Harry

That evening, both Andy and Tonks were sitting together in the Headmistress' apartments. The accumulated petty trifles of Umbridge's personal possessions had been taken away. In their place had come the packs the women had brought. Over time, Andy would doubtless fill the space with her own personal possessions. She was also going to be one of the first Headmistresses of Hogwarts in a very long time who would be prospectively raising young children at the school while running it.

But, Tonks had insisted she thought that was okay for Teddy. Andy knew Bella would have no objections, when it came to Delphini. The more wizards and witches saw her as a normal girl, the better. Ultimately, it would be possible for Bella and Hermione to take over raising their daughter, but… Their daughter. Yes, it's true. They're a couple in that serious sense.

It's for the best, by far. Delphini will do so much better raised by Hermione than by Bellatrix alone, considering… Considering her niece's parentage on the paternal side. That was the lion in the room, best never spoke of again. Delphini Black was Lady Slytherin, Lady Gaunt, and perhaps it would have been best to let those names be fallow and forgotten and those lines extinct, but instead, someday, she would also be Lady Black, and all three lines would be combined into one. But if she was raised in a marriage of two witches, one a muggle-born, she might yet just turn out all alright.

In the meanwhile of her reverie, Tonks had uncorked the bottle of Firewhisky, and poured out another round for them both. Andy raised the snifter and nodded to her daughter. "Thank you."

"Not a problem, mum. Being a widow sucks."

"It does," Andy agreed wryly. That was never something she had ever, ever, ever wanted to share with her daughter. But there they were. "We'll have everything arranged for tomorrow." Umbridge had named a spot just inside of the Forbidden Forest, far enough in to deter casual approach, far enough out to avoid conflicts with the Centaurs and Acromantulas.

"Thank you." Tonks paused. "I want to run out there and start digging in the middle of the dark. We're going to find all of them, mum..." She trailed off, and slammed back half of the snifter.

Andy reached out and put a hand on her daughter's shoulder. "Easy. I'm not actually sure you should see it. It's… You know it's been six years, and there's going to need to be forensics."

"Mum, he's there in a hole in the ground. I feel guilty about leaving him there even one more day." Her face twisted up into a sneer of rage and fury as her hair was shot through with red and black in an involuntary change. "Honestly, Remus… Neville… Harry. They're all there. McGonagall. Half the Order. And Gods know what was done to them."

Andy sank back in her chair, trying to manage the weight of her daughter's self-destructive impulses. Tonks still had a sense of the absurd, but it had been twisted in war. And she had the terrible self-destructive impulse that she showed now. Yes, it was not about risk-tasking, but it was an awful desire to see the grave exhumed, with no benefit to herself. Andy tried to be reasonable. "Dear, think about it this way… If you let others do it, it's a job for them. A reverent job, a bad job, they know these were the wives, husbands, fathers, sons, mothers and daughters of other living people… They won't do a bad job. But they don't know them personally. You do. You absolutely do not want to see this. You want to see the funerals."

Tonks clenched her teeth, staring like she could see through the wall. Her right fist tightened, clenched around the heavy glass of firewhisky. "I want to see Remus one more time, no matter what condition he's in. I want to see Neville. I want to see Harry."

Andromeda closed her eyes, and took a gulp from her own snifter, letting it burn down her throat. "Nobody will stop you, when they're in their coffins. But. Let the specialists do all they can first, please?"

Tonks gave her a single small nod.

Andy leaned against her daughter and squeezed her into a hug. She accepted; they just lay together, hugging, mother and daughter, for some length of time that seemed like forever. What else could they do? Since the day they escaped from the Humber, almost six years before, since the battle of Hogwarts, when her brother-in-law, Tonks' uncle, had helped guide them across the sea…

Billions dead.

Friends mouldering in mass graves.

War to the knife, war to the bone, war without end.

Their own family at the middle of it. Always in the front rank.

...On both sides.

Some of the people that Tonks wanted to mourn had been killed by Bellatrix on that miserable day. Bella. The manic genius older sister, never happy or comfortable with her life… Just like Andy had been. She reached out, held her daughter closer, then, thankful for her as she could be for few things at that point. "We're going to put it back together, I promise," she whispered softly, face pressed up into her daughter's hair.

