Chapter Thirty-One: The Dragons.
By the next day after the airborne operation, their army was on the outskirts of Dnepropetrovsk. Between the VDV division and Bellatrix's Army, the defenders had easily been crushed and thrown back, but now the Morsmordre was bringing up more troops at Dnepropetrovsk. Despite everything, or perhaps especially because of it, they were planning on making a fight to retain control of part of the left bank of the Dnepr.
And that meant Bellatrix was vibrating like a coiled spring, intent that she should keep her promise in full and drive them back. Anyway, she had her orders, she knew it was expected, they wanted her to meet up with the force attacking south which had just, according to the updates that morning, liberated Sumy. That meant that Bellatrix badly, badly needed to force her way through left-bank Dnepropetrovsk and the associated northern suburbs. And it left Hermione wondering if she was going to be witness to an absolute effusion of blood, driven solely by Bellatrix's paranoia.
She immediately regretted it the moment that she thought it. Bellatrix was being pushed by real orders from above. The Confederation wanted the Morsmordre driven back as far as they possibly could, they wanted the Dnepr on its whole length. Bella was under pressure, and Hermione, honestly, wasn't sure if they really would renege if she failed to meet her intemperate boast.
As the days wore by, the temperature kept falling. It was -40C outside, the crossover point between Celsius and Fahrenheit, where both were equal to -40. That had been one of those facts Hermione had learned before going to Hogwarts, that stuck with her and came back now. She felt so different from that long, frizzyhaired know-it-all that it seemed like a dream. But the facts stayed with her.
The met reports seemed to contain more news of it being really cold every day. Sure, Hermione had already known the effects of the nuclear winter, and also how the worst predictions had mercifully not come true. But the Sea of Azov was already frozen in, even the largest rivers were freezing up. This winter was going to be a particularly bad one. It might, in fact, be worse than the legendary Winter of 1709, which Hermione had read about in a day and age when she never expected to live through its rival.
The heat generators were having trouble keeping up; it was 10C inside of the command tent. This was, of course, better than not having them at all. The air had no moisture, and she had only woken up two hours before but was feeling dehydrated. She went to get some more tea, and grabbed a second cup for Bellatrix, who was standing over the maps, detached and almost disassociated, occasionally issuing an order.
When Hermione approached and thrust the mug to her, Bella blinked and turned. The tea, with a draught of condensed milk, swirled, brown, in the cup, and for the briefest of a moment, Hermione thought she saw thanks flash through Bella's eyes. "You need liquid, Ma'am. This air will tear the water from your lungs."
After a beat of silence, Bella smiled faintly. "Thank you, Granger."
For some reason, that casual politeness, even with her surname, made Hermione beam. "You're welcome." God, it's turning into the Stockholm syndrome. I'm happy when she doesn't insult me.
"You remember that second plan I had," Bellatrix began to speak unprompted, drinking quickly of her tea, taking long draughts of it to heat her stomach. "I believe it's time for it, so we can punch through Dnepropetrovsk as fast as possible, with a minimum of casualties. We'll go together. "
"What's the plan?" Hermione pursed her lips above her steaming cuppa.
"We don't get caught up in the thinking of idiots and morons who have become fixed to the idea that a witch or wizard is just an artillery battery in the form of a person. Or maybe if you're me, a battalion." Bella couldn't help the smirk. "So instead, we're going to use magic in a way that changes the game completely."
Hermione waited, patiently smiling, rather than answer Bella. She wanted to see if that got a positive response, and…
Managed to hide her grin when Bellatrix continued speaking.
"There's a sanctuary for Ukrainian Ironbellies to the northeast of Dnepropetrovsk…"
The grin she managed to hide quickly disappeared.
"I believe you have some experience with Ukrainian Ironbellies," Bellatrix continued, now a little bit snidely.
