Talking with the Enemy
Walking up to the house of the vampires. Back into the den of someone who had committed incredible crimes against her—and many others. Also the home of Tonks, whom she respected a very great deal and thought a friend. Now these two places were not mutually exclusive. She was a bit astonished and very proud, and how calmly she knocked on the door.
Valentina opened it. She stood still for a moment, and then nodded. "Come in, Miss Granger. She didn't think you would come." The muggle vampire stepped to the side, holding the door.
Hermione walked inside, to be confronted with a pile of trunks, and one of the House Elves flashing in and out of existence, subtly dropping off another one.
Bellatrix's hearing clearly provided her immediate notification of the beating of a human heart in the mansion, because she arrived a moment later, looking frenetic and manic, fingering her wand. "...Granger."
"I told you she would come," Valentina offered patiently.
"Oh shut up," Bellatrix glared at the other vampire, and glared harder when Valentina just offered a smile, and retreated back into the inner rooms of the mansion.
Hermione couldn't help but be a little amused at Bellatrix's flustered discontent. She was more than a little tempted to rub it in, in fact, but decided to point it out graciously instead. "I came back, as promised. No strike team of MinKol wizards at my back. Or Aurors."
"I have eyes," the witch-vampire finally acknowledged, and gestured toward the parlour. "While we still have some night left, I might as well get some use from my house," she observed, and they went to walk and sit.
"Where is Tonks, then?"
"She wandered off rather than help pack," Bellatrix sniffed, and instructed to the house-elves to stop before they moved to sit. "So, Granger, you came back." Her expression, archly intent, implied her own curiosity with Hermione, and why Hermione had actually deigned to make good on her promise.
"I gave you an oath on wands that I would. Why do you think I'd let my wand be shattered so easily?"
"Because you're a mudblood, so you don't appreciate how important to a Witch her wand is," Bellatrix answered plainly, looking at her in challenge. Without Tonks around, she spoke frankly.
"Granger is a nicer thing to call me." She held herself stiffly. "In fact, my wand is enormously important to me. As it should be for every woman who carries the title of Brightest Witch of Her Age. You have your own wand back, after all. I didn't break it out of spite. It was returned to your family honourably when everyone thought you dead."
Bellatrix sank back. Hermione's refusal to rise to the bait seemed to deflate her promptly. It made Hermione want to grin, though she resisted the temptation. "All right. So, I want to know…"
"I am to be interrogated, then?" Sitting back, in black clothes against red velvet, Bellatrix was stunning as ever, and she seemed to spin back up at once, her eyes flashing defiance, even as she scrutinised Hermione right back. "I doubt you're quite so skilled the Legilimens to do it, but if you want to try, I don't suppose I can presume to stop you."
"Why not? I'm not an agent of the law. You could just say no; anyway, I have no need of Legilimency. I actually think … I wanted to ask you about Tonks. I don't need Legilimency for that. You care about her, why would you lie?"
"Go on, Granger," Bellatrix's eyes narrowed. "But you presume very much."
"Why are you two together?"
"Well, that's certainly blunt. Decided to appoint yourself as my relationship counsellor?"
Hermione found herself confronted with a wit that was very much intact, then. Honestly, though she knew that relationship counsellors did exist in the magical world, she was rather impressed that Bellatrix, specifically, actually knew what one was. She tried to imagine Bellatrix going to one with Rodolphus Lestrange, and … started laughing. Damn it.
"Am I that amusing to you?"
Hermione swallowed in some air, and felt very tense for a moment at the prospect of Bellatrix losing it on her. "You said relationship counsellor. I was amazed that Pureblood marriages would even have such a thing, and then I thought of you and Rodolphus Lestrange going to one…"
She found Bellatrix in her lap a moment later, pushing down with her weight on her thighs, squeezing her into the chair, her ruby lips close to her neck. Oh fuck. But I sure got her attention…
The last time Hermione had been like this had been in the Malfoy Manor, those years ago. Now, Bellatrix didn't need a dagger to be a threat. She had her teeth. Hermione could feel her, brushing back her hair, and breathlessly close to her face.
"Don't fucking remind me of Rod," she spoke on a single forced inhalation. "Don't play that game with me."
"So, the need for a relationship counsellor was on the spot? You hated him?" Hermione whetted her lips, trying to fight the fear. Honestly, Bellatrix was amazing, this was a different view than when she had been a scared teenager, Hermione couldn't imagine a more perfect vampire and there was something about those legs on her's, the corset-clad bosom thrusting into her, that was really … Did any of the books say something about vampires being unnaturally attractive, even across genders? She couldn't quite remember in that moment, with her breath quickening.
