About a Skivvy; or, the fate of Bellatrix Lestrange
Holland Park is probably the most desirable neighbourhood in London; certainly the most agreeable. Unlike other rich quarters, it does not present row upon row of lookalike whitewashed mansions: each house is individual, and they all stand within their own grounds. It is within walking distance of the shopping district of Notting Hill Gate, the famous Portobello Market, and two delightful parks – including Peter Pan's Kensington Gardens – and the hilly terrain makes it picturesque as well as pleasant.
At the tradesmen's entrance of one of the grandest and most beautifully designed of these mansions came, one morning, a young-looking woman with curly brown hair, dressed in nondescript jeans, trainers, a chequered shirt, and a green mackintosh. To the person who opened, she said, in an unexpectedly mature alto voice: "Hello... I'm Debbie Wallace. I've come about the cleaning job."
Debbie noticed that the maid who had answered was actually dressed in a maid's uniform, such as she had only seen before in TV shows. She found herself hoping that the owners of the mansion did not have funny ideas about the dress of servants.
Unfortunately, they had. Within a few minutes, she found herself in the hands of a truly terrible housekeeper, the kind one read of in P.G.Wodehouse, being measured for a maid's outfit. The fact that her employment was only temporary and quite skivy-ish, and that she was not likely to even meet the owners – a Mr. and Mrs. Lestrange – did not, apparently, preserve her from the household's notions of correct dress. To her relief, the housekeeper found that they had a uniform her size; otherwise, she would have had to procure it herself. The housekeeper did not say whether she would have been expected to pay for it or not.
Yet Debbie would not have described the atmosphere in the house as old- fashioned. There was a sense of sanitized efficiency, and a distinct lack of intimacy and animation, that she associated more with shop-floors or open-plan offices she had known, than with any kind of house; and with all that, there was a different, unusual sort of background feel, a taste as if of an extra gas in the air – yet certainly nothing physical – that, in certain moments, all but overwhelmed her. She called it the "acid taste", and tried not to pay it any mind.
Debbie went quietly on about her duties. This was hardly the first unpleasant employer she had ever worked for; indeed, the very notion that work might be pleasant was not one she often entertained. Work was something that had to be done, and therefore she did it. Anyway, this particular job was only temporary – as long as she needed to earn enough money to re-carpet her flat, buy a new fridge, and cover some of the costs of her two children's school fees. And it did not pay badly; in fact, for a skivy-type temp, the rate was quite generous. Debbie had taken it for that and no other reason. She already had two regular part-time jobs, but she needed some extra money.
After all, she had spent most of her life working. The birth of her first child, when she was only sixteen, had marked her for ever. Her family had wanted her to abort him; when she refused, they threw her out, and she had to find employment somehow. By the time she was an adult, she had gone through more suffering and effort than many people experience in a lifetime, including falling into a bad drinking habit and kicking it by her own unaided efforts. Yet her face did not show it. Perhaps because she tended to be slightly overweight – nothing serious, but just enough to round out her features and limbs – she somehow managed to seem little more than a teen-ager, fresh-faced, with huge ingenuous blue eyes and naturally curly hair – unruly, she complained, but many women would spend good money for that luminous tone of brown and those round, delightful locks. She was, in her own way, very pretty, with tiny, graceful hands and feet; not that it had done her a lot of good, since she seemed to have an infallible gift for attracting the wrong men. A series of disastrous relationships had left her with two children from different fathers and a resolution never again to let anyone male into her life. She was a generous little creature, whose many friends tended to rely on her; it was only from time to time that one came upon something less pleasant – a streak of obstinacy, a habit never to tell anyone what she meant to do, and a tendency to tell people what they wanted to hear rather than what she intended, that could sometimes lead to dire consequences when anyone took her word too seriously.
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The first hint of what was to happen came as the end of her job at the Lestranges was – she thought – only three days away. She had finished a particularly unpleasant bit of cleaning out in the kitchen, ahead of time, and was making her way to the housekeeper's pantry to see what else she could do. The back door bell rang, and – since nobody else was there – she answered. A middle-aged woman with dyed curls stood there.
"Good morning. I'm Mrs.Leftwich. I've come about the kitchen job."
Debbie knew that the kitchens were being refurbished, and that the cook had asked for an assistant; so she was not surprised.
"Come in, please. I'll show you to the housekeeper."
Debbie would have thought nothing more of it, were it not that the housekeeper turned out not to have anything more for her to do, and said she could go home for the day. So, as she was changing out of her uniform, she overheard part of the assistant cook's interview.
"...I'm afraid that, if we do not have a uniform your size, you will have to procure one yourself."
Same story as with her, she grinned inwardly. The housekeeper and the cook come out of the pantry, without noticing her. They went to a locker and pulled out what looked like a very inadequate cook's uniform – and Debbie's eyes went very wide, as she watched them do something very strange indeed. The cook held up the white uniform; the housekeeper pointed a long, thin wooden stick at it; a few sparkling lights appeared at the stick's end; and, without any apparent reason, the uniform suddenly appeared to grow – until it was, unmistakably, suited for Mrs.Leftwich's ample proportions. Without saying a word, cook and housekeeper turned back.
Debbie's breath, held for several seconds, was suddenly released with a disbelieving gasp. From the pantry came the familiar words: "You're in luck, Mrs.Leftwich, we have found one just your size..." Suddenly she felt very uneasy in her own half-discarded uniform; she almost tore it off, and, putting on her jeans, shirt and mackintosh, she forced herself not to run out of the house.
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By the next day, she had almost managed to convince herself that she had seen nothing exceptional. It was probably some sort of optical effect that had let the cook's uniform look smaller than it really was. She was, at any rate, not very troubled: her job would be over in two days, and, quite apart from whether what she had seen was real or not, she had found the atmosphere unpleasant enough not to want to come back.
Guests, it seems, were coming, and she was assigned to clean the galleries that overlooked the Great Hall. It was less easy work than it seemed – some of the stains had a curiously obstinate quality, requiring plenty of elbow grease; and Debbie had already been working at one of her other two jobs. She leaned against the marble balustrade.
Suddenly, impossibly, the balustrade wasn't there. Debbie screamed, falling into a void, and hit her back and head. The last thing she felt was the pain of impact.
She came to slowly and in great pain. Her body ached, and she could feel the trickle of blood from the side of her head and its taste in her mouth. When she had collected herself enough to understand, she realized that she had fallen right behind a very high-backed sofa; no wonder nobody had seen her. Then she heard voices, and poked her head out from behind the sofa. She did not try to make herself noticed; she had a nasty feeling that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that the best thing to be done was to wait until everyone had gone, and then sneak out.
Unfortunately, the people present seemed to have no intention of leaving. Debbie had never seen the mistress of the house in person, but she guessed that it was the tall, red-haired, handsome woman with the hooded eyes, because she behaved with that indefinable sense of being at home somewhere that suggests ownership. The two people sitting in front of her were obviously a couple; Debbie could not decide whether they were related or husband and wife – they behaved like husband and wife, but looked so like each other that she would otherwise have taken them for brother and sister. They could both have looked remarkably handsome – and elegant to boot – were it not that both wore a permanent expression of disdain that would have put off even someone less sensitive to character than Debbie. Their names were, it seemed, Lucius and Narcissa; and they addressed the mistress of the house as Bella or, sometimes, as Mrs.Lestrange – in that case, never without a sneer that implied that to be Mrs. Lestrange was not something to be respected.
