DISCLAIMER: Is the entire rich history of the world's magical folklore and traditions treated with reductionism bordering on contempt in Potterverse canon magic? If so, I don't own Harry Potter.

There is still a buffer of unpublished work. It includes the now written final chapter of this part of the story, because there's no way I'm going to do The Hogwarts Years without a proper plan. Writing this fic has reminded me why I resolved, all those years ago, that I absolutely DO NOT try to write by the seat of my pants.

CHAPTER 26

I rip off my goggles and my sodden balaclava. Urgently, because it's waterlogged enough that I was nearly waterboarding myself. I turn to Sirius, who's done the same. "We did it. We fuckin' did it!"

"We did." Sirius is grinning his exhilaration-of-survival somewhere in the megawatt range. "Just, you know, let's never do that again."

-oOo-

The Qumran Rite, Sirius Black Presiding. Has to be Sirius: there's a minimum amount of ritual purification needed before you can even start, and the aging potion that allows me to be present as Adult Mal is an immediate disqualification. So long as I stay out of the ritual space that we have marked with salt and oil-lamps and censers, we should be fine.

Sirius is dressed in undyed, unbleached linen, still damp from all the bathing (regular and ritual) that he had to do, and has been chanting, in various postures, for an hour solid. Fortunately the Rite doesn't preclude the use of a lectern, or he'd be having trouble: there are sixty distinct spells in seven different languages in the whole rite, one of which is the forty-line Old Kingdom Egyptian monster called The Hymn Of Liberation. The magic in the air is heavy, and thrums with purposeful judgement. The sound of it puts me in mind of a great rumbling engine, diesel powered and unstoppable as a supertanker.

Much as I did at Privet Drive, I've given the garage over to ritual space. (In my entire existence I've known precisely two people who used their garage for keeping their car in.) For this day's work, it meant a bit of wand-work to vanish most of the concrete floor-slab and replace it with a couple of tonnes of silver sand from a local builders' merchant. It had to be doused with exorcised water, so it's sticking to everything and we're going to be cleaning up what we've tracked through the house for quite some time.

Bellatrix is going to wake up without the Dark Mark: removing it was part of the pre-ritual cleansing. The counter-spell for the stigma servus only works if cast by the slave's legal owner, and the laws it recognises and enforces are those of the Roman Republic. (Tom made slaves of his Death Eaters by having them swear a modified Gladiator's Oath.) Asserting title, in the proper form, to the abandoned slave Bellatrix Lestrange was the work of an hour or so with textbooks I hadn't read in thirty years. My university's bizarre requirement for law undergraduates to study Roman Law comes in handy in the strangest ways.

If Tom wants her back he can sue me for her, assuming I can't find the legally-required magistratum to emancipate her properly before then. I'm pretty sure that an auror is equivalent to a quaestor, so maybe Moody will oblige? Legally, her slavery is a dead letter. Magically, however, ownership is important.

Whatever. We have her strapped to a cedar-wood-and-calfskin litter lashed together with silken cord - ritual magic requires one to have versatile crafting skills - and still unconscious with Draught of Living Death. She's been under for three days and nights, during which time I shaved her head. Mostly to photograph the tattoos and scarification on her scalp, but also because if there's any magical side effects we don't want hair in the way while repairing the damage. Sirius bombarded her with cleaning and freshening charms: five years without soap left her smelling like the inside of an old man's boot. A switching spell took care of getting her into the linen shift the ritual calls for. Magic is handy for many things, and in respecting the modesty of an unconscious woman it comes through like a champ. We both want to be able to say we did when she wakes up: angry witches are no laughing matter. Modesty is relative, unfortunately. She's been liberally sprinkled several times with exorcised water, and the linen is clinging. We are carefully Not Commenting about that.

She needs no food nor water under the draught: it's magical suspended animation. I'm ready with a sedative potion for when the rite cleanses that effect from her along with everything else: while you do have to 'target' the Rite, it notoriously tends to splash a bit. This is one of the reasons it went out of fashion - it's impossible to be selective about what enchantment you remove. What I'm standing by with in particular, however, is my first-aid and magical healing kit, because there's more than one way this could get fiery or explodey. The hair-restoring potion - she wouldn't be the first woman to go non-linear over hair loss - can wait until she wakes up from the sedative.

Sirius comes to the climax of the Rite, a spell of seven syllables repeated seven times, and then, after a one-beat caesura, "Avada Kedavra!"

I've seen the Killing Curse in Tom's memories. The 'bolt' of the curse itself is almost invisible, barely a wriggle in the air, part of what makes it so hard to block even if you can conjure sufficient masses on the fly. The green light of the spell comes without apparent source: it's a thoroughly eerie effect.

Here, in its proper context, there's no bolt. No rushing sound, just a sudden dead silence that overrules all other noise. A sublime green glow over the whole ritual space, calming like woodland sunlight where the Killing Curse is uncanny.

Sound rushes back in after a breathless moment in which the Rite does its work. Bellatrix writhes and bucks against her restraints, eyes wide, panting in half-vocalised, keening distress. Her arms strain against the straps. There's smoke curling off her scalp.

Backlash, all right. "Stun her!" while casting about for something to stop the burning.

"Stupefy!" Sirius had his wand on the lectern and is gratifyingly quick off the mark.

The ewer of exorcised water can be put to more profane uses, now, and I pour it on her scalp: need to get the temperature down fast.

I share a moment of mutual did-that-just-happen looks with Sirius. Bellatrix's scalp is inflamed and blistered, but the burns don't look to be full thickness anywhere. "Pass me my potions bag, Sirius."

Every time I pass an apothecary I check to see if there's something useful to be added to this bag, and there's a fair stock of non-magical supplies mixed in. While I'm nobody's idea of a trained healer, one can handle a lot with a bit of knowledge and basic kit. The trick is knowing when you need an expert. And, more importantly, when you need an expert fast.

