Redbeargrl's Cave

A Spell Upon Walpurgisnacht
by
Redbeargrl

It happens only once a year on Beltane Eve, Walpughis Night, when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead thins and becomes permeable to Magic.  Any witch who is strong enough, or foolhardy enough, may cast a spell on this one night to see what lay in the beyond.  Bellatrix, in her sixth year at Hogwarts is strong enough, and perhaps, foolish enough to try.  Perhaps she should have waited.

+++++

Bellatrix shivered with anticipation as she prepared for her spell in the dank unused dungeon far from the Slytherin Common Room.  She carefully and methodically set out her supplies according to the large book of forbidden spells she had ‘borrowed” from her unsuspecting father’s library, precisely placing each item as the book described. The only illumination in the dark chamber was from the three guttering black candles she had carefully set in their prescribed position on the cold stone floor within the chalked circle.  A flick of her wand and the incense in the small iron brazier began sending thick ropy tendrils of sickly sweet scented smoke drifting lazily up to the ceiling. She sat within the triangle formed by the candles and uttered the first words of the enchantment, feeling the forbidden magic flowing through her. 

She had waited all year for this night not because she had any great love of the dead, but she sought their secrets; the secrets of Power that only the dead would know and understand.  The thought that the dead wouldn’t be willing to share these secrets with her never entered her young twisted mind. No living person had ever resisted her will and she felt confident that the dead would also fall subject to her will. She uttered the last words of the Summoning and felt her mind cast loose into the utter darkness that separated the worlds of the living and the dead.

“Show me the Power!” she commanded the darkness.

She never heard the soft ironic laughter of Death itself as her Spell took affect.  “As you wish, silly child,” replied Death.  “As you wish!”

Bella thrust her mind deeper into the Void searching for, well, she really wasn’t quite sure, but she was sure she would know it once she found it.  And find it she did,  or perhaps, it found her.  Power!  A dark and brooding power in the blackness lingering just out of her reach.  She pushed herself to her limits trying to grasp what she had found but then she felt something never before experienced.  The Power reached out and grasped at her!

But this Power was not alone.  There were two of them, but one seemed uncaring, almost scornful.  Oh, but the other! Bella was sure it was female but why she wasn’t certain.  Perhaps the color of the Power; soft pinks and crumpled reds like torn rose petals swirling in the blackness. She could feel the evil energy dripping from the entity as pus from a festering wound, and she knew that she had found her desire.  Bella pulled with all of her will to bring the Power to her, but to her surprise it pulled back with a strength and malevolence that shocked her.  Too late the realization came to her as the blackness swooped down upon her on tattered and torn wings and swept her away.  Away to a place that wasn’t hers, but then it wasn’t the entities home either; at least not anymore. 

+++++

“Miss Edith is cold,” she said in a whiny child’s voice thickly laced with Cockney. She twirled in the center of the room clutching a ragged doll to her breast.   “Miss Edith and I want to feel warm again!  But the sun says it’s mad at us,” she finished with a pout.

The man sighed heavily.  “You’re cold because you’re dead Pet.  And Mr. Sun isn’t mad at you Dru. He just wants to turn you into a pile of flamin’ ash...so no Mr. Sun for you and Miss Edith.” He came up behind her and wrapped his arms around the young woman. “What happened to your dolly there kitten?”

Drusilla looked embarrassed for a moment before breaking out into squealing laughter. “Oh Miss Edith said a very naughty word!  I had to wash her mouth out but I couldn’t find any soap...so I filled her mouth with candle wax.  Now she screams but I can’t hear her.”

“Well...that ought to teach the little bint who’s boss,” Spike said dryly.  He released his hold on Drusilla and reached for his jacket.  “I’m feeling a bit peckish Luv.  Fancy going out for a bite?”

Drusilla busied herself brushing Miss Edith’s hair while singing softly to her in a sing song childish voice. “Dolly, you're a naughty girl, all your hair is out of curl, And you've torn your little shoe! Oh, what must I do with you?” 

Spike rolled his eyes to the heavens and asked again. “Dru?  Pet?  Do you fancy somebody to eat?”

