Chapter Four
Several days had passed when Lucius found himself awoken by the sound of someone pounding at the doors. Pulling himself out of bed, he pressed his fingertips to his closed eyes, wondering if, perhaps, he'd dreamed it. But then, that infernal pounding started again.
With a sigh, he threw back his covers and climbed out of bed. Shrugging on his dressing gown and shoving his feet into his slippers, it was more out of habit than fearing he was actually in any sort of danger that he snatched up his wand as he made his way to his bedroom door.
Once out in the corridor, he found Draco emerging from his own room. His son was in a similarly confused and sleep-rumpled state, his grip on his wand so tight the color had drained from his knuckles.
The young man's grey eyes were huge as they met his father's.
His shoulders slumping, Lucius nodded. He started across the floor to the staircase, aware of Draco's footfalls following behind him. He knew Draco was still not sleeping through the night, that it would be a long while before he even could, so that he was not eager to traverse the house in the dark of night on his own was of little surprise.
His son was many things . . . built for War and loss not among them.
As they reached the ground floor, the pounding came again. Lucius was quite displeased with himself that the abrupt sound actually gave him a start.
"Dammit, Malfoys! I know you're in there! Open up!"
Both men visibly relaxed, even as they exchanged a bewildered glance.
Shaking his head as he strode to the entrance, Lucius turned the locks. "Miss Granger," he said in a tone of reprimand as he pulled open one of the doors. "Do you have any idea what time—?"
The wild-haired witch stormed into the foyer—managing to slip under his arm as he held the door. "I know, and I'm sorry, but I just can't!"
Lucius barely had the door closed before he turned on his heel to face her. Draco merely eyed her erratic pacing with an arched brow.
When his son seemed reluctant to question her meaning, Lucius took it upon himself to ask. But as soon as he opened his mouth, she started up, again.
"I know I want to know, but then I think I don't want to know. But I have to know, and it's ridiculous! It's ridiculous, because my knowing or not-knowing isn't going to change the actual truth, now is it? Of course it isn't! And so I've been sitting about for days now with the possible clues to what I need to know right in my hands, and you'd think I'd have combed through every word by now, but I haven't! You'd think I had, you'd think I'd have given them a second go-over by now, but I haven't! It's like every time I think about opening them, I—"
Lucius clamped his hands over her shoulders, stilling her pacing and cutting short her yammering as he snapped, "Miss Granger!"
Giving herself a shake, she lifted her head to meet his gaze. Hermione swallowed hard while she shrugged in his grasp. "I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy. I just . . . ." She lifted the burden she'd been carrying in one arm before her, so that he could see she held Narcissa's diaries. Holding the books against her chest and wrapping both arms around them, she continued. "I know you gave me these to read through, but no matter how I tried, I couldn't seem to make myself. I think I'm afraid what I'll find, but I need to know."
Some of the tension drained from him at her admission. He nodded in understanding, though he had yet to drop his hands from her shoulders.
Sniffling, she frowned. "I tried to think back, to remember my early childhood. I wanted to remember something that could tell me I was wrong, that I'd never been to that churchyard before. I know that seems impossible given all the coincidences, but I felt like I was scrambling for anything."
Draco lowered himself to sit on the staircase. "And could you remember anything?"
She didn't look over at him. Instead, she dropped her gaze from Lucius' to stare down at the books in her arms. "No. But I know sometimes, there's more to our memories than we permit ourselves to see. And perhaps there's some context to my feelings of having been there before that I can't recall."
Lucius arched a brow. "True. But what . . . ? Wait. You want someone else to look at your memories." It wasn't a question.
Running the tip of her tongue nervously along her lips, she nodded. "Yes. I thought, if I focus really hard on the feeling I had when I was in the churchyard, standing before the Rosier crypt, then maybe . . . maybe someone who knows what they're doing with such things could extract the essence of the memory and then . . . ."
"I see," Lucius said with a thoughtful frown. Clearly she was trusting him to be someone who knew what they were doing with such things, because her next words were of little surprise to him.
"So." She tried not to look, or sound, overly hopeful as she lifted her gaze to Lucius Malfoy's once more. "Do you have a pensieve?"
