Chapter 23: The Shadow of the Valley.

Rumours spread fast, and the sooner they got moving, the better. The next morning, Bellatrix and General Diaz arrived at the lodge's dining room, once more being used for dining, at least, for breakfast. Since the supplies were still there, and they wouldn't last forever, the table which was set for them all was a fine English breakfast.

Hermione came down with Larissa from the room they had awkwardly shared that last night. In the army life, there were many indignities, but perhaps the oddest was sharing a bed with a comrade out of simple necessity and lack of space. They both came up short. On the table there were melons and apples, peaches and plates of sliced pears. They both had to remember their discipline, and present themselves to Lady Tamar.

"Officers, I invite you to the table," she offered, and then they both sat.

Hermione couldn't help but feel that Bellatrix was watching her, and her out of the corner of her eye, she saw the woman at the opposite head of the big oval, General Diaz to her right. She looked as bad as the day she had left Azkaban, and had a faint quiver from the stress and shock. She was nursing a drink that visibly bubbled, and was probably a potion from a mediwitch. And quite notably, while she had taken the glove off of her right hand, she was again wearing an engageante on both arms… And still had the glove on her left. Between the two, she fully concerned her golden arm, so that she looked as if she still had her natural arm.

Even Nymphadora, when she arrived, was taken in more by the fresh fruit than by Bellatrix. Both Larissa and Hermione filled their plates, and Ginny was down a moment later to join them, her eyes wide. "Oh wow, I haven't seen a spread like that in years. " She looked a bit guilty as she sat alongside Nymphadora and they all tucked in with a mildly embarrassed indecency, except for Bellatrix, who picked at some of the fruit with an idle distraction.

"Mum, why don't you want to eat?"

Hermione's eyes widened and her look shot to begin Bellatrix. She realised that she had missed that Delphini was sitting at a small, short table behind her mother, in the style of the aristocracy.

"Mum's had her arm chopped off," Bellatrix answered with a kind of morose dryness which was simultaneously painful and funny and awful in how she matter-of-factly said it to a five year old. " So she's not very hungry."

"... Mum, you've still got your arms."

Bellatrix paused from nibbling on a grape, and turned around, a crooked smile touching her lips. "It's magic," she said, and for a moment, the smile had a ghost of sincerity in it.

The fruit was followed by the coffee urn, and with it, lamb chops, with a salad of sliced tomato and lettuce, poached eggs on toast, and deviled lobster. Some of Bellatrix's 'guests' could not hide their shock at the elaborate meal, but Bellatrix turned back from her daughter, still with a faintly bemused and still indulgent look. "They send me all of this fresh food because I'm a Death Eater, and I don't really know what to do with it."

This is like something out of a family Manor in the old times, the Edwardian era.

"What did you do with it before now, Madame Black?"

"I gave away the rest to the soldiers of the Corps. It seemed stupid to let it go to waste. The same now – it will run out instantly, of course, when we make our turn." Bellatrix's eyes seemed to flash with a kind of dangerous mirth. "But I understand that the Russian combat rations are the best."

"There's always meat, though if you have doubts about where it's from, it's best to ignore them," Larissa raised her glass. "Still, you set a good table, Madame Black. I will remember it even if it may be the only time I enjoy it."

Bellatrix looked at the Russian pureblood with a faintly baleful air, considering that the amputation had been Larissa's idea. But then she shrugged. Her face still looked horrible from the shock, though she had managed to work her way through the potion she was drinking, and was now on coffee and deviled lobster. "Well, Councillor, I am a witch of class and taste."

"Since it turns out you know muggle songs, I thought it was wealth and taste," Ginny couldn't resist the bait to compare Bellatrix to the subject of the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil.

"Oh, Weasel, can't you muggle-botherers ever keep the peace?" Bellatrix rolled her eyes.

"I'm sure it was just a coincidence," Hermione intervened between them.

As the meal wound on, the attendants even brought in Perrier and the option of mimosas, and the plates were cleared away. As she ate, Hermione couldn't quite resist to engage with Bellatrix again. "I am very curious, Madame Black," she turned to face her torturer head-on, "how you came to hear Muggle music?"

"Well, Mudblood, as it happens, Wizards like to listen to enchanted radios, but it's actually quite possible…" Bellatrix was abruptly interrupted.

"Perhaps," Flyorov interjected, putting his fork down quietly, but deliberately, "You should realise that it's impolitic in your circumstance to call an Officer of the Russian Federation by that name."

