The (somewhat) Happy Return
By the time the Admiral Ushakov reached Stavanger, she had been shipping almost five thousand tonnes of water from the damage forward and aft. They had successfully dewatered the steering gear and un-jammed her rudder (after undoing the immaterium spell upon it), but the list had crept back up to twelve degrees. She had only a half-metre of freeboard amidship aft when she reached port.
By noon, she lay off Saltnesfeltet, with offshore support vessels standing to each side, with their pumping capacity helping her own. Torrents of water seemed to continuously come up over the sides. An hour later, a dedicated pump-ship came along her stern and was tied fast. By fourteen hundred hours, she was shipping only four thousand tonnes of water, and teams of divers had begun to apply underwater setting concrete to the buckled plates forward.
At this point, a launch came up from Stavanger, and Bellatrix, Hermione, Draco and Larissa were able to go ashore. Rocking gently in the launch, with the white spray along its sides, Bellatrix pulled her greatcoat tighter and leaned into Hermione. Hermione kept her eyes fixed on the battlecruiser, watching her slowly rise out of the water, to live and fight again.
Another hour later, they were in a commandeered former hotel by the airport, now used as officer's billets for the Russian Aviation Regiments stationed there. Hermione and Bellatrix were given separate rooms, of course; but as the General's liaison officer, Hermione was quartered with her, and it was a shameless minute later to slip into Bella's quarters instead. Bella, with a fresh change of clothes available, had mostly stripped out of her own.
Hermione followed her, too exhausted to explain her intent; but they both knew they had no energy for sex. Instead, they just collapsed together, under the layers of blankets on the bed. They were heavy and relaxing and delightful. With the two together, the cold and wet were gone. It was warm, they were tangled together, they had destroyed Azkaban, they had landed in Britain, the fleet had defected; they had done it. Hermione fell asleep without another thought.
The next day, they boarded an IL-76 carrying reinforcements to Inverness Dalcross. In the night, the Scottish nationalist troops had fallen back into the mountains to the southeast, toward Aberdeen, and the airport had been opened for resupply operations. Unlike Lossiemouth and Kinloss, the runway hadn't been damaged by the tsunamis. The rapidity of the enemy's retreat was shown in the fact that two civil BAe-146s had been captured intact on the taxiway, and were now undergoing servicing by the Russian aviation technicians, for employment in the airlift. The tsunami had inundated Dalcross, but not high enough to lift those machines off their gear.
There was a UAZ-469 waiting for them, which carried the four down the A96 highway as far as Allanfearn, where tsunami damage forced a detour inland. In Inverness, the energy of the tsunami had dissipated by the time it hit the railway embankment, and there was only limited flooding beyond it. Narcissa had established her Government in the Inverness railway station, at least, the Victorian parts of it that looked presentable for the purpose.
When they got out of the UAZ, and Bellatrix in her British General's uniform stepped out, there was a cheer. She looked in confusion to Hermione, who quickly saw that it was mostly a group of pensioners, who stood beyond the security perimeter, waving little Union Jacks they had likely been keeping secreted away for the past six years. Like as not none of them knew who Bellatrix was; they just saw her old style British Army uniform and could identify that she was a General officer.
"People like being free," Hermione remarked, shaking the crinkles from her own Russian greatcoat. "Come on." Here, the Union Jack flew above the Russian flag; they were truly home. The flags of the Nordic countries, the other allies involved in the broad operation, hung in a dainty assemblage alongside.
Then they stepped inside. The station was so freshly occupied for its purpose as the headquarters of a Government that they were still moving the baggage tags off the counters and British Rail placards off the wall—something the government had not gotten around to eliminating in the intervening years. They walked through to what had been the Royal Highland Hotel, and up to the fourth floor, in the tower adjoining the railway station. That was where Narcissa had her office, now. Though there was a staff, they were quite ineffective at preventing Bella from getting through to see her sister.
"Bellatrix," Narcissa greeted. Hermione saw that General Diaz was standing next to her high-backed office chair.
"General Black," Diaz added.
"Cissy, General," Bella acknowledged, and waving off the staff trying to follow her, wandered around the table. She could see the map. Hermione joined her. "I take it that the General's presence means I should be preparing to take command of my wing of the Army?"
