Delila Rising

[Harry Potter]

This post is rated MATURE for a good reason. You have been warned.

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Bellatrix Lestrange was screaming.

Little sound was coming out; her vocal cords were torn and ripped, scarred over, then torn and ripped again. Still, her strangled cries echoed around her tiny black cell within Costa Del Sol prison. She was shackled by her wrists, her emaciated arms suspended above her as she lay slumped against the wall, her legs twitching spasticly beneath her thin medical gown.

The only other sound was the steady drip of her faucet, a faucet that the dehydrated prisoner could not reach, a faucet that dripped all day and all night.

The room was lit only by a cone of light streaming in through Bellatrix’s food slot. A shadow passed over the slot, and a man’s face appeared. The face was fat, ugly, and smiling wickedly. The man lifted his hand to show a small device with multiple buttons, waving it at Bellatrix tauntingly. Finally, he pressed one of the many buttons on the device.

Bellatrix stopped screaming, stopped writhing. She slumped against the wall, taking deep, shuddering breaths.

“How we doin in there, Miss Bella?” came the soft whisper of Bellatrix’s torturer, a charming southern voice.

Bellatrix took a few more ragged breaths, and then let out a long low moan. She spread her legs beneath her hospital gown lewdly.

“Thank you sir,” she said mockingly, a line of drool hanging from her mouth. “May I have another?”

The fat face contorted in rage. The man pressed another button.

Bellatrix’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she lost consciousness.

The faucet dripped.

✶✶✶

When Bellatrix next awoke, the first thing she noticed was her torturer’s mistake. He had left her food slot partially open, and a tiny beam of fluorescent light was streaming through, and where there was light, there was shadow.

There was a hiss is Bellatrix’s head as the shadows started to whisper.

The deranged witch let out a bark of laughter, her shackles rattling.

“H-Hey baby,” she slurred through a mouth full of broken teeth. “You come back for mummy?”

The shadows stirred, and then a dementor was floating silently above her

Bellatrix grinned, and bloody drool dripped down her cheek onto her medical gown in time with the sink.

A thin white mist began to escape Bellatrix’s mouth.

“Good boy,” whispered the witch, her heavily lidded eyes closing. “You’ve always known just how to hurt me.”

The Dementor stalked closer, lowering it’s hood.

Bellatrix spread her legs beneath her hospital gown and groaned, the silvery mist now escaping from her mouth like a faucet, creating a line leading back to the Dementors mouth.

“Good boy,” repeated Bellatrix as her soul escaped. The dementor was crouched down, kneeling between her legs.

“Give mummy a kiss.”

The Dementor obliged, performing the darkest act known to wizard kind, and eating the soul of Bellatrix Lestrange.

Yet another, darker hunger had awoken within the monster.

Even as the Dementor ripped Bellatrix’s soul from her body, it left something as well.

A seed.

✶✶✶

This seed would take just one month to grow, where most seeds of its kind would take nine months.

As for the host...

Nobody was surprised when Bellatrix Lestrange went comatose. Completely unresponsive to any outside stimuli, even pain. She would just sit, her stomach swelling each day, repeating the same word in a flat, childish sing-song voice.

“Delila, Delila. Delila, Delila. Delila, Delila. Delila, Delila.”

✶✶✶

Bellatrix Lestrange died giving birth to a black-eyed child mute child who was otherwise very healthy. The hospital staff at the prison wrote down her name as Delila Lestrange, as it seemed to be her mother’s last wish. The baby was transported to a orphanage in Costa Del Sol, where she stayed for nearly two months.

In those two months, Delila grew to the size of a young child of about seven years. The black haired, black eyed mute girl did not make any friends. She did not smile, nor cry, nor eat, nor sleep. She did not play with the other children, and at any rate the other children would not play with her. The employees of the orphanage had very much lost hope of finding a home for the strange child.

Then one day a man in a black cloak with a scarred face had shown up. He said he was the girl’s grandfather, though he had no identification to prove it. The staff of the orphanage were not concerned with such things as petty as paperwork, not when it meant they could get Delila off their hands.

