Fic for gelsey
Author: absolutelybatty
Recipient: gelsey
Title: To Make Fit Again
Pairing: Arthur/Bellatrix with a huge heaping of Molly/Arthur and hinted Voldemort/
Bellatrix
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,321
Summary: Arthur finds that all things can be broken, but not all things can be fixed.
Author's Notes: This story is canon compliant (up to and including the epilogue) except for the part where Molly kills Bellatrix during the final battle; for the purposes of this fic, Bellatrix was only severely incapacitated. Thank you to A. and S. for betaing this for me.
Her name is Bellatrix Black. She is a witch. She can do magic. She knows this. They told her.
She hates being tied down or locked up. She hates the white clothes they’ve given her. She hates the
way they say her name. She hates them most of all, and she wants to hurt them. She doesn’t know
why. They refuse to tell her.
His name is Arthur Weasley. She has an intense urge to wipe the goofy smile off his face the instant
she sees him. Instead, she serenely follows him out of the building and takes his hand when he offers
it.
She doesn’t know why she hates him either.
---
Arthur was sitting in his shed full of muggle oddities. He’d taken apart a toaster-confiscated after a
scorned house wife had charmed it to toast the fingers and toes of her husband’s muggle lover-and it
now sat in pieces in front of him. He picked up a bit of metal and stared at his warped reflection as he
thought about breakfast that morning.
Molly darted around the kitchen with practiced ease. She handled the many, many pots and pans
on the stove with a deft hand and a flick of her wand. Arthur had always admired that about her. He
was hopeless in the kitchen himself.
She sat dishes on the table until it began to groan with the weight of all the food, and then Arthur
stepped in with a spell of his own, just a simple incantation to reinforce the table legs. Molly glanced
over her shoulder at him, but she didn’t smile. She turned to face him, her hands smoothed down her
apron.
“Breakfast is ready.” She said, motioning to the table.
He smiled at her. “I can see that, dear. But you’ve made enough food for a small army. Did you forget
that it was just the two of us this morning?”
He didn’t add that it had been just the two of them since the war ended, and that it was probably just
going to be the two of them every morning from then on. The children (No, they weren’t children
anymore. They were adults with their own lives, their own scars.) were all gone. They’d flown the
nest. He’d appreciated the peace and quiet (Not that he didn’t miss the noise.).
Molly’s face went slack, and she just looked at the table covered in food. Arthur stepped forward
with his arms out stretched so that he could hold her, but she ran past him, out of the kitchen, and into
another room with a loud slam of the door.
He still didn’t know what he’d done wrong.
---
Bellatrix sits on a wobbly chair while Arthur listens to his screaming wife in the next room. Bellatrix
doesn’t particularly mind the screaming. It makes her feel comfortable.
This, she is sure, is the wrong reaction considering Arthur’s hard eyes as he enters the room and
beckons to her. He leads her down a hallway, up some stairs, and into a tiny bedroom. He leaves her
there without a word.
Bellatrix sits down on the bed, and looks out the window. She sees a figure, Arthur most likely, cross
the lawn and enter a tiny garden shed before she reclines on the thin pillows behind her.
She thinks of the screaming-- Arthur, you can’t honestly expect me to be okay with keeping her
under our roof. Do you remember all the things she did? She attacked our children, Arthur. I despise
her. And you are going to take her right back to the Ministry so they can lock her up in Azkaban like
they should have to begin with.--and smiles.
---
Arthur doesn’t try to make conversation. The room is tense enough as it is with Molly at one end
of the table and Bellatrix at the other. He looks at both women in turn. Molly is glaring, and he is
almost glad that she isn’t directing it at him for once. Bellatrix is pushing food around her plate, and
he isn’t sure if she is bored or away with the fairies (or, maybe, she is suffering side effects from the
procedure; they hadn’t said if there would be any).
