A/N: Hey boys, girls, and… everyone else; I know this took forever. I'm muy sorry. I'm starting work at 4am now and I'm exhausted all the time so I've taken to writing in 15 minute bursts on my breaks (Not ideal but it's better than nothing, right?).
I actually re-wrote this chapter so many times that I now have 8 documents in the Lotus Flowers folder called 'Nope' with varying amounts of capital letters, curses, and exclamation marks. It's a miracle I got anything posted at all, it really is.
Also, for the few of you that PM'd me- my messenger is possessed by Stalin or something because it refuses to let me answer anyone, hopefully it will sort itself out soon so I don't feel/look like I'm ignoring you all. Okay I think I'm done. As you were.
/
Hermione was beginning to find this day just a little bit difficult. She had found Bellatrix this morning, after a little direction from Narcissa, in a small, sad little town along the Irish side of the North Channel.
Minerva had lost her mind completely during breakfast and attempted to hex Severus as he made polite conversation, much to the shock of the two tiny Hufflepuff girls that were sitting on the far end of the room hunched miserably over some toast.
"Stop this madness now, Severus! Just stop this right now! And you! Hermione you must know this is just the mark controlling you! Stop this all now!"
And so it had gone on, until Severus had rolled his eyes and stood, gesturing for Hermione to follow him. Their trip to Narcissa's had been short and very tearful, and even Draco looked nervous for her.
Once again, Hermione was more than a little anxious herself.
She had gone straight from Malfoy Manor to the small town Narcissa's instinct had directed her to, and was very surprised to find that on the outskirts there was, behind a lot of trees and driveway, a sister house- slightly smaller but no less grand- to Malfoy Manor there.
It was shortly after ten and not even the most valiant rays of sunlight were managing to claw their way around the greyish white clouds that had, in the early hours of the morning, merged into one giant sheet, blocking out all signs and hopes of blue sky.
Hermione had taken a long time to gather up the courage to go inside the house. Her heart had been racing all the way up the drive and at this point she was just as afraid of finding Bellatrix as she was of not finding her. After half an hour of staring at the door, she had pushed on the white wood, and to her surprise, it had opened.
The house's interior was not unlike Malfoy Manor in appearance- imposing, cold, but in need of a little more tlc than Narcissa's immaculate household; Hermione could easily have imagined it being the sort of place Bellatrix might retreat to as her sister had suggested.
Hermione found nothing of interest on the lower half of the house. A few chairs, a sofa which didn't look as though it had been sat on in a very long time, a gigantic desk and some empty shelves were the only things that Hermione managed to find.
She started up the stairs and winced as they creaked in the seemingly forced silence.
In the back of her mind, she'd still been thinking about Minerva, and the injustice of it all. The woman was out of control, and she wasn't sure how the hell she was going to cope with the rest of the school year if this was going to the the tone.
Perhaps Bellatrix would put an end to her if she asked nicely.
At the top of the stairs and to the left, Hermione had found herself in another room with a sofa but this one, unlike it's ground-floor counterpart, definitely looked more in use. To the left there was a fireplace which had ashes in the grate, and the floor wasn't as dusty looking.
It certainly seemed more promising than anything she had seen so far.
Wondering if there was anything outside that might help, but unsure exactly what, she had leaned in close to the cool glass window and peered out into the grim morning, hazel eyes reflecting the white squares of the window panes. As she studied the landscape, a voice had sounded from the other side of the room that made Hermione jump feet.
"Looking for something?"
Hermione yelped without thinking, turned quickly around and then reeled away, stumbling with her back against the window.
She stared.
Bellatrix was sitting on a table in the shadows near the door with her legs crossed at the knees, leaning back a little on her palms and with her head tilted to one side. Her hair was piled up on top of her head and her eyes were dark. The way she was smiling gave Hermione butterflies.
The young witch felt like a rabbit in the headlights. Her heart was beating so hard that it hurt to swallow, and her voice failed her in what she quickly identified as reflex fear.
She was afraid of Bellatrix. Even after all of this, her body betrayed her.
"Hello my love-" The dark witch said, "What took you so long?"
Hermione's head was spinning and she fought against the head rush that was threatening to overtake her. If she passed out now, she'd never live down the embarrassment- she had, apparently, already walked right past the woman as it was.
"Well well, little lioness, you don't look so good. You can't be surprised to see me, you did walk right in here- although I really am curious as to the timing… Take a months holiday, did we?"
Hermione opened her mouth and then decided against spilling the whole story in one, long, unpunctuated sentence. "You- you knew it was me?" She asked instead, breathless considering she hadn't so much as moved an inch.
Bellatrix scowled. "Give me some credit, you gave me long enough to work it out. It was the eyes that gave you away, though, if you were actually wondering."
