Chapter Text
Prologue:
March 1997
Hermione was trying to pay attention in Defense Against the Dark Arts class, but it was no use. She smelled Bellatrix on her hair.
Snape swooped around the room going on about nonverbal knockback jinxes, but Hermione couldn't listen. She knew Snape was an accomplished Legilimens, so she couldn't think about her too much or she’d give their secret away...but whenever she tried to think about anyone else she’d ever been interested in...Viktor, Tonks, Ron...or anyone she might reasonably be involved with like Cormac, Ginny, or even Harry...literally anyone whose face she could implant over hers whenever Snape stared too intently in her direction...it was no use. The lover of her daydreams had curly black hair, russet brown eyes and lips she couldn't stay away from...
She was already spending nights with her whenever she could get on “watch duty”--easy, since Harry and Ron had Quidditch practice. Sometimes she could sneak off and see her on a free period if Ron was with Lavender and Harry thought she was doing homework, but she feared they were starting to get suspicious.
The bell rang signaling the end of class and Hermione was ready.
Ron had already been snatched up by Lavender Brown and she half heard Harry ask her if she wanted to use their break to get started on Snape’s homework since McGonagall was bound to give them loads. She knew he was just trying to be kind, since he couldn’t have possibly wanted to start his homework so quickly. She knew he thought she was still into Ron and upset about Lavender and was therefore trying to distract her. She almost felt badly about turning down his well-intentioned offer until she remembered who was waiting for her upstairs.
“Look, Hermione, why don't I meet you in the library? I've left my Transfiguration stuff upstairs in the dormitory and I want to get it now so I don't have to run off right before class,” he said and Hermione felt her heart skip a beat, not having expected it to be this easy to give him the slip. She could already taste Bella on her tongue.
“I'd say I'd go up with you, but I think I just saw some...rather unsavory company...head up that way, so do you mind if I go on ahead to the library?” she asked just a little too quickly.
“Fine, perfect,” Harry called over his shoulder and Hermione was already thinking up a list of excuses to give him later as he sped off to the shortcut passage to the seventh floor.
She didn’t know how she'd gotten in so deep with Voldemort’s best lieutenant, and she knew that at some point soon they were going to get caught and their world was going to come crashing down...but maybe it was for the best.
Still, she'd never felt this way about anyone before. Not even Ron. It scared her, of course, but she'd also never felt more excited.
Chapter 1: Not Ready For the Winter
~5 months earlier~
19 October.
~Hermione drummed her fingers on the table, her eyes flickering between Ron and Madam Rosmerta over at the bar. The moment she saw Harry drain the last drops in his bottle of butterbeer 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. Hermione pulled her jacket and scarf more tightly around her, already feeling the slush soaking into her boots and numbing at the edges of her toes.
“Bloody miserable, should've just stayed up at school,” she heard Ron mutter behind her.
“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. She knew she was being petty, descending to the same level of immaturity as Ron, but sometimes she couldn’t help herself--especially when she was already frustrated. They’d been best friends for six years. She’d been suspecting he had a crush on her ever since his outbursts of jealousy while she was dating Viktor in the fourth year--but if he wanted to ask her out, she thought he should bloody well do it instead of acting like a prat around her all the time. She hastened a glance over her shoulder to see that Harry and Ron were a little ways behind her, talking to each other in muffled voices--not that she even had to guess what, or whom, they were talking about...She sighed and trudged on ahead in the direction of the school.
She was passing Hogsmeade Station when she noticed an odd shape in the snowdrifts, a ways off to her right. Something black and flecked with snow. It couldn’t have been there too long or it would have been buried. She was about to call back to Harry and Ron that she was going to check it out, but they weren’t paying any attention and besides, the wind was now whipping her face with such ferocity that she couldn’t have said much even if she really wanted to.
Rolling her eyes once more at her two oblivious best friends, Hermione cut behind Hogsmeade Station, towards the unmoving object that seemed larger the closer she drew to it...but when she got close enough to see what was lying there, she couldn’t help but scream.
“Hermione! What is it?” She was vaguely aware of Ron and Harry running through the snow behind her. About as aware as she was of her extended arm limply pointing at the scene before her--what she’d originally thought was a pile of robes that turned out to be a person. And not just any person.
“It's...it’s her…”
“Who?” asked Ron pointedly, but as they crept closer, she knew there would be no mistaking the mass of black curls, the leather corseted dress, the thin, splayed out arms displaying the tattooed mark of the most evil wizard in the world--for anyone else’s. This was the witch who’d served for decades as Voldemort’s best lieutenant. Who’d fought and killed for him. Who’d tortured Neville Longbottom’s parents into permanent insanity, escaped from a maximum security prison, killed Harry’s godfather. She was one of the most wanted prisoners in the world...and yet...
“Bellatrix Lestrange. Attacked in Hogsmeade…” she heard herself murmur.
“We've got to tell someone!” said Ron as he drew his wand and pointed it at the body on the ground.
