VIII
Bellatrix sat by herself in her car. Her hair was wet from the rain. The car was running, and the wipers swiped back and forth across the windshield. Her eyes unconsciously followed the movement.
Where does one find a crook, Bella thought. Where can you find someone like Mundungus Fletcher?
His records weren't in the files the Death Eaters kept… Fletcher had never been connected with the Order, due to his crooked past and present… there had been whispers of a trial and Dumbledore, but Bellatrix had never thought that the Headmaster would aid a criminal in evading the law…
She had never thought that Fletcher could be a member…
There was no telling for sure, but that didn't matter. Bellatrix shook her head as if to clear fog from inside her skull. She was sinking back into the fourteen-year-old mentality, where people like Professor Dumbledore never did anything questionable. Dumbledore was as much a hero as Voldemort was, and as much of a villain. She kept forgetting that, kept thinking that Dumbledore had no say in the war except the say he had with Lord Voldemort.
Silly girl.
Bellatrix turned on the radio. It was on a classical station. She frowned. Pyrites must have been toying with it again - Bella always favoured the local punk station.
The raindrops beat a soldier's pace against the windows and the roof. She did not move from where she was parked in the parking lot. She stayed where she was, thinking, thinking. And, in the back of her mind, hating.
Mozart beat out a string of emotion on the piano while she sat there. Then she shifted gears, and she drove.
x
The back of the shop was a lot different from the front.
It was somewhat cluttered. Near the front of the storeroom were all the products sold in the store, but as one moved farther inward the objects became less cosy and more bizarre. A door led off to a workroom, but Severus and the woman - Nora - passed it by for the moment.
"So how much trouble did it take you to get it back?" she asked. They stopped in front of a table, where a large variety of items were laid out. Severus cast a collector's eye over them.
"Quite a bit," Severus said mildly. He was still twisting the rosary around his fingers. "Where did you get these?"
Nora shrugged and smiled.
Severus was quiet for a moment, and then handed the rosary to Nora. She took it with shining eyes.
"My father made this for me," she said. "He said it would always protect me…"
"Lord knows," Severus said dryly, turning his attention back to the table. He picked up a chipped, triangular piece of obsidian - an arrowhead. He held it up, and light glinted along the sharp, cruel edge. It tingled with power as he held it; wanting to be fired, wanting to tear, rip, kill. "This is an interesting piece, Nora," he said. "Not at all like your usual array."
"You've noticed, then."
"I notice everything," Severus said frankly. The arrowhead was infused with power, and not the sort of power Nora usually dealt with, which was a religious, holy power. The arrowhead held a demonic quality that Severus did not like.
"Everything on the table is yours," Nora said, matter of fact.
Severus raised his eyebrow at her. "All of it?"
"All of it."
"That must be quite some rosary."
Nora smiled again. She had an unsettling smile. She claimed to be Catholic, but there was something lustful about her that made Severus raise his eyebrows, and then look away. Nora was something else, all right.
"Not to pry, Severus," she said. "But what exactly are you planning to do with all this equipment?"
Severus' look had a deadpan quality to it. "Kill things." he said, beginning to wrap the objects up in rags and carefully arranging them in a leather bag.
"Oh." Nora said. "Well. The book is here, as you requested."
Severus picked up the slim, leather-bound volume, and looked at it critically. Forgeries of it were abundant, and Severus had found himself saddled with at least three useless versions of the book in the past few years. Of course he'd always managed to resell them and claim they were the real thing - but it was still irritating.
"Where did you get this one, again?" he asked.
"I never saw his face," Nora said, shrugging.
"You stole it when he was sleeping."
"Don't be silly, Severus," she said, with a curling smile. "Stealing is sinful."
"Right," Severus said, with a shrug. He shoved the book into an inner pocket of his coat, hefted up the bag, and left through the back of the shop.
x
Bellatrix felt sick.
As she drove she could feel it building in her, like vomit that wanted to come up. What was wrong with her? Why couldn't she keep food down anymore? Was it Rodolphus?
And it won't stop raining, she thought angrily. It won't stop fucking raining. I wish it would stop. I want it to stop.
She was going to vomit…
No, she wasn't.
Bellatrix flipped through the stations until finally a song appealed to her. She turned it up until the electric guitar dragged fingernails down her spine. It wasn't the Sex Pistols, but it would do.
She wasn't going to get sick. Even though her body wanted to. But her body had no say in what her mind wanted to do, she decided; she would have total control.