As the conversation went on, the unseen listener became increasingly alarmed. Things were taking a turn that suggested that it was not safe to hear what was being said. Beneath the banter, the atmosphere was growing hostile. Then the mistress of the house cane out with the first definite shot:
"Tell me, Narcissa, Lucius. Do you think the Dark Lord is stupid?"
"I think, Bella" – answered the blonde woman – "that the Dark Lord would not be pleased if He knew that you can ask such questions." Her language was forensic and coldly precise.
"I think not, Narcissa. You see, it was He who told me to ask you that."
Debbie was not sure, but she thought that the couple's stance and expression had subtly altered at this point.
"Our Lord knows all things, Lucius. He is perfectly aware of your little attempt to set up on your own. No need to bother with explanations; He is not such a judge as to demand evidence or permit exculpation. He has already passed sentence."
"The Dark Lord knew that, if he had come to you himself, you would have resisted. So he lent a small part of his power to me... for a second, for just one second."
The blonde woman went even paler than her natural pale complexion; the man mouthed a soundless oath, and, stepping back, half-drew a stick of wood from his robes. It was too late: a similar stick was in her hand, and reddish sparks danced lazily around the tip. Suddenly Debbie realized what it was that she was seeing – what, too, she had seen on the previous day, outside the pantry.
A wand!
Bella Lestrange had a magic wand!
And so did her victim, "Lucius"... and even her housekeeper!
Before she had time to make it clear to herself that what she had seen was magic, another fact crashed on her senses. The housekeeper was there. Absorbed in the action, she had paid her no attention; but the housekeeper had seen her, had seen her head behind the sofa. She drew her wand, in spite of an irritated and uncomprehending stare from Bellatrix; a stare which turned into one of comprehension as she saw Debbie, blood still flowing from her head wound, come floating towards her on the wave of the housekeeper's magic.
Lucius and Narcissa were already beyond hope. Bellatrix, who was no fool, had not allowed the surprise to distract her: her wand was still pointed at them, and, constricted and overwhelmed by invisible bonds, they looked for all the world as if they were struggling not to scream. As Debbie landed at Bellatrix' feet, they failed, and two long,, unceasing, horrible shrieks broke out.
Debbie looked on, forcing herself to stay silent, as the couple – only a minute before they had been so stylish, so masterful – were dragged struggling and screaming in a particular direction. The door of the great hall was framed by two Ionian pillars, simple and tasteful, made of Carrara marble; and as Debbie watched, the veins of the marble seemed to flow, to melt, to take the shape of living things – clutching, grasping, seizing at the Malfoys – dragging them into the pillars themselves. The surface shifted, moved, shimmered, and --- the couple were gone; joined into the pillars like putty into other putty. Debbie felt their wails change; they were the last thing to vanish, and when they vanished, they neither were cut off nor faded away – they seemed to modulate upwards and upwards, until they had somehow become part of that background feel – that "acid taste" – that she hated so much.
Only then did Bella Lestrange turn to her.
"Well, well, well", she drawled, "What have we here? An Auror spy, perhaps?" As the housekeeper made to answer, she stopped her: "Don't worry. We'll soon know it all from her own lips. IMPERIO!!"
Debbie felt a warm, insidious smoothness slide all over her. Everything suddenly seemed easy and natural: just listen to the woman with the thick, lustrous auburn hair – just do what she says. She did not need to have seen what she had seen, to know that this was a deadly, deceptive danger. She desperately resisted the slippery heat, till she heard her captor say: "Answer me truly, girl. Are you a spy for my enemies? If you are, you know who I mean."
Clearly, in this case the truth was better for her than Mrs.Lestrange's suspicions. Debbie stopped struggling against the Imperius curse and answered with complete simplicity: "I'm Debbie Wallace, a temp cleaner. I was cleaning the gallery above, leaning on the balustrade, when it vanished. I fell. I must have fainted. When I woke up, you were there. I don't know who you are and who your enemies are."
Her story agreed with the wound on her forehead, and besides Bella Lestrange did not conceive that anyone could break her Imperius curse – she had no idea of the titanic and nearly successful struggle waged by the mind before her, until that mind had decided that it was to her advantage to surrender. She accepted the truth of what she heard as a matter of course.
"The balustrade, eh? We will have to do something about that – it seems that there is someone who has not yet accepted his proper position in life." She got up and strode up the ceremonial staircase, leaving Debbie in the hands of the housekeeper. Reaching the gallery, she pointed her wand at the two columns on either side of the place where Debbie had fallen, and spoke a few words. Suddenly the balustrade started fading in and out, in and out; one second it was there, the next not; and the air was filled with screams. Then the columns started to flow and change; for an instance there was an illusion of human bodies, terribly twisted and bound, reaching towards Mrs.Lestrange; then they were gone, and only the solid marble was left. Silence fell.
Still under the influence of the Imperius curse, Debbie had witnessed these proceedings without emotion; even when Mrs.Lestrange pointed her wand at her, she did not immediately react – though her mind started struggling again. It was the housekeeper who interfered: "Madam", she asked, "is it really wise?"
"Of course it isn't, Aubrey. If I listened to you, I would turn all unexpected visitors into furniture – and kill them, for good measure. But where's the fun in that? Disimperio!" Suddenly the soft clinch on Debbie's mind was gone, and she knew that she could act on her own again. Granted she was allowed to, of course. "Do you understand what you have seen, little woman?"
"I... I.. Why did you not throw me into the wall as well?"
"Evidently you do."
Debbie looked around her, nauseously. Suddenly she felt as though the whole house were screaming: as though pillars and floors, furniture and paintings, were nothing more than the cage of souls in Hell. How many, before that tall blond man and the handsome woman with the sneer, had been eaten up by that horrible house? How many were even now screaming, as she was sure they were, above and below and around her?
"I think you are going to kill me... Or to do that Imperio thing on me again, and make me do as you like. Then maybe you'll order me to shoot myself."
"Oh, no, dear. You don't understand. You will live, and you will serve me. What point would there be in being the heir to the world, if we ruled only over those who were pleased to be ruled by us? We are masters; and in order to be true masters, it is our duty to rule even those who reject our mastery. You will do as you are told, little woman; and you will do it no less willingly just because you hate me."
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Debbie had learned long ago to make use of defeat. She accepted Bella Lestrange's orders; she could not do otherwise. She gave up her other jobs and entered her service permanently. And while the sorceress preened herself on having broken yet another will, she came and went, quiet, useful, and silent – and looked around her. She could not do anything without magic; she had to find out what magic was, and how Bella Lestrange used hers.
The truth is that she had been feeling it in the air, even before Bella's transformation: feeling something unlike anything she had ever perceived, a different in the atmosphere, in the vibration, in the... taste. The "acid taste". And so it happened that one day, as she went past a nondescript storage room, she felt a positive blast of it. It was as though she stood in a draft. . It was the magic; it had to be. Debbie made a mental note to herself, and went on.
Two days later, she had a chance to enter that room again; and she focused all her senses. Suddenly she felt her attention drawn to an old, shabby paperback, covered in brown paper. She opened it and – it was not a paperback. In this house, it no longer quite surprised her that the interior of the book was much larger than the outside; she had, anyway, already noticed that the inner proportions of the mansion itself were much larger than the outside seemed to allow. But she was taken aback to see a series of letters in an unknown language compose and recompose themselves in front of her, till they had taken the unmistakeable form of English:
Ye NOBLE & NOTABILIS BOKE OF MAGICKE
OF Ye HOUS OF LE ESTRANGEE
The book was simply charged with magic: now that she was concentrating on it, she could feel it so strongly it almost made her hair stand on end. Bella had tried to conceal it twice over, by disguising it as a paperback and by placing it, not in the proud family library, but in a nondescript place where nobody would think of looking for it. But she had overreached herself; for to a conscientious maid, the scruffy brown-paper cover on a piece of clean furniture was only too visible. Debbie slipped the book into her pocket, and quietly made her way out of the building.
