The Springing of the Year – 2004
Blaise Zabini sat with a quiet confidence before his own communication mirror. Hedwig Jugson was not so calm at all. Addressing the two sat Pius Thicknesse, who headed the government in London. He had considerably more power now that the Dark Lord was in Anatolia, but Blaise knew well enough he was really a man enslaved to the Imperious Curse (and, savagely, had been seven years now), and would never present any kind of alternative strategy to what his master told him.
Blaise was mostly ignoring what Thicknesse was droning on about. It was almost all irrelevant, and what really mattered was impressing upon him what had exactly happened. From the point of view that mattered. He smiled blandly, which continued to perturb Hedwig.
"So, what transpired?"
The young Sea Lord moved quickly to intercept that question. "With inadequate support, I attacked the enemy immediately, and was unready to face them because I had inadequate intelligence as well. I was out of place facing one threat before I was informed of the second, though they were only travelling slowly through the pack ice in the Baltic. Nonetheless, we executed a punishing attack on the Trondheimsfjord. The pilots may indeed have overstated the level of damage, but the only 'failure', Minister, was that we were caught unawares by the breakout of the Russian Baltic Fleet, and unable to prevent it. That was a failure of the reconnaissance and intelligence apparatus." Blaise didn't outright accuse her, but Thicknesse wasn't stupid enough to need to be reminded of who was in charge of that as the area commander, either, so he didn't need to.
"The Russians practised absolute operational security, they had complete radio and emissions silence, they were barely even using the electronics on their ships—not a single wizard aboard the fleet used a single spell. There was nothing for any technological or magical method of detection to find! And that damned icebreaker they have, the one with the nuclear reactor, it let the fleet move at least twice as fast through the ice as we anticipated!"
Perfect.
"But the … Ice-breaker has always been there, has it not?"
Hedwig looked like she had been hit by a sour-mouth hex. "Yes it has, Minister."
"Then why did we not consider the risk?"
"These so-called experienced men of the old muggle militaries were unprepared for it!" She exclaimed. "They had no idea that it was viable for the Baltic Fleet to force the Kattegatt, especially in winter with ice cover."
"Mine did evaluate the risk," Blaise countered directly, now. "Also, we're not facing muggles, we're facing MinKol. They have a very high confidence in their ability to protect muggle military assets from conventional, muggle attack. They drew their plans with that confidence. I have the documents."
"I will be very interested to see them. You will owl them to the Ministry?"
"Of course," Blaise answered.
"Zabini, if you knew there was a risk, why was your fleet out of position?"
"Because my instructions from the Area Defence Commander," he looked sharply at Hedwig and now his voice raised a bit, "were to intercept the Northern Fleet. I was already in the Norwegian Sea by the time you found out about the Baltic Fleet's breakout attempt, Hedwig. It would be ridiculous and timid for me to cower under the cover of land-based air with the most powerful carrier in Europe when the odds were very favourable for me to inflict serious loss on the Northern Fleet, at sea, where the ships could not be salvaged. However, because I was not supported with proper intelligence, the Baltic Fleet had already broken out by the time I knew of it. To attack them first would require my squadrons to pass over heavy air defences which the Russians have established at Stavanger and Bergen. To immediately attack the Northern Fleet meant I would remain in position for the Baltic Fleet to attack me from behind. So I had to order the fleet to stand out further into the Atlantic and then attack the Northern Fleet from a position where I could retreat, and protect any cripples in the fleet, to a safe harbour—in that case, Scapa Flow."
"And in doing so, you left us to lose two frigates from the North Sea Squadron," Hedwig glared.
"But I protected the battle-fleet from damage, and I conducted the attack on the enemy I had been instructed to attack. The North Sea Squadron has always been sacrificial. And, they were used in a reasonable attempt to lure the enemy within range of Azkaban. It was a gambit which failed, but as we have all learned in the past six years of war, battles are uncertain. Intelligence is the main item which can change that, and I was operating blind about the intentions and position of the Baltic Fleet."
Thicknesse slowly tapped his desk. "I've had quite enough of this. Hedwig, you're being reassigned as the commander of the Sixth Air Force on the Russian front."
