FIC: I shall have no sorrow (Bellatrix, Rodolphus, Rabastan, Tonks, Lupin -- R)
SPOILER WARNING FOR DEATHLY HALLOWS
Title: I shall have no sorrow
Series: Harry Potter
Characters: Bellatrix, Rodolphus, Rabastan, Remus, Tonks
Rating: R
Word Count: 2153
Warnings: Character deaths (canon), torture, brutal violence
The Death Eater fell; Tonks couldn't identify him, someone tall and lithe. Behind her, Remus blasted another one straight out the door. Somehow, the sounds of battle seemed farther away, they were cut off… or maybe, maybe the Death Eaters had been driven back, out of the castle, back onto the grounds.
Remus seemed to be thinking the same thing. "Dora, we need to find out what's happened while we've been down this blasted corridor with these two. Maybe our lines have reformed..."
But there were footsteps approaching the door, and somehow Tonks could tell they didn't sound friendly.
"Oh, I've been waiting for this."
Tonks's blood went fire and ice all at once, and turned, wand up, to face Bellatrix Lestrange, entering the room. The dark witch was flanked by her husband and brother-in-law, and cruel laughter lent her face a terrifying, unholy glow. Tonks had dueled Bellatrix twice before; she was a talented Auror, but Bellatrix was a premier duelist, ruthless and fearless and formidable. Tonks had been lucky to escape with her life each time, and she knew it. A stone knotted in her stomach; adrenaline rushed through her, electrifying her nerves. 'Focus, damn you, stay focused, and you might beat her.'
Bellatrix's black eyes were alight with pleasure at the thought of finally getting to hack off the unsatisfactory branch of her family tree. "The Mudblood chameleon, and her halfbreed husband," Bellatrix snarled. "How sweet. Shouldn't you be home nursing the pup?" Tonks could feel hatred fairly radiating off of Remus, next to her: Tonks was fighting a monster who wanted her dead; Remus was fighting the woman he had watched kill Sirius, and who knew how many of his other friends during the First War. And now he fought to protect her as well. Bellatrix's lips curled in a savage smirk. "Tell me, werewolf, did you marry this little filth immediately after your year-and-a-day mourning period for my cur of a cousin?"
Tonks bristled, but it was Remus who replied. "Here to answer for your sins, Bellatrix?"
"Sins?" Bellatrix couldn't have sounded more amused. "Halfbreed, if I fall in battle here, I will die in a state of perfect grace." Her beatific expression would not have been out of place on a stained glass window. "But," she added, with a smile that bared her teeth in a somewhat feline manner, "I have no intention of dying tonight." Remus looked sickened and furious, but spoke no further.
"Do you have anything to say, little Mudblood?" Rodolphus sneered.
Tonks jerked her chin up; if they were Death running her down, she'd meet her end head-on and proud.
"Bring it on."
Bellatrix laughed as she launched the assault; it was one of her more un-nerving qualities, her sheer delight in dueling. Rodolphus and Rabastan followed half a second behind her, and Remus and Tonks parried. Both sides fought to kill; there were old grudges here, and Tonks wondered, as she saw Remus fling a powerful curse at Rabastan, if she even knew what they all were. There would be no reprieves, no prisoners. Only bodies.
The room echoed with the zings and whizzes of the spells, the stone walls reflecting swift flashes of colour. Remus was talking on Rodolphus and Rabastan together, and Tonks wanted to help, wanted to go to him, but she couldn't get past Bellatrix. The woman was a whirlwind, an absolute tornado of curses and shields, thrown up in near-perfect alteration, so that none of Tonks's assaults could get through to her. She struggled to keep up, to deflect everything Bellatrix threw at her. 'Focus, focus, focus! Break her pattern, don't let her hit her stride or you're dead!'
