Author's note: Sorry about the long delay in my works in progress. Real-life issues during 2018 made it much more difficult for me to devote any time to writing and I pretty much got out of the habit. During my fallow period I got interested in a fandom to which I hadn't devoted much time in the past. I came up with the idea for this story and it kept distracting me from continuing my Skyrim and Baldur's Gate fics, although I did manage to get some work on them done. Eventually I gave in and this is the first chapter of the result…

Back To Black

Chapter One: Fox on the Run

"Down eight places to eleven, Sabre Dance by Love Sculpture," the voice of Alan Freeman said over the final notes of Radio One's countdown jingle. "And now on to the Top Ten. Manfred Mann climb twelve places to number ten with Fox on the Run."

Bellatrix Black ate the last piece of her cheese toastie as the opening instrumental passage played. She was aware that a small group of people had just entered the café but she took little notice. Her little Sunday excursions into the Muggle world were, to the best of her knowledge, completely unknown to anyone at Hogwarts, not even Andi or Cissy and definitely not Rodolphus, and she didn't regard Muggles as any threat to her. She picked up her cup and took a sip of coffee as on the radio Mike d'Abo began to sing.

She walked through the corn leading down to the river
Her hair shone like gold in the hot morning sun
She took all the love that a poor boy could give her
And left me to die like the fox on the run
Like the fox, like the fox, like the fox
On the run…

Bella put down her cup and glanced at her watch. Ten minutes until she would have to leave to get back to Hogwarts before the end of dinner. Strictly speaking she should have been there half an hour ago, at the official deadline for returning from Hogsmeade weekends, but in practice it wasn't enforced all that strictly now that Albus Dumbledore was the Headmaster. No longer was Apollyon Pringle allowed to cane students who were out late; she didn't have any Prefect duties until Curfew, and the worst she might face if caught, now that she was seventeen and a legal adult, was a few House points taken from Slytherin and perhaps a detention if she was unlucky. She decided to listen to this song, which she liked a lot, and the next if it too was one she liked. After that, or earlier if the record at number nine turned out to be as bad as the film that she had wasted the afternoon watching, she'd leave the café and find a spot from which she could Apparate to the boundary of Hogwarts without being observed by any Muggles.

Everybody knows the reason for the fall
When woman tempted man down in Paradise's hall
This woman tempted me oh yes, then took me for a ride
But like the weary fox I need a place to hide…

"Stupefy!"

A shouted incantation interrupted the song and Bella saw, briefly, a flash of red light. After that there was only blackness.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

"Did you notice the date? I missed it. All I know is that it was a Sunday."

Bella could hear a voice as she returned to consciousness. It sounded like a teenage boy, probably younger than her, speaking from somewhere outside her range of vision. She tried to move and found that she was held rigidly immobile by a Petrificus Totalis or something similar.

"Crap!" Another teenage boy's voice. "Delphi handled it all and I didn't pay enough attention. Of course, we didn't know then that she was totally round the bend and lying her head off."

"And we can't ask her, now that she seems to have erased herself from existence, not that she would have told us anyway," the first voice said. "We're screwed."

"Relax, Albus, it's not that bad," said the second boy. "We can just ask Bellatrix."

Albus? It wasn't a common name. The only Albus Bella knew of was Headmaster Dumbledore and his voice was nothing like that of either of the boys. Who were they? And what in Hell were they talking about?

"And then I'd have to Obliviate her again," the first voice, Albus, said.

She'd been Obliviated? What had they done to her? Bella was close to panic but couldn't move a muscle to struggle or even to speak.

"We can't risk her remembering anything about this, not even just that Time-Turners can work this way," Albus went on, "but I'm not happy about doing another Obliviation. I'm not confident enough to be sure it won't go wrong. It seems to have worked but I'd rather not risk it again. No, I have a better idea. I can remember that it was half-past six in the evening, a song was playing on the radio, and it was number ten in the charts. I can Google it and find out what the date must have been."

