Chapter Eighteen: Concorde
For four days, Bellatrix had camped in the woods with her daughter and her 'daughter', systematically using the Imperious curse to drive her daughter's behaviour further and further into the girl she had stolen for this task. She had apparated to a Tesco she had seen on the flight back into the woods, and rather awkwardly shopped for enough to make this viable, but after fourteen years in Azkaban, even sleeping rough in the woods was in comparison pleasant, and Delphini thought it an adventure as she grew used to the idea of her otherwise unnerving shadow. Enchanting blankets and making fires never die kept them warm in the snow even if their clothes were all unsuited for it.
Then, on the final day, she had flown to Berwick-upon-Tweed and deposited her fake daughter with Euphemia Rowle. This had led to a brief confrontation, as Euphemia remembered enough to know that something was wrong thanks to her House Elves, but Bellatrix had gotten the drop on her, expecting trouble, and dealt with the situation quickly, then wiped her memory more thoroughly. For at least as long as the Polyjuice potion would hold out from the magical slow-release capsule, the cover would last. She had then used the Rowle Manor to send the message to prepare a Concorde for her return to the front in the Caucasus.
Then they flew south. Knowing what was going to happen, Bellatrix grew steadily clingier, holding Delphini as close as she could on the great Tree until they had reach the outskirts of London. it seemed impossible now that her daughter would ever be a Slytherin as all the women in her family had been. But there was one thing she could do, and she was going to have to do it anyway.
She landed the Tree in the Colne Valley Regional Park, and taking their bags, hand in hand, mother and daughter, they made their way to the edge of the woods leaving the tree behind. Perhaps another lucky Wizard could find it, but there was no time for a hand-off, and it would just raise suspicions anyway. So they paused at the edge of the greenery, now carpeted with the white of snow, both of them panting a big from the exertion of walking through it. The Uxbridge Tube station was just in front of them.
"So, I want you to hold still and think good thoughts, Delphi," Bellatrix explained. "Put your bag down."
"Mum…?" Delphini asked as she set the bag down and looked up. "What's going to happen?"
"You're going to be a Slytherin for a day, dear, as befits you as the Heir of Slytherin." She waved her wand, and without hesitating more or making it harder for her to get it over with, she cast Transfigurate, and as she completed the spell, she had transformed her own daughter into a snake. To keep her warm in the cold, she reached down to the instantly trembling snake and brought her up to her breast, whispering in the Parseltongue that Voldemort had taught her. "Come, little one, deary wrap around my neck and be warm…"
After a moment, Delphini obeyed her mother's instruction, rasping, nervously, "Mum, I don't understand…"
"I can't let anyone know you're coming with me… Good girl, a little looser.. Yes, like that, " Bellatrix noted when she was satisfied with the twists of tail around her pale skin. Adjusting her collar, she added in a rasping whisper of hisses, "let me know if it gets stuffy," and carried on to the Tube station carrying both suitcases now. She was already feeling triumphant, for while she regretted transforming her daughter into a snake, it had revealed that unlike a normal transfiguration, it had given her the knowledge of Parseltongue—that confirmed that Delphini was indeed a heir of Slytherin.
They rode the tube in, and then back out to Heathrow, in a state of distanced reverie. She remembered the songs she used to listen to her in her rebellious days on the wizarding radio, when she changed to the muggle stations and away from the approved wizarding ones… The songs that had led her to explore the Tube system in London a few times, to a world of crisp black leather jackets and amazing music and smoke-filled drinking sessions in muggle bars.
Her cousin Sir i us had adopted that world wholeheartedly. Bellatrix had never abandoned her own values or beliefs. Never would, she expected. A part of her desperately clung to that, in an hour when everything was uncertain, when mentally, she was already unmoored from the whole rest of the world, from the values which had driven her for thirty years, her entire adult life. Loyalty to Voldemort.
It was gone now, and that was not something you could regain. Once it was gone, it was most assuredly gone forever, and if you regretted it, then he would be happy to take your life when you returned. She had already drifted past the point of return without really thinking about it. The tube ride to Heathrow was agonising, as she occasionally reached up to stroke her daughter, curled around her neck as a snake.
But of course, she was shown through security without a check. They opened the gates for her, and took her to the special private terminal for Wizards on official business. With the Morsmordre prominently displayed on the tail, the Speedbird, as the Concordes were still called by their pilots, had her Rolls-Royce Olympus turbofans lazily turning over as de-icing was finished. The Stewardesses took her luggage (and her daughter's by extension) and settled it for her, and she retreated at once to the private cabin at the back with a single bed (Concorde was quite narrow).
