Intrepid

Chapter Six -- Juggernaut

Saturday, November 5, 1977

If there was something to be learned from defeat, it was perspective.

Regulus was beginning to think he was well acquainted with defeat, the only word worth using to describe the debacle the last week had become. If Regulus knew anything about perspective, it was only that he needed a new one.

That was the logic behind the outing, after Bellatrix had begged him to come out with her and Narcissa had scoffed. Being caught between their strong-willed opposition was never a comfortable place, but Regulus' old ally, logic, had not abandoned him completely.

Still, one thing was certain from the start: walking through the dark school corridors with Bellatrix and her friends was completely different than any excursion he'd taken there before.

Something clanged loudly in the shadows, and his breath hitched sharply in his throat. Then silence yielded to a mad snicker and Bellatrix stumbled into view, hand whipping up to stifle giggles, eyes glittering, and Regulus' only thought was that if the entire night never progressed past this puerile giddiness it would be a welcome change.

"Self-control, darling, unless you want to send us all to Filch's office instead of Hogsmeade," drawled Rodolphus, hoisting the sputtering lantern higher, dimly breaching the gloom of the corridor ahead.

"What was that noise?"

"That was Bella, tripping over a blood-sucking bugbear."

Someone chuckled. Rodolphus' lamp flickered across something dark and metallic on the floor, and he nudged it with his toe. "Or a lantern, Evan."

"Or a lantern," amended Evan Rosier with a dismissive wave. "Somebody left it here, then. We're not the only ones out tonight."

"What idiot would leave a lantern in the middle of the hallway?" Regulus scoffed.

Rosier glanced up, lips curling slightly. "At the doorway to the secret passageway, you mean."

With that there was a tilt of his head toward the wall behind them, and Regulus saw with a start was not quite a wall at all. Spreading from floor to ceiling was instead a mirror glimmering with pale images, their own figures dappled black with shadow and gleaming white. In the reflection, Regulus saw his cousin step forward, shadows pooled over her face.

"Severus, would you like to do the honours?"

From behind Bellatrix, Severus Snape moved to the forefront of the group, drawing his wand from his robes with slender hands. A smile looked out of place beneath those jutting cheekbones and hooked nose, but he smirked as he flourished his wand at the mirror.

"Might as well, when you're offering," remarked Snape with the kind of sideways glance at her that would have made Regulus nervous. It was easy to be nervous around Snape -- he emanated distrust.

Presently, his wand tapped once against the glass, and Regulus watched, fascinated, as the silver surface bent beneath its touch, shimmering as it rippled outward. Without so much as a glance behind him, Snape stepped into the mirror and melted through the panel as though it were not hanging there at all.

Bellatrix smiled knowingly at her younger cousin while the others followed Snape. "Pretty little thing, isn't it?"

With that she reached for Regulus' arm tugged him forward and into the mirror, vanishing into the liquid glass. He snapped his eyes shut as he drew in a breath, but felt nothing as he stepped forward --

And suddenly it was over, with anticlimactic lack of sensation. When his eyes fluttered open on the other side, it was entirely dark. His hands, groping behind him, came into contact with solid stone.

Someone whispered "Lumos" and the room surged with light. Regulus blinked rapidly, sight lagging back to reveal the cavernous room, high arched ceiling, and walls curving down to the floor.

"There's probably still a bonfire going," Bella was saying, almost dancing with excitement.

"As long as the pubs are open, that's all that matters," said Rosier, who held the wand aloft, eyeing the passageway that twisted out of sight in the darkness. Illian Neven issued an ardent second.

"They won't be, if we stand here all night talking about them," said Rodolphus, snatching Rosier's wand and sprinting down the passage. Rosier yelped in surprise and went charging after him, the others at their heels. As the floor took a gradual decline, they stomped downhill, wandlight illuminating the path inch by inch and disappearing the same behind. Hogsmeade presumably loomed at the end, and with it, the night's festivities.

That celebration in particular was a tradition Hogwarts frowned upon; 'reputable' schools didn't celebrate the efforts of terrorists, Bella had scoffed, Muggle or magical. Regardless of the school's formal opinions, the Heads of houses were known to turn a blind eye on students found out of bounds on such a holiday. Guy Fawkes was the toast of the night, and in Hogsmeade there lay the promise of many toasts.