"Yes," Narcissa acknowledged. "All of the beach-works were destroyed in the tsunami, so they fell back quickly into the mountains southeast of Inverness. The Russian divisions are pushing on Aberdeen, and as your troops are offloaded, you will be taking the western coast, as we discussed."
"Anything else to be planned?" Bella looked over the map, with Hermione at her side. "The main route of advance is on Edinburgh against the government, right?"
"Well, we'll want to go to the west of the Firth of Forth. This government might easily choose to escape into Glasgow and fight there instead; strong support from the large Scottish nationalist population in the city, and extensive urban industrial works to slow the fighting to a crawl," Narcissa answered crisply.
"Mmmn. Through Stirling and Falkirk, then?"
"Yes. There'd be no point, even with amphibious support, in trying to assault across the Firth of Forth except for surprise, and again, I just think they'd retreat to Glasgow."
"I could take troops by Loch Ness to Fort William and down the west coast, Cissy."
"Rough going in the mountains south of Fort William," she replied. "It's not much better down the A9, but you have both the road and the railway, and you'll converge with the Aberdeen push at Perth."
"All right. I can see it. Other than the fact that it doesn't give us a chance at a coup de main against Glasgow before they've fortified it, it is the better route. Hmm. What about Hogwarts, Cissy?"
Hermione jolted. Of course, she hadn't really been thinking about it, but the enemy could hardly defend it, having fallen back to cover Aberdeen, and the Lowlands. In fact, with their troops on the east coast having been caught in the tsunami, they likely hardly had enough personnel to properly screen Hogwarts. So who knew what was going on there…
"If you want to go, I won't stop you; but you know it will have to be an entirely magical detail, since, as far as I know, the wards are still intact," Narcissa leaned back thoughtfully for a moment. "With General Diaz here to coordinate affairs, I suppose it is a detail we need cleaning up. We won't know the condition of the student body until you arrive."
"Or Hogsmeade, or anything at all, really," Bellatrix shrugged. "All right then. We'll do it. Well, what about the staff?"
"Take them prisoner if possible," Narcissa answered neutrally, and turned back to the map.
Bellatrix grinned.
"I meant that, Bella."
The eldest Black sister rolled her eyes and looked to Diaz. "Surely…"
"I'm afraid, General, she has the right of it."
She shot a look at her lover. "And I know you'd be no help. Very well, if we catch any prisoners, Hermione, you'll be the one to take them back to Inverness."
Narcissa didn't look up. "I don't care what you do with your subordinates, Bella. But I am trying to work. Take a MinKol detachment with you, and if the children need to be evacuated, then bring them back to Inverness as well."
With a wry look, Bellatrix tipped a salute to her youngest sister. For all the age difference, there was really no doubt about how was in charge. She turned and breezed back out. "Come on, 'Mione, you can tell people that the first time you went back to Hogwarts, you killed everyone there."
"Bellatrix." Narcissa's voice echoed after her, Not Amused At All. "I would warn you that there is a very short period of time until there are reporters around to take down everything you say."
Hermione tried to avoid laughing at the grimace that twisted Bella's face. She failed.
"You! Not helping!" Cissy shouted after them. "And take Draco and Larissa and Luna with you, I don't want you going alone!"
Hogsmeade. They apparated in, with about fifty witches and wizards, mostly MinKol but about fifteen from the Black Guards, and four Scandinavians. It would be enough to overwhelm any opposition unless the civilian magical population in Hogsmeade chose to fight—or the Slytherin students. The rush of groups some distance clear of the station came with a moment of tension. For the first time since she had fled Britain, now, back on British soil, Hermione would fight a battle entirely magically, without muggle support. It was sometimes said that Sgurr a'Choire Ghlais was the location of Hogsmeade, but in fact it was merely the location of an approximate physical entrance to the entire Hogwarts preserve, which was subtly shifted to hide much of it from the Muggle population. Perhaps now, that would no longer be needed… But it gave the enemy a proper line of defences, just as it had given them defences for Hogwarts so long ago.
