A/N: This is a bit shorter than usual, but I think you'll like it (grin). Gold stars showered upon anyone who guesses the bit of non-English at the end (and corrects me if I've badly mangled it). Gold stars even if you're close. But fear not, all will be explained in the next chapter next week!
Until then… read, enjoy, review!
Chapter Twenty:
"In conclusion," Hermione said from atop her podium, voice magically enhanced to echo through the hall, "hypnosis shows promising possibilities for our Healers, but as Muggles have discovered, there exists a significant possibility for abuse. With careful use of magic and proper supervision, I believe hypnosis offers an intriguing alternative to excess use of veritaserum and intrusive, potentially destructive legilimency."
The questions that followed were the usual dry, technical and theoretical queries that made up the majority of conferences like this, all except from the last question which came from a young man who looked barely old enough to be out of Hogwart, dressed in purple robes pinstriped with crimson (pinstriped robes? Hermione thought) and a bright red felt hat. He stood out from the sea of beige and subdued pastels like a lone neon sign in the night.
"Ms. Granger," he said with the mocking emphasis on the title she barely noticed anymore, "is it true that your research into this area originated with a series of nightmares that began during your captivity with known Death Eater Lucius Malfoy?"
A low rumble emanated from the crowd, the noise of annoyed people who were too well-mannered to shout the speaker down. Some of her colleagues sitting in the front rows rolled their eyes and offered a wry smile to Hermione. She allowed herself a small grin in return before returning her attention to the speaker, a recent protégé of Rita's.
"I'm sorry, I believe you're in the wrong room," she said.
He blinked, and the Quik Quotes quill suspended over a slim scroll in his hand wilted a little. "N-no," he replied haltingly, "I'm… would you please answer the question, Ms. Granger?"
Hermione affected a confused expression. "Well, yes, I am Hermione Granger, but you must be mistaken. This is the session called Memory Retrieval: Spells, Serum and Beyond. You must be looking for Sensationalist Journalism for the Untalented."
The young man blushed a brighter red than his hat and sat down so hard something creaked. While it was typical for the audience to applause after every presentation, she thought they sounded a little more enthusiastic than usual this time.
After nearly an hour spent shaking hands and expounding on her theme in informal conversation, Hermione slipped out of the vast hall to the grounds of the magnificent castle where the Healers Conference of the Mind, Sponsored by St. Mungo's was being held. They were somewhere in Germany, well-hidden from Muggle eyes in the midst of the Black Forest where a few stretches of greenery still remained in patches over the landscape.
She wandered around the castle, trying to avoid the milling crowd and eating a strawberry almost the size of her hand. Every several yards was stationed a witch or wizard dressed in dark blue, the uniform of the Securors, a sort of second tier of security after the Aurors recently created by combined efforts of several Ministries worldwide. Public and private leaders alike had begun enlisting their service in a hurry; there were many more Securors than Aurors, and every member strove very hard to prove they were as good as the original.
One of them stood a little ways off into the towering trees, tall and somehow ominous in his dark robes. He was facing the same direction as Hermione, so he did not see her, but she did not doubt that he knew someone was near. With his arms crossed in front of his chest, he looked as solid and immobile as the trees rising around him. Only his dark hair and robes ruffled in the wind. Hermione found the sight of this stranger unaccountably comforting as war raged outside this sanctuary. Surely the violence, at a peak even survivors of Grindelwald did not recall, could not last much longer. She barely remembered a time when she did not fear to see a green Dark Mark hanging in the sky.
A particularly strong gust whipped around the castle, and Hermione had to rub her eyes. She thought she had seen the man's hair shimmer, of all things. As she was puzzling over this peculiar sight, he turned to face her. He became very still but relaxed into his ready, tense stance again immediately. The moment passed so quickly that, just like the shimmer, she thought she had imagined it. He bowed and then turned back to stare into the woods.
