Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling is our queen, undisputedly. I'm just a petty thief who enjoys tinkering around in another's world.

Rating: M/NC-17. Graphic femslash in past and future chapters. Shhhh. Just go along with me and pretend it's permissible on this site. I'm hardly the only one.

Warnings: Sex. Violence. Quite possibly some of both together; I mean, we are talking about Bellatrix Lestrange, here.

Pairing(s): Hermione/Bellatrix, Hermione/Andromeda, Hermione/Narcissa.

The library had never looked so good. No one was using it as a hiding place anymore, so Hermione banished the dust, cleansed the windows, freshened the air, and finally, finally found a more magical solution to reorganizing the books. There were original locations for them, after all, places these books belonged, and with the right nudge, they made their way home with ease. By the time she had made her way through the main stacks, the shelves themselves seemed to breathe more easily, no longer unbalanced with the weight of pages that did not belong to them. Even the ladders seemed more cooperative, as though she had finally earned their trust.

The pile of books by Narcissa's chair remained untouched.

Hermione eyed them every time she came in, but there was always something else, one more stack, one more row of shelving.

Tonight, there was the back.

She worked her way cautiously though the racks of scrolls, afraid of damaging the most valuable pieces in the Black collection, but these age-old relics had stayed mostly where they belonged over the years, only needing a gentle prompting to straighten their own edges and stop encroaching on each other's space. One particular scroll kept chittering at her any time she got too close. She left it be.

There were more books behind the rare scrolls, low-sitting shelves nestled in the darkness beneath the rear windows. Last week, Hermione had taken one glance at these and left them alone, noting all sorts of dark arts texts: Poisonous Potions, The Breeding and Keeping of Dark Creatures, Theory of the Fractured Soul, and Mastering Malicious Intent, to name a few.

Today, she took the time to explore, escorting misplaced texts to other shelves and curing even this darkest of sections of a bit of its gloom. Hermione didn't see scrolls piled up at the end until she knocked them over, wincing as the brittle parchment clattered across the floor. Nothing seemed to be damaged, and Hermione breathed a sigh of relief as she waved her wand to gather them up, escorting them to their own rack with the other scrolls, a section that had emptied as she sorted the rest. Upon her return, she noticed one scroll left behind, partially pinned by the shelving. Tugging it out, Hermione caught sight of an eerily familiar diagram, an oddly-proportioned human drawn in the center of a da Vinci circle, one set of limbs clearly depicting the usual Vitruvian Man, but with strange, inhuman appendages marking a second pair, superimposed in a glimmering, silver ink. Cautiously, she unrolled it further, and gasped at what she found. This was an Animagus transformation, diagram after diagram illustrating something Hermione had seen before, in someone else's mind, accompanied now by scribbled notes in the margins around the ancient, unreadable text.

This was it, the scroll Bellatrix had been reading the night… the night she ate the gardener, the night she nearly killed her sister. As tempted as Hermione was to fling the scrap of parchment away from her, she couldn't seem to stop staring at it, unable to read the original words, but understanding the message left in Bellatrix's nearly-illegible scrawl all the same. This was no traditional animal transformation. This was an ancient pure-blood ritual, something dark and twisted, designed to create a powerful alternate form, not whatever reasonable, earthly creature actually existed at the core of a Wizard's being. And the end, the final picture… Hermione bit the inside of her mouth so hard she tasted blood. That was no mortal beast. It was massive, drawn with a dwarfed human beside it for scale. It had huge, powerful limbs and a long, wiry torso and claws and teeth and… haunches, haunches like a bear, ears like a jungle cat, rows and rows and rows of teeth like a shark in a great, gaping maw…

Merlin. No wonder she… she absolutely devoured the gardener. No wonder it all happened so quickly.

Hermione rolled up the scroll as quickly as she could and shoved it to the bottom of the rack, making her way out of the library with a skittish stride, mentally shaken, still cringing at what she'd seen.

The things pure-bloods do for power.