She did not live far away; but she knew she did not have much time before Bella realized the theft, and came looking for her. She headed straight for her flat, to try and find something – anything – to help her in the fight she knew was coming. She had been listening to Bella and the housekeeper Aubrey; and she had understood that they regarded magic as something that was all around them, that could be pulled out of the air, by those who could. So, as she read the book, boggling a little at the strange English, she tried to focus on that taste, to feel it more intensely, to feel it to the exclusion of anything else. She only had one chance, before Bella made it to her house. She had to seize the magic somehow.
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Bellatrix Lestrange left her house, walking at a quiet, even pace. As always when she was on the hunt, she did not want it over too fast. She wanted to enjoy it all – the desperation of her prey, the pursuit, the inevitable end, the taste of blood. That, too, was a part of being a master; imposing one's will on people and things, even when one's will meant destroying them. She smiled softly to herself, anticipating the struggles of the small, soft, plump Muggle and the screaming of her children; she felt a red warmth surge through her.
So it was that she did not notice a red-and-white kitten looking at her with remarkable intent; nor, lounging about somewhere in the distance, a tallish young man with messy black hair and glasses, or a small woman with short brown hair and an American accent. As soon as she had turned the corner, the kitten made its way up the steps to her front door, and scratched; and the locked door opened at its touch.
A second later, Harry Potter, Buffy Summers and Nymphadora Tonks were inside the house of Bellatrix Lestrange and her miserable husband. Wands at the ready, they entered the front hall, turning constantly around to look in the fashion of British soldiers in Belfast. Even had they not known whose house this was, they could not possibly have missed the atmosphere, the sense of hatred mixed with agony, the multiple presences that screamed in voices only sorcerers could hear. Somewhere in this house, people were being tortured; and no doubt Bella – who had plenty of spells to silence their screams – allowed them to be heard, at this magical frequency, for her own pleasure.
This was what Bellatrix' husband had told them when he had entered the Auror office in Central London, after thirty-six sleepless hours in the streets. "She's gone beyond a joke, Potter. Beyond what I can bear. Our house is one vast torture chamber. When I receive my Muggle friends, I can hear the screams as I'm making conversation... and I see her eyes. As if she's deciding which one of them is to vanish next."
"You have Muggle friends?"
"Colleagues, if you want, Potter. In my line of work, I've got to keep in with them... and she's making it impossible for me. And the Dark Lord will hear nothing against her. I've come to the end of my tether. I've got no future with the Dark Lord unless I put up with her – and that I will not do, not for anything!"
Harry had looked up to his colleagues. Buffy and Tonks were listening with great interest and no visible sign of disbelief; indeed, the man was quite convincing. Still, they had encountered Voldemort "stings" more elaborate than this.
On the other hand, if what Lestrange was saying was true, they had a golden opportunity to get Bellatrix with enough evidence to send her to Azkaban forever, discrediting Voldemort's party in the process. Tortured prisoners in her very house... if true, the woman must be mad; and yet, it would be in character. And how would the Dark Lord's party ever hold their heads up again, after this? The very thought was enough to make Buffy's mouth water; and as for Harry and Tonks, they had one particular death for which Bellatrix had, in their dreams, paid a hundred times over. To lay their hands on her, the second biggest prey after Voldemort... They must stay calm. They must weigh the situation on its merits, and not as if it involved woman who had murdered Sirius Black.
"Would you be willing to take Veritaserum, Lestrange?"
"Of course! Of course! I want you to believe me. My life is over if He Who Cannot Be Named hears of this... in fact, it's pretty much over anyway, because I can no longer stand Bella, and he knows that I am no longer trustworthy. I need your help. I need someone who can hide me and defend me and who is strong enough to hurt or even bring down the Lord!"
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"Is this it? Well well well! Good old Severus! You know, I really didn't believe he had betrayed the Dark Lord already... though you can never tell with him."
"Don't be silly."
"You're being silly, Slayer. I could tell Severus Snape's hand in a potion a mile off. He's a master. And I'm glad there's someone else besides me who's dumped V-V-Vol.."
He could not finish the word, but that, more than anything else, was convincing. That a known Death Eater, a member of the body that had done most to raise a curtain of fear and hatred around the name of the former Tom Riddle, was willing to say it in public, said a lot. Lestrange took the goblet of Veritaserum and drained it almost in one gulp.
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And so it was that three of the most brilliant members of the Corps of Aurors were entering the house of Bellatrix Lestrange that morning. From the moment they were in, the noises of souls in torment overwhelmed them, so many and so different that it was difficult to disentangle them. It was not till Tonks had thought of starting to fire off Disenchantment bolts at random, that they started to get results; from walls and windows, from pillars and floors, more and more prisoners were being set free. It almost seemed as though, no matter where you pointed your wand, something would come out.
Not all of what they set free was nice; more than once, Buffy's fighting skills were called upon. The House of Lestrange had imprisoned werewolves, vampires, demons – anything they did not like and could get away with. And the creatures did not necessarily revert to human immediately; it seemed that, if a being was imprisoned as a werewolf, he would be freed as one, even if it was not a full moon.
It was just as Buffy was trying to survive the attentions of no less than three werewolves at once, that Harry and Tonks were attacked by the whole household. The spell they had cast even before they entered had ordered any Muggle or innocent resident of Lestrange Mansion to leave; but most of the upper servants and clerks were conscious supporters of Bella, her relatives and her followers, and would neither leave nor be caught without a fight.
The battle raged for almost half an hour; and, although Buffy managed to knock down all her werewolves, the Aurors were on the verge of defeat when reinforcements summoned by Harry finally showed up. Mad-Eye Moody led them. It did not take them long to defeat and bind the Lestranges, without even killing any. The cleansing of the house then went on.
At the end of two hours' hard work, the Aurors could not believe their haul. Over 800 prisoners had been set free. Most were Muggles, but dozens of wizards and magical creatures of any kind were represented. One unfortunate werewolf had been captured by one of Mrs. Lestrange's ancestors over 300 years earlier, and had only now been set free; the poor man could hardly understand where he was or what had happened to the world in his absence. Most of the prisoners, traumatized by Mrs. Lestrange's tortures, were fit only for St.Mungo's hospital; but there were quite enough capable to testify, to convict the woman twenty times over.
Two things were missing: Bellatrix herself, and the ancient book of magic that belonged to her husband's family, and from which all the power of the household came.
"This is unacceptable", said Mad-Eye Moody.
"Yes", agreed Harry, "if we let that bitch vanish with the book, we are exactly where we were before."
"Worse", said Buffy and Tonks almost at once; and Buffy added: "If we let her go now, after the blows we've inflicted on her, it would be like setting a wounded man-eating tiger free. There is nothing to do now except hunt her down and take her out for good."
"I agree", said Moody. "We must find her... And don't ask me why, but I've a feeling that Miss Charm here" (pointing at Aubrey the housekeeper) "could help us a lot." Moody's "feelings" had often been mocked among readers of THE DAILY PROPHET, but among his colleagues they were held in esteem; as an Austrian warlock had once told Tonks, "I tell you, darling, I've never known anyone like him for fingerspitzgefuehl, feeling in the tip of your fingers."
