Harry Potter and the Memories of a Sociopath, Ch 15: When Bellatrix Attack

"...So those are the basic spells for making a broom hover and move horizontally", Vector lectured. "The hard part is setting up analytic spells to trigger the movement spells in a way that makes it possible for someone to fly. It's common for broom inventors to accidentally charm something that will spin or buck hard enough to throw its pilot. These accidents are occasionally fatal, though that was more common when flying brooms were first developed. Though it's still common practice for pilots to carry a portkey, if they can't apparate, in case a new design isn't controllable enough to land safely.

For the rest of this class we'll go over a few basic control schemes included in the text which are well-understood and safe. Be aware that deviating from those is a risk. I've been told that the arithmancers at Cleansweep only test slight changes from well understood designs, and then do quite a bit of testing before moving further. Of course, I've heard that the Nimbus arithmancers are... less careful.

Anyway, brooms are typically set up to detect pilots shifting their weight so people's natural instinct for balancing will keep the broom stable. The simplest control scheme-"

A patronus cat jumped into the classroom and announced, "I've been informed that Death Eaters are attacking the Ministry. We have no reason to believe they intend to attack Hogwarts, but we're going to prepare out of an overabundance of caution. All students and teachers, proceed immediately to the Great Hall. Teachers, escort your students. Everyone, keep your wands out and stay alert."

Harry and Hermione approached McGonagall. "What is going on?", Hermione asked first.

"Bellatrix attacked DMLE Headquarters and Azkaban."

"You mean she lead a group of death eaters? I thought they were all dead?" Hermione asked.

"I haven't heard much. Bones and Moody are very busy so they're sending memories that will explain the situation in detail before we talk to them."

They walked to her office in silence and found an owl waiting with a pair of glass vials containing a silvery liquid. McGonagall poured poured one into the pensieve. "This one is labeled Kingsley Shacklebolt. He's the current head of the DMLE."

The memory started from the perspective of walking across a room full of aurors. Many were sitting at desks, writing. Others were quietly talking into their mirrors. One of the latter stood up and apparated away.

The view shifted suddenly as Shacklebolt spun around to face none other than Bellatrix Black. She scowled and drew her wand on him, but he just looked away and continued walking.

"Alohomora." Shacklebolt turned back and dashed after her, calling, "Miss, that room is restricted; you can't go in there."

She spun around, and yelled "Imperio." The pensieve image blurred slightly, as if the man's eyes had become unfocused. He turned his back on Bellatrix, faced the other aurors, who, having heard the dark curse, were now rushing toward him. He swept his wand in a wide arc, cast a series of quick shield-breaking curses. They responded with stun and disarm spells, but everyone's shields held.

After a few seconds, he shook his head and the image cleared. Bellatrix had backed through the doorway and was halfway to a vanishing cabinet. He aimed his wand at Bellatrix while calling out to the others, "It's Bellatrix! Lethal force is authorized."

Bellatrix smiled and raised her wand as the aurors ran into the room. She made no attempt to dodge or cast a shield as they targeted her, and began casting various attack spells.

As spells of every color converged on her, six copies of Bellatrix appeared in the room around the original. They wore identical triumphant smiles and were sustaining a shield, which absorbed the aurors' attack. The original Bellatrix pointed her wand at Shacklebolt and called, "Avada Kedavra". This curse was echoed by the other six. Shacklebolt and the other aurors threw themselves to the floor.

More aurors ran into the room and continued casting spells at the seven intruders. Shacklebolt stood and resumed firing, sparing only a glance around the room. That was enough to determine that the six aurors had been hit; the other six killing curses had been aimed exactly where the aurors had dove, rather than where they had originally been standing. Shacklebolt yelled, "Call for backup! Get Bones. Get Moody. Get Dum- Uh, get everyone here now."

Every Bellatrix smirked. One remarked, "If you were smart, you'd run away now." Another added, "You've already lost." As if to reinforce the point, the six dropped their shields, dodging the incoming spells and cast a series of cruciatus curses, dropping the front line of aurors. As the fight continued, the leftmost Bellatrix walked to the vanishing cabinet and, occasionally dodging curses, activated it and stepped inside.

