Chapter 1: 19 October
~5 months earlier~
~Hermione drummed her fingers on the table, her eyes flickering between Ron and Madam Rosmerta over at the bar. The moment Harry drained the last drops in his bottle of firewhiskey she said, "Shall we call it a day and go back to school, then?"~
Once they'd bundled back into their cloaks, scarves and gloves, they reluctantly stepped out of the warm pub and out into the howling October sleet. Harry's trainers instantly dropped into a puddle of slush and soaked completely through.
"Bloody miserable, should've just stayed up at school," muttered Ron, who stormed on ahead after Hermione.
"Wasn't miserable when you were looking at Madam Rosmerta in that short skirt, was it?" said Hermione with a loud scoff. She stormed ahead, plowing a trail of fresh footprints through the thin coating of snow.
Harry made to catch up, but Ron merely slowed down and rolled his eyes.
"Hermione's gotta chill. I don't know if it's N.E.W.T pressure or what, but she's been biting my head off all week," he said.
"Right," Harry grunted in reply. For one thing, he'd been in detention with Snape all week and for another, he was as frustrated with Ron and Hermione's incessant bickering as ever.
"You okay, mate?"
"Fine, just thinking." Ron raised an eyebrow, but didn't press Harry to answer. Besides, the wind was now whipping their faces with such ferocity it wouldn't have been possible to have a conversation if they wanted to.
Then they heard Hermione scream.
"Hermione!" shouted Ron and the two of them tore off after her. They found her behind Hogsmeade Station, pointing at something unmoving in the snow.
"What is it?"
"It's...it's her…"
"Who?" asked Ron pointedly, but Harry crept closer and was instantly filled with revulsion. He heard her voice inside his head-I killed Sirius Black! I killed Sirius Black! Are you coming to get me?-and felt his buried grief and anger bubble to the surface of his being.
"Bellatrix Lestrange. Alone in Hogsmeade…"
"We've got to tell someone!" said Ron as he drew his wand and pointed it at her.
"No!" spat Harry. "I want to be the one to kill her. She killed Sirius!" He pointed his own wand at her, but she didn't move. "Wait maybe someone got here first...maybe she's already dead."
Hermione frowned and knelt down over the horrible witch's unmoving form. "No...She's breathing...but something's wrong with her...she's injured. How did she get here?"
Harry stared down at Bellatrix. She was curled in a half-moon shape with her back to them and her mess of black hair matted with crusted frost and bits of twigs.
"Who cares, let's turn her in and go get warm," said Ron. Harry nodded in his agreement. As much as he wanted to finish Bellatix himself, killing her while she was unconscious wasn't worth making he and his friends murderers for. There were plenty of Aurors-Lupin and Mad-Eye perhaps especially-who'd be happy to do it after they got all the information they needed out of her.
"Calm down, Ron. She's no threat like this...besides, Dumbledore's out of town til Monday, Harry said," said Hermione. Harry's heart sank. He rarely caught side of the Headmaster as it was and now here they were, with one of the most notorious Death Eaters of all time, dangerously close to the school and he was nowhere to be found. Still, they had to make a decision soon. The weather was getting worse and the longer they stayed out, the more they risked other students finding them and causing chaos over Bellatrix.
"Well, we can take her to McGonagall, then. Or one of the Aurors by the school gates…" said Ron, who pulled his Gryffindor scarf more tightly around his neck as the wind threatened to tug it away. Hermione, however, didn't seem ready to leave any time soon. She crept closer to Bellatrix, kneeled down in the slush beside her and began digging through her school bag.
"She's bleeding pretty badly...I think I've got some dittany in my bag…"
"Hermione! You can't be serious! You know who she is-you know what she is!" Harry said exasperatedly, but still, he took a few steps closer and glanced down at the side of Bellatrix that was facing away from them. She had a black cloak shrouded around her, but he could still make out a deep slash between her neck and chest, like she'd been cut with a large knife. Blood poured from the wound and pooled around her face, staining the already dirty mix of mud and snow with an unnerving rust-colored hue. Hermione pulled a little crystal phial with a cork stopper out of her bag and let a few drops of its clear, green-tinged contents fall onto Bellatrix's cut.
"I know," she said. "But I just don't think we should do anything rash until we've got all the facts...whoever did this to her could still be around…"
"Whoever did this to her is on our side," muttered Ron darkly. Hermione rolled her eyes at him again.
"Not necessarily, Ronald, but naturally you know everything.."
Harry sighed and tried to mentally prepare himself for another week of their bickering. Suddenly, he heard a faint cry that extended into a full moan.
"Shut up, both of you! I think she's waking up!" He exclaimed and Bellatrix did indeed stir. She rolled over and faced them, tried to sit up, winced sharply and then collapsed back down.
All the while, he, Ron and Hermione stood frozen in place.
"Where...where am I?" They looked at each other, exchanging anxious glances, none of them wanting to answer her.
