That was a Day, Indeed.
The women were so exhausted. It had been a tremendous battle, a wild battle, as intense as anything she had yet lived. The brush with her former Lord still left her shaking, exhausted in this bone-dead way she hadn't known since her escape from Azkaban. Bellatrix thought it was like another of Kipling's poems, damn the Lovegood girl for putting them in her head:
Sodden, and chafed and aching,
Gone in the loins and knees–
No matter–the day is breaking,
And there's far less weight to the seas!
Up mast, and finish baling–
In oar, and out with mead–
The rest will be two-reef sailing...
That was a night indeed!
Bellatrix didn't much like it, for the chorus when it was put to song:
But we hold it in all disaster
(And faith, we have found it true!)
If only you stand by your Master,
The Gods will stand by you!
But it was what it was, and being loyal to family mattered, too.
They got back to Ancient House, with a Protection force and some of Cissy's aides as Prime Minister. All were shocked, even if they were disciplined not to mutter too much, at what precisely the Seat of the House of Black was. "A Roman villa," one of the younger communications aides muttered.
Bellatrix shot her a look. "A British villa."
"The Dubh, as they were called in those days, could afford Roman luxury, but were always British," Hermione explained diplomatically. The house-elves had prepared lemonade for them—Hermione looked ahead. "Oh, Old Fashioned Lemonade. Lovely right now."
Calling it 'old-fashioned lemonade' got a confused look from Bellatrix for a moment, who decided in the end it was some muggleborn thing and best not to bring it up—and Bellatrix wanted to guzzle it by the bucket-full, anyway. Cissy gestured to her guards. "Drink, drink," she insisted. "There will be enough for all of us, as much as we want, and the house-elves are preparing quarters for all of you in the Villa Rustica."
"Muggles in Ancient House," Bellatrix shook her head, leaning on the wall in exhaustion, already on her second glass of lemonade.
"It happened centuries ago, Bella," Andy observed with a faint grin. It was infectious, Bellatrix grinned too.
They could hear the sound of children, evacuees, in the other rooms of the Villa, but they were too exhausted to follow up. Delphini, however, was not too exhausted to wander in… And then sprint for her mother to give her a hug that sent Bellatrix half-toppling into the wall, arrested only by Andy's ready hand on her back.
"Woah, there, little witchling…"
"Mum, you're back! My new friends said bad things…"
"I'm back," Bellatrix agreed, and held her tightly, even with a body so bone tired that she was physically shaking. "Mum is very tired, and you've already eaten, but we haven't. So we're going to have an adult meal, and then settle down and take a bath, darling."
Delphi looked at her thoughtfully. "I could eat a second dinner, mum. Especially the dessert."
Bellatrix grinned, and forced herself to hoist her daughter up, despite her fatigue. "How about no, dear. But I will tuck you in."
"Awwh, mum.." But it didn't stop her from being carried away.
Food was prepared, the elves avoiding being seen by muggles; the next dining room was prepared for the horribly dirty group. Bellatrix, having used a few scourgify spells on herself rather than soil her daughter's bedroom, returned five minutes later looking cleaning than the others but even more exhausted than she had been, so that Hermione quietly squeezed her hand as she slipped past.
The meal was one of those simple ones that became a lavish feast because of what you had experienced: Roast beef and hot buttered bread; in any other circumstance, it would have been much too simple to be served at table at Ancient House, but they had all been vomiting, torn through disapparation a hair's breadth from splinching against an anti-apparation ward, fighting the dead, covered in the residue of fires, of grime, of blood, of sweat. Empty stomachs and utter exhaustion. It might as well have been a true feast measured against that standard, a full seven courses.
Then the family retreated, at last, to the baths. Cold, warm, hot water, blazing hot steam, it was all there. Soiled clothes were tossed away for the elves to deal with. Bellatrix was far too used to communal bathing to hesitate in the slightest sense, and they all plunged down, using cleaning spells and heat and water and traditional scrapers—pretty much anything which could be put to the service of cleaning off the battle as much as possible.
Staring in a little daze, Hermione just watched as Bellatrix dragged herself up close behind her younger lover, and rubbed her shoulders in front of her sisters. "Now that was a day," Bellatrix whispered headily. "You did splendidly."
Ginny was staring, and Hermione blushing by that point. With a wry smile, her left arm gleaming gold, Bellatrix slipped away, held her nose, ducked completely underwater, let it even soak out her hair. There was something relaxing in not giving a damn, but Hermione was not quite there yet.
Their spring victory really had been too easy. Now you've earned it, she thought, floating in peace below the water for a moment, before she rose to the surface of the blazing hot pool. Hermione couldn't help but smile as she rose.
"Let us all get a well-earned sleep," Narcissa reminded them gently. "We will need it."
