A/N: I have no idea how long this will be at but my chapters for this story are tending to run a lot longer than usual. Anyway, happy Cinco de Mayo! (FYI: it's the day the Mexican people threw off the French… NOT the Spanish!)
Read, enjoy, review!
ON TO
Chapter Two:
A few days after that strange – and somehow satisfying, or at least vaguely flattering – encounter, a cold front moving down from the Arctic met with warm Mediterranean air over the city. As rain pattered on the roof and windows, Hermione thought the metaphor would fit very well her odd meeting with Malfoy. She supposed he was the chilly northern wind, except he had sought her out on purpose, unlike insentient jet streams. But he did make her want to scream and hurtle flashy curses his way, so maybe the analogy could stand.
A low rumble of thunder followed by a sharp crack broke into her reverie, and she looked up to the window. From her current position, she could see faint, wavering orange light and trails of raindrops running down the glass. She could never decided whether she liked the sound of falling rain or not, whether it lulled her to sleep or kept her awake half the
night and depressed her besides.
What she had never debated was that it was above all a solitary sound. Perhaps she had simply never found the right companion for a rainy night, but something about the meaningless staccato sharpened the feelings of isolation she usually felt as muted background noise. Sometimes it was a pleasant feeling, distilling the essential Hermione from the muddiness of an ever-more confusing life.
But now it was just lonely. Perhaps the rain reminded her of tears – tears she had and would again shed, others she thought herself too proud and composed to let fall. Or perhaps the irregular taps emphasized the silence between them, like a dark beauty mark served centuries ago to accent a fair complexion.
"Or maybe I just need to get out of this room," she said aloud with a bitter little laugh. That was certainly true. While it was convenient to blame her lack of a social life on her duties, she knew that the fault lay elsewhere, on her own shoulders. She could go out and mingle or smile back at the young men who smiled at her, but…
She closed her eyes for a moment against the dim wave of pain that thought carried. It all came down to fear. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, and she knew it. She sighed and sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed. With the rain pounding overhead and her thoughts stampeding through her brain, there was no way she would find sleep for a long time.
She left her tiny bedroom to stand by the larger window in the main room for a little while, smoking and musing on the confrontation of opposing air masses. Officially she abhorred Malfoy and everything he stood for, but at the moment, she wondered if she might not prefer him to her own quiet company.
"God, I'm desperate," she remarked as she flipped a light switch. She padded to her desk, where an electric kettle sat on its stand. After holding it a few seconds under the tap, she returned it to the stand and plugged in the cord. As the water heated, she chose a packet of tea (she hated packets, but they were convenient here) and fetched one of her few mugs from its home near the sink.
The water boiled a few minutes later, and she let the tea bad seep as she straightened up her desk. Reports and scrap paper, along with the old café or shop receipt, littered the wooden surface. When she could see a little more of the desktop, she squeezed the last drops from the tea bag and threw it into the bin, along with the cigarette she was careful to extinguish.
The main problem with her tiny flat here, she had decided a long time ago, was the lack of a nice little refrigerator where she could keep a bit of milk for her tea. Mug in hand, she crossed to the door and opened into the dim hallway. Careful not to spill steaming tea on her fingers, she tip-toed to the kitchen and prayed no one had used the last of her milk. While it was accepted that tenants sharing a common kitchen might nick a wedge of cheese or a piece of fruit now and then, taking the last of someone's milk was considered very rude.
She smiled a little to see a full half litre left. Excellent. At least she would have decent tea tonight, even if it did come from a bag. On her way to the kitchen, she had not bothered to switch on any lights, so the dim refrigerator light was the sole source of illumination she had to judge when she had added enough milk. She sipped the tea, nodded, capped the bottle, and returned it to its home on the top shelf before making her silent way back to her room, a sliver of light in the dark corridor.
She walked through the doorway, took another sip, and almost choked.
"What are you doing here?" she spat as her free hand flew to her side. Damn. No wand.
Lucius Malfoy stood at the window, staring into the stormy night. He looked over his shoulder at her with a mild, questioning expression as if to ask what she was doing there. As if he had more right to be there than she did. His eyes flicked to the mug she held.
"We both know what a resourceful girl you are. If I assure that I am not armed or accompanied, I hope you will restrain yourself from using that on me."
She buried her scowl in her mug. How had he known that she had been considering just that? "You want me to take you on your word, Mr. Malfoy?" She barked a short, incredulous laugh. "I thought you told me that the reason you sought me out was that you believe me to be intelligent."
"You are bright, and I cannot believe that as such, you would go into hiding in a strange city without some small measure of protection, even if you were denied your wand, like some sort of criminal."
"It was my idea," she replied hotly. "I didn't want to take any chances that one of you would find me, and I know a couple of artefacts capable of tracking magical objects, not just recently-cast spells."
