Fall into Darkness

Chapter 21: Avatar

Bellatrix started awake. Drenched in sweat, she sat up straight in bed and quickly checked her body for wounds. Yet, she found none. Bellatrix quickly reached over to the nightlight and switched it on. It took her a few moments to realize where she was.

Helena. She was in Helena. At their ranch. This was… their bedroom. The wooden walls, their armoire, the picture of the Manchester Bee hung from the wall to remind Bellatrix of home. Home. She… she was home? But…

Bellatrix reached for her forehead and wiped the sweat from her brow.

"Darling?" sounded the sleepy voice of Hermione. "Are you alright? You've been tossing and turning for half an hour."

Bellatrix snapped her head sideways and locked eyes with Hermione. Her brown-haired, brown-eyed young love was smiling at her as she sat next to her in bed. The dark witch didn't hesitate, reached out to grab her shoulders and pressed her lips on hers. Feeling her warmth, her skin, her gentle lips. Bellatrix kissed her hard, invading her mouth and tasting her tongue. To her delight, she felt Hermione moan into her mouth. When she broke the kiss, she found Hermione smiling at her. "Whoa," said Hermione. "Must have been some nightmare."

Nightmare?

The last thing she remembered was jumping off the platform right into the maelstrom of darkness. Colliding with that thing that wore Hermione's face and then falling together while it clawed at her skin. Hitting the dark waters of the lake. And then… nothing.

"We were… in Bright Falls," said Bellatrix, her voice tired and ragged in the cold night. "You were taken. I was looking for you. I fought to get you back."

Hermione chuckled. "Well, I'm right here. Can't say I've ever heard of Bright Falls either."

Bellatrix glanced over Hermione's shoulder at the mountains in the distance beyond the window of their bedroom. Their ranch did have a magnificent view, after all. Perhaps… Merlin, it had all seemed to real.

"Want to talk about it?" Hermione asked. Ever the psychologist, ever the therapist.

Bellatrix shook her head. "Not now. Maybe tomorrow."

Hermione shifted a little, a sly grin on her face. "Well," said Hermione, her hand soft as warm milk sliding over Bellatrix' stomach, a welcome gesture for certain. "I'm awake. You're awake. The night is young and it'd be a shame to waste the moment, hm?"

Considering they were both naked underneath the sheets, they surely must have had make love already earlier tonight. Odd that she… couldn't remember. Still, her insatiable little Hermione certainly loved night-time activities. And who was Bellatrix to deny Hermione's wants and desires? Bellatrix leaned in and kissed her again, a hand on her breast as she lay a giggling Hermione on her back. Bellatrix latched onto the nape of her girl's neck, biting down a little harder than usual. A hiss escaped through Hermione's clenched teeth while she curled a leg around hers and arms wrapped around her waist. Bellatrix felt desire build in the pit of her stomach… after all that madness, blowing off some steam was exactly what she needed.

"Darling," Hermione husked during the amorous assault. "Turn off the lights."

Bellatrix froze, raising herself up a little. "What?"

"The lights, darling," Hermione pressed again. "Turn off the lights."

That was… odd. Bellatrix knew Hermione long enough to know that she preferred to make love with the lights on. Hermione loved to look her in the eyes during their lovemaking, she loved to see what she was doing or what was being done to her.

Something wasn't right here.

"You do it, pet," Bellatrix pressed. "You're closer to the light switch anyway."

"Belle…" Hermione whined briefly, exasperation on her face. "Just turn off the lights."

Bellatrix narrowed her eyes, hovering over Hermione, studying her a little. "Why can't you turn off the lights yourself?" she asked in a low voice.

Hermione seemed stricken. "Belle, you're starting to frighten me."

Oh, now she knew something was off.

Bellatrix threw the covers off them and slipped out of bed. Though her wand was nowhere in sight, she did grab a robe and wrapped it around her body. "Really? 'It was all a dream'? Really?! The Andersons were right, there's really no creative bone in your body. You're nothing but a bloody leech!"