So all the Aurors turned to Aubrey. "Even if I knew where my mistress had gone, do you think I would tell to any of you Muggle-loving scum?" "Yes", said Moody, "I rather think you would. Buffy, hold her nose." Two strong fingers held the housekeeper's rather warty nose in an unbreakable grip, till her mouth had to gasp for breath; and then, for the second time that day, a goblet of Veritaserum was poured to do its work.
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Bella stood in front of Debbie's ran-down terraced house, her lip curling with contempt. Debbie did not live far, but her neighbourhood bore all the marks of having come down in the world, and Bella knew that a neighbouring street had only recently been cleansed of the drugs dealers for which it had been notorious. (Indeed, if the truth be told, she had used herself to cruise in the more dangerous parts of the neighbourhood, thrilling to the filth and the danger – and, on a couple of occasions, delighting in the slow and bloody death of a few Muggle would-be rapists.) She reached out and crushed the lock in her hand – a more satisfying feeling than just performing the Alohamora charm on it. She quickly strode in, lust rising within her, not quite overwhelming her reason, but colouring it with the red of blood.
Debbie sat silently in her front room, with the book open before her. The children sat near the window; even the fact that she had told them that a mad woman was coming to kill them, could quite have kept them from bickering; but when they heard the noise of the splintered front door lock and the foreign stride in the entrance, they fell silent.
Suddenly the door to the entrance vanished, ceased to exist. The children saw a tall female figure in its frame; there could be no mistaking it for anyone ordinary, because flames of various colours blazed around her body
Debbie raised her head and looked straight into Bella's hooded, triumphant eyes. Her own eyes wore a thoughtful, almost absent expression; that only those who knew her well could have identified – it was the face she wore when she had resolved upon a course of action.
"You should not have come here, Bella", she said quietly, yet with a strange vibrancy in her unexpected alto.
"Bella, is it? Getting quite familiar, are we? Not that it matters."
"No, it doesn't. You shouldn't have come here."
"Indeed I shouldn't, honey. I've done so many things in my life I shouldn't have. You know what? I come from the blood of kings, and should and shouldn't don't matter!" She moved slowly, savouring the moment.
"The blood of kings?", said Debbie impatiently – "Don't be ridiculous. As if that excused you or your attitudes!"
"You know, little woman", said Bella, towering over her, "you are starting to get right out of line. It's always the same with the likes of you – give you an inch and you take a mile. You should beware lest your betters take their inch back, and a mile more besides."
Debbie's voice was openly contemptuous. "Don't play games with me. We both know you are here to kill me, not to lecture me on your superiority. Besides, I don't give a damn."
"Carry on, little Muggle, carry on. Add to my pleasure. You're making the thought of killing you ...slowly ...more and more sweet."
"You are ignorant, and deluded, Bellatrix Lestrange. You will never understand the likes of me. I am a poor, ordinary woman, who has had to fight all her life. I am mother, a worker, and sometimes a lover. Yes, I've stolen your book; and if you think that was the worst thing I've done in my life ... Wrong? I've committed more wrong than you can imagine."
"But I belong to clean things... things you despise and ignore. And here, in the home I built, among my children, I am in my place of power... And, Bella, you should not have come here!"
Even as Bellatrix was preparing to unleash her curses, Debbie's small hands caught her with the abruptness of a biting cobra. One managed to lock both wrists against her chest, forbidding anything more than small motions of her fingers; the other gripped her lips savagely shut, preventing the speaking of spells.
Though surprised, Bella hardly felt threatened. This small Muggle, half a foot shorter than herself and half a lifetime less knowledgeable in magic, surely could not hamper her for long? She tried to shake herself free – and let out a grunt that was really a howl of pain, as her locked lips were nearly ripped from her face by a grip to which she had no answer.
Bella threw her whole weight against Debbie's body; and it made no more impression than if she had struck stone. The relentless pressure continued; but Bella's battle-trained mind now knew what she was up against. She wriggled her body so that Debbie was slightly above her - then, suddenly, she gave way completely. A startled Debbie went flying and tumbling over her, and for a moment there was chaos, as Bella, in a flurry of limbs, disentangled herself from her fallen enemy. Free at last, she moved back and started mouthing the words a-avada k-k-k; but was horrified to find that her lips, crushed and bleeding from Debbie's magical grasp, could not articulate correctly. Suddenly she was out of time, and her prey was upon her again.
Here was a strength such as she had never known; a strength that was holding her fast, preventing her from using magic, preventing anything but ineffectual struggles. Terror rose within Bellatrix – terror that not even her master had ever managed to inflict on her. A grip as unrelenting as fate, more relentless than vengeance: a terror of unhalting steel, of a machine that worked and worked and worked. With it you cannot come to terms, you cannot force your will. Will steel negotiate with you, will steel listen to your pleas, will steel perhaps respect or fear you? Bellatrix' spells bent in on themselves, useless and agonizing, as those unrelenting hands grabbed her and forced her back, slowly but without cease, millimetre by undelayed, inexorable millimetre.
She faced a woman of iron; something that no effort could tire, no threat daunt, no wind or storm turn back. Debbie Wallace was in her elemental form, with everything accessory or superficial stripped away – nothing but the bare focus, hardened in years of tiring and thankless work, the certainty that there was one thing, and one only, that had to be done – and that therefore she would do it, whatever it cost, whatever it took. That had the magic done: not given her anything from outside, any of the fancy enrichments and showy if effective tricks that so boosted Bella's self- esteem – simply a physical, present revelation of the soul inside, of the unbreakable will below the gentle unassuming exterior. Bella knew many tricks, a whole encyclopedia of tricks; Debbie had only one, but it was a humdinger.
Debbie had only one conclusion in mind to this fight. She could not detain Bella, and it would be madness to set her free. She knew nothing of magical law, magical law enforcement, or the Ministry of Magic; all she knew was that she and her children were in danger of death as long as this woman lived, and she had seen too much of her to believe she would ever show mercy or accept defeat. If she did not kill Bella now, then Bella would put an end to her later; probably in a foul, secret and cruel way, and probably taking time to linger and enjoy it. Debbie twisted Bella's body so that one of her own knees lay against Bella's spine, then gave a violent push down. A muffled crack told her that her enemy had gone forever.
She turned and looked at her children, and something struck her like a sharp blow. They both wore expressions she had never seen before. Sure, like every parent, she had had, from time to time, to use force; sure, they were conditioned to be afraid of her in certain moods, and to respect her wishes. But it had never crossed their minds that their mother could fight with such ferocity, or kill someone. They looked at her in open horror; and Debbie felt tears in her eyes.
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That was how Buffy, Harry and Tonks found them when, having found the shattered door, they rushed into the house: Debbie facing her own children, trying to find the words; and behind her, neglected and forgotten, the corpse of one who had, in life, been one of the mightiest sorceresses in the world, the Dark Lord's chief lieutenant.
"Hoo boy", said Buffy.
"My feelings exactly", answered Harry.
Debbie turned in horror. The fear for her children that had driven her all along had not yet died down, and here were three more people whose clothes clearly identified them as sorcerers. Trying to make her expression as threatening as her words, she said: "Wh-who are you? Because if you're friends of hers..."
"No, no", Harry almost laughed, "not as bad as that. Friends of hers? I wanted her dead myself, she'd killed my father... I mean..." and for a moment he fell into confusion.
Then he pulled himself together. "But if you managed to kill Bellatrix Lestrange with your own two hands..." – he turned to Buffy and Tonks – "I think we'd better inform Athena the Wise that one of the Five Heroines of Britain is found."