Of course, she couldn't let anyone on the aeroplane know about her daughter, but she could at least let Delphi slither around the bed as they reached cruising altitude. Bellatrix leaned into the curved fuselage and called for a glass of wine than she drank slowly, like she were not really aware of what she was doing.
So far, so good. They had escaped the ground in Britain, and reached altitude, and were flying supersonic over the North Sea and Europe. Her tension surged again during the Technical Stop in Lvov, still thousands of kilometres from her troops. She wondered what her sisters would think of her now, and with a surging realisation understood that if she wanted, she could actually talk to Andy again. The knowledge brought a twisted expression of anger to her face. Damn you, Andy, it might have been different..!
No, she wasn't going to be a blood traitor. But there was Cissy, and that did mean something, seeing Cissy again. But then another thought pounded into her head. Oathbreaker. She had honestly, and willingly, sworn to receive the Dark Mark. She had voluntarily made herself into Voldemort's servant. By right, she was a traitor in heart and soul now. She was about to be a traitor in deed. She called for another glass of wine as they left Lvov, and then another, but Concorde was too fast for her to be thoroughly drunk when she arrived, and there was a part of her that rejected it, that resisted it. This was too important.
Suffer the wretch not to live, still she thought. The Koldovstoretsy had every right to regard her with suspicion and contempt. Knowing their customs, she idly wondered if they might kill her rather than accept her.
But she did have a plan to deal with that, now didn't she? That's why that capsule was meant to last hopefully weeks. That's why she'd invested so much time in preparing that muggle girl to be her daughter. Still, this positive outcome relied upon trusting others, and that was why Bellatrix's stomach was curled into knots for the rest of the flight, bundling up in tension until she was too sick for more wine. With the heat cranked all the way up for her daughter to be comfortable as a snake, the misery was particularly acute, and finally she left the cabin to sit in one of the conference rooms forward. The comparative cold helped a bit, but in the end she just returned to the private cabin and remained there with her daughter until they landed about thirty minutes later in Grozny.
She had to be helped down to the car that took her to the train, and there she drifted to sleep for a while, mercifully, with her daughter still coiled close. Slowly, the train pulled out through the ruins of Grozny, and then accelerated—Bellatrix was already asleep.
She woke up from the fitful sleep, though, in time to see the train gliding to a stop through the snow and the damaged buildings in the southern part of Vladikavkaz. A convoy of Land Rovers was waiting for them. Bellatrix began to relax, because these were her troops, and still nothing had stopped them. That meant that, among other things, the moment that they were securely in the Land Rover Defender she was riding in, her wand was out, and where there had been a snake, there was against her daughter.
Delphini wordlessly hugged her as tightly as she could. Worried that there would be recorders, Bellatrix had not spoken in Parseltongue to her again until the train ride, when she felt too sick to say very much. "Mum…"
"Shh, it's okay, I'm not transfigurating you again, deary." Bellatrix let her daughter hold onto her as tightly as she wanted.
"You did come back when you promised," Delphini answered. "That wasn't as scary as I thought!"
Bellatrix couldn't help but smile. "Well, good. You are the Heir of Slytherin, after all." She adjusted her daughter's clothes and buttoned up her jacket against the cold. The drive went on and on, up and over the Georgian Military Road. It had only been seventeen days since she had left her Army behind, but it truly felt like eternity when she arrived at the camp, having driven through an endless slurry of white on a road kept bare, a thin grey line into the mountains.
The eternity would really be in the minutes after she arrived. A few intact houses remained in the high mountain village, and with the Army settled into winter quarters, these had been appropriated for the headquarters of her forces and that meant that Jorge and Kempler were operating out of them. The sun was already going down for another day, but there was hot tea waiting for her, and a bedroom prepared. The orderlies waiting for her did not ask questions about the little girl with her.
She went down to see Jorge, stopping at the personal files room for a moment. "Bring up the Chief of Staff's file," Bellatrix instructed to one of the computer operators, and then leaned over the woman's screen.
Jorge Andrés Serrano Diaz.
For the first time, Bellatrix had bothered to look up the full name of the most important person in her Army, or at least with the intent of remembering it, anyway. With a nod, she went down to the situation room in the former Alpine skiing lodge. She paused for long enough to get a cup of tea, Bellatrix was sure she'd need it. Then she went forward.