He smiled. "Yet here I am despite your caution." Well, there was not much she could say to that.
"Still, I knew you would not be entirely foolish. I would be very surprised if you did not have a high-quality Sneak-o-scope hidden nearby… perhaps in your desk? And that," he nodded to the tiny dream catcher suspended over the door frame, "doubtless has embedded within a few protective stones… agate, jasper, onyx and tiger's eye?"
He must have studied it carefully to see all that. Had he been waiting just outside her door all night, waiting for his opportunity to slip inside… or had he been here before?
She crossed the room, leaving a wide berth around her involuntary guest, and pulled open one of her desk drawers. None of her detectors showed any signs of distress. She had always been a little sceptical of the properties of rocks, but her devices should have been having a fit at Malfoy's proximity.
"You tampered with them."
"I have not. You can see that they were still functioning."
Yes, she could see that. If they had been neutralized or otherwise touched with magic, she would have recognized the signs, she was sure. They hummed and whirred contentedly as she shut them back in the drawer. Then he did not mean her harm, but she supposed that he could think of hurting or killing her as doing her a favour. However he had managed to trick her sensors, she was no closer to trusting him.
"Is that how you found me, then?" She had thought that passive devices like these emitted too little magical residue to alert anyone who was looking for traces, but even she did not know the full extent of Dark capabilities – or her side's, for that matter.
He clucked his tongue in admonishment. "I already told you that I would not reveal that information so soon, unless you would tell me something I wish to know…"
"Forget it," she snapped.
"Very well. I do not expect to receive anything useful out of you for sometime."
She blinked and, remembering the mug in her hand, took another sip of tea. Keeping her eyes trained on Lucius, she edged to the tattered loveseat – the only furniture in the room besides the window sill or desk chair where someone could sit – and sat. "Then what are you doing here?" What do you think, her brain replied, he felt lonely, hearing the rain, just like you, and came to keep you company? Her lips twitched in a smile. Of course.
This time, the corners of his eyes crinkled a very little bit when he smiled. "Let us say, for the pleasure of your company."
She almost wanted to smile back. There was no denying that he could be a bloody convincing actor when he tried. After all, that and thousands of Galleons had once (and probably more times) spared him from prison. She considered him for a moment, then spoke.
"As my guest, I would offer you tea, but I'm not sure if I have any clean mugs, and the milk is down the hall." If Lucius Malfoy could be polite to a Mudblood, she could be civil, nay, hospitable to a Death Eater. Not that she would extend the courtesy to offering a cigarette, which was much dearer around here than a tea bag.
"Quite unnecessary," he said as he shrugged out of his overcoat, which looked to have come from a Muggle designer, albeit a very expensive one. When Lucius blended it, he did so with gusto.
She stiffened for a moment at his sudden motion, and he chuckled. "Paranoia is exhausting, isn't it?"
"Nothing I can't live with."
He glanced up from folding his coat over his arm, and she saw surprise in that expression, followed by an equally shocking – and fleeting – look of weariness. Then that small, insufferable smirk reappeared and that strange moment passed before she had time to process what she thought she had seen. That look would stick with her, though.
"Patience has always been one of your special virtues, hasn't it? Patience and a certain… disregard for the spotlight. It's enough that you know what you've accomplished." He gestured with his coat. "What would you like me to do with this?"
"Sell it and donate the proceeds to people who aren't eating tonight. Short of that, you can lay it across the desk." She was glad that she had cleaned it off a few minutes before he came.
"No one told me how amusing you are." As he walked to the desk, she noticed the quiet grace with which he moved and the perfect cut of his Muggle suit. He was taller and broader than many of the French men she saw, and as well-dressed as the best of them. Well, it was no secret that the Malfoys were all too good-looking for anyone's good.
"I imagine there is much we have yet to learn about you. Hidden depths…" He turned, and his pale eyes bored into her as if determined the plumb them right then and there. "Victories we have attributed to other members of your Order."
Sometime in her face or its too-carefully controlled stillness at that moment must have given her away because his smirk widened. "Ah yes, I have hit upon something. Yes, we most certainly have underestimated you, and I could wager than even your friends do not fully appreciate what lurks behind those eyes." He was walking slowly towards her but stopped when she bolted to her feet and strode across the small distance between them.
"You think I'm some stupid little girl you can flatter and win over with pretty words? I'm insulted but hardly surprised. Your problem is and has always been that you don't really understand how people work, no matter how well you know them. Why do you think Voldemort has failed time and again? It's not because of the handful of incredible wizards and witches who oppose him but because, in their hearts, almost no one wants your evil to triumph. People don't care as much about blood as you like to believe, except when you shed it." By the time she finished, she was close enough to feel the faint stir of his breath.
