Title: Wave of a Wand
Disclaimer: I do not own anything recognizable, that's Rowling's. Don't recognize it? It's probably mine.
(This disclaimer serves as a disclaimer for this chapter and any other following chapters of this series.)
Summary:
Hermione wakes up from a dream so vivid that she knows that it was planned. She goes on a mad dash that will involve the slightly reluctant, mostly unwanted help of Draco Malfoy whose knowledge of his heritage will help her discover the truth of hers.
They travel through time, libraries, and estate mansions following a trail that leads them to discover whose magic had waved a wand that spanned centuries. All their efforts will bring to sharp focus the vague past, and will help their actions in the even vaguer future.
Go along with them and be stringed along by their unwanted attraction, unwanted affection, and definitely wanted, but useless, alienation of each other to discover answers to mysteries and finally, as it was meant to be, love.
Info: slightly AU, with great kicks of magic, slightly adventure, but with an actual plot
Author: princecharmprincesswit
Message: I hope you like it.
Chapter one: Vivid
"Presenting: the Honorable Lady Hestia Granger and the Viscount Lyngate," bellowed the footman clad in the distinctive colors of the Moreland house.
The beautiful lady proceeded to glide gracefully down the curling staircase.
Her dainty feet were clad in silver satin ball shoes. Her delicate limbs were clad in an ice blue empress-cut gown, with dainty cap sleeves showcasing a gorgeous collar bone, trimmed with silver lace. Her slender fingers, hands and arms- up to an inch or two above her elbows- were sheathed in fine white silk gloves. Her modest décolletage was offset by a sparkling sapphire pendant, surrounded by filigree design, strung along her swan neck by a thin silver chain. Her heart shaped face showed delicacy and well, impossible to deny it, haughtiness, framed by glossy hair of a rich brown interwoven with thick gold locks, as if it was ambivalent about making her a delicate Scandinavian goddess, or in making her a sultry siren. Her lips were tiny, full petals, in a pale princess-like pink. Her eyes… well, they were marvelous! They were like her hair, a deep chocolate with flecks of glimmering gold, framed by long dark lashes, about as long as a knight's lancing spear. On her wrist hung a chicken skin fan (all the rage!) with the unique design of the sunset painted on in colors that seemed to fade and recede into each other.
Her companion was no less striking. He was tall and square-jawed, with slightly curling hair just a curious shade above brown, and a shade below gold. The ladies found it enchanting. His gaze was sharp, and if those gold-flecked chocolate gazers looked at you, you'd think "Perdition!" and fall down in a suspiciously graceful heap, along with many other ladies with delicate demeanor around the ballroom. Tonight he was clad in an elegant black and white (men's favored party apparel this season), the tie of his cravat not quite ostentatiously dandyish, but quietly elegant. His Hessian boots gleamed, with all the effort Putnam, his valet, put into polishing it with champagne. The ladies should find him delectable tonight. Hestia has been hearing sighs since the start of the ball.
Hestia looked at her brother, standing at her side and attempting to steer them out of the sea of ladies and gentlemen that gathered around them in the Duke and Duchess' Moreland ballroom. Henry was a wonderful brother, and with their father's passing three years ago, was also a very fine nobleman. Very rich. Obviously very eligible. Hestia thought that he'd make an excellent father with his caring nature. She was very worried for him, for the matchmaking mamas had no care for that. They only cared that he be rich, and had a clean name, and that was that. They shan't care for his smashing sense of humor or his sharp wit. She hoped this London season that he might start and look for suitable females.
Her brother has finally landed anchor, near the French windows that opened to a balcony.
"Henry, is that not our acquaintance? Moncrieff? Is that his sister, Miss Moncrieff at his side?" Hestia asked, gesturing to the two blonds heading their way.
"By Jove! Quite right, Hestia. Though, I must say, I rather thought that you'd have quite forgotten about them. I remember meeting them when you were busy, preparing to go off," Henry replied without any critique.
When they'd met the Moncrieff's, Hestia was packing, getting ready to leave for a school where eccentricities were tolerated, allowed, and promoted. It was a school for magic: Hogwarts School of Magic and Wizardry.
Public institutions were looked down upon by people of their ilk so the Granger family told everyone that Lady Hestia went to finishing school in France. Her parents at first were strongly in objection to her education, saying it was folly. Had her grandmother Helena not intervened, she probably would've been placed in a real finishing school to learn sewing and all that… lud! In Hogwarts School, they learned charms, arithmancy, potions and all sorts of things that interest an eccentric like her. Best of all, she was a leading light in those subjects, earning respect from her school mates and teachers alike.
The headmaster, Nicodemus, had once told her to stop thinking of herself as an eccentric that could make things fly, make leaves burn, and dry up ponds. Instead, she should rise above that mentality and think of herself as a witch, a glorious, powerful, and magical female that could control magic for her (or for others') best advantage.
"Oh ha-ha, Henry. We Grangers are sharp, you must know that!" she retorted just as Mauritius Moncrieff and Arabelle Moncrieff reached them.
"Good evening Lyngate, Lady Hestia," greeted Moncrieff. Miss Moncrieff echoed the sentiment.
Some general chitter-chatter was exchanged and Mauritius Moncrieff asked whether Hestia's dancing card was full. Hestia allowed him to sign, and he'd told her that he'd claim her once their set was on. Her brother signed too, on Miss Moncrieff's card.
