Thanks for the follows and reviews everybody! They're making me super inspired to write!
I don't want to spoil the story, but I was thinking I should clarify a few things so people are not disappointed later: 1. No one will be time-travelling to the first-war period, 2. I don't enjoy writing Bellatrix as a sociopath, so she won't be one here, and 3. Hermione is headed head-first into a moral grey area, which may or may not be considered OOC. I just think of it as taking some of her qualities to their logical conclusion.
The gardens of Malfoy Manor were considered some of the finest in wizarding Britain, containing not only an impressive collection of impeccably-manicured topiaries, but also a wide variety of magical plants and herbs. On any given week, one could find a Potioneer or two puttering about in the bushes on the search for rare ingredients. Lucius Malfoy could certainly have strengthened the wards to keep out these intruders, but he preferred to set the dogs on them so that the beasts could get some exercise.
Watching those poor souls being chased across the snow-covered lawn had become one of Bellatrix's only distractions, and she would often stand by the windows, trying to catch a glimpse from behind the curtain, fearful lest the sunlight linger too long on her skin. When the last wizard had scrambled over the wall, barely avoiding the hound nipping at his feet, she made her way over to one of the drawing room settees and fell into it gracelessly.
Grabbing Narcissa's Witch Weekly off the table, she flipped through it with distaste, trying hard to ignore the row going on in the hall.
"Well, I hope you're satisfied, Cissy! You can't possibly imagine how hard it was to get that witch here! Not to mention her services are not exactly cheap," Malfoy hissed.
"It's literally the least you could do, Lucius, after what you've put this family through!" her sister whispered back furiously. "Or have you forgotten that Bella testified to keep you out of prison? That could have been you! Draco would have never known his father!"
"Yes, well, she has my undying gratitude. But I don't see why she needs to stay in this house -"
"Because she is my sister, which is a bond I suppose you'll never understand. But if you want to be the the one to tell the Dark Lord that we're evicting her, be my guest!"
There was a moment of hostile silence. And then:
"She killed my peacock, Narcissa! My favorite peacock!" he whinged.
Bellatrix gave an unladylike snort, but stifled her laughter, not wanting to be caught eavesdropping.
"Well, he was rather getting on in years, wasn't he?" Narcissa replied wearily, as though tired of having the same argument.
"That's ridiculous!" Lucius exclaimed, forgetting to lower his voice. "Agamemnon was in the prime of life!"
"Shhhh! Be quiet!" Narcissa warned.
"I will not be dictated to in my own house! And by my wife, no less!"
"Oh I beg your pardon, Lord Malfoy!" Narcissa sneered, her tone cold as ice. "Would it please his highness to take breakfast on the east patio while the rest of us mere mortals carry on with our business?"
Anyone familiar with her ways knew that this was a dismissal, and, indeed, Bellatrix heard Malfoy's retreating footsteps a moment later. Smart man, she thought, imagining her little sister taking a moment to fix her hair and plaster on a smile in the hall before entering.
When she finally did so, the dark witch pretended to be engrossed in a particularly agonizing article titled "10 Beauty Tricks (and Treats) to Snag the Wizard of Your Dreams!"
"Good morning, Bellatrix," the blond witch greeted, coming to stand over her sister, inspecting her minutely. "How are you feeling today?"
"Like shit, thanks for asking," Bellatrix grunted.
Narcissa pursed her lips, as though wanting to scold her for the improper tone, but decided against it. Instead, she settled on her other favorite subject: Bella's grooming habits.
"I see the hairbrush I gave you was not to your liking."
Bellatrix tossed the magazine aside with an irritated sigh. "What the hell do you want from me, Cissy? You told me I had to leave my room today - well, here I am!"
What more can you possibly expect? her eyes seemed to imply. She'd even changed out of her Azkaban uniform and put on one of her old work robes for the occasion. The hem may have been a bit stained, but she was reasonably sure it wasn't blood, just mud.
"You do realize that cut went out of style twenty years ago," Narcissa pointed out nonchalantly. "In fact, it was already out of style when you bought it."
"No!" Bellatrix gasped in mock horror. "The indignity! The outrage! If you want to disown me for bringing permanent shame upon the family name, I would understand."
A smile flitted across the blond woman's lips, but it was gone so soon one couldn't be sure it had ever been there.
When they were kids, Narcissa used to laugh all the time; she had always been the most lighthearted among the Black girls. Andromeda had been the studious one, and Bellatrix the troublemaker. Usually it would be the eldest and the youngest ganging up to pull pranks on the straight-laced middle sister, with Bellatrix the ringleader, and Narcissa her eager sidekick. Half the time they'd get caught in the act because Cissy couldn't hold in her giggling.
