Chapter Twenty-Four: The Train
Floo networks, portkey stations, they got destroyed in war just like everything else. Once it might have been a matter of seconds for a Russian wizard or witch to go from Vladikavkaz to Tuapse, certainly only a few minutes at least. A sufficiently powerful wizard like Voldemort could have gone there directly from Georgia by apparation. However, it made sense in the circumstances to accept the train ride. There were long-range anti-air missile batteries in Abkhazia which could threaten an aircraft flying north of the spine of the Caucasus, and all the ways that even the likes of Bellatrix and Hermione could have travelled had been destroyed in the chaos of the war, either intentionally to deny them to the enemy, or as 'collateral damage'.
Hermione had asked for a book, and Bellatrix first tossed her a railway timetable from the Russian Railways before the war that she found stuffed somewhere in the car. After a sarcastic exchange, Bellatrix had then given her a copy of a magical history of Iran, and Hermione had sat at the desk in the compartment, while Bellatrix lay sprawled out on the bed, reading a book of her own. Those few hours of companionable silence they had now experienced were rapidly turning into one of the weirdest experiences Hermione had known, simply because she was in a bedroom compartment on an executive coach, reading a history book, while two metres away, Bellatrix Black was splayed on a bed, occasionally rolling around or restlessly shifting position and reading through a book of her own, her boots kicked off haphazardly into one corner.
Every so often Bellatrix would make a request for water and for snacks. At first, the presence of the House Elf had shocked her, but Bellatrix had just fixed Hermione with a glare, and in retrospect it made sense that an aristocratic Death Eater would have a House Elf with her on campaign. 'Mardy' was the Elf's name, and she went out and collected the water and some snacks for them, and later on went out and brought back a bubbling potion for Bellatrix from a mediwitch travelling in one of the other cars. Bellatrix took several of those, with Mardy fussing over her while she did.
The potions were, Hermione suspected, serving to mask the brutal effects of shock on Bellatrix's body that she was doubtlessly still experiencing from the amputation, only twenty-four hours before. The way that Bellatrix refused to take the glove off of her left hand and curled herself around to hide her left arm from Hermione or anyone else, still made Hermione feel slightly guilty. Though the glove and the engageante completely concealed the artificial arm, it was obvious that Bellatrix had not yet accepted what had just happened to her. The woman was suffering, and Hermione hated to be reminded of it, up close and personal.
Nonetheless, there they were, just sitting in the same room, reading, the train rocking and the wheels clacking underneath them. No barbs, no insults, just both of them trying to find ways to stay distracted. It wasn't perfect, but it was close. Hermione could stay perfectly still for hour after hour, just reading and sitting quietly in her chair. Bellatrix fidgeted all over the bed, moving her book around and rolling back and forth. But from the corner of her eye, Hermione could see that she was definitely reading it.
Of course she's reading it. She was 'the brightest witch of her age', just like you were. She had to read to get there. The history of magical practice in Iran was old, and enormously interwoven with mythology, and sincerely interesting. But the longer Hermione was alone with Bellatrix and the more Bellatrix fidgeted, the greater Hermione's urge to speak with the other witch was.
Finally, she couldn't resist. "Bellatrix?"
The book snapped shut and there was an exaggerated sigh from the bed. "Granger, we were doing so well, why did you have to spoil it?"
Hermione carefully closed her own. "I was wondering why you move around so much."
"Oh, you were wondering why I move around so much," Bellatrix tossed a hand in the air, her voice mocking the question, imitating Hermione's words. "Why would you even care, muddy?"
"I said..!" Hermione started to protest the slur, but Bellatrix cut her off.
"And I agreed, until you started to nose around and ask me why I happen to fidget. Despite the fact I was minding my own business! So let me tell you, muddy, precisely why I do: Because I moved when I was in Azkaban. As much as I could, as often as I could, move, move, walk, walk, pace pace, twitch twitch, fidget, shake my leg, whatever! The Dementors couldn't take moving from me! I kept my muscles as fit as I could in that hell, and I distracted myself. By moving." Her eyes bored in against Hermione, unblinking. "Everyone calls me mad, but maybe I actually pretty much fucking figured out how to cope!"
"Maybe you did," Hermione acknowledged, carefully, her words as gentle as she could say them. Then she turned and looked directly at Bellatrix. "I know that you have a family who loves you, and when this is all over, personally, I am not going to feel wronged if you remain free. I can forgive. And I forgive you for torturing me, Bellatrix Black."