/

Andromeda came to her chambers a few days later.

"I'm sorry," were the first words out of her mouth, and, reluctantly, Hermione let her in. "I know what happened… with Minerva… that wasn't fair to you at all. She keeps asking if she can come by and talk to you again, but I—"

"No."

"—thought you would rather have your space." Andromeda offered a placating smile. "It would appear I was right. It's been weeks, though. I had to see if you were alright."

"I won't do it again," said Hermione, determined to make that unwaveringly clear.

"I understand."

"Never," she insisted. "I couldn't control it, I don't understand it, and if that's what it can do, I don't want to."

"I understand, Hermione," Andromeda echoed, voice still soft. "But I don't want you to let one bad experience pull you away from trying new things, I—"

"—Not that new thing."

Andromeda chuckled, holding up a hand. "I understand. All I was going to offer was… a dueling lesson. You're right, that's something we've never really worked on, and as important as healing is, wouldn't it be better to be sure you can keep yourself from needing it to begin with?"

"Dueling…" Cautiously, Hermione nodded. "I… I think I might like that."

/

She did. Hermione liked dueling perhaps a bit too much. She enjoyed the ritual, the crossed wands, the bow, the moment of eye contact where she and Andromeda were the only people in the world, where they acted as one synchronized circle of restrained, ready magic… until the first spell was cast, and then it was just Hermione, alone in a blur of color and light for a few mindless seconds until Andromeda unfailingly snuck something through her defenses, and everything started all over again.

She didn't mind losing, either. After all, this was new, and Andromeda wouldn't hurt her, just push her, let her stretch her mind and her magic and her reflexes until she could keep up for longer, stay on her feet even after taking a hit, cast spells through her own shield charms. She could measure real, tangible improvement, without the wall of exhaustion she had run into learning healing, and it was so refreshing, practice with a purpose.

There were mishaps, of course, strange mishmashes of curses accidentally crafted by Hermione's less-than-scripted spellwork, so there was laughter, good natured teasing, and an entirely contrived rivalry that started to feel a lot like… friendship.

Then, Andromeda was called away to Hogwarts, and Hermione was left behind, alone, in a very different sort of solitude from her self-inflicted isolation. She had a lot of days to think. She thought about McGonagall's job offer, about her promise to Narcissa, and, mostly, about what her life was, here. What was she doing, spending day after day scraping some semblance of a fulfilling existance out of making breakfast, reading books, and flinging around magic for fun? Was she allowed to feel like this wasn't enough? Was she allowed to miss… other human contact? The bustle of distant but present life ebbing and flowing through Diagon streets, the tempting promise of Hogwarts, or even her mother, living who knew what sort of life somewhere in Mould-on-the-Wold with money Hermione practically forgot she was earning? Narcissa hadn't written again, Bellatrix was like a ghost, drifting between the gardens and her upstairs realm without a word to anyone, and Andromeda… Andromeda was trying too hard, being too nice, taking too many liberties with Hermione's good will under the guise of their rekindled friendship.

Time hardly felt real, here. It was too easy to get lost in the surface things. With Andromeda away, there was nothing to stop Hermione from finally admitting to herself that it was time. Her dues had been paid.

It was time to leave.

/

Andromeda returned to the manor in fine form, storming into her office in a flurry of robes and an armful of papers. She passed Hermione in the hall, pausing just long enough to say, "I have fifteen things to do, but I'm going to need a break. Come by in… two hours? A duel would be perfect right about now."

Upstairs, Hermione stared at her packed bags, fingering the note she had almost left on Andromeda's desk that very morning, the one she had agonized over writing, and which, now, she wouldn't use at all. She would go downstairs again in two hours instead and… tell her then. In person. She wouldn't take the easy way out. She could say goodbye. She could do that much.

