The locket was in Wiltshire.
This was the conclusion of three weeks of research, two trips to the Black family archive, one extremely productive conversation with Voclain that Bellatrix conducted by enchanted letter and which produced four pages of notes on soul-bound object tracking, and one moment of inspiration at two in the morning when Mia sat up in bed and said Nott out loud into the dark.
Bellatrix, who had been asleep for once, said "what" into her pillow.
"Nott. Thaddeus Nott's family. The manor in Wiltshire." Mia was already reaching for the notes on the bedside table. "Voldemort's been using it. The Notts have been hosting gatherings since last year — Avery mentioned it in passing last month, I didn't connect it then. But if Voldemort is keeping objects at locations he controls—"
"He'd use trusted family properties." Bellatrix was awake now, sitting up, the sleep gone from her face immediately in the way she went from zero to completely alert that Mia still found slightly alarming. "Not his own. He doesn't have his own. He moves between properties — he's been doing it since he came back."
"So the locket could be at Nott Manor."
"The locket could be at Nott Manor." She reached for the notes too. Their hands collided over the parchment and neither of them moved for a second, and then Bellatrix pulled the notes toward her and started reading and Mia lay back against the pillow and thought about Wiltshire.
"We need to get inside the manor," she said.
"Obviously."
"Without the Notts knowing."
"Ideally."
"Or Voldemort knowing."
"Definitely."
Mia looked at the ceiling. "We need Avery."
Bellatrix looked up from the notes. A pause. "He knows Thaddeus Nott."
"He knows Thaddeus Nott, his family has been to that manor, and he's the only person we trust who has a plausible reason to have information about the layout." Mia turned her head. "It's time to tell him everything."
Bellatrix held her gaze for a moment. The calculation was visible — how much, what risk, what it meant to bring someone fully inside what they were doing.
"Everything," she said.
"Everything," Mia confirmed. "He's earned it."
They told him on a Saturday morning in the Room of Requirement, which Mia had discovered in October and kept in reserve for exactly this kind of conversation — a room that became what you needed, and what they needed was somewhere completely private with no portraits, no ghosts, no Peeves, and no possible way for Filch's cat to appear and make moral judgments at them.
Avery arrived to find a comfortable room with three chairs and a fire and the expression of someone who had been expecting something significant and was braced for it.
They told him everything.
Mia did most of it — it was her story, her timeline, her impossible arrival in a field in August. Bellatrix annotated where relevant with the precise efficiency of someone who had been the second person to know and had spent months organising the information into a structure that made sense.
Avery listened without interrupting.
When they finished he was quiet for a long moment, looking at the fire with the expression of someone running a very large calculation.
"You're from the future," he said to Mia.
"Yes."
"Twenty-three years."
"Yes."
"And Voldemort wins. In your timeline."
"He does. For a while."
"And you came back to—"
"To stop it." She paused. "Not just stop it. Unmake it. The Horcruxes are the foundation of everything. Without them he's mortal. Without them he can be killed and stay dead and the war ends before it properly begins."
Avery looked at the fire for another moment. "How many Horcruxes."
"Seven. We have one." Bellatrix held up the lead-lined box that lived, when not being actively worked on, in a warded compartment of her trunk. "The Gaunt ring. Soul fragment contained, Horcrux neutralised."
"You've been doing this since September," he said. Not accusatory. Just placing the timeline.
"Since August," Bellatrix said.
He looked at her. Then at Mia. Then back at the fire. The calculation was still running — she could see it, the same systematic intelligence that had clocked her in the common room on the first day and made a correct assessment.
"The locket is in Wiltshire," he said.
Mia blinked. "We think so, yes."
"Nott Manor." He looked at them. "I've been there four times. I know the layout of the ground floor and most of the first floor. The cellar is warded and I've never been inside it." He paused. "If Voldemort is keeping something there it'll be the cellar."
"Obviously the cellar," Bellatrix said.
