A.N. Howdy everybody! Here is this weeks chapter which once again, is full of angst and drama. What can I say, I'm good at one thing. Big big thanks to rotehexe for betaing and also a huge thanks to all of you who take the time to leave me comments or like this story. It truly, truly means the world to me.
As always, a big thank you to WMD92, xXMizz Alec VolturiXx, Sincere , Krankykittie, and a guest for reviewing chapter 18!
"No."
Hermione blinked back her confusion. She had just spent an hour explaining her situation to Lucius Malfoy and he merely sneered at her and said no in response? Her fingers itched up her wand, swallowing the anger that would see her hex his bollocks off.
"What do you mean no?" It must've been in her eyes how murderous her rage was growing because Regulus stood calmly and placed himself physically between where Hermione was standing and where the blonde wizard sat smugly in the leather chair that was probably older than all three of the occupants combined. Regulus held out his hand for her wand, and Hermione knew that if she held onto it any longer, Lucius Malfoy would get hurt in some way.
"I find no to be a very simplistic word. You should have a great understanding of it in your lexicon. That is if you are half as clever as you think you are." The menacing smirk that graced his thin lips made Hermione hunger for blood…his blood specifically. How many times in her life would a Malfoy insult her intelligence with a smile on their lips? He rolled his eyes at the balling of her fists. "What are you going to do? Go muggle on me?"
That was it…she realized. In her haste to explain herself, she forgot the most important part. Derailed and distracted by his peppering of questions about the future, she had never once brought up the other Malfoy she'd wanted to…and actually did, punch in the face.
"You wouldn't be the first Malfoy I've punched you know – if I was to go muggle as you said." This gained the intrigued response she'd been waiting for from the man. Regulus knew how to play this game, and Lucius Malfoy's one pressure point was his family.
"And pray tell, when did you punch my father? Unless of course you've laid hands on my wife or mother which I highly doubt as one lives in France and the other would never have let you survive such an encounter." It was true. Hermione saw it in his face. This Lucius loved his wife, he believed in her…she would soon bear him a son.
"No, it was not your father or your mother or Narcissa." She smirked at him now, turning the dynamic on its head. Hermione would tease and torment him and let him be the one to squirm.
Touching his fingertips together in front of his face in thought, all joking left his face. The gaze he fixed on her now was altogether predatory. Every inch the snake she knew hid behind the glamour of pureblooded society, she felt his eyes as if they were under her skin, seeing right through her.
"I suggest you explain yourself more clearly then. I have no more family." This was the moment. This was the opportunity. He was an elegant gazelle lapping up water at the local watering hole and she was what she was born to be…a lioness. Going for his throat, she smiled smugly at him and leaned in to his body, nearly whispering the words.
"You are about to. Have more family that is." Paying attention to her nails and refusing to meet his eyes, she could see his body stiffen in the corner of her eye. It was a particularly cruel and nasty trick, but she needed this…needed him.
"I will not play these games any longer." Within a moment, Lucius's wand was at her throat, and she realized that maybe she had gone too far. Hermione knew how hard it was for him and Narcissa to conceive. Draco had even spoken of multiple lost pregnancies before him when she'd gleaned information on his family from him. It was not one of her prouder moments.
"You will have a son. Don't believe me, go perform a detection charm on your wife." Hermione refused to break eye contact, refused to let Lucius have any power over her. She was not the little girl who met him in Diagon Alley when she was 12 years old. Hermione Granger was a grown woman who had more raw magical power than he would ever know.
"I…" Lucius backed away from her, shoving the tip of his wand at her throat briefly first. "She can't. We were told it wouldn't happen."
"Its already happened." Taking a deep breath, Hermione tried to push aside her knowledge of the monster this man would one day be. He may be a monster already, but in this moment, he was a man who desperately wanted to be a father. If she gave him the chance, he could be a better one this time around. "You have a pensieve correct?"
Lucius didn't respond verbally, just jerking his chin in the direction of a silver wall-mounted basin to their left. It was ornately carved with gemstones embedded in the top design…a gaudy and ostentatious sign of wealth, but one Hermione was grateful to see.
Placing her wand against her own head, she focused intently on her strongest memories of Draco Malfoy. The day she met him on the Hogwarts' Express. The first time he called her a mudblood. The day he brought Death Eaters into the castle. The grey eyes she stared at desperately pleading for help while she screamed…while she bled…while he did nothing. Tears were streaming down her face by the time the last memory had been extracted, and she dropped them into the pensieve.
"Go look for yourself. I'll…" She shook, rubbing away her tears. The air grew tight, and she knew that she needed to remove herself from this room. Away from the oppressive mahogany and walnut and silver with emerald green. "I'll wait outside. Watch these memories. Watch what your loyalties do to your son."
Escaping without a second look to either man in the room, she slid out from behind the door. She didn't bother with her enchantments, knowing that no one from the party would dare to trespass in Narcissa and Lucius's personal wing. Deep breaths came hard at first, but eased as minutes passed.