Hermione remembered Gringotts. She remembered being Bella, physically, for one day of her life. The look was painted on her face, now. They had succeeded, but the Gringotts heist had not exactly been easy. Sometimes, Hermione still had nightmares about it, among other things. "A little bit," she forced herself to answer, stiffening up. "You want to lure the dragons into attacking the enemy positions in the city, don't you?"
"Precisely," Bella grinned, and blatantly ignored how uncomfortable Hermione was. "Dragons have been used in war from time to time in the past, and they're nearby, and available since of course in the middle of the fighting there's nobody to stop us ."
"Nobody to stop us… Most dragons are endangered species," Hermione protested weakly.
"They'll be fine. Come on. I need you there." Bellatrix reached up to tug on the collar of her coat with her free hand, hanging loose, drowning her it was so massive. She finished her mug of tea quickly, and laughed. "Of course, I could order you…"
"I'm going," Hermione stiffened. "Apparate? I assume we don't want to scare the dragons."
"Of course we'll apparate. I get tired of all these muggle contraptions… I suppose you think I actually like flying on helicopters or some kind of bloody rot like that." She turned and pitched her voice. "General Dodson, you have command until I return. Order the Anti-Air forces to ignore slow-moving contacts coming from the northeast for the rest of today. I have a little surprise to lay on for our friends!"
Larissa and Ginny had, with their unit, fought their way to Kirovskiy Raion—to the east bank of the Don in Rostov-na-Donu. There were no bridges for 200km to the northeast so effectively made a flank attack by the Morsmordre forces east of the Don impossible against Bellatrix's Army; none of them would be able to retreat in time or get in position for it. They were all being funnelled north, toward Kharkov, not through the Donbass, and their line of retreat toward Kharkov was also badly threatened, the route extremely long and now under constant attack. It was not quite a cauldron, yet, but the shape could be discerned.
Assaulting Rostov, on the other hand, was another matter. There were entirely ensorcelled troops facing them here, essentially a sacrifice to slow them down. But with the mighty River Don between them and the city, and a crossing necessary to effect the assault, there were no guarantees.
Larissa felt the temperatures, which had continued to fall here. Once the Sea of Azov had frozen over, the temperature had dropped further, and now in the morning, it was -30C, and from ushanka, greatcoat, leggings, wool trousers, boots, her long jumpers trying to fight the chill. The hot boiled tea helped, bitter and sharp and sweetened with a single spoon of preserves.
Ginny had to take a spoon and chop off some of the evaporated milk with it. It had, of course, frozen. The two were huddled in an abandoned house to the east of the main crossings, the windows gone from a nuke that had detonated years ago. It was rotting, mildewing, and still had the debris of someone's life in it. It was out of the wind, so it was worth it. Other troops from the battalion were in the houses around them, waiting. The river was only a few dozen yards away. By the bank, it was already frozen, and here where the current was slower on a side channel, almost all the rest was, too.
"How long do you think it will be until the hovercraft come up?"
"They should have already been here," Larissa sighed. "More delays. But we'll have to be ready to apparate within minutes when they do arrive, so no chance of standing down."
"Yeah." Ginny shook her head. "Merlin, it's been… Weeks, it's almost Christmas, well, our Christmas anyway, and that entire time, Hermione has been stuck with Bellatrix Le-Black. And we haven't heard from her the entire time."
"No functional post office with Black's Army yet," Larissa shrugged ruefully. "What to do about, Ginny? I'm sure she's fine."
"I'm not." Ginny was pensive as she gulped her tea. " Bellatrix was the one who tortured her, I want to make that absolutely clear. The left arm she won't show anyone? That's got the slur 'Mudblood' carved in it. Honestly, she probably wouldn't want me to tell you, ugh, it makes me want to wash my mouth out just to have repeated it. But I need to talk about it. Because you're just as close to her as I am, now. And I don't know what it's going to be like for her to be around Bellatrix that much, maybe for the rest of her life. It seemed like a desperate gamble that was going to fail, but now I can see the beginning of something that's going to succeed, that we're actually going to win. And that means Hermione… Is pretty much stuck playing cover for Bellatrix the rest of her life. The woman who tortured her. Who will never face justice for it. For anything, including killing Harry's Godfather. Her own cousin, I might add. "
"I don't like thinking about it, but I also have faith that Mione will make the best of it," Larissa began to pace. "If anyone can, she can. Even when she's lost the ability to see the best in herself, she proves it by continuing to see the best in others, and be practical, and always learning more. Her books told her it was a good strategy, and she was resolute in following through about that… What you just told me confirms that for me. She faced that woman down and said 'yes, I will chain my fate to your's, so that others may live'."
