Chapter 19: Treason Doth Not Prosper…
The group apparated together to the headquarters of the 27th Guards Division. Tents, armoured vehicles, Kamaz trucks, occupied houses in a village—this was life for the commander of the division and his staff and the guards, the quartermasters, and everyone else who formed the backbone of the Division as a living thing.
At last, they met Tamar Dadiani. She was drinking tea with General Pronichev. The old woman was nonetheless tall and fit, not at all stooped with age, with a round, pleasant face and long grey hair, that wanted to be frizzy but had been forced into a braid. She was also dressed in a regular Army uniform, so she couldn't be immediately identified as a Witch. Her dark eyes were sharp, and sly, and held the humour that she had surely held since youth. Their calm and confident presence was what immediately marked her as a leader. She had kept the peace among Georgian Wizards in the midst of three civil wars in her little country, as the old Soviet order was swept away in a particularly chaotic way in Georgia. Now she led them in a war for survival.
"Lady Tamar, General Pronichev," Hermione saluted as she approached.
"Hermione Granger?" Tamar turned toward her, over the map she had been reviewing with Pronichev.
"Yes, Lady Tamar."
"Good, you're just in time. We're reviewing the location that… Madame Black requested. It's right on the border with the Ossetian territory, so we're working out the boundaries and positions for operational forces to make sure that we have the proper support."
"Are we going to agree?" Hermione asked, stepping forward to the map, at Tamar's left side, which in military protocol was the proper place for a subordinate.
"I see some value in it," Lady Tamar acknowledged.
"Talking is useful until it isn't, and we're not in an active combat phase," General Pronichev agreed.
"We don't think the location is a trap?" She asked, studying the position, on a ridge in the mountains to the northwest.
"No, it's more a matter of personal convenience from their headquarters, but certainly it's within range of both to apparate. I think it's that they have good intelligence files on the Ossetian frontier, so it's what her protection forces are comfortable with," Pronichev mused. "Do we commit?" He was asking Lady Tamar, as the ranking Witch.
"Yes, we commit."
Dora arrived a moment later, a cup in hand. The expression on her face was unreadable as she approached Hermione, the young woman stepping away as the two General-rank officers returned to the comms section to contact Bellatrix's Army with their reply.
"You alright?" Dora asked as she stepped close to Hermione, speaking in only a whisper.
"Of course I am," she answered with a bit of defiance, brown eyes meeting her compatriot's. As was the case with anything fluffy and odd, Tonks pulled off a ushanka much better than Hermione thought she did.
Dora leaned closer. "I know what Bellatrix did to you. I remember the exchange at Chernosvyat. Are. You. All. Right?"
"Yes." Hermione didn't even blink.
"Fair. You know this may not end in an…"
"Shh, I respect it, Dora, I do, but the only outcome I actually want tomorrow is all of my friends being alive, and a reverse against Voldemort. I don't know what's happening but I have my suspicions."
"So do I. They're probably the same." Dora broke up the moment by forming her face into a pig snout for a moment. " So, we'll deal with it together, right?"
"All in it together," Hermione nodded. "Let's see what she has to say, and if it's a fight, it's a fight, if it's not… I go back to the banya at the Dadiani Manor and get a nice dinner. All things said, I'm not going to start complaining about it."
"Then we'll see," Dora agreed.
Lady Tamar and General Pronichev returned from the comms section. "We've reached an agreement," Lady Tamar explained. "We will apparate to the final destination immediately. I'll mark the grid coordinates for all of you on the map. Six on our side, six on their side. She knows we're all Wizards except for Colonel Kabanov, so we will have an advantage; even so, she says she's bringing five regular soldiers, and herself, nothing more. We've got the advantage in wizarding firepower, so we'll duel our way out if it is a trap. If she's lied, we'll respond immediately and vigorously."
Hermione opened her mouth to protest that she herself didn't know who Colonel Kabanov was, until she saw the man approach. There was a certain glint in his eyes like lightning, and he was dressed in the regular field uniform of an infantry officer, but Hermione suspected this was not the case. They are taking this seriously.
Confirming Hermione's suspicion, Dora nodded to the Colonel and he returned the gesture, like they were acquainted to each other.
"Alright. Come closer, please," Lady Tamar instructed. They reached out, hand to hand, and it was the Actual State Councillor for Witchcraft of Georgia who personally apparated the entire group up onto a ridge along the border between Ossetia and Georgia. There was an abandoned watch-post of the peacekeeping forces here, and that was the spot that had been agreed upon for the meeting. It was also exposed to the wind, and cold, brutally cold.
