This was not the sort of thing that happened to Bellatrix Lestrange.

She was not the sort of woman to be haunted by the memory of a lover. She was the woman who left the life-long mark with her teeth. She was the woman who troubled men's minds and drove them slowly into madness as each partner that followed reminded him of her only in that they failed to captivate them. She was the woman men had a tendency to die for, and she was the woman who had a tendency to laugh at them for it.

No heat should have stirred when she heard his name or thought of him or saw his screaming pictures hanging on the walls. No desire to feel his ink dark hair brush against her thighs or his wrongly calloused hands run down her back should have remained. His eyes, so dark with secrets and so bright with danger, should not be on her mind years after they had coupled in forbidden beds, laughing when the little ones threatened to tell, and laughing when they told and were torn away.

But always he had remained in her mind. She could feel him even when they were miles and miles and worlds apart. Even when a war divided him, she felt him above her she was alone in her bed at night, arching her back at the feel of his hands, gasping at ghosts and recollections. It was he who haunted her; he who had driven her mad right alongside the demons of Azkaban.

She had laughed when she struck him down. Laughed when she thought she'd be rid of him. Laughed when she thought she would sleep well that night.

She had only made the ghost and her longing stronger with the distance she had put between them. She screamed in her bed that night, a mixture of rage and ecstasy. And perhaps, in her sober moments, a tinge of regret.

This was not the sort of thing that happened to Bellatrix Lestrange. Yet there she lay, and she wasn't laughing anymore.