Ch60. I am sorry, dear sister.
Bellatrix opened her eyes groggily, looking around herself only to realize she was bound to a chair. She tried to forcefully move her hands but couldn't, blinking her eyes fast in order to regain clarity in her vision. Then, Bellatrix tried to use a small wandless rope releasing spell. That was when her mind froze as she realized she was not bound by ropes but something else.
Her vision finally returned in full and she saw her hands on the armrest and her ankles near the lower parts of chair legs, invisible pressure holding them in the place. Then it clicked.
Runes.
She was bound by freaking runes!
Groaning, she realized there is no way out of this one without getting the caster somehow to release her or scratch the runes. But... she realized the runes are all on the lower parts of the armrest. Cursing, she bit her lip in order to not let out a sound.
She was so enamored in it, she did not notice the icy blue stare observing her actions from the shadows in the corner of the room.
"I see you are still very resourceful, sister."
Bellatrix heard the voice and instantly recognized it as Narcissa's.
"Sister?" She asked hopefully only to lose said hope a second later as the flashback of how exactly she got into this situation appeared in her mind.
"You were the one who bound me..." Bellatrix trailed off in disbelief.
Narcissa impassively stared at her sister, not confirming nor denying but for both, the answer was obvious.
"Why?" Bellatrix screamed, feeling betrayed.
"Well, since I doubt you would be able to come by this information in resort Azkaban," Narcissa chuckled hollowly. "let me explain."
"You are now Bellatrix Black, the new wife of Lord Black. Congratulations." Narcissa quipped sarcastically.
"WHAT!?" Bellatrix exclaimed in distraught. "How!"
"Lestranges sold you... not important." Narcissa dismissively waved her hand and Bellatrix wanted to retort.
"What is important though is that you are a firm believer in the Dark Lord even without the influence of the contract."
"Sister!" Bellatrix screamed, feeling that her sister is not on the side of her master anymore. "The Dark Lord will return! Stop this! We can still be by his side together, serving him faithfully!"
"Oh, Bella. He really did a number on your mind, didn't he?" Narcissa uttered quietly in a pitying tone, stopping Bellatrix short as she realized where her sister is going with this.
"Cissy! I will rip you to shreds for disrespecting the Dark Lord!" Bellatrix raged, thrashing her body.
"I inspected it when you slept, sister. The Dark Lord clearly used his Legilimency prowess to slowly and painstakingly convert your mind over a long period of time." Narcissa started explaining as if she was a mind healer but by that point, Bellatrix was fuming and fighting against her restraints in a vain attempt to free herself.
"Confundus, obliviate, redirecting your mind to reach a certain conclusion, slowly but surely making you dependent on him... Quite frankly, sister, you are a lost cause." Narcissa shook her head in sadness. "You would die for him even if he betrayed you. So fucked up is your mind by now."
"I am not mad! I love my Master!" Bellatrix raved in fury, venomously glaring at Narcissa as her magic tried to flare to damage the runes. "He is my reason for living!"
"Exactly my point."
Narcissa's warm and sisterly attitude instantly grew cold. Her eyes coldly stared at Bellatrix, making her nervous. Bellatrix recognized that gaze. After all, it was the same look she had when staring at a hated enemy.
"In that case, I am sorry, sister dearest. I will have to slightly adjust your attitude."
Bellatrix instantly found herself staring at the tip of Narcissa's wand and before she could react, she heard her sister's menacing voice.
"Legilimens."
And her world burst into pain.
Narcissa's probe violently slammed into Bellatrix's oh-so-feeble Occlumency. A holiday in Azkaban clearly didn't do her sister well. Narcissa didn't penetrate Bellatrix's shields, she shattered them to dust. This, of course, brought Bella such amounts of mental pain, she was shaking in the seat, her eyes wide and her teeth gritted hard. She was not screaming though... yet.
After disposing of Bellatrix's shields, Narcissa ventured further, and further, until she was in the core of Bellatrix's mind. The thing that made her, her. Narcissa's probe squeezed, and started stretching until she finally grabbed a 'handful' of her mind and... forcefully pulled away.
Bellatrix's head slammed back into the backrest with a crunch, a silent scream leaving her lips as her mouth opened wide in agony as tears streamed down her gaunt cheeks from her wide and horrified eyes.
Narcissa wasn't done though. She didn't want to torture her sister and by now, tears of sadness fell from her eyes as she saw Bellatrix in pain. Nevertheless, she continued. The probe holding a part of Bellatrix's mind, pulling it 'out', suddenly twisted into tearing motion so violently it caused a partial rip.