She threw a powerful shield and flung herself into a roll across the floor; Bellatrix was temporarily thrown-off by the unexpected change in her target's position, and her next shot went wide. Her face reddened in fury at her toy becoming a challenge, and her rage caused her to toss out a few reckless hexes, easier for Tonks to evade. 'Take your time, take your time -- focus!' She took careful aim, put all her power behind her wand, and shot off a bright yellow blast.
Bellatrix spun in the air and hit the wall; it was too much to hope the blow had killed her, but it was enough for Tonks to cross the room to Remus's side and join him against the Lestrange brothers. But she wasn't going to get there in time, his defences were failing, the curses were starting to get through, starting to affect him-
His wand arm faltered as a curse lacerated it. Rodolphus grinned, raising his wand for another blow. A jet of red-orange light erupted from his wand -- Tonks didn't think, didn't hesitate, but threw herself between the blast and Remus, taking the shot that was meant for him.
The blast flattened Tonks to the hard stones, knocking the air out of her lungs, and her wand from her hand. Half a heartbeat, and she tried to recover it, but Bellatrix's hard leather boot crunched down on her wrist. She couldn't see Remus any longer, but Rodolphus's triumphant shout let her know he had been disarmed as well. Tonks closed her eyes briefly; no, it wasn't happening, this was too much, it couldn't end like this, not to them.
Bellatrix snatched up Tonks's wand and flung it out the door, then knelt beside her, pressing her wand to Tonks's throat. "Finally," she whispered. Nearby, the Lestrange brothers were dragging Lupin up, pinning his arms behind him.
"You will watch this," Rodolphus snarled, twisting Lupin's head by the hair and forcing him to face Bellatrix and Tonks.
"You have no idea how tormenting it was, having you escape before," Bellatrix hissed. "Still... all in good time, I suppose." She whispered "Crucio" as though it were a prayer, offered with the utmost gratitude, the purest hopes.
Bellatrix was not renowned for the Cruciatus for no reason.
The force of the curse sent Tonks's entire body into rebellion. It was as though her bones were intent on splitting within her body and stabbing their way out to open air, as though every nerve were trying to fry itself, as though her blood wanted to boil and bubble out her pores.
The only thing to be grateful for was that it could only last for so long. The battle was still going on; she could not be kept for weeks and toyed with until her sanity broke. When the curse lifted, Bellatrix dragged Tonks to her knees, one arm wrapped around her torso, the other around her neck.
"The Dark Lord is not without mercy," Bellatrix's dark voice hissed in her ear. Tonks felt, as keenly as the tip of Bellatrix's wand under her jaw, a smooth, flat blade pressed against her ribs. "You bear Black blood, polluted though it may be, and so does your whelp. If I asked it of him, he might spare your boy." Bellatrix trailed her wand down Dora's throat; she wanted her prisoner to shiver, but Tonks refused to give her the satisfaction. "Not here, of course, we couldn't have him here, muddying up the perfect society we're going to build. But we could send him abroad." The dagger at her chest pricked in beneath her breast, just enough to provoke a small gasp. "I might be persuaded to ask the Dark Lord for such a favour... he would grant it to me, I'm certain... but you'd have to earn it."
Remus and Dora met eyes briefly, then Dora's gaze flicked up to Rodolphus Lestrange's face, twisted in an unpleasant grin.
"So if you want to save your precious little brat, Nymphadora," Bellatrix went on, jutting her wand hard under Tonks's chin, "renounce your husband."
A cold shock went through Tonks's veins at the very idea. She couldn't do it, couldn't think of doing it, not after all they'd suffered.
'And yet...' For Teddy, for her son, would one little lie be worth it? Could she spit out the words Bellatrix wanted to hear, if it would save her son?
"Renounce your pup's halfbreed sire," Bellatrix was whispering in her ear. "Cast him from you. Tell me he deserves to die, that he should be slaughtered like the animal he is."
For one, tiny, fleeting breath, one weak and trembling moment, Tonks considered the offer. 'Teddy... if he could have the chance to live..' But the low chuckle rumbling out of Rodolphus's throat brought her back to reality. 'She's lying,' Tonks told herself, trying not to picture Teddy's face, not to be moved by the thought of her son. 'She'll kill me, and then kill him just for the fun of it. She's lying. They'd never have any intention of saving my son.'
