barty could see it too, and set the tracker next to it. Barty hooked his chin over Evan’s shoulder so he could get a proper view of it, his chest pressed against the other man’s back.
The tracker blinked at them.
“It’s a map of the same area,” Evan said, gesturing to the pages. “I thought it looked familiar. The tracker only gives us street names – this map gives us more.”
He was right; the map in the book showed different stores and restaurants and pubs to shop at, and if they cross-checked it with the tracker, they might be able to tell where they needed to go. Barty hated how vague the tracker was. It was impractical to have to use the guidebook, but his frustration didn’t mean he wasn’t glad Evan had figured the first puzzle out. He was just annoyed they had to work through this puzzle in the first place. Jobs were supposed to be straightforward and simple: get in, kill the bitch, and get out.
Barty traced his finger over the map, glancing back at the tracker as he did so. “It looks like the target is in the middle of the street and not moving.”
“Maybe we got lucky and they’re roadkill now.”
“Well, let’s make sure the job’s finished, at least,” Barty said, pushing himself away from Evan and taking a step towards the door.
“Wait,” Evan protested, shaking his head. “B, we don’t even know who the target is right now.”
As if on cue, one of the walls began hissing once more. Barty snapped his head to the side, following the direction the sound came from just in time to watch a slot in the headboard of his bed open up. A small click punctuated the opening of the slot. Inside, a small canister was settled.
Evan crossed the room before Barty could. He reached in and tugged the canister out, the shiny metal reflecting the orange light from the lamp by the beds. He considered the canister for a minute, which annoyed Barty, so the other man reached out and grabbed it for himself. Evan let him snatch it away from him with minimal resistance.
Barty unscrewed one side of the canister and then tipped the contents out into his palm.
A rolled-up, single sheet of paper came out.
This time, it was Evan who grabbed it from Barty, and the paper crinkled under his harsh grasp. He unrolled it with a blank face just like every other time they got an assignment in such a manner. Only, this couldn’t have been normal. Barty felt his heart pinch in his chest as he watched Evan’s eyes widen and his jaw slacken. He hissed in a sharp breath through his nose, and it caught in his throat. He grew entirely still – frozen, almost, in time.
Barty knew something was wrong. Though it was Barty who was constantly moving, there was no rigidity in Evan’s figure unless something shocked him (which was rare) or frightened him (which was even rarer). Here, every muscle was taut, every motion was stilled, every heartbeat was momentarily paused.
Then, in a rush, Evan moved again. Harshly, he said, “That looks like—” An abrupt cut-off. A full stop as if that could change anything, as if that could go back and reverse all that had inevitably led to this moment.
“Looks like who?” Barty demanded.
Evan turned the paper around.
“Che cazzo?” Barty snapped, reaching up to rip the paper from Evan’s hand so he could look at it closer.
“Do you think that’s. . ?” Evan started.
“Surely not.”
“But look at the—” He cut himself off again, not able to voice it.
“I don’t know how it can be him,” Barty reasoned. “Wasn’t he just sent on a mission?”
“The bastard doesn’t talk much if you’ve noticed,” Evan said harshly. “It looks identical to him, Barty.”
“He’s a generic-looking person. Anybody could look like this.” Barty knew he was just grasping for straws, but he couldn’t understand why he would be the target for the mission. He was one of the best of the best – even better than Evan and Barty, and he did all of his work alone, which made it all the more impressive. He was dedicated to his craft, and it seemed like he was the most loyal of all of the Death Eaters to the Dark Lord’s cause.
Evan pulled back the paper so he could point to the man’s face. “Barty, no one else fucking looks that identical to anyone unless they’re twins.”
“Shit,” Barty breathed out.
The picture was the same high-quality, serious-looking photo all the Death Eaters took regularly to update the system. As much as Barty wanted to deny it, there was no mistaking the cold steel gaze, angled cheekbones, and darkly carved eyebrows that set Two apart from anyone else among them. And there, at the bottom of the photo, was the boiled-down thesis of their mission: TERMINATE BY TWO DAYS' TIME.
Bellatrix shot up awake around one in the morning, heart beating rapidly in her chest.
She’d forgotten to go and look for the silver-plated box she’d dropped, and now it was all she could think about. She didn’t really know why. It was just that something had probably been inside, something good, and now she was ever so curious about finding out what it was, but she didn’t have it with her anymore. She threw the blankets off and slipped out of bed.