Drusilla stopped her brushing and listened intently to something for a moment.  “I shant go out tonight!  The stars are talking to me and telling me I must stay.  Fetch me something...exotic!”

“Exotic.  Right. The Chinese take away around the corner has a new girl in the kitchen...will she do?”

Drusilla flashed her vampire face for a brief moment.  “Oh yes please!  That sounds yummy!”

He turned and was reaching for the door knob when a strangled cry followed by the sound of Miss Edith’s porcelain head bouncing on the floor spun him around.  Dru stood rigid as a pole in the center of the room, her eyes were rolled back inwards so that only the whites showed.  She appeared to be talking to something but no words came from her pale ruby lips.  As her knees buckled, Spike rushed forward to catch her in his arms.

“Dru!  What is it?  What’s wrong? Talk to me!”

She began to shake as though gripped by ague.  She looked at her lover with unfocused eyes and answered in a pained whisper. “It calls to me Spike!  The night is calling me.  It wants me to come play with it!”  Her shaking increased and Spike carefully laid her upon the bed, covering her tenderly with the worn duvet.

“Dru!” he called out.  “Stay with me Pet!”

“Oh Spike!  It’s so deliciously evil!” she whispered in a tone of awe.  “It’s...intoxicating!”  Her eyes closed and with a shuddering sigh, she finally lay still, a quiet smile playing on her bloodless lips.

“DRU!  DRU!” he yelled, but she was already in another place.

+++++

The sweet smell of death and newly turned earth swirled in the foggy mist as she found herself walking the streets of her youth. It was Gutter Lane, the street that had seen her birth and she had spent her youth walking as she went to mass every day of her life at St. Mary-le-Bow.  But now, it was not as she remembered it.

The gas lamps were not giving off their soft glow and no lights shone from the windows or shops.  No living person was on the street, but the street was crowded with the shades of the dead; aloof, impersonal and making no noise nor sign of recognition as they passed, but giving Drusilla wide birth.  There had always been the uneasy truce between the truly dead and the walking un-dead and tonight proved no exception. The heavy smell of coal fires hung heavily on the moist still air, mixed with the ominous faint smell of sulphur, decay and the heady intoxicating scent of Power.

Drusilla paused, sniffing the air as might a dog seeking a quail, as she sought the pull of the one that had brought her here.  It took her but a second to locate the spoor, and as she followed the scent of it, a faint glow appeared out of the foggy gloom illuminating a young girl seated on the ground and surrounded by three black candles.  With no more than a thought, Drusilla stood outside of the candles feeble glow, regarding the young girl.

“A Witch! I should have known by the stench!” she spat as she slowly circled Bellatrix within her protective triangle of light.  “And no more than a child by the looks of it.”  The sound of own words shocked her.  She hadn’t been able to focus her thoughts into articulate speech this well since she had been sired more than a hundred years ago. The shock and pain of being turned into a vampire had driven her into her own twisted world of understanding and speech. Despite this, she could still feel the insanity just below the surface of her mind like a festering boil waiting to burst. She decided that this place might have something to do with this so she paid it no further mind.

Bellatrix was shaken but did her best to hide it.  She had seen ghosts and shades before, but the figure walking around her appeared to be that of a normal human female, although her clothing seemed a bit dated with its torn black lace and wrinkled silk, and the high buttoned black boots were definitely from a bygone era.  However, it was the utter lack of respect in Drusilla’s voice that really infuriated her.  This was her spell, she did the Summoning, she reckoned.  And wasn’t she a Black!  Nobody, living or dead, should dare to address her in such a tone!

“Silence Shade!” she snapped.  “I shall brook no insolence from the dead! I, Bellatrix Black, summoned you from the other side!  Now you shall tell me what I want to know!”

Drusilla’s laugh was high and cruel.  “What a pretty little witch you are!  Your talents are only surpassed by your insolence and arrogance,” she said as she continued to circle the girl. “Pretty little witch!  Pretty little witch!  All dead and bled in a roadside ditch!” she sang in a childish voice. “With your pale pink skin and that delicious vein beating at your throat!  I don’t like witches dearie!  Your kind will cause me great trouble in the future.  Begone child!  Before something evil eats you!” she hissed as she made a mock lunge at the seated girl.

