Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or the characters. Credit for that goes to J.K. Rowling. Some lines are from the novels.

A/N: This story is a(nother) re-write of The Feral Twins, minus twins, and entirely focused on Bellatrix. Right now, this re-write is the bane of my existence... I apologize to those whom I've confused.

Warnings: Violence, child abuse, torture. No shipping. AU.

1984

Azkaban, the wizarding prison, was said to be one of the most horrific places in the world, rising up from the North Sea like an unwanted growth, necrotic and hideous. It was a black mark marring the unbroken horizon of the blue-grey sea, a breeding ground for insanity and despair.

There was a riddle that asked: What came first, the phoenix or the flame? A similar riddle might have been: What came first, despairing insanity or the Dementors? The answer was: a circle has no beginning, but in former, the circle was a golden ring, pure and bright, and in the latter, the circle was a shackle, a symbol of inescapable doom.

Bellatrix Lestrange was one of many residents of Azkaban, and as such, she was no stranger to the miseries of life. Despair was the colour of her sky, the colour of her bones, a relentless grey-white, and a monotonous pain that turned seconds into hours. Insanity was just another song in her head, another note of hysterical and humourless laughter. Those who could no longer screamed cried. And those, whose basin of tears had dried, laughed.

Bellatrix laughed a great deal.

And yet, Bellatrix could endure these punishments, these mean insults to her pride despite her pureblood status, her superior upbringing. Because for Bellatrix, there was one emotional state she feared beyond anguish and beyond pain: she feared regret.

And if Bellatrix had to remain caged within this cell, her dark mane snarled in clumps, her pale skin shaded yellow and waxy with sickness - if she had to relive the worst moments of her life, ever again and again, mightn't her resolve crack?

She had entered Azkaban, her heart aflame, fed by righteous purity. She had given everything she was to her cause. She wasn't afraid of what they could do to her. She was afraid of what she would do to herself.

-o-

1985

Everything in Malfoy Manor was bright, the resplendence almost harsh against her sensitized eyes, and scaling skin which offered meagre protection over her sore bones. Like some cave dwelling creature dragged into the light, perhaps it would have made sense to recoil from the vividness, to skitter back into the familiarity of dank and dark places, draped with heavy velvet curtains. But Bellatrix was thrilled by the brightness, drunk to near delirium from the very thrill of being alive, of being free.

With the wily slipperiness afforded to those who were deranged (and she knew everyone assumed this to be so), she escaped her handlers, and teetered, alone, through the corridors, fingers trailing the smooth edges and curves of the pale wainscoting, inhaling the scent of expensive things, French things: amber, rose, leather, night orchids. The things she had taken for granted - the moving portraits, the soft carpets - delighted her now, in a way that they had never done before. It was a pleasure to drag her feet, shush, shush, in a soft drag of friction over the rugs, or gliding across gleaming marble.

Something caught her eye - something brighter than all the rest. Through an open doorway, she saw a shimmer of golden-white, the colour of childhood laughter and innocence. The sight of it was irresistible. Swaying on disobedient limbs, she pushed into the room, her heart seized by the vision, and she felt herself wanting an ever-elusive something. The golden-white was the hair of a small child, a mere cherub, tiny fingers gripped around playing blocks as if they were treasures, and gray eyes wide, widening, mouth opening into a deformed shape, as she thought, don't be afraid, baby, don't be afraid, her own chest tight as she stood, looming.

Recognition didn't come until she spoke, her voice high and soft, cooing: "Hello widdle baby." The child was inching away, like some distant figure in a dream, face scrunching in dimpled dread. "Hello widdle Dwaco." Don't be afraid.

How she wanted to hold it, to hold him, to hold onto something real. The idea of waking up was suddenly terrifying, and she reached downwards, greedily grasping, boney fingers carding through silken strands of hair. It felt real. Soft. Don't let me wake up. It felt real, and yet -

She tightened her grip on the hair, ignoring the resistance. She didn't hear the baby whimper. The glistening sheen in the child's eyes were diamonds, such pretty things. Don't be afraid, baby boy. It was real, wasn't it?

"Bella."

She knew that voice. Cissy's voice. Her sister. She could trust her sister. Her fingers loosened, golden threads slipping through her fingers as she straightened and turned around. Real.

"Bella, you're not well yet and you mustn't leave the care of your healers - not so soon after leaving Azkaban." Cissy's tone was placating, mellifluous. Cissy was a nymph trying to sooth a wayward fawn. "They're looking everywhere for you. How you manage to elude them, I'll never know."

Cissy held out a lily-white hand, the smooth paleness a welcome contrast to the grotesque Dementors. I'm not weak. She felt herself moving towards her sister, sensing safety in that serene expression. I don't need help.

"Dwaco likes me," Bellatrix said mulishly. He's real. Touchable, warm. Would he feel right in her arms?

Cissy smiled, and Bellatrix felt like time was whirling backwards, and she was a child again, back in the days when Andy looked at her with admiration, and Cissy looked at her with love, before they all grew up, and Andy became a stain (a traitor, filthy traitor, Andromeda Tonks), and Cissy became a marble statue, an ice statue (all cold perfection, Narcissa Malfoy).

"My dragon is a little gentleman," Cissy said. And unsaid: And you are not - not a lady, not stable, not safe. Not a mother. "But nonetheless, you must stay with the healers. I will bring Draco to see you later, and we will visit together. Come along Bella."

