Remus

There was a dim kind of horror at the memory. Amycus Carrow, disappearing, his body wreathed in white, turning to a black silhouette, disappearing entirely. Disappearing, into the tentacle of darkness oozing out of the door to the place-beyond-the-stars. To a place worse than Hell. Hermione twisted and turned, and wondered what kind of monster she had been, to condemn Amycus to the destruction of his very soul. Just like with a Dementor, there would be no going back from that, and what had she done, anyway, to treat it as such a cavalier act?

She felt frozen in the horror of the memory. After all, it was something she had thought was awful and evil before. Something that had helped her love Bellatrix to begin with. But to save the world, she had done it herself—to a man mostly guilty of the same deeds as her lover, at the same time, but…

Hermione stirred inside and shifted. Blinking, she felt a very familiar sense of deja vu at the fact that she was definitely, absolutely waking up inside of Hogwarts' Hospital Wing. It gave her some kind of confidence that she was not, in fact, dead. The second one was that she was rather sure that in her heaven or hell she wouldn't be seeing Councillor Tikhonov, the healer attached to the MinKol unit, mixing up potions at Hogwarts. Her head still felt awful. Her heart felt awful, waking up from that miserable dream, with the image of the cave at the bottom of Ararat firm-fixed into her mind and refusing to go away.

Tikhonov saw her and quickly stepped over, and handed her a hot, bubbling brew, propping her up to drink. It cleared the fuzzy disorientation the moment it hit her stomach, and she looked up urgently. "What…?"

"Councillor, you suffered a traumatic brain injury from the concussive force of the detonation. But it's now well on the mend. However, you must absolutely rest."

I last remember… Nothing? Being on a broom and… An explosion. How did I not die? "How did I not die?"

"I understand that the General saved you personally."

...Bellatrix. "Thank you," Hermione mouthed softly, and watched as he stepped away to other patients. She felt herself growing drowsy from the potion again, and feared the reimposition of the dream. Of the reminder of just how fungible her morality had become. But her mind fixed on another nasty image as she drifted off. Bellatrix, reminding her that she had Obliviated from her parents their entire memories of her life.

Oh, God… The misery in her fading consciousness washed over her in waves.

Then felt cool black leather pushing into one of her hands. Gripping it. Holding it. She still passed out, but the relief washed over her, and reminded her that she was still a person. That she was still loved. That her choices had brought that love to her, and saved it, and kept Her alive, and that was the choice that she had made.

Bella was here, with her, at her bedside. Holding Hermione's hand in her own gloved one. Filled with silly behaviours and pretensions and hangups. Wild, manic, impulsive. Beautiful. Deadly in combat. A genius who had invented a new class of magic. A mother.

Absolutely her's.

The dream faded away into a melange of other images. Kitezh, Astana, even Sebastopol, for all the fear when it happened, now seemed happy and reassuring as a memory. A memory of coming together with the woman she loved. Hermione slept, and peacefully, too, as long as Bellatrix sat there, quietly holding her hand. In the ward at Hogwarts, where she had at least returned, after six bloody, brutal years.


Bellatrix sat in the Headmaster's office. She had been here countless times, mostly during her own Hogwarts years, as Dumbledore would gravely lecture her about how she was wasting her potential with the latest pranks, the latest fight, the latest scandal. She racked up as many demerits as she did accolades for her amazingly high performance on the OWLs and NEWTs. She didn't care about any of it. She was contemptuous of Dumbledore, too, calling him Dumblefuck behind his back even in her school days. She could see the way that time and time and time again he did everything he could to favour his precious Gryffindors, his precious 'Lions', while treating with contempt and hatred the Slytherins, never putting in the same effort, never giving them the same options, always taking every opportunity to humiliate them. Slytherin kids grew up feeling like they were the enemy—the only thing standing in the way of progress, decency, and the triumph of light magic in the British wizarding world.

So naturally it became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and Slytherin students focused on dark magic, on blood purity traditionalism, and on standing in the way of his self-proclaimed progress. What else could they do, when the Ministry of Magic let Britain's premier wizarding school—the only one which was allowed to administer NEWTs and therefore the only one that permitted any kind of high achievement career path—be run by an arrogant wizard who demanded the whole world orbit around his vision of sanitised, innocent magic. His delusion that he foisted on everything else to make himself happy about Grindelwald, when every one of the old families knew the dark powers, knew that the legends were a bit truer than anyone gave them credit for.

