Bab 44: Harry Gaunt - Chapter 44
Bellatrix felt cold as she heard Harry's teeth begin to chatter. She felt him shiver, the heating having been turned off after the Dursley's had gone to bed.
Wait, the Dursleys? Bellatrix knew that name, they were Harry's family - she blinked, or was it Harry who blinked?
"Come on…" Harry butted the door with his arm. "Open!"
He tried in vain to open the door, as did Bellatrix as she tried to move her arms, but found she couldn't, they were Harry's now. She was just a passenger through his past, yet she felt what Harry felt. And knew what he allowed her to see.
Bellatrix already hated the Dursleys, especially his Aunt.
Kick.
Harry kicked the door with a shout, which to Bellatrix came as a hiss from an angry snake. It didn't work though, Harry was just a boy as he turned on his side and curled into a ball. He had nobody. Bellatrix felt his pain.
And then the memory changed, flicking through time that she couldn't comprehend until Hagrid, tall and far older smashed down a door on the island of Azkaban. It seemed a strange place for Harry to be, he was still so small as he reached up to receive his letter.
Bellatrix was well practiced at reading over his shoulder, but she didn't have to this time as they read it together. There was a storm outside, the lightening showing clear the date in the corner.
1991.
"Happy Birthday Harry!" said Hagrid. "Here, baked it myself."
Bellatrix saw the writing on the cake. Harry had never been so happy. "T-thank you, Hagrid."
She felt it all as the memory changed once again, carrying her softly to the Hogwarts Great Hall.
Harry was shuffling nervously on that rickety excuse for a stool. And there was McGonagall to their side, she looked so proud as she plopped the hat on Harry's head.
"You could be great you know…" Bellatrix heard. "It's all here in your head, and Slyth-"
"Not Slytherin." Harry whispered. Bellatrix remembered a boy with brightly coloured hair. "Not Slytherin, please."
Bellatrix understood, but was also confused. Harry was a Gaunt, he'd spoken Parseltongue in his cupboard, unknowingly but still… she looked behind through the hat, her eyes upon Dumbledore and the image Harry had seen walking up.
He was watching him. He was watching The Boy Who Lived.
"Gryffindor!"
The scene changed and in a blur, a girl named Hermione joined beside Ron as they battled a troll, read books and laughed about silly things. Harry had never been so happy.
Click.
Harry pushed the latch as entered a room in the dead of night, invisible from all while he approached a mirror of decadent style. Bellatrix didn't recognise it, nor did a name spring to mind as he slipped the cloak off.
She saw their reflection.
"Hi Mum," said Harry. "Hi Dad." He sat longingly upon the floor. "Me again."
Harry smiled as his parents became real within the mirror. They smiled back at him too, looking proud.
Bellatrix stared at them, she knew exactly who these two were. And how could she have not seen it, those eyes. Harry had his mother's eyes.
The picture jarred and swept away again, zooming through time as a presence came beside her. It was comforting, it was Harry as the scene began anew.
"Because I told her to."
Bellatrix looked at a boy wearing Slytherin robes. "You see I can be very, persuasive."
She was beside a young girl, Ginny, Harry had dropped his wand. The scene flickered, Harry seemed to chuckle in her mind as a Basilisk slipped out through the mouth of Salazar Slytherin.
'Told you.'
It reared up. Bellatrix marvelled at the sight of it, even still as the demented boy set it upon them. Harry had a plan though, and a hat.
"NOOO!"
Harry plunged a sword through the Basilisk's brain, then hissed in pain as a fang went through his arm. Bellatrix's thoughts blurred with agony as the memory skipped along, flipping past a phoenix and blabbering man. Harry had killed a Basilisk.
"This heart is where you truly live, this heart here!"
"AARRRH!"
Bellatrix stumbled over a rock as Harry did too. Ron was hobbling behind them, along with Hermione and a bat like Snape.
"Sirius!" Harry straightened back up, but it was too late as a creature Bellatrix had only read about transformed from an ordinary man. Lupin, she'd seen him at Hogwarts.