"Why do you bother?" Bellatrix squeezed herself back up against the pillows at the back of the bed, a trenchant look directed at the younger witch.
"Because I want to," Hermione answered, forcing her fear back with an iron sense of purpose, keeping her voice calm. "Because we might be dead in another day or two, or worse, and I've made my decision to have a clean slate between us."
Bellatrix laughed, and leapt to her feet, swaying a bit in the moving train car, before she crossed the distance to Hermione. She leaned in close when she did, and then put the cool, crisp leather of the glove on her left hand against Hermione's shoulder, and peered forward into her face from a distance of a few centimetres. "A clean slate?" She laughed, screeching, so close that Hermione lurched back in her chair. "Deary, why do you think I care? What maudlin sentimentalism is this rot? Muddy, I tortured you. That's it. It's that simple."
Hermione felt frozen in place. This was very much the same Bellatrix who had tortured her those years before. Bellatrix was mad, and she could do whatever she wanted. She would do whatever she wanted, with no restraints at all… For a moment, Hermione very much felt like she was a teenager again, with this woman over her, the dagger out…
The younger witch cursed softly, because of course that made her remember the other part of what that had felt like. Her memory of the way Bellatrix's thighs, the sight of the woman above her, had made her feel.
"I heard that," Bellatrix grinned at the curse, the hideous condition of her teeth making Hermione flinch. "What's on Muddy's mind?"
Hermione reached out and grabbed at Bellatrix's right arm, her brown eyes flashing. "I said it's a clean slate, and I meant it," she said, her voice low, fighting the conflicting emotions within herself. "But let's be clear. I'll call you Bellatrix if I want to. You can't deny me that informality after you carved 'mudblood' in my arm."
"Oh that's pretty fresh, muddy!" Bellatrix laughed sharply, and lightly cuffed Hermione's cheek with her artificial left hand as she pulled it away, to stand up and glare at her. "What's next, 'shall we go see a concert together', or 'shall we go on a romantic walk by the lake together'?"
Hermione couldn't help it, she flushed.
"Oh, oh," Bellatrix pointed at her and smirked. "Now that's interesting." Wandering back over to the bed, she intentionally toppled back down on it, and this time raised her gloved left hand and pointed it again, as a now horrified Hermione felt herself turning bright cherry right. "Now that's interesting," Bellatrix repeated, shaking her finger at the younger witch. "That's one hell of a blush."
"I gotta say, muddy…" Bellatrix continued idly, shaking her head in bemusement, intentionally trailing off.
"How about you stop calling me that?!" Hermione exploded upwards to leap to her own feet while the train jolted beneath them. "Just like we agreed to! I want you to acknowledge that I'm a human being. You see, when you scrawled that name into my arm, the blood that came out was the same colour as your's! You're burning yourself up with hatred, and it's all based on a lie! There's no difference between us except for our ancestry. We're both witches. In fact, if everything I've heard is true, both very smart ones, too." She sank back to her chair, trembling, her cheeks still flushed.
"Maybe, pet, that hatred kept me warm in Azkaban," Bellatrix spoke dully, her eyes hooded, as she sank back into the pillows with an exhausted sigh, her own body shaking, and yanked the comforter over herself.
"But you don't need it now. I am going to risk my life, Bellatrix, for the moment when you get to give Narcissa a hug. The moment when you get to see Andromeda again, with no society there to condemn you, no Dark Lord to forbid you, no other Death Eaters to mock you. The moment when you get to see cute little Teddy Lupin running around and playing with the other kids in his flat. He's nearly the same age as Delphini, and…"
"Why do you think I give a fuck about Andromeda?" Bellatrix shot back at her sharply.
"Madame Malfoy meets with her regularly now, she lives in Nizhniy Novgorod and takes care of Teddy for Tonks," Hermione sat down, explaining, and then reached down to pull her boots off, her feet aching, trying to project an image of calm confidence as she looked at Bellatrix, keeping focused on her.
"...Cissy and Andy are meeting with each other?" For a moment, the surprise simply broke through Bellatrix's shields. A rather blank and hooded look clouded her face, too complex for Hermione to easily interpret.
