Before I begin this next chapter… thanks to everyone who offered condolences regarding the recent death in my family. Your sympathy is much appreciated. ^_^
~~ Chapter Seventeen: French and Shakespeare ~~
The Malfoy summer home in Cardiff proved to be a prime location to lie low for a while. It was located out of the way and was someone difficult to get to, plus, there were Muggle-repelling charms all around it and it would provide seclusion from their mysterious enemies – for a time, anyway. Without the protection of a large number of other wizards and witches around, that was their only advantage.
It was just before sunset that Lucius Malfoy, his son, and their two guests arrived at the estate. The Malfoys wasted no time in giving Harry and Alina a quick tour of the house; however, the "quick tour" took nearly an hour because of the sheer size of the place. Afterwards, Harry and Draco decided they were going to make sandwiches for the four of them, and while they did that, Lucius offered to give Alina a "quick tour" of the immediate vicinity.
"I don't know if this is such a good idea," Alina commented as she and Lucius walked out into the garden. "The last 'quick tour' wasn't so quick."
"We won't go far," Lucius promised. "We'll keep the house in sight."
Alina glanced back at the massive abode towering above them. "That won't be very difficult."
"Touché," he said, and they both smiled.
"Parlez-vous francais?" she inquired.
"Oui," he answered. "Et toi?"
A smug look crossed her face as she spoke her reply. "J'assiste a l'ecole au Beauxbatons. Enchantement musical, mon ami distrait." Then she winked.
"That's right," Lucius said, nodding his head slightly as he remembered.
"I didn't know you spoke French," Alina commented.
"And German, Danish, Russian, and Spanish," he said. "It comes in handy for all the traveling I have to do for the Ministry."
"Are you still employed by them?"
"I've taken a leave of absence. Once everything goes back down to the normal amount of chaos, I will return."
"'Normal amount of chaos'?" she repeated.
"Once a new Minister is appointed and whatever attacked my family is eliminated," he explained.
Alina nodded. That made sense. The Ministry of Magic was a very complicated organization, and things had only gotten worse since the death of Cornelius Fudge. Hopefully, the new minister would restore order in a timely fashion. "Who do you think will become the new Minister?" she asked.
"Eko Chang," Lucius replied without hesitation. "He's relatively young for that position, but he is by no means incompetent."
"I guess we'll find out."
"Yes, I guess we shall."
They walked on in silence for the next few minutes, enjoying the beauty of their surroundings and the presence of the other. For some unknown reason, the memory of the escapade with the Dursleys earlier that day surfaced in Lucius's mind. He smiled to himself as he mentally replayed the events. Harry had been right – the Dursleys certainly hadn't altered his feelings toward Muggles for the better. They were gullible, dense, and ill mannered. He had quickly lost his patience with them and was about to turn them all into newts (or perform some other equally awful curse that broke nearly every law about Muggle-wizard relations) when Alina showed up.
Alina… oh, how that woman confused him. First, she nearly died to save Draco. Then Snape said she was in love with him, but what he witnessed the night Su Li was killed suggested otherwise. And then there was the incident with the Dursleys, where she pulled off the role of his wife without a hitch. He doubted that even Narcissa could have put on a better performance.
Lucius had mixed feelings about Narcissa. In truth, the only reason he married her was because he needed an heir. There was a physical attraction, of course – she was a very beautiful woman, and he wasn't so bad in the looks department himself. However, with no real substance, their lust quickly faded. Even though their marriage was little more than a social alliance, there was one thing they had a great amount of between them: respect. They didn't love each other, but they respected each other, and if they hadn't been so preoccupied with their own individual lives, they might have been able to become friends. Perhaps they would even have fallen in love eventually. Who knew? Certainly not him, and now that she was dead, there was no way he would ever find out.
He couldn't change the mistakes in his past, but he did have the power to affect the future. Lucius glanced at the woman walking beside him. Alina happened to look at him at the same instant, and she smiled warmly at him. She had a beautiful smile, he noticed. He smiled back and quickly looked away to avoid blushing. Never before had he felt like this about anyone. Was it… love?
Stop it, he told himself as those thoughts entered his head. Have you already forgotten that she's not a pureblood? Malfoys do not fall in love, and they most assuredly do not fall in love with Muggle-borns.
Just the same, though, the argument which had once been so convincing suddenly seemed meaningless…
Two hundred miles away, in London, another man was with the woman in his life. Unlike Lucius Malfoy, though, his feelings toward his partner were completely homogeneous. There were no second thoughts regarding her and the decision they were making.
Even so, Eko Chang was doing his best to make sure they were certain before proceeding. "There's still time, you know," he pointed out. "All you have to do is tell me to-"
"Get on with it," the man interrupted.
Chang nodded. "Right. Get on with it." He paused, trying to remember what came next. He had never performed a marriage ceremony before, and only participated in one himself many years earlier. No such luck. "I'm sorry, I forgot what comes next."
"Oh, it's all right," the woman said. "Just make something up. You're the minister."
"I'm an interim minister," Chang corrected, "and of magic." Then, with a shrug of his shoulders, he said, "But what in this world is more magical than the union of two hearts into one? By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you man and wife. You know what to do."
A warm smile appeared on the interim Minister of Magic's face as he became the sole witness to this union that would soon become known throughout the world. And there, under the pleased eye of Eko Chang, Albus and Minerva Dumbledore shared their first kiss as husband and wife.
"So the words… they mean nothing at all?"
"Absolutely nothing," Alina Terringer said in response to Draco Malfoy's question. "Musical Enchantment is purely melodic. That's why it works with instruments other than the voice. Instrumentalists become stronger faster than vocalists, but vocal is more convenient and far more powerful in the end, if you're willing to put in all the time and effort needed to attain that level of skill."
