Chapter Two
I had a lot of questions. First and foremost was when the novel was created, which I learned from the front few pages of the book that it was first published in 1847. And subsequent queries were generally related; who was the authoress, why did she write such a novel, etc. Then, naturally my mind expanded to why the women in my society were reading this. It was true, I acknowledged, there were similarities to our society in both conduct and etiquette. But there was within me a deep thirst to know why Jane Eyre mattered enough to read in secret; why this book caused women to break conventions, to risk being exposed as a blood traitor and therefore be unmarriageable. I needed to know why it was worth the risk.
One evening over supper it was just my mother and I at the small dining table we shared as a family. The larger ones were for guests and parties. In the absence of my father, who was late at a meeting with the Minister, I decided this would be the best time to broach the topic once more. I read the novel in the span of two days, staying up quite late over candlelight to finish it. Having done that, I had not mentioned it again to my mother, nor had I told I actually intended to finish it. I waited until dessert to start.
"Mum," I said, as I watched her break the soft crust around small a lemon and blueberry tart with her fork. "I wondered if I could ask you a few questions about Jane Eyre."
Her eyes snapped to mine speculatively for a moment. She brought her cloth napkin to her lips and blotted them as she slowly nodded her head.
"Yes, very well," she replied.
"I only wondered," I said, turning my fork over and over in my fingers, "What is the reason you chose to read it? The…the language was quite poetic and beautiful, the story engaging from beginning to end, even thrilling. The framework and the aesthetics of the writing style were quite perfect, I just—I just am wondering why it was worth the risk of reading it."
"Risk?" My mother asked, raising her eyebrows, "I was already married, Lucius, there was no risk involved for our little club to read it. Would our husbands admonish us if they found out about it? Perhaps. But it is far more likely that they would not have noticed the difference between a witch authoress and a Muggle one."
"How would they not have noticed?" I asked quickly.
She took a drink of water from her goblet and smiled to herself. I was mildly irritated: women were always thinking things and not expressing them.
"I read Jane Eyre and much more than that sitting just across from your father at the breakfast table, in the lounge, and even in bed," she replied, "The simple fact that you are more observant than the rest of your sex is of your own accord, not one of our society's making. By default, men know what men know and women know what women know. It is how it has always been."
I felt heat rush to my cheeks. "So women are allowed to have secret worlds without their husband's knowledge, to peruse novels of adventure, romance, and struggle, to live entire existences—to be a stranger to their families? Because it is for women to know it and men to be oblivious of the interworking of their wives?"
"It's just a book, Lucius," my mother said, her voice immediately lifting to soothe me.
But I didn't want her to placate me; I wanted her to tell me the truth. I was suddenly and painstakingly aware that she had no desire to reveal the nature of the world I blundered into.
"You were protected by the knowledge that you were already married and therefore would not be shamed for it," I said slowly, as I digested our conversation, "But what about the women I came upon? Miss Black is highly esteemed to be sure, but even she could be denounced from society for being caught reading Muggle novels."
My mother placed her palms upon the table and gazed at me for some time before she began to speak. "Darling, I think you overestimate how dangerous this sort of undertaking is. Women have been reading outside of the approved Witch's Weekly 100 Life Changing Novels for Pureblood Wives for many years now."
"But why did you read it?" I asked, curling my fingers against my palms under the table.
"Because I wanted more than that list—I wanted my life to be more!" my mother exclaimed, and her cheeks were flushed with anger too, though I did not think it was with me. "Women get four areas of specialization, and my finishing school was very good at persuading young women that what they wanted most out of the world was to sit before a pianoforte or to sing. Not magic. Not culture. Not academic. Entertainment."
She took another drink before she continued. "When you have done everything that you are supposed to for your family and for your society, and still you are not allowed the freedom of your own mind, it will make you experience great anguish…ah, I don't have the words for it in English. L'appel du vide."
