Hello all! Thanks for the lovely reviews! They are much appreciated.
This chapter includes direct quotes out of OOtP Chs 34-36, as well as the same basic plot structure. I'm assuming people are familiar with all that, but unfortunately I couldn't seem to avoid some repetition for the sake of keeping the the story flowing. So, feel free to skim?
Obviously, this chapter contains (non-graphic) torture and death. Also, to clarify: the last chapter takes place in fall of '95 and this one in the spring of '96.
Being a Death Eater was not as exciting as people probably imagined it was, Bellatrix thought, watching her so-called colleagues squabble like children at the end of the hall.
"Did you try Alohomora?" Macnair hissed at Jugson, who was stabbing his wand insistently at the little plaque reading "Department of Mysteries", a complicated schematic in his other hand.
"Alohomora? You don't say! I never would have thought of that!" Jugson exclaimed sarcastically. "Stupid git," he continued under his breath, just loud enough for the words to echo all along the corridor.
Macnair gaped at him, face quickly turning a rather unsightly shade of purple. "Who you callin' stupid, you stinkin' half-blood piece of-"
"Come now, gentlemen!" came the pompous interruption as Rodolphus pushed past her and approached the others. "Perhaps you can resolve this without coming to fisticuffs - again?"
"Tell that to this knucklehead," Jugson muttered with a nod toward the balding Ministry executioner.
"Yer mum sure liked my head though, eh?" Macnair mocked childishly, just as the other leapt towards him with hands outstretched, forcing Rudolphus and Nott to restrain the would-be combatants. It all quickly devolved into a jumble of kicking and punching and incoherent shouting.
Bellatrix couldn't help but roll her eyes.
"Oh, you want to go, let's go - "
She sighed. Where the hell were Malfoy and Rockwood?
"For the love of Merlin, you two, calm down - "
They'd been gone an hour, trying to figure out how to get that bloody door open. It was a miracle really that Potter wasn't here by now with how long this was all taking.
"I'll kick yer fucken' face in - "
Quickly coming to the end of her very limited patience, Bellatrix growled, causing the Death Eaters beside her to step back in alarm. "BOMBARDA MAXIMA!" she cried, sending a jet of energy right at the door, forcing Jugson, Macnair, and the others to leap aside, narrowly escaping being blown to bits. The door, however, was not so lucky; it splintered into a thousand shards, which rained down upon them all like a sparkling black hail.
"There, problem solved," she announced smugly, as every face turned to regard her in shock. "Maybe now the two of you can get your big-boy pants on?"
"You do realize that nothing can look out of place for Potter?" came the haughty response as Malfoy descended the staircase at the far end, tailed closely by that rat, Rockwood.
Bellatrix let out a harsh breath, reminding herself for the hundredth time that it wouldn't do to maim her sister's husband, even though he had inexplicably been put in charge of this mission. "Well, that's not my problem, is it? I got us in, didn't I?"
"Alright, alright," Rodolphus placated, ever the self-appointed peacemaker, "Let's just find this prophesy first, shall we?"
"Very well, why don't you take your lovely wife and search the premises," Malfoy sneered, making Bella's jaw tighten in fury. Oh, how she loathed being referred to as somebody's wife. "Jugson, you and Dolohov can check the upper floors for night guards. The rest of you, help me clean this up."
Following her husband into the bowels of the Department of Mysteries, Bellatrix tuned out his nervous attempts at small-talk as she seethed silently.
It just HAD to be that sniveling, two-faced, greasy tapeworm Malfoy, didn't it? she thought. It's not like I suffered in Azkaban for fourteen bloody years, not like I handed the Dark Lord this plan on a silver platter, not like I'm ten times the witch as that entitled little wanker…
They passed rooms upon rooms of useless junk - a tank of swimming brains, rows of file cabinets, a trillion clocks - and she let Rodolphus handle the security charms, wondering all the while how it had ever gotten to this point. There was a time when she was the apple of her master's eye, his favorite, his chosen right-hand, only to now find herself playing second fiddle to some talentless power-jockey. Her only duties of late had been chatting up guests - a.k.a. torturing prisoners - but even that she was forced to endure under the supervision of a monitor, who no doubt reported every small shortcoming straight to the Dark Lord.
All that ended tonight, however. Tonight she would prove herself.
