Pairing: Quirinus Quirrell/Bellatrix Lestrange (non-romantic)
WC: ~ 1600 words | AO3: here
CW: This is erotica. Religious erotica. Psychosexual liturgical erotica.
Summary: On the night the Dark Lord rises in the Little Hangleton graveyard, Quirrell feels it from Azkaban. Bellatrix feels it too. What follows is rapture, hunger, and a summons neither of them can resist.
Author's note: This entire arc is inspired by @keepmycandleburning's answer to this ask. I spent three days thinking about a Voldemort-based religion, and what it would be like from the perspective of those truly devoted to it.
Thanks also to @villainyredemption for requesting Bellatrix/Quirrell and suggesting Azkaban in the first place!
Prompt: Day 1, Soul via #BorrowedFromJonah, hosted by @berryispunk and my twin @rhapsodyofdarkness
<Prologue | Part One> (This piece can be read without the others)
PART TWO: THE CALL
We are all born with hunger, the need to eat and be full.
For me, the hunger never stops. Everything slips through my grasp, leaving me empty and longing to consume.
Two years have passed since the day I was placed beside her cell. Eternities seem to pass, sometimes. Eternities I later realise are minutes.
It is time enough for the rest of the high-security tier to sink into its own grim litany.
Rodolphus Lestrange is on her other side, mostly silent. Rabastan farther down, his brother's shadow in the dark. They hear us when we speak, but only Bellatrix answers.
Somewhere in that slow accretion of nights and silence, she became Bellatrix to me, and I became something she no longer dismisses.
Rodolphus never objects to her speaking to me. Devotion makes men generous in strange ways. He seems to consider my proximity simply another facet of her proximity to the Dark Lord. He knows her loyalty runs in one direction, and that the Dark Lord shares no one. The rest is arrangement.
When He lived inside me, in my thoughts, in my nerves, in the pulse of every decision, the hunger quieted. It was not healed. It was answered. Directed. Given meaning.
After He tore free of my body and left me dying on the stone floor, the silence He left behind was unbearable. Not for its pain, but because the world became thin. Flat. Without gravity.
The hunger rushed back immediately, sharper for having known its cure. It has lived in me ever since, rasping gently against my ribcage, reminding me I once contained something greater than myself.
Something that wanted. Something that used me. Something that made sense of me.
Here in Azkaban, that hunger feels ordinary. Everything drains you, so my own hollowness simply blends in.
Until tonight.
Something shifts under my breastbone. A tightening. A throb. A pressure. Recognition.
A vessel remembering its occupant.
I feel it in the space He carved out inside my soul.
And the ravenous need that has gnawed at me for months suddenly knows the direction of the one thing that ever filled it.
The air in Azkaban shifts in the hours before dawn. Not the Dementors, not the tide. Something finer, sharper, a thread of heat drawn tight beside my heart, as though something far away has breathed in and I am the thing expanding to take it.
My hands tremble, not in fear, but recognition.
From the next cell comes the faint clink of Bellatrix's chains turning toward me, a sound too intimate for a place like this. Awake as well, she feels it too.
Her voice slips through the stones, low and reverent.
“There it is. It’s coming.”
There is a note in her voice I have only heard once before, when she spoke of her search for the Dark. Praise coiled with longing, like a woman touching the edge of a lover’s silhouette.
I rise from the battered remains of my cot, dragging my shackles, and stand across from where I think she is inside her cell.
The hunger flares, hot and bright, burning straight through scar tissue.
Heat climbs in a slow, merciless sweep and I hitch in a breath against the rise of it.
My knees quiver, not from fear, but weakness, recognition wearing a mask of pleasure. Every scar He left brightens inside me like struck metal. For a moment I cannot tell where my body ends and the call begins.
“What is it,” I manage, though my voice barely survives the exhale. “What is happening.”
“You already know,” she whispers. She sounds aligned, as though the world has finally tipped to place her where she belongs. “You broke under Him. Of course you feel Him first.”
The thread in my chest pulls hard. My breath catches as if someone else is drawing it out of me.
My scars prickle again. Then more heat. Then finally a delicious burn. Not the brutal agony of possession, but something unbearably beautiful. Like being enlightened. Like being chosen again.