Up close, I see that the Rite forced the ink out of the tattoos, and the water washed all but a few streaks of it away. I've no idea where the heat that burnt her scalp came from, sheer intensity of magic is the only guess I've got. It's ordinary burning, second-degree in the worst spots. Not curse-fire, so it responds to the over-the-counter stuff from Diagon Alley. The scarification cuts opened up, and cleansed of their magical taint I can close them up with the little bit of medical transfiguration I feel comfortable doing. God knows I get enough practise between the boys being boys and Sirius, well, being Sirius. Cuts, grazes, and blisters are my limit, but within that limit I'm well practised. She'll barely have scars at all.

"So, that happened," Sirius says while I'm working, and, after a moment or two, "What's that smell?"

I sniff. Burning hair? I have a moment of wincing sympathy about where that could be coming from on Bellatrix, with her scalp shaved, before chancing to look over to where we have the Brothers Lestrange stacked. There's smoke. "Go check on Rodolphus," I say, getting my eyes back on the job.

After a moment, I hear a hearty "Fuck!" And then, "Indephlogistico homine!"

That's a fire-extinguishing charm.

Backlash from ruining my work. I didn't say anything, I thought you'd like the surprise.

Honestly surprised you didn't rise as the Petty Lord. We probably weren't going to get much out of him anyway, we only wanted those two idiots as backups if Bella here wouldn't cooperate with the vault.

Or couldn't be made to cooperate. I had her for ten years, remember.

"His, uh, his brain caught fire," Sirius says as he comes back over. Sounding a little shaky, so I suspect it was as gruesome as it sounds. "Along with his eyes. His hair started smouldering with the heat, far as I can tell." The smell of Bellatrix burning covered up everything before that, of course.

"We probably should've parsed this more thoroughly before we broke it," I say, "Sounds like backlash of some sort. Not that I much give a shit, like, but I'd have preferred not to be surprised."

"Could we have prevented it?"

I shrug. "Stood him on his head in a bucket of ice water? We don't have the room to do the Rite for both of them at the same time." Some rituals you can do in extended spaces. This one pre-dates extension spells, though, so we don't know and prefer not to risk it. I doubt I'm going to do enough ritual magic - it's a huge pain in the arse next to wand, rune and potion work - to want to buy a dedicated building for it, although maybe having one available to rent might be a business idea for someone if it's not already a thing. "How long do your stunners last?"

"On her? Half an hour when she was in full health. Landed one on her the last time I saw her before she got married. She sent me a note of congratulations the next day, and warned me she'd not be got that easy again."

She's three years older than him, so that was no mean achievement when they were both teenagers. It makes his death in the books all the more tragic. Not that I'd ever be so cruel as to tell him about that. I reach into the bag for a sleeping potion, a fairly expensive one that gives you proper rest with - it says on the label, I'm sceptical - no hangover. It also has a calming element so any dreams you have are innocuous. "Thirteen drops, I think. She needs a full night's worth and a bit more, time under the Draught doesn't count. Let's get everything squared away before we stop for tea. Get her down in the cellar and ready to be debriefed when she wakes up, which should be around six tomorrow morning."

"Rodolphus?"

"Plastic wrap and in the new freezer."

"Is that what you bought it for?"

"Yup. Whatever narrative we end up using, the Ministry has to have three escapees accounted for. Freezing and thawing confuses estimates of time-of-death, so we don't have to keep live Death Eaters about the place. There was a contract killer who was famous for doing it, they called him The Iceman."

Sirius chuckles. "We could just turn him over frozen. You know, for the intimidation value."

"We could do that, yes. Transfigure a look of horrified surprise onto his face while we're at it."

"Paint him funny colours, no, give him full clown makeup."

We keep the increasingly-ridiculous suggestions for post-mortem indignities going while we clean up the gruesome bits and move Bellatrix into a medical restraint bed. Which I got from a fetish supply place, because of course I did. Had to modify it to remove the safety features, mostly the stuff to let the victim get out if their partner keels over with a heart attack. The less said about the stirrups, the better. Sirius charmed the absolute shit out of it for comfort and to handle the medical necessities. (I carefully don't ask why a notorious prankster knows catheterisation charms.)

More cleaning charms and a change of clothes: poor woman's sluices opened right up when she woke up with a burning head. I'm thankful she had an empty stomach, or I suspect we'd be cleaning up puke into the bargain. As it is, the linen shift we put her in is a write-off. We could get it clean, but not ritually clean. She gets a plain, long, winceyette nightie as replacement.

We're sitting at the kitchen table when we're done, tea and biscuits helping us unwind, when there's a pop of apparation from the back garden.

Questioning looks at each other as we grab our wands.

"Hello, the house!" comes Remus's voice. He doesn't sound in any way distressed. I'm guessing he's making sure not to surprise us with his unscheduled visit. While nobody has tried to whack Sirius since we made that one pair of hitters vanish, we're not dropping our guard.

"We're decent," I yell back. I hope there's nothing wrong: he's not due back for a few days yet.

He comes in, and immediately double-takes at Sirius. "New look for you, Padfoot," he says, gesturing at the head-to-foot undyed linen.

We had a plan for Remus popping back unexpectedly. It was a pretty obvious thing that might happen. "We're up to no good, as usual," Sirius says, "compartmented, but I suspect you'd approve if we could tell you."

"Parse these runes," I say, pulling a copy of the photograph out of the folder of copies I made, "no need for detail, just your first cut at what they do."

"Is that - is that someone's head?" he says, peering closely. "It's someone's head. Good grief." He turns the photo around to read the outer ring of runes, making an increasingly revolted face as he goes. "Your copy of Spellman's where it usually is?"

I was ahead of him, calling it to my hand. Takes a bit of concentration to levitate it from a bookcase upstairs while also opening and closing doors on the way. The summoning charm can't do that, so in my own home with cultivated tidy habits? My way wins, although it took a lot of practise to get this good. I hand the book over without comment. "Tea? Pot's still warm."

"Love one," Remus says, not looking up from the photo and the book.

