A Life Everlasting Chapter 3 LAST CHAPTER
"Vine wood. Intriguing," Lucius said as he inspected the hunk of branch Draco had retrieved on his walk with Hermione.
The young witch stood behind Draco, a bashful look on her face as she watched father and son interact. "Do you want to whittle it, Father?" Draco asked as his father walked to a large apothecary cabinet to one side of the kitchen.
"No. I believe Miss Granger would enjoy your company far more than my own," he replied, beckoning her toward the odd cabinet.
She stood rooted in place. Draco placed a hand on the small of her back and she immediately straightened up at the brazen contact. "It's okay. He wants to see if anything in here speaks to you. Let's see if there's something we can use as a core. It would help with ease of use and protection," he explained. "Perhaps unicorn tail hair?" he whispered quietly, giving her a wink.
Hermione struggled to keep her features cool—her mother often told her she was far too expressive. Potential suitors would have no desire to learn of her opinions written all over her face. Draco was charming and handsome in an unpolished manner, his demeanor rough and foreign to her. Far from the aristocratic, huffy gentleman her mother paraded in front of her, hoping for a match.
With his gentle nudging she joined Lucius at the cabinet. "These are some of the ingredients we use in potion making," he commented. "Pay particular attention to these items here—they are taken from creatures that possess powerful magic of their own," he pointed to a row of jars near the top.
The cabinet was made from solid oak, the knots and grain sanded by hand. There was an intricate design carved into the doors, symbols Hermione didn't recognize, but clearly held a deeper meaning. There were glass vials of all types of items—dried herbs and flowers; insects moving about in some; some filled with liquid, items suspended within. There was a roughly sewn together book, made of hand-tanned leather from the pelt of an animal she didn't recognize—shiny scales that looked as though they were once hard but had softened with repetitive handling. The front had more of the strange symbols and 'Malfoy' embossed into the scaly cover.
"That's the family grimoire," Draco explained and Hermione looked up to find that she and the blond boy were alone, his father having excused himself.
She looked up at him and he ran a finger tenderly over his surname. "What is a grimoire?"
"A spellbook of sorts," he said, opening it for her to see. "It contains hundreds of years of spells, charms, potion-making instructions, lost incantations. Hundreds of years of tradition passed down in this one book."
The pages inside were made of parchment, once crisp but just as the outside of the book was, worn down from years of use. Hermione suspected that magic might be involved in keeping the book around this long. She tenderly touched the pages' edges. There were languages she couldn't read, elegant postscripts and hand drawn pictures of different plants and animals she didn't recognize. "I must be dreaming," she commented, sighing heavily.
"It's incredible isn't it? To go your entire life not knowing that the subject matter you have read about in fanciful tales is based on reality," he agreed, taking her hand and bringing it near a few glass jars. "Do you feel anything calling to your magic?"
Hermione was silent as he maneuvered her hand in his. She had a good understanding of what to expect—the strange tingling in her hand and arm that she'd felt outside. He hesitated a moment over a long cylindrical vial of white long hairs—unicorn tail hair. He looked hopeful for a moment but she shook her head. His smile fell slightly—he was disappointed they wouldn't have twin wand cores. She felt a tingling in her fingertips as he brought her hand near another cylinder. Hermione smiled and looked up at him. He quirked an eyebrow. "Dragon heartstring—our last one. I'm named after the dragon constellation you know," he pointed out, seemingly pleased with himself.
Hermione didn't know much of the stars—stargazing was the Devil's work, after all. She simply nodded. Draco took the vial from the cabinet and pocketed it in his patched and worn pants. He took her hand once more and gave her an encouraging smile, his cheeks turning pink as he turned his gaze from hers. "Why don't we sit outside for this?" he gestured toward the door and retrieved the chunk of vine wood.
She nodded and noticed that Narcissa had also made herself scarce. Hermione hadn't seen Theo since she initially arrived. "Where's Theo?" she asked, curious.
"He's gone to see the Elder," Draco said by way of explanation.
"Your what?"
"He's an ancient man, full of wisdom and knowledge no one else in this world possesses. He brings us items we may need—dragon heartstrings or wolfsbane for example."
"Is there not a market for people like you?" Hermione asked as Draco took a seat on the rickety porch steps.
