章 63: 3
"Just between you and me… how'd you do it?"
Heh, even now, even after he and the disguised Barty Crouch Jr. laid it all out for them… Cedric still thought he'd somehow snuck his name into the Goblet of Fire. Letting out a sigh, Harry just gives the other wizard a dark, amused look.
"I didn't. I was entered against my will. But that's not something you'll understand until after the First Task, Cedric."
The expression on the handsome Hufflepuff's face is honestly quite gratifying. Confusion and disbelief war across his features as he tries to decide how he wants to answer Harry's words. He never gets the chance of course, because a moment later they reach the end of the corridor where they part ways. Harry splits off towards Gryffindor Tower without so much as a farewell, leaving Cedric staring after him.
Still, the conversation wasn't a complete waste of his time. Talking with Cedric had been precisely what he needed to remember what else happened tonight. Namely, the way he would be ambushed the moment he made his way back to Gryffindor Tower. Needless to say, Harry didn't have time to deal with the entirety of his House all clamoring for his attention. Nor, from what he recalled, did any believe him if he tried to tell them he didn't put his name in the damn cup.
But their faith in him, one way or the other, wasn't relevant at the moment. Harry was on a time table here, and he wasn't going to let anything stand in his way. As such, he draws his wand while approaching the Fat Lady's portrait and turns it on himself. Wordlessly, he casts an incredibly powerful disillusionment charm, rendering his form completely invisible.
Only then does he approach the Fat Lady in her portrait. She's currently speaking with another painted figure, who's telling her all about the commotion in the Great Hall from earlier that evening. The commotion he had technically caused.
"Balderdash."
Neither painted figure actually seems to recognize Harry's voice, caught up in their own conversation as they are. But the Fat Lady still does her job at least, her portrait swinging open to reveal the Gryffindor Common Room beyond.
… As well as the multitude of wizards and witches dressed in red and gold that are waiting within. Dozens if not hundreds of eyes stare out at where Harry is standing, but no one can see him as he slips inside and the portrait door closes behind him. The tension breaks with Harry halfway to the stairs, and one of the Weasley Twins calls out to everyone.
"False alarm folks!"
Groans fill the room, even as Harry ascends the stairs two at a time, making his way to his dorm. There, he doesn't hesitate to rip open his chest and pull out his Invisibility Cloak and Firebolt. Though, he does pause for a moment as his hands run over the Firebolt. It's an old broom by his time traveling standards, but he still remembered it fondly to this day. A smile flits across his invisible features for a moment as he begins to straighten up and-
"Harry?"
Stiffening, Harry curses under his breath. Seriously? He let his situational awareness lapse for one second and he finds himself being ambushed. Though, as he turns around and dispels the disillusionment charm to properly face Ron Weasley, he has to admit… it could be worse than his best friend.
Ron blinks, looking first at him and then to the invisibility cloak still in his arms. Harry's vanishing and reappearing act have clearly thrown the boy for a loop, though he quickly recovers and plasters a somewhat strained smile on his face.
"Is that how you did it then? Was that a disillusionment charm? Had to be the strongest I've ever seen."
… Now he remembers how this conversation goes as well. More specifically, he remembers how it affects their relationship for the rest of their year. Truth be told… Ron Weasley was a man that Harry would trust with his life. He was a stalwart brother against the evils they'd faced together, and there was almost no one that Harry would rather have at his back.
It still hurt, even considering Ron's death. But at this moment, Harry didn't have the time or the emotional capacity to deal with Ron at this age.
"I know you're jealous, Ron."
The red head's eyes widen at that, but Harry is already making his way forward. He overrides the young wizard before Ron can speak.
"I know you think that I put my name in the Goblet of Fire. I know you're angry that I didn't help you put yours in as well. I won't bother trying to convince you that it wasn't me. I will ask you to recall what happened in our First, Second, and Third Years though. First Year, you almost die getting me past the Chess Board and Professor Quirrell tries to kill me. Second Year, Lockhart would have obliviated both of us if not for his poor choice of magical implement. And I had to save your sister from possession. Third Year, the Dementors tried to suck out my soul not once but multiple times."
Shaking his head, Harry sighs.
"It shouldn't be that hard for you to accept that someone is trying to kill me again, Ron. By now, its par for the course, isn't it?"
For a moment, Ron looks speechless. But… as Harry expected, he's not ready to hear it laid out in common sense terms. His best friend's face begins to contort in anger and he starts to snarl.
"You-!"
But Harry cuts him off with a hand on his shoulder and a smile on his face.
