Chapter 17: Spectacular Insanity
That there was nothing more dangerous than the way that Bellatrix had been now unmoored was beyond doubt. There was only one constant in her life: Her daughter. Even Delphini, though, knew that all was not well from the trembling manic energy in her mother.
They ate some sweets together in Hogsmeade and then went to a Wizarding shop. There, Bellatrix was looking for something in particular and she had her mind very fixed on it as well. It was a self-dispensing capsule, an enchanted artefact that would allow for a potion in it to be dispensed slowly over a long period of time.
Having found and selected one, with a brilliant grin on her lips, she rounded up her daughter from the pa rt of the store with hair-potions and the y headed out of the village together in the fading light, passing the train line, and not going to the station, but instead into the woods. "Mum, where are we going?"
"Berwick-upon-Tweed," Bellatrix answered idly. "With a detour along the way."
"I don't want to go back…!"
"Don't worry, you're not. going. back." She stopped and looked firmly at her daughter. "I just need to do something first."
"But the woods…? Not the train?" Delphini looked up wide-eyed, a little scared of where they were heading.
"Not the train." Bellatrix paused, and grinned. "We're going to make sure you're nice and safe, deary. And we're going to travel in style, like Witches, not Muggles, while mum takes care of some business that will help make everything better." She selected one tree that seemed particularly suitable, and drew her wand. "We're going to travel like Russians: We'll use a whole tree for a broom!"
With her daughter's eyes wide, she began the incantations which gave the power of levitation to the tree, until it was pulled forth from the ground, and enchanted as Bellatrix had learned in her long sojourn as an enemy in the Slavic lands. Nonetheless, she had been observant of the local custom. Now there was the opportunity to use it. There was something rawer that she appreciated, the talent and flare of her own magic creating this transport instead of buying a carefully manufactured broom in a shop. A broom wouldn't do for transporting her daughter, or executing her plan. The tree would.
" This is gonna be so much fun!" Delphini, clearly, absolutely could not wait for the ride. " Awesome, mum! "
As it now floated of its own accord in front of them, Bellatrix hoisted her daughter up with a twisted grin of delight and accomplishment, and then, grabbing branches, followed her aboard. A moment later, to make sure her daughter stayed safe, she carefully cast Incarcerous in a variation that let her guide ropes to link her daughter and herself and then around their bags and the tree trunk as well, to provide essentially a flying harness for them. Delphini giggled at the ropes, Bellatrix managing to be gentle enough to only tickle her daughter a little bit.
" Hang on, " Bellatrix called, and using her wand to steer, brought the tree up into the air at low altitude, and then faster and faster. The branches in front of them bent back in the wind, but also blocked most of it from the position on the trunk where Bellatrix and Delphini sat, and thus gave them the cover to go faster than they would fully exposed on a broom. They flew faster and faster, with Bellatrix calling forth her power to urge them on, until she was forcing the tree into the wind at close to a hundred and eighty miles an hour, and she was hunched down close over her daughter, a warm and reassuring presence above little Delphini.
She whipped through the night to the southeast, her eyes enchanted to see in the dark to avoid the tops of the mountains of the Grampians as she hugged the ground. Now she felt like a witch again, powerful and able to do whatever she wanted. Now she felt good that she was sharing that experience with her daughter, instead of the way so much of her life had been controlled.
Still, by the end of an hour's flight to the southeast, the pleasure and excitement were starting to wear off for Delphini. She was tired, and it was hard to stay firmly on the tree as they flew at high speed with the wind buffeting them. Bellatrix hugged her close. "Not much longer, deary. Not much longer."
Their final destination was Morpeth, which was chosen randomly for being a northern suburb of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Newcastle was certainly large enough to have, somewhere, exactly what she would need to make this work. Circling in the suburbs in the region—the city was bustling because British Coal was back, big time, to support the War Effort—she found what looked like a comfortably large Muggle middle class house with several cars in front, and swung in the darkness to settle down in their backyard.
The tree hovering obediently a few feet off the ground, Bellatrix unbound herself and her daughter and gave her a hug, taking out a magically hot thermos of hot cocoa acquired in Hogsmeade and a pastry. "Stay here, and whatever you do, don't leave the tree, but you can shelter under the branches," Bellatrix instructed firmly, "and maybe take a nap if you like."
