seduce & destroy.

        TWO ----- the soldier. ( november 1980 -- october 1981 ) She marries her second husband one and a half years after her first one died. He’s around her age, charming and funny, and his arm bears a Dark Mark. He loves her, she knows this, and she pretends to love him, pretends to be so head over heels with her that she squeals and giggles when he picks her up and spins her around. He buys her pretty dresses and tickets to classical concerts and is a gentleman, in every sense of the word, but somehow understands her darkness too.

They marry in the fall, dark brown leaves sticking to her white dress, the smell of rain filling the air around them. He tells her how they healed each other in his vows, how they had both lost things to the war ( he his sister, she her first husband ) and she talks of how she finally feels at rest now that he’s on her side. Her words are sweet lies, but they could have been true, had she been someone else, had he been someone else.

Blaise calls him dad, and that’s when she starts brewing her next poison. This man would not be her son’s father.

He dies during the height of the war, during battle, and ends up in the newspapers, pictures of his head flashing with the words DEATH EATER FOUND DEAD under him. She supposes the Order claims the responsibility for his death and grins a little at the idea, because it’d been a slow-working potion that had slipped through his veins and clogged them up and killed him mid-mission, his face hid behind a mask.

        THREE ----- the journalist. ( july 1983 -- march 1984 ) She waits until she marries again, for nearly two years. There’s some whispers, people wondering if she was a Death Eater too, as her latest husband was, but she cries in agony at their accusations. She’s grief filled, to the public, shocked by her husband’s role in the war. She starts charities to help survivors -- I feel so responsible, she tells the public, for everything he did while I didn’t even know, so I’m just trying to help -- and slowly heals herself for the paparazzi.

He comes onto her path through the media: he interviews her a few times, smiles at her words and calls her strong, which is funny, because he has no idea how strong she truly is. When she finds out he’s rich, too, that he comes from a long line of successful muggles, she makes her decision. They get married half a year after their first date and he helps her get rid of any rumours surrounding her being a blood purist, with his muggleborn blood status and journalist instincts.

Apparently it’s not that hard to recreate fatal muggle diseases. He falls ill after they are married for only a few months. “You really have the worst luck,” he tells her, after they find out. “But I will try not to leave you like they did.” Oh, he’s so idiotically blind, it’s almost laughable. She holds his hand through doctor appointments and makes sure that Blaise doesn’t start loving this one too much, because he will die too, and not as suddenly as the others did. On his deathbed, he still doesn’t get it, and he apologises for leaving her, for not fighting hard enough, and he’s crying. She plays along for a while, before leaning in and whispering in his ear that she killed the other two, and that she’s killing him too, in his last moments of consciousness.

         FOUR ----- traveller. ( july 1986 -- december 1989 ) Elizabeth Zabini is a cursed woman. At least, that’s what the press say about her: her first husband died of a heart attack, her second one during the war and her latest of some muggle disease called cancer. Something must be wrong with her; she’s either really unfortunate, or a golddigger. There’s nothing they can prove, though, and anyone who even tries to accuse her of anything, will meet a crying, grieving Elizabeth and the hard words of her lawyer/best friend. Husband number three comes into her life at a gala in Italy. His accent is thick, his eyes are a bit dangerous, and he asks her if it’s true, that she’s cursed. She asks him if he cares to find out. They scream in Italian when they fuck that night, and he asks her on a date the next day, and she says maybe. She asks him if he wants to go for dinner a month later and he apparates all the way to Wales to meet her.

He fits her lifestyle, her plan. He’s richer than her, drowning in money, having had a life much more lavish than she has lived. She has fun with him, Blaise has fun with him ( though he knows better than to call him dad, as that makes Beth’s eyes flash dangerously ). They marry eventually, their wedding plastered in international tabloids --- ITALIAN BUSINESSMAN MARRIES ZABINI, WILL HE TOO FALL VICTIM TO THE CURSE? --- and causes jealousy by every woman, man and child reading it, because it’s the most beautiful wedding yet. She wears a dark red gown -- she’s tired of white by now, she’s no longer clean -- and they go on a honeymoon more marvelous than any before. It’s the first time she’s away from Blaise and it’s hard, and when she comes home she clings to him. They’re married for three years and the tabloids think that she’s finally broken her curse, and she smiles and nods and says she hopes that it’s true. They go on trips multiple times a year, because they can, and see such wonders of the world. She loves it. Not him, of course, but she loves it. She also loves the idea of using something different than potion, just this once, and when they look over the Latrabjarg Cliffs in Iceland, it takes just a small sting of her wand, just a tiny push, and he’s screaming and falling and he’s unable to grab his wand. She looks down at her hands after he’s crashed and feels pure power. She goes home donned in black, but her soul is red. It’s on fire, burning her up and eating her whole.