"General Diaz, I would like to talk to you alone, please."
Jorge Diaz looked up, and for a moment an intangible expression flickered across his middle-aged face. Then he nodded. "M'lady," he affirmed, and came to her side, as Bellatrix led him back upstairs toward the room that had been prepared for her. She paused in front of it.
Now, sickness and tiredness fled, and Bellatrix paced with her tea back and forth down the hallway, feeling an intense giddiness, a nervous energy that was absolutely delightful. She desperately wanted to kill something, but in a way, she was about to. Just not Jorge, she didn't want to kill Jorge. "General Diaz, I want you to meet someone."
"M'lady…?"
Bellatrix stopped pacing, and opened the door. "Come out, Delphi!"
A silver-blonde haired girl peeked out from the room.
"I present to you my daughter Delphini Black, the natural daughter of Lord Voldemort and the Heir of Slytherin. By bringing her here, General Diaz, I have disobeyed the direct instructions of Lord Voldemort. You see, the Rabdos of Koschei will be useless to his plans. He will need to come here to find the Water of Life on Ararat himself. And he has grown more and more unstable over the years until we are all slaves unto the hour of death!" Her voice reached a screaming fever's pitch at the last sentence, and Delphini shrank in fear and surprise. "He has rejected my daughter as his heir and denies that she is really his daughter in any meaningful way… But she is most certainly is the Heir of Slytherin, and there is only one thread keeping him from death, and I know how it may be severed! "
Delphini started crying. One might have difficulty in telling if Jorge was more shocked at the words coming from Bellatrix, or the fact that she said them directly in front of her daughter, but if this was a matter of treason, than the split would have to be total.
The pieces could be picked up later, couldn't they?
"You're going to defect," Jorge said, his voice cool, after sighing heavily. "For what it is worth, you have always been better than the others, Madame Lestrange…"
"Black. Madame Black," she corrected sharply.
"Madame Black. You understood that a good blade must be oiled and polished, I will give you that. That is more than most of the other Death Eaters, your comrades, ever appreciated. You have been personally kind and worked to preserve the lives of my men from needless death. Do you know that there will be men whose families are put to death because of this?"
Bellatrix fixed him with a strange look. She didn't say anything at first. Jorge didn't give her the chance.
"Their families will be put to death, and many will die in particularly horrible ways. Those men with families will be giving up the happiness that you just secured with your own daughter, or at least that you will if this plan works out, and the Russians don't shoot you out of hand and send the rest of us to the camps." His voice was iron, his countenance frozen in place, but his words were clipped and intense.
"So, we'll find those men, and…"
"No." Jorge came to regular attention like he would before a military officer, in another life that seemed so very long ago, hands at parade rest behind his back. "We will take care of our comrades, and they will fight with us because they are our comrades. We will follow you, Madame Black. We will become your 'Wild Geese'. I was once a soldier of La Legion before your Death Eaters conquered and overthrew and destroyed my country and subjugated it to the Spanish Wizarding community. I thought I would have the opportunity for revenge by serving as a Janissary, but step by step, I led myself into being a whore, and further from any chance of resistance. I have lost my honour and I cannot regain it, but I believe you are powerful enough and clever enough to give me a fitting vengeance. The men will follow you, they know you are the best of your kind. They know, too, that Voldemort has grown more and more mad, and perhaps, they will believe, too, that your daughter by him will have the same power he does, and so by that he can someday be totally defeated. I believe that your words are not an idle lie or boast; you do know something about his power. And that's enough. It's enough for us to wreak bloody hell on them. And comrades will support comrades. You don't need to do anything about it. You will not mistrust any of us, we are either all for you, or none of us are. Choose."
Bellatrix opened her mouth… And leaned forward and threw up in the hallway, the metal cup dropping from her fingers to the ground with a splash of the remaining tea. She was overcome with the raw anxiety of the experience, the unmoored feeling of reckless daring, as she stretched out and defied Voldemort for the first time in her adult life. Holding her stomach until the dry heaves finished, she wiped her mouth of vomit and spittle, and looked up with a brilliant, dangerous and very mad grin. " Make the preparations, General Diaz. As you muggles probably understand the reference – It's all for one, and one for all."
General Jorge Diaz extended his hand.
Bellatrix took it.
As she released from the handshake, his hand shot up in a salute to his forehead. "Viva la Muerte!"
