XIII

Bellatrix reached out and touched the door handle. It was warm from the sunlight, and seemed to sing at the touch of her fingertips.

She withdrew, but only for a second - the next second she reached out, and grasped the handle, and turned it.

It opened quietly - no squeak, no rusty hinges, nothing. A well-used door. It shut quietly too.

It was so familiar. A piece of her childhood used to support the organisation that wanted her dead. Bile rose in her throat, but she was accustomed to it.

The hallway was very dark. She breathed in the cool air and looked around. The place was clean, but still smelt faintly musty. She went to grab her wand but stopped midway, hesitant, listening closely. Was something watching her?

No. No one was watching her.

She moved forward and began to ascend the stairs. She had a job to do, and not long to do it. Upstairs was where the passages ran down into the cellars, and those dark connections between rooms. Bella had always refused to take any room other than the one near the back and to the left, because it housed the passageway that could bring her to Sirius'. He'd been her best friend before school had started.

She passed the portraits lining the stairway and down the hall. She didn't dare pull the musty velvet curtains back to see what lay behind them. Especially not her aunt's.

Her aunt had been a woman of great vanity - she had the right, for she had been dark-haired and lovely, but in a way unlike Bella or Sirius, who took after their fathers. Sirius' mother had been very beautiful in an aching, poetic way, and she knew it; she'd had her portrait painted, and she'd instilled within it the magical ability to appear just as she was, right at that moment - as if to prove to anyone that in sleeping or in waking, the Lady Black was still the prettiest thing that could be seen.

And of course, as she'd slowly gone crazy, and had aged, and died, alone, in her house, without her husband or her two little boys, the portrait had gone along with her.

It reminded Bella of Dorian Gray.

She peeked into one room - Regulus' old room, she realised. She remembered everything now. She crept in quietly. The floor was bare - no books, no toys, no broomstick.

"Bella," a voice said.

Bella's heart jumped in her throat and she whipped around towards the doorway, her wand drawn, her free hand clutching at her knife. There was no one there and nothing apparent - except for a thin sniggering in the air.

Bellatrix paused. She turned towards the wall, where the sound was emanating - a portrait.

"Grandfather," she said, dryly. Not her grandfather, of course - far older than that - but she didn't feel like counting generations.

"Still spry, Bellatrix," Phineas Nigellus said, sounding smug. "Just like your father. He was quite an uppity lad, though. Whatever are you doing here? You're not allowed, you know."

"I am a Black," Bellatrix said. "I have a right to be here."

A portrait was never the person himself, but still, it held many of the same characteristics. Phineas was a proud man, and he was proud of his family, whom he considered far beyond noble. He still had to clear a few things up before Bella could walk free.

"You married a Frenchman." Phineas said.

"I loved him."

"He was French. You're English."

"He was an Englishman, his family left France with the émigrés."

Phineas smiled dryly. "I should, by rights, inform Dumbledore that you are here."

"But you won't," Bellatrix pointed out. "Because I am family, and family rules over what may be right."

"Right you are, my darling girl," Phineas said, "though I may remind you, you did kill your cousin."

"It was me or him," Bellatrix said.

"I know," Phineas agreed softly, "that is why I am going to tell you that someone else is in this house. Be quick."

Bellatrix froze. Outside the room, down the hallway and the stairs, the front door was closing.

x

She scooted down the hallway, heart beating in her throat. She couldn't bear to think of what might have happened if Phineas hadn't warned her - had let her converse with him and covered up the sound of the closing door, or had not spoken to her at all and she, lost in her work, may have noticed nothing.

If she was caught, she was dead. She knew this.

She listened carefully. Someone was coming up - but only one. One person. She could deal with that - unless it was Dumbledore.

She peeked down the stairs, and froze, because Remus Lupin was looking right up at her, halfway up the staircase - perhaps thinking, before she had revealed herself, that she was a friend, perhaps ready to say a greeting.

He said, "Bellatrix?"

And all along the hallway curtains flew aside, and portraits woke up, and started shouting, and her crazy aunt shrieked "Bellatrix! BELLATRIX!" and the whole house vibrated with their echoes.

x

Remus didn't expect it. He should have. It was a crazy manoeuvre, and Bellatrix was crazy.

She crashed right into him, and he fell - they both fell - down the stairs, tumbling, elbows and knees and heads cracking against the wall or the staircase or sometimes each other.

He supposed it was a lucky thing they she weighed just as much of him - well, he was a little heavier, which was part of how he managed to land on top of her when they hit the floor. The portraits were shrieking her name, over and over; it was surreal, and disturbing.

She punched him in the throat and dragged herself away, clutching at her wand with her other hand. She didn't turn to face him, just ran.

Remus, swallowing and gasping, pulled himself to his feet to give chase.

x

Pyrites lit up a cigarette in the kitchen.

It was an uncomfortable atmosphere. Lucius had never liked Pyrites; Pyrites had never liked Lucius. Physically, of course, Pyrites was far more lovely than the Malfoy could ever hope to be; but, unfortunately, Pyrites hadn't the ability to use it. Lucius could smile at a woman, and she'd fall for him, and that would be that. Pyrites had a much more difficult time with it.

