I was going to post this yesterday but I got distracted by Dx2. OH WELL
"Hey, Bella… I think we need to get going." She's calm, but firm, and I can only nod in response.
We start walking off the bridge, Narcissa still stirring in my arms. As we begin our exit, I look out into the ocean and notice the creatures dwelling. Both magical and muggle, true, but all dangerous. Even if we all had magic, I doubt that'd be enough to prevent the multitude of sharks from ripping our limbs off.
"Bella?" Cissy says slowly, and she looks around, "Bella?"
"I'm here Cissy. How are you feeling?" I ask her kindly, and she merely continues to looks around.
"I… I can walk." She doesn't answer, and though I feel a little worried about her, I can't really prevent her from walking. I set her down gently, with Hermione lifting the charm she placed her under, and she gets up gingerly. Once she stands up, she notices Hermione. Narcissa was acting as suspicious as I was, but now she almost seems… familiar?
"Granger?" She says, looking oddly cool and composed, "What are… where are we?"
"What do you remember?
"Memories… I have… memories. Of my son, Draco. It's disjointed. I have some from when he was 3 years old, and I have some from when he was… 16, perhaps? One, in particular, sticks out to me." She gives Hermione an odd glance, "It was the summer before his second year, as I recall, and he was complaining about the… muggleborn that was beating him in all his classes. He was extremely indignant, and I remember Lucius arguing that he should try and do something about her. I don't quite recall how it ended up like this, but I do believe Lucius tried to curse him. Fortunately, Draco was able to dodge it and I was able to calm Lucius down."
"That sounds like Draco alright." Hermione snorts, "Do you remember anything else? About… me, being in Malfoy Manor?"
"...Yes. It's really… fragmented, and broken, but." She turns, slowly, towards me and she looks at me as though she doesn't know who I am… She's looking at me like I'm just some 7th year, "Who is this? This can't be…"
"We need to get to Diagon Alley." She avoids the answer, but turns her back to the both of us, "Telling you everything now would be useless. We need to get you two wands."
"I thought we couldn't use them?" I ask.
"That was just an educated guess." She sniffs, "I can admit to being wrong, and I have been wrong several times in the past."
"Not according to Draco. Didn't you try and 'free' house elves?" Narcissa… I feel odd, now, calling her Cissy, says with amusement, "S.P.E.W., wasn't it?" Merlin, was that supposed to be an acronym for something? That does sound like something a second year would come up with.
"I was excessively idealistic." She answers coolly, "Can we get moving? I don't want to stand here and get ambushed by whatever's waiting out there."
"Right." I want to get moving too. I want the full answers, which I don't think are coming until we get to Diagon Alley. Narcissa nods as well and we hurry off the bridge. Hermione, leading the way. She points to the stairway down to the road underneath, and we hurry down. Once we get to Upper Themes St, Narcissa grabs both of our arms.
"We can't walk down this street." She warns, "There's something there, besides that building. Some sort of runic trap, almost. I'm not sure what it's going to do, but it looks connected to the building." She's pointing at the road, and I can just barely see what she's talking about. Hermione notices it too, and she groans.
"Damn, you're right. I'm not sure I can disarm it, either." She murmurs, "Let's try going towards the river end of the building. The, er, tripwire only goes across the street, and I doubt they'd put a second one in that little alleyway." So we slow down quite a bit, making sure we don't run into any traps. Once we get to the intersection, we head down to the left and I can feel us sandwiched between two buildings, that if they both exploded, there was no way we'd survive.
Luckily, there seemed to be no problems, and we made our way next to the river. The sludgy brown of the Themes disgusts me, not to mention the various monsters, but I can't let that bother me now. We make our way up the walkway, keeping silent. I guess we're trying to make sure we don't attract attention, but it's not like we've seen anyone else. Anything else, either. Hermione points towards a small little alleyway to make our way back to the street, and we follow her.
