All praise goes to the sweet mcal and my awesome beta niffizzle. Love you, ladies!
Draco looked at the owl in disdain. Of course, it was his father's bird. Couldn't he have sent a more inconspicuous animal? But obviously, Lucius Malfoy hadn't been inconspicuous a single day in his life.
"What does he want?" Theo asked over the table, suspecting the missive's sender correctly. Thankfully, the two of them were in their private office at the moment.
"I don't know, but it can't be good." Draco grabbed the parchment the regal owl had in its claws, and only his pet loving heart made him offer the messenger some treats and a bowl of water as well as a perch to rest. After all, it had flown all the way from Rome to Alexandria. Only then, Draco settled in the leather armchair next to his desk and opened his father's letter.
"Dear Draco," the addressee snorted very un-patricially. He hadn't been his father's dear since leaving his mother's womb. "I hope all goes well with Our Emperor's mission for you in Egypt. Your mother, the soft female soul she is, sends her greetings and reminds you to take care of yourself and sleep and eat enough. Severus reminds you to heed all his advices, whatever that may mean. I, for myself, am not only sending you this owl to ask after your well-being. As pater familias, though, it is my priority. However, Draco, I want to remind you that it is of the utmost importance for you to fulfill your mission. The Caesar's trust, in person and in the Senate, is our family's guarantee of safety. Without it, we are in danger, not only politically, but also personally. I don't need to mention that especially your mother, with her sister's association with Antonius, needs our legacy to be firmly connected to the Imperium Romanum's inner circle of power and influence. Word of our special capabilities has spread too far among the patricians, and recent history hasn't helped. So don't let yourself be distracted by Cleopatra's beautiful daughters - I am telling you this because I know you, son - and dedicate your time to fulfill the task Augustus has sent you to do. You are my only heir. With you, our family's future stands and falls.
Post scriptum: Cantankerus Nott sends his greetings to Theodore. May he be of help and not a source of distractions for you."
Angrily, Draco balled the parchment in his hands and set it on fire with a flick of his wand.
"Wine, Draco?" Theo asked, reading his best friend's mood.
"Yes, please. Pour yourself one, too. Your father sends you 'greetings.' The only thing my father didn't mention in this letter was that I am expected to get married upon my return to Rome." He drowned the wine Theo had poured with one gulp and gestured for a refill.
"That bad?" Theo suspected, and Draco could only nod.
"Yes, but that's my problem, not yours."
"It is my problem when my best friend feels pressured to fulfill his father's insane expectations. Did he tell you to be loyal to the Emperor's cause again?"
Another nod from Draco.
"Of course he did," Theo groaned. "Draco, you are trying your best here, fulfilling the mission and working on your own career. You can't possibly make all your father's wrongs right again."
"No. But if I don't try, I am the one who has to live with the shame he brought to my family. He's the one who followed Caesar's plans, even though everyone in the Senate knew how insane they were. And worse yet, he supported Antonius even when it was clear how much that man loved Cleopatra's tits more than anything else." Draco swallowed, relieved he could voice his anger to someone. "I hear your words, Theodore, and I recognize the truth in them. Still, I am hoping against hope that my father's plans for our family and mine won't end in a war. As far as I see, Augustus brings peace to Rome. He might be strict with those who defer him, and he surely is suspicious of our powers most days, but he has the greater good in mind. What the Imperium needs now is a strong, benevolent leader with a clear moral codex. When we are smart, and with 'we' I mean you, me, and some others of our generation, we can convince the Emperor that magic is more than the dark traditions of some patrician families. And with this case, here in Egypt, we can win him over."
"That's some big words, my friend. Maybe you are expecting too much from two men that haven't even entered the cursus honorum yet and are simply two senator's sons working their way up in their destined hierarchy?" Theo argued.
"Maybe. But our mission is still rolling. And there's this witch I want to visit."
Theo groaned at Draco's plans. "And here I thought you'd stop thinking with your cock for a moment… That is what will ruin you, Draco! Not your father's politics, but you letting your little soldier take the lead!"
Draco laughed at Theo's dramatics. It wasn't like that.
Nevertheless, Draco found himself walking back to the house belonging to the backyard he had almost died in a few days ago. Despite what he had told himself and Theo, he found his thoughts drifting back to the intriguing witch — and he didn't even know her name, for Hippocrates' sake!
A medium wine from the Praefectus wine cellar in his hand, he knocked on the door.
"What do you want?" She had opened the door without greeting. Had she known it would be him, or was she simply so impolite to greet every visitor like that?
"Ave…" he drifted off and curled his lips into a smile many women in Rome found irresistible. "See? I came to you to thank you for saving my life the other day, and I don't even know my saviour's name," he said, carefully sheepishly.
She seemed to ponder his sincerity, taking him in from head to toe. Draco felt naked under her gaze, but not the fun version of it, more like she would extract his most secret thought. Just when he had finished thinking that, he threw up his Occlumency shields. She frowned immediately but stepped back from the entrance.
"Come in. The wine your people make is one of the few Roman things I do appreciate." Then, she grew serious again. "And it's not good for my reputation when a Roman soldier is seen on my doorstep."
"I am not much of a soldier, I am afraid," Draco chuckled. Not that he lacked the ability to fight, quite the opposite really, especially when it came to use of his special powers. But much to his father's disappointment and his mother's relief, he had never had found interest in leading a group of men into the battle.