Bellatrix's mind experienced a large crack but still fought Narcissa at every turn as the twist tore half of the bit the probe held but the next part still clung to the rest. The part that was ripped away was minuscule and Narcissa discarded it away, making it float around the core of Bella's mind, unable to rejoin it as her probe was expelled from Bellatrix's mind.
At being forced to violently part from a part of her mind, Bellatrix started screaming in pain, much louder than what Crucio could ever make her, her mind throbbing as if her brain was just mixed into a soup. Her entire body was tensed, tersely jerking from side to side, only her eyes tightly set in Narcissa's direction as blood trickled from her nose and ears.
Narcissa ended the probe and flopped down on the chair behind her, her wand arm just freely hanging down. She put her free hand over her eyes tiredly as she noted her magic considerably depleted from the struggle between Bella's mind and herself.
Bellatrix finally stopped screaming as the pain receded and hung her head low as her body leaned forward as she started dry heaving her empty guts onto her lap. Her dirty curly black hair covered her face and the blood slowly dripped onto her lap from her nose, mixing with her spit. Her toes curled up from the intense pain as her nails bloodied themselves from the force they clung to the armrests as her nails cracked or completely broke.
"Hehe." Bellatrix chuckled breathlessly in pain. "You failed, sister." She snickered hollowly.
"Did I?" Narcissa groaned in annoyance. "I tore a chunk from you."
"No, no. You might have done that but you are too WEAK to do more than that." Bellatrix started madly laughing only to have a dry coughing fit stop her. She finally stopped gasping for breath and her voice turned serious. "You don't have enough power." She cackled in happiness.
"True." Narcissa rolled her eyes, admitting it calmly. "But I am a master at runes and I spent considerable time at Hogwarts."
Bellatrix didn't understand but stayed quiet, waiting for her next torture. She was sure they were far from over.
"I, of course, placed a few runes there. Six of which are my new prototypes. You see, being able to recharge my magic from Hogwarts directly is quite a marvelous power-boost." Narcissa flippantly said as she activated the six leeching runes at Hogwarts, directing the flow of magic into a rune near her heart, and into herself.
She approached Bellatrix and gripped her hair. Flinging her head up to look at her. Narcissa teared up as she spotted Bellatrix had one eye half-closed while the other was wide-open, a clear sign of mental damage. She saw something she never imagined she would see on her sister's face. Fear. Her sister didn't fear even Crucio but right now, she was staring at Narcissa as if she was the devil himself, about to eat a little girl.
Narcissa steeled her heart and pointed her wand at Bellatrix and again called out.
"Legilimens"
The mind probe ravaged Bella's mind with the sheer weight of magic leached from Hogwarts itself as it this time took a quarter of Bella's mind into its clutches and squeezed, kneading it painfully as Bellatrix's violent thrashes completely stopped. The poor murderer could only release a whimper and tremble at the horrendous agony she was experiencing. Even her body refused to expend energy on thrashing anymore.
Narcissa viciously pulled, twisted, ripped, mixed, and meticulously discarded memory after memory from Bella's mind, letting it just float around in a broken mess.
It took her four screams, wailing, and pleading-filed hours to finally dismantle the core of Bellatrix's mind so utterly, even Voldemort wouldn't be able to put the pieces together. Bellatrix Lestrange… became no longer a possibility.
Narcissa didn't stop there. She continued for the next two hours, staring into the soulless black eyes of her sister that didn't contain even a spark of life anymore and made sure every single memory, moment, experience, or feeling of Bellatrix was fragmented and put into the whirlwind of pieces that were swirling in the chaos called Bellatrix's mind.
If one had to describe what just transpired, the closest comparison would be that Bellatrix's mind was albeit rotten but a whole loaf of bread. Narcissa needed to cut the bread but instead of a knife... hell, even a meat chopper, she brought a bonafide chainsaw with her and started shredding the bread to crumbs. Nobody would be able to put these numerous crumbs together to form the same bread as before.
Only after seeing that a point-blank Bombarda Maxima would cause a lesser mess of Bella's head, was Narcissa satisfied with her work.
"Oh?" She suddenly noticed that using the runes to leach Hogwarts magic during these hours made her own reserves soar by a whole ten percent. A smirk appeared on her face as she realized that maybe she could help her beloved even on the frontlines if her magic strengthened so much every day... What worst Dark Lord in the history of Britain! She will be the worst Dark Lady of the entire freaking world if Hadrian needed it from her!
She left the room with a happy skip in her step as she remembered Hadrian would come home in a short few hours. She needed to bathe and prepare herself!
As the door closed, the bloodied drooling mess that was former Bellatrix brokenly stared into nothingness as IT was still firmly bound to the chair, its hair messily sticking to its sweat-covered face. There was no mind in its eyes anymore.