Authors Note.
It has been a very long time since I updated this story and for that, I apologise. I struggled a lot with this chapter, it needed so much to happen and it became very dark and very poignant all at once. So I will do something I don't always do, this chapter contains imagery that will upset some of you. I hope that you enjoy the story and please review, your feedback does help form how I shape this story.
Lots of love, Sinsofdragons.
"I hurt myself today to see if I still feel.
I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real.
The needle tears a hole, the old familiar sting.
Try to kill it all away, but I remember everything.
What have I become?My sweetest friend,
Everyone I know goes away in the end.
And you could have it all, my empire of dirt.
I will let you down, I will make you hurt."
Johnny Cash -Hurt.
Hermione had wandered around for three hours before heading back home, and even then she only did so because hunger won out over her stubbornness. The missive from her father felt like it was burning a hole in her hand the longer she held it, but she was afraid of what it might say, or not say. She knew she was probably being unfair but a part of her wanted to hate him for being anyone but the man she had called Dad all her life. A bigger part of her was so upset with Dorea and how she had bulldozed through Hermione's world that she wanted him to be everything that she wasn't. So that was why she hadn't read the letter yet.
She got home and made pasta and played with Crookshanks for a while. It was early evening before she sat down on the sofa in the living room, twisting the parchment in her hands. Stealing her nerves even as her hands shook, she broke the seal and pulled the letter from the envelope. She noticed the penmanship was slanted and sharp but somehow remained very neat. The parchment even smelled faintly of sandalwood and somehow she felt more at ease from just that faint scent.
"Darling Child,
There are a million and more things I want to know and say, and even as I begin this letter I feel that my words will be neither enough for you nor I. So I will start with something simple, knowledge of your existence has filled me with an incandescent joy that I would have scoffed at in others had I not felt it myself. I did not expect to have a child, not after so long in that prison and yet there you sit, a gift I fear I am rather unworthy of. I will also say that I am sorry if learning where you come from brings you pain, it is not my intent but I am not so blind to see that such knowledge may not be welcome.
I hope that your life so far has been happy, that you have known joy and contentment and that the ones that raised you have been parents worthy of you. What little I have gleaned from others since learning of you professes of your intellect and kindness and yet I would hope that this is not all that you define yourself by. I would like the opportunity to get to know you and would hope that you might wish to know me as well, even if only to know where you come from. I guess you already know you are a Lestrange, I don't imagine that thought fills you with much joy from what you have no doubt read in the papers.
Being a Lestrange will open doors for you whether you want it to or not. There is a seat of the Wizengamot if you want it, Rabastan and I are currently not allowed to take it, but it is there. Gringotts has been notified of your existence so next time you visit, be sure to help yourself, money makes great armour in certain circles and somehow I think you will need it when you return to Hogwarts. I would like to tell you some wonderful things as well, but I feel it is better to address the hippogriff in the room.
I am not an innocent man, I have made choices and walked the darkest path and it is one I would not want you to follow. I have done things that whilst I do not regret them, I can understand they will be hard for you to accept. The Longbottom family will most likely scorn you now darling, but know that there was a reason for what happened to them. Their actions broke Bella, and as unhappy as our marriage is, I refuse to lament them their well-deserved fate. Bella will never forgive them, and I find myself agreeing with her more and more as the years have passed.
Your uncle, Rabastan and I are the last males of our line, and your uncle is not likely to produce any children. His predilections lean more towards men if you understand me. He very much likes the look of Lord Rowle, whose acquaintance with you I am not sure I approve of. He has a rather colourful history but seeing as mine is streaked with red and black I have very little I can say without being hypocritical. Just remember that there are consequences to touching darkness and I would hope that you never have to learn them.
I have a request for you, I would like to meet you. When and where with whoever makes you feel safe. I would ask that you not bring the aurors or the order, but that is not my choice to make. I would like to know you as you, not as who everyone else would tell me you are. The ring that you are wearing is a form of Portkey. Spin it four times on your finger and it will summon me from wherever I am to where you are. This meeting is completely on you. I will not seek you out or ambush you, we will meet on your terms.
With all my love
Your Father."
The letter was not the only thing inside the envelope, there were also photographs of him, his brother and of his wife, Bellatrix. Her uncle was dark-haired, thick with waves that she knew most women would be envious of and it seemed that Azkaban had not managed to ravage him as it had so many others. His looks were marred only by the scar on his neck from what looked like a shackle had once been too tightly placed there. He did not smile in the photos, and you would almost think him disinterested until you looked into his eyes as he moved within the picture.