To her credit, Bella didn’t flinch but she cringed inwardly as recognition filled her mind.  “You’re a vampire aren’t you.”  It was not a question.  She pointed her wand at Drusilla.  “Stay back vampire!  I can destroy you with a Word!”

“Silly little girl!” laughed Drusilla.  “Look around you child!  Does this look like a place where your puny Magic will work?  I know your kind sweetie!  You probably set yourself up in a place where you feel all safe and protected, with your pretty little candles and your chalked circle!  Does this,” she asked sweeping her arm in a wide circle, “look like that place?”

Bella looked around slowly, but she didn’t answer.  Drusilla didn’t need to hear the words, she knew from the look on Bella’s face that what she said was true.

“But I find you ...intriguing,” said Dru in a soft lilting voice.  “Put up your wand child and perhaps I’ll tell you what you want to know before I....”

“How do you know what I want?” snapped Bella.  “I haven’t told you a thing.”

“So foolishly mortal!  I don’t need your words child.  Your desires float on the wind as the stink above the abattoir.  You reek of want!”  Dru took a deep breath through her nose savoring the scents she found lingering there.  “You seek Power little one!  Yet you seek things that are beyond your ken.  I can smell your corrupt desire for it as I can smell your soul!  You love pain and suffering almost as much as I, but your soul is a hindrance.”  She looked down at Bella with an evil gleam.  “I could cure you of that little problem!”

Bella tightened the grip on her wand as she raised it back up and pointed it at Dru’s face.  “No!  Stay back vampire!  You’ll be doing no curing me of anything this night. You are correct though...when you speak of my desire for power.  Tell me!  What else do you smell about me?”

“Your truth.”

“Tell me!”

“You won’t like it dearie!”

“Tell me! I command you!”

Drusilla shrugged.  “Very well.  You have no friends.  You walk alone and always will.  You believe your sister loves you because she shares her body with you but it is not love that she feels.  It is fear!  And that is what you most desire isn’t it witch!  You are destined to never know real love. You revel in the pain and humiliation of others because that is all that you let yourself see of your inner self!”

“Enough! You lie!”

“No witch!  You asked and I will speak!  You long for love yet you know not what it is.”  Dru resumed her movement around the outside of Bella’s enchanted circle. “I smell many things about you witch!” she hissed as she took in another deep breath. “You can’t even divorce your lust for Power from your most base desires. Ahhh!  Yes!  I smell your desire rising from you so thickly it is almost palpable!” she laughed.  “I can smell your cunny dripping from here; it sings to me of your want!  You drip like a common whore at the sight of a brass farthing so great is your want of me and what I possess!”

“More lies!” Bella screamed.  “Everybody loves me!  And I would rather die than even touch the slightest hair on your head!”

“Now who’s lying?” mocked Dru.  “You reek of sex!  And greed!  Your fate is to die by the hand of another of your kind, but I have the Power to change that!”

“ENOUGH! Begone!” screamed Bella. 

Drusilla’s laugh was cruel and mocking.

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

She watched the gout of green fire envelop Drusilla and then disolve into nothingness.  Drusilla’s laugh was shrill.  “Foolish child! You can’t kill what’s already dead my pretty one!  My turn!”

Bella felt herself being jerked up by a hand clamped tightly around her throat; the razor sharp fingernails digging into the soft pale pink flesh of her neck.  Her feet dangled in the air and she felt her wand snatched from her fingers.  Dru held her struggling body out at arms length and marched across the narrow lane until Bella felt the cold unyielding bricks of a building digging painfully into her back. She whimpered in fear as Drusilla’s face filled her entire field of view.

“Look into my eyes dearie!” hissed Drusilla.  “Be...in me!”

Bella struggled wildly, trying to pull Dru’s hand from her throat, but the vampire’s strength was too great.  Try as she might to look away, she found herself falling into the hazel eyes just in front of her while she felt her will being drained until finally, she resigned herself to her fate and the vampire’s greater will. Only when her feeble struggles stopped did she hear Drusilla’s whispered words.