Delila left that day with the man in the black cloak, holding his hand, walking towards the gate to the Nexus.

✶✶✶

[Harry Potter]

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As far the employees at the orphanage knew, Delila Lestrange did not eat. The mute little girl with the black eyes just stood and stared and made people feel uncomfortable. Sometimes people complained of feeling sick to their stomach or getting headaches when they were near her. Gods knew the children stayed as far from her as they could. But the caretakers were wrong; Delila did eat.

Her entire life the half-dementor had fed on the life force of her fellow children. She ate their hopes and dreams from the air, and felt their life diminish, but it was never enough. Lately a pain in the pit of her stomach had developed, a gnawing hunger that began to torture her daily.

On the night the mysterious man took her from her orphanage, they had stopped in a rundown motel near the entrance to the Nexus. When he brought them to their room, there was a crying woman chained to the radiator.

That night Delila sucked the soul out of her body, and for a moment the hunger was sated.

✶✶✶

By morning Delila was a young woman. Her frame was lithe, nearly emaciated, and her stringy black hair stood out strongly against her pale alabaster skin. Her face showed traces of her mother’s beauty, but her eyes remained the same wide black voids as they had before her apparent puberty.

The man who had called himself her grandfather studied Delili wearily. He was middle-aged, his auburn beard and hair greying. His black robe looked less frightening when the hood was off, and he was handsome despite his scarred visage.

“Morning, Delila,” he said cautiously. He was sipping tea at the table, but his eyes were on the woman.

“I’m hungry,” Delila said, sounding casual yet demanding. Her voice was soft and airy, nearly a whisper. She was craning her neck around the room with a smile on her face, as if seeing everything for the first time.

“You just ate,” the man said flatly. His voice did not falter, his face was stern. “You can eat soon, but right now we have to leave.”

Delila giggled disturbingly. “I don’t think I was asking.”

Delila launched herself across the room, floating eerily forward, the tips of her toes dragging on the carpet.

In a flash the man had risen from the table and was pointing a long wooden wand at her.

“Perfero!” he cried as he jabbed the wand forward in a spiraling motion. A long twisted blade like a corkscrew erupted from the tip of his wand at high speed, piercing through Delila’s stomach and pinning to her the wall. She did not cry out, nor show any sign of pain even as ink-black blood began to leak from her abdomen. She tried to push herself from the wall, but the blade was jagged, and she got stuck. Her black eyes narrowed and she hissed at the man.

He strode up to Delila calmly, his wand at his side.

“You remind me of your mother,” he said with a rueful grin. Delila’s bloody hands grasped for his throat reflexively, and black drool seeped from her teeth. “You have her smile. Her temperament. She came to me to train her in the morning, then tried to slit my throat by night.”

“I smell your fear,” Delila hissed, still pushing away from the wall with her feet in vain.

“She told me she that wanted something very special,” the man continued, as if she had not spoken. “A piece of a flesh from a dangerous man. And so I trained her, every day and every night for over a year. She tried to kill me on more occasions than I care to remember, and I would expect nothing less from you.”

Delila stopped struggling. She hung from the wall, her dark blood dripping onto the carpet.

“I’m going to eat your soul,” she declared boldly.

The man shrugged. “Maybe one day, but not today,” he said apologetically. “Today you are coming with me. We are going into the city, through the Gate. You aren’t going to attack anyone. You aren’t going to try to escape. You’re going to stay by my side, and follow my directions exactly. If you don’t-”

He lifted his wand, and a bright red lightsaber blade emerged from the tip. Delila did not flinch as the man lowered the blade delicately to her cheek, causing her skin to hiss and crackle.

“I’m going to cut your head off,” the man continued. He removed the saber blade from her cheek as putrid smoke began to fill the room. “But if you follow my every direction perfectly, I will show you how to wield a power more terrible than the Omniverse has ever seen. And you will have the strength to sate your hunger.”

Delila just stared at the man with her black eyes narrowed. Her body hung limp as her black blood pooled beneath her. Finally, with a hiss of frustration, she spoke.

“You will show me!”

