The night was crisp and Hermione tucked her scarf more firmly around her chin, her flats squeaking slightly in the wet leaves. Her back ached, but for once it was from sitting hunched over a desk instead of hefting endless tomes over her head, and she smiled quietly to herself. Malfoy was an odd character, with abrupt manners and an overarching air of superiority, and Hermione still couldn't quite shake the feeling that he disliked her, but she had never felt so satisfied.
Once the room had been deemed "passable" by Malfoy—a process that took no less than three feather dusters, a box of Wet Wipes, the theft of several tall lamps from Memoirs and almost all of Hermione's elbow grease—Hermione was finally allowed to go through the stack of materials deposited on the side table.
It was a mess, really, all hand-typed notes and sheafs of crumpled papers with annotations and Latin and nonsense words crammed into the margins. There was one annotator—he wrote in a cramped, spidery scrawl almost exclusively in red ink—that had been so enthusiastic in his note-taking that he had nearly obscured all of the original text on three separate pages. Some previous owners had left doodles, mostly inane geometric designs, and one potentially explicit cartoon that made Hermione blush when she held the paper just so. There were lists, too; references to some volumes that she knew were in the Wheedles and Budgery collection, and others they would have to order or track down from other establishments.
"So—curious yet?" Malfoy had gotten tired of being ignored in his chair and scowled impatiently as Hermione pored over the pile of documents. Hermione looked up, sheepish.
"I have to confess that I am." Hermione admitted. "What exactly is this, Malfoy? It's not a single source, it's in about ten different languages—it's not even alphabetized! You said it was called the Electus but I don't see a single document that has that title..." Hermione trailed off. She could see the work piling up before her eyes and smiled internally. She loved a good organizing project.
"The Electus is not here." Malfoy snapped from his chair, then rose to hover snidely beside the table. "Rather, these are the documents that have been collected by connoisseurs and scholars and fanatics over the years in the hope of locating it. Within these pages is—or should be—the key to the location of the Electus." He thumbed at the pages absentmindedly, then fixed Hermione with a silver stare as if waiting for her to contradict him. She shivered slightly under the cold weight of his gaze, a shiver thrilling across her shoulders and settling in her stomach, then forced her eyes back to the documents strewn across the table.
"So it's a lost work, then! How fascinating!" Hermione worked to keep her voice even, trying to focus her energy on cataloguing everything she had ever read about the study of rare and lost materials and not the liquid depths of Malfoy's eyes and the slight turn at the corner of his mouth…
Focus, Hermione! She had heard of lost works in her work at Wheedles and Budgery, like Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won, or Nicander's Heteroeumena; Mr. Craggins held a deep-seated obsession for the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Waldere, which had resulted in a wild-goose chase for Hermione to a collection of rare texts in Devon that, when translated, had turned out to be an excellent recipe for chicken fricassee.
"So what is it? A poem? A history?" Hermione's mind was racing.
"Well, that's the thing, Doe." Malfoy smirked, settling on the far end of the table and drumming his fingers on the edge. "No one seems to be able to agree on what it is, since nothing exists other than references. Some say it's a map, others say it's some sort of epic, still others think it's just a metaphor. One source even says it's the key to ridding the world of evil." His mouth twisted with contempt. "The one thing they can all agree on is that, if found, it would be a source of great power."
"A metaphor, huh?" Hermione mumbled. She smelled a wild-goose chase. But—"Wait, did you say great power?"
Malfoy sneered elegantly. "Feeling ambitious are you? How unexpected." He traced a long finger around the edge of the nearest sheaf of parchment. "Well you'd better hope that you're cut out for it, since it's written—in fact, it's that one right under your left thumb, Doe" Hermione pulled out the piece in question, one of the more enthusiastically annotated documents, onto the top of her pile "—that this power is something only certain people can comprehend." His mouth twisted slightly, then grew thoughtful. "But power is what you make of it, isn't it?" He frowned and turned away, leaving Hermione to ponder.
She knew it wasn't uncommon for lost works, particularly ones that were shrouded in mystery like this one, to acquire a mythology over time. But for a document to actually possess a great and (potentially) unknowable power? Hermione just didn't buy it. Though—she looked at Malfoy, who was now bent over a second stack of documents—it seemed that Malfoy, through all his snobbish affectations, did. A collection like this, with all its compiled sources, lists of references, and extensive note-taking, was a sign of scholarly devotion and dogged conviction that could rival Hermione's own.
A thought occurred to her. "How did you come to study the Electus, Malfoy? You've obviously studied the files quite thoroughly, but these documents seem to be a collection different scholars made over the course of years, or even decades! Forgive me, but it doesn't seem to be just your work." She flipped through the pages, considering at least five different styles of handwriting, and an idea came to her. "Is it a family tradition?"
