War in a time of peace Chapter 11: Seventh Year - Second Term, a harry potter fanfic

All of the seventh year aside from the Slytherins are gathered together when Belle follows Blaise through the barrier. Half of sixth year is with them.

She looks around. No. That seems to be all of sixth year.

"Luna's gone," Neville Longbottom says. "And Ginny, and half of everyone."

"Not me," Seamus Finnegan says cheerfully, throwing his arm around Belle's shoulders from behind. "And not you, either, de Poitiers!"

"There are too many people who learned their Shield Charms from Ernie, Seamus," she tells him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. "I could not abandon them to their fates. Where is Lisa?"

"Her parents said no," Padma says, peeling Seamus off Belle's back by way of hello. "They're gone to America - her mum's sister is over there. Chicago. Out of reach."

"And Luna and Ginny? I did not think anything could keep Ginny away."

There is a pause.

"Luna was taken," Hannah says, hobbling over on a crutch, about which Blaise seems unsurprised despite how shocked Belle feels. "Her father- something about the Quibbler. No one could tell me anything more than that. We don't know where she is."

"The Burrow was attacked around the same time," Neville says, standing up off the bench and offering his seat to Hannah. "None of us have heard a word from the Weasleys since - Nan says they're on the run, but she wouldn't tell me who told her that."

Everyone around Belle steps back slightly to make room for Ernie, which annoys her a little - just because she is his girlfriend does not mean that her friends must defer to him. Still, the weight of his arm over her shoulders is a comfort, if only because she's so used to it.

Blaise, when she looks sidelong at him, has no sympathy. He slides a significant glance Neville's way, and says no more. Well. At least Daphne is not here to support his stupid idea that Ernie is jealous of Belle's friendship with Neville - why Neville and not Blaise, or Daphne, or Harry?

"So it's just us," Seamus says, offering her a cigarette and holding his hand out for her lighter. "We're what's left, de Poitiers."

Seamus lights up. Belle lights up. So do most of the rest of them, except Blaise, Zach, and Parvati - all three of them now have hipflasks.

The mood on the train is subdued.

The back few compartments, where most of Slytherin are sequestered, are laughing and chatting and chasing one another through the corridor as though this were a totally normal journey. Then there is an empty compartment, the pale light of its dimmed lamps throwing out into the corridor like a haunting, and then there are the seventh years.

All of them fit into a single compartment.

Belle is sitting sideways on Seamus Finnegan's lap, with one of her legs thrown over Blaise's knee. Practical Defensive Magic and Its Use Against The Dark Arts, vol. IV is propped up in front of them with a handy spell Daphne taught her, and a sweet coffee bribed from the trolley witch is in her hands.

Seamus has a small book that has the strange aura of having come from the Restricted Section floating alongside it. It seems to involve a great many spells and potions for burns and fires.

"I can help with that," she says, pointing to a very bright blue illustration of a flame, with what looks awfully like a wand in the middle of it. "You need a source of ignition, and I am a source of ignition."

"If I can get a Carrow's wand," Seamus says solemnly, "I'll bring it to you so we can burn it together."

Blaise is pretending to sleep, with his scarf draped over his face, but he sniggers at that.

On the other side of the carriage, a makeshift worktable has been assembled from their satchels and bags and a pair of plain tea-trays, also bribed from the trolley witch. A fine, colourful map of the school grounds are laid over the two trays, and around it Ernie, Zach, Neville, and both Patil twins are crouched. Lavender Brown is helping Hannah rewind a long, elastic bandage around her swollen knee, and Michael Corner and Tony Goldstein are examining Belle's bracelets, trying to understand how the Shield Charm in them works so they might replicate it for the little ones.

Blaise is forgiven for pretending to sleep, because while Belle and the others were settling and soothing the little ones, Blaise was laying protective spells all over the external doors and windows of the carriages holding the first and second years. Frankly, Belle is amazed that he hasn't fallen asleep yet.

"The way I see it," Parvati Patil says, in her usual straightforward, forthright way, "is that we're going to need Hagrid in on this."

"We can't involve a teacher-"

"The teachers are involving themselves," Zach says, cutting across Ernie with a flat assertiveness that takes Belle by surprise. Zach is cutting, and sometimes mean, and he is not afraid to speak against the crowd, but he generally abides by Ernie's rare caution. Belle feels more alert simply for hearing him disagree. "All of them, but especially the heads of house. There's no reason not to ask Hagrid - he's Potter's biggest fan, isn't he? He'll support this."

This is finding somewhere bigger and less breakable for Dueling Club, somewhere Pansy and her gang don't know about. This is also finding somewhere new for them all to smoke, if possible. Professor McGonagall was displeased that they'd lit up indoors and curfew is getting stricter, so it's next to impossible to sneak out anymore.

It's mostly about Dueling Club, but Belle's trunk is half-filled with cigarettes because she's going through them like there's no tomorrow, since there may not be. A new hideout to smoke would be most welcome, especially if there's an easy way to get to it from the dungeons.

"I don't think I can do it in perpetuity, like Greengrass did," Tony Goldstein says. "She's better at this kind of spellwork than anyone I know - no offence, Pads."

"None taken," Padma says, taking one of Belle's bracelets from Tony and then taking a tiny pair of jeweller's glasses from her pocket. "Oh, my - she is good, isn't she? Look here, Parv, that looks like Nan's filigree spellwork, doesn't it? Get her!"

Belle has already lost the run of that conversation, mostly because Seamus has discovered that books of defensive spellwork come packed full of all kinds of nasty, non-lethal hexes, and is very excited about this.

"Professor Hagrid will help us," Belle says, trying and failing to nudge Ernie's shoulder with her foot. "Ernie. Ernie. He will help. I know that he will."

"If you say so, Belle," Ernie says, oddly cool. "I still think we're better off keeping the teachers out of it."

"Well, we'll see what we can manage," Seamus says, outright kicking Ernie in the leg. "But if we are going to a teacher, Hagrid's our best bet. He loves us - especially us us. Us Gryffindors us."

Belle takes a tiny pumpkin cake from the basket in Blaise's lap and gives it to Seamus.

"Yes, well," she says, "we have Slug."

Blaise sniggers at that, too.

Belle finds herself doing Padma Patil's hair after they all change into their uniforms.

Padma is doing Lavender's, who's doing Hannah's, who's doing Parvati's. The boys are exchanging no doubt very masculine compliments, and Blaise is doing his very best to make Seamus just a little more presentable. Privately, Belle thinks there's something artful about Seamus' perpetual dishevelment, but he'd deny it to the death if she said so.

"You're very good at this, you know," Padma says, sounding a little surprised. Everyone has sacrificed their mirrors so that everyone can watch what's being done to their hair. Belle doesn't much mind - Blaise can do hers, in a pinch, and she can manage her own if she really needs to - but the others are very particular. "Everyone always complains my hair's too slippy."

"Oh, Daphne's is like gossamer," Belle assures her, and finds herself missing Daph just a little less than usual. "It took me so long to understand how to style it, because it is so different to mine. Yours is more like my cousin Jeanne's - Jeanne's is curlier, but it is just as soft."

"Your cousin the Veela?" Hannah asks, laughing and rolling her pretty blue eyes. "Oh, yes, because the thing Padma and Parvati need to be told most is that they're as pretty as a Veela, Belle!"

"Well," Belle says, "they probably are the prettiest girls in our year, except for me."

They give up on doing their hair so everyone can call her vain, and it's been such a long time since she saw Blaise laugh so hard that she doesn't even mind.

There are a handful of little ones clustered together on the platform when they finally disembark, and Belle is glad that she is not the only one who hesitates. Hannah does too, and Tony and Neville

"Come on," Neville says. "Let's see to them, then."

Belle walks with him, arms folded tight against the chill. Hannah and Tony hesitate only a moment or two further before following.

"Hello," Neville says, glancing at her sidelong when she wraps her scarf - plain black cashmere, because she feels less like advertising her house allegiances than she once did - around the neck of a second-year. "Everything alright?"

"Well," says the girl wearing Belle's scarf, whose name is Retta, if Belle remembers her Dueling Club roster properly. "It's only that we weren't sure if the carriages would work for us."

Half-bloods, then.

"Let me guess," Neville says, wrapping his cloak around a nervous looking boy in a Ravenclaw tie - Arnold? Arthur? Aaron - and giving Belle another of those sidelong glances. "Pansy told you they wouldn't?"

"How about this," Belle says. "I'll ride in the carriage with whomever of you is most worried, just to prove Pansy wrong, and then I'll hit her."

"Please don't hit her," Tony says, tipping his wand skyward to keep all the rain off of all of them - a charm Belle will have to ask for. "We don't need any more detentions, Black."

"Well, I'll ride in the carriage anyway," she says, "and you'll all let me out first, just in case someone objects. How's that, Monsieur Goldstein?"

"Acceptable," Tony says, "and less likely to cause Macmillan to hit me."

"Alright then, everyone group up," Hannah says, organising everyone in her very friendly way. "Come along, now, Retta with Belle and Aaron with Neville so no one loses their clothes. Let's get going, come on."

Belle finds herself herded right along with the second years, much to Blaise's evident amusement when he catches sight of her - she waves him off into a carriage with Ernie and Zach, and takes a carriage for herself, Retta, and a trio of her anxious-looking classmates who Belle is fairly sure are not in Dueling Club.

"You should come to Dueling Club," she says, closing the door firmly before the little ones can hear whatever Crabbe is shouting. "I can't promise that one of us will always be nearby, but we can at least show you how to stop the bullies long enough to run away. What are your names? I know Retta, because she comes to the club, but I don't know the rest of you. I should. Tell me your names. Mine is Bellona, like the goddess of war."

Belle is introduced to Sarah and Leah, who are cousins and who go to the same synagogue as Tony Goldstein and his family, and to Robert, who has the same sort of nervous pink face as Neville used to have.

None of them have time to be nervous anymore.

"I used the Bat-Bogey Hex on Harper," Retta says cheerfully, once introductions have been made and they're back on the topic of Dueling Club. "He was trying to hit Leah with a curse, so I hexed him, because you and Ginny told us to do that. He's horrible."

"Isn't he?" Belle agrees. "The main thing to remember is that if all else fails, if you cannot manage to hex someone, you can always hit them. I've hit tons of people."

"I saw you hit Pansy Parkinson when Daphne Greengrass got a Howler for being a lesbian. There was blood everywhere ," Robert says, sounding envious. "Did you get detention for that?"

"With Professor Slug," Belle says, opening the tiny window in the carriage door to wave her middle finger at Seamus, who has just drawn level with them, with the Patils and Lavender Brown in the carriage with him, and who is pulling faces at her and the little ones. "And detention with Professor Slug is never a chore, he mostly just wants someone to help him organise his letters and eat his sweets. I used to never get detention, until He Who Must Not Be Named came back, so that's one more thing for him to suffer for, don't you think?"

The school has never seemed so grim, with lights in only half the usual windows, and Belle gathers her new little friends under the drape of her cloak to guard against the darkness and the rain alike.

They run on ahead once she gets them into the entrance hall, and she pauses for a moment - just a moment. Being cheerful is the most tiring thing in the world.

Tony Goldstein bumps his shoulder to hers, his own gaggle of little ones chasing into the great hall behind Belle's. He seems almost as exhausted as she feels, and she's glad of all these new friendships she's forging. It spares Blaise at least some of her weight.

"They don't deserve this," Tony says. "I just hope we're doing enough to shelter them."

Belle loops her arm through his, glad of the chance to be thoroughly miserable for just a moment. There are so few of them left, so few of them who are adults, with a duty to fight this war so that the children don't need to, and with the teachers so caught between what needs doing and what they can do, they must shoulder the burden.

Hannah and Neville come to stand with them, and they are quiet for a moment. Belle's shoulders feel a little lighter, just a little, and she thinks that it must be true that misery loves company.

Blaise has saved a seat for her at the table, and she is shocked to find that Theo and Tracey are settled opposite him.

Theo's eye is swollen and purple-green, and his lip is split - scabbed enough that it's not a new injury, which means the lack of healing is purposeful.

"No magical healing," he says, before she can say a word. "It seems someone told my father that I've been reaffirming old alliances. I can more or less consider this a mark of my disinheritance, unless the old bastard dies before he can rewrite his will."

"Oh, Theo-"

"I'm not sorry for it," he assures her, reaching across the table to pat her hand. "I promise you, Belle, I'm not. If anything, it's proved to me that I'm making the right choice. My father and all those others who hide in the Dark Lord's wake are cowards, and I can't stand by and watch you and Blaise and all your friends be brave and not feel ashamed."

"Well," Belle says, her throat swollen and her skin cold - she knows that there are parents who hurt their children. Her own mother has hurt her so many times, after all. But there is a difference between the unthinking hurt Maman has caused to Belle and the purposeful, violent punishment Theo Nott's father has inflicted on him. "Well."

"We'll find someone to stitch up your lip, anyway," Blaise says, passing his handkerchief to Tracey so she can wrap up all of the ice cubes she's picked out of the cauldron of pumpkin juice nearest to them. "Put that on your eye for now, and I'll ask Hannah - she's handy with a needle. Or there's that boy in Gryffindor who does the alterations, I'll ask Lavender about him if Hannah's tied up."

"Or we could just ask Hector," Tracey says, a little cool. "You've both gotten far too used to looking outside of Slytherin for help, I think."

Sometimes, Belle forgets that Tracey also grew up in their dormitory, and so she is by default just as capable of being mean as Belle is herself, or Daphne. More capable than Millicent, who is stupid, and less capable than Pansy, who is revolting, but capable nonetheless.

"Or we could ask Hector," Belle concedes, knocking her knee against Blaise's under the table. "I'll catch him after dinner, if you can wait that long."

"I'm not going to ruin the poor boy's dinner, thanks ever so much," Theo says, rolling the one eye they can see. "Come on, eat up - there's more to tell, I think."

In the common room, while wearing an ascot that hides the shiny hint of his Merish ancestry on his neck, Hector takes a hair-fine needle to Theo's lip and stitches it so neatly that it will hardly scar at all.

Belle retreats once she's lit the sconce overhead, settling in around a card table with Blaise and Tracey.

"What more is there to tell?" she asks, shuffling a deck of cards - silk-backed with silver-gilt detailing, so from Sofia Nikolaevna rather than Maman, who gave velvet-backed with golden-gilt detailing. Belle and Blaise are fairly sure that their mothers ordered the plum silk and the fuschia velvet to be a matched pair, but know better than to ask in expectation of a straight answer.

"Well," Tracey says, "Theo and I had enough social capital left to ask a few questions, and we also thought to ask other Slytherins."

"You've already hit us over the head with that particular stick, Tracey," Blaise says, tossing down two two-hole buttons onto the table to open the bidding.

"Yes, well," Tracey says, raising him by a smaller four-hole button. "Flora Carrow says that you kicking her uncle almost makes up for not returning a single one of her letters, Bellona."

"I haven't even returned my mother's letters," Belle says, as evenly as she can manage. "Please assure Flora that no offence was meant."

Belle's hand is terrible, so she folds - no point in wasting her buttons.

"I miss my mother," she says without meaning to. "But please, Tracey - you were saying?"

Tracey gives her a strange look but doesn't comment. Belle is grateful for that.

"The Lovegood girl went missing on the same day as Mr. Ollivander," she says, adding an unusual three-holed beveled button to the pile. "There are a handful of others missing as well - Professor Burbage among them, as I'm sure you've probably guessed."

"All in the same place?" Blaise asks quietly.

"So far as we can tell," Tracey says. "Wherever he's headquartered - and there's no real question as to where that is, either."

Draco's absence feels haunting now. She might loathe him, but Belle cannot imagine the horror of being dragged away from the comfort of school to find that your home has been turned into both fortress and prison at once.

"Why Monsieur Ollivander, though?" Belle asks. "Do they need him to make new wands for them? I was under the impression that those who escaped Azkaban had their wands returned to them, and why else would they need Monsieur Ollivander?"

Belle thinks Monsieur Ollivander is a snob, and not nearly so talented at his craft as he thinks given how limited his materials are, but she would not wish him ill. She would not wish him captured or harmed - not by the Death Eaters, certainly.

"No one is sure on that," Tracey admits. "But half of Diagon Alley is empty - did you know Mr. Fortescue is gone? No one can find a trace of him anywhere."

Belle and Blaise purposefully avoided Diagon Alley over the holidays, and she regrets it now - had she seen Monsieur Fortescue's shop empty, this may have come as less of a blow.

