Even in the dark, when the night sky was full of looming grey clouds and the crashing waves were deep black, there was something especially threatening about Azkaban Keep.

The island it grew from was barely above the water, craggy, sharp and vaguely volcanic-looking even from Harry's vantage point. Its rough surfaces and cutting edges were emerging and submerging from the surging wash constantly, and the only way Harry could tell the difference between the sea and the stone was the violence of the movement where white spray erupted from the gloom.

There may or may not have been a collection of damp, pathetic gravestones in the deepest shadows of the keep, but it was the building itself that grabbed and held Harry's attention.

The keep itself was tall, dark and craggy, almost like a cliff-face rising up out of the depths in protest against the power of the sea. Made of the same dark rock that the island seemed to be, its tall, stern silhouette stretched into the sky like a spear. Higher even than Harry's elevation on his broomstick, its sheer, slick sides reached upwards for hundreds of feet before battlements, bartizans and parapets bristled out of its walls.

Dementor-chill radiated outwards from it like ice, and the magic in the fortress stones blazed in Harry's vision like a brilliant, cold sun. Whipping in and out of hearing with the winds that buffeted the island came the screams of the prisoners.

Harry swore.

"Fred, I think we made it. Bloody hell, that's terrifying. Ah…can you change back, do you think?"

Fred's pine-marten form, still clinging and shivering in Harry's left hand, chattered at him furiously, scolding.

"Yeah, well," Harry argued back. "I'm not approaching that until we've made a bloody plan or two. Can you…I'm not landing on that," he gestured with his chin to the sodden rock far below. "We really should have had you practice changing on a broomstick in somewhat safer conditions first."

For a ginger pine marten, Fred had a very scathing glare.

"Oi," Harry's scowl wasn't quite as frustrated as it could be; it was true he should have planned better. "I didn't notice you suggesting that either!"

The next few minutes were longer than they should have been, as Fred's little form stretched and grew and clung to Harry with rather more desperation than either wizard had experienced before.

"Bloody hell, Crowley!" Fred finally managed, finally perched sideways in front of Harry on the broomstick, his white-knuckled grip still fisted at the front of Harry's Cloak. "You could have stopped being invisible for all of five minutes! That was more nerve-wracking than I signed up for!"

"Ah!" Harry blinked. "I knew I forgot something."

He reached up to push off his Hood, so at the very least Fred could see his face.

"Screw you too, arsehole," Fred grumbled, his mind already turning away from Harry to focus on the challenges in front of them. "Blimey, this place is bleak! And here I thought Dad was exaggerating or something."

"Hrm?" Harry's sense of the seriousness of the moment was somewhat diminished by the tiny little woollen hat that was still attached to Fred's head, now flopping around in the wind, thanks to some well-cast temporary sticking charms. But it wasn't worth pointing out right now, not when they were almost guaranteed to need to both change back into their alternate forms in a minute, so he pushed the thought from his mind and focused.

"What do you think?" Harry finally managed.

Fred grimaced. "Worse than I thought, frankly. Can we do a loop?"

Nodding in silence, Harry did so. It had been a long, long time since he'd tried to ride his broomstick with a passenger. Even longer since he'd put a passenger larger than he was in front of him, but the Firebolt held up well despite the wind and weight. They managed a full circle of the prison in about fifteen minutes, and both teenagers were very quiet once they'd done the full loop.

"We're not going in the main doors," Fred finally broke the silence. "There's no way we can stay out of sight going through that."

"Agreed," Harry nodded. "Er…how closely were you looking at the windows?"

Fred shrugged, then shivered in the wind again as more sobbing screams reached them. "Not close enough, I don't think? I mean…they're all tiny and dark to me. You?"

Harry winced. "A bit better, I think? Ah…it looks like the upper levels are the high-security parts."

"How do you—?"

"The spells on the windows," Harry explained. "The windows up the top might be open to the elements – it must be absolutely freezing up there – but not even birds or insects or anything are getting in through those. I can see the charms," he added after a pause.

"Huh," Fred nodded thoughtfully. "I guess that's one way to stop prisoners getting mail, huh?"

"I was more thinking of Sirius."

"Hrm?"

"I'm trying to figure out: which window he escaped out of. He would've been in one of those up there."

"Ooh, good question."

"I mean. Dogs aren't supposed to be great at multi-story drops."

"What?"

Harry was a bit too cold to feel the hot flush of embarrassment. "What? Oh… Er, well…since it's you he probably won't mind, but. Um. Not my secret to tell."

