Hello all,

First, to answer some questions: yes, Hermione is older than her peers because of all that time traveling (maybe 19-20 going by the timeline in this story). Why doesn't Bellatrix realize it? I think it's a combination of being preoccupied with other things and still suffering the mental distortions caused by Azkaban. I've left the resolution of the two-Hermione problem deliberately ambiguous, so you'll have to wait to see what happens there.

Some were hoping for a Hermione/ Bellatrix interaction in this chapter, and there is one near the end. A reviewer wrote that "Hermione's transition was startling at first" and I was wondering if they could elaborate, because I've been feeling like that too and wonder if I should go back and do some rewrites.

Thanks for reading! Reviews are greatly appreciated.


There had been a time, Bellatrix mused, when she could do no wrong in her Master's eyes. She was like his favorite child - precocious, pretty, talented - whose slightest accomplishment would give rise to an extraordinary effusion of praise. But the child had grown into an awkward adolescence, turned sullen and wayward by degrees, and worst of all, had never quite managed to live up to her potential. These days, when she caught the Dark Lord looking her way, it was with the same disappointed expression her father used to wear.

It was funny how things came full circle.

For all her scrambling and striving, she hadn't come very far, it seemed. What was it she had wanted the most in childhood? Was it freedom? The freedom to hold the threads of her destiny in her own hands?

It was the irony of ironies that at the very first taste, she'd fashioned those threads into manacles, leapt gratefully back into servitude. But what did it matter, when all was said and done? What did it matter, in the larger scheme of things? It was said that all paths lead back to the same place - like the rain outside, falling inescapably back to the black earth.

Thunder came like a giant hand tearing open the sky, and for a moment the downpour was torrential. Her vision blurred, and then refocused on her own reflection in the glass. The face that stared back was skeletal, full of shadows and angles, cold and hard with dread. Now that she was older, she looked little like her Mother, less like her Father, and least of all like her younger self.

Oh yes, Bellatrix knew she had been beautiful once. Nobody had let her forget it, after all: not her parents, not her classmates, not her colleagues, and certainly not the men that buzzed like vultures around the edges of her life. She may have even reveled in that power, were it not quite so fleeting or quite so illusory, if she had been able to do what was necessary to capitalize on it like Narcissa. But Bellatrix would not cajole, or flatter, or flirt. She refused to be owned like her sister, or paraded in society like some prize thoroughbred.

And had she amputated every rebellious part of herself to fit that ladylike straightjacket, she still would not have the respect she'd so desperately wanted. She'd given everything to be the best at what she did, but the only respect she ever got came from the fools cowering at the end of her wand.

The click of the door interrupted this gloomy reverie, and then -

"Oh, Bella! There you are!"

Sighing with resignation, she turned to see Lady Malfoy in the doorway, with a stack of papers in her arms and a determined smile on her face. "Here I am," Bellatrix agreed, raising her glass in a sneering salute.

"It's almost like you've been hiding from me," Narcissa accused, bustling in in a dressing gown that was easily better than any dress robes Bellatrix ever owned. "You haven't been, have you?"

The only response she received was a noncomittal snort as Bellatrix turned back to the fireplace.

When had she taken up the habit of sitting by the fire for hours every night like an old woman? It must have been right after she moved out of her parents' house. That was the last year she could remember living without that perpetual chill that lingered in her very bones.

Evidently deciding to plough on with an air of cheerfulness (that only those who knew her well would have guessed was forced) Narcissa sat beside her sister and dropped the files into her lap. "I'm working on a list of important accomplishments of the Blacks through the ages," she explained. "A sort of unofficial biography of the House. I can't believe no one's done it yet - so many of us were great politicians and scholars and artists." She drew a nervous breath and peered at Bellatrix, who had not acknowledged a word of this. "I would be wonderful if you could help me," she finished, tentative.

"Us?" Bellatrix scoffed, and when she saw her sister's blank expression, she went on, "You said many of 'us' were politicians and scholars and artists."

Narcissa drew back, and her face faltered as if she knew what was coming. "So?"