And if there was ever a student in need of a diversion, reasoned Regulus, it was him. The events of last Monday evening still ran through his mind like an irritating Hobgoblins hit on the WNN. It was hard to say why he felt so jolted by the end of things -- the end of Gale, the end of the statue, the end of pretending things weren't the way they were -- but trying to work it out had proved useless.

Beyond that, even, complications persisted; nothing could persuade Narcissa she'd made a mistake in stealing part of the Televoyance Draught, and Ahlman hadn't noticed the difference when the rest was delivered. Regulus had gone so far during that nerve-wracking meeting to consciously will Phoebus' attention to fall on the theft, but to no avail. He was finally forced to reconcile that his amateur attempts at telepathy were rubbish, while Narcissa smiled politely and addressed Ahlman with a few choice words regarding where he could go if he ever needed anything again. Specifically, Hell.

Now the Room of Requirement and the opportunities it offered were Narcissa's affair entirely -- Regulus hade made it clear that he had no desire to be included in her plans, and he hadn't been. Since Monday evening, everything in his life had fallen back into its proper place.

As it turned out, everything in its proper place was a good deal less interesting, if also less stressful, than not. Agreeing to this evening's excursion was an attempt to break up the monotony.

Thus, be it good sense or folly, Regulus found himself trailing five of his seventh-year housemates down the passageway, anticipation building with every step as he listened to Bellatrix's animated whispers describing all the excitement they'd hoped to find on this gloriously rebellious evening out.

By the end of the passageway their energy, if not Bellatrix's enthusiasm, had drained almost completely. Gargantuan stair steps emerged from the floor, so worn with age that they almost appeared as an upward slope of crumbled rock; the students made their weary way upward without comment. An age of climbing deposited them on a landing beneath a low trap door, soon heaved out of the way, and one by one they clambered out into a nondescript room, entirely dark and encrusted with dust.

"Where are we?" asked Regulus, coughing as he stood up.

"Storage shed behind the Three Broomsticks," grunted Bellatrix, hoisting herself up behind him. "Nothing to worry about, though, they never come back here."

The sound of the pub's name was enough to send Neven bounding out the door with Rosier and Snape soon after, a shower of dust raining down as the door jolted open. Rodolphus was stayed from following them by Bellatrix's hand on his shoulder.

"Tell me you're not going with them."

He looked at her in exasperation. "For a little while, Bella, come with us -- you know there's no point in coming all the way here if you won't at least have a drink! We'll not stay long--"

"Illian will be in there all night," retorted Bella with disdain. "Get drunk on break, have your uncles send you Firewhiskey -- but you can't exactly light a bonfire in your dormitory, can you?"

Rodolphus scowled, which probably meant that bonfires did not fit anywhere into his plans for the evening. As he stood casting his eyes around the room, they fell on Regulus, who lingered beside Bellatrix.

"Can't you show Regulus around? He's never been down here on Bonfire Night, has he?"

No, he hadn't, but before Regulus could verify that, Rodolphus had turned with a grin and taken off in the direction his friends had gone. Bellatrix shouted, "Don't forget the time!" after his back, but looked more amused than vexed by his desertion.

"What did that mean?" asked Regulus, ducking his head as she ushered him out the small doorway.

"Hmm?" said Bella, letting the rickety door thud shut behind them. "Only that we'll have to be back before dawn, of course."

It hadn't occurred to him that they might be out that late, but for some reason he was no more worried than he had been about sneaking out in the first place. It might have been due to Bellatrix's smile as she led him down the alleyway, glowing with the same fervour as the bright shop windows lining the street where they emerged.

That was quite a sight. Paper lanterns swung above their heads, lighting the street brilliantly as torches and shop lights blazed below. Bright-faced witches and wizards hurried up and down the streets in a mess of boots and swirl of cloaks, laughter and loud conversation. A strong smell of wood and cooking meat overpowered the street, carried by wind that swept down between the buildings and ruffled the hems of their robes and cloaks against their legs. Whatever children were lucky enough not to have been sent to bed raced after each other down the cobblestone walk, shrieking and attempting to jinx each other with miniature wands.

It would have been enough to stand there in the mouth of the alleyway simply breathing it all in -- the sights and the smells and the way that warmth radiated from the charmed cobblestone street to keep the snow from making the stones slick -- but Bellatrix wouldn't waste a moment of her freedom and was soon dragging her cousin in the direction everyone was going.

