The three weeks looked like this:
Bellatrix translated the 1703 soul reversal text in four days, which was two days faster than she'd said and somehow still annoyed her because she'd wanted three. She presented Mia with twelve pages of annotated notes on a Tuesday morning over breakfast, sliding them across the table without comment, and went back to her toast.
Mia read the first page. Then the second. Then she looked up.
"This is remarkable."
"It's incomplete," Bellatrix said. "The methodology breaks down in the final stage. The author either didn't finish it or removed the conclusion deliberately."
"But the theory holds."
"The theory holds." She turned a page of her own book. "We'd need to develop the final stage ourselves."
Mia looked at her across the breakfast table, the great hall noisy around them, morning light coming through the high windows. "You already have ideas about the final stage."
"I have the beginning of ideas."
"Which you'll have fully formed by Thursday."
Bellatrix didn't answer, which was an answer.
---
The curse-breaking research took longer and was less pleasant.
The ring's curse was old in a specific way — not a curse someone had cast so much as something that had accrued, layered over decades, the kind of dark magic that fed on itself and grew in the absence of anyone to stop it. Bellatrix read everything she could find on accrued curse theory and came back each evening with new annotations and increasingly specific questions that Mia answered as fully as she could from memory.
"The stone in the ring," Bellatrix said, on the second week. "You said Dumbledore tried to use it."
"He did."
"For personal reasons."
"His family." Mia paused. "His sister died when he was young. Under circumstances he blamed himself for."
Bellatrix was quiet for a moment. "The stone is a resurrection stone."
"One of the Deathly Hallows, yes."
"Which you have knowledge of because—"
"Harry had all three at the end, technically." She paused. "That's a longer conversation."
"Add it to the list." Bellatrix wrote something. "The resurrection stone means the curse isn't just on the ring. It's designed to exploit whoever touches it. Find what they want most and use it against them." She looked up. "We go in wanting nothing from the stone. We treat it as purely a vessel to be contained."
"Easier said."
"Most things are." She set her quill down. "I won't be tempted by it. There's no one I've lost that I'd—" She stopped. Something moved across her face briefly. "There's no one," she said, more quietly.
Mia reached across the desk and covered her hand. Bellatrix looked at it for a moment then turned her hand over and held on briefly before letting go and picking up her quill again.
"You?" she said, not looking up.
Mia thought about it honestly. "I've lost people. But I know what they'd think about me using a cursed stone to talk to them." She almost smiled. "They'd be furious."
"Good," Bellatrix said. "Hold onto that."
---
Sirius found her on a Thursday.
"About that favour," Mia said.
He lit up immediately. "Yes."
"I need a distraction. Two weeks from Saturday, around midnight. Something that will keep Filch occupied on the third floor for approximately forty minutes."
Sirius stared at her. The expression on his face was the expression of someone who had just been handed exactly the right gift. "What kind of distraction."
"I genuinely don't need the details."
"Can it involve the suits of armour."
"I said I don't need—"
"It's going to involve the suits of armour," he said happily. "This is the best favour anyone has ever asked me for. What are you doing?"
"Nothing that concerns you."
"It concerns me a little."
"It really doesn't."
He looked at her with those too-sharp eyes. "Is Bella involved."
"Goodnight Sirius."
"That's a yes." He grinned. "The suits of armour will be magnificent. You have my word."
"That phrase has never been less reassuring," Mia said, and left him there looking delighted with himself.
---
Two weeks from Saturday arrived cold and overcast, which Mia decided was appropriate.
They left through the passage behind the one-eyed witch at eleven forty-five, emerging into Honeydukes' cellar and from there into the dark Hogsmeade street. From Hogsmeade they Apparated — Bellatrix first, then Mia, to the coordinates Bellatrix had fixed from the genealogical records.
Little Hangleton was a village that had clearly decided some time ago that it preferred not to be noticed. Small, quiet, the kind of place that minded its own business with some dedication. They arrived at the edge of it and walked up through the dark toward the hill where the Gaunt house sat.
