Chapter Two:

The Tapas Treachery


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Sign Language, like any other type of communication, was a complex, intricate beast all of its own.

There was no universal style, although there was an international standard if one took the time to learn that too. Each place had their own version of Sign Language, and those places had dialects, short hand slang woven into the finger movements like people, Lobelia had seen described to her, had accents.

Sometimes the accents were thick and dewy, and it made the person hearing it have trouble in understanding what the other person was trying to say. Other times the accent was thin and floaty, barely a hint of colour, cold almost in its robotic pronunciation. Occasionally there was an accent and an entirely foreign language altogether, making communication turn into a game of charades if either one wanted to get a point across… Or order some tapas.

Sign Language was no different.

There was BSL and ASL, FSL and ISL, and so many more, and those themselves broke down further into dialects, accents and tachygraphy lingo picked up from where they grew up, the friends they made along the way, or where they moved to and adopted and incorporated into their own hand-made vernacular.

People who could hear didn't often understand that. Most of the time they would ask a Deaf person if they spoke Sign Language as if that was all there was to it. Lobelia would say, rather politely, that it was akin to asking a non-Deaf person from Zimbabwe if they spoke with their tongue, and when getting a nod in response, expecting that same person to be able to speak to someone else from Portugal or Japan, as easy as that.

That was to say Lobelia didn't just speak Sign Language.

She spoke British Sign Language; with a rather dramatic Scottish-Wizarding shorthand slang she had picked up from her childhood spent casting spells in the highlands under the tutelage of a very Scottish and Magical professor McGonagall. That meant not a lot of people, hearing and deaf included, spoke the exact same language Lobelia did, could understand her Signing movements as fast as they could come, identified each and every Sign she threw out.

In 2011, only 73,000 people reported using BSL at home or continuously in their lives. Seen as, in the same year, there were 63.26 billion people living in Britain… BSL was an uncommon language. BSL with a Scottish-Wizarding inflection was even less widespread.

It also meant that Lobelia was as likely to run into a Sign Language user in America and be capable of understanding each other as probable as a Zimbabwean being able to speak fluent Japanese with no prior experience in Tokyo on a three-day vacation.

Not bloody likely, indeed.

So, when, after a quick google search, Merlin bless the Muggles for their resourceful ways of accumulating information in one neat package not including spending days in a library stumbling across cursed books and hexed scrolls, had shown LuthorCorp to be an extensive billion-dollar corporation situated in a place called Metropolis in America, Lobelia had known immediately she was going to have a rough go of it.

That had never stopped her before.

So she mitigated the trouble as best as she could when, after the twentieth message to the company's email on the website went unanswered, happy to hear her arse, she decided if the mountain wouldn't come to Muhammed, Muhammed would have to take a 417 flight to Kansas of all places.

She packed up spare notebooks clean and ready to use, filled her pocket with pens and pencils, bought a little pack of Pictionary glossary cards in case of emergency, deciding to keep the ones for police and tapas, she really liked tapas, on her at all times, and she did the smartest thing Lobelia possibly could.

She brought along with her the best lexicon in the world.

Hermione Jean Granger.

America didn't stand a chance, and this time, this time, if who ever ran the LuthorCorp email wanted to ignore her courteous inquiries they would have to do so to her face.


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

Lobelia loved big cities, and she hated them too. The rush of commuters, the flare of cars amassing down a fat barrelled road, the neon lights shining down like Christmas tree stars atop towering skyscrapers, the smell of open seated restaurants lining pavements, from sushi to sesame oiled duck, big cities were a feast for the senses.

And it was never for her.

Most cities weren't designed for a Deaf person. Sidewalks were too narrow and often times too crowded for a Deaf person to engage in conversation that required Signing space without elbowing a few passer-by's ribs or arms, and earning glares at having stopped in the middle of the flow and disrupted their journeys by the gigantic number of three extra steps it took to circumvent her.

Public benches were no better, often set in rows or squares, never circles or facing directly, limiting the ability of the Deaf person to create conversation circles and open sight lines they require.