Assuming there would be a battle. As they marched down the track to Hogsmeade, through the outer layers of wards over the entire magical area, closer to Hogwarts, there was little sign of a defence. The Hogwarts Express was at Hogsmeade, with steam up. But the Goblin driver just stepped out and raised his hands. "Glad you made it before we went sawth!" he declared.
Bellatrix laughed and posted a guard, but then stepped down from the station. It was quiet, and people were milling around Hogsmeade, looking uncertain. Hermione knew the feeling. Many of them would hesitate, and wonder if their liberation would be permanent or only fleeting, trying to make up their minds on whether or not to make a potentially fatal demonstration of loyalty to their liberations, if they did not linger for long.
Honeydukes was still there. Hermione supposed even Slytherins in Voldemort's regime needed candy. Madame Puddifoot's was there as well, and a few surprised patrons came out to stare. There was silence, because the wizarding world left after six years of Voldemort's rule had perhaps become too comfortable with it. But there was no resistance. Perhaps the madness of Voldemort's reign had demoralised them.
There were precious few young people, Hermione realised a moment later. Perhaps the lack of resistance was for another reason entirely; those with the inclination to fight had gone to fight, and many of those left, knew someone who had been killed in Voldemort's wars.
One way or another, Bellatrix faced the same problem that Voldemort had all of those years before; powerful wards meant they would only get closer from Hogsmeade, by walking, or rather, marching. They were all so used to it, that as they entered the town, most of them fell into a cadence; and it was Bellatrix alone, with her sauntering swagger, who stood out, who came here as part of the old regime, who was now part of the new. The destroyer six years ago; the oppressor, two years ago, the liberator, today; that was Bellatrix, when it came to Hogsmeade. Hermione forced herself to break the cadence and carried up to Bellatrix's side, marching a half step to the left and behind as a junior officer, though; that she couldn't help. "Does it remind you of anything?"
"Yes, all of it ghastly," Bella bit back. "School was boring, except when I was getting one over on someone." She paused, then, and frowned for a moment, then looked sharply up a rude sort of track that descended into Hogsmeade.
Hermione followed her gaze. A band of goblins was coming down, from the hamlets they lived in deeper within the magical preserve. They were bearing old swords and muskets, and a few of them had half-pikes. The muskets were almost certainly enchanted, knowing how Goblins did things, and therefore highly illegal and immensely dangerous, but doubtless for precisely that reason hidden since the last Goblin war. "Uhh…"
"Oh right, we've been too bloody busy for anyone to tell you what Cissy did!" Bella started cackling. "It's going to bite us in the ass, I'm sure of it; but she did it, and right now, it's marvelous. She rearmed the Goblins! But these ones don't have wands; she sent them all to London."
Hermione opened and closed her mouth a few times as the goblins approached. They even had a drum, beating out a steady rat-tat-tat a marching beat. Now, the residents of Hogsmeade, which had a long memory of the past Goblin wars, began to flee inside, with a few fingering their wands as they did.
Bella's eyes narrowed and she snapped a look back toward where Larissa and Draco had brought up another detachment. "Seize Ollivander's, at once!" She ordered, pointing down High Street toward the branch of Ollivander's shop.
Larissa turned back, barked orders, and pointed a gloved finger in the direction of the shop. They took off at a dog trot.
There was a brief sound of spells being slung inside as the MinKol personnel swift took control. The remaining residents of Hogsmeade took cover inside of their homes and businesses, now. The Goblins reached High Street, and the leader drew himself up—and offered a polite salute. Hermione felt giddy. I never realised that Narcissa had such depths… Oh, but I should have!
"General the Lady Bellatrix Black" The Goblin commander presented. "Nifiger Rittogott."
Bellatrix, with a wicked grin, nodded, and stuck the tip of her wand in her mouth to accentuate said same grin. "Mister Rittogott, it is indeed I. As a gesture of eternal friendship between the House of Black and Goblin kind…"
And Bellatrix is smart too, Hermione thought at the way she immediately phrased it, beaming with pride as she stepped up to Bella's left.
"...I want to offer you a gift." Bellatrix waved them left down High Street as well, and the force of two hundred Goblins or so followed the troops there, who were now assuming positions to secure the street, and cover the secondary storeys of the houses against possible attack.
