Chapter 18: Go ahead, KILL ME! But if you do, I'll leave this story where it is! HA!
I am in the middle of my christmas baking, so my comments will be short.
Thank you everyone for reviewing, sorry for the wait.
FinnishGirl: kiitos, hyvää joulua ja niin pois päin.
Prin69: Aw, I know, this one has its share of odd cuteness as well.
FrenchPiment: Moi aussi j'ai bien aimé l'athmosphère quasi psychotique de mon culte.
SupaFly: thanks and happy xmas and may God inseminate your spouse!
CareBearErin: Draco being stampled means he lost his liberty.
Whogirl: Sorry for the wait, really am.
HermioneGrangr91: thank you.
Alandrea the Magical Kitty : The beginning of the chapter would have been a one shot. It was longer in the beginning though, I just changed it. I just thought it was very fancy and quite interesting style-wise. ( I like to show off, yes)
Semi-Interested Reader: I keep my "-", no matter how much you hate them.
Some dates just stuck out as special. 13th of December was one of those day. Or at least was to be. The 13th of December is the day of light, Santa Lucia. It was also Lucius's name day. Also, it was the day where Lucius was confronted with a new, terrible feeling.
Hermione had refused to eat any food Lucius present in front of her. Everything, no matter how much he ate of it in front of her, how gentle he was, how magicless the food was, Hermione refused to eat another bite. She didn't really have cramps in her stomach she thought she was going to have. The shallow feeling in her stomach was warm, and not that empty really. It was the same feeling you have from laughing real hard. It was comfortable.
Besides, with her life long starving, she didn't feel that uncomfortable; she was used to it. Now, when she breathed out, her ribcage formed a perfect kitty basket just after she'd been in the bathroom. After drinking, she looked like she was pregnant, with all the water in her belly. She loved wriggling around then, wearing the odd noises her belly did. It made her always giggle and Lucius thought it was horrid.
If Hermione didn't eat, she drank. She drank like a camel, always from the tap of the bathroom. Water flew through her in cool arrows and she felt good. She hissed and spit and avoided Lucius's contact, feeling betrayed and annoyed. Yet something very odd was going in her. Her heart didn't beat correctly anymore. Her heartbeat had tripled.
Lucius was getting fed up with Hermione not eating. It was unhealthy. He felt like he was starving a child and a host, a very rude thing to do. After 8 days of dreadful waiting, Lucius couldn't stand it anymore.
He walked briskly to Hermione, stumbling almost on the wheelchair he threw against the bed and waked Hermione briskly. Sleep drunk, she lifted her head but Lucius snatched her arm so hard that the pain awaked her completely.
Lucius produced a croissant from his pocket and stuffed it into Hermione's mouth. She gagged and spit it out, but Lucius just rammed it deeper into her throat with his fingers. She chocked and started coughing. She hit him, Lucius pushed his body on hers. Hermione gathered her force, turned her bust briskly and hit him with her fist in his face as hard as she could.
Lucius flew out of the bed, on the floor. The hit had been impressing, but not so hard it could have made him fall. He had fallen on purpouse, because of the shock. Lucius wasn't used to physical force; magic was much more practical.
Hermione took the wheelchair and briskly pushed herself off the bed on it. She managed to open the door to the bathroom. She has a cheap paperbook she had received in a magazine a week earlier in her hand. On an impulse, she stuck he think paperback between the door and its support so the door would be stuck close.
She pushed herself gently forward, hands slightly trembling. She was in the corridor leading to the bathroom her plan had begun. It had arranged things, yet made them also so much more complicated. A sad smile made its way to her face and she watched the ceiling, trying to stop the urge to cry that kept on rising in her chest.
The wind howled outside and threw fistfuls of hard snow against the thick glass windows. Wave upon wave, upon wave hit the glass, calming Hermione. She saw the sheen of whiteness and imagined that it was a huge hankie that just begged for her to let her tears to be wiped away.
As Hermione watched out from the window, she knew that as long windows existed, there would be a way to escape from the world surrounding her. There was always some notion of liberty in a window.
She opened one of the windows carefully, counting the strokes of the wind so the window wouldn't slam into her face. A set of seven wires held the window closed and Hermione managed to open six of them. The wind was so powerful it simply broke the last wire that held the window shut.
One of the window panels fell from the support and if Hermione wouldn't have pushed it as hard as she could backwards, outside, it would have definitely crushed her. The heavy glass structure made a strange whistling sound as it fell down and Hermione stuck her head carefully outside to see if the window broke.
The distance between the tower and the ground below was so long Hermione couldn't see whether the window broke or not. Actually, the huge window panel that had been at least as long as herself (twice taller even) was not bigger than large chocolate bar from up where she was.
