Chapter 4 - Mirror, Part 1

January 10th 2004

Malfoy Manor, 10:47 am

Lucius Malfoy left the library and closed the door behind him.

Hermione had, up until this moment, successfully held in check any kind of reaction to any kind of thought, feeling, even the most subtle sensation. She could admit that she was a little bit proud of herself; she had acquitted herself well. Now, however, all her poise evaporated, because as soon as the door clicked quietly shut, a dizzy, falling sensation suddenly flooded her body from head to foot.

She stumbled backwards to the nearest chair to sit down; the chair, lower than she expected and ridiculously huge and engulfing, threw her even more off-balance and she floundered there for a couple of seconds, before she inelegantly righted herself again.

Thank God Lucius Malfoy wasn't still here to witness the performance! It would have been immediately apparent that politically and diplomatically she was a neophyte, and she would have lost all the Ministry-backed authority she had been desperately clinging to for the fifteen minutes or so since she and Harry had apparated into Malfoy Manor.

She allowed herself to sink back into the chair, now with a little more control of her limbs. The chair turned out be extremely comfortable; exactly the right ratio of soft and supportive, and she closed her eyes for a moment and let out a sigh.

"You all right?" Harry asked, distracted, from the corner of the room immediately to the left of the door. He had his wand out and was slowly making his way around the perimeter of the library testing for enchantments and casting wards.

"Yeah . . . I'm . . . just . . ." she said, hesitating not only because she couldn't find words, but because she suddenly had no idea what she wanted to say. The unpleasant falling sensation had passed as quickly as it had come; but now her mind was preoccupied with . . . something; something she couldn't quite identify but which made her feel uneasy.

"Well, thank you for clearing that up," Harry said. He had his back to her, but she could hear the gentle sarcasm in his tone of voice. "But still . . . like I said. Are you all right?" He sounded more serious now. It went through her mind that part of his job was to 'check up on her,' although she doubted that Kingsley had meant after less than half an hour of their assignment had elapsed.

"I'm all right," Hermione said. "It's just . . ."

"It's just what?" Harry asked. He carried on his work as he talked to her, and followed the question with a muttered incantation, as green sparks briefly flew from the tip of his wand.

"It's just . . ." Then the words burst of her mouth before her brain knew why. "How you do you this all time time?"

"Do what? Apparate into Malfoy Manor? 'Cause I don't. The last time I was here was with you, in the war. Obaidur McQuoid is the case Auror; and Kingsley only allows him to make one visit a month since Malfoy got back from Azkaban."

"No," Hermione said. While Harry was speaking, her mind had cleared a bit. "What I mean is, how do you treat people like this and not feel — I don't know . . . " she hesitated for a second, but then spoke candidly. "How do you do this and not feel . . . dirty?" Was that the right word? Not exactly, but she just didn't like or feel comfortable with everything that had happened since they had arrived.

"You mean people," Harry said slowly, his voice cautious — if it hadn't been Harry, she might have thought dangerous; he stopped what he was doing and turned to face her, "like Lucius Malfoy?"

Hermione nodded.

"Treating people like Lucius Malfoy like . . . this," he indicated the library with the hand that wasn't holding his wand, "is my job."

"But that's just my point," Hermione said. "I mean, did you see him?"

Harry rolled his eyes; the unspoken word Duh resounded silently around the room. "Of course, I saw him," he said, deliberately obtuse. Then, "Ohhh . . . I get it. Seriously, Hermione? Even you can't turn Lucius Malfoy into a cause, can you?" He shook his head, a look of incredulous pity on his face. "He's a Death Eater. Voldemort's right-hand man, remember? The Auror department has reports from the war that implicate him in a hell of a lot worse than bribery and corruption; things that would make your hair curl even more than it already does, I promise you."