The anxiety of waiting seemed to war with the anxiety of her torture, and strangely enough, the two seemed to balance out. If she failed, if Lucius didn't agree to help her, then she would cast the Imperius herself. This was about more than just Lucius Malfoy and his family or her personal vendetta against Voldemort. This was about the thousands of lives lost to a meaningless fight that would be lost anyway. There were no winners in this war, just those who lost less.
"Hermione." Regulus's voice came through a barely cracked door, and Hermione breathed deeply as she stood. Her knees shook slightly as she rose, but she steeled herself as she turned the doorknob.
"So?" She asked, as she slunk back into the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind her. Her heart was beating so hard in her chest, that she could feel its flow in her toes, her ears and her fingertips.
"I have a son…I have a son and I fail him." It was perhaps the most genuine emotion she had ever seen on the blonde wizard's face, and it nearly made her feel sorry for him. Nearly.
"You do. He takes the mark at 16. A punishment for your ineptitude. Do you know how your precious Lord gets him to take it? He threatens your wife…his mother. I knew Draco from when I was 11 on, but I didn't know him properly until after…" She wouldn't tell him about Harry. He didn't deserve to know. "By the time I talked with him, he was a broken and rotting shell of a man being slowly pieced back together by the woman he loved. You can't even be there for your son because you are rotting in Azkaban under a life sentence."
Hermione kept her tone harsh, growing angrier with each passing word. This man destroyed so many lives, not least of which was that of his own son.
"Regulus says you have a plan…a way to destroy the Dark Lord." His voice hung in the air as if it wasn't necessarily a question or a declaration but rather a prayer. It was clear in the way he spoke, the red inflammation around his eyes…he wanted Voldemort dead, and he would do anything to help her do it.
"Well the first thing I need, is a diary."
Too much time had passed by the end of their discussion, and Hermione and Regulus left Lucius with a Hermes coin and a promise of another conversation. When the word horcrux had left her lips, the blonde wizard had flinched back as if she had slapped him and frowned. "Dark magic like that…he's a madman." Lucius had commented, growing deathly pale as Hermione told him that Voldemort had created not one, but multiple. He wouldn't make seven, she noted. Not in this time. Tom Riddle would never have the opportunity.
When Hermione arrived back to the study at Grimmauld Place, she felt the magic of the room remove the glamours that she had placed on herself and marveled at how relieved she was. A sense of dread had been her constant companion ever since Regulus formulated the plan all that time ago. It was a similar feeling to drifting mindlessly in the ocean and finally spotting land. However craggy and inhospitable the land was, it was a start.
"Regulus…" Hermione's voice left her in a rush, like her chest had been pressed and all the air in her body rushed out. "I…thank you. Thank you so much. Lucius is…this will change everything. Thank you for taking me up on my offer – for choosing to believe my crazy story. We are one step closer to putting Voldemort in the fucking ground and I couldn't have done it without you."
The gratitude she felt coursed through her veins, bursting out as she wrapped her arms tightly around him. He was not a very warm and gentle person, nor did he particularly enjoy physical contact, but she felt him relax slightly in her embrace. Slowly, he wrapped his arms around her in return, however hesitant and stiff they were.
"Thank you as well." Regulus began, and Hermione pulled back. "For offering." Stormy and warring eyes met her gaze and she wondered, not for the first time, what was going on in the man's head. In her expectations of how the past would go, becoming genuine friends with Regulus Black had never been a part of the equation. Regulus. Lily. James. Hermione had never planned for their friendship.
Just as soon as the moment between them had come, warm and endearing, it was broken again by a familiar wailing. Regulus, obviously switching into a protective stance, held his lithe fingers up to his lips to indicate that they should be silent.
"Reggie is that you? Do you have that pretty French witch with you? I'm having Kreacher serve tea in the parlor." Walburga's unmistakably unpleasant voice rang through the wood and Hermione was reminded of the last time she'd heard that voice; when that voice had condemned her own son to be kidnapped and likely murdered.
"Shite." Regulus cursed under his breath. There was no way that Hermione could slip out with Walburga in the parlor. Panic stricken eyes shifted anxiously to the man, and he took a deep breath and hung his head. Leaning in towards the witch who looked as if her heart might stop, Regulus's voice was filled with hesitation. "She's heard your voice, I can't make up an excuse. Either you floo away and she becomes suspicious of the mysterious French woman who fled her home or…" He paused, clearly pained by whatever it was that was coming next.
Based on the pain in his expression, Hermione knew what he was going to say, but she prodded him anyway. "Or…"
"Or you could…bloody hell." Regulus pulled his hand up to cover his face. "Or you could have tea with my mother."
It was a catch 22. There was no way Hermione could escape the house without raising suspicion of herself. She would have to take tea with Walburga Black.
Resuming the glamours when she left the study felt like a betrayal. Occlumency became increasingly difficult as memories of wanting to set her portrait on fire pulled to the front of her consciousness. Being in the same room as Walburga had been something she'd painfully avoided for a majority of the time she'd spent in Grimmauld Place, and it was an unpleasant turn of events to say the least that her streak was to be broken.
"I need you to give me your wand." Regulus warned, his hand against her back leading her gently out of the study. It was rational, Hermione knew this. Regulus didn't trust her to be in the same room as Walburga without harming her in some way and he was right not to. Pulling the wood from where it rested underneath the black fabric of her dress, she unclipped it from the holster around her leg. The wizard watched her with hungry eyes before having the awareness to look away, embarrassed.