"Yeah, they are," she said, brown eyes sincere, as she put the boots under the desk and smiled, shakily. "In Russian wizarding society, there's nothing wrong with being a halfblood. Nothing wrong with keeping up your friendships with other purebloods who marry mudbloods, even. The Pureblood families…"
"Even married aristocratic muggles, as recently as three hundred years ago," Bellatrix interjected, her eyes narrowing. "It was a disgrace. Why the hell were you visiting Andy?"
"Tonks—Dora-asked me to. And, you know, Ron and I were Harry's best friends, and Harry was supposed to be Teddy's godfather, so…" Her voice cracked, she couldn't go on, she started to cry. In front of Bellatrix. In front of this Death Eater. The shame of crying like that just made her cry harder, though. "And my parents—god knows if they're even alive in Australia, where I had to wipe their minds and send them to keep them safe from people like you. And you've got it all, Bellatrix! You've got your daughter, you've got your sisters, you've got your nephew, you've got your niece, you've got a grand-nephew. You're going to walk away from the Crimean and they're going to give you an Order of Victory just like they did to King Michael, and you're going to have all of them in a Dacha, surrounding you, loving you, very, very far from Dementors. If I am lucky when this war is over, I'll have Dora, Ginny, and Lara."
Bellatrix snorted. "Don't forget your boytoy. Who killed my husband, I might add. He'll be getting a flashier Order of Victory than mine, and a chest full of medals that will be heavy enough to topple him over when he's old and fat. Merlin, Weasels. I'm surprised you're even here, the way they breed you should have had four kids by now. At least. Have you been taking birth control and not telling him? He'd probably leave you for that. I'd wager Weasels think it's a sin or something."
Hermione, cheeks hot with tears, was about to open her mouth to defend Ron when the other shoe dropped.
"Should I tell him that you get turned on by me?" Bellatrix continued cheerfully gabbing, a hand dramatically tossed in the air. "Would that make him disgusted or would it turn him on? Ugh, God, a Weasel being turned on. It makes me sick just to say that… I have to admit, I could believe you were something more than a mudslut if you hadn't let him… Do it with you." She made an exaggerated shaking motion, before pulling the covers tighter over herself.
Hermione flushed hard again, even with tears still drying on her cheeks. She felt almost like Bellatrix's puppet at that point. A part of her had hoped the woman had forgotten about her previous blush, but, she hadn't, and now they were here. "What did you just say?" It didn't sound very convincing, even to her, though.
"It was pretty obvious just a little bit ago that you were getting very turned on by having me up close to you, pet," Bellatrix smirked.
The younger witch got up again, anger motivating her through her tears. "I'm not dating Ron. So you're wrong about me being a 'mudslut'," she hissed. "So leave off, and again, don't say it."
"Well you hadn't asked me not to say that word yet," Bellatrix answered petulantly.
"That was pathetic," Hermione shook her head. Forgotten was calm. She wanted to channel her own anger. "Did you even care about your husband? Sleeping with Voldemort to have a child instead of him?"
Bellatrix shot her a look of her own. That had landed close to home for her. "I… No, of course I didn't care about my husband, that's the way Pureblood marriages are. Surely you know that."
"Narcissa loved Lucius, as far as I can tell," Hermione answered.
"Well perhaps my little kid sister was just a little bit of an idiot. Fortunately for all of us she fixed that when it counted." Bellatrix shook her head. "Regardless, I don't give a rat's arse at my husband, then or now."
"Fair. I won't begrudge you your beliefs about others."
"Good." Bellatrix looked around in frustration. "Mardy, can you get the mediwitch to give me another one of those potions? Something with a sleeping draught in it, too, it's getting late."
"Yes, Mistress Bellatrix!" The elf popped away, and Hermione heard what seemed like relief in her voice, to be as far away as possible from the tense conversation between the two women.
"As it happens, by the way, my husband knew and approved of my relationship with Voldemort. It was an honour for me to bear the Dark Lord's child, even at the expense of fidelity in our marriage," Bellatrix continued, mustering some tattered remnant of haughtiness.
Hermione laughed, garnering a sharp, angry look from Bellatrix, but it didn't dissuade her from speaking. Not about this. She'd put a lot of thought into it, long before this night. "That really gets me about all of you Death Eaters. You were all strong, capable, smart wizards and witches. Awful people, to be sure, but I mean, why the blind subservience? Fourteen years in a place worse than hell for you. And your husband got that fourteen years too, and then let himself gladly be cuckolded by the Dark Lord when he gets out?"