"Google it? What's that?" asked the second boy.

"It's a Muggle thing," Albus replied. "They can find out pretty much anything, at least about the Muggle world, with their phones these days. It's a pity phones don't work at Hogwarts. This shouldn't take long. I heard the man on the radio call it Fox on the Run…"

There was a moment of silence and then the other boy spoke. "She's nothing like I'd expected," he remarked. "I'd always heard that she was a crazy murderer but she seems… nice, actually, apart from being angry about being kidnapped. And she's very pretty."

"Don't tell me you fancy her," Albus said.

"Urgh!" the second boy exclaimed. "She's my great-aunt! But it's strange, anyway. The most notorious Death Eater and we find her in a café in Muggle Edinburgh. Acting perfectly normal."

"Maybe it was being married to Rodolphus Lestrange that drove her nuts," Albus suggested, "and fifteen years in Azkaban can't have helped."

"Or something happened to her just after the time we snatched her," the other boy said. "There has to be some reason Delphi picked that time and place, and knew she'd be there. She might have been assaulted by Muggle hooligans, maybe, or something like that. It's a pity we have to send her back. She seems perfectly sane now, but once she goes nuts… how many people did she kill, before your gran killed her? Sirius Black, and Teddy's mum and dad, and she tortured the Longbottoms…"

"Actually, I think it was Dolohov who killed Teddy's dad," Albus said, and then added, in a sterner tone, "Don't even think about not sending her back. That was what made Delphi disappear. And we've already had a hard lesson about messing with time."

"I know, you don't need to remind me. Every change made things go horribly worse, even when you would have thought it would make things better. Have you worked out when it was yet?"

"I'm getting there," Albus said. "If you'd just shut up for a minute… ah, here we are. Fox on the Run, number ten in the charts, April 27 1975."

Bellatrix tried to open her mouth to protest. She found it hard to believe that they'd moved her through time, as Time-Turners could only take you a few hours back at most and couldn't send you forward at all, but if it was true… it had been January 1969 when she'd been listening to Pick of the Pops, not April 1975. Her attempt to speak was futile; the immobilising spell was still in effect. Surely this all had to be some kind of prank… but, if it wasn't, she was going to be in big trouble.

"We'll need to be sharp with the timing," said the boy whose name hadn't been mentioned. "I'll cast the Rennervate and you take off the Body Bind, okay?"

"Okay," said Albus. "Get ready to cast and I'll prime the Time-Turner. We need to time it so that she wakes up in that café just after Delphi snatched her so she thinks she just nodded off for a second. Are you ready? Okay, on three. One, two… three!"

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

…heard it all before
I don't wanna know your name
'Cos you don't look the same
The way you did before

Fox on the run
You scream and everybody comes a running
Take a run and hide yourself away
Fox is on the run
F-foxy
Fox on the run
And hide away...

Bellatrix opened her eyes wide and looked around. It was the same café… but different. The cup and plate that had been in front of her had gone, a stand on the counter that had held sweets a moment ago now displayed sandwiches and scones, and the hair of the woman behind the counter had gone noticeably greyer. The song playing on the radio, although presumably called Fox on the Run, didn't remotely resemble the Manfred Mann song that had been playing mere moments earlier… or was it six years earlier? If this was a prank the amount of preparation needed was far in excess of anything remotely plausible.

"Och, I didnae see you come in," the woman called. "It's counter service, hen."

Bellatrix got to her feet and staggered as she experienced a momentary rush of dizziness. She managed to stay upright, regained control of herself, and walked up to the counter. "A white coffee, please," she requested. The song on the radio was coming to an end, after a repeated chorus and fade, and the radio DJ began to speak.

"That was The Sweet with Fox on the Run," he said. "Now, up eleven places to number nine, Take Good Care of Yourself by The Three Degrees."

It wasn't Alan Freeman. It was someone she'd never heard before. Another piece of evidence that she really had been moved through time.

