Macbeth: Act Two, Scene Two
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is owned by JKRowling, while Macbeth was written by Shakespeare. I think someone should copyright the English Language, and make everyone else pay them money to use it. Then in these disclaimers we'd have to add, 'And the English language is owned by Joe Bloggs'. In fact, I think I should copyright the English language. Excuse me...
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AN: For anyone who's interested in quote-spotting; there was a woven-in one last week which no one spotted. Shame on you all!
As to my favourite authors – in fanfiction, it has to be the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Cassandra Claire. She does things with words and plots and characters that make me go all tingly (there's a running joke among certain of my friends that I'm not attracted to neither men nor women, but in fact to words. A wordosexual, as it were.) As to published authors... well I couldn't list them all! JK, of course, along with Terry Pratchett. I enjoy Orson Scott Card, Catherine Webb, some Garth Nix, Diana Wynne Jones, Peter Dickinson... I have far too many books.
For those who want to read the play, buying a copy isn't neccecary! You can find it on the web quite easily. Type Shakespeare into Google and the fourth website down should be 'The Complete Works of William Shakespeare'. The full text of Macbeth is on there – have fun!
gummybear – I'd love to discuss translations with you, but your e-mail address won't show up in the review! Could you email me? My address is in my profile. Thanks!
And without further ado, onto the chapter. Enjoy!
'My dearest love,' Malfoy said, pulling back from the embrace and looking at her. The corners of his mouth were twitching, as though this whole thing were amusing. 'Duncan comes here tonight.'
The embrace, of course, had been the directors' idea. Hermione hadn't argued when they suggested it – Stan giving his usual good-natured grin – because she knew, even if she didn't want to go anywhere near Malfoy, that it made sense to have an embrace there. After all, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth were married; and in the excitement over the prophecy, it felt... natural.
'And when goes hence?' Hermione continued, attempting to put a little excitement, a little power-madness into her voice. Standing so close to him – her hands on his elbows – was frankly off-putting; especially when she saw that slight glitter of amusement in his eyes. That meant he was laughing at her.
'Tomorrow, as he purposes,' Malfoy replied. Standing this close, she could see that the skin under his eyes was translucent blue. Hadn't he slept again? That annoyed her; what had he been doing instead of sleeping? He might have said he'd just not been sleeping well, but she didn't believe that for a minute.
She laughed, putting a little bit of evil into the sound. 'O, never shall sun that morrow see!' she cried, and as they'd done the past five times they ran through this scene, Malfoy frowned, pulled away and took a step backwards; she closed the space and put her fingers to his jaw bone. The skin felt smooth and slightly cold; almost like the snakeskin they'd used in Potions.
'Your face, my thane, is as a book where men may read strange matters;' she said. 'To beguile the time, look like the time; bear welcome in your eye, your hand, your tongue: look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under 't.' He did that already, Hermione thought. Silvery hair and grey eyes and pale skin made him look like something out of a fairy story, especially with black school robes, but underneath it...
'He that's coming must be,' she paused, 'provided for: and you shall put this night's great business into my dispatch; which shall to all our days and nights to come give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.'
He drew back once again, almost to the edge of the collection of desks they were using as a stage, where a thick black line marked where a door would be on the final stage. He frowned, looking conflicted; his grey eyes clouded over. 'We will speak further.'
She stepped forwards once again. 'Only look up clear; to alter favour ever is to fear:' she said, and then quietly, 'Leave all the rest to me.'
That was the end of the scene; they paused like that for a moment, and then Hermione stepped back sharply, turning to face the directors, who were sitting in chairs before the stage. 'Brilliant,' Stan told them, with his usual wide grin.
'I think you're doing really well,' Ruth added, giving them both a smile. She glanced at her watch. 'Do you think we should run through it again, or would that be enough for now?'
'I think that's enough,' Megan replied, looking up at the two on stage. 'As long as everyone's okay with that? If you want to try it once more...'
'I'm happy to end there,' Hermione said quickly, in case Malfoy was about to ask to do it again. It was exactly the kind of thing he would do, just to annoy her...
'Ok, thanks, then. Can you do Act One, Scene Seven on...' She, shuffled through some parchment in front of her, checked a list. 'Next Thursday?'
Malfoy frowned. 'I've already made plans for Thursday,' he said. 'Could we move it to Friday?'
Megan consulted the list. 'That would mean swapping the two scenes around,' she said slowly, 'and it's Act Two, Scene One on Friday. Which is your conversation with Banquo and soliloquy, Draco, so that wouldn't work...' She thought for a while. 'We could do it before the Scene One rehearsal, if you could both get here for six o'clock instead?'
'That's fine with me,' said Malfoy, and after a moment contemplating saying she couldn't make it just to annoy Malfoy – which would be incredibly childish – Hermione nodded her agreement.