He's half-way down his mug of tea - amid considerable amused glances between Sirius and me, nerd-sniped Remus is never unamusing to behold - before looking up. "Good lord. This is, well -" he trails off in a few phrases of Welsh that I suspect aren't terribly polite. After a moment to pull himself together, "This is awful. What monster -?"

"Compartmented," I say, "It'd reveal the identity of the subject."

"Do you want help getting it off the poor woman?" Because of course Remus is enough of a nerd to deduce that from the grammar of the spell, although Tom's little extra twist isn't obvious unless you know to look for it.

"Already done. Cursebreaking ritual." Sirius waves a hand up and down the long tunic he's wearing. "Hence the outfit."

"Successful?"

"Entirely. Minor hiccup at the end, but Mal fixed her up in a trice."

"Do we know what happened to the object of the spell?"

I take that one. "Object and writer were two different people. Object, who commissioned the work, was present, sedated, and backlash killed him. He's currently in the locked chest-freezer in the basement."

"He didn't suffer, then? There's a pity, look you." Sometimes the fact that Remus is a werewolf shines through. And then, when he's done with the rueful shaking of the head, "You're not going to use that freezer for food, are you?"

I over-act a shudder. "Fuck no. Even if it's completely cleaned, I'd still know, so it's going in the classifieds when we're done. Someone who needs a cheap, freshly sterilized freezer can have one and be blithely unaware of what we used it for. Anyway, subject in the photo is sleeping it off, we're hoping for a debrief, so there might be some more grist for your mill soon."

Remus nods. He's really getting into the part of Resident Intelligence Boffin, and is completely cool about compartmentalisation. "I'll look forward to it. Look, I just popped back for a few things from my room, I'll be out of your way directly. I was never here, I saw nothing, I know nothing."

"That's the spirit, Moony." Sirius raises his tea-mug in toast. "To wilful ignorance!"

-oOo-

Bellatrix Lestrange is a good-looking woman even without her hair. Shaving her bald gave her an otherworldly, fae look, especially as thin as she is right now. Once she's fed back up a bit, she'll be back to looking like her big sister's fraternal twin: still remarkably pretty, but more like she belongs in this reality. Asleep, she doesn't have the twitchy, swivel-eyed lunatic look any more. Whether that was Azkaban or the magic brainwashing I don't know.

I suppose I should call her Bellatrix Black, really. Rodolphus admitted to Tom that she was on Amortentia at her wedding, and while magical law is utterly stupid on the subject of 'love' potions, any sensible individual can see that consent manufactured under that influence doesn't found a valid marriage, civil or religious or howsoever.

How Rodolphus managed to brew the notoriously-finicky potion I have no idea. Neither he nor his brother were exactly wizards of subtlety and skill. It might be that after Andromeda, Druella and Walburga Black were unwilling to take chances. For all they were various shades of evil and/or mad, they were accomplished witches.

Abraxas Malfoy, actually. He suggested Amortentia, and supplied it to Rodolphus.

Why the hell would he do that?

Either I never knew, or you haven't eaten that memory yet.

I roll my eyes. I really shouldn't have started thinking of the bastard as my personal shoulder devil. It means that on some level I expect him to start actually tempting. I already knew there was beef between the Blacks and the Malfoys. As temptations go, curiosity about a dozen-year-old scandal is a bit weak.

By itself, certainly. Besides, I could just be manifesting your fear of falling to temptation and becoming more like me. I am just a neurological epiphenomenon, after all.

He does sort of have a point, there. I know I've harped on it enough. However: Shush, she's waking up.

It takes her a minute or two, along with a minute or so of pretending to be asleep while she listens for clues about her surroundings. She won't get much: I've pulled the same trick as I did with source Coldstream, but this time I've transfigured a generic NHS hospital room, sound-proofed it, and closed the blinds on the 'window'. There's just me in here with her, in a nice comfy armchair that isn't generic NHS - the bulk-purchased ones they have are kind of low to the floor and I need a little more presence for this chat. No harsh lights, no psychological tricks, and my wand left outside. I even went to the trouble of getting a bouquet with a cheery 'get well soon' card to put on the bedside cabinet.

I decide to put an end to the play-acting, and cause the bed to shift into its sit-up configuration. I've got the gestures for this sort of thing down to a finger-twitch, with much practise.

She opens her eyes. "Where am I, who are you, and what have you potioned me with?" Her voice is as scratchy as you'd expect after five years of screaming.

"Taking those in order, you're here in this room, call me Mal, and Dagworth's Number Four Morpheus Drops. The slightly off sensation you're experiencing might be the hangover of the sleeping potion, but it also might be from getting your first decent night's sleep in five years. Not to mention having that abomination removed from your head, and the slave-mark taken off. You're thinking clearly for the first time since before your wedding, and I dare say the sensation is unfamiliar."

Her arms are relatively free: straps just below the shoulder. She pulls up her sleeve to look at her left forearm. Her eyes go wide: some shocks no amount of self-control can help with.

She turns those eyes direct on me. "Who are you?" she asks, barely breathing the words. And, because she's clearly not an idiot, firing up her legilimency.

I shove the probe back gently but firmly. It's weak: between the grogginess and lack of wand she's not bringing her First XI game. "None of that, now. For your own safety as much as anything: I'm a little bit changed from the man I once was, and have been known to devour souls. It's entirely disagreeable, and I don't like doing it."

You'd be outnumbered if nothing else.

Like she'd be on your side after what you did to her, dickhead.

I'm not actually that sure, yet. I mean, I'd be at least willing to consider 'enemy-of-my-enemy' for someone who pulled me out of the shit to the extent I've done for this woman, but then I haven't had over ten years of mental slavery warping my personality. The important thing is that direct mind-to-mind contact with a trained legilimens is not a fight I want unless I've rigged the game thoroughly. I've got things nobody can be allowed to know, least of all someone I'm this unsure of. Tom almost certainly can't try and get involved - but almost isn't absolutely.

"Eat. Souls." The tone is sceptical, but she doesn't try the legilimency again.

"It's as good a way to describe the process as the english language offers. I dare say you could find better in the language of old Egypt, they had a more nuanced view of such things."

