"Well... I suppose you two are old enough to know..."
When they went to Andromeda she first denied the whole thing. She then spent fifteen minutes admonishing Nymphadora which both Castor and Pollux watched with ill-concealed glee. And then, seeing as neither twin had been distracted, she decided to come clean and tell it all.
Except there wasn't much to tell. Yes, Bellatrix Black was their mother. They had been with Andromeda since they were two years old. Bellatrix was currently in Azkaban. She would be out in three more years.
However, the most interesting bit of information was why Bellatrix had gone to Azkaban in the first place. She was there because she had been a follower of the dark lord, He-who-must-not-be-named.
Pollux was in shock.
This was NOT a world without a Dark Lord!
He had been pretty happy till he found Castor could be another Tom Riddle, possibly one without memories of a past life. But now there was a full fledged Lord Voldemort walking free out there? How many were there! With his luck the diary horcrux was also activated and going around riding a bloody basilisk!
The Dark Lord, He-who-must-be-hyphenated was allegedly vanquished by The-Boy-Who-Lived, Harry Potter. Well that was a relief, he was almost afraid it would be the Longbottom brat in this world. Nice to have something predictable after all the shocks he'd gotten.
Hmm, speaking of the Longbottoms, how come dear Bella was only in for five years? Torturing the Longbottoms alone should have been worth life. Did she manage to bribe the wizengamot? The Bella he knew was too much of a miser for that sort of practical solution...
Unfortunately Andromeda had none of the details. There was nothing to do but wait for Bellatrix to get released (since obviously no one was about to let a pair of five, almost six year olds into Azkaban).
Andromeda suggested they write to Bellatrix, now that they knew she was their real mother. Pollux knew the prisoners in Azkaban almost never get to see their letters, but he wrote something anyway.
To a normal six year old boy, two years would seem like an eternity. But to Pollux, who had counted ages in another life they didn't seem so long.
The only notable things which happened in those two years was that at some point, Pollux started practicing occlumency - no doubt Castor was doing the same.
And the other notable thing was that Castor had joined, of all things, a muggle martial arts class! Tom Riddle would never have lowered himself to muggle ways of fighting!
But after thinking about it, it made a lot of sense. As Tom Riddle he had loads of magical power and could afford to bleed magic while standing, but those with low amounts of magic - like Pollux and Castor - needed to perfect magical control. And the first step to that was physical control. Martial arts were a very good way of making the body physically efficient, and therefore magically efficient.
The traditional way of doing that was through fencing and archery of course, but even among wizards that was so rare these days. He remembered Abraxas Malfoy being a mean swordsman, but even his own ponce of a son just carried a wand in his cane.
Pollux also joined the martial arts classes soon after.
Bellatrix was released from prison just before Christmas of 1987.
Andromeda had gone to fetch her from the Ministry of Magic and they had both floo'ed in in the evening when Castor and Pollux had just returned from their Taekwondo practice. She was looking thin and tired. Her eyes were closed and she was leaning against Andromeda for support - possibly both physical and emotional. She didn't seem to have the mad, insane energy he seemed to remember.
When she saw the two of them however, her eyes went wide and she rushed to embrace them. "MY BOYS!", she cried and started blubbering over them all about how she missed them every moment of staying in Azkaban. Castor and Pollux patted her awkwardly and tried not to comment on how their sweaty Taekwondo uniform was becoming tear-stained as well.
It seemed Bellatrix was not about to let the two of them out of her embrace for the rest of the day, so they just settled for hugging her back. If someone had told Tom Riddle he would feel safe in the embrace of Bellatrix, he would have laughed - after cruciating the poor chap, of course. But strangely, that is exactly how Pollux felt at that moment. After all this time spent worrying, suddenly it felt like everything was alright in the world.
"Let me look at the two of you" Bellatrix held them at her eye level as she knelt down.
"You two look so much like your father!" she exclaimed and started sobbing again.
Pollux had taken a good look at himself in the mirror after he'd learned who his real mother was. He and Castor looked so much like a pair of mini-Bellatrices that he had wondered how he had missed it before. But he had seen nothing that reminded him of any of the Lestranges. He supposed it was a distraught mother's whim to try and see something of her husband in her children.
That is, assuming they were LeStrange's children in the first place.