At the centre of the village, where thin and twisting streets gathered together from all directions, the bonfire had been erected: a massive and intricate structure that towered above the village square. Regulus first glimpsed it above the swarming crowd, brilliant flames crackling and licking the air, flashing different colours as wizards spun charms through the flames. The two cousins meandered through the crowd until they were at its verge, surrounded in a circle oppressive with heat, stuffy with people, and enthralling all the same.

"Bonfires combat the winter darkness and bring light into the world," chanted Bellatrix in a singsong voice, gazing into the fire with a bit of a smile.

"What's that from?"

"Some book my father used to read aloud on Hallows' eve," said Bella, and closed her eyes to inhale deeply -- breathing in the night air slowly. "We all grew out of that sort of thing before Hogwarts, though."

"That's practically the point," Regulus said, closing his eyes as well. "Send your kids off just when they get tired of growing up with you."

Her eyes blinked open as she turned toward him thoughtfully. "We never did go back to those traditions, did we?"

He opened one eye to look at her. "Would you want to?"

Bellatrix only laughed and reached over to take his hand, lacing their fingers together. "Come on, Regulus," she said, tugging it gently, "Let's go walking, shall we?"

Just like that they pushed their way back through the laughing crowd, weaving around to a small side street that ran straight to the edge of town. Slowing to a walk, they started up that street, the warmth of the bonfire drifting away behind them.

"A pity we missed the fireworks," Bella remarked, lifting her chin to watch the sky. Regulus followed her gaze and saw the murky brown residue hanging motionless in the air. "Of course," she continued, still looking upwards, "I've always thought of this as a pointless holiday, really. Fawkes failed. And if you leave Hogsmeade and visit a Muggle town, you find that they're celebrating, as well, that he didn't succeed. It feels a bit silly after that, don't you think?"

"Mmm," agreed Regulus, who had never given it any thought one way or the other, "It is pointless, isn't it?"

Bella nodded, half to herself, and tore her eyes from the sky. She still seemed preoccupied as they continued up the street, hands in their pockets to keep their fingers from freezing.

It struck Regulus as they rambled over the cobbled stones just how inflexible Bellatrix's viewpoint was. It didn't matter that the celebrations were fun; to her they were silly, because even the filthy Muggles celebrated. Sirius probably thought that was fanatical; he probably rolled his eyes and exaggerated the story for his friends. Narcissa probably thought it extreme, not because she disagreed in theory, but because it was more practical to have fun than make a fuss over specifics. Andromeda might have thought the discussion ridiculously narrow-minded, but only mentioned that opinion to Regulus, in private.

And Regulus -- Regulus wasn't sure what to think.

But living the way he had since Monday didn't leave a lot of room for thinking on his own, and Narcissa and Bellatrix had enough opinions to make up for the lack. Regulus always felt like a child in Bellatrix's presence, but it was harder to justify as he grew older. Bella never treated him like a child; she treated him like an adult and made him feel like a child all the while.

It was with that self-same hauteur that she turned toward him now, abandoning her stargazing with a faint smirk. That smile, saccharine sweet on her red lips, was as familiar and remote as any other of her defences. If you noticed the smile you might forget the coldness of her eyes.

"About time to find the others, do you think?" she asked, jolting him from his preoccupied musings. He realised that they had wandered far enough that the tree line of the Forbidden Forest loomed somewhere in the distance; only a few derelict buildings stood between them and the pitch-dark land before it.

"Yes, that sounds perfect," he said vaguely, trying to shake off that uncomfortable train of thought. He turned back the way they'd come, mumbling, "There's not anything out here anyway, is there?"

There was no reply for a moment, and he glanced over his shoulder to see her standing solidly, eyes fixed in the distance, as though she had no intentions of leaving at all.

"Oh no," she murmured, that wonted smile curling on her lips, "I think we've just found Illian."

He followed her gaze past the last forlorn building with brows furrowed sharply. Somewhere beyond the grey of sporadic snowflakes was, unmistakably, a group of people.

"How can you see Illian out there?"

One white finger rose to silence him. "Listen."

As he strained his ears, Regulus could make out the muted sound of a very familiar voice. He turned back in astonishment as Bellatrix languidly elevated her eyebrows.