The pictures of Bella showed a woman with beauty that would have men worshipping her and women green with envy. In some she was dancing to a beat you could not hear with ribbons and jewels strung through her hair. In others she looked right through you, all somber and black attired as though she was mourning the loss of something so very dear to her. It was the last one that shook Hermione and left a sick feeling in her stomach.
Bella was stood by a window, joy and tenderness etched into her features as she swayed, her hand gently stroking her baby bump. It wasn't Bella that scared her, no it was the man she was talking to, his snake-like features were amused as he spoke to her. She had never seen him personally but he looked exactly as Harry described him, down to the slits in his nostrils. His hand was also on her bump, his own covered in blood leaving his mark on her skin.
Hermione dropped the pictures to the coffee table beside her, her hands shaking as she could feel her heart pounding in her chest. Why would he send her those pictures, and why that one? She could understand the others, but that one? What had happened to that child? And why was his hand bloody as the stroked her bump? Hermione stood and began pacing wondering what she was meant to think. She had a logical mind, one would think she would be able to detach herself and look at this situation logically.
But she could not. Her emotions had been put through the ringer by Dorea and her heavy-handed self-serving agenda and now her father, whom she both intrigued and terrified her was sending her letters through Thorfinn Rowle. A man she had not thought about since he left Hogwarts and yet somehow knew where to find her when no one else had. She didn't understand it, she didn't have all the facts and there was no book in any library that could tell her where she what she should and should not do.
Her heart told her to meet him, to meet Rodolphus Lestrange and see the other half of the romance that made her. Was he like Dorea? Would he try and take over her life as well with heavy hands and little compassion? Would he be like Dolohov and greet her with stony features and a chilling look in his gaze as though she were something staining his bloodline? His letter was all kind words and filled her with hope, but the pictures? The pictures or at least one of them filled her heart with an icy dread.
She pulled the ring from her hand, and she could feel the faint hum of magic that some objects give off and she shivered. She needed to know but she wouldn't be stupid about it all. She ran upstairs and grabbed the mirror from her underwear drawer and brought it back downstairs placing it out of sight but should she scream Harry would know she had been found. She then scribbled a note with her address on beside the mirror shard, placing it just so that it could be read. Turning from rearranging things to hide it from plain view she found Crookshanks perched upon the grey armchair, his tail ticking impatiently as though he had been waiting for her.
She walked over and picked him up, taking the seat he had chosen and cuddling him for a few moments. She held onto him and she tried to talk herself out of doing this, whilst fretting that if she did not she would let her opinion of the man be shaped by those around her. Dorea, who considered him good enough to bed but not to tell he had a child. Remus and Sirius whose opinions were marred by their personal losses, and her peers who would call him a murderer. She shifted a little, still holding Crookshanks and began to turn the ring around on her finger.
She summoned her Gryffindor courage and quickly completed the turns, looking around for the slightest hint that it was working and tried not to panic too much when nothing at all happened. She looked around the room but there was no sign of anything happening. After a minute or two, she sighed, feeling ridiculous for her heart pounding and nothing happening at all. She slipped the ring back on her finger and then yelped as it seared hot and felt a rush of wind dance along her skin. There was a grunt, followed by a yelp and she was no longer the only person in her home… not that the others noticed her at first.
"...Fucking hell Bella, will you ever relent? So what if I foiled your plans to get back into the Dark lord's graces, you know he would not have seen you even if he had succeeded. He now has to waste his efforts on getting the likes of Malfoy from Azkaban's depths which means the goals he seeks must be put on hold again."
She wrenched her arm from her husband's grip, sneering at him, both far too caught up in their marital moment to realise they were not alone. "The Dark Lord knows we are his most loyal, but you, you faithless rat had a child with another woman, old enough to be your mother and yet you give me none. No child, no future, so I must look to other ways to seek glory for the oh so noble house of Lestrange." She scoffed, her tone heavy with sarcasm as she described the house she had been married into. Her skirts, twisted around her legs as she walked around her husband. They seemed black at first glance but when Hermione looked closer she could see the blues and green of her underskirts appearing through the black lace.
"Narcissa has a son, Rod. That bitch has had the easiest of lives, has never had to sacrifice a moment for anyone or anything and she lauds that boy before me, the one thing I have never had and I hate you for it." There was no madness in her eyes, not like Hermione remembered from the ministry, only loathing and anger clear on her features. "I want a child and if you will not give me one of my own, I will take yours."