He decided to take the opening. "Mother, who was our father?" he asked. He noticed Bellatrix tightening her face, and turned to see Andromeda tightening her features similarly. There seemed to be a silent communication between them and Bellatrix smiled. She said, "Call me 'mum', boys. There is no need to be formal with me."
Andromeda seemed rather put-out at hearing that after five years of training them to be perfect pureblood heirs.
"Your father was a great man. I will tell you his name when you are older, but understand that he was a great man. He died for what he believed in, and he believed he could fix the whole world if he worked at it hard enough. Please don't ask me to tell you who he was right now, but know that he was someone you could be proud of, and he would be proud of two boys like you."
That settled it. There was no way any of the LeStranges was their father. (Tom Riddle had never bothered remembering which brother it was that was actually married to Bellatrix. As far he was concerned, Bellatrix was his.)
He noticed Castor was looking pretty ill. What's the matter, don't like being a bastard you bastard, he thought rather uncharitably.
It took months of nagging and bugging Bellatrix before she agreed to tell her tale.
"I guess you know that I was one of the Dark Lords most faithful followers. In fact I was his favourite."
Castor looked at Pollux, but Pollux was hardly going to contradict her.
"At first we thought the Dark Lord was doing a good thing. He was going to restore the might of magic to its former glory and end the threat of the muggles. It was not like we were doing anything bad either. I was actually pretty happy and proud to be part of the revolution."
Sure, they weren't doing anything bad. Just torturing muggles and practicing dark rituals, thought Pollux.
"But even then, I should have seen how the Dark Lord was only destroying the wizarding world. Pureblood family after family perished to his whims. The Prewetts, the Bones... every other week another family would be gone down to their last heir. We weren't getting alarmed, because it was just the blood traitors, right?
"But it was not like our side was faring any better. Our own fathers, uncles, cousins were dying off, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. And they didn't always die to the other side; in fact Dumbledore's people tried to avoid killing whenever they could. On the other hand, the Dark Lord would often kill someone to punish them for failure. He would kill someone's heir if they displeased him. The Dark Lord was single-handedly wiping out the wizarding world and we were just too blind to see it."
Pollux felt the stirrings of something he was made familiar with only recently - remorse and guilt.
Bellatrix continued, "When father and uncle Orion died I should have seen what was happening; instead I threw myself in my own madness. All across the family of Black lay in disarray - Andromeda was disowned, Aunt Walburqa was mad, Sirius was as good as disowned. Narcissa should have been with me but her husband did not allow her out of the house - perhaps he was smarter than my own husband, now that I think about it.
"Only Regulus stayed with me. He was almost as faithful to the Dark Lord as myself."
"I was perfectly happy with being disowned, you know", quipped Andromeda, lightening the mood somewhat.
"I know that now", Bellatrix smiled. It was a genuine smile which looked out of place on Bellatrix's face to POllux, who was only used to seeing her grin like a complete maniac. "But at the time I pitied you for losing everything. I also hated you for betraying all of us. And somewhere in a corner of my mind I also loved you because you were my sister.
"I was confused and angry, and because of that I only threw myself into the service of the Dark Lord more.
"Then two things happened. One, Regulus died, leaving me utterly alone. And the Dark Lord declared him a traitor.
"Two, I discovered that I was pregnant with the two of you."
Here Bellatrix paused to take a breath.
"I knew the Dark Lord wouldn't mind me having babies. We were all cattle to him, and the women were just there to give him more future soldiers. But it was then that I seriously started thinking whether it was a future I wanted for my children. The Dark Lord did not share anything, and especially not the affection of his followers. Of course, I really had no love for Rodolphus, but it skewered my heart to put aside my affection for Regulus when the Dark Lord declared him a traitor. I had already been forced to sever my ties to Andromeda and Sirius. What if one day I would be forced to give up my affection for my unborn children?
"It was then that I decided to abandon the Dark Lord."
"I planned for several weeks. I was on a short time-table because I didn't want the Dark Lord to know I was with child. If something went wrong I would rather have him punishing just me for my failure and betrayal, rather than come after the two of you.
"It all fell in place during one of the raids. I went to the place unseen and set up some equipment. During the raid I faked my own death and ran away from there."
Bellatrix was obviously not going to reveal the gruesome details to a pair of seven year old children, but Pollux could read between the lines. Bellatrix had to have stowed a woman polyjuiced or transfigured to look like her at the site of the raid. No, polyjuice was probably out - there was no way she would get to visit the site of a raid less than an hour before. Besides, there's no need to assume the woman was alive before Bellatrix "arranged" her demise.
