Dolohov and Bellatrix

The Dolohov family's old house is a two-story building made of gray stone, located on a barren slope at the eastern foot of the Pennines.

The outer walls were covered with dead ivy, and the family crest on the iron gate had been eroded by wind and rain to the point that only a blurry outline remained.

Dolohov Apparition and landed in the manor's Entrance Hall with a soft thud, the sound still wet.

His knees nearly hit the marble floor; he braced himself against the wall, panting heavily.

Blood trickled down his sleeves and trouser legs, dripping onto the light-colored stone slab and leaving a small dark red stain.

,??9

Hurried footsteps came from the direction of the Kitchen, and an House-elf wearing a dirty Tea Towel ran out, carrying a copper kettle, and saw the scene in the Entrance Hall.

The Master was covered in blood, half of his face was mangled beyond recognition, and blood was everywhere.

The copper kettle fell from his hand and clattered to the ground, spilling hot water everywhere.

"The Master! The Master —you"

Dolohov's voice was hoarse. "Go away."

He walked down the Corridor, dragging his right leg, leaving a bloody footprint with each step; he held onto the wall, leaving a bloody handprint with each step.

The House-elf paused for a moment, then hurriedly retreated into the depths of the Corridor, muttering to itself.

In the Portrait lining the Corridor, the ancestors of the Dolohov family peek out from the frames to look at him. An old man in a 17th-century robe opens his mouth as if to say something, but is glared at and shut up by him.

At the end of the Corridor was a full-length mirror, set in a blackened silver frame. On the wall next to it hung a pair of crossed wand models and a faded Tapestry of the Slytherin crest.

Dolohov stopped in front of the mirror and looked at his own face for the first time.

The left half can no longer be considered a face.

The cheekbone was severely injured; the once prominent cheekbone contour had sunken in, and the skin around the edges was purplish-black.

The outer edge of the eye socket was injured. The eyeball was still intact, but the area around the eye socket was severely swollen, with bruising seeping out from under the eyelid. The iris was covered with blood vessels, and the pupil was dilated and unresponsive to light.

The corner of his mouth was torn all the way to his ear, with the skin and flesh rolled outwards; the injury looked very serious.

Blood gushed from the tear, the bridge of the nose was injured and tilted to the right, and the nostril was collapsed.

From his chin to his collar, it was covered in hard, dark red scabs.

He had several severe wounds on his thighs and arms, left on the rubble of Skipton during the Splinching.

The wound was jagged, and blood was still seeping out, flowing down the forearm to the back of the hand, and then dripping from the fingertips.

The person in the mirror stared at him, and he stared back, remaining silent for a moment.

Then, using his still-functioning right hand, he reached for the medicine cabinet next to the sink. The cabinet door opened, revealing neatly stacked medicine bottles with handwritten labels, most of the ink faded.

Dark Arts healing potions, blood tonics, bone healing agents, and pain relievers.

The old house may not have much else, but it has plenty of this stuff. Every generation of Dolohov has had people die from Dark Arts, but many more have been pulled back from the brink of death by these things.

First, I administered the painkiller. The spicy liquid flowed down my throat, burning my stomach. The excruciating pain on one side of my face subsided from a shrill scream to a muffled buzzing.

Then came the bone healing agent, which was the hardest to endure. He tilted his head back and gulped down a large mouthful, his Adam's apple bobbing twice.

The shattered skull and eye sockets began to slowly return to their original positions beneath the skin, the bone fragments rubbing against each other, the sound transmitted from inside the skull into the ear, making a crunching sound.

He braced his hands on the edge of the cabinet, his arm muscles tense, his forehead pressed against the cabinet door, his jaw clenched, and the veins in his temples throbbing.

A thin layer of sweat seeped from my upper body, flowing into the wound and causing a slight stinging pain. My breathing became a little heavier, but other than that, I didn't have any other reaction.

One minute, two minutes, the bone was back in place.

He was taught from a young age that a Pure-bloods nobleman should not whine in front of anyone, not even if all that is in front of him is a mirror and the row of dead ancestors on the wall.

The word "weakness" doesn't exist in the Dolohov family; weakness is the privilege of the loser.

After the bones were put back in place, a blood-replenishing agent was administered.

The feeling of exhaustion from being drained from my body slowly subsided, and my Magic Power gradually recovered. I could feel the Magic Core pulsating steadily again deep in my chest cavity.

