The Flowers of the Forest
Hermione and Bellatrix returned to Inverness the next day. Steam was brought up on the Hogwarts Express, and the small group of prisoners—Morsmordre Aurors and Umbridge—was loaded aboard with some guards. Hermione sat in silence, as they went south, making time through the vast expanse of the Hogwarts preserve. It fit into the world like a glove, a non-euclidean geometry which had obscured the true shape of things. The Forbidden Forest was huge, the area around Hogsmeade was huge, and the Goblin communities in the area also were huge. In fact, the preserve had something like 900 sq. km. of land, which was almost impossible for Muggles to access, and when confused ramblers and hikers did get in, they saw only ruins; in fact, Scotland was 1.2% larger by land than anyone knew, because of the area around Hogwarts.
Hermione kept herself distracted by thinking how the map of the world when change when the war was over, and all these places would be documented and acknowledged. But, it had its own problems. Thule, Lyonesse, the Hesperides (which included Mam, Antillia, and St. Brendan's), Hy-Brasil and Ys were all entirely magical communities. They were strongly pureblood. A great bronze statue of Princess Dahut still marked the gates of Ys, celebrating her revolt against her father which she had led because of his intent of mandating conversion to Christianity, and allowing Muggles into the city. She had driven her father out, and drowned the priests, obscuring the city from Muggle sight. Though all had small populations—the Hesperides were the greatest with fifty thousand people—they would present an enormous challenge to integrate with the world. The death of rationalism. But science and engineering still produced results. Results that ranged from trains to guns to aeroplanes.
All used in the service of War, now.
They ran past the anti-apparation wards, and halted on the line. It was time. The guards collected Umbridge and the dozen or so other prisoners. Hermione wordlessly nodded to Bella, she wasn't in the mood to talk and the older witch saw enough of it that she understood not to bother her. They apparated separately, to avoid the discomfort of sidealong. In truth, Hermione was glad to be away from Hogwarts.
When they arrived in the city, the fact that they were transporting prisoners quickly became obvious. Umbridge and the others were pelted with stones in the street, and Hermione had to improvise a transfiguration of one of the buttons on her greatcoat into a police whistle; that did the trick, some things in British life did not change. "There there now, no shambles! We won't have a lynching in Scotland! It will be the King's Justice for them!"
That served to get them inside of the security cordon at the Royal Highland Hotel. The prisoners were then separated and hauled off to some goods vans spotted at the Inverness Station platforms and being used as detention cells. "I could use to never see her again," Hermione muttered, brushing down her uniform with her hands as she slung her coat onto a rack. That part of the hotel hadn't changed. Bella followed suit, but she couldn't resist sing-songing "oh, we may get one more chance…"
Hermione paused for a moment, shrugged, and headed up. She was surprised, when they arrived at Narcissa's office, to see … Blaise Zabini? No, she wasn't surprised, after all. He was dressed very finely, in a Royal Navy dress uniform of an Admiral. Narcissa saw them entering, and rose. "Ah, Bellatrix, Hermione, some renewed introductions are in order. If I may—Duke Blaise, the Duke of Albemarle. His squadrons have entered the North Sea to support the offensive."
"Lady Black, Colonel Granger."
In uniform, Hermione saluted. Bellatrix smiled and extended a gloved hand; Blaise took it. Then she peered a bit over his shoulder—and sucked in her breath. "Meli."
"Ah yes, I know that you and Lady Zabini are very well acquainted," Narcissa spoke as the very epitome of politeness. "Please, all of you, sit, take tea."
The Afro-Portuguese woman whose physical attractiveness at Bella's age, without the help of the Water of Life to heal her, in fact still exceeded Bella's. She exuded confidence and composure and controlled sensuality. Amélia Zabini had few rivals alive, including in the rumours of dark sorcery, black magic and murder which had accrued to her over the years, always without proof. She looked to Bellatrix for a long while, raising her own tea cup. Hermione had to thrust one into Bella's hands already prepared the way she liked it, with Bella distractedly taking the cup. "I'm glad you escaped," the Lady Black offered after a minute's silence.
