Shards of Nuance

“Why’re you here?” Bellatrix asked one day. She had returned to the bar several times. No one bothered her after the incident with Janek, and she and Hermione increasingly exchanged meaningless pleasantries.

Hermione was making new bitters – which was not unlike potioning - without looking at the witch who she thought very surely shouldn’t be sitting at her bar but was. “I could ask you the same question.”

“But that would be much less interesting than why Britain’s favorite witch is serving drinks to hopeless men in a dead-end muggle town.”

“Striking out on my own, I guess.”

Bellatrix rolled her eyes. “Who exactly do you think you’re fooling?"

Hermione was unsure she wanted to have this conversation with this particular woman, but after a moment she ventured softly. “The fame. The trials. The self-righteousness and grandstanding. The obsession with things that no one really understood or wanted to understand.”

“But the “Good Side” won, didn’t it? The wizarding world was saved by ‘Light’ magic.” The woman’s intonation was ambiguous.

“I guess. But we didn’t only do good. We did bad stuff too. Didn’t even refrain from using dark magic. What is good if you achieve it through evil?” This felt like an odd question to ask an ex-Death Eater.

Bellatrix leaned both elbows on the counter. “No one only does good things.”

“I suppose you’re saying no one only does bad things too.”

“I hope so, but I couldn’t say for sure.”

Hermione drained the sink while she pondered the sick irony of the situation and the woman’s seriousness. “But you’re here too. Britain’s most infamous witch is buying drinks from a mudblood in a dead-end muggle town.”

Bellatrix flinched, and Hermione immediately felt guilty for saying it even though it was true. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say that now.”

“It’s fair. I deserve it.”

That was also true, but it didn’t make her feel any better. When the woman didn’t say more, it crossed Hermione’s mind that they were maybe there for similar reasons: running from a wizarding world with which they couldn’t reconcile, hiding from the haunting effects of offenses that they had committed and that had been committed against them. The only difference was that in this world, Hermione held the upper hand – which she deserved, didn’t she?

“What about your sisters?”

“What about them?”

“You don’t want to stay with them?”

“After that trial? Are you kidding? I can’t see Narcissa.”

“But Andromeda?”

“Living as a constant burden to someone you care about is not living.” She didn’t continue, and several minutes passed without either of them speaking.

“What do you do now?” Hermione changed the subject.

“Track down people and objects. Magic and muggle. Freelancing for a private contractor. Keeps me moving, and I get paid to stay under the radar. Of course, the Ministry knows, but they haven’t stopped me yet so that’s a good sign.”

The dark-haired woman put most of her attention on delicately running her fingers along the rim of her glass, every now and then pausing to pierce the young woman with her charcoal eyes. Hermione knew subconsciously that the woman couldn’t emit magic anymore, but the way the woman’s eyes swarmed at her in those moments fooled her briefly every time. They conversed a while longer until Hermione began closing the bar.

Bellatrix made to leave but lingered at the door for a while before saying, “Hermione…? Would you want to play wizard’s chess sometime?”

Hermione wasn’t yet used to the woman addressing her by her first name so casually. “Uh, sure. I’m pretty bad at it, though. Where…?”

“There’s a muggle coffee shop in the next town over that has a little nook where we can hide the moving pieces.”

“I know the place. Saturday… 1?” Hermione would go early to do some business with a client.

“Sure.” Bellatrix fidgeted with a zipper before leaving.

Hermione was baffled by the undeniable lightness in her heart, but she wasn’t about to question it when it had been missing for so long.

**

Wizard’s chess became a weekly routine. Hermione, who was indeed frustratingly bad at the game, improved considerably; Bellatrix revealed herself as a sore loser when the younger woman began to beat her. Even that did not dampen their time together, however, and they found themselves thinking less about the war than either of them had since it began, which for Bellatrix was quite a long time. Hermione never asked where the woman was staying or working when she wasn’t in town, and Bellatrix never offered the information. Neither of them talked about the war, the trials, or their friends or families, and though that should have felt like a glaring hole, it did not.

Hermione looked forward to the weekends and the nights Bellatrix visited the bar. One Saturday, she forced the woman into a small clothing store to replace her only tattered outfit. “You look like one of the rotting fish on the dock” earned her a light slap on the cheek, but she didn’t pause to think about how that didn’t offend her while the woman made a big to-do about picking only black items. She even coaxed the woman into the little wizarding community - under heavy glamour charms, of course - to the local pub to watch a sort of televised quidditch match. She knew “I don’t even like quidditch – never have” was a lie since she remembered vividly the late nights she spent in the library appraising the Hogwarts yearbook photos of Bellatrix wearing the Slytherin quidditch captain uniform and a pure, joyous smile. She thought muggle skinny jeans, a hoodie, and boots with short heels rather suited the dark witch but that the glamour charms hiding her cascading curls, pronounced jawline, and full lips did not; she was rather embarrassed at how giddy she felt when she removed the charms back in the muggle town.