"Is this some muggle place?" She's looking around as she changes the subject. The decor is certainly nothing you'd likely see in the magical parts of the world.

"A transfigured copy of one. The location of which you may or may not learn later, it all depends on the choices you make. However, you mentioned potions. You might want this one. Hair restorer: we shaved your head as part of the cursebreaking." I levitate the phial over to her.

She takes hold of it, but doesn't go any further. A sceptical look.

"Oh, come on. You're disarmed and tied to the bed. What do I gain by feeding you noxious potions and lying about it?"

She takes a moment with that. "I want a mirror."

"Thought you might." I levitate the one I brought over to her and hold it up. "If you'll permit me the compliment, you do actually carry the look off quite well."

She gives a snort of ironic laughter, as she contemplates her reflection, bending forward at the neck to see as much of her scalp as she can. The scars are just visible, even though the tattoos are gone. "I felt such joy after he did that. But I knew deep inside it was wrong."

I try not to let the shudder of revulsion show on the outside. The thought of being under mind-control gives me the piss shivers, always has.

More head-tilting and self-scrutiny. "You do neat work, assuming it was you."

I shrug. "The actual physical damage was minimal, as it happens. Do you remember waking up?"

She waxes sarcastic for a moment. "Having your head on fire sticks in the memory, call-me-Mal." She stops examining herself and knocks back the potion with a little moue of distaste.

I chuckle. "True. It also scrambles the brains, so I thought I'd, you know, ask. How are you feeling? That bed has pretty much every comfort and sickbed charm we could find on it, but you've been through a lot."

"Hungry, mostly." And going to get more so: the hair she's growing has to come from somewhere. It's also making her look more and more like the bass player out of the Bangles. One of my early and formative celebrity crushes, so I take a firm grip on my self-control. I'm used to it: her sister looks strikingly similar - lighter hair, and a little different around the eyes - and I have to remind myself she's a married woman often.

"You seemed to like these back in Azkaban," I say, levitating a dish of Rum Truffles over to her. "This time without potions. They'll take the edge off while we chat, buoy up your spirits, and clear out the last of the Dementors' influence. Not to mention getting the taste of the potions out of your mouth."

"Muggle chocolate again?" She's raising a wry eyebrow.

"Strictly between ourselves, it's exactly the same as the stuff they sell at Honeydukes, just without the spellwork to cover up the use of cheap, shitty ingredients. I guarantee there's no pig fat in those. I wouldn't drink the rum they use, mind, but that's because it's picked for its strong flavour and I'm picky about my drink."

"Pig fat?" I can see the horrified recollection of all the times she enjoyed a bar of Honeydukes, who apparently don't give a shit that they have jewish customers.

"Scarpin's Revelaspell can be an real eye-opener if you use it on food and drink: it sees through transfigurations." I don't need to tell her that it usually takes me three or four attempts to cast it successfully, even under perfect conditions. "One of my spare-time projects is a pair of spectacles with it on, which will be a godsend when nicking recipes from fancy restaurants. But yes, pig fat. And beef dripping, and pretty much any other cheap fat they can lay their hands on, transfigured into cocoa butter. It's all one to your belly, after all, and magical confectioners take advantage of that. About the only genuine thing in it is the cocoa powder, and they probably get that from muggle suppliers, it's got the same dutching agent in it."

She shrugs, and pops a truffle in her mouth. Yeah, she likes those. Closed eyes, and savouring it. And it's not like she'll need to worry about calories for quite some time, she's alarmingly skinny. "These are good," she says, picking up another one, "I'm beginning to understand why Andromeda ran off."

"I've no idea whether confectionary was a factor, I have to say. She and Ted do seem to be happy together, though, and their daughter is someone they can be proud of. Shaping up to be an accomplished and powerful witch." And a cheeky little besom into the bargain, but that adds to the charm as far as I'm concerned. If I was thirty years younger, I'd be in trouble. As it is, her attempts to flirt are just adorable.

That makes her pause with her third truffle halfway to her mouth. "You know my sisters?"

"Just Andromeda, so far, although the precise parameters of the rest of my social life will have to wait."

She remains silent through three more chocolate truffles. "This," she says at length, "is a better prison than my last one. Well done."

"It, ah, need not be permanent. So long as you accept one fairly mild restriction and do one modest favour, you get to leave. Be nice about it, and I'll devote resources to setting you up with a new identity. And my resources are, as you might have guessed, considerable."

"The alternative?" She gives me the Eyebrow Expectant.

I keep my tone light, polite, even though I'm about to deliver a threat. "I broke three prisoners out of Azkaban, and it hadn't even hit the Prophet as of this morning. You may assume from that that I, with the help of those I work with, am quite a formidable individual. That, bluntly, I can have what I need by force. What you're buying with your cooperation is my help in making a life for yourself afterward." I leave unsaid that the alternative is not being alive at all. "And I do want that cooperation: the muggles have a saying to the effect that a volunteer is worth ten pressed men."

"Refreshingly direct. The restriction?"

"In summary, that you not impair or impede my goal of destroying Tom Marvolo Riddle, self-styled Lord Voldemort, and all his works, and the social and economic conditions of which he is a symptom. I rather hoped you'd approve of that as a goal, given what he and his did to you. Whether you approve or not, it's the condition of you getting out of that bed by your own will. There will, of course, be a magically-binding contract."

She frowns. "Those things are dangerous." I notice she doesn't comment on the terms.

"They certainly can be. They're safer, and all the more binding, with complete consensus ad idem, of course, so you'll find what I've drawn up to be quite clear. I want you under no confusion as to what you'll be bound to neither do nor cause to be done. And as I say, it's a fairly mild restriction: it leaves open literally every other thing you could wish to do."

She thinks her way through another few truffles. "And the favour?"

"One item from the Lestrange vault. I dare say you can guess which one. And if you feel the need to strip it bare of all coin and portable wealth while we're down there, I shan't lift a finger to stop you."

She snorts with laughter at that. Then, more seriously, "You know what he's done, then?"

"Did he admit it to you?"

