Author's Note: Don't be mad, but this is the last chapter of the story. This just is the end of the story, and so… here we go. *cries to self*

He looked like he was dying.

She'd dosed him up with Eloqui Elixir, and she'd propped him up on some pillows, and she'd stripped him down to one of the crisp white shirts she'd bought him the Christmas before and his underwear and had pulled blankets around him. But the colour had gone from his face, and there were dark circles under his eyes, and Bellatrix could swear that she saw a little hint of burgundy in his eyes, a little thread of grey in his hair.

"Master," she murmured, pulling herself up onto the white bed beside him, "can I get you anything? Water? A biscuit to eat? Anything?"

"I just want you," he said, a little pathetically. He smiled a little at her and rubbed between her shoulder blades, and he told her, "You look tired."

If she was honest, she felt like she hadn't slept for days. She felt like if she put her head on a pillow, she'd sleep for twelve hours without dreaming. She wasn't certain why she was so fatigued. But she shook her head, far too worried about Voldemort to care about being sleepy, and she insisted,

"I'm fine, Master."

"I have a song stuck in my head," he informed her, and as she arranged herself beside him, facing him, she asked,

"Is it 'Nessun Dorma'? That piece that played in the orphanage when you were little?"

"No." He shook his head and shut his eyes, and he hummed a little tune, a two-step that Bellatrix had never heard before. She watched his throat bob, and he said softly, "Until the day I die, I shall never forget that dance."

"Dance?" Bellatrix was confused, but he reached for her left hand, dragged his thumb over the engagement ring he'd given her, and he whispered,

"Only once. Just one song. That's all I ever got from you there."

"Oh. My twenty-first birthday party, the first time round for you, you mean." Bellatrix caressed his hand with her thumb, and he said,

"Sometimes, I'd stare at this damned ring, once you were married to Rodolphus, and I would wonder what you would have looked like dancing with me on our wedding day. And then I'd scold myself, knowing I'd never find out. Only, I did find out. In Monte Carlo. And you looked beautiful, Bellatrix."

Her eyes burned and boiled over suddenly. She wasn't sure why she was crying, but something inside of her was filling up with dread, and she found herself whispering,

"Please don't leave me."

"I have no intention of leaving you," he said firmly, "but I do feel myself going. Detaching. Floating away a little. And I do feel old. So very old."

"No, Master." Bellatrix shook her head fiercely. She clutched his hand to her chest, bent to kiss him hard on the lips, and then met his eyes and shook her head again. "No. You are here. And we are together. And look at you! Young and vibrant. Let's talk about something else. Have you ever considered that Lucius Malfoy, and by extension Draco, might have been descended from Yaxley and not Abraxas? Maybe they weren't Malfoys at all! Have you thought about that?"

Voldemort smirked weakly and brought Bellatrix's knuckles to his lips. He seemed as though he were trying not to be condescending as he whispered,

"I think my mind is rather beyond Abraxas' sperm count, Bellatrix."

She laughed despite herself, and she lay down beside him, complaining softly,

"I'm tired. I'm so tired."

"Please come with me," he begged her. He tangled his fingers into her hair, twining them a little, and he sounded distant as he told her, "You used to like when I played with your hair."

"I still do," she nodded. She curled up against him, listening to his heart beating slowly inside his chest, and she asked him, "Should we use the clock on the mantle?"

"No," he mumbled confidently, sounding more than a little drowsy. "I think we'll wake up together. Whether it's in 1911, or 2002, or dead. When our eyes open, you'll be with me. I just know that to be true. Tell me, Bellatrix. What's your favourite ice cream flavour?"

She smiled up at him, her head feeling heavy, and she reminded him, "Honey and sea salt."

He nodded slightly and turned his head toward her. "Florean Fortescue will use it to make a commemorative ice cream, something to mark forty years of me being Minister for Life."

Realisation came over Bellatrix, and she sighed as she curled her fingers around the clock pendant she wore. "That's where you went? That's what you saw?"

