Give me an 'L'! Give me an 'I'! Give me a "ghtofEvolution"!
I'm not sure how one would pronounce ghtofEvolution but she is a wonderful beta :)
Hermione follows Draco to a Ministry floo and they emerge in his manor. The room that receives them, thank Merlin, isn't familiar to her, and she follows him down a corridor with vaulted ceilings to a set of massive double doors. The wood is carved with images of what appears to be men and women in ancient regalia, spanning multiple cultures. She runs the nail of one forefinger over the curve of a woman's rounded hip, studying the work.
"Knowledge Gods," he offers. "Knowledge and wisdom. From various traditions and sources." He points to random carvings and names, "Isis, Ganesha, Athena, muses…"
"It's beautiful," she comments sincerely. She has only imagined this manor as a place of evil and hate, not a source for artistic and intellectual décor.
"My ancestor, Acacius Malfoy, had this custom made. Of course the room at that time was not nearly as grand. It was the fourteenth century, and his library was more of a storage space for parchments and scrolls. Very little bookbinding was done at that time."
She nods, enjoying the history, and precedes him through the door at his gesture to enter.
Inside, the grand room is pretty well what Hermione expected. If, that is, she let herself indulge in the fantasy that walking in would be much like the Disney version of Belle walking in to the library.
She does, and it is.
She does a quick turn five paces in and ogles the shelves. It's massive and she is equal parts impressed and overwhelmed. She's not forgotten why she is here and suddenly only having a matter of hours to search feels entirely too short. Of course, another way to look at it is that she has an eternity of "a matter of hours" if she doesn't find the solution. Day after endless day of research in an unparalleled library would have once felt like heaven. Unfortunately, it now has the potential to become her literal hell. The fantasy shatters into mundane reality and she's ready to take action.
"Alright, let's get to this."
Behind her, Draco is striding casually to massive desk with a plush chair sitting on either side. He sits in the one that puts his back to the wall and taps his wand on the lacquered wood of the desk. "Time and time magic. Cross reference with repeat, repetition, repeating, and loops. Sort by date published."
Hermione watches as, slowly, book after book floats itself out of its position on the shelf, leaving gaps interspersed through the room in their place. Lining themselves like floating soldiers, books slide in between their fellows. At the left hand side, the most battered books, faded, yellowed, and crisp, seem to trudge into place, as if exhausted by their many years. On the right, beautifully bound tomes zip into position impatiently, and nearly vibrate as they hover.
The line comes together until they are touching and move as one onto the empty bookcase next to the desk. The newest books slide in first, on the top row, taking their place as haughtily as an inanimate object can. The weary ancient texts finally slip into place on the bottom shelf, only filling it about halfway, and then the room goes still.
"Would you like top or bottom?"
Hermione starts, entranced as she was by the books, and looks over to find Draco smirking at her. Not a sneer, either. An honest to Merlin flirty smirk. She permits him a small smile accompanied by an eyeroll, and decides for some reason to play along. "Top, obviously. There's more action up there."
"There's more finesse on the bottom. You have to be careful, but you could help control our pace."
She snickers and moves to take the first book on the top shelf, a thick number bound in blue leather with gilded pages. "Are we still talking about books?"
He grins back and agrees, "Of course, Granger. What else?"
She doesn't answer the rhetorical comment, and they set in to the task. An hour passes in which they don't speak so much as a word. She and Draco both utilize a handy charm that opens the book to certain words. Still, searching out "time" results in a lot of skimming pages with nothing more than "cast time" or "time the potion stirs" or "this one time at transfiguration camp".
At some point, she suggests they use the search congruent with other words, but they couldn't quite settle on which word would definitely appear. "Loop"? That seems too new age for the older texts. The phrase "time loop" feels like science fiction more than historical. "Repeat"? What if the text has "repetition" or "repeating"? It's a pretty delicate charm and only searches exactly what you request, much more fine-toothed than the charm that helps the library choose books. What Hermione wouldn't give for a hard drive backup of the room, and she adds that to her list of things to pursue. If she can't bring computers to the magical world, perhaps she can devise a magic solution to sort information the same way.
After an undetermined amount of time, a couple of hours more if she were to guess, a small elf pops in the room with a tea tray and delicate finger sandwiches. "Master Draco, sir?"
"You can just leave it on the side table." He doesn't even look up, and Hermione glares at him across the pile of books between them.
Seeming to feel his eyes on her, he glances her way. With a subtle tip of her head and moving of her gaze, she gestures to where the elf is carefully putting their spread on display. He still doesn't get it, so she clears her throat and widens her eyes with purpose.
"Salazar, Granger, use your words. I can't read your mind."
Huffing, she addresses the elf with as much kindness as she has at her arsenal. "Thank you very much for the tea service. It looks just lovely."
The elf doesn't look at her and continues his task, levitating biscuits from a tin and arranging them in a beautiful array, sorted by flavor.
Draco's snicker draws her gaze back to his face. He rolls his eyes to the ceiling as if entertaining her folly. "Pipsy, Miss Granger was thanking you, not me. You are welcome to speak with her."
The elf falters, nearly dropping a small stack of levitating shortbread. "Miss... Granger, sir? The Miss Granger?"