"And have you heard about Saint Mungo's? I don't suppose you would have done, if you hadn't heard about Ollivander - they attacked the hospital the day after New Year's, right before they attacked the Weasleys. Apparently they wanted anyone who wasn't a pureblood denied care, and the Healers took none too kindly to that. "

Tracey lays down her cards and sweeps all the buttons into her pile. Belle hates poker.

"I really do miss her," Belle says, swinging her legs into the frosty darkness off the Astronomy Tower gantry. "Maman. I expected to miss Anatole, of course, and Amand, but not Maman. We have never been close in the way of Blaise and his mama."

"Well," Ernie says, passing her a cigarette and pausing contemplatively. "She's your mother. You did say that the two of you had been getting on better recently, didn't you?"

"We have," Belle agrees. "But even so - I think it is just the strangeness of not getting her letters. I am so unused to not getting letters, Ernie."

"Where did you leave Blanchefleur?"

"Oh, with Anatole, on the understanding that he would pass her into Sofia Nikolaevna's care. I cannot imagine that he did otherwise, or else he would have broken the embargo to complain about her biting him."

Ernie gathers her under his arm, warm and familiar and smelling a little of peatsmoke - they only burn smokeless, scentless coal in the Slytherin fires, and she is jealous of the homeliness that must exist in the Hufflepuff common room.

"Maman and I couldn't understand one another for such a long time," Belle says after a deep pull of her cigarette. "I sometimes think that we are still strangers to one another in many ways, but we are coming closer to seeing the truth of each other. I cannot bear to think that we might lose the chance of knowing one another."

"Terribly fatalistic of you, de Poitiers."

Is it? She thinks not - the chances of them all surviving this year, never mind this war, seem slim. Even Ernie, so stubborn and cheerful and relentlessly forward-looking, must realise this.

But perhaps Ernie saves his cheer for her, as she saves hers for the little ones. She will ask Zacharias.

"Sometimes," she says, tucking her hand into the warm spot under the part of his kilt, where she can touch his skin. The muscle of his thigh always jumps when she does this, and it always, always makes her smile. "Sometimes I worry, though."

"I know you do," he says. "You worry enough for all of us, Bellona."

"Sometimes I worry," she says, tipping her head against his shoulder, "that it is not enough."

II.

Dueling Club has grown far beyond what Belle could have dreamed, especially considering how many people they have lost to the terror.

Belle feels a flash of terror all of her own when Parvati throws open the door to admit Neville, bloodied and battered and balanced between Seamus and Lavender.

"What in the world happened?" Blaise demands, lunging forward to take Lavender's burden. "You look like you've had a scrap with a Hippogriff, Longbottom!"

Neville laughs, and his teeth are bright red. Belle feels sick to see it.

"Help me down, Ernie," she says, holding out her hand to Ernie so he might help her down from the table. He ignores it in favour of taking her by the waist, his hands slipping under her Racing jersey to settle on her skin. "Rogue."

"I do try," he says, kissing her temple as he sets her on the ground. "Should I run for Madam P? Seems as though Longbottom could do with her care."

"No teachers," Seamus says, dragging Professor McGonagall's big chair around the desk for Neville. "No staff. Can't involve them, not when it's Carrow who did it."

Belle digs her little medical kit from her bag, but once Neville's in the chair and settled she doesn't know where to start.

"I'll get the little ones away," Blaise says, squeezing her elbow. "Tony, Tracey - if you'd be so good?"

They rally well - Ernie and Zacharias help as well, and Lavender soothes everyone she can lay hands on - and before long everyone younger than them is gone from the room. Belle pulls a chair close by Neville's right hand, and still doesn't know where to start.

"Here, Belle," Hannah says. "I've seen you setting broken fingers before, so why don't you start on his face - your stitches are neater than mine. Must be from repairing all that silk you wear."

Hannah busies Belle out of her chair, and with Hannah to his right and Padma to his left, she is not initially sure how to get to his face.

"Well, get to it," Padma says. "We can't ice his face until it's sewn up."

Neville, swollen and bloodied and split-lipped, smiles around his injuries as best he can. Seamus kicks Belle neatly in the backside as he passes, his arms full of the books they each take turns to hide from the Carrows.

"Climb aboard, de Poitiers," he says. "Poor Neville's face doesn't have all night, you know."

Well, when he puts it like that, she really has no choice - so Belle swings aside her robes and climbs into Neville's lap. Mercifully, she wore her trousers this morning instead of her skirt.

"Hello," Neville says, pink under the blooming bruises and the blood. "Fancy seeing you here."

"I am good with my stitches," she promises him, taking a bottle of surgical spirits from a grim-faced Michael. "Just hold entirely still and don't flinch even a little bit."

"I'll do my very best," he assures her. "Just make sure they're strong stitches."

Belle has had to learn to sew with a curved needle just since September, and she's gotten very good at it - no matter how sick the bloodshed still makes her feel, her hands always seem to remain perfectly steady.

"His left leg is twitching," she tells Padma. "Could you check his knee, please?"

Neville is a far more obliging patient than Ernie, because he stays still and doesn't complain, and more obliging than Blaise, who never entirely admits to his injuries for fear of causing a fuss.

"Don't blink," she advises him, pressing his eyelid closed as gently as she can so that the skin of his eyebrow pulls taut for stitching. "I should hate to leave you with crooked stitches."

Tony and Tracey and Ernie and Zach and Lavender tumble back into the room all in a rush, with bars of chocolate and tiny vials of dittany spilling from their pockets. Blaise shuts the door firmly behind them all, and works very hard to catch Belle's eye so that he can grin like a madman at her.

She ignores him.

"Here, Belle," Ernie says, gathering up the dittany and attempting to split it between her and Padma and Hannah. He gives up as soon as he realises how unlikely it is that they're going to stop tending to Neville's wounds. "The little ones offered up their supplies - seems you're a very popular man, Neville."

"I do my best," Neville says, his eye not twitching even a little when Belle tugs the thread to tie it off and snip it with her teeth. "Divvy up whatever supplies the kids gave you between everyone else, Ernie, I'll be fine."

"You will not," Hannah says, "because as soon as we get Belle off you I'm going to have a good poke at your belly, and I suspect you've got all kinds of nasty internal bruising and bleeding. Do you know how we're going to fix that, Neville?"

"I suspect you're going to nag me better, Hannah."

"We're going to make you a smelly potion with a good slug of dittany in it," she tells him cheerfully. "And you're going to try very hard not to be sick when you drink it."

"Why this?" Padma asks, apparently satisfied with her work on his arm and hand and knee. "Why now, Neville? What on earth did you do to bring this down on yourself?"

"They've decided I'm a ringleader," Neville says. Belle pointedly does not notice the way he leans into her hand when she brushes his hair back from his face to make sure she missed nothing. "Now that Ginny's gone, I'm their next target. Makes sense, I s'pose. It has to be one of us, and no one would believe it was Seamus."

"I'd lead the best rings, thank you very much," Seamus says, helping Belle balance on her way off Neville's lap. "But, mate… This isn't good. They held off a bit on Gin because her family are mad, but they're not going to be scared of your granny."

"More fools them," Neville says, smiling until he remembers that his face is barely holding together. "You're probably right, though - best be careful for the next while."

"What rings?" Belle asks, completely baffled. "Who are you leading?"

The guilty look Neville and Blaise exchange cuts Belle to her very core, because how dare they keep secrets from her!

"There are things that you're not well suited to, Belle," Blaise says, patting her shoulder. "You're very good at protecting the little ones and at shouting at the Carrows, but you've never been subtle. Some of the things going on this year have needed subtlety."

"I can be subtle! Ernie, tell them-"

"I'm afraid I have to agree with Blaise on this one, sweetheart," Ernie admits. "You're doing marvelous good work with the kids, but I can't imagine you being underhand. No one would know if was you if you had to do it in secret, and where's the good in that?"

"Excuse me-"

"The kids love you, Belle," Neville says, cutting through all the nonsense. "They feel safe around you because you keep proving that you're willing to fight their battles with them - we couldn't ask more than that of you. There's so much going on, it seemed best to spread our resources."

"But I could help!"

"What Neville means, Black," Padma says, smiling just a little, "is that you're doing enough already - we all are, somehow or another. Not all of us are silly beggars who can find the time to leave Stinkbombs in Snape's office every Tuesday, like clockwork."

Afterwards, when Seamus and Parvati and Lavender are helping Neville off to their far-away common room, and everyone else has dispersed so they aren't caught out after curfew, Blaise forces Belle into the quiet of the boys' bathrooms nearest the Slytherin common room.

No one ever uses it, because there are bathrooms in each dormitory and two of the three toilets in here don't even work, and so it's here that Blaise takes a bar of soap and a nailbrush from his bag, and it's here that Belle realises that Neville's blood is crusted under her nails.

"I've been worried that we might have to do a little minor surgery," Blaise says quietly. "Clean hands are a bonus in the operating theatre, I'm told."

Belle scrubs until her fingertips are tender and red, and she holds on tight to the pale porcelain of the sink when the tears come, thick and hot in the back of her throat.

Blaise wraps his arms tight around her shoulders and lets his own tears fall, scalding, against the back of her neck.

The next morning at breakfast, Neville Longbottom is nowhere to be seen.

"Seamus," Belle hisses, pushing through a tangle of fifth-years to get to him in the rush before class. "Seamus Finnegan, come here."

"I don't know where he's gone," Seamus says, tucking his hand through Belle's elbow and dragging her out of the stampede a little. "Woke up this morning alone in the dorm, Belle, that's all that I know - no one's seen him since we put him to bed last night."

"You do not think-"

"Listen, Belle," Seamus says, dragging her this time to a complete halt, so that the others must all part around them on their hurried way to class. "The Fat Lady would rather die than let the Carrows into the Tower. She almost died keeping your dad out, and she didn't hate him nearly as much as she hates them."

"Your charm runs away with you sometimes, Seamus."

"What I mean to say is," he says, "I think he left. I don't think he was taken."

"But to where? How could he have gotten away? We cannot Apparate, the Floo is being watched, and the Dementors guard the perimeter so he could neither walk nor fly - am I to believe he dug his way out? Used a secret passage? Papa told me that there are several, and Harry told me where they are, but I understood that Snape had them closed off. So where is he, Seamus?"

"As far as we can tell," Seamus says, "he's just… Disappeared. I can't tell you any more than that, Belle, but as soon as I know more I'll let you know. Deal?"

They shake on it, and part ways. Belle still feels uneasy, sincerely worried that the Carrows have managed to spirit Neville away.

This is not the only disappearance from among their ranks this term.

One by one, the numbers dip every morning.

First it is hard to be certain - there are little ones disappearing, and Belle cannot be sure if they have been pulled from school by sensible parents or if there is something more dangerous afoot - but after a fortnight, by the time the shadows of the Forest are carpeted in pale snowdrops, it is obvious. Only Slytherin holds steady, never losing a single person, until Hector does not arrive for breakfast on a bitterly cold Tuesday morning in the very first days of February.

"Worry a little less," Zacharias says, behind a Muffling Charm in Muggle Studies. "Trust me. You don't need to be quite as terrified as you are."

Easy for Zacharias to say, when he has only a handful of true friends and cares about anyone else mostly because he keeps being told to do so.

"Bellona," he says, apparently seeing through her. "Trust me. Have I ever given you cause not to?"

"Seamus and Lavender are gone," Parvati says, at the next Dueling Club meeting. "I've moved into the sixth year girl's dormitory. I'd go insane up top on my own."

"But where are they gone?" Belle demands, sick to her stomach - wherever they are, is it safe? Have they food? Are they hurt?

"I'm not sure," Parvati admits, "but I've got an idea or two as to what they're doing."

The Stinkbombs are still appearing in Snape's office. That gives Belle a little hope.

"Wherever they are," Belle says, "I hope they have enough to eat."

III.

The next Quidditch game of the year is against a hugely depleted Ravenclaw, and were it not for the presence of Alecto Carrow in the changing rooms, Belle would be advising her team to throw the game. This war will be over someday, and there are enough legitimate reasons for their classmates to hate everyone who ever wore Slytherin green without giving them petty reasons, too. Winning the Quidditch Cup simply because no one else can field a proper team is just such a reason, and Belle won't have it.

"If we think you're going easy on your little bloodtraitor friends, half-breed," Alecto says, winding Belle's long braid tighter and tighter around her fist, and then plucking two stray primaries from near Belle's hairline, "we'll toss you in the dungeons and forget where we left you for a few days. Do you understand?"

Professor Slug would never allow such a thing, and Belle has completely given up on her own safety - but throwing this game could have repercussions on the rest of the team. She would do anything to spare Blaise pain.

"I understand," she grits out, and is rewarded for her capitulation with a sharp slap across the face.

"Good little monster," Professor Carrow, sœur, coos. "Now get going, all of you - go! Now!"

It is raining. The soft, misty downpour casts a diffuse filter over the crowd, and muffles Belle's voice when she steps forward to shake Tony Goldstein's hand.

"I'm terrible," he warns her. "Can't see for toffee in this mess, and I'm not a wonderful flier even in fine conditions, but we'd be damned if we weren't going to field a team."

"Follow me," Belle says, "and I'll make sure you win."

Tony's smile is slow and stunned, but sincere. He gives her hand a good, solid squeeze of thanks, and Madam Hooch gives them a knowing sort of a look when she tosses the coin. Tony wins the toss, and decides that they'll play with the wind.

And they're off.

Conditions are simply awful - Belle expected the match to be called off when the thunder started, but Madam Hooch shrugs when Belle and Tony fly-by and demand answers. The rain has gotten so heavy that even with her goggles, Belle can hardly see a thing, and she wonders how Harry ever coped with bad weather in the air.

"There's lightning in those clouds!" Astoria shouts as Belle zips by on a round of the pitch. "The match has to end before it reaches us, Bellona!"

The match does have to end. Belle's been holding back a little so that Tony can stay with her, but there's no time for that. There is lightning in the clouds coming in from the north, and even as she looks it strikes on one of the many steeples of the castle on the hill above the pitch - how little it will take for it to sweep down to them and strike the goalposts! No, this is too much. Belle would fly right through those clouds without fear if it were just her, but she is captain and her teammates are her responsibility. She will not risk them.

Not even Astoria.

"With me!" she shouts back to Tony. " Now!"

The flash of the lightning in the coming storm catches on the tiny, distant spark of the Snitch, idling at the foot of the Ravenclaw goal, and Belle takes off directly through the field of play to give chase.

Someone is commenting - a Slytherin, since she's fairly sure she heard that someone calling her a half-breed - and Tony is only just behind her. The Snitch is still lingering by the goals, and Belle has a horrible feeling that that means they'll have to give chase. The Snitch never leaves things so simple.

"Belle!" Tony shouts. "Belle, we need to get everyone out of the air!"

"The Snitch is right there!" she shouts back. "Go, quickly! Go now!"

He darts past her, the tail of his robes wrapped and clinging to his broom with the rain, and stretches out his hand-

And has to spin away from a Bludger. Damn it all. The Snitch darts away, soaring high, and Belle seizes Tony by the collar and heaves him high into the sky ahead of her.

" Fly, damn you!" she shouts. "Get after it!"

He flies. The storm is coming closer, and people are fleeing the stands - Professors McGonagall and Sprout are herding everyone away, and dear old Slug and Professor Flitwick are on the pitch below, waving their hands and saying something that Belle can't hear over the thunder in the skies and the thunder in her ears.

Tony is so close to the Snitch. She doesn't dare say a word, but she does hang back a little. Just enough that it won't be obvious, but enough to give him a real chance-

"Yes!"

Madam Hooch's whistle shrieks, so high and so sharp that even the thunder can't mute it, and it is almost too late. Lightning cracks, and everyone is rendered in stark black and white.

Well. At least Belle knows now that a Shield Charm works just as well against natural lightning as it does against hexes. Tony owes her both the match and his life.

Someone is screaming - she can't hear anything distinct, just the buzz of it far below them and the thunder rumbling above and around - so she darts up, catches the head of Tony's broom, and points him down.

"Down!" she shouts. "Fly down!"

He does, swooping away from the umbrella of her Shield Charm. She wonders if she will ever be able to repay Daphne for her bracelets. She wonders if she will ever see Daphne again.

Lightning cracks again, this time against the goalposts, and Astoria is the one screaming this time.

Well. Perhaps this is how Belle repays Daphne.

The tail of Astoria's broom is smouldering, too wet to catch light properly but already damaged enough that steering it is impossible. If she keeps going as she is, she'll hit the ground at a dead sprint.

The ground might be soft, but the goalposts are not. If Astoria hits one of those, she'll crack her skull, and then how is Daph to ever make her idiot sister see sense if she's dead?