"I forgive you for being a jealous pillock at this point in your life, Ron. I know that deep down, you're my brother and you always will be. Now… I have to go. I'll see you soon."
With that, he leaves a mystified Ron behind, slipping back out of the dormitory and down the stairs with his Invisibility Cloak hiding both him and his broom now. Though, he doesn't quite leave everything to chance. It's a very minor Confundus Charm that he casts on Ron. Nothing that will necessarily control his mind or anything like that. All it does is dissuade Ron from telling anyone that Harry left. The boy will go to bed and hopefully spend some time thinking about what Harry said, and he will not inform anyone that he saw Harry walking away with his broom and cloak.
Slipping past the party taking place in the Gryffindor Common Room, it takes Harry about ten minutes to get out of the castle, what with his knowledge of Hogwarts' secret passages. Then, he mounts his Firebolt and flies off into the night.
-x-X-x-
The stagnant air of Azkaban Prison is silent, save for the occasional howl or scream. In one of the cells however, a certain prisoner refuses to give anyone the satisfaction… for now, anyways. Bellatrix Lestrange's broken mind is a strange thing. Sometimes, she'll howl with the best of them, or even just howl to be howling. Sometimes she'll cackle madly, laughing her head off in wild insane amusement at seemingly nothing.
… And sometimes, like tonight, she huddles against the back wall of her cell, legs pulled to her chest, and doesn't make a single peep. Shivering violently there, she says not a word and lets not a sound pass between her cracked lips.
Her shivering only grows worse as a Dementor makes its presence known, slowly drifting on by. She's not unused to the dark creatures after all these years. However, she feels a momentary flick of surprise and anger when this Dementor stops in its tracks right outside her cell.
It wasn't fair. She didn't have any happy memories left for the creatures to take. Normally, they didn't even bother with her at this point. Sometimes when her insanity was at its peak, she would develop happy memories randomly, but they would always be quick to strip those away from her. Right now though, she was as clear minded as she possibly could be. There was no enjoyment of her circumstances to be had here, so why was this dementor scraping the bottom of the barrel?
Slowly, as her shivering gets worse and worse, Bellatrix Lestrange lifts her head to see what the fuck is going on. Only to stiffen in wide-eyed shock at the sight of not one, but TWO cloaked figures standing outside of her cell. There's the dementor of course, floating off the ground and looking dangerously at the other… the other who is not floating, the other who is not a dementor at all. A wizard in a hood stands there, his features hidden from her.
But of course, Bellatrix doesn't need to see his face to immediately know who it is! Scrambling off of the wall, she crawls forward, madness shining in her wide eyes as she giggles insanely.
"M-Milord? T-Truly? Have you finally come for your most loyal servant after all this time?!"
That proves to be a mistake. Her sudden surge of happiness causes the dementor to whip its head towards her, a hollow sucking sound coming from its empty 'face' as Bellatrix cries out in fresh terror and renewed fear. Still, she does not pull away. In fact, despite her happiness being sucked out of her as fast as it can be made, she crawls forward, her hands reaching the bars of her cell.
Suddenly, the hooded figure thrusts his wand into the face of the Dementor and calmly incants a spell.
"Expecto Patronum."
Bellatrix is expecting a silvery snake to burst out of the dementor's mouth and send it running, but that doesn't happen. Instead, the dementor begins to shake, violently. Almost as though it's trying to get away… but it can't. Underneath its tattered black cloaks, motes of light begin to shine through. The silver glow looks a little bit like cracks to Bellatrix's blurry vision.
Then, with a sudden whooshing sound that causes Bellatrix Lestrange to fall back on her ass, the dementor… implodes on itself. Sucked into a glittering bright point of light at the end of the hooded figure's wand, the dementor seems to permanently expire, dying a quicker death than it deserved, but also a quicker death than Bellatrix would have thought possible.
"… As to be expected of milord. Please, Dark Lord… please free your loyal servant so that I might once again do your bidding. I will-!"
It's then that the cloaked figure pulls back his hood and looks at her, shocking Bellatrix to her core. It's not the Dark Lord that has come for her. Not her darling Lord Voldemort. No, instead it's the eyes of that mudblood Lily Evans set into the face of that blood traitor James Potter. She might never have even met Harry Potter before, but Bellatrix knows her Lord's greatest enemy on sight all the same. This… this is Harry James Potter.