✶✶✶

[Harry Potter]

✶✶✶

The light of day was blinding to Delila, and her void black eyes were disturbing the Costa Del Sol tourists, so the man who called himself her grandfather purchased her a pair of tinted aviator sunglasses. She dressed casually, in a tank-top and shorts, her abdomen wound seemingly healed. The man beside her smiles genially at anyone who looked their way, but it did not seem to matter.

The flock of tourists gave Delila a wide berth. An aura of dread seemed to follow her, triggering some evolutionary aversion among the throngs of people.

Delila fed from them all.

She fed on their happiness, their hope, their love. She fed on their life force, draining it from the air around her, but she was not sated. She could feel the souls of the passersby, could see them shining like bright white lights in their chests. She would find herself drifting towards them, and feel the sharp tug on her elbow from the man who called himself her grandfather.

He kept up a steady stream of conversation, but Delila was not listening.


“You mother and I come from two universe, both alike and yet unlike,” the man said, gripping Delila’s arm tightly. “They are bound together on a subatomic level by a single substance that creates a net passing between the universes. In my universe, we called this substance the Force. In your mother’s world, they called it Magic.”

He did not let go of Delila’s arm even as he felt her relax. He was nervous still, jumpy even, watching Delila’s head swivel to follow every passing being.

“I’m hungry,” Delila repeated, smiling at a very uncomfortable half-orc who was avoiding her gaze. The man sighed.

“You will not be hungry for long,” he said. He pulled Delila off the busy street and onto a very tall outdoor escalator. Delila grinned and leaned over the railing, looking for all the world like a young woman excited to see a city teeming with life.

The man frowned thoughtfully.

“Delila,” he said with hesitation in his voice. “Have you ever TRIED to eat food?”

✶✶✶

Delila and the man who called himself her grandfather sat beneath a parasol on a deck of a restaurant in Costa Del Sol, eating ice cream cones. The man kept a watchful eye on Delila as the half-dementor smiled at tourists and made them uncomfortable, her chocolate ice cream cone melting onto her hand.

“How is it?” the man asked.

“Cold,” Delila said after a moment, remembering to lick the ice cream again. “Like me.”

The man nodded; he was pretty sure Delila had no taste buds. He also thought she might be blind, despite her complaints about the brightness of the sun . The ice cream seemed to relax her, or at least distract her somewhat.

“Everyone says my mother was evil,” Delila said suddenly, staring at her desert.

The man raised his eyebrows; he didn’t think Delila understood concepts such as morality, or even social stigma.

“How does that make you feel?” the man asked curiously.

The black eyed girl did not respond, and the man wondered if she felt anything at all.

“The word ‘evil’ gets thrown around a lot, mostly as an accusation” the man continued, measuring his words. “It is often another way of saying different, or foreign. There are those that say evil is in ends not in the means, and those that say evil is in the means not the ends. The Dark Side is often called evil, as are Dark Magics, though this is not always so. However, I think in the case of Bellatrix Lestrange there can be no argument that she was evil. Her means, and her attempted ends, violate those laws of morality that are held most sacred by society, even across universes.”

Delila seemed introspective. “That’s what I thought,” the girl said, seeming to have lost interest in her ice cream. She was eyeing a little boy on the boardwalk several stories below them.

“Are you evil, Delila?” The man asked, leaning forward.

Delile shrugged, and did not take her bizarre eyes off the boy on the boardwalk. “I’m hungry,” she repeated.

The man nodded in understanding. “You have your father’s eyes,” he said after a moment. “But you have your mother’s face. Do you feel nothing but your father’s hunger?”

Delila did not have a quick answer, but she discarded her ice cream. “It hurts,” she confessed eventually. “The hunger gnaws. The pain is very strong, but beneath the pain, I can feel something. I can taste my fear.”

The man licked his ice cream pensively. “Fear I can work with. Fear leads to anger. You do seem to have some basic sense of self-preservation, even if I had to pin you to wall to bring it out. Do you know how I found you?”

Delila was not listening. “I’m hungry,” she said again, with an air of wistful impatience.

The man sighed, and worried about customs.

✶✶✶