The Isle of Gramarye

So conflicted. She didn't know where to start. She wanted to believe Bellatrix, and maybe she really did, with doubt refusing to go away. But what was the difference between doubt refusing to go away, and not believing someone? She wasn't sure. Looking at Bella made her heart ache with desire. It was so easy to smile and move on. So hard to quiet what was inside of her heart.

The others filed out. Rooms were prepared; by this point, Hermione wasn't surprised that Draco and Larissa left together, though she didn't think it was anything more than a bedside conversation at that point. Larissa looked like she needed a week of sleep for anything else. Hermione felt like she needed a week of sleep, for that matter…

It was just the two of them. And, Mardy had already left to go to Kensington Palace to attend to Narcissa. The other two House Elves had, as Elves were wont to do, made themselves scarce. After perhaps a minute, Hermione owned up to the fact they were alone. "Bellatrix, what am I supposed to do?" She asked, softly, more a rhetorical question than anything else. But it made Bella draw herself up, and watch her intently. "Those were my friends and comrades." A pause. "If they were my friends and comrades. Bella, you were in Voldemort's regime until …" She trailed off. "Less than twenty months ago."

Twenty months, was that it? Twenty months ago Bellatrix had been her mortal enemy, the woman who wanted to torture her to death… The woman you'd had some kind of fucked up crush on even then? Since then, Hermione's mind had firmly built itself around Bellatrix being her love. She wanted it. She didn't doubt Bellatrix loved her. But…

"You had to have known."

"I was in Europe for years, only returning home to visit my daughter and report to Him," Bellatrix answered, rocking back in her chair, staring at Hermione with richly expressive eyes. Those eyes weren't lying, were they?

Bellatrix got up, and began to pace. "Why do you think I was privy to information about the disposition of high-value prisoners? You believed me when I said I didn't know about the abomination at Hogwarts, why this, Hermione? Why? We're here." She tossed her arm out, spun around. "Ancient House. My family home, we've liberated all the British Isles. I thought I was going to take you to my bed tonight, love."

Hermione couldn't help herself when Bella said that. What did she want? She wanted Bella, of course! She wanted her there and then, with a fiery passion that burned inside of her. Did she really give a shit about the angst, about the uncertainty? It had probably been Narcissa if it was anyway. Bellatrix was a bad Slytherin in the worst of times.

You've already made your bed, are you a moral coward? You were in the goddamned Army that invaded to liberate your homeland, you armed the bombs! Men better than Bella, better than you, helped by the thousand. They didn't ask because they already understood that there was no other way. Bellatrix kept pacing, muttering to herself, flitting glances at Hermione from the corner of her eye that were painfully obvious for Hermione to see.

What was she flinching away from, really? A residual moral effect of Dumbledore's great insistence on never killing, which now looked ridiculous, disastrously counterproductive, even? But then, thinking about it, she saw him smiling, and ask her—but would Bellatrix have been alive to defect, then?

No answer. None was possible. How could you account for possibilities? Did the thousands of pundits who would argue over whether or not your action was necessary to save the world, or a cynical ploy to cement your own power, really matter? They were in the future and they all had the luxury of opining because of what you chose now. They'd had to act, and they'd acted, and they were in Lancashire, a free Lancashire, and could argue the merits until doomsday. You've chosen to love her, so fucking love her!

Hermione spun out of her chair, and caught Bella in mid-stride of her pacing. Pushed her into the wall. Now it was Bella's turn for surprise, for an unpredictable lover, who says two can't play this game? She pushed the smaller Witch into the wall. Pushed her arms back against tapestries and wood facades as old as history. Kissed her firmly, intensely. "Fuck you, Bella. Years ago I promised that I would die for victory. Nobody is going to tell me that living for victory is worse than that, simply because I fell in love with you. You chose your course, and so did I."

Tongues met, and Hermione shoved a hand that pushed back in Bella's skirt, groping at her right down to the centre between her thighs as their tongues tangled in a furious passion. Bellatrix stared at her with both shock and eagerness. Only reluctantly did Hermione pull back, trying to make herself look coy even as she didn't necessarily feel it.

"Show me your bedroom, Bella."