Her father, his eyes meeting Hermione's as he looked around the room, finally noticing that he was no longer in his own home, but instead in a strange room with a young woman and her cat, he gave her the briefest of nods. "Hermione" he uttered and Bella sighed. "Yes, Rod unless you're that much of a bastard that you have fathered more than one then yes I mean Hermione." His eyes flicked back to his wife before he pointed and Bella followed his gesture until she too saw Hermione watching them with Crookshanks in her arms. Her familiar had adopted a protective position over her, his hair standing on end as he clearly was not happy with their new company.
"Rowle found me and gave me your letter," she said by way of greeting, eager to move past their argument that she clearly was not meant to hear. "Next time you send someone to seek me out, make sure I actually like them. Thorfinn Rowle is an arse and I did not appreciate being manhandled in public." Hermione was babbling, she knew this and yet she was too nervous to stop herself. She hadn't expected him to arrive with Bella in tow and Merlin knew the woman intimidated her.
Her father came to kneel before her, his hand reaching out to stroke her cheek and he had a soft smile on his face. "I apologise for his behaviour, trust that he will be dealt with for it, but I do not regret sending him. His sisters spotted you and showed him where he could find you and I am most grateful. My but you did grow up beautiful, you could pass for my Mother you resemble her so well."
With him so close, Hermione couldn't help drinking in his features, to really see him. Those newspaper clippings had done so little for him. He was incredibly handsome, emerald green eyes and high cheekbones crowned with dirty blonde hair. The only signs of Azkaban in his features were the lines upon his face and the flecks of silver in his hair. He was tall, broad-shouldered and there was an unmistakable aura of power around him. Hermione could easily see why Dorea had let herself be seduced by him. She just didn't see what he saw in Dorea.
Even as she looked him over, she could see that he was doing the same, there was a look of pride and hopeful longing on his face. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Crookshanks had climbed the table in front of Bellatrix and they appeared to be having a staring contest, the witch with hair far less tamed than Hermione's, she had her head tilted and was quietly crooning to the cat, although she could not hear the words, the fact that Crookshanks didn't attack surprised Hermione. Her cat was usually all fire and fury but he seemed to be quite taken with the mad witch. She turned to watch as the witch took Hermione's cat in her arms and stroked behind his ears tenderly. Noticing Hermione's gaze she paused "Don't mind me, Love. Talk with your father, I am sure you have many questions for which I have few answers."
Hermione watched her move to the window, crooning to the cat, like one would a small child and she wondered if this is what Thorfinn meant by her quiet and lucid moments. "Why?" It was a simple question, one could have meant a slew of things and was the only one that came to mind as Hermione turned to look at her Fa.. father once more. Just that word in reference to someone other than the man that raised her made Hermione swallow at the pain it caused. She wanted to know this man, yet she dearly missed the gentle man that had raised her.
"Why seek you out? Why send you a letter?" He queried, his hand reaching out and grasping her own, the warmth of them a startling contrast to her own that felt cold.
"No, well yes I want to know the answers to those too, but why do you fight for…?" she let the words trail off, but the unfinished question quickly filled the room with tension. She watched as his face grew slightly more guarded.
"Because when I was young the world was a different place, Hermione. Because my family was losing their rights, lands, and traditions for the sake of a progress that no one wanted. Dumbledore's side supposedly won the war, but what did they do with it? Are things any better? Have muggleborns been integrated into society so that they are employable upon their completion of Hogwarts? Do creatures and witches have any more rights now than they did before the war? The answer is no. You have less so, werewolves are unemployable and left to fend for themselves, vampires are forced into starvation, witches have lost so many of their rights that the moment they procreate society sees them as little more than brood mares. Dumbledore and all his spouting of the greater good does just as much damage as the Dark Lord. I chose to rebel against the society Dumbledore and his kind were forming. Even after my time in Azkaban, I do not regret my decision." His hand found her cheek then, tilting her eyes up to meet him. "I won't force your hand Hermione, I meant what I said in my letter, I only wanted to meet you. Your beliefs and choices are your own."
"For the record," the dark witch interrupted, a look of disapproval in her gaze, "I think you and the Potter brat have been brainwashed and will both be led to a grizzly end by him like so many before you. I will try and change your mind because I don't think my husbands only living child should be cannon fodder for the greater good." Bellatrix was humming softly to Crookshanks now, and the image was so much like a mother cradling a child that Hermione couldn't help but gesture to the picture of her pregnant. The silent question had her fathers breath leaving him.
"Longbottom's." Bellatrix had moved from the window now and sat in the armchair opposite Hermione, looking at the picture with a mixture of pain and longing. "Trainee aurors that should never have been armed, let alone let loose in public. They were tracking a petty thief, and I was at lunch with my sister, I had only days left until my child would have been born." As she spoke her voice grew somber, and her hand rested against her stomach, rubbing as though she remembered the feeling of her own child that had once been there.