The kind of legends which led straight to the Door in the base of Ararat. Bellatrix poured out a thimble of firewhiskey, and drank it, sharp and neat. Her Legilimency had only improved as the war went on, and she couldn't help but feel Hermione's memories there when the girl roiled on her sick bed, vulnerable, healing, her mind open to the pain of her actions. She wished like anything else that she could have spared Hermione the act of killing Amycus like that, but what was done was done, and there was no use pining for the impossible outcomes of the past. Fate just as well would have kept them from ever meeting, for all it would have spared Hermione of killing Amycus' soul.

But now, it just weighed on her and reminded her of what she had done. Though it was true that she had never done it before, she had reached out and used the slur she'd magically carved with Goblin steel into Hermione's arm. Used it to help her, still, but used it nonetheless. Taken advantage of a magical connection which Bellatrix was well aware she could manipulate for more, if she wanted to. A magical connection, the mere prospect of which was so horrible to Hermione that Hermione had suggested severing her own arm over it. And Bellatrix was decent enough that, feeling awful about the loss of her arm, imagining Hermione similarly suffering an amputation was unfathomable. Hermione was the one who had held her right hand as she lost her left. That still mattered to her, now that they were together, beyond words. She dreaded the mere prospect, the dark fantasy of having to reprise the gesture for the woman she loved. And yet, she had done exactly what she had promised not to do. Your promises and your lies both always catch up with you, she thought bitterly, and contemplated another glass.

One of the guards knocked on the door, interrupting, and Bellatrix jerked up. All of Umbridge's obnoxious pink crap had already been removed, at least. That counted for something, or at least it better.

"There's a group of visitors, General. They were passed through by Councillor Naryshkina."

Obviously not a problem, then… She looked up, and then jerked in surprise.

It was Andy. With Tonks. Andy, in the traditional robes of a witch, no less, with her hat held under her left arm to the side, and a Slytherin scarf looped over her robes. Bellatrix had never seen Andy with anything Slytherin since she had been disowned, but then, Bellatrix had seen precious little of her sister in the past years…

"Bella, you're sitting in my chair," Andy said drolly. Tonks had this terribly amused grin on her face, which seemed to break through what was otherwise a painful and pitiful expression, a look like the one a person had when they found something funny—at 0700 in the morning on the day after an all-night drinking session when they had been woken up by someone after two hours of sleep.

"Your chair?" Bella managed one of the most absolutely blank stares of her life, trying to process that statement. She didn't really think through the implications of Tonks' appearance.

"Oh yes." She extended a scroll to Bella, which unfolded of its own volition:


Order-in-Council

Approved by Her Grace the Duchess of Lancaster

Viceroy for His Majesty...


Bellatrix flicked across the formal declaration which stated, in the name of King Charles on the behest of Narcissa, that …

She blinked and read it again.

Lady Andromeda Black-Tonks shall be henceforth hold all the prerogatives, duties and responsibilities of the Headmistress, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and shall bring it into conformance with good governance under its Charter, under the regular supervision of the Department of Magical Education, Ministry of Magic, of His Majesty's Government.

Bellatrix looked up blankly. "What the hell, Andy?"

Tonks broke down laughing, though it was tinged with an edge of mania that Bellatrix was sympathetic to, as it was much like her own.

Bellatrix looked at that, and then looked at Andromeda. "Wait, is this a bloody joke?"

"No, absolutely not," Andy said, and then sighed, and scooted one chair around the desk, pushing it up against the big high-backed leather chair in which Bella sat, and settling down in it casually and leaning across her sister, as Tonks stared at some of the ghastly pink Umbridge-things Bellatrix had swept on the floor, breaking in the process.

"On the contrary," Andy continued after a moment of silence from her older sister, "It made perfect sense, when Narcissa put me to it. You see, Bella, there are only Slytherin students here, and they've been indoctrinated since the Dark Lord's conquest, only the students who will be entering their senior year have any experience of a world without him, and there are very few of those, as almost all the classes in the past six years have seen all of their members passed out after six years, and passing their NEWTs, so that they can be sent to war production jobs or front-line fighting positions a year early. I am a Slytherin, and you know very well that despite the direction my life took me, I can certainly speak the language. I am a pureblood myself, but," she nodded to her daughter, "I have proved amply that I can assuage the concerns of muggles for the conduct of wizards, and also, that I can show the entire magical community compassion while still standing for what's right. And I am tied to Narcissa, which means she can trust what I will do here. Is that perfect? Certainly not. Did I ever expect it?" She laughed. "Also certainly not. But Narcissa put it to me, and honestly, it made a great deal of sense. If magical Britain is going to have a future, we are going to have to build it with the youth, ourselves. I didn't want a place in government, but I do admit… My own experience at Hogwarts, your experience, it was not a good one, and the rot only grew worse over the years. Our traditions were not taught in Dumbledore's era, and yet for all his love of a progressive vision of wizarding-kind, little was done to keep muggle-borns safe at the school. I think we need to make all wizards and witches of Britain confident in their history—whether or not they're muggleborns or purebloods, they are the people of this soil."