"Fifteen pee, hen," the counter lady said, sliding a cup toward her.

Bellatrix frowned. That seemed an odd way of expressing the price, and she'd been expecting the coffee to be one shilling and sixpence. She fumbled a shilling and a threepenny bit out of her purse and laid it on the counter.

The woman stared at the money with her eyebrows rising high. "I said fifteen pee, hen," she said, "and the auld threepenny hasnae been legal for ages, three years or mair."

Bellatrix's jaw dropped. The Muggles had changed their money? She tipped some more coins onto the counter and let the woman take the right coins for herself. A two-shilling piece and a shilling. "But… that's three shillings," Bellatrix exclaimed.

"A ten pee and a five pee," the woman told her. "Where've you been that you dinnae ken about Decimalisation?"

"Decimalisation?" Bellatrix echoed. She thought quickly. "Swaziland," she said, naming the most obscure place she could think of off the top of her head. "I've just come back after six years." With her luck, she thought, the woman would turn out to have a brother who lived in Swaziland and would expose her story in seconds.

"Ah," said the woman. "You may as weel throw those auld pennies awa', you'd nae even be able tae change them at the bank the noo. The silver's fine, but an auld shilling is five pee." Her explanation was cut short as a couple of new customers walked into the café and she turned away to served them.

Bellatrix gathered up her coins and took her coffee back to her table. She stared at the new arrivals. They were a boy and girl, of probably around her own age, wearing clothes unlike any she had seen before. Jeans that went down only to several inches above the ankle and had strips of tartan cloth around the hems. The boy had a tartan scarf tied around his waist with the ends hanging down to mid-thigh level. The counter assistant greeted them without showing any signs of surprise at their clothing. Bellatrix averted her eyes, not wanting to be caught staring, and sugared and stirred her coffee.

This all was… impossible, but she couldn't see how it could be a prank. She really was stranded six years out of time. Her parents and sisters probably thought that she was dead. What should she do? She felt like curling up and crying but she was a Black and had to be strong. She sipped her coffee and thought. Should she go home? It was her first thought, but it would be a shock to everyone, and it was possible she might have been removed from the family wards. Back to Hogwarts? If this somehow was a prank it would be the best course and, if nothing else, it would give her time to think and she could get some advice from Sluggy. She gulped down the rest of the coffee and left the café.

It was broad daylight outside. It had been well after dark when she went into the café, as sunset was at about half-past four at that time of year, but it would be at somewhere between half-past eight and nine by late April, if her memory served her correctly, and what she saw fitted that perfectly. The last vestige of hope that she was the victim of an ingenious and complex prank dissipated. She really had been transported through time.

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

"A remarkable story, Miss Black," Dumbledore said. He looked at her over the top of his half-moon glasses. "Rather… hard to believe, in fact. It contradicts all that is known about Time Turners."

"Somebody in the future must have invented… will invent… ones that work differently," Bellatrix said. She'd endured a rather fraught entry into Hogwarts and now was sitting in the Headmaster's office, together with her Head of House Professor Slughorn. "I know it sounds crazy, Headmaster, but that's what happened. I couldn't believe it myself, and I kept hoping it was just a really elaborate prank, but then the radio show was different, and the sun was still up at half-past six, so I knew the date must have changed. They snatched me in 1969 and moved me to… now."

"Or perhaps you may have been slipped a Draught of Living Death," Professor Slughorn suggested, "and kept in the equivalent of an enchanted sleep for years."

Bellatrix shook her head. "I don't think so, Professor. The Transfiguration of my school robes into Muggle clothes was still in effect. I can't do permanent Transfigurations, mine only last a day or two at most, so not much time can have passed for me."

"Hmm. Perhaps some sort of stasis spell, a variation of the one used to preserve food…" Slughorn mused.