Of course she didn't want to turn him into a cause; she knew perfectly well the realities of the situation and, honestly, Harry's lazy assumption was insulting! But -

"He was Kingsley's cause!" she said, regretting it instantly, but unable to stop herself; the words kept pouring out like a tap that couldn't be turned off. "Before he decided Malfoy was 'politically and diplomatically' a liability and you got a tip-off about a banned book."

"God, Hermione, listen to yourself!" Harry said. "Remember when you bent my ear all night outside that Muggle pub by the Thames right after Kingsley released him?" He started to mimic a female voice that sounded horribly like her own at her most impassioned. "'It's disgraceful Harry! The Ministerial Prerogative of Mercy should only be invoked in the depth of a crisis of justice, and with the utmost care and responsibility! And, honestly, Lucius Malfoy! What the hell does Shacklebot think he's playing at?'" Hermione cringed, sighed, and Harry came to end of his speech and gave a sheepish, conciliatory smile. "You ruined two perfectly good pints!" he said.

Weakly, she smiled back. "You're right," she said. "You're right, I know . . ."

The name Lucius Malfoy conjured up various images that were larger than life. The immaculate wizard she had first met in Flourish and Blotts, the very essence of power and menace, sneering the outwardly subtle but only too clear threat in the direction of her parents - 'Muggles, aren't they?' At the other end of the scale, the wreck of a man who had stood in the drawing room of this house, giving off a nasty scent of stale alcohol mixed with abject fear when he briefly passed close to her, who watched as Bellatrix took sadistic pleasure in trying to destroy Hermione's body and mind.

But the man she had just spoken to, had just ordered out of a room in his own home, was neither of these . . . caricatures. That is, he was, but he was both of them at once, and at the same time obviously human and real.

When he had spoken, he sounded like . . . yes, like Lucius Malfoy; the terse, elegant speech imbued with the impression that the person he was speaking to was amusingly, irredeemably inferior. But there was something else there - a slight reticence, hesitation, as though it had been hard for him to find the few words he had uttered. And he looked . . . fine. He was wearing simple, well-tailored black robes, his hair was brushed and tied back from his face. Having seen him during the war, and photographs of him after Kingsley released him, she had expected him to look demolished and ruined. Certainly, he had lost a lot weight; there were dark circles under his eyes; his hair had slightly lost its shine. But he looked . . . fine.

Except —

As she had reeled off Ministry requirements to him (and now she cringed again, recollecting the officious sound of her own voice), she could have sworn that his hand, his right hand had shaken; that there was a light sweat on his face; that he was breathing just a little too heavily; that he closed his eyes and prepared himself each time before he spoke. And when he fixed his eyes, piercing and grey, on hers, all she could think, as she looked back at him, was that he was trying to hold on to control he barely had access to.

No . . no! Much closer to home than that: all she could think, all she could feel was that the expression in his eyes reminded her starkly of herself when she was most gripped by panic and memories.

"Hermione . . .?" Harry's voice roused her. Oh, thank God! She had to stop this. She was probably . . . obviously projecting, that was all. She should get on with what she came for. After a breath, she sat up, sighed and stretched, then hauled herself out of the chair and stood.

"Come over here," he said, and she walked towards him. "Of all the . . ." He trailed off and pointed to a section of the bookshelf. "They've got Muggle books. Look!"

Hermione bent forward and read the titles of the books nearest to her: Love's Labours Lost. Othello. Twelfth Night. Shakespeare. Antique and leather-bound.

"Talk about hypocrisy," Harry said.

Hermione nodded, but couldn't quite commit herself to the judgment. What if the Malfoys just liked the books? she wondered, and continued scanning the titles. The Iliad - in Greek and English; The Odyssey - the same. War and Peace. Brideshead Revisited. À la recherche du temps perdu - in French. L'Etranger, also in French. Le Petit Prince: she had loved this one as a child; she had read it before she knew she was a witch. She picked it up — an old copy, a first edition, perhaps? — and opened the front cover. A name and date, Céleste de Châtillon, Solstice Hivernal 1945, were written in slightly childlike script, but with the embellishment of swirls and loops, elegance beginning to take shape.