"I'm glad you escaped, Bella," 'Meli' acknowledged at last. "I can tell that you have. Finally."
Hermione looked between the two quizzically. "I assume…"
"Colonel Granger, Bella and I were best friends at Hogwarts," Meli explained after a moment.
"Oh." Well, of course Bella had friends once. Still looks like they care about each other, even. "Was it hard, getting out of the south?"
"It was uncomfortable;" Meli acknowledged. "I crossed the frontier to Scotland packed into a goods van, then hiked across the Grampians until I was out of the range of any Morsmordre wizards using detection charms, and apparated here. Duchess Narcissa was already so kind as to arrange the services of a tailor, so all's well."
The picture of composure, indeed, and that after spending days sandwiched into a goods van. Mother and son—and who knew what kind of relationship that was—regarded each other for a moment. "Anyway, I'm very pleased, Blaise, that this all came together," Meli added, before looking to Narcissa. "So, what's next?"
Narcissa delicately and very deliberately used her wand to push back a single lock of blonde hair. "I send these two," she tapped it toward Bella and Hermione, "straight to the front, and we prepare for the push south. There will be some officers around to interview you, about the disposition of the forces in the Grampians. As for the rest? Well, perhaps it is time for me to explain in some detail my plan, in regard to our Celtic sisters and brothers." She leaned closer across her desk, the grin on her patrician face mingling the fair features of the Rosier with the Black, confident and in command. But that would still be the true test of what she intended.
And as much as she was sheepish to admit it to herself, Hermione was happy to ignore the weird dynamic between Mrs. Zabini and Bellatrix in favour of nerding out over proposed constitutional arrangements.
Lady Bellatrix Black. She had wanted the title for most of her life. The Noble and Most Ancient House of Black should have been her's, by the old laws they had once lived by, in ages past. Instead, she had been married off, and as the war destroyed line after line, she had crept closer to the right, only for it to fall into the hands of one Sirius Black.
And then, hating each other, they had both gone to Azkaban, but only one of them had deserved it.
In fact, Bellatrix was quite convinced nobody deserved Azkaban, but her conviction, she could not deny. Seeing the sea out beyond her headquarters command post, tents and canvas lean-tos on command tracks, still made her uncomfortable. Facing her mission on the Ushakov had been a terrible trial of her own soul.
But she had faced the storm, faced the ocean, faced Azkaban, and it was a ruin now. While the whole of Doggerland had been lifted out of the murk of the North Sea, as if it were an undoing of the ancient magic of the Storegga Slide (though the Slide itself remained firmly embedded in the abyssal of the Norwegian Sea), a crater was all that marked what had once been the highest point—Azkaban. In times hence people could hike to the heights of land on the island and find there the crater-lake, and wonder how it was wrought.
Well, that would be an immortal tribute to her, one way or another. There were few women who could be as well-recorded in history as she would. Boudicca and Queen Medb, mostly. Taking Aberdeen could be added to the list of accomplishments, though that counted for little as, from her headquarters just south of Milltimber, she watched the guns firing into the heights of the Kerloch. Unless they broke past Stonehaven, the rest might yet matter very little. Many invasions had been launched into England from the North in the history of the British Isles, and very few of them had succeeded.
Stonehaven itself was under fire from the cruisers Belfast and Aguirre, the later a Dutch-built ship loaned from the Peruvian Navy to the Morsmordre as reinforcements, and now under the White Ensign. The twenty 155mm cannon between them were hammering the town, wreathing the bell-tower over the market square with smoke and tongues of flame as buildings crumbled under the naval shelling. Three Sovremenny-class destroyers were also present, each bearing four automatic 130mm cannon and using them to add to the destruction. The war had finally come to visit the British Isles truly, and in the past week of storm, it had visited them like nothing else.