'Hermione' looked at her intently, before her eyes turned jet-black thus revealing its true nature. The Thing That Was Hermione now sat in their bed, or rather, a facsimile of their bed. The view beyond their window distorted into a greenish watery tint. Bellatrix was still in the lake, far beneath the surface as she had been before. It was a good thing she had seen through the deception: Merlin knows what would have happened had she given in.

"I had to try," said The Thing Which Was Hermione. "Why? Why resist?"

Bellatrix crossed her arms. "I don't like being used. I don't like being coerced. I don't like being manipulated. There was a man in my past who did the same as you did. I let it happen to me then, I promised myself to never again let that happen."

"You can have everything. You could be everyone. Do everything," The Thing That Was Hermione tried, its voice starting to grate her nerves as the bedroom started to fade around them until there was nothing left but an endless black void surrounding them. Gravity took hold of her as the both of them floated in the waters of the lake. They were… speaking and yet not… some sort of telepathic connection, perhaps? Or simply a property of the lake. Being a magical creature, she felt the nature of the waters all around her, like a fine network of magical strands woven together to form what seemed to be water, but was not. She supposed it didn't matter.

Bellatrix shook her head. "There's only one thing I want."

"I can be her."

Bellatrix snorted. "You wearing Barbara Jagger's face wasn't good enough for Zane. What makes you think you wearing Hermione's face could be good enough for me?! It's insulting!"

"I can be her," it repeated.

"You wouldn't be her. You could never be her!" Bellatrix hissed angrily. "GIVE… HER… BACK!"

In spite of its human mask, to describe the Dark Presence as intelligent would have implied human qualities on something decidedly inhuman. Still, it was clear to Bellatrix that The Thing That Was Hermione, this Dark Presence, had finally accepted defeat. It didn't seem frustrated, or even angry. It just… was. The creature stared past her into the void and whispered softly. "This isn't the end. I am much older than you. Older than your first work of art. I will find a new face to wear. New ground to tread."

Bellatrix shrugged. "For all your age and power, you can't really understand us, do you?"

The Thing That Was Hermione simply looked her in the eye. "Someone will dream me free. And I will cloud this land in darkness everlasting."

Bellatrix shrugged. "Perhaps. But it won't be me."

The Dark Presence, for whatever creature it was, started to ooze away out of the body of Hermione. Thick dark liquid spewed forth out of the nose, mouth and eyes of Hermione and slowly dispersed into the water like a fading dark inky cloud. Something changed around her. The lake was calmer now and light, a pinprick of light, emerged far above them. But Bellatrix was only focused on the girl in front of her. Slowly, every so slowly, Hermione opened her eyes.

This was no trick. This was not a lie. Those eyes, that expression, that soft quiver of her lip. The dark witch would recognize those anywhere. This was the real thing. Bellatrix rushed forward to embrace her. Hermione was cold, shivering. Her skin had goosebumps. Merlin, she must have been so frightened trapped here alone in the dark. Hermione embraced her back, clutching onto her tightly. Bellatrix kissed her. Those soft lips. She felt her cheek and ran a hand through her silky brown hair. Tears fell from both their eyes, mixing with the water and curried away by the current.

And upward current.

She'd almost done it.

The love of her life was almost free.

She gazed in those loving, soulful brown-eyes one last time… before she gently yet firmly shoved her upwards. Hermione was startled as the currents started to carry her upwards. Terror was etched on her face when she floated up while Bellatrix sank down deeper into the darkness. Hermione futilely held out her hand to try and grab her but Bellatrix was already too far out of her reach.

A trade, then. A life for a life. If it meant Hermione would be free, Bellatrix could live with that.

Hermione would be free and she would remain.

Bellatrix watched Hermione float up towards the light until she could see no more of her. In her heart, she felt surprisingly light. It had to be this way. She then closed her eyes and accepted her fate as felt herself descend further into darkness until a bright light appeared in front of her. She opened her eyes and an old-time diving suit floated in the water, pure light emanating from the helmet's visor. She realized they had met before, in way.

"Thomas Zane," spoke Bellatrix.

"A painful loss, a harsh struggle, battle after battle only to end in self-sacrifice you felt was the price needed to be paid for the crimes of your past," spoke Thomas with a gravely voice. "It is the story as you wrote it, to its full conclusion. You poured yourself into the story, along with all the nuances of a warrior witch who sub-consciously felt she still had to pay her dues."