As the bars in front of her vanish like they were never there, Bellatrix hisses in outrage, scrambling back at the sight of her Lord's Nemesis suddenly before her. For a moment, she tries to flee… but then she remembers herself. She is an instrument of her Dark Lord's will…
Flinging herself forward, Bellatrix howls as she tries to attack the Potter boy with nothing but her bare hands. That goes about as well as can be expected, with her suddenly frozen in midair by his surprisingly powerful magic.
"Relax, Bella. This will only take a moment."
Bellatrix shudders. His tone reminds her so much of Lord Voldemort that it hurts. Not only that, but he called her Bella. Could it be… could the Dark Lord have possessed his greatest enemy and then come for her?
"M-Milord? Is it you after all?"
But Harry Potter shakes his head in amusement as he steps closer, killing her hope in an instant.
"No, Bella. Tom Riddle is far from here in too weak a form to possibly help you. I'm afraid you'll have to settle for me."
At confirmation that this IS her Master's great enemy, Bellatrix tries to struggle, truly she does. She fights against the magical hold to the best of her much diminished ability. In the end, without a wand and after over a decade of wasting away, she can't do anything but watch as the Potter boy brings his own wand to his temple and slowly begins to extract a memory.
No… not one memory. See, the way the memory extraction spell worked, you pulled out a memory in the form of a silvery strand and then put it into a pensieve. But as Harry slowly pulls from his temple, it's not a strand of memory he pulls forth, but an ever-growing bundle of silver. Bellatrix watches in confusion and incredulity as the young wizard removes enough memories that he should be brain dead by the time he's done. He's pulled out enough from his temple to account for someone's entire life.
Bellatrix's incredulity turns into budding horror when he finally finishes, only to turn his wand tip and the massive blob of glowing silver towards HER instead.
"W-What are you doing?! Get that away from me you foolish boy!"
Emerald eyes flashing, he just chuckles at her misfortune, once again reminding Bellatrix a little too much of her Lord.
"Sorry Bella, but according to you, this is going to hurt a lot. Still, you claim you deserve it so… here goes nothing."
Before she can even begin to parse that statement, just as Bellatrix Lestrange is starting to wonder if Harry might be just as mad as she is… he shoves the silvery glob right into her forehead, forcing the memories into her mind. And thus, Bellatrix Lestrange, eldest of the Black Sisters… remembers everything.
-x-X-x-
The life of Bellatrix Lestrange, born Bellatrix Black and commonly called Bella by those who knew her best, was not necessarily a nice one. And yet, as the glob of shining silver is forced into her mind, that is precisely what Bellatrix finds herself forced to contend with. An entire lifetime of her memories from both the past… and what would come next.
As the eldest of three sisters and a Scion of the House of Black, great things were expected of Bella, even from an early age. She was drilled constantly and taught all sorts of magics and secrets that other Wizarding Families could barely even dream of. As a result, she and her sisters had excelled when they finally arrived at Hogwarts, and if they didn't, their parents certainly had something to say about it.
However, the expectations on Bellatrix only grew when things began to take a turn for their family. First was her younger sister Andromeda, cavorting with a mudblood of all things and even giving up her place in House Black in order to be with the filth. That was bad enough, but salvageable. Andromeda was merely the middle sister of the three Black Sisters, and while it hurt to lose her, it wasn't the end of the world.
However, when Sirius Black turned out to be a blood traitor shortly after, things became a little more… desperate. As one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, House Black enjoyed a certain… prestige in the Wizarding World. But her cousin Sirius running away from home and cavorting with Light Families like the Potters? There was bedlam, even as his mother had struck him from the Family Tree. After all, Sirius was the oldest male of their generation. An heir.
To avoid any further embarrassments or surprises, Bellatrix and Narcissa were quickly locked down. As the youngest Black Sister, Cissy was pawned off to the up and coming House Malfoy, specifically to its young heir, Lucius Malfoy. But Bellatrix… Bella was meant for greater things. She was tasked with seducing the Dark Lord himself, Lord Voldemort.
Truth be told, it wasn't as though Bellatrix minded being told what to do in this case. She was a loyal daughter of House Black, but more than that… she'd always had a thing for power. Lord Voldemort presented quite a lot of power, all concentrated in one man. He was intoxicating to say the least, and she was happy to present herself to him as a candidate for marriage.
She had willingly allowed him to brand her with his Dark Mark, just as her parents and her aunt and uncle had. She joined his Death Eaters willingly, becoming one of his servants. And then she let herself into his quarters one night, intent on seducing him.