Urban landscapes were worst, so visually stimulating they hindered communication amongst people who relied on visual cues, and light fixtures, so many to be found in the bigger cities, either too dim to light the place up at night fully, or too bright that they shone directly into a Signer's eyes.

These things don't just make a Deaf persons life more challenging and unsocial-

They make it dangerous.

A study in JAMA Otolaryngology — Head and Neck Surgery, tracked injuries related to driving, work, and leisure or sports. For all three categories the risk of injury increased steadily with hearing loss, although slightly less consistently with driving accidents. Over all, compared with those who rated their hearing "excellent," those with a little trouble hearing were 60 percent more likely to have been injured, with moderate trouble 70 percent more likely, and with a lot of trouble 90 percent more likely.

And hearing able people complained about traffic lights…

A delicate hand tapped Lobelia on the shoulder. Turning away from the busy road ahead, she swivelled to her grinning friend standing beside her in the relative safety of an alley way they had slipped into for a breather.

And for space for Lobelia to Sign without elbowing another man's ribcage again.

"You doing alright there, Elia?"

'Fine. It's a big building, isn't it?'

Of course what Lobelia, Elia to her friends, did sign wasn't quite as elegant. More Good. Big building. See? Than an actual sentence spoken by those who could speak. Sign Language was a lot more straight forward than it's spoken counterpart, frank and blunt some would say.

If a hearing able person wanted to go and get some milk from the corner shop they would likely say I'm just popping over the road to pick up some milk. See you soon. What a Deaf person would Sign was more along the lines of Milk out. Shop I go. Bye.

Thankfully, beautifully brainy Hermione had spent years getting used to it, this candour, knew how to fill in the little spaces Elia's Signing left open for her to stitch together.

"It is a bit… You sure this is the right place?"

Slipping out the daisy printed folder Elia had been carrying under her arm since getting off the plane and onto a bus that had taken the two girls to Metropolis, a staggering seven-hour drive from the airstrip, a time Elia could have crossed the entire breadth of her country and not half a State, she flicked open the first binder sleeve and pulled out a piece of paper, handing it to her friend.

It was the print out she had taken from the LuthorCorp website.

It contained most of the important information they needed. A company started from the ground up by one Lionel Luthor, founder and head CEO. The company said it specialized in the manufacture of pesticides, fertilizer and other agricultural products, but has since, over the last five years, diversified, dipping its unyielding toes into biotechnology, communications, electronics, and pharmaceuticals.

Across the top of the website, as was it across the top of Elia's page, was a slogan written over an aerial shot of Metropolis at sunset.

We make things grow for a better tomorrow.

Hermione whistled under her breath, a tell-tale sign Elia picked up from the slight pursing of her lips into a little O.

"It's like they copy and pasted one of those cheesy commercial adverts from TV."

Hermione handed the page back over, and Elia slipped it away again before Signing back.

'What would these guys want with the Dursley's of all people?'

Hermione shrugged, turning to look over the road, across the traffic lights and the small crowd readying to cross at the first spark of green, to the glass and steel monstrosity on grand steps that was the head LuthorCorp building.

When she turned back to Elia, Hermione was still just as lost as the ginger girl.

"I have no idea… But I suppose we're going to find out, yeah?"


Lobelia Potter's P.O.V

There was no whiff or sniff of the agricultural background of LuthorCorp inside the welcoming lobby. It was all monochrome neatness, shiny metal tiles and sharp, keen lines, and not a single plant to see to minimize some of the cold-stark-bleakness of the place.

A cubical farm where profit was watered and nothing else.

LuthorCorp in polished metallic letters was plastered everywhere too. Above the revolving door to get inside, across the convivial wall, even spread about the half-moon desk of the receptionist and on the stationary security guards' breast pockets standing static at the doors and the elevators behind the receptionist.