"The ground is flat here," she said succinctly, with the kind of terseness that might have been thinly veiled agitation. Her eyes did not stray from their mark as she spoke. "Interested?"

It took less than a nod or a grin of concession from him before Bella stepped forward, her eyes trained on the group ahead. They did not hold hands as he followed her forward toward that treeline, where cobblestone yielded to loose gravel and the village lights melted back into darkness.

With it, the warmth evaporated and the wind rushed where no buildings broke its path. The sight of his rising breath and the sound of the gravel crunching beneath his feet were isolated sensations in a deserted plot of land that felt so unreal in its silence, as though colour had been drained from it.

There was a moderate crowd grouped around a short stone wall which did not extend far in either direction. Seated at the centre, voice ringing obnoxiously, was Illian Neven. 'Oh no' was right.

No one took interest in their appearance as Regulus and Bellatrix fell in directly next to the wall, and abruptly he realised that it was not freestanding at all, but was one of four sides of an ancient stone pigpen, walls sinking and crumbling with age. A hideous stench wafted up from the mud that caked the walls and dark bristles of a lone hog reposed in the filth, black-haired and snorting in the frigid air.

The hog was what caught his attention. The most surprising thing, Regulus realized, was that it never had before. How many times had he explored this end of Hogsmeade on a weekend visit with his classmates? He could remember seeing it here, at the very least, but never having stopped to look at it in any detail at all. Now that he finally did it was curiously captivating and absurdly regal. Noble and ridiculous, it lounged as a ruler of a private domain these wizards merely borrowed for a time.

A scoff from Regulus' side interrupted the reverie. Bellatrix was watching the crowd. That probably meant that Neven was telling his story wrong, as she was bound to have been there anyway. Nevertheless, it was easy to see that the storytelling ability of the swaying Neven, who grinned like a fool as he gnawed on his Firewhiskey bottle, was highly questionable.

Before Regulus could even ask, Bellatrix tugged his sleeve and moved to speak in his ear.

"Before the villagers bought it, the pig lived on a farm infested with nogtails," she whispered, her breath warm against his face. "The sow let a nogtail suckle her. A demon, you know -- the farm went bankrupt, so they sold everything and abandoned the place. This pig has a curse from those nogtails."

"It really is a cursed pig?" asked Regulus, straightening in surprise.

She shrugged, her smile crafty. "I don't think there's anything malicious in it. Always good for a laugh, though, cursed pigs."

It was hard to tell what she meant by this, but there was no time to think about it when a distraction interrupted Regulus' questioning.

Neven, apparently overtaken by the task of staying upright on his only slightly precarious perch, had by some manoeuvre of great cunning managed to topple backwards into the pen. Instantaneously the crowd was guffawing again as he smacked wetly in the mud, thrashing his limbs like a drowning man.

"I'm a'right!" he shouted, hoisting himself up with such suddenness that he nearly tumbled over again. Globs of muck flew from his flailing arms, splattering the wall and a few of the nearest bystanders. Regulus took a few wise steps backwards.

"Watch out for the cursed pig, Illian!" Bellatrix teased over the wall.

At the reminder of the pig's alleged curse, Neven wheeled around to face it, boots squelching in the muck before he slipped and pitched over again. The hog, lying a few feet away, snorted its dark-bristled snout but made no move to get up from where it reclined, impervious to the shrieking laughter all around.

That was where they stood when another voice pierced the commotion.

"Cursed pig?" it scathed, louder than was wise, acidic. "Fairy tales for idiots!"

The sound of it jarred Regulus from Neven's amusing act, and instantly he swung around to scan the crowd for whoever had spoken.

Ah. There, only a little way back, was exactly the girl he should have expected.

Bellatrix caught her cousin's attention when she moved away from the wall, taking confident steps through the crowd. Regulus might have expected anger on her face, but as he looked on, dumbfounded, her lips parted in a smile he recognised as hatred.

"You think you're amazing, don't you, Madeleine?"

And Madeleine Bourdelet looked wearily back through the spreading aisle of turning heads.

"No more than anyone else does," she acknowledged. Regulus felt heat spread across his face when her eyes lingered for a moment in his direction -- but she spun suddenly back toward the village glinting not so far in the distance. A retreat.

Bellatrix had other plans.

