Author's Note: Words can not begin to express the apology that is due to everyone who is reading this story... but I will try. :) Things have been just a tad bit hectic in my life... there was a point in time where I did not know if I would actually keep writing or not... then there was a time where some many stories rushed me at once that I could not focus on just one story. During said event, several stories (Sadly, none came to mind for the Bellamioneverse) vied for my attention and kept me away from this story as well as the story 'The Journey Home'. Only in the past few days have I been able to write anything for this story. I really do apologise for the delay and hope that I will be able to have another chapter up soon.
"Divide and Conquer"- Julius Ceaser
"Well. Well. Well," the voice behind the door calls out. "I do believe that I missed a wonderful reunion."
"Good evening, Bellatrix," Albus calls from his portrait as soon as he recognises the voice in the darkness. "Indeed you have missed the reunion. My friends had more pressing matters to attend to though; so they left."
The dark witch shrugs her shoulders. "Pity. I was hoping to enjoy meeting my late cousin's godson under more pleasant circumstances. How is the Potter boy, Albus?"
The dead wizard straightens himself in his frame and stares defiantly at Bellatrix. "I honestly wouldn't know. As you may recall, he is on a mission. It is a very long mission, you see, and I have yet to see him."
"Liar!" The witch snarls as she points her wand towards the chair that Harry and previously sat in. "This room reeks of half-blood! I grow weary of the bloody mind games you play, Albus." She sniffs the air as she twirls her wand through her fingers. "I wonder... did he leave with my dear sweet niece's mutt?" She smirks when she sees Dumbledore's face falter slightly. "Ah, yes... I know the mutt was here. How could one not smell his stench? I nearly gagged when I first opened the door. I almost did not detect Potter when I first came in, but, nonetheless, I know he was here. His scent is almost as disgusting as the werewolf's." She moves closer to the portrait and points her wand at it. "Where are they?"
A throat clears behind her and a voice reverberates in the room. "Now Bella, is that anyway to treat someone?" Phineas asks from his picture.
"Phineas, do not interfere," Albus says as he stares at the woman before him. Go get help. He says through his mind, trying vainly to allow the tiny of magic that he still possesses to carrying his thoughts across the room towards the man in the other painting.
The elderly wizard in the portrait chortles to himself as he leans forward in a conspiratorial fashion. "Just answer this, dear Albus... how do you think my lovely niece knew where to look?"
"Kreacher has been very attentive to my needs while I waited for someone to show up at Grimauld Place," the witch replies nonchalantly as she lowers her wand and walks towards the desk in the middle of the room. "Luckily, Uncle Phineas informed me on the situation that was unfolding here."
"But you were cast out of the family! I have been to Grimauld Place and saw where your name was blasted off the tapestry!" Albus says as he tries to understand the situation before him.
"Ah, you saw that did you?" Bellatrix asks with a smirk. "Well, it is great to know that the Order can not tell the difference between house-elf magic and magic that is cast by a witch or a wizard. You lot never understood the destruction one lowly house-elf created for you, did you? The Dark Lord would have never thought to use Kreacher if not for Hermione telling Him about how he had tricked the Potter boy into believing Sirius was captured by our side.
"You also forget, old man, my dear uncle still has a portrait in my Aunt Walburga's estate... did you not think it odd that it would still be there if he were a shunned member of the House of Black?"
The old wizard frowns at his own error in judgement. 'Why did I never think that odd? Maybe I believed it was a sticking charm that kept it there, just like Walburga's.' He shakes his head at his own misjudgement. The past was the past and there was nothing he could do to change that. "What sick and twisted things have you done to Hermione to cause her to join your side, Bellatrix?"
"Anything and everything," a voice rings out in the darkness beyond the door. Out of the shadows, Hermione steps into the room and smirks. "But that is besides the point. You should be more concerned about what we will do to you old man."
He stares at the young witch defiantly. "There is nothing you can do to me. I am already dead."