Belle's Firebolt is older than Astoria's, but it is better loved and it is not on fire. She catches up quick enough, and then catches Astoria around the waist and heaves.

She manages. Barely. Astoria is broader and stronger built than Daphne, but still lean and light enough that Belle gets her across her own broom without too much effort. There's a wobble, a moment where Belle's stomach hits the ground and she fears that they will follow, but she manages to steady their path and bring them to something like a proper landing, right in the middle of the pitch.

"Well done, Black!" Madam Hooch shouts, using the same umbrella charm Belle forgot to ask Tony for. She seizes Astoria by the collar and sets off toward the changing rooms, leaving Belle to hobble after them on what feels like a badly sprained ankle.

Blaise, because he has always seen her when even her mother did not, comes out into the storm to help her into shelter.

Her ankle is broken. The Carrows laugh and knock her against the wall so hard Madam Pomfrey will later declare her concussed, but they do not forbid any magical healing.

Ravenclaw won despite Slytherin scoring nine goals in the first twenty-seven minutes of the match. Belle thinks a headache and a limp are a small price to pay for that.

IV.

"You didn't have to do that."

A neatly packaged bundle of little toffees in bright foil wrappers lands on the table by Belle's hand just before Astoria's shadow, and Belle is so surprised that she almost cannot speak.

Almost.

"Of course I did," she says. "I am captain, and Daphne is precious to me - your death or injury would have hurt her very much."

Sometimes, because Belle has spent so much time being furiously angry with Astoria, it is easy to forget how young she is. It is so easy to forget how young all of them are.

"Daphne wouldn't care," she says. "After we- after our falling out last year. I'm sure Nana has made sure that Daphne knows she deserves better."

"Madame Méline has given Daph love and support when the rest of you turned your backs on her," Blaise says coolly. "But Daphne cares, Astoria. I wish she didn't, but she does."

Astoria's face is pink, and she fiddles with the ends of her carefully-curled hair. Embarrassment or resentment, Belle can't quite tell, but there's no anger, and no hatred. That is a welcome surprise.

"My ankle is aching," she confides to Ernie, leaning heavily on his arm on their reluctant way to Muggle Studies. Madam Pomfrey did what she could, but Skel-O-Grow is in increasingly short supply and she is already worn thin with all that's needed of her this year - Belle doesn't want to complain. "It shouldn't, should it?"

"Well, no. I suspect it shouldn't. Perhaps we should sneak up to Madam P before class?"

"No," Belle says. "It's not so bad - only on the stairs."

"Which is everywhere in the entire school, de Poitiers. At least ask Professor Slughorn for something for the pain later on?"

"I'll consider it," she promises, leaning up to kiss his cheek. "Did you see Astoria come to speak to Blaise and me this morning?"

"I couldn't believe she took her head out of her arse long enough to thank you from sparing her a cracked skull," Ernie says bluntly. "It's amazing to me that her and Daphne came from the same breeding."

"You should meet my mother and her sisters," she says, managing to laugh a little. It's more than most of them manage, these days. "Metis particularly - or Jeanne and I, compared with the twins."

"As soon as you deign to introduce them to me, I'll be sure to pass judgement," he teases. There is only a little venom in his tone - he feels hard done by to not have met her mother yet, never mind Anatole or Amand or Jeanne, but it hasn't been the right time. All summer, Belle was this way and that with the weddings and meeting Daph's nana, and then there was the garden! And Ernie was busy, anyway, with his own family and whatever it is he does during the summers in the Highlands.

It is a thin excuse, but having Anatole and Amand in London all summer had her nerves in shreds even without adding introducing her boyfriend to them to the stress of it all. And the very idea of Maman and Ernie in the same room gives her grey hairs, she's sure of it.

"I will make you a promise," she says. "When this war is done, and we all are safe, then you may meet my mother. And I will meet your mother."

He goes a little green at that, and she thinks that he perhaps understands now.

"The bitch will be laughing at me," she says uneasily, "because of the match, Ernie. Am I allowed to snap back?"

"Under no circumstances are you to say a sharp word to either Carrow," he says, mild of voice and face because Pansy is coming toward the classroom from the other side. "Nor to Snape, nor even to Filch - you're already carrying that ankle, and I think the thunder has made you a bit deaf."

"Perhaps I should pretend not to hear, then?"

"Is this you being sensible, Bellona? I never thought I'd see the day."

They take their seats. All of seventh year has been condensed into one class for Muggle Studies and for Dark Arts, so Belle has gotten even better at biting her tongue - they just love to talk about Seamus' Muggle father, or Neville's poor parents.

Sometimes they talk about Zacharias' sister in vague allusions. Zacharias' sister is the person he loves most in the world, by his own admission, and she is a Squib. Belle knows this only because Blaise told her in strictest confidence, while they were sitting in the hospital wing waiting for the bone-setting charm to work on her ankle. She knows this only a matter of days , despite having been Zacharias' friend for many months now, and so it worries her that the Carrows know.

So many things worry her at present. Sometimes, in her very weakest moments, she wishes she had done as Grand-mère told her and gone home to Valence for the year.

Today's lesson, based on the proof found by some bigot healer in Nurmengard, is about how cross-breeding between wizards and non-humans or Muggles produces sterile half-breed mules. This apparently proves that interbreeding is an evil, and should be made illegal.

Belle has no idea whether or not she is capable of having children, but if she is not, it has nothing to do with her father being human and her mother being Veela.

Even so, she quite literally sits on her hands and bites her tongue, because her ankle still aches and they're running low on dittany until Professor Sprout's new crop comes in. For the sake of Blaise and Ernie's nerves, she will do her best to avoid the sharp edge of either Carrow's temper. It's just like being under Umbridge's thumb again.

Belle does not think she was prepared to kill Dolores Umbridge. For Alecto Carrow, for Amycus, she thinks she could find the strength.

All her efforts to escape injury are for naught, of course, but how was she to know that Bellatrix Lestrange really would try to get into the Black vault at Gringotts, and that she would visit the school to express her displeasure in person?

Blaise has her wand, and while Belle is thankful that he's protecting it she very much wishes she had it on hand just now so she could stab the mad bitch with it.

"Let me go!" she shrieks, clawing at Bellatrix's arm - to no effect. She may as well be clawing at the castle walls, for Bellatrix Lestrange seems not to feel pain. "Let go of me right now!"

Bellatrix stops so suddenly that Belle trips over her own legs, and she sprawls down the stairs. To further her punishment, Bellatrix stamps down on her hand with a thick-heeled boot, and she grinds.

"So many little bones," she sing-songs. "Snap, snap, snap."

She has Belle by the hair, and she heaves. Belle's face thuds against the stairs, and she can't help but cry out with the pain of trying to push herself up with her broken hand. At least it's her right hand, so she can get a good slap in as soon as she has the chance.

Something in her face cracks when it catches on the corner of a step - her cheekbone, or maybe her eyesocket. Bellatrix is bouncing her head like a ball, and Belle wishes very much that she and Bornog had not been quite so vindictive in their choices of curses for the vault door.

Oh, no. What if Bellatrix took this rage out on Bornog first? Goblins have powerful magics of their own, and Belle knows the stories of their battle prowess well enough to be cautious, but Bellatrix's malice is legendary-

The same thing in Belle's face cracks a second time. Definitely her eyesocket, and the pain is so intense that for a moment, Belle fears she might be blind.

She gets her feet under herself, somehow, once they're back on level ground. She can see crowds gathering - oh, no, Ernie is watching, she doesn't want him to see any of this - but there is only silence around them. Even Pansy is not laughing.

There is a stir just by the entrance of the dungeons. First years, with blue on their robes, and Adalia who is Susan Bones' cousin on her mother's side has her wand out.

Belle cannot have Bellatrix loosed on any of the others, especially not on the little ones. Adalia's eyes are wide and pale with fear when Belle manages to catch them, and that is all it takes.

Her wand goes down. No one is to be hurt on Bellona's account. She'd rather die.

Blaise is standing with Professor Slug when they pass the Potions classrooms.

"I cannot allow this," Slug says, brave and fierce as he has proven to be only in times of war. "You have no authority here-"

"I have the authority of the Dark Lord himself, old man," Bellatrix says, moving so quickly that Belle loses her footing again. Slug braces his arm like steel across Blaise, and Belle is so grateful to him that she could cry from it, if she wasn't already crying from the pain. "There is nothing higher."

"This is not his school, Bellatrix Black," Slug thunders, knocking aside the threat of Bellatrix's ugly wand as though it is of no concern. "And it is not yours, either."

Bellatrix laughs. She laughs right into Slug's face, and while he shows no fear, he has no reply.

"If you stop me from going about my business, old man," she says, "I'll be sure to mention your name when next I speak with my lord. Think on that."

And they're away again. Bellatrix's boots clack loud on the cold stone floor, and Belle's head is spinning so badly that she has no hope of rising again.

Until they are in the deepest of the dungeons, and bright steel manacles are being clapped around her wrists so that Filch, filthy, muttering Filch, can turn a cranking wheel and lift her high into the air, until only her toes are on the ground.

"Now, you dirty little half-breed bitch," Bellatrix says, gleeful and mad. "What have you to say for yourself?"

Belle looks her as square in the face as she can manage.

"I've heard that you are very like Dromeda," she says. "But Dromeda is much better looking."

Bravado was possibly the stupidest choice Belle has ever made.

She forces her shoulders as slack as she can against the pull of the chains when Bellatrix moves behind her with the whip. Invidia once sat her and Jeanne down, when they were only six or seven, and explained to them what a whip was, what it was supposed to be used for, and what it had been used for during the war.

The first lash tears through the silk-rich cotton of Belle's school blouse, just as Invidia warned them it would. She always, always wore a shirt of feather-light, goblin-made chainmail when she had to go out into unknown or untrusted territory, and Belle wishes she'd asked where she might find one for herself.

The second lash somehow lands directly along the path of the first, and Belle screams.

"There we go, little birdy!" Bellatrix laughs. "Sing! Sing, little songbird!"

"How did you do it?" Bellatrix demands, squeezing tight to Belle's face. Her eyesocket is broken, bone below and skin above, and she can't see for the blood in her eye. Her nose is agony, too, and whistles with every breath she forces through it, so that's probably broken as well. "Tell me which little rat helped you do it, and things might go easier for you."

She cannot hum with a broken nose, and she cannot sing clearly with her bitten-swollen tongue, but she sings the tune that seems most fitting for the moment as best her aching throat allows - will Bellatrix know La Complainte du partisan? Unlikely, but it has been sung by Muggles and witches and everyone else in France a thousand times since the Germans last crossed the border, and Belle-

Bellatrix backhands her. Perhaps it is not so much the song as the singing that will keep her temper up. Good. The longer she is in this place of shadows with Belle, the longer she is leaving everyone else alone.

The next whip is not sharp. Belle is too tired to be anything but hanging slack against her chains, and even that is no relief against the feel of two of her ribs breaking in concert under the next lash.

"Oh, this one is a pretty thing," Bellatrix says, coming around to show Belle her blood on the leather - thick leather, embedded with small steel balls that shine black in the gloom. "But we'll use it sparingly, or it will end our play too soon, hmm? One lash for every time you refused to tell me how to get into my vault."

"My vault," Belle growls through the blood in her mouth. "Fuck you."

She endures three more lashes of the new whip, and then, finally, she loses her grip and slides into darkness.

Pain on her back, on her shoulders, right up her nape-

It smells a little of burning, and of blood. She can smell singed feathers and seared meat, and the scream she looses is like nothing she's ever heard before.

Is this madness? Is this strange, perfect clarity, somewhere slightly above the pain, is this insanity?

Bellatrix's eyes are truly mad, so Belle clings determinedly to her own sanity by the very tips of her fingers.

"This is an old trick," Bellatrix says, stroking Belle's face with the tenderness of a mother. Belle spits blood and phlegm and probably a little vomit into Bellatrix's face, aiming for her eyes. "Yes, you animal, yes, that's it - prove yourself a beast! This is what the men who owned your kind used to do, to mark you for what you are and keep you earthbound - let's see how much of a fight you put up now that you're marked as an exile!"

No. No, surely not. Grand-mère and Invidia tore those terrible places to the ground, tore up their foundations, salted and burned so that nothing and no one could ever grow there again. The knowledge of this curse was burned with its wielders, surely?

The burning is right across her upper back. Across her shoulders and her upper arms, right up to her hairline, down to the bottom of her ribs.

Branding and breaking the skin over her shoulderblades, and cutting a curse into her flesh. The monsters who collected Veela and Selkies and all the other beautiful, inhuman people during the Great War used this to mark the Veela they made their whores.

They used it to break their hearts, too. A Veela marked like this cannot manifest her wings. Such was the fate of wild Feronia, Grand-mère and Invidia's sister, who was more beautiful even than Anatole and who staked her life on a chance of rescuing innocents from Nurmengard and lost the bet. Feronia's heart was broken when she threw herself from a high window, choosing to die as a Veela, in the air, even if she could no longer fly as one.

Bellatrix moves behind Belle once more, and pours something over her back - saltwater. Saltwater.

Belle screams.

"Sleep well, little Veela," Bellatrix soothes mockingly. "We will see if you survive the night."

But Belle has never been just a Veela.

She's muggy with pain and exhaustion when she hears someone coming, and she cannot help but cry. It cannot possibly have been all night yet, and she has not the strength to brace herself for another of Bellatrix's assaults, not yet.

Two sets of footsteps. The Carrows, probably. She wishes she could stop her tears, but she will have to let them see her weep - it galls, to let them see her be so weak.

"Sweet merciful fuck," says Seamus Finnegan, and Belle cocks her head to try and see if this is real or if it is Bellatrix's malice.

Neville is with him, with his face neatly healed thanks to her stitches. She sobs to see him.

"It's alright, Belle," Neville says softly, carefully wrapping her in a light blanket - it hurts like burning against her back, and he murmurs gentle apologies right against her ear before bracing his shoulder against her belly, just below the worst of her bruising. "It's alright, I have you, it's over now, I promise."

Seamus' voice is hoarse when he says Alohamora once, twice, and Belle's arms flops useless down Neville's back. He straightens up with her dangling helplessly across his shoulder, his arms wrapped tight around her thighs to hold her steady, and while she can't stop crying with the pain she doesn't think she's ever felt quite so safe.

"I have you," he says again. "Stay with me, Belle, I have you."

"I'll have to Silence her," Seamus says. "We'll never get her anywhere if I don't."

Neville sighs. Belle can feel it in his shoulder, in his back.

"Alright," he says. "But don't forget to check the other room, see if they've put her things in there."

"Blaise," she manages. "Blaise my wand. Or Slug. Blaise. Wand to Slug."

"We'll look into it," Seamus assures her, patting the very top of her head very gently. " Silencio. There we go."

Neville hums quietly as he walks, but it's his thumb moving back and forth over the crease of her knee that really soothes her. She cannot scream or cry or wail from the pain, but with her one good hand she clings to Neville's worn jumper, and she concentrates as hard as her tired, fray-edged mind can manage on the gentle over-and-back of his thumb against the top of her calf until she slips, finally, into sleep.

(e-h

Seamus refuses to lift the Silence on Belle even once they're safely hidden once more.

"Not a chance I'm having the kids listening to that," he says firmly, waving some of the others over - young Hector, who blushes every time Blaise is mentioned, and tiny little Dennis, they're good lads with a needle and thread. So is Seamus, which is just as well.

They'll do well not to run out of thread.

"It isn't her fault," Neville says, only barely letting go of Belle so they can try and figure out how best to lay her down. So much of her is cut up that Seamus isn't sure what's going to do the least damage, and between the left of her face and the massive swelling of her right shoulder, there's not a hope they can keep her comfortable.

"I know that," Seamus snaps, "but they don't deserve to hear her in pain like this - sorry, fearless ringleader, but I'm putting my foot down on this one."

"What's all this noise?" Lavender asks, pointedly nudging them all toward the corner they've made up into their infirmary. That might actually work - the low cots the Room gave them will let Belle's arms fall however hurts least, and that might keep her still for long enough for them to work on the mess of her back.

"I've always wanted to sew for her," Dennis says, scrambling up to sit on Belle's arse once they have her face-down on the cot. There's no room for delicacy in the Room, after all. "I just didn't think I'd be sewing her."

Dennis has quite a lucrative little business, sewing up hems and holes and adding hidden pockets to robes. Seamus has never seen his equal with a needle, and he has no qualms about leaving a fourteen year old to stitch Belle's back together.

Neville doesn't lose his temper often, if at all, and Lavender just knows that he'll be mortified if he gets angry now and Bellona Black hears about it when she wakes up.