He took a breath, released the cabinet, stood up straight, and touched his left cheek with his right hand.

There are still slight signs of collapse at the location of the philtrum. The bone healing agent needs time to fully heal. The bruising around the eye socket has turned from dark purple to dark red, and the blood vessels are being slowly absorbed by the tissue.

The tear at the corner of his mouth had healed, but the scar remained, extending from the corner of his mouth to his earlobe, the new skin bearing an unnatural pink hue.

My left eye's vision went from complete darkness to blurry, and I could see light and shadow, but the details were still blurry.

The Splinching were sealed with Healing Charm and coated with Dittany Essence. The newly formed skin was so thin that the dark red blood vessels underneath could be seen.

Scouring Charm himself of the bloodstains, the House-elf brought him a clean, dark robe, which he put on, buttoning each button neatly.

Smooth out the cuffs, turn up the collar, and insert the wand into the special inner leather sheath.

The old robe and the bloodstains on the ground were taken away and burned by the House-elf, and the bloody footprints in the Corridor were also wiped clean.

He glanced at the mirror again.

The face was repaired, but the scars remained. The outline of the left side of the face intertwined with the scars, making the already distorted face even more grotesque.

That new pink scar that stretched from the corner of his mouth to his ear would turn white, and then become the most conspicuous scar among the many on his face.

I couldn't be rude to my the Master, but given my injuries, this was the only option.

The Study was lined with dark oak bookshelves, the curtains were drawn, and a small fire burned in the fireplace.

Dolohov sat behind his desk, Silver Badge resting on the table and his wand beside him.

The mission itself was just routine: guard the outpost, wait for Rookwood to make contact, and control the Prewett brothers were tracking them—not to kill them, but to keep them trapped.

Then the white-haired wizard appeared, charged up for two minutes, blasted the front of the Castle away, and in the final blow, a face-to-face punch followed by a noble salute.

The thought of that aristocratic gesture made the scar on the left side of my face start to itch again.

He put his mind at ease.

The explosion was indeed exceptionally powerful, but ultimately, the Magic required two minutes of preparation time. Given two minutes, he could create something with the same destructive power.

He knew of at least three ways to blow up a five-story building using Dark Arts; the methods differed, but the results were similar.

Needless to say, those rounds of matches were just going through the motions, with both sides offering each other a way out, and neither taking it seriously.

But in that final moment, he was pressed against the face at the exact same instant he activated Apparition.

From the Apparition to the moment the spatial compression begins, the time window is less than half a second.

Within that half-second, the white-haired wizard made his judgment, activated Apparition, locked onto the landing point, threw a punch, infused it with Magic Power, and hit the target—all within his reaction time.

He was fifty years old, had been fighting for thirty years, and was interrupted by a young man in his early twenties who managed to Apparition at the last possible moment.

The mission failure itself did not need to alarm the Master. The outpost was lost, and there were casualties, but everyone was alive. An abandoned Castle that had been bombed was not a strategic location to begin with.

This level of operational failure is quite common within the Death Eaters; they just write a briefing and submit it, and that's it.

But the Order of the Phoenix now has a young fighter of equal caliber to him, so information must be passed up the chain of command.

Youth is key. Youth means still growing. What will someone who can do all this in their early twenties be like in ten years?

Dolohov picked up his wand, pressed the tip against the surface of the badge, and silently uttered a phrase. A faint green light appeared on the edge of the badge, flashed twice, and then went out.

The signal has been sent; now it's time to wait.

He mentally rehearsed his words: the stronghold Attacks by an unknown wizard, using explosive Magic, white hair and vertical pupils, young, interrupting Apparition.

But after the rehearsal, it seemed unnecessary, as the Master would probably just watch it directly.

He couldn't find his the Master directly.

The Master's whereabouts were never fully disclosed to anyone, not even early core members like himself, who could only communicate through designated channels.

And the current communication channels -

His right eye narrowed slightly, and the pink scar at the corner of his mouth twitched.

The badge vibrated, the green light flashed again, and a coordinate and a Portkey activation signal appeared.

Coastal County Durham, south of Sunderland.

The Portkey left him at the end of a stone pier, where the slippery crevices were filled with seashell fragments that creaked under his boots.