Elia… Elia in her scuffed brown boots, slightly wrinkled pinafore dress, soft-worn leather jacket that had once belonged to Sirius Black, and her almost outlandishly bright amber curls stood out like a sore thumb. Elia was sure, even with the barest of glances from the black and white striped office workers who passed the receptionist and the security guards with a flash of a lanyard, could tell she didn't belong there.

A butterfly trapped in the heart of an ant hill.

Hermione, in her Weasley sweater, jeans and tennis shoes, wasn't fairing any better.

"Maybe we should head back to the hotel and get changed-"

If Elia hadn't let her Deafness hinder her will power, she sure as Hades wasn't going to let a suit do it now. Reaching out and looping an arm through Hermione's, already having notebook in hand and pen balanced behind ear, Elia dragged her friend closer to the receptionist's desk.

Hello, I'm here to speak to Lionel Luthor.

Elia scribbled down when they got to the desk. It had to be Lionel. That amount of money, every end day of the month-

It had to come from up top. Nevertheless, trying to flash the paper at the receptionist, a prim looking man with heavy set glasses, proved fruitless.

He carried on typing.

Elia smacked the edge of the desk. The man startled, peering up, catching sight of the note in her hand. He frowned momentarily, but let his obvious question slide, and turned away when he spoke, going back to his computer screen.

Prick.

Hermione, thankfully, leaned over, Signing back to her.

'He wants to know the appointment time and wants to see ID.'

Elia flipped the page of her small notebook.

I don't have an appointment. I can wait however long it will take, though.

This time, perhaps catching sight of Hermione Signing, the man looked dead on at her when he spoke.

At least LuthorCorp had good HR disability training.

"No appointment, no meeting. Please send an email the company address to set up an appointment if Mr Luthor is willing to… Accommodate you. Until then, I must ask you and your interpreter to leave."

Elia didn't leave, instead she flipped a page and scribbled faster.

I've already sent an email. Twenty bloody times. It's been four months and no reply.

The man, a Thomas Rugley by his gleaming name tag pinned to his pen pocket, barely paid the missive a skimming glance, nodding through another worker.

"Replies can take up to a year. Mr Luthor is a busy man, and cannot meet with every single person who sends him an email in hopes of passing a high school journalism course with a big interview. Once again, please leave and we will contact you at a-"

Elia, frustrated, slapped her notebook down, glaring at the man, Signing a mile a minute despite, clearly, the man not understanding a word she was trying to say.

'Listen here, you little shit. I'm not here about some interview-"

Hermione, likely politely offering some platitudes and apologies Elia couldn't hear, gently grabbed Elia by the shoulders, scooped up the abandoned notebook, and began tugging her away from the desk.

'What are you doing? I was going-'

Hermione Signed back, stumbling through a few of her words.

'What you were doing was going to get us kicked out of here. Evidently he wasn't going to let us through. Maybe we should head back to the hotel and-"

Elia huffed, running a hand down her face, scrubbing at her eyes, missing the end of Hermione's proposal.

She knew what it was already.

Go back to the hotel and wait. Perhaps try to ring instead of email-

Fine for Hermione, not so much for a deaf Elia, and just… Sit around for a reply.

Elia was sick of waiting.

It had been four months since finding that first bank statement. Elia didn't know where the Dursley's had gone, they had left no phone number or forwarding address for her to use to contact them, of course they hadn't, so she couldn't ask them and the only other person who could possibly know why, if the bank statements went back even further then the Sixteen years Elia had already traced backward, the Dursley's were funnelled millions, perhaps billions, of cool, hard cash from this very company was in this building somewhere.

That was a lot of money, even to someone like Lionel Luthor, surely? Particularly to give to a drill salesman at Grunnings and his paisley printed housewife who lived across the bloody ocean.

It had to mean… Something.

Something that didn't sit right with Elia at all. She felt like she was atop a tower, maybe even this very skyscraper, staring down below at the catapult being rolled up, just waiting for the final shot, for the ground to break below her feet and for the drop to come.

Something terrible was about to happen.

Elia wasn't the type of girl to stand by and let the blast come.