I brace my hand on the wall. The stone vibrates beneath my palm.
Bellatrix inhales sharply, ecstatic. Her breath breaks at the same instant mine does, as if the same unseen hand tightens around our throats. “He rises.”
Ecstasy transforms her. I hear it in her breathing, the way her laugh catches and breaks, as though resurrection itself has touched her skin.
The words strike like both curse and benediction. The pull inside me intensifies until I am shaking and my vision blurs. My fingers curl against the wall as I sway against the roar in my body.
“Bellatrix.” It is all I manage.
“Yes,” she breathes. Awe and devotion and hunger braid through her voice. “Do you feel how He reaches for His pieces?”
The burn surges, a claim as much as a summons.
I arch involuntarily, breath torn from me. For one humiliating heartbeat, the pleasure of it burns hotter than the fear, and the realization only drags me deeper into His pull.
Her answering sound travels through the stones, a tremor of heat that strikes the base of my spine. My fingers curl hard against stone.
Her breath falters in the same rhythm as mine.
Her chain-links scrape, a low metallic cry that travels straight through the stone into my marrow. The prison itself seems to lean into us, greedy for the heat we cannot touch.
The walls and the air and my own skin all strain toward the distant place where He is reforming Himself out of blood and bone and will.
“It is Him,” I choke. “He is calling.”
“Not calling,” she corrects. Her voice trembles with exaltation. “Gathering.”
Her Mark must be flaring black by now. I can picture her head tipped back, lips parted. She would bare her arm to Him again in this moment if stone and distance did not intervene.
I sense my body mirrors hers without meaning to. The scars pulse molten beneath my skin. Her breath breaks again, and through the wall it reaches me like heat.
The wall between us stops being a wall. Not physically. But spiritually. Sensually. Devotionally.
The stones warm under my forehead, and for a moment I cannot tell if the heat is mine or hers. The structure leans back into us, greedy for the collision of our devotion, as if Azkaban itself were listening with parted teeth, ready to bite.
Two bodies in the same rapture.
Two worshippers kneeling toward the same unseen altar.
Her devotion sharpens around me like a blade. She has no desire for the man I am, only for the echo I carry. For what He left in me. For what she longs most to serve.
“I do not. I… cannot.” The words are dragged out of me, stripped to their quick.
“You can,” she whispers. “You have always been His. Even before you understood the shape of that belonging.”
The pressure crescendos and I gasp. The hunger fills with light. Religious, unbearable, too much meaning forced into too small a vessel.
I shudder. My breath stumbles. Hers stumbles in answer, I can hear the movement of her feet.
Two lungs, one rhythm.
My vision tightens to a single point of white, hips rocking forward helplessly, seeking something that isn’t there.
The wretched sea-darkened limestone burns beneath my palms, and Bellatrix’s exhale breaks into a soft, ruined cry. The sound drags another tremor out of me. Pressure inside me peaks, one pulse, shared, delivered through two bodies as though we are one vessel.
Then Bellatrix makes a sound I have never heard from her. A soft, broken exhale. The kind that would be obscene if it belonged to anything but devotion.
“He rises,” she says again, voice bright as steel dipped in honey. “And we rise with Him.”
Something inside me snaps open. Purely. Willingly.
I press my forehead to the wall again. My scars ablaze in response. Her chains shift with the same surrendering weight.
“If He wants me,” I breathe, “I will go. I will go anywhere.”
Her answer shivers through the stones.
“Little vessel, this is your consecration. Not your ruin. He is making use of you again.”
Though the Dark Lord is not present, the very absence of Him fills the spaces in our our cells to bursting.
The pressure inside the whole of my body lashes once more, triumphant and distant, then releases, leaving my whole body shaking.
On the other side of our barrier, Bellatrix sighs, sated. The sigh of someone whose faith has finally been rewarded.
“That,” she murmurs, “is the closest either of us will come to touching Him while trapped in these cages.”
My knees buckle and I collapse, panting ragged and quick. Through the wall I hear her chains shift again with the same surrendering weight.
For long seconds I cannot form a word. My body is loose and shaking, emptied and overflowing all at once. The echo of Him rings through my ribs like an aftershock.
