Note: I do not own the rights to Harry Potter. I own the storyline, and any Original Characters/Creatures I come up with.
Beauty, Beast: The Enchantment.
Chapter Three: La Belle et la Bête
Draco watched with an amused look on his face as Granger sat there on the loveseat in complete shock. They had just got done telling her what had happened here at the manor, up to the point where she came in. She opened her mouth to talk and then closed it, thinking it better to just sit there than to make a scene. Although his mother didn't like Granger at all, being a Mudblood, a know-it-all, and a Gryffindor being the main reasons why, she gave him a stern look before glancing over at the younger woman. Oh this was it; they were all going to die. He just knew it. His mother was about to say something that would greatly displease the Golden girl and then they'd all be dead within ten minutes.
"Miss Granger, what part of this, er, situation is familiar to you?" his mother asked. Draco turned to look at his mother. Was she mad? What possibly could look familiar? He was a freaking lion for Slytherin's sake! He huffed, but didn't say anything, yet. His mother shot him a cold look as if to say be quiet Draco. She maybe the only way out of this.
Granger frowned, her eyebrows knitting together. "I don't- Wait. Draco," he winced when she said his given name, he preferred her using his last name, but it couldn't be helped when there were two other Malfoys in the room, "is a beast, a lion to be exact, correct? And you say that the entire household, yourselves included, has been turned into enchanted objects. And that the reason why I haven't been transfigured into one is because I some sort of savior?" she asked, summing everything. That was pretty much it. And she had once again hit the nail on the head sort to speak, getting the basic facts that were enough to reason with.
"Correct as usual, Miss Granger," his mother said.
Granger looked like she was going to be ill. So she summoned a bucket just in case. He envied her for her use of magic when he and his family could not. She looked at his mother, then at his father, and then finally at him. He showed her nothing but distain and hate. Her eyes reflected the mutual feelings she had required over the long six years of being classmates. She was the first one to break eye contact with him and have it settle back on his mother.
"Mrs. Malfoy do you know the story of La Belle et Bête?" she asked quietly.
That was a French Muggle story, he realized. La Belle et Bête translated into English was Beauty and the Beast. It was a story about a girl, the name differentiated in different versions of it but she always preferred to be called Beauty, ending up being the prisoner of a terrible beast in a castle because her father picked a rose for her from the castle gardens. Anyway the girl and the beast, sometimes a lion or different type of beast, always ended up falling in love, but the girl missed her family and when she promised to return to him in some many days, she ended up forgetting and had to rush back there by magically means just in time to see the beast dying. The girl in an effort to save the beast's life, confessed her love for him, he turned into a human prince and they lived happily ever after.
"Yes, I know of the story," his mother replied smoothly.
"Well, on November 22nd, 1991 a film adaptation came out in the Muggle World from a place that had made other films based on these types of tales, like Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, and so on. In the film adaption, er," Granger looked at his parents and then at him, "a film is like moving pictures, with sound, music and voices and color, it's used for entertainment purposes for Muggles. I'll show you one day, if you would so like. But as I was saying in the film, several things are changed around. The father is an inventor, Belle, the female lead, is an only child, there's an arrogant hunter out for Belle's hand in marriage, and the Beast is a chimera, a cross between different animals.
"He was turned that way when an enchantress saw that there was no love in his heart when he turned her away when she was disguised an old beggar woman with a rose as a gift. She changed him into a beast, his servants into enchanted objects, and the castle into a foreboding place. She gave him an enchanted mirror for him to look out at the world, and the rose which would bloom until he was twenty-one and if he could get a girl to love him despite his appearance and he loved her in return, then the spell would be broken, if not then he was doomed to remain a beast forever.
"That's where Belle comes in. Her father was off to a fair and ended up getting lost in the woods, finding the castle. He went in to save himself from the wolves that inhabited the forest and was found by some enchanted objects: Lumiere the candelabra, Cogsworth the clock, Mrs. Potts the teapot, her son Chip a cup, and the castle dog that had been turned into a little foot rest. He ends up in the tower dungeons when the Beast finds him, and Belle comes and takes his place. They at first end up fighting a lot, and then as time goes on, they fall in love, and there's this ballroom scene with just them dancing, it's beautiful, and he lets her go when she finds that her father is sick and lost in the woods trying to find her.
"She goes to her father and nurses him back to health, when the entire village that they live in, has come to take her father away unless she agrees to marry the hunter. When she declines and shows the village the Beast, he locks her and her father in the basement and goes to kill the Beast. Belle and her father escape with a little help from Chip who had gone with Belle when she left. They race to the castle where there's a battle going on and they arrive just as the hunter is about to smash the Beast's head because he won't fight, he's so depressed. When he sees her the Beast regains his senses and defends himself. When the hunter begs for his life, he is told to get out before climbing up to see Belle. But the hunter, who won't admit defeat, climbs after him and stabs the Beast in the side, mortally wounding him. The hunter losses his gripping and falls to his death. Just as the Beast dies, Belle whispers that she loves him, just as the last petal falls, and he regains his human form, as well as his life. As soon as they kiss, the castle and the servants return to their original state."
Granger stopped talking after that as her voice had become hoarse from so much talking. He saw his parents soak in the information that she had given. It seemed that the spell placed on them was similar to the film, minus a few alterations; there was no rose, he was a lion, not a chimera, there had been no enchantress to cast this spell, the spell had already been in place when they had arrived here. Draco opened his mouth to say something but his mother shot him down again.
"Miss Granger, the parts of this film seem to coincide with this spell. Draco is the Beast, we and the rest of the household are the servants turned enchanted objects, and you are Belle it seems," she said, proving Granger's worst fear.
