While Hermione was having her less than pleasant epiphany about one of the most formerly unlikable chaps in the world, Malfoy was going about knocking on every rockface around them. He didn't seem particularly impressed about where they were standing.
The other part of Hermione not being completely befuddled by conflicting emotions was quivering with excitement. She had studied up on the concept of portkeys years ago, just before they went on the Horcrux run, and always had some niggling regret she never got to test her theoretical knowledge. Now was her chance.
"It's definitely here," Malfoy said. "It's marked with petroglyphs and it fairly hums with magic."
"Some say powerful wizards are conceived in just such places," she said, nodding. Then she rolled her eyes when he raised his eyebrows at her. "I meant just that it would be an interesting study to quantify the power of the wizard to the place of, well, the place of conception. Oh, you know I didn't mean it like that!"
"You're blushing."
"I'm not!"
"Granger, we witnessed a fairly extreme fertility ritual together. Afterwards, you discussed lopping male genitalia off with rather disturbing and sanguine equilibrium. Don't tell me now that discussing conception locations is making you all giggly," he said.
Instead of responding, Hermione busied herself with placing each object on the marked place and casting a diagnostic charm. He was right, of course. There was no good reason why she was feeling so...off suddenly. Thankfully, he followed suit and turned his attention to something other than baiting her.
She was vaguely aware of Malfoy digging out the objects from her bag and wandlessly accio'ing any items that didn't immediately leap into his grip: a light bulb, a ripped nylon velcro wallet, a sock, a pencil, a belt, a discarded plastic toy, all stuffed in a plastic bag. She had made sure to get a selection of different materials.
"The sock," she said.
"You couldn't use the accio for that?" he replied, grimacing as he handed her the discarded and grubby sock. "Wonderful. Luckily for me, it's far from being the most unhygienic thing I've touched all day."
"You can scourgify yourself all you want after we're back in England."
"Yes, I grew up on cleaning spells," he said and when she looked askance on him, he shrugged and explained, "My mum has a bit of a fixation with cleanliness."
Her eyes flickered across his face as she recalled his pristine appearance all throughout school years, how the girls had fawned over his looks as much as Ron had made fun of him for being a vain ponce. He didn't look clean and manicured now. His hair was even less blond, from when he ran his fingers through them with less than the cleanest hands. He sported a light stubble along his jaw that was darker than his hair, being slightly golden, and there was a scratch on one of his cheeks. That was not to speak of the ratty condition of his clothes. And yet, he had never looked more attractive to her in her life.
It was an unwelcome thought and she blinked at the realization. Unwelcome because never in her life had she entertained such a thought about this wizard. Loathsome, hateful, irritating, bullying-there had been any number of adjectives she could have applied to him over the years, but attractive had never counted in the list.
Unwelcome because for the first time since the flashes of pity she had felt for him intermittently in the years leading up to the war, she saw that there was someone else underneath the unpleasantness.
Unwelcome because just because he intrigued her didn't mean that it was reciprocated.
Unwelcome because he was taken and there was just that small portion of her that found that a pity.
There were so many things she had discovered about him that had surprised and amused her in turn. He might be a opportunistic cowardly git, but there was also more to him than just that.
There were so many things she felt he hadn't said, and yes, so many things that she still wanted to know about him. There was more to the person she had equal parts despised and tolerated in school. And despite herself, she wanted to know more about this new person.
Malfoy, she wanted to say, could I get to know you better, once we're back in England? I don't have a crush on you or anything, that would be silly. We've spent a few days together after a lifetime of mutual name-calling, that's all. It probably means nothing at all. Only what I've learned of you today is someone that I want to get to know better. I've found that underneath all your irritating posturing in the past that you were just a lonely boy who didn't know the meaning of rebelling. All this time, we've made judgements about the other based on things entirely beyond our control. And, yes, I know you're seeing someone and you really like her and she's really lucky, but-well, never mind because it's not as though our paths will ever cross once we go back. It's just that it's such a pity that I'll never get a chance…
"You're staring at me," he said, raising one eyebrow. "Shouldn't we, and by we, I really mean you, get going with this? We don't want Muggles coming across us and screaming bloody murder."
"Er, right," she said, looking away from him. She was losing her bloody mind.
"Which place has the most? You know, if I ever were planning for world domination," he said, throwing her a smirk.
Hermione sought for the original thread of conversation.
"Funny," she said finally, half a beat too long. "Luckily, most places are practically unreachable. Mount Everest has one. Seven intersections."
She was rambling, which she had a tendency to do when she was discomfited. She was discomfited now.