"Wait a minute, Maddie," she called, striding forward over the gravel. Regulus felt a heavy sense of dread in his stomach -- let her walk away, he willed, but as he watched, Bourdelet halted after only a few steps, turning as though she had something better to do than listen to Bellatrix talk.

"You don't think the pig is cursed?"

Bourdelet's arms crossed. "No."

There was something in Bellatrix's expression, then, that seemed inappropriate; it might have been triumph in her casual smile and her upturned face. And Regulus could tell, an instant before it happened: Bellatrix was planning something.

"But it is!" she burst out suddenly, throwing her arms wide, and then it was happening.

Curious heads turned to watch with empty grins at this new spectacle, another step away from the separated reality in which no one believed a ridiculous story about nogtails and pigs. The girl put words to the drunken fantasy that entertained so vacantly, and so they cheered when she spun nonsensically, crying, "The pig is cursed, isn't it?"

They cheered as anyone might have, one spectacle running into the next as Neven's floundering was abandoned. Regulus' breath caught in the surge of applause, his stomach twisting. No one believed Bellatrix, he knew -- but this was an exhibition, and the audience was enthralled.

Arms still outstretched, Bella whirled back to face her opponent. The grin had become downright cocky. "No one seems to agree with you, Maddie."

Bourdelet remained silent through this mocking, staring determinedly past, fists clenched as tightly as her jaw. What could she be thinking? That allowing herself to be teased publicly would somehow evaporate Bellatrix's long-standing grudge? Clearly that was still what she wanted -- to please -- but Regulus knew this was not the means to that end. Appeasement wouldn't occur to Bella. She'd never even consider forgiveness.

She'd also tire of unresponsive prey -- at least Bourdelet seemed to recognise that. As Bellatrix rounded her transitory stage her glances deserted amusement for contempt. She snarled, "Don't you have anything to say?" and when the other girl merely swallowed, Bella sighed, eyes narrowing. "Tell us, Madeleine -- what should we do with the cursed pig?"

Excited murmuring erupted through the crowd. Bourdelet's stare broke as she glanced around in confusion.

"What we should do?" she repeated blankly.

"We have to do something!" raved Bellatrix, grinning like a fool, drunken with momentum that showed no signs of slowing. "We can't let a nogtail's curse lie so close to Hogwarts, can we?"

More cheering, more laughter, more shouts and jeers and more of Bella's hollow smile. A curse, so close to Hogwarts? No, most certainly not -- the girl was right. Something must be done. The sounds of it rang in Regulus' ears with frightening intensity and it seemed to him that the words were unimportant. Bellatrix stood at the centre of it all -- she was the important part, with her pose of translucent triumph and her smile like cracked glass.

But there was something else beneath it, and as he stood so near and examined her in such great detail that seemed to seep away from everything else in that evening he could see it all. Her wide smile quivered, her eyes blinked cold, her posture trembled with the strain of holding in what must have been a flood of adrenaline and nerve. The shards faded out with the rest of the background, simply because they were not the kind of things Regulus wanted to see.

Opposite was Bourdelet, white as bone, her eyes dark and hollow. Her mouth was open but she said nothing; she stood silent, shivering as though it were a difficult task to breathe.

"Do you know what we should do?" said Bellatrix, to everyone.

And everyone wanted to know.

"I think we should kill it."

The applause thundered with mindless urgency, so intense that Regulus imagined he felt bones tremble in it. For Bourdelet it was as though the spell had been broken. She stumbled an involuntary step forward, the only one affected by shock.

"Kill it?" she choked, "Kill the hog? It's been around for years, you can't just--"

"I'm not going to do it," Bella drawled, "You're going to. Everyone wants you to. Didn't you hear them?"

"I'm not killing anything," shouted Bourdelet, eyes wide with fright. "Get someone else to do it."

No, Madeleine, it wasn't that simple. Bellatrix wanted it. Regulus could see it in her grey eyes when she leered, her arms crossed, dark hair gleaming. He could tell, because she directed every fragment of her attention at Bourdelet -- a privilege, to be sure -- with that look, a look of malice and apathy and irreverence. Bellatrix wanted it, so Bourdelet would do it.

Regulus understood all of this perfectly.

But Madeleine Bourdelet did not, or perhaps refused to believe it. There were still no other options for her; the utter fear wouldn't let her even look away. One foot, perhaps of its own accord, trailed a half-step backwards -- but she wasn't going anywhere, and she knew it. Trapped, as though stunned, too petrified to walk away, too transfixed to break the spell.