"Only by forgetting the past," Tonks answered in quiet agony.

Duchess Narcissa.

Bellatrix, Lady Black.

Andy's childhood playmates. The Black Sisters had always loved each other. They had always been close to each other, until, she had made her fateful decision to escape from the life appointed for her, and blood purity had torn her family apart. The same ideology which would ultimately be the cause of her comforting her daughter for the death of her husband—and for the death of the boy who had saved Tonks' life.

There wouldn't be any easy answers. There wouldn't be any clean redemption or quick solution—Tonks was just working her way through the reality of a world where a woman like Bellatrix could be both villain and hero, and never account for anything. Andy couldn't find anything to say to that. She was so thankful that she had her daughter—and she was so thankful she had her sisters, and a family, after all this terrible war. Her husband was dead, but, Bella had not been involved in his murder. She could move on.

It was harder for Tonks. Quietly, in the midst of her mother's arms, the metamorph shifted into a smaller form—herself in her veriform, her natural form, at around the age of eleven right before going to Hogwarts. Tangled masses of brown curls, liquid grey eyes, very fair, freckled skin. Andy was used to her daughter sometimes transforming in her arms and shifted to hold her closer around loose clothes. This was Tonks admitting to her mum in a most vulnerable way just how much affection she needed.

So her mother held her closer. "There is going to be a future for us all, with the Dark Lord defeated. We will manage it."

"Not for the dead, and … Bellatrix." In fact, at that moment, Tonks looked more like Bellatrix than she ever normally did. But not looking like a classic Black was part of her preference, normally. For precisely this reason. "What's going to happen. Tell me honestly. You can see, just like it was today, how she herself—she vacillates from guilt to cackling delight in punishing her former allies. I can feel part of that in me. The contempt for the absurdity of convention and rules, sure. But, gods, I don't know her as a person. I'm scared of it. She killed them. What's going to happen to her? Tell me honestly."

"Your aunt Narcissa is a very clever woman. She made the King grant her County Palatine powers over Lancashire. In fact, her choice of her reward was all about Bella, because she loves Bella, just… Just like I do, Dora. In fact, she intends to make Lancashire into an autonomous territory by calling its own Parliament, and promoting a cultural revival there with the teaching of Cumbric. She knows it will mostly fail, but she can exploit English political divisions anyway to make the reform stick. The cultural zeitgeist of the age has been completely broken. People are open to the past—democracy, capitalism, modernism all seem called into question by the revelation of magic. So she believes opposition to the autonomy of Lancashire will be muted. Anyway, the important thing is that she is now the ruler in the sense of a true feudal vassal of Charles; she has the writ there, not the King. And she did that for Bella. Oh, it will make her rich, and make Draco the foremost Peer of the Realm, sure, and she did it for those reasons, too. But for her entire natural life, Narcissa will be able to deny writ of arrest for Bella. No government in London will, under law, be able to compel her surrender. As long as Bella stays within the borders of the County Palatine, she will be immune from arrest."

"And… That's that? Manchester, Liverpool, Lancaster, Blackpool, the Fells, the southern part of the Lakes Country, it's all there," Tonks murmured softly. "Ancient House, too. And so Narcissa has set it up so Bellatrix can roam there and live there however she pleases, with no restrictions. That's all the Longbottoms, Sirius, Dobby and all the others will get. That's a pretty tepid measure of justice."

"Her arm, too." Andy said, thinking of her sister and the almost irreconcilable difference between what she wanted—her big sister back, damnit—and what her daughter wanted. Or thought she wanted. And even this scarcely seemed like the truth. Andy was well aware that the game had changed. Doggerland's rising was being treated as miraculous by many. Narcissa and Bellatrix's currency was rising by the day. This was a world of fell magic. There was no particular government on their side prepared to stand up and demand a criminal accounting of Bellatrix Black. The County Palatine might prove only a fall-back.

Tonks was silent for a little while.

"Do you believe that redemption is possible?"

"Yes, mum. But what is it without justice?"

