Title: Untitled
Character: Bellatrix
Word Count: 513
A/N: Written for this week's
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15minuteficlets.
( The word )Warnings:
( Cut, if you don't worry about potentially disturbing subjects )Her mother had lost her figure after having babies. She denied it at first, claiming her husband preferred zaftig women, using that term always instead of the more mundane “pleasantly plump” because she thought it was foreign. No one ever informed her it was, in fact, a Muggle word.
Her husband said nothing, though his mistresses became thinner and thinner until his preferred fuck was nothing more than skin and bones, barely even having any breasts, the only feature the girls were happy to have inherited from their mother, at one time her crowning glory before she let herself go to waste.
The three Black girls watched their mother, watched how she garnered no respect from her fellow socialites who wouldn’t even always wait until she left the room to gossip maliciously, and they all vowed they would never allow the same to happen to themselves.
Her sister, Narcissa, informed her husband before their son had even come home from the hospital that she was not having another baby. The Healers agreed—hers had been a difficult pregnancy. Draco was a small baby; Narcissa had put on too little weight during his pregnancy. She told Bellatrix afterwards that was because she only increased her eating habits slightly despite having the appetite for two.
Narcissa regained her former figure by the time Draco was two months.
The other sister, the one Bellatrix didn’t talk to anymore, didn’t think about anymore, also only had one child. To spit in the face of tradition even further, she stopped after that even though the baby was only a girl. She, too, managed to regain her figure, though Bellatrix wasn’t sure how long it took, only having run into her by complete accident when the child was just old enough to start walking uneasy steps.
Bellatrix’s first thoughts when she learned that Rodolphus’ baby was growing inside of her was to worry about her figure. She wasn’t going to lose her looks. She wasn’t going to become grossly round like her mother.
It wasn’t just for vanity, although her pride paid an important part. It was also because she knew that her Lord would not allow her to continue His work when she become slow, encumbered by her belly.
So Bellatrix ignored the life inside of her. Bellatrix ignored the signs of her own belly swelling. She ignored her own worries about the future, about her place in the months to come.
Bellatrix ignored the blood between her legs when she woke up one day. She didn’t feel regret that the baby was dying, didn’t feel relief that a solution had come.
Bellatrix ignored the sharp pains in her belly. Bellatrix ignored her husband’s inquisitive words. Bellatrix ignored her own sluggishness, the confusion that coloured even the simplest questions. Bellatrix ignored the darkness that remained around her periphery no matter which way she turned her head.
Rodolphus couldn’t ignore it after his wife fell to the ground in a feverish swoon, the blood now staining her skirts, but by the time the Healer arrived, it was too late.