"What do you reckon…" muttered Ron. Harry didn't buy into Bellatrix's feigned confusion for a second.
"She's playing us, she's putting us on…" he said, but Hermione shook her head.
"I don't think she is...B...Bellatrix...are you okay?" She pushed Bellatrix's hair out of the way and put a few more drops of the dittany on her neck, causing the Death Eater to wince in pain.
"You know Ron, I used to disagree with you whenever you said Hermione had gone mental, but this…" Harry trailed off when Bellatrix looked directly at him.
"Please...everything hurts and I don't know where I am," she whispered with such desperation that he had to admit there was something a little off about her. Her eyes looked glassy and glazed over, milky silver where he knew Bellatrix's eyes to be dark brown. He shot a questioning glance at Hermione.
"I know a memory charm when I see one," she said slowly. "I've read all about them. See the way her eyes look cloudy like that and her expression is completely vacant even though we know she's bound to be in pain? Someone put a memory charm on her. A powerful one. And recently. We can't turn her in like this...she doesn't know any of the horrible things that she's done…"
"But why would someone put a memory charm on her?"
"Honestly Ron, it's not that complicated. Obviously someone thought she knew something she shouldn't," said Hermione crassly. Harry frowned while Bellatrix continued to stare intently at them from her position on the ground, taking in everything that they were saying.
"Then why not just kill her? The Death Eaters haven't exactly been known for their compassion, even with their own," he said, but Hermione had an answer for that, too.
"Maybe they cared too much about her to go that far. Maybe it was her husband? Or one of the Malfoys? They're her blood family…"
"But why would they want to curse Bellatrix?" said Ron. "She's on their side..isn't she?"
They all looked at each other. Was it possible she could have shown even a hint of remorse? Was that why the Death Eaters had done this to her? Could she have been like Sirius, falsely accused of the crime she was imprisoned for all along? No. She killed him, right before his eyes, he saw it...yet the woman lying on the ground in front of them didn't look like someone who'd ever killed or tortured anyone.
"I know what you're thinking Harry," said Hermione, meeting his eye. "And you're right, we can't just kill her or turn her in until we know the truth."
"Well now we've found her, we can't just leave her here," said Ron, raising his voice above the now fiercely howling wind.
" I know," said Hermione. "We'll have to get her up to the castle."
"Are you MAD, Hermione?!"
"Possibly…" she admitted. "But it's all we really can do. We can give her over to Dumbledore on Monday, but until then, we don't want to worry everyone, but we can't let her go...and this could be our last chance to get information out of her. She was very close to you-know-who, and after the teachers and Aurors take over, we won't be able to get near her...plus it's a little sad don't you think? Seeing her like this."
"Pathetic, more like," said Ron, but Harry had to admit she had a point. Even still, he couldn't see how they could in any way safely pull it off.
"Sure, that'll work," he said sarcastically. "Let's waltz Azkaban Escapee Bellatrix Lestrange straight up to Hogwarts, past Filch and his secrecy sensors, past all the Aurors and hide her right under everyone's noses."
"Well, that's sort of what I did have in mind, actually. If she's right under their noses, they won't even have reason to suspect anything. Besides, it's only for two days until Dumbledore gets back," she said. Still, Harry and Ron stared questioningly at her.
"Oh come on, it's not like we haven't done anything like this before. Norbert? Buckbeak? Sirius? I mean, we've got the Room of Requirement...and the one eyed witch passageway Harry used to take to meet us in Hogsmeade in the third year...and we've got an invisibility cloak."
Ron shrugged and Harry sighed in his resignation, signs Hermione took as indication that she'd successfully convinced them.
"Right...well..Harry, can you help me get her standing? I think her leg is broken, so let her lean on us if she has to. The cloak will only cover us-Ron'll have to meet us up at the castle."
"What? Why? What if it's a trap and she does something to you guys? I might need to-"
"And have someone in Honeydukes catch sight of your ankles floating on by? If you want to be useful, Ron, maybe see if you can cause some sort of diversion so Filch doesn't notice we don't come back with you...come on Bellatrix, we're going to take you up to get warm."
Reluctantly, Harry crouched down and tugged Bellatrix to her feet, upon which she immediately leaned against Hermione's left side as the gash under her neck began to ooze fresh blood. Ignoring a jibe from Ron, Harry took off the Gryffindor scarf from around his neck and carefully wrapped it around Bellatrix's throat to soak up the blood.
"Can't have her bleeding and giving us away," he said, though he regretted his decision a few seconds later, when the sleet picked up and stung at his exposed skin. He unraveled the Invisibility Cloak from his school bag with the arm that was not supporting Bellatrix while Ron looked on.
"Well, you seem to have everything in order...so I guess I'll just be going then. Good luck, mate," he said with an uncharacteristically hearty wave at Harry and no acknowledgement of Hermione.
She watched him disappear into the storm until he was truly no longer visible before she turned to Harry. "Well, I guess it's now or never then, isn't it?" She prompted, and he tossed the cloak over the three of them.