"Not in so many words. But I'm a Black. The Dark Arts are rather our thing. We're taught about the lines absolutely not to cross. I knew what it was when he entrusted it to Rodolphus to store in the family vault. As an anniversary gift, if you can believe that."

That does sound promising.

I wish I'd known the Blacks were this squeamish. Her and Regulus.

It's called common fucking sense, Tom. Common fucking sense.

"And you didn't raise alarms with anyone, why?"

"Because if he was doing it, it was clearly just fine. That's what he did to me, him and his ... lackeys." Her voice is under perfect control, but tears are starting to fall. I was ready for this, too, and float a small stack of handkerchiefs over to her. Sirius pointed out the likely culture-shock of tissues.

"What is said and done in here goes no further, Miss Black. You'll feel better if you take some time to just let it out. What you suffered was egregious, you deserve at least a little bit of a breakdown."

She stares at me. Hard. Straining to see me through the tears, but otherwise silent and composed. I suspect I've bought some goodwill with the form of address.

I shrug. "You don't need to preserve a negotiating position. You don't have one. The deals on offer are the deals on offer, accept or don't. It costs me nothing to wait out you having a good cry, if that's what you need."

"Strong-arm, is it?" Her control is failing her in her voice. Hoarse, wavery, scratchy.

"Of course. You're a Black, you're trained from the cradle to negotiate and manipulate. I'm hardly going to play to your strengths, now, am I?"

She takes the implicit respect for what it is, and also as permission to break down and blubber for what feels like about fifteen minutes. I couldn't begin to imagine what it's like for her. I turn my face away. I can't leave the room, not yet, so this is all the privacy I can give her.

Tedious. Tom loses patience some time after the ten minute mark.

How in the name of all that's holy, unholy, and everything in between did you manage to get as far as you did? This is how humans work. Understanding is absolutely fundamental to leading them. Or manipulating them, if you prefer.

Fear and mind-control. Much more reliable. And it doesn't make them weak, like all this pandering.

Well if all you want is attack dogs because you're a short-sighted fuckwit in it for the screams and explosions and instant gratification, sure.

"So," she says, picking up a fresh hankie once the tears have blown themselves out, "I suppose Dumbledore figured out what the - what he had done?"

"Dumbledore? He hasn't a bull's notion, unless he's managed to follow the trail of what I've been doing. Which I doubt, we had his agent marked from the start, and doubled him a few months ago."

"You're not working for Dumbledore?" Genuine curiosity in her expression. She's not even bothering with ordinary self-control, never mind posh-girl sang-froid or occlumency.

Here, of course, is someone I don't have to moderate my tone with, when it comes to that man, and there's every prospect that it'll help. Building rapport, if nothing else. I can't help but smirk. "Christ, no. If I want any high-handed blundering done, I'll do it myself, thank you very much, and not have to put up with all the condescending platitudes. The deal-breaker, of course, is the anti-muggle bigotry. I live in a muggle neighbourhood and count several muggles as friends. The further I keep that man from them, the better I'll like it."

"What."

I suppress the urge to chuckle. It's always fun to get a flat 'what' out of someone. "Oh, don't tell me you believe the hype that he's some kind of muggle-lover? He was Grindelwald's first partner in political theorising. One of his favourite aphorisms from back then is carved over the gate of Nurmengard, for crying out loud." Again, I'm assuming Rita Skeeter's not-yet-written reportage is good coin, although Dumbledore did confess to the substance of it in that scene while Harry was hallucinating King's Cross Station. "Not to mention that the first time I met the man was when I caught him in the act of muggle-baiting."

"That can't be true!" There's enough play in her restraints that she can get her hand over her mouth to hide the grin. Her eyes are giving the game away in fine style, though.

"My hand to the deity of your choice," I intone, raising my right hand. "Even if it turns out that some of what I've been told about him and Grindelwald is malicious gossip, they were verifiably in the same place at the same time and were at least acquainted as young men. The story is that they were thick as thieves when together and indefatigable correspondents when apart, and while I haven't seen it personally I understand some of that correspondence still exists and is damning. There was a reason it took twenty years for Dumbledore to get his finger out and stop the slaughter. And, yes, I caught him assaulting a muggle with legilimency. One of my acquaintances. You may be amused to learn that that encounter ended with him stripped naked, tied to a chair, and told in considerable detail how much I disapproved of his actions. This came after I had finished investigating five years of his actions, all of similar moral character, so I wasn't in a forgiving mood."

Like everyone else I've told, she gets a laugh out of the Naked Dumbledore Story. If only the wizarding world had a stand-up scene, I could tour with it. When the laughter has blown itself out, she asks, "So you had him at your mercy?" Leaving the question obvious.

"Jackass though he is, he's held in high regard. Taking him off the board entirely would engender a level of chaos I'm not ready for yet. That's the pragmatic reason. Morally speaking, he's a bungler, not a villain. He ought to be brought to some sort of justice if such a thing existed in magical Britain, but nothing he's done is a capital crime." Apart from the joint-enterprise felony murder of his own sister, but I don't want to oversell this, "Just outrageous levels of culpable negligence and incompetence. Even convicting him of that much would cause chaos we're not ready for yet. The best we can hope for at the moment is sidelining him slowly and by degrees until people wonder what they ever saw in him in the first place."

"So it's you that's the muggle-lover?"

I snort at that. "All of them? No, most of 'em are complete arseholes. That said, so are most wizards and witches. I just prefer to live in a culture with enough population to have more than one theatre and opera house, more than one art gallery, more than one restaurant, more than one pub that isn't a complete fleapit, fashion that changes more often than every other century, the list goes on. Like it or not, we're all people. Saying I'm better than the next fellow because I can do magic and he can't is like saying Luciano Pavarotti is a better man than me because he can sing Puccini arias flawlessly and I can't."

"Who?"

"Opera singer. Tenor. Amazing voice, I've got some recordings of his you can listen to later. Not important. What is important is that to believe in magical superiority you have to believe that possessing one particular talent makes you a better person than someone who doesn't have it. More capable, certainly, in that particular area, but not better. You have to be a dimwit to believe that nonsense once the error is pointed out to you. And to believe in pureblood superiority you have to believe a lie about magic itself."