With slow precision, Bellatrix shortened the distance between them, hands clasped innocently behind her back. Her smile was brittle when she asked, deceptively conversational, "You know, I've always wondered what it's like, being an outsider. Not much fun?"

Bourdelet's eyes found the ground in shame. This was not like her, Regulus realised, not like the Bourdelet he had encountered; she was fast with biting retorts, judgemental, immature. Merlin, she deserved to be paraded as an idiot before a crowd of strangers -- but as much as Regulus believed that, it was still impossible to look on this and not think that something was wrong. Bourdelet always deferred to Bella, if reluctantly, but looking on her now was like watching an empty shell of her face and figure with nothing behind it at all. She was too silent. Everything was silent; even the distant village music was as quiet as though there had never been noise.

"Of course not," Bellatrix was saying, at the centre of her private stage. Her smile melted a bit at the edges, mockingly. "You do still want to be one of us?"

The two girls were standing so closely, and Regulus could see it all: Bellatrix's smile and Bourdelet's half-open mouth. The breeze stirred their hair from their shoulders, whipped around their robes, blowing up leaves from the ground where they stood. Bella was dark and gleaming, Bourdelet pale and bleak.

"Kill it," Bella bit out, their faces inches apart. "You're capable, aren't you? Really, Madeleine -- show everyone you're still your old self."

One of us.

It was as though the blond girl had been put into a trance. Bourdelet nodded, a brief, tight movement of her head, and Bellatrix leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her cheekbone.

"I knew you could do it."

The words sent an ice-cold shiver straight down Regulus' spine, and when the two girls stepped apart he realised why. Bourdelet's expression was so hollow he barely recognised her. But when she turned to walk stoically past him, their eyes met for only a passing instant, but the look in hers was hauntingly familiar. This is your fault.

But it wasn't, he thought frantically, as he backed out of the crowd -- he didn't want to be anywhere near while this was happening. There was no way she could blame him for refusing her help. She didn't deserve help.

His justifications were cut short when he stumbled backward and plummeted to the ground, wincing as his palms hit gravel. Grimacing under a wave of pain, Regulus craned his neck to see what he had tripped over -- not something, but someone.

Illian Neven lay sprawled on the ground, but did not appear taken aback that he had just been shoved to the ground. He reeled while he tried to sit up, cackling helplessly, and Regulus saw the endless mud splatters over his robes.

"Did you know," wheezed Neven, between breathless laughter, "Bella made that story up?"

Horror seized him. Before he knew it he was scrambling to his feet and spinning back to face the pen -- but the crowd was closing in to watch, and Bellatrix was still at its centre.

Bourdelet had already climbed over the wall.

-----

Madeleine was very certain she was drowning.

It was far away in the way she would expect of looking through a telescope backwards: long, drooping figures blurred white at the edges. Her head ached with the task of just looking at it, stomach writhing in her abdomen. Perhaps it was something she'd eaten, she told herself, but when she opened her eyes it was impossible to believe it.

Dread filled her lungs as she stood and listened to the most absurd proposition Bella had ever given her. Her stiff joints felt leaden and lethargic -- it surprised her that she could move at all. Drowsiness overcame her so suddenly that it should have been alarming, threatening to fell her even as she stumbled nearer to her target. As her eyelids drooped it seemed she was insulated from the madness around her, as though she were moving underwater -- and the sluggish protests of her limbs then meant nothing at all.

Bella had never done this before, said something at the back of her mind. That was a transparent lie, for Bella was always doing things like this -- stretching and daring and teasing and shoving to see just how far she could push someone before they snapped.

Madeleine Bourdelet was about to snap, and she knew it.

A wave of panic swelled in her mind as she frantically groped for something, anything to stop the pounding in her brain. Memory upon memory fell together like mismatched pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, jumbled achingly in her head as she staggered forward and tried to make some sense of the present or past. And then she found it, a fragment as remote and persistent as a cobweb in her mind.

At the age of eleven, she'd been the fourth child to let the Sorting Hat fall over her eyes, perched on the stool with a white-knuckled grip on its sides. Before had been two boys but only one girl: the only first year who'd gazed disdainfully at the Hat, the only one to have worn it with such measured calm. Bellatrix Black as she had first appeared, poised and self-possessed through every detail of that nerve-wracking night.