'Everyone else?' Megan asked, looking around. 'There was a chorus of 'Yes,' from Olivia, Ruth and Stan. 'Adrian?' Megan asked, frowning. 'Can you... Oh, I don't believe it.'
Adrian had been lying with his head in his arms for some minutes, and a quick shake from Ruth revealed the truth; he'd fallen asleep.
'Frigida,' Megan said sharply, drawing her wand from her pocket and waving it in Adrian's direction. A jet of water shot out of its end and hit him – rather neatly – in the ear; he yelped and fell out of his chair.
Hermione was close enough to Draco to hear him give a soft snort of amusement.
'What was that for? Adrian asked grumpily from the floor, rubbing his head.
'Your own good,' Megan replied firmly, folding her arms. 'Now, get up, sit down, and tell us whether you can make it on Friday at six.'
He got up, glaring at them all – the other three directors seemed to be struggling with laughter – and sat down, but didn't answer her question. 'You knew I had a headache,' he moaned.
'Which was your own fault for stealing that Firewhiskey from the kitchens,' Megan said without pity. 'Friday at six?'
'I can come,' Adrian muttered, slumping into his arms. 'Can I go now?'
Looking very much as if she would like to say no, Megan said 'Yes.' She glanced up to Malfoy and Hermione with an apologetic air. 'We'll see you on Friday, then. Thanks.'
The following week passed quickly; mainly because she seemed to be doing so much in it. She met with Malfoy again, of course, but only once. They criticised each other less, Hermione noted, and Malfoy was actually passably civil, even if the atmosphere still carried the same tense air of enmity as it had before, even if it was a little lessened. Maybe Malfoy was tiring of fighting, Hermione hoped; maybe they could manage to be peaceable for the rest of the play.
Of course, that was only a hope, and it was just as possible that he'd call her Mudblood next time they met and they'd end up in the hospital wing suffering the results of various nasty hexes. She hoped it didn't come to that.
She knew full well they'd never be anything like friends – unless Malfoy went completely insane, of course, or developed amnesia – but she could hope for some kind of civility. The kind where he didn't insult her, the kind where they got through the rehearsals without any vicious glares or cruel smirks or unnecessary criticisms, the kind where they, perhaps, could even call each other by their first names, or could hold a pleasant five-minute conversation of random small talk.
It was unlikely that they'd ever manage that, but she hoped for it all the same. The rest of her time was taken up with various other rehearsals – Dean and Padma seemed to want to do a rehearsal every day, and there'd been a major rehearsal of Act Two, Scene Three, which they were supposed to be rehearsing on the Sunday. Between the official rehearsals and the informal ones, added to homework and Prefect duties, Hermione was finding herself with less and less free time.
Which was why she was pleased to find a few hours on Thursday evening when she'd finished all her homework and had no one clamouring for practices. Perhaps it was a good thing that she and Malfoy couldn't stand one another – if they'd been friends they'd have rehearsed a lot more, and then would her free evening have gone?
Ron wasn't there, to her annoyance – he'd had to rush off to the Library to write a Defence essay that was due in first thing next morning, which Hermione had done a week ago. But Harry was, so they found two comfortable armchairs in one corner, out of the direct glare of the fireplace but still well warmed from it, and sat there drinking hot chocolate and letting themselves relax.
'It's actually going surprisingly well,' Harry was saying, 'especially since the last time I did any acting was the school Nativity.'
Hermione thought back to the last time he'd mentioned it – weeks ago, now. 'What were you?' she asked. 'I can see you as one of the three kings – or you'd have made a good Joseph.'
Harry shook his head. 'Innkeeper,' he said with a grin, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. 'Dudley wanted to play baby Jesus, but the teachers wouldn't let him, obviously-'
Hermione spluttered, almost spilling her drink everywhere, and Harry paused to let her recover.
'So he ended up playing one of the kings. They enticed him with a shiny gold crown,' Harry said, with a laugh. 'I thought he should have played a pig, though Aunt Petunia had her heart set on him being an angel. 'The real Angel Gabriel was male, you know, why can't my Duddykins play him...' Dudley said it was too girly; that was the only reason she gave in.'
Hermione laughed. 'I could just see him as a pig,' she said. 'He doesn't suit the kings; they're supposed to be wise men...'
'Which Dudley doesn't fit the criteria for,' Harry said, amused. 'I wanted to be a shepherd, I think. But the teachers said I had to be an innkeeper, so an innkeeper I was. It could have been worse, I suppose. At least I actually had something to say.'
'My school never did a Nativity,' Hermione said, sighing. 'Which is a shame, because I wanted to be an angel. Everybody wants to be an angel, every girl at least.'