"Which is?" She looks intrigued.

"That magic, three of the seven fundamental forces of the universe," which isn't an uncontroversial statement, but definitely represents my favourite of the competing theories for reasons not germane at the moment, "the forces that surround us, permeate us and bind the universe together, a universe that is at least twelve thousand million years old, and big enough that light takes ninety thousand million years to cross it, edge to edge. The constituent forces of something this big, and I'm supposed to believe they care who my grandfather is? It's like suggesting that gravity has a favourite piece of music. It's as absurd as it is arrogant: the universe is grand, and vast. We have no special place in it."

"I'm sure I didn't learn numbers that big in Astronomy class. I got good marks, too."

I give her a big grin. "Muggle astronomers. There's a lot more of them, and they have much bigger and better toys. They see further." Her eyes narrow. She has a lifetime of conditioning to get past, and I'm offering no corroboration for anything I'm saying. "Of course," I add slyly, "their superior skills and equipment don't make them better people than you or I."

She laughs, and it's an honest laugh. "You argue prettily, I'll say that for you."

I shrug. "Professional training. I was a lawyer before I turned to this life of crime, breaking convicts out of prison, overthrowing nations, helping fugitive witches rob their in-laws. Thing is, there's a whole world full of interesting and entertaining things like that, and if you take me up on the new life part you can go look it up yourself. Come back and call me a liar to my face, if you like, not that you'll have occasion to. Although I will point out that the size and age of the universe are current best estimates on the available evidence, not firm numbers."

"I'm more interested in this singer you mentioned. Has he done Zauberflöte?"

"If he has, I don't own a recording. Although I dare say somewhere will be performing it this year, and god knows there are a lot of recordings." I grin, "Although I did say the deals were 'take it or leave it' affairs, I'm willing to throw in a night at the opera as a sweetener."

"Oh, well that changes everything."

"Thought it might," I say, deadpan, "who wouldn't be swayed by the opportunity of a night out with my magnificent self?"

She snorts in amusement. "Give me the mirror back, I think this potion is finished working. Also, I'm still hungry."

I make sure she has a paper plate of sandwiches in her hand, with an admonition that she shouldn't entirely satisfy her hunger for a day or two until she's built up to it. While I don't know that she's underfed enough for refeeding sickness to be a risk it'd be a shame to lose her now. Before levitating the mirror over again. We may have the beginnings of a rapport, but I'm still not willing to put a potential weapon where she can easily grab it. Bigger and stronger I may be, but accidents can and do happen.

While she's eating, I go on, "The thing to bear in mind is that you really don't have to sign up to anything I've been talking about. Certainly I'd like to have a talented witch like you on the strength, especially one I can trust not to fall for Dumbledore's blandishments, but you're no use to me as a conscript. If you don't want to join up, all you really have to accept is that for you, the war is over. And, really, what do you owe the pureblood cause? They robbed you of your free will, made a criminal of you, and left you to rot in a pit of demons. Was that what you wanted out of life?"

"What I want out of life right now is a chance to wash my hair and get my curls set right," the self-control is back in her voice, and she's occluding again, probably just to control the upset, "but I take your point. And, oh, I had my doubts before they got the potions in me. I can't remember that happening, so I was probably obliviated. I'd like to think I fought, at least. But they didn't give me that filth because they thought there was no risk of me doing an Andromeda."

"I did wonder. She mentioned that you visited a couple of times. Went out of bounds during Hogsmeade weekends, wasn't it?" Andromeda vouching for pre-marriage Bellatrix is the only reason I'm attempting this, of course. If she'd been a true believer before then, deprogramming would have taken more than a ritual and a bit of a chat.

"Yes. And covered up for her and Edward a couple of times when they nearly got caught shagging at Hogwarts. I felt she could do better, but he made her happy."

"Still does, if I'm any judge. You have anything against him in particular?"

"As I say, I rather thought Andromeda could have done better, but not because he was muggleborn, no. He was just, I don't know, a bit of a lump. Although I was required to damn all mudbloods at home, of course." She takes another bite of a sandwich, thinking her words over. "As for the 'pureblood cause,' I thought it was rather oversold. Certainly, I could see the sense of the old families being worthy of respect because they were richer, more rooted in our culture. But only in our culture. There was one girl in the same year as me, Hufflepuff, she was minor nobility on the muggle side of things. She could trace one line of her forebears back to one of Edward the Confessor's courtiers, and the main line of her family had lived in the same castle since shortly after the Conquest." Bellatrix snorts. "She's the reason I understood that the old families were important only in their own sphere, just as her family were important only in theirs. And she's the only reason I know any muggle history at all, she was quite the buff for it."

"Binns being Binns, I don't think you know much magical history either. A lot of what he teaches flatly can't be true, but that's by-the-by. But seriously, what did you want to do with your life?"

She gives me a flat, level stare. "Be a musician."

I didn't know that.

Of course you didn't, philistine.

Waste of a good witch, letting her fool about with music.

Philistine.

Ignoring Tom, because this is actually interesting, "What do you play?"

She looks taken aback, like she didn't expect me to take her seriously, or ask any follow-up questions. "Violin, piano, flute. But mostly violin. Why?"

"Well, if you want the new life option, getting back to what you originally wanted is a place to start planning. And, you know, the muggle world is where the big audiences are." I give her an encouraging smile. A thought occurs to me. "Was that a Black family thing? Sirius is currently branching out from the harpsichord, Andromeda's a bit useful with the bull fiddle -?"

"Cello," she cuts me off. Which, fair enough, it was a deliberate provocation and I can tell she's annoyed at herself for falling for it, "and it's certainly normal for all the old families." She gets a sly smile on her face. "We don't have television, you see. We have to make our own entertainment."

At a guess she got that old chestnut from Ted Tonks, and there's a traditional punchline I can adapt a bit. "No television? I'm surprised magical families aren't larger."

