Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns everything, I own nothing.
A/N: Alright, here we are at the last installment of part 1. The next installment is another 'intermission'. I think it is an entirely necessary addendum so you, dearest readers, can deduce where I stand on canon with this story. Then the fun stuff starts.
I truly value and appreciate any feedback you might have, so please review!
Chapter 9
September 2, 2003 Hastings, England
'I'm here to see Lestrange.'
The Aurors nod at her. 'She's got no wand and the wards keep her in there. So go ahead. She can't hurt you.'
Hermione moved forward, when one of the Aurors, a tall scruffy-looking man, added in a low voice, 'And we respectfully submit that you do not attempt to kill her, please, however tempting it might be. We don't much fancy the paperwork. We've just barely patched her up from the last visitor.'
Throwing him a look, she proceeded through the door and into a hallway. I guess this is why Kingsley wants me to take over as warden, she mused toward the sitting room she could feel the wards move in around her, permeating the air, bouncing off her skin. Her heart beat loudly in her ears. This was a bad idea. Trauma, the soul healer called it back then. Trauma. The source of a great deal of her trauma was on the other end of this hallway. Am I ready to deal with this again she wondered as she walked carefully on the carpeted floor. As she moved closer her thoughts became more frantic. This woman was evil. Why was she doing this again? Oh, yes, Bellatrix Lestrange was also a brilliant, shiny walking tank of information that nobody else wanted to deal with. Right.
And suddenly, there she was. Wearing a straggly pair of black robes, her hair wild and unkempt, eyes dead. She shrunk into the sofa like a frightened animal, shivering. She was smaller than she loomed in Hermione's nightmares. Thin. Ragged. Small.
Defeated.
It was not so difficult to take her seat across from Lestrange, after all. She had the upper hand. She may have tortured me, but I won in the end. I've been in that body. She's only human. She's not quite sure if trying to convince herself of the latter is working, in spite of what she sees before her.
'Madame Lestrange, have they told you why I'm here to see you?'
'No.' her voice was quiet, childlike, although no longer in that unsettling crazed way Hermione had heard so many times before. 'They don't tell me anything.'
'Do you... remember me?'
A whisper. 'Yes.' Violent shivers follow.
I take it the Essence of Remorse worked, then. Good. She has no interest in feeling bad for this woman, even if she dimly recognizes those shivers as the lingering effect of being tortured once too many rather than the shivers of guilt.
Bellatrix seemed decidedly harmless now, so that was at least settled. It's really all she needed to know.
Hermione muses that she has truly spent an extraordinary portion of her life being frightened of this rather feeble womans' cause. Her teenage years were spent in a perpetual state of being terrified for her life and the life of her friends. But things have changed around her, and she realizes that finally, she too truly has changed. She has fought, and fought again, and she has been victorious. This is the moment, Hermione thinks, she can stop being afraid. Death Eaters were only people, after all. Some of them powerful, yes, but she was more powerful now. The woman before her looked like she could be shattered easily, and she was supposed to be the most powerful of them all.
'Very well. I am simply here to assess you, which... well, I think I'm finished, actually. I assume they'll tell you in due course what the next step will be. You'll hear from me as well, I'm sure.'
Hermione gets up and starts to approach the woman sitting opposite her, but she catches herself in time. I don't need to be polite. I don't need to shake her hand. She'll be given to me to do with as I please if I say the word. She turned and walked away, not looking back.
...
September 2, 2003 Tonks residence, outside Hailsham, East Sussex England
'Could I... talk to you?'
'Certainly.' Andromeda Tonks put down her grandson and followed Hermione into the garden, her emerald robes billowing lightly around her. The sun was shining brightly and while the warmth was welcome the September glare was not, so they took refuge under a tree. Sitting in the shade on a conjured bench, Andromeda leant back and cast a sideways glance at her visitor through the wild curls framing her elegant jawline, marking her so very obviously as the sister of a madwoman.