Bellatrix could think of twenty-seven curses off the top of her head, each worse than the next. But for all that she wanted to resist, no protests came to the scramble that was her mind. And when Cissy placed a hand on her arm to guide her, she allowed herself to be led, not because she was passive, and not because she was weak, but because it was real.

-o-

1986

To the disorganized mind, death was just the next big gamble. Only, Bellatrix was as likely to gamble with lives of others as she was to gamble with her own. After all, there were some things that were more important than death. Beloved. My beloved. My master. My love.

"Where do you keep disappearing off to?" Cissy had shrilled, chasing her across the elegant soulless sitting room, glacier-blue robes flowing in graceful undulations behind her. "You know you're still wanted by the law. Think of the risk, for once!"

"You know what I'm doing, and you know why I cannot stop."

Cissy paused in her steps, incredulity stamped on her delicate features. "He's gone. The Dark Lord is gone."

Bellatrix swerved to face her, lips curled in a snarl, hands like claws at her side, needing only a column of neck to suffocate. "I will find him. I won't stop searching until I do."

"Oh, Bella." Cissy's eyes gentled, filled with what looked to be pity, and Bellatrix longed to gouge those blue orbs out. She needed no pity. "You love him." If Cissy was expecting her to disclaim, it was in vain. Cissy's eyes widened. "You do! I suspected, but - why? I might not have participated in the war, but even I could see that he wasn't a wizard who could love -"

"You know nothing!"

"Bella." Such exasperation in those two syllables.

Bellatrix crossed her arms. She wasn't about to explain. Not to her baby sister, four years her junior. "You wouldn't understand."

Cissy's nostrils flared. "I know a great deal more about love than you think."

Bellatrix snorted irreverently. "What, with Lucy?"

"Don't call him that! And yes. With Lucius."

Bellatrix rolled her eyes. There were far worse things she could say about her sister's husband. "If that's love, then I. Don't. Want it." Nevermind that she wasn't sure she could ever have it. And before Cissy could slip in a reply, face flushed with vexation, Bellatrix disapparated, the whip-crack sound rending the air before she felt herself squeezed, and pulled by the tingling draw of magic.

A disorganized mind was an advantage for more adventuresome spirits, but most of the time, her mental disarray was far more of a hinderance. Bellatrix felt an inordinate degree of pleasure at the prospect of a risk, and the greater the danger, the greater the delectation. It was never her physical well-being that she worried over. Not really. She had spent far too long, far too many years, burying the softest parts of herself, encasing her vulnerabilities in chains and tossing them into the unseen chasms within her. She liked to think of herself as hardened, made tougher, more unyielding, by the grit of life. She liked to think that saying something was so, made it so.

And what better proof of having an iron belly than her willingness to apparate blind? That was something they never taught at Hogwarts. 'You could splinch yourself. Or worse.' Oh yes. There was nothing like a little bodily damage to add a certain piquancy to life. The key to blind apparition was this: instead of fixing a location in one's mind, using one's inner visual faculties to bridge the divide between two spaces, one merely had to focus on the feeling of magic, trusting the inner tactile faculties instead. It was her hope that this haphazard method would lead her to her beloved, the missing Dark Lord (someday, next time, tomorrow, soon).

Instead, this was how Bellatrix found herself in the most hideous little muggle suburb she had ever witnessed.

There was something about this place. It was as if the suburb had been designed with one criterion in mind: inoffensiveness. And even in this, the urban planner had failed. The aesthete within her was repulsed. Bellatrix had long considered herself someone who was intimate with death, but the death represented by suburb was a particularly harrowing one. It was the death of character, the death of individuality. It was a death more of the soul than of the body. So what magic could have possibly drawn her here, to this banal hellscape?

She surveyed her surroundings, taking in a slow sweeping arc, the visual interrupted by boxy houses on square lawns, edged by rectangular sidewalks. It was a copious display of right angles. And, ah, there, an irregularity, a heap of limbs in over-large faded clothing, a shock of mussed black hair, clunky glasses, and an unhealthy pallor. Magic still clung to him, this little slip of a thing, smaller than ickle Draco, but without that rounded indolence, that unbruised peachy softness. The magic left a sweet-sour tang on her tongue, reminiscent of kiwi fruit. Accidental magic. Muggleborn filth.

Bellatrix had a long list of people she would like to kill. She had a long list of people she had already killed. She remembered the faces of the fallen as a rush of power, a stale echo of that sweet intoxication. Her beloved once stated: There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it. What he hadn't said was this: It's only when you don't have power, when all agency is stripped from you, when the concept of choice is an unfathomable dream, then, and only then, can you truly appreciate the value of power. Then, and only then will you hunger for it, always, if only to never be powerless again.

The point of the tangent was that she had meant to kill this slime before her, regardless of who he was. But then, the boy was pushing himself up on quailing bony limbs, turning to look at her, and behind those cumbersome lenses were eyes of vivid green - beautiful eyes, the colour of death curses.

And above those eyes, framed by obsidian hair, was a lightning bolt-shaped scar. The boy who lived. The one who destroyed her beloved.

Bellatrix had a long list of people she would like to kill. And Harry Potter sat at the top of her list. How fortunate it was, that her oh so disorganized mind had led her to him. What were the odds, really.

She lifted her wand (walnut, dragon heartstring, unyielding), bared her teeth in a ravening grin, and pointed, the Avada Kedavra already in mind, needing only to push up her throat and out her lips, and he would crumble so beautifully, dead, dead, soon to be dead.

A/N: This will be a character study, with a stronger focus on prose and conflict.

Since this story is driving me crazy, I'm writing it more for my sake, than for an audience, but I hope it will entertain at least.