Malfoy straightened abruptly. "Don't be ridiculous." He glared at Hermione. "This" he sneered at the papers strewn across the table "is my inheritance."
Hermione shivered into her scarf, wrapping her arms around herself, and made a mental note to put family on the "Tread Lightly" list. At least she had been spared too much awkwardness since Malfoy had left soon after her accidental faux pas, citing a vague "business to attend to" and sweeping out of the room without a backwards glance. Hermione had then thrown herself into the Electus documents, but soon she was blinking at her watch and grabbing for her scarf, having spent the afternoon and much of the evening in a hazy trance of reading.
The bell of the Tea Room tinkled wearily and Hermione glanced at the counter as she passed. Nora was not there, but there was a large slice of treacle tart on a plate with a note that read, Long days deserve sweets. -N
Hermione smiled as she picked up the treat, determined to enjoy it with a cup of chamomile in her flat, and made her way through the darkened restaurant to the back stairs. The old key snicked into the lock and she eased quietly through, padding up the stairway and down the narrow hallway. Dim yellow light filtered through the window at the end of the passage, dust motes drifting listlessly in its the shadows, to illuminate the bronze knob to Hermione's door and the ornate gilded picture frame across from it. Hermione stopped, realizing that Nora must have done some interior decorating while she had been out.
Across from Hermione's blank doorfront Nora had installed a large and imposing still-life of what in the near-darkness seemed to be an overflowing bowl of pink peonies. The painting was impossibly large, nearly the size of Hermione's own door, and incredibly detailed. It was as if the artist had decided to paint an ode to the bulbous blossoms; they fell across the foreground like the skirts of an impossibly full ballgown, cresting and folding like so much taffeta, and arced up over the bowl to form an ample bust. Hermione smiled. In this light, if she squinted and craned her neck to the side, she could almost make out a face in the upper right-hand corner.
It will be nice to have someone just outside my door, she mused absently, and set about making her cup of tea.
…
Malfoy was laughing at her, Hermione was sure of it. Barely two weeks into this blasted project and he already thought she was useless.
Well, not useless perhaps. But...amusing.
Hermione wound her way through Cryptozoology, trying to think when it had all started. She had been endlessly polite, even unnecessarily so, fetching books and taking dictation and copying every nonsensical note he gave her, but none of her memorized facts or civil smiles could wipe that bedamned smirk off Malfoy's absurdly pale face. It didn't help that he appeared to sense her budding attraction to him, either. Malfoy always seemed like to have an inside joke with himself and Hermione always seemed to be the punchline. Last week it had been her name.
She was thumbing through the pages of Alchemy, Ancient Art and Science without absorbing a word, her mind drifting over the way Malfoy's shirt had been open an extra button this morning. The gap had allowed for a tantalizing glimpse of collar bone and had set Hermione to daydreaming, wondering what would happen if she unfastened the next button.
"Doe. Doe." The three letters curled leisurely around his tongue. "What an interesting name."
Hermione hummed her agreement and didn't bother to look up. Malfoy always got bored at this time in the afternoon, 3 pm like clockwork, and Hermione was becoming increasingly skilled at responding without listening.
"Doe. D-d-doe. Dooooo—" she could feel the sharp edges of a headache coming on, and each syllable that spilled out of Malfoy's mouth was another knife stuck in her cerebrum. The subject of a daydream, she thought, should not be permitted to be so annoying in real life.
"What about yours, then? Malfoy. Where does that come from?" Hermione hissed through clenched teeth.
"French," Malfoy sounded bored. "Old family name. Carries a lot of weight in certain circles." He leered at Hermione over his copy of New Theory of Numerology by Lukas Karuzos. "But Doe? Isn't that what m—what they call dead people?" His upper lip curled slightly, baring a dangerously sharp incisor.
"You're thinking of morticians, and no, not exactly. It's the name for unidentified people—Jane Doe or John Doe, I mean—and they don't have to be dead for it to apply." Hermione snapped, feeling the heat rise in her face. One pointer finger traced across the surface of a crisp page, following the spidery lines of Da Vinci's Vitruvian Man, the other rubbed small circles at her temple. She always tried to wear her surname like a badge of honor, bearing her anonymity and autonomy with equal measures of pride and loneliness, but somehow Malfoy managed to make her feel unsure. Suddenly "Doe" was a synonym for shame, a black mark on her person, and Hermione shrank away from its stain.
Malfoy's eyes narrowed as if sensing that he'd touched a nerve. "And that just happens to be your family name?" He smirked as if he already knew the answer.
"No" Hermione bit out. The headache was truly coming on now, and Hermione cursed as she noticed the encroaching foggy black around the sides of her vision. "I don't know my name. All I've got is a first name, and it might not even be real." Her chest was tight. It felt like the black was pouring up through her throat to clog her vision, spikes of forgotten memories stabbing into her consciousness.