After Regulus and Sirius had gone off to do whatever it was that they were doing (she suspected they were fighting, wherever they were, and was almost sad to miss the show), Andromeda had tried to wrestle something out of Narcissa. Bellatrix wasn’t sure what the other girl was looking for, but she clearly didn’t find it. The dinner afterward was awkward and silent, with strange looks being passed between the three girls, remnants of a language they were once fluent in but could only speak in small snatches now.
In a way, Bellatrix loved watching Andromeda’s failed attempt to rekindle her bond with Narcissa because it was delightfully self-destructive. It was Bellatrix who’d patched together Narcissa’s broken ribs once Andromeda ripped the blonde’s heart out of her chest to take it with her when she left. It was Bellatrix who’d snuck Narcissa food in the night when Walburga decided she’d had enough of seeing her tear-stained face at meals. It was Bellatrix who’d acted out so Narcissa would be relatively left alone. Not Andromeda. What right to kinship did she have anymore? Narcissa knew it, too, which was why she barely entertained Andromeda’s efforts despite Bellatrix knowing she partially wanted to.
And there was also that quiet, airy voice in the back of her mind that reminded her how Narcissa didn’t just leave but rather took Bellatrix with her – something Andromeda had never thought to do when it came to either of the other girls.
Andromeda had left them.
She'd left and never looked back.
The house was quiet. That’s what Bellatrix noticed the most. Sure, the house was always quiet now that Sirius and Regulus were both gone, but this was a different kind of stillness, a different kind of silence, one that spoke of emptiness instead of cautiousness. And she noticed it the moment she woke up that morning.
The first thing Bellatrix did was slip upstairs.
Although the third floor was forbidden, a strange determination drove her to check up there anyway. Giddily, she almost hoped one of the Black seniors had died. She couldn’t really tell how old they were – and it wasn’t like they wrote the number down where she could snoop and see it, nor did they ever explicitly tell her – so all she could hope was that they were old enough to die. It sounded awful, and she was well aware of this, but she didn’t care. She was just upset they hadn’t keeled over and died yet.
Bellatrix walked quietly. It was a talent she’d been forced to develop, but something she cleverly pretended to have never quite gotten the hang of it. If they expected her to walk loudly, clumsy with every step even with socked feet, then they would never suspect her to be standing in the doorway behind them since they’d never heard what they thought it sounded like when she approached. She banged around when she knew they would hear, taking each step heavily when she knew it wouldn’t put her in danger, all for the purpose of this: they never heard her walking up the stairs; never heard her padding down the hallway; never heard her push the door open ever so slightly so she could listen to the quiet voices of Walburga and Orion talking when they didn’t realize there was an audience.
Damn.
They were both alive, then.
So much for that.
She hurried back to the stairs before they could catch her, tiptoeing down them and avoiding the parts that creaked. She went all the way down until she reached the first floor, moving fast yet cautious, feeling strangely childlike.
Snores hit her ears the moment she stepped toward Cygnus’ room.
A cold feeling settled in Bellatrix’s gut. Walburga and Orion were alive. Cygnus was as well. But the emptiness of the house was fresh and nearly tangible in the air, so who could it have been?
From the sitting room, Kreacher eyed her, taking in the nightgown she still wore and the unbrushed hair tangled around her head in a dark halo. “Miss Bella?” he asked, voice creaking and scratchy in the silence. “Do you need Kreacher?”
“No,” she hissed, turning back to retrace her steps.
Something was wrong.
The energy of the house was off, she could quite literally feel it, she just couldn’t pinpoint what it was exactly. It made her so frustrated. She wanted to rip her hair out. She wanted to scream and wake the entire house up. She wanted to throw herself down the stairs just to watch the bruises bloom on her skin so that she knew she wasn’t making this up. Knowing something was different but not being able to figure out what it was drove her insane. It was like a small nail was being hammered into her head that she could never find to pull out.
Sometimes, her powers overwhelmed her like this, though that was usually when there was an overwhelming hum of energy around them. It was as if there were too many appliances plugged in at once. Or if too many people were in the room, all buzzing from something that quite literally electrified them to the point where she could sense it.
But she’d never gotten so overwhelmed by a distinct lack of something.
It was like white noise had been playing for so long in the background that she’d gotten used to it, only for it to suddenly drop away and leave her with nothing.
She hated it.
