Chapter 3 - Courage

January 10th, 2004

The Ministry of Magic - 8:00 am

Hermione eyed with longing the pot of tea sitting in front of her on the Minister's desk.

Kingsley's eyes followed her gaze. "Tea?" he invited, smiling.

"I thought you'd never ask," she said, and waited while he busied himself with pouring tea, cups and saucers and spoons. He always did this when he called her in for an early meeting: the consideration was generous and tremendously flattering, and she appreciated it. Especially today, and despite the fact it was her third cup this morning.

He passed a teacup to her, then picked up his own cup, drank, put the cup back in the saucer, turned it around. The little performance gave Hermione the impression he was playing for time, and she wondered why.

Finally, after inhaling briskly, he said, "How would you like to have access to the library at Malfoy Manor?"

"Access?" Hermione repeated, confused. The proposition sounded deceptively uncomplicated. Kingsley was about the most transparent politician you could hope to meet; but, honestly, nothing about the Ministry of Magic was ever uncomplicated.

"Well, I'm being a little . . .simplistic, perhaps," he said, then smiled. "Just testing the waters."

"Waters?" she asked, immediately feeling stupid, aware that she had now responded twice with questions composed of one-word echoes. But it really was not like Kingsley to be so equivocal and cagey.

He drummed his fingers on the desk, looking at her and apparently sizing her up. "Hermione, I need to you do something. Something you are not going to like. I am trying to make it enticing."

"Ent—?" She managed to stop herself from repeating the word enticing. A Ministerial Aide was supposed to be intelligent, determined and willing to serve; right now, she was not exhibiting any of these qualities. She sat up straighter, rearranged her skirt, and tried to look unassailably professional. "What do you need me to do, sir?" she asked.

Kingsley settled back in his chair. "Harry received a very interesting piece of information late last night," he said. "Concerning the 1485 edition of L'Almanach Arcanique du Sorcier Noir."

"The Dark Wizard's Arcane Almanac," Hermione translated the French title softly to herself. The almanac had been produced in Rheims annually between 1477 and 1512; usually between twenty-five and fifty copies per edition. They had circulated relatively freely, even after the International Statue of Secrecy was first signed in 1689. But once the Ministry of Magic was established, succeeding the Wizards' Council, in 1707, great efforts were made to locate and confiscate the books. The magic and magical lore they contained was some of the darkest known to wizards, and also invaluable in the defence against Dark magic.

The 1485 edition was rumoured to be the most mysterious and potent. Possibly this was just hype but, as virtually no one had ever laid eyes on a copy, the legend persisted. Two copies were believed to be extant. One had been caught sight of in Budapest in 1932; the other had disappeared without a trace in 1678.

"The informant," Kingsley continued, "alleges that the copy that disappeared in 1678 has been in the library at Malfoy Manor ever since then. I am inclined to trust the information." He paused. "I would like you to conduct a search for the book."

Hermione felt her heart lurch. Malfoy Manor! Just the name brought back the terror she had dreamed of last night. She almost thought she could feel Bellatrix's breath on her face, the touch of her fingers. Filthy Mudblood. She tried to keep her expression neutral, as she asked, "You want me to raid Malfoy Manor?" succeeding for the most part in suppressing the tremulousness that threatened to break into each word. She took a deep breath: it was for her own benefit, not a prelude to an objection (not yet, anyway), but Kingsley appeared to take it as one.

"'Raid' is a little dramatic," he said. He smiled, trying, Hermione thought, to be reassuring. "Of course, it can't hurt for there to be an element of surprise, so I would like you to start as soon as possible. But the Malfoy library is unusually large, I understand, and houses a substantial number of books. So you might think of it less as a raid, than a siege!"

Hermione felt her eyes widen. Kingsley's smiled broadened.

"That was a joke," he said. "For the most part, anyway. I want you to conduct a thorough search; realistically, it could be a long assignment.