"I think Bella's still trying to figure that out for herself. I just have to have faith that her relationship with Hermione represents that change, as much as she struggles with the outward expression of it. I've got to. I want all of us to be happy."

On this rawest of nights in this rawest of places, Tonks was not yet ready to follow, and Andy could just hold her, and hope for the end of the war to come soon, to give them the time they needed. But she doubted it would be so, and held her daughter all the closer for it.


Hermione stirred in bed again. The Ward. She was used to this place, too used to it, to put it mildly. She had spent so much time here thanks to her adventures with Harry and Ron in school—and then, the less adventurous adventures, trying to face Voldemort. Being petrified by the Basilisk, getting turned into a catgirl (some deranged part of her brain wondered how Bellatrix would have reacted to that—would it have been arousing or off-putting?)-God no stop don't think that don't think that you must still be under the influence of drugs…

Harry. Her mind locked onto thinking of Harry, and her emotions fell. But there was a feeling of someone near, nonetheless. She could feel crisp black leather against her hand, against her cheek.

Bellatrix.

Her mind felt pulled in two directions. Harry and Bellatrix. The two parts of her life that she could never quite reconcile. Hermione tried to blink her eyes open, and saw here there—the one who lived. Cascade of curled dark hair, patrician features, eyes rich with real sympathy, sympathy for her, sympathy which had burned away the memories of hate and torture. Sitting in a chair at her bedside.

Awwh, how romantic. Hermione smiled, rallied, temporarily cleared her head of the thoughts of the dead, and coughed to clear her throat. Bellatrix pressed a cup of water to her lips and she drank, before then managing to speak. "I admit, having a girlfriend here to wake up to in the past would have been nice."

"Councillor Tikhonov says you can leave when you finish waking up, but you need to be on light duty for another two weeks with a continuation of a potion regimen."

"What happened, anyway?"

"Not remembering it is supposed to be normal, he called it a … Traumatic Brain Injury. From the concussive blast. Unfortunately, several of the team curse-breaking and disposing of the charges… Failed, and didn't make it. But, of course, as you can tell, we took Hogwarts anyway. The Lovegood girl brought up some tree trunks as improvised bridging gear, and we crossed the span they dropped. Umbridge was using children to defend the castle." Bellatrix's voice took on a sneering contempt, there.

Hermione, reflecting on her own experiences, and on the way others reacted to them, had grown more and more disgusted by the thought. She twisted up her lips and frowned, growing tense throughout her body. Honestly, Umbridge leading those poor kids into battle made her wonder why the bitch was still alive. Something just snapped, as Bellatrix busied herself helping Hermione be propped up on the pillows. "Why didn't you just kill her?"

"Oh, I wanted to, but you remember. Cissy made me promise not to. Anyway, Andy said she'll be subject to an Attainder."

"...Andy's here? An Act of Attainder? Cissy's planning that, isn't she?"

"There's no way to reconstitute the courts quickly, and it lets her levy punishment as she sees fit, so of course she is," Bella shrugged. "And yes, apparently… Cissy appointed her the new Headmistress of Hogwarts. She arrived with Tonks, though, her first act is to organise, well.."

"What?" Hermione looked to her, catching her tone, telling how miserable it was. Bella was really, genuinely uncomfortable in that moment. "What's her first act?"

"It's an awful business and I don't know if you really want to reprise it."

"Actually I want to know everything, and you of all people know better than to try and spare me after all that I have seen, Bella."

"They're conducting a recovery operation at the mass grave where Umbridge had the defenders of Hogwarts buried, after the battle."

Hermione froze, and felt herself shivering. Harry. There would be no ignoring it, now. "Do they know … Is Harry's body in it?"

"I don't know," Bellatrix answered frankly. "I stayed out of that whole business; I had better things to do. It was all on Umbridge, and whatever instructions the Dark Lord gave her, I suppose."

The younger witch sucked in her breath, and grabbed at Bella's gloved hand, squeezed hard. It was her metal hand, and it evidenced no pain no matter how tightly she held it. Maybe a little bit of her was glad for that because she was gripping, squeezing, hard enough to cause pain in anyone else, on any other limb. It was a reminder that she was sleeping with the enemy. That at the time her best friend had died, Bella… Had been on the other side.