Hermione shrugs. "Yes, you are dead. Severus saw to that up on the Astronomy tower, but that doesn't mean that being dead can keep you from interfering with our plans." She reaches inside her robes and pulls out a purse. "This purse has an extendable charm placed on it, as well as, a weightless spell. As you can already figure out, that allows me to place anything I want into the bag and carry it around where ever I wish to go. I can place a whole library in here without anyone being the wiser."
"I know what those sorts of charms are capable of," Dumbledore says gruffly as he continues to stare at the young witch. "But I am sure there is something else that you wish to discuss with me other than your charm work."
Bellatrix sneers at the wizard's portrait but Hermione smirks and reaches for the dark witch's hand. The older woman lowers her wand at the contact of Hermione's hand on her wrist and she backs away from the picture. "It isn't something that I wish to discuss with you... it is something I have to show you rather." The young woman reaches inside the purse and pulls out several large portrait frames. "I think you recognise these."
"How were you able to find all of my pictures?" Albus asks as he stares intently at the witch in front of him.
"Come on in, maybe you can shed some light on the situation," Hermione calls out to someone that had lingered in the darkness. Out of the shadows, McGonagall strides into the room.
"Minerva, how could you?" the dead headmaster gasps from his frame. Albus stares at the woman, waiting for a response... any sort of response from one of his closest friends. He squints his eyes as he leans closer. A gasp escapes his throat when he sees the blank stare of an Imperiused person staring back at him.
Bellatrix chuckles darkly as she circles the witch in question. "Do you think that everyone truly believed in your ideas? That everyone would allow a child's actions dictate the outcome of this war? Once they realised that your plan was to blindly follow a child's lead, people decided that it would be in their best interests to change sides."
"Liar!" Dumbledore stares daggers at the dark witch. "You Imperiused Minerva to extract the locations of my portraits and..."
"And a few other secrets as well old man," Hermione says with a smirk as she sets the large frames beside the desk in the middle of the room. "Phineas, I do believe it is time that you have a change of scenery, don't you agree?"
"I do believe it would give me a better perspective on life, Enyo," the wizard says with a smirk. "Maybe I can finally spend more time with Druella?"
"I am sure mother would enjoy the company," Bellatrix said with a smile as she reaches for the frame of his picture and gently lowers it from the wall. "It is time to have a proper reunion for the family after all." The older witch hands the portrait to Hermione and the younger woman places it in her purse.
"Enyo..." Dumbledore whispers. If he had been alive when the name was uttered, he knows his heart would have surely stopped. "But... how can this be? Rudolphus killed Enyo years ago! This must be some sort of trick! What depraved constructs have you brought about that would make this poor girl believe she is that vile woman! Rudolphus did the world a favour when he killed her! Now you try to revive her terror through this young witch who knew nothing of the horrors of Enyo. You would place this world into the chaos that..."
Hermione rolls her eyes in frustration, "How could I have ever dealt with your droning before? Clearly you do not understand the concept of reincarnation, Albus. I am Hermione, I have always been Hermione, but where does one's soul come from? There can not be life without death, so where does the person who came before go? It can not come from nothing... we are taught that in basic transfiguration. Something can not come from nothing. A cup can not simply come from thin air just because we will it. There has to be something there to begin with. A rock. A piece of paper. Anything that is of substance is used. So why is it that most wizards and witches feel as though human life is different? There has to be that spark of life: a soul, that brings about another life.
"We each have a past life, a life that was in this world beforehand. Otherwise, life could not exist. There was no spell, no charm that the Dark-Lord or Bella performed that made believe that I am Enyo. It was only the awakening of my past-life that caused me to know who I was and what I was meant to be. I just needed to have the extra push." She smirks at the wizard in the portrait. "I was already having muddled visions of things from the past, I just needed my mind cleared... and the Dark-Lord provided the wind to push back the fog so I may see clearly what lay before me."
"They must have brain-washed you or something," Dumbledore mutters pathetically as he scours his mind for anything that could cause the witch in front of him to turn back to the light. "Hermione, I have known you since you were a first-year student at Hogwarts, this is not you. They implanted these seeds of discord in your mind. We can help you come back to the light. We can..."
