the wrong ends by the wrong means

They brought out the absolute worst in one another — and it’d only made them stronger.

Bellatrix had long ago dented her family’s plans of her becoming their most prized little china doll. They had pinned up her hair and smothered her in frills, but there were some things not even the most tightly laced of corsets could reign in. Brutal things. Ugly things. A vicious side to her no one had ever truly accepted; not Narcissa, not Evan, not even those she’d once called friends. No one but him. He k n e w her. He’d seen her for what she was that night at Hogwarts as she’d done for him, and neither had shrunk back from the fire; they’d merely embraced what others spurned and dived headfirst into the flames, hand in hand. She had never wanted to be the beauty to any man’s beast, and Rodolphus understood that. He understood everything there was to know about her and passed judgement on nothing. It was as if they were laced in each other’s bones and scorched on each other’s hearts — too entwined to ever be severed from one another. Of course he’d been the one to bring her back. You always found your way back to where you belonged.

She rested her cheek against her husband’s chest, shaky fingers thumbing the fabric of his shirt while he cleaned off the blood. Everything still stung. The scratches on her face, the serum burning behind her eyes, the throat she’d all but worn out from the screaming … even her heart at the sudden prospect of him leaving. “S-Stay,” Bellatrix insisted weakly, voice cracking under the strain. A hand wandered back over to his wedding band. “You’ve — you’ve always — stayed.” Through everything. Everyone who’d gone from her life, dead, disowned, or otherwise, and he’d never once left her side. It was another one of those small realizations that were only now beginning to come together to form a bigger picture she’d overlooked for years. Trembling, Bellatrix took another stab at feeling out the serum’s lingering effects and shut her eyes.

Shadows flitted across her line of vision. They hissed out taunts and loomed in dark corners, ever persistent. Fear still clawed at her subconscious, like nails dragging across a chalkboard, but the longer she listened to Rodolphus’ heartbeat, focusing on its steadiness, breathing in the familiar scent of her amortentia… the easier it became.

It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. All she knew for sure was that in the long stretch of silence that followed, listening to his heartbeat, head resting against his chest and hand entwined in his, Bellatrix found comfort, and the nightmare serum’s effects began to ebb away. She slowly opened her eyes against the fading haze and inhaled sharply. He’d brought her back.

They were ruinous and they were damned, but they wouldn’t have had it any other way.

This peace, this quiet in his mind, the urge to destroy was sent slumbering by her touch ( rising if she willed it ). He was hyper-aware in that moment; feeling the coldness of her fingertips, seeing the flyaways of her hair. Everything was solace in that moment — burning behind his eyes in muted dark colours. 

And he did stay. All he ever wanted was to stay. 

And it was Bella who always stayed with him — now matter how they burnt everything in their path. Burning people they touched, scalding them with wounds. She was half poison, half goddess, burning him with her blazing soul & unforgiving kisses. 

He thought his reason to live was to cleanse this world of filth & traitors, of the unworthy. But he could no longer deny the hold she had over him. It was inescapable; impossible like separating the air from his lungs, like barring the sun from the moon. 

Home was the moment she touched her forehead to his — that soft murmur of words he thought he’d never hear. It sent his heart racing like never before, his tongue suddenly wooden in his mouth. 

Beat.

      Beat.

            Beat. 

“I love you too, Bella,” he murmured into her ear, like a secret unearthed. He loved her more than anything else in the world — more than his damned life and the tainted breath in his chest. And he kissed her like dying ( for he might as well declare to the whole world he would die for her ). 

He pulled the blankets over them. And he remembered that night at Hogwarts ( the moment that changed everything ) when she dared him to leave ( look how far they’ve come ). “Sleep, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”

*A lovely one.

“Bells.” His gaze zooms beyond his fry to stare, googly eyed, at the woman making to sit down across from him. If Rabastan were any less surprised, there might have been less surprise in his voice. But there is mostly only surprise in his voice.

Whenever this happens (given that he’s not the one to spot her first), Rabastan always has to take a moment to stop and appreciate the beauty of the universe. Or rather to take in the absolute sight Bella is, her hair windswept, her smile breathtaking and her eyes glittering (with  m a l i c e).

He watches, confused when she plucks his fry from his nerveless fingertips. Even more confused (apprehensive now, not that he knows it) when she swipes a line across his melted ice-cream. And then the innocent man is forcibly thrown from his bewilderment when she brings it to her mouth and  e a t s   i t.

Rabastan’s mouth opens. It’s already open, actually. He closes it instead. He opens it again.

“B e l l s.” A wide smile splits his face, an expression that fits him to a T, and yet might be truly terrifying all the same (to anyone other than Bellatrix probably), “It’s good to see you.”

His gaze does not flicker once to the drink sitting innocuously on her tray. Not once.