I knew what she meant because she had explained the phrase to me once before. L'appel du vide is the sensation of self-destruction. The feeling one might have to jump from a cliff side or put themselves in mortal danger.
"You read Jane Eyre to keep yourself from death?" I asked, puzzled.
"No, precisely the opposite," she replied, shaking her head vehemently, "I read Jane Eyre to live."
My conversation was left unfinished, but I knew my mother would not give me the answers I sought. I wished to ask Miss Black, to derive meaning might provide me with well-rounded opinion of the experience. But I could not write to her; despite having sat with her at dinner, I was not an approved acquaintance. I needed to be introduced to her formally by society's standards, and for that I would need a third party.
Like many other things, I put these thoughts away until I could do something with them. Jane Eyre sat in the drawer at my bedside table. Sometimes I leafed through it, and it was not until two or three weeks had gone by that I realized I had many of the scenes and passages memorized, and that a book I thought was so terribly dangerous at first had become a welcome friend.
Then October came and went and brought with it the faded burn of summer, and pops of colours exploded across the Wiltshire countryside. Goldenrod and crimson leaves fell across our lawns, and I spent much time beyond the gate in the woods, crunching through the leaves under my boots. I took in the invigorating crisp air and spent most of my time sitting upon a rotting, ancient log half-covered in moss, drawing the forest trees in a clothbound black journal. Mushrooms erupted from the trunks of the fallen tree and I collected them for study, placed them in glass apothecary jars with other samples of moss, which sat along the shaded slant beneath my window sill.
One early morning in mid-November, I met with Candra Zabini and Theodore Nott in Somerset for coffee in the Sydenham Hall tearoom. I could not have found more opposite companions. Candra was short, broad shouldered, and quiet. He was a former Beater, but having been injured in our seventh year of Hogwarts, he was never able to move on to a professional team as anticipated. Conversely, Theodore Nott was tall and spindly, with tortoiseshell framed glasses and a bookish nature. He was quite passionate and opinionated on subjects regarding academia, and was specializing in Arithmancy with the expectations of becoming a professor.
I was drinking coffee, but reading a book next to them as Theodore lectured Candra on the importance of quality ingredients in potions.
"You simply must furnish your own," he said, "It is impossible to control the quality and potency without knowing precisely what you are putting into it."
Candra rolled his eyes and placed his elbows onto the wooden table top. "I know what I'm putting into it, because I bought it from a shop and they told me what it is."
"There is more to it than just what you see, there are issues of the approximate amount of sunlight they provided for the plant, what sort of drying process they go through—honestly, Candra, everything matters—Lucius, please lend your professional assistance here."
Having little to no idea what they were talking about, but knowing them as well as I did, I simply said, "I think there is a bit of truth in what you have both said."
Each time I did this to them, their reactions were the same. Candra found the joke very amusing and also felt mollified that I did not shut his argument down. Theodore became irritated by it because he felt that he was intrinsically right, but without my opinion to sufficiently esteem him, he did not have the confidence to feel justified.
"Besides, Theo," Candra said, leaning back into the chair and crossing his arms, "You can always just buy the potion already brewed. Easier that way. Less effort."
Theodore ran his hands through his hair and groaned, his face a shade of brilliant pink. He pulled his glasses from the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. When he put them back on, he was glaring at Candra.
"There is a difference in quality between putting in the hard work yourself," he argued, "And paying for the convenience of someone—which is more valiant to you?"
Before Candra could come back with a response, a shadow fell in front of the large front window facing the street, and a throat cleared.
"Sorry to interrupt your moral philosophy debate, gentlemen," said the figure who had just appeared at our table.
It was a voice I recognized. I glanced up from the book. I twisted in my seat and sat up straight. In my investment in the novel on the table, I had not realized I had slowly moved closer and closer to it, until my spine was curved and my shoulders had sunk toward the table's edge.
It was Miss Black before us, in a dark green dress and silver cape clasped around her shoulders. Her hair was down her back again in perfect ringlet curls and a black cloth headband just behind her ears.