Molly stands up suddenly, her chair screeching against the floor as she pushes it backwards. She
storms out of the kitchen, and Arthur stands as though to follow her before changing his mind. She
doesn’t want to talk to him. He looks at Bellatrix. She seems unperturbed by his wife’s outburst.
“Sorry about Molly. She’s not usually like this. Things have been hard for us recently is all.” Arthur
says quietly.
Bellatrix smiles at him before taking a bite of mashed potatoes that Arthur is sure were cold.
---
Arthur loves his wife. He loves her with everything that he has, and he wishes that there was some
way he could fix whatever it was that he had broken, that the war had broken, that the children leaving
her when she needed to take care of them the most had broken. But he doesn’t know how.
He looks at the instruction booklet for the cordless phone he had in his hands, and not for the first
time, he wonders why life didn’t come with one.
---
He doesn’t know how the conversation started or what it is about. He only hears the end of it.
Molly’s shouting, crying. “You don’t know how to love.”
She storms past him all rage, fire, and flying hair without even a backwards glance. Arthur takes a
deep breath. That fire is one of the reasons why he loves his wife, but he knows that she isn’t the one
that needs him right now. Worst of all, there isn’t anything he could do for her.
He walks into the room Molly just left, and Bellatrix is sitting on the lounge with her mouth partially
open as if she were about to speak. He can see something in her eyes-he thinks it is fear-and he
knows that she isn’t sure if she can love, if she has loved, or what love feels like. He knows that right
now Bellatrix is hurting more than Molly because Molly is right. Arthur sits down beside Bellatrix,
and he takes her hand.
---
Bellatrix steps into Molly’s kitchen. She feels a giddy rush because she knows she isn’t supposed to
be there. It is Molly’s domain, and Bellatrix knows that Molly would be seething to have Bellatrix
anywhere near it especially without anyone else around.
Bellatrix opens up all the cupboards. She pulls out the cups, dishes, cutlery, and anything else she can
get her hands on. She starts throwing things on the floor, and laughing loudly every time something
shatters, breaks into pieces.
She’s barefoot, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she registers that she’s injuring herself. She
realizes she’s bleeding. She realizes that she doesn’t care.
She smiles when Arthur rushes in, and his face is pale, worried. She wonders if he worries about his
wife, and if he feels this much when his wife’s in pain. She’s not sure if he does, not right now.
She keeps laughing as he leads her out of the kitchen, and patches up her bleeding feet.
She leans down so that her mouth is right next to his ear, and whispers: “Who am I?”
---
Arthur sits across from Molly, and she’s isn’t looking at him. He takes her hands in his.
“I know you remember, Molly. But she doesn’t.” He says.
She looks at him then. “That makes it worse.”
He doesn’t know how to answer her. He doesn’t know what to do. He leaves the house, goes into his
garden shed, and sits amongst all his muggle contraptions with parts missing.
---
Bellatrix finds him.
“I sometimes think I would like to kill your wife.” She says as she smiles at him.
He nods at her. “That makes sense. Do you want to kill me too?”
“Yes.” She replies.
“Do you know why?”
Bellatrix shakes her head no, and then she wraps a hand around his neck. With a hard tug, she is
crashing their lips together. Arthur isn’t strong enough to say no.
---
The Ministry asks for volunteers. Arthur chooses Bellatrix. He remembers seeing her name on the list
and making his mind up then and there. He can’t remember what he was thinking. He certainly wasn’t
thinking about his wife, his children, the war. Maybe he was trying to be a hero, he’s not sure.
He lodges the necessary paperwork with the Ministry without telling Molly first. He waits to tell her
until Bellatrix is already in their house, sitting in their chair, and at their mercy. He waits because he
knows his wife, and he knows what she will say.
Why her? Why us?
And he doesn’t have the answers to any of those questions. He can’t tell her why and make it all okay.