Bellatrix closed her eyes for a moment. "Hermione. She taught me how to live again and now I've repaid her."

"Have you? This place," spoke Thomas. "Has always been special. Always been dark. It was content to stay where it was until my story gave it a face, a name, a purpose. Now it wants more. Now it wants out."

Bellatrix nodded and she understood. His love had drowned in the lake and he had moved heaven and earth to bring her back. Zane was a kindred spirit of a sort: like he, Bellatrix had done everything within her considerable power to find and return her lost love. "If I'd been in your shoes, I would have done exactly the same."

"No," said Zane. "You would have done it better. You would not have made my mistakes. What my story brought back wasn't my Barbara. What came back had the will of the darkness. Before me and my flawed efforts, it had no will. It was primordial. I gave it is will. I realized I could only stop it by erasing myself from existence while giving others the tools to finally defeat it. The Andersons gave it a valiant try, but it was you who finally succeeded."

"Thinking back on the creature's words, it doesn't feel like I did," shrugged Bellatrix.

Zane let out a brief chuckle. "There must always be a sequel hook. A writer's prerogative," he said. "What I mean to say is that you managed to see through your grief to realize the truth. You altered your own path, you made the story yours. Fiction became reality as this dark place is wont to allow."

"It's still surreal," said Bellatrix. "To think I retroactively edited reality."

"You needed help, so you brought a niece back to life. You turned back the clock on your greatest mistake," said Zane. "And you managed to do this while under the influence of a fever dream. You changed more than that. You always wanted a dog like Max and suddenly there he was. And do you think it's a coincidence that the two surviving members of your favourite band from your youth just happened to live at Bright Falls and just happened to have fought against the same darkness plaguing you? They too had their own struggle with the Dark Presence, a struggle they won. But it was a struggle they had because your writing caused them to be involved."

"Why me?" Bellatrix asked.

Zane chuckled. "Isn't that always the question? I knew that the darkness would return. I knew that I needed someone to close the door I could not. When I wrote stories to try to undo my mistake, I was in this dark place. Past, present, future. It was all open to me. I looked again to find for help. I found you and you were perfect: a powerful one-woman army driven by passion but tempered by her intelligence. Unfortunately, you were to perish in 1998 without ever having set foot in Bright Falls. That needed to change. You also needed motivation. That was found in a former enemy who came to believe in you and ultimately saw in you the love of her life."

Bellatrix blinked. "I… died?" she whispered. It took her a few moments to actually wrap her head around that concept.

"Yes," Zane replied matter-of-factly.

"I… owe you Hermione," said Bellatrix, but she soon pursed her lips when she realized something potentially horrifying. "Was Cynthia Weaver right? That we are nothing more than characters in a story?"

"Yes and no," said Zane. "Cynthia has always been a bit… rigid in her thinking. Minor changes can have substantial ripple effects. For example, you haven't written your niece's entire life. She lived that herself. All you did was one minor change which changed the course of her life and but in the end, Nymphadora lived that life herself. Same with me. I changed your fate, but your life… and Hermione's life… has always been your own. I might have written the outline, but you filled in the details yourselves. All I wrote in this particular story was that one page you found in the Well-Lit Room. I set the destination, but you decided how to get there."

Bellatrix nodded. "That shoebox," she said. "Explain to me how my own wand has been there since the bloody Seventies… while I was using it during the war in England!"

Thomas fell silent for a moment and Bellatrix felt the emergence of a third presence. Something formed near them. What Bellatrix saw made her question reality again: in front of her floated… herself. She looked to be twelve years younger with messy hair and clad in the same combat armour she had down during the battle of Hogwarts. Dirty and haggard, she looked as if she had just stepped off the battlefield. The other Bellatrix raised her chin imperiously and Bellatrix got the distinct impression the other her was looking down on her. A grin formed on the other's face, a wicked one, eventually revealing rotten teeth.

"Ignore her!" Zane demanded rather tersely. "That's Miss Scratch. She can't do anything to you unless you let her. Don't acknowledge her, don't even look at her!"

No problem there. The whole thing was quite disturbing. Especially how she kept hanging around them while the two of them talked.