"How odd." Narcissa notes, "Why wouldn't there be a trap here?" She points towards the small but foreboding tunnel in front of us, and I can't help but agree.
"I suspect they expected someone to get trapped by that earlier instance, and not this one. Still…" She waves her wand expertly, scanning the tunnel with various diagnostic spells, before nodding at us. We start inching our way through the miniature tunnel, with Hermione leading the way.
"Narcissa." I say quietly, trying to not let Hermione hear, "Who… what's going on?" With you, I wanted to ask. With me. With anyone.
"... I'm not quite sure myself." She admits, "I have memories of myself from the time period that Granger has described, and everything she says rings true to me. Well, they don't ring false is a more accurate way to put it. I don't know her very well, as I'm not sure we've met all that often… but Draco, my son, has talked at length about her. She's very smart, and a favorite of the staff. A teacher's pet, perhaps." She doesn't say it with any malice, which… well, considering people have used that insult on me…
"You have memories of me, too, right?" I ask. She grimaces, but nods, "Tell me." I know Hermione told me off for this earlier, but I still want more information. Still… I still want to believe in myself, that I wouldn't torture someone for no good reason other than the love of some man.
"... I would rather Hermione tell us everything first." She shuffles closer to the Muggleborn and that just sets my mood down lower than it already was. My sister is afraid of me… Or the me that I become, at least. How could I let myself become that kind of person?
Right after exiting the tunnel, I can sense something. An eerie, dead feeling. I can feel the times when I'm in my bed, in the Slytherin dorms, cursing the utter pointlessness of this. The classes, the books, the everything. I can feel the despair that followed when my father told me I would be marrying Rabastian Lestrange, and my first instinct was to fight him… but I fixed my face into a smile and said okay. The helplessness I felt when my father went off on Andromeda for daring to ask questions about blood purity and muggle-baiting, and I said nothing.
I can feel… something. In the soul I thought was dim and fading away.
"Dementors." Hermione says firmly, "There are dementors in the area. Three in total, perhaps. Be careful about the things it makes you feel. They aren't… they are real, yes, but don't give into them." She's so… brave, and stout, and I'm… I'm fucking shivering. Narcissa isn't looking very good either, but at least her fucking knees aren't knocking together like a coward.
Who am I? I thought myself smarter than everyone else, better than everyone else… but am I, really? I've learned from books. From family. From the dark, and the light. And yet… I quail at the sight of three dementors. Not even SIGHT! We just FEEL THEM! Merlin!
"Shite. I worry this is going to give away our position. Bellatrix, Narcissa, find someplace to hide." She directs us easily, and I feel a strange desire to stay, even though I can't help one single bit… almost as though I were trying to prove something to myself. But… When Narcissa drags me back a few yards away, I can feel my knees calm down.
"There!" Narcissa points, and I see three of them appear from behind some trees. They're moving quickly, and they're headed straight for our caster. Merlin, Merlin, if she goes down, we'll have nowhere to go. We will just have to run, futility, against these horrid, disgusting creatures, until we can't run anymore and they steal our souls.
"Expecto Patronum!" She shouts, and a perfect patronus bursts from her wand. The cute little otter causes the dementors to fly up into the sky, and seemingly to the other side of the river… She barely looks affected by them, and I can't believe how much better she is than me, "Well, shall we go?"
"Thanks, Hermione." I say quietly once we make our way back over to her, shuffling as though I was caught with my hands in the cookie jar.
"Uh… no problem." She sticks her wand back into her robes and we continue on our way. We're moving much slower than we were before, because if there are dementors around there have to be other creatures as well.