This time a shake of the head wasn't sufficient and Bellatrix was forced to resort to an eye-roll. "They'd have had to predict the singles chart six years in advance," she pointed out, "to be able to revive me when a different Fox on the Run was at number ten."

"I must confess I don't understand this business about a fox," Slughorn said, "but you seem to know what you're talking about. I'm surprised at you having been slipping off into the Muggle world. I would have thought you were just about the last person to do anything like that."

"It started off as a way to avoid Rodolphus," Bellatrix explained. "It was the one place he'd never go and I could have a nice afternoon by myself without that idiot following me around, like a self-appointed bodyguard, glowering at anyone who smiled in my direction. Then I found out how… interesting the Muggle world could be." She gulped as an ominous thought struck her. "But… sir… please don't tell my parents. They wouldn't understand. If I tell them I was taken from Hogsmeade instead of Edinburgh… would you support me?"

"I don't see why not," Slughorn said. "I'm sure they'll be so delighted to see you safe that they won't worry about the details."

"Of course, we will have to tell the full story to the Aurors," Dumbledore put in.

"The… Aurors?" Bellatrix echoed. "W…will they question me?"

"Indeed, they most certainly will," Dumbledore told her. "You have been officially a missing person for all this time. There was a major investigation into your disappearance and staff, pupils, and Hogsmeade residents were all questioned. The Aurors will have to be notified straight away… although I think it might be permissible to inform your parents first. Actually, I'm surprised that you didn't go straight home when you realised that you had been away for years. Surely you must have known that they would have been dreadfully worried?"

"I was feeling too stunned to think straight," Bellatrix said, "and I just came here because that's what I was going to do before… this happened."

"Quite understandable," said Slughorn. "It must indeed have been a considerable shock."

"Perhaps I might be able to discover more of what exactly happened," Dumbledore said. "You mentioned overhearing that you had been Obliviated. It is possible that I can remove the charm and recover your memories. With your permission, of course."

Bellatrix pursed her lips. She didn't want Dumbledore poking through her mind, especially as she'd skipped over some details of her experience; the part about her being a crazy murderer in the future. Against that, she really wanted to find out what had happened before she awoke, and it would mean that Dumbledore would be able to confirm her story to the Aurors with absolute certainty. After a moment's thought she came to a decision. "You have my permission, Headmaster," she said.

"Very well," said Dumbledore. "Look into my eyes." He leaned forward, raised his wand, and said "Legilimens!"

Bellatrix felt a presence in her mind and had to consciously restrain herself from raising her Occlumency shields; not that they could have kept a wizard of Dumbledore's proficiency out, as she had only recently begun learning the art, but she had got to the stage where attempting to shield was an automatic reaction. Flashes of memory surfaced in her mind; snippets of the extremely silly Muggle film Some Girls Do, which she had seen at the cinema in the afternoon; her time at the Muggle café up to the point where she had heard the cry of 'Stupefy!'; the overheard conversation between the two boys; and her experiences at the 1975 version of the café. Nothing, however, that wasn't included in her existing memories.

Eventually Dumbledore sat back and frowned. "I'm afraid I haven't been able to do anything about your missing memories, Miss Black," he said. "In normal circumstances it should not have presented an insuperable obstacle. It was performed, as far as I can tell, with only moderate skill and without any attempt to provide false memories to cover up any gaps. A simple brute-force approach, devoid of any subtlety, and I suspect that it was the Obliviation itself that disrupted the Stupefy and allowed you to recover consciousness. The problem is that the missing section contains… nothing whatsoever."

"I don't understand," Bellatrix said.

Dumbledore sighed. "There seems to be some sort of… time paradox… involved," he said. "You overheard a mention of one of those involved having, ah, erased herself from existence. The two boys who remained may have done the same thing to themselves when they returned you to the wrong time period. Consequently, in a sense, your… sojourn… into the future… never happened. The only tangible remnant of it is in your conscious memory."

