dreamed on spring nights of a reality filled with malice

[malificence]

It hadn't, by any means, been the career Lucius had dreamt of in school. To be frank, the Malfoys had too much gold to do anything as gauche as dream of careers. Lucius had dreamed of cruelty and power once he was old enough to think beyond the petty tortures of Gryffindors.

Still, he'd always had an odd skill for healing magic to match his less odd skill with curses and hexes, and both his father and his lord had impressed upon him the need to find an occupation. With Abraxas Malfoy, it came from a lack of desire to be the father of the wizarding world's most infamous wastrel. For Lord Voldemort...his lieutenants all needed cover stories, and Lucius' would be less thin if he had some sort of job.

Therefore, applying at nineteen for the St. Mungo's training program had been something like a dutiful whim. There was a certain cruelty in healing, too, though not one recognized by the large number of former Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws who had comprised his classmates at the time.

And now? That occupation was the saving of him. Lucius hadn't even been dragged in before the Ministry, so hard was it to believe that a healer would follow darkness. Especially one such as Lucius Malfoy, who despite his immense skill, had been unable to save his young wife from death in childbirth. Only by the grace of Merlin himself had Draco thrived. Or so some say, Lucius thinks as he walks nearly soundlessly through the quietest section of St. Mungo's. 

Some would not say as much, he expects as he opens a door to a room with bright white padded walls. She must despise this decor, he thinks, but one does what one must when faced with Azkaban.

"Bellatrix," he drawls as the door shuts behind him. "Quite the convincing performance." He doesn't sound as convinced as he ought to be that it was entirely a performance.

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[scinlac]

Perhaps, she thinks, she has gone a little mad after all. Not for her lust for blood, and she sees not fault at all in her crimes, except that she had not been able to drive up their numbers even further. It is the grief that tears her apart, the abhorrent realisation that He is gone. Not dead, no, but gone, to hiding, to be found, but with no clues, no hints, no orders left behind.

And she had had nothing else in her life. There is her sham marriage, there are some people she talks to at the gatherings for that high and mighty social circle she so naturally belonged to, but none of this matters. There is only the Cause, and, to be quite frank, she would sacrifice even all those principles for Him.

So maybe she did not have to put in a great deal of acting. It had not, in fact, occurred to her at all, when she had been captured and brought to trial. With the dementors still fresh on her mind, and no hope left knowing it would be Crouch who decided their fate, she might as well remain loyal to the end, unlike those cowards not worthy of the Mark on their skin. This, in part, had saved her: who would be so mad as to confess? And where Crouch, spitting and with eyes rolling madly in their sockets, condemned his own son, her own father had done what she had never expected of him: he had spoken up at court. Questioned the trial, questioned Crouch's fitness. Oh, he had condemned her, too, had called her clearly as mad as the shells she had left behind in the Longbottoms' house, but it had worked.

There had been another trial, and for this, she had had the presence of mind to let go of any inhibition. Rodolphus and Rabastan went to Azkaban all the same, a life sentence, the ringleaders, for they were neither the youth nor the madwoman. Little Barty will serve his time, too, a reduced sentence, several unpleasant years. And Bella herself had awoken in St. Mungo's, under the watchful, suspicious eyes of nurses and mediwitches and -wizards.

"And quite the act of treason." She need not behave like a pureblood princess now. She can spit out at his feet, for he had not been suspected, and gave no sign of any remaining loyalty. There is little else she can do: her hands are tied, her wand has been taken from her, and her hospital gown is not exactly the stuff to hide daggers in.

[malificence]

Before now, Lucius would have quite firmly said that Bellatrix Black Lestrange had never played the pureblood princess in his presence, but he hadn't been prepared for the levels to which she's sunk. His reflexes remain good, sharp, and he steps out of range. "Treason?" He drawls. "You do not know of what you speak, Bellatrix. Unless, of course, you feel showing unswerving loyalty by sending myself to Azkaban is the best thing I could do for my Lord?"

Some would tell her to be grateful for an ally in this place where she has no others, but Lucius knows that Bella has always considered gratitude to be an un-Black-like attribute. She isn't wrong.

"I'm sure He'd quite approve, don't you?"