Breakfast was full of the tense discomfort Hermione had not yet acclimated to. She expected the anger, she braced herself for the rudeness, she even understood the occasional bouts of furiously physical rage because she had almost begun to think like Bellatrix, but the awkwardness was worse than all of it. She did not know what it said about her, but she preferred the violence. At least it was predictable.
"Do you much like Wandlore?" Hermione asked, eying the stack of books (which she badly wanted to organize from largest at the bottom to smallest at the top) that had been haphazardly leaning atop their sitting room table. She had burnt the toast and the eggs were a bit runny, but she was still frazzled. She had vomited in her own bed and Bellatrix was acting unfailingly nice. And she had been walking about uncomfortably searching for the land-mine the older woman had to have planted somewhere.
"It was once offered as an elective I chose to participate in. I suppose the interest stuck. I always thought of it as divination for those with common sense and a level mind. There is far more to be told about a witch or wizard through their chosen wand than a great lump of leaves in the bottom of a teacup or a rubbish crystal ball. I've got a proclivity for it."
"Did you ever- pursue an apprenticeship?"
"Gregorovitch's wands are ugly, crude, haphazard chunks of woodwork. Ollivander is a superstitious coward who blanched at my very wand-choosing and chose to lecture me on the allegiance of my wand-wood and its inclinations. He tittered a bit, and there was no doubt he was bloody proud of a good match, but I think somehow the old codger thought I might kill him when the chance arose. You will understand why I did not pursue when the two most prominent so-called innovators had fallen so short of worthy."
"Ollivander was a miraculous wand-maker." It was somewhat like foot-in-mouth syndrome, but without anyone around to tell Hermione about it she would just keep aggressively doing it. And since Bellatrix suffered from the same tactless illness, the two never seemed to note a blessed touch of it in the other. "And I wouldn't call someone who had been tortured to such lengths a coward for doing whatever possible to make the pain stop."
"You would say that. Hermione Granger, the Gryffindor I never much understood." The toast had grown tiresome for Bellatrix. It had been, at first, a courtesy wherein she scraped off the little blackened crumbles and ate around them with a few tolerable smears of jam. But now she was getting irate with the conversation, and with each passing moment the breakfast seemed inedible. "Being a coward yourself it must be simple to relate. Wouldn't you say?"
A cheeky smile crossed Bellatrix's face easily, like sand slipping through fingers, and she waited only a partial second before the other woman turned an impressive pink and clutched her butter knife with hostile intent. Yes, Bellatrix wanted it. Badly. She wanted that bubbling hostility. She could feel it. She was waiting for it with the impatience of a child promised ice cream. The idea of twisting that wrist and wrenching Hermione against her coolly, the totality of making her bloody fucking terrified, yes, that was worth the wait.
But no lash out. No. Hermione put the knife down and Bellatrix pouted visibly, her fists tightening in her lap as she sucked in a breath. No outlet. She just wanted to play a game.
"It's very well ironic that it is you with the nerve to call me a coward when you seem to forget that it was you who I managed my greatest moment of courage against. You, Bellatrix Black, who tested my best mettle and allowed me to realize it was good enough." She dropped her arm to the table, the scar still written across it in Bellatrix's childish handwriting, that haphazard chunk of clumsy lettering.
"You screamed like a child." Bellatrix purred calmly, gently walked her fingers across the tabletop until they prodded Hermione's knuckles. She softly rubbed her fingertips over that hand until she could caress the faint scar, tickling at it playfully. She languidly tilted her head to one side, took in the sight of her delightful handiwork so prettily engraved. However, Hermione refused to allow the satisfaction and she shifted in one swift motion, grabbed at Bellatrix's wrist with a viper-quick conviction.
"And I don't suppose you considered I was but a child." And there was something in Hermione in that moment. If she could have given it a name it would have been adaptation, the way a new alpha male in a pride of lions systematically and harshly tosses out the other males to maintain his hard-earned post, the way he learns to be vicious to stay on top. She had adapted better than she would have ever expected, and for a moment, sometimes, she swore it was just a mirrored gaze in Bellatrix staring back at her. "And I'm willing to bet in Azkaban you screamed like a grown woman."
"Vous détestable petite chienne sale." Bellatrix growled calmly, but she was trembling so hard, in fact, that she did not have the presence of mind to tear her hand away. For a moment she only shook in Hermione's grip until the world filtered back into focus, and she had seemed so far detached from it that her mouth moved as though it did not know it had just spoken words. She ripped free, made sure to tear at Hermione with those nails, and very casually she murmured, "Go to hell, Mudblood."
