Harry glanced around as he heard another twig snap. He really didn't want to remove a student so far from the school for no good reason. Figuring that spending the night away from school with a female student would rouse more questions than he was prepared to answer, Harry shook his head. "No, let's just-"
And then his scar began to sting. With speed born of years of fighting and running, Harry's wand slipped into his hand and with a muttered word and a muted pop, he and Bellatrix vanished from the forest. They reappeared at the edge of the forest, just outside of the Hogwarts wards, close to the Quidditch field.
"Ashworth!" Bellatrix hissed.
"Voldemort is following us." Harry shook his head to stop her from asking. "I'll explain later. Apparate somewhere, run at least fifty yards, apparate again. No less than ten miles between apparitions. Repeat at least five times. Meet me in the tube station closest to No. 12 Grimmauld Place. And get rid of that cloak."
Bellatrix was about to ask if he wanted a glamour with that, but the seriousness in his tone and eyes stopped her cold. He was afraid, she realized, and that scared her. With a curt nod, she drew her wand and disappeared. Once she was gone, Harry let out a brief sigh. Hoping that she would be fine, he apparated again, aiming for the coast of Wales. A second apparation took him to Glasgow where he discarded the cloak he had been wearing. Sprinting away from the point he had appeared, he raced down the hill he'd ended up on, then apparated on the run to Dover. Locales blended and blurred around him as he tried to shake whoever might be following. Lancaster. Oxfordshire. Dublin. Some tiny village at the northern coast of France, close to the English Channel. Finally, he appeared in London.
Searching the area around him, Harry hid in the shadows of a nearby alley, shivering in the cold night since he had tossed the cloak Bellatrix had given him. When no one appeared behind him in five long, agonizing minutes, he continued down the streets, making sure his back was always towards a wall. Figuring that there was no point in freezing, he took a moment to conjure up a trench coat, and walked into the tube station. Bellatrix was already there, likewise wearing a long, muggle overcoat. He noted with interest that she was leaning against a pillar that would allow her to see both entrances to the station, while a mirror overhead one of the entrances allowed her to check the blind spot behind her.
When she spotted him, he thought he saw a flicker of fear cross her features for a moment before she hid it behind her usual mask of cool indifference. "Took you long enough," she merely said by way of greeting.
"Just being careful." Harry walked past her and sat down on a bench.
Bellatrix eyed him for a moment, then headed over and sat next to him. "Are you sure it was Voldemort who followed us, and not one of the other students?"
"Yes."
"How do you know? You told me you'd explain, and I just went off on a wild chase of hide-and-seek because you told me there's a dark lord after us, so you better damn well explain, Ashworth."
Harry fidgeted, unwilling to explain the entire story to her. "Suffice to say that due to certain events that occurred in my time, I can feel his presence to some degree. And no, I won't go into any further detail."
"Fine." Bellatrix crossed her arms and glared at him suspiciously. "And… can he do the same? Can he feel when you're around?"
Harry's silence was all the answer she needed. "Merlin's beard, he can, can't he. That's why he was looking at you for so long!"
"Yes."
Bellatrix opened her mouth to tell him how colossally stupid his presence at the meeting had been, how he could have gotten them both killed, but no words came to her. The only thing she could think of was that there was a dark lord running around, and that he had apparently marked her. Or, at the very least, he had marked Harry, which marked her by association. Finally, she spoke. "Your plan is to sabotage his rise to power?"
"Yes." Harry fully expected a barrage of questions to that answer, but none came. Her silence scared him much more than her questions; as collected as Bellatrix was, she almost was one to never miss an opening to ask about his plans and poke into his story. The fact that she didn't hinted at how shaken up she was.
"Look at me." She turned towards him. "Look at me," she repeated as he shied away from meeting her eyes. Green eyes met violet, and Harry resisted the urge to raise his occlumency shields again. It took Bellatrix a few seconds to formulate the question she wanted to ask. "How would the Bellatrix of the future feel about your plan?"
"I don't know," Harry replied. It wasn't a complete lie. Harry really didn't know how a sane Bellatrix would have reacted to this whole thing. As far as he could tell, something had happened to turn her into the murderous, violent sociopath that she was in the future.
"I think you do," Bellatrix said evenly. "Dammit, Ashworth, you're a lousy liar. When are you going to stop giving me these half-truths and vague hints? We're in this together, and because of you, I've just been chased around the countryside by a dark lord. Like it or not, I'm your damn partner, so you better start trusting me!"
Harry winced. "In most cases, I could've told you easily. But there's circumstances, circumstances affecting you… I truly have no idea what you were thinking in the end."
"The end?"
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