In the Lake

Anton Vladimirovich Kobrin had not exactly expected to end up assigned to a rail ferry, hastily converted into a cruiser, on a lake in the middle of the mountains, far from the sea. Sailors generally expected to fight on salt water, and even when on fresh water, perhaps something different from the strange experience of standing on the deck and seeing all the vast looming mountains around, and especially the magic mountain that some called Ararat and some called Damawand.

He had been conscripted, trained, and sent into the Navy—and didn't mind, he had been a first class sportsman in swimming and rowing in school, and loved the scent of salt water by his native Arkhangelsk, and the glimmering northern lights over frozen water. And, as his uncle said, if he was going to die in the war, at least in the Navy, you died with a full stomach.

But then his orders had come in, and he had not gone to sea. He had journeyed by rail to the middle of a continent, to the heart of a mountain range, to fight and die on Fresh Water. Such were the ironies of War.

The lieutenant of his gunnery section on the cruiser, Maxim Lagunov, had led them well through what seemed like a week of savage combat, providing fire support upon the shore; he cursed a great deal, but always led by example and exposed himself to danger first. The Russian Navy had fought, wherever there was water to float a boat, and had proved there was more than enough water in Lake Van. They had fought, and fought, and fought until they were exhausted, fought until the ship was running low on food (perhaps his uncle had been wrong). They'd hit the enemy hard, and kept the honour of the flag, even with this strangest of flotillas of the Russian Navy.

Enough water to float, enough water to sink. The storm that had come up that day had been an ill, nightmarish omen. The waves had reached from shore to shore on Lake Van, and rebounded and redoubled back on themselves, over the deep water, deeper than anyone had ever believed before the mountain had unveiled itself, in a lake larger than people had believed, before the hidden parts were revealed. And they fought over the hidden parts of the lake, close in the shadow of Ararat.

Through the day they had held their positions, enduring air attack from Morsmordre fighter-bombers, enemy artillery fire from the shore, and the increasingly intense waves of the storm. They had fought on, firing their guns and rockets until ammunition ran low, and then still they fought. They had put out two fires from aircraft rockets, while the spray and waves tore across the deck, and they could barely serve the guns as the empty shell casings rolled around their feet and the deck pitched wildly beneath them, enslaved to the whim of the storm.

Then, late in the battle, they had done their job a bit too well. They had attracted the attention of some wizards with a group of Morsmordre troops on the shore. The cruiser had only one wizard aboard, and he was quickly overcome. A moment later, converging bolts of power had torn into the hull, and the converted civilian ferry was quickly sinking, flames gouting up from a gaping hole amidship starboard, until they were doused by the ferry listing hard over, rapidly filling with water, broached on her beam-ends.

By some miracle, the wind and the storm had stopped almost at the same moment. The men didn't look their gift horse in the mouth. They prepared to take to the water. Life-jackets on, and Anton had sat down on the side of the abruptly listing deck as the waves surged up and around them, and taken off his shoes, all-neatly like, and set them with his jacket on the deck, like he was going out for a swim at school. The ship lurched again, in her death throes, as the crew clambered up to the side.

The Captain had cheerfully made his way along the deck, hand over hand, cutting the lines to the lifeboats and the life-rafts and freeing them from the rapidly sinking wreck. "Over the side with you, boys!" He cried. "The storm's breaking, you've got a chance! Swim for it! For Victory!"

A few seconds later, the ferry gave her final lurch, and heeled over and plunged into the dark, surging waves of Lake Van, her funnels, and her mast with the St. Andrew's Cross, disappearing last below the waters.

Anton hadn't seem the Captain since. But he had heeded his advice, plunged into the water, and swam hard to fight clear of the wreck and avoid any suction from the sinking hulk that might drag him under.

When at last the bubbles had faded, he had turned back, fighting to keep his head above water through the surf and swell of the waves, which were now bouncing from each side of the lake and rebounding, having no regular pattern, high breaking swells which carried a man in a life preserver high into the air, where he could see the mountain and the shore, and then delivered him deep back into troughs from which he could see nothing save the raging waves of the lake all around him.

And then, through the crests and troughs, as he fought to make way against the storm, he could see a group of twenty or thirty men, clinging to an overturned object in the waves. He swam closer.

It was Lieutenant Lagunov, with a party of men on an overturned lifeboat!

"Anton Vladimirovich!"

"Sir!" he answered with a shaky laugh, and grabbed at one of the ropes trailing from the overturned lifeboat, and dragged himself up close to the submerged gunwale.