But most of the country was still untouched, and certainly un-nuked. Bellatrix had also observed, quite notably, that the Scottish troops she was opposing had withdrawn rather than fight street-to-street in Aberdeen and destroy the city. The Janissary divisions had been posted in the Highlands—they would not have withdrawn (despite the Scots arguably being better troops), but then, the city would have been destroyed. The Scottish national troops had preferred to fall back, establish their artillery at the Kerloch, and dig in at Stonehaven instead. In short, they were making decisions like they knew that their enemy was civilised.
She supposed she should take it as a compliment.
All well and good. Her job wasn't to defeat and destroy them decisively. Narcissa had made that abundantly clear. As Narcissa had put it, this campaign was educational. Bella had always preferred the kind of education which killed people, anyway. She could see Hermione, standing over some equipment, twelve paces away. A reminder of her own sense of guilt at the fact that they still hadn't had a conversation about the mark, about exactly how Bellatrix had saved her life on the viaduct. She was rationalising to herself that Hermione hardly needed more stress after the 'recovery operation' at Hogwarts.
She turned back to the magnified image before her. The tanks advanced cautiously against an enemy fighting hull-down to the west of Stonehaven, and the crackling of small arms marked where a single battalion of infantry was occupying buildings in the northern part of the town, waiting for the artillery to open paths for them.
Then, sharply, the scream of a jet overhead made her lower her wand, dispersing the enhancement spell that let her clearly see the action ahead, every muscle tensing and ready for action.
She at once readied her wand to cast a protego, instinctively, against an attack from above. But the Morsmordre Air Force had been devastated by the tsunamis—an unexpected stroke of luck to make the campaign easier—and several major airbases in the north of Scotland had already been brought back into action for the Russian Air Force. The jets were friendlies, passing into another engagement.
Hermione turned back toward her from the telex. "Seen what you wanted to?" She asked, absolutely composed, message in one hand, tea in the other.
"Not completely. I was distracted by the expectation we were about to be bombed."
"I think it's easier for the line soldiers to just ignore the planes. We can actually defend ourselves against them," Hermione agreed, brown skin flushed with warmth. The days were heating up but the drizzle off the coast still demanded greatcoats, but, it was easier to work one's self up to a sweat.
"That's a bloody-minded way of putting it, pet." She couldn't resist the easily provoked flush as she turned back.
Still, Hermione had gotten better at recovering from it, over time. "What are trying to figure out, exactly, General?"
"Dispositions of the enemy tank battalion along Slug Road. I want to know if we should shift fires." She had command over an entire division in a densely packed area at the moment, and Jorge—General Diaz-was preparing to bring up the second, but between the enemy withdrawal without fighting street to street in Aberdeen and the need to keep civil order there, she really only had about a brigade in position for this attack.
They were attacking anyway. Of course.
Hermione stepped up, smiled faintly, and put the paper down in front of her. "Well, you might pay attention to this for a moment instead. Just came down the wire."
Bella's eyes promptly flicked down to read. Her lover was also too assiduously competent of a staff officer to ever not pay attention to her suggestions, promptly. She read it, thought about it a moment-"The 6th VDV Division took Rannoch on the Fort William Line"-Turned toward the map of the Grampians they had unfolded. There was a map but Bellatrix only glanced at it for the briefest moment to orient herself. Instead, the picture unfolded inside of her imagination. This was the talent she had been given. In fights where she had been on the front-line, wand in hand, fighting for Voldemort in the wizarding world, and when commanding entire Armies ten times larger than the one she had at the moment, it had all been the same.
She imagined it clearly now, like a symphony of chaos. Four divisions trying to cover the whole front from Aberdeen to Cairndow. Two of them had been in training, as reinforcements for Europe, and weren't ready to fight. They had the strength of six divisions attacking them, with naval and air superiority. Half the enemy fought for pay, half for an independent Scotland.
But the independent Scotland of the Morsmordre was a savage lie, and every man in that force knew it at some level. Also, her Black Guards included in many cases their former comrades and countrymen. So they fought with skill, but cautiously. It was a defensive battle. Why didn't they give up entirely?
