Archive of Our Own

It was a crisp spring day, bright and clear but not particularly hot and the smell of smoke was filling the air. 

Acrid, the kind of smell that clung to hair and clothing - lasting, enduring. 

Rita smiled as she smelt it. 

She smiled as she looked at the grey pillar of smoke rising from the house she had just come from, just sat and drank tea in - the only thing marring the cloudless sky for miles around her. 

It was the smell of annihilation, the complete and utter destruction of everything that Bellatrix had ever held dear. 

It was a smell that proved Rita had meant it and so she smiled as she smelt it.

Bellatrix had probably meant it too, Rita thought, but she wasn’t the one who had won the game that they were playing, that they had been playing since the day they met.

“I’m going to ruin you,” Bellatrix had said, the first time that they had kissed. It was a kiss that had upped the stakes of the game - flames burning higher and higher until it came down to life or death.

Rita had just laughed and leaned in to kiss her again. 

That was the first time that it had been verbalised - the beautiful, apocalyptic thing that connected them - but the process of ruination had started long before that, with a girl with wild, black curls introducing herself to a girl with neat, blonde hair, and would only end long after, with one final conversation and a curse and the smell of smoke and a smile. 

The process of ruination that corrupted both of them and that ultimately only Rita would survive. 

“I’m going to ruin you,” Rita had said, that fateful day, the day they had broken up, the day that had set the final course for them, that would dictate the rest of their lives.

Bellatrix had just laughed and leaned in to kiss her for one final time. 

Both of them had said it, Rita could recognise the parallels, and both of them had meant it - of course, they had meant it in different ways. Although sometimes Rita thought that maybe the two meanings weren’t that different at all - people always said that there was a thin line between love and hate. 

Rita loved Bellatrix, probably always had, probably still did, probably always would, but now she hated her too - now she actively wanted to ruin her, in the literal sense of the word, and she had; she could still smell the smoke.

There had always been something between them - since that first day at Hogwarts, since they had sat next to each other at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall after being sorted - and it was something life-changing, life-starting, life-ending.

It was like when their eyes met - vivid green and flinty grey - a match was struck, somewhere in the world, somewhere inside them, a match that would produce a flame, and that flame would make a fire, and that fire would grow and grow, out of control until it was a blazing wildfire on a brutal path of unstoppable destruction. 

The thing that existed between them, the fire that roared and crackled and stole all of oxygen from the air, started small: casual conversation over dinner, introductory, surface level, talk that continued on the way down to the dungeons, smiles as they discovered they were to share a dorm, friendly goodnights before going to sleep on that first night. 

By the morning the thing had sunk its teeth into both of them and they were inseparable. They were no longer Rita Skeeter and Bellatrix Black. They were Rita and Bellatrix, Ri and Trix, two halves of one bloody whole. 

It was the two of them, always together, and then everyone else, even as first years they held something different from the rest of the school, the flame between them that burnt everyone else but not them, never them - at least not yet. 

But even then there had been something ruinous about it, something dangerous. 

It was in the gossip.

When Rita was younger, before Hogwarts, before Bellatrix, she had always dreamed of being a writer - the kind who wrote stories, fiction, great tales of magnificent adventure and other wondrous things. 

She had always had a good understanding of people, growing up with her grandmother who used to tell her decades worth of pureblood gossip as bedtime stories, she had learnt fairly early on what existed at the core of people, their true motives - manoeuvring the minefield that was high society. Who was involved? What result did they want? Why did they want that result? How did they plan to go about getting that result? 

Rita knew that from these stories she had picked up a deep understanding of the way people worked, the things that could make or break them, and she thought that she could use this knowledge in the fiction books she wanted to write, to make characters that were believable, relatable, best-selling. 

When she got to Hogwarts, she got to see some of the things her grandmother had always told her about happening in real time - history repeating itself, Rita supposed - and she thought her school years would be an excellent time for her to get some first-hand experience in the machinations of people, to witness the kind of things that she could draw from to use in her stories. 

She had told Bellatrix this, a week or two into their first term, huddled up together whispering about the future in a corner of the Slytherin common room. She had told Bellatrix some of the gossip she had picked up during their first week, about how the sixth-year Augustus Pyrites had been boasting about his new dragon-leather shoes, imported from Italy, so excessively that he could only be attempting to divert attention from something else, perhaps the fact that his family was slowly going into decline, their investments stagnating, their vaults draining. 

Bellatrix - the girl made of the same sharp edges as her, teeth and nails biting and scratching at the world, never satisfied - asked her why she wanted to waste this knowledge on stories, on fiction, when she could just make use of reality, use the gossip she knew. 

Why would she want to write about fantasy storylines when she could just manipulate real life into the plot that she wanted? 

(Bellatrix had been raised in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black so she knew a thing or two about manipulation, her ancestors had practically written the book.)

Why didn’t Rita weaponize her skills with gossip? 

And Rita supposed that she would never know whether she would have come to that conclusion without Bellatrix, but she thought the idea fit her much better than ‘fiction writer’ ever had, so maybe it was inevitable. 

But from that point on, life for Rita became a game, a show, entertainment, and she became the director. 

She started to take control of the gossip scene, even as a first year, she started laying groundwork, digging her claws into the heart of the school, easily uncovering the ugly truth behind the façades people presented in public. 

That was maybe an early sign, a piece of the thing between them that was violent, chaotic, ruinous, that delighted in watching (read: making) people’s reputations crash and burn, delighted in the destruction she could leave in the wake of a carefully curated sentence or two.

It was dangerous; the power Rita had over the school - complete control over the entire social hierarchy by the time she was in third year - it was power that could go to her head, power that probably did go to her head, it was dangerous, it held the potential of ruin. 

There were other signs.

It was in the fights. 

Not between Rita and Bellatrix, not at that point - they didn’t fight, not for their entire school careers, they barely ever disagreed on anything, until a couple of years after their graduation, when everything started to collapse in on itself until it exploded into an uncontrollable bleeding mess, and even then it was never a duel in the strict sense of the word. 

But in first year, when Bellatrix first arrived at Hogwarts, she was hounded constantly by witches and wizards trying to curry favour with the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black by pandering to its eldest daughter. 

She hated it, all the fake compliments and simpering, but she had been taught growing up that she needed to present the image of the perfect witch while in public - obedient and forgiving and gentle - and so she had tried to bear it.

Rita could see the façade grating against Bellatrix’s sharp edges, like she was wearing clothes that didn’t fit, pretending to be someone she wasn’t and slowly killing herself in the process. 

She told Bellatrix this one time a few weeks into their first term, after Wilhelmina Brown had simpered on for a solid five minutes about how much she liked how Bellatrix had tied her tie that day (it was the exact same way she had always tied it), asked her why she wanted to subject herself to seven years of this sort of ridiculous behaviour.