If she wakes up. Lavender is dubious, because they're completely out of dittany and she still can't manage Professor Flitwick's antiseptic charm. Daphne and Zabini will go absolutely spare if they think a bunch of Gryffindors let anything happen to Black. No matter how noisy Ernie gets about being wildly in love with Bellona, Lavender knows to be much more frightened of Daphne Greengrass than she is of just about anyone else she knows.

So, to keep Neville from losing his temper, and to give them an extra moment or two of calm in which to keep working on saving Bellona's back, even if the nasty colour of her right arm is making Lavender anxious enough to spit, Lavender grabs Neville by the ear and twists.

Hard.

"Ow! Lav, fuck off! Ow!"

"Shut up and let us think, then," she says, shoving him away by the side of the head. "Here, whichever Creevey you are-"

"Dennis!"

"Good, run and fetch me a big bucket of water, and if someone could run down the tunnel and find me a few juniper berries, I think I can help us out of one of our current predicaments."

"We need to heal the bone so we can set her shoulder, Lavender-"

"And once one of us miraculously learns to piss Skel-O-Grow, Longbottom, we'll do just that," Hector says, snotty in that way that is completely unique to Slytherins. "Otherwise, we have to make her comfortable and wait until we can sneak to the hospital wing. Can you urinate bone regenerating potions, Longbottom? Can you?"

Neville backs down, and Dennis Creevey returns with a bucket of water, soaked head to toe.

"Seamus ran off for berries while you and Neville were arguing!" he pipes up cheerfully. "Can I keep on stitching up her back now? There's still such a lot of it to do."

Lavender does her best not to look at Bellona Black's back until Seamus returns with the juniper berries and she turns her water into gin, thanking her granddad for teaching her the knack even after Mum forbid it.

She's never been so grateful for a Silencing Charm as she is when Bellona goes rigid and wide-eyed, and she and Seamus take turns throwing up into the empty bucket once they're done pouring the gin all over the torn-open skin of her back.

"I'm going," Hector says. "I'm a Slytherin. If I can get word to Theo, he can do the rest, and I can get word to Theo."

The Gryffindors are being Gryffindorish, which in this case means they're being useless. Hector and Theo have an immaculate system set up, and it's via this pipeline that the majority of their medical supplies come - Neville Longbottom could do with livening up a little bit, really.

"I'm going," he says again, firm. "This isn't a question of who's going to brave the school with Bellatrix Lestrange running loose, this is a question of who's best positioned to get the supplies we need to fix Belle's arm before the dislocation starts doing serious damage to her shoulder. I'm best positioned, so I'm going."

If they catch him - and they might, he knows the risks - they'll probably try to drown him. That used to be a trick like the one the Lestrange woman used on Belle, to glue shut a merman's gills and hold him underwater. Hector's got gills the way Belle has wings, but that won't stop them.

So he'll just have to be quick.

"Besides," he says. "Someone needs to tell Blaise that she's alive."

Hector's sneaky work pays off, and Hannah spares him any further danger while also sparing Neville and Seamus their nightly jaunt. Apparently, Mum and Granddad were caught conspiring to protect the Weasleys, so Hannah's best well out of the Carrows' reach.

When she lets herself into the Room, with a huge basket of supplies, she's somehow surprised by how few people there are. Oh, there are plenty of them, from the gang of first years, who thankfully don't entirely understand how dangerous this all is, right up to Hannah's sharp-edged yearmates, all sitting around a low, backless couch. Belle's lying there, strangely still, and the others are playing cards on the backs of her legs as though this is all completely normal.

There's also a house elf. He appears to be wearing Slytherin Quidditch robes, cut down to size.

"Kreacher will stay," he snarls, both skinny arms wrapped tight around the leg of the couch. He spits at Seamus when his leg strays too close, and if Hannah didn't know better, she'd swear that he was trying to stay within reach of Belle's slumped hand.

"Kreacher will stay," Neville agrees, sounding incredibly weary. "You've made that perfectly clear."

"Mistress freed Kreacher," the elf insists. "Mistress and Mistress' mother take care of Kreacher. Mistress' mother pays Kreacher's wages! So Kreacher will stay."

The cut-down Quidditch robes aren't all that neatly sewn together, but the Black embroidered in silver on the back looks almost tarnished - that's something of a relief. Hannah had worried that he was wearing Belle's cast offs. A paid house elf! A free, wage-earning house elf! Hannah didn't know such a thing existed, but she's not surprised it was Belle's mother who arranged for it. She's heard enough tales of Madame Juno from Blaise and Daphne to know that there's a woman who strives to surprise.

"Will Kreacher move away a little so we can heal Bellona?" Hannah asks of no one in particular. She doesn't sleep well, with her headaches, and she's sort of gotten used to the house elves who keep the Hufflepuff common room. They're smarter than anyone gives them credit for being, especially the one who started talking to her because he'd heard that she was Harry Potter's Friend.

"Mistress is hurt," Kreacher says, cautious and suspicious. "Kreacher will stay."

Hannah nods her agreement, and settles in on the floor beside him. The swelling on Belle's shoulder is really troubling, but once the bone is set they can reset her shoulder and heal that, too. Probably. Hopefully there's no lasting damage done.

"Could Kreacher hold Bellona's wand?" she asks, taking Belle's wand in its beautiful case from her pocket. How Blaise had managed to get it back off Slughorn when the Carrows were stalking his every move, Hannah will always wonder, but he and Belle have always been like that about one another. Hannah's a little surprised that he and Ernie didn't insist on coming with her to see Belle for themselves, once they knew she was alive. Zach had to sit on Ernie to keep him from ruining the whole charade for them all, and Blaise had gone so completely still that Hannah had genuinely been worried that he'd had a stroke.

And then he'd gone directly to Slughorn's office. Ah. Anything for family, she supposes.

"I shouldn't like to damage it," she says to the elf. "I think it would mean a great deal to her, if you kept it safe."

He lets go of the couch leg to hold Belle's wand in two reverent hands. While he's distracted with that, Hannah takes a big steel syringe and a bottle of Skel-O-Gro from her basket, fills one with the other, and sticks it straight into Belle's upper arm.

"Some warning might have been nice, Hannah," Michael Corner says as Belle starts to howl - Hannah does have some sympathy. Skel-O-Gro has even less mercy than Professor Sprout. "Shouldn't she drink it? Isn't that how it works?"

"I checked with Madam P," Hannah assures them, leaning back with a firm grip on Belle's wrist so her arm is held out straight and will, in theory, heal right. It's probably agony on her shoulder, but needs must. "In emergency situations this works faster, but it's riskier - heals so quickly it can set the bone wrong."

"Hence the pulling," Neville says. "Right. Makes sense."

Belle stops all that shouting right around the minute mark, just as Madam Pomfrey said - but Hannah still does the tests Madam P showed her, because nothing good can come of trying to set a dislocated shoulder with a broken funny bone.

"This is also going to hurt like buggery," Hannah warns Belle, who looks sort of lucid. "Sorry about that."

The wet noise of the bone sliding back into place is even worse than the stream of furious cursing she lets loose in response, but that's Hannah's work done. There doesn't seem to be much else that they can do.

Hector is sitting with Belle when she wakes up.

Well, he's sitting with her insane house elf, who chases away everyone he suspects of bearing her any ill will.

"Hector," she says, her hand landing sleep-heavy on his shoulder. "Hello."

"Hi, Belle," he says. "Feeling better?"

"Feeling revolting ," she says. "But zat is better than feeling dead."

"Good for you," he says. "Fancy a cuppa?"

(d.

Daphne lets herself into the Hog's Head a little after two o'clock in the morning. It's freezing out, so she had to pick her steps even more carefully than usual, lest some observant patrol catch sight of her tread in the frost.

Abe's asleep - she can hear him snoring through the ceiling - so she curtsies to Miss Ariana, hefts her pack a little higher on her shoulders, and steps into the tunnel.

It's quiet down here, too. The Room's ceilings are high, but Lavender Brown noticed that the echoing was spooking some of the little ones so she hung all the vaulted chambers with brightly coloured sheets to dampen the sound and make it feel a little cosier, and overnight all the armchairs became bigger and deeper and softer.

It's one of those big, deep, soft armchairs that draws Daphne's eye now. It isn't unusual to find Neville awake into the small hours, anxious over their food supplies and their medical supplies and their tiny ration of hope, and it isn't even unusual for him to have someone sleeping in his lap.

It is unusual for that someone to be older than twelve, though.

Belle talks in her sleep, generally in a strange blend of Finnish and French that Daphne can't follow, and she rolls all over the bed - there's a reason Daphne took to plaiting Belle's hair every night, and it was mostly so they weren't late for breakfast every morning because Belle couldn't get a comb through the tangles. When she's awake, she's always chattering and fidgeting, never still for a moment unless it's to make some sort of dramatic point to win an argument with Blaise.

Curled up under Neville Longbottom's arm, though, with her hair pinned into a severe bun and her whole torso wrapped in bright white bandages - and her face, her lovely face is bandaged too, Daphne can see the tape - Belle is still as the grave.

"She's alive," Neville says, quietly so as not to disturb her. Daphne's heart feels thoroughly battered at the sight of Belle, unmoving, but some little part of it aches for Neville. How Belle has never realised that he's in love with her, Daphne will never know. "She'll be fine. Dennis and Hector set her to rights, and Hannah fixed all her broken bones. We healed her up as best as we could."

"Why all the bandages?" Daphne asks, sitting gingerly on the arm of Neville's chair. She brushes a stray curl away from Belle's eye, even though it's hidden under bandages. Perhaps they can source a nice scarf for Belle to use as a sling. "What happened to her?"

"Bellatrix Lestrange," he says, his voice twisting strangely. "And something about a bank vault."

Daphne unties the ribbon holding Belle's hair up and carefully unwinds the bun so that she can start plaiting it.

"She's going to be furious when she sees you," Neville says. Daphne never stays a full night in the Room, preferring to gather her new friends and go, but of course she will be staying tonight. Abe can pass on a message to Su for her. Su will understand - she would do the same, if it were Zacharias.

"Why all the bandages, Neville?"

There are bandages carefully laid right up the back of Belle's neck, but they don't quite cover it. The criss-cross of sliced open skin is visible at her hairline, and Daphne wonders if this is another meeting between Belle and Filch's whips - she heard about that the very first time she came into the Room.

"It looks like wings, Daphne," he says after a long, long silence. "Cut right into her skin. Every single feather cut into her back."

VI.

Belle doesn't think she's ever been so angry in her entire life, and she thrives on anger.

"We were afraid you were dead, Daphne!" she shouts, absolutely ignoring how dizzy she feels so she can be her angriest. "Why! Why did you not write us a proper letter! Why did you not- why did you let us think-"

Daphne completely ignores Belle's outrage to step right in front of her and put her arms around Belle's waist - low down, below the edge of her bandages.

"I've missed you so much," Belle manages, desperate to stay angry so she won't cry. "We've been so worried about you, Daph, where have you been?!"

"I've missed you too, I promise," Daphne says, kissing Belle's hair over and over. "But I couldn't abandon Su, and it wasn't safe for me to come back to school, anyway - not that it was safe for you, either! What were you thinking, Belle!"

"What were you thinking, running off with a family that He Who Must Not Be Named is personally hunting-"

"I've been doing important work, thank you!"

"Well so have I!" Belle insists. "Daphne, please-"

"Nana and your mum made a plan," Daph says, standing up straight. Well, sort of, she's slumped a little so she doesn't have to let go of Belle's waist, but they're face to face now and Belle is so happy to see her. "Focus, Belle. Nana and Juno organised a few things, and got in touch with some friends to sort out a- a network."

"What sort of network?"

"A network that was supposed to get you and me and Blaise out of the country the moment things went south," Daph says ruefully. "But we live to disappoint, of course, so they started with Ted Tonks and Su's family and went from there. Your grandmother wasn't best pleased when she found out that half the cottages on the estate were full of wizards and witches on the run from the English Ministry. Su and I have been helping run people out of the country - we get them to the coast, we've a couple of pick-ups with Nana's friends, and then someone from the other side sails in and brings them off."

"The- Daphne, this is insane. "

"Your granddad is helping too," Daphne says. "And Sofia's dragged all her strange friends into it, so not everyone is in Valence, but we've done a lot, Belle. We've gotten so many people out of the country before the Ministry could get to them."

Belle has failed to stop herself from crying.

"Oh," she says, "Daph, you're a hero."

Daphne has to go - with Retta, who is reluctant to go but also under strict orders from her parents, who are already in Germany with a cousin of Ukki's.

"There is one more thing I'm angry about," Belle says when they're saying their goodbyes. "It is not important as your being absent for months on end- "

"I knew you'd hate it," Daph laughs, ruffling her short, choppy hair. It looks almost white now, silvery-fair and catching the light like a halo around her lovely face. "But being able to sit on my hair wasn't very practical for being covert."

Belle touches Daphne's face, wishing she could hold on properly. She's afraid to look at her back, though, so she hasn't pushed to have her bandages taken off, and her shoulder absolutely aches so she hasn't complained even a little about the sling. She doesn't think she's ever gone so much as an hour with an injury without complaining about it so much that Daphne tells her to shut up.

"I like it," Belle assures her. "I'm just absolutely furious that you did it without me."

"If you expect me to believe that you would have cut your hair off too-"

"I'm serious!"

Daphne touches her face too, and Belle is disgusted with herself for crying again.

"Your mother will be so relieved I've seen you," Daphne says. "And then she'll be even angrier than you are that I haven't put you in a bag and brought you out of here with me."

"You must not tell her what Bellatrix did," Belle says. "Promise me, Daphne, promise me you won't tell her."

"So long as you promise me that you'll tell Blaise that I love and miss him, too," Daphne agrees, "and that you won't hold back against Astoria, if it comes to it."

" Daphne!"

"I hope she shows sense," Daphne says. "But she's so twisted up with Pansy and the others… I hope she does the right thing, Belle, but if she doesn't, we have to. Don't go easy on her for my sake. She won't go easy on you."

You didn't have to do that, and a package of toffees . Belle doesn't want to hurt anyone, least of all Daphne's sister. Every single line that Bellatrix cursed into Belle's back burns at the thought of visiting pain and violence on anyone as Bellatrix did on her, as Dolores Umbridge did, as the Carrows have, as Pansy and the fools have.

"I've already saved her life," Belle says. "I will not undo that, if I can avoid it."

"Word of advice," Seamus says, sitting down opposite her with two bowls of soup - one for her, one for him. "See if someone can get you some clothes."

Belle has been awake for less than a day, and spent most of it holding Daphne's hand and either furious or crying. She has not had time to think about her clothes, but now that she looks-

"What am I wearing, Seamus?!"

"The trousers are mine," he says, grinning, "and the socks are Michael's, I think, and we didn't know how to get you into a shirt so the bandages are all your own."

At least the bandages are wrapped from the base of her ribs up, and over her shoulders, and three layers deep - and her sling offers a little extra coverage. The trousers are too big in the waist but a little short in the leg, and the socks are huge, but very warm.

"Kreacher?" she calls, and he appears with a low snap in place of his old, wet crack. "Oh! How smart you look, Kreacher! Are those Uncle Regulus' robes?"

"Mistress did give them to Kreacher," he says, huddling into his little green suit as though he thinks she'll try to take it off him. "Kreacher is a free elf, Mistress!"

A free-

A free elf! He is! Oh, she gave the robes to him, she gave him clothes! Oh, no! He has been free for over a year, and she has still made a slave of him!

"Kreacher! I owe you so much backpay!"

"Mistress' mother has been paying Kreacher," he promises her. "Kreacher has bought a bed!"

"Oh, but I would have bought you a bed, Kreacher! You should have a bedroom in the house!"

"Focus, Bellona," Seamus says. "Remember why you called the little man."

"We will discuss you having a bedroom when I get home," she says to Kreacher, "but for now, could you get into the seventh year girls' dormitory in Slytherin house, find my clothes, and come back, without being caught?"

In two snaps, he's back.

And he has her trunk.

"Kreacher!"

"Mistress is very fussy about her clothes," he points out. "So Kreacher brought all of them."

Once she's got clothes to change into, Belle seeks out her medical team.

"You can't seriously want us to strip your bandages," Hector says flatly. "It's only been two days, Belle."

"Please believe me when I say that every single bit of it will be closed," she assures them. "I know about this cursework, Hector, and I suspect that you do as well. It was used to bind the Veela they forced into the brothels of Nurmengard, and what use is a whore you can't put on her back?"

Seamus grunts like she kicked him.

"Take off the bandages," she says, directing it to Hannah. "It will be healed, I promise, and I need to see it."

