A Choice of Life and Love (Bellatrix Black, Hard R)

[catsintheattic]

Title: A Choice of Life and Love
Autor: catsintheattic
Fandom: Harry Potter
Rating: Hard R
Warnings: torture, original character death
Prompt: Promp no. 35: It had only been my repeated experience that when you said to life calmly and firmly...'I trust you; do what you must,' life had an uncanny way of responding to your need. Olga Ilyin (1894-1991), Russian

Comments

[ceredwensirius]

Wow, very dark, but very believable. I had no trouble believing that a test of loyalty like this would be something Voldemort would require. She had to give something up, lose a bit of herself in the process in a way, although she was pretty lost to begin with. Poor Terry. Great fic!!

[catsintheattic]

Thank you for reading and commenting.

I'm thrilled that you found Bella's story believable. :-) Voldemort would never accept people he hadn't crushed into his inner circle.

Poor Terry indeed.

[grrangerous]

wow. Brilliant story (I followed celtadiabolica's rec over here).

Your personification of the Dark Lord was particularly convincing. Thanks!

[catsintheattic]

Thank you so much for reading and commenting.

I'm happy to hear that you found the Dark Lord convincing - he gave me a lot less trouble than Bella when I wrote this story. :-)

[kellychambliss]

Wow -- I can believe both this Bella and this Voldemort -- this is exactly the sort of task he'd set his followers. And the process of Bellatrix's self-justification is chilling: the appeal of power for her, the ease with which she can make herself believe what she needs to believe.

Such an interesting use of the prompt.

[catsintheattic]

Thank you so much for your lovely comment.

I'm thrilled that the characterisations worked for you. I've wanted to write about Bella's Marking for quite some time, and when I read the prompt the idea developed further and into this story.

[daybreak777]

That was excellent. I loved Bella's voice and was compelled to read every word. Great job.

[catsintheattic]

Thanks a lot for reading and commenting.

I love that you loved Bella's voice so much. *beams*

[lazy_neutrino]

This is very accomplshed writing. Your pace is very slow at the start - you linger on the detail - but the writing is so good that I slowed down with you (I often have to force myself not to rush ahead, but here it was easy to read slowly and picture the scene). Then you ramp up the tension until the reveal. And then it gets really nasty - I don't mean the torture, but the way your Voldemort uses his charisma and strength of personailty to hold and manipulate Bella. That was beautifully done and the most disturbing thing of all!

[catsintheattic]

Thank you so very much! Your comment literally had me dancing around the flat. :-)

I love to hear that you enjoyed the writing to follow even the slow pace at the beginning - I was worrying about the slow start, afraid that it would be too much until the action finally started to speed up.

the way your Voldemort uses his charisma and strength of personality to hold and manipulate Bella

Yay - you made my day with that bit! This was just what I wanted, focus on how he messes with her mind and how she reacts to it. Voldemort's logic was so clear to me when I wrote him - I always thought that he must have messed with Bella's mind in a truly awful way for her to follow him without ever questioning him again.