Why wouldn't she pull some of the obvious plots out at the root so she could walk between her classes in peace for once?

Why wouldn’t Bellatrix make use of the hexes and curses she had learnt from growing up in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black?

And Rita supposed that she would never know how long Bellatrix’s façade would have lasted if she hadn’t intervened, how long would it have been until the explosion that was probably inevitable. But from that point on, Bellatrix fired off spells before anyone could get three words into their obsequious spiels about her beauty or grace. 

Some people tried to return fire but Bellatrix never lost a single fight, no matter how old her opponent, and she rarely got caught either, only having to attend a few detentions for the dozens of people that she hexed.

Before the end of their first year, Bellatrix, despite her young age, had developed a bit of a name for herself, separate from the name that already had due to her family, people steered clear of her in corridors and nobody really dared to approach her, aside from Rita (who never needed to approach anyway, because she was always already at Bellatrix’s side). 

That was a sign maybe, another piece of something violent, chaotic, ruinous between them, something that was endlessly entertained by the pain it could inflict, that delighted in the destruction she could leave in the wake of a carefully chosen spell or two.

It was dangerous; the power that Bellatrix had over the school - seventh years wincing in memory of her wrath whenever she looked in their vague directions - it was power that could go to her head, power that probably did go to her head, it was dangerous, it held the potential of ruin. 

So yes, it was probably already a corrupting force, right from the start, the thing between them, that spark, that little flame - the flame really was just little to begin with, during their first year; both of them fanned it as they grew.

Bellatrix and Rita together were something with potential - mostly potential to destroy, either to burn the world to the ground or burn themselves or each other; they were stars (Bellatrix even carried the name of one) but not in the sense of something distant or something common-place, they were stars in the sense of something made of fire, something burning, something with the potential to explode, go supernova, they were untouchable and unstable and always toeing the line of something irrevocable (a line that held them back from ruin, a line that Rita crossed: a curse, the smell of smoke, a smile). 

Together, it was almost like they lived in a separate world from the rest of the school; people moving aside in the corridor before them like Moses parting the Red Sea, everyone deathly silent as if it would be disrespectful, dangerous to even breathe in their presence - and often it was, Rita didn’t tend to need a reason to be vindictive, cruel, and neither did Bellatrix. 

The slightest annoyance to them could lead to someone’s biggest, most damaging secret being revealed to the entire school, immediate exclusion from popularity, or it could lead to spells the average student has never even heard of, straight from the Black Family Library, that ended with an extended stay in the Hospital Wing. 

There was no one else on their level, they were inseparable, an immediate soul-deep connection, the strike of a match, a flame that grew and grew as they did; Rita using everyone else’s lives as her own personal entertainment - she was like a Roman emperor deciding the fate of the gladiators with a gesture; Bellatrix using everyone else as her own personal target practice - she was like Zeus throwing down lightning bolts at anyone who defied him. 

Of course, out of necessity, they did both speak to other people sometimes, and for both of them, there was a short list of people that were out of bounds, that Rita couldn’t gossip about, that Bellatrix couldn’t curse. 

There was Zabini, who occupied the third bed in their shared dorm in the Slytherin section of the dungeons; Bellatrix and Rita both liked Zabini, they had something interesting about them, an air of mystery, a constant aloofness, that both of them were intrigued by - Rita always struggled to find any definitive gossip about them (at least at that stage in their life, later Rita would delight in the tales of what they did to their numerous unfortunate husbands), Bellatrix always failed to provoke them whenever she was in the mood for a fight (she always said ‘they’re still out of bounds, but obviously I’ll have to defend myself if they throw the first curse’ - they never did). In later years, the three of them would even become friends but it wasn’t something lasting, it didn’t last past Hogwarts, it wasn’t something life or death like the thing that snarled and gnashed its teeth between Rita and Bellatrix.

There was Rodolphus Lestrange, who was generally a decent sort but more importantly who was betrothed to Bellatrix, her future husband arranged by their respective families. Bellatrix always said that she wanted her marriage to be perfect on paper, no matter how much she hated him - which would never actually be all that much, she hated the idea of him maybe, but he was just so pleasant that neither of them could find it within themselves to hate him, and besides, it wasn’t like he wanted to be married to her either. Anyway, Bellatrix cared rather greatly for her reputation, and that of her family, and those who were connected to her family. This meant that their public conversations were always civil, Rita never printed anything about him or his various relationships, or his brother, Rabastan, (which annoyed Rita because there was a lot of really juicy stuff, but she reluctantly agreed because it was Trix asking) and Bellatrix never raised her wand in his general direction. 

Then there were Bellatrix’s sisters, Andromeda and Narcissa. This one was fairly self-explanatory. Bellatrix would live and die, breathe and bleed, by her sisters, for her sisters - or she would have in first year, things were slightly different in third year when Andy arrived at Hogwarts, and again in fifth year when Cissy came too, and again at the end, after Rita and Bellatrix had graduated - and their fights were always done with words, not wands, no matter how explosive they were. Rita was forbidden categorically from ever writing a single word about them, good or bad, and again, it was Trix asking, so of course she had agreed. 

At that point, Rita would have died for Trix if she asked, but things didn’t turn out that way, maybe the opposite even, in the end.

The only ones who Rita added to this list of people who were out of bounds, aside from Zabini who was sort of a mutual decision, were the Prewett twins, Gideon and Fabian, who had been Rita’s neighbours when she was growing up. They had played with her in the stream at the end of her grandmother’s garden, always smiling, always laughing - in her mind she pictured them as bubbles, playful, captivating, and accompanied by the reminder of childhood, and she had sat with them for the entire train ride to Hogwarts that first year. Once they were Gryffindors and she was a Slytherin, and friends with Bellatrix, she spoke with them less, only a surface-level relationship really, which diminished as the years went by, but she always held a bit of a soft spot for them so she put them on the list. 

It was lucky for them that they were or they would have spent most of their Hogwarts career in the Hospital Wing because Bellatrix thought they were insufferable, but she never cursed them, not even once (not while they were in school, that would come later, after everything had fallen apart and the wildfire between Bellatrix and Rita was destroying everything it could touch before it burnt out). Rita was happy to never gossip about them, to let them get away with the pranks - she always knew about them in advance but she never put a stop to them, they were like bubbles. 

Apart from those few people though, everyone else was fair game when it came to Bellatrix and Rita. 

The fire between them at that point was small but expanding as they fed it with every conversation, with every friendship Rita decimated, with every limb Bellatrix broke, and their life at Hogwarts became something of a game - who could cause the most chaos. 