"You cast that spell very well." I say, in order to break the silence, "I've never been able to cast a Patronus. I've tried over and over, but that's the one spell I could never get the hang of… it infuriates me. I can cast magic so much more powerful than that, so why can't I…"
"... Do you even have a memory worth using?" She questions, "My best friend… well, he's the best out of all of us in DADA, and he had all the motivation in the world to learn it. But it took him a long time, with a lot of attempts against a… well, a boggart pretending to be a dementor." She frowns, "His life was never great. His aunt and uncle abused him constantly, and it was hard for him to find a memory good enough in the wake of that. You spoke of your problems with your parents, right?"
"That's… perhaps that's not all it is." I sigh, stopping at the intersection to allow Hermione to scan the area, "While it's true that my parents are small-minded, awful people… I've never really cared enough, about anything, to be happy. There are only three things that make me happy, and none of them are really fulfilling… My sisters, for one. Even if Andromeda is a Gryffindor pretending to be a Slytherin and Narcissa has an unhealthy attraction for that awful Malfoy boy-"
"...True." Narcissa agrees with me? This must be her future memories speaking, not the one I know. She's obsessed with the little snob.
"I love them with all my heart. Not that that means much… Magic makes me happy too, but it's rarely challenging. I just keep learning and learning from books, even from our library full of hard, dark spells, and it's just so easy, you know?" Hermione looks understanding, which I suspected, "Everyone kept warning me that 7th year was this hard, arduous thing, and I thought it was a JOKE. Really? THIS was hard? Lastly… Ah, well…" I turn red, not wanting to say it, but…
"Her secret girlfriends." Narcissa fills in, amusement dancing in her eyes, "She must've slept with all the girls in the school who were open to that sort of thing. Even with a couple of teachers…"
"Teachers? Really?" Hermione looks like she wants to admonish me, but she just looks amused.
"I slept with the Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher my 7th year… and then, when she ended up pregnant, I slept with her replacement." It wasn't really that big of a deal… both of them were under the age of 30, "But even that… it wasn't fulfilling, you know? Nobody I dated was going to have a future with me."
"Because you were going to be married, to someone against your will." She finishes her spells and we continue, "Arranged marriages are barbaric."
"I agree. But I wasn't looking to fight with my parents about it. Not because I couldn't, or anything… but I honestly hadn't dated anyone worth fighting for. The truth is… When you told me I would become a person that would carve Mudblood into your arm, I was frightened. Not because I couldn't fathom me becoming that person… but because I could."
"Hmm. How so?" She doesn't look offended, but she is keeping her eye on my face.
"Well… The Wizarding World is so stagnant! Magic is this amazing thing, you know? We know that everything works. The spells, jinxes, curses. Runes, whatever. But we know so little about HOW it all works!" I seethe, thinking about all those teachers, "By my 7th year, I was smarter than all of those stupid morons called teachers. Not because I KNEW more than them. No, the exact opposite: Because I can admit I don't know enough! No one does! All of them are so… sure of themselves. So pompous."
"When you know full well that if you asked Flitwick how, say, the Cheering Charm worked… he wouldn't have an answer." She guesses, "You want to know why the spells work. You want to search for the answers to questions no one really cares to ask, let alone answer."
"Which is why the only job I'd ever be interested in is an Unspeakable. It feels like they're the only ones actually putting thought into anything! But… that's… That's it. That's all I really feel passionate about. Other than that. I just… I just can't bring myself to care all that much."
"So, if you met someone who gave you passion…" She trails off, and looks at me with these amazingly sad eyes, "You'd follow them with no hesitation. Even if that eventually led you to torturing someone like me."
"...You're not mad?" I ask with slight trepidation.
"Not at all. Well, maybe, but at you. Keep in mind that I live in this city, right now… do you know how much our world has progressed since the 1960's?"
"I'm going to say not very much."
"It's… frustrating. It really is." She sighs, "Like, for example, that computer you found. The invention of that device changed the muggle world. More than you can even imagine. I can send a message, via e-mail, to anyone around the world who also owns a computer. Instantly, pretty much." She sniffs, "We still use quills! QUILLS!"
"Merlin, that's… depressing." I suppose… well, I suppose I was right to not care about our world. To not even try.
