"Miss Lestrange."
Bellatrix whirled as she walked down the third floor corridor with the Slytherin girls. She frowned when she saw Professors Dippet and Dumbledore standing with a middle-aged witch and an older wizard that Bellatrix did not recognise.
"Will you come with us, Miss Lestrange, if you please?" said Professor Dippet.
"I've got Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons in a moment," Bellatrix said cautiously, and Dippet shook his head.
"Professor Walsh will understand your absence. Come with us, please, Miss Lestrange."
Bellatrix turned to Druella and said furtively, "Tell Tom I've gone with Dippet and Dumbledore."
Then she reluctantly followed the pack of adults away, up some staircases until they reached the Hospital Wing.
"What is this all about, please?" asked Bellatrix, and once they walked into the Hospital Wing, Professor Dumbledore said,
"This is the Minister of Magic, Mr Leonard Spencer-Moon."
"How do you do?" asked the man with the handlebar mustache and the fuzzy grey hair. Bellatrix's mouth fell open. The Minister of Magic had come to Hogwarts? Her heart began to race.
"Hello," she said carefully.
"And this," said Dumbledore, "is Healer Hanna Bovery from St Mungo's. With your consent, Miss Lestrange, the Ministry of Magic would like for a St Mungo's Healer to conduct a full assessment of how your cognitive abilities and senses have been affected - or not - by time travel. Then, Mr Spencer-Moon will ask you a few questions, and you may be on your way."
Bellatrix scowled. "I'm not meant to answer questions."
"I will not ask specifics about the future that will endanger lives," promised the Minister. "Please, if you will allow Healer Bovery to examine you? It is non-invasive."
Bellatrix reluctantly sat on the edge of a bed with curtains around it, and the stern-looking witch pulled up a chair. She opened her leather briefcase and pulled out her wand and a stack of cardboard cards. She flashed Bellatrix a small smile, and Dippet, Dumbledore, and Spencer-Moon all hovered nearby, watching.
"Let us begin with a brief assessment of the five senses," said Healer Bovery. She reached into her leather briefcase and pulled out a small, round sponge. She tapped it with her wand and murmured a little incantation, and then she held it beneath Bellatrix's nose. "What do you smell?"
"Lemon." Bellatrix recoiled from the sponge and stared right at Dumbledore. She made sure her Occlumency shields were all the way up; she could just see him trying to search her mind whilst she was distracted.
"And now?" asked Bovery, and Bellatrix sniffed. She crinkled her nose.
"Coffee."
"The sense of smell has been entirely preserved whilst moving through time and space," noted Healer Bovery. "Now, if you will kindly tell me… how have you found the food in the Great Hall? Has the taste been extraordinary in any way to you?"
"It's tasted just fine," Bellatrix insisted, and Bovery nodded. She held up a card with three blue circles on it, and she asked,
"What do you see here?"
"Three blue circles," Bellatrix said, as if Bovery were insane. Bovery nodded crisply. She tipped her head and commanded,
"Shut your eyes, please."
"I beg your pardon?" Bellatrix didn't feel comfortable shutting her eyes in front of these people. But she finally did it, and she heard Healer Bovary say,
"Tell me when you feel my wand on your cheek."
"There," Bellatrix said in a shaking voice when at last the tip of Bovary's wand touched her cheekbone.
"You may open your eyes," said Healer Bovary. "It is my conclusion that the body has remained entirely intact through the time travel. No significant portion or function has been lost or compromised."
"Well, I could have told you that," Bellatrix snapped.
"Leonard, would you like to speak with her?" asked Dumbledore. "We'll step out. Healer Bovary, if you would come with the Headmaster and myself?"
The three of them left, and the Minister of Magic sank slowly into the chair where the Healer had been. Bellatrix stared right at him and folded her hands in her lap, shrugging a bit.
"What do you want to know, Minister?"
"I am told that you were in Azkaban for stealing food during a war when you fell asleep," said Leonard Spencer-Moon. "May I ask if that war involved Grindelwald?"
Bellatrix just shook her head a little and whispered, "Those are not things that should be discussed."
"You're quite right." Spencer-Moon nodded. "So, let us discuss what happened to you. You were in a prison cell. Were you eighteen years old?"
"Thirty," Bellatrix said smoothly, and Spencer-Moon nodded slowly. He looked around and smirked.
"Must be interesting to be back at school."
"So it is," Bellatrix nodded. "I quite liked school in my time. Not much changed between now and my own school days."
"No?" Spencer-Moon seemed relieved to hear that. He sighed and licked his bottom lip as he asked cautiously, "Did you come here for a specific purpose?"