"That doesn't make sense," Bellatrix protested. "If I can remember the part that I remember, then I should be able to remember the bit that I don't remember, once you remove the Obliviation. Uh, if you see what I mean."

"That would be logical," Dumbledore said, "but once Time Turners are involved logic goes out of the window. I am merely hypothesising, however, and it is possible that the caster, despite a relative lack of skill, simply managed to perform an exceptionally comprehensive Obliviation more or less by accident. Whichever explanation is correct, of one thing I am certain. That part of your memory is gone forever and nothing I can do will bring it back. I very much doubt if any other practitioner of the mind arts would be able to achieve what I could not."

Bellatrix grimaced. She'd allowed Dumbledore to see things she'd have preferred to keep to herself but had found out nothing new. "Thank you for trying, Headmaster," she said, forcing herself to sound polite and grateful.

"There is something else, Miss Black," Dumbledore went on. "When I saw your memory of your… abductors… I heard them say some rather… disturbing things about your, ah, future life."

"You need not worry about that, Headmaster," Bellatrix told him. "They disturbed me, too, and I've decided there is no way I want to go through that. I'm going to do the exact opposite of what they say I did… or will do. Assuming I can come back to Hogwarts, and complete my NEWTs, I'm going to apply for a position as an Auror."

"You need a minimum of five NEWTs at 'Exceed Expectations' or better to be accepted as an Auror," Slughorn said. "You were an exemplary student, on course for 'Outstanding' in all your classes, and I'm confident that you will be able to catch up on the three months that you have missed. The problem is that you were only taking four NEWT courses and, if you add a fifth, you'll be starting from scratch almost two whole terms behind the rest of the class."

"That won't be a problem, sir," Bellatrix replied. "Sign me up for Muggle Studies."

Slughorn gave a short laugh. "Very well, Miss Black. I'm sure that you'll do well."

"And now," Dumbledore said, "I think it's time that I had a word with the Aurors. No doubt they will want to interview you but I can assure them that your story, despite its seeming impossibility, is the absolute truth. I see no reason why it will be necessary to include that part of your abductors' conversation that covered future events that, in this… timeline, are unlikely to occur."

"Thank you, Headmaster," Bellatrix said, her gratitude now entirely genuine.

"After that," Dumbledore went on, "we can break the news to your parents and then send you home."

0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0 – 0

It had been a long time since Bellatrix had had a hug from her mother. She felt more embarrassed than comforted. The brief, awkward, hug from her father was even more embarrassing.

"We thought you were dead!" Druella Black choked out, seemingly on the verge of bursting into tears.

"Or that you'd run away to avoid marrying Rodolphus Lestrange," Cygnus Black said.

"Oh, I wouldn't have gone quite that far, Father," Bellatrix said.

"Andromeda did," Druella said. "She refused point-blank when Rodolphus demanded that she take your place. When we told her that it was her duty she ran off and married a Mudblood."

"Ted Tonks, I take it?" Bellatrix said.

"You knew?" Druella exclaimed. "And you didn't say anything?"

"Sorry, mother," Bellatrix said, "but it was just a school romance. I didn't expect it to last. Ted isn't too bad for a Mudblood, though. Solid, respectful of our traditions, and always polite to me and Cissy."

"Humph!" her mother snorted. "A Mudblood is a Mudblood. She brought shame on the family by marrying one. Arcturus wouldn't let us have her thrown out of the family, because with your disappearance, and Sirius rebelling against the family traditions, we were running a little short of true Blacks. Now you're back we'll be able to get her properly disowned and burned from the tapestry."

"That wouldn't be fair!" Bellatrix protested. "She only did it because you pushed her to marry Rodolphus. Father admitted that you both thought I might have run away to avoid that same fate. Don't punish her. Please?"

"Now, now, don't spoil this joyous reunion by arguing," Cygnus said. "We'll leave it up to Arcturus."

"What did Cousin Sirius do that disgraced the family?" Bellatrix asked.