Hermione blinked subconsciously. She had of course realised that Bellatrix, as it now stood, hadn't been dead for a month; and within the time she'd now spent alive had had more than enough surplus to think over what had happened. She hand't expected Bellatrix to have worked out who she was just from looking at her animagus, however. That was either prodigious skill or uncanny luck.
All in all Bellatrix seemed… unconcerned by Hermione's arrival, as if it had been perfectly expected.
The dark witch cocked her head. Hermione looked exhausted and getting her head together enough to speak was apparently taking its toll. Bellatrix decided to give her a break; it was to be expected that the girl was at least a little nervous.
Hermione watched as Bellatrix hopped down from the table and walked slowly over to the sofa, sitting down gracefully.
Hermione didn't have a clue what to say. What was the normal thing to say to someone you were fated to spend the rest of your life with loving completely and unconditionally when you hadn't yet so much as exchanged two words in passing? You weren't supposed to know these things in advance, she felt like she had broken the system or used some kind of cheat code.
Crap. Was all she could think as she scrambled to form a sentence. Before she could embarrass herself any further, however, Bellatrix squinted at her.
"Is that-" The woman stood up again and Hermione found she couldn't back away with her back already to the glass as the ex death eater approached.
"Is that my crow?" Bellatrix reached out to pull the pendulum from where it rested against Hermione's chest, half hidden by her top.
Hermione's heart stopped dead as the older witch's fingertips brushed against her skin and she had to force herself not to hold her breath.
"Cissy gave it to me." She said without thinking as Bellatrix examined the skull.
Bellatrix's face changed for a second and then went back to neutral.
"Cissy? She echoed quietly. "Is she okay?"
"Last time I checked." Hermione confirmed nervously, hoping that was the right thing to say as if she might be punished if it weren't.
"Then you've spoken with her?"
Hermione nodded. "She was… very welcoming…"
Bellatrix smiled for a moment and carefully let the necklace rest back against Hermione's skin. "She's good at that. Why did she give you this?"
Bellatrix's eyes were dark and something in her voice made Hermione wonder, not for the first time, if there was more to this necklace than there seemed.
"She… I'm not sure." She trailed off, trying to think back to what they had been talking about when Narcissa had gone to get it. Had it been Minerva? Her condition? Hermione couldn't remember.
"I was dying- a lot happened in a short space of time… I- I can't remember."
Bellatrix's eyes snapped up to look into Hermione's and just as her heart rate had begun to feel steady, it tripped and fluttered again.
"Dying?" There was something akin to suppressed concern in Bellatrix's voice and Hermione couldn't help but find it almost fascinating as it jarred with everything she had been previously taught to believe about the woman.
Hermione didn't even know where to begin.
"I think I have a lot to explain." She said after a few moments.
Bellatrix straightened up and nodded slightly, trying not to let on just how much she wanted to hear what Hermione had to say. She had been driving herself insane over the last month, stuck in this house with little to no information about what was happening in the outside world.
Hermione steadied herself and perched on the edge of the sofa, wetting her lips as she tried to think where to begin. Did she tell her about what had happened when her, Ron and Harry were taken to Malfoy Manor the first time? Or should she tell her exactly as it had unfolded from her own point of view, starting with Minerva coming to visit her?
Bellatrix sat down beside her, choosing to sit leaning against the arm to give Hermione some space. She couldn't help but notice how much Hermione had changed since she had last set eyes on her; it had been a few years. The girl's jawline was more defined and her hair was as tamed as Bellatrix could imagine it was ever going to get, not being much one to speak on the subject herself. She was also taller, and notably… lean- not quite skinny, though Bellatrix wondered if she would have said the same if she had seen her a month ago.
"After the battle… I…" Hermione sighed. "I collapsed. When I woke up, I had this." She looked down at the mark across her wrist, feeling Bellatrix's eyes follow her own. Hermione was either too nervous or too afraid to chance glancing up at Bellatrix's face.
"Minerva told me what it was." Hermione's mind went blank and she decided she might as well just come out with it. "It was Black. You died in the battle. And that meant I had about a month to live before I joined you."
Hermione swallowed and tried to remember that she was, for now at least, a Gryffindor. Her eyes darted up to look at the other woman and found the ex death eater's eyes were still fixed to Hermione's wrist. There was an earnest in them which hadn't been there before, but Bellatrix proved to be a good listener and didn't interrupt.
"So Severus asked to see me. He wanted me to allow him the chance to persuade me to, rather than let myself die, bring you back. Which, no offence, I wasn't really… enthusiastic about at the time. But he won, I went to see your sister. And then I spent the month going between days of unconsciousness and pain and training-"
"To be an animagus." Bellatrix finished for her, piecing it together.
There was a quiet between them for a moment and a rather unnecessary voice at the back of her mind pointed out that the fear Hermione had felt when she first laid eyes on Bellatrix had since evaporated. In its place was the same sort of anxiety as if she had just jumped from a high place but was promised a soft landing.