'So, what is it? Something the matter?'
'Well, yes. Actually. Oh, this is difficult to ask... but, well -'
'Is it my sister?' Andromeda interrupted shrewdly.
Hermione nodded shamefacedly to her shoes, uncertain if the subject was too painful for Andromeda.
'Kingsley told me you went to see her. I suspect I know what you're looking for, but I don't know that I have any answers for you.'
'Tell me about her. Please. It would help to know what I am getting into should I say yes.'
Andromeda looked at her, clearly sizing her up.
'She was brilliant, as you know. Kind and funny and gentle once, too. An excellent sister. The two of us are only a year apart, and we've always looked so similar people thought we were twins growing up. We were always together, running around the grounds, zooming along on our toy broomsticks, you know the sort of thing. There weren't any other children around, really, but it didn't matter. She was wonderful. We bickered continuously from birth until I was 18, of course, but in a sisterly way. She was a judgmental cow at times, certainly, and she took the pureblood nonsense our parents spouted a bit more to heart than me, but still. She was lovely to me until the day I married Ted, however much she disapproved.'
'She's just so different from what I thought she'd be. I was prepared to confront my worst nightmare again, and then she was just... someone else.'
'I know. She tends to be... well, I hated my family for a long time, especially her. She's very intense and focused and it was very disconcerting to have her focus all her hatred on me. She was a right bitch when I left and I feared for my life and Ted's life for a long while. But the fact remains that Ted and I weren't killed off by Death Eaters through all those years, nor did they take much of a shot at Dora until the end. Narcissa wouldn't have, of course, but Bellatrix? I would have believed anything of her. But I am not a fool' Andromeda drew herself up and the glint in her eye marked her more clearly a Black than anything Hermione had seen of her before, 'Bellatrix does not miss unless she wants to miss. She had a clear shot at my daughter at least twice, and myself countless times. We wouldn't have been difficult for her to get to, especially before we got involved with the Order. And yet, here I sit.'
'Here you sit.' she nodded.
It was all she could say. It seemed her way forward was clear.
...
September 19, 2003: St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London, England
She had expected blood, gore, illness, death. Everything from the most grisly, to the truly touching or the absolutely maddening even, had all been duly expected. But when Hermione stepped through the door on the 5th floor she was confronted with Draco bloody Malfoy wearing full Healer robes and... well. She had not expected that at all.
'Hello.' she tried uncertainly, and he looked up from the parchment floating in front of him. His eyebrows shot up and he stared at her, shellshocked.
'I didn't know you were a Healer.' she continued, trying to stir him from his evident stupor.
He recovered slightly, now looking mostly startled.
'Well, I... I, well... I am.' he finished lamely, flushing red. 'I better be off.' he practically squeaks before dashing down the hall.
Hermione watched him go. She had known, of course, that he'd not been convicted of any crime and that he'd spent a very long time in a closed ward in St. Mungo's. She had not known that he'd never left.
Continuing down the rather deserted corridor she reached a locked door that demanded she hold out her badge for inspection. This must be the closed ward where she'd be learning Soul Healing, advanced memory charming and some Legilimency to boot.
Only ten minutes passed before she realized that Healer Malfoy works in this department.
...
October 15 2003, St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries, London
'I often think how different things would have been without the first war hanging over Slytherin.' Draco sighs. 'We were all so weighed down by everything. We wanted to be on the right side of history, you know. To not be ashamed of ourselves or of our parents. We wanted them to be right so badly. If everyone had simply admitted they were wrong we could probably have avoided the second war altogether.'
...
October 23, 2003, Ministry of Magic, London England
'I do not truly understand what it is you want me to do! Is it really so important to keep her alive?'
'Until we've got her full deposition, I'd say yes, it is.' Kingsley boomed, evidently annoyed.
'Why can't she just stay with the Aurors, then?'