"Obviously the cellar," Avery agreed. He leaned forward in his chair. "The exterior wards are Dark but not sophisticated — Nott's father is traditional, he uses old family magic, which is powerful but patterned. Bellatrix could dismantle them." He looked at her. "Could you."
"Give me twenty minutes with the pattern and yes."
"The family is in London most of April. Thaddeus goes home for Easter but his parents are always at some Ministry function the second weekend." He looked between them. "Second weekend of April. The house will have staff but no family."
Mia looked at Bellatrix.
Bellatrix looked back with an expression that said she was already planning the approach.
"You're coming," Mia said to Avery.
"Obviously I'm coming." He said it with the calm of someone who had made the decision some time ago and was just confirming it out loud. "You need someone who knows the house."
"This is significantly more dangerous than the genealogy work," Bellatrix said. "This is a Death Eater's manor with active wards and a Voldemort-placed object inside it. If something goes wrong—"
"I know what it is," Avery said evenly. "I've known something large was happening since September. I didn't ask because I wanted to be sure before I decided." He looked at Bellatrix directly. "I'm sure."
Bellatrix studied him for a moment with the particular assessment she gave things she was deciding to trust.
"Alright," she said.
"Good." He stood up. "I'll draw the manor layout from memory. The cellar access is through the kitchen — there's a door that looks like a pantry." He paused at the door. "Also, for what it's worth." He looked at Mia. "The time travel thing. I've decided not to find it alarming."
"That's very pragmatic of you."
"I'm a practical person." He opened the door. "Second weekend of April. I'll have the layout by Tuesday."
He left.
Mia and Bellatrix sat in the Room of Requirement for a moment in the particular quiet of something having just shifted.
"He took that well," Mia said.
"He takes everything well," Bellatrix said. "It's either very reassuring or deeply suspicious and I've decided it's reassuring." She stood up. "The cellar wards. I need to research Nott family magic — there's documentation in the archive."
"Tuesday," Mia said. "You said you'd look at it Tuesday."
"I said I'd—" She stopped. Looked at Mia. "It's Saturday morning."
"It's Saturday morning," Mia agreed. "And we are not spending Saturday morning in the archive."
"We have three weeks before—"
"Bellatrix."
A pause.
"What are we doing instead," Bellatrix said, in the tone of someone who had already decided to be convinced and was maintaining the argument for form's sake.
Mia looked at her. "It's a nice day. We're going outside."
"Outside."
"The grounds. Fresh air. Not thinking about Horcruxes for four consecutive hours."
Bellatrix looked deeply suspicious of this concept. "Four hours."
"Four hours. After which you can spend the entire evening in the archive if you want."
A pause. "The lake," she said.
"The lake is fine."
"And you'll let me think."
"You can always think. Thinking is fine. You just can't do it about Horcruxes."
Bellatrix looked at her with the expression she sometimes got — fond and slightly baffled, the expression of someone who had not expected to find this kind of thing and still wasn't entirely sure what to do with it.
"Fine," she said.
The lake in April was cold and bright, the water catching the light in the particular way of Scottish water in spring — sharp and clear and very awake. They walked the perimeter slowly, not talking much, just existing in the morning together.
Bellatrix had her hands in her coat pockets and her face turned up to the light with her eyes half closed. She looked, Mia thought, like someone who had forgotten to be on guard for a few minutes and was better for it.
"You never do this," Mia said.
"Do what."
"Nothing. You never do nothing."
"I'm walking," Bellatrix said. "That's something."
"You know what I mean."
Bellatrix was quiet for a moment. The water moved beside them. A bird called somewhere on the far bank.
"I don't know how," she said. Not defensive — just honest. "I've always had something to prepare for. Something to defend against." She paused. "My whole life this house has felt like—" She looked at the castle behind them. "Like standing in a field waiting for weather. You know it's coming so you spend all your time watching the horizon."
"And now?"
She looked at Mia. "Now I know what the weather is. I know its name and its timing and I know what we're going to do about it." She paused. "It's easier to stand still when you know what you're standing still for."