"You forget, Albus. I was used by you and your ilk. I was forced to do your bidding and forced to befriend those gits." She smirks as she grabs his portrait off the wall and sets in on the stack of paintings she and Bellatrix pulled from various locations. "Before your final demise, I want you to know one thing and one thing only... I searched the Dark out, not the other way around." Hermione pulls out a wand and concentrates on the stack of frames in front of her. "Take my bag and Minerva and meet me downstairs. I need to finish this, but need total concentration to make sure the fire is contained."
"Just torch the whole bloody place, Hermione! Who cares if this place goes up in flames. I nearly destroyed the castle myself when I came here the night we killed Albus. We have what we came for, as well as Phineas's painting and Our Lord does not mind if the whole place is destroyed. We can build a new Hogwarts... one that is not as tainted as this one." The dark witch wraps an arm around the younger witch and places a kiss in her hair. "Maybe he will allow you and Severus to run it the way you both would want it to be ran. As you know Our Lord looks favourably on intelligence, He would not object to a new and improved Hogwarts."
A smile crosses the younger witch's face as she feels the older woman's magic surround her to help increase the strength of the spell she was focusing. "Once this is all over, it will be a world of our own making. Our Lord has assured us of this."
"It will be a world that only the strong will inherit," Bellatrix whispers as the flames pour forth from Hermione's wand. The two witches look on the burning portraits for only a scant few seconds before reaching for each others hand and heading towards the door. Grabbing the arm of the Imperiused professor, Hermione drags Minerva after them as they fly from the ticking time-bomb of a spell they had created.
Once they were a safe distance from the castle, Bellatrix slows their flight and stares back at the towering edifice. The darkness of the night and the driving rain causes the dark witch to huff in frustration as she watches for any sign that their spell actually worked. A dark grin graces her facade as a small flicker licks the edges of the window she was staring at. A deep groan cuts through the silence of the night causing the ground below them to shake at its crescendo.
A loud crack echoes through the night as the windows of the Headmaster's office shatter in the presence of the intense heat of the fire that was encased in its walls. The flames swarm into a raging inferno as the wind rushes into the room to fill the void of oxygen.
"It's beautiful," Hermione whispers softly as she stares at the swirling storm that is quickly engulfing Hogwarts.
"It is," the dark witch replies. "Do you believe that people will believe that Minerva did this?" Bellatrix glances at the older witch that they had brought along with them and frowns. "She worked at the school for years. She was there when I began school, do you think the rest of the wizarding world will believe it?"
"Most of them will believe it... the rest are not important. In the end, they will all come to the fold, does it matter how? The Daily Prophet will report the incident the way we tell them to, otherwise they will die. It will be seen as an Order hit against the new Minister of Magic. Even though it was not directed to Pius, it was directed at his ideals. By the end of the day, the Order will be nothing more than terrorists in the eyes of every single witch and wizard in England." Hermione turns towards Bellatrix and smiles. "It will be perfect. What better way to destroy them than by turning the people against them even more? Destroying Dumbledore's portraits keeps others from finding out the truth and by the time we are finished with these modifications to Minerva's memory, she will even believe that she destroyed the castle as a way to destroy our new Minister's education system."
The dark witch smirks at Hermione then turns to start working on the memory charms on the professor. "I do love how your mind works. Come now, let us finish up here so we can see how Andy and Nymphadora did with their job."
A scream echoes in the night causing a chill to run up Hermione's back, "Do you think that we did the right thing by not telling the Carrows about the plan?"
Bellatrix shrugs as she grabs Minerva's wand out of Hermione's hand, "The Dark-Lord said they were expendable, besides, they were annoying sycophants who only gave lip-service." She waves her wand a few more times around Minerva's head. "Come on, it is done. We need to get out of here before the Aurors show up." The older woman reaches for her lover's hand and the Disapparate into the night leaving McGonagall alone to stare at the carnage near the front gate of the grounds of Hogwarts.