While Madeleine lurched through the mud, frightened and nauseous and confused, that was the only thing she could think about.

Slytherin meant sitting down right in front of the dark-haired girl who wasn't interested in nervousness or paying attention to other people. Slytherin meant not faltering in that sharp grey gaze and plunging through the first stare-down Madeleine had ever had in her life.

Slytherin meant giving what you got, or being ploughed over in the process.

So that was what Madeleine did when she suggested that if Bella liked glaring at the Gryffindor table so much, she should feel free to deposit herself over there instead of being a lump of self-pity and arrogance over here.

"Do you even know who I am?" the girl had replied coldly, eyes narrowed to dignified slits. Dark pupils like eyes of an animal, frozen air rushing under tattered and muddy robes...

The eleven-year-olds' robes were clean, and there was a nametag on their front. "Bellatrix Black," Madeleine read. Dutiful from the start.

"Do you know who's at the Gryffindor table?" drawled Bella, so suddenly it was surprising. "My cousin."

Embarrassing to admit it -- that was precisely why she did. Somehow, perversely, it was a punishment, and a challenge. The falsely upturned corners of her mouth and the barely perceptible narrowing of her eyes said everything. I dare you to mock me.

Mocking -- there was much of that, but not on the first meeting, and not on the second. That ritual was reserved for the darkness of Bonfire Night, where remote horrors went unnoticed and without atonement, where there was no penance for secret spellwork and bodies that moved without their owner's permission like a walking corpse. Mind games and crowd psychology, confusion and apathy, cruelty and affection that lingered together when neither were completely sincere -- these were the real world.

This was not 1971.

But her mind was so occupied while her body moved forward, mechanically, while wands were drawn and words were spoken so distantly that they must have been a part of some other dimension. She had fallen to her knees and the present was choking when the past blurred -- smothering, gasping, swallowing, breathe --

Madeleine snapped upright so violently that she nearly toppled backwards, coughing frantically and retching over the still corpse before her. Her vision blurred, throat burning as she pressed her arms against her stomach, spitting bile and loads of the red stuff that she didn't want to taste any longer.

When her body shook so badly that it hurt she drew in halting, wheezing breaths, trying so desperately to relax her muscles and force open her eyes. But when she could see the grotesque sight her muscles seized again, eyes burning as she struggled just to breathe.

A deep gash went almost all the way through the pig's motionless neck. The head twisted weirdly where she could see that she'd gone right down to the bone; she could see its mouth gaping open as though it had died squealing for a breath of air.

She threw up.

As she sat shuddering over the corpse, another noise shot through everything else and made her heart freeze mid-beat. "They're coming! Quick! Someone's heard!"

And still, her muscles wouldn't move.

-----

In one awful moment, everyone heard the same words.

Silhouetted by the village lights, black figures pounded across the ground, the crowd scattering in shrieks of dark surprise.

It was chaos then, when panicked figures dashed in all different directions, slipping into the thick night, toward the forest, toward the village. Regulus could feel his blood pounding when he realised that Bellatrix was gone -- it was impossible to recognize anyone else in the gloom.

Thundering footsteps roiled like an earthquake. Swift glances around; everyone running without a clue, stumbling. Bella gone, Neven gone, Bourdelet--

No, Regulus could see with a jolt, Bourdelet was still there. She kneeled as though frozen in the dark mud with her blank, pale face, the red in streams down her throat, arms, chest. For a split moment he could only stare at her haunted face, his stomach lurching, until something heavy slammed into him, nearly knocking him to the ground.

"What the hell are you doing?" The shout was so close to Regulus' ear that he nearly stumbled again. But the voice he recognised as his disorientated mind remembered what was happening. Rodolphus.

"I thought you were at--"

Rodolphus wasn't listening, he was hauling Regulus after him in lurching footsteps until the younger boy ran freely, panting toward the forest without look back at their pursuers.

But when they reached the treeline, Regulus did look back, one swift glance over his shoulder at the place where tall men now stood, shaking wands in the air as the last of the crowd disappeared. Past them, in the crumbling stone pig-pen, all that remained was a blood-soaked corpse and red mixed in to the wet mud.

Bourdelet was nowhere in sight.