After a while, people learnt how to behave and stopped doing things that annoyed Bellatrix with such frequency for the most part, so she started to pick fights herself so she could keep using up her excess energy - sometimes she had too much power inside her and it had to be expelled somehow - and sometimes gossip was slow so Rita had to… edit events slightly to keep people interested, to keep herself in control. In this way, Bellatrix and Rita treated Hogwarts as the setting of their game, the war they were waging (it was them against the world at that point, later it would be them against each other, the rest of the world just innocent victims in their game). 

It was the beginnings of a fiery mess but Rita had always liked playing with fire, she felt like the element understood her; the ability to be so precise, hot enough to melt stone, but at the same time cause such chaos, a volcano erupting, lava burning its way through forests, villages, people. She could do that too; a specific sentence, structured carefully, words picked with purpose, that could cause such chaos, burning its way through reputations, relationships, people. 

In their fourth year, the stakes were raised, the fire between them stoked ever higher. 

Lips pressed to lips in her bed in the dungeons and Rita couldn’t help but think that nothing had ever made more sense - inevitable, dangerous, corrupting, addictive.

“I’m going to ruin you,” Bellatrix had said that night, the flames burning higher and higher, a bonfire now, powerful and hungry. 

And it was true really, in every sense of the word. 

Bellatrix Black had ruined Rita Skeeter.

(Just as Rita Skeeter had ruined Bellatrix Black.)

(Or not quite just as because Rita had taken it several steps over the edge at the end, a complete, wholehearted slaughter, annihilation.)

Of course, Bellatrix had meant it in one specific way, back then (although perhaps it was all one and the same really); she had meant it in the sense of casual brushes of hands in the corridor that felt like little sparks, hot kisses in broom cupboards that were the strike of matches and flickers of warmth, long evenings tangled up in each other in one of their beds that set her completely on fire, flames crackling between them. 

A slightly different sort of flame - a piece of the greater fire between the two of them, a natural progression, the foreordained next move in the game they were playing, the war they were waging. 

They fell together with a sense of finality - Rita would never love another, growing old with only her memories and a sort of grim satisfaction, Bellatrix would never love another (she would never get the chance to; a final conversation, a curse, the smell of smoke, a smile). 

There was an understanding in the touches, the kisses, the love, that this would be it for both of them and Rita wouldn’t have it any other way, didn’t think she could have it any other way. 

They were partners in crime, although they hadn’t got around to the actual crime yet - Bellatrix was still using legal spells, Rita hadn’t become an illegal animagus yet, neither of them had killed anyone. 

When all of that happened, things between them were a little bit different, the crimes were committed against each other - other people were dragged in, pulled down with them into the bloody mess they made of themselves but still, everything they did, they did to each other, for each other. 

Partners in crime, Ri and Trix, and the crime was the ruination of their entire worlds, setting fire to everything they had ever cared about with a smile - they were arsonists, maybe, at the core of them. 

At the start though, the start of this next level in their game, they were partners in crime and they wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, have it any other way. It was brilliant smiles, just for each other, uncontrollable, slightly wild - scratches down backs, the indentation of teeth on necks, drawing blood in the best way. 

They had always been inseparable but in their fourth year they became even closer to that, almost one person. 

Rita sometimes wanted to fuse herself with Bellatrix, claw her way under the other woman’s skin and stay there forever - maybe if she’d found a way to do that it wouldn’t have ended in the way it had, they could have evaded fate, the uneludible demise of that bright and bloody thing between them, the fire burning itself out, maybe they could have been an eternal flame.

Obviously the intimate nature of their relationship was kept a secret - Bellatrix didn’t want to jeopardise her family name, the reputation, the relationship she was going to have with Rodolphus, and Rita didn’t mind particularly; she had never liked her own private life being subject to discussion, no matter how ironic the sentiment might be. They never told anyone about the things they did behind the curtains of their four-poster beds, or in broom cupboards or hidden alcoves around the school, and if anyone suspected anything, they knew better than to mention it.

In this way, their lives continued, that fire still burning, going strong, and Rita was hopeful, perhaps somewhat naively. She had seen the signs, she wasn't an idiot, she could see that the thing between them had an edge to it. Rita liked that sharpness, that danger, she would never turn away from it, in fact she was much more likely to just lean further into it, to pierce herself on the blade, but that didn’t mean that she looked forward to the destruction that likely lay in the future, even as she knew it was inevitable. 

And yet, Rita was hopeful that this could be something uncomplicated, simple, steadfast, solid, constant - something that she could have in her life for a long time to come. Looking back Rita supposed that in many ways this was true, because Bellatrix was definitely a central figure in her life, even after everything, probably the central figure - Rita’s life had maybe always been Bellatrix’s life too, intrinsically linked, irrevocable, something uncomplicated in the fact that, despite it all, Rita could count on Bellatrix to occupy her thoughts, to guide her decisions, to take up space within her, not just in her heart and mind, Rita thought Bellatrix was probably in her very soul too. 

She should have known that they couldn’t live in happiness forever, no matter how much she might wish too. 

Eventually they left Hogwarts, the two witches who had practically been royalty in the school for their entire seven years, the two witches who had used the school as a stage for their games, their personal hunting grounds, two witches who were more predator, more fire, than human. 

Rita left Hogwarts and immediately started to work at the Daily Prophet; she had built up a large enough bank of information over the years to get herself a decent starting position fairly easily and she was eager to exert her power, her knowledge of people, on a larger scale, encompassing the whole nation rather than just the school.

Bellatrix left Hogwarts and immediately married Rodolphus; Rita had always known it was coming and it was no one’s fault (except for probably their parents’) but Merlin, that article had hurt to write. 

An entirely neutral, uninvolved, unemotional report on the ceremony and how lovely it was and, reading it, it was impossible to tell that the reporter who wrote it was in love with the bride, in fact it was impossible to tell that the reporter who wrote it had ever even met the bride - just like how Trix had asked it to be, again, Bella was asking so Rita would do it, would do anything. 

The two of them still met up, frequently, in fact, they basically lived together at Lestrange Manor. Rodolphus and Bellatrix had long ago decided that their relationship was never going to be a romantic one and that both of them would be free to take other lovers if they so desired, and if they kept it a secret. 

Again, Rita didn’t mind being a secret, everyone knew that she was Bellatrix’s best friend, everyone knew that they were close, but Rita was fine with no one knowing exactly how close they were - even Rodolphus and Rabastan, who both lived at Lestrange Manor too, had never been told explicitly, though she expected that they knew, just like how she knew that Antonin Dolohov was never just visiting for ‘business’ (something that would have caused a lot of excitement if she ever mentioned it at the Daily Prophet, but again, Rodolphus was on the out of bounds list). 

