Handle This

"Wake up!" Bella cried, the sound torn halfway between a scream and a sob.

"Lucius? Lucius!"

Bella swallowed hard, shaking Malfoy by the shoulder. His skin was cold as ice beneath her touch and as unyielding as the stone flagstones under her feet. "Malfoy!" she shouted, pummelling his chest in frustration. But no bruises bloomed beneath her fists, and Lucius' blank, staring eyes did not so much as flicker. She might as well have been attacking a statue. Furious, she struggled to her feet and kicked out at the only thing within reach, the thick, scaly hide of the dead Basilisk. All this gave her was a dull pain in her foot, to match the throbbing one in her ankle. Bella leant against the wall for a moment, fighting to control her breathing while a dead, empty silence swelled around her, broken only by the occassional drip drip of water falling elsewhere in the tunnel. Folding her arms, she let herself slide down the tunnel wall until she found herself sitting on the floor, cradling her head in her hands. More than anything, she wished she still had the baby Basilisk to hold onto; a writhing, reassuring weight inside her jumper. But it was inside the Chamber now, waiting for the true heir to call it forth again. Bella fiddled with the silver serpents on the amulet instead, tracing their fixed coils with her fingertip. Breathe in, breathe out. There had to be a way to fix this. Lucius couldn't be dead. He just couldn't be.

Maybe you just don't want him to be dead, a snide inner voice pointed out. After all, it continued smugly, the evidence isn't really in your favour now, is it? "Oh shut up!" Bella snapped to no-one in particular, aware, even as she said it, of how ridiculous she sounded. Talking to oneself is the first sign of madness, after all. "I am not mad," she growled into thin air, and then she groaned. She was having an argument with herself, in the Chamber of Secrets. Maybe she really was mad.

Scowling, Bella hauled herself over to where Lucius lay and prodded him again. How had this happened? After all, Lucius hadn't looked the Basilisk in the eye. She knew he hadn't. She'd been watching him, and the only thing he'd been looking at was the floor. So surely he couldn't be dead? Hesitantly, she picked up one of his frozen wrists and felt for a pulse. Nothing. Frowning now, she fished around in her pocket until she found what she was looking for, a compact mirror. She lowered it to his mouth and waited expectantly, hoping a misty, outdrawn breath would obscure the surface. But it didn't. With a cry of frustration, Bella flung the mirror against the opposite wall and kicked Lucius. Typical! That's what this was, in Bella's opinion. She had begged for a chance to prove herself to her master, and now Lucius had ruined everything by dying. Idiot.

Well, she still couldn't leave him here. People would notice if Lucius Malfoy just dropped off the face of the earth. So she had to find a way to drag him back up the tunnel . . . Swallowing, Bella pointed her wand at him. "Mobilicorpus!" Invisible ropes wrapped themselves around Malfoy's wrists and ankles and pulled him into a crude standing position, floating a foot from the ground with his head lolling grotesquely. The greenish glow of the tunnel wall lent Lucius' already corpse-like features an Inferi-like cast. Trying not to look at him, Bella pushed him ahead of her and marched towards the tunnel's entrance, reflecting instead on how much easier it was to find her way out now she wasn't running for her life. Eventually she found herself back at the pipe which led to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. It was easy enough to levitate Malfoy, but Bellatrix found it little more difficult to climb back up the tunnel after him. The inside of the pipe was covered in slime and sloped dangerously, with nothing to hold onto. Emerging at long last in Moaning Myrtle's now deserted bathroom, Bella found that she was wet through and covered in slime, while Lucius looked like something that had recently been exhumed. Partly to put him out of sight, and partly because she was afraid Myrtle might return, Bella cast a Disillusionment Charm upon his prone form.

What she needed, Bella realized, was a way to get Lucius out of the castle without being seen. The best option, she decided, would be to use the Floo network to bring him home. From there she could surely find a way to contact their master, or another senior Death Eater.

By some miracle, she made it to Slughorn's office without running into any of the teachers, troublemakers or ghosts that usually roamed the school's corridors at this hour of the night. Fighting the nervousness that was making her stomach flip, she slowly pushed the door open. The room was dark, the only light emanating from a fire burning low in the grate and a cluster of candlesticks sprouting like a colony of toadstools on the desk. Slughorn was sitting there but as she drew closer she realized that he was asleep, one fat cheek pressed against a sheet of parchment and his fingers wedged in an empty box of sweets. "Dear Ambrosius," she read, upside-down, "My thanks for the crystallized pineapple! It was nothing short of sublime, my dear boy. Do you know, I think that you would benefit hugely from an apprenticeship with another confectionary craftsman. There's no telling how far you might go, with your talents, and just between us . . . ." Bella rolled her eyes. She found what she was looking for in a little pot on the mantlepiece – Floo powder. Tightening her grip on Lucius' arm, she reached into the pot and withdrew a handful of glittering green powder. She froze, her fist suspended above the flames, as Slughorn snorted in his sleep and turned over, yawning a little. Mumbling to himself, he flexed his sugar-coated fingers and knocked the empty confectionary box onto the floor. Before it could hit, Bella flung Lucius into the flames and threw the Floo powder in after him. The flames flared vivid green at the very same moment Slughorn fell out of his chair with a resounding crash. Without looking round, Bella hurled herself into the grate and shouted "Malfoy Manor!"