Her vision swam for a moment; then it clicked into place, sharp and focused and crystalline.
And that was when it stopped raining.
x
Mundungus tamped down his pipe in the soggy back alleys of London. His matted, gingery hair was damp with rain.
He glanced up. Sunlight had burned its way through the clouds; the streets were starting to glow. Mundungus just shook his head a little and lit his pipe. Typical. You could never trust London weather, he supposed, even if you'd lived there as long as he had.
He went back inside.
x
Lord Voldemort shook out his umbrella and closed it, and looked up at the sky. He appeared somewhat confused for a moment. But then it went away.
x
She knew what to do.
She thought about Lord Voldemort.
She thought about how he knew how much money was in your pocket without being told, how he could see what kind of card you were holding - queen of hearts, ace of spades, anything, everything - when all he really should have seen was just the patterned back. She thought about Lord Voldemort knowing what you wanted to do before you even thought about it.
And when he told her how many grains of sand were in the hourglass in his bedchamber, she knew he was telling the truth. And she thought about how it had stopped raining.
She found a payphone. The rain left glistening puddles on the pavement. She slotted in her coins and, slowly, randomly, with no thought whatsoever, dialled a number.
She put the phone to her ear, and expected the machine to ask for more change, figuring she had dialled a long-distance number.
Then it started to ring.
"'Lo?" a dark voice asked.
"Sorry, love," Bellatrix said, her voice thick and bubbly, so unlike her own. "Wrong number."
She hung up, found a pen in her pocket, and wrote the number down on her hand.
Then she put in more change, and dialled another number. This was a number she knew and never used.
Luckily, it was Andromeda, and not Ted, that picked up.
"I have a question," Bellatrix asked, without preamble. She could hear her sister take a quick breath of surprise on the other end.
Andromeda could say any number of things. She could say anything. She could scream, she could tell her sister to fuck off, she could just hang up.
What Andromeda said was, "What?"
"Do you still love me, Annie?" Bella asked.
"…What?"
"Do you still love me?"
Andromeda was quiet for a moment.
"Yes," she said slowly, after a moment, "Yes, I suppose I still do."
"Good." Bella said, relieved. "And I still love you too. How stupid is that?"
"Very stupid."
"We're stupid, Annie."
"We are."
"Bye."
"Goodbye."
Bellatrix hung up, starting to feel a little better about things.
x
Tonks sat in her kitchen, smoking. She was on her fourth cigarette of the day, and was sucking it down and bringing it back up like cheap champagne. Her striking blond hair, styled into a luxurious waterfall along her shoulders, glinted in the type of sunlight that always came after rain.
She had the matchbox Severus had given her on the table in front of her. Her mouth, painted the raw red of cherries, twisted a little. What a horrid way to gain an inheritance, she thought.
She stretched out on her chair, looking at the ceiling. Kingsley was dead. It made her sad - she'd always liked him. He was a nice bloke. He really oughtn't have died - but that was war for you. Especially this kind of war, with the backhanded killing and the dark plots and the anger that came from no discernible source.
"At least I'm sane," Tonks said softly to herself, blowing smoke upwards. Everyone else was absolutely off their fucking rocker. She couldn't understand it. She'd joined the Order of the Phoenix because, she had thought, it was the right thing to do. And, in a way, it was. She believed in it, certainly. She wanted to stop the killing, she wanted to help tamp everything down; to stop the disease with no knowledge of the needed medication.
She may have been sane, but she was an idiot. It's like I went to join the peacekeepers and accidentally signed up for the army, she thought to herself. But she couldn't get out. You never deserted any membership. Her superiors always said that when you joined the Death Eaters it was a commitment you kept for the rest of your life, and that those who tried to leave were killed - just like her cousin, Regulus Black.
But they never mentioned that it was the same with the Order - that if you wanted to leave everyone called you coward, useless, frightened; that you were monitored and maybe even killed, because you were a vessel of knowledge and if a Death Eater found you and managed to weasel out information, as weak-minded as you were, then you could cost dozens of people their lives.
They say that you have to choose between what's right and what's easy. Tonks thought that that was a load of bollocks - what were you drawing from, anyway? What's right for you, and what's right for everyone else? When were you granted the gift of selfishness?
She had to go out, she decided. She was thinking too much. She stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray, and went to her room to go through her clothes. Time to go clubbing.
x
Bellatrix phoned one more time.
"Peter," she barked, when he picked up the phone. "Got a pen and paper? Good. I want you to find out the address belonging to this number. I'll call back in ten minutes."