“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.” Just then, something clicked inside Hermione, like her shock wore off and her sense of logic came rushing back on. Bellatrix. Here. Was she dead? How did she get here? What happened to her? Was the attacker nearby and whose side were they on? Was Hogsmeade safe? People had always praised Hermione’s ability to stay rational, even in stressful situations, but in actuality she always felt she drew comfort from her own desire to know information. She’d always felt that chaos only came about from lack of understanding and as long as she knew everything there was to know about any situation she found herself in, everything would be alright.
Frowning, she knelt down beside the witch in the snow and placed a gloved hand over her chest. Though they were faint, she could feel the woman’s breaths against her palm, along with the shallow beating of her heart.
“She’s not dead; she’s breathing,” she told the others finally. “...But something’s wrong with her...she’s injured...but how did she get here?” Hermione was thinking out loud, not really expecting the others to answer her. There was something oddly transfixing about Bellatrix in that moment--lying there, curled in a half-moon shape with her back to the three of them and her mess of black hair matted with crusted frost and bits of twigs, like she was frozen in time--not dead, but not sleeping, though not awake either.
“Who cares, let's turn her in and go get warm,” said Ron and Harry nodded in his agreement. She couldn’t imagine how this must be for him--seeing the person who’d killed his last remaining family member. She knew he probably wanted to finish her off, and though she couldn’t blame him, she didn’t think taking out an unconscious person was worth making her best friend a murderer. Especially when there were plenty of Aurors and Order members up by the school gates-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, right Harry?” Hermione reminded them. She could almost feel Harry’s heart sinking beside her. But she knew 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. Besides, the attacker could still be nearby and she had no way of knowing whose side they or it might be on.
“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. She couldn’t really disagree that that was likely the best thing to do in this situation--even perhaps, the most logical thing, but something about it still didn’t feel right. The idea of dragging an unconscious woman, a clear victim of something, over to people who might torture or kill her (or send her off to people or dementors who would do it in their stead) without hearing her side of the story felt oddly reminiscent of the Sirius Black predicament in their third year. They’d spent the whole year (as she knew many children from wizard families spent their whole lives) agonizing over Sirius Black--convicted mass murderer, betrayer of Harry’s parents to Voldemort, and first ever Azkaban prison escapee--terrified he was coming to Hogwarts to murder them in their beds...only to find out he was innocent of all the crimes he’d been accused of. What if...No. She’d seen Bellatrix murder Sirius. Watched her torture Luna Lovegood in the Hall of Prophecy--all of that was true and even if nothing else was, it was more than enough of a good reason to turn her over to the Order of the Phoenix. And yet...She crept closer to Bellatrix, kneeling down in the slush beside her again, trying to discern the nature of her injuries and the origin of the blood slowly seeping around her and staining some of the nearby snow a sickly shade of pink.
She had a black cloak shrouded around her shoulders, but Hermione could still make out a deep slash between her neck and chest, jagged and uneven at its edges, like it was made with a large knife or claw rather than with magic. And even through the fabric of her gloves, Hermione could feel that the Death Eater’s skin was much too cold.
“She's bleeding pretty badly...I think I've got some dittany in my bag…” She began digging through her school bag, feeling Harry and Ron’s shocked and confused expressions boring into the back of her head.
“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. Finding what she was looking for, 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..” She was about to point out that if Bellatrix had made Voldemort angry enough (as they knew even his best Death Eaters sometimes did) it could mean trouble for everyone when suddenly, she heard a faint cry that extended into a full moan.
“Shut up, both of you! I think she's waking up!” Harry 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, Hermione, Ron and Harry stood frozen in place above her.
“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. Bellatrix looked confused and really out of it—giving off no trace of the formidable Death Eater they’d faced in the Department of Mysteries only months before.
“She’s playing us, she's putting us on…” Harry 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 injured woman 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 in a desperation that reinforced Hermione’s initial intuitive feeling that something was off about her beyond her surface injuries. Her eyes looked glassy and glazed over, milky silver where she knew Bellatrix's eyes to be dark brown. And then it hit her like a stunning spell to the chest.
“I know a memory charm when I see one,” she said. “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.
“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 looked at each other, all finally thinking what Hermione had wondered all along. 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 Sirius, right in front of us...And then laughed about it...Hermione reminded herself again. Yet the woman lying on the ground in front of them didn't look like someone who'd ever killed or tortured anybody.
“I know what you're thinking Harry,” said Hermione, barely meeting his eye. “But 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 was silent and she knew he was at least considering her points, though even she knew how crazy her idea sounded—but for the three of them, not so brazen compared to everything else they’d done.
“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.”
As gently as she could, Hermione crouched down and helped Bellatrix to her feet. The Death Eater winced and leaned against Harry’s left side as the gash under her neck began to ooze fresh blood. Ignoring a jibe from Ron, Hermione took off the Gryffindor scarf from around her neck and carefully wrapped it around Bellatrix's throat to soak up the blood.
“Can't have her bleeding and giving us away,” she said, though she regretted her decision a few seconds later when the sleet picked up and stung at her exposed skin. Harry unraveled the Invisibility Cloak from his school bag with the arm that was not supporting the dark witch, while Ron looked on dismally.
“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.
~And the summer became the fall
I was not ready for the winter
It makes no difference at all
'Cause I wear boots all summer long
My eye make up is dark and it's careless
Some circles around my eyes
Sometimes the real color of my skin
Is my eyes without any shadow~