Bellatrix couldn't help it. She smiled savagely at the words she recognised. I will let make you regret abandoning Delphini! She thought, and for the first time, she raged at Voldemort at the same time that she shivered with fear and anticipation and delight and raw giddiness. It's working, it's working!
Her daughter ran to her and squeezed her leg, crying.
Hermione had returned to the Dadiani Manor, but for the moment, they had not been ordered to return to the front. Bellatrix's forces were still quiet, and might be for months more. December had just begun, and perhaps they wouldn't even resume offensive operations until April. There would be plenty of time to rest, if that was the case.
Or there wouldn't be, and they'd need to be ready. There was still a little party of Hermione that, even though she could easily apparate the distance, felt guilty about being back here as a guest of the Dadiani Manor rather than waiting for any potential hostility out on the front.
The tea was good, the food was excellent. It was hard for her to claim she had any complaints about the Dadiani Manor, or its surroundings. The forest was open for her to explore as a guest, and it was magical, but much safer than the Forbidden Forest by Hogwarts, not like that was very hard. Hermione went snowshoeing to get her exercise in, as more snow fell and the ground was further covered. Now, thanks to the nuclear bombs, these lesser mountains in central Georgia might as well have been the peaks of the Caucasus, and the peaks themselves were eternally white. The chill had consumed the whole world.
That made the warmth on returning through the heavy wood gates and climbing up into the Dadiani Manor proper a welcome blessing. Inside, Larissa was waiting for her in the library, with tea, and a plate of Shashlik. "Welcome back, Hermione. I think Master Flyorov is trying to fatten me up so I fail my physical when I return to active duty," her friend greeted her with a smile. "So I need to share some of the meat with you."
"He just wants you to recover. That wound could have easily been mortal, Larissa," Hermione answered as she moved to make her tea.
Larissa responded with a rather silly noise.
"...Have you turned into Dora?"
"Absolutely not! Though it would be impossible for you to tell if I had," Larissa snarked. "I'm just bemused. You really were quite the bookworm once, weren't you?"
Hermione paused and looked at her.
"I think it should be Lara, now," a smile greeted her.
"Fair." Hermione flushed a bit. "I kind of missed that one, didn't I?"
"It's one of those cultural things to pick up. Give it another three years or so and nobody will be able to tell you apart from someone who's native-born."
"Hnf." Hermione scrunched her nose a bit. "I think you're just given to extravagant flattery, Lara."
"As a noblewoman I can afford the effort to make other people feel good about themselves." She folded up the book on her lap, and adjusted the coverlet hanging over her, and said it so deadpan…
Hermione burst out laughing. Inside, she was so thankful at the colour returning to the woman's cheeks, at the way the sunken and hollow expression of her eyes had faded. She would have felt a very sore loss, if she had lost Larissa as she had so many friends and comrades from Hogwarts. Now, they would both live to another battle. Maybe she could even be confident that they'd both live to see the spring.
A tramping signalled someone else's arrival, and both of them whipped their heads around. Hermione went for her wand by instinct, but forced herself to relax afterwards. Such were the reflexes of a combat veteran. She suspected that under her coverlet, Larissa had done the same thing.
Fortunately, it was just Ginny coming back with a bright grin on her face. "Oh, it's good to see you two. Welcome back, Hermione."
"It's good to see you too! Where have you been?" Hermione asked in return, pouring tea for Ginny.
"Oh, thank you," she took the cup gleefully as she sat. "I've given in and started to practice Russian Quidditch. I enchanted a tree and I've been at it. Because it's winter, and it's so cold these days, the tree will last for quite some time, maybe into July before it has to be replaced by another one, so a single tree is good for the entire season."
"I said we'd enculturate both of you in another three years," Larissa grinned.
"Oh come off it, Lara, you only said that about me!"
"Oh, good, she finished the nickname lecture with you." Ginny's face glinted into a bemused, reddish grin from the heat coming back to her cheeks.
"Come off it, it's not a lecture, though it was especially egregious with you ," Larissa protested, wagging her finger teasingly. " It took me getting Hermione drunk that one time in Nanchang to figure out what your full name actually was. Anyhow, come on, Ginny, have some of this food before I get fat."
Ginny obligingly took a few strips of Shashlik, shaking her head. " I don't know about what you all have planned, but I'm looking forward to actually playing in a Quidditch match again."
"Just don't end up in a whole body cast," Hermione deadpanned, smiling, too.
"You're supposed to be on my side," Ginny shook her head ruefully.