"I'm trying my best. It's why I became an Unspeakable. Because I want to innovate. To introduce new ideas. But even then, there are still older Unspeakables that fight me every step of the way." She sighs, "So, no. I don't hate you. I'm not mad at you. Honestly? I'm not even sure you were wrong." Narcissa, who was barely paying attention, swiveled her head around severely.
"How so?" I ask, grimacing.
"You had to try something. You had to… step outside your comfort zone, to try something dangerous, just in the hopes that SOMETHING would change. That SOMETHING would innovate, and change. So when someone like him showed up..."
"Granger." Narcissa says dangerously, "You are talking about the man who helped kill-"
"I'm not excusing him. He wasn't an innovator. Merlin, his entire ethos was all about becoming more insular. But… I do excuse Lestrange, somewhat. Well, maybe not excuse. After meeting with you, Bella, I can completely understand how someone like her could become someone like… that." Hermione grimaces, and Narcissa looks slightly irritated.
"You are excusing… her? Merlin. I hope you realize that not everything can be forgiven. Some people don't deserve second chances…"
"Well, some people might say that about you, Narcissa." She says quietly, and Narcissa just faces away from the both of them.
"Is it just me, or does Narcissa look… older?" I ask Hermione quietly, and she studies the back of Narcissa up and down.
"She has some of her memories, so… I guess that'd be it." She infers, "I mean, it's 2001. How old are you?"
"50-51." I say with a grimace.
"Right. Looking at you now, it's actually pretty eye opening." She scans me quickly, "Plus, I've never seen you look so… put together. Narcissa always was, of course, but…"
"Because I'm crazy, I don't care about anything."
"Right. Er… by the way, I think we should avoid that tunnel." She raises her voice and points towards the larger tunnel, "That other tunnel wasn't nearly as long, after all, and staying where it's light seems safer to me." Both me and Narcissa nod, and we follow her to the road off to the right. Once we get close to the top of the hill, however… I can feel a slight shake.
"Earthquake?" Narcissa asks, and before I can even get a word in, she grabs the both of us and starts running to a nearby building. She tries to open the door, which is locked, before using the Alohomora and holding the door open for us.
"It's best to hide under a doorway during an earthquake!" She urges us in, and even though it sounds like really stupid advice (wouldn't we do better in the open street?), we both do it anyway. We only just get in when the earthquake really starts, and it's more vicious than I was expecting. The glass of the nearby building explodes, as does the one in our building. Oddly enough, we seem to be safe; it seems to be a sort of maintenance area and is clear of anything that could harm us.
I'm huddled to the right of the doorway, and Narcissa is to the left, but Hermione is standing over both of us. Once she can see we're both holding our respective doors open, she also huddles down and… she's squatting right next to me, and her hands are close to my legs… She's so close, if she moved her arms a little closer she'd be hugging me...
Merlin, there's a better time to think about things like that!
"I think it's beginning to cool off." She states, and I can definitely feel the ground stop shaking as hard.
"Is that… normal? It's only been a minute, if that…" Narcissa asks, mystified.
"I think so? I've never been in one myself." She says, and when the ground stops shaking she stands back up and inches closely to the ruined road. It's full of cracks and parts of it have just fallen. Not to mention the multiple panes of glass that shattered, falling on the road…
"Evanesco." She vanishes the glass right outside the doorway, and she proceeds to keep casting it to make a pathway through the broken glass. We follow along, and we're moving slower than ever, but at least we don't get pierced by the glass. However, once we get on the next part of the road…
"Er…" it looks far less damaged. Many of the closer buildings have some damage, and there's still some glass on the roads, but it only goes on for one block at most. Looking back towards the east, it's much the same story. Narcissa looks as surprised as I am, but Hermione doesn't seem all that shocked.
"It must've been localized to that hill." She theorizes, "I bet there was a similar trap on the tunnel above Upper Themes St. as well." Probably for the best we didn't go through that then.
