November 1982

Azkaban Prison

Bellatrix Lestrange spooned gruel into her mouth and stared out the window through the bars. She eyed the Dementor who was floating in the grey sky outside Azkaban, and she sighed. Let them try to take her soul, she thought. She would never surrender. She would never give up herself, for if she did, she'd be giving up on him, on the Dark Lord, and she would never give up on him.

He was out there somewhere. Bellatrix set down her wooden bowl, listening to it scrape on the stone floor of the cell. She set her spoon into the bowl and gripped the bars of the window, her eyes locking onto the Dementor. Somewhere out in that great wide world was her master. Her lord and master was not dead. She could never believe such a thing. He was gone, but never forgotten, never given up upon. So many had forsaken him, but not Bellatrix. She would never, ever stop searching. Someday, she'd escape this prison, she thought, and she'd find him. She'd bring her master back to life. Somehow. Someday.

She went over to her straw-filled cot on the ground and lay down, feeling weak and weary after six weeks' imprisonment. She was hungry, but not for more gruel. She watched as a rat scurried across the floor and approached her bowl of food. She let the rat nibble away. She didn't care anymore about things like that. All that mattered was that someday she'd help her master come back.

Bellatrix lay her head down upon the mattress, feeling straw poke through the threadbare fabric and jab at her cheek. She stared at the rat and the bowl until the rat gave up and ran away into a very small hole in the wall. Bellatrix wondered if someday she could make that hole bigger and escape. Someday. Somehow.

She shut her eyes and dreamed of him. She dreamed of her master, of Lord Voldemort. She dreamed of how he used to sit in meetings and command the room with the quietest voice. She dreamed of him in battle, dueling Dumbledore and Moody and the others. She dreamed of him in his office when she'd go alone to meet with him, when he'd speak quietly and almost gently to her. She dreamed of him, and then she was lost to a great vast blackness.

And when she opened her eyes, she was somewhere else entirely.

She was in a bed, more specifically. Bellatrix thought for certain she must still be dreaming. She sat up slowly, realised she was in a nightgown, and pulled back the emerald green curtains of the bed in which she'd been lying. She rose slowly from the bed, thinking this was a very nice dream.

"Who are you?" asked a voice, and Bellatrix jolted. Suddenly she realised she was awake. She knew so, for she'd backed into the corner of the bed and hurt herself, and she'd felt the pain. She looked up to see a very familiar young witch standing before her. Her mother - but younger. Bellatrix scowled and asked carefully,

"D-Druella?"

"Who are you?" the witch asked again, more sharply this time. "What are you doing in our dormitory?"

"Dormitory?" Bellatrix looked around. Yes. This was a Slytherin girls' dormitory. Something was off about it, something she couldn't quite place, but it looked incredibly familiar now. Bellatrix stared at her mother, who looked to be about sixteen or seventeen, and she asked again,

"Druella?"

"How do you know my name?" Druella snapped, crossing her arms over her chest.

"What's going on? Who the blazes are you?" asked a blonde witch in curlers who came crawling out of another bed. Two more witches came out, and a veritable riot of questions broke out as everyone began asking who Bellatrix was and how she'd gotten into their dormitory.

"Wait," Bellatrix said, holding up her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "I'm not meant to be here. I'm meant to be in… in… Well, I fell asleep somewhere else."

"Where?" demanded the blonde witch, and Bellatrix hesitated.

"I can't really say. What month is it?"

"It's November," said the blonde witch. "November of 1944, of course."

"Did you say…" Bellatrix felt dizzy and leaned onto the bedpost behind her. She shook her head. "Nineteen forty… four… are you certain?"

"Pretty certain!" cried a pudgy brunette witch, putting her hands on her hips. "What, you fell asleep in some other time, is that what you're saying? That's impossible?"

"It's not impossible," said the blonde witch. "It's highly illegal, and it's incredibly dangerous, but it's not impossible."

"You seem like a bright witch," said Bellatrix to the blonde girl. "What are you called?"

"Ivy Greengrass," said the witch, and Bellatrix's heart sank. Her mother had often spoken of a girl called Ivy, who had been her classmate, her school friend. Ivy had died when they were all twenty years old, apparently. Some rare genetic condition. This girl had only a few years to live. Bellatrix gulped and nodded.

"Well, Ivy, you're right, it would seem. I fell asleep in nineteen eighty-two, and I woke up in this bed."

There was a great clatter then as the girls in the Slytherin dormitory figured out that Bellatrix was a time-traveler from the future.

"We should get her to Professor Dippet at once!" said Druella, and Bellatrix tipped her head up.

"I'm not a threat, you know," she insisted, but Druella narrowed her eyes.

"We don't know anything about you. We don't even know your name."

"I'm called Bellatrix," she said, and Druella's face suddenly shifted oddly.

"Bellatrix," she repeated. "I always said that if I had a daughter, I'd call her that. Lovely name."

"Thank you," Bellatrix mumbled. She turned to Ivy Greengrass and said, "When I fell asleep, it was evening. Is it morning now?"

"Yes," Ivy said carefully. She turned to the other girls, looking concerned, and said, "We really ought to take her to Professor Dippet."

"Wait," Bellatrix said quickly, counting years in her head. Her parents had gone to school with… if it was nineteen forty-four, then… "Is Tom Riddle a student here?"

