Masquerade Act One: Hidden Figures
The Fifth Dance: Where There's a Witch, There's a Way
A/N: Now that our two main leads have gotten acquainted the real action and meat of the story can get moving along. I'm interested to see if anyone has any suggestions as to how the two girl's will escape their new found home and prison.
Also thanks to those who have reviewed and favorited this story. Your support keeps me writing. Cheers!
A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work- Colin Powell
"Magic?" Hermione echoed dumbly. "How is that going to get us out of here?"
"Calm down, old Bellatrix will explain everything, if you just listen." She gave the brunette a pointed look until the girl had calmed down. "Now, do you know what this is?"
The black haired woman pulled out a stick from under her robe. Hermione had seen it so many times in her past, she was sure, and she knew it was important yet-
"It's a wand!" the words burst out of her mouth before she could stop them and she clamped her hands over her lips in surprise at the level of her sudden outburst. She finally knew what the word for that object was! It had just popped into her head and she had no doubt it was correct.
"Very good," Bellatrix purred, placing the wand to her lips. "You see this one is my wand. It's special to me and it helps me cast my magic. I'm a witch I'm certain of it. When I went into the morgue and heard those men mention witches and wizards and wars I knew that somehow I was one of them, something just clicked in my head. And I knew that I had to have a wand of my own. It was just trapped in a room somewhere. So I snooped around, looking everyday until I came across my darling wand." Bellatrix was walking around the room, lost in her recollections. She paid no mind to Hermione even as she strode past her. The brunette watched her, cautious of the caged energy the woman was exerting. "And since you know what this is," she waved her wand, "then I assume you must be a witch too."
"Me, a witch? And how does that help our situation, by us being witches?" The brunette wasn't entirely certain where the raven haired witch was going with this.
"Because if we are witches we have wands and these wands enable us to do magic. Magic that will help us fight back and break free from this place. Just take this castle for example. I created it solely with my magic." The raven haired witch turned on her heel and stared intently at the brunette, pointing her wand at her in emphasis. The fire crackled merrily behind her from where she stood in front of the fireplace. It cast her shadow across the room, making her seem bigger than she was and more powerful. Again Hermione's belly tugged with a familiar sensation. She had to have known this woman in her past but how and why? With her standing intimidatingly like this, fire crackling behind, like a solider standing above her defeated enemies as their homes burned behind her, called up a memory in of the other in Hermione's head and she waited for it to surface closer but when it didn't she tried to grasp onto it and was rewarded with fingers of pain that stabbed into her eyeballs.
"I told you to ignore the memories," Bellatrix said, noting Hermione's grimace as she shut her eyes.
"I know," the brunette snapped back feeling a bit annoyed at being reprimanded, and rubbed her eyes until the pain subsided. "It's hard to not do it."
Bellatrix waited until all of Hermione's attention was on her before continuing. "Going on, all we have to do is find your wand."
"Find it? But where is it? I didn't have it anywhere on my person."
"I know that. The workers here have gotten smarter about that. They know better than to leave a witch with their wand."
"Is the fact that we're witches what protects us from this place?"
Bellatrix arched a brow as she lowered the wand to her side. "What ever do you mean?"
"You said that you and I are different from the rest of the people here. That I was rebellious usually when others are complacent."
Bellatrix shook her head rigorously. "I don't know if magic has anything to do with our resilience. Certainly there are other wizards and witches here too. I would hazard a guess that it's more because of our personalities, of who we are as people. I saw a lot of myself in you and I knew you would be a fighter. Someone vital to my cause. You and I have a dangerous fire inside us. A fire that lets us fight." Bellatrix smirked and raised her chin. "Now we're going to go out and fetch your wand. I know where it is and-"
"Shouldn't we wait on this?" Hermione asked, not certain if they should be going out right now.
"Why ever not?" Bellatrix asked, annoyance flaring in her eyes at being interrupted.
"It's just that since I escaped surely they will be looking for me. It won't be safe to go out."
"That's exactly what we want. The staff here will know that you'll be in hiding since you recently escaped so the last thing they would expect is for you to be out and about."
Hermione set her mouth. Well, she couldn't argue with that, especially if the logic sounded reasonable. And Bella had been here longer so she knew better.