Holland Park is probably the most desirable neighbourhood in London; certainly the most agreeable. Unlike other rich quarters, it does not present row upon row of lookalike whitewashed mansions: each house is individual, and they all stand within their own grounds. It is within walking distance of the shopping district of Notting Hill Gate, the famous Portobello Market, and two delightful parks – including Peter Pan's Kensington Gardens – and the hilly terrain makes it picturesque as well as pleasant.
At the tradesmen's entrance of one of the grandest and most beautifully designed of these mansions came, one morning, a young-looking woman with curly brown hair, dressed in nondescript jeans, trainers, a chequered shirt, and a green mackintosh. To the person who opened, she said, in an unexpectedly mature alto voice: "Hello... I'm Debbie Wallace. I've come about the cleaning job."
Debbie noticed that the maid who had answered was actually dressed in a maid's uniform, such as she had only seen before in TV shows. She found herself hoping that the owners of the mansion did not have funny ideas about the dress of servants.
Unfortunately, they had. Within a few minutes, she found herself in the hands of a truly terrible housekeeper, the kind one read of in P.G.Wodehouse, being measured for a maid's outfit. The fact that her employment was only temporary and quite skivy-ish, and that she was not likely to even meet the owners – a Mr. and Mrs. Lestrange – did not, apparently, preserve her from the household's notions of correct dress. To her relief, the housekeeper found that they had a uniform her size; otherwise, she would have had to procure it herself. The housekeeper did not say whether she would have been expected to pay for it or not.
Yet Debbie would not have described the atmosphere in the house as old- fashioned. There was a sense of sanitized efficiency, and a distinct lack of intimacy and animation, that she associated more with shop-floors or open-plan offices she had known, than with any kind of house; and with all that, there was a different, unusual sort of background feel, a taste as if of an extra gas in the air – yet certainly nothing physical – that, in certain moments, all but overwhelmed her. She called it the "acid taste", and tried not to pay it any mind.
Debbie went quietly on about her duties. This was hardly the first unpleasant employer she had ever worked for; indeed, the very notion that work might be pleasant was not one she often entertained. Work was something that had to be done, and therefore she did it. Anyway, this particular job was only temporary – as long as she needed to earn enough money to re-carpet her flat, buy a new fridge, and cover some of the costs of her two children's school fees. And it did not pay badly; in fact, for a skivy-type temp, the rate was quite generous. Debbie had taken it for that and no other reason. She already had two regular part-time jobs, but she needed some extra money.
After all, she had spent most of her life working. The birth of her first child, when she was only sixteen, had marked her for ever. Her family had wanted her to abort him; when she refused, they threw her out, and she had to find employment somehow. By the time she was an adult, she had gone through more suffering and effort than many people experience in a lifetime, including falling into a bad drinking habit and kicking it by her own unaided efforts. Yet her face did not show it. Perhaps because she tended to be slightly overweight – nothing serious, but just enough to round out her features and limbs – she somehow managed to seem little more than a teen-ager, fresh-faced, with huge ingenuous blue eyes and naturally curly hair – unruly, she complained, but many women would spend good money for that luminous tone of brown and those round, delightful locks. She was, in her own way, very pretty, with tiny, graceful hands and feet; not that it had done her a lot of good, since she seemed to have an infallible gift for attracting the wrong men. A series of disastrous relationships had left her with two children from different fathers and a resolution never again to let anyone male into her life. She was a generous little creature, whose many friends tended to rely on her; it was only from time to time that one came upon something less pleasant – a streak of obstinacy, a habit never to tell anyone what she meant to do, and a tendency to tell people what they wanted to hear rather than what she intended, that could sometimes lead to dire consequences when anyone took her word too seriously.
...........................................................................................
The first hint of what was to happen came as the end of her job at the Lestranges was – she thought – only three days away. She had finished a particularly unpleasant bit of cleaning out in the kitchen, ahead of time, and was making her way to the housekeeper's pantry to see what else she could do. The back door bell rang, and – since nobody else was there – she answered. A middle-aged woman with dyed curls stood there.
"Good morning. I'm Mrs.Leftwich. I've come about the kitchen job."
Debbie knew that the kitchens were being refurbished, and that the cook had asked for an assistant; so she was not surprised.
"Come in, please. I'll show you to the housekeeper."
Debbie would have thought nothing more of it, were it not that the housekeeper turned out not to have anything more for her to do, and said she could go home for the day. So, as she was changing out of her uniform, she overheard part of the assistant cook's interview.
"...I'm afraid that, if we do not have a uniform your size, you will have to procure one yourself."
Same story as with her, she grinned inwardly. The housekeeper and the cook come out of the pantry, without noticing her. They went to a locker and pulled out what looked like a very inadequate cook's uniform – and Debbie's eyes went very wide, as she watched them do something very strange indeed. The cook held up the white uniform; the housekeeper pointed a long, thin wooden stick at it; a few sparkling lights appeared at the stick's end; and, without any apparent reason, the uniform suddenly appeared to grow – until it was, unmistakably, suited for Mrs.Leftwich's ample proportions. Without saying a word, cook and housekeeper turned back.
Debbie's breath, held for several seconds, was suddenly released with a disbelieving gasp. From the pantry came the familiar words: "You're in luck, Mrs.Leftwich, we have found one just your size..." Suddenly she felt very uneasy in her own half-discarded uniform; she almost tore it off, and, putting on her jeans, shirt and mackintosh, she forced herself not to run out of the house.
..................................................................................................
By the next day, she had almost managed to convince herself that she had seen nothing exceptional. It was probably some sort of optical effect that had let the cook's uniform look smaller than it really was. She was, at any rate, not very troubled: her job would be over in two days, and, quite apart from whether what she had seen was real or not, she had found the atmosphere unpleasant enough not to want to come back.
Guests, it seems, were coming, and she was assigned to clean the galleries that overlooked the Great Hall. It was less easy work than it seemed – some of the stains had a curiously obstinate quality, requiring plenty of elbow grease; and Debbie had already been working at one of her other two jobs. She leaned against the marble balustrade.
Suddenly, impossibly, the balustrade wasn't there. Debbie screamed, falling into a void, and hit her back and head. The last thing she felt was the pain of impact.
She came to slowly and in great pain. Her body ached, and she could feel the trickle of blood from the side of her head and its taste in her mouth. When she had collected herself enough to understand, she realized that she had fallen right behind a very high-backed sofa; no wonder nobody had seen her. Then she heard voices, and poked her head out from behind the sofa. She did not try to make herself noticed; she had a nasty feeling that she was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that the best thing to be done was to wait until everyone had gone, and then sneak out.
Unfortunately, the people present seemed to have no intention of leaving. Debbie had never seen the mistress of the house in person, but she guessed that it was the tall, red-haired, handsome woman with the hooded eyes, because she behaved with that indefinable sense of being at home somewhere that suggests ownership. The two people sitting in front of her were obviously a couple; Debbie could not decide whether they were related or husband and wife – they behaved like husband and wife, but looked so like each other that she would otherwise have taken them for brother and sister. They could both have looked remarkably handsome – and elegant to boot – were it not that both wore a permanent expression of disdain that would have put off even someone less sensitive to character than Debbie. Their names were, it seemed, Lucius and Narcissa; and they addressed the mistress of the house as Bella or, sometimes, as Mrs.Lestrange – in that case, never without a sneer that implied that to be Mrs. Lestrange was not something to be respected.