“You wanted to see Power witch! Observe what real Power means!”

And then she saw.

Her mind was flooded with the images of the death and destruction Drusilla had wrought across two continents.  Her victims faces loomed up at her, each one crying, pleading, begging to be spared. So many faces!  The young and the old, Princes, warriors, paupers and Kings; even babies in their cribs squealing and crying as their lives were sucked out of them.  Scenes of maggot ridden flesh amongst forgotten fields washed across her mind as the unforgettable stench of the charnel house filled her nostrils.

Perhaps worst of all were the images from Drusilla’s own life that flashed through her mind.  The vivid recollections of seeing her entire family slaughtered by her sire before her eyes; each one piteously crying out to an indifferent God as their lives were drained from them drop by drop.  It was the last vision that had the most affect on her however; that of being almost dead and laying helpless within her coffin as the lid was nailed shut and then lowered into the womb of the grave to await her rebirth. To wait in buried darkness, with half of her mind in the world of the living while the other half listened to the gibbering of the dead as the demon that replaced her soul gathered its strength and made her unwilling body its home.  And over it all, the sweet rotting scent of dying roses, the scent of the creature who held her now as helpless as a newborn babe.

Horrified and helpless Bella couldn’t help the feeling of awe that swept through her trembling body.  This was Power!  This was what she had been seeking and now she reckoned that the very sight of it would be at the cost of her own life.  Without warning, she felt Drusilla release her grip on her throat and she fell, stunned and sickened to the pavement.

The vampire knelt before her, and with a quick slash of her nails, stripped Bella of her robes as though they had been made only of gossamer.

“That is my Power little one,” she whispered.  “The only Power I have and that is Death.”

“Are you...are you going to kill me?” Bellatrix choked as she fought for breath.  She gasped as she felt icy fingers plunge between her legs, exploring her most secret place with rude efficiency while fingernails as sharp as razors marked her breasts and belly.  She found the pain...exquisite!

“Perhaps, not yet witch.  Share your warmth with me child!  If you please me, perhaps I’ll make your death a quick sweet blessing. Pleasure me witch!” she commanded as she pulled Bella’s lips to hers.  “Pleasure me as if your soul depended on it!”

Bella had no great desire to kiss, let alone make love, to some dead thing, but the warning implicit in Drusilla’s last command was not lost on her.  The kiss was harsh, brutal, with no trace of tenderness, only animal need. Dru’s lips, she found, were sweet and soft but as cold as the fear she felt gripping her still beating heart. 

For one so young, Bella was not naive in the ways to pleasure another woman.  Many were the nights she had made Narcissa’s body sing as they huddled together to ward off the loneliness and fear. The difference now being however, that on those occasions it was she meting out the pain and in control while her sister was the one whimpering and pleading.  She found those same small whimpers coming from her own mouth now, but they were not born of a desire for sex, they were whimpers of frustration as she found herself so close to the Power she desired but helpless as to how to make it her own.  Her childish mind reckoned that if she could please Drusilla enough, perhaps she would share her secrets with her.  But that idea was dashed as she felt an enormously powerful hand entwine itself in her hair, pulling her face sharply downward.

“You kiss sweetly witch, but I have no need of foreplay!”

Unable to resist, Bella found her face thrust under Drusilla’s long black skirts while strong hands pulled her against the vampire’s sex. A slight hesitation was rewarded by furrows of skin being removed from her naked back.  “You’re only hope of life awaits you witch.  Pleasure me now!”

The words scared her but the pain was a great motivation.  She wrapped her arms around the slim waist and began to lave the folds before her.  She hadn’t known what to expect, but she found the taste not unpleasant.  Sweet and musky, rather like the scent of a garden on a damp fall day and yet again, with the scent of roses permeating her nostrils.  Her tongue plowed a path through the thin sparse curls until she found the bud against her lips.  She suckled it, drawing it into her mouth, swirling her tongue around it before letting it pass back between her tight lips only to repeat the process over and over.