Jarrick Ollivander, one of the old man's grand-nephews, was being marched out in bonds at wand-point by two MinKol wizards. When he saw the Company of Goblins assembling in front of Ollivander's with a mixture of wonder and envy and awe, he was capable of putting two and two together.
"My God, Black, it's against the law, and common sense too! If they have wands, it will be the end of peace in Britain! And all of this because you were dissatisfied being second? Because your kid sister wants to rule the whole roost with the help of a Russian Army!? You'd steal the whole stock of our store!?"
With a sneer of contempt, Bellatrix lunged forward and dug her wand into Jarrick's neck, until he breathed sharp and low, with eyes wide in fear. "Law?" She cackled. "Merlin, Jarrick, but you Ollivanders have always been half mad, and even Bellatrix Black can tell you that. Let me put the matter to you plain, like the old poem says: No gospel can guide it, No law can decide it, In Church or State, till the sword – Hath sanctified it. Well we have just sanctified it, Sir! Go on, Hermione, help Mister Rittogott arm his people."
Hermione tipped her lover a salute, and stepped through the door, past Jarrick, who was now bathed in cold sweat. Inside, there were boxes and boxes of wands. She walked around behind the counter, thinking, for the moment, that with an armed body, she had simply walked into a civilian store in her native Britain, and started seizing the wares of the shopkeeper and distributing them for free, in violation of the law, to a band of Goblins.
She shrugged, and started opening the boxes and sliding them across the counter to Goblin, after Goblin, after Goblin, while humming the rest of the song that Bellatrix had quoted:
"Lay by your pleading,
Law lies a bleeding;
Burn all your studies down, and
Throw away your reading.
Small pow'r the word has,
And can afford us
Not half so much privilege as
The sword does.
It fosters your masters,
It plaisters disasters,
It makes the servants quickly greater
Than their masters.
It venters, it enters,
It seeks and it centers,
It makes a'prentice free in spite
Of his indentures.
It talks of small things,
But it sets up all things;
This masters money, though money
Masters all things.
It is not season
To talk of reason,
Nor call it loyalty, when the sword
Will have it treason.
It conquers the crown, too,
The grave and the gown, too,
First it sets up a presbyter, and
Then it pulls him down too.
This subtle disaster
Turns bonnet to beaver;
Down goes a bishop, sirs, and up
Starts a weaver.
This makes a layman
To preach and to pray, man;
And makes a lord of him that
Was but a drayman…."
She had become one of the Siloviki in Russia. Now she returned to Britain, and she was a Swordswoman. The Goblins, for what it was worth, found nothing at all wrong with singing the bloody-minded song as they took their free wands, the first that their kind had known in centuries.
Hermione had come back to Hogsmeade in triumph, and instead of being greeted as a liberator, people fled into their homes and looked through the blinds nervously. They hid, and the woman she loved held one at wand-point and threatened him while she had her troops steal all of the wares of his shop—war, real war, had come to Hogsmeade.
Goblins saw her as a liberator, though. They thanked her as they took the wands.
When it was done, Hermione quietly looked around the empty shop, and decided that was enough. She stepped out briskly. The sun was still high in the sky. Rottigott was standing with Bellatrix, Draco and Larissa, conferring over a set of maps spread across some tables that had been used to display wares at a shop. Larissa was eating some fudge with a devilish grin as she leaned over the map, leaving Draco with a somewhat awkward expression on his face, and leaving Hermione to wonder if one of her best friends had literally just sacked Honeydukes with a body of troops.
What did you do in that circumstance?
Hermione walked up to Larissa. Damn them all. Voldemort would have never reached power without them, anyway. "Can I have some?"
"Of course, 'mione. It's damned good fudge." With a grin, Larissa handed over a brick.
In the madcap world of war, it was best to choose a principle and stick to it, and not care much for the rest. The Goblins were free. Good enough.
Hermione ate the fudge.
Bellatrix had a very big grin as she reached over to a steal a piece, and for a moment, their eyes met.