Mia looked at her. "That might be the most romantic thing you've said to me."
Bellatrix blinked. "I was talking about strategic clarity."
"I know what you were talking about."
"It wasn't—"
"Bellatrix." Mia stopped walking. Bellatrix stopped too, turning to face her, the lake at their backs, the morning wide and bright around them.
"You came here with nothing," Mia said. "No plan, no identity, no certainty about anything. And you built something anyway. We built something." She held her gaze. "That's not strategy. That's not preparation. That's just — us."
Bellatrix looked at her.
The morning was still. The water was bright.
Then Bellatrix stepped forward and kissed her right there on the bank of the lake in the full April light where anyone walking the grounds could see, her cold hands coming up to cup Mia's face, warm and deliberate and completely public.
When they separated Bellatrix looked faintly pleased with herself.
"You did that on purpose," Mia said.
"We decided to stop hiding," Bellatrix said. "I'm not hiding."
"Three Gryffindors just walked past."
"Good," Bellatrix said serenely. "Let them look."
Mia laughed — the full version, surprised out of her, and Bellatrix's expression went warm and unguarded and they stood by the lake in the spring light and it was a very good Saturday morning.
The second weekend of April arrived.
They went over the plan on Friday night — Avery's layout spread across the table, Bellatrix's notes on Nott family ward patterns beside it, the containment vessel from Little Hangleton cleaned and re-runed for a second extraction.
The Nott manor had three entry points. They were using the east side, which backed onto a field and was furthest from the main house windows. Bellatrix would take the exterior wards. Avery would navigate them to the kitchen. Mia would handle the cellar door, which Avery had described as having a Muggle lock underneath the magical one — the kind of detail that suggested someone had been nervous about magical detection.
"Any questions," Bellatrix said.
"One," Avery said. "The soul fragment, when it's extracted — you said it tries to attach to the nearest host. What do we do about that."
"The containment vessel is pre-activated," Mia said. "The moment the fragment separates from the locket it has approximately three seconds before the containment activates. We will be standing outside the containment boundary when that happens."
"How far outside."
"Six feet minimum."
"And if something goes wrong."
"Then we improvise," Bellatrix said. "Which we're good at."
Avery considered this. "That's not as reassuring as you think it is."
"It's not meant to be reassuring," Bellatrix said. "It's meant to be accurate."
He looked at them both. "Right," he said. "Let's go steal from a Death Eater."
Nott Manor was larger than Mia had expected and darker than any building had a right to be on a clear April night.
It sat in the middle of its grounds like something that had grown there rather than been built — stone and shadow, the windows dark, the topiary in the formal garden having gone slightly wrong in ways that suggested the magic maintaining it had opinions.
"Charming," Mia said quietly.
"The Notts have been here since the 1400s," Avery murmured beside her. "The house has had time to develop a personality."
"I don't want my house to have a personality," Mia said.
"Ours does," Bellatrix said, studying the exterior wards. "Most old magical houses do." She raised her wand. "The ward pattern is Nott family standard — I've seen it documented twice in the archive. Give me eight minutes."
She gave it six.
The exterior wards came down in a sequence so clean that Mia almost missed the moment it happened — not a flash, not a sound, just a slight change in the quality of the air, the way a room sounds different when a window opens.
"Clear," Bellatrix said.
They moved.
The kitchen was cold and dark and smelled of old stone and something herbal that Mia couldn't identify. Avery navigated it from memory, leading them between a long table and a row of copper pots to a door that looked like, as advertised, a pantry.
Up close it felt wrong. The wrongness was quiet and specific — the particular quality of something being suppressed, old magic folded down over itself, a smell underneath the kitchen smell that was darker and more concentrated.
"Here," Mia said.
She crouched and looked at the lock. Muggle mechanism, tarnished, old. She had it open in thirty seconds with a hairpin which was — she was aware — not a skill anyone in this building would have expected her to have, and which she was not going to explain the origin of.