---
Arthur watches Bellatrix working in the garden. She picks up a gnome between her fingers, and
laughs as the tiny thing tries to bite her fingers. Molly is standing to her left, scowling. Arthur doesn’t
know how to describe what he’s feeling, so he laughs instead. He thinks Bellatrix hears him.
---
It happens one night when Arthur smiles at something Bellatrix says. He touches her hand, and
Molly’s had enough.
She pulls out her wand, and he waits for her to yell something, anything, but she doesn’t. She says
nothing, and Bellatrix just looks at her as if she’s daring Molly to hit her with her best shot.
Arthur doesn’t know what to do-he doesn’t know anything lately-and he’s almost grateful when
Molly does speak.
“The only person on this planet who doesn’t want you dead is sitting right here at this table.” Molly
points at him, and Arthur swears the sound of his heart’s rapid beating grows loud enough that Molly
and Bellatrix can hear it.
“Aren’t I lucky then?” Bellatrix says, and Molly shakes her head.
“Maybe you are.” And Arthur knows this is Molly giving up. She isn’t fighting anymore, and Arthur
knows it is because she has nothing left to fight for. Her children are all grown up, her husband is
distant, and there are no more wars left to fight, no more causes to defend.
---
When Ginny comes home to visit, it is Bellatrix who opens the door. Ginny takes out her wand faster
than Arthur has time to draw in a breath.
“If you touch me or speak to me, I will hex you faster than you can say Voldemort.” Arthur sees
Bellatrix goes rigid as if she remembers the name, but he knows that she doesn’t. Ginny quietly
moves past Bellatirx, and into her home. She embraces Arthur first, and then runs off to speak to her
mother.
Arthur puts his arm around Bellatrix and closes the door for her.
---
Arthur thought it was unethical when he first heard of the Ministry’s scheme to deal with the captured
Death Eaters.
There were too many of them to keep in Azkaban, they said. Most of the Death Eaters were too
dangerous to be kept in any regular prison. The Azkaban guards weren’t reliable.
But playing around with the memories of Death Eaters? That was safe.
All they had to do was make them forget everything: all the people they’d tortured and killed, the
psychopath they had worked for, and all the pain, blood, and screams that filled their heads.
It was as easy as that. Who said you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks?
---
Arthur taps his quill against his desk as he looks down at the fortnightly paper work he is supposed to
fill out as Bellatrix’s rehabilitator.
Question number six: Has your charge shown any signs of violent activity?
He sighs and writes yes.
---
Bellatrix kills a cat. It’s Molly who finds its corpse on the front lawn, and she is yelling at the top of
her lungs for Arthur to come downstairs and deal with his “murdering bitch”.
Arthur walks down the stairs slowly, and when he reaches Bellatrix at the bottom, he places a kiss on
her forehead.
---
The Ministry comes to collect Bellatrix one year after Arthur took her into his custody. Arthur knew
that he only had one year to rehabilitate her before the Ministry labelled her a lost cause, and they
took more drastic measures to deal with her. Arthur knew, but he had tried his best to forget.
He holds Bellatrix’s hand as they wait for the aurors to arrive.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.” Arthur says.
“I’m not.” Bellatrix smiles at him and squeezes his hand hard enough that he hears the bones grinding
together.
When she’s gone, Molly comes outside and sits down next to him on the steps.
“Did you love her?” She asks.
“Of course not, Molly. I’ve always loved you.” He says, looking at his wife out of the corner of his
eye.
They are silent for a moment before he lays his head on her shoulder and starts to cry.
---
Her name is Bellatrix Black. She is going to die tomorrow. They told her that.
She thinks she might not have wanted to kill Arthur Weasley after all, and she feels a strange sort of
flutter in her stomach when she thinks about him. She wonders if that’s what Molly meant about love.
No one will tell her though, and after awhile she forgets because they wave their wands at her and the
memories fade away into nothing.
---
Arthur sees the official announcement of her death in the paper the next week. He wonders if she
could still remember him when she died.