She does not want to see her back. She doesn't want to see the markings that are going to leave Grand-mère and possibly Invidia unable to even look at her, that will mark her as a victim no matter where in Europe she goes. But she does need to see them. She needs to confront it and the fear it represents so that she can be of use to the little ones.

Perhaps, if all of the bandages are off, there will be something more they can do for her shoulder, and then at least she can cook and they might have something more than soup and stew and porridge to eat.

"And if it gets infected?"

"Have Lavender throw another still of gin over me," she says wryly, which makes Lavender laugh. "Better to strip it off and take out my stitches before they get infected, don't you think?"

The whip marks won't be healed, but the feathered branding will. Belle knows her histories.

Hannah cuts right up along Belle's spine, and then down each of her arms. Lavender offers her a t-shirt to hold over her breasts, and it's only once she's sure she won't start crying that she dares to look over her shoulder.

"Oh," she says. "I thought it would be much worse."

It's hideous, of course. There is a wealth of purple and green bruising over her ribs, and the deep, tightly-stitched lashes of Filch's whip are still livid red, but as for the rest? It is not pretty, but it could be a great deal uglier - extended wings carved into her skin feather by feather, smothering her back and shoulders and the tops of her arms. It has all healed clean, though, and she does not scar as her mother does. Veela scar pink, impossible to hide on the pearl of their skin, but the Toujurs Pur on the back of Belle's hand is silver-white, and someday, these wings will look the same.

There's poetry in that, somewhere. Her father and her mother, each scarred into her skin by hands not their own.

VII.

Belle meets Aberforth Dumbledore and immediately likes him more than his brother.

"Well," he says. "You look worse off than they usually do."

"I expected more velvet," she says, "of a Dumbledore."

He snorts, still wiping a dirty glass with a dirtier rag.

"You'll be the Black girl, then, if you didn't like Albus," he says. "You can come down here whenever you want."

Her shoulder is still stiff and swollen, and Hannah shrieked like a banshee when she saw Belle trying to lift her own trunk. She's been relegated to sitting with the little ones and spellwork, so today, over a week after waking up, she put her foot down and insisted on being allowed help with the food run.

Tony was the only one on her side, so he has come along with her and Neville to collect their supplies. She made a request for more garlic, and hopes very much that it was honoured.

"Young Daphne has been worried about you all year," Monsieur Aberforth says, handing a huge box to Neville and then reaching behind the counter to source a pair of big wicker baskets for Tony. "She's very chatty, isn't she? Nice girl."

"The nicest," Belle agrees. "I have been worried about her, too."

"So what happened the shoulder?"

"Oh! Torture."

"Ah," Monsieur Aberforth says sagely. "That'll do it, alright."

There are letters in the basket. All kinds of letters, for everyone in the room. Neville and Tony "allow" Belle to play owl, and she tucks them all into her sling as she goes about her business.

"You!" she says, pushing Seamus aside to get to the brothers Creevey. The older one, who Belle thinks might be in love with Harry, has his camera around his neck, and he smiles in open terror at her approach. Belle doesn't really care about him, though, because little Dennis who helped Hector sew her back together is much more interesting. "I owe you my thanks, Monsieur Creevey!"

"Oh, it was nothing," he says, blushing the most spectacular shade of deep Gryffindor scarlet. "You were so badly hurt that I didn't even think about it, really."

"You are the Gryffindor boy who does the alterations?" she asks. "Blaise told me about you. He says your stitching is so fine that it is invisible, and having seen my back I must agree."

"I'm glad you think so," he says, still absolutely crimson in the face. "Our mum taught me to sew - she was a seamstress."

"I would gladly trust my clothes to her if she is even half as good as you are, Monsieur Creevey," Belle assures him. "But please, I owe you my life. Do not think I will forget that."

There are letters in the basket for Belle, too. Tiny notes from Maman, Anatole, Ukki, Jeanne, and Dromeda, all tied together with one of the rose pink hair ribbons Daphne favoured before she butchered her hair.

They're with her extra garlic.

Without thinking, Belle turns to her right to laugh with Blaise, and his absence hits her once more. Aside from the summer after she lost her father, she hasn't been away from Blaise for longer than a few hours in years, and she did not realise quite how entirely she relies on him.

Seamus makes sure everyone leaves her alone when she takes her wand and her letters and sits as deep into the corner as she can get.

Ma Belle,

Daphne told me what they did to you.

You are so brave. You are so strong. I am so proud of you. Your papa would have been so proud of you.

You can survive them, mon coeur. You must, so I can bring you home.

I love you more than anything,

Maman

Chouette,

Your mama told me what Andromeda's sister has done. Amand will not let me out of the house for fear of what I might do.

Don't dare die, Bellona. I could not bear it if you did.

With all my love, and Amand's,

Anatole

Susan has no time to spare, but know that Aleksi and I are only ever a letter away.

We love you very much, pupu. We will have dinner waiting for you.

If you die I will KILL you. Tante Juno says that a cousin of your papa's used the whore's mark on you. Perhaps I will kill HER!

Come home when you can. I miss you, and I worry for you.

With all my love - but no baklava, for once!

Jeanne

Dearest Belley,

I hear Bella's been causing you trouble. Remind her I'm never far away if she comes near you again.

I can't remember how we left our last match, so I concede. New match: pawn to d4.

Stay safe. Survive.

Dromeda.

PS: Have you heard Dora's news? She wants you to be godmother. She's due in April - let's hope all this silliness is done with by then, what do you think?

Neville sits down beside her and wraps her up in a blanket without a word, and that helps. She just wishes she had Blaise with her, or Daphne.

"I miss Maman," she manages to say. "And Anatole. I miss them so much."

Neville sniffles, and for the first time ever, Belle does not have a handkerchief to offer him. She's wearing her Racing Rhône jersey and her jeans and the ratty old hiking boots that she bought last time she was in Taivolkovski and Aleksi brought her into Helsinki as a treat. She has nowhere to have put a handkerchief, but even so, she cannot help but scowl at the crumpled paper tissue Neville pulls from his cardigan sleeve.

"Gran knitted this for me," he says. "She's on the run now."

Belle locks her fingers through Neville's, all her family's letters in her lap and him wrapped in his grandmother's handiwork, and they hold on.

VIII.

"You will all be able to perform a functioning Shield Charm or I will eat my boots," Belle warns her much-diminished Dueling Club. She has both of Daphne's bracelets on her arms, even though Hannah and Seamus let her know that they were not pleased with her for taking off her sling against orders. Her shoulder is aching, but Monsieur Abe promised her a bucketful of ice once this is done.

Belle cannot always be with the little ones, and even if she could be, Bellatrix's tender mercies have proved to her that she is even more fallible than she realised. She will not risk the little one's lives and wellbeing any more than she absolutely must.

"How many of you know how to use a Shield Charm?" she asks. "Hands up, thank you."

Michael Corner raises his hand, sitting on the edge of a table behind all the little ones. He apparently thinks that this is all a bit of fun, and Belle decides that she will show him as a means of showing the little ones.

"Good," she says, beckoning him forward. "You. Here. Now."

He startles, but he comes up and stops opposite her.

"Shield," she advises him, and raises her wand.

The little ones all finish the evening able to Shield against a variety of hexes and milder curses. Michael's bruises will heal up in no time at all, she's sure.

"You're pushing them," Neville says quietly, while they're sorting through a basket Hector found on one of his increasingly risky jaunts into the castle. There is a small box wrapped in green-and-blue paper, labelled for Belle in Blaise's handwriting, and she holds that to her chest for a moment before setting it aside. "The kids, I mean."

"If I don't," she says, "they die."

Neville's head falls, and he grabs the sides of the basket so hard the wicker creaks.

"Bellona."

"Why do you think Daphne started the Dueling Club?" she asks. "Why do you think I kept it going? We've known it was coming to a war longer than any of you have, and we've done what we could to prepare for it."

Belle remembers sitting in a windowsill with Papa's arms around her. She remembers him apologising that he and the Order and all their allies had failed to end the war once and for all. She cannot stand the idea of making that same apology to Dromeda and Remus' baby someday in the faraway future.

She presses her hand to the small of Neville's back, on the stretch of t-shirt between his cardigan and his jeans just to be sure he can feel her warmth.

"I'm sorry," she says. "I don't mean to be cruel, Neville."

"It's not cruel," he says, and she thinks he means it. His arm comes up around her shoulders and pulls her in close against his side, and he is so warm. "It's a little harsh, but it isn't cruel. We need to be ready for what's coming. Can't hide here forever."

Belle leans into him, into the warmth of him, and wishes that everything could stop for just a moment longer.

It cannot, of course. Outside of the quiet of this room, this brace of heartbeats, there is a war. Somewhere out in the damp cold of March, Harry and Ron and Hermione are trying to find a way to end all of this madness.

Somewhere out there, Daphne and Maman and Anatole and all the others are bringing so many people to safety, and putting themselves in harm's way to do it. The very least Bellona can do is try to keep what few people are under her protection safe.

"Tell me," Belle says, chopping onions because no one else ever puts enough of them into anything. Monsieur Aberforth gave her a bottle of not-terrible red wine, the very last left in the whole of the pub, and she is making an approximation of beef bourguignon for their merry band of exiles. It will have enough onions and enough garlic to please even Tante Metis, and if she is lucky, the flavour will be so strong that no one will notice how watery the broth is. "Would it be unkind of me to murder her?"

"I don't think so," Hannah says, laid out on the floor behind Belle with her cooling bandage over her eyes. "She did torture you. And she killed your father, according to Harry."

"I think Neville has a claim to her as well," Michael says, bruised anew from offering himself as test dummy for the little ones' Stunning Spells yesterday afternoon. "But yeah, I'm with Hannah on this one. I don't think unkind is the word you're looking for, though."

"Morally repugnant, then," Belle suggests.

"Closer," Michael agrees. "But I still don't think it would be. I don't think killing someone like her counts as murder, really."

"Pest control," Hannah says sagely. "We could take turns killing them. The Death Eaters."

They laugh, but Belle's chest feels tight. The idea of killing someone makes her feel nauseous, even if it is Bellatrix. Bellatrix looks like Dromeda. Like Dora, when she is not shifting between faces. Like Belle herself from some angles.

Like Papa. How could she turn her wand on someone who looks like Papa?

Neville's hand lands warm on her good shoulder when he leans over to sniff at her cooking pot. His wand is tucked behind his ear, and Belle wonders when Neville became handsome.

Oh, no. Blaise will be insufferable if she ever has a chance to admit that to him.

Kreacher arrives in the Room late one night, or early one morning, and he is not alone.

The elf clinging to him is wearing the filthiest clothes Belle has ever seen, horrible even if they are of bizarrely fine make. She is also screaming, fat tears running down her little face, and she shrieks like a demon when Belle moves to comfort her.

"Winky cannot stay in the kitchens like this!" Kreacher says. "Kreacher went to the kitchens to make sure no one has told on Mistress, and he found Winky like this. Mistress must make her be quiet!"

"I am afraid I do not know how, Kreacher," Belle admits, wondering how it is that kneeling before a wailing house-elf in soiled silks is the strangest thing she's ever done. "Whatever is the matter, Winky? Will you not tell me?"

"Dobby was Winky's friend!" she howls, her little round nose bright red and her huge brown eyes bloodshot with grief. "And Dobby is dead now!"

Dobby? Harry's little friend? Surely not. Surely it cannot be.

"Winky says Dobby the Free-Elf went to help Mistress' friends in Miss Cissy's house," Kreacher says, patting Winky hard enough on the head to concuss her. "And Winky says that Dobby did not come back."

"Oh," Belle says, one of Winky's cold hands clasped in both of hers. Hannah is there, crouching with her, and Seamus, and Neville and Lavender and Michael all gather around. "I am sorry, Winky."

Dobby the Free-Elf, friend to Harry Potter, is dead.

Belle only hopes that Harry Potter, friend to Dobby the Free-Elf, is not the same.

IX.

Harry arrives, and everyone loses their minds.

People have been gathering for days, it seems, ones and twos drifting into their room, and Belle has hardly been able to keep up with the demand for her onion soup - she does not have time to slice beef for bourguinon enough for everyone. Neville has been here and there and everywhere, trying to be all things to all people, and Belle has kissed brave brows and soothed aching hearts as best she can for every new arrival Blaise and Theo and Tracey send her way.

And Ernie, and Zach, and Tony, and Padma, and lonely Parvati.

Padma and Parvati arrive the morning before Harry does, Parvati limping and leaning on Padma's shoulder. Even without the red and the blue on their robes, they don't look as much alike as everyone always says - or perhaps Belle is just used to distinguishing between twins.

Of everything in Valence, it is the twins she misses the least.

But then Tony comes, and Zach, and Tracey and Theo, and they all bring a scattering of the younger students with them - Zach has a first year clinging to his back and a split eyebrow, and Neville takes the first so Belle can sew the other. They are all gathering, and it is Tony who reveals why.

"Granger's damned coins," he says, showing her the token from Harry's Army in fifth year, shining bright with the renewed spell. "Summoned us, didn't she?"

Harry's army is mustering in the Room, which surely means He Who Must Not Be Named's army is mustering somewhere beyond their sanctuary.

Ernie and Blaise arrive together, with what is surely the last of the first and second years.

Belle goes straight to Blaise.

"Please never do that again," Blaise says, his tears and hers alike wet on her cheeks as he crushes her into his arms. "When I thought you were dead, Belle, I-"

She cannot blame him for saying no more, because she can say nothing at all. She can only cling to him, to the silk-rich cotton of his Lelong shirt under his heavy robes and the cedar-rich scent of his aftershave warm behind his ear when she tucks her face against his neck.

"Daphne is alive too," Belle manages. "I've seen her, Blaise, she's-"

"I knew about Daph, you silly woman," he says, drawing back just far enough that they can see one another's faces. Blaise's dark eyes are bright, the strange light of the Room catching on all the gold, and Belle is so happy to have him back that she could just about scream.

She does scream, when Daphne slams into them from the side.

"Isn't this nice!" Daph laughs, kissing their faces. "Don't cry, Belle, we're all here now and it's going to be alright, isn't it?"

All here. All of them.

Blaise and Daphne laugh when she pushes them aside, and she ignores the jab of pain in her shoulder to throw her arms around Ernie's neck.

"Hello, sweetheart," he says, tight-eyed but smiling. "This is nice, isn't it?"

She kisses him. She kisses him a great deal more than she's ever kissed him in public before, and he seems pleased enough when she pulls back, even if he does direct his usual kiss-induced smugness somewhere over her shoulder.

"Did they hurt you?" she asks, touching his face. There's no evidence of anything, but Ernie's a good healer and he heals well so it might be that she can't see what harm was done. "Oh, Ernie-"

"I'm fine," he says. "Mostly I've just been worried about you. Hector let us know you were alive, but we didn't know anything more than that."

Ernie's arms feel heavy around her, with muscle and with relief, and she leans into the steadiness of him just for a moment. He's unwavering, unmoving, and that is enough for now. It has to be.

"Battle plans," Seamus says, and he looks dangerous. That alone is enough to make Belle pay close attention, even if all she wants to do is lean into Blaise and hold Daphne's hand. "Come on, gather around."

He unfurls a massive scroll that covers the whole of their dining table, and Michael and Lavender weigh it down as though they've done this a hundred times. Perhaps they have - Belle hasn't been well enough to help with all their sneaky nighttime activities, and she's been reminded time and time again that she isn't subtle enough even if she was fit for duty. The map they've made is fantastic, though. Whoever charmed it so that the stairs move will have Daphne after them for the trick of it, and Blaise is fooling no one with the forced casualness of his fingers tracing the beautiful penwork of the border.

"They'll start here," Lavender says, pushing a marker into the entrance hall. "Primary point of entry, and since they technically have control of the field it makes sense that they'd stake their claim there."

"We need to take the main staircase," Seamus agrees, moving a marker - this one bright purple, against the toxic green of the other. Daphne notices the contrast too, and squeezes Belle's hand so hard their knuckles pop. "If we could take the great hall, that'd be an advantage."

"The Astronomy and Divination Towers," Ernie says. "Get some of us up high, we can snipe them."

"Good point," Lavender says, sounding insultingly surprised. "Alright, we'll need some flyers, then - how do we get to the brooms? None of us will be able to get around all of them-"

Belle clears her throat. Lavender blinks, and then grins.

"Of course you made more of the House-Elf Liberation than Hermione did," she says. "She's going to be furious. Go on then, Black, let's see Kreacher earn another bonus."