Avery looked at the hairpin. "Beauxbatons curriculum?" he said.
"Something like that," Mia said.
The door opened.
The cellar was one room and it held more objects than it had any right to.
Not cluttered — organised, in the particular way of someone who kept things they didn't want found but needed to access quickly. Shelves along two walls, each item separated, each with its own containment measure. Some of the containment Mia recognised. Some she didn't and had no intention of investigating.
The locket was on the third shelf.
She knew it before she reached it — the same wrongness as the ring, the same quiet pressure, a thing that had been twisted against its own nature and knew it. It was heavy gold, serpentine, with an ornate S that caught the wandlight and gave it back greenish.
"That's it," Bellatrix said quietly.
"That's it," Mia confirmed.
They went through the sequence.
Bellatrix cast the containment boundary — wider than Little Hangleton, they'd adjusted it based on Voclain's notes. Avery held position at the door, watching the stairs. Mia set the vessel.
"Ready," Bellatrix said.
"Ready."
The counter-curse sequence was more complex than the ring — the locket had been a Horcrux longer and the soul fragment had settled deeper into it, the dark magic more thoroughly integrated. Bellatrix worked through the sequence with total focus, her wand moving in the precise controlled patterns she'd been practicing for weeks, and Mia tracked every step and fed the counter-pressure where she felt Bellatrix's magic strain.
The joint casting.
She felt it the moment it engaged properly — the way Voclain had described it, like a conversation, the magic moving between them in a rhythm that wasn't planned, just found. Lead and follow. Push and receive. The magic running back and forth between them like something that knew the route.
The locket shuddered.
"Now," Bellatrix said.
The containment activated.
The soul fragment separated from the locket with a sound that wasn't quite audible — more felt than heard, a deep wrong note that lasted half a second and then cut off as the vessel sealed.
Silence.
All three of them held very still.
Avery let out a careful breath. "Is that—"
"Done," Bellatrix said. She was looking at the vessel with the focused expression of someone checking their own work three times before accepting it. "Fragment contained. Locket neutralised."
Mia picked up the locket.
It was just an object now — heavy gold, ornate, old. The wrongness was gone. It sat in her palm like something that had been released from a long tension and didn't know it yet.
"Two down," Avery said.
"Two down," Mia confirmed.
She looked at Bellatrix. Bellatrix looked back. In the dark cellar of a Death Eater's manor with Avery watching the stairs and the contained soul fragment in its vessel and the locket in her hand, Bellatrix was looking at her with an expression that was tired and satisfied and deeply, quietly pleased.
Mia smiled at her.
Bellatrix's mouth curved.
"We should go," Avery said. "The staff—"
"Going," Mia said, and pocketed the locket.
They were back through the kitchen and across the grounds and past the boundary before the exterior wards finished resetting — Bellatrix put them back exactly as she'd found them, which was the kind of detail that separated good from exceptional, and Mia had learned to expect exceptional.
They Apparated to the edge of Hogsmeade in three separate cracks and walked the last stretch to the castle in the dark.
Avery was quiet for most of the walk. Then he said, "The joint casting."
"What about it," Bellatrix said.
"That's not trained. I've seen trained magical cooperation before. That wasn't it." He paused. "That was something else."
"Yes," Mia said.
He walked for a moment. "Is that part of how you destroy them? The joint casting?"
"Yes," Bellatrix said.
"All of them?"
"All of them."
He was quiet for a bit longer. Then: "I want to learn the ward dismantling sequence you used on the exterior."
Bellatrix looked at him sideways.
"Not for this," he said. "In general. It was elegant."
"It took me four months to develop," Bellatrix said.
"I know. I'm a fast learner."
She looked at him for another moment. "Tuesday," she said. "Library."
"Thank you."
They walked the rest of the way in comfortable silence and the castle let them in and the corridors were empty and dark and Avery peeled off toward the Slytherin dormitories with a quiet goodnight and they were alone in the corridor outside Bellatrix's room.