Bellatrix stormed to Andromeda’s room – for what, she wasn’t sure, and wasn’t ever able to understand what had driven her to stand in front of the door. She grabbed the doorknob and threw it open, anger and overstimulation winding up a snarl only for it to die on her lips.
The room was empty.
Empty empty empty empty.
Empty.
The sheets were pulled back and tousled, the pillow creased from the indent of a head.
Stray clothes were strewn about the floor, things that must not have been deemed necessary.
The curtains fluttered from a breeze drifting in through the open window.
Sunlight poured in, spotlighting the empty sheets where the other girl should’ve been lying, where the other girl should be shouting at Bellatrix for waking her up.
Empty.
The closet door was flung open, the light carelessly left on.
Picture frames had been emptied and were now bare, nothing but glass and a metal frame with nothing inside.
Old bloodstains still marred the floor.
The bedframe was still chipped from a mishap with a knife when they were twelve.
Empty.
Empty.
Everything was empty: Bellatrix, the room, her heart, the room, her mind, the frames, the room, the room, the room.
“Bella?” came a murmur from behind. Sleepy and rough from a lack of use. In that state, it was deeper, and it sounded like relief and it sounded like light and it sounded like Andromeda. Bellatrix turned around and saw Narcissa standing there instead, rubbing her eyes tiredly while she stifled a yawn. She spoke again when Bellatrix didn’t answer and asked, “What are you doing?”
“Dying.”
Narcissa frowned. “What does that mean?”
Bellatrix stepped to the side. Eyeing her warily, Narcissa peered into Andromeda’s room. Her eyes flitted around rapidly as they took in the state of the room, and Bellatrix watched as the blood drained from the other girl’s face. All the pink in her cheeks from the warmth of her bed washed away into an ashen white. Her lips parted in surprise. And then, a low, keening noise came from her throat.
“What are you doing?” Bellatrix asked. She'd never heard Narcissa make that sound before. It was a decisively horrible sound, one she wanted to stop immediately.
“Dying,” Narcissa whispered, echoing Bellatrix’s previous statement, having finally understood what she meant. The first tear fell fast, practically skipping over her cheek bone in its haste to make its way down her face. The second tear was slower, tracing its way around her nose and over her lips before settling on the tip of her chin and lingering.
Bellatrix was frozen while she watched Narcissa begin to cry, and it wasn’t until the third tear began to fall that she snapped back to herself.
An anger so desperate and all-consuming filled her.
How dare she run away like this, leaving Narcissa and Bellatrix alone? How dare she abandon ship without even alerting the other girls she was going to do it? How dare she so selfishly save herself without bringing the rest of them along?
Bellatrix hadn’t even known Andromeda was strong enough to finally break away – she thought, if anything, she’d have to drag both girls out with gritted teeth and a white-knuckled grip. When Sirius ran away, it was rebellion, it was cruel, and it was the easy way out. When Regulus disappeared, it was unpolished, it was unnecessary, and it was out of the blue. Andromeda was neither rebellious nor unpolished. And she wasn’t quite brave enough nor stupid enough to follow in the boys’ footsteps – or so Bellatrix thought.
She flew down the stairs, a whirlwind of a woman: her hair a rat’s nest around her head, her nightdress wrinkled, her cheeks bright pink from anger, her nails digging into her palms hard enough to draw blood. She moved with the ferocity of a lightning storm, her rage so strong that it was subconsciously drawing the electricity of the house to her, and it crackled in the air dangerously. She could taste the metallic grit of the electricity in the back of her throat. Her hair stood up on end impossibly so. Anything she brushed up against was shocked by her skin.
She went to the kitchen, needing to hurt something, someone, anything, hoping that maybe Kreacher would be an easy target there.
Bellatrix flung the door open.
Empty.
A cavern in her chest opened, and the clear taunt from the universe – the emptiness of the house – only fueled her further.
She ripped open the cabinets and grabbed the plates. One by one, she threw them to the ground, listening to the delicious sound as they shattered and broke and crashed against the ground. One plate after the other.
“What is going on?” came a shrill cry from three stories above. Walburga.
Bellatrix grabbed the water glasses next, smashing them against the ground with fervor. The glass splintered as it shattered, flying across the tiled floor and littering the ground, catching at the light and glittering like flakes of snow or shards of ice or cuts of diamonds. She smashed each cup until the cabinet was empty, then looked through the rest of them in search of something more, stepping on hundreds of pieces of glass without noticing the sharp bite.