Hermione cursed. In the moment of them all being surprised, and debating what to do, she had forgotten to get Lady Tamar to force Larissa to stay behind, and now, from the shiver that ran through her body even under her massive greatcoat, it was clear that the Russian Witch, who was still recovering from her wounds, would be punished cruelly by the cold, bitter wind on the ridge.
"Let me see if there's some fuel for a heater or a fire in the guard hut , Ma'am," Hermione asked to Tamar.
The older woman nodded her assent. "Of course, Councillor. We don't know how long this will take."
Hermione stepped across the scrabble of rocks on the slope and into the guard hut. There, she found a kerosene heater that still had some fuel, and quickly got it going. To her delight, she also found a tin pot that had been abandoned, and some tea in the stores. Brushing away some of the snow and grabbing some that was fresh from below the eaves to melt in the kettle , she stepped back out just in time to see Bellatrix apparate in with a group of soldiers.
Bellatrix, and someone else, a small child thoroughly bundled up against the cold, who clung close to her side. Ginny audibly gasped close-by.
What the hell? Did she really think she needed to bring a hostage while under flag of truce? Hermione started. Then she narrowed her eyes and took in Bellatrix, who looked like a desperate cornered animal, her hair flapping violently in the wind on the ridge; she had a greatcoat of her own, but no hat. It was like a flag strung out behind her, tattered but proud. For all that, there seemed to be agony wrought on her face. She didn't have her wand out.
Stuffed into that massive coat, Bellatrix looked like the smallest and loneliest person in the world, an imagine broken only by the tiny child at her side.
"Bellatrix Black?" Tamar Dadiani's voice cut over the sound of the wind, in accented but precise English, as she watched Bellatrix's men, in full winter gear, fan out cautiously. It was strange for Hermione to hear that name, instead of Bellatrix Lestrange, but that insistence on the part of Bellatrix matched with what Draco had told her, as well.
"Tamar Dadiani?" Bellatrix answered, and even now, in these strange circumstances, that voice brought back to Hermione a punishing set of memories. "I am indeed Bellatrix Black." She gestured to the guard hut, with an imperious look set on her face and a crisp motion of a gloved hand. "May we go inside?"
The group followed, and Hermione stood by the door. For a moment, Bellatrix paused, as if she were trying to muster herself up some dignity, as she looked sharply at the woman whose armed she had scoured all those years before. She seemed like she wanted to say something, but then she let the wind reign, and she carried on inside. The building was at least large enough to be comfortable for all of them, and there were some murmurs of surprise and relief at the presence of the heater and the kettle now boiling over it.
Lady Tamar leaned against one wall with a casual confidence, watching and observing as Bellatrix carefully got the child to sit at her side in one of the remaining chairs. "She's your daughter, isn't she?"
"Yes," Bellatrix acknowledged, looking, for a moment, surprised that Lady Tamar could tell, even though it seemed obvious. Then she looked up and focused. "I want an alliance," she said simply, and the words made Hermione's heart bottom out.
What…? The younger witch just stood and stared at Bellatrix from by the heater in a moment of pure, unadulterated confusion.
"You want an Alliance?" Nymphadora stepped forward. "Do you realise how ridiculous that sounds?"
"I'm in control of my divisions, Tonks," Bellatrix's eyes flashed to her niece.
"Don't call me that. " Nymphadora stiffened, clearly reminded of the pain she could never forget, pain that had stripped the happiness from her disposition. Remus.
Lady Tamar raised a hand. "Please, Councillor Tonks, let her speak. I am very interested in hearing this. Madame Black, what interest do you think we have in an Alliance?"
"From Rostov to Astrakhan, from Volgograd south to the heights of the Caucasus and beyond them—I control all of the Janissary troops in the southern half of this sector and most of the other troops as well. If we drive back across the Jvari Pass and counterattack to the north… I can collapse the entire position of the Morsmordre in the southern front, and liberate an area of Russian and allied soil more than half the size of France. You've only managed one offensive, the Scandinavia operation, in this entire war. Other than that, the Morsmordre has always been on the march, always advancing. Well, I can make it two, I can save the oil fields and reopen direct land lines of communication, liberate major recruiting grounds for your armies!" She sank back, and looked around at them. "They're with me. They'll follow me."
"Merlin, I can't believe I'm hearing this," Ginny said with a stunned expression on her face. She didn't even resort to accusing Bellatrix of planning a trap. It was all too stunning.
"I just need my daughter to be safe, you understand," Bellatrix continued. "I could not risk Voldemort turning on her."