"Riiight. I'm sure I have no idea what you might be talking about. Nevertheless, speaking of windows, what's caught your eye for us then?"

"I'm not landing on that," Harry pointed out, gesturing uselessly at the slippery, craggy rocks below the tower. "This reminds me an awful lot of that time I broke into Gr—" he coughed. "My safe house the first time, actually."

"You broke into a saf—You have a safe house? Wait, wait, wait." Fred held up a gloved hand to pause the conversation, shaking his head in bafflement. "That's…Remind me to quiz you about that some other time." Fred's tiny, red-and-white hat wobbled wildly as he spun his head back to stare at the Keep. "Does that mean you've got a plan then?"

Harry licked his dry lips and brushed at the hair that was dancing across his vision and catching at his eyelashes.

"I should probably start this off by saying that I've never tried to fly a broomstick as a crow before, and I don't think the tail bristles will fit through the bars anyway."

Fred, whose influence had once prompted Ginny to say that you 'sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve' was delightfully interested and not at all abashed by the slightly doubtful tone that crept through Harry's voice. "Brill! Sounds awesome," the older boy exclaimed cheerfully. "So we fly halfway through the bars, I'm guessing? That's a good start. What then?

Harry could have kissed the boy. If only all his plans that this much support!

"I don't suppose your dad's ever told you whether visitors can cast spells in Azkaban? Or are we stuck spelling things out here and just hoping that they last?"

Fred pursed his lips. "Good question. Lemme think."

The silence between the two was filled only with the sound of wind whipping and the occasional scream that carried to them from within the dark, stone prison.

"I don't know," Fred finally muttered, looking up from his musings to glance at Harry's visible head. "I mean, visitors always cast the spells for the patronus and whatever, but I don't know if there's any tracking of spellwork once they're inside. Y'know," he shrugged a shoulder stiff with cold, "that might reveal any unsanctioned visitors, or be logged somehow, or reveal our…Hey!"

His whole body jerked as Fred stared with indignation at Harry, eyes piercing. "You're even younger than me! How come you're happy to flit around casting spells here without worrying about the Trace!? I can't even do that yet!"

A warm trickle of relief travelled through Harry's body when he realised that Fred hadn't identified some gaping hole in his plans. "Oh, an experiment of a few years ago that worked out in my favour. Did I never tell you about that? Don't worry about it for now, but I guess that does mean I'll do all the patronus work? Anything else we need to worry about?"

From the look on his face, Fred was reluctant to cease his sulk. "…Visibility?"

"Fair point."

Fred's discomforted look – despite all the evidence, he'd still been thinking of Harry as some kind of law-abiding child, hilariously – put a small smile on Harry's face despite the location. "I guess we'll go ahead," Harry finally spoke up. "You'll have to shift back for a bit, I think, and grab hold of the broomstick from the other side of the window bars, once you're in."

Immediately thereafter, Harry checked to make sure that his Cloak was covering the whole of his body, popping his Hood back up again, before reaching out to Fred and rapping his wand neatly on the older boy's forehead.

The redhead spat out a, "Damn it, Crowley," as the disillusionment spell travelled down his body in ripples. The last bits of Fred that Harry could see clearly were awash in tiny goosebumps, and then they were safely unnoticeable with only half a broomstick faintly visible in the night sky, were anyone looking.

"Here goes nothing," Harry muttered and turned to face forward, the magical glow of Fred clearly visible in his mage-sight while his friend's body began to shrink rapidly.

It turned out that breaking into an empty Azkaban cell unnoticed wasn't as difficult as Harry had expected; it was only the high risks that came with failure that kept Harry's muscles tensely alert and Fred twitching with every sudden noise.

They'd snuck in through the window neatly enough: Harry sent his Crow patronus through the window first – to illuminate the cell and do the spellcasting from outside any wards that might record him. Then pine-marten Fred and the front end of the broomstick were in through the gaps between window bars; the older boy shifted back to human long enough to hold the broom handle while Harry turned crow himself, and side-stepped along the handle to pass through the wards.

Finally, wizard-Harry had stuck his mokeskin pouch out through the window again so that he could drive the full broom-length into its extended insides, cleverly and neatly managing the whole operation with militant economy and leaving no evidence of their presence behind.