Wizards, mingled in their ranks, being used more as Political Officers than as front-line troops. Less opposition for MinKol—they were suppressing their own people instead. So, the magic began to tell on them. Goblins coming down from the heights—no reserves left to face them. Can't bring up supplies, the enemy bombs everything coming up from the rear. Give them a prepared position—they can hold it, for eight hours, for twelve hours, inflict heavy losses. The mortars run out of bombs, the guns out of shells. The tanks are down to a quarter tank of diesel. Fall back now, or never fall back at all.
The cracks appear. The symphony of steel plays across their positions. The artillery strikes down men with a statistical sense of the random. What are they fighting for anyway? Do the wizards really even fight for anything themselves? Would Duchess Narcissa Malfoy be a worse ruler than Lord Voldemort? Would she let Britain's magical culture die?
Or is it just fear that Voldemort will win no matter what, that he can't be killed, that defying him is a fate worse than death?
The fear seeps into their ranks—Bellatrix can feel it in her imagination—until the motivation begins to slip away. The VDV divisions are almost completely amphibious—Loch Ericht is a passage for them, not a hindrance—they're taken on the flank. The reserves are out of position, they're slow, they don't want to brave the shelling, even if they're fighting loyally they're fighting slowly. The cracks become crumbles.
The line breaks. The men fall back. The Russians to the east, they're in the flank of the position at Pitlochry now, and there wasn't enough time to haul guns up to the tops of the mountains to cover the vales. The lack of transport in the Highlands is as much of a hindrance as a natural defensive line, they don't have the time to prepare works, this isn't 1915 on the Alpine front…
Bellatrix looks up from the paper, eyes distant. She's aware Hermione is staring at her. "Are you alright, General?" At heart Hermione knows she's alright, she knows Bella gets this way, she knows that the older witch imagines, viscerally knows the battlefield this way. That's why she's Bellatrix, gifted symbolically by her father to Andrasta on the day she was born. She can't be any other way.
"1915 on the Alpine front…" Bellatrix muttered again.
"Avalanches," Hermione supplied immediately by free association, and then continued: "In school they told us about the avalanches killing almost as many men as the fighting. Austro-Hungary against Italy, 1915-1918, the Alpine front. That's what you were referring to, right?" Hermione, confident, composed in danger, bookworm to the bloody end.
The passes in the Highlands were still choked with snow. The cooling of the world would not end for long, long after the war itself. There were plenty of roads in the Mounth, gravel access roads, for logging, for farming, whatever, but they were there, eminently passable by tracked vehicles. She'd pinned substantial enemy forces here, and the furthest west she went, the more likely she was to encounter forces whose reserves were being pulled away to deal with the breakthrough at Rannoch.
"Tell General Diaz I want the 8th at Braemar, not here."
"Understood." No question—they understood each other now. Hermione glanced to the map, and wrote the grid squares with a flick of her wand, noted the highway number, went back to the radio.
"And get ready to apparate with me, Hermione! We're going back to shake loose another brigade. We're going to lead them across the Mounth south of Ballochan. These troops need only pin the enemy in place. They've lost the initiative, they won't counterattack! We have them, we just have to make it happen!"
Like a storm over the mountains, with wet, heavy snow magically dislodged before them in roiling avalanches down the slopes, they had fronted the Mounth and swept their way down the other side. The line had broken completely, the enemy could not hold, the enemy did not want to hold, not in the heart, not in the way that fired the kind of resistance that could stop such an advance.
They swept down onto the Firth of Tay in the days that followed, and took Perth against dissolute resistance. But by the time they had, troops were already converging on Stirling, and Hermione lived as she had at the best times of her adult life, sleeping in an APC, drinking tea boiled on top of an exhaust manifold, being tempted into a cigarette with the regular line soldiers. She was trying to avoid getting addicted again, but the rhythms of this life were so straightforward and so comfortable that it was hard, at best.
It was a forgetting, and she craved it. She was there at Bella's side while Bella was being her best, too. In the lowlands all of the snow had melted, and it was almost May, anyway. The fields were wet and soggy and the mud torn up from the passage of the tanks flecked their coats. On they pressed, under slate skies and through drizzling light rains.