Nothing.
She tore open the drawers and dropped the silverware onto the ground. This was much less satisfying – it didn’t shatter or break, but it clattered louder than the plates or the glasses had.
“You filthy girl!” Walburga shrieked at Bellatrix.
The girl continued her destruction of the kitchen, content knowing that Walburga didn’t have the backbone to cross the sea of glass to reach her.
Bellatrix cut her a sharp look before pressing down hard on the drawer, putting all her body weight into it. The wood began to splinter, and Walburga gasped, drawing up her shoulders and clenching her fists by her side. The drawer broke with a snap.
“Kreacher!” Walburga cried, summoning the strange elf-like creature to her side.
Bellatrix opened another drawer, grabbed the heavy meat cleaver, and weighed it in her hand.
Walburga, to her credit, didn’t seem threatened by this, but that wasn’t what Bellatrix was going for anyway.
She imagined Andromeda’s face on the glass of the oven door, then swung hard, bringing the cleaver right into where she pictured the center of the other girl’s face to be.
“Yes, my Mistress?” came Kreacher’s pathetic voice.
Without looking, Bellatrix threw the cleaver at him, but she didn’t bother to double-check to see if she’d hit her target. Based on the loud bang of the cleaver against the floor and the distinct lack of pained cries, she guessed it hadn’t worked. It only made her seethe more.
“Stop her,” Walburga demanded.
Bellatrix had enough. The old woman needed to shut the fuck up, needed to stop talking, needed to let Bellatrix deal with this, or she was going to do something about it. She was already about to do something about it.
Bellatrix reached to tug a knife out of the block.
She wasn’t sure what she was going to do – stab Walburga? Stab Kreacher? Cut the couches up? All she knew was that she wanted that knife in her hands, and nothing was going to stop her from grabbing it.
Kreacher pulled her legs out from underneath her without Bellatrix even hearing him approach.
The attack caught her off guard, and she went down, chin smacking against the countertop as she was pulled onto the glass-strewn floor. She shrieked, but hitting her chin left her dazed and in pain, so she wasn’t in the right mindset to attack.
The glass cut into her skin everywhere it touched. Kreacher’s claws raked against her legs and her arms. Her ears were ringing.
Pain burst all across her skin, like a hot flame that burned and burned.
And then it was pure instinct that took over.
And then she shrieked, and then she shrieked, and then she—
Everything cut off.
The memory became hazy.
It was like something had been snatched away from her, like she’d been stolen from, and no matter how hard she pressed, she couldn’t recover it.
Bellatrix tasted the memory of blood as she thought about that morning. She shuddered before brushing it away, tucking the strange, broken echo into a compartment of her mind to be revisited at a later time, a better time, one that wasn’t utterly inconvenient.
Like in the dark.
It wasn’t good to remember terrible things in the dark.
Because then, if her eyes couldn’t fully see everything, she might be mistaking a memory for the moment. Might be mistaking the ghostly ache of an old pain for the pulsating feeling of a new wound. And it would be terrible to have overlooked something like that.
Bellatrix left her room without really thinking about it. She'd fallen asleep in the clothes she’d worn that day, and she didn’t bother to change even now. It was around one in the morning – no one would be out that she needed to impress. She remembered, at least, to put her shoes on, but even that was a miracle.
It was just Narcissa in the house with her now.
Andromeda left after their awkward dinner, leaving the other two girls alone, and Narcissa’s flinch when she announced it made Bellatrix want to do something stupid.
Alone, Narcissa and Bellatrix stared at each other for a minute, not so sure what to do. It'd been so long since they operated just the two of them, but it wasn’t entirely unfamiliar, nor was it completely unwelcome, it was just strange.
Narcissa had eventually asked, “Are you staying?”
“Are you?” Bellatrix said instead of answering.
The blonde hummed in acknowledgment, then nodded – one short, curt nod that left no room for questions or elaboration.
“Okay. It’ll feel better that you’re here. I can’t imagine this place alone.”
“We’re not alone,” Narcissa said firmly. “Druella is here.”
“Maman,” Bellatrix teased cruelly, never able to walk away from someone without leaving a gaping wound for them to remember her by.
