CHAPTER 38 - TRANSLATION
"That's it," said Hermione, her voice momentarily hoarse from disuse. "That's the last rune that matches the scroll. I've gone through the whole Grimoire twice to be certain. We haven't missed any."
Draco lowered his quill to rest upon the surface of the small writing table and stood, crossing his room one long stride to join her on his mattress. He took a seat, resting himself back against the headboard by her side as he reached out and took the proffered parchment from her hands. She turned, angling her body to face him and watched his eyes as they darted back and forth across her meticulous notes. Since they had retrieved the Black family Grimoire from Malfoy Manor, Hermione had been compiling the list; one column recorded each rune that appeared in the ancient scroll they had discovered in the library, the next noting each use of the corresponding symbol in the Grimoire.
"We're only missing three," Draco said, placing the parchment down before them.
She caught his eye, finding the anticipation she felt reflected in his gaze. "In theory, that should be enough."
"We found so much more information than I could have hoped for, but we must not get ahead of ourselves. As with most translations of ancient languages, many of these runes will be open to interpretation."
With an outstretched arm Draco pointed to one of the runes she had documented on her list, tapping it with his long finger.
"This one here," he said before reaching for the Grimoire and opening it to the corresponding section Hermione had listed. "Here, in this context, it means external. But that same rune-" he paused, flipping through the pages to find the next entry she had noted.
"Here!" He tapped against the place in the Grimoire where Hermione had identified the rune. "Here it translates to outward. Similar in meaning, yes. But a small difference could skew the overall meaning greatly; especially when one considers the exponential variables for each rune in a subsequent chain."
She watched him as he spoke, his gestures becoming increasingly animated as his enthusiasm grew. The way his brows shifted with the emphasis of certain words, so at odds with the stoic public facade he so often wore. An ache bloomed low in her belly and she sucked her lower lip into her mouth, moistening it with the tip of her tongue. This man, his intelligence – the eagerness with which he pursued knowledge – she found it beyond attractive.
Without stopping to consider her actions, she swiftly rose to her knees atop the mattress and threw herself at the wizard. To his credit, he responded with the well honed reflexes of a Seeker, pushing the Grimoire and notes out of harm's way before wrapping his arms around her waist. Their lips meeting in a fervent kiss as his hands lifted hastily to tangle in her hair.
Knock, knock, knock.
Hermione pulled herself from Draco's embrace with a startled gasp. The wizard groaned in response, his head falling back against the headboard with a thud.
"Who the fuck could that be?" Draco grumbled, his hand coming up to rub at his temples. "You're the only person who ever comes to my room."
"You should probably check who's there," she said as she shifted back to sit on the mattress once more. "It could be important."
Knock, knock, knock.
"Hold your damn Hippogriffs, I'm coming!"
With a sigh, Draco hauled himself up from the bed and made for the door. She watched as he cracked the door a fraction, his shoulder leaning into the doorframe and causing his body to obscure her from the sight of whomever stood on the other side. Almost instantly, she saw the tension leave the muscles of his back, before he turned his head back to catch her eye.
"They're after you, love."
The endearment caught her off guard, so much so that she almost didn't catch the meaning of his words. Someone was here – at Draco's bedroom door – looking for her. She hurried up from the bed, almost tripping on her own feet in her haste to make it to the door. Draco took a step back, allowing her to take his place at the threshold.
"Harry?" she asked.
The wizard offered her a lopsided smile. "Hey."
"What are you doing here?"
"Well, uh- You weren't in your own room so I thought you might be with Malfoy."
"We were working on some runes translations," she hastily supplied.
The corner of Harry's lip twitched upward at her overly defensive response. "Well, I hate to interrupt you swots, but there's someone at the portrait wanting to speak with you."
"Who?"
"Ravenclaw Seventh year. Lillian… Er, Fineweather? No, Fairweather. That's it!"
"The Head Girl?"
"Uh, yeah. I guess so," he replied, scratching at the back of his head.
She shook her head, but couldn't help but smile. Of course Harry hadn't bothered to take note of who their Head Girl was, that boy was far from observant this year. After a lifetime of hypervigilance she wouldn't begrudge him this temporary lax in attentiveness.