"I know, but she's my friend, and I want her to be happy, Lara! Heroine, she's already got that covered, even if she would never admit it in a million years after the Battle of Hogwarts. But happiness? She actively denies herself now. I don't know what would break her out of that."
"She doesn't seem uninterested in dating," Larissa suggested, leaning out the window with her wand to use a spell that would magnify part of her distant vision. "Let's win the war, she'll find someone. Ideally, someone who can set boundaries with Bellatrix."
"That would be one hell of a witch," Ginny sighed. "Do you see something?"
"Yes, they're coming in now. We should turn out the men," Larissa nodded. The big Zubr combat hovercraft were part of the Black Sea Fleet, and with Bellatrix's defection and the enemy fleet switching sides, they had been able to cross the frozen Sea of Azov, and come up over the flat farmland to the south, to bypass the enemy gun positions on the opposite bank near the city of Azov.
"I remember father taking us on a hovercraft when I was little—one of the ones that went across the Channel."
"God, a British hovercraft? Did it catch on fire? Why not just apparate…"
"Oh, shut your mouth, Lara! It was a perfectly fine journey. Da' just wanted to show us muggle things." Ginny paused. "How are we going to clear the opposite bank? They'll be very vulnerable carrying tanks and men across. We'll apparate ahead of them to cover them, I know, but…"
Larissa looked at her chrono. It was time. "Well, no hurt in telling you right now. Last night we brought up special detachments of the NBC Protection Troops."
"Oh Merlin, we're going to use a tacnuke on one of our own cities!?" Ginny's face paled.
"God, No! Nothing like that. Something much more precise. You see, Russian muggles are very resourceful, when they needed dragon-fire to support combat operations… They made it up."
"Buratinos." Ginny grinned now, too, shook her head. "Sorry, Lara." Then she flashed a victory sign. "I'll turn my men out now. See you on the other side, Councillor." With a tipped salute, the redheaded witch turned away. "Better make sure of that, or I'll have to tell 'Mione!"
Laughing, Larissa started out of the ruins of the house, though the abandoned toys on the floor as she left it brought her grin to a quick halt. Her expression stiffening, she thought it was fortunate she had seen them; they reminded her not to have any mercy or hesitation.
The heavy thermobaric rocket launchers of the TOS-1 type opened fire five minutes later. Thirty munitions per launcher, thirty launchers—all fired within less than a minute. The munitions created a fuel-air explosive mixture which detonated to collapse buildings all along Beregovaya Street along the waterfront. The massive rippling effect of the detonations compounded the flames, sucking the oxygen from the buildings, generating overpressure, spreading flames, but mostly doing damage by collapsing structures, since the pressure quickly knocked the fire down as soon as it had been established. The effect was still incredible, demolishing several blocks of the city within a single heartbeat as they surged forward, again over onto the attack.
Then, the hovercraft charged just west of the ruins of the Voroshilovskiy bridge, while just to the east was where Larissa and Hermione apparated with their combat teams. Some of the flames were still around and ahead of them, cinders wafting through hot air that was a welcome relief from the bitter cold. Their combat engineering vehicles would knock it down and prevent the fire from spreading as they advanced. They were in battle immediately as the conventional artillery followed up.
Lesson learned. If you didn't have dragons—get them.