Bellatrix flashed a smile at her that was almost shy; she folded an arm around Hermione, and together, they went upstairs. Ancient House wasn't as large of a villa as Fishbourne in Chichester—Hermione had been to the museum as a girl—but that it was of the second rank of Romano-British villas, couldn't be doubted. Only a fraction was being used, though. Not only had the family declined in size, but the entire Villa Rustica section—the productive section of the estate—seemed closed off.

Hermione, even walking up to someone's bedroom to have sex with her, wanting to be an intellectual about these things. It was also pasted across her face and expression, as plain as day. Bella started laughing brightly. "Oh, dear."

"What, Bella, I'm just wondering about the economics of a Romano-British estate in Lancashire after the Statute…"

Bellatrix was giggling madly, then. "Yes, the estate fell on hard times with the Statute, as you might imagine. Some Goblins were retained to work rock and stone, and the elves keep our own gardens and fields for most of the food we need, but it hardly made money after that. You're so sweet. You just ravished me and a minute later you sound like you're some rambling professor. So, let me solve the problem."

Hermione felt lips again on her own, as Bellatrix tugged her into her bedroom—with a wave of her hand, illuminating patterns in green and silver, and then the mosaics on the walls, revealed here, came alive, showing maidens dancing in the spring, the hunt in the forest, the playing of a game something like hurley. Hermione's eyes lit with wonder, magical images that old, before she was pulled down onto a bed with black satin sheets.

She couldn't help it, grinning up to Bella now as they folded together, cuddling atop the blankets. "More Black, really?"

"What can I say – I went through a phase in the sixties, and I never grew out of it." she curled in closer to Hermione, eyes wide in the dim lights still glowing in Slytherin colours. It was like Hermione was consumed in Bellatrix, laughing softly at the frank admission, and then finding her lips together with Bella's again.

But she didn't get beyond the kiss soon enough for Bella's taste: "Now hurry up, you dork; stop gawking and fuck me."

Blushing, grinning, laughing, Hermione reached for jacket and skirt-belt, tossed outer-layers of Bella's and her own aside, went for the corset under the uniform jacket—the privileges of a General, who needed to be 'regulation'-and kept going until she felt Bella's hands removing her own bra. "Uhh…"

"I didn't tell you to stop, 'Mione…"

No, you didn't, Hermione thought as the two ended up, hands, arms tangled together and working at once, mostly managing to strip, with clothes tossed here and there, standing out in the dim magical light against the black velvet blankets, save the few that disappeared into the lush carpet.

There was something deliriously intoxicating about the idea of fucking a Pureblood in her own bedroom in her own family manor. Since the age of eleven, Hermione had been confronted with the idea that was inferior, it was casual, it was laced into Wizarding society. Even the Weasleys were intensely paternalistic toward muggles. Hermione's parents and childhood friends were muggles. She had grown up constantly experiencing bigotry toward her.

And now she was playfully throwing Bella's panties at her face as she spread her legs on her bed, in a house that was literally a Roman Villa. She couldn't help it and didn't want to help it, it was wildly hot. She looked up.

Bella looked back down at her, curls blending into the blanket below. "Hmm?"

"I love you, Bella," Hermione grinned, and settling herself between Bella's legs, planted a light kiss on the other set of thick black curls the woman had. Bella hummed soft and low in her throat, seeming remarkably content.

Maybe taking a lover here had always been a fantasy of her's. Hermione loved the thought; it was mutual transgression. "Teen girl's bedroom dreams finally coming true?"

Bella's head shot up. "Oh, why, you…"

Hermione shut her up with her tongue, or rather, made her moan with a soft stroke. "I think that meant yes, anyway," was her own playful answer, and she buried her face into Bella's lower curls and inhaled until the air running across Bella's skin made her shiver softly. And then her tongue darted out.

The twisting, squirming, shaking of her thighs and hips under Hermione's hands, the groan—Bellatrix was so vocal, she broke every stereotype Hermione had ever heard of—all of it came together, the delight of making her orgasm in her own childhood bed. She indolently licked with her tongue until the shivering and quick breaths from Bella suggested her lover was overstimulated, and then she looked up with something like a feeling of laughing delight. Thirty minutes before she had been locked in uncertainty, didn't know what she wanted to do, how she felt about the entire situation.

So, of course, they had just went and fucked.