"Of course I did!" Bellatrix laughed, and pushed back, her weight bearing down into Hermione. "Alright. If that's what you meant, I'll forgive the slight." She slowly rose, then, and retreated to her own chair, leaving some inane, vampire-influenced part of Hermione actively wishing that she hadn't gone.
Bellatrix brushed herself down, settled her clothes, crossed her legs. "I detested Rod, but you see, purebloods are not given a choice in their marriage alliances, unlike mudbloods who can do whatever they please, Granger. You had all the freedom of the world… And you apparently decided to use it to marry Ron Weasley. Honestly, I'm astonished with the way Weasleys are that you don't have three children already," she added with a lazy smirk that brought a burn of a blush to Hermione's cheeks.
"I can use birth control like any modern woman," Hermione snapped back, her irritation showing, but it was more her irritation with herself than with Bellatrix, that she had responded, taken the heat from that comment so easily. What is wrong with you around her?
"Pureblood men very much do not like their wives doing so. Though… I did get away with it anyway," Bellatrix acknowledged with a wink. "I am really surprised the Weasel boy doesn't forbid you as a sin or some sort of nonsense like that. They love breeding so much."
"He would never!"
"Really?"
"I would never let him!"
"That's better," Bellatrix brought the tip of her wand up to her lips. Still grinning. "Just because you're a mudblood doesn't mean that I'm going to let the standards slip on the Brightest Witch of Her Age title."
Hermione glared. She had been baited and it was growing late, or rather early. Bellatrix had definitely won that round. So she tried to gently push back to the original topic. "It sounds like you're happier with Tonks than with Rod."
"That wouldn't be hard."
Hermione blinked. "...Are you a lesbian?"
"Hmm. Curious question to ask." She twirled her wand a bit, showed a hint of fang as she did. "No, I'm capable of enjoying men. I just don't much prefer them."
"So, you're mostly attracted to women?"
"Hermione Granger, Golden Girl, holds interview with notorious Death Eater and asks a lot of questions about her sexuality," Bellatrix declared in a bemused voice, before the false tone dropped. "Something like that, Granger."
It was another duel of wits, but that left the next move, like a game of Chess, very clear. "You used my first name. Thank you. Do you want to talk about Tonks now? I mean, you clearly are happy with her."
"She's ridiculous," Bellatrix answered, but it was with a faintly fond smile. "She's at her sweetest when she shifts in her sleep and doesn't realise it when she wakes up in the morning. Which, when she rediscovered her ability, re-forged it, made her an enormously happy woman to wake up and promptly topple over from her want of balance."
Bellatrix. Acting human. Smiling in fondness about her lover. Hermione knew enough to know that Tonks would be perfectly fine with the depiction, too. It's now or never. "Did you seduce her to free her, Bellatrix, or did it happen because you didn't realise what you were doing?"
Bellatrix froze, and archly looked at Hermione. She let her wand slip down to her side. "Maybe you are smart enough to have earned your title. Yes, I did. Now I pay for it, I can't control anyone; but I did it of my own self. And I don't regret it. She's family."
"You disowned her mother. Would have gladly killed her father. But she's family?"
"The mudblood tainted her, corrupted her, but my Andy was still there. Just… Trapped. And half-breeds are people. Her daughter… Tonks is a person. Wrong side of the sheets, perhaps, but… A person." she looked uncomfortable, as if there were surely something deeper behind that, a more intense sentiment underlying those uncertain words.
"And I'm not? Valentina is not?"
"Valentina is a vampire."
Hermione could feel that Bellatrix was, in some sense, running on fumes when it came to this argument, and she pressed, even as outside, a faint twinge of grey was pressing, too. The dawn. "I'm a witch. Would you disbelieve that now? What kind of woman denigrates the opponents who systematically defeated and dismantled her entire cause? If the mudblood won, what does that say about the purebloods?"
Bellatrix stared at her. Leaned against the armrest of her chair.
"You're a smart woman, Bellatrix. I know that. What does Tonks think of all of this?"
"She thinks it's a joke," the dark witch acknowledged.
"Yeah, that sounds about right." Hermione got up. "I'm sorry I arrived so late. Madame… Black."
A faint smile from the former Death Eater. Makes sense. I'll remember to call her that. She really doesn't like Rodolphus. Hermione made herself smile back. "I'll see you again tomorrow night. The packing was a sensible precaution, by the way. I'd have probably done the same in your place."