Elia wasn't the type of girl to be turned away at a receptionist desk.

Elia wasn't the type of girl to twiddle her thumbs to elevator music-

Elevator.

Elia's hands fell from her face, and Hermione was still Signing away, but her gaze was caught and hooked from across the welcoming lobby. To the gleaming chromium doors of the elevator.

Hermione smacked her shoulder, face stern, worried, one hand Signing.

'Oh no, Elia. Don't you dare-'

Too late.

Elia hooked Hermione's arm, pinned the folder containing the bank statements under her elbow, and bolted.

She hauled her friend across the lobby, passed the suddenly alert and shouting receptionist, she didn't think, if they were caught in their mindless dash, they would take her being deaf as an excuse this time, darting around the two security guards who tried to intercept, no match for her Seeker reflexes, through the small crowd now piling into the open elevator, Hermione slipping and sliding along behind her-

They stumbled through the doors to the elevator just as they closed.


Hermione Granger's P.O.V

Of course, Hermione Granger should have known that anything involving Lobelia Potter, even that which first seemed innocent enough, would pertain breaking and entering.

She should have known better, and yet-

Yet, here she was.

Hermione peeked around the corner of the hallway on the eighteenth floor of LuthorCorp, pulling her head back around the bend just in time for the patrolling, searching security guard to miss her crop of caramel curls.

She glared hotly at her friend.

'I can't believe you've done this.'

Elia, dimples and all, grinned back from standing upon a table she had dragged from one of the conference rooms into the hallway, balancing precariously on her tiptoes to reach the ceiling above.

'It was this or get wrapped up in red tape. You know as well as I do they would have never answered my emails. I doubt they even read them.'

Hermione did know that, she supposed. Still-

'You could have given me a heads up before you went Neanderthal and dragged me into this.'

Stretching up to the panel above, to the rectangle grated square of an air duct, flicking her wand with a flare of orange magic and two fingers twisting, Elia pulled the grate clean off.

'Hold this. We can't stay out in the corridors. The higher we get by the floors, the more security guards there seem to be. I bet the top is like a wasps nest, and I bet that's were we'll find Lionel Luthor's office."

Hermione caught the grate passed her way, wondering why she took it at all, why she was going along willingly with this madness, and watched as Elia bit down on her own wand, bent over and picked up her folder, throwing it through the, now, hole in the ceiling.

Elia wasn't far behind the folder, using the wall to kick herself up and into the air duct tunnel.

They were lucky neither girl topped five three.

Elia was gone for a moment, vanished, before her head came out upside down, ginger hair a flash of sunset in the white hall, wand now safe in her pocket, hands Signing.

'Are you coming or what?'

Hermione scoffed, a fat lot of good it did getting her exasperation across to Elia who couldn't hear it, and hauled herself up onto the table, grabbing Elia's offered hand.

'Of course I'm bloody coming.'

With a tug and a heave, Hermione was up and into the cramped, confined air duct, jiggling the grate back over the hole, Elia disappearing the table below, and sealing the grille with a wash of a vanishing Charm.

'Which way do you think leads upwards?'

Elia glanced left and right, before holding her hand up. Hermione frowned before she realized what Elia was doing was not Signing.

She was testing the air flow.

'The air goes right, so we should go right. I'm guessing it gets pumped up from a bottom janitorial place in the lower floors where they can change the filters without bothering the suits in their midday conference calls.'

Re-seizing her folder, Elia was off, scuttling forward on her hands and knees, Hermione trailing closely behind.

If she was going to fall through this death pipe to her death-

Worse, if she were to have a criminal record because of this-

Elia owed her big time.


Hermione Granger's P.O.V

Elia leaned over the vent, face flush with the floor, flat on her belly, peering through the slats. When she pulled back, gazing over her shoulder to her equally flushed and flustered friend, who knew airducts got so bloody hot, it was with a toothy grin.

'I think this is it.'