"Like us," he reprimanded softly, tapping the stair next to him for her to sit. "And our kind is not well received in the general public. We are being hunted by the Muggles—they'd rather kill what they do not understand than try to amend their ways."
"A real witch hunt, then?" she asked, perturbed by this new information.
"Precisely. That is why it is so imperative that we teach you the Old Ways before we return you home. If you suppress your magic, you can unwittingly create an obscurus—a Dark parasite that is inherently dangerous to everyone around you. And if you speak of our existence to anyone, we could all be hanged," he said, retrieving a non-folding whittling knife from a chest on the porch beside him.
Hermione watched as he skillfully removed all of the bark from the outside of the small log. She noticed that Narcissa was out in an area of the clearing that housed a small garden, plucking strawberries. "If you all can do magic, why do anything by hand?"
Draco looked up at her for a brief moment before returning his attention back to shaving chips away from the wood in his hand. "Sometimes, doing things by hand creates a greater sense of accomplishment and appreciation. We do use magic quite a bit, mostly for healing purposes or to make life simpler. For instance, this knife is imbued with magic—it allows the blade to slice through this wood like butter," he admitted.
He shaved a few more long curly strands of wood as she contemplated what he said. "I've never had to lift a hand to perform a menial task in my life," she finally settled on saying.
He let out a hearty laugh and she enjoyed the deep rumbles. "No, I guess the daughter of a railroad tycoon wouldn't have to do much menial work."
Hermione was fascinated by the way his hands worked, quick and sharp movements. He was wearing a long sleeved white shirt, dingy and well worn and he had the sleeves pulled up to his elbows, revealing surprisingly fair skin. The muscles in his forearm worked as he twisted and turned his wrist. Hermione had never noticed such a thing on another man before. The men in her life were always in full suits and waistcoats, haughty top-of-the-world sneers adorning their faces. The rich. The powerful.
Here was a boy whose family didn't have any money, who lived off of the land that they tilled and planted and harvested all on their own. He had patched and reworked his pants—probably by way of magic—into faded and worn fabric. His shirt was dingy, though cleaned by hand. He had no problem doing simple tasks by hand though he seemed to have the power like the world had never seen, right at his fingertips. And he had a playful, inquisitive and innocent demeanor, unaffected by the outside world of railroads and coal mining. He seemed genuinely content in the simple life his family led.
Hermione watched his hands—long, deftly able fingers that moved with an ease that seemed well rehearsed. She looked him over from her peripheral vision, trying not to alert him to her voyeurism. His skin was significantly paler than she would have expected for someone who clearly spent a good amount of time outside, and he had a delightful smattering of freckles over his exposed arms, neck and cheeks. His hair, paler blond than she had ever seen in her life, was cropped neatly and brushed back, his neck trimmed and tidy. A single strand of hair fell from his greased coif into his eyes as he whittled. He did have the faintest smattering of facial hair splashed across his jaw and lip and it glinted as he worked in the sunlight. His eyes were absolutely mesmerizing, a shade she'd never had the pleasure of seeing before.
She had the urge to reach over and touch him and then immediately felt disgust at how completely wanton that unwelcome thought was. Draco must have sensed her inner turmoil because he looked up at her. "You all right, Miss Granger? You are awfully quiet."
"I should be furious with you," she replied, biting her lip and looking down at her bare feet on the stair below them.
Draco nodded his agreement. "I agree. You would have every right to be."
Hermione wrung her hands and looked out over the garden to Narcissa, who was straightening her back into a stretch and looking up into the sunlight. Now that her fears of the Malfoy family harming her had begun to ebb, she found that she wanted to stay with them, for a little while longer. She wanted to see what they could do; she wanted to see what she could do.
"Why did you capture me? In the woods. How could you tell I was a witch?" she questioned curiously.
He smiled as he smoothed a hand over the roughly hewn wood, now narrower and sleekly designed. "I felt it."
"Felt what?" she asked incredulously.
"Your magic. I felt it vibrating around you."
He could feel her? Was she vibrating? She held out her hands in front of her and turned them over, waiting to see waves of vibrations come off in colorful waves. But she felt as she always did, couldn't visibly detect any change. Draco lifted his hand and pointed over her heart. "From in here," he said, his voice low.