As the conversation went on, the unseen listener became increasingly alarmed. Things were taking a turn that suggested that it was not safe to hear what was being said. Beneath the banter, the atmosphere was growing hostile. Then the mistress of the house cane out with the first definite shot:
"Tell me, Narcissa, Lucius. Do you think the Dark Lord is stupid?"
"I think, Bella" – answered the blonde woman – "that the Dark Lord would not be pleased if He knew that you can ask such questions." Her language was forensic and coldly precise.
"I think not, Narcissa. You see, it was He who told me to ask you that."
Debbie was not sure, but she thought that the couple's stance and expression had subtly altered at this point.
"Our Lord knows all things, Lucius. He is perfectly aware of your little attempt to set up on your own. No need to bother with explanations; He is not such a judge as to demand evidence or permit exculpation. He has already passed sentence."
"The Dark Lord knew that, if he had come to you himself, you would have resisted. So he lent a small part of his power to me... for a second, for just one second."
The blonde woman went even paler than her natural pale complexion; the man mouthed a soundless oath, and, stepping back, half-drew a stick of wood from his robes. It was too late: a similar stick was in her hand, and reddish sparks danced lazily around the tip. Suddenly Debbie realized what it was that she was seeing – what, too, she had seen on the previous day, outside the pantry.
A wand!
Bella Lestrange had a magic wand!
And so did her victim, "Lucius"... and even her housekeeper!
Before she had time to make it clear to herself that what she had seen was magic, another fact crashed on her senses. The housekeeper was there. Absorbed in the action, she had paid her no attention; but the housekeeper had seen her, had seen her head behind the sofa. She drew her wand, in spite of an irritated and uncomprehending stare from Bellatrix; a stare which turned into one of comprehension as she saw Debbie, blood still flowing from her head wound, come floating towards her on the wave of the housekeeper's magic.
Lucius and Narcissa were already beyond hope. Bellatrix, who was no fool, had not allowed the surprise to distract her: her wand was still pointed at them, and, constricted and overwhelmed by invisible bonds, they looked for all the world as if they were struggling not to scream. As Debbie landed at Bellatrix' feet, they failed, and two long,, unceasing, horrible shrieks broke out.
Debbie looked on, forcing herself to stay silent, as the couple – only a minute before they had been so stylish, so masterful – were dragged struggling and screaming in a particular direction. The door of the great hall was framed by two Ionian pillars, simple and tasteful, made of Carrara marble; and as Debbie watched, the veins of the marble seemed to flow, to melt, to take the shape of living things – clutching, grasping, seizing at the Malfoys – dragging them into the pillars themselves. The surface shifted, moved, shimmered, and --- the couple were gone; joined into the pillars like putty into other putty. Debbie felt their wails change; they were the last thing to vanish, and when they vanished, they neither were cut off nor faded away – they seemed to modulate upwards and upwards, until they had somehow become part of that background feel – that "acid taste" – that she hated so much.
Only then did Bella Lestrange turn to her.
"Well, well, well", she drawled, "What have we here? An Auror spy, perhaps?" As the housekeeper made to answer, she stopped her: "Don't worry. We'll soon know it all from her own lips. IMPERIO!!"
Debbie felt a warm, insidious smoothness slide all over her. Everything suddenly seemed easy and natural: just listen to the woman with the thick, lustrous auburn hair – just do what she says. She did not need to have seen what she had seen, to know that this was a deadly, deceptive danger. She desperately resisted the slippery heat, till she heard her captor say: "Answer me truly, girl. Are you a spy for my enemies? If you are, you know who I mean."
Clearly, in this case the truth was better for her than Mrs.Lestrange's suspicions. Debbie stopped struggling against the Imperius curse and answered with complete simplicity: "I'm Debbie Wallace, a temp cleaner. I was cleaning the gallery above, leaning on the balustrade, when it vanished. I fell. I must have fainted. When I woke up, you were there. I don't know who you are and who your enemies are."
Her story agreed with the wound on her forehead, and besides Bella Lestrange did not conceive that anyone could break her Imperius curse – she had no idea of the titanic and nearly successful struggle waged by the mind before her, until that mind had decided that it was to her advantage to surrender. She accepted the truth of what she heard as a matter of course.
"The balustrade, eh? We will have to do something about that – it seems that there is someone who has not yet accepted his proper position in life." She got up and strode up the ceremonial staircase, leaving Debbie in the hands of the housekeeper. Reaching the gallery, she pointed her wand at the two columns on either side of the place where Debbie had fallen, and spoke a few words. Suddenly the balustrade started fading in and out, in and out; one second it was there, the next not; and the air was filled with screams. Then the columns started to flow and change; for an instance there was an illusion of human bodies, terribly twisted and bound, reaching towards Mrs.Lestrange; then they were gone, and only the solid marble was left. Silence fell.
Still under the influence of the Imperius curse, Debbie had witnessed these proceedings without emotion; even when Mrs.Lestrange pointed her wand at her, she did not immediately react – though her mind started struggling again. It was the housekeeper who interfered: "Madam", she asked, "is it really wise?"
"Of course it isn't, Aubrey. If I listened to you, I would turn all unexpected visitors into furniture – and kill them, for good measure. But where's the fun in that? Disimperio!" Suddenly the soft clinch on Debbie's mind was gone, and she knew that she could act on her own again. Granted she was allowed to, of course. "Do you understand what you have seen, little woman?"
"I... I.. Why did you not throw me into the wall as well?"
"Evidently you do."
Debbie looked around her, nauseously. Suddenly she felt as though the whole house were screaming: as though pillars and floors, furniture and paintings, were nothing more than the cage of souls in Hell. How many, before that tall blond man and the handsome woman with the sneer, had been eaten up by that horrible house? How many were even now screaming, as she was sure they were, above and below and around her?
"I think you are going to kill me... Or to do that Imperio thing on me again, and make me do as you like. Then maybe you'll order me to shoot myself."
"Oh, no, dear. You don't understand. You will live, and you will serve me. What point would there be in being the heir to the world, if we ruled only over those who were pleased to be ruled by us? We are masters; and in order to be true masters, it is our duty to rule even those who reject our mastery. You will do as you are told, little woman; and you will do it no less willingly just because you hate me."
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Debbie had learned long ago to make use of defeat. She accepted Bella Lestrange's orders; she could not do otherwise. She gave up her other jobs and entered her service permanently. And while the sorceress preened herself on having broken yet another will, she came and went, quiet, useful, and silent – and looked around her. She could not do anything without magic; she had to find out what magic was, and how Bella Lestrange used hers.
The truth is that she had been feeling it in the air, even before Bella's transformation: feeling something unlike anything she had ever perceived, a different in the atmosphere, in the vibration, in the... taste. The "acid taste". And so it happened that one day, as she went past a nondescript storage room, she felt a positive blast of it. It was as though she stood in a draft. . It was the magic; it had to be. Debbie made a mental note to herself, and went on.
Two days later, she had a chance to enter that room again; and she focused all her senses. Suddenly she felt her attention drawn to an old, shabby paperback, covered in brown paper. She opened it and – it was not a paperback. In this house, it no longer quite surprised her that the interior of the book was much larger than the outside; she had, anyway, already noticed that the inner proportions of the mansion itself were much larger than the outside seemed to allow. But she was taken aback to see a series of letters in an unknown language compose and recompose themselves in front of her, till they had taken the unmistakeable form of English:
Ye NOBLE & NOTABILIS BOKE OF MAGICKE
OF Ye HOUS OF LE ESTRANGEE
The book was simply charged with magic: now that she was concentrating on it, she could feel it so strongly it almost made her hair stand on end. Bella had tried to conceal it twice over, by disguising it as a paperback and by placing it, not in the proud family library, but in a nondescript place where nobody would think of looking for it. But she had overreached herself; for to a conscientious maid, the scruffy brown-paper cover on a piece of clean furniture was only too visible. Debbie slipped the book into her pocket, and quietly made her way out of the building.