The moment had been such a strange lapse in the usual that Hermione did not even react. Not even when both their plates flew violently across the room and shattered into shards of glass, nor when the leftovers from her culinary journey flipped into her lap. Something else hopelessly vulgar was howled at her, but between the sound of her fragmenting goodness and Bellatrix's well spoken and strangely lapsed French, Hermione could think about nothing but how removed from the situation she had become and how sometimes, mentally, Bellatrix seemed to remove her own self from the situation altogether.
"Damn it." She said finally, when it occurred to her there were gooey egg bits leaking down her favorite Calvin and Hobbes pajama pants.
They had teetered on the edge of a civil conversation and then it had gone up in smoke in ways Hermione could never have measured. Every time she thought she was a step ahead she was actually several steps behind and Bellatrix was flouncing about before her into the sunset. She had tried and then the brick wall of unkindness had shot up from the ground before her very eyes.
And it made her angriest that Bellatrix seemed the most capable of making her downright ugly.
"You- can't work in- in that."
She admittedly could not remove her stare from it. The tight, black dress, the rather gratuitous slit at the thigh, the cleavage cut only faintly covered with a sheen of lacy pattern. The length of her only slightly heeled though abominably high leather boots. Bellatrix did not feel concerned with the nature of those around her, nor their appropriation for her outfit.
"You'll do well to suggest to me and not talk at me." Bellatrix said, and still Hermione found herself wondering if she ever brushed that hair at any moment in her life, or if that was just a distant childhood memory. "If that oafish bear knows a thing he will put me far from the rest of his incompetent staff. Anyone who finds my wardrobe problematic can issue a formal complaint to my proficiency in offensive hexes."
And this time there wasn't a joke to it. It wasn't a tease, not as Bellatrix stroked a hand alongside Cat's back and hid whatever expression possible behind an unruly waterfall of curls, "Unless by anyone finding it problematic the truth of what I am looking for is 'you'."
"It's positively indecent!" Hermione huffed.
And Bellatrix, whose mood was as erratic as it was unreadable, just said, "And why are you looking?"
"Alright. You've got your own offices. It's a bigger department then it is staffed, so there are choices. Keep in mind a few are dusty and-"
"By a few he surely means they all are." Bellatrix added in casually, and the office, Hermione noticed, was curiously void of personnel. The desks were absent and the chairs were empty and there was a silence in the air she identified as long-standing.
"You've seen through my disguise, lass." Gregor quipped, his laugh a bark, more of a shout, and in spite of this Bellatrix did not feel a single need to accompany the humor. Her mood had not lifted and it remained, instead, the very sort of disdainful Hermione tried so hard to avoid. She had summoned the oncoming storm and it was rolling in, the black clouds, waiting for the thunderous bang that often accompanied the thick downpour.
"If by disguise you mean 'flimsy cellophane' then I suppose I have." She wandered into a room and slammed the door shut, leaving Hermione and Gregor to hang back and stare as the blinds on the window within shuddered mightily. Evidently Bellatrix had made her choice and that was just fine.
"So are we not to have coworkers?"
"Coworkers? You'll have coworkers! You'll have so many coworkers you're going to get tired of having coworkers!" Hermione couldn't help it, the small smile she cracked at the clearly gratuitous joke the older man made with a sweeping motion of his remaining arm. He looked down at her sheepishly, his spectacles tumbling to the end of his nose, perching there unevenly. "There's eight people working here, with you, Madame Black and I included. -Wait. Seven. Tiffany just quit after a strange bout to do with Nargles. Drove her mental. But I've got more applicants and I thought today might be a tour of the office without any- surprises."
"And by surprises you mean..."
"...People who might not clearly understand this situation so perhaps we should try to keep Madame Black busy." He glanced briefly at the other room where Bellatrix was tossing papers aside, sweeping boxes off the desk. She flicked her wrist elegantly and the overhead light short-circuited, crackled and died out, leaving the room as shaded as possible within a fluorescent lit office.
They looked in for a long while until the light flickered roughly back on, much dimmer now than it had been moments before.
"You're doing the right thing." He said, and rested heavy his paw of a hand at Hermione's shoulder, "Don't look so unsure. She hasn't burned it down yet."