She encountered no more hallucinations as she made a circuit of the castle. People streamed back into the castle as ancient bells announced the beginning of the afternoon sessions. The most sensational of these was a presentation by Milli Werrabridge, a witch barely older than Hermione who claimed to have created a simple potion that would rid the drinker of the Imperius curse. Along with the obvious benefit this would pose, there were whispers that Ministries all over the world had contracted with the major potion makers to brew tonnes of the stuff to force down the throats of their employees, down to the greenest assistants. Well, whatever the political consequences, it might prove the most important development in the war.
Ahead of her, witches and wizards hurried with little regard for their neighbours and shoved and poked each other with their elbows. No one quite brought out their wands to clear a path, but she was sure some of them were tempted. For her part, she had a spot reserved in the front, so she could take her time getting there. People were still milling around the hall, jostling for place and exchanging a few last words, enthusiastic or sceptical, when she arrived and took her seat.
"Hermione!" the man next to her boomed happily, "your presentation was a complete success! I'm sorry I did not stay and speak with you, but you looked busy enough without me."
She smiled as he enfolded her into his embrace. "Thank you, Anthony, I'm flattered. I don't think everyone was quite as impressed as you, but it certainly got people thinking."
They chatted until Milla Werrabridge took the stand. Hermione could not help but notice some of the envious looks cast at her, envious and vaguely disapproving, as if she did not deserve to be on such friendly terms with this powerful man. There was a wing at St. Mungo's named after Anthony Mitherston and probably at several other hospitals around the Wizarding world. He not only contributed sacks upon sacks of Galleons, but he also shared much of the work which came of out his private research facility, staffed by the elite of Healers focused on curses and other damage to the mind.
Not for the first time, not even for the hundredth, Hermione mused that she could not have dreamed of forming such a personal friendship with this man without the Malfoy name behind her, a name she never even used but which followed her nonetheless. She might have been selected to work for his foundation, but he employed dozens of talented witches and wizards and did not have the time to get to know all of them so well.
From the podium, Milla beamed at the crowd and, before she began the body of her presentation, extended her special gratitude to Mr. Mitherston for all the support he and his foundation had offered her. Hermione thought she heard murmurs around her at this, but they died as the witch started into her speech. She listened, fascinated, as Milla traced her research, through books and interviews and endless experimentation.
She spoke just long enough to make her conclusions and the process by which she had arrived to them clear, and then questions filled the rest of the session. Quills scratched throughout the hall, raising a maddening echo like thousands of racing mice. Hermione shifted in her seat; about one in three of the questions actually interested her. Her eyes started to wander, and she smiled to see Securors standing at every entrance and among the audience. Yes, this session in particular was bound to raise attention in many quarters, some of them most unpleasant.
She attended two other sessions that afternoon, wearing into evening, and then with no little relief retired to the small bedroom reserved to her in the castle. That she had a room at all at the palace was impressive, even more surprising was the lack of a roommate. Yes, the Malfoy name had done much for her in a relatively short amount of time. Networking was not among Hermione's strongest skills, but that name did oil the social gears. She descended again to join the other presenters for dinner but could not force herself to stay for the ball. She was exhausted, not accustomed to spending so many hours in a single day around so many people.
Instead, she wandered through the castle, a gargantuan thing built over the course of centuries, not because of any difficulty of construction but because its owners could never settle on a single style or shape. She came across more people like herself than she would have expected, none of them feeling especially sociable but unwilling to retire to bed just yet. They nodded and exchanged greetings and then left on their rambling walks.
Hermione also saw more Securors than she had expected, and to her dismay, they looked increasingly edgy as she became mildly lost in the castle and then centred herself again. Their eyes flashed at every noise and barely managed to avoid jumping when someone rounded a corner. Though she was not normally very sensitive to that sort of thing, she could feel thick wards throughout the castle like heavy fog and spiderwebs. It was cloying, almost suffocating, and suddenly she found herself trying very hard not to break into a run for the nearest exit.
The air was cool and smelled of green grass and flowering trees. She took a deep breath and set off at a slower pace, her wand emitting a pale glow. The castle grounds included a wild garden, rambling much like the castle itself, much different from the rigidly geometric gardens she had seen in France. Stone benches dotted the flora at irregular intervals, carved in ever more whimsical shapes as she continued. Eventually she sat on what appeared to be a giant stone mushroom, almost completely concealed from view on every side by a curtain of weeping willow branches.