Bellatrix insisted it had to be only the two of them, her and Hermione. Nobody else. They would rouse the dragons together, and rile them into attacking the Morsmordre troops in Dnepropetrovsk. Of course, the entire plan was thin on details of how they were going to do that.
It was only after they arrived in the sanctuary, which was buried between a park and a military training range, with both having intact woodlands and sand-scrub to buffer the surrounding farms from the immense space of the dragon sanctuary, folded in on itself and removed from the map, that Hermione began to have her suspicions. The first thing they did, regardless, was immediately cast warming charms on themselves. It still didn't seem like enough.
She decided to get it over with. "Bellatrix, we're going to ride the dragons, aren't we?"
"Of course, Granger. How else would we do it?" Bellatrix blinked and looked at her with what might be— damn it all— an actually sincere innocence.
"Alright." Hermione forced herself to answer. "Alright. They'll like a rock lair… Not much rock around here, maybe exposed on one of those hills?" The woods, at least, meant that the bitterly cold wind was blocked from playing directly on them, and the reserve was filled with low hills ahead of them, as they used magic to pass through the anti-muggle barrier at the entrance, and then stepped past an abandoned MinKol building. "The Dnepr Rapids mean there is rock around here, the …"
"Well, we are firmly in the Poltava Plain," Bellatrix answered, her face twisting up as she began to walk forward with a purposefulness that Hermione didn't share. "Draco Sekonius."
"There's a spell to search for dragons, then we can just…" Hermione trailed off, seeing the obvious problem with that.
"One does not simply apparate in front of a dragon, Granger," Bella answered, cackling. But just as Hermione had managed to avoid saying it, Bella managed to avoid an insulting follow-on rejoinder. Somehow.
Instead, they both started walking forward, Bellatrix following whatever signal she got from her wand. The problem was that it was through the snow. They got about ten metres or so before Hermione started to reflect on how utterly stupid it had been to think this would be other than a joke, or a disaster. The snow was deep enough to bring their progress to a gruelling, messy halt.
Bellatrix paused, saying nothing. They both looked at each other. Hermione desperately wanted to avoid being the first to speak, to acknowledge how ridiculous this had been. They would barely walk two hundred metres before collapsing, at that rate.
But Bella was carefully looking around their natural environment. "Boughs. Boughs from the trees."
Hermione half-flopped her way through the snow toward one she found fallen. " Alright, what are you thinking of, Bellatrix?"
"I can use a transfigurate spell to make tree-boughs into snowshoes, obviously, mudblood. Doesn't it ever occur to you to use magic to get your way out of problems? Where there's a witch, there's a way, you know! Or rather, apparently not, " she mocked.
"I've never heard of that spell," Hermione answered defensively. "And why don't you apologise?" She stopped by the bough, refusing to pick it up.
"Or else what ?" It was Bella at her worst, the Bella of almost childlike rages.
"Or else I won't pick the bough up," Hermione replied, snappishly, feeling the effort of slogging through heavy snow having quickly gotten to her.
"Well, what in Merlin's name is this? Some kind of strike like you were trying to rabble-rouse up with the elves and S.P.E.W.? Do you want to get paid? Do you want me to pay you for the sex, too?" She swayed her hips with her off-hand planted firmly on one, though the effect was lost in the massive coat, her expression was somehow attractive even when she was insulting the hell out of Hermione.
Hermione spat into the snow. "Damnit, take that back. Fuck, Bella, I would never ask for money for…"
"Then shut up and get on with our mission, people's lives are counting on us, Granger!"
"What the hell do you know about peoples' lives? You're doing this for you. A million deaths wouldn't be enough for you! I damn well know that you would do absolutely anything to get yourself and I suppose Delphini through this war alive. Oh wait, forget about suffering them yourself-you've already caused a million deaths and maybe a whole lot more! And I slept with you… Because I am a fucking idiot, I guess. So you don't have to apologise for that! But you damn well apologise for the slurs, right now."
Bella paused. A cloudy look passed her face; Hermione thought it might actually be regret. "I am sorry, Hermione. I have been trying."