"I went back yesterday."
Bellatrix blinked and Hermione watched as turmoil broke out behind her eyes.
Finding herself unable to think of anything else to say suitable for the moment, Hermione instead rolled up her sleeves to occupy her hands.
She regretted doing it almost immediately.
"What's that?"
"What's- oh." Hermione looked down to her arm and the cursed scarring that Bellatrix had noticed without hesitation.
Hermione supposed that now was as good a time as any. "Remember when Harry, Ron and I got, uh...escorted to Malfoy Manor?" Hermione risked another glance up to Bellatrix's face and her expression told her she most certainly did.
"Well, I got... interrogated. By you. Except it wasn't you- it was Rudolphus using polyjuice. But up until last month when I spoke to Narcissa I thought it was you. He used a knife to cut that on my arm and nothing will get rid of it." Hermione concluded quickly, not wanting to dwell on the memory for too long.
"That son of a..." Bellatrix stopped herself and looked away, her eyes narrowed. She stared out of the window for a few moments and then looked back, apparently a lot calmer.
"I'm sorry." She said resolutely.
"It... wasn't you." Hermione said, feeling weird that she was trying to make the woman that had until recently been straight out of her nightmares feel better.
"It might as well have been though, for the effect it had."
Hermione opened her mouth to disagree before realising she couldn't. Not without lying, anyway.
"So… What is this place?"
"One of Andromeda's houses she lost when the family disowned her. I'm now the rightful owner, the resident, the maid, gardener and cook."
"The Christmas party must be a blast." Hermione said without thinking.
Bellatrix looked at her as if she was going to reply for a moment before laughing loudly.
"Ah… yeah, it has its moments." Bellatrix agreed.
"I think… I think Severus wants to speak with you."
Bellatrix turned to gaze at her with big brown eyes which despite being uncharacteristically gentle made Hermione's own eyes dart back to her lap like repelled magnets.
"Where?"
"Hogwarts."
"I can't go there, Hermione."
Hermione shivered, trying with all her might not to make it obvious.
"There's nothing Minerva can do." The younger witch said impulsively, aware it sounded more like she was trying to convince herself than Bellatrix.
"Minerva?"
"She's… on the war path." Hermione had been sparing with details of the headmistress, and was yet to mention the second half of Severus' plan.
"She'll probably make an attempt on my life when she gets her hands on me." Hermione sighed.
"Well in that case." Bellatrix stood up suddenly. "I suppose I should be there to even the odds."
/
The only thing that wasn't covered in crusted, powdery sea salt in the dismally small town of Marlowe-On-Sea was the railings between the road and the beach, and that was only because they had recently been hit by a beauty of a wave whipped up by the never ceasing 'godforsaken fucking damned wind' which hit the town dead on 99% of the time.
Everything else was either covered over for the impending storm or covered in salt and left to its fate.
The man who was watching the uproar on the beach couldn't say he was surprised.
He was pushing 143 now and it took a lot these days; when he was younger the world had seemed like a vast place, but generally, he had since found, this was not the case.
Of course there were wonders; Hippogriffs and the clandestine secrets of the Centaurs, ancient dragons and bog unicorns, but really, most experiences in life could be equated to the one he was watching right now- three women, one man, screaming, fire, and the occasional rugby tackle. Really, life was like this- completely random, with little point, a lot of fighting, and the wind blowing in totally the wrong direction to that which would be helpful to any or all parties.
He tugged at a long white whisker as he watched the man with the black cloak and the blacker hair take yet another near miss from a smaller woman with brown hair, who seemed intent on dismantling a woman wearing what was clearly a witch's hat.
Was this what Hogwarts did these days? He wondered. It had been so many years since he'd so much as set eyes on the castle he would have believed the man who told him it was no longer there. He had been living among the muggles in this isolated place for so long that at one point he'd had to leave for a decade and then come back as someone else, for fear someone would twig he had been seventy for over forty years. As it happened, the muggles were particularly unobservant when it came to the elderly, and he had gotten away with it nicely.
A loud bang startled the remaining gulls into a sleepy adrenaline-fuelled flight over the bay and the woman with long black hair- who had earlier cursed colourfully about the wind as she and the smaller woman had walked past him- shouted something not quite loudly enough to be heard from such a distance at the woman in the hat, who seemed now to be getting it from all sides.
Wands were now drawn without a thought for who was watching, and the man took a second to check behind him for other onlookers, since the witches and wizard on the beach clearly weren't going to. There were none. A few lines of battered beach huts, some small boats huddled under bright blue tarpaulin, and a closed cafe with its shiny silver seats all stacked on the table tops and tied down with a mixture of guy ropes and pull ties were all that faced the scene.