It gets another laugh. "You know Sirius as well?"

"I helped get him out of Azkaban. While I had Dumbledore tied to that chair, I, ah, motivated him to get on the trail of Pettigrew, who was alive all this time. While he was on with that, I had a quiet word in an appropriate ear to get Barty Crouch put in Azkaban for breaking Barty Junior out. You're not the first to be broken out of that place, although your escape was the first that wasn't an inside job. Which is a long story for another time. Yes, I know Sirius. He's working with me on various projects."

She looks like she wants to ask about Barty Junior, doubtless for fairly obvious reasons, but blanks her face before I'm finished talking. "And Rodolphus and Rabastan?"

"Rodolphus died when we broke the curse you were under. Riddle set it up so the backlash all went to him, and it turned out to be stronger than we were expecting. Rabastan I got for completeness' sake, but he's securely held until we need to turn him in." It was actually so there was a clean sweep for the Longbottoms' sake, as well as to prevent shenanigans with the Lestrange vault. As long as the Ministry and Gringotts think he's in the wind, they'd have to change laws to do anything, assuming the wider Lestrange family don't have measures already in place. The only finesse is going to be whether Bellatrix's death is real or faked. I'm quietly confident, on her showing so far.

"No great loss in either case." Her face takes on a hard cast for just a moment, before she gets it under control. I'm guessing that being potioned to enjoy it doesn't make the abuse less traumatic. "I want to see this contract. Read it."

I could do with a comfort break, so I leave her the document while I go potty. She doesn't need to know that there are hidden mirrors around the room so I can keep an eye on her. The shop that makes those things is doing very well out of me, not least because I keep giving them ideas for new product lines. Magic parents are getting video baby monitors decades before their muggle counterparts.

She's still reading when I go back in, so I sit down and wait quietly. She finishes with a quiet 'hmm', puts the paperwork down, and looks at me. "You said it was clear, and it is."

Nice to hear I'm still up to my old standards. I've been awarded Crystal Marks. "As I say, consensus ad idem strengthens the contract. You should have seen that it really is a mild restriction on your conduct. About like giving your parole as a prisoner of war so as to have some liberty."

"I got that, yes. I could be persuaded to sign it, I think. I don't have fundamental objections," Grabbing for room to negotiate, Bellatrix, well done, shame it won't work, "It's where we go after that that I want to know about. Let's assume that the Prophet is behind with the news as usual, and the Ministry knows I'm out. That means there's a kill-on-sight order for me." I notice she doesn't mention her late husband and soon-to-be-late brother-in-law. I probably wouldn't, in her place, although in my case more for their enthusiasm in Tom's cause. What they did to Bellatrix was fairly mild next to some of their crimes that Tom has reminisced about. We've crossed off a couple of dozen child murders from Remus's list. Still not mine, alas.

However, back to the womanhunt that's probably already under way, "More than likely, yes. We're going to have to fake your death as a first order of business. Unless you want the genuine article, in which case I have several painless -"

The magic flares out of her at the very idea: sparks and corposant and waving hair. Her eyes flash up from their resting dark blue to a vivid violet. "I do not! Whatever gave you such a dimwit -"

I hold up a placating hand. "You've lived nearly fifteen years of personal hell. Some people would want to end it all, and until now I didn't know you well enough to say you weren't one of them. So with that established," and hand-on-heart her suicide would be awfully convenient, "We need to fake your death. I can make an entirely convincing corpse and turn it in to the Ministry with a suitable legend of how I felled you and those two herberts I broke out with you. Titanic battle, ringing declamations of fell import, that sort of thing. You'd have to move a long way away under an assumed identity. Live an entirely blameless life of quiet anonymity and never give yourself away."

She's nodded along with the outline plan. From the intrigued look in her eye she wants to know how the convincing body might be made. "Which I could do. You're implying there's another option?"

"Well, instead of making a body to stand as your corpse, how about making a new body for you to inhabit and turn in the one you're currently wearing? I can even put the Dark Mark back on it." Which I totally can, I own it. Although the idea of crudely drawing it on with a felt pen does have some appeal. As for doing this for Bellatrix, I want a test candidate for doing this to a living human, and she has nothing to lose. Research ethics, what are those?

"What."

I love doing that to people. "Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. I'm proposing to make you a new set of crude matter to wear. Although calling the products of modern, cutting-edge bioalchemy 'crude' is doing my handiwork a disservice. Side effects include becoming taller, better-looking, and twenty years younger." It's true, too. Although not better-looking by much, in my case. Just with looks I don't have to be thirty to have grown into. "You have to use ageing potion to look like a grown-up, of course, like I'm doing right now."

Long silence. "You can do that?"

"Yep. See this body I'm wearing? Came out of the reaction vessel on 27th June, 1986."

A moment of mental arithmetic. "You're less than two years old?"

"Came out of the vat with a physical age of about seven, seven days and nights of accelerated growth. As for my age rather than my body's, a lot older, actually. My last body was fifty years old when I had a bit of an accident with it. I've also spent time as a wandering spirit, plus some subjective durations outside mortal time, so my actual age is a bit of a vexed question." With the amount of Tom's life I've absorbed, it stacks up as somewhere in my seventies, although that's probably an entirely wrong-headed way to approach it.

Stolen life doesn't count, thief.

Shut up, Tom.

"So you've defeated Dumbledore, let him live by your mercy, survived and returned from bodily death, casually broken prisoners out of Azkaban, and for an encore you're going to kill and reincarnate me?" She looks like she doesn't know whether to burst out laughing or swear a blue streak.

"Not a bad summary, and if you stick around you'll find out how much of a braggart I'm not. Just so's we're clear, you don't get killed at any point in this. You'll be in a new, fully-functional body and given the full suite of commissioning tests before we euthanase the one you're wearing now. Oh, and the process needs some modifications. The protocol was written for a male body, so unless you have a secret hankering to be a boy?" One thing both Sirius and Andromeda agreed upon about Bellatrix was that - with considerable justification - she was totally full of herself from an early age. Which makes it all the more fun to gast her flabber.