"Yes," he whispered. "I took their ladder. And you were with me. You had to have been, if they made an ice cream for you."

She smiled a little and looked around the flat. She was more sleepy than ever now. She should feel afraid. Her heart was slowing, not speeding up like it usually did with fear. She should be breathing quickly, but instead her breaths were laboured and heavy. This felt like dying, like a slow and easy sinking, like dissolving. But she wasn't afraid. Should she be afraid?

"Master?" she turned to meet his eyes again, but he had shut them. His chest was rising and falling very slowly now, and she tucked herself up beside him and closed her eyes. She felt his fingers, not shaking one little bit, settle into her hair. Just before she slipped off into sleep, she heard a distant voice whisper,

"You used to like when I did this…"

"Hyanosssiath kyanossss…"

Lord Voldemort slowly opened his eyes and smiled a little, looking around the clean, grey and white office he'd first encountered in his vision. Nagini was curled up on the rug in the middle of the office, and as he rose, he hissed at her in Parseltongue,

"Well. Long time, no see. How did you get here?"

"It is complicated, Master, as is time," she hissed back. "A long way through time and space have I come to you. To her."

Voldemort glanced at his desk and saw the issue there about the fortieth anniversary gala, about Florean Fortescue's making an ice cream honouring the Dark Lady's preferences. He sighed a little and flicked his eyes to the mirror on the wall, recognising himself even through the lines and the grey-white hair. He swallowed hard and hissed at Nagini,

"Where is she?"

Nagini slithered over toward the door, and for a brief moment, Voldemort was vaguely certain that snakes could smirk, for Nagini looked awfully satisfied. Suddenly he heard the patter of boot steps in the corridor outside, and he heard a trembling voice call,

"Master? My Lord?"

"I'm in here, Bella." He couldn't help himself from walking quickly toward her then, and he froze when she appeared in the doorway. Her eyes were overflowing with tears, and she laughed almost maniacally as she exclaimed joyfully,

"We're old!"

He laughed back and shrugged. "Yes. We are."

"Nagini!" Bellatrix, who, like Voldemort, had aged the way humans were meant to do, crouched down. Her once black curls had greyed, and her face had wrinkled, but as she stood creakily from giving Nagini some affection, Voldemort told her very honestly,

"You are absolutely beautiful."

She smiled crookedly and admitted, "Not as bad as I'd always feared. And the age gap's gone, so there's that. It does seem as though I've mentally missed half a century of my life, but… well… it is what it is. I shall just have to live to be two hundred, like Norah Abbott did."

Nagini slithered across the office and curled herself up around something Voldemort hadn't noticed - a stylish ladder of shiny chrome.

"She made this for you as a birthday gift ten years ago," Nagini hissed in Parseltongue. "A symbol, she said then. To remind you. You climbed their ladder, and now it is yours."

"What did she say?" Bellatrix asked, and Voldemort felt his heart race a little as he smiled at her face, which had aged so very gracefully, and said,

"She was just… confirming a prophecy. Now. Let's you and I go and explore my empire, shall we, My Lady?"

He held out his hand to her, and as she took it, he noticed that she was still wearing the diamond ring he'd put on her, and he nodded, and all was well.

THE END -

Author's Note: Whew! What an adventure this story has been to write, and clocking in at over 110,000 words in exactly a month, it's been a doozy, too. I am so incredibly grateful for the readership, the encouragement, and the feedback. It has meant more than I can say.

I do hope that if you're a Bellamort fan, you will join me on my next adventure, which is a story that will be novel-length and will begin tonight or tomorrow. Entitled Her Cruel and Angry Bones, this will be a story where Bellatrix is expelled from Hogwarts (and brought before the Wizengamot) for using the Cruciatus Curse against a fellow student. When her parents kick her out of the house for shaming the family, Lord Voldemort decides to take this cruel young witch under his wing as a protégé, and things go very wrong very quickly. :}

Thank you again so very much for reading this story. Hope to see you at Her Cruel and Angry Bones. Please do let me know what you thought of this one!