“Bellatrix,” I whisper, half prayer, half confession.
“Yes.”
“He filled me,” I breathe. The words shame and steady me in equal measure.
“Yes,” she echoes. “He filled me too.”
The silence between us hums, luminous and intimate, and I wonder if this is what it's like for Bellatrix. To burn all the time.
Two penitents. Two conduits. Two bodies trembling with the same divine echo.
And far away, the Dark Lord lives again, risen into this world of fog and sorrow.
I don’t know why but there’s certain sentences I read in the same way I read those “worm off the string what crimes will it commit” posts, but I can never make those jokes cause I’m not sure if anyone else reads them the same way, anyways now that we have the background out of the way
Yesterday I created some figures to better understand the results of the data I acquired. While Matlab took its time to calculate and plot the figures I further worked on the introduction. You cannot tell from this angle but I bought a macbook pivacy screen. I really dislike when people keep staring at my screen. That is so impolite.
I really like my desktop background on the big screens. I took this picture years ago at the place where I lived during my bachelor studies, in the morning when I waited for the bus.
Later in the day, I was so exhausted from talking to colleagues and from interacting with people in general that I just wanted to go home. And I am really honest and raw here: I found myself being angry at someone for no real reasons. But no, not angry at this person, rather angry with me...
Because I claim something that I don’t even own. And it is not that I don’t want this person to gain knowledge about this one thing. It it just the way the person told me about it. In his face and the way he told me about it, was full of guilt. Like why would you feel guilty about it? If there is nothing fishy going on behind my back, just tell me in a normal way.
It is the topic that I am kinda (should be) the expert in, since this it is the topic of my PhD.... I am collaborating with him because his group wants to use the analysis that I am using because their analysis is not showing what they wanted to show. Or at least they want to elaborate more by doing another type of analysis. And that is really really great. I am happy that they came. But you know, there are so many fishy things going on behind my back that I could scream. I am open-minded about my data (HEY, SCIENCE NEEDS TO BE SHARED, right???) and ideas but I am not gonna hand in my piece of code that I have that basically is my PhD work. Like the code is on the internet, everybody has access. But for me, being completely new to this topic and having no real data at hand, it took me a while to understand how it works, and how to adapt it for my needs. And that is also the reason why they came! I now have a code where I can say, I contributed to it quite a bit and I wont just give it to people. Like... we are all doing the same thing, and what I heard from his supervisor was: “Ah ok, so we gotta publish before you!“... Like... yeah right, thanks, awesome. That is the only reason why I don’t share *my* code. And you think I have ever heard a thank you from this guy after I sent him papers that could help his studies? Never. And that is what annoys me. He/they take, don’t say thank you and sell it as their “work“. No, I don’t like this. And I don’t support this behaviour.
But now you guys have a piece of the dynamics and behind the scences of my PhD open space workplace. A “scientific research institution”, we are basically a big group with little subgroups having more or less different topics. I am my own group, my supervisor is in the clinic and doesn’t really know what is going on at the campus (Don’t even know if he would be a help).
So back to what I wanted to say: Since I am kind of an introvert (too much human interaction yesterday, also nice ones) I just wanna stay at home this morning and work from here (I don’t even know if this is allowed, I just do it). Later I have my skype meeting with my advisors (also whose code is on the internet, I am lucky enough to collaborate with him !!!!! :)))) and I have also been to his lab). So I gotta hurry and finish these figures and files to send them off to them.
And STAR WARS yesterday was great! I always get so inspired, the movies are very well made. They tried to put a lot in this last movie (last? let’s see :D), so some scences were just short and they kinda “hopped“ through scence in the end, but it was still very well made.
We again had the vegan vietnamese udon noodels at the christmas market as a treat (I overcame my urge to leave people and go home but cooking at home also didn’t sound good, so there we were).
Okay, such a long text... But I had to bother you with that.
Please, take care of yourself. You are great and precious.
Today I put a smile on my face and tell myself I am valuable because I am.
Has anyone else had that experience where for a moment you fully and completely realise and appreciate how every single other person in the world is also a conscious entity with a full theory of mind and a subjective experience that's as real as yours and you sit there for a moment like woah
