“Honestly! You’d think they’d be familiar with Polyjuice Potion with the amount of attempted break-ins that must occur here!" ranted a very furious Hermione nearly four hours later as they watched the Leaky Cauldron disappearing slowly into the distance from the back of a Ministry of Magic issued vehicle. “I mean really! Griphook was even with us in Malfoy Manor! He saw Bellatrix torturing me! I could have lost any amount of hair then! I was practically tearing it out myself! That's all she needs, isn't it? Why didn’t he say anything?”
Ron was seated beside her with a sick expression on his face. The memory of being locked in a cellar, listening from a distance and unable to help as Hermione screamed in pain was still fresh in his mind, as was the ruthless line of goblin questioning that they had all just been subjected to.
"That's just it, Hermione," he said complacently. "They understand how Polyjuice Potion works. They just couldn't understand why it hadn't worked completely on you”her”or how you...I mean SHE got past them when she was only half-transformed without raising any suspicions."
"Or how she got to the Black vault. There was no other cart to take her there, and no goblin to guide it," added Harry. "And Narcissa had a Truth Line, so she couldn't have ever gotten inside in the first place."
The goblins had closed down Gringotts immediately when Harry had entered the main lobby once again with a dazed Griphook mumbling about wizard greed, and a search had ensued from the highest tower to the deepest vault in an attempt to find Hermione's malevolent double. The search was still in progress, of course”the Gringotts vaults ran an incomprehensible distance below nearly all of London. But Harry had little hope that it would turn up more than the skeletons of a few unlucky thieves who had got themselves locked in years before.
Harry sat quietly on his side of the car watching the London scenery pass quickly by and clutching the valuable remainder of Narcissa’s trunk”seven undamaged memories out of the dozens that had been stored there. They were on their way once again to the Ministry, where Headmistress McGonagall had agreed to meet them with the Pensieve.
Harry’s mind was reeling. He had spent the last hours telling and retelling his story to goblins and Aurors and Ministry agents, and finally to Ron and Hermione after both had arrived and had passed through the same merciless interrogation. He had been filled with the terrifyingly useless sensation once again of being held against his will while the culprit got away, as indeed she had. Other than the gash on Griphook’s head, a small empty bottle of what had later been revealed as Polyjuice Potion, and the shattered remnants of what Harry had come to retrieve, there was no sign at all left of the Hermione/Bellatrix that had appeared out of the darkness.
The car jerked to the right slightly as a traffic light and a large amount of Muggle rush-hour traffic jumped out of its way. Harry saw a small child smile at him through the back window of one of the stationary cars as they passed by. They made a sharp turn to the left, and he began to recognize the scenery. They weren’t far from the visitor entrance of the Ministry. Harry’s thoughts drifted back to the vault. Those strange half slitted, frighteningly bloodshot eyes kept appearing again and again in his head.
Why hadn’t the Polyjuice Potion worked properly? Had a skilled Death Eater such as Bellatrix misjudged the amount she had to take? Had she taken so long to arrive at the vault that she had begun to transform into herself again? Harry didn't think so. Those hadn’t been the eyes of Bellatrix Lestrange either. Harry shuddered to think of the only person he knew who had slitted eyes. But it couldn't have been him. His scar would have hurt in warning.
They slowed to a near stop as they entered an underground car park. The bar that kept Muggles from leaving without paying lurched up and out of their way quickly and they were plunged momentarily into an underground darkness. When their eyes adjusted to the dim yellow of the artificial light, Harry saw that they were winding steadily downward into a Muggle parking garage.
The garage wall curved ahead of them, taking them downhill to another level, but instead of slowing down for the inevitable turn, the driver accelerated and drove straight into the wall. Hermione gave a startled gasp and caught both Harry and Ron’s hands as the concrete structure disappeared around them and they entered onto a brightly sunlit plain where no less than one hundred unmarked black Ministry cars sat, shining in the sunlight.
The car came to a stop and Harry, Hermione, and Ron stepped out in quiet wonder, looking back toward the wall where they had just entered. There was a vast expanse of undulating prairie grass where the wall had been.
The driver caught their attention with an unobtrusive cough. “It’s Mrs. Mary Cattermole’s creation. She spent last year stateside and came back craving wide open spaces.” He led them toward an inconspicuous rocky outcropping”the only outstanding object in their view, as they smiled around at each other. Harry and Hermione had been the ones to save Mrs. Cattermole, and to suggest an elongated vacation abroad. The driver continued. “Kingsley said she could do it as long as maintenance didn’t object.”
“It’s beautiful,” gasped Hermione following the driver as he walked through solid rock and disappeared.
