Lucius followed the sound of persistent giggling and light laughter to an open door at the back of the motel. It led into a basement, a rare sight in this part of the country but Lucius didn't bother to think too much about it. After all, he had a good idea of what it was used for. Tightening his grip on his wand he stepped down and shut the door behind him. The howls and other animalistic sounds were immediately dampened.
The stairwell was dark but as he turned the corner he could see a single bright bulb illuminating the room. Potter and Granger were planted on a black and metal couch, a Muggle television showing something he couldn't even begin to describe. They were both holding an oddly shaped black box with buttons which they were mashing with glee and without much pattern. Severus had seated himself at a desk in the corner working on what looked to be his lesson plans for the upcoming school year. Papa Odie himself was seated on the foot of a large bed which had been shoved into a corner and mostly hidden behind a bookshelf. Marty was next to him reading Witch's Weekly.
He put his wand in back pocket. There was little threat of being jumped by a half-idled werewolf in this basement.
"Are we going to stay down here all night?" Lucius asked.
"Mmhm," Odie replied nonchalantly, bending forward to relight the incense sitting on the table in front of him. "That door you came through has more protection on it than all of Hogwarts."
"I see," he replied and took the only open seat next to Potter. "What are you doing?"
"Playing zombies."
"What?"
"You know, the zombie part of Black Ops. You wanna try it?"
"No, thank you."
After watching them play for another few minutes-Potter and Granger had an ongoing competition to see who could get the most headshots-he was finally able to discern the basics of whatever kind of game this was.
"Harry!" Granger shouted. "That's cheating!"
"It is not! It's creative gameplay."
"Cheater!"
And thankfully the game ended quickly after that. Potter set the little box-thing he been using on the table and stood up to stretch. They had been down there for the most of the day. Everyone except Lucius who had followed Fenrir into the forest. He hadn't dared spoken to the werewolf nor had he purposefully attracted the attention of the gathering wolves. He had simply watched, as was his nature.
There were thirty of them in the small clearing with the runes. Lucius did not recognize any of them besides Fenrir. Each was in a different state of malnutrition or poverty. It was rare for a werewolf to make a living and most of them would spend their lives begging and stealing in places like Knockturn Alley or Wicca's Hollow. If they were Muggles they had a tendency to force self-exile on themselves, unable to cope with the sudden and violent introduction to a world they rarely belonged in. Fenrir spent his time as a hermit in the woods living off of wild game which he rarely bothered to cook.
For the last decade or so he'd been wandering the dense woods at the back of the Malfoy property. They were as dangerous as the woods outside of Hogwarts and were separated from the main house by a pleasant lake. Magical creatures of all nature had been wandering in out of that land for centuries and Lucius had always found the things that lived there quite fascinating. He had spent much of his childhood observing them, just as he had the day of the full moon.
But now he was sitting in what he was certain was Papa Odie's personal bedroom and he was feeling a bit light headed from whatever the man was burning.
"Should we watch something?" Granger asked picking up a battered copy of Hogwarts, A History and setting it in her lap. She didn't move to open it but Lucius suspected she was perfectly content to simply hold it.
"Star Wars?" Potter asked.
"We watched that last time."
"Doctor Who?"
"Watched that the time before."
"We aren't watching another documentary, Hermione."
"What's wrong with learning something?" Granger snapped.
"Yes, Potter," Severus spoke up with a tone that was simultaneously silky and sarcastic."What is wrong with learning?"
Potter looked as if he dearly wanted to say something sarcastic and perhaps a bit rude but the fact that Severus was his teacher, even outside of Hogwarts, prevented it.
"It's summer," he mumbled lamely.
"I'll watch a documentary," Lucius said, surprising everyone but mostly himself because he wasn't entirely sure what he was agreeing to watch.
"Great!" Granger shouted and leapt up, tossing the book aside haphazardly in her excitement and pelting Lucius right in the gut. She leapt over the back of the odd looking metal couch and planted herself in front of the bookshelf scanning the rows. "Which one haven't we seen?"
Potter huffed and fell back onto the cushion, arms crossed and pouting.
"Watch this one," Papa Odie replied poking at a selection from his side of shelf. It fell out and Granger caught it. "Lucius will like this one."
"You think?" Granger asked skeptically but moved to the television anyway.
"Yes," Odie told her and snapped his fingers. The lightbulb went out which caused Severus to make a noise of annoyance but he simply lit the end of his wand and continued working, ignoring them all with the practiced skill of a lifelong introvert.