And so Tonks inhaled deeply, drawing in a gulp of air. She thought, irrationally, that it should have been sweeter for being so near her last, but it wasn't; it was air, simply. "Bellatrix," she said, cold and clear and strong, "when you get to hell, be sure to tell the Devil I say 'sod off' to you both."
Bellatrix's laughter rippled up to the ceiling and back down again, a cruel, jeering echo. "Have it your own way."
Tonks felt Bellatrix tap her wand against her throat, and then her windpipe seized up, cutting off her breath. For a moment, Bellatrix let her suffer and choke, and then, as though with an instinctive knowledge of when Tonks's vision began to swim, and her capacity to feel pain started ebbing away to numbness, she removed the suffocating hex and thrust up swiftly with the dagger. The point drove between Tonks's ribs, piercing her heart.
Bellatrix let her body fall unceremoniously, and wiped the dagger blade on her skirt.
Rodolphus jerked at Remus's hair. "And now for you, halfbreed--" he began.
But Remus, who had been straight and still, his blood frozen, as he watched his wife die, suddenly erupted. With a ferocious howl, echoing with vengeance and fury and not a hint of fear, he slammed his elbow up into Rodolphus's chin. Before any of the three Death Eaters could react, Remus retrieved his wand from the floor; still bellowing in rage, he swept wide with it, sending an arc of yellow light out at all three of them. Rabastan leapt to the side, and was clear of it; Bellatrix produced a shield which deflected the worst of it, but the full force of the curse caught Rodolphus across the chest. As his flesh tore apart, he hit the wall behind him, slumping even as Bellatrix and Rabastan both sent Killing Curses squarely between Lupin's shoulders. Lupin tumbled, falling next to his wife.
Something terribly strange happened to Bellatrix. Her vision seemed to have gone grey around the edges, oddly hazy, as though she were watching her surroundings across smoke rising from a small fire. All the colours had dimmed, faded away, except for a vivid splash of crimson. The hues had bled out of all the rest of the world, and concentrated in a pool beneath her husband's body.
She felt a hand around her left wrist, and heard Rabastan's voice. "Bellatrix. Bellatrix, the Dark Lord's calling a retreat... Bellatrix, we can't stay here." She nodded, or at least thought she did. "I'll bring... I'll take care of him, Bellatrix. Bellatrix, you need to go." She probably nodded again, but the only motion she was conscious of was sinking to her knees.
It had not been painless; she could tell that just by looking at the splintered bits of bone, the ragged cut from one side to the other, the blood... Bellatrix knew about blood. She knew how much a human could lose, and how quickly. It had been quick, but it had not been painless.
"Bellatrix." Rabastan's hands on her arms, pulling her up. "Bellatrix, come on." Rabastan's voice, growing more urgent. "Bellatrix, now."
Bellatrix shook her head, and the fog cleared from her vision. She suddenly became aware of a stinging pain in her arms, and across her cheeks; small lacerations, bleeding freely, but no threat to her life. She looked down at Rodolphus, mentally swearing all sorts of things, all kinds of vengeance.
"I summoned our house elf for his body," Rabastan said, and only then, with her own head clear, did Bellatrix notice how thick his voice was, how much it was costing him just to speak. "He'll be taken back to Areles... we can take care of... well, later."
Bellatrix nodded, resigned. There were more important things now. She had a war to finish, a goal to attain, a world to build. Rodolphus would have understood. As she and Rabastan walked out of the room, leaving three bodies in their wake, others came rushing down the hallway, opposite numbers looking for their dead. Bellatrix's wand twitched in her hands, but she would not break the cease-fire her Lord had commanded.
She and Rabastan walked on.
"Because I have loved life,
I shall have no sorrow to die."