The pier was short, with several rotting fishing boat wrecks moored at the end, their gunwales covered with dried seaweed that swayed gently in the sea breeze.

Inside the pier was a burned-out fishing village. The wooden houses on the stone foundations were reduced to charred frames, with broken wooden beams sticking out in the moonlight, and the remaining walls showing honeycomb-like pits.

The air was filled with the smell of damp, burnt firewood and the earthy odor of freshly turned soil.

After walking a few steps from the dock into the village, I saw haphazardly placed pits in the open space.

Three or four, rectangular, neatly arranged, with freshly dug wet mud piled around the pits, which were empty.

There were about twenty Muggle corpses lying on the open ground nearby, dressed in different clothes. Some were wearing fishermen's leather aprons, some were wearing faded floral dresses, and two old men in striped bathrobes were barefoot.

There was no pain on his face, as if he had fallen asleep and never woken up again; the Killing Curse was swift and decisive.

One of the bodies was getting up, its movements stiff, its joints cracking and sputtering, its arms twisted and bent. Then it stood up, its hands hanging down, its empty eye sockets facing the sea.

The newly created Inferi has not yet received instructions and is currently in a standby state.

Dolohov's gaze swept over the Inferi; he had seen far more spectacular ones.

During the incident at Little Hangleton, an entire village was slaughtered, and corpses littered the church lawn.

He was there that time too, in charge of perimeter security, watching the Master walk out of the church, followed by a whole row of newly risen Inferi.

This time it was even quieter.

He continued walking forward.

I've seen this kind of thing many times, but every time I see an entire village wiped out by the Killing Curse, something inside me still gets a little tingled.

The power of a person to take dozens of lives in a single night, like trimming a lamp wick, is itself worthy of awe.

His specialty is inflicting torture on living people, driving his opponents to the brink of collapse under extreme pain.

On another level, what the Master did was to use death itself as raw material.

He worshipped this power and willingly knelt before it.

Bellatrix stood on the low stone wall at the edge of the clearing, with her back to the sea.

He was wrapped tightly in a black robe, his hair was longer than when we last met, reaching his waist, and was being swept to one side by the sea breeze. He stood quietly, his hand holding the wand hanging at his side, the tip of the wand pointing downwards.

She turned her face when she saw Dolohov approaching.

Dolohov paused for a moment.

The eyes were still those dark eyes, but what was inside them had changed; the familiar manic smile was gone from the corners of his mouth, and his lips were tightly pursed.

His eyes were still fervent, his pupils unnaturally bright, as if they were constantly burning, but they had burned for so long that they had turned into a kind of quiet, morbid calm.

The Bellatrix of the past was fiery, flamboyant, mad, screaming as she pounced on anything her the Master pointed to.

The fire is now suppressed underground, with magma churning beneath the rocks and only wisps of hot smoke rising from the surface.

She looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on the scar on the left side of his face for a moment. Her lips twitched, but she didn't make a sound.

The scar was still fresh; the pinkish new skin hadn't fully healed, clearly indicating that the person had just been beaten.

Dolohov Antonin, an old man who never gave her a second glance, was injured.

"Antonin." Her voice was softer and slower than before, with unnatural pauses between syllables, coming out from her throat, gentle yet with a sharp chill.

His mouth was saying his name, but his eyes, with their burning pupils, were elsewhere; his voice and gaze were misaligned.

Dolohov kept a few steps away from her.

The Master's handiwork.

The last time I saw Bellatrix, she was a crazy woman who might scream and pounce on me at any moment, but now she seems to have been completely transformed.

It has definitely been modified, but he couldn't tell exactly what was done.

There are countless ways to transform someone using Dark Arts: at the level of the soul, the body, Magic Power power, and will. Each method leaves a different mark.

But the outcome is clear: it's even more dangerous now.

A Bellatrix who is insane is controllable; her madness follows a pattern; her screams have a cause.

Bellatrix was quiet and sickly; he didn't know what would trigger her, nor what would happen after it was triggered.

His instinct was to create distance, not wanting to spend another second with this woman.

His expression remained unchanged as he nodded slightly, his voice low and deep. "Where is the Master?"

Bellatrix tilted her head and glanced towards the dock. "Follow me."

She jumped down from the stone wall and turned to walk towards the dock.

Dolohov followed behind, keeping a few steps' distance.

(And there's more!)