"Granger, listen," Draco said with a laugh, pinching tiredly between his eyes as he shook his head. "I hate to disappoint you, but—"
"Yes, we do."
Hermione was so shocked to hear an affirmative reply, she covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a gasp. She registered Draco locking wide, disbelieving eyes on his father from the edge of her periphery.
"We do?" the younger wizard demanded, shooting up from his place on the staircase. "What do you mean we do?"
Lucius' brows pinched, his eyes drifting closed as he shook his head. "This manor is the ancestral home of a pure-blood family. All such homes have one. That you did not know of it, Draco, was not a deliberate attempt to keep it from you, but merely that we never had need of its use in your presence. An ancient pure-blood line having their own pensieve is largely so commonplace, it's taken for granted."
Her fingers slipping from her lips, Hermione exchanged a look with Draco. Raised an orphan among Muggles for much of his childhood, Voldemort likely had not known any such thing. He could've forcefully extracted memories from anyone he wished. After all, memory charms weren't useful if one wanted to look at the memories, veritaserum wasn't always on hand, and one could never be certain who was skilled at Occlumency. It seemed he would've thought such a thing useful, indeed. That he hadn't taken advantage the artifact—something that seemed obvious with Draco's total lack of knowledge about its very existence—had to mean the Malfoys had never mentioned its existence to him. She could tell from Draco's expression that he'd come to the exact same realization.
Which also meant someone else had never told Voldemort any such thing, either, as that someone most certainly would've used it.
"Why didn't your sister-in-law know about it, then?" she asked as she returned her attention to Lucius. "When she believed I was lying to her about that bloody sword, why didn't she force the memory out of me and go look at what I recalled for herself?"
Lucius' grey eyes narrowed a bit at the sharpness of the witch's tone. He couldn't say he blamed her for getting worked up, however—that day was hardly a pleasant memory for anyone, but least of all for her, he'd imagine.
Sighing, he tightened his grip, firmly but gently, on her shoulders. Dear Lord, was he still holding her? Why hadn't he noticed sooner than he'd still had his hands on her all this time?
"Because I told her the Ministry confiscated ours during the house raids a few years back. We were family, but I never believed I could trust Bellatrix not to betray us. If she thought for a moment any of us were in possession of knowledge the Dark Lord could use and were being . . . less than forthcoming, she would not have hesitated to suggest that very thing."
"Never trusted her?" Hermione couldn't help but smirk as she held his gaze. "Suppose you're not completely terrible, after all, then."
He actually found himself wanting to return her amused expression, but he understood she did not quite grasp how serious the matter could have been. "She was quite paranoid when it came to not doing enough to serve him. It would not have been long before she imagined we knew things we did not. Do you know what happens to a mind when one tries to forcibly extract memories which do not exist?"
Her shoulders slumped beneath the weight of his large hands. "I . . . ." She swallowed hard. "I imagine it's not good."
His brows drew upward. "You are a master of understatement, I see."
Again, she shrugged. "I suppose what I actually imagine is that scraping about in someone's mind for something that isn't there would leave the victim virtually lobotomized."
From the questioning looks on the Malfoy's faces at the word, she guessed they were unfamiliar with the term. Not surprising, she supposed, as its heyday was well after the legal separation of Muggle and Wizarding worlds.
"Sorry. It's an outdated and barbaric Muggle medical practice, intended to correct, well, let's say behavioral issues. But, really, it didn't take the issue away, it only made the patient too docile to act out. Even one of the foremost physicians in the technique was quoted as saying the result was surgically-induced infantilism."
Draco's features pinched in disgust. "Well, the word breaks down to brain-cut, I doubt anything good could come from that."
The young woman nodded, a hint wide-eyed, herself, at the unfortunate subject.
"Then, I should say, the results are not very different, at all." Lucius' tone was quite serious, just then, and he waited until she snapped her eyes up to lock on his, once more, before he continued. "So, I ask you to think carefully. Are you absolutely certain you recalled being in the churchyard before?"
She pouted, feeling her lower lip tremble as she did so. "You're . . . you're asking, because if I'm mistaken . . . . Right, of course." Clearing her throat, she nodded. "I understand."
"And so? Are you absolutely certain?"