When she finally pushed through the office doors, she found a fuming Andromeda scribbling away at a bit of parchment so violently Hermione feared she would rip right through. "Andy, I—"

"—Do you see all this?" Andromeda muttered, barely even glancing up. "Want to know what it is? Bellatrix. All of this." She flipped through a stack of papers as thick as her wrist. "All of this, and I still don't know if they'll even hear my petition. All I want is this bloody job, and I can't keep commuting from this godforsaken cesspool of a house every day to do it!"

Hermione felt her insides recoiling, cringing away from Andromeda's mood. She had clearly picked the worst day imaginable to do this. "I'm sorry. But I—"

"There's nothing else for it. She's got to come back."

"What?"

"Narcissa. She needs to come back. I'm never going to get this done in time. I—" Andromeda sealed an envelope with her tongue, something Hermione hadn't seen beyond the Muggle side of London, and she wondered briefly where Andromeda had picked up that habit. As she handed the letter to the owl waiting on the windowsill, however, Hermione bit her lip. "I'm telling her to come back. I need her here."

"She's not going to do that, you know," said Hermione softly.

Andromeda glanced up sharply. "She doesn't have that luxury! She doesn't get to just leave like this. Leave me here with our sister while I'm trying to start my career again and I—"

"Andy. No."

"She doesn't get to do this, Hermione!"

"You did."

Andromeda's eyes widened. "Excuse me?"

"You did! Or have you forgotten? You told me the moment you had a chance, you got away from this place. How can you—"

"I came back!"

"Because you had to!" Hermione insisted. "And you're trying to leave again! Right now! Can you honestly say you would willingly choose this? Of course not! None of us would! Not you, not me, not Bellatrix or Narcissa or Lucius or…"

Andromeda's mouth opened, but Hermione wasn't finished.

"No! You wouldn't! You had to lose everything. That's what got you back here this time. You lost your husband, your daughter, and… and now that you've got something again, a job, you're running away as fast as you can! You don't get to harass Narcissa into coming back. Would you wish that on her? Would you? Losing her son, again, losing everything but you and Bellatrix and this… this place, just so you can have an easier time running away again?"

Andromeda had stilled, mouth open in clear shock. "I—Merlin."

Hermione raked her fingers through her curls, trying to get hold of her sudden flare of temper.

Andromeda's eyes narrowed. "Did my sister..." She shook her head. "No." She turned towards the window before she could see Hermione flush crimson. "That was… harsh of you."

Hermione didn't respond.

"Did my sister do this to you? Whatever she did in all those months the two of you were—"

"No!" Hermione spluttered.

"You just called me a coward."

"I did no such thing! I—"

"Did she do this? Make you this… cold?"

"I'm not… I'm not cold and… and if anyone… That was you! Do you still not understand what you did to me? I was a child. I knew nothing about the world, about magic, about… about love! You—"

"—Can we not do this now?" Andromeda interjected. "I asked you here to duel, not to—"

"What?"

"I don't want to have this conversation with you again! I thought we were past this, I thought—"

"Fine! Incarcerous!" Hermione snarled.

Andromeda barely raised her wand in time to deflect Hermione's spell, and another was already spilling off the younger witch's lips. "Langlock!"

This one hit true, pinning Andromeda's tongue to the roof of her mouth.

"You want a duel, fine," Hermione spat. "You want to act like you've done nothing wrong, fine. You—oomph!"

A silent spell caught Hermione off guard, propelling her back against the wall in a whirl of paper and red sparks.

In the precious seconds Andromeda wasted freeing her tongue, Hermione landed a stinging jinx, leaving Andromeda to snarl a more mundane curse of pain rather than a magical one. "Bloody—"

"Expelliarmus!"

"Not a chance," growled Andromeda, deflecting Hermione's spell into the corner beside her. In another instant, Hermione was on the defensive, confronted with a flurry of spells she'd never seen, Andromeda's wandwork fast and unrestrained, and too soon, Hermione was backed against the wall, disarmed, a spell flying towards her chest and…

She grabbed it. She grabbed it with her bare hand, or maybe that was her mind, but either way, she held a riot of magic in her grasp for just a moment, and it burned at her like a live flame in between her fingers, so she flung it away, right back at the witch it had come from, and Andromeda fell flat on her ass, skidding back until she hit the desk, breath knocked out of her lungs, wand knocked out of her hand.