It was only a matter of shifting back into crow and pine marten to squeak through the cell bars into the dank and dirty corridor, and then Harry and Fred were pacing carefully along the keep hallways in search of upward-travelling stairs and the witch that they were interested in: Bellatrix Lestrange.

Two floors up, and having needed to backtrack only once to avoid a trio of dementors, Fred spoke.

Harry jumped a bit when he did so; his nerves were still taut, goosebumps in evidence, and the cells that they were passing were filled with the sound of soft whimpers or, even worse, no noise at all.

As such, Fred's voice was oddly loud and intrusive in the disquiet, even taking into account that all the usual joie de vivre in his voice was gone. His speech was awkwardly hurried and forced, as if he was distracting himself from a horrible nightmare.

"Y'know, Crowley, when you floated the idea of doing this, I thought it was going to give me bragging rights and all, you get me? First wizard to ever break into Azkaban. Second wizard to break out again. It sounded really good while we were all tucked away safely at Hogwarts."

Harry flinched as the crumpled form of the wizard in the cell they were passing twitched towards their noise and proved he was alive by groaning, "Let me die, please, whoever you are…I'll do anything."

Fred's disillusioned arm grabbed blindly for Harry's invisible one, and they fell silent and rushed on. It took Harry two or three steps to remember what Fred had just told him.

"What?" Harry's own voice was off as well. Not echoing, not loud, but somehow intruding into the torment of the poor wretched people he was passing. "Oh, ha…bragging rights. Well, I mean…as long as you don't go around actually telling people…"

Fred twitched at the despairing cry of the wizard they hadn't stopped to help and swallowed loudly. The cold light of Harry's patronus cast odd light on his disillusioned face.

"I just…I thought it was going to be a bit of a lark. M'brother was so peeved when I reminded him that I was the best at spellwork and would make the better companion for you."

The silver-glowing Crow that flitted before the duo made a sweeping turn in the air – no dementors ahead – and came back to Harry and Fred, causing the chill in their bodies to recede just a little.

In the small comfort that grew, Harry remembered to take a deep breath instead of tiny huffing gasps. "Uh huh?"

"I'm never going to come here again," Fred told him bluntly, tongue tripping. "When dad described this…This is worse than I thought, kiddo. It's not just the dementors – it's the wizards in here!"

Another cell that they were pacing past had an eldery-looking witch curled up in a corner and shuddering in full-body-shaking, silent sobs. Harry quickly averted his eyes.

The scent of rotting straw and stale urine that filled the space with a strong, acrid stench was more difficult to ignore.

"It's not just the bad memories," Fred continued, apparently running his mouth to keep himself from thinking more depressive thoughts. "But the idea that...that everyone has given up hope. I mean, if one person lacks hope you can be inspired by others, right? But here, they're all convinced there's no point to, well, living? If you're one of the rare innocent ones or have someone waiting for you—" Sirius' comparative sanity and its causes had come out over the past few months of reporting, "—the others will drag you down to their level!"

Harry bit his lip and cocked an eyebrow. "Yeah. As if hearing your mum's murder wasn't bad enough."

Fred stumbled. "That's what you...? Oh, Merlin, Morgana and Maeve! Bloody hell, Crowley, and you come here voluntarily!?"

"I did tell you I had important plans." Harry would have rolled his eyes, but he was too busy checking the dark corners for unpleasant surprises, his wand out even if he shouldn't be using it in here.

They fell silent as they came up to the next set of spiral stairs, narrow and dark and enforcing single-file as it did.

Finally, when they came out into the next corridor – not pleasant by any means, but still better than the encroaching darkness of the stairs – Harry remembered to keep his friend talking for their sanity.

"What's all this about 'Crowley', anyway? I don't recall being part of any conversation to discuss, er, me?"

Fred's scoffing chuckle was a ghostly echo of what it would be on a usual day, but he clearly appreciated Harry's effort to distract him, by the way the reflected light on his blurry face shifted.

"I can't call you by your legal name in here, kiddo! It's one of the first rules we learnt as little first years, all the way back in the day."

A particularly desperate scream resounded from somewhere up ahead of them, carried to them on a gust of forceful, fierce air, and Harry and Fred both paused mid-step until its otherworldly echo died away.

They'd just quickened their pace again when scrabbling sounds of jabbering and shaking started up around them.

Harry twitched violently as the cells around him suddenly came to life: the whimpers and keenings that the prisoners around them responding to the cry made the hair on the back of Harry's neck stand up and he clearly saw Fred succumb to a full-body shiver.