"Which way do we go once we get to the end of this street? It funnels us to the next bridge, if it's still the same…"
"I think we should head up to Fleet St." She says what I was thinking, and Narcissa nods as well, "It's probably safer to be on a wider road, just in case something like that happens again. Though I have my doubts we'll hit another earthquake…"
"You don't think we'll find anymore Dementors, do you?" Narcissa asks slowly.
"I want to say no, but I was shocked enough to find them here in the first place." She holsters her wand after Vanishing the last of the glass on Queen Victoria St, "That frightens me way more than the earthquake."
"Agreed." I'd definitely rather die in an earthquake than have my soul sucked out… I'm not scared of much, but facing Dementors without a wand sounds like one of those very things.
We walk a little quicker down the street, and Hermione doesn't even bother to scan the street. I wonder if she thinks our ordeals are over? Or at least, they're over for now. We aren't that close to Diagon Alley, so maybe the traps are more numerous… All of the sudden, Narcissa stops right in the middle of the road, and since she was in front… we both almost ran into her.
"Hey, Granger… Are you… dating Ronald Weasley?" She says, as though she doesn't really believe her own memories. Wait, what?
"I'm sorry… you were dating a Weasley!?" And a boy? I could've sworn… Oh well.
"How did you know that, Narcissa?" She has an unpleasant look on her face, "Are you gaining more of your memories?"
"A little bit. They're still fragmented, but I seem to recall… Draco telling me you two were dating. Surprisingly, considering how often he complained about you, he just said you could do better."
"Ha, that sounds like Draco alright." Hermione's unpleasant look shifts into an amused one, and she giggles a little, "No, no. We broke up. That was a horrible idea from the start, to be honest. We were great friends, of course, but we made horrible lovers. What's the latest memory you remember, by the way? Is it just the, ah, thing that happened at Malfoy Manor? Or is it after?" Her face tightens a little, but otherwise she doesn't seem to mind bringing up her torture by… me…
No, Lestrange.
"I believe so? They're so jumbled and odd that I find it hard to judge which memories fit where. The only way I can tell is Draco being taller or smaller, as most of my memories seem to involve him," She admits, "Is he… doing well?"
"Well, he's actually a co-worker of mine." She rolls her eyes fondly, "Though we don't really work together. He's working in the time travel division, and I'm working on… another project. Though he really only joined the Department of Mysteries to prove Harry was, er, lying, he really got into it. I've even got him watching muggle movies and TV shows about time travel. He insists that he doesn't actually like them and it's just for research, but… Astoria told me how he keeps talking about making one of the rooms of the Manor into a 'muggle' room."
"Hmm… Really?" Narcissa asks, "Draco?"
"I know, right?" She laughs, "Sometimes we'll all go out together to the movie theater. Me, Harry, Ron, Ginny, Astoria and Draco, though I think Draco only tolerates all of us going together because it annoys Ron…" She looks slightly evil as she says this, "And to be honest, I love that part too. Ron keeps asking me if I'm… you know, dating him on the side, and I don't ever say no. Ron knows he can't actually curse Draco or anything, because as an Auror he has to hold himself to a higher standard, so he's stuck just making snide comments that Draco never takes the bait for."
"How very Slytherin of you, Hermione." Narcissa smirks unexpectedly, and I don't know who any of these people are, but honestly? That does sound like something Narcissa would do. Wait, there was something Hermione said earlier…
"Why would he proving Harry wrong?" I ask, confused. Wrong about what?
"Oh… uh. Well… I guess I can tell you?" She goes quiet right after, and they make it down three blocks before she starts speaking again, "I'm not trying to hide anything from right now, I'm just not sure of all the details myself. In fact, none of us are quite sure what he told us was true… Well, Luna believes him, but Luna would believe in just about anything." She gives an eye roll that's equal parts fond and exasperated, "It all starts with the Battle of Hogwarts-"
"There was a battle at Hogwarts?"