"He was sorted into Gryffindor," her mother replied, with a sniff, "and was quite unrepentant about it. Walburga was furious. And he's befriended the blood traitor James Potter. Regulus says Potter is quite the bully to Slytherins and Sirius is following his example."

"How old is Sirius now?" Bellatrix asked. He'd been nine when she'd last seen him, at Christmas 1968, and she'd been quite fond of the bright and amusing little boy. Hearing that she had killed him in the future, in the original timeline, had been an unpleasant shock. She started to work out his age. If this was April 1975, he'd be…

"He's fifteen," Cygnus said. "In Fourth Year."

"I'll sort him out, then," Bellatrix said, "assuming they let me continue as a Prefect when I go back to Hogwarts."

"You don't need to go back," Cygnus said. "You're twenty-three now and it's not as if you need NEWTs to get a good job, or even need to work at all."

"I might technically be twenty-three," Bellatrix said, "but in my head I'm seventeen. And I will need NEWTs for the job that I want. I've decided to become an Auror."

"An Auror? Isn't that rather a… low-class occupation for a Black?" her father said. "You've never expressed any interest in that line of work before… unless you use it as a stepping-stone to a high position in the DMLE, and from there to something more prestigious… hmm, yes. Oh, but don't you need five NEWTs for that? Weren't you only taking four?"

"Slughorn thinks I can take a fifth and catch up before long," Bellatrix said, deciding not to mention that the NEWT in question would be Muggle Studies. "I wasn't thinking about a career when I only signed up for four but I'll put that right."

"But why an Auror?" Druella said. "You might find yourself having to arrest some of… our sort of people. There is a movement seeking to put the Mudbloods and blood-traitors in their place and they may be, technically, breaking the law in the service of a higher cause."

"Hmm. An Auror loyal to the Pureblood cause might be very useful," said Cygnus. "Being a little… lax, selectively, and perhaps warning the right people…"

Bellatrix shook her head. "If I become an Auror I'll give it my all," she declared. Her top priority was stopping the events leading to her going to Azkaban for fifteen years from coming to pass, and becoming effectively a crooked Auror wouldn't help her avoid that fate. "The best way to prove Pureblood superiority is to be better than the lesser breeds. I'll be the best Auror I can, enforcing the law without fear or favour, as they say."

"I suppose that's a laudable aim," Cygnus conceded. "I'm sure you'll rise to Head of the DMLE in no time. But what brought this on so suddenly? You never expressed any interest whatsoever in being an Auror before now."

"I was kidnapped," Bellatrix said. "I think it was basically a stupid prank that went horribly wrong, rather than being done with malicious intent, but it still got me thinking along the lines of catching criminals." There was no way that she was going to reveal to her parents the true reason behind her decision. "You've told me about Andi, and Sirius," she went on, wanting to change the subject. "What about Cissy? She'll have long left school by now. I take it she doesn't still live at home. Has she married Lucius Malfoy?"

"Oh, yes," her mother said, smiling. "They married not long after Cissy left school. A beautiful, traditional, Pureblood wedding. It's such a shame you couldn't have been there."

"It certainly is," Bellatrix said. "Just one more reason to resent having been kidnapped." Although, she had to admit to herself, her having missed the wedding would be worth it if it also meant that she missed the fifteen years in Azkaban and early death.

"They haven't started a family yet," Druella continued, "but it hasn't been all that long since they were wed. There's plenty of time."

"I'm glad," Bellatrix said. "It's bad enough that my two younger sisters are both older than me now without me suddenly finding out that I'm an aunt."

"You are an aunt," Druella informed her. "Andromeda had a baby girl eighteen months ago. They've called her Nymphadora. I must admit that, despite her polluted blood, she's a very cute baby and shows signs of being a Metamorphmagus."

"Oh, wow!" Bellatrix exclaimed. "I must see her before I go back to school. But not tonight. It's been a very long day… six years long."