Exorcism and Apostasy
The short weeks that Bellatrix stayed at Hermione’s house seemed as long as the last few months that they’d known each other. The dark-haired woman improved marvelously, a testament to either her stubbornness or Narcissa’s skill or both. Andromeda stopped by twice to check on her; Hermione had the distinct impression she was being checked on too.
In the morning, Hermione would awake on the couch, creep to her room, and try not to disturb the sleeping woman while getting ready for the day. Mostly she was successful. She hadn’t had a television since she lived with her parents, but she bought one for Bellatrix to watch during the day. After Hermione got off work, they would talk for a while or she would do some routine healing spells and potions from the list that Narcissa had detailed for them.
One night, she served Bellatrix a large draught of a potion known as much for the deep sleep and vivid dreams it caused as it was for its cell regeneration. The woman’s eyelids grew heavy quickly, and Hermione was still by the bedside when she slipped her hand into Hermione’s with her fingertips resting on the inside of her wrist.
“Stay.” Bellatrix’s said thickly. “Just for a little bit.” When Hermione summoned chair, the hand tugged lightly on her. “Up here, please.”
Hermione was flustered but crawled onto the bed anyway. She balanced precariously on her side on the tiny sliver of mattress available to her to avoid touching the other woman. The groggy figure, however, shifted and relaxed so that her hip sank into Hermione’s thighs, who tried not to move.
“Hermione, don’t forget to breathe.”
Hermione wasn’t sure if she was on fire with embarrassment or something else and was afraid her pounding heart would keep the woman awake. After only a few minutes, however, the woman’s breathing grew deep and regular, and the peacefulness of sleep settled on the room. A single, dark curl had fallen across her face; caught in her eyelashes, it was about to tickle her nostril. Instinctively, Hermione gently lifted the curl from the woman’s face and tucked it behind her ear, her hand lingering just long enough for her to feel the need to snatch it away quickly. She extracted herself from the bed, unaware of the small smile that flitted across the older woman’s lips as she exited the room.
The next morning, Bellatrix hobbled from the bed to the kitchen where Hermione was deeply concentrated on drawing strands of milky liquid from a small bottle with her wand. She watched the young woman for a bit with amusement before she cleared her throat and said, “Tele is rubbish, you know.”
Hermione nearly dropped the bottle. “Geez, give a girl a warning. Should you be up out of bed?”
“I’ve been warning you with my presence for nearly two whole minutes now.” Bellatrix smirked. “And I’m feeling quite well today so I figured I’d take advantage of it.”
“If you think you’re going out of this house – “
“I wouldn’t dare. I’d have to deal with you and both my sisters, and I assure you I don’t need that headache on top of everything else. What are you working on?”
“My side gig.”
“Not just a bartender, I see. War heroes really do go above and beyond.”
“Wow, I didn’t hope you’d be more rude to me after being pulled back from the brink of death. Normally that makes people more appreciative of those around them.” Hermione didn’t look away from her project.
“Oh, come off it. What’s your little experiment going to do?”
“Can’t tell you.”
“Well, it’s clearly a magical adjustment of some sort. I would guess – “
“I don’t want you to guess, and I’m not going to tell you. It’s part of the agreement I make with my clients.”
Bellatrix smiled with pleasure. “Delightful. You’re full of surprises. I won’t pry anymore.”
Hermione didn’t send her off, and when Bellatrix brought tea to the table she ceased working and put it all away. Each day after that, the dark-haired woman flicked through one of the many muggle books from the shelves while Hermione worked in silence until tea appeared in front of her. She began to look forward to the interruption. Her mind and body attuned to the woman’s movements, aware of every little sound she made in the kitchen – clinking glasses, clicking stove knobs, the calculated moment when the water was taken off the burner before it truly started to boil, tiny curses muttered under breath when something clattered to the floor, pronounced exhalations that she shouldn’t have been able to predict. The woman slouched gingerly when she sat, whether it was to intrude into Hermione’s work or to settle on the couch with a book. She sometimes – but not always – twirled a loose curl in one hand while she read, and sometimes in the middle of a page she wrinkled her forehead with closed eyes before continuing to read. Whenever she put a hand down, she almost always led with her pinky, placing her fingers down one at a time in order, including her thumb, before settling the palm flat. She crossed her arms when she was pleased, and when she was really interested in something, she showed it by leaning forward with her lips barely parted.
Hermione had never noticed so much about a person. It was thrilling simply to notice and not react, a feeling she had not experienced before. That’s why she knew something was different when Bellatrix received her sisters’ suggestion to move back into the Black Manor. The woman brooded alone for several hours until she emerged dressed in robes that Narcissa had left for her.
Hermione looked up from her work, only just discovering she had been dreading this. “So you’re going then?”