"Oh yeah," Fred spoke quickly, not hysterical at all. "It doesn't work well as an anonymous prank if a fifth-year prefect overhears you call your brother by his name. Just saying."

"Oh, makes sense," Harry agreed, his pace picking up again. He reached out with his left hand and grabbed at Fred's robe sleeve, hoping that the touch would somehow ground them both. "So, 'Crowley'?"

"Oh," Fred's hand also reached out and clasped at Harry's cold fingers. He clenched at them so hard that it hurt. "I loathe to admit it, but that was River's idea, actually." He swallowed. "You know River, of course, our…mutual friend, our third?"

"Yes, yes, go on?"

"People think he's our mature influence and all, but I'm proud to say our third gives as good as he gets. He saw an opportunity for chaos, and he took it."

Harry thought that this was exactly the kind of atmosphere that should have his footsteps echoing loudly on the dark, hard stone floor of the corridor, but instead, his feet were practically soundless amidst the gloom.

"Chaos," he muttered, sending a boost of magic to the glowing form of Crow, and getting a wash of bodily warmth back in response.

"Oh yeah," Fred answered, huffing and puffing out white mist in the dark. "You've already got a 'Crow' after all. And you both look, shall we say, very similar?"

"Is this another quip at how 'scrawny' I am?"

"Only a little bit," Fred puffed. "'Cause if you look the same and sound almost the same, then your secret's even safer with the misdirection. I mean," he gestured with their clasped hands, "take a look at that."

Harry blinked, paused and shot a look at his companion who was pointing up ahead towards his patronus.

"…Yeah?"

"That's not Crow, kiddo." Fred finally had to explain, when Harry stayed silent. "That's, uh, you."

"Nah."

"Yeah!"

They had to pause their conversation again when they found another staircase upwards and travelled single-file in the tight spirals until they reached the next level. Harry felt absurdly relieved that Fred didn't want to let go of their hands either, even if it did make some of the steps feel awkward.

"I realise you probably haven't actually looked at yourself much like we have – other business keeping you busy, I understand – but we've played around with mirrors to figure ourselves out a bit and it's occurred to me that you probably haven't. 'Crow' cuts quite a majestic-looking figure: dignified, competent, mature…you get the idea."

"I'm not sure what you're going for," Harry huffed white mist back at his friend, "but I get the feeling that you're building up to an insult."

Fred snorted. "'Crowley' is, um, how to put it. Much more of a scrappy little thing. Constantly windswept, still growing, defensively prickly at times…much like that." Again, he gestured ahead towards Harry's patronus, and this time Harry narrowed his eyes to really scrutinise it.

"He's just cold."

"…He's a patronus, mate."

"…There's a bit of a winter breeze in this place," Harry protested. "He's, uh, wearing his winter feathers."

"…He's a patronus."

They paced on for a few moments, footsteps hurried, until Harry broke the silence.

"Crap. So I'm my happiest memory? I…" He thought about all the people in his life, his found-family, his friends, witches and wizards and house-elves he'd lost last time, now regained, and what he'd had to do to have that. What he'd survived. The patronus brightened as he did so.

"You're empowered, is what," Fred told him with an attempt at a smug tone. Harry would have enjoyed the banter were it any other time.

"So who are you then?" Harry shot back, his conversational responsibilities distracting him from the quivering wizard beginning for his mummy on his left, and the mad, empty gaze of the witch in the cell they passed after him. "Mischief or Managed? Wai-wait-wait. Mischief, or Mayhem?"

"Ooh, Crowley," Fred told him with a halfway decent attempt at pride in his voice. "I like how you think. Those're way better than 'Martin' and 'Pinenut'."

Harry snorted.

It took far too long for the two teenage wizards to reach the top floor of Azkaban. Their luck at avoiding the dementors had run out shortly after their conversation, and Fred had had to slip back into the form of Mayhem to ride in Harry's pocket when they came across the first, lone guard about five floors up.

A floor or two further, and the patrolling dementors travelled in pairs or trios, and Harry had to call his patronus back under his Invisibility Cloak to avoid drawing attention.

Even further up, and Harry found himself alternating between pacing past the dementors with his Invisibility Cloak, or starting and stopping his way forward as Crowley.

They did, however, appear to be almost all descending from the top of the tower, so maybe the night watch of whatever would give him half an hour's grace without interruptions. Harry hoped.

It wasn't easy for a bird who hadn't taught himself to fly yet, but finally, they got there. The top floor.