Things were fine for a while, for a good couple of years actually, and she didn’t know it then but looking back Rita could see the flames licking at the edges of their lives, barely restrained, only getting stronger with the more time that they spent together and Rita knew now that their relationship was always inevitably going to go down in a blazing spiral of heat and fire. 

Bellatrix and Rita were both fairly obsessive people; they would get hooked on something and refuse to give it up, pushing things to their very limits. 

Rita did this with her gossip, the idea of knowing people's secrets had always been incredibly important to her and a couple of years after Hogwarts she found a new line she could cross in terms of information gathering; she became obsessed with the idea of becoming an unregistered animagus. 

Bellatrix did this with her spells, she loved the idea of being the best, the most proficient dueller, an unbeatable warrior. The spells she used throughout her school years had always leaned towards the darker side of things, coming as they had from the Black Family Library, but a couple of years after Hogwarts she was immersing herself further in that pit of Dark magic, much further than was probably healthy, and in a way that would have consequences that Rita wouldn’t recognise until it was too late.

Her obvious interest in the Dark Arts in turn gained her the interest of the Dark Lord who started to visit Lestrange Manor fairly often to extol the many apparent benefits of his grand scheme for taking over the world. 

Rita wasn’t particularly impressed by him, in fact it was more accurate to say that she hated him and she was vehement about this when she spoke to Bellatrix. From what she heard from Trix, he was hellbent on the myth of blood supremacy (and yes, she said ‘myth’ because Rita Skeeter was many things but a blood supremacist she was not, she may be in the business of ruining lives but it was always justified by something they had done , not just because of something they were born with and had no say in). 

She didn’t think Bellatrix was a blood supremacist either, despite her family she had never shown any sort of particular hatred towards those that weren’t of pure blood - she would throw spells at anyone no matter whether their ancestors were wizards or not - perhaps because she was so far above everyone that it hadn’t mattered what how pure their blood was, so long as they knew that Bellatrix was superior to them. 

To start with it seemed that Bellatrix was fairly unconvinced by this Dark Lord’s arguments as well, much to Rita’s relief - she thought he was a talented man, admired his skills in the Dark Arts which were irrefutable but she never acted - at least in front of Rita - like she saw any appeal in joining his death eaters, she was not the sort of woman who submitted to the wishes of others. 

And then, Rita was called away to Spain for a month, reporting on the development of a political scandal there - it was a huge opportunity for Rita, the chance to expand her gossip circles into mainland Europe, so of course she had accepted. It also just so happened that her trip had coincided with an electrical storm in Madrid, where she was staying, which meant that she could finally complete her animagus transformation.  

And then, when she came back, victorious and almost manically gleeful about it, she had a new promotion under her belt and a shiny green beetle-shaped surprise to show Bellatrix who she immediately went to see. Bellatrix had grinned and kissed her, just like always, when Rita arrived at Lestrange Manor, and said that she had a surprise too. 

Rita was completely blindsided by what happened next.

The Dark Mark. 

The mark of the Dark Lord, ugly and heavy and there on Trix’s arm. 

And Rita didn’t see how it could have happened. 

How Bellatrix could willingly accept the idea of obeying another person - following orders was never her strong suit, she was a fire, the sort that couldn’t be contained or tamed like she had apparently been. 

And she wasn’t a blood supremacist. 

If she had ever told anyone, they would never have believed her, but at that point in her life Rita Skeeter believed wholeheartedly that Bellatrix Black (Lestrange, but Rita still disliked thinking about that) was not a blood supremacist - sometimes she still thought it, hoped that the woman she loved hadn’t ever truly fallen to that low. 

It was never an issue that they really talked about, it was irrelevant to them in a way because gossip was gossip and a fight was a fight no matter who it was about or against, and Rita had always just assumed that Bellatrix, like Rita, had no particular issue with people who weren’t of pure blood, even knowing who her family was - it was all the same when they were bleeding from the curses she inflicted upon them. 

But she had the Dark Mark in her arm. 

And that meant she had signed up, pledged herself to support the Dark Lord as he attempted to remove all traces of muggleborns and the like from Wizarding society - which sounded a lot like blood supremacy to Rita. 

She looked into Bellatrix’s eyes, seeking something, maybe regret, or an apology or just an explanation for what the fuck had happened but there was just a sort of unhinged pride, and something else that Rita couldn’t quite decipher. And Rita remembered that this was Bellatrix’s surprise for Rita, this was something that she was excited to share with her, that she was happy about, that she expected Rita to be happy about. 

Then Rita thought that maybe Bellatrix didn’t expect her to be happy about the news, because she realised what that ‘something else’ in Bellatrix’s eyes was: a sort of malice, the knowledge that this was going to hurt Rita. It was a glint of something cruel and dangerous that had never before been directed at her. 

“Why?” She asked, still stricken as she realised with startling clarity that the stakes of their game had just been upped again in a much different way, that the flames were rising higher and higher and now they were burning Rita too. 

They had never burned Rita before - it used to be that the flames surrounded them but Rita only felt their warmth, the flames licking at her skin but never hurting. 

Now she was getting burnt, the heat was unbearable, painful; she looked at the mark on Bellatrix’s arm (Trix who she loved more than she had ever loved anything apart from herself) and all she could see was flames, all she could feel was her heart burning, the flames so hot that they melted what Rita thought would never melt. Her heart was still beating - beating for Bellatrix even, always just for her - but now it was a blackened, shrivelled thing, ugly like the mark on Bellatrix’s arm, something twisted about it. 

And Bellatrix didn’t say it, didn’t answer, but Rita had always been able to tell what she was thinking, she knew Bellatrix’s mind as well as she knew her own, better maybe, and she could hear the unsaid words - ‘Look at how I’ve ruined you. Do you see now?’

Rita looked at her and yes, she did see, she saw what they were going to become, perhaps what they had always been destined to become - there’s a thin line between love and hate, after all, and Bellatrix and Rita had always toed it. This was merely the next level in the game they had made of their lives; there was always going to come a moment, this moment, when the fire spiralled out of control, when the two of them lost their grip on the reins, when the line was crossed and grew into a wall that stood insurmountable between them. 

Rita didn’t know if Bellatrix believed any of the doctrine that the Dark Lord was spreading, she hoped she didn’t, she thought it was perhaps more likely, perhaps better, if she had taken the Dark Mark because of Rita. She thought that perhaps Bellatrix had taken the Dark Mark because she could feel the heat that was building and building between them and she wanted to get in the first blow before their love inevitably turned into open warfare, a blood-stained battlefield - Bellatrix wanted to hurt Rita before Rita hurt her and so she had crossed that line first, had joined the Dark Lord, knowing full well that Rita was categorically in disagreement with his beliefs. 