A genuine grin crossed her features as Bellatrix remembered this little fact - her first happy recollection since Azkaban. She had assumed those kinds of memories had been lost to her forever, gobbled up by the Dementors, but perhaps they'd just been buried in the recesses of her mind where they would be safe.
"Are you ready for your visitor?" Narcissa asked.
"No," she said, petulant.
"Well, I suggest you prepare yourself, then, because seeing her is my condition for your continued stay here."
"I don't understand what meeting that hack is supposed to achieve, Cissy!"
"She's not a hack!" the younger witch protested. "She happens to be the world's foremost authority on healing the mind."
"So, an overpaid hack then."
"Bellatrix, Healer Amin is incredibly busy, and we are fortunate that Lucius was able to convince her to spare some of her time on you."
"Little does she know I'm a lost cause," the dark witch smirked.
"That may be the case, Madame Lestrange," came the dispassionate response from the doorway, "but we will not know until we try."
Both witches turned upon the intruder; Narcissa looked scandalized, clearly hoping the witch hadn't overheard the way they'd been speaking about her a moment ago, while Bellatrix looked completely indifferent.
Getting her bearings quickly, Narcissa smiled politely and ushered the healer into a chair next to her reluctant patient.
"It's a pleasure to have you in our home," she said, ever the perfect hostess. "Is there anything I can get you? Tea, perhaps?"
"Tea would be most welcome," the healer assented. She was a woman in her late sixties, with streaks of grey running through her black braid, and carried herself with great dignity. Bellatrix supposed that at one point, she may have been uncommonly beautiful.
Placing the order with a house elf, Narcissa wished them a pleasant visit and excused herself.
Bellatrix, for her part, wasted no time launching into her attack. "Look, I've been strong-armed into this ridiculous meeting by my darling sister, who's going to kick me out unless I talk to you. So let's get this over with as quickly as possible, and then you will issue me a clean bill of health so I can finally get Narcissa off my back."
"I'm afraid it's not that simple, Madame Lestrange," the healer explained steadily, apparently having failed to take offense.
Fighting the urge to backhand the woman in front of her, Bellatrix took a deep breath. Having to mutely endure torture at the hands of Azkaban guards with nary a brain cell between them had done wonders for her self-restraint.
"Then why are you here?" she demanded instead.
The healer quirked her eyebrows, mildly amused. "I am here at the request of your brother-in-law, to see if I can offer any assistance."
"Well, I'm afraid your efforts will be wasted on me, Healer Amin. I've been told I'm completely incorrigible," Bellatrix informed her with a smirk.
"Please, call me Amitra," the woman graciously requested, "and I have no intention of doing anything but speaking with you. If it so happens that our conversations are useful to you in some way, then I have achieved my aims." There was just the merest hint of an accent in her voice, and Bellatrix wondered if she was familiar with the war or with English politics.
"Tell me why you would want to interview a Death Eater," she ordered.
The healer tilted her head thoughtfully. "Professional curiosity, I suppose."
"You're not afraid I'm going to break your neck?"
"Is that important to you, that I be afraid?"
Bellatrix narrowed her eyes. What sort of inane question was that? "I'm just wondering what makes you think you can handle hearing about my life?"
"Well, my last patient was Gellert Grindelwald," the healer revealed, impressing Bellatrix against her will. "And before you ask, no, I am not at liberty to comment on any of my other cases."
"Spoilsport," the dark witch muttered.
The silence stretched long between them then, as the healer placidly sipped her tea and Bellatrix fidgeted with her wand.
"I suppose you want to hear about my childhood?" she finally spat.
"If that is where you'd like to start, yes," the healer humoured her.
"It was wonderful," Bellatrix baited. "My parents were saints."
But a thoughtful "hmm" was all the response she got as the healer reached into her briefcase and withdrew a parchment and a lovely multicolor quill. Noticing the Death Eater's admiring gaze upon the latter, she explained: "It's a tailfeather of the Indian peafowl, a gift from your famous wandmaker, Ollivander."
"Well, I can certainly still appreciate beautiful things," Bellatrix murmured, eyes trailing insolently across the older woman's exposed clavicle.
To her credit, the Healer's face remained completely impassive. "Still?" she stressed.
"I - " Bellatrix began, but stopped, disconcerted. "It's a figure of speech."
"Is it? I thought perhaps you were referring to your time in Azkaban."
"We're not going to talk about Azkaban," Bellatrix growled, praying that the godforsaken shadows that plagued her would keep at bay, at least for now.
"That's fine," the healer said. "Let's return to your parents, then. Lady Malfoy tells me that your father suffered some early dementia. That couldn't have been easy."