"Good, one more, just what I was looking for!"

"Sir?"

"We're going to right the lifeboat, come on! The storm's rising again, and we're all goners if we can't get to the oars, and keep her bow into it!"

They clambered up onto the top of the lifeboat, and took up a school song that kept the rhythm, running from one side of the lifeboat to the other, until it rocked harder and harder, a perilous act in the pounding seas, while the men on the sides heaved and leaned in with all of their might.

Finally the men on top of the lifeboat had to leap, as it surged up, the men on one side pushed and let go, those on the other side pulled hard, ducked under. It flipped with the rising of a wave, and they converged again, throwing out lines and pulling themselves into the waterlogged lifeboat. One man found the manual pump, and started it going, working the levers hard. Others began to unship the oars. More grabbed the canvas cover for the emergency survival rations and flares, and began to use it like a bucket, for bailing.

Lieutenant Lagunov hauled himself in last, and pulled his soaking wet uniform cap out from his shirt and planted it firmly on his head, and fixed the strap in place, in a bit of dignity in the midst of the storm. He sat on the rearmost seat of the old style lifeboat, unpowered, and grabbed the tiller. "Step lively to it, lads, we're on our fucking beam-ends!" Broadside to the waves, and they barely managed to avoid the little boat flipping again, before they had the oars in the water, biting and hauling on the churning lake surface as hard as they could.

Her bow started to work back into the pounding water.

They had more men than oars aboard, and Anton found himself curled up in the prow of the lifeboat as the waves broke over them, joining the others who kept bailing, trying to throw the water out as fast as it came in.

At least it was summer, and the weather was not savagely cold, nor the water of the lake, though Anton feared for the coming dark. And it was then, thinking about the night coming on, that he saw it—a black shape, tumbling, flying through the air.

At first, he thought it was a piece of an aeroplane, knocked off as it was being shot down in the still-heavy combat on the western shore. Then he realised it was a person, a woman—a witch, almost certainly—literally tumbling through the air.

He watched her with all the horror and interest of a man about to watch a fatal car accident, where absolutely nothing could be done in time. But then something changed—the witch. In a single supreme burst of magic, wandless, and possibly accidental, driven by will rather than intent, she slowed down.

Forgotten by whatever enemy or accident had sent her here, Anton watched as she slowed down, and caught the attention of other men in the lifeboat. She slowed down, like she was feather-light, until at last she gently just dropped into the Lake.

"Bad luck, that," one of the men at the oars muttered.

But Anton thought about it differently. He knew that it was supremely dangerous to rescue someone who was drowning—that often rescuers were pulled underwater by the person they were trying to rescue. Both drowned.

But he had come here to risk his life, to fight for his homeland, and now he found himself in peril on the sea. He had been a damned good swimmer, he had been trained as a shore lifeguard, and he damned well wasn't going to watch her just drown, when she had fought until the last moment, so hard, to live.

So he pushed himself up over the gunwales and flung himself back into the raging waves.

"My God, Anton Vladimirovich!" Lieutenant Lagunov screamed. "You idiot! You'll never bring her back" – but for all that, he followed it up with his own orders: "God damn it, port oars, double-time, back water to starboard, come about, follow him, follow him! You there, sailor, in the bow, get a line ready!"

Anton's strong arms carried him sixty metres through the water, fighting the waves every second. It seemed like it took forever, but there he was, about where she had begun to sink. He took a deep breath, and plunged under. Whereas the storm was roaring above his head and the waves were battering him and the lifeboat, below the waterline, it was peaceful, but he knew this peace was the peace of death.

He dove, and dove, and despaired that he would ever find her. But powering himself down, he saw something, then, in the dim water of the lake. He saw a glint of gold. Having no other prospect of finding the falling woman from the sky, he pulled for it as hard as he could, until his lungs nearly burst.

It was the woman, for one of her arms was artificial, a beautiful thing inscribed with runes, and made all of gold plate. He was almost enchanted by it, glimmering gently in the dim, dank light so deep below the water. It had saved her life; he would have never seen her if she didn't have it. The pounding pressure on his lungs reminded him where he was, where she was. He swam the last distance, and grabbed her firmly.

She was limp, and offered no resistance, and he wondered if she was already dead, but removing to give up, he pulled hard for the surface of the water, as hard as he could, hauling her up, pressing her absolutely tiny figure close to his. He saw she was in a uniform, and as best as he could tell, it was one of an allied nation, but something in him, the desire to save someone from the sea, would have carried on even if she were an enemy.