Her magic vibrated forth from her heart? She wondered if he could detect somehow exactly how rapidly her heart was thrumming. Draco held out the thinned branch for her to grab hold of. "How does this feel?" he asked, letting go of the end.
Hermione lifted it and felt a heat spread through her. She shrugged. Draco grinned once more. "Is it too heavy? Too long and awkward?" he asked, backing away from the wand's end and turning it away as though she were pointing a loaded pistol at his face.
Hermione put it across both hands and weighed it. She shrugged once more. Draco took the wand from her delicately and began running an abrasive implement over it to round down the ends and smooth the entirety. "Would you like for me to carve something special into the handle?" he asked, raising an eyebrow teasingly.
She shook her head. "Not that I can think of."
"It will have to remain in the moonlight tonight, the dragon heartstring next to it so that they mate and meld together properly," he explained.
He stood to set it into the windowsill and then offered his hands to help her up. "Walk with me?" he gestured to a path on the opposite side of the clearing than they had trod that morning.
Hermione stood, wishing she hadn't discarded her boots in her mad dash to escape. She was looking at her feet and wiggled her toes, dirtied and bare. Draco looked down at her toes and then shrugged, removing his boots once more. "Now we're equal."
Hermione gave him one curt nod, hiding a smile that threatened to spread. It wouldn't do to have such a coquettish attitude with a boy of his class. He began walking toward the path and he pointed his own wand at her feet and whispered. "A cushioning charm. Nothing will be able to break the skin."
She held up a foot and wiggled her toes once more, her ankles dreadfully bare in his presence. She struggled, but she could no longer feel the crunch of twigs and leaves under her feet. Draco led her deep under a dense canopy of trees, the light growing significantly dimmer. He was walking ahead of her, leading her. To where, she did not know. He looked over his shoulder and reached back, taking her by the wrist. There was a look in his eye that Hermione might have described as mischief had she ever known the emotion in a boy before. "Race you!" he growled and he took off running, pulling her arm behind him.
Hermione had to sprint to keep up with the long stride of his legs as he skillfully hopped over twisted tree roots and down the side of a hill, from whence trees grew. When they reached the bottom, they emerged into a large clearing, double the size of the one where the tiny black cottage sat. It was filled with millions of dandelions, both the buttery gold flowers and the cotton like seed heads. Hermione looked around at the millions of plants, her jaw open wide. Draco reached over and put one finger under her chin, a chuckle leaving his lips. He gave her a moment more and then he took off sprinting into the field, dropping her hands to bend and drag both of his across the tops of the flowers. "Come on, Hermione!"
Her mother's face flashing before her eyes, the thought of the verbal lashing she would receive at partaking in such unusual behavior, caused her to hesitate for a moment. She didn't even know this boy, this strange lad who ran through flowers and carved magic wands. Hermione felt sad for a moment as she thought of her parents, frantic and worrying over her state. And then their faces flashed through her mind as they spoke to her of marrying Ronald Weasley, of how well the Weasley family complimented the Granger family.
Hermione felt a surge of defiance and rebellion and took handfuls of her dress up on either side, letting her legs carry her away. This family was inherently kind and only captured her for her safety as well as their own. Hermione wanted to return home, but for the time being, she would try to enjoy the company of perhaps the only people in the world to understand her. People like her.
Draco had slowed his pace for her to catch up and she dropped her skirts—they were in no danger of tripping her now that he'd shortened them. She bent forward and held her hands out on either side of her, just as he had done and felt the soft petals of flowers beneath her fingertips. As they ran and frolicked, the fluffy seeds of the dandelions flew into the air. They danced like snow on the breath of the wind.
Hermione could feel her hair growing in size and mass as it caught in the wind, her chestnut curls a wild mane about her pale heart-shaped face. He was turned around, walking quickly backward, laughing as the fluffs caught in their hair, on their clothing. He stopped abruptly, nearly causing her to slam into him had she not had such quick reflexes. "I win," he snickered, tossing his hands up to brace her should she fall.
Hermione couldn't remember the last time in her seventeen years of life she'd been in a more confusing predicament. Or a time when she'd felt more carefree.
o-o-o
THIS IS THE END OF WHAT I HAVE FOR A LIFE EVERLASTING!
