Shards of Nuance

After the war, people told the story of the three friends’ quest for Voldemort’s horcruxes as an epic, romantic tragedy. In reality, it was miserable. It was mundane. Hour to hour, it felt meaningless. They treated each other badly and fought constantly. Many years later, a muggle movie was made about their break-in to the Lestrange vault in Gringotts, but in the moment Hermione just felt vile and afraid. The sword of Gryffindor was as heavy as it was pretentious and looked more at home in the Death Eater vault than it did in Harry’s hands.

After a particularly nasty fight, Ron left them, claiming he no longer believed it was worth it to fight Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Hermione was equal parts furious and jealous of his ability to do so. As hopeless as their mission and the war sometimes seemed, she didn’t have the luxury of abandoning it if she wanted to remain in the wizarding world. When he came to his senses and returned, the snatchers followed closely behind. Hermione had not counted on their ability to reverse engineer her repelling charms. A spell which would have usually sent even a well-trained witch or wizard away remembering some appointment they were late for drew the ratty band straight through their wards. Hermione’s stinging jinx that disfigured Harry’s face was to no avail; they were escorted straight to the gates of Malfoy Manor.

Narcissa Malfoy, who let them in, first regarded the snatchers with disgust, ignored Harry and Ron completely, and spared Hermione a withering glance before snapping her fingers for a house elf. “Call Draco and Bellatrix to the Great Room. Immediately.” Then to the snatchers, “You’ll proceed no further than the Great Room.”

They were pushed forward by wands poking into their lower backs and by a faintly green magic welling up from the floor. Narcissa joined her husband and son, well-practiced disinterest looking truly graceful on their faces. A loud smashing of glass made the snatchers and the three friends jump in alarm. The sound came from a figure with her back to them, curly black hair held up high on her head in a messy bun with a wand stuck through it. She was leaning forward against the mantle, one hand resting on a bottle of firewhiskey, the other still wrapped around an empty glass with a newly jagged edge. When she released it and turned towards them, Hermione saw fresh blood smeared on the glass. With her chin lifted and her hips swaying as she sauntered forward, it was clear to the three friends that Bellatrix Lestrange was much more flagrantly dangerous than Andromeda Tonks, despite their uncanny resemblance.

“A baby Weasley and the infamous Hermione Granger.” Hermione swallowed thickly at Lestrange’s words. “It’s hard to believe this isn’t Potter - though if so he is much uglier than his father which I didn’t think that was possible. Draco! Come confirm that it’s him.”

Draco stepped hesitantly across the room and leaned forward to look at Harry. Hermione’s heart beat wildly as he searched Harry’s forehead and face. She knew exactly when recognition passed through his eyes because his jaw clenched tightly.

“It’s hard to say…” He ventured through gritted teeth.

“Draco, be certain. Think of the family.” Lucius sputtered, his stony mask faltering.

“Shut up, fool.” Lestrange bristled at the man’s desperation. “Draco.”

“I am not sure.” He wavered, but he was saved by a shrill cry from Lestrange whose gaze had swept across the others in the room before alighting on the sword of Gryffindor in one of the snatchers’ hands.

“Where did you get that?”

“Found it on the kids. Reckon it’s mine now.”

In a flash, Lestrange’s wand was out and spinning. A long whip sprouted from its tip and curled around the snatcher’s neck while she summoned the sword. Simultaneously, a wordless spell pinned the three friends to the wall. Quick work found the snatchers unconscious on the ground and Lestrange replacing the wand in the sprawling bun on her head, the sword thrust through the shoulder of the man who had been carrying it into the stone floor. Surveying her work, the woman bent down to remove three wands stashed on the inside of the man's robe near where the sword was lodged. She examined them with little interest before tossing them carelessly on the mantle next to the alcohol.

“Narcissa, Draco, take them to the dungeon. Lucius, get lost. I don’t want to see you anymore.” The three did as she commanded without protest. Mother and son began to usher the three friends from the room as Lestrange threw back another swig from the firewhiskey bottle. “Leave Granger! We’re gonna have a chat. Girl to girl. Lock the door behind you.”

Hermione felt the most vulnerable she’d ever been when the Malfoys, Harry, and Ron were gone from the room. Lestrange approached her menacingly. Panic overtook her, and she rushed to back up, cursing when she collided with a wall. She pressed her hands flat against the stone and stood up on her toes trying to create space between her and the crazed woman who grabbed her collar and slammed her against the wall hard enough to make her see stars. Reddened silver magic swarmed from the stone behind her, around her face, and into Lestrange’s hair.

Lips inches from her own, Lestrange overly enunciated her next words with a hiss. “Listen to me very carefully, because you can’t afford to make a mistake. I am under very strict orders to torture you until you give me every piece of information the Dark Lord wants and then some."

She jerked Hermione’s collar forward and back again, pinning her further against the wall and probably bruising the back of her head. If Hermione had felt fear before in her life, this was terror.

