DISCLAIMER: Harry Potter belongs to JK Rowling.

A/N: This is the "bad ending" version of Ouroboros. Some of the text is the same in the first two and a half paragraphs.

The first line of the fic is not my own words, but a sentence taken from the beginning narration of Secret of Mana.

~ And History Repeats ~
(Ouroboros: Bad End)

But time flows like a river... and history repeats.

The sudden disappearance of Bellatrix Black threw both sides of the war into chaos. At first, everyone thought the girl was dead. The light side assumed (wrongly) that she had been killed by her master. The dark forces assumed she'd been exterminated in secret by the Order of the Phoenix.

It seemed to Voldemort that he was the only one who actually believed that she was alive, and that she had - of her own volition - run away from home. He did not know why she left, and didn't care to speculate on the matter. Death Eaters who deserted were killed - no exceptions. If there were extenuating circumstances behind her departure, or if she was in the clutches of the Order of the Phoenix, he would deal with that when the time came. And so his search for her began.

She had hidden herself well, for it took him over a year to find her - and when he did find her, it was not the woman herself that he found. What he found was a tombstone which bore her name. It said only Bella Black, not her full name, but the date of birth matched hers exactly. The small, rundown graveyard was situated behind an equally small and rundown church. To which religion the hall of worship belonged, he did not know. He could not fathom why Bellatrix would choose this as her place of refuge, but apparently she had, for here she was buried. Most of the other graves had "Sister" listed before the women's names, indicating that the majority of the graves' occupants had been nuns.

Well, he told himself, there's no use standing here wondering. She's already dead. There is nothing left for me to do here.

She'd been cold in the ground for six months before he had dared to trespass on this small patch of sacred ground. He doubted that there would be anything of hers kept at the church, if indeed that had been where she'd stayed in the months leading to her death. Perhaps she had been running the entire time and had merely happened to die in the vicinty.

But it's no use thinking about it, he chided himself as he turned to leave. I shall never know.

After returning home, he chose not to divulge his knowledge of Bellatrix's demise. Her family, believing that she (like her sister) had betrayed the Noble Cause, had already begun to pretend that she did not exist, and the Dark Lord saw no reason to contradict them in this.

Several years after the fall of the Dark Lord, Albus Dumbledore heard rumors of an orphaned magical child who was showing early warning signs of becoming a sociopath.

As soon as he met the girl, he knew exactly whose child she was, and the old man promised himself that he would not make the same mistakes this time that he had made with her father.

~end~