Chapter 4: 27 October

"How was Quidditch practice?" asked Bellatrix when Harry strode into the Room of Requirement that night well after midnight.

"Completely lousy," replied Harry honestly. Quidditch was one of the only things he was allowed to safely talk to her about and besides that, he had an overwhelmingly strong desire to vent to someone unrelated to Gryffindor or the team at the present moment.

"Ron did seem a bit...agitated last night...I wondered…"

"He talked to you?" asked Harry, surprised. For all he'd heard, Hermione and Ron didn't talk to Bellatrix that much during their nights on watch. Hermione often tried to interrogate the Death Eater, who in turn grew upset when she didn't get answers to the questions she posed back to Hermione about her missing memories and her past. Hermione then ended up spending a lot of her time on homework. Ron, though he'd never admit it, was terrified Bellatix was going to lapse into her evil ways at any moment and Harry knew he dreaded being alone with her.

"No, but he seemed agitated and he muttered something about Quidditch, I thought-"

"Well, you thought right," Harry heard himself say only to feel bad instantly. Ron was his best mate, what was he talking about him to Bellatrix Lestrange for? Maybe there wasn't much point in keeping things from her after all. "See, the thing is...Ron's my best mate, but he's not the best-I mean, he's brilliant-when he's on form...but he lets nerves get the best of him, even at practice, and then he…"

"Flops," Bellatrix finished for him.

"Err...something like that," Harry replied, only to feel guilty again. Ron was his best mate. What was he doing telling Bellatrix on him for?

"Have you talked to him about it" said Bellatrix.

"Err…"

"I'll take that as a no. You've just got to get his confidence up, it sounds like. You said he's on form when he isn't nervous...is that true?"

"Yes, I mean, I've seen Ron make great saves-like last year for instance, he was so good we won the Cup...but it took him a few games to gain his ground and now it's like he's lost it all over the summer."

"Have you no way of convincing Ron in advance that he'll play well in the match?" Bellatrix asked. She seemed to be hinting at something obvious, but Harry wasn't following.

"No...well, we all tell him we know he can do it and everything...but unless I could predict the future...but even then he wouldn't believe it. We're both hopeless at divination." He smiled and she laughed musically again before rolling her heavily-lidded eyes.

"No, I mean really convince him...like a trick."

"Trick Ron into believing everything will definitely be alright...but how?"

"Yes...maybe even trick him into thinking luck is on his side…" Bellatrix was definitely smirking now, and in that sort of all-understanding Hermioneish way, like she knew something he didn't.

"Luck? No...you don't mean...how did you know?"

"You aren't the only one who vents to me."

"Hermione?" Harry asked, but Bellatrix merely shrugged as if she wasn't about to give anything away without more effort on his part...but Harry already knew.

"I'm tired of this bed. I feel like an invalid. Let's move somewhere else and talk."

"Where do we…" But as soon as she said it, a change overcame the little space. The two chairs normally reserved for Ron and Hermione changed shape and merged into a comfortable-looking black couch trimmed in indigo lace and pushed back against the window overlooking the snowy grounds below. Bellatrix tossed away the covers of her bed with a flourish of her bandaged hand and relocated herself to the couch.

"There. Now we can talk as friends." She patted the space beside her and Harry felt a spark of adrenaline, fear and excitement. She wanted him to sit beside her. Should he? Was it a trap? Could he fight her off if need be? Very quickly he decided that yes, given he had a wand and she didn't and that she was still injured and he wasn't, it was probably safe to sit with her. She watched him, her legs crossed and her messy hair falling over her shoulders and still smirking like she could see his brain working around this pivotal decision.

Then, as though no time had passed at all, Harry crossed the tiny bedroom to sit beside her-not too close, but not too far away, either.

"You er...smell nice," he said. A musky, dragon's blood kind of smell.

"Thank you. I've found that with the exception of food, my wand, and answers, this room gives me anything I like...including my favorite shampoo."

"Speaking of answers…" said Harry. "Why did Hermione tell you about the Felix Felicis?" Wasn't she breaking her own rules about not telling Bellatrix too much? Was Harry then, now more at liberty to discuss things more intimately with her? What else had Hermione told her?

"She really doesn't think it's right that you won the potion...she thinks it's cheating." Did she know about the Half-Blood Prince's book, too? Maybe he wouldn't press this yet.

"But it is! I mean, if I use it on Ron at the match like you're saying!"

"She's right-you are thick." Bellatrix laughed, in a warm cackling sort of way this time, like chunks of wood in a fire. "You don't have to use it...Ron just has to…"

"-think I did. Bellatrix...you're brilliant!"

"We Slytherins are known for tricks like that." She was smiling, but her eyes looked sad. "Well, now we've got that sorted. I wanted to talk to you," she said and her eyes looked sadder.

"Oh. About?"

"Me. This place. You said before that you would tell me what's going on."

"Oh." Harry frowned. He had told her he would tell her...hadn't he? He knew she could tell he was struggling and failing to reason his way out of it.