Bellatrix started smoking cigarettes in the bar on a whim one day. Hermione commented on how muggle that was of her, to which Bellatrix replied that she only smoked when she drank in rural muggle towns (“Even more muggle,” she had quipped). Both women refused to reflect on how strange their camaraderie was, because they both were relieved to finally feel something other than damned.

One day, Hermione received two letters by owl from wizarding Britain. The first was from Shacklebolt inviting her to participate in a special ministry project. It was to be a coordinated effort between Muggle Affairs, St. Mungo’s, the Ministry of Education, and Magical Law Enforcement to prepare a new approach to relations with the muggle world and managing the ways it would affect the wizarding world both immediately and in the future. The second letter was from McGonagall imploring her to accept Shacklebolt’s proposal, assuring her that she could think of no witch or wizard more prepared for and capable of guiding the plan. Hermione truly did consider it, if only for McGonagall’s sake, before sending a letter saying as much and respectfully declining the offer.

**

It continued like that for a few months. One Tuesday night, near closing time, Bellatrix sat leaning against the wall, one knee bent with the foot on her seat, the other leg dangling lazily. Between her fingers was a careless cigarette that sloughed off ash more than she actually put it to her lips. Hermione thought the woman looked good doing it, which was the only reason she let her smoke in the bar. She personally enjoyed it, and it turned out to be good for business.

“How many of those are you smoking these days?” Hermione asked, slightly concerned but mostly out of principle.

“Not many. It’s for effect. Gives me a headache if I have more than one, honestly. Why? You worried about me?”

Hermione rolled her eyes, leaned across the bar, and removed the cigarette from the woman’s fingers to take a single draw before delicately replacing it. “You’re ridiculous.” It gave her a headache too, but the gesture felt satisfying.

“Yes, well.” Bellatrix grinned deviously, crushed the cigarette butt onto the counter despite Hermione’s protests, and made to leave. “You are clearly turning out the lights, so I’ll keep you no longer. I’ll be out in Eastern Europe the next couple weeks. Maybe I’ll swing by when I’m back.”

“Oh, you’re coming ‘back’, huh? Finding the fish smell rather cozy these days?”

“Just act like you’re happy about it.” Bellatrix zipped her hoody up and exited the building.

Within a few minutes, Hermione closed up shop, locked the door behind her, and strolled down the street toward her flat. A thick fog lay low in the neighborhood, giving the impression that the buildings and road signs were floating. It was an uneasy tranquility, as if the town existed before evil and therefore thought itself impervious to it.

Out of the fog materialized a lamp post with something slumped at its base. Hermione’s heart sank when she recognized a very pale dark-haired woman struggling to breath, one arm stiff against the ground to hold herself up and the other pressed against her stomach.

“Bellatrix? What’s wrong?”

Hermione rushed to kneel next to her and moved the woman’s arm. Warm stickiness dampened the woman’s ripped clothing. The first few notes of panic bubbled under her sternum. “Bella, what happened?”

Bellatrix wheezed, trying to get words out. “Shot me. With a gun.”

Hermione swung her head around, scanning for anyone else on the street. The fog obscured anything and anyone there was to find, and she could feel blood leaking into Bellatrix’s clothes. Breathing raggedly, she deployed her wand and apparated with the bleeding woman into her own living room.

She managed to get Bellatrix to the couch, where she gagged when she pushed one hand assertively down onto the wound (thank the gods for that first aid and CPR class). After a minute or two, the bleeding did begin to slow, but her mind whirled in faster circles: there could be organ damage, or bleeding she couldn’t see, or a bullet in there, or soon infection. She had not been particularly skilled at healing, and even basic episkies and tergeos were escaping her right now. Trying not to let that old insecurity mix with mounting panic, she summoned soap, scissors, the knife from her room, and kitchen rags and made Bellatrix press a rag on the wound while she worked. She conjured water to pour down in mid-air like a faucet from nowhere, not realizing she hadn’t used her wand to do so. The water splashed all over the floor while she washed her hands. She didn’t even consider vanishing the water or getting a receptacle of some sort to collect it, nor did she think to stop the flow. Blue nitrile gloves bloomed from her wand to cover her hands; casting a self-sanitizing charm on them was an afterthought. She transfigured the tongs into smaller instruments that looked like ones her parents used in their dental practice, and a last minute idea sent her fumbling through her potions cabinet, trying to find something that might act as an anesthetic, or at least knock the woman out for a bit. Finding something she thought was close enough, she tapped it with her wand to adjust the type and concentrations of few ingredients and forced it down Bellatrix’ throat. The woman only weakly protested before her head lolled back on arm of the couch.