"What's your name then." He paused, and the blackness filled the space he left between his words. "Hermione?"
When she came around, her face was sticking to the pages of Alchemy, Ancient Art and Science. Malfoy was hovering beside her, his face a mixture of disgust and—was it concern? Hermione batted in front of her face, trying to clear away the cloud of black spots that hovered at the tip of her nose, and Malfoy leaped back as one hand came dangerously close to his cheek.
"You have fascinating study habits, Doe." He sneered lazily, settling back into his chair. "I now understand how you've managed to contribute so much to our research."
Since that day Malfoy had treated Hermione with a wary and scathing indifference, focusing his efforts instead on (what Hermione interpreted as) a concentrated effort to find evidence of her incompetence and disqualify her from the research. He drilled her daily in Latin and Greek declensions, prattled at her in flawless French (My first language, he'd said. Let's see if you can keep up. She couldn't) and had even begun quizzing her on the growing list of nonsense words they'd accumulated from the margins of the Electus papers. Thankfully, however, he was keeping the War On Hermione Doe's Intellect Just For The Sake Of Pettiness between the two of them.
On Monday morning Hermione arrived at Wheedles and Budgery feeling tired but confident. She had worked ceaselessly over the weekend, even trying to enlist Nora's help as a study partner (which had been an entirely useless endeavor, for as soon as Hermione had started listing off nonsense words Nora had become inexplicably busy,) but she was certain that she had the list well in hand. She could handle Malfoy. She was even wearing her good-luck cardigan.
Hermione strode in the front door at 10:55, ready for her 11:00 appointment with Malfoy in the study, but was stopped fully in her tracks by the sight that waited for her. What fresh hell was this?
Instead of arriving at 11:15 like he usually did, Malfoy was already seated just inside the foyer, looking for all the world like a long-suffering slave to research. He gave her a baleful look, sighed theatrically, and gestured listlessly to twelve new books for Hermione to carry to the study. Mr. Craggins observed the scene with disapproval, tutting at Hermione's "lateness" from the doorway to the stockroom, and Malfoy, the cad, had the audacity to wink at her over his shoulder. Her eyes narrowed. Malfoy had a new scheme, she was sure of it. Gritting her teeth, she accepted the stack of books without comment and followed his black woolen coat tails up the staircase.
Not a word was mentioned about the Nonsense List all week. Of course.
Instead, Malfoy continued to show up frequently and dramatically, and it quickly became clear to Hermione that this was the next step in the Campaign To Make Hermione Doe Look Bad and Make Everyone Else Suffer In The Process. He was everywhere: in the study, muttering darkly in Greek; in the stacks, reshelving books in the wrong order; he even showed up one day behind the counter to stare eerily at customers as they left with their purchases. He began looking increasingly haggard, dragging himself about the premises scribbling notes and nibbling on the ends of Hermione's favorite pencil.
And, much to Hermione's chagrin and quiet rage, people around the bookshop began to notice. Mr. Craggins started glaring at her every time he saw her, muttering under his breath about time wasters and misuse of resources. One of the researchers in Cryptography tsked ominously at Hermione over his spectacles when she scattered a pile of Malfoy's notes in her attempt to fetch Codes for Commoners: Deciphering the Words of the Rich and Powerful. A middle-aged woman browsing in Advanced Mathematics looked so concerned that she stopped Malfoy and offered him a battered package of biscuits from her purse.
Malfoy spent the afternoon smirking and getting crumbs everywhere. Hermione vowed to stuff her good-luck cardigan in the back of the closet until it learned some manners.
It wasn't just the mornings, either; Malfoy began spending his evenings in Wheedles and Budgery, too. He hovered as Hermione restacked maps of Atlantis, spent hours munching noisily on Jammy Dodgers in the corner of the study, and foraged for the most ridiculous and unrelated tomes in the Wheedles and Budgery collection to deposit on Hermione's desk, all in the name of "background reading."
It was the extra reading that bogged Hermione down the most, and she despised Malfoy for it. She was now bringing home at least two supplemental volumes a day, falling asleep at her desk almost every night, and she was having an increasingly hard time remembering what she had read when she woke up. The headaches threatened to consume her. She had begun to avoid the stacks of books on her desk, to shy away from her shelves, and she blamed Malfoy for all of it. How dare he make her resent reading? It was too much.
By the Friday following her episode, Hermione had had enough. As the newest stack of drivel whumped onto her desk, she shot up out of her chair. A momentary look of surprise crossed Malfoy's face before he hid it behind his shocking blondness, squinting at Hermione down his aristocratic nose.