"Kreacher?" Belle calls, and he appears with a whiplash snap. "How many of your friends in the kitchens do you think might wish to help us another time?"

But Harry arrives, and everyone loses their minds.

He's swamped in an instant, disappearing into a tumult of arms and shrieking, and Belle gives him his moment. She will take hold once everyone else has caught their breath, but for now there is Ron and Hermione behind Harry. They look shellshocked and desperately thin, and there's a flinch in the way Hermione's jaw sets hard and fast against the noise that Belle recognises all too well.

Seamus grumbles a little, when she pushes him aside to get to Ron, to get to Hermione, but that has never troubled her before now. It is far, far more important to welcome them and get them warm than it is to worry about Seamus' easily repaired pride.

"Welcome home," she says, and means it. The castle has never been home to her, but the people? That is something else.

Hermione holds on tight, her arms hooked under Belle's, and Ron throws his arms around the pair of them at once. They both smell absolutely terrible, filthy from the road and stinking of fear, but Belle is so relieved to see them alive and mostly well that she doesn't even mind.

Hermione sniffles a little, and Belle holds on tighter.

"Alright then, alright," Monsieur Abe shouts from behind them. "Alright, move along now, get a move on."

"You be quiet, sir," Belle chides him, herding Ron and Hermione and the mob with Harry at its core into the Room. "We will have none of your petulance today, old man."

"More'n just me wants to see what all the fuss is about, Miss Fancypants," he snipes back, but he pats her shoulder on his way past all the same. "Good girl, keeping the soup pot going - do you need me to fetch anything up?"

"I think we have all we need for now," she promises. "But I am not shy of telling you if we do not."

He laughs, and follows Seamus off to wherever they're planning their mischief.

Lavender and Parvati and Padma and Hannah all come, flocking around Hermione and leaving Ron to Ernie and Michael and Tony and Zach. Neville is stuck somewhere with Harry, and Blaise is busy trying to clear enough space that no one knocks Belle's soup pot, and Daphne is slipping her arm through Belle's and squeezing, just a little.

"This is it, isn't it?" Daph says. Belle squeezes back. There is not much else to do.

But it is not just Harry and Ron and Hermione who come.

Molly Weasley comes, with Arthur and Ginny and the twins and Fleur's husband and also the mad brother who trains dragons, or breeds them or raises them, Belle has never been sure. There is Kingsley Shacklebolt and both of his sisters, and the smelly little man who used steal and sell on Belle's family heirlooms whenever Papa's back was turned. There is a jolly man with pink cheeks and knock-knees in a purple top hat, and a tall man with a stronger jaw than Ernie's and hair like a thatched roof.

There is a beautiful woman with filigree bracelets and rings who must be Parvati and Padma's mother, by the way her jewellery catches the light in unexpected, dangerous ways. There is a stately, bearded man and a tall woman with shoulders like an Olympian who can only be Tony's parents. There are Ernie's mother and grandfather and father and aunts, all save his mama with the same shiny blonde hair and proud chins.

There is Neville holding hands with a small, fierce-faced old woman, who must, therefore, be his inimitable Gran.

And here is Remus, and Dora!

"Wotcher, Belley," Dora says, hugging Belle so hard her shoulder creaks. "Look at you! Rebellion suits you, I see. Mum'll be so proud, she really will."

Dora's hair is the brightest pink Belle's ever seen it, but otherwise they have never looked so alike. Her Black eyes seem darker, against the pink.

Remus has photographs in his hands.

"Say hello to your godson," he says, pulling Belle and Dora together under his arm and kissing her temple. "This is our Teddy."

The baby is fat, and smiling, and has a tiny tuft of bright turquoise-blue hair. Belle adores him immediately and without reserve.

"I do not even have a present for him!" she cries. "Oh, I should have used my time here to knit something-"

"I'm glad for the baby's sake that you didn't," Blaise teases, leaning down to kiss Dora's cheek and then shaking Remus' hand. "Congratulations, both of you - you must be thrilled."

"I understand James and Lily a little better now, I admit," Remus says, looking suspiciously sheepish. "How have you all been? Every single one of you looks terrible."

Daphne runs to Susan when she comes through the tunnel. There are others with her, but Belle cannot see them for the smile on Daphne's face.

Harry looks horrible.

"You're so careful of my feelings, Belle," he says, rolling his eyes - but he lets her hold onto both of his hands without complaint. "Is it the beard? It's the beard, isn't it?"

It is the beard, which is ugly and completely without style, but it is also the dug-in-deep shadows under his eyes, the fear and the grief and the determination stark in his green, green eyes.

"Not that I look much better," she laments, just to see him smile. "Ugh, at least my nose healed straight - but my back? Pah! "

"What happened your back?" Ron asks, tucking in against Harry with a cup of tea for each of them. Belle's own tea is still steeping at her side, because she has taken to taking it extremely black. "You fall off your broom?"

"Not until I die," she says, scowling as hard as she can manage, given how relieved she is to see him. "How rude! No, no, I had a run-in with Cousin Bella, and she saw to it that no one will ever doubt that I am my mother's daughter."

Harry's face falls quicker even than Ron's.

"Bellatrix was here? In the school?!"

"I met her when Blaise and I went shopping," Belle says, which seems to perk Ron up a little. "Of course here. She came to see me because I locked her out of my vault. I was afraid she might, and she did. It is done now."

But Harry is not done.

"What happened, Belle?"

She's wearing a horrible cardigan belonging to, she thinks, Theo, but underneath that she only has a t-shirt of Blaise's that she cut the arms off of when he was being snotty over the summer.

"Well," she says, letting the cardigan slip down her arms, "this."

Everyone sees. Belle sort of doesn't mind. Ron says something she can't quite hear, and Harry says nothing at all, which is somehow worse.

"Your turn," she says, tugging the cardigan back up. "What have you spent the past year suffering?"

"So this is the girl who has my watch."

Belle is kneeling on the floor, with Remus' bad ankle in her lap so she can strap it up for him before they all ride to war. The shadow of Neville's grandmother's hat falling across Remus' legs startles her more even than her sharp voice.

"Hello, Augusta," Remus the traitor says, looking absolutely thrilled. "Being a fugitive has put colour in your cheeks."

"I look seventy again, do I?" she asks, and while the cutting edge of her demeanour is completely new to Belle, the wry curve of her smile is a perfect match to Neville's. "You always were full of rot, Remus Lupin. Hello, Miss Black."

"Madame Longbottom," Belle says, pushing aside Remus' foot so she can stand up to greet Neville's grandmother. "It is a pleasure to meet you."

Madame Longbottom shakes Belle's hand hard enough that she feels it in her shoulder, and her pale blue eyes take in every bit of Belle's face without flinching, even when her mouth goes just a little thin.

"You do look like her," she says at last. "But Neville was right. You aren't as much like her as I thought you would be. How's my watch serving you?"

Seamus found Belle's necklaces and her bracelets and her watch in Filch's office after he and Neville saved her, boxed up and ready for selling, and she hasn't taken them off since her neck healed enough to wear them. She takes the two necklaces - one Madame Longbottom's watch on its long chain, the other Grand-mère's pearls-and-silver - from under Blaise's t-shirt, and displays them for Madame Longbottom's inspection.

"Hmm," she says. "It suits you. He did think it would."

Remus' smile is just begging to be slapped. Belle can feel her blush not only in her cheeks but all down her neck, and Madame Longbottom notices that, too.

"Gran, " Neville groans, appearing with one hand on Belle's back, right between her shoulderblades, above one whiplash and below another. The other he uses to push down his grandmother's wrist. "Stop harassing Belle. Go harass someone else old."

She grins up at him, grins at Belle, and grins in a general sort of way.

"War has done you a world of good, dear," she says, reaching up to pat his cheek. "Good boy."

Neville is even redder in the face than Belle is, which is a small comfort.

"You know," Remus says, tying up his shoe as though having his head down will keep Belle from slapping him, "it's old-fashioned, but watches are acceptable courting gifts."

Belle slaps him around the ear just as Dora arrives.

"You probably deserved it," Dora tells him. "But tell me why you're embarrassing Belley, yeah?"

"I'll take that as my cue," Neville says, and Belle resents that he's calmed down enough to smile. "I won't be far - shout if you need anything."

"I can manage," she promises him, and ignores his knowing glance at her shoulder. "Go, Neville, before Remus suggests we marry on the spot-"

"I'm gone!"

"Remus!" Dora hisses. "What did you do?!"

"I like Neville," Remus says, unrepentant. "You could do much worse, Belley. Your dad would've loved him."

Ernie is watching from across the room, but he dips his head when Belle tries to catch his eye. She does not have the time or the energy to consider his silly jealousy. It is not Neville's fault that Remus knew his parents, and it is not Belle's fault that everyone who's lived in the Room knows where not to touch her back.

All the little ones gather close to Belle as they move through the school, to Belle and Blaise and Daphne, and Flora Carrow and Roman Urquhart, and Hannah and Zach and Theo and Tony and Padma.

Harry is somewhere, doing something. He was vague, and Belle trusts him. So does Neville. That seemed good enough for everyone else.

But the little ones cluster around them like ducklings, and Belle feels sick with the sure knowledge that they are leading these children to their deaths. She has done her best, as Daphne did before her, and Harry before either of them, but they are still children. Most of them have never seen a fight, never mind battle, and they are going up against at least Pansy and her goons, if not hardened Death Eaters who will kill them for fun.

"I almost forgot," Flora says, her eyes so bright, highlighted by the acid green scarf around her neck. "Happy birthday, Bellona."

Belle did forget. There has been so much to worry about, so many things more deserving of her attention, that she forgot that she is now an adult under French law, too.

"Don't think we forgot, Belley," Dora says, now with Teddy turquoise streaks in the pink of her hair. "Mum's the worst baker in the world, but she's attempting a massive cake for you. Dad'll buy something nice so you don't have to eat it, when we're done with this."

Dromeda and Ted are waiting for them, with Teddy. Belle hadn't thought of it in such simple terms.

All the more reason to lead this fight.

Battle turns Bellona's stomach.

Violence does, as a rule, when it is without reason. People laugh when she says that, given her name, but it is true. Bellona was goddess of war, but not of violence. It was from her temple that the opening act of war by the Empire was staged, and it was in her name that acts of valour in war were committed. She was not goddess of cruelty, except to Statius, and Belle has long felt that she is growing into her namesake well.

She has visited violence upon Pansy a dozen times by now, but each time it has been an act of revenge in return for malice. She has hurt Astoria in return for pain done to Daphne. She has thrown hexes and curses as often as there has been a need, but never for the joy of it. Never simply to see another person in pain.

The Death Eaters, though? Ah, the Death Eaters.

Belle has been parted from Daphne and Blaise, left with Looney Luna and Vicky Frobisher, who's got bloodied teeth and the look of a madwoman in her eye.

"They're much more unpleasant than I thought," Looney Luna says, touching featherlight to the feathers of Belle's shoulder - her cardigan which was Theo's is long gone. "People who torture other people, I mean."

The dark circles and dark depths of Luna Lovegood's eyes remind Belle of her own.

"Yes," she agrees. "They're horrible."

And off again-

Professor Slughorn has made some sort of bombs.

"Finally a use for those damned fragile beakers!" he says cheerfully, lobbing the corked beakers into the air one by one so that Professor Flitwick can direct them into the appropriate faces with a clever flick of his wrist. "And Pomona's gone off to find her nastiest little friends, although how we'll get those airborne-"

How silly Belle feels.

"Kreacher!" she calls, and then "Protego!" because she will not be the cause of his death, not now that he finally has some little freedom. "Kreacher, I need my broom, can you find it?"

"Yes, Mistress!" and he is back in a flash with her Firebolt in hand. "May Kreacher help, Mistress?"

"Kreacher is a free elf," she reminds him, "and may do whatever he pleases, so long as he is mindful of his safety."

Kreacher is gone so quickly that her broom nearly hits the ground, but she is quick enough to stop that even with her shoulder burning.

"If anyone has a bag, sir," Belle says, "I might be able to help with all kinds of things in the air."

Death Eaters, it seems, love a fast moving target.

Shame, for them, that Belle is half-Veela.

Daphne is somewhere inside, clearing the floors one by one - Terry is with her, and Parvati and others, somewhere.

That somewhere proves to be the fifth floor on the east wing. Belle knows this because, while she's on her way around to the greenhouses to restock, Daphne smashes backways through a fifth-floor window.

Belle has lost people. They all have. But she has never seen someone she loves die before, and she has no intention of doing so now. Not now, and not ever, if she has her way.

Her broom is well cared for, and she is the best flyer in Hogwarts. Daphne will not touch the ground until Belle puts her down.

Daph is screaming. High and clear like a silver bell, and piercing like a death knell.

Not now, and not ever.

Belle screams too, when she throws out her right arm to catch Daphne and her shoulder tears out of place again. That doesn't matter, though, because Daphne has the best reflexes Belle's ever seen off a Quidditch pitch, and she has herself up and behind Belle before either one of them has stopped screaming.

Belle flies up. Up to the fifth floor. Her right arm is limp by her side, Daphne's arms tight around her waist, and Belle's more than able to keep her seat with just her thighs so she can raise her wand and use a curse she never expected to use.

The death's head mask under the Death Eater's hood flashes in the green light, and Belle feels no guilt. If he tried to kill Daphne, then he is beyond redemption.

"Belle, your arm-"

"Daphne," she says, "your life."

She still goes to Madam Pomfrey in the great hall. Daphne is shaking, and there are cuts all over her neck and the sides of her face and a few even in her hair, scarlet against the silver-white, but she still tries to fuss at Belle.

"I'm fine," Belle insists. "I just need someone to stick it back in and it'll be fine."

"That," Madam Pomfrey says, bearing down on them like an avenging angel, with blood and glory like filth all over her crisp white apron and her hair coming loose from its neat bun in tiny wisps, "is not fine."

She hands Daphne off to someone - Hannah, of course Hannah - and pushes Belle down onto a bench. There are people sobbing all around, some curled up in pain and some far too still, and Belle has to force back bile at the sight of it.

"Finnegan! Here, now!"

"Alright, de Poitiers," Seamus says, wrapping his arms tight around Belle from behind. Her shoulder really is sore now, so she's grateful that he drops one hand under her right arm, brings the other over her left shoulder, and links his hands tight over her sternum. She doesn't even mind how badly he strangles her name. "You're going to want to hold on tight to something, because this is going to-"

She howls when Madam Pomfrey pushes her shoulder back into place, and curses as hard as she can in as many languages as she can when a syringe of something purple follows.

"That'll bring down the swelling and kill the pain," Madam Pomfrey says, just about audible over the thundering in Belle's ears. "Ten minutes, and that's all I dare ask of you."

"I'll keep her here," Seamus promises. His hands are stained, and there are scalds and burns all up his arms, but he doesn't flinch when Belle seizes his wrist when the pain spikes in her shoulder right before it fades. "Now then, what nonsense did you get up to this time?"

"One of them threw Daph out a window," she says, "and I killed him."

Seamus doesn't say anything, but his arms tighten around her just a little. He only lets go when Hannah releases Daphne, and Daphne waves a frantic Blaise down, and Seamus has to make room for them to hold onto her since her right side is out of bounds.

"I never want to do that again," she says, looking at Seamus because she can't look at Blaise or Daphne, "but I will. If I have to."

Seamus' hands are stained. He nods.

As soon as Belle's arm is well enough to ignore, she seizes her broom.

"You'll have company," Blaise says, tying her hair high on top of her head with a torn stretch of bandage. "Good and bad, I think-"

Parvati and Neville, and between them-

"It was Greyback," Parvati says, cold with terrible fury. "Fenrir Greyback."

Neville is already tearing a bandage into strips to lay over the torn skin of Lavender's face. She's breathing, but it's uneven and rasping, and Hannah and Madam Pomfrey are already washing and stitching all her other wounds.

Professor Slug arrives, ashen but solid, and in his arms are two cases of potion bottles.

"Wolfsbane," he says. "Enough for a dozen people."

"Or half a dozen," Belle says, climbing onto her broom and taking the top case of potions, "and one bastard."

Slug does not object. Belle takes it as permission.

Ginny Weasley is on her broom, too, and Otto Vaisey and- Cho Chang? When did she get here, and everyone who's ever played Quidditch for Gryffindor or Ravenclaw or Hufflepuff, they all seem to be in the air when she emerges from the castle.

"Find me Greyback!" she shouts. " Find him!"

Even the Death Eaters seem to avoid him, the thing that tried to make a monster of Remus, of Lavender, of who knows how many others. Belle flies just out of easy range, close enough to see the eyes of every nightmare on the ground through their stupid masks, and she sees him.