Nobody needed any urging. Cooling off, drying with drying charms to get their hair out of a miserable damp state before sleep, with fresh night-clothes and evening robes laid out, they all parted ways, except for Bellatrix and Hermione—straight to the same room. But there was nothing passionate in it, no desire. There was simply no energy for it that night. Even the manic Bellatrix had been worn down to the point that she was mellow and content, even if it was only exhaustion that had done it, and she and everyone else knew that.
Hermione tugged her the last bit of the way to her black satin sheets. With a start, Bellatrix realised that she had just been standing at the verge of her room, staring blankly at the wall. "C'mon," the younger witch whispered. "I'm going to sleep so long, and so close to you…"
Bellatrix couldn't muster a word to say. She just brushed a kiss against Hermione as she pulled Bella into bed. A single light cover was pulled over, the others under. The two witches nestled together in a state of bone dead exhaustion, but perfect safety, too, behind the immensely old and powerful wards of Ancient House.
Within five minutes, she drifted to sleep, her golden arm still warm from the bath, and pushed up under Hermione, where it wouldn't feel pain or go numb from her weight atop it. A groggy last thought—perhaps becoming a glorious amputee had not been so bad, after all.
Alexandra slumped down, lower into her camp chair, in the revetment which concealed her command tent. Even in June, this far into the interior, the mountains of eastern Anatolia could be bitterly cold at night. Her greatcoat was pulled over her like a blanket. Steam wafted off of her tea. She was terrifically tired, but who could sleep after a day like that, with twelve hours of desperate preparation to launch an unplanned spoiling offensive into the teeth of an enemy still conducting offensive operations against them. Everyone fully rigged in their CBRN gear, because they would be attacking through the cleared routes created by eight nuclear bombs.
Just to have it cancelled, two hours before the attack was to begin.
She wasn't complaining, nobody was in the entire Corps. They had taken thirty percent casualties or more in the fighting of the past weeks, and they'd take another thirty percent in a single day if they launched that attack. They had lived for one more day. It was just like a drill, but a drill which had been real, right up until the moment it wasn't.
There was nothing peaceful about the night, despite that. She was bone tired, but sleepless as a veteran usually wasn't sleepless. On rotations back to the homeland, she had sometimes boasted that she could sleep inside of a washing machine after sleeping on the front. Six years of war, and despite all the terrible blows they had inflicted upon him in the past two years, the enemy was still able to conduct offensive operations. If anything, as the war grew more intractable, the monster on the other side of the mountains grew more awful, more horrifying in what he did to people, to the world.
Which meant they could not let up.
She raised the cup to her mouth with a shaking hand, and revelled in the hot feeling down her throat.
There was a little part of her that had wanted the attack, anyway, that was frustrated it had been cancelled at the last minute. The hungry part of you, which wants to prove you can do the impossible—a necessary part of being an aggressive military officer. It was not like the night was quiet, anyway. It was only 'quiet' by the standards of the front. One could hear artillery and machine-gun fire in the distance. There was always some harassment fire, some shifting of troops which were detected by a battery covering a particular sector. Some men hastening out to repair wire or place mines, who were detected and engaged by an enemy machine-gun.
And the front had not become static. Voldemort would attack again. He'd have to, having lost Britain. His capacity for offensive operations would be lost soon enough, surely. It was now or never…
We will be sorely pressed to hold. The entire front is on the edge of collapse, even though we put on a brave face. To roll the dice with a counterattack might well have been worth it.
There were footsteps. She looked up: General Pronichev. Alexandra set her tea aside and rose quickly, to salute. He waved her wave.
"It's been a long day, Colonel. At ease." He went to take another of the camp chairs.
"Sir."
"We have some good news from all of this. The nuclear weapons—the detection charms the enemy has for them are too much risk of finding them if they're moved again. We used a very special team to get them here," he explained. "So, we're being allowed to use them in support of our defensive positions. I believe it greatly improves our ability to hold, or at least to slow down a major offensive."
"It will, Sir, it will. You know, we might even be able to salvage the planning."
"An active defence, yes."
"Exactly—use the nukes to launch a location spoiling attack when they begin their next offensive, to reach the lake."
"Colonel, you really do believe the mountain is the whole sum of his objectives?"
"I do, Sir. The wizards are clear on it. And I fear, greatly, what would come of it. I think the Government has sent so many troops here with good reason."
"Then there better be a solution for his existence soon. I think we're running out of time," he answered, voice calm but his words not, looking to the starry sky above. "He's desperate, he needs a victory before the power of his armies here begins to wane. And we need time to grow our logistical network in this land. But we don't have it. So, no matter what we try, we're just running out of time. I do hope our magical friends have something they can do."