He was impressed with the thoroughness with which Bellatrix had gone on with her defection. She would have had to mimic the magic of the dark mark on the hands of the doppelganger, and then destroy her hands so that no one can examine the body and tell that it was not an actual Dark Mark. She must have done it pretty well to fool the Dark Lord himself!
"I had a fake identity all setup. I went over to the muggle side, and within weeks I had another fake identity setup by a muggle forger. I gave the second identity to a muggle traveller and got myself a third set of identity from another muggle forger. In this one I deliberately gave a lot of details wrong, so that it wouldn't show up in any search made on my description. I figured that if anyone pointed it out I'll just confound the guy.
"But in general I was determined not to use magic at all unless my life or the life of you two depended on it."
"But hold on," interrupted Andromeda, "Wouldn't You-know-who be able to track you with his magical mark?"
Pollux had been wondering that himself. The Dark Mark worked in two steps. First, during the branding, the Dark Lord places a spell on the memory of the event, so that every time someone remembers the event He would know of it. And second, when the Dark Lord summons a follower a sharp pain reminds the wearer of the occasion when he or she was originally branded. Once both steps are completed the Dark Lord knows where the bearer of the mark is and can either bring them to himself, or take himself to their location.
"I don't know. Several times my Mark flared, but I couldn't dare think of the Dark Lord - if I was tempted even for a second it would have been my downfall. I forced myself to think only of my children."
Of course. A sufficiently strong occlumens could force themselves to not recollect the memory of the branding, and interfere with step two. The Dark Lord would never even have realized she was alive. Trust Bellatrix to unwittingly come up with a way to break one of his better spells!
"I had you two in a muggle hospital. I decided to name you after the Gemini - it's an Black tradition to name their children after the Stars after all - with the second name of Black since I myself had renounced my husband when I left the Dark Lord. I gave different names at the hospital, of course, but in my own mind you were always Castor and Pollux.
"I found that life was tough for a single woman with children in muggle Britain. But I had one thing in my favour - my good looks. At the earliest I convinced a muggle to marry me, and with a husband and children I was respectable enough when I moved into a new muggle neighborhood."
Pollux wondered if magic potions were involved or just plain old fashioned seduction. Probably the latter, seeing as Bellatrix was trying not get herself noticed by the magical world.
"I convinced myself I was just an ordinary muggle. I convinced myself I was going to stay in this neighbourhood forever. I convinced myself I would never return to the wizarding world.
"That is why when my new husband started hitting me, I did not turn him into a toad and step on him."
Bellatrix had tears in her eyes and Pollux was suprised to find himself having an irrational anger at this unnamed muggle who dared beat her.
"What was his name, mother?" He asked quietly.
Bellatrix must have seen something in his eyes, because she wiped her tears and said "It doesn't matter any can't harm me now."
"Perhaps we should talk about it when they're older...", suggested Andromeda.
Bellatrix seemed confused before looking at the twins with worry in her eyes. She must have liked what she saw because she got a shrewd look in her eyes as she said, "No, they can handle it. They are very mature for their age - and I can only thank your wise upbringing, Andy. I don't know how I would have raised them."
Andromeda blushed at the praise.
Bellatrix continued, "My only worry then was for the two of you. I didn't want to upset your life, and for that I had to pull in reserves of patience I didn't know I had. At some point I started thinking I deserved all the punishment I was getting - both for who I was and who I had been.
"And then my whole life changed again. On the Halloween when you were just two years old, my Dark Mark stopped hurting and all but disappeared. The Dark Lord was gone!
"Of course I had no way of being sure. I didn't even dare hope. But the signs were all there. A discreet trip to the Leaky Cauldron just confirmed it for me. The Dark lord was gone and I could return to the magic world!"
She paused as if trying to remember something painful.
"I could just stay in the muggle world, I suppose, but I missed my magic. And it wasn't like I had a dream life with the muggles.
"I wondered what to do about my husband. I wanted to crucio him till he went mad from the pain - but I wondered if I wanted to go back to the same dark place I had left. In the end I just obliviated and left him one day and went to Andy."
No way she left it at just that, thought Pollux, but before he could interrupt Andromeda picked up the tale... "This was in the middle of November, I think. I must have hexed her pretty good before I realized she wasn't shooting back." She grinned at the memory.