-- Amelia Burr
Authoress's Notes: They deserved good deaths. I feel sure they had them. But I felt terribly cheated that we didn't get to see them fall. A noble end should not go unmarked.
Title: I shall have no sorrow
Series: Harry Potter
Characters: Bellatrix, Rodolphus, Rabastan, Remus, Tonks
Rating: R
Word Count: 2153
Warnings: Character deaths (canon), torture, brutal violence
The Death Eater fell; Tonks couldn't identify him, someone tall and lithe. Behind her, Remus blasted another one straight out the door. Somehow, the sounds of battle seemed farther away, they were cut off… or maybe, maybe the Death Eaters had been driven back, out of the castle, back onto the grounds.
Remus seemed to be thinking the same thing. "Dora, we need to find out what's happened while we've been down this blasted corridor with these two. Maybe our lines have reformed..."
But there were footsteps approaching the door, and somehow Tonks could tell they didn't sound friendly.
"Oh, I've been waiting for this."
Tonks's blood went fire and ice all at once, and turned, wand up, to face Bellatrix Lestrange, entering the room. The dark witch was flanked by her husband and brother-in-law, and cruel laughter lent her face a terrifying, unholy glow. Tonks had dueled Bellatrix twice before; she was a talented Auror, but Bellatrix was a premier duelist, ruthless and fearless and formidable. Tonks had been lucky to escape with her life each time, and she knew it. A stone knotted in her stomach; adrenaline rushed through her, electrifying her nerves. 'Focus, damn you, stay focused, and you might beat her.'
Bellatrix's black eyes were alight with pleasure at the thought of finally getting to hack off the unsatisfactory branch of her family tree. "The Mudblood chameleon, and her halfbreed husband," Bellatrix snarled. "How sweet. Shouldn't you be home nursing the pup?" Tonks could feel hatred fairly radiating off of Remus, next to her: Tonks was fighting a monster who wanted her dead; Remus was fighting the woman he had watched kill Sirius, and who knew how many of his other friends during the First War. And now he fought to protect her as well. Bellatrix's lips curled in a savage smirk. "Tell me, werewolf, did you marry this little filth immediately after your year-and-a-day mourning period for my cur of a cousin?"
Tonks bristled, but it was Remus who replied. "Here to answer for your sins, Bellatrix?"
"Sins?" Bellatrix couldn't have sounded more amused. "Halfbreed, if I fall in battle here, I will die in a state of perfect grace." Her beatific expression would not have been out of place on a stained glass window. "But," she added, with a smile that bared her teeth in a somewhat feline manner, "I have no intention of dying tonight." Remus looked sickened and furious, but spoke no further.
"Do you have anything to say, little Mudblood?" Rodolphus sneered.
Tonks jerked her chin up; if they were Death running her down, she'd meet her end head-on and proud.
"Bring it on."
Bellatrix laughed as she launched the assault; it was one of her more un-nerving qualities, her sheer delight in dueling. Rodolphus and Rabastan followed half a second behind her, and Remus and Tonks parried. Both sides fought to kill; there were old grudges here, and Tonks wondered, as she saw Remus fling a powerful curse at Rabastan, if she even knew what they all were. There would be no reprieves, no prisoners. Only bodies.
The room echoed with the zings and whizzes of the spells, the stone walls reflecting swift flashes of colour. Remus was talking on Rodolphus and Rabastan together, and Tonks wanted to help, wanted to go to him, but she couldn't get past Bellatrix. The woman was a whirlwind, an absolute tornado of curses and shields, thrown up in near-perfect alteration, so that none of Tonks's assaults could get through to her. She struggled to keep up, to deflect everything Bellatrix threw at her. 'Focus, focus, focus! Break her pattern, don't let her hit her stride or you're dead!'
She threw a powerful shield and flung herself into a roll across the floor; Bellatrix was temporarily thrown-off by the unexpected change in her target's position, and her next shot went wide. Her face reddened in fury at her toy becoming a challenge, and her rage caused her to toss out a few reckless hexes, easier for Tonks to evade. 'Take your time, take your time -- focus!' She took careful aim, put all her power behind her wand, and shot off a bright yellow blast.