They breached the surface. Gasping so hard for breath, the woman was still limp in his arms, as his legs worked double-time to keep them above the surface.

But there was the lifeboat, and there was Lieutenant Lagunov. They threw a line—but Anton couldn't grab it while keeping the woman's head above water, hoping that she was able to draw breath.

With a curse, Lagunov doffed his hat again, and plunged into the water himself, leaving the tiller to a starshina.

"God damn it, you idiot sailor!" he exclaimed, but together, they got the ropes around themselves, and hauled the woman to the side of the lifeboat. The sea was picking back up again, the storm was beginning to re-form above their heads. It didn't look good, and there they were, fighting to drag this flying woman out of the lake.

But four pairs of arms crowded close, the lifeboat heeled to starboard-"Fuck, one of you get back!" Lagunov exclaimed, and at last, with scraping and slapping against the wood of the lifeboat and feeling like they were being tortured on the rack, all three were dragged into the boat.

Lagunov shook his head and glared at his sailor. "You'll get a life saving medal, if she isn't already dead, but fuck me if I don't also get you a courts-martial!" He exclaimed, but then laughed. "Good work." He immediately crawled and climbed aft for the tiller. He needed to be there, he needed to fight to keep his little command above water.

And Anton cleared the woman's throat, and gave her mouth to mouth, and pounded on her chest in some kind of hopeful, half-hearted effort at remembering how to perform CPR.

With a start, she drew a long ragged breath, vomiting water into the bilge of the lifeboat.

Anton didn't know who the little lady's life was, and in that moment, he didn't care. Regardless, he had saved someone from drowning that day, and in the midst of their sinking and the terrible battle, that was enough for him.

The waves were picking up again, and their lifeboat was being pounded over with breaking waves again and again. They were having trouble keeping up with the bailing. But they fought on, men against the sea, and slowly, as they fought, the courage to carry on was so they could save their 'Flying Lady', who had become their mascot, their promise, and they struggled to keep the waterlogged lifeboat above the surface, for her as much as for themselves.

And they prayed, and hoped to see another dawn.

Hermione looked to the waves across the Lake. She looked at them again, and again, standing on the shore, back at Van. After retreating from the depths of the Dark Road inside of the mountain, they had apparated straight away back to the city they had started from. It was over, even if nobody really knew it yet, and the killing would continue for days, weeks, months, years. But the outcome was written, set in stone. They were going to win.

She had this entire future, and there was no Bellatrix to share it with.

They were all standing, sitting, in the grass along the shore, watching the dock for the rail ferries, which was over with waves, being torn apart and half-submerged. Luna was sitting with Harry, giving him a hug. Ron had insisted on walking to the field hospital, instead of letting medical personnel be summoned.

And she had used her rank, and pulled strings with headquarters, and for once in her life, didn't give a shit about it. Hermione diverted four Galinas from regular operations, and right now, they approached low and careful over the open fields. A group of MPs dashed out from the buildings, and guided them down for the final approach and helped them chock the wheels.

Without another thought to her friends—let them mourn those lost, let them celebrate the end of the war—she marched out, to tip a salute, wink, and grin to the helicopter commander that she knew she could lean on for this. "Captain Golovin."

"Hermione Alanovna, come on, get on," he waved to the lead machine. She bounded up, caught his hand, and was hauled aboard.

"Is it true? We've heard a wild rumour, but it's spreading fast and it's on everyone's lips. They say the Dark Lord is dead, and the enemy has been defeated around Tatvan, and we're trying to scrape together resources for a counterattack."

"It's true. Thank the Gods, it's true." She threw herself into the jumpseat, grabbed a headset so she could talk to the pilot, while Captain Golovin and his gunner settled themselves in. The door-gunner flashed a thumbs-up, and the helicopters applied power.

"Hah!" Golovin gave the order, sounding triumphant, to his flight, and the four helicopters rose into the air. She listened to the chatter of the pilots over the radio, as they flew on and out over the lake.

After Voldemort's destruction, the storm had faded away, but the weather was still rough from the natural aftereffects of the unnatural tempest. The helicopters chopped and bounced as they flew low over the spray, at a hundred metres above the surging waves.

Then, they spread out, and began to circle and search for any sign of any living thing on the surface. They were driven by Hermione, who had only irrational hope, and the whispered suggestion from Elahaïs that all was not lost.

