The Line
How do you explain to your daughter that it’s the end of the world, and that her father ordered it to happen? Bellatrix, who thought she cared for and feared nothing, didn’t have the faintest idea of how to approach it. Fortunately, she didn’t have to, at least, not yet; Delphini was not quite two years old, and had no idea of what was going on around her.
So Bellatrix held her daughter, kissed her, and cast a little sleeping spell. Within a moment, Delphini was fast asleep, and she stepped out of her room.
“Come on, Euphemia,” she gestured to the woman who had taken in her daughter, on the Dark Lord’s command. “We’ve got work to do, and if we fail… If we fail, we all fail.”
“They say it will be the night of the Dark Lord’s victory, Lady Bellatrix,” Euphemia said, in an exited, anxious state, as they stepped out into the street in Berwick-upon-Tweed in heavy robes against the spring chill of the night.
“Maybe,” Bellatrix answered, quietly looking skyward.
“Maybe? How could it not?”
“We’ve already begun unleashing nuclear weapons,” Bellatrix answered, her voice distant, trance-like. “The most powerful thing the muggle world has ever made. They will be crossing the globe now, and each one can incinerate a small city, twenty will destroy the largest urban area in the world. They climb into space itself, and then descend to detonate with the power of the sun, contained with hunks of metal. An insidious kind of magic, that the muggles think for their technology, that poisons the land around, and causes people to die without apparent wounds. And they have tens of thousands of them, and we did this to make them all fly. They’ll smash cities across the globe. It won’t be millions of muggles that die, but billions. And, wizards will die with them. Any unlucky wizards too close, wizards in cities we decide not to defend. Magical communities will be poisoned, and magical creatures will fall dead from the fallout as it spreads across the land. Most of them will turn against us.”
Her voice was absolutely cold as she joined the other wizards in the midst of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Here in Britain, the muggle population already knew to fear them. The rest of the world was about to learn just how important that was, but they hadn’t quite, yet.
“When their civilisation is disrupted and half-dead, when billions of muggles have been slain, then, the rest will fight. They’ll pick up whatever is left, and attack us with it, every way they can. There are populations of wizards who will certainly join them. Anyone who thinks it will demoralise them into surrender is a fool. We’ll conquer a lot, in the initial months, following the shock of the attacks. Then, with growing strength, they’ll fight. They’ll send the old into the irradiated cities to salvage what is useful. They’ll mobilise the children in their rural areas. They’ll drag every weapon they have out. I’ve seen their cleverness, when I worked with the muggles at Dungeness. No, no, Euphemia. The war doesn’t end today.”
Bellatrix’s eyes glinted, hard and cold. “The war begins tonight. All the work we have in His service is in front of us.”
“Muggles haven’t the courage to do such things as you say!”
“Oh stuff it,” Bellatrix laughed. “I’ve seen them toss on their ‘hazmat’ gear and go into a reactor—spewing this invisible death into the sky. Stupid, dirty, smelly muggles, the fucking people who made those death machines in the first place. Good riddance to them. Aye, we’ll kill billions. But they’ll fight, Euphemia, mark my words. Even a beast in a trap fights. Muggles are beasts, sure. But have you ever hunted? I’ve hunted, Euphemia. Beasts fight. They’ll fight.”
The woman grew silent and pale, rather than argue back.
Bellatrix felt the Dark Mark burn. It was not a call but a signal. She raised her wand to the sky. “Now, to power the ley lines—now!” She called. The other wizards and witches in the group obeyed her, necessarily; she commanded everyone in this group. She was the only Death Eater, and that she was here at all in this small city was something that should be considered honour enough. They reached out with their wands, and the power of the magical cores of each and every one of them, and directed it out to the natural lay lines of the area.
With them were tens of thousands of other witches and wizards in the British Isles. Attendance was mandatory, enforced by the Dark Lord’s Government. Their power came together into the sky above, and slowly, a glowing green shield began to form above them. Bellatrix wondered at the tint, as she felt the power pulse through her. Perhaps a gesture from Her Lord. Green was very much His colour, and she suspected he was charging the defence in some way.
Likely through human sacrifice.
Well isn’t that what this is? One great human sacrifice to usher in our new Dark Avalon? Bellatrix trembled with emotion. There was a part of her, a real and true part, the darkest part, that was still celebrating their triumph over the world, for all she knew that the war had only begun, that she would still be called to live up to her name, to be Bellatrix, the Warrior, one more time, and perhaps more intensely than she ever had before. There was another part of her that raged against the use of these monstrous weapons, that knew what it would do to the magical world, that couldn’t believe that, humiliated and subdued, she had just gone here join in the defence and make no more protest.
But, she was saving magical Britain from the consequences. By raising her wand to the sky that night, she joined in the shield, she joined in the guard, the magical line that would hold their islands clean and pure, untouched by the nuclear hellfire. Tonight, on this Night of Fire, to hold her power skyward was unquestionably Right.
She laughed, for all that she cared about Right.
She laughed, as the flashes began, and she let her power surge and flare through the lines, glowing in the sky, of almost a hundred thousand wizards and witches united in one force and purpose. She laughed, and laughed, and cackled, for death, for ruin, for despair, for triumph and for the savage war to come.
And the laughter only ended when she remembered the daughter left in Rowle’s townhouse, and the memory forced her to wonder what kind of world had just been created, for the life she had brought forth.