Bellatrix looked very cold for a moment. Then she reached for the mimosa pitcher and poured herself one. "They say," she declared conversationally, "that I shouldn't mix alcohol with the potion I just drank—but fuck them." She raised the glass and downed half of it before looking sharply at Hermione. " Councillor Granger, it's quite possible to turn the channel on a Wizard radio and listen to the Muggle tunes. In those days, the best stations where the ones where long, smokey, enchanting tunes were played late at night by DJ's who rambled about conspiracy theories and New Age-y topics. Why, I still have a fondness for one live recording about thirteen minutes long going off on Nostradamus and oil and some such. Lovely, though he was a rotten Diviner, really."

"A king shall fall and put to death by the English parliament shall be; Fire and plague to London come in the year of six and twenties three; An emperor of France shall rise who will be born near Italy; His rule cost his empire dear, Napoloron his name shall be. From Castile does Franco come and the Government driven out shall be; An English king seeks divorce, and from his throne cast down is he; One named Hister shall become a captain of Greater Germanie; No law does this man observe and bloody his rise and fall shall be," Hermione rhymed the lyrics, holding a glass of Perrier, and then smiled tightly and concluded with a soft: "I am a history nerd, Madame Black. I think that was Al's performance live at the Roxy in 1973."

Bellatrix flashed a look around the table and her eyes glinted. "Perhaps you're not completely stupid after all. It will be interesting to spend a few days alone with you."

Hermione's smile died on her face. She had been avoiding thinking about that as much as she possibly could. " We have a mission to execute together, Madame Black, and I will drink to its success," she answered tautly.

Bellatrix smirked and leaned forward, her décolletage pressing against the table as she raised her glass. "What would a muggle say…? Westminster Abbey or Glorious Victory, I think?"

Hermione forced herself not to shiver, brown eyes sharply fixed on Bellatrix as she raised her own glass. "To the Allied Nations!" She counter-proposed the toast.

Bellatrix laughed, sharp and screeching, and tossed herself back with her glass high in the air, and finished it in a single gulp. "We're going to have fun, Mu-" She trailed off, shaking her head, and shot a look at Flyorov. "Too many bores around, I'm afraid. Delphini, go back upstairs. Mum's got to talk about some stuff with these lovely people now."

"... Am I gonna see you again, mum?" Delphini got up from where she had finished her meal, and quietly stepped over to her mother to give her a hug.

"Of course you are, sweetie. Mum's just got to deal with some silly people who don't respect her. She'll be back soon." She looked to Flyorov. "Tamar Dadiani's husband will be taking you in, see? Vasily Flyorov. The nice old man over there who won't let me call people mudbloods."

Delphini's eyes are wide. "Well, what else are you going to call a mudblood, mum?"

"Something else, I suppose…"

Flyorov, with a smile, got up to leave with Delphini, and then paused and looked to Bellatrix. "You have my word that I will protect your daughter to the last dying breath, Madame Black. She is five. She deserves none of this. She will be welcome at the Dadiani Manor for as long as she lives."

Bellatrix fixed him with a look for a long silent moment, and then made an imperious gesture to command him to leave without speaking, using her gloved, newly artificial left hand, which she had otherwise held folded close to herself in a listless way through the whole breakfast . Flyorov chose to obey, and followed Delphini out. Once the door was closed, her gaze fixed on Tamar Dadiani instead.

For a moment, silence reigned over all of them. Bellatrix had a talent, or rather animal charisma, with her wild personality to control the tempo of a room. She reached, trembling, with her right hand to pluck a document out that she had stuffed into her corset, ignoring the rather impressive show the gesture gave to her guests as she retrieved it, and extended it, her arm still trembling, to Lady Tamar. "This is my Will. I expect, that it will be legally binding, to guarantee that my daughter, should I fail to return from this mission, will be raised by my natural born sister, Narcissa Malfoy née Black, with full rights of custody and parenting. Since you are the Actual State Councillor for Witchcraft of the Republic of Georgia, I expect you to file it appropriately."

Lady Tamar took the parchment with a single, reserved nod. "I will give you the consideration, Madame Black. If you do not survive, for whatever reason, we will convey your daughter to your sister."

Bellatrix gave her no answer. She clearly considered it a right, and she was clearly uncomfortable having contemplated failure at all. Hermione was surprised that she had, but it was clear that motherhood had changed the Death Eater.

General Diaz, who had been silent before, looked significantly at his watch, then. Bellatrix looked at her own left wrist, then paused, and sighed. She fished around in a hidden pocket in her skirt for her own chronometer, and strapped it on over her engageante; she was clearly unwilling to show any part of her arm to the world. "It's time, isn't it?"