"Is that what she told you? I shouldn't be surprised, Cissy loves her euphemisms. The truth is, he was completely - "
Bellatrix stopped short, with a distinct sense of having been neatly manipulated. Had she really been about to discuss her father with this glorified hand-holder?
One had it to give it to her though: the woman knew what she was doing. Unwilling to say more, the Death Eater settled for the most intimidating glare she could manage. A glare that had reduced grown witches to tears on more than one occasion, Bellatrix was proud to note.
Seemingly unphased, the healer continued: "Are you aware that psychological issues are often hereditary? I wonder if you see any parallels between your father and yourself in that respect."
"I am nothing like him," she hissed with venom. "I would never do the things - "
Stop it, Bella. She's goading you into revealing too much.
Springing out of her seat, the dark witch paced to the window, tension evident in every limb. She dug her nails into the flesh of her palms, trying to let the pain ground her.
"I notice you don't wear your wedding ring, Madame Lestrange," the healer remarked softly.
Jerking her sleeves down, Bellatrix hid her hands from the woman's all-too-perceptive gaze. "I'm afraid to lose it," she ground out.
"Really? I thought it might be because you believe your associates won't take you seriously if they see you as just a wife."
"Oh, is that what you think?" she drawled, the tone of mockery disguising her unease.
"What I think is that you sacrificed a lot in your life to become more than that."
And for some reason, that last comment brought Bellatrix to the end of her patience. "Don't talk to me about what I've sacrificed! You know nothing!" she shrilled. "NOTHING!"
Fury clouded her vision - sudden and blinding as a lightning strike - and before she knew it, she was leaning over the healer with her curved wand at her throat, breathing hard.
Curiously, the healer betrayed no reaction, almost as though she'd been expecting an outburst.
"Please have a seat, Madame Lestrange," she said, grasping the Death Eater's wrist and lowering her wand arm gently.
Pulling away as though burned by this fleeting touch, Bellatrix looked down at her hand. It was the hand of an old woman, all protruding bones and paper-thin skin, holding a wand which no longer worked. Or maybe it was she, herself, who didn't work anymore.
"Tell me - what did you think of, just now?" the healer asked, pulling the dark witch out of her miserable introspection.
"What?"
"You went somewhere in your mind - what was it you thought of before you lost control?"
Hazel eyes, watching her with hatred, disappointment, immeasurable sadness, boring into the very darkest part of her heart where all her secrets lay carefully concealed. Bellatrix dug her palms into her eyesockets to block out the vision, but those hazel eyes remained, as they always did. Watching her every move. Demanding How could you? with every breath she took.
"You need to leave," the dark witch said, defeat weighing down her words. She had her back to the older woman, refusing to give her another opportunity to throw out some unbearably incisive observation.
"Yes, perhaps it is best we conclude for now," the healer agreed after a long moment. "However, I should tell you that if you want your magic to return to what it was before prison, you are going to have to process all of those uncomfortable memories."
"How do you know about my magic?" Bellatrix snarled, turning upon the other witch. But then it occurred to her - Narcissa. Of course that insufferable, nosy cow had said something about her magic. "And what the hell do my memories have to do with it?"
"Magic is a skill, like any other," the healer explained. "If you suppress awareness of the years you spent building up that skill, the knowledge will remain unavailable to you. You could re-learn everything of course," Bellatrix snorted at the idea, "but I don't think you want to do that."
No, she didn't want to do that. Or, more to the point, her usefulness to the Dark Lord would be extremely limited if she failed to regain her former skills, and fast. Unfortunately, she knew all too well what her master did with useless things.
Stifling her pride for the moment - and really, what use was pride when you had the darkest wizard of all time breathing down your neck - she asked: "What do you recommend I do?"
"You should acquire a Pensieve. Visiting familiar places or old friends may be beneficial as well. Looking at mementos, or a diary. Anything that will help you remember."
Bellatrix wasn't one for thank you's or polite chit chat - all that was better left to Narcissa - so she merely nodded in response and let the healer see herself out.
Moments later, she heard her sister's dulcet tones in the hall, no doubt trying to smooth over any social friction Bella had caused, a job that in the past had always belonged to Andromeda. She knew that Narcissa would be in here before long, interrogating her about the meeting, asking how she was feeling in that unbearably patronising tone, trying to pressure her into spending time together.
But she just wasn't up for any of it today. That Healer had worn her out more than she realized, left her feeling like a rock somebody had turned over - unearthing a colony of insects which quickly scurried out of sight, terrified to face the light of day.