Turning her head to look over her shoulder she found Draco back on his mattress, reclined with quill and parchment in hand.
"Draco," she said, the blond wizard looking up to meet her gaze. "The Head Girl is looking to speak to me. I'll be back once I've spoken to her."
He merely inclined his head in understanding before returning his attention to their notes. Stepping out into the common room, she pulled the door closed behind her.
"It's Draco now, is it?" Harry asked, not bothering to hide the amusement in his tone.
"Oh, leave it," she replied, shoving playfully at his shoulder while trying to ignore the heated flush she felt colouring her cheeks.
"Not a chance," Harry chuckled, turning and making his way back to where Neville sat by the fireplace.
Opening the portrait of Lady Clair de Lune, she found the Head Girl waiting. She had seen the girl around the castle – a petite witch with deep blue eyes and soft honey coloured ringlets – but, never before had she seen the Ravenclaw so anxious.
"What's wrong Lillian?"
"Oh, uh- Please, call me Lilly," she requested softly. "Nothing's wrong, not exactly. I'm just a little nervous to be speaking to you. I'm so sorry to bother you in your common room, but you weren't at dinner this evening."
"There's no need to be nervous, Lilly," she said, fighting the urge to roll her eyes at the way people treated her in the wake of the war. "I'm just another student, no different to you."
"This would have been yours," she said, lifting her hand and touching a fingertip to the Head Girls badge on her robes. "If last year… If you hadn't been, uh-"
"At war," she supplied.
"Yeah."
"There's no need to feel like you've taken something from me, Lilly. Yes, at one point I would have loved to have been Head Girl. It wasn't you that took that from me though, it was an evil megalomaniac. Honestly, I'm glad McGonagall decided not to assign the Head roles to the Eighth years. I wouldn't have appreciated the extra responsibility this year."
The Ravenclaw's eyes fell to the stone floor, her hands ringing the leather strap of her satchel with both hands.
"You want my help with something," Hermione deduced.
"I don't want to be the one to offload an extra responsibility on you."
She suppressed her desire to sigh, overwhelmed by the thought – not for the first time – that the students in the lower years seemed far less mature to her than they had before the events of the war.
"Why don't you just tell me what it is you're needing help with and I'll decide if I'll be able to offer you any assistance?"
"The Headmistress has asked us, the Head Boy and I, to organise an event to promote inter-house unity," said Lilly.
Hermione groaned internally. This was the exact sort of thing she wanted no hand in. This year she had no interest in engaging in a leadership role, or even participating in a group project for that matter. Frankly, the mere thought of it exhausted her.
As if sensing her reluctance, the Head Girl amended, "I don't need your help with the planning or any of the hands-on organisation of the event."
Hermione felt herself relax. "What do you need from me then?"
"I was just hoping to get your opinion on the two ideas we have narrowed our choices down to. The Prefects can't seem to come to a consensus on the matter and I know you've played an integral role in successful past events."
"What are your options?"
"The first option is a Quidditch match with mixed teams, players from all houses. Though I do have concerns about this option. On paper it sounds viable, but I'm not sure how far it will actually go to foster inter-house unity. It will only be two groups of seven students that are required to work closely together, there is no real incentive to encourage interactions with the spectators."
"I have to agree," Hermione replied. "Quidditch has to be the epitome of house rivalry at Hogwarts, it seems far from the best environment to encourage the sort of intermingling required."
Lilly's gaze dropped to the ground once more as she scuffed the leather sole of her shoe against the stone. Hermione saw the girl's cheeks colour before she spoke.
"The other option is admittedly a little cliche."
"A dance?" Hermione surmised.
"We were thinking more along the lines of a formal ball, similar to the Yule Ball that was held for the Triwizard Tournament. It would be a requirement that everyone attend with someone from another house, or as a mixed house group."
"That's actually not a terrible idea. I think allowing group attendance in addition to couples will lessen tension as well," Hermione said, nodding her approval of the Head Girls plan. "I would consider restricting attendance to Fourth years and above, otherwise you are going to have a difficult time monitoring the number of students. While you might want to think of some secondary events that are open to the wider student body, the younger years are likely to require less persuasion than their older peers to branch out in their friendships."
