Chapter Text
Friday, August 13, 1972. 11:23 pm.
Three dark-cloaked figures apparated silently into an alley in Hull, shortly before midnight.
Lord Voldemort wrinkled his nose in distaste as he stepped around a puddle of vomit behind the bar, and scourgified his shoes reflexively.
“It smells like kneazle-piss,” Bellatrix said, picking her way around wet cardboard boxes left to rot in the alley. “I’ve smelt fresher hippogriff dung,” she muttered as she passed an overflowing skip behind a restaurant. “What is in that box – fermented thestral shite?”
“Cast a smell blocking charm, love,” Rodolphus advised. She did, with a wrinkled nose.
Rodolphus looked around with wide, disgusted eyes as the Dark Lord lead them down the street.
“Muggles are worse than I expected,” he murmured, and Bellatrix concurred.
“Is this... typical?”
Lord Voldemort sneered. “Quite.” With a casual flick of his wand and “Alohamora,” he popped open the door to a block of flats.
The stairwell stunk of stale smoke and old vomit, as the three slunk their way up the stairs to the third story, and entered, with another casual flick of the wand, the door with a tarnished brass “9”.
“Eh!” shouted a man from the sitting room, watching telly. He flung himself to his feet unsteadily, barely catching a beer bottle before it knocked the overflowing ashtray to the floor. “What d’you think yer doin’, bargin’ in?”
“Are you Joseph Botterill?” Rodolphus asked.
“What’s it to ye?”
“Answer the question,” Lord Voldemort said silkily.
“I am.”
“Where’s the girl?” Rodolphus demanded.
“What girl?” he said belligerently.
“The child! You’re fostering a child!”
“What’s it to ye?” Joseph snorted again. “Ye can’t jus’ barge into a man’s ‘ome at midnight and start askin’ questions. I’ll be callin’ t’ bobbies!”
“She’s family,” Rodolphus hissed. “Where is she?”
“Susan!” Joseph called, “Somebody’s here about t’bairn!”
A woman came out of the bedroom, dressed in a long worn nightdress.
“What is it? Who’s here so late?”
“I understand that you are in possession of my sister,” Rodolphus said. “Bring her to me. Now.”
“See here, mister, you can’t just barge in here at midnight!” the woman said. “The bairn’s asleep. You’ll have to talk to the local council, I can’t do nowt without them.”
“I’ll be glad to see her go,” the man muttered. “Oddest bairn I’ve ever seen, the council says she’s never lasted more than a couple of months at a home.”
Ignoring them, Bellatrix opened the door to a small cubby of a room, where a toddler lay on a mattress on the floor, crammed in between a chest of drawers and another pile of boxes.
“Girl?” she called.
The child shrunk back from her reflexively, and Bella frowned. She’d never been much good with children, or had an interest in them really, but that wasn’t the normal reaction at all. Even little Reggie, nervous child that he was, didn’t flinch that hard.
“I’m here to take you to your family,” Bella said. “Come along, we’ll get you out of this filthy Muggle hole, and take you to to stay with your own kind.”
The girl’s face was still as she obediently climbed from the bed and followed Bella, watching silently like a pale, curly-haired doll with big eyes as Bellatrix scanned the room. She threw open one drawer, than the next, slamming them shut as she looked at the worn Muggle clothing within. Finally, she found a dress that looked not too horribly Muggle, and held it out to the girl.
“Put this on, dear, we need to go out.” The child took the dress obediently, and pulled off her pyjamas to change. She was pale and too thin in the moonlight streaking in from the window, but there were odd shadows on her upper arms that Bellatrix realized with a start were fading bruises.
Bellatrix’s hand tightened around her wand as she continued to dig in the chest of drawers, pulling out socks, and a jumper which she passed to the girl.
Why was she so silent? She remembered Cissy at that age had never stopped babbling. Had the Muggles used Silencio, like Aunt Wally used to do with cousin Sirius? No, they were Muggles, of course, they couldn’t have...
“Come now,” she said, holding out her hand, which the child flinched from, but took it without protest.
“She looks exactly like Rabby as a child,” Rodolphus breathed as she appeared in the doorway, tugging the little girl behind her. “Hello darling,” he said, kneeling down to be at eye level with her. “I’m your brother, Roddy,” he said, reaching a hand out to her. His face fell as she flinched away, huddling behind Bellatrix’s legs.
“See here, you can’t just take her!” the Muggle woman shouted. “Emma’s been given to us by the council to foster! We need the money!”
“She’s MY sister,” Rodolphus spat. “Not some Muggle council’s!”
“My mother treats her crups better than you’ve treated this girl,” Bellatrix hissed. “The girl’s arms are covered in bruises.”
“I think you’ll find that we can, indeed, ‘just take her’,” Voldemort said, calmly. “Bring her to me, Bellatrix,” he said. Bella, loosing patience, blasted aside the piles on the floor with her wand and the child went still, eyes widening impossibly further as she tried to tug her hand away. Bellatrix dragged her by her hand to the Dark Lord, who took it, holding her firmly to his side, tucked among the folds of his black robes.
“Hey!” shouted Joseph, moving to grab her.
“Incarcerous,” Rodolphus cast, almost lazily, and the man fell to the ground, tied in ropes.
“The nasty Muggles won’t hurt you again,” Voldemort promised the girl softly. “You’ll be safe.”
The girl clung tightly to his leg, and Lord Voldemort found himself in the unfamiliar position of not knowing what to do. This night among the Muggle filth was already reminding him of his childhood at the orphanage, but even then, no one had thought to try to get Tom Riddle to comfort the younger children, and they’d avoided him, not clung to him.