She did not live far away; but she knew she did not have much time before Bella realized the theft, and came looking for her. She headed straight for her flat, to try and find something – anything – to help her in the fight she knew was coming. She had been listening to Bella and the housekeeper Aubrey; and she had understood that they regarded magic as something that was all around them, that could be pulled out of the air, by those who could. So, as she read the book, boggling a little at the strange English, she tried to focus on that taste, to feel it more intensely, to feel it to the exclusion of anything else. She only had one chance, before Bella made it to her house. She had to seize the magic somehow.
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Bellatrix Lestrange left her house, walking at a quiet, even pace. As always when she was on the hunt, she did not want it over too fast. She wanted to enjoy it all – the desperation of her prey, the pursuit, the inevitable end, the taste of blood. That, too, was a part of being a master; imposing one's will on people and things, even when one's will meant destroying them. She smiled softly to herself, anticipating the struggles of the small, soft, plump Muggle and the screaming of her children; she felt a red warmth surge through her.
So it was that she did not notice a red-and-white kitten looking at her with remarkable intent; nor, lounging about somewhere in the distance, a tallish young man with messy black hair and glasses, or a small woman with short brown hair and an American accent. As soon as she had turned the corner, the kitten made its way up the steps to her front door, and scratched; and the locked door opened at its touch.
A second later, Harry Potter, Buffy Summers and Nymphadora Tonks were inside the house of Bellatrix Lestrange and her miserable husband. Wands at the ready, they entered the front hall, turning constantly around to look in the fashion of British soldiers in Belfast. Even had they not known whose house this was, they could not possibly have missed the atmosphere, the sense of hatred mixed with agony, the multiple presences that screamed in voices only sorcerers could hear. Somewhere in this house, people were being tortured; and no doubt Bella – who had plenty of spells to silence their screams – allowed them to be heard, at this magical frequency, for her own pleasure.
This was what Bellatrix' husband had told them when he had entered the Auror office in Central London, after thirty-six sleepless hours in the streets. "She's gone beyond a joke, Potter. Beyond what I can bear. Our house is one vast torture chamber. When I receive my Muggle friends, I can hear the screams as I'm making conversation... and I see her eyes. As if she's deciding which one of them is to vanish next."
"You have Muggle friends?"
"Colleagues, if you want, Potter. In my line of work, I've got to keep in with them... and she's making it impossible for me. And the Dark Lord will hear nothing against her. I've come to the end of my tether. I've got no future with the Dark Lord unless I put up with her – and that I will not do, not for anything!"
Harry had looked up to his colleagues. Buffy and Tonks were listening with great interest and no visible sign of disbelief; indeed, the man was quite convincing. Still, they had encountered Voldemort "stings" more elaborate than this.
On the other hand, if what Lestrange was saying was true, they had a golden opportunity to get Bellatrix with enough evidence to send her to Azkaban forever, discrediting Voldemort's party in the process. Tortured prisoners in her very house... if true, the woman must be mad; and yet, it would be in character. And how would the Dark Lord's party ever hold their heads up again, after this? The very thought was enough to make Buffy's mouth water; and as for Harry and Tonks, they had one particular death for which Bellatrix had, in their dreams, paid a hundred times over. To lay their hands on her, the second biggest prey after Voldemort... They must stay calm. They must weigh the situation on its merits, and not as if it involved woman who had murdered Sirius Black.
"Would you be willing to take Veritaserum, Lestrange?"
"Of course! Of course! I want you to believe me. My life is over if He Who Cannot Be Named hears of this... in fact, it's pretty much over anyway, because I can no longer stand Bella, and he knows that I am no longer trustworthy. I need your help. I need someone who can hide me and defend me and who is strong enough to hurt or even bring down the Lord!"
.........................................................................................
"Is this it? Well well well! Good old Severus! You know, I really didn't believe he had betrayed the Dark Lord already... though you can never tell with him."
"Don't be silly."
"You're being silly, Slayer. I could tell Severus Snape's hand in a potion a mile off. He's a master. And I'm glad there's someone else besides me who's dumped V-V-Vol.."
He could not finish the word, but that, more than anything else, was convincing. That a known Death Eater, a member of the body that had done most to raise a curtain of fear and hatred around the name of the former Tom Riddle, was willing to say it in public, said a lot. Lestrange took the goblet of Veritaserum and drained it almost in one gulp.
.........................................................................................
And so it was that three of the most brilliant members of the Corps of Aurors were entering the house of Bellatrix Lestrange that morning. From the moment they were in, the noises of souls in torment overwhelmed them, so many and so different that it was difficult to disentangle them. It was not till Tonks had thought of starting to fire off Disenchantment bolts at random, that they started to get results; from walls and windows, from pillars and floors, more and more prisoners were being set free. It almost seemed as though, no matter where you pointed your wand, something would come out.
Not all of what they set free was nice; more than once, Buffy's fighting skills were called upon. The House of Lestrange had imprisoned werewolves, vampires, demons – anything they did not like and could get away with. And the creatures did not necessarily revert to human immediately; it seemed that, if a being was imprisoned as a werewolf, he would be freed as one, even if it was not a full moon.
It was just as Buffy was trying to survive the attentions of no less than three werewolves at once, that Harry and Tonks were attacked by the whole household. The spell they had cast even before they entered had ordered any Muggle or innocent resident of Lestrange Mansion to leave; but most of the upper servants and clerks were conscious supporters of Bella, her relatives and her followers, and would neither leave nor be caught without a fight.
The battle raged for almost half an hour; and, although Buffy managed to knock down all her werewolves, the Aurors were on the verge of defeat when reinforcements summoned by Harry finally showed up. Mad-Eye Moody led them. It did not take them long to defeat and bind the Lestranges, without even killing any. The cleansing of the house then went on.
At the end of two hours' hard work, the Aurors could not believe their haul. Over 800 prisoners had been set free. Most were Muggles, but dozens of wizards and magical creatures of any kind were represented. One unfortunate werewolf had been captured by one of Mrs. Lestrange's ancestors over 300 years earlier, and had only now been set free; the poor man could hardly understand where he was or what had happened to the world in his absence. Most of the prisoners, traumatized by Mrs. Lestrange's tortures, were fit only for St.Mungo's hospital; but there were quite enough capable to testify, to convict the woman twenty times over.
Two things were missing: Bellatrix herself, and the ancient book of magic that belonged to her husband's family, and from which all the power of the household came.
"This is unacceptable", said Mad-Eye Moody.
"Yes", agreed Harry, "if we let that bitch vanish with the book, we are exactly where we were before."
"Worse", said Buffy and Tonks almost at once; and Buffy added: "If we let her go now, after the blows we've inflicted on her, it would be like setting a wounded man-eating tiger free. There is nothing to do now except hunt her down and take her out for good."
"I agree", said Moody. "We must find her... And don't ask me why, but I've a feeling that Miss Charm here" (pointing at Aubrey the housekeeper) "could help us a lot." Moody's "feelings" had often been mocked among readers of THE DAILY PROPHET, but among his colleagues they were held in esteem; as an Austrian warlock had once told Tonks, "I tell you, darling, I've never known anyone like him for fingerspitzgefuehl, feeling in the tip of your fingers."
