Potter's Girl / Butterfly Effect.

106. Bellatrix's Vault

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

"You look... terrifying, Hermione."

"You'd better take a long look in a mirror, then," said Hermione, her eyes traveling down Cassie's Polyjuiced body, "because you're not much better."

Cassie spun to face the mirror behind her. She had already spent a couple minutes staring into it, at her new reflection, with a look of shock sitting upon her unfamiliar features. Now, she gazed into it, attempting to perfect Narcissa Malfoy's signature disgusted sneer.

Her eyes were the same colour, at the very least, but the shape and glare of them was entirely different. Her whole face was much sharper than she was used to. Her skin—already pale, usually—was white as snow and not touched by a single wrinkle.

Probably Narcissa Malfoy was not one prone to laughter or grins.

"Don't try to kiss me when you look like that, Cass," said Harry, walking down the stairs with Ron, Griphook, and Atticus in tow. Ron had been the first of the group to be Glamoured — his hair was now long and wavy; he had a thick brown beard and matching mustache, no freckles, a broad nose, and heavy eyebrows.

"What, you don't like it?" Cassie asked Harry, puffing out her lower lip. "I think it's quite pretty. Perhaps I'll change my hair to permanently look like this, yeah?"

"You'd look like a skunk," Atticus pointed out, raising an eyebrow. "Though, judging by the podgy look that's always on Narcissa's face, I'd assume it's a real skunk on her head..."

As the others laughed, Harry took Cassie's hand and led her toward the kitchen. He shut the door behind them and turned to face her, which evidently was a difficult feat whilst she looked like Narcissa Malfoy.

"You don't have to come," Harry said, "if you really don't want to."

"I want to," she said, nodding. "I really do, Harry. I don't want you three to do this by yourselves. Plus, I think Atticus could use the alone time — he's been through a lot. If he won't talk to me about it, I suppose there's nothing I can do except wait, yeah?"

Harry nodded his agreement, though pursed his lips and ducked his head as they swept from the kitchen. The others looked to them expectantly; Bill, Fleur, Dean, and Luna had now joined them.

"We've got to get going," said Hermione, glancing to the clock sitting on the wall opposite the stairs. "We only have an hour, and we've used up about four minutes of it."

"Right," said Cassie, rubbing her palms on her formal black dress and pulling from her robes Narcissa's wand. "Are you lot ready?"

Harry, Hermione, Ron, and Griphook nodded their approval. Waving goodbye to the other inhabitants of Shell Cottage (Cassie pressed a kiss to Atticus's cheek and squeezed Luna's hand on the way out), the five of them swept out the door and away from the cottage in order to break past the Apparation barriers.

Once they decided they had gone far enough, they took each other's hands one by one, and with a turn over their shoulders, they Disapparated from Shell Cottage and were, in the blink of an eye, staring up at the face of Gringotts.

Griphook, safely situated on Harry's back and both of them beneath the Invisibility Cloak, whispered one last bit of advice to Harry that Cassie caught the tail end of but could not quite make out. And anyway, she was rather busy with glaring around at everybody that passed by with a revolted sneer.

The group had barely stepped foot up the steps leading to Gringotts when a loud voice from behind called to Bellatrix, and, in turn, caused both Cassie and Hermione to freeze in their tracks. They spun to see a man with a crown of bushy grey hair and a slight limp in his left leg wobbling toward them.