Larissa had quietly stepped up to Hermione's side, and poured out some of the tea into the aluminium cup she carried with her. She brought it over to Bellatrix, and said, almost tenderly, to Bellatrix: "You know that I am a member of the Princely Naryshkin family, and thought you have snapped at me in the midst of the duel, I will say as a graduate of the Black Court of Koldovstoretz, that if you do this, I will raise your daughter in my family as one of our own, she will go to Koldovstoretz, she will hold a princely rank. What you have done is very brave."
"If Lady Larissa had not already made the offer, I would have extended it for the Dadiani," Tamar agreed.
"You are seeming to suggest that I won't be there to raise her," Bellatrix answered, her voice going flat. "I very much intend to be. That is exactly why I am here."
The group glanced at each other, and silenced reigned in answer. Ginny stepped over to Bellatrix's side. "Can I take … Delphini, into another room? So you can all talk freely?"
Bellatrix hesitated, glaring at Ginny. "Alright, Weasel," she allowed, unable to resist the mocking name.
Ginny gritted her teeth, but looped an arm around Delphini. "Come on, I've got… A chocolate bar from my ration pack, and I'll show you some hexes, little witchling." They slipped out, and the room, despite the tea and the heater, seemed to grow colder still.
Bellatrix looked down at her gloves, and back up.
"We could just go aside right now," Larissa said, dimly, leaning against one of the walls by the stove. "An Unforgivable, or a gun, your preference, we could oblige it. A cigarette, a shot of vodka. Your choice on the blindfold."
Bellatrix's eyes narrowed and her face twisted up in rage, but she controlled herself, somehow. "I came here to hand you an inestimable gift. I do have my command staff ready to follow me, and we are ready to…"
"Turn your coat, against Voldemort," Hermione finally forced herself to speak, clearing her mind, looking at the others around her. She had a cup of tea from the kettle in hand, now, and as she drank it, like a bolt of lightning, her memory focused on something she had read some weeks before. "She wants to change sides, well, we've let it happen before. Romania."
Colonel Kabanov turned to look with interest at Hermione. Lady Tamar's eyes narrowed. "Go on, Councillor."
"Michael's Coup. When Romania changed sides, the outcome of the war against Hitler was not yet decided. It opened the entire southern flank and allowed the success of the Jassy-Kishinev Offensive to turn into an absolutely devastating strategic blow to the Nazi Empire," Hermione explained. "He was even awarded the Order of Victory for it, and unlike the Tsar, he was allowed to leave Romania safely when it became a communist country, carrying all of his possessions he could fit into a train. We have done it before, Ma'am, Sir."
"She's hurt you the most, " Tonks said almost incredulously. "I… I admit I don't know the example, either."
"It's a true story, Councillor Tonks," Colonel Kabanov spoke for the first time. "That much, she's absolutely spot on."
It was like nobody really knew what to do. The entire event was far too strange. But Hermione remembered the book she had been reading when they were sailing across the Caspian to begin this strange campaign. Machiavelli's advice in the situation would be succinct: Don't obsess with revenge, make a deal, maximise the leverage against Voldemort. "What's the way we can do maximum hurt to the Dark Lord?" Hermione asked. "Go on, Madame Black, let's hear it. Let's plan this out. If you want to be our ally, let's figure out the maximum hurt we can do. They're still talking about shooting you, after all. Looks like you're going to have to try better than that."
Eyes both angry and stricken looked back at her, and ignoring her, turned to Tamar.
"You heard the Councillor," Lady Tamar's gaze was steel, and she had remained standing the entire time. " What else can you do for our cause, when you have already done so much against it?"
"There are two thousand Wizards under my overall operational direction in the Caucasus front – At least some will follow me, the rest will be denied to the enemy. There is no way you can turn the forces under my command without magic. Without me," Bellatrix looked increasingly frantic, her eyes flicking from side to side. She clutched at the tea cup Larissa had given her.
"Those are all territories you and your fellow Death Eaters took from us in the past eighteen months," Tamar noted. "Try again. Try harder. What else can we use?"
Bellatrix seemed to be gripping the cup so hard that it would have cracked if it were not metal. "James Dodson is the muggle Chief of Staff for the 14th Army besieging Sevastobol. He served under me in my previous command before I took this one, before General Diaz. Like General Diaz, we got along well. And Benjamarious Terrant is the commander of the Wizard contingent on the Crimean, he's been under surveillance for potential subversive activities. It's only a matter of time until he's removed from command. Between the two of them, I could turn the Fourteenth Army after we have silently put everything in place for my troops here to turn north, for the Army of the Caucasus to begin its operation. But we would only have days to put it together, before He finds out. And I couldn't travel there myself, so I don't know how to make the connections without revealing my treachery. I am supposed to be here, not there. "
Lady Tamar glanced to Hermione. "Does she mean the Dark Mark?"