"As for the shoebox," said Zane. "I knew I had to remove all that had made this horror possible, including myself. That was the only way to banish the Dark Presence I had unleashed. But I also knew that wouldn't help others fighting it in the future, you and the Andersons, so even as I wrote myself and my work out of existence, I added a loophole as insurance, an exception to the rule. Anything of mine stored in a shoebox would remain."

"That explains the paper, but not the wand," said Bellatrix. "The wand from the shoebox. It was hers, wasn't it?"

Zane let out a sigh and there was pain in his voice as he spoke. "My method to change the course of your life was… flawed," he lamented. "I fear you will suffer greatly for it. I am sorry."

"Suffer?" Bellatrix raised a story.

Zane's visor brightened a little more. "Your story doesn't have to be over. You have power in this place. Power I no longer possess. The dark place will obey your magical nature, to a point. Use it."

"Use it?"

"You wrote an ending," said Zane after the currents tugged Bellatrix downward. "But there's still room for you to write and epilogue. And several chapters. Maybe three. Three will suffice. Three and an epilogue."

Bellatrix looked back to the other her, this Miss Scratch. Miss Scratch grinned again and wiggled her fingers in a mockery of a goodbye before she faded into the darkness once more. Zane and the lights were also gone and Bellatrix felt herself fall even deeper into darkness.

Max sauntered at the side of Cauldron Lake. Max wasn't a stupid dog; he knew it wasn't wise to be here. The lake was bad. The water was bad. He shouldn't drink the water. He shouldn't swim in the water. Those who did always met an untimely end.

Max had no master, he didn't want a master. Max was a free-spirited dog. He had felt a kindred spirit in the magic lady. The magic lady was strong and willful, but had a kind heart for animals in that harsh exterior of hers. Max had never misjudged a character and decided that he would like to stay with the magic lady. The magic lady often spoke of a different place and wanting to take Max there. Max was ready for a change of pace and a new place to be with new people. The magic lady had another magic lady friend she was looking for and if she was nice too, Max would enjoy living at their house.

As long as he got to go outside plenty of times and never would have to wear a leash or collar. Max was a free dog, after all.

The darkness-things were gone now and the morning sun was in the sky. The sun reflected off the lake. Max had waited at the side of the lake, waiting for the magic lady to get out of the lake. So far, the magic lady was yet to return.

Max would wait. Max was a good dog.

His nose picked up a scent. It smelled like the magic lady, but this was another human. Perhaps the magic lady had found her other magic lady!

Max barked and started running.

Bellatrix opened her eyes and realized her feet were touching ground. All around her was darkness, but things were somehow visible to her. A greenish tint of blurred water clouded her vision as her fragile human mind tried to comprehend what she was seeing.

This was the Dark Place, the Dark Presence's home… or its body. It's mind? Maybe all three. She was in the thick of it, however. The place she found herself in was unlike anything she could ever have imagined; it wasn't solid, it flowed. It was conceptual and subjective. Back at the lodge, Hartman had said she was multi-talented, a savant. As such, Bellatrix could sense the sheer possibility all around her.

Words, images, concepts. It all floated together. It was like she had found Plato's Cave. But rather than being sat looking at the shadows the ideal forms cast on the walls, she was looking at the undiluted ideal forms themselves. She could see these ideal forms for what they were and they were all poised to become real.

The ideal form of a muffin floated in front of her, flowing in raw creative power. She reached out with her mind and the ideal form changed, shaping into a muffin the way she would have baked one back home. A higher level of reality became a lower level of reality when the muffin was held in her hand. She took a taste and realized it tasted exactly as one of her own would. Still, there was joy in the creating itself beyond merely shaping it with her mind.

More ideal forms floated ahead of her. Now that Zane was gone, she stood alone in this shifting dream that was the Dark Place. The sheer amount of power was overwhelming. Someone like Voldemort would have only dreamed of having access to this kind of power. But Bellatrix knew what she had to do. She had to find a way to the cabin, the one she had been trapped in. She needed to get there. But… how could even find something in this surreal place?