“You’re going to do us all a favor. Don’t fuck it up, or I’ll get to kill you. I am going to walk out of this room using the door to your left. You are going to exit through the door on the right. You’ll go to the end of the hallway. Turn right. Third door on your left. Take it, and then first door on your right. Get your friends out of the fucking dungeon and then get the fuck out of the house.”

The silvery-red magic danced between their lips, one drinking in the wisps that the other exhaled. Hermione felt like she was about to hyperventilate.

“Out? Why?” She squeaked. It didn’t make sense to follow escape instructions from a Death Eater, but maybe it was just as good as staying for certain torture and death. “Anti-apparition wards?”

“Figure it out.” Lestrange spat. “You have fewer than five minutes before I’m back.” Then she pulled the sword of Gryffindor up from flesh and stone - which, if Hermione had the wherewithal to notice (which she didn't), she would see had begun to fuse together - and strode out of the door to the left, and clicked the lock behind her.

Hermione stumbled toward the mantle. She fumbled the wands, which were slick with the dark witch’s blood, knocking the glass to the floor where it shattered into pieces that flew as far as the opposite wall. Move, move, move. She cursed herself as she bounced off the table and an unresponsive snatcher on her way to the door to the right. She tried to move her wand and mouth to no avail. Alohamora alohamora please please, her brain buzzed. The lock sparked, and the door fell open when she leaned against it. Down the hallway, right turn, two no three doors left, door on the right. She willed her legs to move faster, to work better.

This time her mouth worked, and her wand responded. She took the stairs two at a time. “Harry! Ron! Harry!” Her voice was louder than it should have been.

“Hermione? How?” Ron rushed to her, head wagging in confusion.

Harry appeared with Luna, however, so Hermione corralled them up the stairs. “Not now. Come on. Hurry!”

They rushed through hallways, turning at random. A scream of frustration sounded not very far away, followed by increasingly louder voices. We aren’t going to make it, she thought, options spinning through her brain.

“Can we apparate?” Ron gasped out.

“No. The Malfoy blood wards are up.” Hermione cried, still moving them down the hall away from the voices and footsteps somewhere behind them.

Luna’s unflappable voice piped up. “Harry, what about Dobby? Elves can apparate through blood wards.”

In Harry’s hesitant pause, Hermione heard people approaching from a new direction. They were going to be hemmed in. “Harry! Dobby!” she cried.

Dobby appeared with a crack at her call, which she did reflect on until several weeks later in their lonely tent in the forest. So did Lestrange at the end of the hallway. Her arm raised as Harry interrupted the elf’s salutation, “Dobby get us out of here!”

Dobby’s magic reared up. Lestrange’s elbow and wrist snapped forward. A small knife spun toward them from her hand. As they disapparated, all Hermione saw was Lestrange exhaling sharply, a long curl lifting and crashing back into her face.

They buried Dobby in the sand dunes. Only Luna saw Hermione pocket the knife, which she assumed was goblin-forged due to its similarities to the sword of Gryffindor. Hermione would not meet her eyes then for fear of something having to deal with something about which she did not want to know. Luna always made her confront new magical intricacies, and Hermione was tired of learning about old, dark magic. She was tired in general.

**

The imperius curses were stronger after that, for all of them. Narcissa escaped them by making herself as uninteresting as possible; it dismayed her how easy that was for her. Lucius was not so lucky. They never discussed it, but she had the suspicion that he drew extra attention to himself to distract the Dark Lord from Draco. Sometimes it worked; sometimes it didn’t. Draco’s magic diminished at an alarming rate. It reminded her of Bellatrix before the Dark Lord’s great reveal, before his curses began to warp them further than their predispositions had. There had been a time when Bellatrix’s magic was the most frightening thing about her, when she had exerted power over groups and situations simply by being present – not unlike Andromeda. Narcissa did not know what Andromeda was like now. She did know, however, that sometimes the old Bellatrix bled through when one was least expecting it. The Dark Lord apparently did not know the eldest living Black could sometimes resist the Dark Lord’s imperius to some degree, or he surely would have crushed her. It was unclear to Narcissa – to all the Death Eaters and their families – how much of their behavior now was due to his imperius and how much came naturally to them. Perhaps it did not matter anymore.

It does matter, she thought. It matters for Draco. The thought of the Dark Lord consuming her son the way he had consumed the others in both the Black and Malfoy families nearly broke her sometimes, but for his sake she dared not push back. If there was evil, it was this: that she had to be complicit with it – maybe even be evil and commit her magic to choosing darkness - in order to protect her family from it. She wondered if Andromeda left because she foresaw this or if she’d just gotten lucky in her selfishness and fear.

She had been too passive back then, back when Andromeda and Bellatrix dominated the family by tangling so openly with each other and the family magic. Now she was the one who held together whatever was left of them, and she was not good at it. Now she was always picking up the pieces of her eldest sister with a sense that some were trapped in places she would never be able to reach. When Bellatrix was imperio’d she was murderous; when she was lucid, she was hollow. Narcissa did not know which was worse anymore.