#bellaluna

They’re in the Department of Mysteries. Bellatrix is cackling because lightning strikes are in the air, and the thrill of death chases her every step.

Then, everything stops.

It’s just her and the girl. It’s her and the girl who looks just like her mother. Her hair is long and blonde and tangled. Her eyes are bright and brilliant and blue.

Bellatrix swears she’s seen a ghost.

“I believe I was meant to find you,” the girl says and shows her a picture from an ancient time. When Bellatrix was young and beautiful and loved. A picture of Her.

She stuns the girl and leaves her there, but the girl’s image follows her. It follows her home, to the bath, to the bed. Until the girl is all Bellatrix can think about, and she knows she must see her again.

-♦️-

“You foolish girl,” Bellatrix hisses, “I will hurt you just as easily as I would hurt anyone else.”

She backs the girl up against the edge of the astronomy tower. It’s a long way down, but Bellatrix is not afraid to fall. She has already fallen.

“No, you won’t. I know you won’t,” replies the girl — naively, stupidly. Because Bellatrix has killed more people than this girl can possibly fathom. She has bathed in rivers of blood, cracked the skulls of her enemies then hung them above her mantle.

But the girl continues to hold her so gently, look at her so fondly, that an idea begins to form.

-♦️-

The girl is still a student, still so pure, still so impressionable.

Bellatrix visits her every day the summer before her Sixth Year. She talks with her in the garden, caresses her sun-kissed skin, and bestows seventeen deliberately laid kisses on the girl’s birthday.

Every day the nights grow longer, the web spins tighter.

The girl looks just like Her, smells like Her, sounds like Her. If Bellatrix imagines, she’s twenty years in the past with a head full of nargles and eyes full of stars.

“Bella,” the girl calls her one day, just like Her, and Bellatrix’s breath catches.

She cannot live without the girl any longer. She knows the girl cannot live without her either.

-♦️-

Bellatrix books a room above the Three Broomsticks on Valentine’s Day.

She is careful not to mark the girl’s porcelain skin. She is gentle as she works her fingers inside. She is worshipful as she traces the swell of the girl’s breasts, as she nips at the ridges of her collarbone. She coaxes musical moans from her throat. 

She does not allow the girl to touch her.

No, that will come later.

“I want you to gasp my name,” the girl blurts out, and Bellatrix falters.

The girl is in her bed, in her arms, but it’s Her who is in her mind, her memories. When she brings the girl to orgasm, Her name lingers on her lips. She does not allow it to spill out.

No, that will come later.

Also read it on AO3!