Bellatrix gave her a grim smile, thinking, of course she knows. "There's no 'us' anymore, Cissy. You're a Malfoy, I'm a Lestrange, and Andromeda's joined the Mudbloods. The House of Black is dead," she declared with a dramatic sweep of her arm, spilling a good bit of her whiskey. "I killed it along with Sirius."

Her tone was icy, challenging - as if daring her sister to offer either pity or condemnation.

But Narcissa just rearranged her skirts primly, refusing to rise to the bait. "That's not true. Draco will inherit the title now, officially uniting two of the best, oldest families." She looked proud, as though this was the best outcome she could imagine.

"Your precious Draco doesn't give a flying fuck about the House of Black," Bellatrix told her, a vicious slur creeping into her tone. "It hasn't got the cash or the political influence or the tacky Manor. But I guess it must be looking a damn sight better now that dear Lucius is Public Enemy Number 2."

She sprawled out in her seat with an exaggerated groan, knowing exactly which buttons to push, and was rewarded with a glare from Narcissa. Dear Narcissa, who would die before she let someone catch her using the wrong fork at supper, couldn't handle her sister's utter contempt for decorum on the best of days.

"Who knows, maybe the boy will even condescend to burn down Grimmauld," Bellatrix went on darkly. "Finally put it all to rest."

Narcissa drew a sharp breath. "You - you can't mean that."

"Oh but I do," Bellatrix confirmed with a bitter little smirk. "Look what's become of our generation, Cissy! Look what we made of ourselves! Regulus was too weak to survive, Sirius was a traitor, Andromeda was a slut, you're the house-witch of the saddest excuse for a wizard since Father, and I'm a bloody nutcase." She listed their 'crimes' with a distant sort of contempt. "That's our legacy. They're going to say the House of Black fizzled away into irrelevance…into nothing. Wouldn't you rather go out with a bang and be done with it?"

Narcissa glanced at her, saw the chaos swirling in a dilated, unsteady gaze, and looked away. "I hate it when you get like this," she quietly reproached. "You have to stop doing this to yourself. People are counting on you. I'm counting on you, Draco is count-"

"Again with your precious Draco," Bellatrix cut in, jumping out of her seat with poorly-suppressed irritation. She was restless enough to pace, but too drunk to do it with any semblance of coordination. "He resents you, you know," she went on, cutting her eyes to Narcissa to see if the shot found its mark. "Blames you for not doing more for Lucius in his time of need. Tell me, Cissy, does precious Draco know you were only too happy to get rid of that husband of yours?"

The blonde witch pursed her lips, trying and failing to hide the way they trembled. "That is...not true," she said, but the waver in her voice gave her away. There was nothing Lady Malfoy loathed more than showing weakness - an aversion that had been beaten into them all from earliest childhood - but her eldest sister had always had a talent for going straight for the jugular.

"Liar," Bellatrix smirked, teetering as she turned from the window. "Did it start to chafe, having to fuck him every night for your monthly allowance?" she asked, all mock-concern, stalking closer to her victim. "How exactly did that transaction work - you make him cum and he buys you one of those fancy frocks? Or did he make you really earn it?"

"Don't be disgusting," Narcissa spat, the haughty demeanor not quite hiding her flush of humiliation. "You are an exceptionally hateful drunk, do you know that? You should consider why you're so desperately unhappy that you need to drag everyone else down with you."

"Oh ye gods, please spare me the lecture tonight," Bellatrix cried, raising her hands skyward in a parody of prayer. "If you were anymore smug, sister dearest, it would be coming out of your bloody ears."

"This is not about me. It's about you. Deep down, you must know that I'm right!"

"I never said you weren't. But maybe, just maybe, I don't need to have it thrown in my face EVERY FUCKING DAY!" Before she knew it, her voice had risen to a yell and she was standing over a frightened Narcissa with her hands balled in fists. At the look on her sister's face, Bellatrix gave a growl of frustration and turned away.

Instead, she raged at the fire. "You think this is how I wanted things to turn out? You think I don't realize - "

You think I don't realize what I've become? She'd been right on the verge of saying it, but couldn't get the words past her teeth, even now.

