For anyone interested, I now have some original fiction WIPs posted. You can find the link on my FFN profile, or simply head over to FictionPress. com and check for me (same name).
Chapter Fourteen
Hermione seemed more driven than usual in the days to follow. While Thorfinn's gift had definitely lifted her spirits, it had also stirred a host of old emotions she'd not yet been prepared to deal with attached to memories that were still murky at best. Salazar curled around the back of her neck—his tiny, serpentine form hidden almost entirely by her wild hair and making Thorfinn wonder if she planned to use this trick to tout her pet around in public while he was still small enough to make keeping him shielded from view possible—she zoomed through the dusty tomes with a renewed determination, carefully discarding useless volumes, and he suspected her delicate movement was only on account of how she'd trained herself to handle books. Precious cargo they were to her, after all.
By the end of the next week, she'd fully sorted the stacks completely. He tried to help as well as he could, but it seemed the witch had implemented some private system which caused her distress when he placed one of the books in any incorrect spot. For a few fleeting seconds, he wondered almost facetiously if the Malfoys of old had perhaps spelled their archives to drive mad anyone who put them out of their original order—assuming Lucius was correct, and that order wasn't at all lunacy, but rather a system lost to time. It might've been easier to just leave her to it, yet he could not abandon her in her pursuit. Instead, he would simply read the bit of information that caused him to think this or that particular book could prove useful and then wait for her direction.
But . . . he was beginning to worry. The young woman barely spoke these days. She was so engrossed in her search, she did nearly everything but sleep and take meals down here—and those things were only because he carried her up to bed at night and Narcissa refused to allow eating in such a dusty space, concerned what might get on the food.
One thing she never seemed to forget to do was to take Salazar out to the gardens for a few minutes each day to let him hunt for insects, and to keep a saucer of fresh water on the desk of the archive room for him when he was thirsty, despite Mrs. Malfoy's mild objection—a cleansing charm was no big deal, after all. Damnedest thing to watch him slither down her arm to the desk, intake his fill and the return to his hiding spot, as though he'd already been trained. That was when Thorfinn noticed it. He'd heard her murmuring to the sleek creature every so often, but it wasn't until he actually tried to listen to her, tried to figure out precisely what she was saying to Salazar, that he was able to make out the hissing and sliding syllables that escaped her lips.
She'd remembered. Hermione Granger was speaking Parseltongue.
Salazar, the baby Basilisk, was so obedient because she was gently instructing him on what to do. Thorfinn recalled hearing Sabina speak to her pet so when they were children and now he wondered if this had been why they were so attached to one another. Even as young as she'd been, she must've raised her first Basilisk from a baby. He thought perhaps it was no wonder that she had been so mature for her age, pretty much always. Even a thousand years ago, and at all of five or six years old, her intellect had been recognized, and responsibilities beyond her age assigned her because of it.
He didn't imagine Rowena and the human Salazar would've entrusted him or even Helena to raise such a potentially dangerous pet from so early an age.
Yet, she didn't even seem to notice she was speaking as a Parselmouth. Thorfinn couldn't be certain what her response would be if he pointed it out, so he let it be, deciding she would make the realization when she was ready.
Her nights were filled with yet more memories disguised as dreams, but her sleep was far from restful. She tossed and turned from dark 'til dawn, occasionally slapping him awake entirely by accident or disturbing Salazar from where he lay curled into a neat little coil on the bedside table. He began to suspect she was looking forward to her nocturnal recollections—and not because of anything to do with learning who she'd been or cataloging what had been taken from her. No. After waking, she'd recount the events in a rushed whisper, trying to pick apart all she'd seen and experienced. That was when he understood. She'd completely forgone trying to learn about herself in her desire to scrape together clues that might aid in her search for proof of Godric's treachery.
The single-mindedness of her pursuit was becoming mildly terrifying.
Even the Malfoys had noticed, though Lucius and Narcissa were far too gracious to comment on the bruise shaded half-moons forming beneath her eyes or the way her recent shut-in behavior—yes, with the blessed exception of Salazar's hunting trips in the garden, which granted her fresh air for all of ten minutes a day, if that much—had seemed to dull her appearance, leaching some of the color from her skin and widening her already large, dark eyes so that she looked absolutely haunted.