Elia yanked the grate off, dropped her folder through the cavity with what ended with a faraway thud, the room below must have been empty, and swung her legs over, glancing back to Hermione one last time.

'I'll go first, and then you follow.'

Elia, brave, bull-headed Elia, didn't wait for a reply, there on the edge one second, dropping through the next. Hermione scrambled forward, hissing.

"Elia, wait-"

But by the time Hermione was staring over the edge, Elia was already coming to a stand from her crouch, grinning up from the black marbled floor below.

She waved Hermione down, and Hermione shook her head violently.

'Oh no. I'll find another way. One with less of a fall. You just stay there and wait for me.'

Elia was having none of it, Signing fast but precise.

'There is no other way. Just drop down. I'll catch you.'

'But what if you don't? What if I fall and crack my head off that floor and there's blood-'

The one thing Hermione Jean Granger, no matter how many books she had read, could never get over-

Heights.

'I swear, I'll catch you. Don't you trust me?'

Oh, bloody hell…

'You know I do.'

'Then jump.'

Hermione slowly, deliberately, swung her legs over, balancing, knuckles white on the edge of the gap. Elia grinned up at her, beckoning her down with an encouraging flap of her hand.

Hermione's heart thrashed against her ribs.

'I don't know about this.'

If Ronald Weasley could not, despite his posturing, get her on the back of a broom, than how was she supposed to-

It was Elia, however, and that ginger gremlin had a habit of somehow, impossibly, making a man or woman do what they never thought they would be able to do.

'Just don't think about it. On the count of three. One. Two. Three-'

Hermione dropped; eyes squeezed shut, scream wedged in her voice box, bile rising in her gut-

She bounced as she was caught, and peeping an eye open when her heart finally decided to leave her throat and sink back down to its home between her gasping lungs, Elia was silently laughing at her.

'See? Not so bad.'

Hermione tore herself free from the hold and whacked her friend on the shoulder none too gently.

'I swear, one of these days I'm going pay you back for everything you've put me through in these last five years. I've made a list, you know.'

Elia bent over and retrieved her folder.

'Cheesecake would be nice.'

'I was thinking about a spider in your knicker drawer.'

'Kinky.'

Hermione huffed, but she was grinning, alive, whole. Not a splatter on the floor. She aimed her own wand up, casting a charm to reseal the gap above in the airduct closed.

'You're a right bastard, do you know that?'

But Elia didn't answer, instead she was taking a whirl in the office, hand raised, finger spinning.

'What do you think? Too much money, or too little sense?'

Hermione turned her attention to the room, and her eyebrows shot up to meet her hair line.

Much like the building, the room was made of sleek, cool lines, black and steel, the far wall a testimony to crystal, windows opening up to the Metropolis skyline stretching as far as the eye could see.

The rugs were heavy and red, the painting on the wall some, likely, lost Rembrandt, fluid glass sculptures dotting the table and chairs in one corner, a cosy looking informal meeting nook, and in the heart of it, a large black desk with a larger backed seat behind it.

Modern.

Expensive.

Cold.

'Definitely money. I'm pretty sure that decanter over there is a real Lalique. '

Elia came to the bottom of the desk, A heavy, dense thing, covered nearly down to the floor on three sides by thick panels, running a finger across the glass and metal as she swooped around towards the chair. Something caught her eye, a little frame on the end, and she stole it, eyeing the face Hermione couldn't see.

Hermione came to her side and peered over, just as Elia Signed.

'Which one do you think is Lionel?'

It was a candid shot of two men, likely taken from a press release, Hermione thought. Definitely staged, no one looked that put together and ready to smile by a surprise paparazzi shot.

The older of the two was dressed sharply, well-kept, long dark brown hair a mane around his shoulders, beard neatly trimmed along a strong jaw. It served as sharp contrast against the younger man, softer looking, just as regal, bald headed-

Hermione thought the photo might have been a sting, an insult, really.

'The older one I suspect.'