"There, Belle!" Lisa Turpin shouts, and when did she arrive? It doesn't matter. "He's there!"

Remus once told her that Fenrir Greyback chased being the wolf, that he strove to become as much of a monster as he could. If he's been successful, then this will hopefully kill him.

There is still blood on Greyback's face. Lavender's blood. Belle swoops high above him, and she upends the whole case of wolfsbane potions on his head. She doesn't know if this will even work when he isn't fully transformed, if all that shattered glass will do more harm than the potions, but there is no one who brews potions of such blistering concentration as Horace Slughorn, so she hopes it feels like acid on Greyback's skin.

He screams. Belle tosses the heavy wooden case at his head for good measure.

In the silence, in the in-between time, Belle staggers into the great hall on tingling legs. She cannot remember ever spending so long in the air for anything other than a long journey, with her travel-saddle, and her ankles and knees feel like jelly.

They go from under her completely when she comes to the third and fourth bodies, laid out neatly along the wall. Her wand and her broom hit the floor just before she does, and she presses her hands over her mouth to try and contain the, the noise she's making.

Blaise and Daphne are with her in a moment, hushing and soothing her, but even their presence can't comfort her.

Whoever laid Remus and Dora here left them so their hands are touching. Dora's hair is the same soft, mousy brown as Ted Tonks', but her cheekbones and her jaw are the same hard, clean lines as her mother's when there's no change being laid over them.

Remus looks young, and unworried.

Belle cannot stop wailing. Not just yet.

She stumbles toward Madam Pomfrey, determined to be of use now that she's come to her senses. There is nothing more that she can do for Remus and Dora, save swear to it that Teddy never suffers another loss as long as she lives, but there are plenty of other people who need help.

And if she's doing something, she isn't going to scream about how horrific Dora looks in stillness, or how terrible it is to see Remus without the strange little crease of concern between his eyebrows.

"Don't," she says to Blaise, when he reaches for her hand. "I cannot bear it."

He nods. Daphne nods. Everyone is happy, except that they're not.

Not far from the field hospital that has replaced the teachers' table, though, Belle is drawn to a halt, because she never expected to see Arthur Weasley cry.

The twin on the ground - with both ears, so Fred, who was the more suspicious of the two about Belle's being a Slytherin - looks almost as strange in stillness as Dora, and Belle does not think before wrapping herself around Mrs Molly Weasley as tight as she can.

"I am sorry," she says. "I am so, so sorry."

Mrs. Molly Weasley holds on in return.

"Before this is over," Belle says, bent in two because she never realised quite how small Molly Weasley is. She's always seemed such a big woman, somehow. "Before this is done, there will be reparations. I will tear them from the Death Eaters myself if I must."

"Oh, believe me," Arthur Weasley says, looking down along the hall to where Remus and Dora might be sleeping, but for how cold they are, "you'll have help."

Belle notices that Harry is not with Ron and Hermione, near Ron's silent brother, and her stomach clenches.

Surely he didn't.

Ernie is with his family, and still avoiding Belle's gaze when she tries to catch it. Madam Pomfrey has no such qualms, and she has a good look at Belle's shoulder now that they have a moment to catch their breath.

There are tear tracks cutting through the smog of filth on Madam Pomfrey's round cheeks, and Belle wonders what her own face must look like.

"If I give you a sling," Madam P says, rotating Belle's arm and frowning at the faces Belle can't stop herself from pulling, "will you wear it, and sit out?"

Belle pulls another face, and Madam P sighs.

"It will never come right if you don't rest it," she warns.

"Nothing else will come right if I do," Belle says, but she kisses Madam P's cheek in apology before departing.

She finally meets the inimitable Boneses, during this strange hour.

Ivan Bones has a square jaw and fantastic grey hair, and he has Susan's bright eyes and daring smile. He shakes Belle's left hand, because she's got her right arm tucked against her body to give it its best chance, and has Daphne as firmly under his left arm as he has Susan under his right the moment he's done.

Good. They love her, then, just as she deserves.

"We did worry," Blaise admits, draping his robes around Belle's shoulders. "When Daph didn't come back, Belle and I had our concerns - it's good to see that they were unfounded."

Dagmar Bones is tall as well, with eyes almost as blue as Aleksi's, and Susan's little nose.

"Susan loves her," she says. "That was enough for us."

They gather on the steps when the Death Eaters emerge from the forest like smog.

Hagrid is weeping. Harry is limp in his arms.

The tumult of it all, of Neville standing against the monsters with Gryffindor's sword in hand like Lancelot in his youth, of Harry not being dead - and she will kill him for that if they survive the day, of Molly Weasley putting Cousin Bella down like the dog she is-

Belle spends it all in the air, fireball in one hand and wand in the other. It turns out that Dementors are just as susceptible to flame as they are to Patronus. It turns out that Belle's Patronus, when inspired by the hope of cooking dinner for all of her family, of meeting her godson, takes the shape of a phoenix.

Veela are close to firebirds, after all.

Seamus has Dean Thomas and both Patils with him, on one of the balconies on the front of the castle.

Belle can hear him cursing from ten yards away, and she can guess why.

"Seamus!" she shouts. "Seamus, throw it up!"

"What the-"

She ignites a fireball in her hand, and his face lights up.

"A source of ignition!" he crows. "De Poitiers, you beautiful bastard!"

The potions the Gryffindors and Padma throw into the air are bright purple, and they burn blue when Belle's flame hits them.

Death Eaters scream. Belle feels no guilt.

Oliver Wood is just as mad as Belle remembers, and she is glad of him when Malcolm Baddock hits her with a curse that sends her sideways into the castle wall. Wood hits him with a Stunner that leaves Baddock spiralling slowly to the ground.

"Doing alright over there, de Poitiers?" he shouts, and he is wearing Quidditch goggles. Of course he is.

There are Weasleys everywhere she looks - Ginny and George, grey-faced and grim as they cut through Dementors and Death Eaters like Bludgers, Ron finally looking as dangerous as Belle has always suspected him to be as he fights back-to-back with Hermione, Fleur's husband and the dragon-whisperer fighting Cousin Bella's husband and brother-in-law-

Mrs Molly and Mr Arthur Weasley raising bloody hell as they tear through the panicked ranks of Voldemort's minions.

Kreacher seems to be leading an army of house elves. His fine green suit is like a beacon, and Belle will throw anyone who harms him into the lake for the squid to enjoy.

She lands with Blaise and Daph, and no one breathes.

Harry is facing off against Voldemort.

Harry is raising his wand.

Harry is attempting to Disarm the most powerful Dark wizard in British history.

Harry… Harry wins.

Madam Pomfrey is determined to win the day, and Belle concedes the field.

She wears a sling.

"At least she was out of bandages," Blaise says, tying the scarf Kreacher supplied behind her neck. It's a pretty blue and green paisley pattern, and Blaise pads the knot with the remnant of his torn shirt sleeve. "And that Kreacher chose a scarf that matches your bra."

"You cannot see my bra!"

"You do realise that it's my t-shirt you're wearing, don't you?" he points out, coming around to sit with her. "The armholes are huge, Belle. Everyone's been able to see your bra since you lost the cardigan. It's very avant garde of you."

"I hate you," she says, even though she's been holding onto him as much as possible from the moment Voldemort fell. He grins, because he knows she's a liar, and grins wider when Daphne comes along and plops herself down across their laps.

"Now," she says. "I understand that today hasn't been much of a birthday, Belle, so I propose that we have a birthday for you next week, once everyone's swelling has gone down and Madam Pomfrey says we can get drunk."

"Don't be silly-"

"We're going to be drunk for the next week no matter what Madam Pomfrey has to say," Susan says. She has a tray of tea in her hands, and a fantastic bruise blossoming on her jaw. "Seamus is already negotiating the use of the Hog's Head with Aberforth."

Belle wonders how much it will take to convince Aberforth to order in some wine for her.

Hagrid hugs her very, very carefully as soon as she breaks through the crowd near him - near Harry, she supposes, but Hagrid has not ventured far from Harry since the fighting ended.

"Well!" he says. "Well, this has been a day and no mistake!"

"I am so glad that they did not hurt you," she tells him. "I'm sorry I missed your party. The others told me about it."

"Seamus told me why you missed it," he says, "so there's no need to be sorry."

He gently guides her over toward Remus and Dora, and he sits with her without a word when she cries a little.

"No shame in that," he says, once she's finished. His polka dot handkerchief has somehow survived all the fighting, and she's so overwhelmed that she blows her nose on it. Belle has never blown her nose on someone else's handkerchief before in her life, and would be embarrassed if Hagrid wasn't shiny-eyed himself. "None at all."

She's still sitting with Remus and Dora when the gates are suddenly filled with people Apparating in.

It's parents, mostly, frantic for having heard whispers of the war coming to an end, but there are journalists, too. These are herded mostly into an uncomfortable corner and left there without even an offer of tea or coffee. Peeves, in what Seamus thinks is a show of mourning for Fred Weasley, pelts them with as many Stinkbombs and Dungbombs as he can lay hands on.

Cameras flash every time anyone with dark hair moves, but Harry is tucked away somewhere with Ron and Hermione and a plate of sandwiches, and Belle will personally scalp anyone who disturbs his peace. There is more to come for him, she knows that, but it will do no one any harm if he takes a moment to catch his breath.

She does think that someone should fetch him now, though. He's going to want to meet his godson.

Dromeda's face is tight with the effort of controlling herself - Belle has worn that same haughty expression enough times to know it well - and Ted is pink with tears.

Teddy, though, looks confused, and plump, and the loveliest thing Belle has ever seen.

"Help me arrange him," Belle says to them, hugging first Ted and then Dromeda as hard as she can one-armed. "I'll keep him safe, don't worry."

"You're a good girl, Belley," Ted says, giving her a damp kiss on the cheek and helping her tuck Teddy's weight into the crook of her elbow, so he can lie against her chest. He immediately seizes her silk scarf with grubby fingers, and Belle wonders if Mlle. Lelong does baby clothes. "There now, Tedzer, go with Aunty Belley, good lad."

Dromeda strokes Belle's hair, then Teddy's - black, now, as dark as Belle's, above eyes the same bright, pale blue as Remus'.

"Don't give him solids," she warns. "No cake, Miss Belle."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Belle promises, hastily revising her understanding of what babies like and are allowed to eat. "He is safe with me, Dromeda. I swear it."

Ted is very gently cleaning Dora's face. Belle cannot quite look, and takes Dromeda's grim little smile as a dismissal.

"Now then, Teds," she says, bouncing him a little to see if he will smile. "Let us introduce you to absolutely everyone, and then perhaps you will be too tired to cry, hmm? Come meet Uncle Blaise and Aunty Daph."

Daphne is busy with Susan and her family, but Blaise has only Zach and Otto as a distraction. He lights up like Christmas at the sight of Teddy's fat bum balanced on Belle's forearm and his plump little hand locked tight around the edge of her scarf.

"Well, who's this?" he coos, and she does not object when he lifts Teddy away from her - had anyone else dared, she might have killed them, but this is Blaise, and she doesn't think she's ever been this tired. "What a handsome little man! You must take after your mama, because your papa always looked like he'd been pulled through a hedge backwards."

Blaise's stepsisters in Helsinki have children. Two boys and a girl for one, a girl and a boy for the other. How long has it been since Blaise saw his nieces and nephews? How much of that parting has been for Belle's sake?

"You should have your sisters to stay," Belle says, smoothing Teddy's tufty Tonks hair. "They can stay in mine, if your mother has other guests."

Blaise kisses Teddy's temple, then Belle's.

"I'll invite them as soon as I've washed," he promises. "Now come on, let's get you some soup."

Belle has had enough soup for several lifetimes, but she does not want to complain.

"I want to help," she insists, and Blaise and Daphne look at her as though she's lost her mind. She supposes that she must look it, in the dirty wreckage of Blaise's t-shirt with her arm bound up in an expensive scarf that now has milk stains all over it and her hair bundled up on top of her head with her wand and some bandages. Teddy is asleep against her shoulder, too, dribbling onto her t-shirt with his hair fading from lemon to lavender to the very softest baby blue as he dreams. "It is important that I help."

"You're injured," Daphne says, " and you're babysitting."

"Babysitting implies that he is not mine to care for," Belle counters. "But I- I need to help, Daphne. Please."

Hannah and Theo have organised some of the others - adults only - to search the school and the grounds for bodies. Belle wants to help, if only because she knows how many of those bodies she caused.

"You're hurt, Miss Black," Madam P says, touching her fingertips to Teddy's hair, which is now the same dusky blue-mauve as a duskish sky. "And I'll hurt you twice as much if you don't stay right where you are. Has he been fed?"

"So much that he got sick," Blaise assures her. "And then we fed him a little more afterwards, because he seemed hungry once he calmed down."

"What a lovely baby," she sighs. "I'm serious, though, Miss Black. Did you take the anti-inflammation potion I gave you?"

"Well, no-"

"And did you listen when I told you not to carry anything?"

"He's only a baby, Madam P-"

"And are you going to listen when I tell you to rest?"

"No, of course not! There is too much to do!"

Madam Pomfrey sighs. Madam Pomfrey sits.

"I understand that, Bellona," she says, very, very gently. "And I understand that you want to pull your weight, but please, try you to understand that you have done that. You've done a great deal, and - don't dare cut across me, young lady - very few others here are recovering from a beating like the one you took just over a month ago."

Teddy burbles quietly against her shoulder, and Belle swallows hard against the tears gathering like stone in her throat.

"But I need to help," she insists. "I- what right have I to sit here and do nothing while everyone else does all those horrible jobs, Madam P?"

"I said you can, that's what right."

Harry looks much better now than he had before. Belle hadn't even heard him coming.

"Death becomes you, I see," Belle says, which makes Madam Pomfrey snort with the effort of not laughing. She doesn't seem particularly awed of Harry, but given how many silly injuries she must have patched up for him over the years, Belle cannot fault her for it.

Belle doesn't feel particularly awed, either.

"I'm extremely angry with you," she promises him. "But I do not wish to wake the baby."

She isn't really angry - angry that he did not tell anyone, because surely Ron and Hermione would not have allowed him to walk to his death without a word, of course, but not angry with the choice to make that walk. It would have been cowardice to do any less, and Harry has never been anything but fiercely brave. She's mostly terrified, because she does not think she could have borne seeing him still and ashen beside Dora and Remus.

"Can I hold him?" Harry asks, holding his hands out as though she can pass Teddy to him like a parcel. "He's my godson, you know."

"Well! He's my godson too, and you might have noticed that I only really have one hand at the moment."

"I see that this is a family matter," Madam P says, pink with mirth under the filth on her face. "See to it that she rests, Mr. Potter - although I daresay that will prove harder than killing You Know Who."

"We'll leave you to it," Blaise says. "Don't let her run away if she lets you hold the baby, Harry. Soup?"

"I'm fine, thanks," Harry says. "Belle?"

"Teds and I have already eaten," she says. "He got sick on me."

"Does he seem likely to do it again?" Harry asks, displaying the same anxious lack of knowledge Belle feels. "Is that normal?"

"Babies expel things," Daph assures him. "We won't be far if you need us, alright?"

They only go as far as Ron and Hermione, two benches over. Harry touches Teddy's hair with a strange, wistful smile.

"You can hold him," she tells him. "But be careful of his head, and try not to wake him."

They manage the transfer with a minimum of fuss, and Teddy looks just as darling sleeping against Harry's front as he has everywhere else Belle has seen him so far.

"When I was in the Forest," Harry says, running his hand carefully up and down Teddy's back and not meeting Belle's eye. "I had - there was this thing Dumbledore left me in his will. A stone."

"... this is why you did not die?"

"No! Well, no. That's a longer story. But this stone let me see, eh, well, I suppose you could call them ghosts."

"Of Voldemort's other victims?"

He saw something like that the night Voldemort returned, she knows. He told her of that, or perhaps Papa did.

"Not quite," he says, adjusting his hold on Teddy a little. "It was… I'll explain better when neither of us is bandaged up, but it was people that were important to me. Just as they were before they died. My parents, and Remus, and Sirius. Your dad."

Belle waits to feel jealous, and is relieved when she does not. Harry was with Papa when he died, and that had been difficult to bear at first. This, somehow, is not difficult at all - perhaps because Belle has the memorial under the Judas tree, and Harry has nothing.

"He loved you so much," Harry says, his voice hoarse. "Just as much as Remus loved Teddy, and my parents loved me."

Belle leans her head against Harry's shoulder, and lays her hand over his on Teddy's back. They stay there a while. No one disturbs them.

