"You would give your life for hers?" Voldemort said to a weeping Bella.
"I have given you everything my lord." Bella said not lifting her head. "Please."
"I thought she disgraced you. I thought she was a blood traitor Bella and now you beg me to spare her."
Bella trembled, Andromeda flashed before her eyes, Dora with her big black eyes looking up at her.
"I do my lord ask this of you. Spare her, kill the mudblood, but spare my sister."
"And the child? What would you have me to do with the halfblood?" Voldemort said, Bella pushed against him in her mind, she buried the images of Tonks deep inside herself.
"Spare her for Carina, for the child you could not return to me." Bella said carefully.
Voldemort looked down at Bella for several minutes, she kept all thoughts of Dora still safely away from her mind and pushed Carina forward. She played herself at the grave side, of her first real talk with Tom Riddle. The probing stopped, he had relented.
He turned to the Death Eaters, "Kill the mudblood. Spare the Pure blood and her offspring. For now."
Bella's head sunk to the floor, she would pay for this. He pulled her roughly from the floor when the others had left and threw her to the bed.
Bella stared at the ceiling, the whore of a snake.
Bella crawled from the bed and made her way down the hall, she saw the light crack under the door. "Andy?" She whispered tapping lightly on the door and opening it. Andy was sitting at a desk, her back to the door. Her hand holding a photograph touching it lovingly. She jumped slightly like a child caught being naughty. Bella glanced at the photo, it was Andromeda with Ted in France looking happy and waving.
"Bella." Andy said putting the picture face down and turning to look at her sister. But it was too late, Bella was gone from the room.
Hermione ate breakfast with Andy and Tonks the next morning. Bella had left very early to go to Cissy. Hermione understood, Cissy was not taking the news well of Lucius' continued absence. Though they still treated it as a missing person, the Aurors had explained that finding him alive at this point was highly unlikely.
"Where's Bella this morning?" Andy asked, her mind flashing back to the previous night, she felt sick to her stomach. "Off to see Narcissa very early this morning." Hermione said thanking the house elf for the breakfast plate in front of her. The house elf merely nodded, she was used to Hermione's odd behaviour of thanking her. She wasn't sure what to do with the money that Bella paid her so she kept it in a sock in her cupboard.
"Oh." Was Andromeda's reply. Hermione frowned and picked at her food for a moment. She had been up late the previous night going over the notes from the book Tonks had read them.
Tonks spooned eggs into Teddy's mouth and ate pieces of toast in between his bites. She was due to interview a nanny for Teddy at nine to accompany them back abroad. Andromeda insisted so they could spend time together without worrying over Teddy so much.
"Aren't you hungry?" Andromeda asked watching Hermione shift the food around on her plate.
"Hmmm oh yes, just tired." Hermione said by way of explanation. She was more than tired; Bella had woken her up to make love the previous night. Her refusal led to an argument that left Bella fuming and Hermione in tears. Hermione finished half her breakfast and excused herself to get ready for work. The nanny had just arrived for the interview with Tonks and Andromeda said she needed to go start packing for their departure the next day.
Hermione stood in the bedroom looking at her reflection. She pulled off her pyjamas and stood naked in front of the full length mirror. Her hands rested on the sweet little lump that seemed to get a little bigger each day. Her heart was sore, she hated arguing with Bella, she frowned slightly and caressed her stomach.
With a sigh she walked to the closet to get her clothes, she had just managed to get her shirt buttoned when she realised the room was spinning. She braced herself against the doorframe and called for Andy. She felt herself slipping to the floor before being lifted by Andy.
After may assurances to Andy that she had simply stood too quickly, Hermione walked into a flurry of activity, investigators were running all over fetching reports and scribbling things on parchment. Birch-Lock was in his office speaking rapidly to two Unspeakables pointing out the sketches tacked up to his wall.
"Black." He called when he spotted her and waved her in. Hermione stowed her things in her office and went into Birch-Locks.
"What's all the buzzing?"
"There's been a development with the arc- sorry with the gateway. Gentlemen, this is Hermione Black, she was who brought this gateway to our attention."
Hermione nodded at the two men who nodded back.
"So as best we can tell without digging down into the platform, this is the 12th gateway. The other 11 have been lost, broken, or stored in private collections their contents lost." Birch-Lock said pointing to the sketches of the other 11 gateways that Hermione had drawn.
"Now as far as we can tell the 12th gateway is the gateway that opens the balance of magic. Without this gateway there was no way to balance out who was to become a wizard or witch. The world would be overrun with magic. A world overrun with magic cannot exist with the muggle world."
The Unspeakables nodded and furiously scribbled as Birch-Lock spoke.
"It was essentially the gate that sealed magic into a family line, the twenty-eight remaining pureblood families can all be traced into this era of magic through their direct connection to Merlin."
Birch-Lock pointed to the family trees, "None of these families have ever had a reported squib born into their family line. It is sealed for them, there is no dilution or loss of magic. The other families with weaker connections to Merlin and the original gateways have squibs in their lines."