In the silence that followed, Narcissa's tired exhale seemed unnaturally loud. "I know-"

"You don't know shit," Bellatrix interrupted furiously. "This…" she gestured around the room with contempt, "...is the life you always wanted. You just didn't expect that one day, all this expensive crap," she picked up a porcelain vase and threw it into the grate where it shattered, "...wouldn't be able to compensate anymore!"

Narcissa looked at the glimmering shards coolly, as if considering whether they were really worth saving, and when her pale eyes found Bella's, they were singularly unimpressed.

"But Mother would be so proud of you," Bellatrix went on with a mocking lilt, really trying to draw blood. "You're the only one of us who fulfilled all of their expectations, after all. You must be so happy to have spawned yet one more mediocre, coddled, spineless," she gave a vicious sneer, "... paragon of blood purity. At least you have that."

So finally, Bellatrix got what she wanted as the aristocratic mask slipped from her sister's face to reveal naked fury. But Narcissa said nothing, and that, Bellatrix realized, would always be the biggest difference between them. Narcissa would never throw her pregancy in her face. She would never say, You could have had that too, but you killed it. She would never say, and thank Merlin for that, because you would have been the worst mother in the whole fucking world.

And it was infuriating, because for some inexplicable reason, Bellatrix was desperate to have someone tell her what a shit human being she was. She wanted somebody to tell her what she couldn't tell herself.

Miraculously, Narcissa managed to be graceful even in anger as she rose from her seat and took out her wand. Bellatrix eyed the wand disbelievingly, watched the tremor run from her sister's hand to the glowing tip - stood still as the spell sailed over her shoulder and into the fire to repair the vase she had broken - then turned away with a dismissive little huff.

"You can insult me all you want, but don't you ever presume to insult my son. Not while you're living under my roof!" Narcissa's voice quavered even as she made a visible effort to calm her herself. "All I wanted to do tonight was spend a little time together, like we used to. Do you remember that? We used to have fun. You used to smile. You used to laugh," her voice cracked, the memory of their lost happiness like a reopened wound.

Bellatrix gave an exaggerated eye-roll. "I really don't need this right now - "

"You don't need this?" Narcissa looked as though she would cry from impotent fury. "What about me? You don't know how sick I am of your endless tantrums. You're like a child, lashing out at everyone who tries to help you! And now there's no one left but me, and I am at the absolute end of my rope!"

"Well what are you waiting for then?" Bellatrix challenged, coming so close that Narcissa's wand jabbed at her ribs. "Why don't you put us both out of our misery, hmmm? You know the incantation, don't you?" she slurred, her mouth twisted in a grotesque parody of a smile. "Here, let me remind you…" She grasped Narcissa's wand hand, forcing it to draw the pattern of the curse as she began to chant: "Avada Kedav-"

"NO!" Narcissa cried, wrenching her arm away and stumbling back. The look she gave Bellatrix was impossible to describe - it was terror, and heart-break, and hatred, and love - before she turned and ran from the room.

Suddenly finding it unreasonably hard to keep herself upright, Bellatrix barely managed to sink onto the sofa before she passed out.


When she woke it was morning, and someone had unceremoniously dropped a note beside her body for her to find. Cringing at the repulsive taste in her mouth, Bellatrix carefully maneuvered herself onto the floor - a hard surface to hold onto while the room refused to stop spinning - and looked at the letter.

The script was so tiny and spiteful it could have only been from Snape, who was apparently as stingy with his ink as he was with his good will:

No success with translation, despite consulting several sources. Apparently codeword is needed for cipher. Book enclosed. Have put wards on upstairs window - that is to say, I hope I never see you at my house again. SS

Bellatrix snarled in incoherent frustration, considered sending the useless bastard a Howler for his trouble, but wrote it off as too much work. She would just have to change her strategy with the girl, which wouldn't be a problem now that Bellatrix no longer cared about getting in her pants. The gloves were coming off, so to speak.

She never did get around to owling the girl for a meeting because events conspired to throw the little wretch in her path once again.