The woman blanched.
"You need to be under closer supervision of an integrated operational headquarters. Also, you are quite junior, and the situation in Britain is now somewhat serious. The enemy is clearly concentrating assets to attack our islands. Blaise, good young man, good head on your shoulders. You will take command as the Area Defence Commander. I am certain if you can disrupt the buildup of forces in Norway, whatever the real intention is, the Dark Lord will personally reward you."
"Of course, Minister," Blaise dipped his head politely.
"That will be all." The ghostly image faded away.
Blaise rose, and at last allowed himself a small, triumphant smirk. It faded almost as soon as it had come. The next step in the plan would be exceedingly dangerous, certainly, but the offered rewards were also great. And, he would be an idiot to think that continued service of the Dark Lord was a wise proposition. He had stopped caring about anything at all in the world, and was fixated entirely on some dark mountain in eastern Anatolia. He was throwing his troops into making gains in what had been a secondary theatre, and all of his capacity for war-fighting was concentrated in the untouched British isles.
There was plenty of weakness in that situation, and a good Slytherin knew when to walk away.
The preparation for a major operation could be exhausting, but it was also far more open than actual operations. They lived in comfortable homes, they did their work in offices and meeting halls, over maps and tables of information. There was reasonably good food, particularly for the officers.
There was a little time for Bellatrix and Hermione to just be a couple. It was a small vacation cottage in the woods outside of Ålesund to the east, but with magic to make everything comfortable, it was everything they needed.
A couple with a child. It was the first time they were all together, for more than a few weeks at a time. She was growing up, now, at an age where Hermione was introducing her to as many books as possible, though she wanted friends and that was harder to arrange in the circumstances, with the security detail. Still, she was the darling of the officers; she always had flowers in her hair and a neat braid, and veteran Generals and Admirals, when an opportunity allowed at the headquarters in Ålesund, would let her sit in their laps.
That gave Hermione and Bella some private moments, and there was a sauna in the woods behind the cottage. Today, though, she had Delphini curled up on the couch, looking at copies of Planets and Man and Space from the Life Science Library. Both were translations into Norwegian she had found—at Delphini's age, with a young and supple mind, they were making good progress on teaching her a fourth language (only magical books were available in Cumbric, and Hermione was still learning that tongue, herself). The two books were respectively by Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke, and Hermione had read library copies as a girl, herself. Her mother was off at some meeting or another, where Hermione's attendance was not required.
"The muggles took pictures of the planets. From up close." Delphi's face twisted up with a frown of thought. "But we can't do that. Muggles did something that we can't do."
"Not true," Hermione laughed gently. "Delphi, of course you can take pictures of the planets from up close. You could travel to the stars just like any other human being. You'd just do it like any other human, whether or not they have magic."
Delphi shot her a look, a thinking girl, maybe a little embarrassed at the implication. "...Could I even use magic on Mars? If I couldn't, I'd just be a muggle there."
"You'll never just be a muggle, because Earth will always be here. But it might require accepting that, for a time, you're no different than one, yes. It's said that magic is linked to the natural forces of life. I've sometimes wondered if aliens also have magic like we do…"
"Aliens? Now you're talking funny, Hermione." Bellatrix would always be Mum for Delphi. She had yet to decide that Hermione deserved that appellation as well. And Hermione respected that. But about a week ago, while sleepy, Delphi had slipped up from her serious effort, and called Hermione 'mum' as she yawned and settled down to sleep. It was that moment which made Hermione feel like she could spend ten thousand nights like this, sitting with the girl, and trying to negotiate the delicate circumstances of her past. Delphi might be a halfblood—the same caste as a daughter that Hermione herself could have with a pureblood—but she had been raised to see herself as a Pureblood, because nobody dared treat the Dark Lord as anything but. Bellatrix had been raising her with a Pureblood's disdain for muggle-borns. Hermione was trying to undo the privilege that her own lover had inoculated into her daughter, before that fateful turn.
And Hermione had already gotten "mama" out of her. She still thrilled at that moment. But no giddy feeling was going to get her out of answering the precocious girl's question.