Who had collected these books? Had Lucius Malfoy read them? Who was Céleste de Châtillon and why was her book here?

As the questions tumbled through her mind, Hermione suddenly felt deeply ashamed of her curiosity. She snapped the book shut and put it back in its place on the shelf, easily fitting it in because there was unfilled space left for another book next to it.

Intending to get back to business, she turned her attention away from the small collection to the greater part of the library. But her questions, along with her discomfort, only increased as she saw, about twenty feet further into the room, another armchair, and next to it a fire that was starting to sputter out and a small table. She walked towards the little scene. On the table was a pot of tea and a cup and saucer, an untouched sandwich, and two books, one closed, one open and facedown as though it had been rapidly abandoned at the page most recently read.

She wondered again how she could have been so tunnel-visioned and dense. She hadn't considered that the Malfoy family had real lives, pastimes, that they intimately knew people who weren't part of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, wanted for war crimes, or part of Cornelius Fudge's questionable Ministry and its worse aftermath. She hadn't even considered the possibility that Lucius Malfoy would be in the library when they arrived. In her imagination, the situation had played out so that they would prevent him getting in, not that they would kick him out. Now she understood the impact of what she had done. He had been reading, drinking tea! How would she feel if she were peacefully reading in her flat and government officials apparated in and insisted that she leave?

A part of Hermione fought against the urge, but something that she couldn't ignore, not just curiosity, but something that seemed necessary, made her walk towards the table and look at the two books.

She picked up the unopened book first, Tropical Horticulture, A Wizard's Guide. She opened it, and a quick, furtive glance inside the front cover revealed the name Narcissa Malfoy. She closed it and put it back down on the table. The second book displayed the title Le Répertoire De La Cuisine by Louis Saulnier: recipes; the book was very old, battered and with a burn (magical or not, she couldn't tell) on its bottom right hand corner. Immediately she touched it, she felt a wave of energy ripple against her fingers. Instead of picking it up, she took out her wand and tentatively poked at the book, on alert for enchantments. "Aparecium," she said softly, not wanting to attract Harry's attention. But although the energy signature remained perceptible, nothing was revealed, and she could not detect any spells. She turned the book over with her hand to reveal the pages. In the margin of the left-hand page, next to a recipe for something called Daube Provençale, a note had been scribbled in pencil, faded now and dulled: Abraxas dit qu'il aime ça. Comment le cuisiner avec magie? Demande à l'elfe de maison. Hermione's French was good enough to more or less translate it. Abraxas — she knew that was the name of Lucius Malfoy's father, a founding Death Eater, and at the source of countless incidents of Ministry corruption — says he likes it. How to cook it with magic? Ask the house-elf.

She couldn't help it; she turned to the inside of the front cover; they seemed to like to write their names in their books:

Céleste Malfoy, 1953

Céleste Malfoy had not been mentioned in any of the Ministry dossiers on the family and their long involvement with Dark magic and Voldemort; a part of Hermione wondered why, as another part reached the conclusion that Céleste could be Lucius Malfoy's mother.

Had he been reading his mother's old cookery book?

A lump formed in Hermione's throat, and her eyes prickled with tears, as she quickly, carefully rearranged the book as she had found it.

Then, from behind, a series of clumsy noises disturbed her as Harry knocked something over and muttered "Shit," to himself and, with it, Hermione came back to the present.

And back to her senses.

None of this mattered. Lucius Malfoy had made choices and had created the life he was now living. He was incredibly fortunate to have been released early from Azkaban. And she had a job to do.

Silently and emphatically she repeated several times to herself the essential, important part of Harry's pronouncement: He's a Death Eater! Not a cause!

Then she took a deep breath, turned to face Harry, and walked towards him. "What did you break?" she asked, teasing, her meagre attempt at banter designed to convince herself, at least as much as to convince Harry, that her emotions, her thoughts and her sympathies were back to normal.