"A good thing I wasn't, or else you'd be dead", muttered Bellatrix, showing some of her old fire. Turning to the boys she said, "She didn't believe me at first, but I convinced her I had defected to the Light side, so to speak."
Not to mention Andromeda would have been Bellatrix's only hope. If she had gone to Narcissa there's no saying what Lucius would have done. He could have killed her in revenge for betraying the Dark Lord or handed her over to aurors to support his own story of being under the Impreius. Or, knowing him, he would have killed her first and then informed the aurors, spinning a story of how the Dark Lord's most fanatical follower came after him and he was forced to kill in self-defence.
"If I hadn't believed that, I had to believe what she said next," continued Andromeda, "She wanted to leave the two of you in my care and turn herself over to the aurors."
She got up and started pacing, "It was a bad time. Crouch, Bartemius Crouch that is, the boss of the aurors, was putting people into Azkaban without trials. I tried to convince her not to do it, but she wouldn't listen."
"I had to face punishment for everything I had done. Even if I had to spend fifty years in Azkaban, I wanted to be able to say I paid for my crimes when I came out" Bellatrix said, holding herself up with pride.
"Then something unexpected happened; Crouch's son was found to be a Death Eater!" continued Andromeda "Crouch just had to resign from his post, and he was replaced by Amelia Bones. Bones was known for being a stickler for the rules, so we figured now was the right time to turn herself up."
"Ooh I remember Barty Crouch - the son I mean. He was one creepy fellow." Bellatrix shivered theatrically.
Pollux had to bite his teeth to refrain from making any comments about pots calling kettles black.
Andromeda favoured Bellatrix with a skeptical look and continued, "But of course we weren't about to let her meet the head of the DMLE without legal representation. We convinced the Black family barrister, that's Mr. Graves we met last summer, to take her case to the wizengamot.
"The case went on for nearly a year. The prosecution wanted to throw the book at her, but they didn't really have any notable evidence on her. The only reason she got sent to Azkaban was because she didn't claim she was under the Imperius unlike some others I could mention." Finished Andromeda.
"Well you could hardly expect me to behave like that poofter who married Cissy", began Bellatrix knowing who Andromeda was referring to, but stopped in confusion at the stern look Andromeda was giving her.
Her confusion was relieved when Castor piped up "Mum, Aunt Andy does not want you to use bad words where we young impressionable children can hear and learn them." Just like that, with perfect seriousness.
Both the adults gaped at Castor before they started laughing. It seemed the tension in the room was suddenly gone.
After that Bellatrix became a part of the household. It seemed she had no marketable skills in the wizarding world, and even in the muggle world she had been a full-time housewife. So she decided to pay her rent by helping Andromeda with household chores.
It became immediately obvious that household chores and Bellatrix Black were a bad combination. Over a period of four months several garden gnomes, doxies, spiders and various vegetables must have died painful and brutal deaths at the hands of Lord Voldemort's former favourite and most vicious, before Andromeda decided to stage an intervention and send Bellatrix out job hunting.
Bellatrix tried every shop in Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley before she announced one day that she had been hired as a store assistant at Zonko's.
Her announcement was met by silence. Pollux wondered if Zonko was in fact as insane as he pretended to be.
Bellatrix, apparently undisturbed by the silence, continued "I have a uniform too. It's a jester's uniform, but modified to fit a woman."
Castor sharply drew his breath and muttered something that sounded to Pollux like "bloody harlequin". It was obvious he was trying very hard not to laugh. Pollux himself pitied the poor children who would visit the store and get traumatized by the sight of Bellatrix dressed like a clown.
But to everyone's surprise, Bellatrix was actually good at her job. It seemed her combination of overenthusiasm and insanity was a good fit at Zonko's. With the clown make-up on what most people say was a beautiful energetic woman with a good figure. It seemed sales had increased at Zonko's.
At some point of time Bellatrix found out that Sirius was in Azkaban without a trial. She started pestering Mr. Graves to see if he could get Sirius's sentence reduced. He agreed to try, but made no promises.
In time the twins were eleven, and their letter to Hogwarts arrived.
Author's Note. Whew. Another chapter finished. Man, these chapters are growing longer and longer!
I got this finished faster than I expected. I'll try to post the next chapter in the middle of next week, or the weekend after.
Please read & review.