With a sudden expression of recognition, one Bellatrix offered, "Nymphadora? Niece, come fight with your family. I'll personally ensure that you regain your rightful status as a noble and never have to work with commoners or incompetents like these again."

Tonks replied, "Right, like you'd welcome a half-blood into your family even if you did somehow get out of here alive."

"No really. My father, the late Lord Black, was one of those 'impure blood for five generations' extremists. None of the rest of us really bought into all that nuttiness."

"I'm not sure which is harder to believe: the claim that you're not really a blood purist or you calling other people 'nutty'. Diffindo" Tonks slashed her wand sideways, aimed at Bellatrix's abdomen.

That Bellatrix jumped and pulled her feet up, clearing the attack. After landing, she made an exaggerated frown, "Aww. Are you sure?" Her wand was pointed at Tonks faster than anyone could follow, and she whispered, "Imperio."

In a flat tone, Tonks said, "You're right, Auntie. Of course I'll help my family."

Bellatrix beamed, "Excellent. Glad to hear it."

An auror announced, "Protego maxima is stable. Code 13." The auror was shaking slightly from the drain of dividing the room with the powerful shield, but the effort allowed the other aurors to push more power into offensive spells.

Six copies of Bellatrix and four imperiused aurors focused simultaneous shield-breakers on that auror. His wand quickly exploded in his hand and the shield dropped.

The disarmed auror dashed forward to physically attack the rightmost Bellatrix, apparently assuming they would need a few seconds after that spell before being able to resume their attack. In a move that looked effortless, that Bellatrix dodged a punch and pushed the auror into the nearest wall. He fell to the floor and remained motionless. As if to answer the obvious question, that Bellatrix put her wand to his head and spoke an incantation ending in, "Inferius."

The inferius rose and ran at the aurors, one of whom was forced to cast a blasting curse to neutralize the former colleague.

Shacklebolt leveled his wand at the center Bellatrix and bellowed, "Avada Kedavra." She made no effort to dodge as Tonks jumped in front of her, absorbing the spell. With what looked amazingly like outrage, Bellatrix screamed, "You killed my favorite niece, you muggle-fucker! Crucio!"

Shacklebolt screamed in pain and sank to his knees.

One of them cast a levitation charm at an auror who had just been disarmed and pulled him into the path of the green light. They laughed maniacally, the nearest Bellatrix stopping only long enough to step forward and cast 'inferius'.

The death eaters cast another set of 'crucios'. As the aurors were recovering, they stepped together and cast a protego maxima in a dome around them. Then they imperiused a new set of aurors.

Before the others could react, the imperiused aurors cast spells in every direction to counter unbreakability charms. They followed immediately with blasting curses directed upward. Walls began to crack and sections of ceiling fell and then the image went black.

"Enervate." Shacklebolt rolled to his feet and looked around. Volunteers were clearing the rubble that formerly DMLE headquarters. He cast a levitation charm and tossed some debris aside exposing six copies of Bellatrix still within their shield. As he began chanting a powerful shield-breaking curse, they smiled triumphantly, pulled out time turners and vanished.

The memory began looking down at a patient, a transfiguration recently completed, and Fawkes arriving with the Philosopher's Stone, so the doctor could make the results permanent.

The doctor turned in response to a crashing sound behind them. There was a flash of flame, red and somehow black, as an area of wall collapsed to floor. A snake made of fire slithered into room, coiled in center of room.

Bellatrix stepped through and smiled, "Hand over the stone and I won't hurt you." Her smile widened, "Not too badly, anyway."

Has to hold stone in place for another few seconds to keep patient alive, nowhere to run anyway, Fawkes apparently disappeared. "I'm afraid I can't do that."

Bellatrix slowly stalked across the room, still smiling, "No?"

After a brief pause, she grabbed the doctors hand and squeezed. The doctor fell to his knees, the sound of breaking bones audible even over his screams. Then the memory went black.

Then, Bellatrix's voice, "Innervate... I didn't say you could sleep."