“Not yet.” Bellatrix shook her head. “I’m just trying to see if I can stand wearing robes again.”
“The wards might kick you out if you arrive wearing muggle clothes.” Hermione quipped.
“Clever.” Bellatrix made a face. “It makes sense for me to go there. It is mine after all. It’ll just waste away unless I give at least some life to it, even if I can’t engage its magic anymore.”
Hermione wondered if Bellatrix would be the one to waste away if she returned. It also had not crossed her mind that the house might have lost its master when Bellatrix’ magic was removed. What happened when a family’s magic lay unclaimed and untethered?
“This is just so different that when you said you couldn’t see either Narcissa or Andromeda after the trials. It wasn’t even that long ago that you said that.”
“That’s fair. There was just something about being around them together that changes things.” Hermione couldn’t deny that but was unwilling to acquiesce to the dark-haired witch.
“I can see you’re skeptical. I know what I’m doing.”
“I just don’t see how it’s better than other options.”
“Returning to my childhood home? Hermione, I know you think being a part of a pureblood family is horrific, but it mostly hasn’t been. It’s also not a choice.”
“Andromeda sure makes it seem like it.”
“Andy was selfish. Still is. That’s how you know she’s one of us.” Bellatrix winked, but her face betrayed her pain.
“Leaving hatred and bigotry isn’t selfish, Bella. Looking down on people for their blood status is. What is the family motto again? Toujours pur?” Hermione didn’t know why she was unleashing her bitterness now. It shouldn’t matter that this woman, the ex-Death Eater, return to her pureblood life and privilege.
Bellatrix sighed. “You’re right. Blood status doesn’t matter. It doesn’t now, and it didn’t then. Our family motto is a farce.”
“How can you say that now, after all that time and energy spent hurting people?”
“Blood status was just an ugly excuse for the old families with disintegrating power and wealth to feel good about releasing their dark magics. That was the great joke that the Dark Lord played on us. He didn’t need a reason to be dark, but we thought we did. He gave us a reason that catered to our insecurities.”
“You played that joke on yourself.”
“Yes, I did.” Hermione thought Bellatrix should have lowered her gaze or bowed her head in some indication of shame, but she didn’t. “I fucked up myself and my family and a whole bunch of other people.”
Hermione didn’t know what to say so she looked away. She hated that it was in the middle of this conversation about ugly aspects of Bellatrix’s past that she was realizing she didn’t want the woman to leave. “When will you go?”
“As soon as Andy’s done wrangling the Manor. The building went a little feral being unchaperoned for so long. Glad it’s her dealing with it and not me.”
Hermione remembered how Grimmauld Place had nearly burst at its seams the day Andromeda appeared in its fireplace to tell off Tonks for not being home for dinner. The memory made her glum, and she spent the rest of the day sulking in the wizarding community to get away from the dark-haired witch in her flat.
**
Bellatrix waited for Narcissa in her usual seat at Hermione’s bar the next day. The young woman mostly kept her head down while she worked. She felt Narcissa before she saw her; the glasses on her shelf twinkled in the windowless room before the door banged shut. None of the muggles in the room gave any indication they noticed, but it put her on edge. Narcissa’s heels and cane clicked on the floor; Hermione felt the sound in her bones, echoing across two decades of vivid memories that Narcissa Malfoy should not have been able to touch. The three witches exchanged curt greetings and immediately began their goodbyes.
“The Manor really is a lark.” Bellatrix said across the counter as she stood. “You ought to come see it.”
“Sure,” Hermione only raised her eyes enough to see Narcissa watching her sister curiously.
“Thank you, Hermione.” The dark-haired woman’s voice was noticeably soft.
“Of course.”
Then the sisters lifted their chins in unison and strode out the door, and Hermione lost something inside herself. She forced her little birds upward into the ceiling so the customers wouldn’t notice them.
**
Many weeks later, Andromeda sent an owl asking to meet for lunch at a muggle café in London. Hermione obliged her but remained tight-lipped for most of the visit except to ask about the Ministry’s investigation into Bella’s shooting. Apparently, both Narcissa and Bellatrix has resisted a formal investigation until recently. Very little progress was being made because Harry had been banking on their silence up until then and was now scrambling to get his department to catch up. The rest of the Ministry was not informed with the exception of the Department of Mysteries, which was being extremely difficult to work with per usual.
“Bella said she sent you an owl.” The auburn-hair woman waited in vain for Hermione to speak. “She said you didn’t respond.”
Hermione scraped her plate with her fork before replying with a shake of her head. “I don’t know what I was thinking…as if we could be friends. I think I was just lonely. She was lonely. It was just lucky I was around when it happened.”