Harry nodded. 'Apart from the ones who wanted to be Mary,' he agreed. 'Why didn't you do a Nativity? I thought it was one of those traditions that every school did...'
'Our Headmaster was... rather modern. He didn't like sticking to the traditional things. We did do a version of the Ramayana-'
'The what?' Harry asked in confusion.
'The Ramayana,' Hermione repeated. 'It's a Hindu story – there's probably a book containing it in the Library, if you want me to find you one. Anyway, we did that when I was about seven. And in assemblies we were just as likely to have Norse mythology or Buddhist chanting as we were to have hymns or Bible readings.' Hermione paused, smiling. 'It was fun; and I think I learned a lot more too.'
'Sounds like it,' Harry said, with a smile. 'We just used to have the same old songs... and assemblies were really boring, we never learnt anything.' He paused, taking a sip of his hot chocolate. 'It was worst on the last day of term before Christmas, because the headmaster used to give a speech all about redemption and stuff. The same one every year. And all of us would be sitting there – the assembly was last thing – and knowing that our parents were waiting outside and as soon as he finished we'd be free...' He twisted the mug in his hands. 'I don't think any of us actually listened to what he said, which defeated the whole point rather, didn't it? None of us cared about it anyway.'
Hermione considered this. 'It's the kind of thing that's interesting in a philosophic sense,' she said eventually. 'Redemption, I mean.'
Harry frowned. 'How?' he asked. 'It's never seemed at all interesting to me...'
'Well, think of all the questions you can ask about it. For a start, what is redemption, anyway?' she asked.
Harry was silent for a moment, biting his lip slightly and taking another drink out of his mug. 'In the general sense? It's... I guess it's making amends for something you've... something wrong that's happened,' he said, curling himself tighter on the sofa. 'I never really thought about it before...'
'It's an interesting topic,' Hermione said slowly, watching the hot chocolate swirl in her mug. 'It's almost like there's two types of redemption-'
'What?' asked Harry.
'It's always going to be sacrificing something, or making some kind of penance for a wrong,' Hermione said, 'but there's the kind when you're making penance for something you've done wrong, and the kind where you're making penance for something someone else has done wrong.'
Harry only nodded.
'I think the latter one's mainly in religious contexts, though,' Hermione said thoughtfully. 'It doesn't happen so much in day-to-day-life.'
'Yeah, I guess not,' Harry said, quite quietly, then looked up. 'I've thought of another question; how do you get redemption?'
'I guess it depends what for, and who you ask,' Hermione replied, tilting her head to one side. 'But it would be something which fit the nature of the wrongdoing. So if you'd killed someone and wanted redemption, you might...' She thought about it. 'Risk your own life to save the lives of others, I suppose. Or die to save others.'
He considered this, resting his head against the soft armchair, looking rather tired all of a sudden. 'Die to save others,' he repeated, then closed his eyes.
He didn't speak for another few minutes; Hermione frowned. 'Harry? You aren't falling asleep, are you?'
'No,' he replied, 'Just... just resting my eyes.' He sat up, yawned, putting his empty mug down on the table beside him. 'I guess I should go to bed.'
'You probably should,' she agreed. 'I'll probably go in a minute, after I've finished my drink.' She looked at him, giving him a smile. 'Night, Harry.'
'Night,' he replied, before turning and heading to his dormitory. Hermione watched him go, frowning.
On Friday morning they awoke to news of another Death Eater attack. A rural village in Yorkshire had been attacked; five wizards and seventeen Muggles were dead, and the Aurors had confirmed that Dark Arts and Unforgivables had been used. The Daily Prophet just showed the gruesome, floating Dark Mark, of course, and a few pictures of the victims who'd had a clean, quick Avada Kedavra, lying on the ground pale, sightless and slightly surprised.
The whispers going round school – not the everyday whispers of chatter and gossip, but altogether darker and more subdued whispers, the kind you make in a library, or in the home of the recently-dead – told of worse things that had happened. Stories told of people's hearts being torn from their chests while they were still alive, or of people being tortured into insanity, or of people being forced, under Imperius, to kill their friends, children, lovers.
People recounted the properties of Dark curses that they'd heard about only briefly, as a dim and distant memory; curses that made your bones turn to ice and shatter inside you, curses that ate away slowly at your flesh like invisible maggots; curses that made your spine hiss and writhe like a malevolent snake under your skin, jabbing upwards to stab through your brain.
No one knew how many of these rumours had any truth in them; but by their existence people could at least believe they knew what had happened, which made the whole thing less frightening. An enemy you can see is always far less frightening than the one that is just a dark shape amongst the shadows, a shape that could be anything.
It was a quiet day, as it always was after an attack. The conversation in the common room kept breaking off, fading for a few moments before picking up again, stilted and almost forced. Harry hardly spoke at all.
