Chapter 11

Hermione walked to Lucius' bedroom. She had never been inside, but she knew where it was. She hadn't been told, but somehow she just knew where it was. The door was slightly open. She knocked softly on the door and called his name. There wasn't an answer so she peaked inside, calling his name again.

The room was both as she expected and not at the same time. It was dark and masculine, but also relatively bare. Nothing was out of place, like it was a show room. With the exception of his cloak which was draped over the back of a chair. There were flowers in a vase, which she was pretty sure had not been placed there by him. She had never seen him gardening. The elves must be putting flowers in his room. Not something she'd expected.

"Lucius?" she called again.

"I am currently indisposed, Miss Granger. Whatever it is, it can wait." He was inside the bathroom, she could see dark marble inside the doorway to the bathroom and a soiled white shirt on the floor. The light was brighter in there.

"You're injured," she said. "I've come to check on you."

"I am still breathing," he said. "You can rest assured." His voice sounded tight. Tighter than normal. He was in pain.

"I can help." He didn't say anything and Hermione took it as an invitation. She stepped into the bathroom, where he was standing by the sink with his top half bare. There was a metallic smell, blood smell with more. A singed smell as well. The smell that accompanied a hex that makes contact with flesh. She saw soiled linen on the sink surface.

"I don't need help," he stated. Hermione didn't believe him. He had waited until she was there to say so. He really wouldn't have waited and let her see her in this state if he didn't need help. His pride just wouldn't let him accept help. "You should leave."

"You are injured. I am going to see to your state whether you like it or not." She stepped around to his other side where a large hex mark covered his side. It was raw and weeping. He was trying to clean it in preparation for the ointment pot he had on the sink.

Hermione took the strip of linen off him and pressed it to his side. Pressure was needed to make the weeping stop. He didn't say anything but only a slight tensing in him gave away the pain he felt. It would have hurt incredibly, but he refused to show it. Just like he didn't show most feelings or emotions. The same stoic response as when people spat at him on the streets.

She dabbed the wound some more, then holding it is place putting pressure on it. She also noticed that this was not his first wound, he had scars on his back and on his front from what she could see in the mirror. They were faded with time and blended in with his fair skin, but now that she looked he was covered with scars.

The picture of himself that he presented was so clean, neat and tidy. His hair was neat even now that his hung down his shoulders, not one strand out of place. He had even lulled her at times with his quiet life and academic pursuits, but his skin told a different story. He was used to fighting and he'd been doing it for a long time. The scars of the damage he had wreaked on this community were there on his skin.

She pressed the cloth a little harder to his side and felt the infinitesimal change in tension. She wanted to drop the linen and scrape his wound with her nails. She wondered if that would hurt enough to make him acknowledge it. But then he had also saved her and she was struggling reconciling her gratitude and her hatred, because there was that point today when he'd come and she'd felt safe. He had brought her back from the absolute edge and she had clung to him.

"We almost died today," she said. Her voice was steadier then she felt. Anger was burning in her consuming everything else. He didn't respond, but she got his attention through the mirror. "Oscar doesn't deserve this, neither do I."

"He is my grandson," Lucius said.

"You can't be so cold that you would willingly do this to him, put him at risk like this." She saw something flit through his eyes before it was gone. "We almost died today."

"I will take care of it," he said quietly and calmly like he was talking about something inconsequential like vermin in the garden.

"You must know that this situation in untenable, you can't raise a child like this."

"I'm afraid the milk is spilled, Miss Granger. The danger will be just as great if you were living elsewhere, much graver in fact. While you are here, I can protect you."

"And you think this it is acceptable that you have done this to us?"

"I didn't do this," he said a bit more sharply. "I didn't know Bellatrix was to be resurrected. I would not have let it happen if I knew."

"But you wouldn't have changed forcing us here if you had."

"What does it matter?"

Hermione didn't exactly know why, but it did matter.

"How can I trust my son with someone who would willingly put him at risk?"

"I am not willingly putting him at risk," he said with more force. "You forget, but I know the consequences of putting one's child at risk. It is not an outcome I want to repeat."

"As much as I despise your son, he wasn't responsible for his fate. He was a child when it was handed out to him. How can I trust my son with you when you have already shown that you would put him at risk? You did so when you brought us here."

"If I had known it would turn out like this, I would have perhaps done thing differently."

Hermione wasn't sure why she'd needed to hear him to say that, but she had. She needed him to acknowledge the risk he'd put them in. She needed him to acknowledge that it mattered. Maybe because he wouldn't be an absolute monster if he did. Judging from the state of his skin and his actions in imposing his will on them, she wasn't entirely sure that he wasn't.

The wound had stopped weeping and she put the linen down as she picked up the ointment. She started spreading it over the wound with her finger. He wasn't making any movements or sounds as she stroked the raw skin. She wondered who helped him with these other wounds. From the sounds of it, it hadn't been his wife. She suspected that it hadn't been anyone, that he hid his vulnerability. Even now, he wasn't showing any vulnerability, he had just let her spread ointment on an awkwardly placed wound. And he had admitted that his actions were not as completely self-serving as he had earlier alluded to, although maybe she was just choosing to believe so. How could she have been so relieved and grateful to him earlier if he'd had absolutely no regard for the danger he had placed them in?

His wound was now shiny with ointment. She grabbed the roll of bandages off the sink and placed the edge of it along his warm back. She rolled it around his waist and he lifted his arms up to let her. The sheer logistics of it made it more intimate than she was comfortable with, particularly in light of the concept that if he may not be a complete monster. Then what was he? A man. Not something she was willing to acknowledge. Thinking of him in those terms was every kind of wrong.

As much as she hated it, even if he was the ultimate cause of their predicament, he was also the only true defence she had from the danger that threatened her and Oscar. There was a part of her that needed to trust him, and in order for her to do that, he couldn't be a complete monster. Something about him was so ordinary, he studied ancient artefacts for academic purposes, read books by a fire, but his skin and his fighting abilities told a whole different story. She couldn't quite get her head to reconcile it, but as angry and unwilling as she was about their situation, it didn't change the fact that he was her problem now. This scared, unloved and unpleasant man, who tended to exist in either extreme reservation or violence.

The white bandage covered his waist and Hermione stuck the other end on with a spell. He would have to sleep with it on, on his other side. She wondered if he would take anything for the pain, but she suspected that he wouldn't. Maybe he also acknowledged that he deserved the pain.

"Thank you," he said.

Hermione nodded and left without another word. She had an instinct to get a clean shirt for him, but she dismissed it. She didn't even know where he kept his shirts and she wanted to keep it that way. Seeing what he looked like without one on was more than she wanted to know in the first place.