"I've been here a week now. And before you try to lie, I already know it isn't any kind of hospital. I know I'm in the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts. I also know I'm trapped here in some kind of section of the room of lost things and even though I'm almost physically healed, I still don't have my memory, or my wand, and I still can't leave."He could see tears welling up at the corners of her eyes, could see them fighting against the thick eyeliner gathered there, against Bellatrix's own resistance to pain.

"Well...err..what is the last thing you can remember?"

"See, that's the complicated thing. It's not so simple. It's not really one thing I remember before I blacked out. It's a series of things and non-things at the same time."

"Meaning?"

"I remember everything...as clearly as one can remember things that happened long ago...from up until I was about 17...and after that, everything is blurry. I know that my little sister got married and had a baby, but I don't remember the baby's name. And I know I was married at some point, but I don't know when or to whom. And I remember little day to day things like times I went to the grocery or the pub, but I don't remember where I lived...and Harry, I'm really scared." She let her arm fall against the arm of the couch and cast her face away from him, probably to hide the single tear he saw escape its confines and fall into her lap, where it soon became lost in the fold of the thin black robes she was wearing.

Harry didn't know what to do. In a way, she felt like a friend and if Ron or Hermione or Neville or Ginny was upset, he would want to get them feeling better as soon as he could, in whatever way he could. But this was different. Bellatrix was not his friend...and the pain, what she was feeling, what he could feel radiating off of her in spiraling waves, wasn't an ordinary upset. It was a lost, confused, lonely sort of upset...the only thing he had to associate it was with a memory. A little boy alone in a dark cupboard under the stairs in the house of an aunt and uncle who never wanted him, knowing there was something...something he didn't know. Dreams of green light and high, merciless laughter...Harry saw an arm he recognized as his own reach out to touch her shoulder and he shivered even though her skin was rather warm.

"It's killing me inside to ask this of you...but Harry, you can't leave me and if I must be here...you can't stop coming to see me. Not until everything is okay again…"

"I think you and I have different ideas about what 'okay' is, Bellatrix."

"Harry...please…"

"I'll be here as long as-"

"Really, that's all I needed to hear," she said, cutting him off. She tossed his hand away and rubbed the tears out of the corners of her eyes, covering them with yet another different kind of laughter, forced and choked up this time while she muttered something that sounded like "being silly." But Harry didn't think she was being silly at all.

"Maybe...things will be better (he was careful not to say 'you' or 'feel,' sensing she was strong like Ginny and wouldn't want her emotions called directly into question) if we can sort out some basic things you do remember. To start, what is your name?"

"Bellatrix Marie Lestrange, formerly Black," she said with conviction.

"Good...and how old are you?"

"I feel like I'm still 17 since that's the age I remember most clearly...but I know that can't be true since I remember my little sister turning 19 and having her baby. So I must be in my 20's or 30's...but like I said, I don't know. Harry, please. What happened to my memories? You know what happened. I know you do." She was trying to keep her voice even, but Harry could sense the desperation in it anyway.

"Well, I don't know for sure. But I think someone took your memories."

"Took them? But who? And why?"

"I don't know, and nor do Ron and Hermione. We found you this way. We thought maybe you knew something you shouldn't have."

"Whatever I might have known is gone now," she said as she shrugged. "Bastard got what they wanted, I expect." She was quickly returning to herself...her new self, her raw self, but herself nonetheless. She turned towards him and let their eyes lock for a brief second that hung in the air between them, bearing the weight of everything. Then those eyes found his forehead so many eyes before them.

"You...you have a very interesting scar, Harry. You probably have a very interesting story to go with it," said Bellatrix.

"Like you I don't remember the story that goes with it," said Harry, not completely lying. She smiled and put a finger to her lips.

"Then we don't have to talk anymore about it. Not today, anyway. But maybe...on other days...we can help each other remember." Her presence was binding then. Maybe it was her smile, or her eyes, or the snowy moonlight glowing silvery on her skin...maybe it was the fact that she didn't keep staring at his scar, but he couldn't have looked away from her if he wanted to.

"Yeah, Bellatrix, that's-"

"Please. If we are to be friends, then you may call me Bella." Bella. It sounded nice in his head...like a charm. The kind that was powerful and beautiful to look at all at once-like Incendio or Aguamenti.

"It's Halloween in three days, isn't it?" she said. "I've been smelling the pumpkin and cinnamon coming from the castle for the past few days now….the Halloween feast was always one of my favorite days at Hogwarts...I would love to see it again."

"Well, you know we can't do that...but I'll be sure to bring you plenty of the food-and some pumpkins, too, whatever I can nick."

"We can have our own feast," said Bella. And her eyes sparkled with new fire all of a sudden.

"Sure, it'll be….spectacular." He'd said the first word that came to mind. Spectacular?!

"I'll look forward to it...and Harry? Thank you." She smiled...and laughed again, her musical one this time.

He didn't know why it hit it so powerfully then, when maybe Hermione'd come to her own conclusions already, but the Bellatrix before him wasn't the same woman who'd murdered Sirius or tortured Neville's parents or professed her love for Voldemort...the woman before him was Bella who'd never even heard of Voldemort. Here, now, she wasn't a Death Eater and he wasn't the Chosen One. She was just Bella. He was just Harry. And he'd never felt this way before.