This was written in response to mew-tsubaki's "Valentine's Day Happens Year-Round" challenge.

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"Love is the slowest form of suicide."

Bellatrix Lestrange had killed many people. So many had died at her hand, writhing in untold agony as she threw back her head and laughed, a sound that was at once happy and sad, hearty yet chilling. Murder was her greatest joy, her art, and all of her intended victims suffered in a spectacular homage to their master.

All but one.

Rodolphus Lestrange.

Slowly but surely, Bellatrix was killing her husband. She did not know it. Rodolphus doubted that his slow decline at her hand was theatrical or fun enough for Bellatrix to notice. But he couldn't stop loving her.

She had vowed to have him in sickness and health. They were husband and wife, but it was another man that evoked her passion; the Dark Lord. And it was killing him. Every time he saw the way her dark eyes sparkled as their master, her master, allowed his gaze to linger upon Bellatrix, the cold ache inside Rodolphus grew. It ate at him, sucking all sense of achievement and validity from his bones.

Lord Voldemort lacked the capacity for love – more than that, he considered it a weakness. The Dark Lord may deign to glance at his mesmerising, fiery wife, who sunk to new depths of depravity with every raid in an effort to impress him, but he would never acknowledge Bellatrix as anything more than a convenient form of entertainment.

Rodolphus loved Bellatrix exactly as she deserved to be loved. He loved her slender body, her creativity with curses, and the way her relentlessness would never burn out. If she would let him, Rodolphus knew that he could make them both happy.

Instead, Bellatrix gave him barely a fraction of the attention she received from the Dark Lord. If Voldemort was a cruel master, Bellatrix was an abusive one.

At her best, she would mock his feelings – 'Do you wuv me, Rodolphus? Do you? It's pathetic!' – and laugh until she could no longer speak. At her worst she would be indifferent, continuing her life as though he didn't exist.

Rodolphus longed for her until he knew that he would die of it.

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