My dear brother in law thinks I'm insane. He's normally so quick to label someone, but I do sincerely believe his reflections on my mental state were accumulated over a very long time. For someone I'm not particularly close to, he's witnessed me on several occasions at my most vulnerable.

"It's mourning Rabastan," I tell him simply one evening as we sit by the fire concocted with a bit of his wandless magic.

"What?" he seems irritated, but his tone reforms into the soft shades one normally uses with the incompetent. He looks as though he might pat my hand, though shies away in the split second he recalls all the times I have say... bitten him for such an offense. "It's the dead of night love," he amends, turning away again and staring into his lap. He's trying to come up with the next brilliant idea as to what we should do with ourselves.

"I mean sadness you dolt!" I watch the fire flicker in his honey brown eyes. So like his brother's, but without Rodolphus's zest for life. I chase the thickness that threatens to seize my voice and continue. My own clause for my rudeness is weak. "I loved your brother very much."

"I know," he tells me with a shrug. "I did too...in a different way mind you." Always so concerned with propriety is he. "It's been a difficult time."

I laugh. The simplicity of that statement is too much. It sums things up yes, but it's so bloody ridiculous. 'Difficulty' before these past few weeks I always equated with say, an exam. A spell. A difficult child. A difficult pet.

I must say that hasn't changed. Were I Christian I could call this Hell. But foreplay with semantics is as equally ridiculous as misuse. Besides I'm already getting that look from Rabastan that tells me my Bohemian ways are grating his poor nerves. I realize my laughter has gotten to the pitch of a wolf's howl and settle down.

"And yet we're still here," I muse. "That says something doesn't it?"

"I suppose." Rabastan stays silent. He seems at odds as to whether I've made a full recovery or this is just the calm before the storm, the storm being where I gnaw off one of his limbs. "Were you...eh serious about bringing back the Dark Lord?"

I stand. My height over his I feel like a guiding shepherd silhouetted against the night. He looks small and childish, his clothes are too big. They're stolen muggle clothes, apparently from the morbidly obese. Stretching I pace around him and the fire, feeling him look down his thin nose at me through the flames. "Yes. I was serious at the time. I didn't know what I was saying..." My tone tapers off, my hand goes to my mouth brushing at the dirt and dried blood there.

"At any rate," I continue, "It seems out of the question."

"Do you believe he's dead?"

"No. The Prophecy has not been fulfilled has it?"

"Ah true. But you don't want to wait for him?" An air of amusement enters my relation's tone. "The woman who nattered on about all the years you spent in Azkaban for him? You've devoted your life to this, why stop now? We've both devoted our lives to this cause, it's not like we've got any marketable job skills? Where are we going to live, among the muggles? Christ Bella use your head." He stands suddenly, arms crossed. I'm still taller than him by about six inches. Small funny little man. The amusement, I dare say, has left him. He's not admitting it but I can tell he's very nervous. This is tearing him apart this uncertainty.

He'd always trade happiness for security. He lived with a woman he didn't love, did everything his ugly family said so he could have their money. Rodolphus was, as you must have been assuming, the direct opposite nearly. He loved his parents, but I knew he loved me more. I could not have tolerated a man who loved anyone over me and he knew that. His mother loathed me as the years went by, my spiteful ovaries couldn't give her boy an heir and all that rot.

Except for Rodolphus they were awful people. They all had this sort of haggard arrogance; sincerely they wished they didn't have to keep telling you they were better, it wore on their dear fragile nerves. Rodolphus though, I can honestly admit I loved over my own family. The Blacks were always closer than we appeared, and our trust ran deeps though it was hard to retrieve. There was a time when I would have died for Sirius, and he for me. But as I said, he gave up a strong alliance and friendship long ago. I don't regret his death.

But my husband was free. Just speaking to him he'd severed a certain tie in his mind, and kept a balance of being both golden son and doing whatever the hell he wanted. I believe that tie would be called respect for his family. He wanted to serve Voldemort as any of us did, but the trick was he did it because he wanted to. If it was hot, he didn't wear clothes. If he wanted a cigarette, even if they were filthy muggle devices and deadly, he smoked one anyway. He didn't give an honest goddamn about his grades at school.

His was the perfect mind set to complement my sixteen year old persona, always vigilante for the world outside her tight knit family. Thinking on all that freedom, I watch Rabastan get pissy because I didn't answer him quick enough. If I were his child I think he would have back-handed me.

I refuse to beg him to pay attention to me as I speak. I wait for him to give me that reproachful look, oh how he just wants to give me one more chance to do the right thing.

"Rabastan, I'm surprised at you," I tell him. His eyes widen. He must've taken my silence as sign of a psychotic attack. But I just sit beside the rock he's perched on pleasantly, crossing my legs and weaving my fingers purposefully. "I seem to remember someone 'nattering' on constantly about pragmatism on more than one occasion. I believe one of my better points in my state before was we are largely unwanted. Voldemort didn't want us, we couldn't be his martyrs to be dredged up by wayward youth looking for someone to follow twenty years from now. Fate's an ugly thing. Our own world we were never apart of, part of a fringe pureblood-supremacy movement. Obviously muggle-fuckers are the majority, and our names were on their press' lips long before the final battle. They know our faces. They presume us dead, and if they find something to the contrary, well they'll correct it. And don't think they won't, we're weak now. Oh come now," I touch his shoulder. He's looking more disheartened by the minute. His spy's defenses are broken. I could tongue his soul if I wanted to. Beautiful horrid little man. "I'm as loathed to admit it as you are," I feel my energy improving. I feel my want to do things other than slop around in my husband's blood returning.

