The leather armchair proofed as comfortable as it looked and without thinking Harry, still looking exactly like Fleur Delacour -or was it Weasley now?-, sat inside the armchair, prim and proper like a lady should. When Harry heared Bellatrix clear her throat, he instantly shot her a withering look. He was so deep in thought that he didn't realize he used mostly Fleur's mannerism. It was oddly fitting to both his current body and the situation, as Fleur was naturally quite arrogant when dealing with people she wasn't close to.
"I really like that expression, I think you should stay like that for a while. You can't know this, but little Ms Lovegood had a very similar look on her face, the first time she saw me. That was a few weeks before I made her see how wrong she was and how right my -let's say- point of view is."
From the look on Luna's face, it was clear how much Bellatrix was enjoying this conversation. Harry figured it must be because she no longer had to pretend to be Luna. Something in his head told him that Bellatrix is also far more composed and calculating than he remembered her. This insight surprised him, as he wasn't prone to analysing, he usually just followed his gut feeling. He wanted to give himself -and wasn't it hard to still think of himself as male?- some time to think so he tried to keep his jailer talking.
"I don't think you are as clever as you claim. You probably just forced her inside a skin that was also a horcrux and, once she was possessed, you obliviated her," Harry said dismissively and looked at Fleur's manicured nails. Was anything about Bill's wife less than utterly perfect? Harry found himself quite pleased with what he saw and at that moment realized that these were Fleur's thoughts.
She was an analytical kind of person, highly gifted and very vain about her appearance. Maybe it would turn out to be his luck that he picked a former triwizard champion. Now that he knew what was going on, it was quite easy to differentiate between Fleur's and his ideas, but he let them flow into each other, becoming more the woman he looked like and less the boy he actually was. Luna's voice stopped the quiet musings.
"You can think that, but you would be wrong. You give far too much credit to a scared girl and far too little to me." The smug smile on Luna's face only widened as she said that. "Sure, dear Luna was defiant, but a mixture of carrot-and-stick and a cursed skin, steeped in my particular brand of dark arts and it ended in her becoming absolutely me."
"So, you say that being you had changed how Luna really was? Next you will tell that you never forced her to put the skin on." Despite saying this in an unbelieving tone, Harry believed her. He certainly felt more and more like staying Fleur for a bit longer even if he weren't forced to do so right now, it was quite comfortable. Also, if his or rather her conclusion was correct then Bellatrix is only nearly sane because of the effects of the skinsuits.
"OOHH good guess, that was exactly what I planned to tell you," said Bellatrix, chuckling inwardly. "The skin was planted in her soon-to-be cell, alongside some clothes, and I let her natural curiosity do the rest. It was so satisfying to watch her find it, shed her clothes and see her changing into what would one day be her true form. Her cell was well furnitured and only frequented by my husband and me. It was alss right next to my our quarters at Malfoy mansion. She was quite smart to use her newfound 'disuise'," and how Bellatrix giggled at that word, "to 'trick' Rudolphus into freeing her, before stunning him with his own wand. That was when I made my appearance and told her how she was mine to order around."
That sounded plausible, Luna always had a weird idea of common sense and probably thought herself lucky to find something like that. But Harry couldn't really see how that turned Luna into a second Bellatrix Lestrange. It took Riddle nearly two months to control Ginny for a short amount of time and Harry choose to voice this, only to cause another laughing fit.
"No, wandering around looking like me didn't yield such wonderful results. Otherwise it would be far more effective than a boring Imperius curse. No, I told her that we could trade places under two conditions."
"Carrot-and-stick," said the apparent Fleur, who really stopped thinking of herself as male by now and wanted to go by her fake name as long as she wore that skin. "You offered her time out of her cage. She was probably thinking of using that as a chance to spy on you lot."
"Probably, yes," Bellatrix readily agreed, "but my conditions made sure that she never got too much control."
"First, as long as she was me she wasn't allowed to leave or contact anyone outside of the Death Eaters. That made sure that she could 'spy' but not do anything with the information. It also made sure that she wouldn't leave on an assignment and never return."
"And Second, as long as she was me, I would stand in for her and nobody was to find out about our little switch. So she had to do all the nice things I usually did. Interrogation, rituals and murder. If she wanted to change back she had to come back to her cell."
As hard as she tried, Fleur couldn't keep the horror from her face. Luna's face turned into the serene, content look that seemed so natural on her. The reaction she got from telling this tale greatly pleased her. "Of course I had a good time being her. Doing research, being younger and the like. But the best part was hearing her confess, as I like to call it. She was naturally horrified by what she did after the first few days. Torturing some dirty muggles, I think. The self of the skin enjoyed doing that and so did the poor little Ravenclaw."
She leaned back and reminisced about that moment. "I can still hear whine about what that evil skin made her do. Of course, I told her that the skin can't force her to do anything, mine certainly didn't. I repeatedly explained that she only enjoyed it because deep down she wanted them to suffer. Such an easy lie. And she even suspected it, I'm sure."
The satisfaction of Bellatrix was making sitting still and listening, hoping for her to trip up and give Fleur a way out of the situation, torture in and of itself. But she was also intrigued, as shameful as admitting that to herself was.
"But what choice did she have? Her hours as Luna Lovegood were hell, while she was treated with deference when she was me. A few weeks later she started to spend the nights as me, I think it began after she slept with Rudolphus for the first time. She was still forced to behave like me, so it was inevitable that it would happen. Sleeping INSIDE a horcrux, no better for it to influence her. Though by then she had few reservations about pretending to be me. I bet she even enjoyed it already. Naturally I had some fun with my husband, too. He was aware of everything and had his way with her and with me."
She licked her lips at this and Fleur couldn't help but imagine Luna in bed with Rudolphus Lestrange. Not a pleasant thought, to be sure.
"At that point she started to forget or misremember things. Like believing that she was in Slytherin or that she had always been somewhat annoyed by muggles. She stopped getting out of my skin for longer stretches at a time. I actually don't know when she forgot that she wasn't me. But once I noticed that she wasn't pretending, I knew my work was done. When you and your friends were caught I simply went down to the dungeons. The rest is, as they say, history."
Tue Sep 16 02:34:33 2014
3 comments Last updated: Fri Sep 26 01:13:01 2014