For a moment, Hermione was simply relieved with Ginny's brave and easygoing disposition. She had endured the loss of the boy she was in love with, beyond their failure, Harry had been her's, she had been dreaming about a future with him, and expecting that future. And they had failed him, they all felt that.
But Ginny endured, and found ways to enjoy life. It made Hermione slightly embarrassed for her own ridiculous life. Breaking up with Ron, coming out… That last one caused a guilty pang, since she hadn't actually told Ginny yet, and now, she really wanted to resolve to make sure that she knew before anything happened to them, that she wouldn't leave unsaid with her best friend the fact that she had broken up with her brother for perfectly reasonable causes, instead of ones that made her feel guilty.
Even if they did make her feel a little guilty.
She was about to open her mouth and start talking about it when Master Flyorov came in.
"Ladies, we have just received an urgent communication through the Floo network from Kutaisi," he said, his expression more serious than Hermione had ever seen before. "My wife wants you at the 27th Division's headquarters, she's apparating there herself, immediately. Madame Tonks is with her."
Lady Tamar Dadiani herself. The Actual State Councillor for Witchcraft of the Republic of Georgia, who had been actively fighting on the front in Abkhazia to the point she hadn't actually visited them yet. Hermione stiffened.
Ginny's eyes goggled, and she shrugged wryly in acceptance. "Do you know what it is? Has Lestrange decided to try a winter offensive?"
Hermione reached up and grabbed her arm. No change. Still…
"Or Voldemort executed Lestrange, and there's someone new and dumber in charge," Larissa mused.
"No, it's not that," Flyorov and Hermione said in unison, and then looked at each, both surprised at the other.
"Go on, Vasily Gregorovich, " the young witch warmed her tea up, and drank it strong, knowing that she would soon not have the opportunity. She flashed a smile as Larissa imitated the gesture, then frowned. Is she planning on going too? She must be planning on going too…
"Yes, well," the old man stepped over to get his own cup. "I will put it to you all plainly, and not speculate. Bellatrix, identifying herself as Bellatrix Black, has asked for a meeting, specifically including all of you but also the senior commanders on the front, under a flag of truce."
"It's a trap!" Ginny exclaimed, her eyes flashing. "Lestrange was probably ordered to come after us by Voldemort when she reported back to him, and she'll break a flag of truce to do it." She paused, though, looking around and realising that the other people in the room didn't share her immediate opinion.
"Eh, you know that we will declare 'no quarter' and refuse to take prisoners if they violate a flag of truce like that," Larissa noted frankly. "Bellatrix may be a madwoman but she's treated her Army decently and she has to know that would have a serious negative impact on morale." She looked at Hermione, significantly.
Hermione was muttering something under her breath. " Spectacular insanity… " She looked up, sheepishly, at the others, realising that she had been heard. "Sorry. Something somebody told me about Bellatrix. Anyhow, let's go. If State Councillor Dadiani wants to extend a truce, that's her right. And if General Pronichev concurs, I'm confident it's a good idea. Let's go see what this is about."
Larissa pushed herself up from her chair. "I'll get my greatcoat and hat."
"Lara," Hermione groaned. "You are not well enough."
"Is that an order? Lady Tamar said 'all of us'." Larissa looked back at her. "I want to be there, and I think that order applied to me, too. If you want, you can complain to her and get me sent back here from Divisional Headquarters, but I swear, I'm going at least that far."
Hermione bolted down the rest of her tea in a slug of hot liquid strong enough to make her shake her head and shiver. "All right then. We'll sort it out there. Let's go!"
References:
1. Concorde's callsign in British airways service was "Speedbird".
2. Though she does not have a special talent for it, I assume Bellatrix was able to learn Parseltongue from Voldemort.
3. La Legion is the formation of the Spanish Foreign Legion-yes, they have one too.
4. "Viva la Muerte" translates as "Long Live Death", the battle-cry of the Legion.
5. I freely admit that my story, and the interest in has in the different names people use with each other, and the way these can change in circumstance (and also because of preference and memory, in the case of Nymphadora Tonks) is of interest to me, but probably also one of the culturally hardest things for an English-language reader to follow. Feel free to ask clarifying questions or suggest how I might improve it if any of you feel a lack of clarity on the matter of names.
6. The Wild Geese were Irish refugees from the English conquest, who fought for the monarchies of Spain and France extensively in the 17th and 18th centuries. It has also referred to several more modern military mercenary units; it carries a connotation of exile.