Not like it was over.

Bellatrix rolled onto her, splayed out across the bed, the covers messed up and tangled. Her thigh was shifting as she repositioned herself, shifting unhesitatingly between Hermione's, pushing her knee between her legs. it was her turn.

After it was over, the rush of pleasure and need banished all doubt. Her body twisting and spasming against Bella, hips bucking, thighs clenching, that was all she needed, everything she wanted. Falling in love with Bellatrix was perfect. Bellatrix, muscles tensed and body a mix of curves and firmness around her, held her with her thigh gripped in place between Hermione's legs, until at last she relaxed, fell against the taller witch, breathing hard, both bodies drenched in each other's sweat.

"Ancient House is going to be our Manor," Bella whispered in the afterglow, dragging blankets over them haphazardly, but who really cared. "For us. For our family."

Hermione closed her eyes, and held Bella close, the warmth of the covers banishing the cool chill of sweat on the skin. It was spring, and maybe there was hope, after all.


They rose very late, sleeping in a comfortable bed that truly felt their own for the first time since leaving Norway. The House Elves set out breakfast—the bacon was smoked and streaky, lightly crispy; there were poached eggs, small loaves of crusty bread, black pudding, and Arbroath smokies, with tea that perfect colour, smokey and dark but not quite black; and of course, a special table for fitting on the bed to keep everything tidy.

Hermione sat there, leaning against Bellatrix, both of them leaning back against the bed boards, with pillows propped up to support their heads. If it wasn't almost uncomfortably decadent, if Voldemort wasn't still alive in the Near East, then it would seem like a dream at the end of the war. They said little—they ate breakfast, and cuddled.

A while later, after the elves apparated the breakfast table off the bed, Bellatrix coaxed two robes out of the wardrobe and over to the bed with her wand. "We should go down to the toilets and the baths," she explained, almost absently.

Full Roman experience, Hermione realised. There was a bit of real excitement even if it was also slightly weird—indeed, Ancient House had central plumbing and central heating, but of a decidedly 200 AD type.

There fortunately had been some upgrades to the toilets, at least, but the baths took Hermione's breath away. The mosaics were perfectly preserved, and were not at all like the typical Roman ones that she had seen on television shows when young. They were instead a detailed religious story of Arnemetia, Brigantia, and Coventina and her nymphs, water-goddesses of Britannia, celebrating the baths and cleanliness and the youth and spring they represented. The whole hall was lit by magical lights, and though nowhere near as large as a stereotypical Roman public bath, the ancient family of Dubh had clearly loved water because the full Roman bathing progression was available.

"It's easier when the hypocaust is fired with magic instead of wood," Bellatrix declared, and spun off her robe.

"What of the others?"

"Elves help guests too, at least when they're told to," Bellatrix declared. "Bathing first for us, they might already have for all I know. Then we'll all gather, for we must go out for hawthorn."

Nos Galan Haf. The time to gather Hawthorn for the houses, before May Day. Hermione smiled, and slipped off her own robe to join Bellatrix in the progression of bathing. Days of chaos, a night of passion, it all slipped off into baths which were happily working their way toward their two thousandth anniversary.

And Bellatrix wasn't hiding her arm, and Hermione wasn't hiding her scar. The gold glimmered wetly, and shimmered under the blazing hot water of the central solium pool in the Caldarium. The scar was blurred by the tiny waves that rippled over it. Hermione leaned against Bellatrix, and felt quiet and content, as they moved next together to the intense dry heat of the laconicum.

She could see that Bellatrix was quietly looking at her scar. "Bella? I'm proud of you, for what it's worth. You have nothing to be ashamed of with your arm. It's a symbol of your escape from Voldemort. You don't try to deny what you've done in the past that was evil—you should take credit for what you have done that is good, too. Show the world that arm with pride. Show them that you suffered to end Voldemort's power over you, and suffered to be able to act successfully against him."

Bellatrix sighed softly. "Perhaps I should. Perhaps it doesn't matter if you're here. If you'll still be here… Still be here tomorrow."

"Bella!? Why are you talking like that?" Hermione asked sharply through the steam.

"Your scar. I'll be plain with you. When you were falling, at the viaduct at Hogwarts, I used the connection to the scar to recover you. Right after I had promised to give you the time you need, to support you, that I had never influenced you with it, right then, when it was fresh in my mind—for the Gods so jest with us mortals."