After they regrouped, with most of the Goblins with a small group of MinKol officers to direct them serving as the garrison of Hogsmeade, the main body—mostly wizards and witches with some Goblins who had more experience and weapons to use other than wands, like the enchanted muskets—prepared to march down the road to Hogwarts. Larissa had volunteered her and Draco to command the garrison at Hogsmeade—Hermione realised it was to keep Draco safe, and probably at Narcissa's instruction, but she respected the way Larissa handled it, and Draco seemed proud of the responsibility.
Now, it would be up to Bellatrix and Hermione to lead the troops taking the school itself. Hermione stepped up to her side. "Were you worried about Draco?"
"Not in isolation, pet," Bella answered softly, seeing as they were standing far enough away from the others. "But he has many bad memories of this place. I do, too, but mine are older."
"Bad memories? He was always.." Hermione fell silent as Bella moved quickly to speak over her. She didn't mind, she could see from the intensity in the woman's eyes how important it was for her.
"Profoundly unhappy, no matter how in control he seemed at the time. Worse for me. It was here, after all, I nearly brought my family down with scandal."
"Fair." Hermione took a breath. She wanted a cigarette, as the anxiety peaked. They would be walking through the place where Harry died. But of course, she'd managed to shake the habit, so she didn't have a pack, and off they went, advancing toward the outer gates.
There was a small group in Auror uniforms, black cloaks and robes and jackets with the green flash of the Morsmordre, waiting for them, in defensive positions behind the walls. Bella magnified the scene with her wand quickly. "Hermione, take the Goblins forward with their muskets. I'll organise covering them with shields."
Hermione nodded, and jogged over to Rittogott. "Mister Rittogott, if you'd form up your musketeers in the lead? MinKol will provide cover."
"We don't like being left out as cannon-fodder for wizards, Colonel," he eyed her back warily.
"I'll be accompanying you. You will have cover."
"So be it then—company, muskets forward!"
The Goblins swung out in order down the road, with Hermione walking, her wand out, in a measured pace, upright. By the standards of modern warfare, even as a witch, this felt mildly suicidal. The Aurors immediately saw them coming. There was a moment's hesitation, they were not expecting a small company of Goblins to be involved in the assault from what they knew by the time they had retreated from Hogsmeade.
The spells they started slinging at the force of Goblins a moment later, were scattered to the four winds by the combined power of fifty wizards working Protego simultaneously.
"Present!" Rittogott commanded, raising the wand he had obtained. The Goblins, still marching forward, presented their muskets at the shoulder.
One Auror issued an order. Hermione had a bad feeling about the way they shifted...
"Fire!"
Instead of musket balls, bright fat balls of magical energy, doing all kinds of things, turning into floods of water, exploding, undermining the walls, dumping dirt out of the thin air—all of them happened at once, tearing through the wall, and the gate, and the Aurors.
"Merlin!" Hermione exclaimed. She should have known. But her fear about what the Morsmordre Aurors intended was true, too. Two of the Aurors still had presence of mind and firm ground. They unleashed Avada Kedavra on the column, knowing it couldn't be shielded, and two Goblins dropped promptly dead.
Hermione had not spent so long a soldier to be caught completely off-guard. She blew them back with a quickly slung Bombarda Maxima. The MinKol wizards and Bellatrix now quickly came in from the right flank, descending with them to the ruins of the gate. Symbolically, they crossed over it, and into the boundaries of the Hogwarts School of Magic. A few of the MinKol officers made to detain the surviving Morsmordre Aurors before they were executed by bayonet thrusts of the Goblins, or something else like that, in rough field justice. Relations between Wizardingkind and Goblinkind were poor enough to expect that anywhere, now that the Goblins were fighting openly.
They carried on, toward the viaduct. It stood, grand in stone, leading toward the main entrance courtyard of the castle, and there, for the first time in six years, she was back at Hogwarts, she could see the school she had never been able to graduate from. She'd spent her childhood, her entire life, loving knowledge. Hogwarts would never be her Alma Mater, her first school. It had been the first she had attended, but she'd never graduated. Never finished. Would never have that completion mark to show her family, never have that sense of normalcy.
