VI
Night had fallen by the time Bellatrix returned to headquarters, though she had spent some time driving along with a blood red sun glaring at her eyes.
Her boots had dried by that time, but still she took care to tread mostly upon the grass in case anything flaked off from the sole of her boots. She lugged the duffel bag with her, weighted down with files and papers. She wasn't sure how useful they were, but that wasn't her job.
She took off her boots once she got inside, and set them aside for cleaning. Then she went into the kitchen.
"Where's Peter?" She asked Voldemort, politely.
"Sleeping," Voldemort replied, scrutinizing his notebook. Then he looked up at her. "You've got blood on you."
"I know," Bella said. She went upstairs and found Peter's room, and went inside without asking. She went over to the bed - Peter was already awake, light sleeper that he was - and dropped the bag on his stomach.
"Can you look through these?" She asked. It came out as a question, oddly enough. Usually she wouldn't have bothered.
"Right now?" he asked.
"Right now."
"Alright," Peter said, huffily.
"Thanks, darling."
"You've got blood on you."
"I know."
She needed to take a shower.
x
She leaned towards the hot jet of water, hungrily. It burned her skin, cleansed her. Cleansed her of what, though, she wasn't sure. It stung the half-healed cuts on her face and body. Voldemort was right - they were going away.
The water had long ago stopped turning red from the blood it was washing away, but she wasn't ready to get out yet. She gathered her long hair up in her hands and pressed the slick, wet locks to her mouth.
The coils of hair in her mouth were wet and warm on her tongue and lips, strangled her, suffocated her. She breathed heavily through her nostrils, huge, heaving sobs, and she cried for a long time in that shower, Bellatrix did, until her tears stopped coming and the last of them had washed down the drain at her feet.
No matter how angry she was it couldn't mask how sad she felt.
x
The body had begun to fill up the house with its stench by the time Lupin got there.
Lupin had a strong stomach, but Hestia didn't - she rushed for the nearest bathroom, emptying her guts into the toilet, retching herself bare, while Lupin examined the corpse.
Lupin was a werewolf, and he was experienced in death. The smell of meat was hot in his nose; from the strength of it Lupin judged that Kingsley had been killed before sundown, for it hadn't baked in the heat.
The body was still warm, as well. Tracks of gore and bodily fluids lead out of the room. Lupin followed them, cautiously, not sure whether or not the house was unoccupied.
He needn't have worried.
The office was ransacked, and so was the bedroom. Lupin ducked into various other rooms - there were few, as Kingsley lived by himself - and found nothing too out of the ordinary. The killer hadn't had time to check everything, then.
The footprints had faded, but Lupin knew that they would refresh themselves soon enough, when the murderer left. He had seen dried blood on the pavement on his way to the front door, and it had been a warning to him as to what lay inside.
Lupin went downstairs and checked on Hestia. Her usual pink cheeks were pale.
"So he's dead," she said.
Yes. Kingsley was dead.
Lupin was quite certain who had killed him.
It had to have been Bellatrix.
There was nothing to say that it was even a Death Eater - no Dark Mark, nothing. It could easily have been a Ministry Official, an assassin, someone who wanted Kingsley's work or for him to die or anything else. There weren't merely two sides to this War, though that's what most people believed. There had to be a dozen different sides, fighting in the conflict, some taking advantage of the other.
But the thing was, Lupin could smell her. He could smell Bellatrix - it was a heady scent. When Lupin had been younger he had always admired Bellatrix, four years his senior, with her long dark hair and engaging laugh. He had never told Sirius because Sirius would have hit him if he had. Bellatrix was Off Limits, even if Sirius never talked to her and mostly pretended she didn't exist.
Lupin could smell sweat and spice and anger. He fancied he could taste it, too. It was Bellatrix Lestrange, alright, filled with blood and fire and rage. The females of the Black Clan could be very emotional at times.
"Hestia," Lupin said gently, "get a message back to Grimmauld and tell them about Kingsley. I have to go find Mundungus before she does."
x
Bellatrix quickly towelled her body dry and then walked out of the bathroom wearing absolutely nothing, her hair still a tangled, dripping mess. She strode down the hallway and into her bedroom, leaving the door open, and pulled on a pair of ratty underwear and sleek black trousers. She put on a bra, turned around, and saw Pyrites leaning against the doorway.
"You know," he said, "I believe you had more impressive breasts before you went to Azkaban. All of that starvation and thin living went and threw half your cup size out the window."
"Thank you for that, Pyrites," Bellatrix said. "Your kind thoughts get me through the day, and your philosophical musings cause me pause in the middle of my dreary life and think."
Pyrites was lovely and Lucius Malfoy had positively detested him. Bellatrix found him bearable, unless he tried to assert dominance in the household. Voldemort let his followers do as they wished when it came to who was at the top of the pecking order. Bellatrix had held the position for a long time. Pyrites had always wanted it.
Pyrites was never going to get it, either, so long as Bella had her way.
"Women like you eat men for breakfast, Bellatrix, me included," Pyrites said, with a bit of a sigh. "I wish I had gotten to you first before Rodolphus."
"So I could chew you up and spit you out as well?" Bellatrix said, brushing past Pyrites and going down the hall. Pyrites drifted behind her in mild interest and watched her stride into Peter's room as if she owned it. He was at his desk.