Returning to human form took mere moments after all the other stuff they'd managed tonight, and then Harry and the disillusioned Fred stepped forward to peer through the bars of Bellatrix's cell.

It was dark. It stank. Old straw and other detritus littered the floor so badly that for a moment Harry couldn't spot Bellatrix herself.

Then, he did. Her rags were dirty, dark and hung from her skeletal form like they might hang off a coathanger. Grey skin was visible through gaping holes in her prison uniform, and her hair – he'd had such an impression of her wild hair, before – her hair hung bedraggled around her face like lank, dead weeds. Made into a pathetic bird's next. Later abandoned.

Harry swallowed. He needed to judge this just right.

"So much for Voldemort's famed lieutenant," he scoffed.

There was a moment of absolute stillness, and then Bellatrix was abruptly there. Leaning before him, hands clinging to the bars of her cell and an absolutely unholy light of passion in her mad, crazed eyes, she was instantly full of fury.

"Who dares to use his name in vain!?" the witch demanded, even as her eyesight refused to focus on Harry, merely feet away. "I'll kill you. I'll KILL YOU! When my Lord returns, he shall smite you into ruin! Who dares?!"

She was…grotesquely skeletal. Lips parched and peeling, her whole face was the sickly colour of some ungodly curdled milk and corpse grey mix. Some of her nails, which Harry could see around the iron bars, were so long they were bent, black with grime. Others were snapped short, stubby and torn. She was bleeding in places, from where she'd scratched herself and the stones of the keep had rubbed against her bare skin; her sickly skin hung, sagging, from the protruding bones of her face, her stomach and ribs, her forearms. Her stink was incredible.

Behind Harry, Fred bit back a retch.

"There's no guarantee he'll want you in this state," Harry continued, halfway amazed at himself for letting the words come out strongly, evenly. As if he was unperturbed.

"I am my Lord's most faithful!" Bellatrix rasped. "He will know…He will reward me…"

Harry shrugged off his Invisibility Cloak entirely, handing it back to Fred without looking away from the crazy lady. Her eyes fought to understand him, and she stared at the suddenly revealed Harry with a dark-eyed glare that could strip paint.

"Who are you, to question my Lord?!" Bellatrix demanded in a hoarse voice.

"What? You don't recognise me?" Harry faked shock. "Ah well, you've been out of action for over a decade, you know. If your Dark Lord needs help, what do you have to offer him, hm?"

"My, my loyalty shall be rewarded. I…I have never failed him. I will never recant, will never renounce—"

"Yes, yes." It was easy for Harry to overwhelm her voice, just because he was healthy and she was…most assuredly not. "Whatever you say. But you're not very useful, are you? And, as we all know, the Dark Lord does reward," the words dripped off Harry's lips like dew drops falling loudly into a pool of silence, "loyal service."

The dark witch froze as if petrified, and then tried to come at Harry, screeching, as though there were no bars in her way. Hands scrabbled but couldn't reach him. "Who are you? How dare you claim to speak for my Lord? Where is he? Have you seen him? Take me to him! How dare you pretend—I am my Lord's most faithful! I knew he would return! Bring me to him! Take me there! Don't just stand there—"

"Yes, yes," Harry waved her protestations away. "Can't help you with that, sorry. Releasing you from prison just doesn't work in with my plans. But you could help."

The mad glint in her eyes really was disturbing, and her yellowing teeth should really not be shown in such a broad, unbalanced grin.

"Ohhh," Bellatrix crooned instead, and her voice cracked like a rusty gate. "The little wizard has plans and he needs Bella's help." Unsurprising to Harry, because he'd been with Sirius when he was in a similar state, but clearly shocking Fred, her mood changed abruptly. "What is it you want, little wizard? Who are you? What are your plans for my Lord?"

He needed a light touch. Just…implying things. Never lying, because that would ruin everything, but juuuust the right words…

Harry shrugged. "I've plans to resurrect the Dark Lord."

Two gasps, one significantly more passionate than the other.

For a moment, Harry turned his head. "What are you surprised at? We spoke about this!"

Fred's voice: "Sorry. Just wasn't expecting you to…come out and say it."

"Yeah, well…I did." Harry turned back to face the dark witch. "But I'm not going to do it for free."

"THE DARK LORD DOES NOT NEED YOUR PATHETI—"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. But he'd probably appreciate some quality help. He's kind of scraping at the bottom of the cauldron right now, y'know?"

