"The desire of love is to give. The desire of lust is to get." (Proverb)
Eleanor finished a light dinner in the great hall and tried to concentrate on Madam Hooch discussing some of the more arcane rules of quiddich with Professor Flitwick. The four houses had already managed good line-ups this term and it was promising to be an exciting year of matches. Fortunately Professor Snape got in on the conversation and tried to make a strong point for a Slytheryn win at the end of the year, which was hotly debated by Professor Flitwick, so she could afford to let her concentration drift.
As she sipped a cup of tea for dessert she felt that Albus Dumbledore seemed to be looking in her direction a few times, but every time she glanced over he was talking to Minerva McGonagal. Nerves, she told herself and was glad when the bell announced the end of dinner and she could walk back to her room accompanied by a whole troop of Ravenclaw students who discussed their plans of going to Hogsmeade for the weekend.
Back in her quarters she hurried to get ready. A quick wash, change of clothes and brush through her hair seemed sufficient. She fastened a low-slung belt around her hips, put her wand in its sheath, selected a thin black velvet choker with a silver knotwork design and stretched her hand over her desk to have her portkey snakes arrange themselves around her wrist. Finally she was ready. She wrapped up her notebook with her translation, and stepped into the middle of her room. "Abraxas," she said in a commanding voice and felt the portkey whisk her away. Seconds later she found herself in a high, candle-lit room surrounded by bookshelves.
Lucius Malfoy sat in a chair at the far end of the room by the fireplace and now got up and folded a newspaper he had been reading. She watched him as he placed the paper behind him, stretched and walked towards her to greet her. Flames were dancing off the pale gold of his hair and he looked at her with a smile that seemed to even reach his grey eyes. "Eleanor," he called out, and then grasped her hands as he stood before her. "I am delighted to see you. I hope your apparition was comfortable?"
She found it easy to smile back as he lifted her right hand to inspect his gift. "Perfect, Lucius. This is the most beautiful portkey I could imagine." He gently turned her wrist to look at the snakes. "Yes, they seem to like you," he murmured in that silky, intimate voice she knew so well by now. "Then again, I don't think they ever had a more beautiful owner. Your appearance is a delightful surprise every time we meet." In his usual lingering fashion he finally kissed her hand before he released her.
"May I offer you anything?" he asked. "I have just received a shipment of red wine from Hungary that you might like." She agreed and felt his hand at the small of her back as he stepped to her side and gently led her back to the fireplace. She took a look around while he poured a crystal goblet of wine for her. The library seemed very old with carefully waxed honey-colored oak wood floors and ceiling-high shelves made from the same material. She wished she could lock herself up in here for a few weeks and explore. This room held probably as much arcane knowledge as the old library at Hogwarts, though it would be of a somewhat darker nature. High west-facing windows caught the golden rays of a rich September sunset over what seemed to be a well-tended, elegant English garden.
"Here you are," Lucius voice pulled her back from her observations as he handed her a beautifully cut glass filled with velvet-black wine. He lifted a similar goblet to hers and toasted her. "Welcome to Malfoy Manor, Eleanor." She looked at him, green eyes meeting grey. "Thank you for inviting me," she answered and drank. The wine tasted of rain-soaked earth, apple blossoms and cloves. She watched his throat move as he swallowed and felt an odd dark excitement course through her. "Oh, and I have something for you, this time." She pulled out the parcel she carried and handed it to him. He sat down his glass and took the book from her. She watched his long hands as he carefully stripped the paper and inspected the pages.
When he looked up at her, she read surprise in his eyes. "You made a handwritten translation for me." He read the inscription on the fly-leaf.
"To Lucius Malfoy, May you know the shadow but live in the light. Always, Eleanor Sartorius."
He lifted an eyebrow. "That is a translation of your family's motto, vive lumine, disce opacum." He gently closed the notebook. "It is a beautiful and priceless gift. I did not expect that you would want to share the full knowledge of the book with me. I am truly grateful." She took another sip of the wine. "I am intending to publish, actually. I think that some of my grandfather's recommendations will make life less – hazardous – for unsuspecting muggles. As long as we are practicing the dark arts, that may be a benefit. At the very least we'll fly under the Ministry of Magic's radar, or their laws can't touch us."
