Disclaimer: I do not own. I promise.

Author notes: Just a plot bunny I had to write before studying for finals. I just had to!

Gordian Knot

Prologue

She was born with a mark on her back.

Few knew of it, and frankly few were worthy of this knowledge. She was born a flower with the Thorn on her back. Rebirth…the promise of eternity is what her father had said.

She believed it saved her life and her place in his heart…a heart sore with the numerous miscarriages of his wife and her failure to produce a male heir. It was said, or whispered, that the day she was born was the day she had almost died.

Lycaon Black was not very forgiving of failure.

The grey-haired man with silver eyes had entered the room where his wife was holding Bellatrix (at that point, yet to be named) and tore the child from the mother's grasp. He carried her to the highest point of the manor, leaving his wife's cries fading into the stone walls that served to smother the sound.

He held her out towards the heavens from his place in the window, about to let her plummet to the earth…until he spotted the mark. The curious arrangement of pigmentation that was noticeable, even on such a small back, a back smaller than his hands.

It pushed him back away from the ledge, away from himself almost. It stabbed at his eyes and he knew.

This child was to be great. This child was his Heir.

He named her for everything she was to be. A beauty, a majestic standard…not looks, the look of a wielder, of what was in all things magical but hidden. Underneath, she was like the ocean, full of such places travelers would not return from. A warrior of the old ways.

She was his. He trained her.

"Only if you beat me, will I acknowledge you as my Heir," he said without tone or emotion. Duels had no room for emotion. "Or worthy of my blood."

It took fifteen years for her to become a person. For most of it, she lived in her father's shadow until Hogwarts took her away.

He had shown her the labyrinth underneath the manor, full of tombs that changed design over time. They traveled in a elm boat on water that held the blood of their ancestors. He picked her finger and she added her own being to the river.

It was vast and endless, seeming to be far greater than the manor in length. Their blood was ageless.

"The original Black crest was a phoenix," he told her underneath the earth. "Because we never fade. We are loyal. We are steadfast. We are the purest of the pureblood. We harbor the true magic. And we defend it, regardless of ourselves."

Her first lover traced the dots in awe, unable to resist repeating the motion. She lay languid in the satin covers, watching the snow fall outside and the fires warm where the Slytherin dungeon had been cold and sightless. She envied Gryffindors and their possession of both her crest and her color. Red was eternal and the House of Black was eternal.

The second person who glimpsed the Thorn was Him, who transcended past even eternal. He was not of this earth, in her view. She treaded the path of heaven and earth with Him.

He had marked her again.

The third person had been the most unlikely but the most worthy. And that is where Bellatrix Black-Lestrange had been reborn.

&&&

It was thoroughly odd to see someone's lips move with healing paste on half of their face.

Stranger still were Luna Lovegood's words.

"Some say we make our memories when really our memories make us. Please, Harry. Please…wait until she remembers," she pleaded gently before she walked up the stairs and out of his sight to rest.

He was left in the darkness to watch the prisoner's movements like a hawk and his old hatred was roaring through his veins. He was so close to that feeling that he could not step away. Yet he had not revenged Sirius's death.

There was one thin line that separated moments: one moment being where Harry cast the Killing Curse on Bellatrix Lestrange. The other moment was the present moment where he could only imagine casting the Killing Curse of Bellatrix Lestrange.

As typical with one caught in time, he merely sat and stared, running mad in the darkness with his thoughts that were growing more and more realistic. He shivered.

The first real battle had left scars on them all. Some had been less than lucky.

He had made his first real kill today. A girl his own age, Millicent Bulstrode, and she had collapsed on him and he had been caught under the weight of death for too long to be useful. Though that was nothing compared to the weight bearing down on him now…

The weight of wanting to kill, of needing to…he knew he would still be empty where Sirius used to be but at least, his death wouldn't be worthless and meant to be forgotten over time. Harry had started to understand in part the Dark Lord's fear of death. It wasn't death itself. It was time and how it eroded everything that mattered. Ages ago, people lived and he didn't know them, their trials, or their losses. So it can only be that he, the famous Harry Potter, would be forgotten and become a mere word. As will those he had failed to save.

A great bitterness welled up in him and he cursed.

The woman behind the bars stirred. He froze, gripping his wand and for one desperate moment, not trusting himself. Harry walked to the cell and looked in, smirking.

She looked confused, gazing at first at the cold stone cell and then at the boy outside the cell. She stood tall and proud, for someone who had had their memory Obliviated by a rookie Auror.

"Where am I? Who are you?" she asked coldly, though not without a hint of uncertainty and just possibly, fear.

"You…are in the Hogwarts dungeons for being a filthy murderer. I am the one who will make you pay," he answered back, unforgiving and unmindful of Luna Lovegood's pleas. Those seemingly fortress-darkened eyes widen.

"What?" she whispers hoarsely, no doubt wondering who exactly she had killed. Harry would have been pleased to inform her except he suddenly couldn't get a word in.

"That can't be. You are mistaken," she sneers back. "I-…"

A bit of silent horror on her face, contorting it into the most marvelous of mirror image of the shadow on the mind, where one had lost something extremely dear to them…or someone who has just woken up from a nightmare to find the nightmare had been a much better than reality.

"I am no murderer," she finishes firmly and fiercely, leaning back against the wall and cross her arms tightly, to protect herself. Her eyes are full of intense clashing of threatening panic.

"Oh, but you are," he hissed back. "Or else you don't consider the death of a thousand Muggles murder."

He couldn't mention his godfather at this point.

"Muggles…"she muttered, seeming again confused. Then she regained her façade. He would have flung her Death Eater's mask in her face if he had had it in his hands.

"Forgive me if I don't believe ridiculous made-up words from children."

Harry blinked in shock and almost dropped his wand. Was it possible that her memory was that far gone?

He searched frantically for some semblance of a lie in her face. All he found was a dazed and feral look of someone cornered and possibly lost, caught between Scylla and Charybdis.

He cursed again.

"Bloody hell."

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Short because of finals. Please review if you'd like!