"Hermione?" Delphi looked up in query. "Aliens?"
"Well, people from other planets. Maybe they'll look like Elves, or, well, anything, like someone far different from elves. Anyway, before I knew I was magical, I wanted to see aliens someday. But instead, I got to meet House Elves. Still, now, I wonder if there are aliens—I do think there are—and I wonder what they will look like. If they'll have magic."
"Mum does say you like House Elves a lot," Delphi nodded. "So I guess it makes sense that you like these aliens so much."
Hermione leaned back into the couch cushions and nodded. "I guess I've always been like that."
"Well, maybe if there's life on Mars, I could still be a witch there," Delphi returned to her original thought as she looked back down at the pictures in the book. "It doesn't have to be human life, right?"
"Oh, it's the whole web of life that we think supports and sustains magic. We don't think there's life on Mars, but there might be. It would be in the soil, though. Though the author of that other book," she referred to Clarke, "once wrote a novel where there was life on oceans under the ice on Europa, the moon of Jupiter. Now there we might see a lot of life."
"Then I want to be the first witch to go to Europa! If it's an ocean, perhaps I'll find merpeople there."
I f there's any part of the world left that can go into space. If wizards and muggles can sit side by side and plan such a thing, Hermione mused, a little sadly. "Well, with your imagination, you can go anywhere, Delphi. So you'll get a chance to dream of Europa in your sleep now, because it's bedtime."
It was the usual little war of words for bedtime. It always would be. After tucking Delphi in, and waving her wand to blank the magical lights, she went to the kitchen and got herself a glass of kreking, traditional Norwegian wine made with blackberries, with spices and herbs added. A part of her mused about Carl Sagan, and she was glad he had died before this war. It would have been the ruination of all his hopes for humanity. Instead of a world of peace and exploration and science, they were in a world of war and superstition. The ineffable sense of wonder which had driven Hermione to love magic from the moment she had discovered it, had been replaced by something more like Lovecraft. Monsters lurked in the bottom of mountains in hills.
And it all had to be done.
Hermione finished draining the glass. The door opened; it was warded, so that could only mean one person. "Bella. Delphi's already asleep, of course."
"Of course," Bellatrix sighed. "So much for today's Cumbric lesson." Bella eyed the open bottle of kreking on the counter. "Game for another glass, Hermione?"
"With you? Always." She poured them out. "Anything I should know? You do seem a little tense."
"There's been a complication. Thicknesse and Voldemort prevailed upon the Americans to finally send help. An American carrier group has been dispatched to Reykjavik, and another one to Lough Swilly."
Hermione bit at her lip. That was bad. The American carriers were still the best in the world. "They don't even have that many left, do they?"
"Just six," Bella agreed.
"Of course, the MACUSA has never provided serious support to Voldemort before."
"It seems he's worried enough about our buildup that he finally told them to put up or shut up," Bella replied, and there was a glint of savage bemusement in her eyes as she knocked back the glass. "Cissy tells me that if we strike boldly and show we have the ability to win, that they'll be unreliable."
"That's what this is, isn't it?"
"It is." Bellatrix agreed. Then she leaned back against the counter, and eyed Hermione archly. "You're a nice sight to come home to."
Hermione smirked even as she felt her blood rush. She was a grown woman, and an experienced veteran, but… Well, she knew Bella now, in every sense, but the older witch could still easily get her worked up. "Is it the wine or the sense of danger that's turned you on?"
"Maybe just being around all the old men and having to think about you to keep from getting bored," Bella answered saucily, and leaned in for a kiss.
Hermione was carried away. She could just imagine Bella—impertinent, insouciant, uncaring Bella—idly glancing at the briefings, already with a fully formed picture of what she intended to do in her head. Nodding along and making the right noises, so the staff officers felt their briefings mattered, when really Bella was the sort of commander who operated on a divine intuition for the terrible symphony of War. Bella, who was wasting her brain-power on more important things. Like fantasizing about her. About one muggle-born Hermione Granger.
She realised that Bella's hand had just been shoved down her uniform pants. It wasn't like she needed anything else to be horny, after all, fantasizing about Bella boredly fantasizing about her had been more than adequate!