"So… yes and no." Not confusing at all, "There was supposed to be. We'd just gotten to Hogwarts, to search for a certain… item, and Voldemort found out. So we drove the Headmaster out of the school, who was a Voldemort puppet, and we were preparing for war. This is the part where things get confusing. In the history HE remembers, he remembers lots of people dying. Lots of them." She looks significantly at me, and I don't need to ask to know what she means by it, "But he found… something, that let him go back in time. And then this is the history I remember. As soon as we drive the Headmaster out… he leaves Hogwarts, all of the sudden, without any of us."
"Wait. What?" I ask, slightly confused. This is a very incomplete story.
"Yeah… we were freaking out, of course, because we'd thought he'd been kidnapped. An hour later, we see a group of centaurs coming to Hogwarts, with Grawp holding a bunch of stunned Death Eaters. And according to them, he just… killed Voldemort? Somehow?" She shakes her head, violently, "I'll be honest, he won't talk about what happened in the forest and it irritates me so much. SO. MUCH."
"Questions. I have… many questions. Who the bloody hell is Grawp?"
"Oh, er, Hagrid's giant half-brother."
"Oh." That… is completely not surprising at all, "Secondly… time travel? Really?"
"I have to assume that's what he did! Otherwise, what he did makes no bloody sense! Before he left, he told us to go to the Room of Requirement and search for Ravenclaw's lost Diadem. We did, and destroyed it… and that was all he said before he left."
"But really? I didn't know time worked like that." At least, that's what I know about Time Turners…
"You should listen to Draco sometime. He was a Death Eater, technically, but I don't think he ever wanted to cast an Unforgivable, or hurt anyone greatly, until AFTER the war. And he heard what Harry did. I've had to dissuade him from casting Imperio on him multiple times…" She blushes, "Only because I know he can break it. Veritasium, too; as an Auror, he knows how to check his drink for foreign substances."
"Okay. Fine." That… really bugs me, which I suppose is what Hermione feels, so I better stop asking about it before she gets too irritable, "Who the bloody hell is Voldemort? What kind of name is that?"
"You may know him better as Tom Riddle." Narcissa supplies, and I gasp; the man our father wanted us to meet the night we were… kidnapped…
Kidnapped? Were we? For some reason, I'm having doubts about that assumption.
"Wait, you've already met him?" Hermione questions.
"Not… at the time our memories end. We were to meet him that night." I frown, "Our father was oddly excited about that. Whoever it was, it made him… extremely excited. It didn't frighten me, but anything that makes our father happy was not going to be something good."
Narcissa snorts, "Don't forget it was BOTH of them. Mum getting excited was almost as bad."
"And… this was the man who inspired me to become a full blooded blood purist." I say, shaking. Some man inspired me that much?
"Honestly, I don't even know if you WERE." Hermione reasons, "That you actually believed in it. Especially now that I get to know you. I think it was just… love. You were in love with him."
"I fell in love with a man?" What does it say about me that I almost find the prospect of falling in love with some MAN worse than becoming a torture loving blood purist?
Right. Because I care more about myself then other people.
"I mean… I don't think you two had sex." She offers, "If that makes you feel any better. Actually, I don't think he ever had sex with anyone."
"That shouldn't make me feel any better." I sigh, "But honestly, it does."
"Pathetic lesbian." She sticks her tongue out at me, and I goggle. Who was this woman? Even if I believe I'm not the one who tortured her… How can she flirt with the person who grew up to torture her? Was she… into that? How… crazy. Who would ever… be into… that…?
For the record, the mystery is not what Harry did to travel in time. In fact, you can just imagine it! For some reason, I have it in my head that he found Kyubey in the Room of Requirement and now Harry goes around London in a skirt fighting witches. He's really annoyed they're called this and he argues with Kyubey constantly.