Hermione felt her own feet dragging her forward until she leaned over the other witch. "You hurt me. You had all the power in the world compared to me and you were ready to have me give up the tiny bit I had so you could… so you could, I don't know, feel better about what you did to Bellatrix? Feel better about wanting her dead? I thought you were sorry. I—"

It was only then that Hermione realized Andromeda was crying. "I hate it," she whispered, and Hermione froze. "I hate being trapped, Hermione. I—I do stupid things, when I feel like I'm backed into a corner… I ran away, I married someone I didn't love, all to get away from here and I just…" She laughed, then, a strangled sound. "It broke me, Hermione. Growing up here, I…I was nothing, I was the mediocre child living in the shadow of Bellatrix's power, Narcissa's beauty, I... I was jealous of everything, even the… the violence, the misery, I felt so invisible and so trapped."

"That, that doesn't give you the right to…"

"I used you! I'm sorry!" Andromeda gasped. "Is that what you want to hear? I felt cornered again, chained to my sisters like nothing had ever changed and you were there and I—I thought I could do it differently, this time! I thought I could use you without hurting anyone. I thought, if I just… if I just loved you I could…"

Hermione let her wand fall onto the desk. All the fire had gone out of her. The accusations were gone. She said her two cents and won another apology she wasn't looking for and… and what now?

Andromeda was crying on the floor and Hermione felt her own eyes watering in response and she didn't want to care, she didn't want this woman to be able to make her feel anything anymore, but here she was, slumping onto the floor beside her and pulling Andy into her arms and feeling tears drenching the collar of her robes as apologies spilled aimless and ineloquent into her ear.

She waited until the tears stopped before she pulled back, staring at Andromeda's chin, unable to look into her eyes. "I'm leaving, Andy."

"You… what?"

"I'm leaving. I packed up this morning and I… You've done so much for me. In some ways… you may well have saved my life, the first time we met. But I'm not that girl anymore. I can't live my whole life by the whims of your family. I'm going upstairs, I'm going to write Narcissa, tell her you're okay, you didn't mean whatever you demanded in that letter you sent, and then I'm going away."

A finger appeared under her chin, lifting it, drawing her gaze to Andromeda's eyes. Hermione expected anger, expected demands, but instead, all she saw was a calm sort of wonder. "You've changed," said Andromeda. "Last year… you wouldn't have even thought about how you could or couldn't live your life. You were just… determined to stay alive. I—I'm happy for you, Hermione. And you're right. As much as I might want to keep you here… I don't have that right." She stood, extending a hand to help Hermione up. "Come on. Did you catch your cat?"

Hermione winced. "Merlin, I nearly forgot."

Andromeda shook her head. "Let him stay until you get settled somewhere new. He's getting fat and alarmingly happy here, but it won't hurt him to stay a few more weeks. I'll write that letter, then I'll help you bring down your things."

"Thank you?" Hermione managed, following Andromeda from the room on unsteady legs. She felt drained, but… almost… peaceful? She had just closed a lot of lingering, half-open doors, and now she could almost see it, her next steps, stretching golden and untouched into the fog of the future.

/

The front door swung open just as Hermione dragged the last of her things into the Atrium.

"Stupify!"

Hermione drew her wand the moment she heard the spell, but she wasn't the target. Instead, she watched in horrified confusion as Andromeda slammed backwards into the wall, head cracking audibly against the wood. As she crumpled, Hermione almost stepped out of the shadow of the stairwell, ready to run to her, but in one step, she finally saw who had pushed through the door.

There was Lucius, wand raised, a ragged snarl of a grin etched on his face. Flanking him to either side were two men Hermione had never seen before, but they were dark figures, unkempt and wild-eyed, and Hermione instinctively pulled back into the shadows.