And while Lucius was not exactly young, Pyrites was far older. No one knew how old he was. Voldemort had once mentioned how, at one point, Pyrites had collaborated with Nicholas Flamel. And Flamel had been an old man. So Pyrites, as a result, tended to talk down to people who didn't appreciate it - in other words, Lucius.

"So the woman with the bombs," Pyrites was saying, "That was your wife? Pretty gutsy. Obviously a Black."

Lucius gave Pyrites A Look. Then he stood up and left the room.

"Bloody aristocrats," Pyrites said, rolling his eyes. They all acted the same. Poncy. Bellatrix was different; she acted like a woman, and wasn't afraid to admit it, but she was one of the few of the purebloods that didn't put on such airs.

Voldemort came in, wearing a black sweater with the hood up. He sat down across from Pyrites, in Lucius' vacated spot, and fastened his eyes on the ceiling.

Five minutes later, Voldemort said, "Put that cigarette out."

The unsaid words were, before I do something rather violent to your face, but the thing about Voldemort was that he never needed to say those things. It was crude and overdone. People knew he would do something bad anyway. So you just did what he said.

Pyrites hurriedly crushed the cigarette out on the kitchen table.

x

In the meantime, Remus had his ear pressed to the wall, listening.

She was there. She had to be. Where else could she have possibly gone?

Down the hallway Bellatrix had gone, like some mad march hare on the run. And then she'd gone. Hadn't Sirius told him, years ago, about all the passages that riddled the House of Black, and that was how he was able to get away from things, night after night, during the summer holidays?

(Of course, Regulus would find him sometimes, but Sirius would scare him away).

Remus was confused as to why she wasn't just trying to up and kill him. He'd killed her husband, after all. Surely she knew that by now.

Perhaps she was playing with him.

What Remus didn't know was that Bella had a job to do.

x

The passage was musty, and when she inhaled she nearly tore into a fit of coughing. She muffled herself as best she could, squeezing her eyes shut to protect them from the dust.

There was a wolf down the hallway. She could sense him, prowling across the entrance. Maybe he would get her. Maybe he wouldn't.

But she had a job to do.

She dared not blunder her way in the dark - childhood memories could not help her, no recall of a passage's state could fend off anything dark and unsavoury that had decided to make the place its home.

She whispered lumos, and made her way through.

Nothing bothered Bella. Perhaps it was because she had an ancestral right to be there, as she had told Phineas. Or perhaps there was nothing in there anyway.

She came out at the kitchen, as silently as she could. The portraits had stopped shrieking, now; their echoes had dimmed, and the house was quiet.

The kitchen looked as if it had been left suddenly, without warning - no doubt it had. There was some cutlery on the counters, and a glass of water on the table. There were some documents on the table as well - but nothing that interesting. Nothing the Death Eaters didn't know. She folded them up and tucked them into her sweater, anyway. She should have brought some sort of shoulder bag.

She listened. No werewolf.

She knew Remus Lupin from her school days - the quiet one. The one that did nothing when someone was getting hit right in front of him. She hadn't much appreciated that sort of person, until she'd met Rodolphus, who had been very similar in manner. She liked Rodolphus, who was quiet, and smiled a lot. In fact, she'd even loved him. It had been liberating.

Bellatrix crept back into the passageway and shut the door behind her.

x

Voldemort was wandering through the house, restlessly, ducking into every room, looking beneath every bed and peeking in every closet. He finally settled down when he walked into Bella's room, moving across the chamber to open the window and stick his head out, bathing his face in sunlight.

"My lord?" Lucius asked, from where he was sitting on the bed. Lucius, of all the Death Eaters, was the most beaten. He asked questions - many, many questions - and, often, Voldemort ended up hitting Lucius because of it. Lucius never seemed to learn from this. "May I be so bold as to inquire as to what, exactly, you are doing?"

"You're always bold," Voldemort said, drawing a deep breath of warm, noon air. "That is why I keep you around."

"I see."

"Curious thing," Voldemort continued, absent-mindedly. Voldemort had a penchant for talking, about anything and everything; and this was infuriating, because no matter how much Voldemort talked, most people had no inkling of what he was really saying. "I once encountered a cobra in my travels. A very impressive snake - when it rears in warning, it can reach the height of a man. And it usually only rears when its young are in danger."
"Is that so, my lord."
"That is so," Voldemort said, looking over his shoulder at Lucius and his white-gold hair. "And I say it is curious because that particular type of cobra has a very interesting habit of sharing living quarters with its prey. Isn't that odd, Lucius?"

"Very."

"Yes," Voldemort said, turning back to the open window, inspecting a tree with interest. "That's what I thought."

x

Nobody ever knew just what Voldemort was talking about. Some probably thought they did - like Dumbledore, maybe - but that was foolish thinking and, in many cases, pure arrogance.

There had been one girl, who had known exactly what Voldemort was talking about. He'd met her in Sicily forty or so years ago. He'd killed her, in the end, because that's what Voldemort did. He killed people.