Candlelight flickered through tall, iron-barred windows, yellow and warm. As she sat and stared into the night, she started to notice that the lights from the castle were flickering more and more erratically. She tensed and then jumped when she spotted the first green flash through the ground floor windows. The ballroom erupted into brilliant flashes which spread through the castle and too soon outside. Hermione gripped her wand and picked her stealthy way toward the battle.
The crunch of gravel under someone else's foot startled her, but when she spun to see who was following her, she saw no one. She turned back, and a hand clamped over her mouth. She struggled and aimed her wand at her assailant. To her surprise, she was allowed to move enough to catch a clear glimpse of the person's face… and thought fled. She was close enough to see through the Disillusionment of the Securor she had seen earlier, the solid, dark-haired man.
He raised his eyebrows at her in a silent question, and she nodded slowly. She could not think of the first thing to say. As she stared wide-eyed at this apparition, he bent his head toward her and whispered, "I must get you somewhere safe."
She jerked away and shook her head. "I can't leave. It's an ambush, and I'll have the element of surprise. People are going to die here."
"I can well believe," he replied harshly, "that you might believe that you are better equipped to handle a Death Eater attack than witches and wizards trained exactly for such a situation, but I must protest. You will serve no purpose here except as a trophy for a lucky Death Eater." It was disconcerting to see that familiar drawl coming from a stranger's face.
This was not how she had imagined their reunion, but then, she could never predict anything about their interaction. For the moment, they seemed to be on the same side. He was wearing a Securor's uniform, after all, instead of black robes and a white mask. Of course, it could all be a ruse to lure her… where? They were already isolated in this dark garden.
"Fine," she hissed. "I can take you to my house, if you insist."
He shook his head. "It may not be safe." He shook his robes back and proffered his arm. "Take my hand."
It should have sounded perfectly ordinary, but Hermione shivered. Years had passed and nothing, and now she was just supposed to take his hand for an Apparition without an explanation? Again?
She interlaced her fingers with his and drew close enough that their bodies were pressing together. Soon, she was feeling the horrible compression of a Side-along Apparition, and as they neared their destination, something else brushed her. Another ward, she decided. When she could see again, she stood on the slope of a small hill in front an elaborate gate made of a translucent, glassy substance that reflected the moonlight so that it seemed to glow silver.
Beyond the gate rose an edifice significantly smaller than the castle in the Black Forest but, in Hermione's opinion, much more pleasing to the eye. The walls were white and the steep roofs black in the pale light. From what she could see, the château formed three sides of a square around a big open court, complete with a splashing fountain. At the feet of the stone walls, eye-wrenching gardens with vegetation trimmed in fanciful designs cascaded down the hill before fading into a forest she could barely see.
Still holding his hand, Hermione looked up at Lucius to see him returned to his usual self. Charms like Disillusionment did not fare well during Apparition, and she imagined he had other things to concentrate on besides maintaining an illusion which could not matter much now anyway. She disentangled her fingers from his and reached up to touch his hair, white-blond as ever but now cropped short. It was easier to maintain the illusion this way, of course, but she was dismayed to see it.
"Your hair," she said softly.
He chuckled. "Many people have had to make sacrifices during this struggle, my dear. Think of it as my… patriotic duty." He emphasised the word 'patriotic' with a wry twist of his lips.
She smiled involuntarily. It was reassuring to know that whatever else had happened, Lucius Malfoy had not changed in essentials. He squeezed her fingers and leaned forward to lay a soft kiss on her lips. "We must hurry. It will be impossible for anyone to track us once we're inside."
He took her hand again, and he did not stride up to the house, he ran. By the time they reached the front entrance, Hermione had a stitch in her side and could hardly breathe. She coughed as the front door swung open, and a diminutive house elf greeted them with a low bow.
"Master!" he exclaimed, "Tingy was not expecting Master, Tingy will go alert the rest of the house elves." The creature turned its bulbous eyes to Hermione and, if possible, they bulged even further. "Mistress! Tingy has not had the honour to meet Mistress yet. Tingy welcomes Mistress to Kastell g' feiz."