"Oh . . . a joke, I see," Hermione said, too anxious to find it funny, and gave a polite, faint, distracted laugh.

Because, all right, a very small part of her actually was enticed now by the prospect of having unfettered access to the Malfoy library. But Malfoy Manor! And, oh my God, Lucius Malfoy! No . . . really, no, she couldn't! Wouldn't an Auror . . . several Aurors, be more appropriate? But then what choice did she have? The Minister of Magic wanted her to search the Malfoy library. This was her career, the career she had put her heart and soul and half her twenties into. She could sit here and let her thoughts and fears debate with each other, but she already knew perfectly well which point of view would win. Her ambition and her sense of duty would not allow her to refuse this assignment. She would just have to rise to the occasion.

She roused herself from her thoughts to find Kingsley studying her, and she resolutely composed her face into a neutral expression so there would be absolutely nothing for him to study.

"I don't think Lucius will trouble you," Kingsley said, intuitive in a way that made Hermione wonder briefly whether he had an aptitude for legilimency she had not known about until now. "It is true that he rarely leaves Malfoy Manor. The Aurors have a surveillance charm on him. Since his return from Azkaban, he has made one trip by floo to Diagon Alley. Otherwise, he has not left his estate." He paused. "But once you are at Malfoy Manor, he will not have access to the library. His freedom is highly conditional. He has no wand, no magic to speak of; and he is not the man he once was." He paused. "Of course, an Auror will accompany you on your first visit and, after that, regularly check up on you. The Auror Department has complete access to break through the wards cast on the house against apparition. You will go straight to the library, apparate and disparate to and from there, and the Auror who accompanies you will place strong wards on the room so Lucius, or anyone else, cannot enter unless you expressly allow it." His eyes, full of confidence, met hers. "I assure you, you will be quite safe. We will do everything we can to help you."

Again, he paused, searching her face with his eyes. "Hermione, may I speak frankly with you?"

"Of course, sir," she said, surprised at the cautious note in his voice.

"I took a risk in releasing Lucius Malfoy," he said. "I am both proud and, at the same time, ashamed to say it was not wholly a calculated risk. Proud, that is, as a man; I could not allow him to rot in prison any longer. Even the Governing Wizard was concerned about him, which is extraordinary in itself, as the man was appointed to run Azkaban partly due to his ruthlessness. As Minister of Magic, however . . ." He gave a discontended sniff. "Malfoy's presence in Wizarding society — even as a virtual recluse — is a political and diplomatic problem, as you are well aware. I am sure you are wondering why I should assign this role to you, rather than an Auror."

Hermione nodded. Again, he was correct about her thoughts.

"Well, in the first place, to quote Harry, 'only Hermione is going to be comfortable in a library the size of a Quidditch pitch.'

He laughed amiably; Hermione again made the weak sound that passed for a laugh.

"And then," Kingsley continued, "having a member of my private staff involved in this search can only be good for public relations. Rumours constantly fly around about this book. If my Ministerial Aide were to locate it, at the same time making her presence felt at Lucius Malfoy's manor, it would go a long way to restoring public confidence in our governance, so we can again have our full attention on all the important work we have before us." He scrutinized her again. "As I said, Lucius Malfoy is a diplomatic and political problem. You are now a Ministerial Aide; it's time you got your feet wet politically and diplomatically speaking. And, Hermione . . . forgive me but, for you personally, I think it will do you good to get out of this building for a while. You have sat at a desk here since the end of the war. Time for new horizons, don't you think?"

Hermione was not certain she would call Malfoy Manor 'new horizons,' nor that spending time there could possibly 'do her good.' She also had the same disquieting sense that he could read her; that he knew, or suspected, more than he was revealing except in the most vague terms, about her current mental state.

"So it's settled?" he asked.

It was, of course, a rhetorical question; only the details remained to be firmed up. "When you do you want me to go?" she said, faking confidence and resolution.