"No, I did not. I was watching a rat eat my gruel, and then I lay down upon my straw mattress, and I shut my eyes. And when I opened my eyes, I was in a bed in the Slytherin girls' dormitory in my eighteen-year-old body."
"How very intriguing." Spencer-Moon took a long, trembling breath. He shrugged a bit. "There are dozens of examples of this happening throughout history. People appear, seemingly out of thin air, with knowledge they could only possess if they had come from the future. But because they come back, the futures these people have lived very rarely come to pass. You see, by the very nature of your being here, certain changes will inevitably happen. Do you understand that your memories will likely not be recreated exactly as they occurred? Do you understand that we will not be able to send you, erm, home?"
"This is home now," Bellatrix said firmly. "I will make a life for myself here. I will find purpose here. The Universe wanted me to move, so I moved. I am a traveller. I have travelled. I will make my existence in this place."
Spencer-Moon nodded again. He rose slowly from his chair, and he folded his hands before his robes.
"Thank you for your time, Miss Lestrange. You may return to your lessons."
"Bella."
She looked up from the History of Magic essay she was writing at the desk in the Common Room to see Tom striding toward her. He visibly gulped and leaned down over the desk.
"Come into my room."
"Is something wrong?" Bellatrix asked, and he breathed quickly through his nose as he informed her,
"I've had another letter delivered via Caeso Malfoy."
"Oh." Bellatrix quickly packed up her parchment and textbook and buckled her bag, and she rose and followed Tom toward the boys' dormitories. They hurried toward the Head Boy's room, and once they were inside, Tom shut the door behind them and pulled an envelope out of the breast of his robes.
"Bella." He held it out to her. "Things are… things are moving more quickly than I'd anticipated."
"Really, Master?" Bellatrix dropped her school bag and took the envelope from him. She opened it and pulled out the letter inside, which was written in elegant script.
Mr Riddle,
On the second of February, Hogwarts students will visit Hogsmeade. Inside The Three Broomsticks, at a quiet booth in the back corner, you will see an ancient-looking wizard in a dark grey hat, sipping a Butterbeer and eating sausages. That wizard will be me. Come and sit with that wizard, Mr Riddle.
Bring your time traveller.
G.G.
Bellatrix's heart thudded in her chest. She tried to swallow but failed, and when she looked up to Tom, she felt frightened.
"First the Ministry, now Grindelwald," she whispered. "Everyone wants a piece of the time traveller."
"He probably wants to know some information about his defeat by Dumbledore. You need to give him all of that information whilst withholding the fact that I become powerful," Tom stressed. "If he knows that I become the great and powerful Lord Voldemort, he'll simply eliminate me as a threat to his dominance. We need him to see me right now as a subservient ally. Make things up if you have to; just say that the world went on after Grindelwald with Dumbledore mostly in charge."
"That's not a lie," Bellatrix pointed out, and Tom scoffed loudly.
"Disgusting," he snarled. "I despise that man."
"Wait a minute," Bellatrix said, frowning. "How can either of us go to Hogsmeade? We haven't got permission slips."
"Permission slips?" Tom looked at her like she was mad. "No. All students over third year get to go."
"Dumbledore must've come up with that rule later," Bellatrix mused, "or someone else did. In my time, you had to have a permission slip, even once you were seventeen."
"Huh. No, we can go." Tom tucked her hair behind her ear. "An ancient wizard in a dark grey hat sipping Butterbeer and eating sausages. Think he'll be using Polyjuice Potion with the hair of some random Muggle or something?"
"I dunno. He seems skilled at hiding. Remember all those stories about him in New York in the twenties?" Bellatrix asked. "When he was hiding out as Percival Graves? He's a master of disguise. I'm sure he knows what he's doing."
"But it's still almost three weeks away!" Tom lamented. "How will I possibly wait that long? I'll be crawling out of my skin by then."
"Perhaps I could distract you in the meantime," Bellatrix suggested, and she started to loosen his tie. He raised his eyebrows, and as she pulled his tie off over his head, he whispered,
"I like that idea."
"Hmm." Bellatrix unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it away with his robe, yanking it from his trousers. She unbuckled his belt and his trousers, and she let him do the rest as she started to strip off her own robe, jumper, shirt, tie, and skirt.
"Are we… erm… what are we doing?" Tom asked cautiously. Bellatrix didn't really have a good answer for that.
"We're getting naked in your room, Master," she replied with feigned confidence. She laughed a little, unbuckling her bra and tossing it away. Tom stared at her breasts, and she caressed them a little.