Bellatrix had the vessel in her hands, turning it over.
"Two," she said.
"Two," Mia agreed.
"Five more."
"Five more." She looked at Bellatrix. "We're winning."
"We're ahead," Bellatrix said, which was the correction she always made. "Winning is the end. We're not at the end."
"We're ahead," Mia conceded. "Is that allowed to feel good."
Bellatrix looked at her for a long moment. Something warm moved through her expression.
"Yes," she said. "I think it is."
She opened her door and looked back.
"Come in," she said. "We should document the extraction methodology while it's fresh."
"That's not—" Mia stopped. Read her face. The slight curve of her mouth, the deliberate composure, the eyes that were warm and doing something other than thinking about documentation.
"Oh," Mia said.
"Yes," Bellatrix agreed.
Bellatrix closed the door behind them with a soft, definitive click and set the small containment vessel on her desk. The heavy quiet of her room swallowed them.
She turned. Her hands went to the collar of Mia’s cloak, her fingers working the clasp with a deliberate slowness that had nothing to do with efficiency. Her gaze was fixed on the task, her dark lashes casting shadows on her cheeks in the low lamplight.
“You were brilliant today,” Bellatrix said, her voice low.
“We were,” Mia corrected, her breath catching as the cloak slid from her shoulders to pool on the floor.
“No.” Bellatrix’s hands moved to the buttons of Mia’s shirt. “You. The way you held the extraction. Your control was… exquisite.” Each button gave way under her fingers. The backs of her knuckles brushed against the skin of Mia’s sternum. A shiver chased the touch.
Mia reached for her in turn, fingers finding the fastenings of Bellatrix’s travelling robes. “Your ward-work was a masterpiece. Avery wasn’t wrong.”
“I know.” A hint of that arrogant, musical laugh colored the words, but it was softer now, private. She pushed Mia’s shirt open, hands sliding inside to rest on her waist. Her thumbs stroked the dip above Mia’s hips. “But I want to hear you say it again.”
Mia looked at her. At the fierce pride, the wild warmth, the slight flush high on her cheekbones from the night’s success and the current of want between them. “It was a masterpiece.”
Bellatrix kissed her. It wasn’t gentle. It was a claiming of the silence, of the safe space, of the victory. Her mouth was hot and insistent, tongue sweeping past Mia’s lips with a possessiveness that made Mia’s knees weaken. She tasted of night air and bitter coffee and triumph.
Mia gave back just as fiercely, her hands finally pushing the robes from Bellatrix’s shoulders. They stumbled toward the bed, a tangle of undressing and kissing and quiet, gasping laughs. The cool silk of the duvet met Mia’s back. Bellatrix followed her down, one knee settling between Mia’s thighs, the heavy weight of her a perfect, welcome pressure.
Bellatrix braced herself above Mia, her untamed curls forming a dark curtain around their faces. Her eyes were black and endless. “Two,” she whispered, as if the number was a spell.
“Two,” Mia echoed. She arched up, capturing Bellatrix’s mouth again, her hands sliding up the strong line of her back, feeling the shift of muscle, the heat of skin.
Bellatrix’s mouth left hers, trailing a wet, scorching path down her jaw, her throat. She paused at the hollow of Mia’s collarbone, her breath a warm gust. “I can feel your heart,” she murmured against the skin. “It’s pounding.”
“It’s you,” Mia said, the words half a gasp as Bellatrix’s teeth grazed the spot.
“Good.”
Bellatrix moved lower, her mouth closing over one nipple through the lace of Mia’s bra. The fabric was damp, clinging. The sensation was a sharp, bright shock. Mia cried out, her hands fisting in Bellatrix’s hair.
Bellatrix worked her mouth, her tongue, until the lace was soaked and Mia was writhing beneath her. Then she moved to the other, giving it the same devastating attention. Mia could feel the slick heat between her own legs, a desperate, throbbing ache. She rocked her hips up, seeking friction against Bellatrix’s thigh.