" You said you wouldn't leave…"
Bellatrix gave her daughter a hug. "And I won't. My magic keeps the tree hovering, and so you shall know that I am well, so I will not be far." It was a lie, but an honest one in its way, and there was a part of Bellatrix that was uncomfortable with her daughter seeing what happened here, and certainly any stray memories of her might be disastrous.
She headed to the door, just as a young brown-haired woman in her early thirties or something like that came to it, wondering at the commotion outside. Her face widened into shock, and then a rictus of fear. Muggles in all of England had learned well that Wizarding folk could do to them what they pleased in the service of the Dark Lord. There was no law here, except, of course, the law of the sword. In Scotland, the situation was somewhat more regular, because between the nuclear attack on Edinburgh and the need for troops for the Dark Lord's armies, the Scots had been conciliated, providing free troops at yet another step above the sentiments of the Janissaries; Berwick and the Debated Lands had been handed back to Scotland, and Holyrood had a measure of latitude and discretion in its affairs that had been entirely eliminated in England proper. There, she had not thought to try and do what she was about to do. So she had flown further south than would otherwise be necessary, and would do her work in England.
The woman tried to close the door again. Bellatrix caught it with her foot and drove it back out, her dagger out and close, rushing forward to the woman's neck. "Would you interfere with the work of a servant of the Dark Lord?" She asked as the blade pressed to the woman's neck, her voice dropping to a hissed whisper. " Are you such a fool? "
The muggle woman froze. "No. Forgive me," she whispered in wet, agonised fear. "Forgive me for all of this. Forgive me… James!" She screamed, and the knife pressed into her neck by instinct.
Her husband, coming downstairs, froze in place.
For a moment, it was Potter and the one Weasel boy standing in front of her. It was Mudblood in her hands and at the touch of her dagger. The memory flashed through Bellatrix's mind, and then she roughly shoved the woman away and drew her wand, instead. In full view of her husband, she forcibly transformed the woman into a polecat. The electric lighting flickered and almost went out, and the television smoked.
Bellatrix grinned and winked. "James, is it? As you may have noticed, I just made your wife a polecat; unfortunately, she won't be a professional stripper for you afterwards," she added with a wicked bemusement creeping into her voice as she invoked the use of the name as a euphemism for a stripper. "But I'm sure she will think you are so heroic when you come back to the house having obeyed me like a very good boy, and I turn her back into a human. How's about that?" To the man's credit, he hadn't pissed himself yet.
"Wha… What do you want from me?" He finally asked over his trembling fear, his eyes fixed on his wife, who was now cowering against the couch in the corner.
" Do you know anyone in the neighbourhood who has a five year old?"
"Ye-yes, the Rigbys… Thomas, my colleague at…" His face fell, his voice trailed off as if he had betrayed someone, and Bellatrix granted, that was true.
"That will do. Come with me, James." She gestured with her wand. " Let's go take care of some business together."
"With a child ?"
"Oh yes," Bellatrix answered, nudging him toward the door. Ultimately, James went along with her toward the Ford Fiesta that he still had a permit to drive under the very tight fuel rationing scheme.
"Is this your ghastly… Little… Muggle box on wheels?" Bellatrix asked, looking it over with an expression of surprised disgust. "I thought they were … Bigger."
"...Not many people can even drive cars right now," the man answered with a sullen hint of defiance.
Bellatrix shot him a look, and then looked back at the tiny little muggle wheeled box. "It's just… Smaller… than all the other muggle boxes. And the fabric is… Fake, not leather." The expression on her face was very much one that reflected Bellatrix's feeling of if she should have really come up with a plan that involved getting into a tiny muggle car without enough room to really wave her wand if it came to a fight, that looked like it would explode if someone looked at it funny.
It's too late to turn back. A few seconds later, they were driving down the suburban streets, James in a cold sweat, while Bellatrix had discovered that there was a little flip-down board with plastic on it that had a mirror on it, and was making faces to it in an attempt to idly distract herself from what she was doing. That seemed to terrify the muggle even more, which was useful in principle since it kept him driving toward the house of this Rigby family.