He tilted his head as if he wanted to question her motivation, obviously protecting muggles was not very high on the Malfoy agenda, then thought better of it and put down the book. "I am sorry, I forgot," he suddenly said. "Your cloak, I haven't even asked you to take it off. Dobby!!" he called over his shoulder.
Presently a depressed-looking house elf in an old ratty pillow case came scuttling in and Lucius stepped behind her, lifted the heavy wool fabric off her shoulders and passed it to the elf who staggered slightly under his load as he left the library. "Why don't you have a seat, we could move over to this table and take a look at the translation while you tell me about the book. I noticed the original had quite a few rather curious diagrams."
He picked up the book and his glass and she followed him to a broad reading table, admiring the easy, powerful grace of his movements. "Lumos," he said and lit a lamp with his spell. So far she was impressed and a little disappointed at the same time. He had been an exemplar of decorum, and if this was an indication of things to come, she would be leaving in about two hours without a single strand of her hair out of place, not quite the night she had imagined in her wilder dreams of him.
He pulled out a chair for her and helped her get settled, then took his seat right next to her. At least he managed to sit closer than was strictly necessary, which was reassuring. If she moved her left foot a fraction, the black velvet of her dress came in contact with his right leg. His elbow was already touching her arm and she could feel the heat of his skin through the thin grey silk of his shirt. For a moment she found herself distracted by his proximity and by his scent.
She had never been this close to him and was analyzing a heady mixture of vetivert and acacia that struck her as very appropriate for him. A sidewise glance revealed his aristocratic profile with his high-backed aquiline nose, heavy eyelids and full, mobile lips. As if by instinct he looked over at her at the same moment and their eyes met. Neither of them spoke, neither of them looked away, and the atmosphere in the room suddenly changed. Static crawled over her skin as if she stood on the brink of a storm.
Finally she licked her lips. "Are there any topics you are particularly interested in?" Lucius' thoughts raced. She had just given him the perfect opening. He would only have to steer the conversation to the generation of the homunculus and he would be able to obtain all the information he needed to get Lepidus off his back. But it was so damn hard to concentrate. There she was sitting right next to him, so close that he could feel the warmth of her body seeping through the black gown she was wearing. If he looked down he saw the creamy skin of her neck cut by the severe line of a black choker, and the slope of her breasts above the low bodice of her dress. Her knees under the table seemed to both lightly lean over in his direction and make the barest contact with his right leg. One arm lay on the table, her hand right next to his, spreading the pages of the book. He saw her slender wrist, framed by the vivid orange and red of her sleeve inset that spilled like fresh blood across the wood grain.
If he had had a say in her attire for the evening he could not have suggested a better choice, save perhaps to suggest she visited naked. She seemed much less innocent than on their first encounter and less severe and restrained than during their official meeting. Now her green eyes were looking into his with an expression he could not interpret. Oh, yes, she had actually asked him a question!
Realizing that the silence had stretched much too long he cleared his throat and said: "There has been a rumor that wizards in Germany made great progress in certain areas of alchemy. The topic has always interested me, and I was wondering if your grandfather had any insights. I know some disciplines have been forbidden in practice for quite some time." He picked up his wine and took a long draught. She bent her head and leafed through the book, glanced at a few images and paragraphs as if to refresh her memory.
"Well, he drew quite a bit from muggle science, especially physics and chemistry in order to bypass some of the more arduous processes inherent in producing both the elixir and the lapis." She pointed to some alchemistical designs that she had copied and showed correspondences with the modern periodic tables. Lucius' interest was definitely aroused and he finally managed to follow her explanations quite closely. Potion-making and alchemy had always been of special fascination to him and for a brief time he managed to forget both the topic of the homunculus as well as his plans for seduction. He asked questions and led her on in her explanations until they both found that the sun had set and it had been completely dark in the garden behind the library for quite a while.
