DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling.
A/N: In the style of its predecessors, this fic will have drabble-length chapters and will likely run between 25-30 chapters long. The first fic in the series is "Nothing From Nowhere".
~ Lukewarm Rain ~
- Chapter 1: Burning From The Inside -
Months had passed since that fateful battle, but it remained fresh in Bellatrix's mind.
She often dreamed of a graveyard in the rain, where she stood in front a headstone marked simply A Star Who Burned Out Too Soon. She was overly aware of the water running down the length of the chain around her neck, the drops collecting in the coils of the tiny silver serpent until they flowed over, down the sides of the glass sphere around which the serpent was wrapped...
Her dreams were no longer premonitions, merely nightmares now. Always nightmares.
The loss of her child would be difficult enough to bear under normal circumstances, but the manner in which the events came about... She shuddered to think of it. Bad enough she had been a plaything of the gods, worse still that an end to the chaos had come only at the cost of her daughter's life.
The Dark Lord tried his best to comfort her, but it was not enough. The child had been as much his as hers, yet he could not comprehend the intensity of her grief. His feelings for both her and the child reached nowhere near the depth of hers. He had accepted and moved on from the child's death in short order. Bellatrix's persistent mourning unsettled and confused him.
He too had nightmares, nightmares that were no longer premonitions, but his nightmares were not of the past; they were of the present-future and the wealth of unimaginable power that his enemies still held.
The war was at a standstill, the dark army in hiding, because the light side still had two orbs of power with which they could easily crush Voldemort's forces if they should so desire. The Order of the Phoenix seemed content to leave them to their own devices for now... but there was no guarantee that the stalemate would be allowed to remain, especially if the Ministry got wind of the powers that were in the Order's possession and ordered a search for (and subsequent extermination of) the Death Eaters.
And so he continued to watch her fall apart, and he began to wonder if he should test the vow she had made to him two years ago.
No matter what you do to me, she had said back then, I will always fall in love with you again.
~to be continued~