Another bang and the man looked back.
Well, he thought, as the tall woman with the black hair finally hexed the woman in the hat, standing firmly in front of the smaller woman with the brown hair whilst the man in the cloak put his face in his hands, Hogwarts has certainly upped its game for practical lessons.
Even as he thought it, he could see from the enraged look on the hat woman's face that this wasn't practice. She fired something back, and hell broke loose.
The man in the cloak stood now with his hands in the air, shouting at the sides of his company's heads as they carried on fighting regardless.
It was probably the most exciting thing those sands had seen since a brig carrying salted meats and spices had been wrecked against the cliffs in the night and washed up onto the beach with the high tide in 1746.
From what he could see, the woman with the black hair was by far the superior fighter, followed closely by the woman with the brown hair. Her reflex was infallible, her counter spells precise and effective, and overall the woman in the hat was first outmatched, and then also outnumbered when the slightly smaller woman joined in. The black-haired man was obviously not of a faint heart, as he tried to step in between the women to halt the fighting, using his body as a wall.
For a short time it worked and he tried to further talk the situation down before the woman in the hat made what the man watching assumed was a smart comment, and the smaller woman lunged at her again, forgetting her wand entirely.
Drop by drop, fat bulbs of rain began to fall on the beach, hitting the railings and jumping out into four or five smaller globs before running down towards the pavement.
The man wrinkled his nose and peered up to the grey sky. A drop fell on his forehead, then his cheek, and then, with no further warning and in full British spirit, it lashed it down.
The taller woman with the dark hair wrenched the smaller woman away from the scuffle and put her behind her, and then put her hand over the woman with the hat's face and pushed her clean onto her back in one motion. She then turned her back, grabbed the brown haired woman, and disappeared on the spot. The man in the cloak looked from where they had disappeared, to the the woman on the wet sand, and then disappeared also, leaving her to struggle to her feet, covered in sand and sea water. Once she was up she shouted, blew a hole in the sand before her in anger, leaving a crater about a meter wide and a meter deep, and then disappeared also, before she could become anymore drenched by the freezing rain.
The man watched the empty beach for a long while after the four had gone. After the first two drops, the rain hadn't further hit him and he supposed he should make himself scarce before a muggle came to investigate all the noise, only to find a huge hole in the beach, and an old man standing dry in the downpour. That could be a difficult one to explain.
After thinking about the scene on the beach for a few more seconds, he decided that maybe now was the time to lay eyes on Hogwarts once more.
He turned on the spot, and he too was gone, leaving the crater, the rain, and the oncoming storm.
/
Minerva was humiliated more than she was angry. Years of built up contempt had caused her to underestimate Bellatrix, even after everything that had happened. Not only had she managed to forget that she was not Dumbledore, and could likely not take on both Bellatrix and Hermione at the same time, but she had also forgotten just how quickly Bellatrix could tire of dealing with someone. She could switch from furious to boredly unimpressed in under a second, and Minerva knew she might never live down being pushed on her back by her face if Hermione or her new partner ever decided to divulge the event to anyone else. She couldn't believe she had been so stupid.
Now back in her office, Minerva bristled at the thought of the ex death eater alive and well within the castle walls, and further still at the fact there was nothing she could do about it. She was convinced that Severus was the ignition source of this problem and that he had been since the beginning.
But what could she do? She couldn't kill Bellatrix without killing Hermione. And if Hermione's condition were to be found out, investigated... No. Minerva knew she would not get away with it. Azkaban couldn't touch Bellatrix unless Hermione really went out of her way to mess up and she landed herself in there too, and she couldn't expel Hermione from the school without causing an uproar of epic proportions with the media and the ministry.
She was, as the kids said these days, fucked.
All she could do now was try to make life difficult for the two in the hopes they might leave of their own accord; and she knew exactly where to start.
The letters were already primly written and folded, tucked neatly into their envelopes and stacked in one magically supported column halfway to the high ceiling. Hundreds and hundreds of calligraphic names printed one one side, and as many red wax seals stamped on the other.
If Hermione and Bellatrix wanted Hogwarts, she'd give them Hogwarts.
In 48 hours time students would be flooding the great hall, now repaired and proud as though nothing had ever happened, and they would have no where left to hide.
If she was honest, the repairs to the castle could have done with another two weeks to really finish up, but Minerva wasn't that patient. Her decision to call the students back to school had been made without consulting even the minister, and she intended to answer any and all criticism with the excuse of just not being able to stand seeing the halls empty for another day. The crowd always had liked a sentimental old woman.
If that didn't work, she would find something else; she had to get rid of Bellatrix by any means necessary, and she needed to do it quickly and quietly.
After so many years, after beating the damned woman once, she couldn't afford for Bellatrix to let her secrets get out now. She couldn't afford for Bellatrix to live again.