Only… Lord Voldemort was above such plebian desires. As handsome as the Dark Lord was, he was also asexual. More than that, as he would eventually confide in her, he intended to live forever and thus had no need for heirs OR spares in order to carry on a legacy he saw no reason to concern himself with. His reign would be eternal.
And so, for her impertinence that night in sneaking into his quarters and baring her naked body to him, Bellatrix Black was tortured with the Crucio Curse from dusk until dawn. The Dark Lord did not let up for even a single moment, for he sought to break her… and in the end, he did precisely that. Bella would never be the same again after that night. But rather than turn her into a fearful whipped dog shying away from her Master, all the torture did was tie her to him more closely.
A combination of her own innate mental instability, her fetish for powerful men, and the chains Lord Voldemort's Dark Mark intwined in her soul left Bellatrix eager to serve in any way she could. Her Lord did not desire a wife… he desired a tool, and Bellatrix endeavored to be the best one of all. She'd even gone so far as to marry Rodolphus Lestrange on the Dark Lord's orders. By comparison, Rodolphus could not hold a candle to her Lord, but he had done well and pleased Lord Voldemort, so she was given as a gift to her husband and told to obey him in all things a wife should.
Those days had been the height of Bellatrix's life. Mad and crazed as she was, she loved being Lord Voldemort's toy. She put up with her husband for the sake of the Dark Lord, and exulted in being able to carry out her Lord's orders.
And then, just like that, it all came to an abrupt end one fateful Halloween Night, and an already broken, insane Bella spent over a decade in Azkaban, becoming even more broken and more insane. Until finally, the Dark Lord returned. He saved her and her fellow Death Eaters, letting them free to play once more. In that time, Bellatrix had certainly played. She'd killed her blood traitor of a cousin. She'd killed many in the Dark Lord's name, in fact.
… But Lord Voldemort's Second Rise lasted only a scant few years when compared to his first. And then his great nemesis, a boy a quarter of his age, defeated him yet again. Harry Potter. The Boy-Who-Lived.
Bellatrix survived the Battle for Hogwarts by the skin of her teeth, going to ground and obsessing over killing Harry James Potter to get revenge for her Lord. Unlike the other Death Eaters, her Dark Mark didn't fade with Lord Voldemort's final death. As she would eventually learn, this was because he'd set her up as his final instrument of vengeance in the event that the worst came to pass. She was to be his weapon, his blade in the dark.
That, of course, was before everything started to go to shit. Even Bella, as crazy as she was, could see the world ending all around her. More than that, she could see Harry Potter working to try and stop it. As she watched from afar, hiding from his gaze and plotting his downfall, Bellatrix Lestrange recognized in the man, no longer a boy, a power she'd only seen once before. The green-eyed wizard was just as powerful as her Lord had been. No… more so.
Perhaps that had awakened something in her. Perhaps that was why, when the time had finally come, her attempt on Harry's life had been half-hearted at best and doomed to fail. Either that, or the state of the world itself had sucked the strength from Lord Voldemort's last gambit. After all, magic in general was dying by that point along with everything else. It could be argued that her Lord's hold on her mind had begun to wane at long last.
Either way, Bellatrix failed. She failed so badly that she didn't even die in the attempt, instead ending up captured. And when she woke up? Her Dark Mark was covered in chains and her soul belonged to a new Lord. Instead of killing her for all that she'd done against him and his, instead of taking vengeance for his godfather… Harry Potter repurposed her.
Bellatrix was never anything but a tool… and after that, she was Potter's tool, the Dark Lord a fading memory. Harry had used her to her fullest extent to, extracting every ounce of value from her. At times, it had seemed likely he would expend her life in one of his plans… but it never happened. People closer to him fell like flies, and somehow, Bellatrix, collared and shackled hound that she was, had survived.
When the time finally came for Harry Potter's last gambit, she was the only one he confided in as well. To be fair, there weren't many left by then. But those who were left, he knew he couldn't trust. They might try to stop him. They might convince him to change his mind. After all, his plan was… insane, to say the least.
It'd been right up Bella's alley. She'd happily gone along with it, helping him to gather the resources necessary for the ritual. There was no helping it, and if they'd waited much longer, even sending him back would likely not have been possible any longer. Magic was growing weaker by the day, and a ritual like the one Harry wanted to perform would probably fail if they had stopped to smell the roses, so to speak.
That was why, when the end came, Bellatrix had gathered her courage and asked a boon of her new Lord… of her TRUE Master. She was loath to think that he would go back in time without help, without assistance… without HER. She was even more loath to think that he would go back to a time where her old self would be an enemy of his, and a loyal pet to the Dark Lord.