Draco, of course, was the one to comment that they now seemed to have a new ghost lurking about the house who just so happened to resemble Hermione Granger. Thorfinn had been quick to clamp a hand over the other wizard's mouth and drag him out of sight, but when he looked back, he realized that Hermione hadn't even heard the quip.
He knew she was desperate to find something, anything, the smallest scrap of evidence before her friends returned from abroad so that when she revealed her secret, she could show them that her father's identity didn't make her a monster-by-proxy, because they had no idea who the monster really was.
Now, he leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb of the archive room, watching her as she poured over one of the accounts, her quill poised carefully over a fresh sheet of parchment as she waited to note anything of importance.
"Please don't hover," she said, her voice so soft he barely heard her. Hermione hadn't even glanced up in his direction. "It's distracting."
Frowning, he pushed away from the entrance and crossed the room. She was going to make herself sick at this rate.
Heaving a sigh, he hunkered down to kneel beside her chair. "Hermione?"
She was engrossed in her search and he tried again. Nothing.
Pursing his lips together, he took a tack he knew she wouldn't like. "Sabina?"
The change in her was immediate. Her posture stiffened and she winced, collecting herself before turning her attention to him, at last. "I've asked you not to call me that," she said, still whispering.
"Well, I used the name you've asked me to call you—twice—and you didn't respond."
Closing her eyes, she pressed her fingertips to her forehead. "I'm sorry. I'm just so—"
"Caught up, I gathered that." Thorfinn sighed again, reaching up to tuck some of her wild hair behind her ear. Salazar, from his perch 'round her neck, moved to snap at the intrusion, but a flick of his tongue told him by scent who said intruder was, and he settled back down. "I know this is important to you, but you're starting to worry me."
Her curious, haunted look turned into a lost, haunted look, which seemed worse, somehow, as she glanced from him to the book open upon the desk, and back. "I'm sorry to cause you concern, but I thought this was important to both of us."
"It is. That doesn't mean I can't also worry about you." He drifted closer, resting his forehead against her knee. "You need to take a break."
Features crumbling, she curled her fingers into his hair. "I can't. I have to find something, please."
The desperation in her voice tore at him, but he knew he had to stick to wand on this one. Lifting his head, he met her gaze. "I'm by no means telling you to give up. All I'm asking is a few days away from this. Just you and me—and Salazar, of course. Hell, we can even hole up in your Muggle house and just not be bothered by anyone. No Malfoys, no dusty rooms, no pressure. It'll be like a vacation. If a clue is here, then it's not going anywhere; it will still be here when we get back."
Her shoulders slumped. That did sound nice. And he was right. In a few months' time, Salazar would be the size of a full-grown anaconda no one would be able to look in the eyes, and he'd only get larger from there. If she was intent on keeping him with her until he was too large to hide and old enough to start managing himself, this might be the only time during all of this that she and Thorfinn could take a few days for themselves. There was a little under another month and a half, still, before everyone got back. God. Had it really only been two weeks since this all started?
She was losing her sense of time. She was . . . she was losing her sense of herself.
Dropping her face into her palms, she groaned. "I just feel like I have to find something."
"I wasn't going to say anything, but . . . ." Thorfinn shrugged, reaching toward her neck to give Salazar an affectionate little brush with the tips of his fingers. "It might be a good idea to check in with the Ministry while you're there. Just an owl, or by Floo? You're supposed to be concerned with the search for your Muggle parents, remember?"
Her body drooped at the mention. Even if they were found and given back their memories, they'd likely be surprised if they thought 'their daughter' still believed herself to be Hermione Granger, Muggle-born. But she understood his meaning.
"Of course, you're right. For the time being, I have to keep up appearances." She lowered her hands and nodded. "I might not find anything before Harry and the Weasleys return. I . . . I might never find anything, at all. But, assuming I will find something, I need to maintain myself as the person they believe me to be until I do. For my own safety, for yours, even for the Malfoys."