Morning at Ancient House. Hermione and Ginny, Narcissa and Andromeda, Bellatrix … And Delphini, and Teddy (who was starting to speak English without a Russian accent again. Children were quick about these things), and then Tonks arrived, and swept her son up in her arms. Bellatrix had Delphini in a chair right next to her own, on her left side, with Hermione on her right, and Delphini's chair was pulled in until it touched her own and her daughter was leaning against her.
"You were in the city, too, Dora?" Andy asked wearily to her daughter.
"I was," Tonks acknowledged with a sigh, before smiling again and ruffling her son's hair. "C'mon, little man, let's have breakfast."
Draco and Larissa arrived soon after. They had also been at London, but Larissa still looked better than she had after the taking of Britain—a month of near to bed-rest with Draco and house elves seeing after her at the Malfoy Manor had done her much good, enough that she had handled a day's worth of savage combat on short notice with that irrepressible grin returned to her face when she settled down. "The English country breakfast never disappoints." A full and proper breakfast, with fish, indeed awaited.
Hermione observed how they did not discuss anything of import, not in front of the children, not here, not after the terrible battle of the day before.
"Tell me about the new friends you've made," Bella's attention was focused on Delphi, turned away from her, and other than the occasional brush of a hand or other gentle touch that Hermione got in, she was being ignored… And she was perfectly all right with that. Delphini was a part of their family too, and needed Bella's attention, too.
"They're all from Diagon Alley, Mum. Well, really they're from other places but that's where they came to Ancient House from, and I had to be the Lady of the House for them … Because you were busy!"
"I was very busy, dearie," Bellatrix acknowledged with a ghost of a sad smile. It was a sign, to Hermione, that she was badly affected by the battle in London, and the confrontation with Voldemort. She lingered as breakfast was finished, and didn't want to join the other adults in the atrium, but in the end, Hermione standing there in the verge of the door watching her, Bellatrix kissed her daughter's cheeks and sent her off with the house elves. Then, she straightened up, and moved with indecorous haste to Hermione's side, spun an arm around her, and walked out.
Narcissa had been reading reports all throughout breakfast, and now she was communicating via Floo and radio to follow up on them, surrounded by her staff. She looked up to the two of them, composed despite the time of stress. "Bellatrix, Hermione. Unfortunately the enemy used the cover of the attacks yesterday to begin offensives in both Brittany and Galicia. We are using allied air cover to defend Brittany, and sending reinforcements now that the situation in London has been dealt with, and I'm confident that we'll hold there. However, Galicia is a much harder lift, and the Galician government will be sorely pressed. Bellatrix, I want to appoint you as commander of the forces there. I will have the Duke of Albemarle support you with the carriers, and a brigade of Marines. But mostly you must take all the available wizards to reinforce the conventional troops there, and try to stage a counterattack. I am not sure holding Galicia will be tenable, and that will look very bad, unless we can stage a convincing victory."
"Mmn." Bellatrix closed her eyes for a minute, and reached out to grab Hermione's hand, ignoring the stares from some of the staff. Hermione felt like an electric shock had gone through her that Bellatrix had done that so blatantly in front of Narcissa's government staff, but she didn't want to let go, shake loose, or minimise it in any way whatsoever. She liked it.
"Well, Cissy," Bellatrix began to speak. "The best thing would be Portugal. They were a traditional English ally, in the day; the northern part around Porto has strong elements of the Celtic customs itself. They have no reason to hate us as yet, and perhaps if I can win signal enough of a victory, we could begin the process of detaching some real countries from Voldemort's grasp."
"A rather large 'If' you're giving to yourself," Narcissa answered, "But certainly, that would be ideal. If nothing, just break the Morsmordre Army there and fight defensively—give them a good bloody nose. It's good terrain for it."
"Of course." Bellatrix tipped a salute at her younger sister. "What about Portsmouth and Southampton?"
"I'll be going there personally," Narcissa answered, before pouring her sister a cup of tea. "Here, have something before you go to London and put your staff together – the Floo to Whitehall should be intact. Then, you should be able to reach El Ferrol by portkey."
"Thank you." Bella took the cup gladly, and a second followed for Hermione. She looked between the two sisters. Something was still on Bellatrix's mind, even as Hermione was working herself up to ask where she would be going.
"Cissy," Bellatrix began again. "I wanted to talk about Theo. Theodore Nott."
Narcissa looked up.
"Before I go, I'd like to see his pardon go out."
"We have a war to fight, Bella. I will get around to it. I have every intention of upholding our word. It was given collectively, with all of us present. I acknowledge that."
"Maybe," Bellatrix answered with black eyes gleaming with a strange, sharp seriousness, "I want Toujours Pur to mean something new now: Purity of heart, purity of thought, purity of deed. These purities that are worth keeping. We gave our word. The pardon, Cissy. You can write it faster than I can finish my tea."