Bellatrix spun in the air and hit the wall; it was too much to hope the blow had killed her, but it was enough for Tonks to cross the room to Remus's side and join him against the Lestrange brothers. But she wasn't going to get there in time, his defences were failing, the curses were starting to get through, starting to affect him-
His wand arm faltered as a curse lacerated it. Rodolphus grinned, raising his wand for another blow. A jet of red-orange light erupted from his wand -- Tonks didn't think, didn't hesitate, but threw herself between the blast and Remus, taking the shot that was meant for him.
The blast flattened Tonks to the hard stones, knocking the air out of her lungs, and her wand from her hand. Half a heartbeat, and she tried to recover it, but Bellatrix's hard leather boot crunched down on her wrist. She couldn't see Remus any longer, but Rodolphus's triumphant shout let her know he had been disarmed as well. Tonks closed her eyes briefly; no, it wasn't happening, this was too much, it couldn't end like this, not to them.
Bellatrix snatched up Tonks's wand and flung it out the door, then knelt beside her, pressing her wand to Tonks's throat. "Finally," she whispered. Nearby, the Lestrange brothers were dragging Lupin up, pinning his arms behind him.
"You will watch this," Rodolphus snarled, twisting Lupin's head by the hair and forcing him to face Bellatrix and Tonks.
"You have no idea how tormenting it was, having you escape before," Bellatrix hissed. "Still... all in good time, I suppose." She whispered "Crucio" as though it were a prayer, offered with the utmost gratitude, the purest hopes.
Bellatrix was not renowned for the Cruciatus for no reason.
The force of the curse sent Tonks's entire body into rebellion. It was as though her bones were intent on splitting within her body and stabbing their way out to open air, as though every nerve were trying to fry itself, as though her blood wanted to boil and bubble out her pores.
The only thing to be grateful for was that it could only last for so long. The battle was still going on; she could not be kept for weeks and toyed with until her sanity broke. When the curse lifted, Bellatrix dragged Tonks to her knees, one arm wrapped around her torso, the other around her neck.
"The Dark Lord is not without mercy," Bellatrix's dark voice hissed in her ear. Tonks felt, as keenly as the tip of Bellatrix's wand under her jaw, a smooth, flat blade pressed against her ribs. "You bear Black blood, polluted though it may be, and so does your whelp. If I asked it of him, he might spare your boy." Bellatrix trailed her wand down Dora's throat; she wanted her prisoner to shiver, but Tonks refused to give her the satisfaction. "Not here, of course, we couldn't have him here, muddying up the perfect society we're going to build. But we could send him abroad." The dagger at her chest pricked in beneath her breast, just enough to provoke a small gasp. "I might be persuaded to ask the Dark Lord for such a favour... he would grant it to me, I'm certain... but you'd have to earn it."
Remus and Dora met eyes briefly, then Dora's gaze flicked up to Rodolphus Lestrange's face, twisted in an unpleasant grin.
"So if you want to save your precious little brat, Nymphadora," Bellatrix went on, jutting her wand hard under Tonks's chin, "renounce your husband."
A cold shock went through Tonks's veins at the very idea. She couldn't do it, couldn't think of doing it, not after all they'd suffered.
'And yet...' For Teddy, for her son, would one little lie be worth it? Could she spit out the words Bellatrix wanted to hear, if it would save her son?
"Renounce your pup's halfbreed sire," Bellatrix was whispering in her ear. "Cast him from you. Tell me he deserves to die, that he should be slaughtered like the animal he is."
For one, tiny, fleeting breath, one weak and trembling moment, Tonks considered the offer. 'Teddy... if he could have the chance to live..' But the low chuckle rumbling out of Rodolphus's throat brought her back to reality. 'She's lying,' Tonks told herself, trying not to picture Teddy's face, not to be moved by the thought of her son. 'She'll kill me, and then kill him just for the fun of it. She's lying. They'd never have any intention of saving my son.'
