The Marauders: Year One | #Wattys2016

Morsmordre

Morsmordre

Bellatrix Lestrange ran through the trees, sing-songing loudly enough that her voice echoed through the woods, a creepy little disturbance in the forest. "Killing a half-blood, killing a half-blood, doing the bidding of the Dark Lord!"

"Bella, hush," grunted Rudolphus, "You're making far too much noise." Though his thick frame moving through the trees was just as much a disturbance as her shrill voice was.

She danced more than she ran, really, her feet only barely touching the ground as she leaped and spun about, her thick curls flying all about her joyously, as though she were on her way to a jolly holiday. She grinned at her husband, "Don't be such a kill-joy," she pouted at him, pirouetting over a fallen log gracefully. "The Dark Lord chose us for this! This is important. He trusts us! He trusts us!" She spun, jumping giddily about. "The Dark Lord trusts us for his important jobs!" With that, unable to contain herself, she started sing-songing again and Rudolphus let her go at it, aware that she was far too excited to keep quiet.

Truth be told, Rudolphus spent more time annoyed with Bella than he spent in love with her. He'd married her out of convenience more than anything else, after all. They'd both been purebloods and he'd married her because she was the only pureblood his age. She was too enamoured with the unattainable Dark Lord himself to be in love with anyone else. It was a good fit, one meant for breeding and continuing the blood lines than anything else.

When they were approaching the house, however, he held up his hand to silence her. "We're nearly there," he scolded, and she silenced immediately, a hungry look of a lioness on the prowl coming over her as they crouched through the last bits of brush to the edge of the property, where they looked over the short little fence toward the tiny yellow house. Lights were on in the downstairs, the upstairs lights off. Rudolphus grinned, and pointed, "That window there," he said. There was a window with a tree outside whose branches nearly touched the side of the house. "That's the one we go in through."

Bellatrix was beside him, panting with excitement - or else recovering from her exertion of energetic dance through the trees, perhaps. She seethed with glee, "Let's go."

They rushed across the yard quickly through the moonlight.

The end of June had come, the dimming evening air was cooler than the heat of the summer day. The moon shone bright in the sky, full and silver. Remus Lupin was in the old bomb shelter, locked underground in the Lupin's backyard. Lyall had had a long day at work fielding questions and concerns about the new Muggle Liaison Coalition and he had fallen asleep in the overstuffed chair in the living room, his feet up on an ottoman, newspaper laying, quite forgotten, across his chest. Low snores escaped the back of his throat.

Hope smiled over at him, at the way his tawny hair fell across his brow and the skin at his neck bunched and rippled beneath the tilt of his head. She stood up, balling the yarn she was using to knit her son a new jumper to replace the one he was no doubt tearing to utter shreds in the shelter at that very moment. She dropped the knitting into the basket beside her chair, and went over to her husband, taking the paper from his chest and folding it neatly onto the coffee table. Smoothing the hair on his forehead, she kissed him softly, before collecting their tea cups and the kettle and walking into the kitchen, leaving him to snooze in peace.

The sound of the running water and the clinking of dishes in the sink drowned out the thump above her head in the upstairs bedroom as Rudolphus Lestrange tripped over a pile of textbooks left in the middle of the floor. "Bloody hell," he groaned, having hit his face against a desk.