“Do you regret it?” Andromeda’s voice sounded like veritaserum the way Narcissa’s curiosity looked like legilimency.
“I guess not. I just feel foolish I think.”
“Why?”
“Too much happened, right? Too many terrible things happened. They did so many terrible things to people like me. It’s laughable that I even considered befriending someone like her, or vice versa. I don’t know which is crazier.”
“Yes, about the terrible things, but the choices that arise in their aftermath that aren’t necessarily the ones we prepared for. What you do doesn’t have to be what you expected to do.”
Hermione paused. “Can I ask why you didn’t want Dora to join the Order?”
It was the other woman’s turn to sigh. She put her napkin and her hands in her lap. “I lost my family to fanaticism, especially Bellatrix; I didn’t want to lose my daughter to another kind of fanaticism. But I guess there are some things you can’t escape.”
Hermione heard what Andromeda did not: the woman spoke about the House of Black as her family before she spoke about her husband and daughter. This did not seem like something she had the right to address so she returned her attention to the original conversation. “But the Order was meant to be the opposite of the Death Eaters.”
“The opposite. Exactly. It was so polarized. Light magic versus dark magic. Good versus Evil. The Order versus the Death Eaters. Dumbledore against Voldemort. It’s too easy for people who see themselves as bastions of an innate sense of morality to convince others to sacrifice themselves for an ultimate ideal like love, friendship, family…”
“Weren’t Voldemort and the Death Eaters like that too but with hate and greed?”
“In some ways. But the Dark Lord cared only for himself and his own power, and after the first few years he did little to hide that. His followers died for a waning sense of their own entitlement. They wanted – they almost needed – to use the magic that had grown dormant in their families. He was a sick promise of feeling alive and, once in, most couldn’t get out.”
“You make it sound so tragic. In the literary sense of the word.”
“It’s not. They wanted to hurt and kill. They wanted to reclaim that old, powerful magic again. At any cost. It made them ugly. But the Order wanted to destroy the concepts of darkness and evil but was too blind to realize that “dark” and “evil” were really just people. The Order defeated Voldemort and the Death Eaters, sure. The Order did nothing against the deterioration that comes from repressing the magic in your blood for centuries, so there will always be more people who ‘good’ people feel the need to defeat.”
“Deterioration?”
“Yes. I assume, based on your side projects, you know that at the most basic level magic has adverse effects on human anatomy and physiology.”
Hermione nodded, somewhat alarmed that Andromeda knew about her work.
“It has the same effect on you as a muggleborn as it does on me. But the Black family bloodline, much like the Malfoys or even the Weasleys, has stored up centuries worth of cellular degradation because of the magic we can’t or won’t use. Purebloods tend to be born with an excess of latent magic that must be converted into something else to keep it from destroying them, and most would call it dark magic.”
“And you don’t?”
“No magic is inherently dark. The witch or wizard makes it dark.”
“So what about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“What did you do to manage your own magic, to keep it from becoming dark?” Hermione didn’t think anything about Andromeda was latent.
“I’m sure there are plenty out there who would still call me a dark witch,” the woman said with a smile that Hermione couldn’t differentiate as sad or as devious. “They’re up to something, Hermione. My sisters.”
Hermione couldn’t explain why her heart sank. “Please tell Harry this. Not me.”
“Harry will know if it’s important. It might even be good for Bellatrix; I guess for both of them.”
“Are you not involved?”
The woman sighed. “How could I be? How could I not be? This is not something I’ve figured out, Hermione.” The younger woman let her continue and didn’t mention the chemistry the three sisters exuded together. “But that’s all for now since I don’t know the details. Would you return my sister’s owl so she will stop bugging Cissy and me about it?”
“I don’t know, Andromeda. It may be better for me to just stay away now.”
A sharp look replaced the woman’s smile. “Hermione. When I ran away with Ted, Bella saved me from my father. She burned me off the tapestry to keep him from killing me. I never once saw her again until she burst into the courtroom during the trial that day. She stayed away to protect me, but I stayed away because I was a coward.”
“You don’t seem like a coward to me.”
“It’s very easy to mistake cowardice for conviction when it comes to us purebloods. Britain’s been doing it for ages. It was just lucky that my fear made it easier to act on what I chose to believe. At least Bella never settled for such artifice.”
“Is that you trying to convince me she’s a good person and deserves my friendship?”
“Ha, no! Bellatrix is absolutely not a good person. That's what the rumors have always gotten right about her. But staying away isn’t always the answer, even when it feels like it.” The woman pulled a roughly hewn but glistening wooden sparrow from her bag and handed it to Hermione. “She made me swear to give this to you. Be careful. It’s probably a portkey, and she’s taken advantage of more than one witch in her life.”
While Hermione inspected it, Andromeda paid their bill at the counter and left.