"How long have you been doing this?" Hermione questioned as the black haired witch put her mask back on her face and pulled her hood up, hiding her mass of raven curls under it. "Why does that matter?" was the slightly defensive answer.
Hermione shrugged. "Just wondering. Curious really." She looked over to her side trying to feigning disinterest.
Bellatrix's lips curved up in a smirk. "You really love questions, don't you." She hid her wand into her robe as she considered what to say. "All I can say is that I've been doing this for far too long. Time has a weird way of working here."
Hermione nodded her head in consideration of this. Time did work weirdly here. She still had no idea how long she had been trapped in that room. And she doubted Bellatrix would know the exact amount either. "Put on your mask." The witch threw the mask the brunette had dropped to the floor at her chest. She fumbled to catch it. "Why?"
Bellatrix tsked. "Again with the questions." She only sounded mildly annoyed because she knew she owed to explain to the girl how things worked here, she was only miffed that she couldn't not say something the minute it was asked because of their agreement. But she had agreed so it was her own fault. She had been desperate to have a comrade in arms-a witch of all things! How wondrous- and this was what desperation bred. Bellatrix had a feeling she wasn't a desperate person. That she was the type that breed desperation in others, but she couldn't fathom why such a thing would happen.
"You simply need to wear the masks in this world."
"Reason being-?" Hermione put on the mask obediently and looked at Bellatrix, awaiting the explanation. Bellatrix let her smirk drop from her face as a memory etched into her mind forever ran across the forefront of her brain. She had been at a restaurant, eating by herself when the incident had occurred. In it a man, who had removed his mask for whatever reason, turned into a burning inferno, his screams ringing through her ears horrifically as he fell to his knees in agony, others avoiding him and moving on to other tasks. All Bellatrix could do was stand and watch as slowly his cries died out and all that was left of him was a pile of still smoking ash, small flames dancing in it before they too died out. The only thing untouched had been his mask, a crying face.
She shivered as the memory brought her joy. Why had she been happy seeing him suffer? She pushed it out of her mind as she approached the entrance of her house. "Because if you don't wear it you'll face something unpleasant," she stated grimly and vaguely and she could see a thousand more questions forming on Hermione's face but she turned her back on her and pulled open her door. "Now, like I said, they won't be expecting us to be out so soon, but that doesn't mean we get sloppy," Bellatrix instructed as they walked down the passageway and out past the statue of the man with wings. She lowered her voice and hunched down behind the statue, Hermione doing the same as her. The raven haired witch looked both ways to make sure the hall was empty before she strode up to the plain wall in front of them. She pulled out her wand and tapped on the wall, muttering out a word in a different language. A hole opened up from them, just big enough to let them through.
"What's this?" Hermione poised as they walked through and ended up in a completely different space from the one they had just been in.
"I opened up a portal to where the wands are being held."
"You must have practiced a lot to do this," Hermione had an appreciative look in her eyes at the witch's magic.
Bellatrix couldn't help but lift her chin up arrogantly. "I didn't practice. I only did what felt natural. The magic and spell words just come to me."
"You must be really powerful. I have a feeling that you were, whoever you were in the past." Bellatrix smiled at this innocent comment but it didn't reach her eyes. Yes, she sensed that she was powerful too, but there was something more. Something darker and unnameable that bothered her. She wasn't entirely certain she had used her powers in an appropriate manner.
"The wands are in this room," Bellatrix said as she strode past Hermione to a gray door. They looked to be in a basement of some sort, darkly lit. The witch tapped on the door, frowning. "They've reinforced it. Nothing I can't handle." With a confident swish of her wand and murmur of words the door sprung open revealing a room full of boxes on shelves.
"All you have to do now is let the wand call to you."
"Let it call to me?" Hermione shot the witch an incredulous look.
"Each wand is specifically tailored to the user. It feels...," Bellatrix stuck her tongue in her cheek, searching for the right words. "You'll just know when it happens." She gave up, losing forbearance for finding the right phrasing, and pushed Hermione into the middle of the room.