"Well, that was easy," said one with a slimy laugh. "Thought you promised us a fight?"

Lucius's nose wrinkled. "We got lucky, Antonin."

"What's all this junk?" the other asked, kicking Hermione's largest bit of luggage.

Lucius shrugged, scanning the room. "It probably belongs to the girl." When he made to open it, Lucius shoved him forward. "Enough, Rowle. We're not here for that."

"Yea, yea," Rowle muttered. "Rough up the place, kill the blood traitor sister, wipe the Mudblood, blame it on Bella, chain 'er up like you saved the bleedin' day. I know the plan. Still don't think it's gonna make the Ministry let up on you." He picked up a silver candlestick from the mantle, tossing it up and down as he spoke before pocketing it deep in his robes.

Lucius ignored him. "Come along. Bellatrix will be on the third floor. We can take care of the Mudblood on the way. Spread out. One stairwell each. Make sure no one comes down as we head up."

Hermione cast a silent disillusionment charm as Antonin walked past her. Once he had rounded the corner, Hermione slunk up the main stairs, not daring to look at Andromeda's still form against the far wall, following instead as silently as she could in Lucius's wake. She saw him pacing towards her chambers just as she reached the top of the first flight of stairs. Heart in her throat, she darted round the corner and sprinted for the third floor.

"Bellatrix!" she hissed out the moment her foot struck the landing.

She took two steps down the hallway before a spell struck her right in the chest. "Petrificus Totalus!"

One of the men had beaten her here, the first, and his wand pressed against her frozen throat when she tipped backwards against the wall. "Ah-ah-ah. What have we here?"

"What was that?" Rowle rounded the corner, almost stabbing the other man in the chest with his wand.

Antonin pushed aside the tip with a noise of disgust, "Watch where you put that thing, Thorfinn. I never should have broken you out of Azkaban, you miserable excuse for a Death Eater."

"You got 'er?" Rowle ignored the other man's insult, grinning at him instead. "Pretty, for a Mudblood." He leered at Hermione, poking her in the collarbone so hard she almost tipped over. "We'd better go say hi to dear ol' Bella, then."

"No need to search, boys." Bellatrix's approach had been so silent that both Death Eater's jumped when she spoke, and Hermione would have, too, if she had any control over her body. She struggled against the spell, but it had already done its work, settling into her muscles and locking them tight without leaving even a trace of magic for her to work with. She wanted to call out, to warn Bellatrix of their intentions, but her mouth was frozen shut, and she could only hope her frantic eyes were conveying something more than anger and terror. "I'm right here."

"Bellatrix!" squawked Rowle, coughing as he choked on her name.

"Dolohov. Rowle." She said their names with about as much pleasure as one might feel when biting into rotten fruit.

"Bella," Dolohov murmured, glancing nervously down the stairwell behind him. "It's been too long." His words sounded like a greeting to an old friend, but his twitching eyes shattered any illusion of warmth.

He breathed an audible sigh of relief when Lucius reached the top of the staircase.

Bellatrix's eyes narrowed. "Lucius." Her wand hung from the end of a disarmingly relaxed wrist, but her stance was wary, and Hermione felt a flicker of hope. "However did you get in here? I really would have expected the family wards to be… less than charitable."

"Bellatrix." His tone matched hers in cold, crystal clear disdain. "Did you really think I stayed married to your sister for over twenty years without collecting a bit of the family blood."

Bellatrix stiffened. "I never did like your cronies, Lucius," she quipped. "They aren't welcome here."

Lucius's eyebrow arched, amused. "Well, I never did love your sister," he said with a shark-like grin. Dolohov chuckled behind him as Rowle let out an audible snort. "And I don't give a rat's ass about being welcomed by you."

The men behind him hissed and cawed with nervous laughter, scraggly teeth gnawing at the air, meaty, unclean hands slapping against thin, bony thighs. Bellatrix's nose wrinkled with disgust, and that was all the warning they had.