Hermione froze. For the Gods so jest with mortals. It was true, it was an evil coincidence. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

"I was ashamed," Bella answered, and the force of those words struck Hermione like a blow. It was an admission she had never heard from Bella and that simple word, ashamed, meant so much from the proud, haughty pureblood. "And," she continued softly, "I was afraid that even if you didn't leave me over it, you'd insist on having your own arm struck off right there and then to remove the possibility of my ever influencing you with it, ever again."

Hermione took a breath and leaned into Bella. Bella was the problem, but Bella was also holding her and comforting her. It was one of those complicated moments in the world where the person you loved was also the complication, the difficulty. It hurt like hell, but that made her hold Bella all the closer for it.

"It saved my life. The scar you gave me, with about as hateful and racist of a slur as I've ever been called—not the only one but certainly the one that hurt worse—it saved my life. Everything about that is fucked up, Bella. But we're in a war, and … Having this on my arm forever is not what I want. Muggle science invented artificial arms with synthetic skin. I'm sure with some effort we can coat an enchanted prosthetic in synthetic skin. For both of us. But not now. Not yet. I'll give you until … One year after Voldemort is dead, Bella. Then it's got to go. One year. And I want you to do it yourself."

Bellatrix froze.

"You did it to me," Hermione said softly, holding the shorter woman all the harder for it. "You un-do it. If you can't fix it, you take my arm. You enchant the prosthetic. Don't force someone else to do the work, even someone else who loves and cares for me like a sister like Larissa. Do it yourself. Take ownership of it. Heal me, or end it. But either way, do it yourself."

Bella looked at the wall, squeezed her hand, and nodded. "I swear."

"Good." Hermione smiled. "We've been sweating long enough." She tugged Bella up, and took them together to plunge into the frigidarium, a small pool here, but deep enough to be fully immersed for several people, and then, they retired to the comfortably warm tepidarium to warm back up, and at last, began to dress. Hermione was necessarily stuck with her uniform, her belongings had not got here yet, but she was surprised to see Bellatrix drape herself in a comfortable dress—still with a bodice, granted—of browns and greens of the wood, leggings and a pair of deerskin soft-soled boots. And, she didn't hesitate to live her promise. She went out with Hermione to the portico of the peristylium. The others had already gathered there, and hot tea was available. Ginny and Draco both seemed shocked at the way that Bellatrix was dressed, though Luna just smiled.

"Lady Black!" She was holding a guitar in her lap. "A blessed Nos Galan Haf for you! We are going for hawthorn, this afternoon?"

"We will," Bellatrix agreed, and couldn't help but a small smile at the brilliant innocence of the Lovegood girl. She seemed to have completely forgotten, or simply chosen not to remember, her own captivity in Malfoy Manor.

Instead, as Bellatrix and Hermione joined them and took tea, she started to strum a few chords, warming herself up for a song. Hermione looked to Larissa, feeling a bit of consternation, but her friend greeted her with a smile, reclining on one of the couches close to Draco.

"A very long night's sleep and that absolutely amazing bath certainly have me feeling revived," she offered.

"...The same," Hermione agreed, though she imagined her sleep hadn't been as long as Larissa's.

"You are the guest of the House of Black for as long as you please to recuperate with our hospitality, Lady Larissa," Bellatrix addressed her.

"Thank you, M'lady."

Luna was smiling again. "That may be for a while," she mused. "And that makes me think of a song." The chord shifted, and she began first to hum, and then to sing, as Bellatrix looked with interest at her remark, and Larissa quickly glanced to Draco, and then focused with her own interest on the song.

Hermione quickly realised that it was a Kipling poem, put to music.

"SEE you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
Oh that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar."

Larissa stared, entranced, her hot tea cupped to her hands, leaning against Draco openly, now.

"And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayharn's mouldering walls?
Oh there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's."

Hermione shivered, too. For her family, the idea of Britishness was complicated by her own family. She certainly knew that Kipling was a man of a beautiful imagination and a care for the common man and a lyrical ability to frame the wisdom of India into the British soul, and to give voice to the British soul. Hermione felt intensely British in this moment, in this place, as Bella's lover in Ancient House, where at the back of the peristylium she could see the room that held the idols of the old family Gods of the House Black.