"You do need to go," her Chief of Staff agreed. "And we loaded everything you asked for into a convoy already."

"Good. So we go to the Crimean, organise the coup de main there, and then kill Rookwood. Easy," Bellatrix shrugged. "We should be going, then."

Hermione tensed. "Kill.. Rookwood?"

"Of course. As I explained, though some of my old staff is there, the forces in the Crimean are not under my control. Rookwood is commanding the forces arrayed against Sevastopol," Bellatrix answered. "Our first order of business when the fighting begins will be to kill him before he can organise opposition against us, and that's precisely why I need you, because without some kind of prize I am carrying to the Dark Lord, he would be too suspicious about all of this."

"Alright." Merlin, what the hell are our chances, anyway? Hermione shivered, then closed her eyes. "I'll meet you outside at the convoy, Madame Black. I want to say goodbye to my friends, alone."

Bellatrix pushed herself up, reaching immediately afterwards for her left shoulder and rubbing it with a grimace on her face. "Sure, if that's what you like. I need to find another pain potion anyway. And say goodbye to my daughter." She glanced to General Diaz. "You know what to do. Move the troops into position quietly, operating under Lady Tamar's direction, launch the attack when you receive the signal from me in the Crimean, and just keep attacking until you reach the Dnepr."

"Of course, Madame."

Hermione watched as Bellatrix stalked out, then General Diaz followed her. The door again closed, and she looked around… And reached out her hands to take Ginny and Nymphadora's hands across the table. Larissa reached out to put a hand on her shoulder, and she smiled faintly.

After a moment, Lady Tamar and Colonel Kabanov also excused themselves and departed, to leave the four friends behind.

It was then that Hermione felt comfortable enough to speak. "Thank you all. I appreciate that you've remained my friends through all we've known. Dora, Ginny, please don't quit until Britain is free from Voldemort. Ginny, please," she swallowed, and forced herself to say it. "I want you to explain something to Ron, the next time that you see him." She absolutely felt, with what was now a pressing sense of impending doom, that she could not leave these words unsaid.

"I'll be happy to, Hermione, but you can do it yourself, too, you know. You are coming back to us. Just don't trust Bellatrix and keep your wand ready, and if it all goes to hell, apparate to the Sevastopol garrison, they're within range."

" I'll remember the advice," Hermione said, and elected not to remind her friend that unless Bellatrix followed her—which was highly unlikely—that she'd die for failing to do her utmost to protect Bellatrix under the Unbreakable Vow. "So… This is what I want you to tell Ron: What he did in Chisinau made me uncomfortable, but there's a bigger reason why we broke up, and it's not his fault at all. I'm a lesbian, Ginny."

"Oh… Oh. Oh." Ginny smiled and laughed. "That doesn't really surprise me actually. Does.. Nobody else is surprised either… You told Dora and Lara already didn't you?"

"Yes, I was going tell you, I promise," Hermione flushed, "But this whole stupid thing with Bellatrix switching sides got in the way before I could. So I just got overwhelmed, but I absolutely had to tell you before we reached a point where … I may not be able to. And Ron deserves to know, too. He does."

"He does," Ginny agreed, and started crying, wiping at her eyes. " Merlin, Hermione. I was worried. You know that, I didn't want to think that Ron would ever do anything to drive you away. You're like family to all of us who are left, and I never want that to change. Anyway, you and Ron, I admit, didn't really seem to have any chemistry, and this makes sense for why. To be honest, I'm glad, I'm happy for you. How did you figure it out, anyway?"

Hermione buried her face in her hands. "I'll tell you some other time. It was … Stupid. And I do have to go."

"Alright, that's fair." Ginny paused. "I don't want you to go. Even now. Even though I have to admit it seems like Bellatrix really wants to … Well, I won't say a good parent, but she wants something with her daughter, so I don't think she's just going to leave her behind and go psychotic and kill you. Merlin, I hope so."

"... I have to admit it," Dora added, "I agree with Ginny. I thought Bellatrix had something sinister planned from the start, but after this, after what she actually did, I'm less certain about it. She's still a fucking beast, though, Hermione. Be careful. Even if she wants the mission to succeed, she could still put you in enormous danger."

" Yeah, I know. She's Bellatrix. That hasn't changed." Hermione looked down. "Well, I'm going to do everything I can to make this mission a success, and I'm sure you're going to do the same here. If it all comes together, we're going to save a lot of people and we're going to give Voldemort a big smash to the nose. That's what's worth it, and I don't want you to ever think I've been forced into this. It's the best chance I have to contribute to victory, and that's what I want."