That was why she'd asked him to do what he'd done. To take her entire mind and suck it right out of her head, leaving her body an empty husk. It wasn't quite the same as a soul death at the hands of a Dementor, but it was close in a way. It was the only way for him to bring her back with him though, so he could shove her memories into her younger self.
An insane idea, of course. One that Harry had warned her was likely doomed to failure. But Bella hadn't cared. She was dead either way. That was probably what had ultimately convinced him. His choice was to either leave her behind to meet oblivion with the rest of the world, or try and take her with him and likely lose her anyways. Only one option had any hope of keeping her around, so why not give it a try, right?
There was practically no hope of it working though. There was… except it had, hadn't it? Bellatrix slowly blinks, her foggy and glazed over eyes finally snapping shut and then reopening as she realizes it had actually worked. Clawing her way out of the depths of her mind, she moves about in the real world once more, finally unfreezing from her long extended stay processing her new memories.
Coming out of memory lane fully, Bellatrix looks around and sees herself in a nondescript hotel room. She has no idea where she is, only that she's sitting on a bed with her back against the wall… and her Lord is looking at her with some small amount of concern in his glowing emerald eyes. A quick check of her bared arm shows that her Dark Mark is once more covered in chains, so even if the memory transfer hadn't worked, she would still be enslaved to his Will… as was right.
"Bella? Are you with me?"
She was. She was with him, just as she'd been in the future that never was and hopefully would never be. But of course, Bellatrix doesn't just say that. Instead, she lunges across the bed and takes Harry to his back, pinning him down right then and there. Not that he's at all bothered by her sudden aggression. In fact, the expression on her Master's face is one of pure exasperation as he looks up at her with a sigh and places his hands on her hips.
"… Yeah, you're with me."
Bellatrix can only moan as she grinds her crotch into his, humping him rather wildly. She loved that he could just tell. After all, she was still just as insane as she'd ever been… but she was HIS insane, leashed Dark Witch. No one else's. After a moment more of thought, she begins shuffling backwards, sliding down off of his crotch so she can kneel between his legs instead. It's been barely a day since she last did this, and also far too long, and also it's never happened at all. She has to, heh, make up for lost time~
-x-X-x-
When Bella begins going for his belt, Harry considers stopping her for a moment before ultimately just letting her do it. Truth be told, only her innate magic had kept her from looking downright awful. He might have his Bella back, the memory transfer managing to work against all odds, but at the same time, she was still inhabiting her old body… the one that had spent a decade and a half locked up on the Isle of Azkaban.
Still, there WAS something incredibly sexy about her subservience. Harry could admit it… circumstances had made him not a very nice person in the future he and Bella had come back from. When she'd finally made that attempt on his life, he'd been desperate. So desperate that he hadn't put down Sirius' killer like the rabid dog she was.
… He never told any of the others that he let her live, or that he had her under his thumb. There'd been a few near misses where some of his closest friends and allies had almost found out, but in the end, it had never come to pass. Harry didn't know what it said about him that of everyone he'd brought with him into the past, it was Bellatrix. Then again, he's not sure if it would have worked with anyone else.
There was really only room for one set of extra memories in his head, and that was solely because of the damage Voldemort's soul shard had done to him over the first portion of his life. Said soul shard was currently quarantined in this new timeline, as Harry still intended to use it very shortly. Regardless, he could only take one additional 'mind' back with him… and in the end, it could only have been Bellatrix.
Inserting an entire mind's worth of memories into someone, even if they were technically their memories… was foolhardy in the extreme. Even if they were technically compatible because it was the same person, it would be enough to drive anyone insane. Except… Bellatrix Lestrange nee Black was already insane. She was already a broken husk of a woman barely held together by first Voldemort and then his control over her soul.
In the end, she truly was the only one who could have survived the journey with him. And now she was sucking his dick, having pulled it from his pants and wrapped her lips around the tip of his cock while her hands fondled the lower half of his shaft as well as his balls.
Sitting up on the bed, Harry grimaces as he considers whether to let her continue on for the moment… or stopping her. They were, after all, on a time crunch. And they still had other things to get done tonight, things far more important than Bellatrix's fine, witchly ass giving him some head.
At the same time though, her desperation and subservience spoke to something inside of him. Something hungry.
With a sigh, Harry reaches out and places a hand atop Bella's head, opening his mouth to speak as her eyes flick to his, clearly waiting to hear what he has to say.
-x-X-x-
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