The apology made Hermione smile. She picked up the bough. "Called me my name," the smile turned into a grin. "You called me my name. Apology accepted, Bellatrix." She turned to collect the other boughs, it felt like slogging through the snow was easier.
"Good. Do you know how to snow-shoe?" Bella asked, next, her voice sounding like she expected it all to have been in vain.
"The Army trained me," Hermione answered as she picked up the forth and headed back to where Bellatrix was standing. "But how did you learn?"
"I taught myself. When I was young, you know, there was a lot more snow in Britain. And the Black Manor—not that nasty place in London that my cousins lived in, the real one—was near Fair Snape Fell in Lancashire. Back before your muggle relatives wrecked the world, there was plenty of snow there every year. And it was a way to … Be on my own, Granger."
"Why do you think muggles ruined the planet?"
"I'm not a raving idiot. I remember the environmental movement in the seventies and early eighties, do you think it didn't come up in Death Eater circles? We're not monsters, we had reasons. The natural world being impacted will keep damaging magic, keeping… Taking everything beautiful out of the planet, and replace it with drab muggle ways. The destruction of the planet—your own science confirmed it and you kept doing it anyway. "
Hermione wanted to take that at face value. She wanted, of course, to believe that in some sense the Death Eaters had all started as a bunch of radical Wizard Environmental Terrorists. It would be reassuring that she had fallen in love with a misguided woman instead of someone who just killed for pleasure.
But… "what about the nuclear war, then?"
Bellatrix winced. "I wasn't there when they made the decision," she answered defensively, and finally set to work on turning the boughs into snow-shoes.
Hermione watched her work. The wince had surprised her. She didn't know what to make of it, other than the possibility that at some level, Bellatrix really was ashamed of her involvement in the nuclear exchange, or rather her guilt by association in it. Then she thought of something else in the nasty exchange from before. "You know about S.P.E.W?"
"Of course. Elves talk. Elves talk to me, in fact, particularly because I know basic courtesy."
Coming from Bellatrix that was pretty rich, but Hermione had seen her be nice to her sister's elf. "And… You discussed S.P.E.W?"
"Of course. I think it's ridiculous, Elves want to serve. But it's true they are abused by many."
Like your own family? Hermione managed not to say it, though, even as her mind flashed back to the decapitated elf heads mummified on the wall of Grimmauld Place.
"And I like knowing about my adversaries. So I took the time to understand it," Bellatrix finished, testing the fit of the snow-shoes on her boots, and nodding for Hermione to do the same. "Alright, enough delays, let's go."
"Well… Yes, of course." Hermione quickly started of. Despite her shorter height and age, Bellatrix proved that the years had not removed her memory of the process; she was still better at crossing ground with snowshoes than Hermione was. "Thank you for at least considering it. I should have liked if all purebloods did."
"I'm sure you would have," Bellatrix laughed, and carried on. Now they made good time, and soon enough, a smooth, low hill with rock, glacial erratics, piled around the bottom, marked their path. Covered in snow, it looked like a burrow, or even a Kurgan, and Hermione wondered if the dragon habitat had actually been artificially created.
Along the way, Bellatrix had swung out and snagged a deer with the Imperious Curse. She was now marching it toward the den. "We've got to get the dragons out somehow," she explained.
Hermione couldn't dispute that, it would be much better than going into the massive burrow, essentially a hill and not a small one, either. She remembered the Ukrainian Ironbelly from Gringotts and was not at all in the mood to go into a burrow in which several of them lived.
"Now, whatever you do," Hermione murmured to herself, "break step, so they're not attracted by the rhythm…"
Bellatrix shot her a look from where she was forcing the deer to go on toward the entrance to the burrow.
"Just a bad paraphrase of a book I read," Hermione answered, grinning. "It's nothing." A rush of anticipation filled her. They could do it. They would do it.