"I know, Hermione," Larissa nodded, and squeezed her shoulder. "And we won't let you down, for our part of it. So we will push as hard as we possibly can, and we'll make sure that we're all around to meet you when we link up." She reached out, grabbed the remainder of the pitcher of mimosas, and poured a small measure into each of their glasses, and then rose.

Hermione rose with other, and then the others, and all raised their glasses, too. She forced a grin to her face, and winked to Larissa. "Poyekhali!" She shouted, and then drained her glass, and caring nothing for the floor or the expensive crystal flown out for a Death Eater's table from London, threw the glass to the floor.

They all echoed the toast, and littered their boots with fragments of crystal that glinted and glimmered in the light of the room. Hermione tossed a salute to Dora as her nominal superior, and the woman with perhaps a glint of a tear in her eye, returned it. And then Hermione turned away, and parted from her friends, and went to face the fear that was boiling in her gut. She was passing away from friends and comrades, and placing herself in the hands of Bellatrix Black, to go with her deep behind enemy lines, sworn to obey her command.

God help me.

They sat together in the same Land Rover, while the drivers of the convoy ran hard and fast up and over the Georgian Military Road and the Jvari Pass. Descending, and descending, through the massive snow-filled canyons, where wizards of the army worked to keep the roads open, and torrents of water still plunged through the streams and rivers, now building up Naled growing thicker and thicker around the road in the low spots, as they raced along with perilous speed toward Vladikavkaz.

They pushed along the roads until the Naled receded from the flanks of the tarmac, and the trees poked back through the snow, and finally until they reached the ruined buildings of the city of Vladikavkaz, which because of the circumstances, was filled with people, living in ruins and hovels, who did not yet realise that they had already been liberated, nor would they know it for several further days.

The whole while, Bellatrix was sitting across from her in the back of the Land Rover, slumped down to the far side, cradling her artificial arm in her good one, usually with her eyes closed, but occasionally opening them and looking at Hermione as a predator does to prey. For all that, the position was quite vulnerable, and it reminded Hermione of just how small of a woman Bellatrix was, shorter than her sisters and that actually, Bellatrix was at least five centimetres shorter than Hermione. That gave her no comfortable. Bellatrix was so wickedly unpredictable and aggressive that she always seemed far more dangerous and in control of a situation than her size alone would ever suggest. Even now, Hermione felt like she was facing a cornered predator, who would be all the more dangerous for it.

That danger held another element in it. Those eyes refusing to turn away from her were a constant reminder of what she had felt in the past. Bellatrix, pressing down on her… Her voice, speaking evil words in a sickeningly desirable tone. Hermione shoved herself further into the far door of the car. At least we'll be in a train shortly and we'll have more space, she reassured herself, and, to distract herself from speculating on what that look really meant, she decided to ask an innocuous question. "How long will the train trip be?"

"There's still a lot of damage to the lines; fourteen hours to get from here to Tuapse, I understand," Bellatrix answered, without leaving her place, and her voice as unpredictably sultry and dangerous as when discussing weightier subjects. Or anything really.

"Overnight, then?" Hermione asked, feeling aimless.

"Yes. But don't worry, I don't need to chain you until we get to Tuapse."

"Wonderful," Hermione sarcastically answered, gritting her teeth. Chained. Just like she was in Azkaban.

"Don't worry about it, Muddy," Bellatrix laughed, and her eyes gleamed. "I'll be gentle."

"I would appreciate it if you didn't call me slurs anymore, Bellatrix," Hermione snapped.

"...Is that so?" Bellatrix abruptly lunged away from the side, nearly throwing herself into Hermione except that the seatbelt restrained her. She reached out with her gloved left hand, so recently added to her body in replacement for the natural one just severed. Cool black leather cupped Hermione's cheek as the young witch froze in place. "Maybe… Without a hundred thousand soldiers with guns and arms at your back… I can just as well do whatever I want, pet."

It felt like an electric shock up her spine. Fuck her ! But the connotations of the words just embarrassed herself in the moment, and anyway, she opened her mouth and no words came out to reply to Bellatrix. Still, she had not used 'muddy' again, or 'mudblood', she had used… Another word entirely.