"Bermuda Triangle," she continued. "The Challenger Deep. The poles. Many of the mountain ranges have at least four or more intersections." God, it wasn't stopping, was it? "And you need to have at least three to create a long-distance portkey, which is why they're so expensive in the first place. And they have to be at an exact location on all three axis. That means-"
"I know what it means, Granger. I was in class with you when Professor Vector covered astromancy. Although maybe I should have sat in front of you and raised my hand every three seconds so that you remembered my presence."
His words would once have set her back up, but now she recognized it for what it was-his own particular brand of humor.
She pulled a face and took a deep breath. "I was pretty annoying as a teen, wasn't I?" she said and could have bitten her tongue off the moment that comment slipped out. It was a comment she could have said amongst her friends with no fear of reprisal, but this was Malfoy. He would rip her to pieces and it would hurt.
After a moment of silence, he spoke and she was relieved beyond measure when his response was surprisingly mild in nature. "Everyone's fairly disgusting as children. Some of us grow out of it. Others stay ginger forever, for example."
She ignored his dig at her friends. His enmity with them was still a reflex with him, no matter how much ground they had broken together. "It was just that everything was so new and exciting," she said to the horizon. "I finally had an explanation for who I was, and I wasn't just some...freak who didn't play well with others. Except, I don't know-I guess I still was. Or am," she said, thinking of her work place issues.
It must've been the ley lines, she told herself. These weren't things she dwelt on or talked about out loud. She wasn't one for brooding and ruminating over regrets or talking about feelings. But it was also because she never had anyone to share things with. She had been an only child, and then sent to boarding school where she thought she would make lots of interesting, close friends. She had, of course, only they were boys, and there were only so much you could discuss with boys who had not one interest in common with you.
It also didn't help that one of those boys was essentially Atlas reborn, with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and the other someone so easygoing and simple that most things flew over his head without a blip on his radar.
And then, she was propelled head-first into a full-scale war which effectively cancelled out any hope she had of making those close personal soulmate girl friends, since her blood status was suddenly a killing offense.
She hadn't realized it until now, but she still was fairly lonely, and those cows at work hadn't made her life any easier.
"Sometimes," she said slowly. "I do think about returning to a Muggle life. My parents want me to, you know-after, well, after everything that happened. And it would be easier, not dealing with other types of prejudice."
He was looking at her with an expression that seemed like alarm.
"Not right this minute, of course, don't worry. I'll see you home, Malfoy," she said, going up to him to elbow him in the side. "I'll even walk you to your front door."
"Charming. As to everything else you've just said, have you ever considered that you're the lucky one in all this? Consider this, you can hack it in both worlds. Don't you reckon your options are just a tad more open than mine are, for example?"
"Well, that's new," she said. "I never thought I'd see the day when Draco Malfoy told me I'm the lucky one."
"Quite so. And who'll be there to show us up if Hermione Granger left the wizarding world? Anyway, we're all freaks, in some way or another. Why should you get to be special?"
"Thanks for the pep talk," she said, suppressing a smile.
"What pep talk?" he denied, affecting nonchalance.
Hermione shook her head to hide her smile, bending over to prepare for the next step.
She cast a spell that shot out yellow rays of lights in eight directions until one of the lines turned orange and then red.
"There it is. The Ras Safsafa ley," she murmured to herself, following the line of light to the point where it glowed the reddest. She lifted her head and smiled at Malfoy, whose eyes were wide. "I can't believe it's really here."
"What is that spell?" he asked in a hushed voice.
"Linea portus," she replied, crouching down to mark the spot with her wand. Then, she dug into her bag and drew out one of her books. Transpositis: Io Ergo Sum.
After a moment of staring at the glowing compass of lines until they slowly faded away, he took the book from her.
"Transposition: I go, therefore I am?" he said, flipping through the tome. "It's in Ancient Latin, Granger. I thought you didn't know Latin."
"I had to cast a translation charm to read it," she admitted. "I'm not as fluent in languages as you are."
"You weren't so bad at Ancient Runes," he said absently. "This book must be incredibly rare."
"Yes."
"The section on ley lines is written in hieroglyphs."
"Actually, it's Ancient Sumerian."
Malfoy quirked an eyebrow. "And how were you able to decipher it? Last I knew, Hogwarts didn't exactly offer a comprehensive Ancient Languages program."
"I wanted to read more books than what was offered in the Germanic languages," she said, shrugging. "I found someone in the Ministry who was able to give me a crash course."
"Granger, you know that most people who work at the lower levels are supposed to be drones. You're not fulfilling your half of the bargain there."
"Ha-ha."
He returned the book to her. "No plans for aiming any higher on the Ministry totem pole?"
Hermione heaved a sigh. "To be honest, you've been right about it all along. I'm a little burnt out, to be honest. Like you said, office politics isn't really my thing."
"It never was your thing, if I recall."
"Oh, shut up, Malfoy."