"You're not wearing a shirt," Peter told her. Peter tended to say the obvious to her, not because he thought Bellatrix hadn't noticed it or something of the sort, but because his thoughts and her thoughts simply did not mesh very well. Stating what truly was instead of voicing opinion was simply the safest way for the two of them to coexist. Voldemort would not protect Peter if he got in Bellatrix's way.
"I know," Bellatrix said. "Have you gone through the files?"
"Some." Peter said. "I think most of these are all done in code, so it will take longer than expected."
Peter had not been the most talented student, but he was bright enough. Peter's schoolwork in his younger years had been average - he'd had a cause to be distracted often from his assignments. But now, years later, with Bellatrix Lestrange breathing down his neck, Peter could accomplish some truly wonderful things.
"Ah," Bellatrix said. "Well, alright. I'll be downstairs. I might leave again."
Bella turned and she went past Pyrites and she went back into her room to put on a crisp white button-up shirt. And then she went downstairs, like she said.
x
Dumbledore was thinking.
He was always thinking, technically. But now he was thinking, pondering, scheming. And though scheming tended to suggest some wickedness behind everything, Dumbledore was a wicked person. It was just harder to see; like how the fact that Lord Voldemort really could be quite nice when he wanted to was hard to see.
Dumbledore thinking made Severus uncomfortable. It made him terrified, and anxious, and made him want to hyperventilate. Dumbledore thinking was more frightening than Voldemort thinking, and a lot of times Severus was unsure why.
The reports had all been made, and Lupin was absent. Severus wanted to leave. There was something bothering him, tickling the back of his neck. Something dark and aggressive and smart. Bellatrix Lestrange had killed Kingsley Shacklebolt, though the evidence of this was thin, and Lupin was absent still, which didn't make him look very innocent. Claiming Lestrange was the killer and then rushing off? Suspicious.
Moody certainly thought so. But Moody thought everything was suspicious, and it had kept him alive. Of course - and Severus felt somewhat scornful when he thought it - Moody was due for a heart attack any day now.
"This is a blatant attack - either upon the Order or the Ministry. I am still unsure," Dumbledore said, gravely. He didn't mention that fact that there may be another few sides involved, though everyone was thinking it - thinking that maybe, just maybe, Kingsley was a traitor, and there was another player in this game. Everyone except Severus, that is, who had as much blood on his hands as Bellatrix did when it came to the murder. "Everyone must be aware that another attack may come at any time, and that we must gather ourselves together upon the offensive."
Those seated at the table remained silent. Upstairs, there was nothing - no children. The Weasley children, who had occupied the house last summer with Hermione Granger and Harry Potter, were absent, back at their own home, away from the grime of Grimmauld Place. Despite all of the cleaning, it was still dirty - doors remained locked and shadows remained unlit.
Without Sirius Black around, nobody wanted to disturb the darkness.
"This meeting is at an end," Dumbledore said, softly. He looked tired, and he was certainly worried. He got up to leave, and so did everyone else.
x
Bellatrix sat at the kitchen table beside Voldemort, and she ate. It was early in the morning, and she was eating cold pizza she had found in the fridge.
Voldemort, a man who never seemed to sleep, had chin-length brown hair that fell into his eyes and soft, pouting lips. It was not the face she had seen when she had come home (because she was beginning to think of it as home now).
He said, as he played cat's cradle, "So, what did you find out?"
"Nothing," Bellatrix said. She was disappointed.
"My poor darling Bella," Voldemort said. He looped the string about his fingers some more. "Did you go and bother Wormtail?"
"Yes."
"With what?"
"Papers and files. I wanted him to go through them."
"Ah." Voldemort said. And then he said, "Bring them down here to me."
Bellatrix looked at him; then she went back upstairs, and when she came down Peter was with her, and so was Pyrites, who wordlessly started to make coffee.
Peter set the files on the table in front of Voldemort. The cat's cradle had disappeared.
Voldemort looked at files. He flicked through them, delicately, and then, with purpose, pulled one out from the pile.
He read, "July fifth, Nineteen ninety six, send message with MF to nightclub on eighty-sixth with target and date. Northern Lights."
The kitchen was very quiet.
Voldemort said, "I suggest you sleep for a few hours and then take a trip down to the club and speak with the owner. He might have noticed something."
"How did you do that?" Bellatrix asked, bluntly, staring at the pile of paper.
Voldemort shrugged. "I chose a piece of paper."
"How did you know it was the right one?"
"I just did."
"My lord-"
"Go to sleep, Bellatrix."
Bellatrix looked at him. Then she picked up the piece of paper, stared at it, then she looked at Voldemort again. And then she sat back down beside him, put her head in her arms, and within moments she was asleep.
"I am going out," Voldemort said to Pyrites. He stood up and he left the kitchen.
x
Pyrites followed Peter back upstairs.
"She's a saucy one, isn't she," Pyrites said.
Peter shrugged. "Bellatrix is Bellatrix," he stated, firmly.
"She doesn't like you."
"Not really, no." Peter said.
Usually, a conversation like that opened up to a larger, deeper one, the sort that is the history behind schemes and manipulations and murders. But Peter was smart because he knew this, and he shut the door in Pyrites' face before the man could whisper something sacrilegious into Peter's ear.
"You're a lot smarter than you seem," Pyrites said with a sigh to Peter's closed door.