Out of habit more than passion, she allowed the sharp edges of her teeth to glide over that bit of flesh as she flicked it with her tongue.  She felt empowered when she felt the sharp gasp from Drusilla and the pressure on her head from the vampire’s hand eased a bit.  Emboldened by the response she bit down harder and this time her reward was to hear a high keening wail from the creature.  She cast her net wider, running her tongue up and down the slick cold folds until she found the opening she sought.  She thrust her tongue within, both licking and suckling, as the strange noises grew louder and more intense.

She took a chance and brought a hand around, thrusting first one then two fingers within the vampire, working them in and out as she returned her attention to the swollen nub, raking it with her teeth.  The keening intensified and she felt powerful thighs slam against her; the wail turning into a feral growl as the creature reveled in her release.  A hand plucked her from the darkness as easily as she would have lifted a teacup and she again found herself upright with the familiar feeling of bricks biting into her backside.

“You did well little one!” whispered the vampire as her fingers closed around Bella’s throat.

“Then...you’ll release me?” she choked out.  “You said that if I pleased you...you would...you might...”

A sudden change in Drusilla’s face dashed any hope she had of survival. The demon that lived within her was in charge now, and Bella found that the sight of sharply pointed fangs, inches from her face, were turning her bowels to water.  She wanted to scream, cry out for help, but she found that she hadn’t the will left to try.  The vampire owned her now, body and mind.  Bella silently consigned her soul to hell.

“Of course child!” laughed Drusilla.  “As soon as I’ve fed!”

The pain of those fangs sinking into the soft flesh of her neck was less than she had expected but more terrifying than she could have ever imagined.  To feel her life being sucked out of her, knowing that she was being eaten alive, was the worst thing she could have never imagined.  A noise played at the edges of her mind, a sound that she had not heard in years, and she found herself cast down to the ground as the vampire retreated backwards towards the deeper shadows. 

The demon face had left Drusilla as she stared at the girl laying in a crumpled heap. “You have friends little one!  Powerful friends to make the cock crow just at this moment!”

Bella tried to ignore the agony at her throat as she looked up and saw the first glimmerings of dawn beyond the buildings.  “Beltane..” she murmured, half unaware that she had done so.  Finally, recognition swept over her.  “It’s the sunrise of Beltane!” she cried.

“Yes!” came the hissed reply.  “Walpughis Night is over!  Perhaps we’ll meet again on another!”

“NEVER!” cried Bella as the sun rose and flooded the narrow street.  “Never again!”

+++++

“DRU?  Can you hear me kitten?  Dru, are you there?”

Drusilla opened her eyes trying to focus on the face of the young man hovering over her.  “William?” she asked softly as she sat up.

The voice sounded much relieved.  “Yes Dru!  it’s me!  Are you all right?”

Drusilla threw her arms around her lover and began to giggle uncontrollably. “Oh Spike! Such a lovely game the night played with me!  It was delicious!”

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he inquired with an amused tone. “Or just leave me all guessing?”

“I’m famished!” she cried.  “I’ll tell you all about it after I...”

“Go out for a bite?” he finished with a smile.

“Oh yes please!”

+++++

“Bella!  Bella wake up!”  The voice was urgent but hushed.

Bella opened her eyes, closed them and then opened them again to see the faint image of her sister kneeling in front of her.  “Bella!  You must get up!  It’s very late and we’ll lose House points if we’re caught down here!”

“Cissy?  What...?” Sh looked around to find the familiar walls of the dungeon.  Her candles were sputtering and dying, casting flickering shadows on the cold stone walls.  “What happened?”

“I told you your stupid spell wouldn’t work!  All that happened is that you’ve fallen asleep!  And now it’s late and we’re going to get in trouble if we’re found down here.  Come sister!  We must get back to our beds!”

Bella felt relief course trough her.  A dream!  The whole thing had been just a bad dream.  She laughed softly to herself.  “Yes.  Of course we must go.  Help me up Cissy.  I think my legs have gone to sleep.”

Cissy pulled the larger girl to her feet and as they started to leave the dungeon Cissy looked at her sister with a quizzical expression.

“Bella?  Why is your neck bleeding?”