The image returned as the doctor opened his eyes again. He was laying flat on the floor. Bellatrix, had been holding the stone against her chest but now reached out and gestured with it, "Disobeying orders from a superior. Withholding treatment from a patient who needs it. Wasting a Death Eater's time. You have a lot to answer for. What's the worst torture curse you've experienced in your life?" Still holding the stone in her left hand, she leveled her wand at the man's face and began to laugh.

Then the playback of the pensieve appeared to freeze; Bellatrix's mouth slowly closing was the only perceptible motion for an instant.

Then there was a popping sound and a red and gold flash appeared near the ceiling, behind Bellatrix and to her right.

After 10 milliseconds, Bellatrix began to turn right and raise her wand, instinctively seeking the source of the sound. The flash had coalesced enough for a beak and wings to be visible. The fiendfyre serpent's eyes were already following the phoenix.

After 30 milliseconds, Fawkes had fully materialized, already in motion, gliding behind Bellatrix.

After 40 milliseconds, the serpent had begun moving forward. Bellatrix had seen the serpent's reaction and apparently recognized the sound of a phoenix appearing.

After 70 milliseconds, her lips had pulled back to show her teeth, in an expression combining a smile and a snarl. The fiendfyre began to grow and reshape, still accelerating forward.

After 190 milliseconds, Fawkes turned and dived, eyes locked onto the stone.

After 200 milliseconds, the fiendfyre tiger abruptly turned a few degrees to the right, its path now aimed to intercept Fawkes in front of Bellatrix, rather than behind her. Bellatrix's head turned left, tracking the tiger.

After 260 milliseconds, the doctor began desperately scrambling backwards, out of the tiger's path.

After 280 milliseconds, the tiger pounced, accelerating forward again.

After 300 milliseconds, Fawkes' talons closed around the stone, jerking it out of Bellatrix's hand and continuing forward without slowing down.

After 320 milliseconds, Bellatrix felt the stone being pulled away.

After 340 milliseconds, she blindly grabbed for it, finding nothing but air.

After 350 milliseconds, Fawkes began to brighten and blur.

After 360 milliseconds, she realized what had happened, and began to shout 'no', her body language indicating that she was willing the fiendfyre to extinguish.

For the next thirty milliseconds, the tiger brightened and dimmed, as if caught between obeying its creator and fulfilling its ultimate purpose. On average, it trended toward slowing and shrinking, but was still on an intercept course for Fawkes, who had blurred into a red-gold orb.

At 390 milliseconds, nothing was visible other than a featureless but impossibly bright red glow.

After 400 milliseconds, all the fire had faded away completely.

After 500 milliseconds, the doctor had stumbled to his feet and lurching across most of the room toward the doorway. A blasting curse surged past him, blowing a hole through the opposite wall and allowing light to stream into the room.

He glanced back in time to see Bellatrix still aiming her wand at the hole with her right hand, the back of her left hand rushing toward his face.

Then the pensieve went black again.

McGonagall began, "If I hadn't already seen Harry with Fawkes and the stone, I think that would've given me a heart attack."

Hermione replied, "Last-second solutions are common in muggle fiction to resolve a catastrophe in the last few possible seconds, but that was three or four orders of magnitude closer than anything I'm familiar with."

Harry said nothing; he was already activating his time turner.

Future Harry pulled off an invisibility cloak as Bones and Moody arrived through the floo.

Moody asked Harry, "Do you really think you can bring the dead aurors back to life? The volunteers helping to dig out the DLME thought I was nuts for having them transfigure bodies into coins to preserve them."

"Probably not all of them, but... let's just say I have some ideas."

"Well, I'd like to see that. How much time do you need to prepare?"

"There's something I want to test as soon as possible. I don't know if we can trust Azkaban; we'll have to set up a temporary healing area."

Moody sighed, "I have some emergency safe-houses prepared around Britain. We can rotate through those for a while."

Hermione frowned, "Harry, you're not going to do something stupid, are you?"

"I promise that if I think something is stupid, I won't do it... Anyway, I've been meaning to ask: didn't any of the aurors have time turners? Couldn't they have sent multiple versions of themselves back like Bellatrix did? To eliminate her increase in manpower and her advantage in foreknowledge?"