The dragons lunged for their prey. Two massive Ukrainian Ironbellies, younger and healthier than the one in Gringotts, they exploded out of their den with furious roars and snorts of smoke. The eating had been lean, lately, and any opportunity was taken…
With a combined blast of fire that interlocked from the mouths of the hunting pair, their victim, the deer, was neatly cooked. Snarling, snapping, they made to do something somewhere between asserting dominance and sharing the food.
Nodding, Hermione and Bellatrix split up and went for each dragon, while they were distracted by eating. They came closer and closer, until there was no closer. You either leapt onto the dragon's back with the assistance of a quick levitating spell, or your didn't.
So they both did. Your position had to be perfectly chosen, too close in for the dragon to turn back and blast you off of its back. Too far forward, bucking its head or clawing with its wings would dislodge you. Just perfect…
And the agitated dragon would leap into the air to try and force you off. For the second time in her life, Hermione was flying on the back of a dragon. Hanging desperately onto the spikes, she saw the ground whirl away below her. Despite her trepidation, now that she had flown many times on the Galinas in the heat of battle, it just didn't seem as scary.
The problem was making the dragon go remotely close to anywhere like they wanted. To the southwest, to Dnepropetrovsk. Dragging herself into a more comfortable position, Hermione prepared to experiment with this, just to see Bella's dragon turning sharply and angrily with a hiss toward the city, then away from it, then toward it again. But each time, Bella was waving her wand. Then she protected her voice with another spell.
"Hermione, a stinging charm! Be lively! Unlike any other beast, a dragon turns toward pain!"
The opposite of a whip, in otherwords. Hermione snapped her wand out, a quick stinging charm, and, the dragon turned.
She made haste to follow Bellatrix. The air whipping across her seemed to overwhelm all of the warming charms, to chill her down to the very bones. But the dragon itself was warm, and that warmth welling up in her fought against the other impulse, the one for the slipstream to steal her breath, and soon enough, her life.
Instead, she rallied, and ahead of them, the ruined city of Dnepropetrovsk began to spread out. As directed to General Dodson, the anti-air on their own lines let them through, though for a few minutes Hermione certainly remained in mortal terror of the prospect of 'friendly fire'.
And then with Bellatrix in the lead, snapping her dragon around, straight toward the enemy lines, the troops of the Morsmordre realised just what a predicament they were in, as the two massive, six tonne dragons descended on their lines abruptly, undetectable, grey against a grey sky, until the very last moment.
They opened fire with everything they had on the dragons, and bullets and the detonation of automatic cannon shells plinging and spreading shrapnel—for the moment, without any effect at all against the massive 'iron' bellies of the Ukrainian dragons—told Hermione that they were in very, very hot water. But it also riled the dragons, thrashing, alerting them to the threat, ironically guaranteeing that what came next… Came with a terrible fury.
The dragon dove, and the dragon began to burn. Hermione watched Bellatrix abruptly disappear, disapparating from the back of her dragon, riled enough by the gunfire to keep fighting and burning, instead of using the opportunity to escape. She sucked in her breath, and in relief, duplicated the gesture.
A moment later, she stood beside Bellatrix at the Army's command post, trembling in relief. Behind them, in fire, fang and fury, the enemy lines burned.
Notes:
1. Breaking step to avoid riling the dragons is, of course, a reference to Sand Worms, and Dune.
2. The TOS-1 Buratino is a specialised MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) used by the Russian CBRN/NBC (Chemical Biological Radiological Nuclear, or Nuclear Biological Chemical) troops in an engineering supporting role; thermobarics essentially produce a fuel-air explosion.
3. One begins to see some more of Bella's past here. It will all come together.
4. Stockholm syndrome is a so-called psychological neurosis where under high stress, you associate with your captors.
5. A Raion is a sub-oblast level administrative unit in Russia. (An Oblast is the standard equivalent of a Province).
6. Yes, -40C really is equal to -40F.
7. In ASOIAF, Dragons turn toward whips. I shamelessly inserted that tidbit.
Also, "met" is just short of "meteorology".