"Fuck me," Hermione muttered, her mind seized with that insatiable desire to know things that she had always held. "I've got to see."

"No, I really don't encourage it. It's been six years, there won't be much left except for bones. Except for clothes and … Fuck, I don't even want to talk about this, 'Mione."

Hermione fixed a hard look at her. "I'm not leaving Harry. I'll put it to you plain, Bellatrix. We'll go together. I'm going to be there for my friend. It's the last thing I can do for him. And you're going to be with me, and you'll suck it up and be there for me, while I'm there for him. Yes it's going to be awful and yes it's going to be burned into my mind for the rest of the rest of my left, but that's the life I was given, and I am not taking the coward's way out with being his friend. We're going."

Bellatrix looked at her for a solid minute, silent. Then her head jerked unevenly in acknowledge. "Let's get you up, get you dressed, get you some tea, and something simple to settle your stomach. You don't want to go just to faint. And then we'll go together." The sigh that followed seemed to carry all the bitter resignation in the world.


Dressed in their greatcoats against a cold rain of early spring upon the Highlands, Bellatrix and Hermione stood inside of the forbidden forest. Hermione still felt weak, and she leaned against Bella to stand. A group of MinKol wizards who specialised in this unpleasant task had been brought in. There were only four of them.

Andy had arrived, and made arrangements that the older Slytherin students, who had collaborated in Umbridge's defence of the castle, should be required to assist them, as there were not enough MinKol personnel to properly excavate the mass grave on their own. After some reflection, Andromeda had decided—since, as the Headmistress of Hogwarts, they were her's to punish—that assisting with the recovery of the remains would be their punishment.

A hole had been crudely dug in the woods. Here, the bodies had been thrown, and a loose layer of soil cast over it. Later on, more had been added, to hide them from any student who might go looking, rather than to provide them any dignity. They could see Centaurs watching from the edge of the woods further back, but they did nothing to intervene.

The team had brought in a line of standard issue Russian military body bags. Hermione didn't have the slightest idea of how many of these had been used over the past five years, and here they were at Hogwarts too. "Cargo 200," she muttered softly; dead soldiers, going for their final burial. Some of the first in this very long and very bloody war.

They started to haul the bodies out, and Hermione's breath hitched. She winced, visibly, unable to believe what she was seeing, and grabbed tightly onto Bella's artificial arm. Held it harder, squeezed it as hard as she could as her mind went blank, and then pulled hard, hard, turning away, pulling so hard she wasn't sure if someone inside she wanted to rip the metal arm off of Bella's body, and perhaps beat her with it. She stumbled and staggered away, feeling sick despite a humble meal of a half cup of tea and buttered bread. She staggered, dragging Bella, dragging a Bella who had seen, too, who knew precisely what had happened… When did she know, when did she know!?

Hermione shoved her lover into the trunk of a tree at the edge of the woods, hard. "When did you know? Damn it, when did you know?"

"Now," Bellatrix gasped. "Now. I swear it to Nemetona as matron of this place, may I be struck down if I lie. I didn't go back to Hogwarts for years after the battle, I didn't want to, I didn't need to. Hate the fucking place, to be honest with you."

Hermione had her grabbed by the lapels, her eyes wide, she could feel the rage inside of her body. She could feel it. She wasn't sure she wanted to feel anything else, as waves of both fury and nausea pounded through her. "Not, helping." She gasped out, almost shaking Bella before she relented of it, and let the older witch stagger down from the tree trunk. And then fell into her, sobbing, fell into her warm embrace and the crush of her heavy clothes and coat. "Oh my God. Why why why?"

Bella's voice took on a flat timbre. "Know this… He was mutilated when she buried him, to cripple his spirit, and make it unbearable for you."

Shuddering, shaking, shivering, Hermione looked up, her face pale. She recognised that. "That's a paraphrase of The Oresteia."

Bella smiled weakly. "How do you think Narcissa was named?"

"Can there be no justice?" Enfolded in her arms, Hermione punched Bella's chest, padded through the multiple layers she wore, the cold rain lashing them.