Hermione faltered. She had never stood this close to Malfoy before—there had always been at least a desk or a stack of leather-bound books between them—and found she had to tip her head back rather foolishly to glare into his eyes. Next time, she noted wryly, make a stand from higher ground.
"Malfoy," she sounded squeaky. Again, "Malfoy!" Much better. "This has to stop! All this extra work, it's taking up too much time—time I could be spending on the Electus documents! I'm already taking my evenings to go through the supplementary readings, plus bringing work home for translation. If it needs to be done, you should be doing it yourself." She tried to look imperious.
Malfoy only stared at her, his mouth twisting with amusement as a nearly-transparent eyebrow quested towards his hairline.
"I mean honestly, Malfoy. I don't have the time! I know you're eccentric, but" she ran her fingers down the spines of the books on her desk. "Water Plants of the Highland Lochs? Omens, Oracles & the Goat? What gives you the right—"
All traces of amusement drained from Malfoy's face. He leaned down to her ear and Hermione froze. They had definitely never been this close before. She smelled peppermint.
His breath ghosted across her cheekbone, surprisingly warm, and Hermione felt a thrill down her spine as she breathed him in. It was a surprisingly intimate moment, there among the dusty books and scattered pages, and Hermione was dizzy with the thrill of it. She thought hopefully of the glimpse of collarbone, and his devastating smirk—then he spoke.
"The right?" His voice cut with a serrated edge across her cheek. "Do you think I'm being unfair?" Hermione wanted to move, to run, but he had her trapped against the desk.
"I don't think you understand just how fair I'm being, Miss Doe." He hissed, the icy words dripping from his mouth to shatter on the floor. "These materials—which I am providing, by the way, specifically to bring you, my assistant" he spat out the word as if its taste were hateful, "up to speed—are being procured with no small effort by myself and others. Although it may be a joke to you, the Electus is real to us." He was visibly angry now, the muscles in his neck corded and taught like strings ready to be plucked. "I am partnered with you out of necessity. So the next time you feel that I am being unfair, Miss Doe, I suggest you remember what this is costing me."
He stepped back and his face was thrown into high relief in the lamplight, a rude flush smeared across his cutting cheekbones, his eyes burned like burried ore in shaddowed sockets. He inhaled sharply through his nose and closed his eyes, head tilted back as he clenched and unclenched his fists. Malfoy was a vision of barely controlled anger, Hermione thought. Like a sheet of ice over a volcano. For the first time since their meeting, Hermione thought she saw hate lurking behind the mockery in his face.
Then a nasty smile spread snaked across his mouth and his eyes snapped open, flitting from Hermione's face to the stacks of books on her desk and back again.
"It has occurred to me that your mornings would be much better spent here, working, as opposed to your taking so many valuable materials home every night. I think it would be much more" he paused, "profitable if you had a longer exposure to the material during the day. That way your evenings are your own. I know how much you like to sleep, that much was made evident to me last week." He winked cruelly. "This is your only option. I'd hate to have to renegotiate my contract with Mr. Craggins." He swept to the doorway, then turned.
"I'll be in early, if you decide you have the time to actually pursue this research." And he was gone. Hermione was left to hyperventilate and then, as she breathed more deeply, to seethe.
She began to pace, her turns in the tight space whipping up a small tornado and sweeping papers off the desk. He had completely missed the point! How could he accuse her of not being dedicated? A throb had begun between Hermione's eyebrows but she barely noticed, channeling the pain to feed her anger. It was obvious that Malfoy was trying to prove his superiority and dominance to make her abandon the Electus, and she couldn't let it slide.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. Who was this "us" he referred to? The other annotators? "Connoisseurs and scholars and fanatics" he'd called them. It made it seem like this research was much larger than Malfoy himself. She decided to tuck that thought away for later.
It was clear that she was not his ideal research partner; she was no "connoisseur" of the Electus to be sure. But couldn't he see that she was trying? They already spent at least nine hours a day together, for heaven's sake. And now he wanted her to spend the mornings with him, too! Hermione stopped. From the way he had acted, that seemed to be the exact opposite of what Malfoy wanted. He seemed repulsed by her, the way he sneered and spat at her. I am partnered with you out of necessity. What an arse!
And furthermore, how dare he bring up the amount of money he was paying for her services? Hermione winced. Phrasing it like that made her sound like an intellectual prostitute.
He was challenging her, trying to make her feel incompetent and useless with all his superior knowledge and stupid fluency in French. If she had to listen to him eat another biscuit she'd scream! How dare he try to intimidate her? And then make it seem like it was her fault? All this posturing and throwing his weight around had to stop.
Hermione smiled grimly. She would just have to out-swot him.
What exactly is the Electus? Tensions rise as the research starts.
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