So all the Aurors turned to Aubrey. "Even if I knew where my mistress had gone, do you think I would tell to any of you Muggle-loving scum?" "Yes", said Moody, "I rather think you would. Buffy, hold her nose." Two strong fingers held the housekeeper's rather warty nose in an unbreakable grip, till her mouth had to gasp for breath; and then, for the second time that day, a goblet of Veritaserum was poured to do its work.
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Bella stood in front of Debbie's ran-down terraced house, her lip curling with contempt. Debbie did not live far, but her neighbourhood bore all the marks of having come down in the world, and Bella knew that a neighbouring street had only recently been cleansed of the drugs dealers for which it had been notorious. (Indeed, if the truth be told, she had used herself to cruise in the more dangerous parts of the neighbourhood, thrilling to the filth and the danger – and, on a couple of occasions, delighting in the slow and bloody death of a few Muggle would-be rapists.) She reached out and crushed the lock in her hand – a more satisfying feeling than just performing the Alohamora charm on it. She quickly strode in, lust rising within her, not quite overwhelming her reason, but colouring it with the red of blood.
Debbie sat silently in her front room, with the book open before her. The children sat near the window; even the fact that she had told them that a mad woman was coming to kill them, could quite have kept them from bickering; but when they heard the noise of the splintered front door lock and the foreign stride in the entrance, they fell silent.
Suddenly the door to the entrance vanished, ceased to exist. The children saw a tall female figure in its frame; there could be no mistaking it for anyone ordinary, because flames of various colours blazed around her body
Debbie raised her head and looked straight into Bella's hooded, triumphant eyes. Her own eyes wore a thoughtful, almost absent expression; that only those who knew her well could have identified – it was the face she wore when she had resolved upon a course of action.
"You should not have come here, Bella", she said quietly, yet with a strange vibrancy in her unexpected alto.
"Bella, is it? Getting quite familiar, are we? Not that it matters."
"No, it doesn't. You shouldn't have come here."
"Indeed I shouldn't, honey. I've done so many things in my life I shouldn't have. You know what? I come from the blood of kings, and should and shouldn't don't matter!" She moved slowly, savouring the moment.
"The blood of kings?", said Debbie impatiently – "Don't be ridiculous. As if that excused you or your attitudes!"
"You know, little woman", said Bella, towering over her, "you are starting to get right out of line. It's always the same with the likes of you – give you an inch and you take a mile. You should beware lest your betters take their inch back, and a mile more besides."
Debbie's voice was openly contemptuous. "Don't play games with me. We both know you are here to kill me, not to lecture me on your superiority. Besides, I don't give a damn."
"Carry on, little Muggle, carry on. Add to my pleasure. You're making the thought of killing you ...slowly ...more and more sweet."
"You are ignorant, and deluded, Bellatrix Lestrange. You will never understand the likes of me. I am a poor, ordinary woman, who has had to fight all her life. I am mother, a worker, and sometimes a lover. Yes, I've stolen your book; and if you think that was the worst thing I've done in my life ... Wrong? I've committed more wrong than you can imagine."
"But I belong to clean things... things you despise and ignore. And here, in the home I built, among my children, I am in my place of power... And, Bella, you should not have come here!"
Even as Bellatrix was preparing to unleash her curses, Debbie's small hands caught her with the abruptness of a biting cobra. One managed to lock both wrists against her chest, forbidding anything more than small motions of her fingers; the other gripped her lips savagely shut, preventing the speaking of spells.
Though surprised, Bella hardly felt threatened. This small Muggle, half a foot shorter than herself and half a lifetime less knowledgeable in magic, surely could not hamper her for long? She tried to shake herself free – and let out a grunt that was really a howl of pain, as her locked lips were nearly ripped from her face by a grip to which she had no answer.
Bella threw her whole weight against Debbie's body; and it made no more impression than if she had struck stone. The relentless pressure continued; but Bella's battle-trained mind now knew what she was up against. She wriggled her body so that Debbie was slightly above her - then, suddenly, she gave way completely. A startled Debbie went flying and tumbling over her, and for a moment there was chaos, as Bella, in a flurry of limbs, disentangled herself from her fallen enemy. Free at last, she moved back and started mouthing the words a-avada k-k-k; but was horrified to find that her lips, crushed and bleeding from Debbie's magical grasp, could not articulate correctly. Suddenly she was out of time, and her prey was upon her again.
Here was a strength such as she had never known; a strength that was holding her fast, preventing her from using magic, preventing anything but ineffectual struggles. Terror rose within Bellatrix – terror that not even her master had ever managed to inflict on her. A grip as unrelenting as fate, more relentless than vengeance: a terror of unhalting steel, of a machine that worked and worked and worked. With it you cannot come to terms, you cannot force your will. Will steel negotiate with you, will steel listen to your pleas, will steel perhaps respect or fear you? Bellatrix' spells bent in on themselves, useless and agonizing, as those unrelenting hands grabbed her and forced her back, slowly but without cease, millimetre by undelayed, inexorable millimetre.
She faced a woman of iron; something that no effort could tire, no threat daunt, no wind or storm turn back. Debbie Wallace was in her elemental form, with everything accessory or superficial stripped away – nothing but the bare focus, hardened in years of tiring and thankless work, the certainty that there was one thing, and one only, that had to be done – and that therefore she would do it, whatever it cost, whatever it took. That had the magic done: not given her anything from outside, any of the fancy enrichments and showy if effective tricks that so boosted Bella's self- esteem – simply a physical, present revelation of the soul inside, of the unbreakable will below the gentle unassuming exterior. Bella knew many tricks, a whole encyclopedia of tricks; Debbie had only one, but it was a humdinger.
Debbie had only one conclusion in mind to this fight. She could not detain Bella, and it would be madness to set her free. She knew nothing of magical law, magical law enforcement, or the Ministry of Magic; all she knew was that she and her children were in danger of death as long as this woman lived, and she had seen too much of her to believe she would ever show mercy or accept defeat. If she did not kill Bella now, then Bella would put an end to her later; probably in a foul, secret and cruel way, and probably taking time to linger and enjoy it. Debbie twisted Bella's body so that one of her own knees lay against Bella's spine, then gave a violent push down. A muffled crack told her that her enemy had gone forever.
She turned and looked at her children, and something struck her like a sharp blow. They both wore expressions she had never seen before. Sure, like every parent, she had had, from time to time, to use force; sure, they were conditioned to be afraid of her in certain moods, and to respect her wishes. But it had never crossed their minds that their mother could fight with such ferocity, or kill someone. They looked at her in open horror; and Debbie felt tears in her eyes.
.........................................................................................
That was how Buffy, Harry and Tonks found them when, having found the shattered door, they rushed into the house: Debbie facing her own children, trying to find the words; and behind her, neglected and forgotten, the corpse of one who had, in life, been one of the mightiest sorceresses in the world, the Dark Lord's chief lieutenant.
"Hoo boy", said Buffy.
"My feelings exactly", answered Harry.
Debbie turned in horror. The fear for her children that had driven her all along had not yet died down, and here were three more people whose clothes clearly identified them as sorcerers. Trying to make her expression as threatening as her words, she said: "Wh-who are you? Because if you're friends of hers..."
"No, no", Harry almost laughed, "not as bad as that. Friends of hers? I wanted her dead myself, she'd killed my father... I mean..." and for a moment he fell into confusion.
Then he pulled himself together. "But if you managed to kill Bellatrix Lestrange with your own two hands..." – he turned to Buffy and Tonks – "I think we'd better inform Athena the Wise that one of the Five Heroines of Britain is found."