But apparently not before standing around the Hall of Prophecies for three hours in the near-darkness, waiting for Potter to show up. Surely there was nothing worse that being surrounded with fidgeters and mouth-breathers on a stake-out, Bellatrix thought, shifting from foot to foot uncomfortably to fight the numbness creeping up her legs.
"Brilliant plan, Malfoy," she hissed petulantly from behind her mask, glaring at the back of his hood and forgetting for a moment that it was, in fact, her plan.
"Will you please shut up," came the frustrated response, and he may have said more were it not for the distinct sound of a door creaking open somewhere in the distance.
The sound of approaching feet followed - not two, but many. Rodolphus shot her a look of confusion and she shrugged. Had the little brat brought reinforcements?
"This is it!" a boy exclaimed.
"You said row ninety - seven?" a girl responded, the voice eerily familiar, though Bellatrix couldn't place it. "We need to go right, I think. Yes … that's fifty-four…"
The Death Eaters lingered in the darkness as a group of children entered the aisle, and she sensed more than heard the others exhale in relief; they had all been expecting the Order to make an appearance. The children, for their part, already looked terrified, even without having yet realized they were outnumbered two-to-one. There was an odd feeling in her gut, something like the embarrassment of having come to a party exceedingly overdressed.
"Have you seen this, Harry?" the red-headed oaf asked the little bespectacled one, who she now knew was the famed Boy Who Lived, bane of her Master's existence. "It's got your name on it…"
Pick it up, pick it up she chanted in her head, impatiently watching the boy inspect his Prophecy on the dusty shelf. All he had to do was pick the damned thing up, and they could all call it an early night. It was now obvious to Bellatrix that this mission would require no heroics, present no glory, and she no longer envied Malfoy's position.
Finally the boy took it in his hands, and "Accio Prophecy" was already on the tip of her tongue when Lucius pushed roughly in front and into the lighted clearing. Of course - the simplest solution did not provide enough opportunity for him to preen and gloat. Oh no, there just had to be a dramatic monologue involved, and lots of menacing blond hair-flipping.
"Very good, Potter. Now, turn around - nice and slowly - and give that to me," he commanded, making the children jump in surprise.
"Where's Sirius?" the boy said stupidly, looking about as though expecting to see her blood-traitor cousin gagged and bound in some dark corner. Now that she'd had a good look at him, Bellatrix realized how much he truly resembled his father; James Potter had been a more than competent duelist, and she wondered whether the son had inherited his talent. The couple of gingers beside him in second-hand robes were surely yet more Weasley spawn, while the little blond girl and taller boy both looked vaguely familiar. Finally, her eyes settled on the last member of this pitiful cavalry, and she barely managed to contain her gasp.
It was her.
The girl from her fever dream. The one who healed her wounds, chased away the Dementors, gave back her hope. The one at whose feet she'd knelt, begging for death.
Bellatrix could hardly breathe for the rage and humiliation and yearning rising like bile in her throat. And the girl had the fucking nerve to just stand there, looking like some perverse paragon of innocence, like some virtuous little martyr - trembling, terrified, but oh-so brave.
"Give me the Prophecy, Potter," Malfoy insisted, as Bellatrix removed her mask and came into the light, trying to force some response from the girl. The children gaped at her with revulsion - and she knew she wasn't exactly a pretty sight these days - but the girl showed no glimmer of recognition, no hint that she felt any of the emotions that were ravaging Bellatrix.
"You need more persuasion?" she demanded, ostensibly addressing Potter. But her eyes were glued on the girl: acknowledge me, damn you, they screamed. But the little wretch refused to so much as look at her.
"Very well," she went on furiously, "Take the smallest one. Let him watch while we torture the little girl. I'll do it."
And that certainly got her attention. Those brown eyes grew wide, as though unable to believe the depth of this cruelty, but strangely, this response didn't satisfy Bellatrix either. She was champing at the bit to get her hands on that delicate little throat- choke a confession out it - but the children circled the redhead instead, no doubt believing her the target.
"How come Voldemort wants this?" Potter said, drawing a round of gasps from the assembled Death Eaters. Bellatrix, for her part, could not believe his gall; could he not feel her Master's presence lingering in the air all around them?
"You dare speak his name with your unworthy lips?" she roared, all her anger now focused on the boy. "You dare besmirch it with your half bloods tongue, you dare -"
"Did you know he's a half blood too?" Potter interrupted maliciously. "Voldemort? Yeah, his mother was a witch but his dad was a muggle - or has he been telling you lot he's pureblood?"