Ah, of course, how foolish of her: her will had power here. She only had to think of something and it would happen. Bellatrix closed her eyes and followed the idea of a path in her mind. And just like that, she had thought herself across the darkness that blocked her way and, with that, there was a bridge to the island beyond. The idea of the cabin flickered in the underwater darkness. She willed the cabin to be real. And it became real.

Bird Leg Cabin, where she had Hermione had arrived scant two weeks ago, stood before her in all its glory. It beckoned her as if it were an old friend.

She went inside and walked up to the small office. There, she fished her diary from her coat and put it down on the desk. She sat down, turned to the last page of the story she had written and dipped her quill into the ink. Force of creation swirled around her, eager to become real through the stroke of her quill.

Bellatrix smiled as she could feel Hermione's presence close-by, as she had sent her on her way but now had to release her. She knew what to do now. She knew how to write the ending to her story. The real ending. Light and darkness, cause and effect, guilt and atonement. But the scales needed to balance, everything had a price. That's where Zane had gone wrong. Bellatrix would not make the same mistake.

Her quill flew over the page as she started to write the final chapters to this tale she had woven. And smile crossed her lips as she lay the ink to dry. Outside the window, an endless plane of ideal forms shifted, just waiting to be molded into reality.

Bellatrix leaned back and chuckled. "It's not a lake," she whispered. "It's an ocean."

Hermione coughed to expel the water from her lungs. Wet and cold, she lay on the bank of Cauldron Lake, exhausted and shivering. Her mind tried to make sense of what just happened to her, but she was so grateful to see light again. Hell, she never wanted to be in the dark ever again. So… so cold. She felt so very cold.

The mere memories of it all. She endured torture and pain in her life, but nothing compared to what she had experienced in the past two weeks. She wasn't taunted or hurt, bruised and battered. No. She had just been left floating in a dark void. Just… existing without any form of external stimuli. Her own sharp and active mind turned against her. She screamed without sound, scratched herself and bit her own tongue just to feel and experience something… anything… Her own thoughts were driving her mad: her mind conjuring gigantic non-existing sea-monsters patrolling the waters beneath her and above her.

Being a therapist herself, she was acutely aware just how damaging two weeks of complete sensory deprivation could be. Even now, she sheer amount of smells, sound and sights were beyond overwhelming. But infinitely welcoming.

And Belle…

Oh, poor Belle… Now stuck in that same place.

She had no energy left in her body to cry, no matter how much she wanted to.

For now, she would simply lie there and let herself bask in the warmth of the sunlight. That was, until something very wet and very cold touched her cheek, followed by something wet and warm and ticklish. With a groan, Hermione rolled on her back only to see a golden retriever looming over her. Of course, the licking assault never stopped, not even when she painfully raised her arms to pet the dog. "Hello there," Hermione managed weakly. "Do… is your owner near?"

The dog, of course, said nothing. Hermione, tired as she was, thought she could hear the sound of a car door slamming shut. People running. Good, she needed help since she could barely move. The dog barked again. Hermione closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she saw…

"Nymphadora?" asked Hermione as she was being sat up. "What are you doing here?"

Three women were with her, two she didn't recognize and… the waitress from the diner?

She felt a soft and warm blanket being wrapped around her while a rotund red-headed woman examined her. "You're into shock, ma'am," said the rotund lady. "We'll get you warmed up and take you straight to the doctor."

"N-no," Hermione protested weakly. "I… I can't leave. B-Belle…"

Her teeth started to chatter. God, she was still so cold…

"Where's auntie Bella?" Nymphadora pressed.

Hermione let out a sob just as she weakly pointed to the lake. It was all she could do not to break down further. In her mind she knew she had lost her. Belle had exchanged herself to free her and was now trapped in the same darkness she had been held prisoner in. She knew how terrifying that had been. She knew how cold she had been. Hermione couldn't leave her Belle down there, not after all they had been through, not after all she had built together.

"Oh, no," Nymphadora let out vile curse under her breath. "Stupid, stupid…"

Hermione could only look at the lake as the sunlight reflected off its mirror like surface. She only hoped that some of that light could reach Belle for below in the impossibly deep caldera lake.

She hoped that Belle would remember that she had people who loved her and wanted her to return.