Watching Bellatrix silently laugh and shake her head, Hermione showed herself out. She wasn't sure at this point what she was getting into, but Bellatrix's confession at least confirmed to her the principles of what she wanted to know, which is that Tonks' relationship with the eldest Black Sister was dysfunctional but not profoundly abusive. She'd be able to let herself sleep on that, without a sense of guilt, and then…
I don't know what, then. In a moment she was thankful for Ron, and terribly ashamed that she had ever doubted him. She could scarcely imagine herself in the same position as Tonks, linked by a vampiric bond to Bellatrix Black. It was there and then that she resolved that she would keep working on this effort until the day came to pass where Nymphadora Tonks would be able to come to a meeting of veterans of the Order of the Phoenix. Hermione would just have to figure out some way to deal with Bellatrix.
Her sleep that night was considerably better than the last, but it was still discomforted by the singular fact that she could not at all be sure if she meant any of it, or if it was all just pathetic self-rationalisation to justify her choice to collaborate and cooperate with the Vampire-Bellatrix for the sake of getting that scar on her arm healed. And her dreams, well…
Bendery or the Malfoy Manor, there were still Bellatrix's thighs pressing down upon her.
The next evening, Hermione made sure to do things right. She got up before the sun set—she had dinner, at one of the nice restaurants, where she could get her first real meal in days, instead of street food. Plenty of tea, and only a single glass of wine, to obey Churchill's maxim that the first glass sharpened the senses, and anything after that wrecked them. That was a good start, then. In fact, even the single glass of wine brought back the reality of what she was doing, because the bottle was from the vineyard that Bellatrix and Tonks owned. Old racist bastard who also saved the free world.
Humans were complicated like that.
Vampires were, in most of the ways that mattered (she dearly hoped), still human.
Food, caffeine, just a little alcohol—a brisk jog in Tiraspol through the parks along the bank of the river. Change her clothes after that—it was summer, and hot, after all. And then she was off, apparating back to the neighbourhood by the mansion. The sun sank below the horizon—only direct sunlight harmed vampires, shadows and gloom were fine—and she stepped up toward the door.
It was Valentina who greeted her. "Madame Granger. The others don't wake up as fast as I do."
"Oh?"
"Old soldier's habit," Valentina chuckled mildly.
"You were a soldier, then. As a woman. In the First World War?"
"The Death Battalion," she answered so mildly, as if it were nothing at all to say. A history now all but gone, a few old men on the edge of death, the last living history of that era—and just perhaps a few vampires like Valentina. It would be fascinating if it didn't seem more or less like the kind of distraction that her intellectual mind would crave, and that she was taking advantage of to keep from thinking about Bellatrix.
Valentina led her down to the den. "Madame Granger," she repeated, now as an introduction to Tonks and Bellatrix—pure formalism. They knew the mortal that the Russian vampire was leading to them.
"Hermione," Tonks smiled. Her hair was black, and in fact, she had never looked more like a Black before. It was drifting across her face, disorganised, she had a cute little button nose and a hint of freckles, shorter than usual. It was cute, and Hermione grinned as she moved to sit in the chair where Tonks gestured, close to her.
Of course, minus the freckles, Bella was the same, just older. A little bit of a memory of that heat from the night before of having Bella pressed into her made Hermione want to flush a little, then. Valentina quietly showed herself out.
"Tea, Granger?" Bellatrix said it very precisely, very mildly.
"Oh, certainly, I could definitely use more. Not nocturnal, you know." Something was up, well, more than the whole taking-tea-with-Bellatrix-Black-in-an-unrecognised-country thing.
Bellatrix was looking at her. Tonks was looking at her. Hermione very much felt like something had happened in the intervening fourteen hours or so that she was completely unprepared for. You did your best, but they're not statues just waiting for whatever you do next…
Tonks pursed her lips and grinned faintly. "Bella and I had a talk, 'Mione."
"...I was starting to put that together," Hermione acknowledged. "Was it about… Each other?"
"Yes, actually," Tonks acknowledged, folder her hands up behind her head, leaning to the left in her chair. "I'm really quite thankful for it."
Hermione shot a look to Bellatrix. She wanted to know what was going on inside of that mind, but Hermione was nothing of the kind of Legilimens would punch through the Occlumency shields of Bellatrix Black. And those remained, a kind of natural magic which the transformation into a vampire had not changed, indeed, that might have been made stronger. Bellatrix might as well have been a black hole to mind magic.
"I won't intrude on your personal lives," she offered immediately.
Bellatrix rolled her eyes. "You've already done quite enough of that, Granger." Cocked back in her chair, legs crossed, here was some more spark in her. "Are you satisfied that I am not abusing Tonks? Did it ever occur to you that I might just… Talk the entire thing through with her?"
"Why didn't you do it sooner."
"I understood, sort of instinctually, but I was not sure. Your book-learning confirmed my successful course for me," Bellatrix explained with a thoughtful wave of a hand. "I don't have access to the library necessary to duplicate it." She whipped her wand up, and cast a quick "Lumos," bringing a brilliant but red light into the room. "Things have changed for both of us."