The Dark Lord assigned Bellatrix the unenviable task of leading a host of Dementors to attack a Muggle village. Though the Ministry would probably consider it another ploy to strike terror into the hearts of the populace, the simple fact was that the creatures had proliferated to such a degree that Malfoy Manor could no longer contain them. They were growing more restless by the day, and her Master was right to fear their indiscriminate hunger.

But still, Bellatrix couldn't escape the feeling that he was doing it to punish her. For there was no 'leading' Dementors; you could only open the floodgates and run for cover before the torrent swallowed you up. The Dark Lord claimed that she got the most dangerous missions because of her skill, but some small part of Bellatrix suspected that she was now one of his liabilities. He would never kill her himself, of course...but she doubted if he would ever save her again.

And am I destined to die in this Muggle hell-hole? Bellatrix wondered, eyeing the dark storefronts and manicured shrubs with distaste. There were dozens of those awful contraptions called 'cars' all around, but thankfully they seemed to be sleeping.

"They're coming," Alecto whispered, pointing up to where a swirling storm cloud was fast approaching.

Suddenly the wind picked up, cutting through their cloaks with a biting chill. Bellatrix saw the first Dementors zoom down from the sky, and as they drew near, the grass by her feet turned grey with frost, shriveled, and died.

"We need to leave!" Alecto called over the howling wind, her brother nodding emphatically by her side.

Indeed, they did need to leave, and quickly, before some stray Dementor forgot what side it was on and made a meal of one of their souls. The plan had been to lead the whole horde into town, and run on home before the chaos really got underway. But no - that would have made her life easy, which was something the fates could never allow.

She wasn't even surprised when the tell-tale pops of apparition broke through the noise of the gathering storm. One after the other, Aurors materialized in the street around them, and it may even have been intimidating, were it not for the way their faces changed from smug determination to abject terror as they looked to the black vortex in the sky.

"REDUCTO!" someone bellowed, and an uprooted tree was suddenly barreling towards her.

With a jerk of her wrist, Bellatrix turned the tree into a million splinters, sending a few of the Aurors ducking for cover behind an old van. They couldn't hide for long, though, as she sent the van flying at the two wizards dueling a desperately overwhelmed Rowle.

He shot her a grateful look over his shoulder, but it only increased her desire to slap the stupid off of his face. The Carrows had some poor kid on the ground between them, and were taking turns hexing and kicking him. Selwyn was firing Stunning spells in every direction, hardly caring who he hit.

In short, it had all gone to hell in less than a minute.

Few people realized that when it came to dueling, Bellatrix was a lover of precision and finesse, above all else. There was nothing that got her going quite like a brilliantly executed maneuver, but the vast majority of the time, these battles just devolved into a frenzy of senseless scrambling. The Dark Lord forced everyone to train with her, but the problem was that they never seemed to listen to a damn thing she said.

Eventually she realized that she couldn't force them to adopt her superior techniques, nor could she fight their battles for them. Well, she really could (in her sleep, no less), but what would be the point? Why interfere with the rule of nature by prolonging the lives of the brainless and the weak?

That first contingent of Aurors didn't last very long. She stunned perhaps five, another fell victim to the Carrows, one fainted when a Dementor flew right past his face, and the rest made a strategic retreat.

Somewhere in the distance, a child started screaming. Muggles couldn't see Dementors, of course, but they were still susceptible to their presence. They could still have their souls sucked out - and tonight, no doubt, many of them would. Was it worse to be drained of your life-force by a monster you couldn't see? How could it be, when even the darkest figment of the imagination could never compare to those black gaping mouths, those bottomless eye-sockets, those cadaverous claws?

Reinforcements for both sides were certainly coming, and the battle would soon recommence. But in that moment of calm, the others stood silent beside her, staring upward in terror and awe. Frozen, as if a natural disaster was unfolding before their eyes, and they could not look away. Bellatrix had never seen a volcano erupt, or a tsunami obliterate the shoreline, or even a tornado wrench a house from the earth, but tonight she could imagine the feeling was similar.