Mia smelled it before she saw it. Old magic going bad — a specific smell, like something electrical left burning too long. Acrid underneath the cold night air.
“There," Bellatrix said.
The house was barely a house anymore. It leaned slightly to the left as if tired, windows long since dark, the garden swallowed entirely by something that had stopped being plants and started being something with more intention. The wards were visible if you knew what to look for — a faint distortion at the property line, the air slightly wrong, the particular quality of space that had been magically claimed and then abandoned.
"Blood wards are definitely dead," Bellatrix said quietly, her wand out, reading the magic in the air. "Passive curses active. Three of them — decay, confusion, and something older I don't recognise immediately."
"The older one will be Gaunt family specific," Mia said. "Probably a pain curse of some kind. They were unpleasant people."
"Right." Bellatrix began dismantling the decay curse with the focused calm of someone defusing something delicate. Her hands were steady. She didn't rush. "Confusion next. Watch for disorientation — it'll feel like you've forgotten why you're here."
“How do we counter it."
"Hold onto something concrete." She glanced sideways. "Something you know is real."
Mia looked at her profile in the dark. "Manageable," she said.
They crossed the property line.
The confusion curse hit immediately — a sliding, sideways feeling, like the ground had shifted slightly under her feet. Mia reached out and took Bellatrix's sleeve without thinking and Bellatrix's hand came up and covered hers and the feeling receded.
"Real," Bellatrix said quietly.
"Real," Mia agreed.
They walked to the door.
---
Inside was worse.
Not dangerous, exactly, just deeply unpleasant — the accumulated misery of a family that had been going wrong for generations and had done it all within these four walls. The magic in the house had gone thick and stale. It pressed slightly.
"Charming," Mia said.
"They were famously charming people, the Gaunts." Bellatrix was scanning the room with her wand, reading each surface. "The ring will be—" She stopped. "Here."
It was on the floor in the back room, half buried in old debris. A black stone in a gold setting, old and dark, and even from five feet away Mia could feel the wrongness of it. Not loud. Quiet and persistent, the magical equivalent of a smell that made you want to leave the room.
"I feel it," she said.
"Don't look at the stone directly," Bellatrix said. She was already preparing — from her robes she produced the containment vessel they'd made together the previous week, a small lead-lined box covered in containment runes in Bellatrix's handwriting. "The stone will try to show you something. Keep your eyes on the setting, not the centre."
Mia kept her eyes on the gold band. "Ready."
Bellatrix cast the first counter-curse. The air around the ring resisted — a visible thing, a dark shimmer, the curse recognising the challenge. She cast again, harder, and Mia felt the quality of the magic in the room change, pressure building.
"It's layered," Bellatrix said tightly. "Three curses minimum — hold this—" She passed Mia her wand arm without looking, and Mia gripped her forearm with both hands to steady the wandwork while Bellatrix used her other hand to cast a containment boundary around the ring.
"I've got you," Mia said.
"I know." She cast the third counter-curse.
The ring jumped — actually moved, skittering across the floor away from them, and for a moment the stone faced upward and Mia caught a flash of it — not an image, just a sensation, a pulling feeling, something that wanted her to look properly—
She looked at Bellatrix's hands instead.
The containment boundary locked. The ring went still.
"Now," Bellatrix said.
Mia summoned the box. Bellatrix levitated the ring into it without touching it. The lid closed and the runes activated and the pressure in the room dropped all at once like a sound cutting off.
Silence.
They both breathed.
“That," Mia said, after a moment, "was the first one."
"That was the first one," Bellatrix confirmed. She sounded perfectly steady and Mia could feel her pulse going fast under her fingers where she was still holding her arm. She didn't mention it.
"Six more."
"Six more." Bellatrix looked at the box in Mia's hands. "We should go."
“We should absolutely go."
---
They were back through the passage and into the castle by two in the morning, which left time to deal with the minor issue of Sirius's distraction still apparently in progress on the third floor.