It was taking a stance, donning her armour, Bellatrix’s way of protecting herself from the impending disaster that was their relationship.

(At least, that’s what Rita liked to think - it was better than the idea that Bellatrix actually fundamentally believed that she was inherently superior to others (than Rita’s grandfather, in fact) because of something she had absolutely no control over.)

But Bellatrix wasn’t the only one who could don armour, who could start a war, who could burn brightly and bring forests down with her - Rita was cut from the same cloth as her. 

“I’m going to ruin you,” Rita said, a deadly conviction in her voice because Bellatrix may have ruined her but their love was a double-edged sword and she wouldn’t let her get away unscathed.

Bellatrix leaned in and kissed her one final time, burning, white-hot, condemning. When she pulled away she looked Rita in the eye and said “I’d like to see you try.”

Battle lines were drawn and this time Rita and Bellatrix were on opposite sides of them, no longer them against the world, now it was them against each other, the rest of the world was irrelevant except for how they could be used to harm the other. 

Rita took one final look at the woman she loved - had always loved, probably would always love - and nodded firmly to herself before turning away. She walked with purpose towards the receiving room, determined to leave without looking back. 

“Does this mean we’re over?” Bellatrix had called from behind her, a sing-song lilt to her voice, Rita could hear the smile in it, could picture the way she would be grinning in her mind: vicious and sharp and mean and wonderful.

“We’re never going to be over, Trix,” Rita said, not turning around. And then, “But we’re never going to be together again either.”

She apparated away to the sound of Bellatrix’s cackles. 

Yes, Rita may be ruined, maybe always had been ruined, from the moment she locked eyes with Bellatrix, but that didn’t mean she was going to go down without a fight - she, like Bellatrix, had been forged in the fire that burned between them and she knew how to fight back. 

Ruined didn’t mean destroyed, didn’t mean annihilated, didn’t mean dead - and Rita liked to leave all of her targets six feet under, in the metaphorical sense, that of their reputations.

Bellatrix was going to be Rita’s target now - because she had declared war, the next level in their game, flames burning higher and higher, hurting, out of control - and Rita thought she should start picking out a coffin. 

The next moves went like this:

There was a promise made between two girls when they were at school.

A short list of people who were not to be involved in their game, people who were sacrosanct, exempt, protected. 

The girl with the wild, black curls and the steely grey eyes was not to cast an offensive spell at any of those people.

The girl with the neat, blonde hair and the sharp green eyes was not to spread an offensive rumour about any of those people.

The blonde wanted to hurt the other girl in the way she did best, the only way she knew how, with the blade she had learnt to wield like she had learnt to breathe. 

The blonde released a series of articles. 

The first held the headline ‘RABASTAN LESTRANGE AND LUCIUS MALFOY EMBROILED IN DRUG TRAFFICKING AND AN AFFAIR’. 

It was fairly tame - when compared with the articles that were to come - and it started Rita’s campaign against Bellatrix in several important ways. 

One of Bellatrix’s main worries was the reputation of her family, and this included people that were associated with the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Neither Rabastan or Lucius were explicitly on the list of people who were out of bounds, but they were linked enough that Rita was definitely bending their promise if not outright breaking it - both the Lestranges and the Malfoys were connected to the Black family in business, in politics, as well as in more personal connections, Rabastan being the younger brother of Trix’s husband and Lucius being betrothed at that time to Andromeda (although with the articles she had planned, Rita didn’t think he would be for long). 

The two men ran a rather successful business together at Hogwarts, with Rabastan brewing an array of highly-illegal potions and Lucius distributing them smoothly among the pureblood students for a high price. Although she was more than aware that both of their families would be able to buy their way out of any trouble this might cause them law-wise, it would be harder for them to protect their reputations - not because they were selling illegal potions to schoolchildren, but because they got caught .

She was also sure to point out in her article that both men were betrothed to another and definitely violating chastity clauses in betrothal contracts - while this sort of thing was generally a given in pureblood circles, with the multitude of arranged marriages, it was something that was always kept a secret, again, the shame lay in getting caught. 

The publicity of this was where the scandal lay so Rita made sure that it was front-page news. 

It probably wasn’t going to scar - the wound that the article caused - but Rita thought it would hurt, when the Aurors inevitably tried to search Lestrange Manor for any traces of the potions, when some of the older purebloods turned their nose up at her due to her connection to the scandal. 

Anyway, Rita did intend to leave a lasting scar on Bellatrix. 

That’s why she didn’t stop at the first article.

The next week she released a second article, with the headline ‘NARCISSA BLACK NOT SUCH AN INNOCENT FLOWER?’ 

This one was more fun to write and it would definitely hurt more - Bellatrix’s sisters were incredibly important to her and Rita knew that this would devastate Narcissa, especially after she had gone through so much effort to keep her relationship with Alice Fortescue hidden. Rita detailed the entire course of their relationship, from the brief, secret meetings they had as friends whilst Rita was in sixth year (they were in second year) and the way this developed into more shortly before Rita left school. She wrote about how, with both of them in fifth year now, their relationship had moved into something that was decidedly not innocent and also decidedly unsuitable for the youngest daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black.

The damage the article would do was twofold. 

Firstly, Bellatrix would be upset by the deception, because Narcissa had told no one about her relationship with Fortescue, despite it having gone on for nearly two years - over three years if you count it in a non-romantic capacity. Trix had always been insistent that the Black sisters had no secrets from each other - something which she had failed to prove when she hadn’t told them about Rita, but Bellatrix never seemed to notice her hypocrisy, expecting honesty when she wasn't giving it - and Rita knew it would be painful for her to see that actually she didn’t know everything about her dearest, littlest sister Cissy.

Secondly, it would be painful to see Narcissa raked over the coals in pureblood circles, her reputation basically torn to shreds and her relationship probably in jeopardy as well. Women were always held to much higher standards than men in society; where Lucius and Rabastan would probably get a few disdainful looks and offended sniffs for their indiscretions, Narcissa would likely be entirely shunned. 

The youngest Black sister was currently betrothed to her cousin, Sirius Black, which, ew, incestuous, but was also probably lucky for her reputation because it meant she wouldn’t have to suffer the indignity of a broken betrothal, as would have happened if it was anyone else she was set to marry, anyone who wasn’t already family. But young pureblood women were expected to behave in a certain way and Narcissa would now likely become somewhat of a pariah at Hogwarts, with mothers telling their daughters not to associate with her lest her wicked ways rub off on them or some other such nonsense. It didn’t help that Fortescue came from a Light family, and Narcissa came from the darkest of the Dark families, the Blacks would not be happy with Narcissa’s actions, the article would have serious implications. 