Sirius went flying over the cliff. Sirius, Harry's Godfather. And the other man there too, he'd transformed into a rat.
"Come back here Potter!" squawked Snape.
Harry was throwing rocks again, one of them hit Lupin in the head. Bellatrix could see why he was so good now.
The werewolf disappeared, the memory becoming dark and misty as Harry stood with his wand across a lake. She could see him on the other side, and Sirius, they were being swarmed by Dementors too many to count.
"Expecto Patronum!"
She felt was he did, a rush unlike anything she'd felt as magic shot through their limbs. Bellatrix had always sensed that Harry was an extraordinary wizard, but this, this feeling as he did.
This was real. Harry was from the future.
'You can ask me anything.' Harry's voice echoed in her mind. Things became quicker now as the memories changed. 'And I am sorry.'
Bellatrix couldn't speak. Harry presence disappeared as she looked into the eyes of Voldemort.
"Crucio!"
Her mind exploded with pain, and then just as quickly, flickered between moments too fast to truly comprehend. She was falling through the ministry, then holding her best friend's hand as the light became dim within his eyes. Ron was gone, he was dead as Hermione wept behind them. There were more too, others she couldn't name firing spells at flying mist between the shelves.
They left his body there. And then Hermione's too as she took a curse meant for Harry, a violent break ripping through her muggle cardigan. Harry caught her, Bellatrix felt her hand touch Harry's face, softly and for the last. Hermione was dead, and in that moment, Harry changed.
"Harry, we need to run," said Neville behind a rock and spraying spell fire. "Harry, please!"
Bellatrix stood up. She had to find Sirius as she clambered up stone and bloody rock towards an empty arch. She was muttering to himself, hissing between words as she spied one Lucius Malfoy duelling her beloved Godfather. Rodolphus was there too, Sirius was losing as a mist travelled high above their heads.
Harry didn't notice. But Bellatrix did.
"Avada Kedavra!"
She saw herself appear on a jagged rock, then green as it smashed into Sirius. He fell through the veil. Harry watched it all with a growing numbness.
He turned to his enemies with voices whispering behind him. He raised his wand and with it, the memory came to an end.
Bellatrix felt wrong. She kept forgetting what was her and what was Harry. She was now in a woodland killing snatchers, breaking them with spells that she'd learned and invented since leaving Hogwarts. A memory of a man that looked like Dumbledore flittered across her mind. It had been nearly 2 years as Harry kicked a man's throat while he burned alive. She didn't like hearing them scream, only burn.
She appeared inside Malfoy Manor. Harry was overwhelming.
"Lestrange, or should I call you Black now?" Harry looked across the room towards a huddled mess. "Why are you."
Harry walked towards her. Bellatrix saw herself huddled within a corner of the drawing room.
"Potter - the Dark Lord, he'll - mh!"
Harry dragged her across the floor, his hand serene like an artist's brush as he guided her over. Bellatrix looked down at her older self, a haunting sight as she writhed on the floor, but not by Harry's will.
"Where is he, he should be here," she muttered, beginning to cry like a child and plead for her lord.
Harry stood above her. He'd seen this before too many times, flashbacks of their duels that would end in this, a crying heap on the floor. Bellatrix saw all the times he had spared her, how he'd watched with his wand in hand, and done nothing.
Her head hurt. Where had Harry gone?
"Bellatrix?" The sound of her name brought her back, of Cissy as she came through a door with her wand at the ready. "You. Look what you've become."
Harry looked back at her. "Stay here," he said. "I'll be gone soon."
Cissy shifted with her hair tied up, looking mature and regal in her elegant robes as she stepped aside.
Harry walked through the door. He hadn't even raised his wand, he didn't need to with the likes of her.
"Bellatrix." He'd left her alive again. "Please, stop this."
The sound of scraping nails brought her over, her sister reduced to this after her lord had abandoned her.
The house shook. He'd found where they were hiding, the cowards.
Boom.
Cissy soothed her crying sister. The house was cracking along the walls. It would just be the two of them soon, just as it had always been.