For a second, all Bellatrix could do was stare in shock, and then, he lies...the boy lies… reverberated through her aching skull - her Master's voice. She raised her wand.
"STUPEF-"
"NO!" Malfoy deflected her spell, and it hit the shelf, knocking over two glass orbs. "Do not attack! We need the prophecy!"
She seethed as her imbecile brother-in-law carried on with the boy as though they had all the time in the world for explanations. If anyone had asked her (and they really ought to have done) she would have said that Potter was stalling for time with his questions, planning something.
And she was proven right mere moments later when the children turned as one and blasted the shelves off their hinges, calling up a storm of apparitions. It was utter chaos, and in that chaos Potter disappeared with the prophecy - and worse, with the girl.
The Department of Mysteries was a veritable maze of rooms, which they were forced to split up to search, her and Rodolphus drawing pairs once again. It wasn't the worst; in fact, he and his brother were the only ones of the lot she could still tolerate, now that poor Barty had gone the way of all flesh. She'd heard that he slit his wrists up at St Mungo's after only two months of "protective" custody - and Merlin knew, she certainly remembered what that was like.
They rounded the corner, coming to another fork of hallways, each lined with a dozen doors, at least. Bellatrix groaned. "You know, I really hate this place."
Rodolphus grunted his agreement. "Let's split up, it'll go faster."
She was about to refuse, unwilling to face the boredom of wandering around here by herself, when a glimmer in the air caught her eye, followed a second later by the sudden appearance of a familiar figure.
"Uh huh," she muttered distractedly to her husband, feet already bearing her onward, as though of their own volition.
There she was.
The girl had somehow managed to reappear on the opposite side of the building, and stood there seemingly alone and clearly oblivious to her observer. Bellatrix crept forward, unsure what she intended to do, not knowing why she would bother when all they needed was Potter and the Prophecy.
The girl was staring at something out of sight. "Agatha?" she called, surprised. "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask you the same thing," came the gruff response, the voice tickling at some long-forgotten memory in the Death Eater's brain. Agatha, Agatha - did she know that name?
"The consolidation point from my calculations," the girl said, "It's tonight."
"So the other one is here? Right now?"
Consolidation point? The other one? Bellatrix had no idea what that meant, but it strengthened her determination to get answers.
"Yes, I've been trying to avoid her…" the girl explained, and then, in a voice made deliberately casual, "Agatha, who is that?"
"Oh this? This is my dear old friend Augustus, who I was quite surprised to run into tonight."
With a lurching feeling in her stomach at the woman's tone, Bellatrix edged forward to carefully peer around the corner. The girl's back was turned as she stared at the witch called Agatha, who held a seemingly defeated Rockwood at wand-point. The memory which had been floating just out-of-reach became clearer, and Bellatrix knew - knew without a shadow of a doubt - that Rockwood would die tonight.
"And, as it happens," the ancient witch went on icily, "We're long overdue for a chat."
"I ...I don't understand," the girl stuttered, looking between the old woman and the cowering wizard in trepidation.
"Yes," Agatha tutted, "That always surprised me about you. So very clever, and yet so blind to what's right under your nose…"
A moment passed as Bellatrix imagined the gears turning in that curly head, and then the girl drew a sharp breath of realization. "It was you!" she accused, and if the Death Eater could see her face, she was sure it would read blame and disbelief. "You took my time turner! You stole it from the hospital!"
The grey-haired witch fingered a peculiar golden chain which hung around her neck and grinned, though the expression was more ominous than anything. "You didn't need it anymore, my girl - I made sure of that. I'm the one who needs it now. It's my turn to make a few little alterations."
"How could - I - You -" the girl stammered in incoherent fury, but, getting ahold of herself, continued with an air of forced calmness: "So, how long have you been planning this?" Her voice cracked at the last moment, betraying so much hurt that it was hard not to feel a twinge of pity.
Agatha sighed, as though embarrassed by this emotional display. "From the very beginning," she admitted, in a tone that demanded why anyone would ever expect any different. "From the moment you begged for my help at the One-Eyed Harpy."
Ah, those good old Slytherin ethics, Bellatrix thought with a certain bittersweet fondness. The only thing worse was a pious Gryffindor - ruthless to the end, every one.
"I gave you Judith's journal," the elderly witch went on, "Against my better judgement, just to see what you could do, to see if you could recreate her work. And, I must say - I was not disappointed."