Granger groaned and grabbed for the bucket, which was not enchanted, thankfully, and threw up in it after placing a silencing charm on it so the plopping of vomit could not be heard. As soon as she was done, she banished the vomit, washed out her mouth with water, paste and a brush and spit that out into the bucket, washed her mouth out again, spit the water into the bucket and then banished that into nothing. She looked worse for wear than he had ever seen her.
"I'm terribly sorry for that," she apologized. "I have not been feeling well for a few days now. I ate some of Ron's cooking the other day, well his attempt anyway, seeing as his mum was not around and we were all hungry and he would not let me do it, saying that cooking, no matter if it was a woman or a man doing it ran in the Weasley's bloodline, apparently not, and coupled with the news that I'm your son's Belle to his Beast just put me over the edge. It's not every day that you get told you're going to be forced to fall in love with someone you consider an enemy."
Draco could wholeheartedly agree to that. He couldn't wrap his head around it either. She was his Belle to her Beast. That statement made him almost ask for her bucket and vomit in that. It made him ill to think that they were going to fall in love. Malfoys' didn't fall for Mudbloods. It just wasn't done. Hundreds of years of tradition would be going down the preverbal sinkhole. His ancestors were more than likely rolling in their graves. He knew he would be. It was quiet after that, each one of them lost in his or her own thoughts. And it looked like Granger needed to take this time to take a Pepper Up potion to sooth her stomach and aching vocal chords. He didn't see how she had gotten it in the first place. The only thing he saw was a purple little bag.
"So… about this testimony," Granger spoke softly, making him jump a little. He wasn't counting on her speaking again.
The two Elder Malfoys sighed and launched into their side of the story, from the time that his mother was threatened to what happened just prior to them coming to the Order. It was a sickening tale to take in and Draco looked at Granger the whole time, watching her facial expressions as she took notes. To say that she wanted to pass out again was an understatement. He was sure that she wanted to do more than pass out. She looked like she was living their memories, their words, which was impossible. He watched as her head shot up when they got to the part of the reanimated zombies.
"But aren't zombies animated by Dark magic anyway? What was the spell for then if they were already animated?" she asked, her know-it-all habits kicking in.
"The spell was designed to entrap a human soul, one of a witch or wizard, to reanimate the zombie into preforming magic. Yes, the zombies were already animated by Dark magic, true, but the Dark Lord wanted more than just that. He wanted the zombies to preform magic so that they would destroy any resistance from the Light," Lucius said quietly.
Granger looked as if she was going to puke again by just hearing the description of what the spell did.
"Please, continue," she replied.
His parents started were they had left off; the day after the discovery or the invention of the Dark spell. Then they recounted the wizarding villages and towns that had fallen quickly because of the reanimated zombies. This was the term that Granger used for the creatures that the Dark Lord had created. She wrote down every detail while listening what happened months later to Hogwarts, and then the month later when his aunt died. She shivered at the description, sickened by it as he had been to see it. She had mental to the point of no return, but she was still a human being, Granger had reasoned, and no person deserved that fate, not even someone as nutty as Bellatrix Lestrange.
With their testimony in hand, Granger pulled out her wand and considered on a thought before crying out, "Expecto Patronum!" Several silvery otters erupted from the tip of her wand, and they looked back at her as she was using another spell to have them communicate with the other Order members about the testimony and that she needed to stay with them as she was ill and was not up for travelling again. With a wave of her wand, the otters left in a little ball of light to the other houses of the Order. That only left Granger, himself, and his parents in the room again, quiet.
Granger bit her lip nervously before asking, "So how was everyone's Yule?"
It looked like she couldn't really stand the silence as much as anyone else could. She was probably use to having five different conversations at one time going around number 12 Grimmauld Place what with half the Weasley clan, Potter, and some of the Hogwarts professors there on a day to day basis. His parents murmured that it was fine, besides the walking in the cold and the fact that it had been wet.
"I see…Mine could have been better…Yule was when Ron had cooked, and the next morning they had left me to go searching for a way to defeat You-Know-Who." Granger looked a little sad at that as if she wanted to go as well. After that, no one talked.
*REVIEW PLEASE, IT'S LIKE MUSIC TO MY SOUL!
-The song selection for the chapter is basically echoing all of their thoughts when the Malfoys are giving their testimony and the explanation of the Dark spell used in the creatures that Voldemort had created. Song Selection for this chapter: Voodoo by Godsmack
I'm not the one who's so far away
When I feel the snake bite enter my veins
Never did I wanna be here again
And I don't remember why I came
Candles raise my desire
Why I'm so far away
No more meaning to my life
No more reason to stay
Freezing feeling,
Breathe in, breathe in
I'm coming back again
I'm not the one who's so far away
When I feel the snake bite enter my veins
Never did I wanna be here again
And I don't remember why I came
Hazing clouds rain on my head
Empty thoughts fill my ears
Find my shade by the moon light
Why my thoughts aren't so clear
Demons dreaming
Breathe in, breathe in
I'm coming back again
I'm not the one who's so far away
When I feel the snake bite enter my veins
Never did I wanna be here again
And I don't remember why I came
I'm not the one who's so far away
When I feel the snake bite enter my veins
Never did I wanna be here again
And I don't remember why I came
I'm not the one who's so far away
When I feel the snake bite enter my veins
Never did I wanna be here again
And I don't remember why I came
I'm not the one who's so far away
When I feel the snake bite enter my veins
Never did I wanna be here again
And I don't remember why I came
voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo,voodoo, voodoo,voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo, voodoo,
So far away...
I'm not the one who's so far away...
I'm not the one who's so far away...
I'm not the one who's so far away...