BOOM!
The windows blew out, sending shards of glass skidding across the room. Cissy didn't know it yet, but the other side of her house had blown from its foundations.
"Hold on Bellatrix," she murmured with their hands intertwined. "Soon. Soon we'll be set free."
Potter would die at the hands of the Dark Lord.
"I know," replied Bellatrix with clarity in her eyes. "He doesn't stand a chance." She looked up at her sister with hope, acceptance as Cissy squeezed her hand.
~~~~~~~
Bellatrix was in a vortex, tumbling and turning as something cold gripped at her very being. She could feel it, and the other who fought with a manic desperation. But not her, not Harry as something broke free from them both and fell into the void.
Harry had a scar on his forehead, she'd never noticed that before as they hit the ground in the Forbidden Forest. Bellatrix woke with a gasp.
"Bellatrix, breathe." Harry guided her down to the pebbled rocks beside the lake. "Breathe. You're back, we're here by the lake."
She took deep lungfuls of air, clinging on for dear life to Harry's robes. "H-harry." She looked at him leaning over her. "Y-you're from the, the-"
Harry nodded, his expression clouded with sadness. "Yes, hard to believe, I know." He knelt beside her. Bellatrix touched his cheek. "You'll feel better soon, I promise. My memories are very…"
Bellatrix climbed on top of him, she didn't need him to explain as her hands went through his hair. She'd already seen it.
"Y-you're all right with this?" Harry uttered beneath her gentle touches.
Bellatrix kissed his nose, then his cheek. Then placed a hand on his-
Harry laughed. She was impossible in so many ways as he kissed her back, her quiet giggle so beautiful to hear.
"But wait," said Harry before she could unzip him. "You must have questions, you must." He pulled away from their kiss. She pouted at him.
Harry looked at her pleadingly as she found a seat atop his lap. "A few, namely how on earth you travelled through time…" She prodded Harry's stomach. "And, I assume…" Her hands became, she didn't want him to go.
"I've no idea how to go back," said Harry with a shake of his head. "And nor would I want to, I had nothing there." He sat up from the pebbled shore, keeping Bellatrix in place. "That future's gone, my past as you saw it doesn't exist anymore. And if we're successful, it never will."
Bellatrix understood. And in fact. "I think even if we fail at stopping Tom, what happened is only a possibility. Lily and James can't have a son called Harry again, right? You're still here."
The thought was mildly disturbing.
"I've no idea." Harry wondered what it would be like meeting himself. "No, surely not. There can't be two Harry's."
Bellatrix shrugged. She'd only been teasing. "And me," she admitted sadly at the memory of Sirius. "I killed him." She looked down in shame.
Harry hugged her. "I didn't know you much before, and despite everything I did to you, and you me. I didn't hate you in the end." Harry looked back into her face. Bellatrix was nothing like who Lestrange had been. "I hated what had been done to you, what he and the rest had forced you to become. I pitied you," he said quietly.
And it was in those moments he scarcely remembered that he knew why, when Lestrange would lie still upon the floor and blink up at him. She'd asked him once who he was, he forgot how long ago, how her gaze had been just like his was, lost and alone.
Harry couldn't kill her. He just couldn't.
"I know you did," said Bellatrix upon his lap. "I felt it. And I know why." She smiled at him softly, he was everything to her as he asked her how she knew.
She titled her head. It should be obvious. "Because you're mine," she said happily. "It doesn't matter what year it is, you're mine. Mine." Bellatrix poked his chest, she hoped he understood that as he playfully poked her back. Maybe she was right though, how else could they explain it?
"We'll go with that then," he concluded happily. "But if I am yours, then you're mine."
Bellatrix smiled as she found his zipper. "Happily." She smirked. "Now hold still."
Harry felt her hand slip inside. There was no use denying her - she loved him, and as Harry became lost in her gentle hand beside the lake, he realised something too. "Bellatrix."
She looked up, was something wrong?
"I love you." Harry shifted close to her stunned expression. He wouldn't be without her. "I love you, Bellatrix Black."
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