Hermione trembled. She had never thought of it like that. Somewhere, at the back of her mind, she knew there was going to be a reckoning with those words one day, sooner or later. Delphini by law was a halfblood, but also by law, the Heir Black. Even in the case of Draco, who someday now would have the rather more elevated title of Duke of Lancaster, Larissa might be a pureblood, but by the height of British fanaticism on the subject, the Princely House of Naryshkin would not be one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. What would the reckoning with Toujours Pur be, for these brave and strong women of the Jackdaw? In the middle of the war, still sorting out the exact contours of the family she had with Bellatrix and Delphini now, Hermione had not been prepared to bring it up, herself.
But Bellatrix had unflinchingly faced the fire first. "I want to help you to start writing that new chapter right now, Cissy." Hand still at Hermione's waist. Golden hand. No longer so uncomfortable with it.
Cissy looked at them for a moment, and then, unfussy, always business, she looked back down to her desk, took pen and paper, and wrote quick, in neat, precise and easily read strokes. She signed and dated it, and pressed her signet, and quickly called one of her aides over, speaking swiftly as she handed the letter over, and then dismissing him.
Bellatrix stood there, cuddled up against Hermione in the warmth of the rising sun. She drank her tea, and she had a little grin on her lips. Hermione couldn't help it, she was grinning, too.
"Alright," Narcissa turned back with a smile. "Now on to war for me, sister-mine. The Iberian Front is your's to command."
"What about Hermione?"
"I need her here, Bella. There are important matters that I must discuss with her."
"Without me?"
"With you," Narcissa nodded. "I need to meet with the Taoiseach here in just another hour, and Hermione was the one who liberated him from Voldemort's power. I need her here for that. I understand he and his cabinet are singing a different tune, after what they witnessed in London yesterday, and I want to strike while the iron is hot to come up with a reasonable modus vivendi."
"That isn't all, though, is it?"
Narcissa looked up. "No, it isn't, Bella." She opened a drawer in her desk, and flicked her wand at something. "As I said, you are to command the Iberian front. Marshal."
Bellatrix stared at the British Army Marshal's Baton her sister had just transfigurated and handed to her. "Are you serious?"
"For the saviour of London? Certainly."
"We saved London together, " Bellatrix almost stuttered. "It shouldn't just be me."
"A significant fraction of the world's population doesn't want me dead. And absolutely none of it, save a very small group around a tottering Dark Lord, wants Andy dead. You, on the other hand, sister-mine, need all the damned help you can get. You saved London from the hordes of Inferi, and you're being promoted for it. You're the heroine of the British nation, at least as long as I have anything to say about it, and for the moment that's a very great deal. Now shut up and deal with it. And don't ask what I'm about to do."
Bellatrix raised her right hand in salute, gripping the baton in her golden left. Then with a curled smirk, that grin that showed she enjoyed herself far too much, she pulled Hermione in, and the younger witch found herself locked in the passionate embrace of a kiss. Hermione held it for as long as she could, warm lips locked, tongues duelling until they were both short of breath. Hermione gave up, Bellatrix was going away from her again, she didn't care if it was in full sight of everyone, let them deal with it, let the world know they were an item.
Like Cissy said, Bellatrix needed all the help she could get. And Hermione had something of an inkling about where this conversation was going, and she needed to distract herself from it, to forget about where it might lead, for as long as possible.
Bellatrix pulled away, and tipped a salute with the baton. "Keep buttering me up like this, Cissy, and I'll take fucking Madrid for you. El Ferrol it is!" She spun around to face the Floo, and walked into it without hesitation. " Whitehall. "
Hermione watched her go, and managed not to cry. Then, she felt a tug on her arm, and was led into an alcove by Cissy, alone, away from the others. And Cissy followed it up by making sure of a magical silencing charm, to give them their privacy. "So, Hermione, we have a very weighty matter to discuss."
"This is about Harry, isn't it?" The tea she had drunk seemed to do nothing to keep her from getting a dry throat.
"It is." Narcissa answered, taking on a grim tone. "I will be plain with you. If the Dark Lord is terrified of his resurrection, then I intend to give him something to be afraid of. After we meet with the Irish delegation, we'll be holding a meeting that will include most of the remaining survivors of the Order and friends he had, as well as those who may provide us information on the Water of Death. It's time to see if we can come up with a plan to bring this war to an end."
My friend, a pawn again…
...But how else are we going to win this war? Hermione jerkily nodded her head in the affirmative. She could do nothing else.
Notes:
1. Ferrol in Galicia is one of the few cities in the west which had its name changed for political reasons like many cities in the former Soviet Union have: From 1938 to 1982 the birthplace of Francisco Franco was formally named "El Ferrol del Caudillo". Because of this, many westerners of a certain age who are not Spanish refer to the city as "El Ferrol" instead of Ferrol.