"This is the fourth report of a slain unicorn we've gotten inside of four months. One a month. That's what seems to happen." Inside of a two week span she had organized all of Gregor's former and present cases, filed an 'in' and an 'out' box of concerns, and balanced the department's budget with the skill of a goblin working at Gringotts. She looked up when he entered the room, ducking slightly in the doorway to do so, and against the regulation blue of the office Gregor's purple-plaid-and-yellow-solid attire seemed to visually threaten her. She had to remind herself it was just Gregor, and his colors were loud. "We need someone with experience on this. Someone who's capable enough against whoever's got the bollocks to take on a sweet, wee thing like a unicorn."
"No. No, no, no. Absolutely not. That is so far out of the question it resides in another universe."
"We don't have a lot of choice. Miss Granger, she's the only person with the expertise to take on a possible threat this size."
"Yourself, then? What about you?" Hermione tried, nervously clasping her hands together atop the desk.
"I've got one good arm left. I'm not the wizard for this job."
"The Ministry would-"
"Miss Granger, the Ministry and its acting Minister allowed me to take her on for a position. A position I hired her to fill. She's, pardon my saying, pure jobby at paperwork. She's handled one situation and we had to replace her window when she broke it because she was frustrated. She isn't cut out for a desk, lass. She's a restless beast, that one. She needs to be out."
"And I cannot keep tabs on her in the field. Mister Townsend, what you're suggesting is a gamble of massive proportions."
"I must be daft. And here I was thinking the intent of this little crusade was to make a good example." Somehow, there was never a thing but a wizened nature to the one-armed gentleman, and though his tone was good-natured it did not feel patronizing. "She can't be you or I, lass. If you get three men to put a suit on a bear all you get is two dead men, one drastically injured one and a bear screaming as he tears off the suit. This is preventable if one of the men realizes you shouldn't try to put the suit on the bear at least midway through the silly ordeal. The bear doesn't like the suit and she doesn't want to wear it, and if we force it on her she's going to gore us for it. And then she won't trust us at all."
The chance was there, so Hermione took it, "Was it a bear who cost you that arm, sir?"
"This? Nuh. 'Twas a Hungarian Horntail. Bit of a crabbit beast. Shouldn't have tried to prove they're capable of being tamed. Ruddy bas took it off with his teeth. All I wanted was to ask politely if he could sit, please. I would like to think he heard 'bite' instead of sit. Was particularly windy that day."
There was a cocktail of anxiety in the pit of Hermione's stomach and it churned and spun like the inside of a washing machine. It was beginning to feel like what she imagined a parent went through letting their child take bus themselves to school for the first time. It was either let that kid go and find their way, trust them to come back to the safety of their home, or refuse such a privilege and deny the shape of that particular brand of independence.
He was right. Wild Bellatrix was useless behind a desk. She hadn't taken well to being captive. The inability to remain in constant motion left her a restless liability. And weren't idle hands the worst things there were, or how did that adage Hermione vaguely remembered go? She couldn't remember in between how annoying it had become to literally spend every second of her day making life altering decisions.
"She can go. With the appropriate surveillance. I need two Muggle mobiles. I'll be performing a Prior Incantato when she returns. If there's a partial utterance of an Unforgivable this is over. She has six hours to complete her task. If she doesn't she is still obligated to return. I'll not have the Aurors following her. They'll turn the entire thing into rubbish once she feels pressured. She has to check in on a mobile every ten minutes. A single mistake and she's immediately removed."
"It's been almost a year, Miss Granger. Maybe this extension of trust will do some good for her attitude."
"I trust your judgment, Mister Townsend, and I fervently pray you are right."
"Blasted fucking nonsense."
Beneath her there was a mess of blood steadily gaining ground, a muck of leaves soaked crimson. The tree behind her roughly scratched at the raw, gaping hole and it took every ounce of her focus to remain upright and steady, but it at least allowed a solid stand to keep her on her feet.
"I can't believe the Ministry sent Bellatrix bloody fucking Lestrange after us!"
The boy was young, his hair poorly bleached a horrific white-blonde, and from beneath dark roots crept their meager ways into the shoddy excuse for a coloring. A small hoop impaled through his right eyebrow, his inquisitively golden brown eyes maintained a discomfiting luster to them that had achieved a faintly metallic sheen.
"She got gored right enough! -Oi, Cole? Where do you suppose she is?"
"Shut up, Fex!" She had seen his face for only a brief moment, but she could make out through the haze of her eyesight his features and the way they seemed to angle. The dark talon of her wand was several feet away and among the twigs and branches she witnessed it, helplessly out of reach, but so temptingly close she felt perpetually beseeched to reach for it. Of course she was not a stupid woman, and therefore would not do such a stupid thing.