Hermione leaned against Birch-Locks desk and listened to the connections he had made the previous night when she'd left to go home.
"Now, you guys have been researching this gateway for nearly forty years when it was recovered from a loch bottom after the loch was drained. Now the loch was located near where three of the original gates were last reported around eight hundred years ago."
"What does this have to do with this morning?" The Unspeakable with the beard asked. Hermione hadn't caught their names.
"I am getting to that." Birch-Lock said "So this gate along with the other 11 were actually soul binders. Each one corresponding to a great witch or wizard of that age. In this case, the age of Merlin."
"So this is literally a soul that we're dealing with?"
"The essence of a soul yes."
"Which soul was in the 12th gate?" The other Unspeakable asked.
"Sir Mordred, the son of Arthur and Morgan Le Fay."
The silence was palpable. Both Unspeakables stared from Birch-Lock to Hermione.
"The Betrayer? He was no great wizard"
"The killer of Arthur and the restorer of the kingdom and I assure you sir, very much a wizard." Birch-Lock corrected.
By noon Birch-Lock and Hermione had an audience of Unspeakables and Kingsley listening to them.
"So what is happening right now with this gateway?" Kingsley asked studying the photographs.
"As far as we can tell the gateway is unstable." Hermione said feeling slightly nervous in front of so many wizards. "There is no balance coming into the gateway. For years a parade of wizards and witches have been brought to what we thought was an archway with no idea what lay inside it. Meanwhile Mordred has been watching and learning. He's adapting to what is happening. There is no reawakening the dead that we know of, however many of the magics from the time of Merlin have been forgotten. "
"So he's getting stronger?" Vance asked from the back of the room.
"Yes." Hermione said pointing out the photo of the mist coming out of the archway. "He can take on any form through the mist. He can speak and be understood by certain witches and wizards. The ones who can hear him clearly are all from the 28 remaining pureblood families or have ties to them."
"You can hear them."
"I hear the whispers." Hermione said, "I cannot make them out."
"How is that possible you're a muggleborn?"
"I am pregnant with the child of a pureblood." Hermione explained, "Which is why I can hear the whispers but not make them out. I wasn't aware I was pregnant at the time I went onto the dias."
There were mutters, "Birch cannot hear the whispers and there is no effect for him when he approaches the gateway. He is not part of the original families, while his family is old they are not one of the founding magical families."
Hermione pointed out her prisoner lists and the interactions with the gateway. "Every one of the witches or wizards who have been affected or killed by this gateway are part of the founding magical families."
"What would you have us do with this gateway?" The head of the Department of Mysteries asked.
"Destroy ir." Birch-Lock said. "It's already manifested and has appeared in the dreams of several pureblood families."
"Dreams." The Unspeakable named Barrows laughed.
"We have conducted interviews with members of every founding family and all of them have reported an increase in disturbing dreams in the last five months."
"Nightmares are hardly worthy of a dangerous being."
Hermione exchanged a look with Birch-Lock.
"He speaks in the dream. Audible and at times, commanding wizards and witches to do his bidding." Hermione said, Barrows stopped smiling looking surprised.
"He told Antonin Dolohov to come to my home and kill me. To torture my wife and Antonin tried to do just that thinking he was under direct orders from Lord Voldemort." The name brought hisses from the group.
"Why you are you so important to the wizarding world?" Again Barrows spoke.
"My wife is a pureblood and I am pregnant with her child. I was already at the time of the dream, my only guess is Mordred knows Bellatrix from her time at the gateway. Kill me, the child dies, balance with no halfblood. Keeping the founding families' blood line pure. Or he just wanted amusement and was testing his control over an individual."
"Lucius Malfoy, we believe, willingly walked into the gateway believing he was going to free the dark lord. Tonks, a half blood from the Black family, saw her dead husband and had to be pulled away before walking into it. This is dangerous, this is not an object to study it is an object to be destroyed." Birch-Lock said trying to impress the group assembled.
Kingsley stood and spoke, "You've given us much to consider. Thank you for the extensive work you've put into this. We do need to get back to the situation at hand."
Hermione and Birch-Lock looked at each other frowning as the group began to get up and walk from the room. "This is the situation at hand." Hermione said to the retreating backs.
Birch-Lock kicked his waste basket, "Fuck."
Hermione collapsed into a chair and held her head in her hands. "You know they're not going to destroy it right?"
Birch-Lock tore down the map that marked the location of the original gateways. "They have no idea what they're dealing with."
Hermione leaned back in the chair, she was exhausted. Weeks of research, dead ends and finally the answer and they were going to do nothing but continue to study it.
"What-what happens if-"Birch-Lock asked, his hand on the wall holding him up.
"All the magic and energy that is stored comes out with him."
"A world overrun with magic." Birch-Lock said looking at the book Andromeda had given them.
A world overrun with magic could not exist with the muggle population. Hermione rubbed her face, Mordred was coming to purge the magical world and the Ministry was helping him.