Bones looked appalled, "In that situation, it would practically guarantee that those involved would suffer temporal psychosis. Before today, I'd have considered it unthinkable that anyone would use such a tactic."

Harry nodded, "So while that action could save the lives of aurors, they couldn't know whether it would be worth the risk without knowing the result of the battle. And because the aurors had an overwhelming advantage in numbers, they probably assumed they could win fairly easily. That makes sense."

"It's more than that. Many people believe temporal psychosis involves damage to the soul and would never consider it worth the risk under any circumstances."

Hermione interjected, "Can you explain temporal psychosis, and if it's such a threat, why Bellatrix risked it?"

Bones answered, "Time can't be changed, even using a time turner. So when someone knows their future self is present and then sees something bad happen, they know that their choices will inevitably lead them to travel back and reach that outcome. Experiencing that sense of hopelessness and futility for at least an hour can be overwhelming. People in that situation report feeling that they've lost their free will, become mere pawns of destiny. They begin to behave in ways that are out of character, reinforcing the idea that they're no longer in control, as if they were imperiused by time itself. Sometimes it's temporary, ending after they no longer have foreknowledge of events, but it can be permanent."

McGonagall inquired, "So you don't go crazy just from trying to think through time travel paradoxes?"

Moody smirked briefly, "Migraine yes, crazy no."

Hermione nodded, "So only Bellatrix was willing to risk that."

Moody grunted, "After serving Voldemort and a decade of dementor exposure, I don't know how she's still on her feet. She's a surprisingly high-functioning form of totally insane. Maybe temporal psychosis would be an improvement."

Harry remarked, "It's somewhat surprising how many tactics the Bellatrix had prepared that aurors weren't prepared for."

Hermione commented, "I don't think 'Bellatrix' is the plural of 'Bellatrix'."

Harry shrugged, "Between time travel and copies of people, standard English grammar is overly restrictive in this situation."

Moody replied impatiently, "Fighting with minimal shielding is a common tactic for advanced dueling. The goal is to expend less magical power defensively so more is available for offensive spells. The trade-off is that it requires lots of physical exertion for dodging, the ability to quickly recognize and deflect specific spells, and the willingness to get hit by some spells when you can't avoid everything. And you have to be certain that the spells that hit you won't neutralize you. The opponent typically counters this strategy by alternating more powerful attacks with low power spells which are as esoteric as possible, to try to force them to use more effort on defense. But I've never seen anyone take it to that level. It's unbelievable that Bellatrix was able to stay unshielded for so long against concentrated fire from a much larger force without being stunned or injured, much less killed. She was faster than anyone I've ever seen, but still...

"And the imperius curse was obviously a force-multiplier that isn't available to aurors. Aurors are trained to resist the imperius, but anyone's mental defenses are compromised for a moment after a cruciatus curse. They were able to break free sooner or later, but she timed those moments effectively. Probably because she knew what was going to happen. And a single inferius isn't much of a threat to a competent wizard. It took her longer to make them than it took to neutralize them: she was doing it entirely for the psychological effect on the aurors."

Bones added, "She must have cast an unusual shield. I've heard of wizards who could apply an unbreakability charm to their own skin, but it's of limited value because it severely restricts movement. Maybe she was using a variant of something like that. And she probably took a strength potion or something based on what she could do unarmed."

McGonagall asked, "That last memory ended with Bellatrix diving through a hole in the wall. After that, was she captured? Or killed?"

Bones shook her head, "We searched the tower and island, and there was no body or even blood anywhere, so she must have landed in the water. Aurors briefly flew over the ocean nearby, but didn't find anything. Even so, I don't see any way she could have survived. No one could survive that fall, and no one could survive in that water for long. Certainly not long enough to get outside the anti-apparition wards."

Harry glanced around the table then looked down and muttered, "Oh no." After thinking for another moment, he let his head drop into his hands, "Oh, no..." After another moment, he rested his head on the table and quietly said, "Oh, no."

After a pause, McGonagall prompted, "Harry?"

Harry sat back and calmly asked, "How many ways are there to heal a missing arm or leg?"