"Useless Muggle bullshit." She scowled hotly. The mobile phone in her hand had beeped and flashed, but evidently she had overridden its entire function by impatiently smashing the touch screen until it was borderline unresponsive. It kept insisting she 'say a command' and that was the last straw. There was nothing covert about the idiotic communications device.
A girl's voice spoke up, one evidently younger sounding than the two boys Bellatrix had heard before her, "Do you reckon we'll be expelled for this?"
"If the lot of you don't shut up I'm going to Cruciate you mercilessly."
The footsteps had stopped, and this was the unfortunate moment the phone beeped in, ringing in distorted fashion for half a second until Bellatrix rapidly clicked 'answer' on the word 'Mudblood' and held it up to her ear.
"There has never been anyone in deeper shit than you right now. Yes, that is a word I emphatically said. You are in so much shit that fortunately for you I have told the Aurors you've checked in on a lead and are following it. Which is something I have no idea about because you have not checked in with me for four hours and you are four hours over your allotted time limit. The only reason I am not this minute sending you on a one way ride back to Azkaban is because I want to look you in the eye right now and do it myself. Now either tell me what the hell you think you are doing or give me the world's greatest excuse and perhaps I'll pity you, but right now, Bellatrix Black, your future is looking very dark and incarcerated."
"There's been a problem."
"Your breathing is irregular. And I can barely hear you. Speak into the receiver a bit louder. Are you holding it upside down again?"
"I'm not fucking holding it any way. Just send the Merlin-be-damned Aurors you idiot."
"I need you to be sure your phone is capable of tracking coordinates. I need you to go to the settings and give me the serial number."
"I really haven't the time-"
"HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO FIND YOUR LOCATION WITHOUT AN EXACT MEASUREMENT, YOU INFURIATING CREATURE?! MY NECK IS ON THE CHOPPING BLOCK FOR YOU, SO IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO CONTINUE ENJOYING A LIFESTYLE IN A ROOM LARGER THAN A UTILITY CLOSET YOU WILL DO AS I SAY!"
"Did you hear that?" The girl said, and involuntarily Bellatrix cringed.
"I did. Is there someone else here?"
"Lestrange wasn't enough? She's been so domesticated the Ministry doesn't even think she can handle a single job. That would be hilarious if it wasn't an inexcusable shame."
"Bellatrix, what the hell is going on?"
"If you used your brilliant deductive reasoning you would understand I cannot talk. You'll have my coordinates in a moment, somefuckinghow. Send me a cavalry."
She closed her eyes and breathed for a moment, pushing her back against her hiding spot hard enough that the jab of sudden pain shredding through her shoulder succeeded in making her far more alert. She bit back the sharp, loud breath, no matter how difficult it was, and nearly cursed in the most fluent string of French obscenities there had ever been. Instead, she stayed very quiet, and wondered faintly if this would be the way she died.
"Harry!"
Bless Harry Potter. She regularly thanked god for him, and his good sense. The boy who lived, as he was known and often did not enjoy being called, had been forced by the brightest witch of her age to cling to the one semblance of muggle technology that made more sense than a large chunk of the wizarding world: a mobile phone. When it rang he flipped it open immediately, and was met with the breathless sound of Hermione's hushed panic.
"'Mione, are you alright?" His first reaction was to tense. It had been a year of Auror training and learning and since then, what with the contact he didn't have being Hermione's rather special situation, he hadn't gotten a chance to speak to his best friend as much as he would have liked. Add in the strange situation he was caught between (Ron still regularly muttered about it, red-faced and bothered, trying his best to respect her choices, failing in the face of his practical, distrusting self) and poor Harry Potter was at a loss.
"I need the invisibility cloak. I need it right this minute and I would never ask for it unless it was a first rate emergency."
"Tell me she hasn't done something loony. And assure me she isn't holding a wand to your throat."
"She isn't, Harry. She isn't at all. She's trying to do something right, but she's in- a lot of trouble, and if I don't go about this quietly I will have collapsed everything I have been working for."
"Alright. Give me ten minutes and meet me in the Ministry Atrium."
In spite of Harry's gut feeling he wouldn't turn his back on Hermione. No, he reminded herself. She was infinitely practical. If she was playing this the way she was, it was for a reason. She was no fool. After all, he thought, it had often been Hermione who was the perfect planner. If she had a plan, whether it went awry or not, it was going to work.
"I won't be gone long, Ron. I've forgotten a few errands I forgot to run." He lied, and Ronald Weasley looked up from their shared kitchen table with a mouthful of muffin and a distracted glance, nodding as messily as his food seemed.