And so Tonks inhaled deeply, drawing in a gulp of air. She thought, irrationally, that it should have been sweeter for being so near her last, but it wasn't; it was air, simply. "Bellatrix," she said, cold and clear and strong, "when you get to hell, be sure to tell the Devil I say 'sod off' to you both."
Bellatrix's laughter rippled up to the ceiling and back down again, a cruel, jeering echo. "Have it your own way."
Tonks felt Bellatrix tap her wand against her throat, and then her windpipe seized up, cutting off her breath. For a moment, Bellatrix let her suffer and choke, and then, as though with an instinctive knowledge of when Tonks's vision began to swim, and her capacity to feel pain started ebbing away to numbness, she removed the suffocating hex and thrust up swiftly with the dagger. The point drove between Tonks's ribs, piercing her heart.
Bellatrix let her body fall unceremoniously, and wiped the dagger blade on her skirt.
Rodolphus jerked at Remus's hair. "And now for you, halfbreed--" he began.
But Remus, who had been straight and still, his blood frozen, as he watched his wife die, suddenly erupted. With a ferocious howl, echoing with vengeance and fury and not a hint of fear, he slammed his elbow up into Rodolphus's chin. Before any of the three Death Eaters could react, Remus retrieved his wand from the floor; still bellowing in rage, he swept wide with it, sending an arc of yellow light out at all three of them. Rabastan leapt to the side, and was clear of it; Bellatrix produced a shield which deflected the worst of it, but the full force of the curse caught Rodolphus across the chest. As his flesh tore apart, he hit the wall behind him, slumping even as Bellatrix and Rabastan both sent Killing Curses squarely between Lupin's shoulders. Lupin tumbled, falling next to his wife.
Something terribly strange happened to Bellatrix. Her vision seemed to have gone grey around the edges, oddly hazy, as though she were watching her surroundings across smoke rising from a small fire. All the colours had dimmed, faded away, except for a vivid splash of crimson. The hues had bled out of all the rest of the world, and concentrated in a pool beneath her husband's body.
She felt a hand around her left wrist, and heard Rabastan's voice. "Bellatrix. Bellatrix, the Dark Lord's calling a retreat... Bellatrix, we can't stay here." She nodded, or at least thought she did. "I'll bring... I'll take care of him, Bellatrix. Bellatrix, you need to go." She probably nodded again, but the only motion she was conscious of was sinking to her knees.
It had not been painless; she could tell that just by looking at the splintered bits of bone, the ragged cut from one side to the other, the blood... Bellatrix knew about blood. She knew how much a human could lose, and how quickly. It had been quick, but it had not been painless.
"Bellatrix." Rabastan's hands on her arms, pulling her up. "Bellatrix, come on." Rabastan's voice, growing more urgent. "Bellatrix, now."
Bellatrix shook her head, and the fog cleared from her vision. She suddenly became aware of a stinging pain in her arms, and across her cheeks; small lacerations, bleeding freely, but no threat to her life. She looked down at Rodolphus, mentally swearing all sorts of things, all kinds of vengeance.
"I summoned our house elf for his body," Rabastan said, and only then, with her own head clear, did Bellatrix notice how thick his voice was, how much it was costing him just to speak. "He'll be taken back to Areles... we can take care of... well, later."
Bellatrix nodded, resigned. There were more important things now. She had a war to finish, a goal to attain, a world to build. Rodolphus would have understood. As she and Rabastan walked out of the room, leaving three bodies in their wake, others came rushing down the hallway, opposite numbers looking for their dead. Bellatrix's wand twitched in her hands, but she would not break the cease-fire her Lord had commanded.
She and Rabastan walked on.
"Because I have loved life,
I shall have no sorrow to die."
-- Amelia Burr
Authoress's Notes: They deserved good deaths. I feel sure they had them. But I felt terribly cheated that we didn't get to see them fall. A noble end should not go unmarked.