He pulled up, and Bellatrix, for a brief moment that genuinely scared her, found herself trapped in the automobile. Unlike all the other times she had been in one, there wasn't someone there to open the door for her. For a moment, Bellatrix thought her entire plan might be undone by her inability to open the door of a Ford Fiesta, and she silently cursed the absurdity of Muggle inventions. Finally she fumbled with the handle and got out without having to ask for help. "Alright, come with me."
She forced him along up to the door, and made him call for them with the electric doorbell. Another man, with darker hair, opened the door, and began to smile, if in confusion, at his friend. Then he saw Bellatrix and paled.
"I have to have a talk with you and your wife, Mister… Rigby," Bellatrix said coolly, pushing them into the house by her threatening force of presence, and levelling her wand when James started to open his mouth. He closed it immediately.
"I'll get Sarah…"
"No, call for her," Bellatrix said with an absolutely stone cold expression. "And your child."
"But… What do you want with Amy, she's just five and…"
"BOTH OF THEM!" Bellatrix screamed.
"I'm an Englishman. No," Mister Rigby answered with a growing sense of defiance.
"All right then," Bellatrix answered, and raised her wand, whiplike fast as the man lunged toward her and James shouted "No, don't be a fool!"
" Imperio !"
The commotion, ironically, brought the rest of the Riggby family downstairs, but by that point, James had watched in horror as Bellatrix had completed working the curse completely over onto James. Soon curses and hexes were flying quickly for other things, oo, with the muggle with the Ford Fiesta as a hapless spectactor. Sarah Rigby had at least the small mercy of not really understanding what was happening before her daughter was ensorcelled to come close to Bellatrix and her own mind and that of her husband were systematically wiped and expunged of any memory of her daughter's mere existence. There was nothing quite so horrifying as two mothers set against each other for the sake of their children, but Sarah had no means to resist and no way to imperil Bellatrix's plan, and so it was solved in a strictly one-sided fashion.
By the time it was done, Amy Rigby followed in quiet obedience to Bellatrix and stuffed herself into the back of the Ford Fiesta as Bellatrix settled into the passenger's seat, and she was now for all intents and purposes an orphan, for while her family was alive, they no longer knew that she existed. They no longer knew that they had a daughter who an hour before they had loved.
And the muggle next to her sat in silent horror, driving his car back to his house, that he had participated in that to save his wife. Finally, he dared to ask: "What kind of assurance do I have that you'll keep your end of the deal?"
"None," Bellatrix flashed a far-too-wide smile at him. "But don't worry. I mean, what kind of husband wouldn't at least try for his wife? A piss-poor one that's for sure. So, you did your best."
With a flash of a smile as the car rolled up back to his house, Bellatrix got out with her prize, and forced him back in. Now she began to work, taking her potions kit out of her bag of holding. With a thoroughly ensorcelled girl and a polyjuice potion…
The potion, of course, took forever to brew, and shrugged and turned to James. "Make food for us," she instructed, and headed out to get Delphini, who had fallen asleep under the branches of the tree. A moment later, she disguised the floating tree by the simple device of having it stand upright, so it looked like part of a grove already on the back lot of the property, and then wandered back in.
The man of the house had not interfered. Of course he was absolutely terrified, but he was also aware that he would have no truck with law enforcement when it came to the actions of a Witch, because the Wizards now were in power, and that was that.
While the potion was brewing, Bellatrix ensorcelled him to go to sleep, and with a breakfast of baked beans, bread, tomatoes and butter, they passed the time passably well, and then Bellatrix napped herself after forcing James to sleep as well, leaving the plates out for his wife to lick as a courtesy.
After an eternity, and more dubious rationed muggle food, but the somewhat better tea as well, the polyjuice potion was ready, and Bellatrix applied it to Amy Rigby with a strong instruction that she should imitate everything she saw from Delphini over the next few hours. With instant obedience, the girl began to mimic the curious and fascinated Delphini. The rest of the potion went into the enchanted capsule, and Bellatrix forced the girl who now looked exactly like her daughter to swallow it.
Then she turned to James, and smiled. It was not a kind smile, though the outcome was milder than it might have been. Bellatrix needed no investigations and no complications. "Thank you for your hospitality. I did lie to you in one way. You won't be able to tell your wife that you were a hero. I'm going to make both of you forget that all of this ever happened."