Oh Rodolphus. I know you're guiding me somewhere. This is what you would have wanted. My love you could appreciate this blasphemy like no one else. It would have suited you perfectly to come with us, to be apart of this new scheme and buck everything once and for all.

"But dear we're going to have to do something proactive eventually, I'm not one for sleeping like cattle as you so elegantly put it. We're going to have to integrate into the muggle world." His eyes widen. I think it's my delight at this prospect that startles him. I loathe muggles do I not? I do not. Not particularly.

My beliefs have always fell similar to a muggle who was for segregation. I don't have a problem with them, but I don't want them or their children attending the same school as I. It's distasteful. It's a proven fact that mudbloods just don't get along in our world, or belong. They aren't as apt at magic, and they just spoil good bloodlines. It's silly really. A year ago this would have been a disgusting prospect.

Sleeping in shit in some farmer's fields is a disgusting prospect. Having nothing to eat and diarrhea when one finally does ingest are disgusting prospects. Having nothing to look forward to but Rabastan's company and the memory of my beautiful Rodolphus's thick greenish lips parted in death is a disgusting way to live. Knowing that my life was a waste that cost me my husband is not liveable.

The only thing existing of our marriage now is in my mind (again as loathe as I am to admit it, I have felt it breaking for a very long time), two silver wedding bands divided between a corpse and a crow, and my child's small head stone and coffin at our abandoned manor.

For so long I was regarded as a fool, Severus taught me that much. Such a creature he was, though he knew I had something he did not. I had pride, as cliched as the expression is. I could keep the jail sentence at bay, those times I wanted something to fill the emptiness of being childless... of being alone on a prison floor... because of my arrogance. I held onto the string that one day my side would triumph and idiots like Severus would apologize for doubting me and my master.

It's twice now I've held onto hope. Didn't I say that once you ruin a Black's trust, that's that?

Well Andromeda.

Well Sirius.

Well my Dark Lord.

Rabastan's making noise. Protesting noise. I hear it as nothing but snow on a window. His hand's in mine, my thin dry fingers find their place against his pretty-boy clean skin. I kiss his wrist and laugh at his flabbergasted reaction. "Silly ickle git," I croon playfully. "Mother will take care of you, you'll see. We're going to be just fine, just stay holding my hand. We're going to go wash now, yes. You're very dirty, and so is mummy."

I lead him to where the cows drink, a spring in my step and yanking him along for everything he's worth.

"Bella... Christ.. What're you on about?" His question doesn't deter me from pushing him down on his knees, into the muddy edge of the man-made pond. From him I slip his jacket off, getting a bit of a scramble from it as he tried to retain his garment. It's easy to slip off however, as is his shirt. I told you they were very big after all. His body was skin and muscle in a utilitarian fixture over small furtive bones. His dark mark on his left wrist had faded considerably. Was this a sign?

"Look Rabastan, look at your wrist! He must be dead!"

"That's impossible... goddamn it Bella.. Potter didn't kill him, STOP IT!" he roars at me as I try to bathe him. He scrambles up the hill and I follow him, naturally. In the moonlight I can see the clean streaks in between the dirt that's collected on his skin. I feel that's good enough and return to the pool, letting my silence be ample answer.

Standing over the murky, weed-choked water I slip my robes off into a dark wreath about my feet. From it I step from the center. The water chills my pale skinny ankles, as I'd abandoned shoes some time ago. I continued my pilgrimage into the dirty water without haste, spreading my arms to embrace the water and closing my eyes. The water was at least six feet deep. I am five-ten and opening my eyes, I can see the moonlight through a few good inches of water.

Muffled yelling. Him. I smile in the water ruefully. Now I know why we fell, I joke in my mind, we had the clumsiest spies on the planet. "Bellatrix you fucking fool!" Oh there's that word again. I let him spot me in the water, propelling myself away just as he dives in after me. He's submerged. He's coughing. "Bella...unghhh..." Water shoots out of his mouth. I tread water calmly as I watch him flail. "Please.. Can't.. I can't swim!"

I don't let him die. I couldn't think of another bloated corpse on my account from the Lestrange family. Under his arms proves a good hold to yank him to safety.

He looks at me, vulnerably still coughing up water trying to catch it in his hand like a gentleman. I push him on all fours, giving him a few good smacks on the back to bring it up. I feel no concern as his breath hitches, I've lost interest by the time he discovers he's coughing around a thick piece of pond weed.

"Bella," he taps me on the shoulder to get my attention.

"What?"

"What else have we got?"

"Nothing except this pond to drown ourselves in." He nods. He's out of his element. He's finally taking my lead. Plus I suppose that pond example was just a bit too close for comfort.

"Yes then." He's still coughing dryly.