𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝘂𝗻 𝘄𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗯𝘂𝗿𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗠𝗼𝗼𝗻

Chapter 18: Something That Happened to Me

They didn't speak for a long time.

Bellatrix sat with her back against the gnarled roots of the tree, fingers loosely wrapped around her wand, knuckles white. Vivienne sat a few feet away, quiet, legs drawn up, arms crossed.

The moon filtered through the canopy in fractured silver.

Bellatrix hated silence.
But she hated this silence most.

Because it wasn't empty.

It was waiting.

"I keep thinking about Paris," Vivienne said at last, voice quiet, cool. "About how easy it would've been to stay there. To forget you."

Bellatrix didn't look at her. "Then why didn't you?"

Vivienne laughed, soft and humorless. "Because I was the one bleeding, Bellatrix. I was the one trying to survive while you gave yourself to someone who doesn't know what love is."

Bellatrix's jaw tensed. "You think I had a choice?"

"You had me."

That landed like a slap.

"I have a feeling," Vivienne continued, "that you got everything you wanted. And I'm the one still stuck here. That to you, this—" she gestured vaguely at the air between them "—was just a small thing. Something that happened."

She turned to look at Bellatrix fully now, and her voice dropped, brittle and sharp.

"The world ended when it happened to me."

Bellatrix closed her eyes. And for a second — just one — she let herself feel the wreckage inside.

"I thought," Bellatrix said slowly, "if I buried you deep enough, I'd forget."

"Did you?" Vivienne asked.

Bellatrix opened her eyes. "No."

She finally turned her head to face her.

"You were never small, Vivienne. You were everything. That's why I had to destroy you."

Vivienne flinched — not at the cruelty, but at the honesty.

"That wasn't love."

"No," Bellatrix whispered. "It was need. And I hated you for making me need anything."

A pause. Cold. Long. The fire between them had burned too hot. What was left was smoke.

"I loved you," Vivienne said softly. "And you used it like a weapon."

Bellatrix shook her head. "I didn't know how to carry something that beautiful."

Vivienne stood. "Then why call me here? Why not finish what you started in that dungeon years ago?"

Bellatrix rose slowly. She stepped closer, uncertain, her voice quieter now, not the usual hiss but a rasp of truth.

"Because the only part of me that hasn't rotted... still remembers how you used to say my name."

Vivienne didn't move.

Bellatrix's hand hovered at her wrist but didn't touch.

"I don't know how to be forgiven," she said.

Vivienne's voice cracked just once. "I didn't come here to forgive you."

Another silence.

Bellatrix finally whispered, "Then why?"

Vivienne looked up at her, calm, raw, eyes shining with something like devastation.

"To make sure you remembered what you destroyed."

Bellatrix closed her eyes — and for the first time in years — looked ashamed.

Bellatrix stood there, lips parted, as if one breath too deep might collapse her.

Vivienne had turned her back.

She wasn't walking away — not yet — but the distance between them had never felt so final.

The wind moved through the trees, cold and sharp. Bellatrix clenched her fists, hating the ache in her chest, hating how human it made her feel.

"I still remember your name," Vivienne said suddenly, not turning around.

Bellatrix blinked.

Vivienne's voice lowered, each word deliberate, like she was pressing them into Bellatrix's skin:

"Bellatrix. I remember your name.
And I remember how beautiful it was...
to scream it into the wind."

Bellatrix's breath hitched, her knees almost gave.

"Don't," she said, but it was barely audible.

Vivienne finally turned, and her face was unreadable — carved from ice and fire.

"But you don't get to be beautiful anymore," she said. "You gave that away."

Bellatrix's mouth opened — maybe to argue, maybe to beg.

But Vivienne had already walked past her.

She didn't look back.

Bellatrix remained there long after she was gone, rooted among the trees like a broken spell.

The world felt too loud.
Too empty.

And for the first time since Azkaban, she whispered her own name aloud—

As if afraid it no longer belonged to her.