"They shot out a slew of spells, trying to cut off his exit when a simple anti-disapparition charm would have done a much more effective job. They cornered him in the apothecary and inside of using an incarceration charm she shot out a bombarda, shattering the glass front and sending shards of glass flying into the street outside. One shard caught Narcissa in the shoulder, and another went straight through my back and into my unborn child, taking him from me before he could ever draw his first breath." Her voice had turned to steal now, her eyes growing steely as she warred with the emotions that she was fighting back.
"I held my child just once, a broken little boy who looked so much like my husband that looking at him now still causes me great pain." She stroked her cheek against Crookshanks' head as she watched Hermione, comforting herself with Hermione's familiar in a way Hermione sensed she left few others near her to see. "They were never charged with murder, it was a tragedy, yes, but my son never had any justice. As grief ate away at me, the little bitch had a son of her own, had the happiness that she had stolen from me and the unfairness of it all broke something in me. So I took from them what was taken from me. Their future, their happiness. But a swift death would not suffice, it would have been too easy. So I broke their minds, broke them until their son could be looking them in the eyes and they wouldn't know him. The law would not give me justice, so I took revenge for myself. Augusta would never let them put her son out of his misery so I knew, even in Azkaban with those wretched wraiths that no matter what happened, they would always suffer far more than I."
She released Crookshanks then, reaching across the space between chairs and gripping Hermione's arm in a steel grip. "It's also why I won't let you make a decision based only on the hippogriff manure that Dumbledore feeds his order. For everyone that died by our hands, know that one on our side was killed too. There is no side that is better than the other, both are just as saturated in blood as the other. The difference is that we do not lie about it and call it something poetic to help us sleep at night. An ugly truth is always better than a pretty lie."
Hermione was startled when the witch kissed her cheek "Take your time to learn what you need to, Hermione, but do not take too long. Your father might not force your hand, but if I think you are becoming a pawn to the light, I will intervene. I watched the loss of one child drive him to drink, I will not allow you to drive him back there. He betrayed our marriage to have you, he broke that bond and broke what was left of my tattered heart, and yet I still love him enough to want his happiness more than my revenge." She gave Rodolphus a bitter smile then "Still as handsome as the day I wed him, and even though I hate him and he makes my blood boil, I love him more than life itself."
Hermione looked at the witch in confusion. She had so many questions, far more than those that she started with and yet she couldn't bring herself to ask about them, fearing that talking about such a loss would break the fragile state of the witch before her. She couldn't fathom the depth of pain that had caused Bellatrix's thirst for blood, or even loving anyone that much that you would do something worse than death, and shatter everything that made someone who they were. She didn't know how anyone could survive the pain that Bellatrix spoke of, and in a way, she didn't think the woman truly had survived.
"Hermione, we'll leave you for now, but that ring should you need it, can call me to you. You might not like the man that I am, or agree with my life choices and I do not ask you to. But know that nothing short of death itself will stop me from defending you, or coming to your aid should you ask for it." With that he stood, pulling her to his feet before him and smiling as he looked her over. "You are a beauty, and a miracle I very much do not deserve. Thank you, for trusting me just this once and letting me meet you. If this is the only time that such a thing should occur, then I thank you for the moment of peace after so long in the hell of Azkaban." His hand cupped her cheek as he kissed her temple and moved to his wife to leave Hermione's home.
Just when he was about to leave Hermione shouted. "Wait!" At their questioning look, she ran upstairs and pulled out a photo album that her grandmother had put together of her growing up. She had even caught Hermione's first bought of accidental magic in print although, as the muggle camera could not show the books moving it looked as though she was a toddler with a book mobile around her. She dashed back downstairs hoping that they had stayed and panting passed the book into his hands. "I thought you might like this, its, well they are muggle pictures so you might not want to display them, but they are pictures of me as I grew up. My grandmother kept annotations on the back so you can see how old I was and what I was doing. It's not much but I thought…"
She was cut off by a warm smile and a quiet "thank you" as he took the book from her. Bellatrix gave her a polite nod and with a "Pop" they were gone from her home. Hermione fell to the sofa and wrapped her arms around her middle, confused, elated and strangely bereft. She couldn't put her finger on why, but him leaving seemed to carve a hole in her chest that made her ache and want to call him back even though her mind told her that such an impulse would be bad. She opened her arms to Crookshanks and murmured "So that's my Dad…"