“Shut the fuck up,” Narcissa hissed before turning on her heel and promptly disappearing up the stairs. She didn’t even bother looking back, too pressed by the comment although there had been far worse said to her throughout the day – it seemed she’d reached a snapping point. Bellatrix almost wished Sirius had been here to see that it was her who’d finally made Narcissa have enough and not him; he might never admit it, but his mean streak matched hers to the point that she used to be competitive over it when they were younger. He never liked that game, though. But she did.
Bellatrix watched Narcissa retreat, and it was such a familiar feeling.
They were two lone ghosts wandering the Black Manor once more, only now there was a high chance there were actually two ghosts wandering about the manor. She briefly pictured what Walburga and Orion might’ve looked like as ghosts, but the image didn’t do them justice, so she moved on. In fact, if she even saw their supposed spirits moving about the house, she would just assume Narcissa was casting an illusion to punish her for the comment. Maybe she just didn’t find the idea of ghosts alarming.
She spent the rest of the evening doing things she was never allowed to do as a girl – snoop through rooms and offices, lounge on the couches lazily, slam the doors. It was quite fun, in a weird way, but Kreacher, who’d been mad at her since the funeral, didn’t seem to find it amusing. He hovered over her as she had her fun, looking strangely peeved for an elf.
When she’d grown bored, she retreated up to her room and milled about before eventually falling asleep.
And now here she was, creeping down the stairs so she could fetch the missing silver box she’d dropped. Though it definitely wasn’t valuable, it’d been weighing on her, and she had this burning itch to go find it and bring it back so she could unjam it and see what was inside.
“Curiosity killed the cat” and whatnot.
Although, in this case, she wasn’t so sure how the box would kill her. If anything, it was the people roaming the streets of London in the dark that might be her demise. Or so she suspected. She'd never been the best when it came to these kinds of things.
She slipped out the front door and let it slam shut behind her, not quite caring if it would wake anyone or anything up.
The street was more imposing at night.
When she was younger, she’d never really snuck out during the nighttime, too wary of the consequences. She watched out her window, of course. It was a nice neighborhood – wealthy and maintained dutifully by gardeners who’d been hired to make it look beautiful. It had no business being threatening in the dark, but the knowledge of who lived in the area made everything more sinister. Something about this street would always leave her uneasy, the memory of cruelty and harshness like a warning sign to turn around and stay away from the area lest she find herself trapped again.
Of course, now all the Black seniors were dead.
There was nothing to fear anymore. The reminder made her grin until her cheeks hurt.
Her hunt for the box was difficult; in the dark, it was hard to remember where she’d been, and she’d lost it hours and hours ago, so she couldn’t quite retrace her steps. She ended up just wandering back and forth for a while, eyes wide open as she looked for the silvery box.
Somehow, she found herself twenty or so minutes away from the house, down by the shops and the pubs and the bank.
She scanned the streets, hoping the box would reflect the streetlamps or the moonlight or the police lights that flashed in the distance.
The police lights.
Like a moth to a flame, Bellatrix was drawn to them. Here was something interesting. Here was something compelling. Here was something she could occupy her time with.
And she wasn’t the only one who was pulled into orbit.
As she grew closer, she could see two men standing near the edge of the police tape. They were immaculately dressed: expensive suits and shiny shoes, with silky ties and firmly pressed undershirts, the clothes all screaming of money and an overwhelming amount of it.
With her wrinkled clothes, messy hair, and smudged makeup, they overlooked her easily, not even glancing at her once. She was beautiful like this, strangely enough, but in an off-putting way, in a way that begged for lingering stares and not just quick glances, but they didn’t give her the time of day.
She looked at them, though, content knowing they weren’t going to notice her watching.
The sharper of the men – and he was quite sharp indeed, with his nose and his jaw and his words – glanced down at the small device in his hand. At first, Bellatrix thought it was a phone of sorts, but on second thought, that couldn’t have been it.
“It says he’s here,” the sharp man muttered, his voice carrying more than it should’ve through the silent street. Bellatrix wondered what that could’ve meant.
“Did you break it?” the other man – an angel, he looked like, though Bellatrix suspected he was anything but – suggested, and it didn’t sound unkind.
“No,” the sharp one snarled. “Why is it always my fault, hmm? What if you broke it?”
“Because I know you,” came the simple reply.
“Fuck you, you don’t know shit.”