That article was the first real twist of the knife - it was undoubtedly going to hurt Bellatrix. 

It was a promise broken fully, for the first time, shattered into pieces.

Rita didn’t intend to stop there. 

The third article read ‘RODOLPHUS LESTRANGE AND ANTONIN DOLOHOV, MODERN DAY ROMEO AND JULIET?’

The feud between the Blacks and the Dolohovs went back at least six generations and only seemed to grow in strength with each one (except for the most recent one, apparently) and because the Lestranges were allied with the Blacks, they were feuding with the Dolohovs by extension. Rodolphus however, did not seem particularly invested in said feud - which had started because the Dolohovs came over from Russia, an incredibly powerful pureblood family and started trying to encroach on the Blacks’ hunting ground (the Blacks being an incredibly powerful pureblood family from France who had managed to successfully start an empire in Britain and didn’t take kindly to that being threatened). 

Bellatrix obviously knew about the affair - the man practically lived at Lestrange Manor after all - but that wasn’t what was going to hurt about this one. No, with this article, the pain lay once more in the reputation - of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, of Rodolphus himself but most importantly, of Bellatrix. She had always placed a lot of importance in the way her relationship appeared to general society - the reality of it was different of course, but she always wanted the public to perceive them as the perfect couple, her duty as a Black, as a pureblood, that sort of thing. 

It was one of the reasons why she had never told anyone about Rita, the truth about her relationship. Rita wanted to take the façade of Bellatrix and Rodolphus’ relationship away from her without exposing herself - she had told Bellatrix that they were never going to be together again and they wouldn’t be, not even just in words on a page connecting them to each other, but there were many ways to skin a cat and although she had nothing personally against Rodolphus or Antonin, who had actually always been nice to her, this was the easiest way to do it.

It was a more direct attack on Bellatrix’s reputation - it made her look foolish, betrayed by her husband, who was sleeping with an enemy of her family, it made their relationship look shallow, revealed its transparency, went against all of their efforts to make it look real and perfect. 

Painful in a different way, but Rita wasn’t done yet.

The fourth article’s headline screamed ‘ANDROMEDA BLACK IN LOVE; PLANS TO ABANDON FAMILY FOR MUGGLEBORN’.

This was a big one - one that was likely to have big consequences. 

Andromeda was in her final year at Hogwarts, in love with a Hufflepuff muggleborn called Ted Tonks, and planning to run away to elope with him after their graduation, leaving behind her family and her life. The article went over their relationship and their plans in quite a lot of detail, even including a ‘quote’ that had been overheard from Andromeda about how she could not wait to be rid of her awful family. Rita's first thoughts about the relationship had actually been ‘good for her’, but that had been before Bellatrix drew the battle lines, and now she didn’t care what happened to Andromeda. 

It could go one of two ways - either, the Blacks would lock Andromeda up, at home or in some marriage, hurrying along her betrothal to Lucius perhaps, and ensuring that she couldn't run away to Tonks, or they would disown her on the spot, which probably would have happened sooner or later anyway. 

Either way it would hurt Bellatrix. Again, she was firm in the belief that the Black sisters held no secrets from each other - or at least that Narcissa and Andromeda held no secrets from Bellatrix - but here was more categorical evidence to the contrary in the form of this major, life-changing secret. She would view this revelation as a betrayal of their sisterhood, but even despite that either option would be painful for Bellatrix because she would lose her sister either way - in the resentment Andromeda would feel for the entire family if she was forced to stay, or in the complete removal of the woman from her life that would come with the disownment. 

It would hurt Bellatrix that Andromeda intended to choose Ted Tonks over her; she had always been a selfish woman (Rita would know because she had always been the same), particularly when it came to the people that she loved, particularly her sisters, not wanting to ever share them - she used to hex people who even looked slightly funny at her sisters in the corridors, although evidently she had missed a few tricks if Fortescue and Tonks had both been able to get so close, and in secret too, to Narcissa and Andromeda. 

This article, and the Narcissa article as well, would probably destroy the relationship Bellatrix had with her sisters, probably the most precious thing in her life, because everyone knew that Rita and Bellatrix had been best friends at Hogwarts, had been inseparable until very recently, and everyone could see the name at the bottom of the article - Special Correspondent Rita Skeeter. 

There was only one reason why all of this would be coming to light now, when it hadn't before, and all arrows pointed to Bellatrix, a divide between the two inseparable girls that had led to these articles, that had caused this destruction.

Rita didn’t particularly care that Andromeda and Narcissa, and Rodolphus and Antonin and Rabastan and Lucius, and Ted Tonks and Alice Fortescue, probably hated her, and she was sure they did because she had disrupted their lives, ruined them in some cases, but she didn’t care. 

All she cared about was that they hated Bellatrix too, and she knew they would when they saw the last article that she had planned - not only would it reveal the reason behind the split (in reality, maybe this wasn’t the real reason, the real reason was fate, an inescapable inevitability, the tipping of the scales) but it also probably wouldn't endear Bellatrix to them because several of them were largely against the war, and the Dark Lord.

The fifth and final article was another front page headline, and it read ‘BELLATRIX BLACK TAKES THE DARK MARK’. 

That one was the final nail in the coffin. 

It would probably make Bellatrix’s family proud, yes, and most of the people she associated with were death eaters too so it's not like it affected that - but now Bellatrix was a target for the Ministry, she would be unable to go out into society casually for fear of arrest from any enterprising Auror. She would be far less capable of mass destruction if she was stuck inside Lestrange Manor for much of her time, she would be a disappointment to her precious Dark Lord. 

Death eater’s identities were always a sort of open secret; of course people knew, but the mask and robes meant there was no certainty unless the death eater in question got arrested. In revealing that Bella had taken the Dark Mark, Rita was robbing her of her anonymity, forcing her to claim responsibility for the fact that she actively went out and attacked innocent muggles and muggleborns on the orders of a madman. Rita also knew that Andromeda was against the Dark Lord, and Narcissa was against the idea of a war, so it would hurt them to know that Bellatrix was actively participating in it.

She was sure it would hurt - a knife-wound that would leave a scar that would never fade, she was glad that it would hurt, because the flames of their relationship were burning ever higher now, after what Bellatrix had done, but Rita had grown with those flames, she’d been forged in the fire and she knew how to withstand them even if they were actively attacking her now, she knew how to twist them to her benefit - she’d never done it to Bellatrix’s detriment before but she was a quick learner too.