Quick as lightning, her wand was out, and spells were flung with deadly, stunning efficiency. Hermione watched in frozen awe as all the legendary dueling prowess of the Dark Lord's right hand blossomed before her eyes, and Lucius's men fell one after the other in a shower of light and fractured cries of pain. As Dolohov was struck in the chest by a bolt of sapphire light and toppled backwards off the stairs, Hermione felt the magical bindings around her limbs falter and fail, and she staggered to keep her balance as Bellatrix faced Lucius alone.

"Just you and me now, Luci," she said, matching his grin with equal fire. She batted aside his spells with eerily smooth motions, casting her own without words, without pausing or flinching or giving ground. Lucius's face contorted in concentration, spellwork tight and focused but barely keeping up with her wild abandon. She laughed through the blaze, and Hermione was mesmerized, watching them circle each other, one the clear predator, the other the defiant prey. Jets of green light spluttered from the tip of Lucius's wand and vanished like smoke into the whirl of Bellatrix's cloak. Splinters of wood ripped themselves from the walls at Bellatrix's command, spinning towards him in a shower of needle-sharp mahogany. They smashed against his shield, turning to sawdust, but the dust crept beneath his silvery protection, rising in a swirling storm that tore through his robes like paper, peppering them with holes until his ankles were raw, chapped, and bleeding. It was only then that he managed to banish the dust, still fighting seemingly endless jets of red and purple light that sparked from Bellatrix's wand between spurts of wild laughter.

It was… almost beautiful. Hermione couldn't stop watching, amazed and quite frankly happy to watch Lucius getting his due at the hands of this fierce, fearless, deranged witch.

With a crack, Bellatrix's wand lengthened, transformed, uncoiling itself into a whip of black, gleaming wandwood which snapped through Lucius's shields like tissue paper, coiling around his neck. He gasped, clawing at the tightening noose around his neck, and Bellatrix nearly cooed with pleasure. "You thought you could defeat me, here, in my own home? You, the Dark Lord's favorite chew toy, take on his most trusted, his most loyal servant?"

Lucius's face was turning red, crimson, rapidly approaching purple, and he seemed to have given up trying to unwrap Bellatrix's spell, clutching the whip ineffectively with both hands instead.

Bellatrix spat at him. "I should have killed you decades ago."

A sudden, purple sneer darted across Lucius's bulging face, and he yanked at Bellatrix's whip with both hands.

She stumbled, off balance, and he used her own momentum against her, dragging her past him, pushing her forward even as he staggered to one knee, and in an instant, the coiled wood about his neck disappeared.

Bellatrix had been propelled into the stairwell.

In a flash, Lucius was on his feet again, coughing, shaking, but spitting spells through it all, pressing the now magicless Bellatrix further and further down the stairs as she screamed in sudden fury. Hermione staggered to her feet, frantically dashing after them, tripping and stumbling to the landing where she found Bellatrix backed against the corner window, bleeding from a gash in her leg.

Lucius seemed to be milking his unfair advantage for all it was worth. "Yes," he hissed. "You should have killed me when you had the chance."

He stepped closer, wand tip dragging from her shoulder to the crease of her arm, leaving another bleeding cut behind. Hermione frantically raised her wand, a spell on the tip of her tongue, but Bellatrix's eyes locked with her own, and she froze.

"Stay back!" Bellatrix snarled.

Hermione stumbled, protests dying at the look of unadulterated rage on the dark witch's face.

Lucius's spine tensed at Bellatrix's words. He glanced over his shoulder, spotting Hermione only half a meter away, and before she could come to terms with Bellatrix's command, he flung up the rug at her feet, stopping her in her path. As the fabric wrapped around Hermione's ankles, he raised his wand once more, pressing it directly between Bellatrix's collarbones. "Your pride will be your undoing," he snarled, and Bellatrix closed her eyes. "Avada—"

A/N: Happy New Year!