The beginning of the end: Bellatrix Black

A kiss of betrayal

They said that it all was a new era. Usually, when people say that, they mean that times would change for the better. People rarely mean that that so-called "New Era" would bring pain or even death. People never refer to the idea of something as bright as the new start - a chance to change for the better, as to the idea of more suffering.

So how could Tom call what was coming "a New Era"?

Perhaps we all seek chances to reinvent ourselves. On and on as if we ourselves can simply change our nature. As if who we are is not a result of what the life has shaped us into. 

This is why I would always be a monster. I would always be slightly crazy even in the best of my days. Why I would never ever get a happy ending.

I think, of course, of the chances of that new era as the shell of Tom Marvolo Riddle wraps his mind and control around mine, making my body his to be. I give it away as if it isn't the only thing that is left of me. 

In this empty, cold room, my body would once shiver to the dead touch of his majesty, the Dark Lord. My head would turn away from his intentions, resisting even so to this foreigner who made himself home in my body.

I don't resist because facing it, it's what the easiest. He will come again but also he will always leave. He does again. Like a puppet whose strings are cut, I lie on the bed in the consuming darkness. At this point, light is more disturbing than that darkness.

He doesn't even look back on me. Afterwards, what am I if not a toy to be used until I lose my value, that's all I mean for him. Don't worry, I'll make him see me.

"What do you want to name our daughter?" I say as sweetly as a song to Tom's shell.

His body froze, splendid seconds before his hand reached for the metal handle of the door.

"Why would you say something so dreadful?" he wouldn't turn to face me.

"As the fact that your heir would be female and not male?" I laughed coldly "Easily, women have the nerve to rule over armies with greater success than men as they actually put thoughts in their actions and don't act on their primitive instincts." 

His hands were on my throat in an instant, his gruesome nails scraping my flesh yet my eyes were burning with rage, trying to oppose him with every nerve as I stood up to face him. He was uncertain in his actions. His red eyes going up and down my bare body.

"Am I not right?" there was something on my face which resembled that grin I dearly missed. "See, one look on me distracts you from your interests, isn't that primitive?"

In his pale face, I could read fury but also defeat. It was sweat to witness something like this.

 "You," I felt powerful having his gaze on my skin "have forgotten who am I. You have forgotten that I am Bellatrix Black." I raised my head even higher "Don't you ever again."

"I let you use my body as your own. I let you have me as if I was part of you and not someone else. Someone with a life. At least a bliss ago." I looked down with disgust. "You must know very clearly what you put me through!" I let him feel my anger as I moved closer to him.

"That scars you left on me. What you made me." I was building up but I was just getting started "What you turned me into." I was close enough to have his breath, the breath of Death himself, upon my chest. 

"How you used me!" I closed my eyes, opening to those painful memories which I had suppressed over and over and over through all those years, gathering to a perfect storm. 

"What I am is because of you and if you ignore that fact then you're just a fool but know," I breathed in, preparing for something I had been craving to say for so much time.

"Know that I am no longer ashamed of what I am because of you." 

The Lord was no longer furious but a grin was tugging at his lips. He was interested to see what I had to say. And I had plenty.

"Accept me as your equal back into your ranks because this is what I deserve and what has been mine all along. You put me through hell and now I am back" And I was ready to show everyone.

"You will take my loyalty as yours." I was now so close to his body that we could be one.

"After everything we've gone through, together we would stand strongest." I went on my tiptoes and kissed him as if I meant it all. As if I wasn't thinking of the power that awaited. As if I was willing to give him actually all of me and stand to be his. 

I kissed him until he replied by kissing me back and then I was certain that this was my last shot but sure as hell, I was going to make it count.

I stepped back and gave him a grin, his hands pulled away from my skin even though longing to stay.

"And I thought that I had broken you" he breathed down my neck. "Bella."

He did leave after. And I was back to being the stringless puppet. In the end, no one can control a puppet with no strings.

So yes, this was my new era. My last shot and I was forced to reinvent myself for my own sake. After all, snakes do shed their skins.