Those brown eyes, which had just seemed to spark to life for a few precious moments there, dimmed again. Alarmed, his brows pinched together. "What?"
She cast her gaze toward the vaulted stone ceiling and forced a gulp down her throat. "I was just thinking. Um, I said this isn't about establishing the new order my father imagined, and it's not. It's about exactly what I said, righting the way our world thinks of him. But if I can't do that . . . ." Tears gathered and she found herself sniffling. Her heart broke at what she was thinking. "If I can't do that, I don't think I'll be able to stay here."
"In Malfoy Manor?'
Hermione shook her head. "I mean in the Wizarding world, well, at least in Britain, anyway. Knowing what I know now? I don't think I'd be able to keep going in a place where 'Salazar Slytherin's evil ways' are treated as historical fact." She pouted miserably. "If we can't find proof of the past, then . . . I'm going to have to pack up and leave. Somewhere I won't to be barraged with lies just by being a part of the world. I am honestly afraid that if I can't manage this, if I stay here but I can't prove who I am and what really happened, I might go mad."
She truly didn't want it to come to that. Then again, what she really wanted wasn't even possible, she knew that—for the proof she needed to fall into her lap, for Harry and the entire Weasley clan, and all of her friends, to take the time they needed with the truth and still welcome her into their lives with open arms as though they didn't see her any differently.
The sheer impossibility of it hurt, seeming in danger of suffocating her for a few terrifying seconds, as surely as the mere thought of separating herself from Harry and the others did.
Thorfinn appeared to take a moment with that. Finally, he nodded. "Okay."
Her brows furrowed, her expression sobering a little. "Okay what?"
A pensive puff of air hissed out from between his lips and he clasped both his hands around hers. "If we fail, and you want to leave, then that is what we'll do. We will go anywhere you want."
The witch's breath caught in her throat. Suddenly, it was a struggle to keep those tears in her eyes. He just kept surprising her. "We?"
To his credit, he did not appear affronted at her shock. "Of course. Not exactly like I've got anything here to keep me tied to Britain, now is it?"
"But . . ." She shook her head, her gaze searching his. There was a vague yet comforting awareness of Salazar stretching to brush the top of his soft, scaly head against her jaw. "You told me you wanted to collect on the empire my father promised you."
The wizard before her shrugged. "Not much point in any of that without you."
"Is it really something you could turn away from?" Every day since he'd turned up in her kitchen a little over two weeks ago, he proved to her again and again that he was not the person he'd been before Voldemort had fallen. He was no longer the brash, angry, temper-tantrum-prone man who set things ablaze with upsetting frequency just to prove a point. Thorfinn Rowle had somehow transformed from that horrid young wizard she'd only ever heard about and seen across the battlefield, raging at the world for reasons he didn't understand, into the Viking Prince he'd been born to be. Careful with his temper—though that was very much still there, very much still a part of him—protective of what he thought was right . . . even doting on his betrothed.
Still, she had trouble believing even a reformed Death Eater with the memory of a gilded life a millennium ago could give that up.
"Dear Lord, you can be thick sometimes. You're really missing the point," he said with a derisive chuckle as he shook his head. "The very idea was to have that with you. I want to find this proof as much as you do, but we both know it might not be possible. So . . . yeah. If it comes to that, and you want to leave, then we will leave. We will go wherever you want, do whatever you want. Just me, you, and our eventually giant-arse serpent we won't ever be able to look in the face of."
She threw back her head and let out a mock sob. "God, why do you have to be so thoughtful?"
"I told you," he started, offering a gentle grin, the blue of his eyes glittering from the way the lantern light in the room filtered over him, "Vikings take the responsibility, and honor, of keeping their wives happy very seriously."
In the midst of all the misery she was feeling over these 'what-ifs,' Hermione's heart warmed. "You . . . you really think of me that way already, don't you? Not your betrothed, not . . . not some childhood companion all grown up now, but you think of me as—" She paused, she couldn't bring herself to actually say the word. Instead, she settled for, "Yours?"
