Round 6
Word Count: 1515
Year 2
Hogwarts: Trusting uncertainty
Write about a character that must trust their enemy (that enemy can be a person, an object, a mindset, etc.).
· Leap of faith
· I scratch your back; you scratch mine
· The enemy of my enemy is my friend
· Mistrust
PROMPTS:
Mandatory Prompt [First/last line] It was 11 o'clock when time stopped.
Additional Prompt [Dialogue] "I cannot begin to express the extent of my disapproval."
Fate's Intervention
It was 11 o'clock when time stopped.
Everyone stood still and everything became quiet, spells froze midair, harmless and useless.
Fate was furious, all the prophecies and all the time turners had been destroyed. The timeline was in shambles and the nature of things had been defied one too many times. The only consistency in people's lives, the only thing that was immutable was death. And here came this 'Dark Lord' defying the very nature of things.
But he wasn't the only one that had defied Fate; the other 'Light Lord' had destroyed the timeline with his meddling ways. Lives that were destined for greatness had been lost and sacrificed for a Greater Good.
Fate looked down onto the battlefield; there stood his chosen ones. Two witches, more powerful than any other, both brilliant and dubbed the smartest witches of their age. They stood on opposite sides, one blinded by the light, the other by the dark. They had been controlled and manipulated in order to suppress their powers, powers that the leaders of the two factions feared more than anything.
Tom and Albus had a common goal, they wanted to be the most powerful, most feared and most admired wizards in the world. When they had sensed Bellatrix's and Hermione's power, they had gone to extremes to control them and the power they possessed.
Fate had had so many plans for these two witches, they were so different but at the same time so similar. They were the only hope Fate had to reestablish equilibrium, to let nature take back its course. If they couldn't, well, the timeline was doomed; it would sink into darkness and nothing and no one could ever change that.
With a light flicker, Fate freed Hermione and Bellatrix from the constraint of time and watched as they moved, tried to cast spells but stared in confusion as nothing happened. Both looked confused, the scene surrounding them was similar to one of a paused movie.
Bellatrix was the first to see the movement from the younger woman; she zeroed in on her and let out a feral cry.
"You! What did you do, Muddy?" Fate could clearly hear the underlying fear hidden behind Bellatrix's words, but Hermione could only hear the anger. The young woman was startled at the cry and clasped her wand harder, knuckles turning white, pointing it at the Death Eater, and watched with terror filled eyes as the older woman made her way towards her.
Fate decided to intervene before any harm befalls Hermione. With another flicker, Fate froze the two once more, but this time kept them aware of their surroundings. Fate could see the terrified look in both of their eyes, they were looking at each other, trying to gauge the other reactions.
Bellatrix was the first to recover and started to look around, trying to find this invisible enemy that had rendered her defenseless. Fate had to give it to her, she was well hounded and could assert a situation better than most people.
Fate decided to make her presence known in that moment.
"Bellatrix, Hermione, it's good to finally make you acquaintance," Fate announced, appearing from thin air in front of the two women. She could tell that she had startled them, and her appearance had sent them both into panic.
"Calm yourselves, I am Fate. For the first time in a long time, I've had to intervene to set things back to their natural course. I will speak first then you will talk, but all of this name-calling is nonsense."
Fate smirked; this could be amusing. She snapped her fingers, and both women could talk and again, but both remained quiet, too startled by the apparition in front of them to speak.
"Good, good, you both can follow instructions, I see. Oh! Before I forget, Bellatrix, Hermione, you both have a pesky compulsion charm problem that needs to be dealt with." And with that Fate snapped her figures removing a multitude of intertwined charms. The charms ran deep and touched the cores of the witches; it had driven her crazy to see the old coot and the crazed soulless monster web them time after time. Before this point, Fate had not been able to intervene, it had been prohibited by the nature of things for her to set things right. But when the Time Turner had been destroyed it had created a ripple in time, a ripple so great that it had ripped at the very fabric of time and had created a passageway between the realms.
When the charms were removed, a sign escaped both women, the heaviness and the constraints that had been imposed on their magic having torn them from the inside. Fate was sure Bellatrix was lucid for the first time in years. The compulsions and restraints had pulled at the magic and left her mind fighting to regain control before retreating into itself when it became too much.
"Now, Bellatrix, Hermione, you both have been under a multitude of compulsion charms and magic constraints for years, Bellatrix a lot longer which has caused you to retreat into your own mind in order to protect it. I would imagine Hermione would have followed soot if they hadn't been removed."
"Wh…How?" Bellatrix uttered, bewildered. Hermione remained silent, observing Fate with wide eyes.
"Well, Bella, your father and Riddle, realizing your power and potential, decided to control you rather than have you oppose them. You hate your father, and for a long time you hated Tom, too. They couldn't have that, so they acted that way in order to keep you under their thumb. Hermione here, presented so much power that Albus saw fit to use her so that she could protect his golden boy. He set her on a path and wove in a loyalty charm to him, the boy, and that Weasley brat. Both men are very similar in the way they operate and, unfortunately, you two were the victims."
"I don't understand. How... what is happening?" Hermione asked, looking around lost.
"The Time Turners breaking created a ripple that let me intervene in this realm. You two are my chosen, you have power few would dream of obtaining and your minds are as sharp as they come. You will work together and set the balance back, the equilibrium of things has been broken and you are the only people capable of reestablishing it."
"What! But I can't work with her, she's a Death Eater!" exclaimed Hermione.
"I am not a Death Eater, that… that… thing is not my master. I am a Black; Blacks bow to no one!" Bellatrix glared at the young woman.
"Oh really, what do you call what you were just doing, if not fighting children under the order of a maniac?"
"I wasn't me! I was not in control!" That seemed to shut the younger woman up. Fate was sure Hermione was evaluating her own actions. Neither had been in control of what they were doing, while under the thumb of two men.
"I cannot begin to express the extent of my disapproval," Fate declared haughtily.. "Both of you need to work together. If you do not trust each other, that is fine, but you both need to trust me, and trust that without the other, neither of you will succeed."
"And what is it that you want us to do exactly? I just got back my mind, and to be honest I'd rather leave this place and never return," Bellatrix said. Surprisingly, Hermione nodded in agreement.
"Well, both of you could leave but if you do, everything will be destroyed, be it the magical world or the muggle."
"So, you're telling us that we must either help you save the people that destroyed and controlled us, or everyone dies?" Hermione said, resentment clearly in her voice.
"Exactly!" Fate told them. "Tom Riddle and Albus Dumbledore are the people that have wronged you, not everyone else. A lot of them are also the victims of these men."
Fate could see them thinking things through, working out the possibilities and the consequences. Bellatrix was the first to speak, though.
"I'll do it, but I'm not doing it to save anyone; I'm doing it for myself. They have stolen years from me, destroyed my soul and made me do atrocious things. Tom Riddle needs to pay for what he has done to me."
"I'm still not sure of all of this, but Bellatrix has a point, Dumbledore has been trying to control me for far too long, I will not stand for this and I need to make sure he doesn't do it to anyone else."
"Well then, if that is settled, we need to talk about what needs to be done," Fate announced.
The two women looked at each other, and Fate read in their eyes that, despite the fact that they had been enemies just half-an-hour ago, both women were ready to trust one another; to save the worlds they loved. Fate smiled that one one hell of a ripple through time.