"You've really kept yourself busy these years," he observed. "I hope to Merlin nobody ever crucios you and dissects that swotty head of yours."
She gave a short laugh at the irony of that. "They've already tried."
Their eyes met. Hermione felt a moment's regret at her words. Their contentious past seemed a slightly verboten subject for them. Now she had gone and ruined everything.
"Granger, I…" Malfoy said slowly. "That should never have happened."
Or maybe not.
"Don't worry about it," she said, looking anywhere but at him. "Here, I'm going to cast the spell. I think the sock seems to be the object that resonates most with this ley intersection."
"No, listen," he said and stopped her turning away from him by holding onto her wrist.
It was the first time he had voluntarily touched her. When her eyes snapped to his hand, he let go immediately.
"That day, at the Manor," Malfoy said haltingly and then exhaled.
She waited.
"Aunt Bella, she…" Malfoy said, as though trying to talk through a lump in his throat. "She was kind to me when we were younger. She was beautiful, you know, just lovely and full of laughter. She was older than my father and perhaps one of a few select witches he respected.
"She intervened for me on more than one occasion, when my father thought I hadn't done well with my tutor or if I'd misbehaved. She would always cut him off in the midst of one of his lectures and say, 'Don't be so stuffy, Lucy. Don't you remember being a boy yourself or was that too long ago?' Then she would give me a sweet and tell me to not worry too much about my parents' rules."
Hermione stared. Never in her entire life had she imagined Draco Malfoy would share something so personal with her. Never in her life had she envisaged that this was the history he shared with one of the most powerful and crazy Death Eaters under Voldemort's sway.
Once he started, it seemed he couldn't stop either. In the back of her head, Hermione wondered if something about this place was compelling them into word vomit. She should have been aghast at the things that spilled from her mouth just a short while ago. She should be trying to uncover the possibilities of such a magically powerful place, but none of that seemed as urgent to her as listening to what Malfoy was keen to share with her.
"She used to tell me she thought of me as her child, because-I don't know, maybe because she couldn't have any. She said I had grey eyes, which was the Black family trait. She went to Azkaban when I was little and when she came out, she was a different person. Mad. Angry. So full of anger. But she had never done anything like that, at least not in front of me. How do you rebel against someone you've always liked and been taught to respect?" He gave a short, unamused laugh as he gave voice to the internal conflicts she never knew existed. "I should have-" A deep breath. "I should have intervened. I'm sorry."
She could almost picture it in her head-a small blond boy being scolded by his father and running to his laughing aunt, who would sneak him a sweet. It was an endearing image, and not even the strange notion that it was Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange in those roles took away from its poignancy. Perhaps it was all the more so, because they were people she had never equated as being vulnerable or loving. The confession of such a personal memory to someone like her, who had every reason to despise them, won her forgiveness entirely. He wasn't the only one to know about sadness and loss and internal conflicts and deep-rooted regrets.
Hermione found it hard to breathe. Their eyes met. They were so close that she could see Malfoy's eyes were grey, with flecks of hazel and green around the pupils and that his lashes were brown, tipped in gold. His eyes were awash with the regrets of the past and turbulent with unsaid things.
Somehow, there was something incredibly personal about being so near a person that one knew exactly what colors their eyes were. Hermione swallowed through a knot in her throat.
"I think," she said slowly, her heart pounding away, "that was just about the nicest thing you could have ever said to me."
"Don't be ridiculous," he said, turning away from her. "I'm never nice to you."
"Malfoy."
Now he was the one to pull a face as he turned back around to face her. His expression was one trying to close himself off, but not succeeding entirely.
Spontaneously, she reached out and grabbed his hand. He flinched briefly at her touch but he didn't pull away. Later, she would blush at how forward she was, at touching someone who had once jeered at her uncleanness. But at this very moment, it seemed right, fitting. They were alone in the world in this barren landscape, and if they should die in the next hour, it was only right that they should confess their sins to one another. To stand hand in hand before facing judgement.
"I don't blame you for anything you did during the war. We were all trying to survive. As for the bad blood between us… I'd say we're all products of our upbringing."
"I don't…" His hand shifted and then tightened on her fingers. "You know that I don't believe in those things anymore, right?" There was an intensity to him that hadn't been present earlier. His eyes were unblinking and focused on hers. She felt the world shrink to just him in her vision.
Her mouth pulled up on one side. "I guess I can't go around calling you a bigot anymore then, either."
He half exhaled and half laughed. And then chuckled.
"Although, frankly, it was about time your eyes were opened," she tacked on, trying to infuse levity into the situation.
"Really, Granger?" he said, rolling his eyes. "A lecture? Is that really in the spirit of forgiveness and interhouse unity?"
She laughed. It was a genuine laugh, with her head thrown back.