“You know,” she begins, snatching up her spoon and taking a casual scoop from his sundae in one fell swoop. “You should really try saying that next time without looking like you’d rather be shitting a knife. Might come across as the slightest bit more authentic.” 

Her glowing smile remains perfectly intact around the rim of the plastic spoon currently hijacking his chocolate sundae, and when she finishes and it’s flicked in his direction with just a tad too much zeal, Bellatrix can only feign innocence as a small chocolate blot settles on the tip of his nose and another stains his shirt. “Ahh -- sorry about that,” she apologizes brightly, and it’s not long before another one of his fries is filched from his tray, this time brushing teasingly along the hint of ice cream trespassing against his nose before it’s dropped back down onto the table. “All better.”

It’s a perfectly innocent scene to the untrained eye. Playful. Cute, even. As if they were simply the best of friends sharing a meal together. Her smile tightens.

Bellatrix finally leans back into her seat, tray still untouched. “How’s life been treating you, then, Lestrange?”

He peers for a moment at the teenager who is staring at him- there’s a stupefied look on her face as she watches him shovel ice-cream onto his fries. He winks. The kid flushes and looks away. Rabastan dunks more fries into his ice-cream.

“Seat’s not taken,” he says preemptively when someone stops in front of him, not even looking at them in favour of trying to catch a trail of melted ice-cream.

Finding Rabastan fuckin’ Lestrange at a crowded McDonald’s was a whole other story. It’s something that bypasses jadedness altogether and jumps straight into a sort of grim acceptance she’s finally come to terms with. When she realizes his is the only table with a free seat in the entire restaurant, she’s not surprised. The universe, it seems, is hell bent on throwing her together with the same man who’d very nearly cost her both her personal freedom and a £300,000 paycheck. If not McDonald’s today, she’s sure she would have run into him outside a gas station tomorrow, or in line to buy movie tickets the week after that, such was their luck. 

But let it never be said that Bellatrix doesn’t stop every now and again to humor fate.

“Don’t mind if I do,” she replies, dropping down into the seat in front of him along with her own tray of food. Then with all the bravado of someone who’s far more comfortable with the situation than she should be, Bellatrix reaches out a hand clad in fingerless leather gloves and snatches away Rabastan’s fry, smearing it against the trail of ice cream. She plucks it in her mouth and chews slowly. “Huh,” she speaks up after a moment’s pause. “That’s not half bad, actually.”

“I can’t say that the fruits are worth it.” He shot him another glance before turning his back to Bobby. “Thank you.” He picked the book up, thumbing through the pages with a slight smirk on his face. “Thought you’d enjoy it. I hope it gave you some ideas of what you could do to patrons like…” He trailed off, his eyebrows raising as he nodded his head towards the teen. “I don’t have anything to give you with me, but is there anything you particularly want to read? I have some Bulgakov if you’d be interested in that? He has a brilliant one about a scientist and a dog.”

A sigh of frustration escaped him. “Brilliant. He’s probably at the bloody skate park.” He slipped his phone out of his pocket, checking the time. “I suppose I can wait a little while to see if he reappears.”

She dunked the glass underneath a tap and waited out the warm rush of ale. “Leave it to teenage rebellion to fund your indoor jacuzzi,” Bellatrix went on, the corners of her lips twitching at Severus’ insinuation. “But I’ll let you know the next time I’m in the mood for some human vivisection. You bring the scalpels, I’ll bring the Bobbys, and we’ll make a whole day out of it.”

His craft beer was slid wordlessly across the table with all the familiarity of two people who had known each other for quite some time now, and none of the animosity their first encounter had actually inspired (she still maintained that the car accident was his fucking fault -- and trying to take a tire iron to his windshield hadn’t been ‘overreacting’).

She supposed that was friendship for you.

“Great. Now you and Bobby will get some more time to bond.” Pitching her straw in the rubbish, Bellatrix turned to face him with an expression drawn in pain, brow furrowed as she prepared herself to admit to something that would cause her no shortage of agony. “I might... possibly... be interested in giving Stephen King a try. But I swear to god, if you even think the words ‘I told you so’ I’ll start swinging.”

She remained silent as she followed Bellatrix to the bar. This was not the type of conversation she wanted to have in the middle of The Shade with a drunk audience. But seeing as how the venue was not her choice, she could at least control the amount of onlookers. And at the bar was the least amount of people.

When they reached the bar, she finally spoke, “I know it has been fifteen years; but don’t you remember me at all? Not even a little bit?” Her tone was soft. Whether it was not to be overheard or because it was still stuck in her throat, she had no idea.

Those two words alone were enough to flip the switch on Bellatrix’s paranoia, giving way to a sudden coldness in the pit of her stomach. She chanced another glance up at the stranger, and a heavy, unwelcomed realization began to sink in, sending a chill wracking down her spine. 

She did know those eyes. Time was a formidable force, yet it hadn’t been able to stamp out the recollection of them trailing after her in drafty corridors, shining with unshed tears.