"I only wondered if I could borrow Mr. Malfoy for a moment," she said, her dark blue eyes shifting to mine.
Theodore and Candra exchanged glances and I pushed my chair back and nodded. I walked with her across the tearoom to the back corner of the room, where she sat in a leather booth. Crumpled up pieces of parchment were all over the table along with several clean sheets and ones which had been written on to her right. Her pen was modern, a fashion on a quill with no feather but still a sharp end. She would have to apply the ink into the barrel and as she pressed upon the parchment, it would bleed the ink through and onto the page as hard as she wished. From my observation, Miss Black pressed pretty hard into the parchment, as her penmanship was composed of deep, inky black swirls.
I sat across from her and laced my fingers in my lap, surreptitiously attempting to read whatever she had upside down, but it was useless. She sat across from me drew a cup of coffee to her and brought it to her lips.
"Well, how was it?" she asked impatiently, as if I should have known what she wanted without her saying it.
"How was what?" I repeated, raising one eyebrow.
The moment the liquid met her lips, she gasped in pain and placed the cup back down. The coffee was so hot it was swirling steam the porcelain cup into the air.
"I always do that," she muttered, lightly pressing her fingers to her bottom lip and pressing her tongue flush on the other side. When she recovered, she looked back up at me. "How was the book?"
"Which book do you speak of?" I asked her, determined not to say it first. For added injury, I smirked and said, "I'm terribly sorry, have we met?"
She folded her hands onto the table, her elbow obscuring whatever she had been writing. I assume she saw my frequent glances. "Mr. Malfoy, you may look stupid, but I think there is a mind up there and it works on occasion."
I drew away from the table, having not realized I inclined so far toward it. "I hardly think it is necessary to make such remarks to a stranger."
"You are not a stranger," she replied swiftly. She picked her cup up again and drank from it, and this time I was quite sure it burned her mouth just as badly, but she was determined not to show it.
I shifted, pressing my back into the leather seat. "You will have to be a bit more precise, Miss Black, I read a lot of books."
"Good to know," she said, "Can you conjure up the one about a Miss Jane Eyre perhaps?"
"How do you know I have read it?" I asked suspiciously.
A witch arrived at the table with a plate full of small vanilla and honey scones. She placed them on the edge of the table, then refilled Miss Black's coffee cup to the rim with a quick flick of her wand.
"One for you as well, sir?" she asked.
I nodded, and she disappeared behind the large counter. She returned in seconds with a cup of coffee for me. But unlike Miss Black, I did not enjoy the taste of coffee plain, and so I used the milk and sugar the witch had charmed over to the table.
Miss Black watched me as I placed two squares of sugar into the liquid and stirred, then added three splashes of milk. I stirred again, clockwise four times as I had with the sugar, and she pursed her lip.
"I know you have read it because of the look in your eyes when I approached the table," she said, "And I am going to guess that book over there is it, am I right?"
I looked up at her in surprise. "Do you think I would read such a thing in public? In front of other gentlemen?"
"Do you think anyone would take notice of what you read, Mr. Malfoy?" she replied, with a tight lipped smile.
She suddenly reminded me very much of my mother. She was irritating, I decided, and she knew it. Perhaps she even revelled it.
"One of them most certainly would," I said.
Miss Black leaned across the table so that she could have a better look at my friends. "Brown untidy hair and glasses would be the one to notice, right?"
"Correct," I replied, with a sigh.
"He looks like he belongs to the Nott family," she surmised, curling her fingers together into a fist and resting her chin on top of her knuckles.
I twisted around to have a look at my previous companions at the other table, but they were engrossed in another argument. When I turned around, I said, "You would be correct there as well, he is their eldest son."
"Handsome," she remarked, and her eyes flashed to mine for a moment and then she sat back. "So, are you going to tell me your thoughts?"
"I do not see any reason why I should," I told her honestly.