"Well, you're the Headmistress now," Bellatrix stared at her middle sister for a moment. "I kept encouraging you to do more when you were in Nizhniy, but I never … well, you are a Black."

"I am," Andy agreed, and pointed a single imperious finger at her daughter, who stared back with something of a who me, mom? expression. "And she's also a Black, Bella."

"Yes," Bellatrix agreed. "But if she starts presenting herself in public as one, there will be a lot more people calling her Nymphadora."

Tonks groaned despite herself.

"So, I will … Give you your chair," the eldest Black then acknowledged, and rose, and handed it off to her sister. With a laugh, Andy sat down, and put her hat on the desk.

Bella, rather than sit again, walked around to the other side of the office, pacing.

"I heard that Hermione was wounded," Andy offered solicitously. "Is she improving?"

"She is," a nod. "Two days now, and she was awake for a while, but very troubled. The detonation which dropped a span of the viaduct injured her… Badly. I… Well, it was a near thing to rescue her in the dark."

"A fell feat, to catch someone out of the air," Andy shook her head, and grinned. Bellatrix felt no impulse to explain further, and let herself, guiltily, bask in her sister's praise for a moment, and then step out of the way as Andy pointed her wand at the pink enchanted teapot.

"That was Umbridge's," Bellatrix said, aghast. "Do you really need tea that badly?"

"It's an enchanted teapot. I haven't had one around in quite a while, and I don't care who's it was before. The water boils," Andy answered archly.

"Mum drinks tea by the bucket," Tonks observed from her chair.

"I thought so. It'll be by the tanker after a few years of this job." Bellatrix nodded gravely. "So, we're in control of Britain and Hogwarts. Legally, anyhow. Still need to deal with a few armies for the former."

"Only you would put it that way," Andy murmured. "So what's next?"

"What is next? You're the Headmistress! Well, where is Delphini and Teddy?"

"In Inverness," Andy smiled. "Narcissa offered. I'm not sure if she's sleeping, but she considered it very important to get a hand on the situation here. And all the officers in the headquarters treat them like darlings, anyway, so it's like they have a hundred parents there. I'll send them for them as soon as the situation here is firmly under control."

"Ah." Bella shrugged and leaned against the wall. "So …"

Andy quickly cut her off. "Before you ask, or indeed, talk anything more about family matters," she shot a look at Tonks, and then fixed Bella with a particularly uncomfortable stare. "I want you to bring Umbridge here, please. Immediately."

"Oh, is that all?" Bellatrix tossed her hair back. What the devil does Andy want with that pink bitch? "Sure. I'll send for her, it will be just a minute to send her up from the cell. Why, though? She's perfectly useless. No intel at all. I already checked."

"Did you look around in that scummy mind of her's and see where they buried my husband?" Tonks' words bit about as sharp as words could bite, and Bellatrix froze.

"Oh." Bellatrix had never prepared for this. She wasn't ready for the moment when she had to directly face the fact—that the army she had been a part of had killed her niece's husband, before her eyes in fact, and therefore the woman she had been slowly growing more—tolerant? fond?–of was expecting her help in recovering the body of her husband. The father of her child. Because, you know, Dolohov killed your nephew-in-law. She tried to think of what to say, but nothing productive came to mind.

"I'll get her at once," she said in the end, nothing more, nothing left, in a very small voice, and turned away. Tonks' eyes never left her until she departed the room.


Umbridge was bedraggled, certainly, as a few days in an improvised prison cell would do to someone. The first day had been the most unpleasant, no doubt, before the castle had created a bathroom for her in the room in which she had been locked—as its powerful magic had a habit of rearranging things to do. I bet you had never had to shit in a bucket before, Bella smirked to herself. It was easy to push aside the sudden, unexpected wave of guilt that she felt, over the death of Remus Lupin.

Bella stood next to Andy, sitting in the Headmistress' chair which had until a few days ago been Umbridge's. She looked around her former office with dull shock. Andy had unpacked some of her things, and the portraits had been taken up from the basement and put on the walls—Dumbledore's portrait had managed some nice words for Andromeda as the new Headmistress, at least, mumbling on about how proud of her he was.

The two sisters, side by side. Tonks was there—but having taken the form of a male MinKol officer, unrecognisable to Umbridge. It seemed that Umbridge was almost struck dumb by seeing the two of them side by side. Finally she spoke. "Treason to Our Lord, I already expected, Lestrange. But consorting with Blood Traitors? Andromeda Tonks?"