The helicopters were buffeted by the remnants of the storm as they circled. Hermione, her skin as pale as it could be (granted, that wasn't much from her natural darkness, especially in summer, but she hadn't imagined it was like this, like every erg of blood had been drained from her), her stomach sick, empty, acrid, smoked cigarettes and stayed strapped into one of the jump-seats, looking out over the sea to the left, while the door gunner took the right. She saw nothing through the rattling and shaking Galina as they circled, and circled again, and tried to cover as much of the lake to the southeast of Ararat of as they could, while the fuel tanks held.

One cigarette, two, three, four. The nicotine only half calmed the shakes, but anything was better than nothing. At least she was doing something, even if the search was completely futile. She wouldn't get in trouble for diverting them; Narcissa would make sure of that. And she wouldn't care if she did. Normally Golovin wouldn't have let her smoke in his machine, but today they'd just killed Voldemort, so he was too excited to give a shit.

But they circled, and circled, and the fuel gages dipped way over low, and the pack of cigarettes steadily disappeared alongside the jet fuel. They would soon have to return to Van, and Hermione would have to come to grips with just what the rest of her life would mean, without Bellatrix.

"Hermione Alanovna!"

"Captain?" Hermione leaned forward instinctively even though it was over her radio headset, jerking out of her miserable reverie, half-gone cigarette clenched in her teeth.

"One of the other birds found a lifeboat, it's probably from one of the gunboats that sank! We're almost zero on fuel, can we try a rescue? At least someone will come off the lake alive, today, Councillor." His voice held that tone, which reached out to basic human decency and compassion: Yes, you cannot save the person, but you can save a person. Let us save a life today.

I looked for Bellatrix, and I couldn't find her, but I saved men in a boat. Well, she still had her values, the core ones that really mattered, or so she liked to think. She nodded, once. "Go for it, Captain!"

They veered to the right immediately as he looked back, and they picked up the image of a waterlogged and half-sunken lifeboat, an old style one that would have never been allowed on a modern ship, but which the Turks had gotten away with only bothering to equip their ferries with, on an inland lake. The Russian Navy had had no time to add new ones, and instead had just supplemented them with life-rafts.

There had been reports on the radio of other rescues, but they had been far away; the others had all been in life-rafts, and these men, in their lifeboat, had drifted in a different direction and were deep in the middle of the lake, to the east off True Ararat, toward the outer northern edge of the search pattern that Hermione had ordered Captain Golovin's helicopters to fly.

As they approached, a flare erupted upwards from the flaregun on the lifeboat. They had been spotted, and men praying for rescue, were hoping that the helicopters were coming for them. No, Hermione definitely didn't regret it.

"There's thirty in the boat," one of the other pilots reported as they circled. "We don't have rescue hoists, Anatoly Borisovich! How can we do it? They're waterlogged and I'm not sure how much longer they'll last."

Hermione tapped her headset on. "Captain, have we got some rope aboard the helicopters?"

"Yes, a twenty-five metre cord. What are you planning?"

"I can go down to them. Featherweight charm each man. Then the door-gunner can haul them up without a hoist or a rescue rig."

He only needed a second to think about it. "Two. This is lead, I want you on the west flank, to block the waves with your rotor wash as much as you can. We're going in. Our Witch will lighten the men with charms, so our gunners can haul them up by hand. He'll hold the rope in the middle, and I'll summon the ends, so we'll need a continuous rope, which means you need to hover at not more than ten metres."

"Understood!" Hermione acknowledged the final point of the plan.

"Understood, Sir. Poyekhali!" Two acknowledged the instructions and veered away, and descended closer and closer to the water, until the massive power of her main rotor was physically beating back the waves and kept getting lower and lower until his wheels were nearly touching the surface of the water.

Then Lead, her helicopter, Golovin's, turned in to come in close and low with the lifeboat. Hermione was seized by a sudden thought, of how she could help more. She rushed to the side, and cast a charm, twirling and whirling the surface of the water, to transform a layer of water into oil. It immediately helped quiet the waters around the lifeboat, and calm the rocking for them. She flicked her cigarette into the wind, and stripped off her uniform jacket and boots and the headset. Flashed a thumbs-up to the door gunner, and secured her wand in her holster.

And then she was sailing gracefully through the air. She guided her own fall as best as she could, but the powerful wind from the rotors of the helicopters drove her away from the lifeboat. The water of the lake hit her, grabbed her, welcomed her with a sharp shock that wanted to drive the air from her lungs.

It shook her alive, as the cigarettes couldn't, after Bella.

She sprung into action, swimming hard for the lifeboat. Fished her wand out, and charmed herself with the same charm, featherweight, that she'd be using on the men, to make it easy for the two who pulled her onto the lifeboat.