"McGonagall wants the event to take place before the Easter holidays, I'll still need time to plan however so I'd like to wait until at least next month to hold the ball. Oh Merlin, I need to think of a theme!
Hermione considered the options for a moment, it needed to be something to bring students from all houses together, rather than divide. They had to choose something that put them all on equal footing.
"The vernal equinox is on the twentieth of March," she mused.
The Head Girl's eyes widened, her hands moving to hastily unfasten the latch on her leather satchel. Withdrawing a scrap of parchment and her quill she began to write.
"Yes, that will… Uh-huh, perfect," Lilly muttered to herself as she became lost in her planning.
Hermione smiled softly, the girl reminded her so much of how she had once been. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had desired the role of Head Girl. Though now, all she wanted was to leave those responsibilities to someone else. She just wanted to go back to Draco, to work on unravelling the secrets of their scroll.
"Well," Hermione said, startling Lilly from her note taking. "If that's all you needed from me-"
"Yes," she said hastily. "Sorry to have kept you so long. Thank you Hermione, you've been such a fantastic help."
She offered the Ravenclaw witch a smile. "Goodnight, Lilly," she said before stepping back through the portrait hole, leaving the girl still scratching away enthusiastically at her parchment.
She crossed the common room – ignoring the all too knowing looks from Harry and Neville as she passed them by the fireplace – and made her way back to Draco's door. With a whispered password she opened the door and stepped into his room. The wizard must have been engrossed in a particularly enthralling section of the translation, for he did not so much as raise his head to look at her as she closed his bedroom door behind her.
This, right here, was the man's most endearing quality she decided. The way he lost himself in the pursuit of knowledge. She had come to recognise his tells – when he found an Arithmancy equation particularly challenging or when hyperfocused on a brew – his normally rigid facade gave way by an increment, as if his brain were too occupied to maintain the mask. Her eyes wandered over his body, from the small crease between his brows, to the bouncing of one knee. The way he twirled his wand absently in his long fingers, his lips moving ever so slightly with the utterance of silent syllables as he read.
She closed the distance between herself and his bed, taking a seat on the mattress by his side. He stilled instantly, his eyes snapping up to meet her own.
"Granger," he breathed, voice hoarse from disuse. She must have been gone longer than she had first thought. "You're back."
"That I am," she replied.
He thrust the parchment he held in her direction. "Look at this."
As she took the parchment from his hands, he shifted closer to her atop the mattress. One arm snaked around her back to hold her at the waist as he leant past her shoulder to point out a particular section of his notes. The parchment was nearly covered in various annotations, sections crossed out, others circled. Then, at the bottom of the parchment a line of his elegant script, recently underlined in ink that had yet to fully dry.
Soles bare, grounded to earth. Body, mind, spirit align.
"At first I believed those first two runes to translate to bare one's soul, but then something about the next chain of runes felt familiar. Body, mind, spirit - I think there is little room for debate of the direct translation of these three. You can see here-" he said, pausing to indicate one of the page's many annotations. On closer inspection, she realised it was a list identifying page and paragraph numbers below a depiction of each of the three runes in question. "Yes, right there, I've listed at least twenty three occurrences of these particular runes in the Grimoire."
"So they are commonly mentioned?" she asked.
"Not just in isolation," he clarified. "All three are mentioned in relation to the other on multiple occasions."
"What does this tell us? Besides the mention of body, mind and spirit being a common occurrence in old magics?"
"Do you remember when I told you Bel- that I was trained in Occlumency?" he asked.
Her eyes widened in understanding. "You told me your initial study of Occlumency was theoretical, that it was one of many lost magics in the Black family Grimoire."
"Exactly," he said, pulling the Grimoire forward and flipping through the pages. "Which is exactly why this line was familiar to me. Just here."
He tapped on the heading of the page and then trailed a finger down to a line of text. Due to the enchantments on the tome, where he saw English, she saw only runes. Taking this to her advantage, she withdrew the ancient scroll from her small beaded bag and cancelled the protective charms they had cast over it before unfurling it atop the mattress.
"You're right!" she exclaimed. "Right there, the sequence of runes is an exact match for this line in the theoretical Occlumency. Does this mean the scroll we found relates to Occlumency?"