It even affected the rehearsal: Megan was paler than usual, her face pinched as she guided the rehearsal through its steps with determination, and Stan had lost much of his good humour. Olivia and Ruth were both unusually quiet, and even Adrian and Malfoy were more subdued then usual.
They arranged the next formal practice for Tuesday, and – at Ruth's suggestion – Hermione and Malfoy agreed to meet on Sunday for another practice.
'Late again, Granger?' was the first thing Malfoy said when she arrived in the Library, leaning back in his seat with a confident smirk. Hermione sat down in her seat and glared at him.
'Perhaps if you hadn't been on the opposite side of the library to where we usually are, I wouldn't be so late,' Hermione replied sharply.
Malfoy simply smiled in reply. 'What are we practicing today, my lady?' he asked sarcastically, picking up his book. 'Act Two... Scene Two?'
She gave him a brief nod. Act Two, Scene Two took place directly after Macbeth and his wife had murdered King Duncan; it was dramatic and exciting, and she'd been looking forwards to acting it out. Drawing out her script, Hermione took a brief breath, concentrating on her view of Lady Macbeth, her thoughts about this scene, and began.
'That which hath made them drunk have made me bold; what hath quenched them hath given me fire,' she began, speaking quickly but firmly, like one who is trying to convince themselves of an untruth; then she gave a passable imitation of a startled jump. 'Hark! Peace!' Then, after a pause for Lady Macbeth to catch her breath, 'It was the owl that shriek'd, the fatal bellman, which gives the stern'st goodnight,' she told herself.
She went on for a few more lines; Malfoy didn't interrupt. She kept taking small glanced at him over the top of her script; he was paying attention, certainly. Perhaps he'd just got bored with criticising her every move? It would be a relief if he had.
Malfoy performed the difficult task of making 'Who's there? What, ho!' sound serious rather than comic, and Hermione carried on for a few more lines.
'Had he not resembled my father as he slept, I had done't,' she finished, glancing up. She remembered, briefly, their argument at the first rehearsal over whether Lady Macbeth was truly evil or not. What was it Malfoy had said? 'And yet she can't kill Duncan with her own hands, and she goes mad from the guilt of the various murders. Someone who is truly evil doesn't feel for their victims, doesn't go mad thinking over what they've done.'
If he wanted to fight, this was the perfect place to bring it up. Hermione waited a second in expectation before finishing her piece. Enter Macbeth, and 'My husband!' Desperate, slightly panicked, slightly relieved.
Malfoy was silent for a few moments, before saying in unspeakably eerie tones, 'I have done the deed.'
Hermione shivered involuntarily. A second later, Malfoy looked up. 'Didst thou not hear a noise?'
'I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry,' Hermione replied. 'Did you not speak?'
They continued on, without interruption, without criticism. She didn't know why Malfoy wasn't criticising her: she wasn't criticising him partly because she didn't want to upset whatever civility they had, and partly because he was actually very good; there were no glaring errors.
She'd always though of Macbeth's tone in this scene as being somewhat harsh and raw; painful, perhaps. Malfoy was more subtle, but equally mesmerising; he said things so softly, but so eerily – 'This is a sorry sight,' - raising his hands up and staring somewhere at his wrists. When they acted it, for real, his hands would be covered in blood; listening to his voice there, Hermione could almost see the blood, could imagine his hands crimson and sticky with it, and shivered.
'A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight,' she rebuked him sharply, and they carried on through 'These deeds must not be thought after these ways; so, it will make us mad' and 'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor shall sleep no more, Macbeth shall sleep no more' and 'Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood clean from my hand?' They didn't stop once before the end; or almost the end, anyway.
'To know my deed...' Malfoy began, and stopped, then began again, his voice frighteningly hollow. 'To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself.'
He had another line to go, but he didn't speak; just stared in an abstract way at the inside of his sleeve. Hermione waited, frowning, and put it down to lack of sleep.
'Malfoy?' she prompted.
Another second, then, without looking up, 'Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!' he finished, very slowly, and with just the right amount of desperation infused into this voice. He looked up, then; his cheekbones were tinted pink, and he was breathing too fast, pale and wide-eyed.
'Should we do it again?' Hermione asked, not knowing what else to say, and Malfoy nodded.
They went through it again.
A/N: 'Frigida' is the latin for, unsuprisingly, 'cold water'. Poor Adrian... Oh, and the Ramayana which Hermione refers to is an actual Hindu story.
I'm interested to see if any of you will be able to piece together what's going on. I have been leaving massive clues as to what's going to happen all over the place; so massive that they are not foreshadowing, they are foreneoning, which is like foreshadowing but with big neon lights.
Whether you work it out or not, you're going to find out some of it next chapter... but between now and then is a week's wait. What you do in that time is your choice, but you know what I suggest you do for at least part of that time? Review!