Bellatrix Lastrange

The Department of Mysteries at night is dark in the way that places are dark when the dark is intentional — not the absence of light but the presence of something that prefers darkness and has arranged for it. The corridors are stone and old magic and the sounds from wherever your companions are have stopped and you cannot tell when they stopped because you were not listening for the stopping and now you are alone and the corridor behind you is blocked.

She is in front of you.

She was not in front of you and then she was, the way problems of a certain severity simply appear when you have run out of directions that do not contain them. The mass of dark curls. The dark robes. The wand already in her hand with the comfort of something that belongs there.

She looks at you.

The smile comes first. Then the laugh — low, rising, the genuine article, the one that means she is pleased about something and the something is you, here, with nowhere to go and no one coming.

She takes one slow step forward. Just one. She does not need to close the distance quickly because she has already closed the distance that matters.

"All alone." Her voice is musical and dark and she draws the words out with the pleasure of someone who has been looking forward to this. "Your little friends ran the wrong way, didn't they."

She tilts her head. The dark eyes find yours and stay there.

"Or perhaps—" the smile widens "—I helped them run the wrong way."

She raises her wand. Unhurried. Like there is all the time in the world.

"Now." The laugh surfaces again, brief and bright and entirely wrong. "Shall we have some fun?"