And then, for better or worse, the Land Rover rolled to a stop at the temporary platform built next to the ruined train station, and the guards moved quickly to open the doors. In relief, Hermione quickly stepped out and stretched her legs, looking around the snow-covered ruins of the city. It had been wrecked before Bellatrix conquered it, but she had wrecked it again, and now, only a few months later, she had switched sides and her troops were going to liberate it. Vladikavkaz would be liberated by the same woman who had conquered it, within the same year. It wasn't the first time that had happened in history. War was ridiculous.

Unlike Bellatrix, she had nothing. She was going to pretend to be a prisoner, after all. She had nothing with her name to it, as if she had been captured on the battlefield. She still had her wand, but by the time the train trip was over, she would have that confiscated by Bellatrix, too. Then she would be completely at the woman's mercy.

"Come on, muddy!" Bellatrix waved to her from the steps up into the train.

Hermione grimaced and followed after. The private car was intended for luxurious travel, that much was clear from the moment they entered it. There was a sitting room, a dining room, a rather opulent bathroom, and a bedroom. And Hermione saw them all because Bellatrix kept leading them back until they were in the bedroom, where Bellatrix's sparse belongings, two bags, waited for her, carried from the convoy.

Jolting over temporary relayings, the head-end power flickered to life and fully illuminated the room. Bellatrix walked from window to window, pulling down and securing the blinds. "Needless to say, you'll sign your death warrant—and probably mine, too-if you open these once we leave this immediate area. Or if you head into the front of this car, or any other cars. Am I clear, pet?"

"You are," Hermione acknowledged, leaning back against one of the walls. The space was certainly larger than the back of a Land Rover, but she remained in very close proximity to Bellatrix Black.

"You better not be suicidal," Bellatrix said softly as she turned back to Hermione.

"Didn't I have to believe the same about you?" Hermione answered uncomfortably. "To swear that oath like I did? Don't I have to trust that at some level, Bellatrix Black is willing to force herself to be a functional human being for the sake of her daughter? Otherwise, how the hell could I possibly be standing in front of you right now? Merlin, it's not even your fault… Fourteen years…"

"Don't ever say that!" Bellatrix flung herself toward Hermione and barely stopped. "Don't say it isn't my fault. I made my own damned decisions in this, and it's precisely that Voldemort enslaved us all that I broke with him now. Everything was my decision, the arm included! I'm here because I want to be, mudblood. And you're damned well right that I am not going to kill myself. If I wanted to do that, I'd do it, I wouldn't sit around and moan about it and pretend I cared about living. Now what do I need to do to make sure you're not a dead weight while I'm fighting to come home to my daughter?"

Hermione, trembling, looked Bellatrix right in the eyes. "Stop. Calling. Me. Mud. Here. Where there's nobody to force you. Where it counts. Make me feel like we're a team, so we can fight for our lives together like a team. "

Bellatrix stared at her for a moment, and then, laughing, threw herself down on the bed. "Oh, oh, Pet. Deary. That…" Still laughing, she rolled over onto her stomach. "Suit yourself then, pet. Suit yourself. We'll be … A team. And you, who they had the gall to call the brightest witch of her age as if you could ever be compared to me, you, you," her eyes shot up to glare at Hermione, "You are going to do everything exactly like I tell you to, and we are going to get out of this alive. Is that clear?"

Hermione swallowed. "As crystal."

Notes:

1. The lavish breakfast is something an aristocrat of Edwardian Britain (1900 - 1914) might have eaten; as usual, the Wizards are behind the times, and of course, Death Eaters have food flown in, at great complexity and expense, even on the front.
2. Perrier is a brand of sparkling mineral water, which is somewhat stereotypically aristocratic.
3. The lyrics of the song about Nostradamus, which both Hermione and Bellatrix recognise, are from the song of the same name, "Nostradamus", by the English-Scottish singer-songwriter, Al Stewart. In particular the 13-minute long version at the Roxy incorporates "The World Goes to Riyadh", an unreleased song, as a bridge between the two halves of "Nostradamus". It is exactly the sort of thing that would have been played on pirate radio in the early 70s.
4. "Westminster Abbey or Glorious Victory", i.e., Death or Victory, transposed to favour Death, was attributed to Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson.
5. Rookwood was the Death Eater who infiltrated the ministry during the first war.
6. Dnepr is the main central river in the Ukraine, extending north into Byelorussia and Russia.
7. Poyekhali is a toast roughly meaning "let's go" or "Let's do it".
8. Naled is the Russian name for what is more commonly called in the West "Aufeis", the German term. It's created when ice formation blocks the normal upwelling of groundwater.
9. Tuapse is a port city on the Black Sea Coast between Sochi and Novorossiysk.