Hermione looked deeper at the photo, edging closer-

That was when she saw it. The curl of the older man's hair, the smooth imperialness of the younger but taller, the bow of a cupids bow on the bald-headed ones mouth, the same quirk of a keen pressed brow-

'He looks a little like you. Especially the younger one. I even think his eyebrows are ginger.'

Elia frowned deeply, whipping the photo back around to look, tilting it this way and that, head cocked-

'Huh, he does a little-'

The chrome door to the office clicked, the hint of a door handle turning, and Elia didn't realize it.

Hermione, wide-eyed, faced Elia.

"Hide!'

Elia dropped the photo back onto the desk, turned left, found nothing but the table, turned right, nothing but the painting, turned back, nothing but the window wall-

Hermione reached over and snatched her arm, and with a tug and a roll, the two girls disappeared underneath the large desk.

Hermione heard the swoop of the door open, the sound of a refined voice following it, Elia, unable to hear their guest, stiff below the table as Hermione brought her finger up to her lip.

Shhh.

"Just a moment, Clark. I need to pick up the files I left in my father's office, then we can head to the Talon and Lana can fill in the paper work for the tax returns."

Another set of footsteps, heavier, sturdier, joined the other.

Shite.

"Do you know what's up with the security guards? I just saw one run down the hall."

Hermione thought there was enough time between the question and the reply for a flippant hand to be waived.

Elia tugged on her sleeve.

'How many? Where are they?'

"Likely some enthusiastic news reporter. It's happened before, unfortunately. They've been turned away at the door, and then they've tried to sneak in. Nothing to worry about. I'm sure security will find the culprit soon enough."

"If you're sure…"

The second voice was less cultured, but gentler, kinder almost.

Hermione held her fingers up, pressed into the corner of the enclosed desk.

Two.

The set of clicking shoes, dress shoes Hermione suspected against the thud of the work boots, retreated, and she sagged.

Elia did too at her nonverbal cue.

"Got them. I thought I'd left them on the table. We'll head down and get-… What's this?"

Oh no.

Hermione, carefully, pressed down under the table deeper, peeping her eye out of the slither of a crack between the front of the hooded desk and the marble floor.

She couldn't see faces, but she saw black dress shoes, shiny and polished, well ironed slacks-

And a pale hand holding a card. A speckled blue backed card-

Hermione jumped back up, grabbed Elia by the lapel of her jacket, dipped her hand into the inside pocket-

And only found one card.

She pulled it out.

The Pictionary policeman smiled back, cartoon siren flashing behind his head.

"Tapas? Where did this come from?"

"Are you alright, Lex?"

A hum, long and drawn and curious echoed in the air, and Hermione watched as her friend patted her pockets, picking up on the missing card, why Hermione must have suddenly looked so worried-

It must have fallen out by the table and chairs when they jumped from the bloody airduct.

Maybe they could-

A pale face appeared from above the desk, sideways, peering below, one ginger eyebrow cocked high.

"Good afternoon, ladies. Do one of you want to tell me why you are cowering below my father's desk?"

Hermione cursed under her breath, between her teeth, slumped, caught-

And Elia, sheepishly, waved hello.


Woo or Boo?


Next Chapter: Hermione tries to stop her friend from being arrested for trespassing, Lex is faced with a folder full of riddles that paints a picture he can't help but see, and Elia just wants her Tapas card back…


A.N: Ta-da! One shiny new chapter for all you lovely readers! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. I love Hermione and Fem!Harry friendship, I always picture it as a sort of next-gen Remus and Sirius, the former begrudgingly along for the ride, and the latter just running fuckin' wild, and I really do hope that vibe comes through, and even more in future chapters. Plot does begin to pick up from here on out, as we're moving from catching up in Elia's life to the present.

Everybody is in for a surprise.

P.S: this fic might eventually involve some Hermione/Lex. Just wanted to give everyone a heads up.

THANK YOU all for the followers, favourites and the lovely reviews! I hope you all liked this chapter, and if you have a spare moment or two, please drop a review, and I will hopefully see you all soon!