And with that, she raised her wand. It was time for the next phase of the plan.
As promised, Hermione had taken some of her leave to use the floo network to reach Moskva from Nizhniy Novgorod. The Russian capital had also survived, and still bustled, though the war had left countless abandoned construction projects, the trams and the buses were the main mode of transport, and as the years had worn on since they first arrived, the city had gotten grimier and more broken down. Less money, less effort to maintain it for people, and more money and more effort to be ploughed into war preparations.
She arrived in the Ministry Building, which was near the Krutitskoe Podvorye and was of a similar age, but had long been hidden by powerful magic. It still was, and that was for reasons of security. A series of tunnels led out of it, to disperse the Wizards and Witches who were coming and going into different parts of the city, and after spending a good fifteen minutes walking through one of those magically lit tunnels, she finally was able to leave it, to come to a Metro station, and make her way to meet Draco.
The Café they met at had returned to the Soviet form of the past, out of the necessity of rationing. She saw Draco standing out from the crowd, because Draco was Draco, and he was immediately recognisable, unmistakable. He was dressed in the uniform of a regular line infantry officer with the rank of Major, and he didn't seem to recognise her for a moment, before jerking with surprise as she approached, and coming to attention.
"None of that, Draco, we're meeting for dinner," Hermione laughed, and smiled. "You look well."
"For what it's worth, Councillor," he agreed.
"Hermione," she said, easily, and all of the tension and worry melted away when she remembered his patient disposition during the flight from England to Russia, the escape across a war-torn Europe, and the way he had changed then. He had not lost the virtues that those changes had brought to him.
"Hermione," Draco acknowledged with a smile, and they were shown to a table.
The buterbrody type open sandwiches with sprats or beetroot and herrings were a reminder of the humbler times that they found themselves in than the Moskva which had, until the hour of the war, been straining to return to more ornate times. But the tea was still excellent for all the rationing imposed some restrictions on how elaborate the food was, and in the midst of the boisterous conversation, they would not be overheard.
They could have spoke English to make that assured, but there was something about both of them in that moment that very much craved normalcy, which included no nervous or questioning looks from those around them in the wartime environment. So, by an unspoken mutual agreement, they spoke Russian.
Because of that, they could have just been two more officers meeting after duty, if they had a posting in one of the headquarters elements in the capital, or some element of Moskva's defences. It was a comfortable obscurity.
"I understand you'll complete your command staff training, and then be on the short-list for Councillor yourself," Hermione smiled. "Even Tonks … Dora, is willing to …"
"Tell people about my medals? Well, I suppose if it makes her feel better," Draco answered after a moment, stirring some preserves into his tea and taking a drink. "Otherwise, I'd rather anyone not bring them up. The difference between a hero and dead is that you held on for a second longer."
"I'd drink to that," Hermione acknowledged. "Why does she prefer Dora instead of Tonks now? Do you know? She asked me a year ago, so Ginny and I obliged, especially when we were around her a lot this winter, but she never explained."
"Remus," Draco answered with a flush of shame colouring his cheeks. "She just doesn't want to be reminded of the days when she was happy, and married, and in love, and going to raise her son together with him. I confess that I can't say I blame her."
" I suppose that's as good of a reason as...Well, it's not really good, but you know."
"Yes, I rather do." Draco bit into his food. "Has it been hard on the Caucasus front?"
"We had to use a tactical nuke to keep the enemy off the Poti-Alat railway line and the pipeline," Hermione answered. "So it was rough going, but we drove them back and reoccupied good defensive ground afterwards."
"Something to be said for that. We used tactical nukes at Alvesta and Varnamo too, and we broke through to the coast and finally reached Gothenburg, but then we had to use more to reduce the pocket in Scania. But the Baltic Fleet was able to support the landings in Zealand without them, when we took Copenhagen and established our defensive perimeter on the Great Belt. I don't like the nuclear weapons, I feel like we're slowly destroying more and more of the world."
" You'll get no argument about that from me," Hermione shook her head. "The sooner we can win, the better. Was that the last action you saw, then, the Zealand operation?"