Kipling had also been a bloodthirsty, racist defender of Empire. Hermione was ambivalent, sure, but she was sitting happily next to Bellatrix Black. It gave her an absolute perspective on the good and bad within everyone.

"See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
Oh that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet."

But despite all that, despite her own experience, in that moment, Hermione felt downright patriotic. They had won. They had liberated the country.

"(Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years,
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers!)

See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book."

Luna caught the line about Flodden Field with delicate sincerity. In fact, Kipling meant the poem from an English perspective, though Hermione knew there was a subtle complexity in that toward the end. Luna clearly did, too, because she inflected the verse with all the terrible sadness and tragedy of Civil War, instead of the slightest hint of triumphalism. It was beautiful.

"See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
Oh that was where the Saxons broke
On the day that Harold died."

Bellatrix was stiff, now. Hermione could see it, see the family history. The Saxons had conquered, aye, but it was the Harrowing of the North by William the Conqueror which had sent her family into exile for centuries. It was the Normans that had ended the first era of Ancient House. Hermione could imagine, centuries later, an earlier-Bellatrix, a 15th century Bellatrix, weeping to at last return to this place, the home of her ancestors, preserved by magic in the meanwhile, until in the reign of Henry V they had earned their return to it. But England had become more Norman and more Saxon all at once. The Old North of the British folk, of Bella's blood, had gone underground, to the murmur of a secret river in the culture and customs of the people of the North.

And at this spring, it was blossoming again. Hermione thought Bella might nearly be crying.

"See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
Oh that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came by.

See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
Oh there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house.

And see you, after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
Oh that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul."

Hermione was seized by the sudden need to embrace Bellatrix, and whisper to her: "You adopted what the Romans brought, and built this wonderful house at your place of power. Things changed, but the House of Black remained strong. Will you adopt muggleborns into your culture, and remain strong? You have changed and been strong before, my love."

Bellatrix softly began to weep.

"And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
Oh they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns.

Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn-
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was Britain born."

Hermione caught it. The only change of a word so far in Luna's rendition. The substitution of Britain for England. And she understood why, too, for what came next:

"She is not any common Earth,
Water or wood or air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare."

Merlin's Isle of Gramarye, where you and I will fare. Hermione shivered and held Bellatrix close as Luna finished. It was the whole island that was Merlin's Gramarye, from the land athwart the Orkneys to the view of the Isles of Scilly from Land's End.

"Welcome to Britain," Luna said sweetly to Larissa.

Larissa smiled fiercely and squeezed Draco's hand. "So, you said something about a custom of Hawthorn gathering?"

As they headed out into the woods, on this sacred eve, Hermione couldn't help but think of another Kipling poem suited to the evening, and wonder about Larissa and Draco.

Oh, do not tell the Priest our plight,
Or he would call it a sin;
But we have been out in the woods all night,
A-conjuring Summer in!

"Do you think they're going to…?" Hermione whispered as they were out into the woods on the estate.

"...Not going to put bets on my nephew's sex life, pet," Bellatrix answered immediately, deftly seizing another bough. She had clearly done this as a child.

Hermione blushed. It was awkward, to have one of your best friends apparently falling for the nephew of the woman you wanted to spend your life. But that was what you got, when you dated someone almost thirty years older than you were.

"Anyway," Bellatrix grinned and whispered into her ear, her lips close enough to make Hermione shiver, "No way am I such a fucking mark that I'd take a bet with odds that poor."

Bellatrix was right. Larissa and Draco stayed out in the woods all night, conjuring summer in.

And the next day, with May Poles up in the villages of mixed wizard and muggle-folk around, and the din and clamour of the bells and drums; the Morris Dancing and the May Queens—the general and joyous celebration of a people liberated—Draco, tired but grinning, carried the House standard for Bellatrix, and Bellatrix beat the stick down along the boundary stones, marking out the limits of the estate. The smile and light expression on Larissa's face was a relief, for the friend that Hermione had seen destroying herself for the past year.

There was still a war somewhere, but today was Calan Haf. There was mead and beer and dancing and song, and summer came for Merlin's Isle of Gramarye.