Granger started the documentary and Lucius found himself utterly enraptured for the next two hours learning about a man named Elvis Presley. The man was magnetic and Lucius had to admit he rather liked the music. Perhaps Muggles weren't quite as useless as they first appeared to be.
By the time the documentary was over, night had fallen and Lucius could plainly hear the howling of the werewolves outside. They seemed to have abandoned the forest in favor for prowling the parking lot of the motel. Lucius looked up to the popcorn ceiling and listened with all the others. No one bothered to try and suggest that they put on another documentary or otherwise try to drown out the noises of the wolves. In fact, everything was so quiet in the basement that Lucius easily heard the sounds of a fight.
Werewolves commonly had fights if they weren't with a pack and it didn't surprise Lucius that one had broken out so quickly. Fenrir was a wolf that had been running alone since the Dark Lord fell thirteen years ago and had only just started to rebuild a Pack. He would always be influential in the werewolf community but as for running with other wolves, he had mostly stayed away. Until last year, when he'd discovered what was left of a Pack running from werewolf hunters.
A few men, several women, and a whole slew of now orphaned children. He had taken these city werewolfs and showed them how to live in wild. And now Voldemort was demanding that he kill half of them to prove his loyalty. It didn't take a genius to figure out why Fenrir had taken to the plan to defect.
"Granger, I have something for you."
Surprisingly it was Severus who broke the silence and he opened a desk drawer. After ruffling around inside for a few moments he tossed something to the girl who caught it perfectly. It was a purple, beaded bag. A little fancy for her but Lucius could easily tell that it was secondhand and by no means designer. It fit Granger quite suitably.
"Who's it from?" she asked knowing instinctively that Severus certainly hadn't been the one to procure it for her.
"Do you remember Sarah Harknell?" Severus asked and she nodded. "She left it here for you. It has an Undetectable Extension charm on the inside that's gone wrong. She didn't know who to fix it without messing up the other charms. She said if you could fix it, you could have the bag but only after you tell her how you did it."
"Challenge accepted," Granger said and immediately opened the bag and practically stuck her head in it to get a good look at the inside. When it became apparent that she wasn't going to remove her face from the bag anytime soon the conversation moved on without her.
"Well, I'm bored," Potter said before leaping up and then taking a flying jump to the bed landing on his stomach by Papa Odie. The group made idle chit-chat for nearly three hours before everyone started to drift off to sleep. Granger-who had finally pulled her face out of the bag-and Marty shared the bed. Potter pulled the odd-metal couch out flat into another bed. It was the strangest thing Lucius had ever seen a piece of furniture do. Papa Odie and Potter shared the couch-bed. Severus and Lucius were stuck with sleep pallets on the floor.
He really missed his mansion.
00000
The glow of the television woke Lucius up at a quarter after two in the morning. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and sat up. Granger was in front of the television a long cord connecting her ears and the television. Lucius could hear the sound of the show she was watching coming from the white circles in the her ears. She was sitting in front of the couch-bed, leaning against the side. Potter was tossing and turning behind her.
Lucius had never seen Granger like this. She looked wholly sad and content at the exact same time. She clearly wasn't paying attention to what was on the television but was rather using it as an excuse to sit and be lost in thought. Lucius had a sudden urge to know what she was thinking about at quarter after two in the morning.
Deciding on impulse to act on the urge, he got up from his pallet and cautiously made his way to where she was sitting. It was only a few steps but it was enough distance that it gave her time to realize she wasn't the only one awake. He sat next to her and she took one of the white circles with the sound coming out of it from her ear.
"What are you doing up?" she whispered.
"I was going to ask you the same thing." She looked him up and down and huffed. She was smart enough to keep her guard up with him. They may have spent a lot of time together in the last few weeks but she didn't have any reason to trust him and he hadn't really given her one.
"Insomnia?" he asked looking for whatever answer she might give him. He couldn't explain why he was interested to know. He just was. What did the 'brilliant' Hermione Granger think about at night? He was sure that there were plenty of people in their world who would be interested in knowing the answer to that question.
"Worry," she finally said. "How bad is he? Really?"
"The Dark Lord?" he asked and she nodded. "He's..." He stopped suddenly. How could he explain the Dark Lord? On the surface he was terrible, a monster even. But he had had a silver tongue and he had power and Lucius didn't want to admit that he had fallen prey to either of those things. "He's as bad as you think he is." She was smart enough to know the reality surrounding the Dark Lord and her situation as a Muggleborn. She turned back to the television without another word.