"Brilliant," said Ron following Hermione. Harry held the seven tiny vials tight against his chest and walked into the rock. There was the fleeting sensation of being spun uncontrollably that Harry had come to associate with floo powder, and then he appeared in the green flames of one of the Ministry's entrance chimneys. Hermione was saying goodbye to the driver as she shook the soot from her robes. Just beyond the line of chimneys, Kingsley, Professor McGonagall, and Percy awaited them with anxious expressions.
As soon as Harry got within arm’s length of his old transformation teacher, she grabbed him in a relieved hug.
“Let me get a look at you, Potter," she said firmly, holding Harry at arm's length and examining him from head to foot. "Are you absolutely certain you’re not hurt?”
Harry nodded, smiling sheepishly. Professor McGonagall hugged him again for good measure and greeted Ron and Hermione, who had both found something suddenly fascinating on the entryway ceiling far from her gaze.
“I’ve grown tired of seeing you three in the Prophet headlines for such horrible news all the time. You’d think that after killing You-Know-Who, you would be able to finally have some peace!” She pushed the Pensieve into Harry’s arms. “We've all watched the three of you grow up in front of us. We’ve grown quite fond of you, and I can’t help but ask myself if you couldn’t just leave this one for the Aurors, or someone else. Why does it always have to be you?”
No one responded. Everyone around her had asked themselves that question several times on many different occasions in the past eight years and had always come up with the same answer”of course it had to be them. There was no one else. That fate had been written for Harry ever since that horrible night in which his parents had given their lives to save him, and Ron and Hermione had unwittingly sealed their own fates during that first uneventful train ride. They had all been signed, sealed, and set in motion by Voldemort himself.
Judging their expressions as the only response she needed, she turned to Kingsley, frustrated. “Well, let’s have a look at those memories then, shall we?”
They decided that it would be best to view the remaining memories in the seclusion of Kingsley’s office on Level One. They set off determinedly for the lift. A calm woman’s voice announced each floor as they passed, and it was only arriving to the third or fourth level that Harry remembered he had already been to the Ministry today.
'Did anything else happen at the trial?" he asked.
“Nothing,” said Kingsley, nodding a polite hello to a stout wizard who entered, stared opened mouthed for a moment at Harry's lightning scar, and pushed the button for level two. "She was sentenced to life in Azkaban, but we all knew that was going to happen. That mansion was used as the center of all ministry resistance."
The short wizard exited the lift among a flock of interdepartmental paper airplanes on level two, and Harry remembered Ginny. "I told Ginny that I would send her an owl!" he exclaimed.
"I can do that while you're viewing the memories," said Percy. Harry started. He had forgotten that Percy was even there. He really was good at working behind the scenes.
The lift arrived at Level One and they exited into an empty hallway. Only the Ministry’s most elite were allowed on this level. Kingsley showed them into his office and shut the door behind them.
"You know the drill," he said smiling at Percy. "No visits, no interruptions."
Percy nodded haughtily and closed the door. Kingsley focused on Harry.
“How many are left?” he asked eagerly. Harry extracted the seven remaining bottles and placed them in a line on the desk”three blood red bottles, one pure white, one a brownish grey, one a morbid purple color, and the final one, a swirling dancing vial of jet black memory. He placed the Pensieve beside them and looked up expectantly at Kingsley.
“Which one should go first?”
“The red ones,” said Hermione simply. “There are three of them.”
Cautiously, Professor McGonagall picked up the first tiny red vial and poured it into the Pensieve. She looked up in anticipation at Harry.
“I believe you’ve earned the privilege to go first, Mr. Potter,” she said.
Eagerly, Harry walked up and placed his face into the Pensieve. There was the familiar feeling of falling and the dark purple walls of what he recognized as the drawing room of the Malfoy Mansion blurred slowly into view around him.
He stared at the large crystal chandelier that he had seen broken the year before, and glanced toward the large marble fireplace half expecting to find Lucius Malfoy in the ornate chair in front. Instead, he found Ron and Hermione looking around reluctantly. As he watched, Professor McGonagall appeared beside Hermione, and Kingsley followed quickly. He looked around briefly before pointing to a spot somewhere behind Harry.
In the corner, sitting at a small table and immersed completely in the task of writing a letter was a younger and much happier-looking Narcissa. Her eyes had the sleepy, half lidded quality that made her look so much like her sisters, but the permanent snarl that always reminded Harry of someone who was smelling something rancid was missing from her face. She was even half smiling as she wrote. The smile gave her a completely different aspect.