“That’ll be £43.58.” Bellatrix said dully, forcing her gaze back down to the till in front of her and handing the woman she refused to acknowledge as anything other than a customer her bill for the shattered drink glasses. If fifteen years worth of distance had failed to wipe out all traces of her biological family from her memory, then fervent denial was her next best bet. 

After a moment’s pause, Bellatrix raised her head and faced those blue eyes and those soft, barely there words with a withering stare that betrayed no recognition beyond that of an indifferent barmaid and one of her patrons. “Thanks for coming,” she continued blandly. “Come back again soon. Maybe when you’ve grown a spine or learned to pitch a decibel or two above pipsqueak.”

“No,” he replied blandly, as if his twin’s lack of organisational skills were just another accepted quirk of his personality, much like Bellatrix’s penchant for recording devices in unsavoury places and his own wildly possessive streak over his things earned through two years behind bars. They were a volatile mix for such a small space, but this was what his family looked like. That and the banging and crashing of tiny people from upstairs and Molly occasionally shrieking for them all to shut up. “Funny, it sounded a lot like first blood of the day,” he replied with a roll of his eyes, hooking one of the bar stools away from the kitchen counter next to her and dropping down onto it with a grimace.

“I wear plaid on Thursdays,” he corrected her, staring down at his hands, lined with the grease of the bike he’d been busily tinkering with downstairs as if it might keep the stoic expression on his face but it was already beginning to shift. “Christmas is going to have to wait a while, Trixie. But if you wanted an authentic experience I think I saw an elf at the ink shop the other day.” 

Any semblance of excessive violence folded into snickering, the grin on his face a clear sign that the temporary storm had blown over, “Bean’s gonna be pissed.”

Absently, her knuckles brushed along the stitching on her own leather vest. First Lady. Though she lacked the humility to admit it aloud, there still existed doubts within Bellatrix with regards to her place with the Prewetts. Fifteen years ago she’d burnt through every bridge connected to her biological family and had never sought a means to cross back over because this was her life now. It was the shady little bar downstairs with its dubious clientele and beer stained floorboards; a motorcycle club she’d bled and killed for; the hurricane of a woman in the flat above, alongside the children she’d raised; the knowing, familiar grin staring at her from across the counter -- even Gruffyd himself, wild eccentricities and all. They’d been the buoys to help guide her past the wreckage of her former life. They were her family. 

But they weren’t blood; a fact Fabian pointedly enjoyed reminding her of. There was something missing there on a deeper, cellular level that she grimly suspected would always relegate her to second or third best. She was the stormy bolt of dark ambition and selfish wants; they were the bright, copper suns that burned unflinchingly and without mercy. Most days they struck a balance, but every so often there’d come a dent in the equation, and those blatant differences would bleed out onto the surface. That was when the taste of ashes in her mouth would become too much to bear and all their talk of brotherhood and fraternity would fall on deaf ears.

The patch on her cut was one of the few things Bellatrix considered wholly hers. It wasn’t just some fringe benefit of being a Prewett in name, if not in blood -- it’d been earned. Her patch and the rank it represented proved that in some way or another she did belong.

Her mouth twitched at the mention of Fabian. “Good,” she said brightly. “A frown line for every month you spent in lock up because of him sounds like a fair deal to me. Don’t suppose you got much of a chance to fuck around with an iPhone 6 behind bars. Consider this me evening out the scoreboard.” If her words carried a twinge of bitterness to them it was only because she was holding back. Fabian’s role in Gideon’s imprisonment was as touchy a subject as it got for her, though to Bellatrix’s credit, she’d reigned in the resentment enough to not take a shot at his leg whenever they were in the same room together. Still, her smile waned. “He could do worse.”

Hands In The Sky (Big Shot) - Straylight Run

“No.” Severus sighed heavily, beginning to get annoyed with the person next to him at the bar. “I was asking if you had seen him. Short, wears a beanie, talks shit most of the time.” Clearly his line of inquiry was far from making any ground with the drunk next to him. Heaving another sigh he turned away on the barstool, his chin resting in his palm. “Is that guy always that out of it?”

As if in response to her question, the weedy teenager slumped over the bar accordingly, landing face first in a bowl of peanuts with a loud thump. 

She snorted softly. “Behold, the fruits of our hard labor.” Bellatrix remarked wryly, choosing to let their resident burnout rest for a few more minutes. Nothing a pint of cold beer down his shirt couldn’t fix later on. Shrugging, she turned her attentions back over to Severus. “Two things...” Her hand reached behind the register and pulled out a faded copy of a book, “The Island of Doctor Moreau,” that he’d lent her a week ago, nudging it forward across the bar table. “One: you’re a twisted little shit for recommending this and I appreciate it. Two: Pettigrew dropped by around an hour ago, said he’d meet you here. Never seemed to occur to him to mention when exactly.”