He wonders if they let her remember anything at all.
Recipient: gelsey
Title: To Make Fit Again
Pairing: Arthur/Bellatrix with a huge heaping of Molly/Arthur and hinted Voldemort/
Bellatrix
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,321
Summary: Arthur finds that all things can be broken, but not all things can be fixed.
Author's Notes: This story is canon compliant (up to and including the epilogue) except for the part where Molly kills Bellatrix during the final battle; for the purposes of this fic, Bellatrix was only severely incapacitated. Thank you to A. and S. for betaing this for me.
Her name is Bellatrix Black. She is a witch. She can do magic. She knows this. They told her.
She hates being tied down or locked up. She hates the white clothes they’ve given her. She hates the
way they say her name. She hates them most of all, and she wants to hurt them. She doesn’t know
why. They refuse to tell her.
His name is Arthur Weasley. She has an intense urge to wipe the goofy smile off his face the instant
she sees him. Instead, she serenely follows him out of the building and takes his hand when he offers
it.
She doesn’t know why she hates him either.
---
Arthur was sitting in his shed full of muggle oddities. He’d taken apart a toaster-confiscated after a
scorned house wife had charmed it to toast the fingers and toes of her husband’s muggle lover-and it
now sat in pieces in front of him. He picked up a bit of metal and stared at his warped reflection as he
thought about breakfast that morning.
Molly darted around the kitchen with practiced ease. She handled the many, many pots and pans
on the stove with a deft hand and a flick of her wand. Arthur had always admired that about her. He
was hopeless in the kitchen himself.
She sat dishes on the table until it began to groan with the weight of all the food, and then Arthur
stepped in with a spell of his own, just a simple incantation to reinforce the table legs. Molly glanced
over her shoulder at him, but she didn’t smile. She turned to face him, her hands smoothed down her
apron.
“Breakfast is ready.” She said, motioning to the table.
He smiled at her. “I can see that, dear. But you’ve made enough food for a small army. Did you forget
that it was just the two of us this morning?”
He didn’t add that it had been just the two of them since the war ended, and that it was probably just
going to be the two of them every morning from then on. The children (No, they weren’t children
anymore. They were adults with their own lives, their own scars.) were all gone. They’d flown the
nest. He’d appreciated the peace and quiet (Not that he didn’t miss the noise.).
Molly’s face went slack, and she just looked at the table covered in food. Arthur stepped forward
with his arms out stretched so that he could hold her, but she ran past him, out of the kitchen, and into
another room with a loud slam of the door.
He still didn’t know what he’d done wrong.
---
Bellatrix sits on a wobbly chair while Arthur listens to his screaming wife in the next room. Bellatrix
doesn’t particularly mind the screaming. It makes her feel comfortable.
This, she is sure, is the wrong reaction considering Arthur’s hard eyes as he enters the room and
beckons to her. He leads her down a hallway, up some stairs, and into a tiny bedroom. He leaves her
there without a word.
Bellatrix sits down on the bed, and looks out the window. She sees a figure, Arthur most likely, cross
the lawn and enter a tiny garden shed before she reclines on the thin pillows behind her.
She thinks of the screaming-- Arthur, you can’t honestly expect me to be okay with keeping her
under our roof. Do you remember all the things she did? She attacked our children, Arthur. I despise
her. And you are going to take her right back to the Ministry so they can lock her up in Azkaban like
they should have to begin with.--and smiles.
---
Arthur doesn’t try to make conversation. The room is tense enough as it is with Molly at one end
of the table and Bellatrix at the other. He looks at both women in turn. Molly is glaring, and he is
almost glad that she isn’t directing it at him for once. Bellatrix is pushing food around her plate, and
he isn’t sure if she is bored or away with the fairies (or, maybe, she is suffering side effects from the
procedure; they hadn’t said if there would be any).