The vine wood responded to her heightened agitation and sparked slightly when Regulus's thin fingers wrapped around the handle. Hermione just shrugged. It was not her fault that her wand could tell that she wanted to murder the blood purist bitch.
Tottering on her aching feet in the tall heels she had decided it was a good idea to wear to be on her feet all day, Hermione pasted on her brightest smile and rounded the corner that stood between her and the parlor. The dreary room seemed to be made somehow bigger by the lack of Walburga's portrait, but infinitely smaller due to her live and in person. As is customary when greeting pureblood women, Hermione kissed her on either side of her face.
"Eet is a pleasure to meet you Lady Black. Regulus 'as told me so much about you." If the older witch could tell Hermione's voice was as fake as her glamours, there was no sign of it as the woman smiled with all of her teeth and no warmth.
The man in question followed in after her then, settling in the chair that Hermione knew was Sirius's favorite in her time. She found herself briefly watching with unwarranted fascination as the younger black lounged in the chair in a much stiffer manner than Sirius had ever done. In every way that Regulus was prim and proper, Sirius was loose and vulgar. The space where her heart would be if she had the time to indulge it stung as she found herself thinking of his long limbs and warm touch.
Walburga's voice came back into her focus as she heard the witch call her false name, and Hermione slowly turned her head, diverting her eyes and blushing slightly at having been caught unaware. "You seem distracted dear. Don't tell me that there is some wizard waiting on you back in France."
A pedantic and petty part of Hermione strongly wished she could lie to the woman and tell her all about her army of muggleborn lovers, but she swallowed down her hatred and responded in the sing-songy fake French accent she'd become used to using.
"Oh non. I am 'ow do you say…on the market." The women shared a giggle, and it nearly choked Hermione in her throat, burning like acid as it bubbled up from her throat.
"I must sound like one of those harpies at the Malfoy's ball, but you really are so lovely. Regulus is still a bachelor you know…" She was cut off by Regulus making a groaning noise.
"Mother. I've told you, Ms. Selwyn is just a friend. Besides I'm still a bachelor because no one wants to marry the spare." Hermione's eyes snapped to his, and she saw the genuine hurt flash in his grey eyes for only a moment before they once again lost their life flicker and returned to the bored indifference he was so good at putting forth.
"You aren't a spare." Walburga spit out, dropping the façade of being a pleasant and proud mother for a moment. Seemingly remembering herself, she turned and cleared her throat. "I do apologize Ms. Selwyn. Regulus will be the heir soon enough, once my son of a bitch blood-traitor son is dead or my husband's father finally has the bollocks to properly disown him."
Sirius wasn't properly disowned? This information could be useful later on. Hermione saw an opportunity to gather more information, and she pounced on Walburga like the lioness she had grown to be throughout her childhood. "Regulus has told me so little about his brother."
"Regulus has no brother. That little blood traitor stopped being my son the day he was sorted into Gryffindor. When it comes to the Black family, we believe in purity and honor above everything. Toujours Pur. He threw all that away when he befriended a blood traitor and a half-breed. If it were up to me, he would be treated like all black sheep and stray dogs and put down…" Walburga's voice cut out as the beam of red light hit her straight in the chest. Hermione blinked once and then again as her heartbeat rang in her ears. Rage filled her body and her fists were drawn so tight that she could feel a small trickle of blood run through her fingers as her nails cut into her palm.
"Fuck." Regulus cursed, rushing over to check his mother. "Alive." He confirmed, staring at Hermione with a new emotion…fear.
"I…I've never had such a powerful bout of accidental magic. When I was a girl I made books float to me, vanished a mean girl's crayons…I didn't…I've never…" Air became thin around her as her lungs struggled to fill. She'd just jeopardized her whole mission. If Walburga awoke and remembered Hermione attacking her, she would want revenge. It wouldn't take much digging to figure out Jolene Selwyn didn't exist.
"Breathe Hermione." Regulus grabbed Hermione's hand, which had grown cold over the course of the tea and placed it against his chest. "Feel me breathe and do as I do." Breathing in through his nose and out through his mouth, she closed her eyes. It was easy, to feel the slow rhythmic pulse of his chest, but it was infinitely harder to get her chest to rise and fall. Her panic didn't recede, and she could feel the wizard's own breathing get more strained as he began to panic. Moving away from her, Regulus seemed to walk away and leave her, and Hermione whimpered and sobbed as her anxiety came crashing around her.
Alone, her chest heaved with the effort of breathing and she shook uncontrollably. Her eyes were shut so tight that it was like the black and white static from the telly was displaying across the inside of her eyelids. After an indistinguishable amount of time, Hermione heard the distinctive click of the front door of Grimmauld Place, and she wondered if it was Regulus returning, or someone come to kill her. Helpless and broken, she felt tender arms embrace her.
Tears were streaming down her face, and the last thing she remembered before she blacked out were the grey eyes that she saw when she opened hers…the wrong grey eyes. "Sirius…"