So Rita wrote a series of five articles over the course of five weeks that systematically destroyed everything that Bellatrix held dear - her relationships with the people she cared for (they all knew who was to blame for them being slated in the press, even if they didn’t know or understand the specific reasoning - Rita hoped they hated her), her relationship with her family (the Blacks would be shattered into pieces after so much scandal, even if their social standing wouldn’t suffer all that much in the long run, and the weight of expectation would weigh heavier on Bellatrix - Rita hoped it killed her), her relationship with society, her reputation (she was always the unbreakable, untouchable Bellatrix Black (Lestrange) but these were her weaknesses laid bare to the world that hadn’t ever known that she even had things as human as weaknesses - now they did, and Rita hoped they hurt her).

And maybe Rita broke the first promise but Bellatrix broke her heart, burnt it into a mangled, ugly thing. 

Rita thought that was worth more than a promise. 

And the fiery thing between them started to spiral out of control the second Bellatrix decided to take the Dark Mark; no longer a struck match or a bonfire, it was the beginnings of a forest fire, out of control, out of bounds - how could their promise from first year hold up against that, that destructive, ruinous force?

Rita smiled as she wrote her articles, a helpless, uncontainable grin, because she knew it would hurt, this betrayal, just as it had hurt her when Bellatrix had shown her the Dark Mark. Bellatrix had thrown the first punch, the first grenade, the first angry ball of fire, but Rita upped the stakes even further, coaxed the flames into a full-blown wildfire, one that would destroy everything in its path, unstoppable, Rita returned fire with a vengeance and smiled as she did it, knowing that the flames were probably hurting Bellatrix just as much as they were hurting her but not ever wanting to stop. 

She didn’t care about the other people that she hurt on her quest to hurt Rita, the people she dragged down with them, the people from the list of those who were out of bounds who she finally brought into the game that was between them. 

Other people had never mattered before, it had always just been Rita and Bellatrix, Ri and Trix, two halves of one bloody whole, the rest of the world innocent casualties, victims of their cruelty, their game. 

She had known there would be consequences to her actions, she just didn’t really care about them. 

She had known there would be retaliation from Bellatrix, Rita would never have just let it go and her and Bellatrix had always been made of the same sharp edges, teeth and nails biting and scratching at the world, at each other, never satisfied, so of course she was going to retaliate. 

The awful thing, the truly horrible thing, was that Rita didn’t regret it all, even knowing what the consequences would be, she would happily have written those articles a hundred times over, because it was always going to come down to just Rita and Bellatrix in the end, nothing else mattered apart from that. 

Maybe she should care, but she couldn’t find that place within her that she was sure used to care, even just slightly, about other people, all she had left inside of her was fire, a fire that burnt for Bellatrix, that existed to burn Bellatrix, and to burn Rita - a twisting, fiery madness that constantly threatened to consume her. 

Rita’s actions did have consequences. 

Because the thing about knowing everything about each other, about having spent an entire seven years in such close proximity, was that they knew each other’s weaknesses. They knew where to aim to make the deepest wound, the longest-lasting scar. 

And Rita had used that - she’d taken everything that she knew Bellatrix cared about and destroyed it in the only way she knew how, with her words, with scathing articles that systematically dismantled the life Bellatrix had created for herself - her image, reputation, her relationships. 

So she supposed turnabout was fair play really, because Bellatrix knew her weaknesses too, and she knew how to dig her nails into them and rip them open - the only way she knew how, with her wand. 

When Rita arrived at the Daily Prophet offices one morning, just over a week after her last article, she was given a copy of the paper that was being circulated that morning. 

There was a headline - of course there was, every newspaper had a headline, but this one was different. 

She hadn’t written it, first of all, that was unusual these days, Rita’s career was skyrocketing with the success of her most recent articles.

And unlike most other headlines, this one didn’t make her smile, the sharp, vicious smile she had learnt from Bellatrix, or maybe Bellatrix had learnt from her. 

This article was something different entirely.  

‘PREWETT TWINS KILLED BY DEATH EATERS’ 

And she knew. 

She just knew which death eater in particular had killed them. 

Because she had made them sacrosanct, marked them out of bounds, in first year, and that meant that Bella had never raised a wand to them, until she did, until she killed them. 

Here’s the thing; Rita used to care about the Prewett twins, she truly did, she’d grown up with them, they were wonderful people, but Rita wasn’t a wonderful person, she had a rotting soul, she was corrupted and wicked and an awful human being, not that she was all that bothered by these facts, they were just facts. But the difference between them meant they weren’t close, they had hardly spoken to each other by the time they graduated, she hadn’t physically seen them in nearly a year; they were bubbles, she was fire, they didn’t run in the same circles.

So maybe Rita didn’t particularly care about them, but with Bellatrix’s actions, she could feel the flames getting even higher, her skin starting to sizzle under the heat, her insides being singed. There was rage there, behind her ribs, surrounding her black heart, the heart that beat for Bellatrix, and the rage was for Bellatrix too, because Fabian and Gideon Prewett were out of bounds, even if she didn’t actually care about them, they were on the list. 

Rita was a hypocrite too maybe - in the same way that Bellatrix expected her sisters to have no secrets from her whilst she maintained secrets from them, Rita expected Bellatrix to keep her promises whilst Rita broke them viciously, shattered them into pieces and scattered the shards that remained. 

She knew, when she was writing the articles, that she was breaking a promise, but when Bellatrix broke that same promise, Rita thought it might be unforgivable. Even if she didn’t particularly care for the Prewett twins, it was the principle of the thing that affected her, that lit that rage, that madness in her chest, that put a small furrow in between her brows. 

Rita thought, as she sat down at her desk in the Daily Prophet offices, that she could see where Trix was coming from - she’d done the same thing after all, in a slightly different way, it was something maybe only two people who crafted from one violent, bloody whole could understand, although the understanding didn't stop the rage. 

Rita cared about less things, less people than Bellatrix did, Bellatrix who had always been slightly reckless with her love, not excessively, but she threw her love at the people that she thought deserved it, a select few - Rita was a bit more cautious, her love was less clear, less obvious, but nonetheless just as strong. In her life, Rita had probably only really ever loved her grandmother (the woman who had raised her, the first who had loved her), the Prewett twins (when she was very young and growing up with them), and Bellatrix (who she had maybe always loved and maybe always would love). 

At that point in time, her grandmother was dead, so the only way Bellatrix, who had never had Rita’s finesse when it came to wrecking reputations, could get under Rita’s skin was via the Prewetts, even if there was no love remaining between the three old neighbours any longer. 

Neither of them dared to touch Zabini, who neither of them actually really cared about anymore, but they had been put on the list by a mutual decision and it would be like cutting off a finger if they hurt them, Rita and Bellatrix were self-serving witches at heart and they didn’t intend to hurt themselves with their revenge even as they sought to hurt each other - maybe Rita was lying to herself here, she could feel herself burning with every word she wrote, she channelled it into rage. 