Molly stands up suddenly, her chair screeching against the floor as she pushes it backwards. She
storms out of the kitchen, and Arthur stands as though to follow her before changing his mind. She
doesn’t want to talk to him. He looks at Bellatrix. She seems unperturbed by his wife’s outburst.
“Sorry about Molly. She’s not usually like this. Things have been hard for us recently is all.” Arthur
says quietly.
Bellatrix smiles at him before taking a bite of mashed potatoes that Arthur is sure were cold.
---
Arthur loves his wife. He loves her with everything that he has, and he wishes that there was some
way he could fix whatever it was that he had broken, that the war had broken, that the children leaving
her when she needed to take care of them the most had broken. But he doesn’t know how.
He looks at the instruction booklet for the cordless phone he had in his hands, and not for the first
time, he wonders why life didn’t come with one.
---
He doesn’t know how the conversation started or what it is about. He only hears the end of it.
Molly’s shouting, crying. “You don’t know how to love.”
She storms past him all rage, fire, and flying hair without even a backwards glance. Arthur takes a
deep breath. That fire is one of the reasons why he loves his wife, but he knows that she isn’t the one
that needs him right now. Worst of all, there isn’t anything he could do for her.
He walks into the room Molly just left, and Bellatrix is sitting on the lounge with her mouth partially
open as if she were about to speak. He can see something in her eyes-he thinks it is fear-and he
knows that she isn’t sure if she can love, if she has loved, or what love feels like. He knows that right
now Bellatrix is hurting more than Molly because Molly is right. Arthur sits down beside Bellatrix,
and he takes her hand.
---
Bellatrix steps into Molly’s kitchen. She feels a giddy rush because she knows she isn’t supposed to
be there. It is Molly’s domain, and Bellatrix knows that Molly would be seething to have Bellatrix
anywhere near it especially without anyone else around.
Bellatrix opens up all the cupboards. She pulls out the cups, dishes, cutlery, and anything else she can
get her hands on. She starts throwing things on the floor, and laughing loudly every time something
shatters, breaks into pieces.
She’s barefoot, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she registers that she’s injuring herself. She
realizes she’s bleeding. She realizes that she doesn’t care.
She smiles when Arthur rushes in, and his face is pale, worried. She wonders if he worries about his
wife, and if he feels this much when his wife’s in pain. She’s not sure if he does, not right now.
She keeps laughing as he leads her out of the kitchen, and patches up her bleeding feet.
She leans down so that her mouth is right next to his ear, and whispers: “Who am I?”
---
Arthur sits across from Molly, and she’s isn’t looking at him. He takes her hands in his.
“I know you remember, Molly. But she doesn’t.” He says.
She looks at him then. “That makes it worse.”
He doesn’t know how to answer her. He doesn’t know what to do. He leaves the house, goes into his
garden shed, and sits amongst all his muggle contraptions with parts missing.
---
Bellatrix finds him.
“I sometimes think I would like to kill your wife.” She says as she smiles at him.
He nods at her. “That makes sense. Do you want to kill me too?”
“Yes.” She replies.
“Do you know why?”
Bellatrix shakes her head no, and then she wraps a hand around his neck. With a hard tug, she is
crashing their lips together. Arthur isn’t strong enough to say no.
---
The Ministry asks for volunteers. Arthur chooses Bellatrix. He remembers seeing her name on the list
and making his mind up then and there. He can’t remember what he was thinking. He certainly wasn’t
thinking about his wife, his children, the war. Maybe he was trying to be a hero, he’s not sure.
He lodges the necessary paperwork with the Ministry without telling Molly first. He waits to tell her
until Bellatrix is already in their house, sitting in their chair, and at their mercy. He waits because he
knows his wife, and he knows what she will say.
Why her? Why us?
And he doesn’t have the answers to any of those questions. He can’t tell her why and make it all okay.