"My husband never controlled me enough to be able to say no, " Bellatrix answered with a self-satisfied smirk. "And never let yourself think otherwise."
"Good. So why did Voldemort control you?" Hermione's brown eyes didn't want to let Bellatrix go, they held her gaze, now, curiosity overcoming fear. "Brightest Witch of Your Age, and I certainly believe women are as good as men. Why didn't you take over the world and kill all the mudbloods yourself? Why couldn't you have done it, why did you have to destroy your life to serve him instead?"
Bellatrix flinched.
"Was it the sunk cost fallacy?" Hermione continued.
"Oh, Merlin, muggle rotter words," Bellatrix sighed, recovering some of her composure and using that to dodge answering. The words had certainly impacted her, however. She reached out to tug at some greying hair on her head, and then distracted herself with Mardy's return with the mug refilled with another bubbling potion.
Hermione, for her part, reached for a glass of water and gulped it down, before using a spell to clean her teeth, since she for rather obvious reasons hadn't packed a toothbrush. She'd mock you for using one instead of a spell, anyway, a voice in the back of her head suggested nastily, as if being mocked by Bellatrix should, in fact, matter a great deal. It was clear both of them had exhausted their interest in fighting.
"So how are we going to do this sleeping thing?" Hermione asked afterwards, watching while Bellatrix continued to nurse the potion.
"There's a bed, you sleep in it," Bellatrix snarked.
"There's only one."
"And? It seems like you'd enjoy that, from everything I've seen tonight. ...Wouldn't you, pet? I assure you, it's very flattering that I can make you blush just like… Hah, that!" She shrieked excitedly and pointed to where, indeed, Hermione could feel the blush returning.
"Blushy-blushy deary…" Bellatrix singsonged, laughing. "So why wasn't Ron worth it? Awful in bed? Sexist pig who just wanted to put babies in you? Both? Probably not both, Weasels have so many kids they must at least know how to get it on properly. Tell, tell, you have got to tell."
"I thought the idea of Ron and I having sex was making you sick just a little bit ago?" Hermione shot back. The last thing on the planet she wanted to do was gab about Ron with Bellatrix as if the two of them were just a pair of girls critiquing one's former lover. Ron deserved better than that.
"Oh, oh, it still does," Bellatrix held her gloved left hand in a warding gesture. "Let me assure you, I don't have the slightest interest in hearing anything at all about that. I was interested in why you broke up with him, pet."
Why does she keep calling me that now? Oh Merlin… Fine! "Easy. You've been baiting me with it for a while now. I'm a lesbian. I never really was all that hot for Ron. We had rotten chemistry, and it was because I fancy women, do you got it? "
"I got it." Bellatrix shook her head, chuckling. "My, my. Would've caused quite the scandal in the Wizarding World if one of their precious Golden Trio had turned out to be lesbian. They're not very 'up on things', you know, a little bit behind the times. Britain, Muggles like yourself, oh yes, that's fine, I'm not surprised at all you just blurt it out. But this would have been something new for the wizarding world. They want everyone paired up in nice, neat and tidy heterosexual couples."
"Not everyone is part of arranged marriage pureblood culture, Bellatrix," Hermione snapped. In truth, she was hiding the fact that if it wasn't for Chisinau, if they had won, she probably would have gone for Ron anyway, taken a marriage for Respectability. If she wanted to enter politics, become the Minister someday… That's how you did things. You zipped your feelings up as neat as a button, and married for appearances and image. The thought made her glum, as she tried to find something to answer to the elder witch's comment. "Larissa is fine with having me as a friend despite my orientation," she settled. "So are Ginny and Dora and I told both of them before I went on this mission. You don't exactly seem the type to be upholding sexual morality yourself, so if you want to bait me with it, just can it. I'm very happy that you have Delphini and all, but you haven't got a leg to stand on to criticise me for my own sexuality."
"Maybe," Bellatrix's eyes glinted at her, "Maybe you in fact understand me like shit, Granger. If you seriously think that I care about whether or not you're fucking other girls, you have a larger stick up your arse than I thought the first time I saw you. Really, I mean, you were awful back then. It is a surprise for me that you finally cut that giant Lion's mane worth of hair off and got down to business as a soldier, and now, fessing up that you're a dyke. I thought you were too much of an uptight prude to ever even dare think about something like that. So I do give you that! I do give you that!" Her words degenerated into laughter as she repeated them for emphasis.