Slughorn's office disappeared in a blur. Bella screwed up her eyes against the hot, howling wind and dug in her fingers, fighting to keep a hold of Lucius, whose dead weight was throwing her off course. "Malfoy Manor!" she screamed again in desperation, struggling to stay upright as her ankle threatened to give way beneath her. Her head knocked against something hard and she saw stars for a moment. She blinked and they disappeared, replaced by a succession of fireplaces which showed themselves to her in brief flashes, revealing snatches of the rooms beyond before they vanished, hauling her onwards. She closed her eyes, about to be sick, when the network spat them out abruptly, and she fell to the floor in a dark, unfamiliar room. She groaned, pushing Lucius off her, and stood up, examining their surroundings. All around her were shelves, racks, and rails, draped and stacked with fabric. Robes, she realized, pulling a silken set from a nearby rack. They were in Madam Malkins robe shop.

Levitating Lucius once more, she let them out of the shop and stepped into Diagon Alley. The street was deserted. Only the windows of The Leaky Cauldron glowed with a warm yellow light, and the only people within sight were a furtive-looking pair in dark cloaks, who withdrew into the depths of Knockturn Alley as she looked at them. Not for the first time, Bella cursed her Trace. If it wasn't for that, she could just apparate to Malfoy Manor. As it was, she was going to have to be more creative. Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto the kerb and flung out her wand arm.

BANG. From nowhere, a bus appeared, bearing down upon them with its headlights blazing. Bella had never taken the Knight Bus before. Triple-decked and violent purple, she couldn't stop herself staring at it as it rolled to a smooth halt in front of her and a young wizard not much older than her jumped off the back. He was rather weedy and weak-chinned in appearance, but as his eyes met hers he flashed her a sudden, dazzling smile. "Good evening!" he cried in an implausibly jolly tone. "Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transportation for the stranded witch or wizard! Or anyone who's had one too many near misses with splinching to trust Apparition, hahaha. My name is Gilderoy Lockhart and I will be your conductor for this evening! Where would you like to go?"

Bella gaped at him. She thought the impossible brightness of his shining white teeth might have blinded her for a moment. "Malfoy Manor," she managed at last, suppressing the urge to knock them out one by one.

"Alright," Lockhart said cheerfully. "Is your friend coming too?"

"My friend?" Bella repeated blankly. Looking round, she realized too late that her Disillusionment Charm had come undone and Lucius was lying fully visible in the middle of the road. Before she could come up with an excuse, Lockhart bounded into the road and picked him up, grimacing a little at the weight as he dragged him onto the bus.

"Awfully cold, isn't he?" he said cheerily, settling Lucius into a particularly squashy armchair by the window. "Hold onto your seats!" he called, as they took off again with a loud BANG. The coins Bella was counting into her palm scattered all over the floor and she fell out her seat. Upstairs, there was a nasty spattering sound that suggested someone had just been sick. Lockhart smiled benignly at her as she straightened up. "Present, is it?" he said, jerking his head in Lucius' direction.

Bella gave him a blank stare. "What?"

"The mannequin," Lockhart replied happily. "I must say, that's quite simply the most brilliant idea for a present I've ever come across. Wouldn't mind one myself. Where did you get it?"

Suddenly aware that her mouth was hanging open, Bella shut it. "It . . it was custom made," she said faintly.

"Oh." Lockhart looked disappointed. "Brilliant idea though," he continued covetously. "I mean, simply remarkable. No more faffing about with mirrors and agonizing over 'is primrose really my colour?'. No, you just pop it on the mannequin and hey presto!" He shook his head in wonderment. "I'm going places you know," he confided. Bella raised an eyebrow. "Oh yes," he continued happily. "You'll see. One day soon, it'll happen . . . .Gilderoy Lockhart. That's a name to watch. And you can say you met me!" He beamed at her.

Bella shook her head at his stupidity and glanced out the window instead. They were rolling through a chalky white quarry, and then . . . BANG. The scene outside her window changed in an instant, and they were tearing through a cobbled street in Aberdeen. Lockhart, apparently unperturbed, was now examining his reflection in the back of a shiny silver sickle.

"Next stop, Wiltshire!" the driver cried in an irritable tone.

Lockhart jumped. "Great Scott, is it Wiltshire already?" he said with a yelp.

BANG. Lockhart leapt to his feet as they raced through rolling green fields. "Next stop Wiltshire!" he shouted, toppling over as they screeched to a halt outside a pair of elaborately crafted iron gates. "Malfoy Manor! That's your stop," he added unneccessarily.

"I know that," Bella said, annoyed.

Lockhart shrugged as he dumped Lucius unceremoniously on the ground beside her. "Gilderoy Lockhart! Watch this space!" he shouted enthusiastically as the bus roared off into the distance, leaving Bella alone beneath the clear night sky.