The sound reached them on the second staircase — a rhythmic clanking, overlaid with what sounded distinctly like several suits of armour moving in a coordinated fashion and a voice that was almost certainly Sirius's whispering no, left foot, the OTHER left—
Bellatrix stopped walking.
"I didn't need to know," Mia said.
"You used my cousin as a—"
"He volunteered."
"He's fifteen."
"He's extremely capable for fifteen. Clearly." They both listened to the armour. "He's got six of them moving in formation."
Bellatrix stared at the ceiling with the expression of someone making peace with something. "Go to bed," she said.
"What about Sirius."
"He'll be fine. He does this sort of thing recreationally." She turned toward the stairs. Then she turned back. "Mia."
"Yes?"
"The ring." She paused. "One down."
Mia looked at her in the dark staircase, both of them exhausted and slightly wrung out and smelling of abandoned house and old magic, the first Horcrux in a box in Mia's hands.
"One down," she said.
Bellatrix held her gaze for a moment with an expression that was tired and satisfied and something else underneath both of those — something that was getting harder to not put a name to.
Then she turned and went up the stairs and Mia stood there for a second in the dark thinking that she was very thoroughly in love with her and had been for quite some time and wasn't going to say so in a staircase at two in the morning smelling of Gaunt house.
Soon, she thought.
Mia went to her own dorm, the stone corridors of Hogwarts feeling both impossibly vast and claustrophobically close. The box containing the ring was a cold, leaden weight in the pocket of her robes.
Her room was dark, the other fourth-year Slytherin girls asleep behind their hangings. She set the box on her bedside table and stared at it.
One down. Six to go. The math was simple. The reality of it sat in her gut like a stone.
She changed out of her clothes, the fabric smelling of damp earth and ozone, and into a soft sleep shirt. The adrenaline was gone, leaving a hollow, twitching fatigue in its place. She crawled into bed.
She lay there for an hour, watching the faint greenish light from the lake filter through the window.
The door to her dormitory opened with a soft click.
Mia didn't move. She knew the cadence of those footsteps.
Bellatrix’s silhouette paused at the foot of her bed, then rounded it. She didn't ask. She just lifted the edge of the duvet and slid in beside her.
The bed was narrow, forcing them close. Bellatrix was still in her day clothes, her skirt and blouse smelling of the same journey Mia had just tried to wash away.
"Couldn't sleep," Bellatrix murmured into the dark. It wasn't an apology.
"Neither could I."
Bellatrix turned onto her side, facing her. In the gloom, her eyes were black pools, unreadable. "The ring is quiet."
"For now."
"It'll keep." Bellatrix’s hand found Mia’s hip under the covers. Her fingers pressed into the thin cotton of Mia’s shirt, a firm, grounding pressure. "You were good tonight. Steady."
"You were brilliant."
A low, quiet hum of acknowledgment. Bellatrix’s thumb began to move, a slow, absent arc against Mia’s hipbone.
Mia’s breath hitched. The touch was simple. It shouldn't have unspooled her. But the night’s tension, the shared danger, the look on the staircase—it all condensed into the heat of that single point of contact.
Bellatrix shifted closer. Her knee slotted between Mia’s. "Tell me what you're thinking."
"I'm thinking I want you to kiss me."
Bellatrix did. It was slow, deep, a tasting. Her mouth was warm and insistent. Mia's hands came up, one tangling in the wild curls at Bellatrix’s nape, the other fisting in the fabric of her blouse.
Bellatrix broke the kiss, her breath coming faster. She nosed along Mia’s jaw. "I can feel your heart," she whispered against her throat. "It's racing."
Her hand slid from Mia’s hip, around to the small of her back, pulling their bodies flush. Mia could feel the lines of her—the curve of her breast against her own, the lean muscle of her thigh.
"Bella—"
"Shh." Bellatrix kissed her again, swallowing the rest. Her tongue swept into Mia’s mouth, claiming, possessive. The hand on Mia’s back dipped lower, fingers splaying over the curve of her arse through the thin cotton.
