"Lucius. You said it was urgent."

"It is, My Lord. Quite urgent." Lucius Malfoy seemed rather anxious as he sat in the chair opposite Voldemort. A frigid rain pattered outside the office window. Lucius dragged his tongue over his bottom lip and said, "She is with Narcissa now, getting cleaned up and dressed and fed."

"Bellatrix," Voldemort clarified, and Lucius nodded.

"She's gone mad, Master."

Voldemort tipped his head. "Fourteen years in Azkaban is likely to do that to someone."

"My Lord, it's… she thinks it's 1970," Lucius said, and Voldemort scowled.

"A pity, for a mind like hers to go."

"The only thing, My Lord, is that she looks… she looks… young," Lucius pronounced carefully. Voldemort cleared his throat a little, shaking his head, but Lucius continued, "She claims she fell asleep in her bed at the Black family residence in August of 1970, and that she woke up in Azkaban ten days before the breakout. She says she screamed and cried out once she realised she was in prison. Then the Dementors came and broke her out. We explained as much as we could to her. We explained the way you… disappeared. The way she'd gone to prison for so long. We even tried to explain your new… appearance. She was incredibly confused by it all. She kept insisting I was my father. She seemed terrified. But she looks young, younger than I remember her being even when she went off to Azkaban."

"Interesting." Voldemort drummed his clawed fingernails along the edge of his desk. "Bring her to me."

"Yes, My Lord. I think she's just upstairs getting some fresh clothes. I'll bring her down."

Lucius bowed when he stood, and Nagini slithered up to Voldemort. Once Lucius had gone, Nagini hissed in Parseltongue,

"You have missed her, Master."

"It has been too long. I couldn't miss her anymore," Voldemort insisted back. The snake looked as sceptical as snakes could do, and she slithered over to rest beneath a bookshelf. Voldemort sighed, running his fingernails over his bald head. She would be horrified by him, time travel or not. Thanks to snake venom, his nose was now just a set of slits in his face. He could smell very well, as it happened, but the look was disgusting. Not that he minded; in fact, he quite liked that everyone else was terrified of his new appearance. He hadn't been very handsome before the incident with the infant Harry Potter, anyway. Making so many Horcruxes had warped and melted his features.

But Bellatrix had never cared.

"Enter," he said at the sound of three knocks on his door. His voice shook far more than he would have liked. The door opened, and then Voldemort's jaw dropped.

It was her. Her, Bellatrix, only she looked like she'd just left Hogwarts. Her face was almost childlike in its youth. Her eyes were bright and glittering with life. Her hair was jet black, her curls shining. She was thin and gangly, almost untouched by womanhood. His breath caught. This was not a witch who had spent fourteen years in Azkaban.

"Bellatrix," he said softly, and he watched her blink in shock.

"M-My Lord." She dipped her head and raised just her eyes to study him.

"Horrific, isn't it?" He glanced down at himself, but Bellatrix shook her head as she came into the office.

"No. If what they say is true, and you were gone for so long, then I am only glad you are safe."

He smirked and gestured for her to sit.

"You pretend not to know what happened, but I refuse to believe you've gone mad. There's one way to find out. Let me in your mind. Legilimens."

She gasped as he thrust himself into her head. He searched through her memories, trying to find faint glimmers of what had come to pass between them from 1970 until she married in 1976. Nothing. He searched for memories of her trial, of her imprisonment. Nothing. Everything stopped at the end of the summer after she'd left Hogwarts. She'd been working for Voldemort since her sixth year in school, and over that summer, she'd become his full-time and closely associated soldier. But she remembered nothing past a hot night in August when she'd gone to bed, and then she'd awakened in a cell in Azkaban.

"So it is as you say," Voldemort whispered, "and you have come decades into the future through your sleep. How can this be?"

"I have no idea, My Lord," Bellatrix admitted. "When I saw Lucius, I didn't recognise him. Neither him nor Cissy. Then they told me about you. I figured it out quickly; I knew I'd come through time. But I had no Time Turner, nor any spell or potion or device… I don't know how it happened. I don't know… oh. Hello."

Nagini had slithered up to Bellatrix and was curling up her chair. The snake held her face out toward Bellatrix, hovering and studying.

"Leave her be," Voldemort hissed in Parseltongue, but Bellatrix dragged a knuckle almost affectionately over the top of Nagini's head and murmured,

"Pretty creature. Hmmm."

"She is lovely and kind and I enjoy her," Nagini hissed at Voldemort. Bellatrix smiled just a little and kept petting Nagini's head, and she noted,

"You had such an affinity for snakes, My Lord, in my time. What is she called?"

How Bellatrix knew it was a she, Voldemort did not care to know. He cleared his throat a little and said,

"She's called Nagini. She quite likes you."

"She's marvelous." Bellatrix trailed her knuckles down Nagini's scales, and Voldemort's chest tightened oddly.

"Go," he commanded Nagini, and the snake hesitantly slithered away from Bellatrix. She watched the snake go, and then she turned her attention back to Voldemort.