"Forgive me, Councillor, but we're getting kind of crowded, and taking on water! What's the plan?" The Lieutenant at the back came to attention awkwardly, and gave her a salute.

She acknowledged it, and then blinked.

One of the men muttered: "so, second woman to fish out of the lake in a day."

Bella.

Laying there, sprawled out, in the bilge of the lifeboat, with the water almost up to her nose and mouth—but they had propped her up, on the metal flare-box, to keep her breathing. She moved, and blinked slowly, and stared up.

"Fucking angel," Bellatrix muttered in English up at her. Was that a hint of a grin?

Hermione broke out laughing.

"I don't suppose you two are acquainted?" the Lieutenant asked.

"Actually, as odd as this is, yes, we are. You just rescued a British Field Marshal, comrades." She wanted to laugh, she wanted to scream, she wanted to shout, and jump up and down.

But she was on a sinking lifeboat, surrounded by thirty men she needed to save, and Bellatrix, Gods, and Bellatrix.

"Good God. Send the Lady up, then!"

Bellatrix choked, and coughed, from where she lay in the bottom of the boat. "Send them up first. I go last."

"Why's that, Bella?" Hermione looked down, and couldn't help but keep smiling like she was some kind of damned idiot.

"Because you're here."

The grin, the adrenaline, the endorphins, it banished all pain, it banished the cold, it banished the savagely empty stomach and the shaking hands. "Alright comrades, here's the plan. We're going to have one helicopter approach first, and I'm going to summon a rope from it … When I summon the rope I will tie it to you, in a continuous rope, as they hover directly overhead. Then, I will give you a featherweight charm, and hold on to the bottom of the continuous rope, while the door-gunner hauls from above. We'll load eight of each on each helicopter. And the Marshal and I are going last."

The helicopters approached in their turn, and in their turn, Hermione called out "Accio rope ends!" while the door-gunner held onto the middle of the rope, and tied them together around the waist of each man, in a continuous rope. And one after another, with a salute or a pumped fist, and a cheer from the men still left behind in the lifeboat, they flew up the rope with the aid of magic, and were secured aboard the big screaming Galinas.

Eight men, the first Galina was overfull, but they had the featherweight charm applied to them, and the fuel was low. Golovin applied full power to the turbines, and they climbed away. Lead's lights blinked in signal, and he aimed for the shore of Ararat, to put the machine down and unload the men just as soon as he could.

Three went in next, rotors sounding like a tempest overhead. They trailed the rope out. "Accio rope ends!"

One man, and another, and another. Eight men.

Three applied full power, and swung away to the northwest to follow Lead to shore, her lights blinking. It was growing dark.

Four moved in. Now, without so much weight, the lifeboat started to lurch uncomfortably with the waves.

The process was repeated, until there were only six men left in the lifeboat, with Hermione and Bellatrix, and there was only one helicopter left hovering—Two. But two was the one that had been hovering at low altitude the entire time, keeping the water clean for the others. And as she rose, the waves immediately picked up, and the lifeboat threatened to capsize.

Bellatrix, in the bottom, gasped for breath as the water slapped over her face. "Eight of us? You can apparate eight to Van, 'Mione, don't fuck around with it."

Hermione grinned. You're right. She waved Two off, and then raised her wand and magically amplified her voice. "I'm using magic to take them to Van directly, wait until we're gone and then break off and head for home! It's too risky for you to leave station to try a rescue, or until we're gone!"

The helicopter blinked its lights in acknowledgement. It was getting very dark.

And Bellatrix, breathing as hard as Hermione had ever heard her breathe, reached up, golden arm to her, and Hermione took it, and the other sailors linked their hands over those of the two women, locked together like iron.

Hermione raised her wand arm, and they spun, and with a crack, disapparated.

Mercifully, only a split second later, she saw around her the lights and the buildings of Van, and felt it was the most beautiful city she had ever seen in her entire life.

And she lowered Bellatrix to the grass, and she couldn't laugh, and she couldn't cry, and she couldn't scream. The sailors she had just rescued approached, and each shook her hand and saluted, in turn.

And the guns still thundered to the west, but they were on the offensive, and Voldemort was dead, and victory was in the air.

And against all odds, and by the courage of muggle strangers themselves in peril on the sea, they had both lived.

Oil spread on the water will in fact calm wave action in a local area.

Thus begins the last part of the story, "The Matter of Bellatrix". It will be five chapters including this one, and then have an epilogue.