"That's the whole point of it, Mr. Malfoy," Miss Black said, playing at the clasp at her throat that held her cape around her shoulders. "You read the book, you ruminate upon it, and then you share your explorations and thought with others. Reading may be a solitary act, but humans were meant to discuss the stories. That's the entire point of book clubs."
"I have never joined such a thing, and so I have no standards to apply myself to," I said, tentatively testing the temperature of the coffee by sipping along the edge of the cup. Finding it was safe to drink, I opened up my mouth and drank with ease.
Miss Black snorted and quickly recovered her rude behaviour by pressing her cup to her lips. When she had swallowed the liquid, she placed it onto the table and moved to her pen and parchment. I watched her tear the parchment in half and begin writing on it.
When she was done, she slid it over the table toward the fingertips of my left hand wrapped softly around the coffee cup.
"This is the address of the next meeting and the date and time," she told him, "We are reading a book I think you will find amusing. It's Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I have written it down for you so that you will not forget it. Now, if you need assistance obtaining a copy, please just ask and I will send you one. But otherwise, you will have to collect it from a Muggle shop."
She looked up at me with a clear attempt to hold back laughter as she finished her sentence. I expected nothing less—this is what women do. They make remarks and laugh at their own cleverness, as if it has anything to do with you. Women apparently had their secret world of literature and life separate from their husbands, and that must have also come with an affinity for secret mocking and jokes.
"You want me to join a book club full of women," I stated, letting the words fall flat in my tone, as if I had just dropped a dead weight into the middle of the table. "How many of your members are unmarried?"
"All of them, I suspect," she replied, with a noncommittal shrug.
I leaned into the table, softly sliding the cup out of my way. "Miss Black, I will be eaten alive."
She placed a single galleon and two sickles onto the table and then twisted her reticule onto her wrist. "Suit yourself then, but the only way to get rid of a temptation, Mr. Malfoy, is to yield to it."
I realized after she left that she paid the balance of her table in full, including my own cup and the scones she had not eaten. I brought these two the table with Theodore and Candra, who made quick work of making them disappear.
When I arrived home, it was nearly afternoon, and I searched through the parlour and lounges for my mother. I did not find her there, nor if her master suite. I finally found her in the conservatory tending plants, though by that time I was covered in a sheen of sweat and panting.
"Mum," I said, leaning against the scrubbed wooden table where was repotting verbena flowers. She was playing music softly in the background from a radio that absently, she had stuck in a clay pot full of dirt and half-covered. "I need to ask for another favour."
"Lucius, I am not sending any garments of yours back to the tailor for at least three months," she snapped.
"Not that," I replied hastily, "Although, I just need one or two adjusted again—we'll discuss it later. I mean to say that I need to ask if you have a particular book."
She placed her hand shovel onto the table and took off her gardening gloves. "Which one?"
I sighed in relief as I realized she would acquiesce, at least for now, to this strange activity I was partaking in. I slipped the parchment Miss Black had given me from my front breast pocket and read the title in her lulling script.
"Frankenstein?" I replied, uncertainly.
She silently walked away from the table. I followed after her to my their bedroom. She went into her closet and reappeared in a few moments with a thin and red book bound in dragonhide.
"Here you are," she told me, "But bring this one back, it is a personal favourite and a rare edition."
"Why is it rare?" I asked her, slowly turning the cover and flipping through it.
She sniffed. "It is a first printing. I had it rebound, for protection, of course."
I nodded absently as I chewed the inside of my lip and scanned my eyes across the first chapter. My mother sidled past me and left me in her room, and it took me several pages to realize I had sunk onto the wooden bench that sat at the end of her four-poster bed.
Something new had bloomed inside of me. I had nurtured something deep inside of me that I did not know existed, but it was there coiled up inside of me. A seed just beneath the surface of topsoil: waiting. It felt like I had become a fiend overnight. I wanted to slip beneath the surface of these worlds and live there. I felt something I never had before. It was like I spent much of my life awake and now I was dreaming of some soft forested utopia where no one and nothing could reach me.