There are people coming all of the time, and Belle is sitting with Ted and Dromeda - Teddy has returned to his grandfather, and looks his happiest in Ted's arms - and Blaise and Daphne are nearby with Susan and the Boneses and Zacharias and the Goldsteins.

"'Scuse me."

Dennis Creevey is standing behind her, playing anxiously with his fingers.

"Hello, Dennis Creevey," she says, . "What can I do for you?"

"Our dad's after coming in the gate," he says. "His van stopped working in Hogsmeade, but I saw him from the doors and I don't want to see him alone-"

"But surely Colin will want to see your papa also, chéri?"

Dennis' tiny face folds, and he sniffles.

"Oh, Dennis, I am so sorry-"

She gets her good arm around him and lets him hide his face against her neck for just a moment.

"Of course I will come to see your papa, Dennis," she says. "Come along, pupu, come on, introduce me."

Colin Creevey is lying just next to Fred Weasley, and is impossibly small.

Monsieur Creevey is a neat little man with pale blonde hair parted to the side above the nervousness of his hazel eyes. Dennis is more like him than Colin was, and he seems to understand without asking that it was bad news that drew him this far north, rather than good.

Dennis goes straight to him, crying in terrible little high-pitched, keening sobs, and Monsieur Creevey gathers him close.

"I am so sorry, Monsieur Creevey," Belle says. "You should be very proud of your sons. I am sorry that we could not keep them both safe for you."

"You're a teacher, then?" Monsieur Creevey asks, rocking a little with Dennis still weeping against his chest.

"Oh, no," Belle says, trying to smile. "Just a friend of Dennis'."

She finally gets a moment with Ernie once she's seen the Creeveys safely to Colin's current resting place. His family are talking with a pleasant looking woman with a sensible ponytail who is clearly Hannah's mother, and he is adrift.

"At last!" Belle sighs. "Are you alright? I haven't seen you at all."

"I, ah, yes," he says. "I saw you. On your broom."

Ernie usually has her in his arms within a moment, but he's reserved now. This is not how Belle imagined victory in battle would feel.

"Your family are well? They came through the fighting unharmed?"

He looks uneasy. She doesn't understand why.

"Ernie-"

"We'll catch up afterwards," he promises, patting her shoulder as though she is halfway a stranger. "Ah, I promise. We'll catch up."

"Ernie Mac millan," she snaps. "You will speak to me now."

"It's not that I don't want to see you, Belle," he says, hesitant and nervous - twitchy, looking back over his shoulder as though afraid of who might be looking. "But things are- my parents are here! My grandfather! You have to understand, Belle. There are expectations."

He's gone before she can say a word, beetling away back to his family. No one has dared to shame Belle for her mother's blood in years, save the Death Eaters, but she has a nasty feeling that Ernie is embarrassed of her.

She's never been a cause for embarrassment before. Shame, yes, before Maman realised how much that was hurting Belle, but never red-faced embarrassment. She thought Ernie was anxious about introducing her to his family for the same reason she was mortified at the idea of his meeting Maman and Anatole - she even understood that! But she still expected to be introduced, if only because they've been seeing one another for a whole year now.

She had been looking forward to introducing Ernie to Maman, when the idea didn't make her curl up with preemptive embarrassment.

"Idiot."

"Hmm?"

Theo obviously saw Ernie's misstep, and has an ugly, tense set to his jaw.

"What an idiot," Theo says, emphasising his point with a sharp nod at Ernie's rapidly retreating back. He has coffee in his hands, and hands a cup to Belle. "You alright, Black? Twat. How dare he! Who the fuck does he think he is? Viscount bloody Ness, thinking he's above the Marquess of Pembroke! Come on, drink up."

"I only take one sugar," she chides him, knocking her hip against his because she has no hand to spare. "Why is there at least five in this?"

"Because you haven't eaten a thing except a few biscuits while you were feeding the baby. Blaise is cracking up."

Belle wonders if Theo's papa survived the battle. Belle wonders if she's the one who killed him.

"I can't wait to wash my hair," is all she says. "I can't eat until I'm clean."

"You could always use the prefect's bathroom," Theo suggests. "I don't think anyone would question it, after the year you've put in."

"If it's simply a matter of having had a difficult year, I think we are all entitled to using the prefect's bathroom."

They sip their coffee as everyone drifts around them, aimless with a giddy relief that doesn't seem to have been tempered by grief just yet.

"The Gryffindors are already talking about valour and bravery," Theo says. "And the Ravenclaws are already talking about how this will all be recorded for future generations."

"Most of the Hufflepuffs are being caring."

Theo's laughter is quiet, made for smokey rooms in private clubs and polite, searing mockery.

"And what of us, Bellona Black?" he asks. "Most of us kept down in the dungeons with our wands confiscated, save a few of us who earned the trust of the Gryffindors thanks to you and Daphne and Blaise. That won't be forgotten."

"For better or worse," Belle says. "There are plenty who think me traitor for fighting against the Death Eaters. There are more who would have thought me a traitor had I done nothing."

"And what do you think?"

"I think that I could not have looked myself in the mirror had I stood by."

"Well then," Theo says. "Given the kind of people who think you a traitor include among their number one Pansy Parkinson, I think you've made the better choice."

People come in through the gates.

Most people come in through the gates.

Belle is having a smoke with Tony and Seamus on the castle steps as the sun sets. There are little ones scattered all over the lawns, some with their families and some in shell-shocked huddles, warding off the creeping chill with the closeness of their friends.

Belle is doing the same. But there is a greater warmth on its way for her.

"Here, Belle," Seamus says, nudging her with his toe. "Here. Listen. Here."

"What is it now, Seamus Finnegan?"

"It's probably that, Belle," Tony says, louche and elegant with his sun-glasses reflecting the flaring dusk. "Up there."

Up there are three wide wingspans shining golden-orange. Up there are white cloaks billowing like gossamer behind long limbs. Up there are Maman, and Anatole, and Jeanne.

"Help me up," Belle says, stubbing out her cigarette on the step. "And don't let on that I was smoking with you. Don't dare. "

"Of all the things to be afraid of," Seamus says, "it's your mam finding out you smoke? Coward."

"Clearly you have not met my mother," Belle says, handing her box of cigarettes and her lighter to Tony, so that he can hide them. "But you will now, and then you'll understand."

And then she runs. Maman's wings are still unfurled behind her when Belle runs into her arms, and the shock of pain in her shoulder is a small price to pay for the smell of Maman's perfume and the tight strength of her embrace.

She is crying. Belle is crying too, and trying to talk, but there is too much to say and not enough words to say it.

"I have been so scared, my darling," Maman says. "No letters, no word at all until Daphne tells me that the mad bitch has had you-"

"But I am here," Belle promises. "I am safe now."

Anatole and Jeanne must take the time to lower their wings before they gather close as well, and Belle is laughing. She isn't sure why.

"You stink, chouette," Anatole says. "But I am so glad to see you that I don't mind."

"He has been so anxious he got lost crossing the Channel," Jeanne says, kissing Belle's good shoulder. "We have all been so worried for you, Belle - we are so proud of you."

"Your friends are all well?" Maman asks, leaning back just enough that Belle can see her face. Her eyes are bright with tears still, and her lovely, lovely face has become thin and sharp-edged. "Blaise? Daphne? Your Ernie, and the rest?"

"All of them," Belle assures her. "Everyone except- except for- oh, Maman, except for Remus and Dora!"

Maman gathers Belle close again, kissing her hair over and over again, murmuring in French while Anatole whispers in Finnish and Jeanne in Greek, which comes to her as automatically now as English does to Belle.

To be surrounded by them is to be home. Strange to feel it so strongly here, so far from Valence.

Everyone they pass stops to look, particularly at Anatole. Belle ignores them, and is rewarded by Blaise and Daphne's arrival. Ted and Dromeda and Teddy are coming as well, and Harry, and Theo and Tracey, too, with speculative looks.

Maman goes directly to Harry. She kisses him on either cheek, and then holds him at arm's length.

"Sirius would have been so very proud of you, young man," she says, in the crisp English she reserves for solicitors and for making a point. "How brave you are. How brave you all have been."

Jeanne is with Blaise and Daphne, kissing their cheeks and holding their hands and speaking in quick, low tones with them.

Anatole stays with Belle. He keeps her under his arm, not minding that she's muddying his beautiful white flight robes.

"When Daphne told us what happened," he says, halting and uncertain as she has never heard him before. "Amand locked me in our room. He was afraid I would get myself killed trying to come to you, since Daphne would not agree to help me come here."

"You have never been one for subtlety, cher oncle," she teases him. "Even Daphne could not have gotten you here undetected. And I was well cared for! Everyone made certain to look after me."

"That is as it should be," Anatole says fiercely, drawing his long scarf from around his neck and draping it over his shoulder. "You try to care for all your friends, so I am glad that they have returned the favour. Come here, chouette, let me get rid of that dirty scarf. How did you find feeding a baby for the first time?"

"How did you know?"

Anatole laughs, gently guiding her right hand to her left shoulder as he removes her green-and-blue scarf. His hands are careful as he neatly folds his scarf to form a fresh sling for her injured arm, and he takes his clean handkerchief to pad her it behind her neck. They are both bright, gleaming white, and only serve to make her look even filthier.

"I fed you many times when you were a baby," he tells her. "And Jeanne, too. I know what it smells like when a baby vomits on you."

"I have missed you," she says, so quietly she almost doubts he can hear her, "so very much this past year."

He finishes tying off her new sling, and then takes her face in his hands.

"My dearest girl," he says, leaning his brow against hers. "I have no words to explain how hard it has been not to damn the danger and come here to your side."

"Do you think Amand might make me an almond cake? I have missed his baking almost as much as I have missed him."

"I think he will bake you a dozen cakes," Anatole promises her. "But I think he will weep to see you alive first, so be patient with him."

It is dark when Belle gets away.

It is dark, and the moon is very bright on the water of the lake. It is quiet, under her tree, and cool, and she settles between her two favourite roots to watch the breeze drift across the surface of the lake.

It is dark, and so she does not notice Neville until he is sitting on the root to her left, shaking a bag of what turns out to be pear drops at her. He keeps shaking them until she takes one, and then he allows the quiet to continue.

It seems wrong to sit here, so close but not touching, after all they've seen this past year. She reaches up and cups his calf in her hand. He jumps slightly, but doesn't move his leg.

"I'm sorry about Remus and Tonks," he says, soft as starlight. "I know how much you love them."

"Molly Weasley killed Bellatrix," Belle says, squeezing his leg a little. "I would feel cheated, but I think it is better this way. I don't think I could have stopped just at killing her."

"Nor me," he agrees. "How's your shoulder?"

"Aching. Your leg?"

"It feels like I'm being stabbed every time I walk on it," he says. She cannot see his face, only the reflection of the moonlight on his eyes, but she thinks he's smiling. She can tell by his voice. "But it could be worse."

The silence is cool and comfortable, and the sky overhead is full of owls to-ing and fro-ing. A long, dark tentacle splashes out and then back into the water, and a ripple of mer-song echoes in the noise of it. Somewhere, a wolf calls - but not a werewolf. Two died today, and Lavender will either transform on the next full moon or she will not. Tonight there are only the wolves in the woods.

The centaurs are whooping, too, somewhere in the forest. There are fireworks over Hogsmeade, and no doubt in London and everywhere else. Seamus had run off with Dean and a maddened gleam in his eyes, so Belle expects to see the sky above the castle lit mostly in red and gold, because Gryffindors have no imagination.

"Help me up?" she asks, and because Neville is a gentleman, he does. He stands up and takes her left hand, and then leans down to wrap his other arm around her waist. He's so warm, and when they're upright, he leaves his arm around her waist.

This close, she can see his face. His soft eyes and his gentle mouth and the long, firm line of his jaw. She touches him there with just her fingertips, right where his skin is thin over his pulse behind the corner of his jaw, and he dips his head to lay his cheek in her palm.

"Belle," he says, and then, " Bellona."

Belle has kissed Ernie tons of times, and she kissed that pretty Beauxbatons boy at the Yule Ball, but she doesn't think she ever really wanted to kiss them, just for the sake of it.

Here, where it is quiet and dark save for the moonlight, she wants to kiss Neville.

"This isn't fair to Ernie," he says. "Or to either of us. I- I won't do this while you're still seeing Ernie."

"I know," she says. "But I still want to."

She drops her hand. He lowers his arm. They step very slightly further apart.

"I should have kissed you before Macmillan did," he says, shaking his head and smiling slantways. "It would have saved an awful lot of moping about on my part, and then there'd be no fussing now."

"Ernie doesn't want his family to know about me," Belle says, wrapping her left arm tight around her own waist to keep from reaching out to touch Neville again. "But you asked your grandmother for her watch."

"Remus was half right," he says, stuffing his hands emphatically into his pockets. "If I'd given you my mum's watch instead of Gran's, that would have been as good as proposing marriage. I didn't think that was a good idea, given we'd never even gone out together, and we were sixteen."

"Excuse me," Belle says, wishing that she could keep from smiling. " I was seventeen. That was the point, I think."

"Nothing wrong with seeing a younger man, I'd say," he teases. "Shit. Well, this isn't the conversation I intended on having when I came looking for you."

"I just needed a moment," she admits. "I hope no one worried."

"Blaise's mother arrived just as you slipped out," he assures her. "She and your uncle immediately started arguing, so I don't think anyone noticed."

Lantern-light is spreading across the lawn now - people spilling out of the castle in twos and threes for a little peace in the cool air. Belle wonders how long they can go without being discovered here.

Not long, it turns out.

"Finnegan told us we'd find the two of you together," Professor McGonagall says. She looks very well, wrapped up in a clean robe of bright emerald green velvet that looks suspiciously like it came from Slug's wardrobe. Slug, bearing a lantern of stained glass that gives off beautiful warm golden light, is bandaged around the head and has the look of a man who has been at his brandy stores.

"Professors," Belle says, hoping lanternlight doesn't show up how much she's blushing. "How may we help?"

"Well, there's this damnable question that's been plaguing us this past hour or so," Slug says, holding out a tiny tin of iced biscuits. Belle didn't see him taking it from any pocket, but Slug's always got the best sweets. "We assume that most of you will come back in September, since not a single one of you has a NEWT to your name."

"And we assume," McGonagall says, "that no one will question us choosing a new Head Boy and Head Girl, since neither Mr. Malfoy nor Miss Parkinson will be among the returning eighth years."

Slug's tiny tin of iced biscuits contains a surprise.

"And we assume," he says, "that choosing a Gryffindor Head Boy and a Slytherin Head Girl would be a suitable show of unity, if you're interested. It would look extremely good on future job applications, dear girl."

Neville's hand lands warm and heavy right between Belle's shoulderblades.

"It's a great honour," he says. "Surely- what about Harry, though?"

"I fear it will take a more convincing tongue than mine to bring Potter back here next year," McGonagall says archly, and Belle sees the challenge in her tiny smile. "Even so, while I'm very fond of Potter, and no one can deny his heroics, he may be the least conscientious young man I've ever met unless Hermione Granger is looking over his shoulder."

"Fine young man," Slug agrees. "But he panics whenever he's asked to do anything other than play Quidditch or fight Dark wizards, so you see why we aren't considering him particularly."

"And what of Hermione?" Belle asks. "Or Hannah, maybe, or Padma or Parvati?"

"You're both so humble," Slug sighs. "Be quiet and take your badges, and we'll see you back here bright and early on the first of September, hmm?"

Belle gets her bath, and Jeanne brought clean pyjamas in her flight-pack, and a long silk robe - all in de Poitiers black and white, of course.

With her hair clean and drying over her shoulders, with Anatole's white silk scarf holding her arm firmly against her chest, with Blaise and Daphne curled up on either side of her before the fire, with Maman and Sofia Nikolaevna sitting on the couch nearest while Jeanne and Anatole play cards on the one just beyond it, Belle feels safe. The Slytherin common room has never felt quite so homely, and it is only mostly because Maman and the rest are here.

It is, at least a little, because Pansy is absent.

"You'll come back next year?" she asks, leaning her head on Blaise's shoulder. Daph stretches out and rests her head against Belle's thigh, and Belle strokes her silky-soft hair. "Both of you?"

"I need a NEWT in Arithmancy if I'm going to play the markets," Blaise says, warm and teasing and a little sleepy. "Daph?"

"Look at the mess the two of you made when I left you alone," she says, already mostly asleep. "How can I possibly trust you to do it without me?"

Belle settles a little more comfortably against Blaise. She thinks Anatole is the one to lay blankets over them, but the quiet chatter and the crackle of the fire is enough to lull her to sleep.

She thinks she has earned it.