The evening went on in a whirl of satin, silver, silk, gold, jewelry, laughter, and warmth, fading and receding into each other like the sunset in Hestia's fan. She sought temporary rest in one of the balconies, escaping the gaiety of the ballroom, and into the serenely cool night she slipped. The balcony she has entered was thankfully unoccupied. She gazed around, just to make sure. She lifted up the front of her skirts and fanned madly at her legs, trying in vain to cool off.
"Well, well… Mudblood, I never actually thought we'd come across each other again," came a drawlingly familiar voice suspiciously close to her ear.
Darius Malfoy, she thought, was exactly the devil's spawn, planted on earth for the sole purpose of the torture of muggleborns such as her. They had been schoolmates together, with his as a leader of the muggleborn- haters' club.
She, too, honestly and foolishly thought that they'd cross paths again. Their estates were marvelously close to each other. Their country seats just about two hours by coach apart. But that didn't man that they'd be paying calls to each other. Goodness no!
Darius Malfoy, the ladies at Hogwarts School had said, was one edible piece of sweet-meat. His hair was the color of the deep lake being hit by the sun's rays at night, not that Hestia had seen anything of the like. The lake's reflection would become a pale, silvery glow that made the eyes hungry to see more. His eyes were a lead gray ringed with the pale blue, almost the exact shade of Hestia's ball gown. His face was chiseled as if a Greek sculptor molded it to try and achieve perfection and succeeded. His body, some loose-skirted girls from school had said, was perfection too. But to her he was not such. He was such.. such..
Such pestilence!
He did not hate muggles, she observed. In fact, sometimes, when he chose to smile at one of them, there'd be a genuine twinkle in his eye. She suspected that he only hated muggleborns because they were not in their natural balance. They were only supposed to be mugles but they have disturbed his magical world.
Malfoy would one day come to be Marquess of Blackthorne. As of this moment, he was known as Earl of Sherringford. Sherry to some. Devil Incarnate to her. She, as a viscount's sister, was way lower on the echelon than he, but he did not deserve the time of day, so she did not feel the need for a display of grand decorum; she did not lower her skirts (though, if others were to see them, a huge scandal would break out, worse than Professor Folia's puss inducing fruits), nor turn around (though it was a huge disrespect in society's ladder).
"Malfoy, you are dismissed," she said in the haughtiest voice possible.
"I was under the illusion, my lady, that you'd have come to miss me," he said- still in that infuriating upper-class drawl, a drawl that she, too, possessed.
"Like the way you've come to miss me?" she parried.
"What I missed was putting you in your right place, and I see now that the seven years I've wasted on you needs more time for lessons in the society echelon," nodding his head to her scandalously raised skirts.
"Excuse me, Malfoy, I need to see some good people," she said haughtily.
"You are already in the presence of the best," he said with a look of conviction that almost made her want to believe him.
It was a good thing, then, (Hestia thought) that she knew better.
"If by that you meant the presence of the beast, then I agree," the graceful pile of hair on top of her head was slightly quivering, Malfoy noted with amusement.
She put her skirts down, and turned on her heel to exit, only to find him leaning over her, a sparkle of what Hestia thought as amusement (but chose, nonetheless, to ignore) in his wickedly delicious eyes.
"You haven't changed a bit," Malfoy stated simply, and allowed her to pass.
She passed him by with barely a shoulder's brush.
She burned inside, with fury at remembering all the things he's said in the past and that "You haven't changed a bit." Who says those things anyway? It was scandalous!
She too, burned inside with shame. Because part of her had truly missed him. A part of her had truly wanted to match wits, and fight.
She entered the swirling colors of the sunset that was the ballroom, leaving the tall, broad-shouldered pestilence-on-earth alone on the balcony.
On that hazy mix of colors, Hermione Granger, the current Honorable Lady Granger, snapped awake in her four poster bed in Hogwarts, in present time, in the Heads' Dormitory. She half expected to see that lady who looked so much like her to float out of the floor or flit through the wall to waltz with her.
Her eyes were still swimming with color, notwithstanding the fact that morning light bathed her face through the open curtains. What an unusual dream. There have been family folklore about eccentric aunts, and this dream, silly as it may seem, might just be a key to that.
She padded to the bathroom that she shared with the Head Boy on bare feet, in over-sized dopey Tigger twin set pajamas (that she secretly thought was cute), hoping the cold floors would put her back on earth.
Upon finding the door locked:
"Malfoy, you arse, hurry up!" she yelled to the current Earl of Sherringford.
"Your time will come, Granger. Maybe just a little later," said arse called back.
Hermione could practically feel the smirk blooming on his face- a face that looked very much alike to the one in her dream.
Her fellow head was- yes, indeed- Draco Malfoy.
As she thought of all the hexes, curses, and charms that'll cause Malfoy harm, she thought, too, of Darius Malfoy and Hestia Granger and how they were connected to each other and to her. She knew that that dream wasn't just coincidence.
Dreams so vivid like that never are.
It had a strong scent of magic and that unmistakable glimmer around the edges.
Now, if only Malfoy would start shimmying his undoubtedly taut arse about.
End of chapter one
I hope you like it. Please review. Thanks!