“Please,” Mia heard herself say, the word ragged and torn from her.
Bellatrix lifted her head. Her lips were swollen, her eyes glazed with a dark, hungry satisfaction. “Please what?”
“Touch me.”
A slow, wicked smile curved Bellatrix’s mouth. She shifted, her hand sliding down Mia’s stomach, past the waistband of her trousers and knickers. Her fingers found her, hot and slick and ready.
Bellatrix’s breath hitched. “You’re soaked.”
She didn’t push inside. Not yet. She circled, the pad of her finger applying a maddening, perfect pressure. Mia’s back arched off the bed, a low moan ripped from her throat. Every nerve was focused on that single point of contact.
“Look at me,” Bellatrix commanded, her voice rough.
Mia forced her eyes open, met that burning black gaze. Bellatrix watched her face as she slowly, slowly slid one finger inside.
The fullness was a relief so profound it bordered on pain. Mia gasped, her hips pushing down to take her deeper. Bellatrix’s thumb found her clit, began a slow, matching rhythm. Her eyes never left Mia’s.
“That’s it,” Bellatrix whispered, her own breathing becoming unsteady. “That’s how we celebrate.”
She added a second finger, stretching her, and Mia cried out, her head falling back. The world narrowed to the feel of Bellatrix inside her, the building tension, the shared breath. She was close, so close, the orgasm a storm gathering at the base of her spine.
Bellatrix bent, her mouth finding Mia’s ear. “Come for me,” she breathed, her voice a dark promise. “Then it’s my turn.”
The words, the feel of her, the safety of the room and the shadow of their victory—it crashed over Mia all at once. She shattered, her body seizing, a broken cry of Bellatrix’s name lost against her skin as the waves tore through her.
Bellatrix held her through it, her movements gentle now, coaxing every last shudder until Mia went limp, boneless and spent against the sheets.
Slowly, Bellatrix withdrew her fingers. She brought them to her own mouth, her eyes locked on Mia’s, and sucked them clean. The act was so blatantly possessive, so raw, that Mia felt a fresh, weak throb of heat deep inside.
Then Bellatrix was moving, stripping off the rest of her own clothes with impatient hands before settling over Mia again. She guided Mia’s hand down, her own slickness evident. “Now,” she said, her voice trembling with need. “I need you now.”
Mia, still trembling from her own release, obeyed. She touched her, learned the rhythm that made Bellatrix’s breath catch and her hips stutter. She watched the control bleed from Bellatrix’s face, replaced by a vulnerable, open want.
Bellatrix came with a choked-off sob, her body bowing, her forehead pressing hard against Mia’s shoulder. Her magic sparked in the air around them, a harmless, bright cascade of dark energy that made the lamplight flicker.
They lay tangled together in the aftermath, skin damp, breathing gradually slowing. The containment vessel sat on the desk, a silent sentinel. Two down. The reality of it settled over them, warmer than any blanket.
Bellatrix shifted, her head coming to rest on Mia’s chest, her ear over her heartbeat. Her fingers traced idle, unknown patterns on Mia’s stomach.
“The documentation can wait until morning,” Mia said into the quiet, her voice hoarse.
Bellatrix’s laugh was a soft, breathy thing against her skin. “Yes.”
For a long time, there was only the sound of their breathing, and the distant, comforting weight of the castle around them, and the two of them, ahead, in the dark.
Bellatrix did actually write up the extraction methodology, because she was Bellatrix and the documentation genuinely couldn’t wait forever, but she did it sitting in bed with Mia’s head on her shoulder and the notes balanced on her knee, which was — Mia had decided — the most Bellatrix possible compromise between work and not working.
The locket sat on the desk. Just gold now. Just an object.
“The cup is in your vault,” Mia said to the ceiling.
“I know.”
“When we go for it—”
“I know.” Steady. Already decided. “I want to be there for that one specifically.”
“You’ll be there.” She paused. “You said you wanted to be the one to destroy it.”