Narcissa’s musings were interrupted by a frantic pounding from the next room. All five of the onlookers jumped alongside Narcissa who jerked violently and gave a quick worried glance toward the stairs that Harry imagined led to the bedroom of a sleeping Draco, depending on exactly when the memory occurred. She made her way gracefully to the next room and gazed worriedly out of the side window.
The spectators strained their necks to see who was making such as scene just as Narcissa gave an annoyed sigh and flicked her wand toward the door. It opened wide. Five curious figures watched as Bellatrix fell in through the opening.
She was much younger and much more beautiful, though the crazed expression on her face reflected a shadow of the murders that she had yet to commit.
"Bella! What are you doing here at this time of night? I'm expecting Lucius in just..."
“I’m going to Hell Cissy!” she interrupted and fell at her sister’s feet, clutching at her robes as Narcissa backed away in shock.
“Bella what are you…”
“I can feel her inside of me now!” Bellatrix screamed unaffected. “Look at me! Am I different now? Can you see her? It was to save her, you understand!”
The look of utter confusion on Narcissa’s face matched those on every one of the onlookers. She glanced back toward the stairs once again.
"You look fine, Bella," she whispered distractedly. Please stop screaming. Draco is asleep upstairs!”
“Draco!” Bellatrix repeated, turning her wild eyes toward the stairs as well. “He’s sleeping, and he’s safe, isn’t he Cissy? Your sweet little boy…” she leaned closer to the stairway. "What will you do when the Dark Lord comes for him?"
Harry recognized the look of savage protection that flashed in Narcissa’s eyes. “We serve the Dark Lord faithfully, whatever he may ask," she hissed ominously. "You're not making any sense, Bella. Where have you been? Did you drink some kind of potion?”
Bellatrix, who was still on the floor, suddenly began to writhe. From her stance only yards away, Hermione grasped Harry's shoulder in alarm and glared from him to Ron. All three of them recognized the effects of the Cruciatus curse, but Narcissa was the only one in the room, and she had done nothing. In fact, she was bending over her sister, pleading with her to tell her what was happening.
A horrible sound began to emerge from Bellatrix, and Harry realized that it was somewhere between gales of mad laughter and disconsolate sobs. It was not the Cruciatus curse after all, but Bellatrix’s own raving.
“It burns!” She screamed between gushes of noise. “I don’t want it any more, Narcissa, I take it back! Get it out of me!”
“What!?” Narcissa screamed back anxiously as Bellatrix’s eyes rolled up into her skull, showing only whites. “Tell me what you did, Bella, and I’ll help you!”
“It was for her!” she screeched. “There was no other way!
She was the strongest!”
“Who are you talking about!? What did you do, Bella!?”
Ron, Hermione, Harry, Kingsley, and Professor McGonagall leaned forward in anticipation. They were so eager to hear the cause of this chaos that they did not notice the tiny white head that came scampering in from the room they had all just left. He ran right through Kingsley and wrapped his arms around his mother’s legs. Draco looked about two or three years old.
“Aunt Bella, leave my mummy alone!” he yelled, and with his wide eyes he seemed too pure to ever become the malevolent teenager that Harry had come to know. Bellatrix stopped sobbing and lunged toward him, but Narcissa was too fast. She grabbed Draco up in her arms and turned away.
“Leave him alone Bella!” she said forebodingly, and no doubt was left in anyone’s mind who would win out if she were forced to choose between sister and son. Bellatrix did not recognize the threat, however, and she lunged again for Draco’s hanging bare foot.
“Why not Draco?” She sobbed. "I don't understand, why not him? I did everything right!" She continued to pull at her sister’s robes to get to Draco, who was emitting a terrified squeal and grasping at his mother's neck for dear life.
Bellatrix gave one last pull, and Narcissa lost her footing. She reeled for a moment before regaining her balance, but Bellatrix had a firm grasp on Draco's little leg. Narcissa furnished a well positioned kick directly to Bellatrix’s head. There was a sickening crunch as her nose broke. She wailed and retreated, releasing Draco, and curling up on the floor.
“Stay away from my son, Bella! I’ve warned you before!” Narcissa shrieked, backing quickly toward the stairs with her wand pointing threateningly in her sister’s direction. “If you harm one hair on his head, I will KILL you!”
And the memory turned away from the thrashing figure on the floor and began to dim. By the time that Harry had looked around to see where Narcissa was headed, there was nothing left but a faint gray glow. He glanced around at the others.
“Let’s go,” he said solemnly.
The Legacy of Four by spaniard
Chapter Notes: A look into the demented past of their fugitive.
Chapter Endnotes: Up Next: Of Weddings and False Horcruxes