"You were right about that," Tonks added. "The way our magic worked changed. It's been a struggle to re-learn it and honestly, Bella's done better than most. Better than me, even."
"I already knew you weren't helpless, for what it was worth." Hermione picked up her teacup, seamlessly provided by one of the elves. "Honestly, I'm fascinated by how a vampire-witch re-learns magic to adjust to the changes in her magical core. The texts are very dreary about the fate of one's magic, at least in the histories."
"You read fast," Bellatrix observed, though Hermione chose to take it as something of a compliment. "Where did you find the books, anyway?"
"The MinKol headquarters. The Station Chief has an extensive library of esoterica."
Bellatrix nodded thoughtfully. "She is Black Court, I think."
Well, it was obvious that Bellatrix had been here longer and learned more about the local situation, but Hermione had heard the term a few times now and hadn't had it defined for her yet. "Hmm? The Black Court?"
Tonks interjected smoothly: "Koldovstoretz is divided into Courts which focus on teaching students different aspects of magic, instead of Houses based on character traits. So, students are sorted according to a mix of their talent and interest to focus on specific fields. The Black Court focuses on esoterica, historical ritual magic, blood magic—several fields that would be illegal in Britain, frankly."
"Okay… Larissa Naryshkina is very nice, but I can definitely see it," Hermione rolled her neck a bit, hoping for a pop and of course not getting one. Her skin was cool, down here in the cellar of the manse. And Bellatrix's response to her words, as it too often was, consisted of laughter.
"Very nice, but I can see it. Awwh, are you starting to get used to the idea that the magical world isn't black and white?" Eyes that flashed with unnatural light, curly black hair dancing in red-light. "They must only teach Dumbledore's vision of the wizarding world now—stupid tricks and silly jokes, and none of it power."
"Well, perhaps you'd be wrong. My fascination with blood magic has certainly increased since I discovered it was intimately linked to the two of you."
"Is that all? You'll have to try harder."
"Bella," Tonks sighed. "You're just baiting her to bait her at this point."
The elder vampire rolled her eyes, but sank back in her chair and called for a goblet of bloodwine.
"In fact, the decline of ritual magic in wizarding Britain is an issue I'm interested in. So's the interrelation between the attempts to control the limits of magic and normalcy and the way we've objectified, and 'otherised' the non-human sapients. Which includes the two of you at the moment." Hermione leaned forward, adding, drolly, "and I assume for the permanently forseeable future as well. So, let's call a truce on that?"
"We can. We can." Back straight again, stiff, Bellatrix was always manic, always moving around, even in her un-life. "But wouldn't you like to see the library at Grimmauld Place, then? I believe it's Potter's, thanks to his inheritance," the look was savage, "but I know the wards, he doesn't."
"I … Would." She coughed, and cleared her throat. "Scar first."
"It would make it easier…"
Dangled in front of her like a lure for a fish. Hermione shivered. Dragon-eggs forgotten, she wanted to be nothing more than back in London, at that moment, going through the library at Grimmauld Place. "All right. Then I'll work with Harry to see about making arrangements. He won't be surprised to hear that I want to bring the library to specialised curse-breakers. He'd probably even give me most of the books; they don't match into what he wants for his life."
"You can always trust a man to waste the true gifts he's been given."
"I think…"
"I think it's quite astonishing that I'm being so polite about Potter, who killed My Lord." Back to the 'My Lord' stuff, back to the trenchant observations. But, she could scarcely blame Bellatrix at this point. The great family library of the House of Black was in the hands of the man who had killed her Lord. It was objective fact, and from that point of view, Hermione tried to sympathise. She'd be furious if Bellatrix had her library, after all, even if it was nowhere near so great.
"Alright." A simple, abject acknowledgement that Bellatrix's hurt was real. That was it. It didn't have to be more. Smile. Disarm the whole thing. For twisted, unreasonable reasons, she still had legitimately experienced suffering and pain. Experienced death, and that because of a more honourable reason, saving her sister's daughter; a reason that may well have contributed to Voldemort's defeat. Who knew how many of them might be dead if Bellatrix hadn't weakened herself. Perhaps Hermione herself. Hermione cleared her throat. "Then I have a simple proposition for us. I would like to work with you to come up with a way to get Tonks back into British wizarding society. Without blowing your cover, Bellatrix. To let her live between two worlds, at least. For her sake, would you work with me?"
For a moment, Bellatrix stared like the young muggleborn witch before her had grown a second… Or maybe a third… Head. Then she nodded once, and smiled, apparently content at whatever had passed up to that point, the banter, the oaths, the information exchanged for information—the very Slytherin give-and-take of the conversation. "I will."