Hermione cast her an uncertain stare as the witch backed up against the wall and waited, leaning against it and twiddling the wand between her nimble fingers. "Well? Will you get on with it?" she said impatiently and Hermione snapped her head back to focus on her task. The witch had said the wand would call to her...but how? Hermione decided to approach the boxes on the shelves and see if they jumped out at her or something.
She walked up and down the rows, reading the labels on the boxes. Some of them were odd. One label said Black Plague wands: Do Not Touch and another a row down said French Revolution and some simply had dates on them like 100 B.C to 500 B.C. How odd indeed.
"Could you hurry it up?" Bellatrix's impatient statement brought the brunette out of her wondering. She had been walking aimlessly around for a while now, lost in the world of shelved boxes and dates. "You know we don't have all day here. Someone could be bound to come in."
"I would hurry if only I knew where it was. There's so many different dates and eras on these boxes. What do they mean?" Hermione ran her finger over a label with the words World War One on it.
"They mean what they mean." Bellatrix waved her hand dismissively. "They probably meant something to us in our past but not now." Hermione continued to move down the rows, irritated that this was taking so long. How many rows had she been down already? She was just about to complain that perhaps Bellatrix had been wrong in diagnosing her as a witch when she felt it, a tingle in her fingers.
Her hands curled reflexively and her eyes zoomed in on where she felt a strong pull of magic coming from. She could feel the sensation spreading from her fingers to her arms and she smiled. This had to be it. This had to be the call! She strode over to a box labeled Voldemort's War. A strong shiver ran down her back as she read the name, a bitter taste filling her mouth but she didn't know why. Throwing the feeling away she opened the box and saw it was brimming with wands.
Well, this makes things harder, Hermione wrinkled her nose. How was she to know now? Surely not all the wands were calling to her.
"Are you done yet?"
"Almost!" Hermione shot back, considering if she should just take the whole box with her and pick and prod through them all back in the safe house. She shifted a couple aside with her fingers experimentally, the tingling growing stronger and then to a burning as her pointer finger touched a wand. She pulled it out, shutting the lid on the box and examined it, the burning only increasing as all her digits wrapped around the wand. She reveled in the feel of it on her palm and the way she felt comfortable and safe with it. So this was what she had been missing all those times her hand had twitched. She was missing this wand! Just like she knew certain things in this world without explanation were true, she knew this wand was undoubtedly her's. The grain of the wood, vine, reeked with familiarity and she instantly knew it had a core of dragon heart string. She wanted to test it out, to see if she could cast magic but suddenly Bellatrix was next to her, grabbing her by her shoulder and roughly moving her.
"You found your wand, good, yes. Now we must go. There are workers coming here." Bellatrix steered them away from the door after waving her wand and having it close. She was looking for a flat wall to open a portal on, her eyes roving quickly back and forth. At last she found one at the very back of the room.
"Was this door locked before?" a muffled voice asked. Someone had arrived at the door.
"No. You probably locked it when you left." Answered another.
"I didn't lock it!" the first voice insisted, insulted. "I don't have the keys for it."
"Well then you better get the keys, or else we can't get in." There was a rattling as the door handle moved but stayed firmly shut.
"Quickly, in you go," Bellatrix shoved Hermione in through the portal she had reopened and both of them ended back up in front of the statue. Without wasting a second, Bellatrix opened the secret passageways as well and soon the two were back in the safe house.
"So?" the raven witch asked, removing her mask and tossing it to the couch. "How's the wand?"
Hermione looked at the piece of wood she had clenched between her fingers. "It's mine. It called to me." She looked up at the witch. "Do you think I will be able to do magic with it?"
"What a silly question. Baubillious!" Without warning a streak of white lighting flashed from Bellatrix's wand straight at Hermione. The brunette's wand shot up and she shouted out "Protego!" in time for a shield to rise and block the attack. Her heart pounding dreadfully in her chest from the near attack, she lowered her wand only when she felt it was safe to do so. How had she know to do this? Her body had moved on instinct.