"The Gods have a way of bringing it in their own time," Bellatrix murmured, barely above a whisper, refusing to be shifted from her place by Hermione's futile blows.

"I believed in nothing, but now, I feel if I don't believe in something, that I shall have nothing inside of me at all," Hermione wailed, feeling an emptiness and a rage within her. "The parson of that stupid church my parents went to when I was little would tell me to trust it all to Christ, but I don't fucking want to forgive! I need to know, I need to know! Where the hell are they?"

"The Gods of my ancestors need no such meekness from you, Hermione," Bella murmured, the liquid pools of her gaze, misted with the faintest of tears, staring into Hermione's brown eyes—utterly overcoming with sobbing, but her face struck pale with a growing rage.

"Good. Then perhaps I will not need to ask their forgiveness for this!" She pulled away from Bella, staring at her, her mind made up. Turned. Began to run back toward Hogwarts.

"Narcissa wants her in Inverness alive, Hermione! Narcissa wants her alive!" Bella's voice echoed after her, but she did not care.


Hermione had wiped the tears from her face by the time she arrived back in the castle. They could not be discerned from the water that covered her head, and melted down into her greatcoat which had kept her warm in the Highland rain. The guards snapped to attention and saluted as she passed. There was nobody to stop her.

"Alohomora securitas," she directed, specifically, to unlock the sealed door on Umbridge's cell. The woman looked up to her from the floor where she sat. The castle had provided her a bathroom after the first days—its magic reconfigured it to the demand of people—and she was not that bad off, except that she was bedraggled and unwashed for almost a week.

She opened her mouth. Of course she did. Of course she had to. "Why, Hermione Granger… The years have not been kind to you."

"I've been living in freedom the entire time. I'd say that's kind enough. What did you do to them, Umbridge? What did you do ?"

"I don't know anything about what you're talking about," she answered, her eyes confused at first, and then growing distressed.

"Like Hell. You were responsible for disposing of our heroes. You know exactly what I'm referring to."

"I did nothing, though. I just had a grave arranged."

"A hole in the forest, with a foot of dirt carelessly strewn across the top. But that means you had to know. Where are their heads, Umbridge? THEY'RE MISSING THEIR HEADS! WHERE ARE THEIR HEADS!?"

"The Dark Lord did it! The Dark Lord did it! I had nothing to do with it!"

"You buried the bodies, though. Where? Where? WHERE?" Hermione would never know exactly the point where she became capable of it, but capable of it, she was.

"Crucio." She didn't scream it. She didn't shout it. But there was something dreadful in her voice, dreadfully sure, and possessed of a pale righteous fury to compare to few other things.

And then Umbridge did all the screaming that was needed, for both of them. "Where?"

Sobbing and gasping and convulsing on the ground, Umbridge stuttered in blind fear. "Their heads were hung in the Great Hall until the repairs were complete and school opened for the next year… I got the Dark Lord's permission to take them down before the children came, to avoid upsetting them, they only hung for the summer, I promise, I promise, I wasn't the one who did it, I wasn't the one…"

"Hermione, what the fuck just happened?"

Hermione slammed the cell shut in Umbridge's face, and slowly turned, to see Tonks standing there. She felt dead, absolutely dead inside. Tonks was staring at her in horror. She saw you do it.

A tired, indifferent shrug, and she walked toward Tonks."

"Hermione…"

"Voldemort mutilated them before he buried them, Tonks. I'm going to let the team know where the heads are buried, so they can be – put together, in their coffins."

Tonks froze. Looked down toward the cell, where Umbridge was still shaking and sobbing in shock and pain for the Cruciatus curse. Looked back to Hermione.

Without another word, Tonks turned and followed Hermione out.

At the courtyard, Hermione stepped out, back into the rain, to find Bellatrix standing there, talking to Andromeda, with her eyes wide. She thought about what to say. She wondered if she should rage, or if she should hug her, but in the end, she just nodded at the two Black sisters. "She told me where," Hermione offered simply to them.

"Hermione, did you…" Bella stared.

"She's still alive."

Behind her, Tonks just nodded once.

Andromeda started to cry.