"You Romans all are soldiers," the woman added.
Instead of replying to the jab, he asked, "What is your name?"
"You aren't easy to deter aren't you?"
To that, he gave an honest laugh. "No I am not. I am Draco Lucius Malfoy. And you are?"
"I am Hermione."
"You're Greek?" he asked before he could stop himself.
Now, it was she who chuckled. "Well, look what we have here. A Roman with some brains in him. Yes, my name is Greek. But my ancestry is as Egyptian as it is Greek."
Draco was intrigued. This woman, Hermione, was not like the other girls he had met in Alexandria so far. Nor was she like the other women his age, though, most of them had been married for a few years and borne a few children.
Hermione now tilted her head and gestured for him to sit down at the simple wooden table of what appeared to be her kitchen. She produced two mugs and a carafe of beer.
"What? You're not going to share my present with me?"
She raised one perfectly curved eyebrow. "It is my present, isn't it? And I am saving it for later. I am only offering a beverage because this is what one does." She was certainly warming up to him. "Are you going to tell me what you really want here?" Again, amber eyes bore into his, and he braced himself for another mental probing, but none came.
Though, her eyes were enchanting enough for Draco. For a second, he pondered if he should lie to her and, instead of retrieving information, charm his way into her sheets. It really was tempting because the curve of her hips and the soft swell of her bosom called to him.
But he hadn't come so far in Rome without ambition, and despite what his father pressed him to do, he genuinely wanted to fulfill his mission. "I did want to thank you for your help. While Theo, my friend, would have saved my life, I think I was much more adequately treated by your capable hands."
"You can turn off the charm, Draco. This doesn't work with me," she stated, coldly. Maybe she had fought off advances of another Roman before?
"Give me a chance to explain myself, will you?" he replied firmly. "As I said, I am not a soldier. I am more of a scholar. Sent from Rome to learn about certain aspects of the Egyptian culture and religion." Before he revealed his mission in detail, he needed her to trust him. Thus, he presented her only the most public level of his job in Alexandria.
Her eyes gleamed with curiosity. "That means?"
"That means, for example, I am reading old scripts about Egypt and seeing if the people of Alexandria confirm what stands in them." To solidify his point further, he produced a parchment he had indeed brought here from Rome for the exact reason he had just described.
"Put that away," she commanded him after she had scanned the high quality parchment he had spent hours copying from. "It's not worth its money written on it when it comes to our culture, especially if you want to learn about the present."
"How can you know that?"
"Because the chronists of the past were Roman or Greek in this case." She stepped behind him, placing her long, elegant index finger over a paragraph. "And this? Ridiculous."
"You can read Greek and Latin?" Draco was truly flabbergasted.
Hermione expressed her disgust with a loud snort. "Of course I can read it! We do that here, too, did you know? It's not only about hieroglyphs."
"That's not what I meant-" he started, but she interrupted him again.
Her eyes were blazing suddenly, and the air was suddenly dense of magic, the kind you felt when a thunderstorm was about to work chaos. She was gorgeous. "I know exactly what you mean, Draco Lucius Malfoy. You are not used to a woman who can write more than the list for the Greek slave to go to the market and actually read the laws that deem her her husband's property." He actually didn't mean that, but he honestly was too fascinated by her outbreak that he didn't want to interrupt her tirade. "I worked in the Library of Alexandria, a protegée and confidant of our Queen Cleopatra herself!" Defiantly, the woman raised her chin, demonstrating how proud she still was.
Draco's mind was reeling, storing every bit of information coming from her mouth away for later.
"I can read and write many languages, and Latin is one of the most simple," she stated arrogantly. Placing her hands on the table in front of him, she looked him dead in the eye and said, with a low hiss, "Until your Octavian came and destroyed it! Eternities of our history, of our culture, of our lives - lost in the fires brought by the Roman army!"
Had she been anyone else, a man or a less charismatic woman perhaps, Draco would have left without another word. Maybe would have thrown the carafe to the wall for effect to show how a member of the patriarchy didn't like to be treated like this. But instead, he sat there, at Hermione's table, and took a sip from the beer, praying his libido would calm down. Not that he had a masochistic kink, but this strong, vibrant, voracious woman fascinated him. After setting down his beverage again, Draco met her gaze. Her cheeks bore a slight blush from her passionate words.
As neutral as he could, he said, "So you are a daughter of Isis?"
Apparently, she hadn't expected this reaction. "Yes, I am."
Draco smiled. "I have heard a lot about your practices and—"
"So we are finally getting to the real reason why you came to me."
What was it about this woman and her interrupting him? Caught between fascination and annoyance, he wanted to explain, but, yet again, she continued without waiting for his input. "For the carnal pleasures and sex rites my sisters and I are supposed to be so proficient in."
"No!" He stood, hands raised in defence.
But she only pulled at his wrist, her grasp surprisingly strong, and pushed him towards the door. "When it comes to sex, you men are all the same, aren't you? Go and try your luck elsewhere!" She made a hand gesture that vaguely reminded him of a wand movement, but when the door was slammed closed just a handbreadth before his elegant nose, Draco only stared at the wooden surface, discombobulated.
What had just happened?