“I do.” She wrote something, the quill scratching softly. “The destruction sequence — Voclain’s notes suggest the Fiendfyre approach needs to be modified for a soul fragment that’s already been extracted. The contained fragment is more stable than a live Horcrux but the destruction still requires—”
“Bellatrix.”
“Yes?”
“It’s two in the morning.”
“The documentation—”
“Can be here in the morning.”
A pause. The quill stopped.
“The documentation,” Bellatrix said, her voice low, “is how we don’t make mistakes.”
“I know.” Mia turned her head and looked up at her. The lamplight caught the ink smudged on Bellatrix’s fingers, the focused line of her brow. “But you also need to sleep. The documentation will be better when you’ve slept.”
Bellatrix looked down at her. The lamplight was warm and her hair was loose and she had ink on her fingers again and the notes were balanced on her knee and she looked, Mia thought, like everything.
“Fine,” she said.
She put the notes on the bedside table, placed the quill beside them with a precise tap, and lay down. With a flick of her wrist, the lamp went out. The room was suddenly dark and warm, filled with the scent of them and old parchment.
“We’re winning,” Mia said into the dark.
“We’re ahead,” Bellatrix corrected, her voice a sleepy murmur against Mia’s hair.
“Same thing.”
“Categorically not the same—”
“I love you,” Mia said.
A pause. A shift of breath. Bellatrix’s arm tightened around her.
“I love you too,” Bellatrix said. The deliberate choice of it, every time. “Go to sleep.”
Outside, the April night was cool and clear, and in the manor in Wiltshire the wards were exactly as they’d been found, and nobody knew that anything was different. Two down. Five to go. They slept.
Morning light, pale and insistent, found them still tangled together. Mia woke first to the feel of Bellatrix’s breath against her neck, the solid weight of her arm across Mia’s stomach. She lay still, listening. The castle was quiet. Sunday.
Bellatrix stirred, a low hum vibrating against Mia’s skin. Her eyes opened, black and immediately aware. “You’re thinking,” she accused, her voice rough with sleep.
“Always.”
“About the cup.”
“Yes.”
Bellatrix pushed herself up on one elbow, her curls a wild cascade. “Gringotts,” she said. The word hung between them, heavy with implication. “Not a country house. Not a cave. The most secure magical institution in Britain, barring perhaps the Department of Mysteries itself.”
“Your family vault,” Mia countered, though the tension in her shoulders betrayed her. “You have access.”
“I have supervised access, with a goblin escort, during banking hours, for the purpose of withdrawing family assets. Not for smuggling a Dark artifact out under their noses.” Bellatrix’s gaze was sharp, calculating. “The wards on the high-security vaults are… comprehensive. They’re keyed to blood, intent, and magical signature. They’ll know if I try to remove something that wasn’t deposited by a Black.”
Mia sat up, the sheets pooling at her waist. The neutralized locket gleamed dully on the desk in the morning light. “Then we need a diversion. Or we need to make the removal invisible to the wards.”
“A Substitution Charm won’t work. The vault’s inventory magic is too nuanced.” Bellatrix ran a hand through her hair. “We’ll need to confound the escort, override the intent-scanning, and mask the cup’s signature as something else. All within a five-minute window, likely while other patrons are present.”
“We need Avery,” Mia said.
Bellatrix looked at her. “For the ward theory.”
“For the third wand. And for the fact that he’s a pureblood heir with his own vault. His presence won’t raise an eyebrow. A party of three young heirs touring the high-security level, making withdrawals… it’s a story.”
A slow, wicked smile spread across Bellatrix’s face. “You want to use him as camouflage.”
“I want to use his access, his knowledge, and his impeccable sense of aristocratic boredom to sell the performance.” Mia met her smile. “You said it was time to bring him properly in. This is it.”
Bellatrix leaned in and kissed her, a quick, hard press of lips that tasted of sleep and resolve. “Then we find him after breakfast. And we plan a heist.”