Bellatrix pushed her closer in to the counter, pinned her in place even though she was the smaller woman. Her hand pushed firmly through Hermione's panties, and gently rubbed. A moan could not help but escape from the younger woman. Her hips responded to Bella's fingers, fabric in the way or no.
Bella reached her gloved hand up to Hermione's neck. "Come, kiss me," she instructed, gently tugging her head down. Their lips met, even as Hermione fixated on the first word for a moment. There was that fussy, rules-obeying, teacher's pet part of her that wanted to object. "What if Delphi wakes up?"
"What if she doesn't," Bella counted with a grin, and kissed Hermione more fervently, this time with her tongue.
Hermione's back curved and her lips pushed down into Bella's. She couldn't get enough of that feeling… But then Bellatrix redoubled it, and her fingers slipped down under Hermione's panties.
Bellatrix was so damned skilled with what she did. She had Hermione's body plotted and marked! She learned fast, in the way of someone who was too smart to need much formal education, and too bored to stay with it; she devoted her fingers to controlling Hermione's body like a DJ—manipulating every part of her lover as part of the experience.
Taut and tense and desperate and wildly pleasured for the intensity of what Bella did for her—Hermione came. Bella always made love by fucking her first. Kitchens, tanks, beds; it didn't matter. That strange considerateness, unexpected from the first, from when Bella still called her muddy—it had drawn her in. Bellatrix seemed more interested in seeing her pleasured than in experiencing her own. However controlling she was, however, sometimes, casually bigoted she still could be, Bella put the needs of others first.
Hermione let herself be coaxed along back to their bedroom, snuggled up and around Bellatrix. Their clothes fell off in disorderly piles until only an engageante and a glove on Bella's left hand marked them, two nude women, in tones of brown and white, mingled together in bed. It was still winter, even if the hope of spring loomed like a promise, and the snow was piled high outside, but the woodstove in the cottage kept them warm. The quilts were pushed aside and forgotten.
Bella tossed herself back into the pillows like a Queen on her throne. Legs spread out, her hair draping behind her in a resplendent curtain, she was somewhere between woman, witch, and an object of worship; Hermione felt a greedy lust at the chance to reciprocate, as she buried herself between Bella's legs. Somewhere along the way, the leather covering that left hand had ceased to be problematic, it was just part of who Bellatrix was now, and when it pressed down into the tangled, frizzy curls of Hermione's hair, she submitted to the direction, and with tongue and lips, gave back to her love as months of experience allowed her to do.
Bella's hips quickened beneath her. The way her face was scrunched up with un-expressed need, that she held in her own moans as they made love, for the sake of not waking Delphi; it was attractive in its own right. Long ago, she had abandoned the idea of Bella being an enemy. Older still was the idea of hating her. Somewhere along the way, the movement of her hips, the way she muffled her own moans—these had become a joy to Hermione's heart.
She would do anything for Bella, but most of all that night, she made love to her.
It was as the spring had just begun to melt the snow, while it still was piled high, but mostly packed firmly, the lowest layers almost like ice. The fine house in the traditional style was a fitting enough place for a witch like . It fronted on an ancient hörgr, or open-air altar of the Norse faith. Turid had welcomed them with Mead, and after a brief prayer and offering, led them inside.
Inside, Hermione saw the woman in the Indian Air Force uniform that Narcissa had mentioned before. Like Narcissa, she had the ineffable sense the woman was somewhat magical, even though she had no wand. But, she came to attention and politely saluted Bellatrix. "General."
"Air Commodore," Bellatrix acknowledged, her mind as sharp as a whippet, she never forgot military ranks even though she affected not to care about them at all. Hermione could tell there was respect in her eyes, and this was rarely granted to a muggle, so she must have seen it as well.
Darya returned to her seat, picking up her own glass of mead. "We've confirmed everything, General. It's ready. MinAtom confirmed the review of the plans, and you have my word of honour."