"Anyway, you did your best," she went on, always one to beat a dead horse. "Given the circumstances. It wasn't your fault your aunt recognized me. You even tried to intervene with... her. I appreciated it, you know. So...there you go. It's war. There are heroes on both sides, even if nobody acknowledges them."
There was a new light in his eyes now, something that had replaced the melancholy that she now realized had been there since she had bumped into him again. It was the expression of someone who had been searching for absolution and found it.
Something fluttered in the pit of her stomach. She was deeply thankful that whatever his problems, they had been directed to this place. Never in her life would she have considered that Draco Malfoy would have wanted anything from her, and that something would be forgiveness. And that, in itself, was a sort of magic in itself.
She turned away from him to hide how flustered she was.
"Erm, okay, maybe we should get going with this. The sun's about to set on us but according to my calendar, there will be a full moon, so that's good." She was rambling again, to cover up how unsettled she was.
"Go for it," he said, one side of his mouth tilted up in his signature smirk.
Hermione practiced the wand movements a few times before she approached the sock. Then, taking a deep breath, she muttered the words and the destination that would cause the portus spell to take.
Then she turned around and shrugged. "I think that's it."
"I think it took," he said.
"Yeah?"
"It glowed, so you did something. We just don't know if it'll kill us or worse."
"Ever the optimist," she said, grinning a little, riding on the high from performing a new spell. "Well, there's no time limit. We should step forward and just touch it and with any luck, be in the midst of Diagon Alley."
"Right," he said with a nod. "Here goes." He reached forward with a tentative hand.
Then he hesitated and turned back to her.
"Wait," Malfoy said. "Granger, I just-wanted to thank you for helping me. I don't know how many people would have just walked in the opposite direction. Well, actually, I do know. Most of them, I reckon. But...you went out of your way, even though I really was the most miserable bastard to you for years and years. I just-well, I have no words."
It was a beautiful apology and expression of gratitude, made even more beautiful by its total lack of eloquence from someone who had always been slightly too glib. Hermione swallowed hard. It was just much to take in on top of everything else he had already shared that she found her pulse pounding at double the tempo.
First, the revelation about his aunt and an apology. Now an expression of gratitude that, as far back as she had ever known him, he had never evinced. Maybe the ley lines were pulsing with extra potency today, but they hadn't caused her to say anything that hadn't been what she felt wholeheartedly.
And if so...what she learned about him today that had completely overturned the privileged, entitled poncey image she had of him for years. The idea of him growing up lonely and stifled under a control freak of a father with very strict educational goals for his son, an overprotective mother who had a cleaning obsession, and a fun-loving aunt who turned into a mad fanatic bound for Azkaban. These were all things she had never expected and had never bothered to learn.
She-all of them-had been too quick to judge and condemn this man standing in front of her now, just because he had been privileged with material goods and blessed with exceedingly good genes. No one had bothered to go out of their way to find that there was some good buried deep, deep beneath the sarcastic front.
Whether it was the ley lines or something else, she no longer cared. She liked him. She, Hermione Granger, genuinely liked Draco Malfoy, and wouldn't that just set the cat among the pigeons.
So say it, she told herself. What do you have to lose?
Only her utter and complete pride, she realized, his faceless girlfriend reappearing at the edge of her conscience.
"Well, you still have plenty of opportunity," she quipped. "After all, you still need to pay me back for the felucca trip."
The words for suggesting dinner as repayment were on the tip of her tongue, but she saw the moment her words came out that she had said the wrong thing. His face closed up at once. "Of course," he said formally. "A Malfoy is always good for money." There was no inflexion in his words but she thought he sounded ironic.
"Malfoy, I-"
"C'mon, Granger, the sun's just about set. Let's get our arses back where they belong, hmm?"
It doesn't matter, Hermione told herself, although part of her winced at the expression that had crossed his face. Here has a girlfriend… Even though he said they're not serious...Well, we've got plenty of opportunity after we land. International travel, it's pretty draining. We'll probably grab a drink at the Leaky Cauldron. Who knows, maybe we could become friends for real. Stranger things have happened. Her head was spouting confusing lines of logic and emotion at the same time.
It came to her that their conversation in Cairo had inadvertently set the rolling stone in motion-she would no longer be a passive participant in her own love life. In the back of her mind, the hysterical thought came to her that her first item of action in terms of female empowerment in the mating arena would be for the purpose of chasing down one Draco Malfoy. Wasn't this goal an ironic end to her Egyptian trip?
She nodded and they both stepped forward in sync to reach for the lone black sock on the stone block.
Their hands, however, never reached the block as several sudden whooshing sounds prompted them backwards.
Within seconds, they were surrounded as figure after figure appeared out of thin air and materialized in a circle around them. To a one, they all wore white robes and a mask.