Bella cackled, and the sound made Umbridge freeze. Perhaps, then, she recognised that she had just gone down a path which was not wise, with one of the most dangerous witches alive. Bellatrix rested her hand on the back of Andy's chair, while her sister reached up and gently put a hand against her hip, urging her to be calm. Bellatrix did not feel like being calm, though, but she respected Andy and managed to, against all odds, in fact remain calm.

"Miss Umbridge, I don't think insults are going to help your cause," Andy at last observed, quite mildly, and reached for her tea. Umbridge was offered none, and neither was she given the opportunity to sit. "I am now the Headmistress of Hogwarts."

"My good Slytherin students will never obey a Blood Traitor," Umbridge answered with a haughty sneer. "Your sister has given you a poisoned chalice."

Andromeda raised her cup, and sipped her tea, eyeing Umbridge with brown eyes across the top. "We'll see. But I really meant it. You should stop insulting me. We have brought you here to ask a particular question, and I would have you answer it."

"I will answer nothing," Umbridge rallied and smirked. "You must provide me with a solicitor."

"Why would you be provided with a solicitor?" Andy asked, almost in what seemed like genuine confusion.

"It is my right under law for a trial before the Wizengamot!"

"You will not be tried before the Wizengamot," Andy answered, and the grin which Bella could no longer hide from her face began to make Umbridge lose her nerve. Andy, alas, was too good of a person to prolong this. "No, Miss Umbridge, you are to be Attaindered by an Act of Parliament."

The vinegar left her in that moment. It had returned, when she had realised that Bellatrix did not intend to immediately execute her, and she thought, or fancied, that she could hold her own at a trial. Perhaps it had been easy for her to fancy that the side they fought against would insist on trials.

But Narcissa was not Dumbledore. An Act Attainder. And Andy looked cool and inflexible at her, as if bothered not a wit by it, despite her own association, once upon a time (albeit in a non-combat role), with the Order of the Phoenix. The office took on a certain chill, and Bellatrix was laughing silently, gloved hand gripped onto the top of the back of the chair.

No, Narcissa really wasn't Dumbledore.

"So, Umbridge," Bella began, and cut off, because she was laughing. The woman in front of her looked more and more panicked, as if the psychological terror of a bemused Bellatrix Black was exceeding all that she could handle in that moment, as she understood exactly what an Act Attainder meant. "Best not insult my sister, or Her Grace, Duchess Narcissa may be inclined to bring harsher terms to Parliament for your Attainder."

"Parliament," Umbridge stuttered, "is a small band of refugees meeting in Russia."

The older witch's eyes glinted. "I know. After a few cabbage winters, they aren't likely to be in a forgiving mood, either. So are you going to cooperate?"

"I know nothing of importance!" Umbridge shrieked. "Nothing! Nothing! I just ran the school! With discipline, and the decency of Our Lord's doctrine!"

"But you know where the bodies are buried, don't you?" Bellatrix straightened up, went in sharp for the kill. "Don't you ?"

"What bodies, I…"

"The bodies of the defenders of Hogwarts, don't act stupid, you were the one in charge of cleaning up and taking control of the school," Bellatrix continued. "We want to know where the graves are. What did you do to them? We want them."

"You were there yourself!" Umbridge, glaring, looking bedraggled, horrified, scared, but perhaps not without a bit of fight or perhaps with some reckless arrogance still, shot back. It made Andy ever so faintly wince.

"Oh yes," Umbridge was laughing. "Don't like remembering that do you? The Dark Lord's Lieutenant, and you're faking being part of a happy family again. Well, she was there, why don't you just go ahead and ask?"

"You well know," Bellatrix replied with a voice now utterly cold, "that the Dark Lord instructed me to a hot pursuit of the beaten enemy. I wasn't there to see what you did with the dead. And he would not have granted that task to anyone other than one of his most completely useless and obsequious followers. So go ahead and answer, or I'll show you how much my Legilimency has improved in the past years. I'll enjoy taking that information from you even more than I enjoyed putting Rookwood under the Imperious curse before he was executed."

Both her sister and Tonks, hidden as the guard, flinched at that. It was a visceral reminder of just what Bellatrix was capable of.

But it got the message across to Umbridge. She wilted. "Alright. The Dark Lord told me to never reveal it. He never wanted anyone to know… To know the location of Harry Potter's body."

"It's one grave?"

"One mass grave," she agreed.

One mass grave for the defenders of Hogwarts.


Notes:

An Act Attainder is a law passed by Parliament convicting and punishing someone for a crime. This is legal under the Westminster system, but has been specifically outlawed in some other Common Law jurisdictions like the United States. Winston Churchill proposed it as a means to punish the Nazis after WWII, because he opposed the concept of ex post facto law which Nuremberg represented.