Give me respect, and all will be fine, he promises, voice tender and sweet.
(Bellatrix likes to play with her food? Have you ever met her husband?)
So many promises made and broken, how long do you think that muggle girl lasted in his care, even when she flattered him, told him that his poetry was enlightening, that his eyes were the most beautiful?
Not very fucking long.
---
A gentleman, a picture of everything a pureblooded heir should ever want to be. Hair parted to the side, priorities in check, an image of perfection, Rodolphus Lestrange, the apple of his mother's eyes from a very young age, finally off to school. He sits in a compartment on the train with others his age, and smiles quietly to himself as he hears stories of the muggle world.
How primitive, how barbaric their ways, how pitiful that they are not us, he says to himself, blue eyes never gleaming with any sympathy, They're lucky enough to be here, in my presence, in the presence of someone whose blood is so pure, so untainted.
He sighs, and smiles, and is cordial, and is liked instantly -- he has always been liked instantly, with his charm.
Oh how he loved the way their faces paled as he spat on their hands instead of shaking them.
---
Just remember:
the kindest man with most understanding smile can turn cold and unfeeling with blink of an eye.
---
Anything to help those poor, pitiful creatures to die, anything. Was it that much of a surprise to find that he was one of the first to step up and join his father's old school mate?
He sees his work as benevolent, the Dark Mark on his arm as a badge granting him the right to play god with the lives of those lesser than him.
---
Life and death, so different, and yet they are only separated by a few words and a blink of an eye.
---
He loves blood, but doesn't want it on him. He kills brutally but precisely - there's no room for stains on his blindingly white button up. He doesn't have to time to fix his hair again.
Clean and crisp, presentable, charming, all the while leaving bodies behind him. People tell him that it's beautiful, the way he manages to appear untouched. Unsoiled, untainted.
(He wants it that way, he is perfect, perfect perfect all the time).
He makes sure to wash his hands afterwords anyways, just in case.
---
"I hate her, I love her, I want to murder her, I want lift her to the sky and make her a queen,
I want to cut her chest open and with her still beating heart in my hand I whisper that she is the worst wife I could have ever asked for, but that she is greatest friend and partner."
---
He's never liked the idea of an arranged marriage, and, seeing the malice and disgust in his brides eyes as they stood next to each other at the alter saying their vows, he felt dirty. Why should she be bound to a man not as great as her?
He never touched her, unless she touched him first. Never held her back, told her sit down and obey him. Why should he chain down a beautiful creature such as her?
When he realized he loved her he wrote a note she chose to ignore:
"Darling, your bones are so beautiful."
---
What a popular, personable young man, they say as he entertains his mother's friends at only 15. They surround him, as he reads his poetry from a small black hand book no has ever looked in besides himself, pearly whites in-between dark red lips.
(He always believed that their lips were stained in blood, and what was left was smeared on their cheeks -- he always believed they were beautiful and poised, pearls and diamonds and expensive jewelry hanging on their limbs).
---
"Rodolphus, son," his father sits him down, an image of what Rodolphus himself would grow up to be. His mother, in furs of animals that were killed, gutted, skinned, just for her, stands beside him, a delicate but calloused hand resting on her husband's shoulder. "You're going to have a little brother."
He never liked the idea of sharing his parent's affection, and now as grown man, and now, despite his love and bond with his brother, detests the idea that they are the Lestrange Brothers.
It's his own fault though, he took his littler brother underneath his wing, taught him how to enunciate words, how sit properly, how to play piano.
"Don't be rude, Rabastan," was a sentence more used by him than his own mother.
He hates that he has to keep saying it.
---
Us, and them. He doesn't get why there are blood traitors, he doesn't get why those with blood like his fight against him. Order of the Phoenix? He laughs because he knows that once they die, red pooling around their heads, spilling on their hands, they're going to stay that way. Phoenix is an ill fitting name for them, and he relishes in knowing that.
He will tear them down, one by one by one, carrying his own personal vendetta:
Why would disgrace our blood to help those that are weak, those that do no deserve to live here with us?
---
He's not unfeeling, he isn't cold --
at least not to those that matter.