"Is it worth it?" inquired Harry Potter. The three of them were sitting on the floor in the library of the large house, and she was answering questions they had about her field. The current whereabouts of Lucius Malfoy were unknown.
Alina hesitated before giving a reply. "That depends on what you value in life," she said. "If you value power above all else, then nothing will give you more power than Musical Enchantment. It takes hard work, dedication, and commitment. If you don't focus your entire life in the field, you will never master it. But if you value friendship and family, it's not worth it. Devotion to the study must come before personal happiness, and it will drive away everyone you've ever loved."
Harry and Draco looked at each other. In their mind, this sounded like the voice of experience talking. They didn't understand, though. Alina was a Master of Musical Enchantment, and she seemed happy enough. She had friends, and all her students adored her. Was there something they missed?
"You say that like you've been through it," Draco said, speaking for both of them.
She closed her eyes and nodded. "I have." Her eyes opened, and her gaze became fixed on the two boys. "Know this, both of you. Nothing is worth being alone the rest of your life. Nothing. Don't make my mistake." She rose to her feet. "If you'll excuse me, please, it's been a long day. See you in the morning."
Once she was gone, Harry looked at Draco and said, "If she's happy with her life, then my name is Garfunkel."
Draco nodded in agreement. "And mine's Wilford. What do you think happened?"
"Isn't it obvious?" Harry asked. "She's lonely."
"Lonely…" Draco repeated. "But how? Everyone loves her. Everyone except my father, that is." He paused, then spoke again. "Well, I know he's a little put out over the fact that she's a Muggle-born, but he doesn't hate her."
"I think if they could get over the differences in their bloodlines, they could be good friends," Harry commented. "My parents were like that, you know – pureblood father, Muggle-born mother."
A mischievous smile crept onto Draco's face. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?"
Harry caught the look, and he grinned, too. "Absolutely."
The two boys high-fived and began plotting.
Half asleep, the newly married Minerva Dumbledore was laying on the bed in the bedroom of the small apartment provided by the Ministry of Magic to herself and her husband, replaying the events of the day in her mind. It was an unusual wedding, but it served its purpose. She knew from the minute she accepted Albus's proposal that a small, informal wedding with minimal attendance was what she wanted. The attendance certainly was minimal at their ceremony – only three of them were there. They hadn't planned to marry so soon; in fact, they hadn't planned to marry until the end of the school year. Recent events, however, made them rethink those plans. Neither one of them knew how long it would take to vanquish this enemy or even if they would survive to see its end, and the death of a student at the claws of a Nundu, of all creatures, did not boost their morale much. The light provided by a little happiness in the center of darkness never hurt anyone.
She heard the creak of a door opening, and then the click of it shutting, and smiled to herself. It had to be Dumbledore. He and Eko Chang had some things to go over, and he promised her he would be back at about this time. "Good evening, Professor Dumbledore," she said as she heard him enter the bedroom.
"Good evening yourself, Professor Dumbledore," he replied. He laid down on the bed so that her back was facing him, propped himself up with one elbow, and caressed her arm with his free hand. "If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss."
A smile appeared on her face. "Romeo and Juliet, act one, scene five," she said, recognizing almost at once where those words came from. She rolled over so she was facing him, and brought her palm to his. "Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss."
"Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?" he replied.
"Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer."
"O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do! They pray; grant thou, lest faith turn to despair."
"Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake."
"Then move not while my prayer's effects I take. Thus from my lips, by thine my sin is purged." He kissed her, softly and gently, as if she was a dream he would wake up from if the kiss was too strong.
"Then have my lips the sin that they have took," Minerva said when the kiss ended.
"Sin from my lips? O trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again."
The kiss that followed that line was much more intense than the previous. Soon, Dumbledore's lips left hers and drifted to her neck. Shivers of excitement ran down Minerva's spine, and she spoke again. "Lovers can see to do their amorous rites, and by their own beauties; or, if love be blind, it best agrees with night. Come, civil night, thou sober-suited matron all in black, and learn me how to lose a winning match, played for a pair of stainless maidenhoods. Hood my unmanned blood, bating in my cheeks, with thy black mantle till strange love grow bold, think true love acted simple modesty."
Dumbledore stopped kissing her. "You just skipped an entire act," he commented.
"I don't recall Romeo ever saying that."
He smiled and kissed her again. "Romeo can keep Juliet. I have Minerva."
"Then Juliet can keep Romeo. As long as Minerva has Albus, she will be satisfied."
And she was… very satisfied.
A/N: Sorry about the lack of AD/MM in the last few chapters… I think this made up for it, ha ha. Hope you all like Shakespeare and implicit love scenes. Implicit is good when you're trying to keep things at a PG/PG-13-ish level. Implicit is bad in calculus, though… implicit differentiation… bleh, hate implicit differentiation. *mad scowl* Oh, and in case you don't speak French, the rough translations for the Lucius/Alina French dialogue is as follows:
Alina: "Parlez-vous francais?" = "Do you speak French?"
Lucius: "Oui. Et toi?" = "Yes. And you?"
Alina: "J'assiste a l'ecole au Beauxbatons. Enchantement musical, mon ami distrait." = "I attended school at Beauxbatons. Musical Enchantment, my forgetful friend."
I'm a former first-year French student with a dictionary and a sudden desire to incorporate some language other than English into this story, so if my sentences and/or translations aren't entirely accurate, please find it in your heart to forgive me.
Today's Wednesday, so I'll wish you all a happy Wednesday and be off. ^_^