"But I just can't believe that," the girl insisted. "If you were using me the whole time, why would you help me? Find me a place to stay? Call St Mungos? Save my life?"
For a long moment, Agatha gazed at the girl, her cool mask gradually giving way to something like sadness. It was as though she was used to being won over, as though the girl was not entirely wrong. "You remind me so much of my sister, Hermione," she admitted, with a rueful shake of the head. "So very much. She had it bad too, you know - worse than you, I think. But she let the obsession swallow her up before her work was done."
"Before her work was done…" the girl muttered, as though on the cusp of some terrible revelation. And, indeed, a moment later the echo of her gasp reverberated through the chamber.
"Judith is your sister," she whispered.
"Well, she was," Agatha said, fury contorting her features as she noticed Rockwood trying desperately to wriggle free, like he realized that his time was drawing nearer every second. Her silent spell found him an easy target, and he lay still once again. "But that was before she lost her damn mind trying to bring back mother."
Bellatrix nearly gave herself away with an involuntary shudder as Agatha's words brought back a stream of memories.
Not this again, she thought. If she never had to deal with Judith bloody Mintumble again in this life, it would be too bloody soon. That woman had been a complete psychopath. It was the way she looked at you, like she was perpetually evaluating your potential as a lab rat, like she would gladly slit your throat just to measure the trajectory of the blood...it used to make her skin crawl. The day Judith went to prison was a very good day; she vaguely remembered getting so drunk that night that the Leaky Cauldron was forced to issue a lifetime ban. Irony of ironies was that just a few years later, Bellatrix would occupy a cell right next door to the woman she'd put away.
Was this the sort of madness the girl was involved in? Bellatrix didn't want anything to do with it - and there were truly urgent matters at hand - but she just had to know why the girl had to come to her.
"I helped you because I wanted to see the endgame play out," Agatha said. "I needed to know what really happens after you change the past."
"That's why you sent me to see her!" the girl exclaimed in horrified realization. "And that day in St Mungos - "
"That was just a little Legilmency," Agatha cut in. "I had to see what you saw, to see if there was any hope for her at all. Though I dare say, you were woefully unprepared for it, my girl. You were practically a zombie afterwards."
Bellatrix couldn't see the girl's face, but she suspected that she had become an unintentional witness to some grand moment of disillusionment. When the girl spoke again, her voice was strangely empty. "You said I didn't need the time-turner anymore, that you made sure of it. What did you mean?"
"That muggle had to die, Hermione," Agatha said softly, eyes almost pleading. "Even you yourself realized it."
The girl gasped. "How could you? Do you even realize the trouble I'm in because - " she began to rage, but stopped short with a shaking breath.
"Well, now you've seen the endgame," she declared after a lengthy silence, voice once more devoid of feeling. "The endgame is a paradox. And we're stuck in it."
Agatha seemed almost hurt by this indifferent treatment. "What about the consolidation point?" she asked.
"That has a snowball's chance in hell, as you well know."
The elderly witch gave a minute shrug, levitating the unconscious Rockwood into her grasp. "Well, it's a chance I'll have to take."
The girl gave an anguished cry. "Oh Agatha, no! The timeline is too fragile tonight -"
"You must understand," the elder witch interrupted, fiddling with the golden chain around her neck. "I never thought I'd get my hands of this little cretin, and now that I have, I can't waste the opportunity. He's going to pay for what his father did - he's going to help me end this, once and for all. For Judith. For mother."
It all happened at once: the girl suddenly had her wand in hand, a spell already on her lips, as Agatha, clutching the limp Death Eater, set the golden chain to spinning - and the two were just about to shimmer from existence when a deafening explosion sent Bellatrix rolling on the floor for cover. Every glass cabinet in the room shattered as one, and the air itself seemed to be bursting at the seams as a current of energy surged forth from the time-turner. Out the corner of her eye, Bellatrix just managed to glimpse Agatha disintegrate into a million blinding fragments.
She did not know it, but in that exact moment, Neville Longbottom misfired a stunning spell into a shelf, breaking every single remaining time-turner and triggering the cosmic fissure which claimed the ancient witch.
When the dust had settled and she was reasonably certain that the storm had passed, Bellatrix climbed slowly to her feet, her back protesting every inch. Looking about, she saw the girl still standing in the same spot, staring intently at the place where the the two Unspeakables had been not a moment ago. There was nothing there save a patch of scorched tile.