In Hermione’s flustered problem-solving, she was unwittingly combining muggle and magical practices in an inefficient, haphazard fashion. Drawing on what little she remembered of her high school human anatomy class and the almost certainly incorrect procedures she had seen in medical dramas on TV, Hermione used the little knife to cleanly open the wound a bit more before changing tactics and attempting to accio a bullet. Nothing happened. A wave of despair washed over her as she knelt by the couch, staring at the frightening wound, her wand in one hand, an ornate knife in the other, tiny birds chirping anxiously, and an endless flow of water from the air soaking the ground around her.

Then the knife twitched.

It must be in my head, she thought. I’m so stressed that I’m hallucinating. I’m fucking it all up. This is not the time to lose your shit, Hermione.

It twitched again, and the butt of the handle dipped down forcefully in the direction of the wound. She had to clench it tightly to keep it from plunging. It almost whined as it wiggled in her grasp.

What the hell?

She again questioned her own sanity when she slowly let the knife handle draw her hand downward. It sank down into the pulpy mess of the woman’s wound, but its urgency began to lessen with the contact. It stopped moving when it clinked into something solid that she could not see. With her free hand, she worked her fingers alongside the knife – into a body, she thought and almost passed out – until they contacted something hard and unnaturally cold. She pinched her fingers around it and slid it along the knife handle up and out of the body. A bronze cylinder no bigger than the last bone in her thumb was illuminated by blue lines of electricity that crackled audibly while dancing over the object. They glowed, dulled, and repeated themselves so that the object never looked the same two seconds in a row. She slumped against the side of the couch, her head against Bellatrix’s still body. Though the whole event would become a blur in her memory, she never would forget the moment she realized the small knife in her hand was the one she’d pulled from Dobby when he died helping them escape Malfoy Manor. She had just used it to extract some malicious magic from its murderous owner, next to whom she now knelt with a cursed weapon in each hand.

The woman stirred, groggy but coherent. Hermione dropped the knife and bullet onto a table as if burned. She summoned an anti-nausea potion and another that was normally used for repairing damaged magical goods but would hopefully slow the worsening of Bellatrix’s condition while Hermione worked.

Handing it to her, she whispered, “Who were they?”

Bellatrix’s hands and lips shook trying to manage the little vial. “I don’t know. Didn’t say anything. Couldn’t see their face. But they had an auror badge.” She spoke haltingly, no hint of the normally striking red in her lips.

“An auror badge?!” Hermione looked at the bullet crackling on the table. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.” The woman grimaced as she tried to adjust her position without success.

Anger rose like bile in Hermione’s throat. “An auror used a muggle weapon on you?” Bellatrix only nodded. “From the British Ministry?”

“Yes, the crest. I’ve seen it enough...”

“They didn’t say anything at all?”

“No. Appeared right out of the fog. Shot almost before I saw them.”

Hermione tried not to choke on her rage.

“Hermione,” Bellatrix murmured. “Can you turn off the water?”

Hermione blinked at the waterfall of water next to the couch, confused as to when she had created it and why it was still running. Apparently, that was all it took for the spell to end, and the last of the water collapsed on her legs and still bloody instruments on the floor.

Fortunately, her mind began to work efficiently again. She remembered a number of healing spells that seemed applicable and thought she could use them marginally well enough to hold Bellatrix over until she could find a real healer. Given the woman’s high-profile criminal status, treatment at St. Mungo’s or another professional medical response would require the presence of an auror team, which was now out of the question.

She made a course of action about how to order spells, potions, and muggle technique to stabilize Bellatrix while she figured out what to do next. Though she felt tireless, she found herself dozing between alarms set to signal time for a potion. Once, she awoke to a painful groan accompanying a shift in the cushion where she was resting her head. An arm slid off the couch and hung limply next to her. Turning her head only briefly to see the woman breathing deeply with her eyes closed, traces of color returning to her face, Hermione let out a heavy sigh and pulled the arm over her shoulder. She sat with it clasped to her body until the next alarm went off.

Bellatrix began to look relatively normal for someone who had experienced a such severe injury just about the same time Hermione ran out of resources to continue treating her. Hermione had stewed for hours, working hard to keep herself calm so that she wouldn’t disturb the injured woman. A million different manic options for what to do next flitted through her mind, most disposed of quickly. Antsy energy crawled under her skin, and she rubbed her eyes hard with her knuckles when she thought she saw her fingertips glowing blue. When that didn’t remove the glow, she stuffed her hands in her pockets to try to ignore them.

The clock on the wall flashed 8:00 am when Hermione placed a blood replenishing potion, an anti-infection tincture, and a cup of water with a drop of Felix Felicis in it on the table next to the woman.

“In fifteen minutes, drink the potion. 15 minutes again, then the tincture. Then sip the water until it’s gone. I’ll be back. Don’t move.”

“Couldn’t if I wanted to,” came a reply muffled by the back of the hand Bellatrix dragged across her face to rest on her forehead.

Hermione didn’t let herself dwell on the woman’s vulnerability. Instead, she donned her wizarding robes for the first time in almost three years and steeled herself to visit the Ministry of Magic.