So yes, Rita understood, she knew exactly why Bellatrix had killed Gideon and Fabian, she thought the pain she felt because of the deaths was of a similar kind to the pain that Trix would have felt after the articles, albeit probably to a lesser extent - she used to care about them, but now all that she cared about, all that she loved, all that she hated, the singular focus of her life was Bellatrix, so the pain was secondary. 

The rage was primary. 

Rita was mad, angry, furious, seething, she could barely sit still in her office, could barely write a word as she thought of what her next move should be.

It had to be huge, devastating, final. 

She thought about how she usually left her victims six feet under, in the metaphorical sense of course, but she killed them nevertheless. 

She thought about how she had killed Bellatrix’s reputation but the witch herself was still living, still above ground. 

She thought about how the death of Bellatrix’s reputation didn’t seem to be enough in this case, she still wanted more, to destroy her further.

She thought about how Bellatrix was always the one who used her wand, who used her spells and curses to harm, or to kill nowadays. 

She thought about how ironic it would be if they swapped weapons, if Rita picked up her wand and aimed to kill, if Rita killed Bellatrix, literally not metaphorically.

At the end of the work day, Rita went home with a plan forming and a determined glint in her eyes; there were spells she needed to learn. 

Two weeks later, she was ready.

She didn’t take anything with her, just her wand, as she left her house one afternoon, preparing to apparate. 

Rita knew Bellatrix, better than she knew anyone else, better than she knew herself, she knew Bellatrix inside and out, two halves of one bloody whole, so she knew with a cold certainty that this would work. 

Bellatrix was a proud witch, she probably hated Rita now just as much as she loved her, just as much as Rita loved and hated her, but Rita had said “we’re never going to be together again” and so this would work. 

Rita turned on the spot - Destination, Determination, Deliberation - and apparated to Lestrange Manor. 

The wards let her in. 

Just like Rita knew they would, cold certainty, because Rita had said “we’re never going to be together again” and Bellatrix was determined to prove her wrong, leaving the wards open to her, a silent invitation, a taunt - ‘try and stay away from me,’ it said, ‘I’d like to see you try’.

Bellatrix would see this as a victory for her, the wards chiming, the alert that Rita had arrived on the property, Bellatrix would think she had won, that Rita was surrendering to her, the end of the game, Rita giving herself over again, inevitably drawn back to her. 

That wasn’t what it was. 

Bellatrix would find out soon enough. 

“Rita,” she said, as Rita turned towards the door in the receiving room of the Manor. 

Showtime. 

Bellatrix’s voice was cold, but Rita could hear that manic glee just under the surface, it was the same thing that was bubbling underneath Rita’s skin, the anticipation, like the moments before a volcanic eruption, the moments before a bomb going off. 

When they locked eyes, it was as intense as ever, vivid green and flinty grey. 

“Bellatrix,” Rita replied in the same tone. 

“Thought you said we were never going to be together again?” Bellatrix said in a sing-song voice and Rita could see the victory that she thought she had in her eyes. 

“We’re not together now, Trix,”

“Oh?” Bellatrix asked, leading Rita down corridors she’d walked hundreds of times before, towards the sitting room they’d spent long days in. 

Rita wondered if there was anyone else in the Manor, anyone else who might unwittingly be about to go down with Bellatrix. She knew that she didn’t particularly care, but she wondered nevertheless.

“I just came to ask if you’ve been enjoying the show,” Rita continued, as they entered the room, a tea service appearing on the side table. 

“The show?” Bellatrix raised an eyebrow.

“Mm,” Rita confirmed, letting a small smile flicker around her mouth, “The show. You said to me, ‘I’d like to see you try’ and I’ve been wondering if you have liked it, seeing me try that is... So? Have you liked it?”

Bellatrix was staring at her now, eyes narrowed, sensing now that maybe this wasn’t going to be her victory after all, “What have you come here for, Rita?”

“If not to surrender, you mean?” Rita took a sip of her tea, “That’s an interesting question.”

The witch sitting across from her didn’t say anything in response to that. 

“I suppose I had a few things I wanted to say to you before the end.”

“The end,” Bellatrix repeated.

Rita’s smile widened slightly, “Yes, the end. Do keep up, darling”

She watched as Bellatrix’s brow furrowed before she picked up her own cup of tea to take another sip. That was when Rita moved, moves she had been practising in every spare moment she had in the last two weeks, moves she had been practising until they were perfect. 

Her wand was in her hand.

Expelliarmus.

Petrificus totalus.

Incarcerous.

Spells she had been practising relentlessly since she concocted her plan - she had never been the one who fought with her wand, that was always Bellatrix, but Rita thought that made it all the more beautiful (the irony, the vicious irony) when Bellatrix’s eyes widened and the spells hit her full on. 

Obviously, Rita knew that she would never be able to beat Bellatrix in a fair fight, a duel, but she could catch the witch by surprise, off-guard, and win that way - she had never been all that interested in things being fair anyway.

Rita cast a few more spells to make sure that Bellatrix couldn’t possibly move, or speak, including some that definitely verged into the realm of Dark magic, just to be on the safe side, she knew that it would be stupid of her to lower her guard even slightly, Bellatrix was a Black after all. 

She took a couple of steps towards the bound witch, looking her directly in the eyes. 

“I love you,” Rita said, stopping about a foot in front of her.

“I hate you,” she continued, leaning down as if to kiss Bellatrix. 

“And you should know by now that I never just try at things,” her voice was a whisper now, lips a hair’s breadth away from Trix’s.

“I succeed,” she finished, pulling away again. 

She went and stood by the door to the room, looking back at Bellatrix, unable to stop her smile now. 

Fiendfyre.

An angry ball of fire, aimed directly at Bellatrix’s heart, which would burn just as Rita’s had, in that very room when Bellatrix had shown Rita her Dark Mark. 

The two of them had always played with fire, but now Rita wasn’t playing with fire, she had mastered it, she was commanding it, brandishing it as a weapon, primed to kill, to win. 

She had spent the last two weeks, always a quick learner, practising control over the curse so she could end Bellatrix’s life perfectly. 

And with that, Rita turned around and walked back to the receiving room.

She could hear the flames crackling behind as she walked, burning higher and higher, in a physical manifestation of the relationship between the two of them, complete annihilation.

Rita may be ruined, but Bellatrix was destroyed and Rita had won the game they had been playing since the day they had met - raising the stakes one final, condemning time. 

She stood a few miles away from Lestrange Manor on a little hill, watching as smoke started to fill the air, the scent, acrid, enduring, eventually reaching her as the building collapsed into flames. 

Rita smiled as she smelt it.