"And as for the Order, you will never begin to comprehend why we continue to fight despite your threats and everything you can conjure. Most of all, you will never understand me, and you will never persuade me to abandon my friends. So leave… you're wasting my time and yours here."
She wished she had not left her tea on the floor by the loveseat; her throat felt parched. Most of that she had thought in bits and pieces of over the past couple of weeks since Malfoy had first approached her via letter with his offer, but it had never seemed so clear.
In spite of her anger, he did not leave. His eyes took in her flushed cheeks and the rapid rise and fall of her chest and dropped even farther before flicking back to her eyes. It knocked her a little off balance, that look. It was not the way a senior villain was supposed to look at a seething enemy.
"Nor did anyone warn me that you've ravishing when you're angry."
Sure, she had heard stories of Dark sorcerers trying to seduce members of the Order and other influential people, but she had never thought Lucius Malfoy quite the type to engage in such… low tactics.
"You're contemptible." She jerked her head toward the door. "Get out."
He continued to regard her without the smallest visible trace of annoyance until she sat heavily into the window sill seat in defeat. At this, he smiled.
"Better. Now, let us discuss our affairs like two adults instead of squabbling children or green idealists." He left to retrieve her mug and presented it to her with a mocking little bow. She took it without smiling but managed to bite her tongue as he sat at the other end of the window seat. Something like a silent truce passed between them in that moment. Lucius would keep to a minimum his jabs and even more ridiculous flattery, and Hermione would hear what had to say.
The conversation was stimulating, if doomed to fall into a familiar, endless pattern. The falling rain filled in the gaps nicely, and before long, she realised that she had relaxed so much that she was beginning to drowse. With Malfoy the Elder in the same room, smiling that little cat smile of his. She sat up straight and tried to glare.
When she did so, he chuckled. "I can't say I'm accustomed to talking people to sleep. What a trusting lamb you are."
She narrowed her eyes. When he was not trying to kill her or lure her to the side of evil, he was insulting her. "That makes you a pretty poor wolf."
"Merely patient," he replied and leered at her again. She wanted to cover up with the rug she kept near the window but braved his glacial stare.
"Why did you come here?" she asked, breaking the silence. "I can understand working your little tricks on me once you were here, and I understand why you accosted me the other night, but why now? Isn't there Dark magic you could be performing at this hour… innocent Muggles you could be torturing?"
He leaned back against the window sill, caressing the silver head of his cane while he framed a response. It was the first time that she had caught him at a loss for words, though he was hardly flustered.
"The rain," he said after a long pause. He stood and fetched his coat, draping it over one arm, before approaching Hermione where she sat. Hating the difference in their height and the feeling that he was looking farther down at her even than usual, she stood without thinking.
"Such a strange sound," he continued, eyes locked on her. "I had the bizarre sensation that I was the only human being in the city, perhaps in the world. Outside, Muggle gazes passed by me as if they saw nothing at all." His eyes drifted and stared at nothing for a moment before he shook himself. "Ultimately, I came for the same reason that you did not turn me away."
She told herself not to indulge him by asking what that reason was because she knew that she would not like the answer. She supposed that she already knew it, but to hear it she would have to acknowledge the truth of it. And that might be dangerous.
But Lucius appeared content to wait there, near enough to touch, until they both expired.
"Fine," she began in her most irritable tone of voice. "Why, to my eternal regret, did I not turn you away?"
"Don't pout. You're a powerful and intelligent witch, not a spoiled child."
Lightning flashed all around them, shortly followed by a noise like a crashing tree. To her credit, Hermione did not jump, only stiffened a little and dropped her sullen expression.
"I know very well what I am and am not, and I know that you will not be satisfied until you enlighten me. Why are we here, together?"
His lips curved, not into his cat-like smirk but into a warm smile. "Because we are both brilliant, solitary warriors, and the rains pounds on the rooftops with a strange and lonely sound."
For a ludicrous moment, she thought he was going to… Ridiculous.
She was not aware that she had spoken that last thought aloud until he chuckled again, cold as ever. "Do not concern yourself. I would not presume so, not without your express consent." His arrogant smirk said that no, he would not presume to do anything of the sort without her permission but that if he wished her to, she would beg.
That look broke whatever spell – no pun intended – he or the rain had cast, and she sat down in a huff. With one last low laugh, he turned and left, closing the door softly behind him.
If she had been the dramatic sort, Hermione would have thrown her empty mug at the door, but she was above all sensible. Sensible and patient. She would continue her work here and await the moment when she could direct her ire where it would do the most damage, preferably with Malfoy at the other end of her wand. Instead, she lit up a fag and sat and smoked and stared out the window into the storm.