She leant back where she sat, her leg now making definite contact with his and stretched, hands pushing her away from the table, baring her slim white neck, her red hair rippling over the back of her chair. He looked up from the book and at her sinuous body as she relaxed her muscles. "Something more to drink?" he asked. She sat back up and looked at him. "That would be nice. You are right, it is a wonderful wine."
He got up, reluctantly leaving the closeness of her touch and walked back to the fireplace. She followed him with her eyes, drinking in his body as he moved, blond hair lazily falling over his shoulders. He refilled the glasses and as he turned he saw her watching him intently, green eyes huge in the candlelit dark. He noticed that she was not just looking at his face, either. Time to get to the homunculus. A little more of this and any aspirations at coherent thought would be out of the window.
As he handed her her goblet, he managed what he thought was a suitably casual question. "Did your grandfather ever concern himself with that old hobby of alchemists, the homunculi?" She took a sip of the wine, then looked at him. "Well, he made a few suggestions on how to improve the process. For example, a traditional homunculus is bred in fresh horse manure that has to be replaced as soon as its temperature drops. Of course that is a complicated, disgusting and smelly affair, even if you run a stable and have several house elves or alchemy students helping you. So instead, use fresh humus, which does not smell as badly and install a muggle heating system. Even hot water bottles will do the trick. You just moisten the humus, change out the hot water from time to time and have a better time of it.
The same with the blood that is used to feed the homunculus: Instead of chaining up some poor hapless muggles in your cellar and bleeding them dry over 40 days, apparate into the local blood bank, swipe some bags of plasma and heat them to body temperature before administering them. Of course you have to use spells to make sure you get either male or female blood only, or your homunculus will have a rather interesting sex life later."
Carefully Lucius worded his next question and took his seat next to her. "That sounds like a lot of hands-on advice. Do you think Falco ever made a live homunculus?" She gave him a thoughtful look and leaned back in her chair. "He certainly gives no indication in his book, but even at his time the generation of homunculi was forbidden, so he would probably not have published any attempts to avoid trouble. As to whether he did it in secret, from what I know if he could get away with something, he'd do it, so it's possible." He decided to push a bit further. "Did your parents or anyone else ever mention any attempts to you?"
Now her green eyes narrowed and he grew afraid that he might have aroused her suspicion, but she thought for a while and finally answered him. "It didn't work that way. My father and mother really made an attempt to raise me as a muggle in a muggle family. The only wizarding element in our lives consisted of the bookstore my father ran under the guise of a muggle store for curios, esoteric literature and antiques. He sold that to his business associate a few years before he died. Frankly I was surprised when my parents decided to enroll me at Durmstrang for my education. I guess they realized I had abilities and I had to learn to control them. After all, there are cases of young muggle-born wizards and witches who do not receive recognition or training and end up institutionalized.
Other than that, magic was never mentioned at my house. All I found out about my family came from my own research and stories told me by my teachers at school. In any case, I never heard about an actual homunculus." She gave a brief laugh. "I certainly didn't find one when I went through my possessions that my parents had left me at Gringotts, even though I came across a few items that the Ministry would not approve of."
Lucius decided to change the topic. "It is amazing to see how you have come into your own as a Sartorius after the kind of upbringing you describe. It seems you are very determined in the pursuit of your interests. I find that admirable." 'Pursuit of interests,' she thought, that was a suggestive bent in the conversation. Well she had not made much progress with her current pursuit and decided it was time to make or break the situation.
She laid her hand across his on the table. "Thank you," she said looking deeply into his eyes. The icy grey of his irises had turned to storm clouds. "I think there is an interest that we might share, but have not discussed yet," she suggested as she got up right in front of him. He followed her and they now stood inches apart. "And what would that be?" he asked. She watched as his lips curved around the words. Quickly she leaned in, her mouth right by his ear. Wisps of his blond hair tickled her nose as she whispered: "Animal magnetism."