"Of that, I am doubtful. While this line is the same, the scroll depicts this rune here-" He pointed to a rune he had circled on his notes. "Numerous times. It's one I mentioned earlier, it translates to outward or external. Nothing about the study or practice of Occlumency could be considered such."
"Legilimency then, perhaps?" she pondered allowed, before answering her own question. "No, while the external to Occlumency's internal, it wouldn't have a theoretical framework like this. Occlumency is an intuitive magic, while Legilimency has a practical application - a spell to vocalise with correct pronunciation, a wand movement to perfect. While related, they are very different magics."
"Precisely my line of thought," Draco replied. "The theoretical Occlumency is complicated, but much of what I studied was specific meditative states and how to achieve them. The line that is mirrored in both the Grimoire and the scroll, it is one of those techniques."
"So your hypothesis is that the scroll depicts a form of intuitive magic, one harnessed through the practice of a particular meditative technique?" she asked, barely able to contain her excitement at the monumental breakthrough in their research.
"Yes," he stated, his face breaking into a wide grin. "That's exactly what I'm saying."
Invigorated by their breakthrough they threw themselves wholeheartedly into the translations, comparing the runic symbols to various English interpretations they had identified throughout the Grimoire.
Hermione had no sense of how long they had been enthralled by their work, but as she was forced to stifle a yawn she concluded it must have been quite some time. The sound caught Draco's attention, his brows furrowing as he looked up from his notes.
"Tempus," he said, with a flick of his wand. "Shit, Granger. It's half two. We really should call it a night, we have class in the morning."
Reluctantly she conceded. It wasn't that she disagreed, she knew they needed rest, but they had been making such great progress at last.
Draco stood, his elongated spine cracking as he stretched. Hermione watched as he made his way to his wardrobe, rummaging within for a moment with his back to her. She watched him still, the muscles in his shoulders tensing before he turned to face her. The evident concern on his face caused her gut to twist uncomfortably. As he held out the empty glass vial for her to see, a wave of guilt washed over her for not informing him of her intentions.
"We never went to Madam Pomfrey to collect your refill of Dreamless Sleep today," he stated.
"I know."
"You did this on purpose?"
She winced at the small hint of accusation in his tone and realised that she had upset him by not informing him of her decision beforehand.
"I should have told you," she said. "I'm sorry."
"Why didn't you?"
"I've wanted to stop for a while now," she confessed. "I was worried that if I told anyone, if I told you-" She sighed, unable to hold his eye. "If I told you my intention but then couldn't follow through… I didn't want you to be disappointed with me."
Draco crossed the distance back to his bed in two short strides and sat down on the mattress by her side. Reaching out, he grasped her shoulder with one hand, the other lifting her chin gently until their gaze met once more.
"I wouldn't have been disappointed if you'd changed your mind," he said, tone sincere. "You've managed to reduce your dose to half of what Pomfrey originally prescribed you. That's a huge achievement, Granger. But we both know that stopping entirely is going to be difficult."
"I want to be free of it," she confessed quietly.
Wrapping an arm around her and pulling her into his side, Draco placed a soft kiss atop her head. "You should have told me, we could have put in place contingencies."
"I don't think planning would have helped much, honestly," she said. "Though there is something you could do to help."
"Anything."
She buried her face into Draco's chest, her anxiety preventing her from forming the words she knew she needed to say. As if sensing her distress, the Slytherin brought his hand to her back and began to rub soothing circles through her clothing.
"I don't want to be alone," she admitted. "I know we haven't really talked about the night I stayed here after the Manor. But, would you mind if I stayed with you tonight?"
She lifted her gaze up to look at him and saw his lips pulled up into a genuine smile, the blue hue bleeding out into his irises.
"You can stay with me whenever you want," he said. "In fact I've been hoping you would want to again. I've just been hesitant to mention it, as I didn't want to pressure you in any way."
She lifted her head and placed a soft kiss on his lips. "I'll need to fetch something to sleep in."
Draco's soft smile shifted into a smirk. "I've still got the Oxford you wore last time. In fact, I find myself quite partial to seeing it on you."