Their forces combined with the VDV divisions that had penetrated through the western highlands at the Keir roundabout, at the north end of the M9 motorway south of Dunblane. They'd dislodged a mortar battery which had been positioned in the woods to the southeast and Hermione was calling up air support from a orbiting flight of Su-24s on standby to attack a battalion of self-propelled howitzers that were falling back toward Stirling.
"We cannot comply, III Corps Headquarters. We have been directed to a general operational halt in the eastern sector."
"Huh. An operational halt?"
"The order came directly from Inverness. Over and out." The channel clicked off.
Hermione turned to Diaz. "General, operational halt? Frontal Aviation apparently heard about it."
"Something just came out now…" He looked up in surprise, but then, Bella appeared out of one of the command tracks, her greatcoat shaking loose and fluttering behind her like a cape. "General, an operational halt?"
"General Diaz, get an escort squad for me right now, I'm going to Keir House."
"May I ask why, General Black?"
"The commander of the Scottish National Army has received a truce from my sister," Bella answered. "No symbolic battle of Stirling Bridge to rally people to the colours. But we have to move quickly if we're to seize the government before it reaches Glasgow."
"Am I coming with?" Hermione asked.
"Of course. You'll have to see this." A grin. "Wouldn't have it any other way."
In the 1970s, Keir House, a fabulous lowland Scottish country house with an attached 15,000 acre estate and the residence of the Stirling family, had been purchased by some Sheikh. Someone in Voldemort's regime had seized it, rarely used it. A few servants had very hastily packed belongings—or just robbed the place—in the past few days.
Now Bellatrix Black appeared with Hermione and a squad of wizards in a crack of apparation. They faced a group of grim men with rifles, and an officer with a staff of four, of General's rank. John Cowan, Hermione thought, connecting intelligence files with a face. He looked sharply at Bellatrix, who looked back. Of course they had seen each other before, the commander of the Scottish National Army ranked well enough for direct interactions between them in the past, before Bella's defection. Now they stood together again, in the scattered remains of some rich Wizard or collaborator's life, in the faded remains of the excess of an age that was already dead.
Standing in a dusty and disorganised parlour, two groups from opposing sides. General Cowan waved and the rifles were lowered. "Secure the area," Bellatrix directed, after checking her chrono, and then looked again to Cowan. "Just a minute now."
"Of course," he cleared his throat, watching as Bellatrix went through an assortment of spells, testing intent, testing for wards, testing for traps, testing for bombs.
Then it was time. Narcissa Black Malfoy appeared, with her own contingent of guards, and Lady Zabini at her side. She was dressed in a fine conservative style, not proper wizarding robes but something taken from Edwardian fashion which immediately marked her as a pureblood, and would still be more palatable to muggles than wearing robes. She smiled regally to the General, and spoke. "Nid ydym yma i-dod ag annibyniaeth in Alban i-ben, ond i'goblhau men gynghrain o genhedloed Brythoniaid." They didn't know what she was saying, of course, since Scots Gaelic was nothing like Cumbric for those who spoke it, but Narcissa provided the translation at once: "I am not here to end Scottish independence, but to fulfil it in a League of the British peoples."
She paused for a moment, and then continued purely in English. "I am as Celtic as the people of Alba, but these petty disputes between the peoples of these islands, when we are all one blood and kith and kin of this land and its power and nature, should be well done and behind us. I forgive you and your troops, General; you did what you had to according to the circumstances. I am more concerned about the government. I aim to seize the leaders and summon the Scots Parliament to hear my terms; and if we are to be successful, we must move quickly."
He took a breath.
But it was a foregone conclusion.
"Of course, Your Grace."
They would not keep dying for Voldemort. They would have to have faith in whatever Narcissa planned, for the sake of them all. Were they not, in fact, all of one blood?
Hermione smiled. If anyone could bring peace, now, Narcissa would. She had become remarkably fine with the idea of a future created by the youngest sister of the House of Black.