Except... He remembered the summer of 1941, returning to the orphanage amidst the bombed ruins of London. A car had backfired, and there’d been a boy, maybe two years of age, who’d screamed, and grabbed his leg, refusing to be separated for hours. Tom had avoided chores and sat with the boy in the cellar until he finally calmed down. In a rare moment of what, in a weaker wizard might have been called compassion, but Tom was certain had been idle curiosity, he’d checked in on the boy when he went back the next summer, but he’d died not even a month after Tom was back at Hogwarts. He’d survived the Blitz, only to succumb to whooping cough, dying choking for air instead of the relatively painless death of a Muggle bomb. He’d seen it happen often enough that he’d dreamt of it that night. It was hard to remember, in the dark of the night, that Wizards were above such ignoble deaths.
Awkwardly, he peeled this girl’s arms free, and swung her into his arms so he could walk. The girl clung to him, little arms and legs wrapped tight around him, and buried her face into his robes, above his heart. He could feel that flutter of magic, deep inside her. Did she recognize his? Is that why this child would cling to him, so inexplicably trusting?
He whispered a deafening charm on the girl, so she wouldn’t hear the screams. He put a light sleeping charm on her, too, and she relaxed in his arms, dead weight. He brushed the hair from her face, studying the her pale, doll-like features, scowling at the bruise on her collarbone.
“Make them hurt,” he ordered, holding the child’s head cradled to his chest with one hand, keeping her from seeing the ensuing carnage if she woke. “Show them the cost of hurting a child of magic.”
“With pleasure, my Lord,” Rodolphus said. Bellatrix grinned.
The child remained quiet, crying silently in her sleep, tears dampening his robes as the Dark Lord listened to the symphony of screams of the Muggles and inhaled the perfume of copper-scented blood in the air, overwhelming the smells of damp and dirt and cigarettes. The male had soiled himself as he thrashed on the floor, and the Dark Lord wrinkled his nose at the unfortunately inevitable odour, casting a bubble head charm around himself and the child.
“Do you regret it, now, hurting a child of magic?” he asked, idly. The muggles merely whimpered – Rodolphus had cut out their tongues long ago.
When the Muggles were nothing more than a whimpering mass on the floor, he cast a lazy crucio, child in one hand, wand in the other, at one, then the other, smiling with satisfaction as they barely even twitched.
Heading for the door, he called out behind him,“Kill them, and then clean up – use fiendfyre on the building. I’ll meet you at Wyrmleah.”
“Yes, my lord,” his two newest recruits chorused, Bella looking slightly disappointed to cut her fun short.
He spun on his heels and walked out of the muggle home, still carrying the child.
He cancelled the charms protecting the child as he walked out into the night, and she sleepily stirred against his chest. “The Dark Lord has fixed it for you, child,” he murmured, carrying her into the garden. "Mortsmordre", he cast, and the skull and snakes filled the sky, glowing green in the fetid, starless night air, illuminating the clouds above. “Look, child, at my sign. You are safe now. The muggles will never hurt you again.” The toddler looked at his mark, shining large in the sky, eyes growing big as she gasped and reached out towards it, and he smiled down at her. She smiled back.
“This will feel a bit funny, but we’ll be home in an instant,” he told the girl, and before she could think to worry, he apparated silently away, still carrying the child.
That night, in the great hall of Wyrmleah Castle, the Dark Lord summoned his Inner Circle. The child slept on a settee, having screamed and cowered when the elves had tried to take her away to the nursery. The Dark Lord had blasted the elves back instinctively when she cowered, and settled her onto the settee with a sleeping charm, tucking her in with his outer robe, and ordering a still scorched and cowering elf to fetch him a fresh one. “It’s too soon for her to be away from family,” he said, and Rodolphus was not inclined to disagree – he wasn’t sure how he’d ever let his sister out of his sight. He’d only been patriarch of the family for three years, and already he was a failure.
Bellatrix Black and Rodolphus Lestrange took the Dark Mark that night, standing side by side, their devotion to the Dark Lord sealed in the blood of muggles who had dared to assault a witch-child, and the blood of every other Muggle unfortunate enough to reside in the same building, who had not intervened to save the child. Bellatrix Black, a true credit to her line, remained grinning even as the pain of the mark tore through her and she screamed. Rodolphus Lestrange counted himself lucky that he remained upright, clutching his betrothed’s hand, in too much pain to collapse. The Dark Mark found fertile ground, slithering into the willing cracks they’d made in their souls that night, in service to Lord Voldemort.
The following morning, a pale-faced and still shaky Rodolphus Lestrange formalized his sister, Reinelde Maude Lestrange into the family, officially a Lestrange from her father’s blood, despite her mother being married to another at her birth. Pure blood was too valuable to be cast in the dirt like an unwanted litter of crups, and Lord Voldemort would be quick to remind his followers of that. Tom Riddle stood as the child’s godfather, and Bellatrix Black her godmother. Her godfather presented the child an antique locket as a token, while her godmother presented her with her first broomstick.
Thierry Rosier, a long term member of the Inner Circle, was not seen again after that night, but his son, Evan Rosier, recieved his mark and immediately filled that gap in the circle with zeal and devotion that only the satisfied promise of vengeance can bring. The rest of the Circle was wary, but the message had been sent. No child of pure blood was to be tossed into the dirt with the muggles, despite the common convention, and those with mistresses were more careful of their contraceptive potions from that night onward.
Bellatrix and Rodolphus married, just three short months later, a lovely affair that made the front page of the Daily Prophet, a fairy-tale wedding in the gardens of Ravencrest Cottage, with little Reinelde Lestrange as an adorable, if silent, flower girl.
But Bellatrix always maintained their true wedding was the night they sealed their bond together, in blood and dark magic, their marriage ordained by the Dark Lord, not some ministry official.