"Yeah, we're stalemated northwest of Trollhattan. We've occupied Trondheim on the Norwegian coast, you know, but the bulk of the Norwegian population and central-western Sweden are still under the control of forces loyal to the Dark Lord, and still fighting us. It's nothing to feel good about, not yet. "
" But you did hold on for that one second longer," a shake of her head, holding up her glass of tea. Still, from the moment that Draco reacted, she could tell that it did not fill his heart with joy.
"I'm a coward, Hermione, and I honestly don't know how I did it. To be honest, I think I only manage to fight because I'm more afraid of the humiliation of everyone knowing I'm a coward than I am of dying, at this point. I don't know how you or Ginny do it."
"Maybe we're actually not that different, after all, actually," Hermione counted with a flicker of gentle bright brown eyes danced. "Maybe I'm actually just as afraid as you are, Draco, and I'm just here, trying to keep hope alive in the future, not because I'm a hero, but because I expect to die soon, and I'm less afraid of death than I am of people remembering me only for the Battle of Hogwarts."
Draco cringed. "I'd sooner die."
"You made the right call at the right time, Draco," Hermione answered. "It wasn't your fault it didn't work out. You certainly have saved lives from that day forward. That's something to be proud of, and clearly your superiors think so as well, because they've decided you have the discretion, as well as the valour, for high command."
"I'd say you were just flattering me, except that I have to accept that they clearly do." He paused, and took a breath. "Hermione, I've wronged you, I spent years wronging you, and…"
"Knock it off," the young witch laughed. "We're front comrades now, we're both fighting for the same Army. I've killed more men than I can count, I've boiled tea on the exhaust of a tank, and when I've won a battle, I've crossed my legs on a friend's cot and drank Vodka with one fist and smoked belomors with the other to celebrate the triumph . We're both in the same Army, right?" She smiled at the nod. "We're both fighting the same enemy, right?" At the second nod, she grinned. "Exactly right. You see, it's over. I'm an adult now, and I get to call it over and done with."
"One thing hasn't changed, Hermione," he remarked in wondering bemusement. "You are as much of a confident know-it-all as you were in your first year. Do you still read?"
" Every manual at arms, and book of strategy and politics, and official campaign history that I can get my hands on," Hermione admitted. "You got me in one."
"You're part of the military now," Draco smiled, "but you've just become a military bookworm, that's all."
"Guilty as charged." She spent a little time catching up on her food and drink after the fairly intense conversation, before she asked the question that was hot on her tongue. "Draco, what's Bellatrix like?"
Draco's expression froze. For a solid minute, he said nothing, and he barely moved, just blinking a few times like he had been pinned in place. "Bellatrix Black, you mean."
"Well, Lestrange, but…"
"She hates her married name, actually. She taught me Occlumency, you know. Called me her favourite nephew. Of course, I'm her only nephew." He grinned mirthlessly. "Her mind was racing a mile-a-minute with sarcastic one-liners. I think she was impatient, because she wanted the future she had fought for to come right now, right then, right there, to make up for the fourteen years she spent in Azkaban. She comes off as a loyal footsoldier, but honestly, in private, to me, she was all rebellious. I think she served the Dark Lord to get away from her family and expectations of married Pureblood life for a Lady of House Black." He shrugged. "I'm not sure what else to say."
"Thank you." Hermione paused for just a moment. "I have one more question."
"Go ahead."
"If she knew in advance that Voldemort was going to kill her, would she let it happen?"
Draco's eyes widened. "Oh Merlin no. I don't have the faintest idea what would happen, but it would be spectacular insanity."
Notes:
1. The Ford Fiesta was the most popular car in Britain in the 1990s.
2. I just assume that, somewhere in the world of magic, someone has invented a delayed release capsule for putting potions into.
3. Draco's heroism may not be stereotypical, but it is powerful, and in-line with his character to me.
4. Krutitskoe Podvorye is a large old religious complex along the Moskva (Moscow) River, which was the central administrative complex of the Russian Orthodox Church during the 17th century. The Ministry building is located immediately to the north and uses magic to fold into a little pocket of reality between the Krutitskoe Podvorye complex and the intersection of the Krasnokholmskaya embankment and Sarinsky Proezd.
5. A "polecat" is, in addition to being a kind of animal, a slang term for a stripper/exotic dancer (i.e., dancing around a pole).