Approaching the french doors leading out to the terrace, she looked out over the grounds beyond, turned barren and grey in the bleak light of the January morning. It had been so long since she'd last seen snow that she'd nearly forgotten what it looked like. Its cold was crisp and refreshing, so unlike the lingering, bone-chilling cold of the North Sea. Somewhere beneath that white blanket, nature was sleeping, waiting for the exuberance of spring to come and breathe new life into its drooping branches.
Leaving the warm comfort of the drawing room, Bellatrix descended into the garden, watching with amusement as the peacocks scurried into the trees in their rush to avoid her. The dogs, too, kept their distance, recognizing in her a predator that had grown dangerous though sheer desperation.
She walked slowly down the lane to the main gate, trying to picture where she wanted to go. A familiar place, the Healer had said. To help her remember. Well, she had thought of just the right spot.
"Bella!" someone called from the house, but she didn't turn back; Cissy's temper tantrum would surely keep for a few hours. Instead she took out her wand, concentrated on the image in her mind's eye, and prayed for luck.
Pop! The air around her crackled, and she was gone.
The Apparition wasn't anything spectacular, but when her feet made contact with the ground, she could have laughed for joy to have made it in one piece. She had been seventeen the last time she'd seriously feared splinching, and hadn't needed a wand to do it since she was twenty - but still, it was more than she could have hoped for under the circumstances.
It was commonly accepted wisdom that a witch should never apparate to a Muggle area in broad daylight, and if her sister could see her now she would most certainly have a very unladylike fit. But somehow, Bellatrix couldn't bring herself to be concerned with being spotted, even by wizards. If the Aurors caught up with her, she would go out in a blaze of glory - and that was probably the best she could hope for these days, a death worthy of a warrior.
Looking around, she noted that little seemed to have changed in this drab, dirty, Muggle-infested little town, which huddled against the hillside under the looming shadow of a long-abandoned mill. Here, she could imagine that time stood still, had waited for her for fourteen years, and the thought made her feel a little lighter.
Mother had always said, if you must wallow, you'd better do it with the filth in the gutter. Which is why she now found herself outside the Death Laughs Last tavern, her old beloved haunt. Everything was just the same, down to the patched roof and the grime in the windowpanes. Even the pigeon droppings on the sign were still there, making the painted, hooded skeleton look like it was crying muddy tears.
The wood door creaked as she pushed it open, and the all-too-familiar smell of sour cabbage assaulted her nostrils. It was barely noon, but in the gloom she noticed that a couple of regulars had already staked out their corners. No one spared her another glance,despite her strange apparel, though maybe in the dead of winter her black robes could have passed for a long overcoat.
She made her way to the far end of the bar, the only spot in the house where you could keep your eye on all the windows and doors at the same time.
"What'll it be, luv?" the barman wheezed, and looking up, Bellatrix saw with immense relief that it was still the same ancient man with the funny round glasses. The feeling of deja-vu that washed over her was bittersweet. It was as though this little place had ceased to exist while she was gone, as though she'd conjured it up from memory exactly the same as it had been so many years ago. Except that, she, herself, had changed so much.
"Whiskey," she told him, with a crooked half-smile. It wasn't exactly Old Ogden's, but you couldn't expect much from the Muggles. "Just give me the bottle."
"You know, if you're trying to drown your sorrows, there's a river out back," the old man chuckled, pouring out the first measure. He'd made that joke to her at least a dozen times before, and though it had never been amusing, she did find it oddly comforting now.
Not a soul alive would ever believe that Bellatrix Lestrange would deign to step foot in a Muggle hole like this, and that, really, was the entire appeal. Back when she cared about her reputation as the pure-blood scion of the Most Noble House of Black, she'd found it was impossible to get properly plastered in public in the wizarding world without setting the gossip-mill ablaze. She'd stumbled upon Death Laughs Last on a raid one night, realizing that it was just the right place where she could be at her worst night after night and no one would look at her twice.
"Do you remember me?" she tossed out, though she wasn't sure why it would matter. They were just Muggles, after all. Hardly people.
The old man squinted at her for a long moment, before nodding. "Oh yes, you're the girl who used to bring her own knives to play darts. Were pretty good too, if memory serves. It's been a long time."
"It has."
"What happened? D'you get married?"
"I was in prison."
"Ah. Fine distinction, there," he muttered, drawing an involuntary snort from Bellatrix.
"Indeed." She gave him a nod of thanks and retreated to one of the shadowed alcoves - her usual seat.
The whiskey sat in front of her for a long while, before she gave in to the inevitable and took the first gulp. If that damned Healer wanted her to wax nostalgic, well - there was no way she was going down that treacherous road without her oldest, dearest friend.