Mia arched into her, a soft noise escaping her throat. The fatigue was gone, burned away by a sharp, specific heat. She was getting wet, a slick ache building that made her press her thighs together, trapping Bellatrix’s knee between them.
Bellatrix felt it. She made a rough, approving sound. Her hand moved from Mia’s backside, around her hip, and slid under the hem of her sleep shirt.
Her palm was hot on Mia’s bare stomach. Mia gasped, her abdominal muscles fluttering under the touch.
"Look at me," Bellatrix breathed, her lips a millimeter from Mia’s.
Mia opened her eyes. Bellatrix’s gaze was black fire, intense and unwavering. Her hand inched higher, brushing the underside of Mia’s breast.
Mia’s nipple tightened instantly, a sharp peak against the fabric of her shirt. Bellatrix’s thumb passed over it, once, twice, a deliberate, circling pressure.
"You're trembling," Bellatrix observed, her voice a dark ribbon of sound.
"You're touching me."
"Yes." Her hand cupped Mia’s breast fully, her thumb still working that maddening circle. "I am."
Mia’s head fell back against the pillow. Her hips rocked, a helpless, seeking motion against Bellatrix’s thigh. The friction was exquisite, not enough. She was soaked, the cotton of her underwear clinging.
Bellatrix kissed her throat, her collarbone, the hollow where her pulse hammered. Her other hand came up to frame Mia’s face, holding her still. "Tell me."
"I need—"
"What do you need?"
Mia’s mind blanked. Every coherent thought had been replaced by sensation—the weight of Bellatrix’s hand, the heat of her mouth, the hard line of her thigh. "You. Just you."
Bellatrix’s hand left her breast, trailed down her stomach again, lower. Her fingers hooked into the waistband of Mia’s underwear.
She paused there. Her breath was hot against Mia’s skin. Her whole body was a line of tension, poised.
Mia held her breath. The anticipation was a live wire, singing in her veins. Bellatrix’s fingers were right there, a promise, a threshold.
Bellatrix looked up, her eyes meeting Mia’s in the dark. Something shifted in her expression—the fierce possession softened by a vulnerability so raw it stole the air from Mia’s lungs.
She didn’t move her hand. She just held that gaze, her fingers trembling slightly against Mia’s skin.
Then, slowly, she leaned forward and rested her forehead against Mia’s. Her breathing was ragged. "Soon," she whispered, echoing Mia’s own thought from the staircase. The word was a vow, and a surrender.
She withdrew her hand, instead wrapping her arm tightly around Mia’s waist and pulling her close. She buried her face in Mia’s hair.
Mia clung to her, her body still humming, her need a sharp ache. But the embrace was firm, anchoring. The unspoken thing hung between them, named in the silence.
Bellatrix’s breathing evened out, deepened. She was asleep within minutes, exhaustion finally claiming her.
Mia stayed awake a while longer, listening to her breathe, feeling the solid weight of her, the first Horcrux contained on the table beside them, their war just beginning. She pressed a kiss to Bellatrix’s temple.
Soon.
---
In the morning at breakfast Sirius slid into the seat across from her looking immensely pleased with himself and slightly singed.
"The suits of armour," he said, "did a full march down the third floor corridor, up the east staircase, and performed what I can only describe as a choreographed sequence outside Filch's office."
"How are you singed."
"One of them had a torch."
"Why did one of them have a torch."
"Aesthetic choice. It looked great right up until—" He waved a hand. "Point is, forty-two minutes. I went over by two, I apologise."
"It was fine."
"Good." He stole a piece of her toast. "Did you get what you needed."
"Yes."
He nodded, satisfied. "We're even then." He stood up. "Unless you need something else broken into. I'm available. It's genuinely my best skill."
"I'll keep that in mind," Mia said.
He grinned and left and she looked at her stolen toast and thought that in another life she'd known a version of him who would have loved knowing about all of this.
She hoped the version sitting across the hall arguing with James Potter about Quidditch would get the chance to find out.