---
Arthur watches Bellatrix working in the garden. She picks up a gnome between her fingers, and
laughs as the tiny thing tries to bite her fingers. Molly is standing to her left, scowling. Arthur doesn’t
know how to describe what he’s feeling, so he laughs instead. He thinks Bellatrix hears him.
---
It happens one night when Arthur smiles at something Bellatrix says. He touches her hand, and
Molly’s had enough.
She pulls out her wand, and he waits for her to yell something, anything, but she doesn’t. She says
nothing, and Bellatrix just looks at her as if she’s daring Molly to hit her with her best shot.
Arthur doesn’t know what to do-he doesn’t know anything lately-and he’s almost grateful when
Molly does speak.
“The only person on this planet who doesn’t want you dead is sitting right here at this table.” Molly
points at him, and Arthur swears the sound of his heart’s rapid beating grows loud enough that Molly
and Bellatrix can hear it.
“Aren’t I lucky then?” Bellatrix says, and Molly shakes her head.
“Maybe you are.” And Arthur knows this is Molly giving up. She isn’t fighting anymore, and Arthur
knows it is because she has nothing left to fight for. Her children are all grown up, her husband is
distant, and there are no more wars left to fight, no more causes to defend.
---
When Ginny comes home to visit, it is Bellatrix who opens the door. Ginny takes out her wand faster
than Arthur has time to draw in a breath.
“If you touch me or speak to me, I will hex you faster than you can say Voldemort.” Arthur sees
Bellatrix goes rigid as if she remembers the name, but he knows that she doesn’t. Ginny quietly
moves past Bellatirx, and into her home. She embraces Arthur first, and then runs off to speak to her
mother.
Arthur puts his arm around Bellatrix and closes the door for her.
---
Arthur thought it was unethical when he first heard of the Ministry’s scheme to deal with the captured
Death Eaters.
There were too many of them to keep in Azkaban, they said. Most of the Death Eaters were too
dangerous to be kept in any regular prison. The Azkaban guards weren’t reliable.
But playing around with the memories of Death Eaters? That was safe.
All they had to do was make them forget everything: all the people they’d tortured and killed, the
psychopath they had worked for, and all the pain, blood, and screams that filled their heads.
It was as easy as that. Who said you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks?
---
Arthur taps his quill against his desk as he looks down at the fortnightly paper work he is supposed to
fill out as Bellatrix’s rehabilitator.
Question number six: Has your charge shown any signs of violent activity?
He sighs and writes yes.
---
Bellatrix kills a cat. It’s Molly who finds its corpse on the front lawn, and she is yelling at the top of
her lungs for Arthur to come downstairs and deal with his “murdering bitch”.
Arthur walks down the stairs slowly, and when he reaches Bellatrix at the bottom, he places a kiss on
her forehead.
---
The Ministry comes to collect Bellatrix one year after Arthur took her into his custody. Arthur knew
that he only had one year to rehabilitate her before the Ministry labelled her a lost cause, and they
took more drastic measures to deal with her. Arthur knew, but he had tried his best to forget.
He holds Bellatrix’s hand as they wait for the aurors to arrive.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you.” Arthur says.
“I’m not.” Bellatrix smiles at him and squeezes his hand hard enough that he hears the bones grinding
together.
When she’s gone, Molly comes outside and sits down next to him on the steps.
“Did you love her?” She asks.
“Of course not, Molly. I’ve always loved you.” He says, looking at his wife out of the corner of his
eye.
They are silent for a moment before he lays his head on her shoulder and starts to cry.
---
Her name is Bellatrix Black. She is going to die tomorrow. They told her that.
She thinks she might not have wanted to kill Arthur Weasley after all, and she feels a strange sort of
flutter in her stomach when she thinks about him. She wonders if that’s what Molly meant about love.
No one will tell her though, and after awhile she forgets because they wave their wands at her and the
memories fade away into nothing.
---
Arthur sees the official announcement of her death in the paper the next week. He wonders if she
could still remember him when she died.
He wonders if they let her remember anything at all.