"My Lord and Mast—"

"Yeah, Barty Crouch Jr was helping him out," Harry ignored her fuss and spoke evenly. "Don't know if you kept up with that drama. But he's just been caught. He's got Wormtail remaining, of course," – under the disillusionment spell, Fred twitched – "but we all know how well that's going to work out. And if I don't help 'smooth the way' and all, he's probably going to have to get Lucius Malfoy involved, and I'm conflicted about that, and I'm sure you have opinions on the matter too."

Muttering, Bellatrix continued to stare at Harry with fixed, dark eyes. "That useless, uppity, shallow, cowar—"

"Yeah, so I'll be helping with his resurrection whether or not you get involved," Harry continued, feeling his heart rate increasing as he spoke the bare, bald truth. "But I'm not doing it for free, so I needed to figure out one of his followers I could approach. You get the right of first refusal, I think. I figure you wouldn't want to see one of his 'lesser followers' gaining his recognition and appro—"

"What do you want?" Bellatrix demanded loudly. "What are your plans? How can I trust you?"

"Well," Harry sighed expansively. "All you had to do was ask. I've brought my unnamed and anonymous friend here to act as our witness and bonding agent, should negotiations prove successful. All that remains, after I decide you're worth the effort and you decide to trust me, is to pick and chose the wording of our Unbreakable Vow."

He almost had her, she was wavering. Even in this darkest and most depressive of places, Harry had offered Bellatrix hope and she wanted it so much this might work…

Harry's pulse beat rapidly in his throat, even as he tried to breathe through his mouth.

"What do you want from me?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know," he lied. "I was thinking of your property, if you've got anything decent." She didn't. "Any secrets that you might tell me that are still useful these days." They wouldn't be. "Or maybe just some gold. Not some gold, a lot of gold, obviously," Harry clarified. "But I'd like to be able to get it myself without waiting for you to no longer be…undisposed," he waved a hand, "as you are."

Sullen, Bellatrix Lestrange stared at Harry from eyes sunk well into her face. It sent a long shiver down his spine, and the hairs on the back of his neck rose as if a rabid dog was mere feet away from him. Which, Harry supposed, there kind of was.

"I was thinking that you would provide me a certain amount of gold in galleons and I would promise to bring Voldemort back to life, up to and including using my own blood and magic to do so," Harry suggested. "Do you have a secret stash of money, or will you have to give me a note for the goblins? Obviously, we'll word the vow so that if I go" – when I go – "into your bank vault, I won't touch anything you haven't promised me, but if I have to get the goblins involved then we are making damn well sure that all legalities on your end are sorted out. In fact, how about we decide that I have access to your gold before I resurrect the Dark Lord? I'd hate us to overlook some small, tiny detail and have the goblins kill me for thievery before I could spend any of your fine gold, hm?"

"You want gold." Shock, and then a tiny smirk began to make its way across Bellatrix's haggard face. "As much gold as you can carry in your bare hands, perhaps? Haha! And in exchange, you will do your best to return my Lord and Master to full health and power."

"Full health and power, you say?" Harry scratched at the back of his head. "I mean, probably, but I'm not a potions expert; you'll have to give me a little more leeway than that."

Had Voldemort been at full power after his resurrection last timeline? Harry had no point of comparison.

"I'm just not an idiot, and I'm about to be bound by an Unbreakable Vow. And only my bare hands?" Harry scoffed. "Perhaps I should ask someone else. You can barely carry any gold in just your hands, and I need to make this worth my while."

"Haha! A pathetic wizard such as—"

"And I might need gold for the rituals and whatnot as well," Harry deflected naturally. "If it's in service of Lord Voldemort himself, twenty galleons will leave nothing left for me. It's not really worth my time if that's all you can offer me. I know there are some other loyal death eaters just down this way—"

"Don't go!" Bellatrix spat. "We'll keep going. Negotiations go like this, right? Right? I must be the one to help the Dark Lord return to glory." Finally, she abandoned her small, raspy chuckle to let loose with her that eerie, high-pitched cackle that went on and on. "Bella will be the most loyal; the Dark Lord shall return with ickle Bella's help, and she will rise up and be great!"

The laughter had her double over and wheezing unhealthily.

"Yeah, sure," Harry muttered, hoping to cut her off before she died or something. Then, he sat down just out of arm's reach to grab a quill and parchment from his mokeskin pouch. "So. The Vow. Let's sort out the details and make this plan happen…"