"Cole." The boy whined, presumably Fex, and he stamped his foot loudly. In spite of everything these ridiculous children had enough sense to stay in the area, and that left Bellatrix hemorrhaging between a rock and a hard place. She was rubbish at healing charms, that much was true, but there was little she wouldn't have done to repair a clean impalement even slightly. Fucking unicorn, the stupid creature had made enemies with the wrong person. "We haven't even really searched. We're not getting anywhere doing this. And I'm bored."
"She was run through by a unicorn, Fexin. She wouldn't have gotten far quickly and if we stay here when she chooses to do something bloody drastic or downright mental we can take her out. Well, Cole will."
"Thank you, Amelia." Cole replied, pleased as a cat who had slaughtered a rodent. In spite of all her suffering Bellatrix could do nothing but fantasize about gripping the eyebrow ring implanted into his face and tearing it free with almost no sound but a great deal of fleshy resistance. The thought filled her with a giddy warmth that might have replaced the sensation of blasted cold air filtering rapidly through her gaping injury, had the thought been more radiant.
"Shh." Hissed a sudden gust of air against the shell of Bellatrix Black's ear, accompanied with a voice speaking from the outer reaches of her cracked mind. And suddenly she felt a forceful pressure against her bloodied skin, the sure sensation of a palm shoved there, "This unicorn business- tell me the truth. Tell me you aren't lying to me. Tell me you haven't been two-timing us all. Tailor your answer rather carefully."
Everything whirled too quickly and she trembled, shuddered, consciously focused on numbing the pain that Hermione had chosen to sturdily inflict, "These children seem to be the culprits."
The pressure eased but didn't relent, and though her first instinct was to lash out at the unseen (and suddenly very nervy) Hermione it would have blown her cover utterly and completely. She sucked in a sharp breath, glancing past the trunk that had become her home, watching the trio amble aimlessly about their small section not too far off. They hadn't caught on. At least there was a stroke of luck.
"A unicorn attacked you. That is the cleanest run-through I have ever witnessed. And unicorns do not recklessly cause harm unless the action is heinous or directly hurtful to them, or unless the person is of despicable countenance-"
"Well, Granger, if you haven't noticed I'm not a fucking kitten, am I?"
There wasn't enough time in the world to realize that she had just heard Bellatrix use her name. And, partially shocked, she let go.
"It was about fucking time, but if you assault me in such a way again I will cause you ungainly harm. Where are you, and how are you doing this?"
"Invisibility cloak."
"Children's tales."
"You're right to say that, but wrong in substance."
As if out of thin air a sliver of pale flesh had appeared, floating within the world, a tear in the background. It was a breakage in the atmosphere itself, like a Disillusionment Charm of phenomenal talent. And then a thick handful of light brown hair, a pale curl, and from within seemingly nowhere a shapely hand reached out, "Come on, then."
"My wand." Bellatrix interrupted immediately, and for a moment the weakness was evident in her still-gaunt face, in the crevices to her parchment skin where the color had drained. When she stared into those ink-pot eyes Hermione found nothing but a glossy, dark mirror. The hand retracted and the cloak closed, and Hermione wondered a moment if Bellatrix's request had been an inquiry for a favor, because it certainly did not sound like a demand.
"Yes." Hermione agreed, but truthfully did not have to say a word. She picked up the walnut thing instead, saw it clearly not far from where they were standing. It had been in her possession so long that the thing had a siren's call all its own, a whispering familiarity. She made sure to gently gather the thing into the cloak, to step forward, to avoid the awkward sensation she kept feeling trigger in the back of her mind. It would forever feel uncomfortable, to be seen and not seen. "Now that your journey has bled out half your life's blood I think a trip to St. Mungo's is in order."
The Invisibility Cloak served its purpose and like a great, encompassing pair of raven's wings it stuck Hermione with the burden of being forced far too close to Bellatrix for comfort. There were few reasons she found to feel detached from her inappropriate behavior while intoxicated a week or so ago, and proximity brought a flush to her cheeks that stirred around her conscious thoughts and made her dig up the less conscious ones. It didn't matter that the older woman was clammy and cold, exhaustedly disinterested, and altogether an unattractive mess.
"I would greatly prefer to avoid St. Mungo's and the inevitable scandal." How rare this was, Bellatrix not arguing, borderline polite. Disagreeing but without a seething rudeness, "Just home."
"Work first. Then home."
Home. Hermione's brain felt much too tired to dissect the nature of that word these days.