"Today, please. As soon as possible. Protocol requires us to send Lucius an owl to notify him of our intent to conduct the search — we will go by the letter of the law and leave it until the last minute."

Hermione stood up. Perhaps it was lack of sleep or too many cups of tea, but she felt suddenly very weak and had to hold on to the back of her chair to steady herself. She tried to smile at Kingsley, hoping that her smile looked less pathetic than it felt. Apparently not, because his eyes became deeply kind, and he said,

"Why don't we ask Harry to be your Auror?"

A suggestion which both embarrassed her, her vulnerability now clearly exposed, and made her feel instantly much better.

Malfoy Manor, 10:00 am

Newly released from Azkaban, after setting foot in Malfoy Manor for the first time in years, Lucius had gone directly to his chambers and slept. For days. For countless hours each day, and even through the night, heavy sleep; and even when awake, everything in him had slowed down to a bare minimum of movement and response. Sleep and torpor had immersed him; but it brought him no pleasure, it was not restorative, it was just necessary — a visceral reaction to the fractured exhaustion of his body, mind and heart.

When he eventually left his chambers, and ventured out into the long corridors and spacious rooms, his house seemed at the same time intimately familiar and frighteningly alien. He had lost his connection to everything, including the house where he grew up, married, and fathered a son.

Where he had fallen from grace.

Years had passed, the house had, it seemed, been rigorously cleaned, but Lucius could still smell, in his imagination, the stench of torture and terror left behind by the Dark Lord's occupation; could feel still coursing through him his own fear, impotence and shame. The house stank of Voldemort; in his private chambers, both sweeter and infinitely worse, everything was suffused and saturated with Narcissa.

He wanted to hide. Even without the memories, Malfoy Manor was, by far, too big. At Azkaban, he had at first loathed the small, cramped quarters he was forced to exist in, but over time, the constraint had become comforting, something to anchor himself to. In the vast expanses of his house, the world lacked the edges he needed to stop from becoming completely unhinged.

So he went to the library.

The library which, while very large itself, offered small spaces to hide in, alcoves with encompassing and comfortable chairs and, most importantly, books that he could lose himself in.

The library which had become his refuge, a place of tenuous peace, and which now he rarely left.

A sudden splintering Crack! frayed his nerves. Narcissa's house-elf. It was a small, female elf, of delicate build, timid; yet it apparated with a sinew-shattering racket that never failed to startle Lucius. He did not quite understand why the elf remained at Malfoy Manor once Narcissa had gone. His wife … his ex-wife had always had an usually cordial relationship with it. She had asked Cygnus Black to let her bring it with her when she married Lucius and, curiously, Cygnus had given his permission and performed magic to separate it from his house and bind it, instead, to Narcissa. Now, despite her departure, the elf remained. He thought its name was Tilly, perhaps: as he never summoned it, it did not matter much. Of its own volition, it magically cleaned the house, brought him food and pots of tea. It did not bring him fire whiskey, and drooped its ears, warily disapproving, when it saw him drinking. But it made sure the fire was always alive in the grate by his preferred chair in the library (a service he secretly appreciated, because he was always cold now, to the bone). Sometimes it lingered and looked at him with large eyes and smiled sadly and muttered 'Poor sir . . .' to itself. A judgment that had the effect of increasing his complete despair at himself, that a house-elf should apparently find him an object of pity.

"Sir . . . sir has received an owl," the elf said. It walked cautiously towards him and stretched out a hand, holding out a sealed envelope. The only owls Lucius had received since his return from Azkaban had been from Narcissa. A brief spark of hope flared in his chest that she had written to him.

The hope died when he saw the Ministry of Magic seal.

"You may go," he said to the elf, and it disapparated at once, again with the appalling Crack!.

He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, heaved a sigh. Of course, he was being a fool. He and Narcissa were divorced; she desired no further communication with him.