The wheelchair was carefully placed next to the wall and Hermione started the heavy, slow task of dragging her up on the windowsill. Hermione put her arms on the windowsill and pulled up herself and managed to fling one leg on the cool stone surface. After finally managing to sit on the windowsill, she breathed in shakily. It wasn't hard, but the lacy wedding dress as well as its five layers of tulle wasn't helping much either. The positive side was that Hermione wouldn't freeze.
The windowsill was cool. Hermione installed herself somewhat comfortably. Stones were under her butt. They were cool, half in ice, half in moss. The trees she'd seen in autumn were bare now, poking out from the balconies all around the mansion. It was beautiful how everything looked dead and lifeless.
Hermione sat on the windowsill and bent forward so she could let her elbows rest on her knees. Her head felt heavy from the fight and she wanted to clear her mind. She knew Lucius would punish her severely for hurting him. Hermione wasn't afraid of pain, but this time wasn't her usual fight.
Each time someone attacked her, Hermione could fight back. In battles, all rules are annihilated as long as you can cause pain. But this time, Lucius could stab her in the back and she could just lie down and endure it all. The prospect of this confrontation scared her very much. She chided herself and tried to over talk the fear. The fear of something just increased the fear of the thing itself.
Hermione hated heights. She hated it with a passion for a very good reason: emptiness had the most terrifying power. For instance, emptiness refused categorically goodness. It refuses it with a rare stubbornness. But evilness, in contrary, just begs to invade emptiness, just as if they were old friends that wanted to come together to exchange old memories.
If emptiness were good, angels wouldn't need winds to fly. It is surprising how often demon were pictured like creatures able to fly without wings. In books, heroines who caused the premature death directly of their lover threw themselves out of high towers to their deaths. The people who jump from buildings just ask to get contaminated by evilness. All too often the good people committed suicide.
The beautiful women took poison to conserve their beauty, the evil men were strong and arrogant enough to stab themselves, children slept away, mothers kept on living like martyrs. All the desperately good souls threw themselves to the emptiness. Heights assured your death. Or at least severe inner damage.
Heights were xenophobes. People call the Earth Mother, the time Father, say that water has memory and that fire is the Devil; why wouldn't air have its own personification and traits? It fire was the devil, air was its faithful little helper. Wind and fire do mix very well; fire destroys, but wind helps it to spread. Therefore, the air was xenophobic against goodness, but welcomed evilness in its emptiness.
Of course, there will always be people pretending good and evil don't exist; those people haven't met real evil. Goodness is very less convincing than evil: it's because its chemical structure is different. Goodness wasn't natural; you had to think about your actions if you wanted to do good things.
Like gold, goodness isn't found pure in the nature; therefore it's easy not to find it impressing. Evilness had the bad habit of always making a huge scene.
Evilness could be compared to a gas: it's hard to detect it, but you recognize it at its smell.
Lucius managed to open the door after some pushing and got very afraid as he saw Hermione sitting so close to emptiness. He had felt her fear of heights and he could sense her toughts of death.Before even he could do anything rational he just blurted out:
« You wouldn't jump. »
After this, Hermione said a sentence that reeked of tackiness, but was a sign also of love. Usually, when the sentence was used, it was heroic, sad but also terribly brave. But mostly sad. It was a mark of trust; a similar trust a mother would pace on a stranger to help her deliver her baby.
Maybe I love him a bit in a way no one, not even me, could ever understand, Hermione thought as she saw his face, his hair. Love was a natural feeling and since the only human thing was Lucius, she loved him. He's tyrannical way of trying to force happiness and a carefree life on her was maybe horrible, yet it was also very sensitive. Maybe it was for this reason she said the words that crossed her lips.
" -I'm not afraid to die in your arms, Lucius."
Hermione pushed herself forward. She wasn't dangerously near the edge, but seeing her like this made Lucius very uncomfortable. He walked to her and took her by the arms.
Hermione hadn't expected the touch and since she still was angry, she scooted closer to the emptiness. When Lucius touched her skin, wrapped his hands around her elbows, without ever doing it on purpouse, she was suddenly half dangling outside. Suddenly, without even understanding why, hermione pushed herself of the windowsill and held Lucius elbows as well.
Lucius was tetanised of fear for Hermione.
" -Don't let go, I can offer my love for you for centuries if needed. I can be here for you forever."
" -That is a lie, Lucius, no one can promise that. It's stupid."
" -It's not. It's love."
" -Love isn't that brilliant really. It always makes people leave."
" -No, love makes people stay."
Just as he said this, Hermione let go of his elbows and used the wind to make her body moove dangerously much .She felt a wave of snow hit her face as she let herself slide down a bit more. Her hands now gripped loosely his and Lucius just saw it.
Their fingers were still connected.
Now, Hermione had just a final question.
"- Lucius, who do you think is stronger? The air or you?"
He saw it. He saw the spark that connected her brain to her hands. Before he could even say a word, Hermione's hands were off his.