"Touch them?" she asked softly, and he stepped up to her and cushioned one breast with his hand. He squeezed a little and dragged his thumb over her peaked nipple, and he groaned a bit. His cock was getting hard, she could see. The purplish tip was rising, edging outward, and the organ seemed hungry for attention. She reached for him and wrapped her fingers around him, pulling her thumb back and forth over his tip until a dewy drop of fluid spread over it.
"Bed. Bed, bed, bed." Tom started to push Bellatrix, and she giggled a bit until she saw how serious his face was. He wanted her. Badly. Now. She could sense that. She was about to be taken by him, she realised. He was a virgin, wasn't he? Was this body of hers virginal? She wondered if it would hurt to receive his cock in this form.
"Wait! Wand." Bellatrix snatched her wand off the ground and aimed it at her lower abdomen. "Breviter Sterilatatem."
"Oh. Right." Tom shook his head; he hadn't been thinking at all about contraception. Bellatrix threw up one eyebrow. The last thing either of them needed right now was a child thrown into the mix of everything. She let him push her toward the bed again, feeling herself flush wet between her legs, and she landed with an oof on the blankets when he pushed her up. He crawled atop her, and Bellatrix begged him,
"Slow down, My Lord."
"No. I can't." Tom was moving with incredible urgency. Well, of course he was. He'd never done this before. Bellatrix wasn't counting on a lot of foreplay tonight, and she didn't wind up getting any. Instead, he just spread her legs wide with his hands and guided his cock toward her entrance, and he thrust right in.
"Ahhhh!" Bellatrix arched her back up and threw her arms around Tom's shoulders, and he froze.
"Pain?" He seemed confused. Bellatrix nodded quickly, for she'd felt a rip and a tear, and she whispered,
"This body's never done it before, apparently. Sorry; there might be a little blood on your sheets."
"Easily Siphoned," Tom said dismissively. He started to thrust in and out, and Bellatrix whispered,
"Oh, please slow down."
"Sorry." He finally listened to her, gliding in and out more regularly, more smoothly, and Bellatrix pulled him down until she could burrow her head up against his chest. He smelled good, like the ocean. She felt his cock hit her cervix over and over, felt him spreading and stretching her, and she murmured,
"I like it."
"So do I." He huffed a breath and bent to kiss her, the angle made awkward by their height difference. He finally sat up onto his knees and held Bellatrix's hips as he accelerated his pumping motions, and he shut his eyes as he asked her bluntly, "Are you going to finish?"
"N-No, probably not," Bellatrix said honestly. "Don't worry about me, Master."
"All right, because I've got… ungh… ten seconds." He screwed his eyes shut tightly and let his mouth fall open, and then his head dropped back and his cock was throbbing and twitching inside Bellatrix's body.
He stayed inside of her for an awfully long time, until he started to go soft, and his come drizzled out between them when at last he withdrew. Bellatrix lay where she was, sore and tired, and she stared at the ceiling.
"Master?" she whispered, and as he lay down beside her, breathlessly staring at her, he hummed,
"Mmm-hmm?"
"I'm just as in love with you here as I was there. Maybe more."
He was quiet for a very long time after that. He finally pulled Bellatrix up against his body and said softly,
"It would seem as though I was very foolish in ignoring you so thoroughly in the life you lived. But I won't ignore you here, Bella. You are… very special. Very special to me, you understand?"
"Yes, My Lord." Bellatrix's eyes burned. He picked up her left arm and dragged his thumb around her dormant Dark Mark.
"I am glad they didn't do a comprehensive physical examination of me today," Bellatrix mused. "They would have seen my Mark."
"They were idiots. Testing your sense of smell. Pah. I wonder if they'd be interested to know that your body became virginal when you moved through time and space," Tom said in a low, angry voice. "And the nerve of the Minister, asking you about Grindelwald."
"My father held a door open for me yesterday," Bellatrix noted, almost dreamily. She remembered the way Cygnus Black III had held open the Potions classroom door and given Bellatrix a very strange look. Then he'd kept the door open for Druella and smiled warmly at her. "Do you suppose they'll marry and I'll be born here?"
"I certainly hope so," Tom sighed. There was a long quiet then, and he finally reminded both of them, "We're going to meet with Gellert Grindelwald in a few weeks."
"Yes, Master," Bellatrix breathed. "We are."
"I'll be ready," Tom vowed. "I will be prepared for that meeting. Now. It's almost curfew, Miss Lestrange. Go get dressed."
Author's Note: So Dumbledore did get the Ministry involved. And Grindelwald is certainly interested in Bellatrix, too. And lemons, yay. LOL. Thank you so very much to those who took the time to review after the last chapter. I really do appreciate it so much. Thank you for reading.