Finally, Bellatrix cast her eyes downward, and that's when she saw her. The girl.

She was just a dark silhouette beneath the glow of a street lamp, but with the wind whipping furiously through her robes, she looked more like a piece of the storm that had taken a human shape.

It was hard to come up with a worse time and place for a meeting than this, but her presence was a wordless demand that Bellatrix couldn't - or didn't want to - ignore.

Abruptly, the girl turned and walked down another street. The message was clear - follow me.

And she did, grudgingly. She followed the girl for blocks and blocks along a winding route that led them away from the others, getting angrier with each step.

In some wretched little alley, the girl turned on her heel, bringing Bellatrix to a sudden stop behind her. She looked terribly pale and agitated again, her eyes flickering constantly up to the sky behind Bellatrix.

"This is insane," she burst out finally, her hands clenching helplessly into fists. "Completely insane. Everyone is going to die."

Was that an accusation in her tone, or was Bellatrix imagining it? As if this fiasco was somehow her fault - as if she could do anything about it at all!

"Then what the hell are you doing here?" she snarled. "More importantly, who tipped you off? Who is the Ministry's source?"

Irritably swatting the windswept hair from her face, the girl ignored the question completely. "I know you sent the book to Europe," she said instead. "And I bet it's probably passed through a dozen hands by now!"

Caught off guard by the change of subject, Bellatrix stared at her. She had holes in her Muggle jeans and mud on her Muggle trainers and some band she'd never heard of on her Muggle T-shirt. It was almost like the little chit had no shame.

And the next words out of her mouth proved it: "Do you even comprehend how incredibly dangerous that is?" she cried. "If anyone, god forbid, was able to translate the whole thing, what they could do with that information… They could destroy the timeline! They could ruin everything!"

The situation had turned so ridiculous so quickly that Bellatrix was tempted to laugh. Was she really standing here, in the midst of a Dementor-fueled apocalypse, being lectured by some teenage peasant about a book?

If it was someone else, she would have been furious. And the fury was there, simmering below the surface as always, but stronger than that was a perverse sort of satisfaction at seeing the girl so riled up.

Bellatrix was the picture of indifference as she said, "I don't see how that's worse than giving it to you."

"Because I know what I'm doing!" the girl replied, petulantly crossing her arms.

And then Bellatrix really did laugh - well, it was more of a sarcastic bark, but it was something. And Narcissa claimed she never laughed. "You forget I was there the night Rockwood and Mintumble died…or exploded, or vanished, or whatever the hell happened to them. So, forgive me if I don't believe you. Besides, you're just a child - "

Right. You just keep telling yourself of that, Bella.

" - so there's no way you're working on your own. What coward has you running around doing his dirty work? Is it Dumbledore? Scrimgeour?"

A darkly humorous look flickered in the girl's eyes, and in the momentary flash of a lightning strike they glittered like amber. "I told you I didn't come on anyone's behalf," she said.

"Hmmm...I'm supposed to take your word for that, am I?"

"No you're supposed to stick to the deal we had!" came the frustrated response. "The book for information on Emmeline Vance."

"Well, there's a new deal, sweetheart. You tell me what you know or I start teaching you some manners." With an ominous twirl of her wand, Bellatrix took a step closer.

But the girl didn't back down. Instead, she gave a particularly indelicate snort. "Manners? I could learn better manners from a troll."

Before she even knew what she was doing, Bellatrix lunged at her. Her hand wrapped around the girl's neck - which turned out to be much less fragile than it looked - and forced her back into the wall. "What the fuck did you say to me?" she growled.

The girl clawed at her fingers, fighting to draw air into her lungs. "Y-you heard me," she rasped. The night air was frigid, but her breath on Bella's face was warm.

As if of its own volition, her hand spasmed and tightened its grip so she could feel her prey's blood pumping furiously in her veins. "You must have a death wish, little girl," she warned.

A hoarse chuckle forced its way from the girl's throat. "Oh, you have no idea."

Before Bellatrix could ponder this strange reply, she was thrown backwards with the force of the girl's silent spell. Falling into a roll, she was on her feet in a heartbeat, firing a curse right back.