No, when she finally showed her parents what she'd accomplished with her life—if she ever found them, if they were still alive—her first diploma would be from a school whose full name in English was the 'The Combined Academies Order of Lenin Order of the October Revolution Red Banner Order of Suvorov of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation – Military Educational and Scientific Center of the Russian Ground Forces.'
She turned to one of the MinKol officers. "Do you have a smoke?"
"Of course, Councillor." He extended her a belomor and a light.
Hermione took it up and took a long drag, the familiar old hit of the nicotine flooding into her lungs. She stared long and hard at Hogwarts, and was seized with a particular kind of hate for all the abuse and all of the pureblood idiocy which had led up to the war and in the end, to never having a normal school experience, never graduating, and never having a normal childhood. "Well, you failed," she spit out at the silent walls. "Dirty mudblood got a degree after all, even if it wasn't the one she wanted, and now she's back," she whispered in hoarse anger, staring at the school.
"I thought I had gotten you to quit," Bellatrix remarked as she stepped up. "Hmm. It's a bit of a problem, don't you think? They've probably rigged the bridge with charges. But, their forces on this side have already been defeated, and it seems stupid for them to not just blow it right now."
"Umbridge is a first class idiot, Bellatrix, and of course she's trying to catch us on the bridge," Hermione snapped.
"Something wrong, Hermione?"
"Yes." Hermione glared at Bella, and remembered, suddenly, just how intensely Bellatrix had believed in the pureblood ideology for so long. "Your fucking pureblood ideology ruined any chance at a childhood I had."
Bellatrix winced like she had been slapped, and Hermione immediately remonstrated with herself; Bella had come to check up on her on a genuine matter of importance, since smoking would kill her sooner or later. But maybe the wince wasn't a bad thing.
"Just working through it, Bella," she murmured softly, and looked back at the school with another drag on the belomor. "Yeah. Just working through it." Actually, the more she thought about it, the more she was guilty about something else entirely, that she was feeling angrier at the loss of her own educational attainment and normalcy than about the fact that her childhood best friend was probably buried in a shallow and unmarked grave somewhere on the grounds—if he had been that lucky.
And Luna stepped up, and saluted indifferently. "General, Colonel, there's someone to see you…"
Hermione jerked around. Evening had been getting on, and as the light faded from Hogwarts, she hadn't really noticed it, staying, with her eyes fixed on the school as the troops moved and took up positions around them. Standing just behind Luna was Nearly Headless Nick.
"Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington, at your service, General… Why, are you Lady Bellatrix Black? I do recall you in your Slytherin days… Hermione Granger? I have not seen you in a very long time, and … My my, what dress is that?"
"Russian Ministry of Witchcraft," Hermione answered, and held up a hand to discourage Bellatrix from speaking. "Nearly-Headless Nick."
"Hmmf. Well, I haven't had much to do, since they discontinued sorting! You've come back, and brought an Army of Russian wizards with you?"
Through her anger and sadness, Hermione now grinned. "Yes, I damned well have." There was something about interacting with poor old Nick that cheered her up immensely, and made her think of the happy times at school, instead of the sad.
"...But who's turned their coat, then?" He glanced between the two in obvious confusion—he was a ghost, and how much of the modern world he always remembered was debatable.
"I have," Bellatrix finally volunteered through gritted teeth. "We're here to liberate the school."
"You know! You always were such a firebrand, caring nothing for convention! I must say, sometimes I felt the Sorting Hat had misplaced you…"
"A Black, not be a Slytherin? You might as well shoot me there and then!" Bellatrix exclaimed.
"Well, there was Sirius," Nick answered defensively. He'd always had a talent to put his foot in his mouth, even when alive.
Both Hermione and Bellatrix fell silent, and it was a very awkward silence indeed, before Nearly-Headless Nick made a slight bow. "At any rate. Ladies. Since the true Gryffindors are on your side, I wanted to let you know they have rigged charges to the bridge."
Hermione nodded and turned through the darkness to look at the viaduct again. "We figured, Nick."
"I may have watched them brewing in the Potions classroom, and know what they're made of, so that you can counter them…" His sideways head disconcertingly grinned.
Both women turned to look with close interest at the ghost.