Last October, divorce papers had arrived. At first, he had not understood; for Lucius, the death blow to their marriage had been dealt when she wrote her final letter to him in prison. Pure-blood families did not divorce; instead, arrangements were made that maintained outward propriety. But Narcissa, after years of waiting and forging her own path, had required a legally binding and absolute termination.

For centuries, the Malfoys had carried on a discreet association with an understanding Muggle solicitor. The Blacks — never a pragmatic lineage — had not, so Narcissa had used Lucius' law firm to issue divorce papers. The irony would have amused him, had he been capable of amusement; but his heart had been broken again.

She did not even want money. Nothing. No settlement at all. She just wanted to be rid of him.

He had not exactly refused to sign the papers, but he had allowed them to sit on a writing table in the library, not disregarded, because he thought about almost nothing else, but untouched.

Narcissa wrote again.

Lucius, please. Please do not prolong this any further. For both our sakes.

He had screwed the the note into a tight ball and thrown it violently across the room. But it was a worthless gesture. As her poignant words stated — he could hear her low, soft voice speaking as he read them — he only hurt her with his procrastination, and tortured himself. Nothing he said or did, nothing he was would change her mind.

Steeling himself, he had spread out a fresh piece of parchment, picked up his quill, and tried to dip it into the ink pot, but his hand had shaken frantically. Of course it bloody had! His hands always shook now. If the Ministry had allowed him a wand, he doubted he could have kept his hand steady enough to cast the simplest of spells.

He had wanted to reply to Narcissa with some measure of composure; to sign the damnable papers that would sever him from her as though he were still a man of consequence and sound mind. The shaking hand, the awkward handwriting it produced, where once there had been elegance, bravura, the flourish of confidence, unsparingly gave away his reduction to a lesser version of himself. Nevertheless —

Narcissa

Dearest Narcissa

His throat contracted, his eyes burned and his vision blurred.

My love

He could not think coherently, emotions swamped him, and he wrote from his heart.

Can we not try again? I do not wish to divorce you. I do not wish to lose you. I am lost

His hand cramped painfully. He had begun to sweat. The sweat ran down his hand and on to the parchment, wetting it here and there. He had thrown aside the quill and buried his head in his hands. His heart raced; his breathing quickened. She did not want him. She had already made it clear; this was just legality. The fault was his. He must accept it. He took a deep breath, raised his head, wiped his hands on his robes, screwed up the letter he had tried to write, but did not have the energy or determination to fling it across the room. It lay on the writing desk, as hopeless as the love he had wished to express.

He drew towards himself another clean sheet of parchment and wrote, simply:

Signed as requested, Lucius.

Then he initialed in several places and signed the papers, as indicated by the Muggle lawyer, wrapped his note around them and secured the whole thing with a black silk ribbon. When the elf came again, he would instruct it to send the package by owl to Narcissa.

The crackling of the fire, a twig blazing briefly before it disappeared into ash, brought him back to the present, and to the envelope in his hand. He opened it.

To: Lucius Malfoy, Malfoy Manor, Nr Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire

From: The Office of the Minister of Magic, Westminster, London

This communication serves as official notice of the intention of the Ministry of Magic to enter Malfoy Manor to conduct an unrestricted search for illegal artifacts of Dark magic. The Ministry of Magic reserves the right to seize and to retain any such artifact discovered. Full co-operation with the Ministry, its representatives and any actions taken by them is required by law. Failure to co-operate will be met with severe penalties.

Please expect Ministry representatives Mr H Potter (Assistant Deputy Head Auror) and Ms H Granger (Ministerial Aide) immediately following receipt of this notice.

Lucius closed his eyes and sighed. Sometimes he wondered why Shacklebolt had released him from Azkaban; sometimes he almost wished he had not. At least, in prison, the pain and degradation had been simple.

Then —

Two soft, popping sounds vibrated — loud enough to hear, subtle enough to announce their creators as adept, the air gently oscillated, and two people apparated into the room. On high alert after the notice, and wearily accustomed to the intrustion of Aurors, Lucius still, for a second, froze.