The girl barely managed to throw up a hasty Protego, clearly surprised by her opponent's lightning reflexes. Bellatrix had gone easy on her in the past, but if the little brat wanted a duel...a duel she would get.

Bellatrix Lestrange hadn't lost one in twenty years, and she wasn't about to start now.

They volleyed spells back and forth, and though the girl had solid technique, she was obviously tiring quickly. Like most, she became sloppy as her stamina waned, and into one of those lapses, Bellatrix snuck a well-placed hex.

The girl cried out as her wand was wrenched from her hand and she was thrown back. Her body contorted oddly, hit the wall with a sickening crack, and crumpled in a heap of black robes.

A self-satisfied smirk graced her lips as Bellatrix approached her felled opponent. Nudging the girl with the tip of her boot drew a small groan - she was still alive.

"Is that all you've got?" she taunted. "Can't say I'm not disappointed, I really expected -"

But she couldn't finish because a terrible, crippling pain had suddenly seized her leg. She looked down to see the girl pressing some odd device to her ankle, before the pain overwhelmed her and everything went black.


It was impossible to tell how much time had passed when she woke, but she could tell that someone had dragged her indoors. Her body seemed impossibly rigid, almost as though it was under the effect of Petrificus Totalus, except that she found she could twitch her fingers with effort.

Never mind. Bad idea, Bella, her nerves screamed in pain as she tried to lift her arm.

"Oh, thank God," came the relieved sigh, and Bellatrix opened her eyes a hair to see the girl leaning over her body.

Then, she felt the shiver of a spell on her skin, and sat upright in shock. "What the hell are you doing?" she rasped, voice painfully hoarse. The girl had a notebook in one hand a wand in the other, and she was carefully wrapping the Death Eater's ankle with a pale blue light."Get away from me!"

"No! Please!" the girl begged, grasping Bella's foot - now inexplicably bootless - to keep her in place. "I'm just trying to heal you. You have quite a bad burn."

"That you gave to me with that...that thing!" Bellatrix accused, wearily eyeing the strange black contraption on the floor. Was it going to attack her again? It looked inert just laying there, but you could never tell with these Muggle abominations, could you?

"Well, yes…" the girl admitted, sheepishly studying the little book in her lap. "But it wasn't supposed to happen like that! It was just supposed to send a small bit of electricity - "

"Electricity?" Bellatrix spat, shifting as far back from the girl and her demonic little implement as her aching limbs would allow. "Isn't that that evil Muggle magic that makes all their machines work?"

The girl gave her a strange look. "Uhhh, well, I guess you can put it like that...but it was just supposed to stun you for a second. I had to fix it so it functioned with magical energy and something must have gone wrong…" she trailed off into silence, staring at the device thoughtfully.

"Wrong? Wrong?" Bellatrix barked in disbelief, her previous anger surging back to the surface. "What did you expect, messing around with their barbaric weapons? You could have killed me! What did you think was going to happen?!"

"Well, it's a prototype I made," the girl explained, avoiding the older woman's piercing gaze, "And the thing is…" she shifted uncomfortably, "I hadn't exactly gotten around…" she studied her nails, gave a minute cough, and finally turned a guilty face to Bellatrix, "...to testing it yet."

Somehow, Bellatrix managed not to slap her right then - though it was a very close thing. Instead, she tore the book the girl was nervously twirling from her hands and looked at it. It was full of scribbled little notes.

The girl made to grab for it. "No, wait - "

But Bellatrix had already read what was written there. It seemed that while she'd been out cold, the girl had taken a full medical diagnostic scan and faithfully recorded the details. The page was titled Trial 1: physical effects.

Bellatrix looked at her, not knowing whether to feel violated, revolted or amused. "So while I lay here - practically at death's door, mind you - you took a moment to take some notes. You really are something else, Granger."

The girl looked exceptionally uncomfortable, perhaps more so to hear her name on the Death Eater's lips. "Aren't you exaggerating just a bit?" she asked, snatching her notebook back and pocketing it. "I mean, you only got a bit burnt and lost consciousness for a few minutes. I, on the other hand, probably have some broken ribs from what you did to me."