        FIVE  ----- the oldest. ( march 1991 -- december 1991 ) The word golddigger is used more and more to describe her, so Elizabeth decides to give the gossipers something more substantial to gossip about. She cries in interviews, because her Italian husband had shown her so much that she hadn’t seen before ( not that she had needed him for that, really ) and starts her search for her next husband. She finds herself a widowed man, decades older than her. He’s already ill, already going to die, dragonpox and old age having him in his clutch. And so, if he dies, there’s no way they can blame it on her.

He falls for her, like they all do, all too easily. He’s old and frail and he’s been widowed for years and years now, tells her he never thought about finding love again until she came in his life. Their engagement follows quick after their first meeting -- Beth wants this one to be quick -- and they marry quietly and quickly. Her dress is green this time, to represent the youth she has and he doesn’t. She hopes people see this marriage for what it is: a quick way for her to earn more money. She hopes the rumours spread more, because she’s untouchable, leaving no trace whenever she kills, playing the role of cursed, unfortunate woman all too well.

She doesn’t let the dragonpox kill him. She does that himself. Again, it’s her bare hands that do it --- poison is effective, but it’s less exciting, less dangerous. Her manicured fingers wrap themselves around his neck, his eyes growing wide as she kisses his cheek, leaving a red mark on his dry, wrinkled skin. She charms away the bruises once he’s stopped breathing and sends for their healer, weeping desperately, clinging to her husband, knowing that the gossip will be MAD the next day.

       SIX ----- the threat. ( june 1992 -- october 1993 ) He intrigues her in, in the way she usually intrigues others. He’s sneaky and playful, breaking all the rules that society has made for people like them. He laughs, is someone Blaise gets along with so well that she starts to think that maybe she should stick it out, for her son, who’s never met his dad, who’s never had a man stick around long enough. She marries him in the summer, when Blaise is back from Hogwarts, and he’s happy, and that’s all that matters. She decides to try, for Blaise, who is only twelve, still so young, in need of a man, perhaps, to give him guidance ( looking back, she realises how idiotic that thought was ). The three of them have a summer for the books, one where she -- for the first time -- feels like that she’s created a family.

For over a year, it feels right. Blaise is happy, seems less angry with her. He doesn’t know, of course, what happened to the other five, but he’s not stupid. She’s glad that he’s got his suspicions, because that means her son’s not an idiot, like most men are. For over a year, she can pretend to love this man and not get tired, but then she finds him snooping, sneaking in her belongings, flipping through files and papers and potion ingredients, and suddenly she gets it, and curses herself for her stupidity.

She’s been beaten at her own game. Well, almost. She doesn’t tell him that she’s seen him, doesn’t tell him that she knows that he’s playing her like she’s playing him. No, she waits, patiently, until summer has passed and Blaise is at Hogwarts again, starting his third year, far away. She slips a poison in his drink during breakfast on a plain Tuesday morning and tells him who she is --- ELIZABETH ZABINI, someone who will not be beaten at her own game --- and she snaps his wand in two, restrains him in his chair, asks him who’s put him up to this. She drops veritaserum in his throat while he begs for water. She receives her answers and then watches him die, a satisfied grin on her lips.

         SEVEN ----- the almost. ( may 1994-- april 1996 ) She doesn’t take too long to marry again. She knows now, that people are watching her, and she wants to get under their skin. There’s also someone new presenting himself to her and she finds herself falling for him. Before, when she felt herself falling for someone, she turned in the other direction, but this time she did NOT. This time, she wraps her fingers around his wrist and pulls him into the office of the host of a party, pressing herself against against him, kissing him and fucking him until the sun rises.

They marry while Blaise is at school, weeks before Voldemort returns. He has a Dark Mark on his forearm, and it’s been burning all year and he’s been worried, but she’s not. She’s untouchable, no matter what, and when he does return, she simply feels ecstatic. Maybe this means more power, more opportunities to get away with things, more everything. Blaise comes home and likes him well enough --- not as much as the last, he says, but he’ll do --- and she presses a kiss on his forehead.

She falls for him. Really, she falls hard. She can almost call it love, and that’s dangerous. She cannot have that. He’s the hardest one of all, the hardest one to kill. He’s the one who makes her decide to not do this again. He’s the reason why she remains a widow after that: she’s tired of the constant process, of the chess, is hungry for another game, or perhaps just a little break. She kills him all the same, though, slipping poison in his breakfast and watching him die while she lies next to him, trailing his stomach, watching it rise and fall slower and slower with every minute that passes. She weeps for him as he dies, but she had no choice --- she doesn’t let them live. That’s the rule. That’s how it is, that’s how it will always be. 

And so he dies, and her tears are, for the first time, not completely insincere.