"How did you know that?" asked Ivy, looking suspicious, and Bellatrix nibbled her lip as she shrugged and asked,

"Don't you suspect that in the future, a great many people will know who Tom Riddle is?"

"I suppose so," said Ivy, and the plump brunette girl confirmed,

"He's Head Boy. Of course he's a student here."

"I need to speak with Tom Riddle, please," Bellatrix beseeched the girls. "Please. Please, it's urgent."

"I don't think that's a good idea," said Ivy, but Druella said softly,

"Perhaps we ought to let Tom have a look at her and see what he thinks is best to do next."

"Yes! Yes!" Bellatrix almost added, Mum, but she managed not to. She said quickly, "You should always do what Tom Riddle thinks is best!"

The others seemed very uneasy at that, but ten minutes later, all the girls were dressed, and Bellatrix was in a borrowed black dress that belonged to Druella Rosier. She walked in the middle of the pack of girls, an escorted prisoner, out to the Slytherin Common Room, and Ivy Greengrass went to the boys' dormitory and called in that they needed Tom Riddle immediately. Five minutes later, he came out in his school uniform, and Bellatrix almost lost consciousness.

He was indefensibly handsome at seventeen, with wavy black hair that was thick as you please. He had piercing dark eyes and a chiseled face, and his sharp features were accented by a slick smirk that seemed perpetually plastered upon his full lips. When he came walking out of the boys' dormitory, Tom Riddle eyed the pack of girls and said playfully,

"Ladies, it isn't even breakfast time; you must give me… Oh. Hello. Who are you?"

"Tom," said Ivy in a low voice, "This is Bellatrix. She woke up in our dormitory."

"She woke up in your dormitory," Tom repeated sounding a bit confused. Bellatrix tried to catch her breath. She couldn't seem to breathe, all of a sudden. She swallowed hard and finally spoke up.

"I fell asleep in Azkaban Prison in nineteen eighty-two," she said, and the girls all gasped as she revealed where she'd come from. Tom Riddle's dark eyes flashed, and he said in a menacing sort of voice,

"Ladies, if you will kindly give me a moment with Miss…"

"Madam," she corrected. "Madam Lestrange."

His eyes flashed again. "If you will kindly give me a moment to discuss things with Madam Lestrange, and we shall proceed from there."

He walked with her to a pair of wingback chairs facing one another, and the girls all retreated to their dormitory at Riddle's command. Tom sat facing Bellatrix, and she bowed her head. She shut her eyes and said sincerely,

"It is so good to see you again, even if it is in an altered state, Master."

"What did you say?" His voice was very quiet then. Bellatrix raised her eyes to him, and she told him honestly,

"Where I come from, you are the master, and I am the servant."

He was silent for a long moment, and then he said, "What an unexpected, and not at all unwelcome, thing for you to say. Nineteen eighty-two, you said."

"But, Master," Bellatrix whispered, "I was in prison because something awful had happened to you. I must have been sent back here to warn you. That must be why I'm here. You… there was a baby you were trying to kill, and the Killing Curse rebounded. You vanished into thin air. You disappeared."

"That's impossible," Tom said dismissively. "I have my… anyway, that doesn't explain why you were in prison."

Bellatrix pinched her lips and said, "When you disappeared, My Lord, many people gave up on you at once. But not me. I was determined to find you, to help bring you back. And I was interrogating people -"

"Torturing people," Tom said, "with the Cruciatus Curse." He narrowed his eyes, and Bellatrix nodded. Tom's brows went up. Bellatrix continued,

"We took it too far with some, and we got caught. We got thrown into Azkaban. But I screamed at them as they dragged me away to prison. I screamed at them that the Dark Lord would rise again. And last night, I fell asleep on my straw cot and I dreamed of you, Master. And then I awoke here. It cannot be an accident. I have been sent to warn you, to spare you the fate of destruction that unfolded for you."

"Bellatrix," Tom said very carefully, tenting his fingers. "You and I were quite close, it would seem."

Bellatrix felt her cheeks go warm. "Not so close as I might have liked, Master, but I served you with all my might."

"Much as I adore the honorifics, Bellatrix, I'm not sure the others are ready for them," he said gently. "Call me Tom."

Bellatrix scoffed a little and shook her head. "I couldn't possibly…"

"I insist," he replied, and Bellatrix just nodded her assent. He asked her cautiously, "How old are you? Were you?"

"Thirty, Mast… erm… Tom." Bellatrix folded her hands in her lap anxiously, and Tom scowled.

"No," he said, "You're not a day over seventeen."

"I beg your pardon?" Bellatrix asked, and he took out his wand. He Conjured a mirror from thin air and handed it over to her, and Bellatrix gasped at her reflection. She had childlike features again, and there was a roundness to her cheeks that had given way in adulthood to a sharp gauntness. She had apparently moved back in age when she'd come through time and space. She was meant to stay, then, it seemed. She huffed a breath and handed the mirror back to Tom, impressed when he Vanished it nonverbally.

"Some force of the Universe sent you through time, space, and age to intersect with my path," Tom concluded. "That is very clear. And I do think I shall like having you around, Bellatrix. Now. As Head Boy, it is my duty to escort you, our time-traveling visitor, to the Headmaster. But don't worry. I'll make certain he lets you stay."

Author's Note: Squeeeeee! Okay, I'm super excited about this one. This will be a novel-length Bellamort (Bellariddle?), which I haven't written in a while. I would be very grateful for your feedback on this. Thanks so much for reading.