And oh, maybe Bellatrix had this all wrong. They seemed like business partners at first, but maybe they were something more, something closer. Although, it was still strange for a pair of lovers to be out at night, staring off into the crime scene in the distance where police were still actively running around. Of course, she was there too, so she couldn’t really say anything.
“Oh yeah?” the angel – the devil, it seemed more like now – taunted.
“Yeah.”
“Come on,” the blond one muttered. “We can look around in the light. He's clearly not here.”
“He could be underground,” the sharp man pointed out. “We’re standing right on top of the dot.”
Oh.
Oh.
They were tracking someone?
Bellatrix was too tired for this. There wasn’t enough context in the world to explain what was going on, but she was kind of invested now. She wanted to know if they would make out or kill each other first.
The angel kicked at the ground. “It doesn’t sound hollow,” he said cheekily.
“Press your ear to it and knock,” the sharp man snidely said. “You know how you knock on watermelons or on walls?”
“I’m not pressing my ear to the dirty road.”
“Well, I’m not either.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
A pause.
Then, the sharp man said, “Who am I kidding, I can’t imagine him playing around in the sewers. He’d have to be dead to be caught down there.”
“I’m telling you,” the angel said, turning around and beginning to abandon the other man. “The dumb thing’s broken.”
“Guess it’s the old-fashioned way,” the sharp man said, sighing, and pocketed the device. He trailed after his partner – in either sense of the word, because Bellatrix couldn’t really tell – and followed him down the empty road.
Now, Bellatrix was faced with a very tricky decision here: follow the men or keep looking for the box. Sure, the men were entertaining, but she wasn’t too invested in what they were doing, having grown bored rather quickly. The box was digging at her, though. She'd brushed off the contents earlier, but now she was desperate to know what might’ve been inside.
With that, she promptly forgot about the men and continued her search.
The streetlamps did very little to aid her. They were weak lights to begin with, but now that she was looking for something, it seemed like they were even dimmer. She could barely see her hand in front of her let alone anything left behind on the street.
It was about an hour or so before she was shivering and tired and decided to give up. The mystery made her mad, and she kicked herself for having ignored it in the first place. Oh, if she could go back and strangle past Bellatrix she would. Or maybe she’d just rob her of the box before she had the chance to lose it. There was a lot she could do. She wished she’d had Regulus’ powers.
She wished Regulus was here to go fetch the box for her.
Oh, and wasn’t that just a good solution?
She didn’t have a pen with her, so she just made a mental note to beg him to do that tomorrow.
Content with this plan, she retreated back to the manor, humming happily.
For the second time that day, Bellatrix practically broke into the Black Manor, only to be let in by a bleary-eyed Kreacher who was still muttering profanities about her under his breath. He needed to get over the funeral, Bellatrix thought, and she told him such. It only made him mutter more, so she kicked him on her way up the stairs.
His pained yelp echoed through the staircase, and so did her burst of laughter.
When she reached the second floor, she had the sudden piercing urge to not be alone.
It was a terribly vulnerable feeling, one she’d suffocated when she lived on her own, but one glance at Narcissa’s door revitalized the urge.
She opened the door as quietly as possible.
Narcissa was sound asleep.
Bellatrix toed her shoes off at the doorway before venturing into the dark room. She climbed up on the bed, smiling to herself when Narcissa mumbled a soft protest, before wiggling her way under the sheets.
Next to her, Narcissa was stiff.
“It’s just me, Cissy,” Bellatrix said, not sure why she felt the need to comfort the girl.
Narcissa relaxed entirely at hearing that. “Get out,” she said, but the way she rolled over to flop an arm over Bellatrix said otherwise.
They used to sleep like this, sometimes.
It was a habit they’d picked up when they were younger, but Andromeda was usually here as well. The other two girls would squish Bellatrix into the middle, and they would sleep in a tangle of limbs and hair and warmth. Now, there was no one on Bellatrix’s other side, and the icy cold feeling of just air and empty sheets made it all the more obvious.
Bellatrix had missed this. She still missed this. It wasn’t the same as it used to be, and it would never be the same again. She'd grown used to knowing that things like this would never happen again, but now that they were, now that they’d all been under the same roof together and all quarreled and ate together and existed in the same space, it was like an unfillable void had been ripped open in her chest, and Bellatrix was left wanting and wanting and wanting. She’d always be left wanting.
She fell asleep with Narcissa’s hair in her mouth and an overwhelming feeling of home pulsing under her veins.