McGonagall frowned, "None. Other than with the philosopher's stone, I suppose."

"That doesn't really heal. Transfiguration does the healing; the stone just fixes the transfiguration."

Moody asked, "Are you suggesting Bellatrix transfigured an arm for herself this summer and has been sustaining the transfiguration since then?"

"If that was the only mystery about her, I might be satisfied with that explanation. But... if I said something appears to be inhumanly strong, immune to various spells, and probably recovered from a severed arm, what am I describing? Or if I said something had superhuman speed and was mysteriously immune to suspicion?"

The others' expressions lit up with sudden understanding, and Harry concluded, "In retrospect, I think the most surprising part may be that they found a way to weaponize an aura of innocence."

Bones interrupted, "I've read about the spell that gives people the abilities of magical creatures. It's temporary. There's no way she's been using it since the summer; she'd be dead."

"She got to the stone, so it's permanent now. Before... there must be a way around that. Maybe by reapplying it occasionally, or maybe she was transfigured into a small object for most of that time so not much time passed for her. But Bellatrix is definitely still alive. And so is Voldemort."

Bones frowned, "Explain."

Harry paused for a moment, then explained quickly, "Would Bellatrix on her own have let a phoenix escape with the stone rather than destroying them both? Or escape rather than fighting to the death to get her objective? Or trusted anyone else to apply spells required? I suppose it's possible Voldemort gave Bellatrix instructions in case of his disappearance; claimed that the stone was required to bring him back. I think this was less of a serious attempt to steal the stone, and more about sending a message: that Voldemort thinks using the stone to help people is a frivolous act and an unnecessary risk, and he's going to oppose me on it."

McGonagall frowned, "You make it sound like you're a part of Voldemort's plans."

"There's no way I'm not part of Voldemort's plans."

Bones exclaimed angrily, "A message? Nearly a third of Britain's aurors died today!"

Harry sighed, "You saw her and you heard what Mad-Eye said. She could have killed everyone there. She was playing. And how often has Voldemort sent a message that didn't come with a body-count?"

Everyone was silent for a moment, then Hermione asked, "Can someone explain what happened with the fiendfyre? It also seemed to me like it was trying to fight Bellatrix to get to Fawkes."

McGonagall answered, "Dumbledore said they were closely related forms of magic. Phoenixes are a nearly inexhaustible source of life and magic, while fiendfyre is a nearly unquenchable force for the destruction of life and magic. Fiendfyre is one of very few magics which can kill a phoenix and a phoenix is one of few things which can extinguish fiendfyre while the caster is still alive and willing it on."

Bones stood impatiently, "If there are no other pressing questions, I have to supervise the security of a country with a significantly reduced auror force. And apparently hunt down a super-powered dark witch." No one said anything before she exited through the floo.

As Harry was returning to his office, the air in front of him shimmered into a human form. He jumped back and drew his wand before recognizing Moody.

"You didn't mention everything that you concluded back there. Also, you respond to ambushes way too slowly."

"Pretend I don't know what you're talking about. I need to hear you say it."

Moody frowned, "Everyone who knew about the stone was either under an unbreakable vow or in that office. Someone is a traitor."

Harry nodded sadly, "And you have a suspect."

"I want to hear you say it."

"I... have some suspicions about Hermione."

Moody laughed humorlessly, "I've had suspicions about her since she failed the possessed-by-a-horcrux test. You even pointed out how dumb my secondary test was. I was surprised everyone let it go so easily."

"I've told you... about the prophecy and the about the vow. Eventually, this world will end. In order for any of the people to survive, I'll have to 'choose a path of lesser destruction over one of greater destruction', which will require Hermione's approval. If anything happens to her, everyone dies. That's why I couldn't risk coming to you earlier. But I'm afraid Voldemort wanted me in power with himself secretly advising me. Unfortunately, he's probably bringing about the prophecy he intended to avoid: the world is doomed yet I'm guessing Voldemort will be willing to sacrifice humanity to save the physical planet, with his precious horcrux network hidden around it."

Moody nodded slowly, "I'll start looking into non-lethal ways to expel a soul from a host. Because I'm sure there's lots of information available about the options there."