"How much did you hear?" the girl said quietly, and it took Bellatrix a moment to realize she was talking to her.
"All of it," she admitted, caught by surprise. At that, the girl turned toward her, and for the first time Bellatrix felt a jolt of recognition; this wasn't the frightened little kitten she'd seen in the Hall of Prophecies, but something altogether different. It unsettled her, almost as though there were two of them - but how could that possibly be?
The girl opened her mouth - and Bellatrix intuited that the word on the tip of her tongue was Obliviate - but she seemed to reconsider at the last moment. There was something about her, some coldness in her gaze that did in fact remind Bellatrix of the Mintumble woman. But it was gone in a flicker, replaced by a look of intense curiosity.
"So, ummm," the girl murmured instead, gesturing at the wreckage around them, "You come here often?"
An involuntary laugh tore its way from the Death Eater's throat; the absurdity of the situation, it seemed, was not lost on the girl either. They stood there - knowing full well that beyond the wall a battle was raging - neither willing to break the tenuous thread that had formed all those months ago in an Azkaban cell. There were so many questions that Bellatrix wanted to ask, but all she said was, "Do you?"
"Yes," the girl said, a sardonic grin tugging at the corner of her lips. "Unfortunately."
Wands in hand, they examined each other closely, though neither moved to attack. For her part, Bellatrix wondered if this girl, like Judith, was a few sandwiches short of a picnic; for not even the Dark Lord dared to meddle with time, the consequences of which, even she knew, could be cataclysmic. All the while, the girl's gaze scorched her skin in its obsessive scrutiny, and for the first time in many years, Bellatrix was acutely aware of the devastation the years had wrought upon her once-immaculate features. Still (and quite inexplicably, Bellatrix though) the girl stared as though she wanted nothing more than to rip the cloak from her body, the skin from her ribcage, the flesh from her very bones.
But this strange paralysis was broken a moment later when a crash at the door drew their attention. It was Rodolphus, looking back and forth between her and the girl in bewilderment.
"Bella, what - " he begun, but the rest was cut short when a stunner from the girl hit him square in the chest, and he pitched forward, unconscious.
Snapping back to reality as her husband hit the floor, Bellatrix went on the offensive. She sent hex after hex at the girl, intending to subdue rather than wound, but to her surprise all her efforts were parried. The girl circled the room, appropriating furniture to deflect the attacks, scouting out the weakness in her opponent's defense, alternating Protego and Stupefy.
If was the classical Department dueling style, the very same she had been trained in all those years ago. Bellatrix could recognize it anywhere. It was, in part, what made her so successful in battling Aurors; she knew all their tricks better than they did. And, certainly, she could have pushed harder, overwhelmed the girl's formulaic stance with some creative spell-work, but when she had her wandless at her mercy, Bellatrix would have to make a choice: to question, to kill, to set free? And that was a crossroads she just couldn't face at present, because there was a part of her that couldn't bear to hear what the girl would say, or see what she herself would do.
And, more that even that, it was the way the girl kept glancing furiously at Rodolphus, as though his mere existence was a grave offense. And she seemed to grow angrier by the second, that carefully-controlled aura of hers morphing gradually into something wild and reckless.
"Locomotor Mortis!" Bellatrix cried, the spell making an arc across the room towards the girl.
As her opponent prepared a counter-offense, Bellatrix noticed a strange flicker around the edges of her body. It was so subtle that for a moment she thought she'd imagined it all - but no! The girl seemed to be growing fainter and fainter, her limbs almost translucent in the candlelight.
But the momentary distraction cost her; the girl deflected her spell, and it rebounded upon the unprepared Bellatrix, locking her legs together and sending her reeling into the wall. She gave a faint cry as her skull bounced against the stonework.
"Alright?" the girl panted, rushing over to her fallen adversary.
It was as though their battle had been nothing but a bout of friendly sparring - and Bellatrix wondered why their interactions seemed always destined to devolve into absurdity. The girl had about her a quality of being entirely divorced from context - somehow out-of-place in the real world - and she dragged Bellatrix into that strange dimension.
"Are you alright?" she countered, noticing that the girl's face had also grown translucent.
The girl looked down at herself, then up at Bellatrix in bewilderment. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you look like you're…" Bellatrix began, as the girl turned ever more ghostly, and began to flicker.
"...disappearing," she finished, and as she said it, the girl shimmered for the last time, and was gone.