"I'm not sure, Karkaroff was able to…"
"It's gotten worse," Bellatrix snarled. "It's a permanent link, and as his power and strength have grown, he has made it more able to track us than it was before. We are all his slaves!" She leapt to her feet. "Don't you understand? None of it was supposed to be like this! It was never supposed to be like this! He cares nothing for us, and the only reward I will get for loyalty is death!"
It was at that moment, presented with a problem more within the area of competence of the Black Court, that Larissa's expression changed. "Actually, we might be able to turn that link against the Dark Lord, if it tells him where you are based on the Dark Mark, Madame Black."
"How long do we have until your actions are found out?" Lady Tamar began to pace, but her eyes barely left Bellatrix.
"Days. Perhaps a week."
The Georgian woman shot a look to Larissa next. "The plan you're thinking of, is it viable in that timeframe? Otherwise, don't waste our time with it."
"It is, I'll just have to call my friend Aiman, and arrange transport for her. Perhaps one of the enchanted Tu-144's. The sooner she gets here the better."
"What… Are you planning?" Bellatrix had lost the plot. She had thought she was going to be offering terms in triumph to a desperate enemy; instead, she was being compelled to stretch what had already pushed her to the ragged edge.
"Oh, that's easy. Black Court, you know. Esoterica. Blood magic." Larissa, pale and weak but looking even more dangerous for it in the moment, stepped forward toward Bellatrix with an ominous click of her boots. "You will go to Fourteenth Army headquarters, and the Dark Mark will remain behind. Alive."
The two women started at each other sharply, nose to nose, Larissa leaning down. "It's a small enough sacrifice if you really mean to be our 'ally', and be around to send your daughter to school after the war."
"I'll hear your plan out," Bellatrix allowed, as if the combination of the lure of survival and the lure of magic could revive her moods, and focus her mind. "If you understand that it isn't good enough, whatever sorcery you have planned. I need an excuse to travel to Fourteenth Army headquarters officially, even if the Dark Lord is not immediately alerted. Though, with a sufficiently high-ranking 'prisoner', I think I could craft the excuse."
Hermione watched as Bellatrix focused on her, and her heart skipped a beat. Her extremities went numb, colder than they already were. And she met the gaze, as bravely as she could. Here she was, Bellatrix in the flesh, sitting down and having a talk with them. Her arm ached from what she was increasingly sure was the power of the curse. But there was little bravery inside of her as she watched Nymphadora rise out of her chair, and almost lunge at Bellatrix.
"A Prisoner. I know what you're up to now, isn't it? That Voldemort would forgive anything from you if you could hand one of the Golden Trio over to him, so he can finish the job he started at Hogwarts!?" There was the hysterical edge in her voice of a woman who had lost everything, and knew that this creature who was her aunt had caused a great deal of that pain.
Larissa held up a gloved hand and stepped forward, intervening. "We must all be practical here. We are at war. Personal emotions should be beyond us. The way I see it is that Madame Black is offering us something, and we need to consider the calculated risk."
Hermione gritted her teeth and sucked in her breath. "If some on the side of the enemy desert to come to your service, if they be loyal, they will always make you a great acquisition; for the forces of the adversary diminish more with the loss of those who flee, than with those who are killed, even though the name of the fugitives is suspect to the new friends, and odious to the old."
Larissa grinned and pointed at her friend with a snap of a black-gloved finger. "You go right on quoting Machiavelli."
"I mean it when I said that she's hurt me the most, but I still support doing whatever is necessary to win," Hermione said as she took a step to her friend's side. "What's got you, Dora?"
"She means you, Hermione," Dora answered, flustered.
Hermione felt like her insides had been hollowed out. "Yeah, I know. But I want to hear what Larissa's planning first."
Larissa tipped a salute to Hermione, a jaunty sort of gesture, and moved to circle Bellatrix. "It's simple. I'm a bit of a layabout as a Witch of the Black Court. Aiman Sadykova, on the other hand, has cultivated blood magic finely."
"Have out with it, Naryshkina!" Bellatrix snarled, her patience gone.