"Well, you're wrong, because I did, and I'm here, and I'm not going away." Hermione squinted her eyes at Bellatrix, her voice growing soft. "I've learned a lot about myself, in these five years of war. Sure, I'm the girl whose arm you carved. But I've grown up, Bellatrix, and I'm not afraid of you—but I am willing to fight at your side."
"And you are," Bellatrix finished the last of the potion with a swig and put the mug on the tray to the right of the bed. Then she used her own wand to clean her teeth as well. "I mean, one can well argue that you don't have the slightest choice about the fact that you're fighting at my side, but you are fighting at my side. And you're getting turned on by me. It's all nice and mature and I'm sure it makes you feel great about yourself." her voice turned sultry and low. "Would you like to ramble on some more about how self-actualised you are, or are you in fact going to live up to your newfound maturity?"
Hermione sighed. "Fine. I do appreciate you making your effort. So, about the whole thing with finding a way to sleep? We kind of lost that in everything else we just talked about."
"Oh right, that's obvious. You take your clothes off and get into bed with me." With this impish, devilish grin on her face, Bellatrix tossed the comforter off, just to dig herself deeper under the rest of the sheets and blankets and toss it back on again. Her eyes, alive with mirth and bemusement, didn't blink or look away from Hermione's face as the girl turned bright red again.
"Come on, just how much of a dyke are you? You keep blushing like a schoolgirl."
"I…" I am not going to admit to Bellatrix that I haven't slept with another woman yet. Am. Not. "I just want to go to bed," Hermione finally spoke instead, realising that she sounded as whiny as Bellatrix usually did the moment she opened her mouth, and feeling more embarrassed about that, too.
"You misinterpret me," Bellatrix answered smoothly. "Your clothes are dirty. I think you've been wearing them for two days now. I don't want my bed dirty. Take your clothes off so you can sleep with me in my bed. Because I'm not sharing it with you out of the kindness of my heart, I'm sharing it with you because I want you to get a good night's sleep … Mardy, bring my guest a sleeping draught, please!"
As the Elf acknowledged, Bellatrix watched Hermione try to hide a wretched sounding groan, and then give up and go to the side of the bed to disrobe.
"We could be in a fight for our lives, and the last thing I want," Bellatrix continued smoothly, "is for you to be so tired you fuck it up and get me killed. Like you said, I have a family I want to go see when this is over."
For the first time in the whole conversation, Hermione felt a little thrill of triumph and relief as she disrobed. While this was awkward and embarrassing in every way possible, Bellatrix had just admitted that she did care about and value her own family. Surely that, then, was a start that she could build from. Build what? What are you even trying to do, Hermione? She asked herself derisively, particularly with how she felt when, stripped down to her skivvies, she found herself under the covers next to Bellatrix Black in what was barely a double bed, rocking back and forth down the damaged tracks.
Yes, she really needed that sleeping draught to drift off, though as she did, she couldn't help but noticing something important. Bellatrix had taken her own sleeping draught first, and drifted off before Hermione. That meant that Bellatrix had, in a real sense, left herself vulnerable to Hermione when she had gone to sleep, and the younger witch decided that, too, was something that she could count on for being positive.
Really, Bellatrix's wild, impulsive confidence and reckless disregard for the social conventions that she had nominally fought as a Death Eater to uphold was hot, it was sexy, her brain was telling her as she drifted off. Profoundly unwelcome thoughts when sleeping in the same bed with the older woman, she still couldn't actually bring herself to not have them. That just proved impossible.
The wheels of the train clacked beneath them, lulling her to sleep, carrying them on and over toward Tuapse. For the first time, she was falling asleep next to the first woman she had ever fantasized about. The last coherent thoughts in her mind were about how Bellatrix definitely didn't want her like that, and about how she definitely didn't really, actually want an unstable nutcase like that, either. The last incoherent thoughts, were of another kind, entirely.
Notes:
- Yes, you really can get a private railcar with a bedroom like that.
- Movement, within the limits of the heavy manacles, would be one of the only activities not producing emotion, available to the tortured victims of Azkaban.