Bellatrix shrugged. "It's a duel. People get cursed. But what you did…" She paused, searching for the right words to describe why she was so offended, "... it's just bad sportsmanship. It's cheating."

This, the girl contemplated for a long moment - so long that Bellatrix was about to offer to heal her just to fill the uncomfortable silence. But it was broken when the girl said, "I couldn't help but notice that you kept the Pendant."

Involuntarily, the Death Eater's fingers came up to trace the medal below the collar of her robe. "It's...come in handy once or twice," she admitted reluctantly. But the truth was that she could never have survived all those months trapped in the Dementor-infested Malfoy Manor without it.

The girl gave her a small smile. "I'm glad," she said, sounding improbably sincere. And Bellatrix, Merlin help her, was actually grateful.

Taking a little parcel from her inner robes, she tossed it on the floor with a sigh that sounded very much like resignation. "You'll be happy to know that I couldn't find anyone to translate your bloody book. So here - take it. It's useless to me."

It hadn't been her plan to give the girl the book, but she loathed the feeling of being indebted to someone. Now, the score was settled and she could walk away.

"May I?" the girl asked softly, gesturing at the older woman's ankle, which was still red and scorched. She ghosted her fingers over the broken skin there, and her touch itself was like fire.

Bellatrix jerked away, biting back a harsh breath. "No, I'll do it myself." She grabbed her boot from the floor and nearly fumbled putting it on. It was unbearably painful, but she schooled her features into their usual frigid mask. "I should go - "

"I should go." Those were the last words she spoke to every woman she'd ever taken to bed, usually in the moments following climax. The parallel was unintentional, but the implications - not only of her slip, but of the way the girl was staring - unsettled her. Silently, she stood to leave, and her hand was already on the door when the girl spoke.

"Emmeline Vance was killed in self defense. By a Muggle she tried to attack."

Ah. Right. Emmeline Vance. Bellatrix had intended to beat that information out of her tonight, but had forgotten. Or been very thoroughly distracted. Turning on her heel, she saw the girl had risen to her feet and followed her across the room. "And why would she do that?" she asked slowly, trying to gage how much the girl really knew.

"The Aurors think she was under the Imperius curse."

Bellatrix narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "If she was killed by a Muggle, who cast the Dark Mark over her body?"

"I did," the girl confessed, obviously trying to suppress a self-satisfied grin. "To point the Ministry in the right direction. It was your people, wasn't it, who put the curse on her?"

The bloody nerve! Bellatrix thought, shaking her head in disbelief. To pull a harebrained stunt like that was one thing, but to admit it so smugly to the most dangerous witch in England?

She took a menacing step forward. "Do you have any idea how many problems you've caused me?" she hissed. "The Dark Lord is furious!"

"Well, let me make it up to you, then," the girl murmured, taking her own step so that they stood uncomfortably close once again. She had all the clumsy persistence of a stubborn sixteen-year-old Gryffindor - which, Bellatrix realized with a queasy lurch in her stomach - was probably exactly what she was.

"Fine," she snapped, imperceptibly shifting away from the girl. "You can do some research for me."

The girl's pupils seemed impossibly dilated as she stared hazily back. "Research?"

"Yes, you're good at digging up dirt, aren't you?" There was a sardonic edge in her voice as Bellatrix recalled the way the girl spoke of reading her file. "I want information on Scrimgeour's involvement in something called Operation Mooncalf."

"But why are you asking me? This is something you can't do yourself?"

"It's not really my style," Bellatrix told her with a shrug. "I get my information from of other people - whether they want to give it to me or not."

And that seemed to snap the girl from her daze, as though she finally realized exactly who she was talking to.

"Besides..." Bellatrix went on, forcing herself to ignore the girl's suddenly weary demeanor, "I think it might be mutually beneficial. Don't you want some leverage on the man who's got you on his bureaucratic little leash?"

The girl seemed to think for a moment, and then her mouth formed a grim line. "Actually, I really do."