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Some Death Eater lackey he didn’t remember the name of bowed in front of where Voldemort was sitting at his desk. Turns out that winning and trying to rule a country took more effort than he’d thought about. He’d just wanted power and to kill a load of people, he hadn’t really thought about the consequences. “My lord.”
He waited for a second, but when they didn’t continue, he said, impatient, “Yes?”
“The Marauders have hit another of our safe houses.”
Voldemort snarled. “Survivors?”
“They have no knowledge that could be of assistance.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” he said coolly. “Bring them to me.”
The nameless Death Eater gulped, but bowed obediently. “Yes my lord.”
He waited until the door closed and sighed. “Bellatrix?”
“Yes?” She didn’t bother with a ‘my lord’ while in private; she had more than earned herself some leisure around him.
“I have a mission for you. Find the Marauders. Kill them, capture them and bring them to me, find any modicum of information you can, I don’t care. Just get out there and bring me something.” They knew nothing about them except their name. Not how many members, who they were, what they went by… anything.
She nodded and headed for the door. “I will not fail you.”
“You never do,” he said, turning back to the papers on his desk with distaste.
Bellatrix returned a week and a half later, spitting mad and cursing the first poor bastard who showed her the slightest inconvenience. He bled quite a bit on the floor, which seemed to appease her from attacking anyone else.
“Report.”
“Disappointingly little, my lord.” She tipped her head in subservience.
“You would not have come back with nothing,” he said, a hint of challenge in his voice.
“There are four of them, using the aliases Prongs, Padfoot, Moony, and Wormtail. Fierce duelers and a formidable team, though we knew that already.” She said the last sentence with particular bitterness, and Voldemort noticed the way she was favouring her right side.
“It’s more than any of these people,” he glared around him, at all the people trying to eavesdrop who immediately pretended like they weren’t, “have been able to accomplish.” He continued on to the gardens, knowing that Bellatrix would follow. “We will deal with them later. There are bigger concerns at the moment.”
“Given time, they will become our biggest concern. In the past year already, they have made more problems for us than the three years preceding it combined.”
“I know,” he said sharply. “But I will not send out a manhunt for four people we know nothing about and who injured you.” He grimaced and added, “Not yet.” Bellatrix was right: at the rate the Marauders were going, he was going to have to do something about them, and soon.
Margaret checked to make sure they were alone before saying anything. “They say Prongs and Padfoot are dating.”
Janet rolled her eyes and kept pulling at weeds that seemed to rip her fingers even through the gloves. “They flirt while they kick our arses, it’s not the same.”
“They were snogging! Mulciber and Macnair were bound, and before they were rescued, they saw them snogging each other’s faces off!”
“Margaret, Mulciber and Macnair had any number of mind-altering injuries when they were rescued, we can’t trust that.”
“But they really seem like they’re in love! We’ve seen them fight. They’re perfectly in sync, and they always have each other’s backs.”
Janet rolled her eyes again and punched a garden gnome away from her. It screeched, but when running off into the bushes. Whatever, it wasn’t her problem. “All the Marauders have each other’s backs, it’s why they haven’t been caught yet.”
“You’ll see,” Margaret said confidently. “When they’re being executed, their last words will be ‘I love you’ to the other one.”
...Turns out that Margaret and Janet and quite a few other low level Death Eaters did live to see their love confessions, unfortunately for them, they were all behind bars for it. And they saw it in the newspaper the prison got every week for their wedding announcement. Still, Margaret took great pride in showing it to Janet with a smug, “I told you so.”