Lucius was satisfied with what he'd gotten from her. She was thinking about Potter and herself and quite possibly the people they'd left behind at River Point. Maybe she was even thinking about Papa Odie-all snoring, seemingly 100 pounds of him.
"Potter said that you don't respect violence," he whispered suddenly and she gave him a sharp look. "What do you feel about what Papa Odie did here all those years ago?"
"It's disgusting," she said immediately. "But I won't deny that people are safer now because of it. Papa Odie is an ancient soldier from an ancient world. His wisdom outweighs his violence."
"You really think so?" he asked. It was a little staggering to him that Granger would have the capacity to understand that sometimes violence really did do the job. She may not like it herself but she could recognize that they were at war. They were all at war. There would come a time when she might have to kill another human being or do something possibly immoral in order to protect herself or some else. It seemed to be weighing on her.
"I think that there were circumstances to that massacre that Papa Odie didn't tell you. You can't make a judgement without the full story." She turned back to the television while Lucius tried to swallow that. What hadn't Papa Odie told him? The man had already admitted to killing many people in cold blood. He had even provided a suitable motive. What was so bad that he would withhold it from Lucius but give the information to Granger? Whatever it was, was deeply personal.
"What are you watching?" he whispered. This time she smiled when she turned back to him.
"America's Next Top Model," she replied and handed him her extra sound-circle which he accepted and put in his ear. He was immediately bombarded with that oddness of American Muggle competitions. He had never seen anything like it and it fascinated him in a way he hadn't thought possible. Perhaps it was because it was three in the morning that he was taken in so easily.
But taken in he was and he was so engrossed in the photo shoots and catfights that he didn't even register when Granger got up to back to bed. handing him the other sound-circle which he put in his other ear. Four hours later when the others started to stir he was still watching.
He wasn't shaken from his trance until Potter woke up from his fitful sleep rolled over and immediately burst into laughter at the sight of Lucius Malfoy watching a Muggle reality show with his hair askew and his eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. His mouth was half open and he had no idea what time it was. Potter's laughter woke everyone else and he only laughed harder when Severus threw a pillow at him in frustration.
"Are you still watching that show?" Granger asked, sitting up from the bed. She was looking at him with a mix of amazement and amusement, the same expression on Odie's face.
"Um," was all Lucius could say, too tired to be embarrassed and honestly too engrossed in the show to care. "Yes."
"Leave him alone," Odie cooed though it sounded like something he was only saying to make the still giggling Potter stop before he died from lack of air. Unfortunately it all made Granger start to giggle. She crossed to the television and pulled out the cord. The sounds of the show immediately flooded the room and they all watched the television marathon for another two hours when there was a knock on the door.
"Go get it," Odie told Potter who leapt up to obey. He ran up the stairs and opened the door. There were the sounds of talking and then Potter led a thoroughly disgruntled and dirt covered Fenrir down the stairs. Fenrir eyed the proceedings wearily but when no one seemed to notice him he asked a question.
"What is going on?"
"A marathon of America's Next Top Model," Granger replied patting he ground beside her. Fenrir raised his eyebrows but took a seat next to her. This effectively left her sandwiched between Lucius and Fenrir and he was honestly surprised that she didn't leap up in fear or disgust or some other strong emotion that they deserved. But she just sat there calmly as if this entire thing was normal.
Lucius was positive that this was the strangest thing he had ever done.
He was in a basement with a tattooed Merlin, the Boy-Who-Lived, a Muggleborn from New Orleans, a Muggleborn he'd almost killed once, a grumpy Severus Snape, and an Alpha werewolf fresh from a change.
Sometime in the middle of an episode-Granger had explained television lingo-Marty had brought down leftovers from yesterday's breakfast and they all indulged. Fenrir said that the other werewolves were wandering out of the woods but weren't going to the motel.
"They rarely stay the day after," Odie said. "They have their own human lives to get back to. A lot of them are Muggles and don't want to be here more than they have to."
Fenrir shrugged that off and stuffed three sausage links in his mouth at once.
They filtered out of the basement one by one over the course of that day. Lucius didn't leave until the television station stopped playing the show somewhere around three in the afternoon. He'd been awake for twelve hours by then and was exhausted. He and Fenrir went up to their room and fell into their respective beds.
"Why did Granger keep stuffing her head in a bag?" Fenrir asked suddenly and Lucius couldn't help but burst into hysterical laughter. He blamed the exhaustion.