"The one and only," he answers, seeming to bite back a chuckle.
Warily, the elf looks to Hermione and is visibly shaking, where before it had seemed calm. "Th-thank you for your kind words, Miss. If you will excuse Pipsy." The elf makes an exaggerated show of backing three paces away before popping out of the room. Draco howls with laughter.
"Just what is so funny!? They are terrified of you! Are they not allowed to speak with guests?!"
His laughter dies pretty fast then. "Pipsy adores me, Granger. He's terrified of you."
"Me?! Why in the world would he be afraid of me? He doesn't even know me."
"Oh, he does. They all do. Every house elf in all of Britain I'd wager. The infamous Hermione Granger: Destroyer of households and scourge of honest work."
Her eyes narrow and she crosses her arms over her chest. "Well that's just ridiculous. It's... it's propaganda, is what it is. Telling these poor elves they shouldn't want freedom or respect. I demand to know who started that campaign. Was it Nott? Oh, he'd like that wouldn't he? To turn the elves against me. He's just mad I tried to deliver a hat to his garden elf to keep her poor ears warm."
Draco is chuckling again but there is something more than mirth. He seems to be bottling in some actual annoyance. "For someone who champions the rights of the downtrodden, you really don't know much about them do you?"
"I know what I need to know," she offers snottily. "Your father taught me all about it."
That seems to get him and even the illusion of mirth fades. He scowls at her. "You know, just because I'm a pureblood doesn't mean I'm not learned. I am familiar enough with the muggle scientific method to know that research with only one set of results is not enough for a theory. I know you've been told time and again they like to work but have you ever actually thought about that? And it wasn't Nott who spread the word about you Granger, it was the House Elves."
"I... but your father-" she starts primly, pointedly, but he cuts her off again.
"My father is a prick, Granger. I'm fully aware of that. But he only ever treated one elf that way and it was Dobby. I don't agree with how he handled him, I'm not making excuses for how cruel he was, but the only reason he did was because Dobby was disobedient."
"Disobedient?!" A tirade is building but he interrupts her yet again.
"Yes, disobedient," he answers evenly. "It's a natural order that has been going on for centuries. Elves like to work. Purebloods like clean houses. It's symbiotic. Most any house elf is devastated if you don't give them work to do. I'm not being hyperbolic. Take any other elf and ask them not to work, or worse yet, tell them you don't need them to, and you may as well Avada them. They would rather die than not be useful. Dobby was different and it went against nature. If there's one thing my father can't handle, if you can believe it, it's disorder."
"Disorder and mudbloods," she mumbles petulantly.
"Disorder and mudbloods," he agrees with a nod, and hearing the word from his mouth, for the first time in years, is a knife to the heart. She feels herself bleeding emotion from the wound, but he goes on. "It's not really muggles, you know, or even muggleborns. I didn't understand it as a child. I just parroted rhetoric because that's all children can do. My father... he didn't want the world The Dark Lord promised, necessarily. He just wanted order. He also wanted to come out on top, and Tom Riddle seemed to be the winning ticket.
The truth is, Granger, my father doesn't hate muggles. He thinks the world needs an order: Wizarding and muggle worlds separate to keep the peace. Muggleborns are an anomaly that ruins that order. If you keep sheep and goats, you generally don't have them graze the same pasture. You might value them equally, but they have different needs."
She ponders that a moment. It's almost a soothing explanation, but not enough to eradicate over a decade of prejudice felt at the hands of Lucius Malfoy and his ilk. "Except he doesn't value them equally. He wanted to see the sheep slaughtered, to go with your analogy."
Draco shakes his head and he looks, she thinks, almost regretful.
"He didn't. Not really. My father... he had to be tough. He was involved with the first war as a young man, caught up in the movement. He raised me with a hard line; sure that if he didn't, I wouldn't make it in the new world order. He didn't want to murder people, Granger. His greatest sin is holding the safety and success of his family above anyone else. You can judge him for that, but don't make him a monster. He didn't really give a fuck about the sheep or the goats. He's just trying to feed the farmhouse."
Let that sink in, she ventures, hesitantly, "And you? What do you care about?"
She watches Draco almost literally shake off the heavy mood and he grins at her, gesturing with a tilt of his head to the tray Pipsy left behind. "Chocolate shortbread. And wine. Maybe not at the same time but just generally speaking..."
She's tricked into a laugh and allows him to change the topic, pouring her a cup of Lady Grey and offering her one of his coveted shortbread, shaped like a snake. "Pipsy only makes them for me this way," he explains of the design.
The rest of tea is spent on trivial conversation. When they return to their books, Hermione steals glances over her pages, watching his eyes dart across the words of his book and his brow scrunch in concentration. They spend the rest of the afternoon and evening reading before she bids him goodnight to go home for a late dinner and put herself to bed.
Maybe, she thinks to herself as she brushes her teeth that night, Harry was right. He's maybe not quite as bad as she remembers.
Sorry for the delay! You are all wonderful and it's such a true pleasure to write for you. Thank you for letting me be a piece of your daily entertainment. As always, your reviews, follows, and favorites are appreciated more than I can say!