He smirked, dropping his gaze to his hands clasped still around hers. "Haven't exactly been subtle about that, have I?"
She shrugged. "Unless you count all the talk about which of us wants to not marry the other one more."
A snicker sputtered out of him. "After . . . after the War, after the false heir fell . . . ." He paused, darting the tip of his tongue along his lips in an almost nervous gesture that seemed very not-Thorfinn Rowle. "I was a bit . . . taken aback, I suppose, that you didn't remember. I felt lost, especially since I was alone. That wasn't supposed to happen, we were supposed to at least have each other. Lucius Malfoy noticed the change in my demeanor instantly. Turned out he'd been waiting for it. Took me in, hid me from the Ministry, much to Draco's confusion at the time. But there was something I had to do—something only I could do."
A certainty that she knew where he was going with this settled around her shoulders. "You had to watch me, didn't you?"
His eyes locked with hers. "I was the only one who knew Sabina. I had to keep tabs on you so that I could tell if you began to remember or not. When you didn't, when it seemed nothing with you was changing, we became concerned."
The witch nodded. "But you had to monitor me. You had to get to know me to spot the differences, if they happened." Her eyes clouded over a bit. "You got to know me when I wasn't even aware of you."
Now it was Thorfinn's turn to nod. "You were . . . unavoidable for me." A small, somewhat distracted grin curved his mouth. "When I wasn't keeping an eye on you, I was here with Lucius and Narcissa; they'd be wondering aloud, plotting about how to help you. Look at the papers and of course, there you and all your little DA friends were, nearly every other bloody day. At first, it annoyed the hell out of me, that you could be so inescapable, yet have nothing at all to do with it. But then, somehow, I started looking forward to it. I would catch myself counting the minutes until it was time to go see what you were up to that particular day."
Hermione held her breath, feeling her heart thump wildly behind her ribcage, cognizant of the beat of her own pulse beneath her skin. Was he . . . was he saying what she thought he was saying?
"I was starting to find happiness in just watching you live. God, that sounds rubbish." Rolling his eyes, he uttered a mirthless laugh at himself. "Sappy and rubbish and idiotic."
"No, no." She offered him a smile. "Please, go on."
Giving her hands a delicate squeeze, he relented. "You already know what I'm going to say, I can tell."
She had to remind herself to breathe. "Say it anyway."
He winced, shaking his head. Merlins' arse, he was never going to be able to say no to her, was he? "I started to realize that I was . . . falling for this witch. And she didn't even know I was there." His eyes widened a little for emphasis as he shrugged. "Literally did not. You were pretty clueless about the whole thing."
A surprised laugh bubbled out of her. "Oh, that's not fair."
"It is."
"It is not," she said, still giggling as she let herself droop forward, resting her forehead against his shoulder.
"But," he went on, tipping his head to lay his cheek lightly over her ear. "There it was. Nothing to do with the past, nothing to do with the betrothal, or anything I recalled of the girl you'd been, it was just . . . you. Been stuck on you ever since, like the poor, hopeless sod I am."
"Oh, it's not so bad." Her voice sounded calm, almost whimsical, for the first time in days.
"Isn't it?" he asked, smiling in spite of himself. "Are you only saying that because you're a poor, hopeless sod, too?"
She recognized what he was truly asking. "I'm getting there," she said, her heart feeling light for admitting it.
His frame trembled just a bit, as though he was in danger of collapsing under her for a split-second. "Thank God. Because if you were about to say no, I'd have been forced to start calling you Sabina again."
"Don't you dare."
"Don't give me a reason."
An amused breath escaped her lips. "You're right. I need . . . I need to get away from this for just a few days. Remember myself for a bit and then come back."
"That's my girl," he said, before slipping his arms around her and standing, cradling her small frame to him.
"Thorfinn?" She arched a brow as he started from the room carrying her.
He shook his head at her. "I'm sorry, did I give you the impression I wasn't going to be ridiculous?"
Smiling, she gave up, laying her cheek against his shoulder. "Not a once, actually."