Forcing another gulp down her throat, Hermione closed her eyes. She exhaled slow, thinking back to that moment after the funeral. When she'd walked through the overgrown grass, along a path she shouldn't have known was there. She recalled feeling the breeze against her skin . . . recalled the sensation of her heart dropping into her stomach as she found herself staring up at the name on that mausoleum. As she realized she stood before the Rosier family crypt with no logical explanation for how she'd found her way there.
As she felt that dreadful certainty twisting in her gut that she'd stood there before, that her sense of something being here was this. Her skin prickled with goosebumps at the memory and she opened her eyes, once more.
Shivering just a little, she met Lucius Malfoy's gaze, unflinching. "I'm utterly positive I've been there before. So long ago the memory is barely a memory, but it is there, yes."
Nodding, Lucius gave her shoulders a reassuring squeeze before at last dropping his hands from her. "Then follow me."
Hermione trailed after Lucius' long-legged stride, but Draco hesitated to follow. There was simply something to this moment that felt incredibly private. He doubted she was pleased with having to turn to one Malfoy, as it was, so having two there, as her fears were dismissed or confirmed?
She clearly knew what it meant when she didn't hear any footfalls behind her.
Hermione turned her head, her own steps pausing as she looked at him. "Draco? You're not coming with us?"
He shook his head, his gaze leaping from her to his father, as the elder Malfoy pivoted to face him, as well, and back. "No, no. I'm sorry. This just . . . feels wrong to intrude on something like this. This could be very difficult for you, and I'm, well, I'm shit at handling emotional difficulties, really."
Draco couldn't help a half-grin in response when his words brought surprised laughter from both Granger and his father.
Nodding, the witch sighed once the moment of levity had passed. "All right. Well, goodnight, then, I suppose?"
With a nod of his own, Draco turned and started up the steps. "Goodnight, Granger, Father," he called over his shoulder.
The pair left behind on the floor below both turned and started off, once more.
Though, Hermione could hardly say she was all that familiar with the layout of Malfoy Manor, she had the oddest impression they were taking a roundabout way to wherever they were going. Lucius seemed to halt each time they reached an intersection of rooms, as though he wasn't quite certain of the way, himself, and she knew that could not be.
She must've made some thoughtful sound without realizing, because the wizard guiding her through the massive house said, "Something the matter, Miss Granger?"
Her eyebrows shooting upward, she locked her gaze on the back of his head as they walked. "Oh, um, I just got the feeling we're sort of taking the scenic route to wherever it is we're going."
"I suppose we are," he answered with a sigh. "I thought you might appreciate avoiding the drawing room."
Hermione's eyes widened at that. She'd not expected him to be so considerate.
Swallowing hard, she ignored the odd feeling of her cheeks warming at such a small, simple act of thoughtfulness. She also ignored the urge to brush the fingertips of her free hand along the scar on her throat. "Yes, actually. Thank—thank you."
He nodded, and kept walking. He was pretending he didn't hear the catch in her voice as she spoke.
In silence, they continued on. Across the ground floor, through a thick, ancient looking door she thought appeared strangely incongruous with the rest of the manor's décor, and down a winding staircase. She understood this must lead to some intentionally separated section of the cellar below.
She wondered, as they reached the bottom, why Draco hadn't ever stumbled across the family's pensieve. Children were by nature curious, and who wouldn't have been curious about a door that seemed so very out of place? Shrugging, she kept her thoughts to herself as she followed Lucius to what looked like an old trunk, but more aged and . . . important, somehow. Draco hadn't just been a child, he'd been a pure-blood child. She was rather certain when he was told to stay away from something, he'd listened rather than finding his way around the rules, as a Muggle child—or, one of the Weasley twins—might've.
Lucius settled on his knees beside the ancient wooden box and gestured for her to do the same.
Hermione followed suit, lowering beside him. She carefully placed Narcissa's diaries aside as she watched him lift the lid.
The sides of the box collapsed fluidly outward, the white-blue glimmer of the substance within the pensieve spilling about and illuminating their surroundings. He turned his attention to Hermione as he raised his wand. She appeared transfixed by the pool within the large, rune-inscribed silver bowl.
"Miss Granger?"
With some effort, Hermione pulled her gaze from the swirling surface to meet his eyes.
His brows pinched together as he tried for a sympathetic look. "Are you ready?"