"We'll cut your left arm off at the shoulder and keep it alive separate from your body, so Voldemort can't track you through the Dark Mark. Removing the mark is impossible through normal means, it requires great sacrifice to be cleansed, but if we separate your arm and nourish it from a bowl of blood, Voldemort will think you are still at the front with your Army. You will be able to travel to the Crimean and try to make a second army defect then. And if you go through with it, I think that's enough proof that you're not doing this only to get ahold of Hermione Granger." Larissa stood in an effortlessly graceful pose and struck up a cigarette with defiant insouciance. "What do you think, Hermione? Would that make you comfortable enough to go with her?"
There was a heavy sense of discomfort that Nymphadora and Hermione both felt hearing what Larissa had just described. This wasn't the Dark Arts in the classic European sense, but something else, still dark. A Shaman of one of the tribes of the Steppe was a different tradition, but it still felt—Dark, in the fullest sense.
"There will be an enchanted replacement, of course, though we don't have enough time to fit it," Larissa continued easily, as if she were discussing tea rather than proposing the voluntary dismemberment of the woman in front of her. Even Lady Tamar was as stiff as a board. She may have gone to a school where these things were taught, but in her heart, she did not fully approve of them.
Bellatrix was staring at her left arm. Hermione couldn't help but wonder: Do you only now realise the totality of what you have done? Of how there's truly no going back? Yes, there was a little bit of sympathy in that thought, even though Hermione wanted to curse herself for it.
Then Bellatrix looked up, looked to her. "Well, Mudblood? If your friend and her blood-sorceress cut my arm off, will you go?"
Hermione's eyes widened. "You'll still do it?"
"I think it was McGonagall who liked to quote some muggle: 'When you find yourself in Hell, keep going.' Well, I'm in Hell, and I'm not going to stop." She looked around the room, now focusing on Lady Tamar and Colonel Kabanov. "But I'm going to get that pardon. Magically sealed. Applicable to the whole of the CIS. And we're going to find Lake Anahit."
"Why is … Why? Why do you want it?" Lady Tamar answered, her eyes narrowing. "We expect that Voldemort will want to find the path, badly. But why you?"
"If I may be impertinent, My Lady," Larissa interjected, "Fourteen years in the camps, as they'd say in the bad old days."
Bellatrix pooled lower in her chair, and nodded with a shiver running through from head to toe. "Fourteen years! Fourteen years! And look at what we've got for it! The world overturned in war: Cities burn, Wizard kills wizard, brother fights brother, all across the world. There will be no end. He doesn't care about an end. He wants it this way. He has us at each other's throats lest we are ever a threat to him. He invents new ways to control us further through the Dark Mark. We huff fucking clouds of radiation, and not even that brought us anything except for more war. Oh, I wanted to rule at his side, oh yes. Oh yes, I wanted to get rid of all the dirty mudbloods, I surely did! You won't see me became some blood traitor overnight. But he has become the doom of us all." Listless, she held up her left arm, and stared longingly at it, even concealed by glove and en gageante. Her eyes flicked to Lady Tamar, abruptly composed, intense. "A pardon and an hour by the shore of Lake Anahit. I don't need immortality. I just need my life back. Give me that, and I won't just collapse the southern front for you; I'll put your Army back on the Dnepr."
There was a confidence in her eyes, a certainty which made that boast seem like a strong swig of samogon, of liquid courage. Hermione shivered. Bellatrix made acts of defiance, confidence and violence come with seductive tones. Somehow, she forged ahead into the madness, forgetting how to be afraid. She was in too deep to turn back, and she didn't flinch.
Colonel Kabanov stepped forward, and tipped his head, with a slightly mocking and slightly sincere politeness. "We cannot make those promises at this level, Madame Black. We will have to consult the government."
"Go ahead and ask your chief muggle, then, but bear in mind that time is of the essence so get an answer quickly," Bellatrix shrugged. "Unless you want to fail. Who are you, anyway?"
Colonel Kabanov smiled darkly, albeit with a touch of real humour reaching his eyes. "A muggle."
"Well, Mister Muggle, bear in mind that I will need Wizards in position to secure those who will commit treason against me. We must act fast, we have a day to get your answer, or less."
" It's kind of ironic that you're calling that treason." Nymphadora was shaking her head, and laughing almost hysterically, before she looked at Hermione with eyes that were serious despite the laughter. "...Are you really okay with this?"
"Treason doth not prosper because if it prospers, none dare call it treason," Hermione quoted, and smiled, and nodded. "I said I'd do it, and I will."
"Good, because I want one more thing." Bellatrix's eyes drilled straight in to Hermione's now, and she felt herself caught like a deer. "From you, since you will be going with me into danger, from you, muddy, I want an Unbreakable Vow."