"Mr Malfoy." Harry Potter glanced around the library, and then rested his eyes on Lucius. "Hello." His voice was incongruously pleasant, and he smiled slightly, before pushing his glasses back into place in what looked like a habitual motion.

At first, Lucius could do nothing more than stare at Potter. Then he dredged his memories for someone he had once been, and forced himself to say, suavely, he hoped, although the effort was immense, "Mr Potter," and gave a curt nod.

There now came an uncomfortable silence while they assessed each other, and Lucius tried to work out how much notice they had given him of this intrusion. Even with his immersion in his recollections of Narcissa, surely no more than half an hour had passed since the elf had delivered their message? Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose, he thought. Where Alastor Moody had Alohomora'd doors and stormed buildings, wand blazing, and asked questions later, the new Ministry and its 'representative' Harry Potter issued official notices too late to be a proper warning, and stood around feigning casual affability. Perhaps Lucius' current state of mind played a part in this, but he actually thought the modern method subtly more chilling.

"Mr Malfoy." A quiet, feminine voice broke into Lucius' thoughts, and he shifted his gaze to the second person. For a moment, although the notice had clearly stated the Ministry would be sending Hermione Granger, Lucius thought they must have sent someone else.

The woman before him was exquisite.

So much so, that he forgot himself, where he was, what was happening, even his predicament. His senses were entirely arrested by her.

But then she spoke again.

"You received the Ministry's notice?" she asked in a clipped, forthright tone, and abruptly broke the fantasy she had created.

Lucius, snapping sharply back to reality, nodded to acknowledge that he had. Her voice and vexatiously determined manner revealed her, indeed, to be Hermione Granger.

"We must ask you to leave the library. You may not enter again without our permission." Miss Granger continued, and looked around, inspecting the bookshelves. "We require total and unrestricted access to perform the search mandated by the Ministry."

She paused and looked at Lucius, apparently expecting something.

What, he could not comprehend. Certainly, she did not need his permission. His library, his house, his life were under her control — hers, Potter's, the Ministry's — not his. He began to feel light-headed, his heartbeat irregular — Please God, not now! — his breathing became shallow and tight, nausea washed over him. At least the sweating had not yet begun.

"Failure to comply with the Ministry's order, or any attempt to obstruct —"

"Yes, yes … I understand," Lucius was finally capable of saying, unable to bear any more.

Miss Granger stared at him, apparently holding her breath, her mouth slightly open, on the point of saying something that never formed into words. A part of Lucius vaguely registered that she seemed nervous. But her emotions were not pertinent now, when his own were threatening to overwhelm him completely. He balled his hands into fists to try to prevent worse shaking.

"You are requesting that I vacate my library?" he asked, fearful that he would reveal his desperation, and relieved when his voice managed to sound stiff and offended.

Inside his robes, a trickle of sweat began to run down the inside of his right arm; despite the fist, his right shook more convulsively. A voice in his head began, unbidden, a different dialogue, pleading: Please do not make me leave. I'll do anything. I will not impede your search. Only … In his mind's eye, he saw himself kneel down before her and beg. Dear God, what had he become?

"Uhm …" Harry Potter said. "It's not really a request, as much as a —"

"Of course," Lucius broke in. He was struggling to breathe now. "Forgive me." It was a reflexive phrase of etiquette bred into him over decades; he did not care about their forgiveness. He only wanted one thing, to be allowed to stay in his library, and that they would not grant him.

Miss Granger cleared her throat. "Thank you for your co-operation, Mr Malfoy," she said.

Her voice, Lucius thought, was softer now, and for a brief second he noticed her loveliness again, and her nervousness, and an expression in her eyes that seemed kind.

But what of it? No doubt it was a chimera born of his anguish. And, even if not, it made no difference; his fate was decided.

There was nothing to be done, except maintain dignity long enough to turn and walk away, leave the library, and quietly close the door.