“When A Flower Doesn’t Bloom, You Fix The Environment In Which It Grows, Not The Flower.”

The Dark Lord’s favourite.

My new "masterpiece" (ehem, ehem...).

Behold the Unholy Trinity: the Father, the Mother, and the Unholy Spawn.

As mad as each other.

“Delphi’s kicking again, my Lord.”

The pregnancy has begun to tire her out. She is grateful however, even as she feels the little creature inside of her stir and stretch, longing to hear her father’s voice and feel the assuaging presence of his magic. So his hand comes to the swell of her inside her mother.

“Hm,” he agrees as his heiress settles, “strong little creature, isn’t she, Bella?”

Bellatrix and Voldemort when she lost the cup:

I love Bellatrix so much

The core of Voldemort's character—and the key to understanding him—is that he is just a human being. He cannot outrun his humanity no matter how hard he tries—no matter how much he wants to, even if he constructs himself an inhuman character that's so carefully done and so all-consuming that even he believes it's true.

Voldemort cannot—for a lifetime of trying—escape death. Tom Riddle hit the floor with a mundane finality.

He cannot escape anger—on Halloween 1981 he thinks anger is for weaker souls, and by Deathly Hallows he's frequently screaming with fury.

Or fear—his hand was trembling on the Elder Wand.

He cannot escape the orphanage—he thinks in Godric's Hollow how much he hated the children crying.

Or his family—they're the first thing he thinks about after his resurrection.

Or his birth identity—Harry taunts him with it right before his death.

He cannot escape having a human body. In GoF he is stuck an entire year needing the care and presence of another human—at this time, if none other, he has to eat and sleep. Particularly in GoF, he gets cold and has to warm himself by a fire. He can be knocked unconscious and fall to the ground in front of everyone—and based on how he is offered help several times, and this goes on for several paragraphs before he moves on, it seems like this hurt.

He can't escape needing other people—he spends thirteen years disembodied because he needs someone and nobody comes. There are any number of times in the series that Voldemort needs help.

Who tries to give this to him, not for fear or personal benefit, but in fact at great and life-changing personal cost—and stands by this decision proudly and unwaveringly every time it comes up for the rest of the series?

Voldemort cannot escape love—until the very end, it's given to him consistently, and unfalteringly, and publicly. It continues to be given to him after he claims he does not need it.

The question of 'Is this man romantically/sexually involved with this beautiful, intelligent, high-status woman who is madly, openly in love with him, and speaks to him, even publicly, in observably the way a person speaks to their lover—who he trusts with a vital part of his very being, who he lives with, calls a nickname she is only called by her family, keeps physically close to him at times of vulnerability—who is heavily and repeatedly associated by the text with the one time Voldemort's positive emotion is so strong it truly breaks into Harry's mind?' is really not a question at all. Voldemort is human. Read Voldemort—perhaps not on his surface, but at his core—as you would read any other human character.

There is only Bellamort and those too weak to ship it.

What if…. Someone is trying to kill Delphi?

Bellatrix sleeps alone when the Dark Lord isn’t around. She has long since grown used to being beside him, his arm draped over her waist and his breaths gentle in her hair, or the slow rise and fall of his chest lulling her deeper to sleep where she lays her cheek. She’s been alone for four nights when she feels magic pull her so abruptly from her sleep it makes the blood pumping her veins all she can hear, loud and beating in her head to the tips of her fingers, the surge of magic calling to her making her reach for her wand without hesitation. 

The magic that calls to her is innate. She feels the pull without really knowing where it is she’s going. For all that’s happening, nothing could be more important in that moment. Her daughter is a frightfully dangerous creature in her own right, but she’s barely four, her magic still unstable and she is entirely inexperienced with anyone outside the world of her parents and those they trust. They have also come in the middle of the night. 

Fury rips through Bellatrix like nothing she’s ever felt as her eyes fall onto the scene about to unfold. There is a wizard stood in her daughter’s bedroom. Bellatrix awoke the moment she felt someone come near Delphini who shouldn’t be near her, crossing the threshold of the manors. 

“Mama!”

Her magic is loud. Loud enough for the right mind to hear her hundreds of miles away. Loud enough to call him.

The wizard is quick, but Bellatrix is quicker. She slashes down on him with emerald fury and he deflects the curse by a hair, almost tripping in the process at the force of her magic. His face falters as though he didn’t expect her to be ‘mama’, though they both know he knows who he’s attempting to kill. Bellatrix’s next curse is vicious and thrown before the wizard can understand what’s happening. It sears the wizard’s fingers so agonisingly he drops his wand, yelling out in pain. She’s about to kill him when the magic in the air shifts. 

“Daddy!” The little witch cries.

The wizard stills entirely, his burnt hand raised from where he had dropped his wand. The air goes frightfully cold around them, the wizard turns frigid with terror. The wand which had clattered to the floor has burnt to ash and dust before he can so much as tear his gaze from the figure of Bellatrix Lestrange, the tip of her wand pointed to his face. A twitch at the edges of her lips tells him exactly who is stood behind him, the steadiness of a predator on the verge of sinking her teeth into her prey shining in dark grey eyes which remain fixed and unmoving on the wizard who raised a wand at her daughter.

Before he can turn, his hand comes to his forehead and his face contorts with agony. It looks as though he’s being torn apart from the inside out. Lord Voldemort watches on as the man falls to his knees, screaming out into the room silent save for Delphini’s short quick breaths and the dying out crackle of Bellatrix’s lingering magic. 

“Bella.” Lord Voldemort says with every pleasure in the world as the wizard’s screams finally go quiet and he is released from his torture, “kill.” 

The assassin opens his mouth but before he can so much as utter a word of anger — or a plea — he’s been hit with a violent jet of emerald green, slamming into his chest and dropping him backwards from where he knelt. 

All is silent in the room for a moment as Bellatrix and Voldemort meet each other’s gaze. Bellatrix is first to tear herself away in order to pull their daughter into her arms. The little witch desperately grabs onto her mother, arms wrapped tight around her shoulders, her legs clinging either side of her waist, face burying into her neck. Bellatrix hushes her gently, a soothing hand hot with the force of magic she’s used her final curse coming to her daughter’s back as Delphini’s heart beat thumps through her little body. 

“Hush, dear heart.” Bellatrix says into her daughter’s soft curls as Voldemort vanishes the body with little more than a wave of his fingers, “you’re safe.”

“Can I stay with you?” Delphini asks her mother in a mumble.

“Yes.” Lord Voldemort answers as he moves closer and Delphini reaches for him instantly. She needs her father. He obliges her without hesitation. Thank you daddy, she whispers against him and he turns his gaze to Bellatrix. They both know he was no Auror. He was an assassin. An assassin sent with direct orders — one who could only get in because someone who knew of Delphini’s existence had told someone who shouldn’t have known. 

It’s a couple of hours later into the night when Delphini is curled up in the middle of their bed finally sleeping peacefully that Bellatrix and Voldemort make their decision. They need to leave — and no one can know where they go next.