She shakes her head. Gingerly, as if suddenly worried it's going to just fall off.

I've had frequent bouts of down-the-rabbit-hole feeling since arriving in this universe, and it feels good to spread it around a bit. "No? Well then. We'll have to spend some time on that. You'll be wanting to review the ritual magic elements yourself, of course, and any suggestions you have for the necessary changes will be welcome. Putting your own work into the thing will considerably improve your chances of it working perfectly first time."

"How are you going to, what, swap me from one body to the other?"

"There's a body-swap magic, invented as a sort of poor-man's immortality for people who didn't mind having to reinvent themselves every few years. Very nasty, very dark, tends to corrupt each new body you get after you've done it a few times. When I analysed it, though, all of the dark stuff was to overcome the target's resistance to having his body stolen. With consent or guaranteed absence of resistance, it's a much more, shall we say, streamlined spell. Being in a body you actually own reduces the side-effect profile to nil, too, so you'll have to pay me a nominal sum to establish absolute property rights over the supplies that go into it. Still difficult, and we might have to suffer through a couple of failed attempts before we get it right, but doable." If she can't manage it herself, I can possess the new body and swap with her, then just hop back into my own flesh, but it shouldn't come to that. Like possession, it builds on legilimency, so she's got the foundations at least.

Long silence. Clearly, she's thinking through the implications. I can tell because the normal sense of presence I get from an occluded mind vanishes behind deep occlumency. It's good for times when you have to think clearly and dispassionately. At length, in a small voice. "I'll sign the contract." Then, more boldly, "I was concerned that you were a fool. To take on the Dark Lord? However, if you're not the braggart you sound like..? I think I shall stick around long enough to confirm everything you've told me. If it's all true..." She trails off, and then smiles slyly. "Is there a Mrs. Call-me-Mal?"

I can't help it: I laugh out loud. "Whyever do you want to know?"

"You did ask me out, Call-me-Mal."

AUTHOR NOTES

Roman law of the period the Stigma Servus is from (in this fic, at least) has some strange ideas - to modern eyes - on how property rights arise and are transferred. Mal owns Bellatrix by occupatio, taking possession of an unowned thing. She's the abandoned property of a deceased intestate with no natural heirs, and the Ministry then abandoned her, as Mal sees it (and would argue in the event of litigation) to the Dementors. Mal's title will become absolute after a single year by way of usucapion. No, he's not looking forward to telling her any of this.

Whoever helps with Bellatrix's manumission is going to have to perform a little ritual that actually involves a wand tap - substituting for the lictor's rod in the original - and Mal is going to have to shave her head again, and give her a hat. (And a hair-growth potion, if he knows what's good for him.) Ancient Rome had a special hat for freed slaves to signify their status, and the shaving was part of the manumission process.

I swear I'm not making any of this up.

(Moody being a quaestor-equivalent derives from my headcanon that Wizarding Britain apes the constitution of the Roman Republic, with the Minister as sole Consul and the Wizengamot as Senate. Aurors are one of the beginning steps in the cursus honorum that leads to Wizengamot eligibility: Moody is unusual in serving long enough to retire. It gives Umbridge's opposition to Harry working for the Ministry an extra resonance, too, no?)

Exorcised water: you may be as surprised as I was to learn that the rite for turning water into holy water is actually an exorcism, not a blessing. Since here it was done for non-religious purposes, the result isn't 'holy' water.

The fire extinguishing charm is built on the now-defunct theory of Phlogiston. A burning object was releasing its phlogiston, or dephlogisticating. The charm stops that process.

The Iceman was Richard Kuklinski. Charming character.

See previous author notes for my thinking on the Black Family Tree. I'm fixing Bellatrix's graduation year as 1975, and she married that same year. (It makes her 32 in this chapter, she was old for her school year). Andromeda was class of '72, and Nymphadora was the result of post-NEWT, successful-elopement celebration, born between March and August 1973. Lucius graduated in '72-'74 (he was a prefect the year Snape was Sorted), and Narcissa was one of the youngest in the class of '76: they either took a while to get married or Draco took a while to turn up (earliest he can have been born is 1 September 1979.) The Marauders, Snape and Lily finish school in '77, that is fixed in the books by the dates on the Potters' grave. These aren't the only dates that fit with what's in the books, but they do work.

Bellatrix having a Problem with the horcrux? It's not a terribly great leap of logic to think that Bellatrix and Regulus had the same curriculum of private tuition that explained exactly why they were bad. Sirius skived off the lessons of course, (or never got them as the family rebel) which is why he didn't recognise the locket for what it was in OotP.

Dumbledore as murderer? Yes, under the law as it stood when Ariana was killed. "Joint Enterprise" and "Felony Murder" make for savage legal doctrine. By it, all three wizards involved in that duel should have hanged for Arianna's death. And much trouble (and one crappy pub) the world would have been spared thereby.

Bellatrix's classmate was claiming kinship with one of England's oldest families, who really can document every step of their descent for over a thousand years. Which I mention because I've got heartily sick of reading fanfics in which various families claim to be able to trace their lineage back to pre-Roman times. Worldwide there are a tiny fraction of families who can reliably document their descent much past a couple of centuries, and of the exceptional few - mostly aristocrats, but the descendants of Confucius are reasonably well documented - all but a handful peter out into obscurity or outright mythology before getting to fifteen centuries and generally considerably short of that.

Crystal Mark: an endorsement given, on application, by the Plain English Campaign. Who do exactly what they say they do, and worthy work it is too.

Changing the ritual to make a female body: numbers have gender in more than one system of numerology. Odd is male and even is female in the tradition wizarding Britain uses. Adapting the ritual to create a non-binary body abides research to extend arithmancy to more complicated numbers than integers.

I keep having to not call these new bodies 'sleeves', since not everyone has read or seen Altered Carbon. (You really should.)

Fanfic recommendation: Bookworms Notice, by Magi Silverwolf on FFN and Magi_Silverwolf on AO3. A small story, but perfectly formed.