'It's too big of a risk. We've not yet been able to keep any of them from cursing her left right and centre, and frankly I am at a loss for how a Healer would contain her. You've already got most of the needed training, you've got a position that enables us to easily hide Lestrange, and you've got the ethics not to kill or torture her. It's easiest if it's you. The less people involved, the less mess.'
'It's not right, Kingsley. I've spent enough time dealing with the likes of her in my life.' she tries to throw it at him, hoping for guilt.
'Oh, excuse me, Hermione, while I cry in a corner for you.' pipes up Andromeda. 'Some of us have been dealing with these people since the 1960s so perhaps you can just put on your patience cap and pipe down, can't you?'
A stunned silence followed. Andromeda blushed.
'So, I've taken after Ted's way of expressing himself a bit over the years...' she mumbled, the blush growing deeper. Finally, clearing her throat, she pressed on.
'Anyway, the Department of Mysteries has quite a few questions for Be... Lestrange, as well. Some of the magic Voldemort used... well, we want to know about it. There is also the security question, and the Department of Mysteries has quite a strong record of keeping things secret that need to be, unlike the Auror department.'
...
October 23, 2003, Portkey Main Office, Ashford Kent
'Stop sulking, Hermione.' Ron grumbled as he circled several posts on a rather complicated map he had spread over his desk.
'I'm not sulking! I just... I think it's bloody ridiculous, is all.'
'Well, I've got enough on my mind, so give me a hand instead, alright?'
'You're really doing it, then?'
'Five dimensions, complete British grid, 50 stations.' he smiled broadly. 'Limerick to Hogsmeade 10 times a day! All approved.'
'I never should have given you that physics text.' she smiles back.
'Yeah, well, no more sodding apparition for me, at least.'
'I've really gotten quite fond of apparition myself.' she confessed idly, taking a closer look at the map.
'Well... I'm not saying it isn't a cool party trick or that it hasn't saved our lives, but it also nearly took my arm off, so now I don't have to use it, I don't want to.'
Flashing him a smile, Hermione crossed around the table to reach for a diagram.
'I hear you've got yourself a new girlfriend as well as a new job.'
Ron snorted and rolled his eyes.
'I think you have to actually go out with somebody at least once before they're your girlfriend, Hermione. Bloody Ginny, don't listen to her!'
'When's that particular social occasion taking place, then?'
'Tomorrow, as a matter of fact.'
'Who is it?'
'Wouldn't you like to know?' he grinned before deadpanning. 'It's Pansy Parkinson. Is she a good kisser?'
She punched him in the shoulder and he grinned at her.
'Alright, alright!' he exclaimed, raising his hands above his elbows. 'I give up. It's actually Lisa Turpin.'
She fell back to her seat.
'The Ravenclaw girl?'
'Well, yeah.' he replied, a bit sheepishly.
'With the...?'
'Indeed.' he grinned. She laughed.
'Lisa Turpin with the gigantic tits is your date?'
'She is indeed.'
'Well, that's very exciting. Good for you, Ron.' she smiled at her friend, genuinely happy for him.
'I am fairly excited about it myself.' he paused, 'You know who you should ask about their love life, though, is Tonks. I hear she has got herself a new girlfriend.'
'Really? Someone young and attractive and working in the Department of Mysteries, perhaps?'
'So it's true! You're going out with her!'
'I am not, but I have heard the rumours. She's actually going out with Angelina Johnson. I'm not sure where the mixup happened, but somehow everyone thinks it's me. Perhaps we should have some sort of tawdry affair, since everyone seems to think we are anyway. Might as well got something out of it.'
'I can't believe she's into women. I always thought..'
'That her marriage to Remus was strange and suspect and that they didn't seem to like each other very much? Come on, Ron! They're both as gay as a pair of rainbows on legs. At least they've both admitted as much now.'
Glancing at her watch she discovered the time had run quite later than she expected, and she burst forth to the apparition point 'Oh shit! I'm late to meet Luna and Harry! I'll see you later, Ron!' before disappearing.