"See, and you were worried you couldn't do magic," Bellatrix cackled, twirling her wand between her fingers. "You can, we'll just have to draw it out of you." She ripped off the heavy black cloak on her shoulders for the first time and tossed it to the side, a wide grin on her face, excited to trade blows with another witch. She was wearing a black dress underneath with a tight corset and high heels. How had she been able to run in them? They looked taller than Hermione's did yet the witch moved so quickly during the time Hermione had chased her. Hermione didn't give it another thought as she focused on the raven haired witch in front of her who was pacing around the room, forcing the brunette to pace around as well unless she wanted the other to bump into her. Hermione didn't know if she was ready for a fight. She had wanted to see her magic abilities but in quiet contemplation and in practicing it in the privacy of a room. Would trading blows bring it out faster?
The other witch watched her with a predatory gaze as they continued to circle around the room. The fire in the hearth had lost most of it's intensity from before. It would die out if no one attended to it yet Bellatrix didn't pause to fix it, too intent on dueling Hermione. "So are you going first? Or are you waiting on me?" Bellatrix asked playfully.
"I-"
"Stupefy!" a spell was flung at Hermione catching her off guard once more. She barely managed to put up her shield from before, blocking the attack. How was the witch so damn fast with casting these spells? But Bellatrix didn't stop there. "Tarantallegra! Sectumsempra!" Bolts of blue, red and green magic flew from her wand tip and it was all Hermione could do to either deflect, protect or dodge to avoid the spells. Burns in the floor formed from where Bellatrix's magic hit it as Hermione fought to remain on her feet and out of harm's way. She was sweating already and they had only barely started, or at least Bellatrix had. Hermione felt like she had been fighting for forever, but the witch didn't look at all tired despite the rapid succession of her spells. She shot a few more at Hermione, cackling with delight. "Come now pet, surely you can do better than that! Attack me, I know you have to have a few attacks up your sleeve."
Hermione would, but the other witch wasn't slowing down her onslaught; she had no open window to cast a retaliatory spell! Unless she...
She ducked behind one of tables, a spell flying over her head. "Hiding now, are we?" the way Bellatrix voiced this, in a sing song manner, made Hermione's heart clutch in fear. She swore she had to have heard these words from the others woman mouth in the past, and they had brought her fear and pain. Suddenly Hermione was very afraid of the other witch in the room and her breaths came in shallowly as she fought the rising panic in her. For some reason she needed to get out, she needed to win this fight or else she would die!
"Confrigo!" a bolt of frantic magic escaped from her wand tip to the ceiling of this room, which promptly exploded with a terrific boom and shower of fire.
"The bloody hell-!" Bellatrix exclaimed, not expecting that, as chunks of plaster and dust showered over her. She waved her wand to get rid of them and that's when Hermione popped up from her hiding place and pointed her wand at her. "Expelliarmus!" Bellatrix's wand went soaring out of her hand and into Hermione's and the duel was over.
"Well, that's a new spell," Bellatrix said blinking her eyes slowly in shock at being disarmed so easily. She had thought that she would win this duel, that she was the stronger of the two, but maybe this young witch would prove her wrong. Hermione didn't say anything, just breathed in and out. The poor girl looked like she had just been through an ordeal. The battle hadn't taken that much out of her, had it?
"I think I'd like to practice on my own now," Hermione's voice was soft and almost squeaky in quality. Bellatrix furrowed her brows and cocked her head as she accepted the wand Hermione handed back to her. "Of course. You're room is upstairs."
"I'm staying here?"
Bellatrix laughed. "And why wouldn't you? You're no longer safe in your room, they'll only hunt you down. No one can get in here. I guarantee it." She smiled but Hermione avoided her gaze. Why was the girl acting so strangely now? Hadn't she felt her blood sing in joy as they traded spells? Hadn't she felt the way it felt so natural to fight one another? Hadn't she? Why was she so glum?
"I'll be on my way then." She headed upstairs, leaving the older witch with a still smoldering ceiling and a mess on the floor. The fire had gone out too due to the gusts of wind caused by their spell casting. She frowned. Now she'd have to clean up this mess. She really needed to think things over better before she started slinging magic carelessly around.
A/N: I know the characters may seem a little ooc for now, especially Bellatrix, but that's cause they don't have their memories. Without their memories a person is not their true self. They lose a part of themselves. But the girls will be acting their old selves in due time, promise.