"My Lord. I don't know what happened to the me that spent years in Azkaban. I don't care. All that matters is that I am here to serve you now, in this new war."

Voldemort dug his grey teeth into his bottom lip and decided she needed to know a little more truth.

"You don't know what happened between… erm… between you and me," he noted, and when Bellatrix seemed shocked, he clarified, "The night of your nineteenth birthday… we'd both had entirely too much to drink, and we… you know, we were together. It kept happening, with increasing frequency, until it become something of a proper affair. Only, I couldn't have you quite that close, so… I commanded you to marry Rodolphus Lestrange, which you did in 1976."

"Oh. That's why everyone keeps mentioning Rodolphus." Bellatrix stared at her lap and blinked a few times. She kept her eyes down as she asked, "Did I love him?"

"Does it matter?" Voldemort asked, and she shook her head. She was intelligent enough, even as an eighteen-year-old, to know why he would marry her off to cut off an affair. Even then, even as a warped middle-aged wizard, he'd been entirely too busy to be bothered with a young, clingy witch.

"Rodolphus and Rabastan are tired, but they certainly haven't time traveled," Voldemort said. "They'll need a few weeks to recover before being put back into service as Death Eaters. Do you know, Bella… very nearly everybody turned on me when I disappeared. They started eating themselves alive, giving up one another's names. Fleeing. Denying. But you… you."

Bellatrix raised her gaze to him, and he could see that she was on the verge of tears. He shrugged a little and told her,

"They dragged you kicking and screaming from the Wizengamot whilst you shrieked at them that I would rise again."

"I would never, ever give up on the idea of you, Master," Bellatrix insisted, and again his chest hurt. He nodded.

"I know." He cleared his throat and reminded the both of them, "You're meant to be forty-five years of age. I am very old now."

"All that matters is that you get the power you deserve, My Lord," Bellatrix insisted, shoving her pretty curls away. "Perhaps I've been sent here so that I can better serve you. A forty-five-year-old me who's served fourteen years in Azkaban likely wouldn't be as much help as a younger me. Not as practised in battle, I wager, but I'll learn."

"So eager," Voldemort whispered. "You have always, always been so very eager. For everything I would give you. Any scrap of attention brought you bliss. Any touch, any kiss made you…"

He stopped then, but Bellatrix's eyes had gone wide. She didn't remember any touches or kisses. She barely remembered any battle. She had not yet lived the times they'd been physical together, nor the times she'd killed and tortured for him. She was little more than a girl, this Bellatrix who had come to him through the years.

"Do my scarlet eyes frighten you?" he asked abruptly. When Bellatrix shook her head, he scoffed and said, "I suppose I was hardly good-looking even when you knew me. Wrinkled and bent by Dark magic. But this… I am much taller, and much older, and more snake-like. Are you repulsed?"

"Quite the opposite, My Lord," Bellatrix said softly. He took a long breath through the slits of his nostrils and murmured,

"You may stay here at Malfoy Manor, in the suite of rooms I keep, until further notice. Until we've got some of this mystery sorted out. I'm sure you're not anxious to jump into bed with Rodolphus Lestrange."

"Not exactly, My Lord," she whispered, looking grateful. Voldemort nodded and said lightheartedly,

"Well, I shall do my best to keep Nagini out of your room, though it seems she's extraordinarily fond of you."

Bellatrix looked over her shoulder and smiled at the snake that held a scrap of Voldemort's soul. Bellatrix seemed drawn to Nagini, far more than any of the others were. Well, that made sense, Voldemort thought. The others had given up on him when Bellatrix had cried and screamed that her master would return. Of course she would be more magnetically attracted to his Horcrux than they all were.

"Have you any notion at all of how or why I've come here, My Lord?" Bellatrix asked suddenly, and Voldemort snapped to rights. He shook his head.

"Not yet. I'll have to do some research. Though, in my experience, meddling with time is a terribly unwise act. I'm not about to try and send you back. You're here. You're free. You'll fight for me in this time."

"I will always fight for you, Master," Bellatrix insisted, "no matter what year it is."

"So young," he whispered. He rose and walked around the desk, knowing his movements were unnaturally fluid. He wondered how Bellatrix would react to him touching her with his talon-like fingers. She didn't flinch even a little bit when he brushed her curls away from her face and said softly, "You look so very young."

"I turn nineteen next month," she reminded him, but he smirked and informed her,

"It's January. Things are more than a little thrown off, it would seem. Come on upstairs, Bella, and I'll show you your room. You must be very tired."

Author's Note: Woooo hoooo! New Bellamort fic! This one is going to get VERY interesting as we see substantial chunks of the story take place in 1996, 1970, and 1950, moving around every now and then as the plot carries on. This story will have quite a lot of mystery and action, as well as occasional lemons (with variously-aged Voldemort and Bellatrix), so please be advised of that. Thank you so much for reading and please do leave a quick comment.