Chapter Text
There were no entries after that. Not a word written in the last few remaining pages . Nothing that told her what she did during those few days she disappeared from school.
All she found were doodles, small mindless creations that were nothing like the beautiful things she had created before.
They didn’t have any reason, no detail, no polish. Just a never ending swirl of lines and shapes that came together and formed a dark image. There was a beauty to it though. There was always a beauty to the things Bellatrix created, but these images were not things Rita could say she had seen before in her time looking through Bella’s work.
Everything she made had feelings, had a story. If Rita saw the world through her words, Bellatrix saw it through her drawings. And these drawings started as something and ended as something completely different. As if the world was changing as she was creating it.
As if she was changing as the world did.
The last page held what were possibly her last words before she was taken in.
It should worry her that her first thought isn’t in how she should report on the confessions made in the journal, but wondering just what Bellatrix had found it important to say to her before they took her.
And like a dying man, I wonder if I did anything of value. Was there something I did, did I help in some way. The Dark Lord holds my heart in a way no one else can. The heavens should send an angel to get to get to change. An angel so bright the light blinds me, who hold so much truth it will kill me.
Bring me an angel as I wither and die, for if I am taken I will never return. If you bring me an angel, protect it because I have promised to rip the wings of such a creature, and with no wings there is no escape, and with no escape she is mine.
How I hope I see an angel before they take my life.
I want one final good memory before I must go.
Mocking even still. Bellatrix had no shame, had no respect for those who were said to have power over her. She never played by the rules. She ignored them and made her own games. Most people were often too afraid to stop her.
“Better to be silent than dismiss as they say.”
“I wasn’t aware you even knew how to speak to the common folk.”
Rita immediately jumped and dropped the book she had been holding in her hands. It couldn’t be, no, it was her imagination. First the voice and now this. Had her broken heart not suffered enough. Did she need to go with this?
“Don’t look at me like you’ve seen a ghost. You’d want for me all the same if I were a ghost anyways, wouldn't you angel?”
“Angel”
Angel
Angel
That fucking word.
Why was it haunting her now?
“You’re here, how?”
She was at the door, her body half leaned against it like she had been waiting for Rita to finish flipping through the pages as she got closer and closer to the end of the journal.
“Does it matter how?”
“Seeing how there was never a chance of you being out, I’d say yes.”
The corner of her mouth quirked up, as if she was amused by the whole thing. She likely was. She lived off the humiliation of others, fueled her in a way nothing else really could.
Just how long had she been standing there, and why hadn’t Rita noticed.
“Just say you’re happy to see me angel.”
“You told me you’d kill me the last time we saw each other.”
Bella shrugged as she stepped closer, closing the door behind her.
“I was young. It was over a decade ago. I barely remember the incident.”
And like a challenge, Rita picked up the journal and flipped through the pages and found the note once again.
“So then what does, ‘I hate Rita Skeeter. I will kill her’ mean, or maybe you could explain ‘I want to rip her wings and have her chained to me. Never let her leave. I want to be her grim reaper’? Better yet ‘Her betrayal never forgiven but her existence mine to keep’. How do those words tell anyone, especially me, that you’re over it. You don’t forgive Bellatrix, I know this better than anyone.”
And maybe it had been years since they last saw each other and Bella had always had that look in her eyes. The look of someone half mad and still wanting the person in front of them in a way that just couldn’t be pushed away.
“I don’t forgive you. I never said I forgave you, just that I forgot the incident. I had to do a lot of things to keep my memory of you safe angel.”
She was standing before her, pushing her back until Rita was sitting back in the chair that had remained empty all this time.
Her hands were on her cheeks, thumbs on her lips keeping her quiet and Rita had never felt so desperate to have this again.
“You are one of the only things that keeps me alive, angel. I’ve done horrible things to keep myself alive, to remain on top and I’m losing the last thing that keeps me half sane. I’ll never forgive you, but I’m also not giving you up.