Bellatrix sank down into her own chair, and stared almost incomprehendingly at her glass of mead for a moment, as Hermione sat last, feeling unnaturally dense, remember back to the awful night of fire, on the day the modern world had died. The raven-haired witch jerked, and raised her glass, her eyes gleaming in a way that, to Hermione, seemed rather peculiar. "Go on, Air Commodore."
"We've received a shipment of eight Russian 200kT thermonuclear warheads. As the uneducated would say—each one is about twelve times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb. Of course, it's more complicated than that. At any rate, they're being loaded aboard the Admiral Ushakov. There will be no impacts to the operational serviceability of the missiles; we tested the inertial guidance systems under enchantment successfully, using the enchanted electrical components, and I understand you can duplicate those."
"I can," Bella admitted with some obvious pride.
Now it was Turid who spoke. " I understand that the Duchess Narcissa will have the two of you personally handling the operation. Four for Azkaban. Then four for the Channel Tunnel."
Now I understand! Hermione's eyes widened for a moment. The final piece of the puzzle was in place. She had heard Narcissa's arguments and appreciated why they had to this. It was critical for winning in the operation, to keep the Morsmordre from throwing in reinforcements from the continent. She got it.
Now she understood what was personal about it to Bellatrix. To clear the way for attacking the Chunnel with diving nuclear warheads, they were not going to simply assault the fortress of Azkaban. They were going to utterly annihilate it. It was an expatiation for Bellatrix. A chance to move beyond all that had been done to her, and all that she had done.
A cleansing in fire.
With a slightly manic air, Bellatrix accepted the plans she was given, the scrolls of parchment which recorded the incantations, in the moving picture-images that wizards used to teach each other how to cast spells. Turid presented them with a flourish. In Bella's hands, to her point of view, was the opportunity to finally bury the past—when this operation was done, Azkaban would simply cease to exist.
Hermione raised her glass, and wondered. So far, we haven't had much success at burying the past. It tends to refuse to stay dead. Yet she understood why Bella needed the closure so badly, even if she would never admit it, not in a hundred years, not in a thousand.
And it was militarily necessary, of that, Hermione had every confidence. They could not land on the eastern coast of Scotland without removing Azkaban from the equation, and she had, in fact, been wondering for a while how it would be done, as that part of the operation seemed much less important than the others. Now she knew. It was less important because the suppression of the wizarding fortress would be done by a new weapon never before seen in the world.
And these two women assigned to develop it were very confident that it would work.
But it hadn't been tested, and it couldn't be tested. The moment an enchanted nuclear device was used somewhere on the planet, the sheer scale of the energies involved would immediately alert Voldemort that it had been done, and so counters could be developed before it was actually used.
They had to trust Turid and Darya, that they and their teams, the magical and engineering teams involved in this effort, had known what they were doing, and had integrated Bella's developments in systematic electrical magic competently. Hermione, though, knew that her lover shared no such hesitation. She understood, too, that Narcissa was perfectly comfortable with the effort, and she wondered what quiet agony the woman had endured, knowing that her older sister would spend her life in Azkaban.
A quiet agony that Narcissa had helped forge stronger bonds from. Love for family. The love that drove her to fight and sacrifice—the love which made her overcome even her own bigotry, to the point that she now counted Hermione as part of the family.
It was clear that both sisters, for their own reasons and their own experiences, intended to see Azkaban annihilated.
Hermione raised her glass. And there's nothing wrong with that.
As the Odyssey said of cunning Ulysses on the eve of his battle with the suitors, it was time for them to reclaim their halls. That they would go through the ruin of Azkaban-so much the better.
Notes:
1. The Admiral Ushakov - The lead ship of Project 1144 "Orlan", the Kirov-class battlecruisers.
2. I have seen, and admittedly, have used, both the spellings Kattegatt and Kattegat to refer to the northeastern part of the Baltic Straits around Jutland (the approach from the North Sea into the Baltic Sea).
3. 200kT - The standard form of the abbreviation for "kiloton"; the Hiroshima bomb was under 20, but these days, 200kT is a very common "yield", or power, for a nuclear weapon.
4. MACUSA is ruled by a government nominally aligned to Voldemort, but which has refused to actually assist him in any substantial military fashion. This has some antecedents in Franco's actions in the Second World War.
