Title: Black and Deep Desires
By: Dr. Kim-chan
Me: College work, Spring Break, finals, attending my first-ever anime convention (ACen 10!!!), the start of summer break, and my stupid laptop all conspired in the demise of my plans to get this out on time. But you know you still love me. (readers shrug) Riiiiight. Anyway, I do realize I write a lot of cliffhangers that I don't uphold until three months or so, and I know it's annoying as hell, but I do try.
Lucius: If the meaning of "try" is tramping around Chicago cosplaying and buying a $60 katana you will probably never use.
Me: (smacks him with a defrosted halibut)
Lucius: WTF?
Me: I wanted to smack you with something other than newspaper for a change. Anyway, the main problem in updating, however, had to do with a stalled plot. When I wrote about Ron having a plan…honestly, there was no plan at the time, so I took a break and put a LOT of thought into what'll happen next. I even dedicated an entire Notepad file to tracing back everything I wrote. A lot of Chekhov's guns floating around.
All 4: Wha…?
Me: (sighs the 'Hermione' sigh) A Chekhov's gun is a prop introduced very early on in a story or play, and as insignificant as it may seem at first, it'll be made useful later on, if not at the very end. The name originates from the Russian playwright Anton Chekhov, who once wrote, "If a pistol is on the table in the first act, it must be fired in the last act".
Plushie: …Stop being such a literary smart-ass!
Me: I can't help it! I'm a Creative Writing major, dammit!! (all cower) So what happened to Professor Mills? What of Harry's fate? And what exactly IS Ron's plan? Find out now…or I'll smack you with a defrosted halibut!
(Begin Chap. 42)
…All sounds, all sights…they were nothing more than buzzes and dichromatic blurs.
Struggling to regain a sense of time and space, Professor Mills widened her eyes and lifted her head to inspect her surroundings. It wasn't long before she registered two sensations at once: a vision of Dumbledore and the throb of a pounding headache. She tried ignoring the pain in her temple as tried to sit up. The question of why things weren't as colorful as they looked was answered almost immediately. The hospital wing was dark with the shades of nighttime. How long had she been out of it?
"I understood your reasons for doing so; however, emphatic healing might not have been the safest strategy," Dumbledore's voice echoed back to her.
Mills groaned and sat up fully. The memories of what happened in the past few hours rushed back to her once she heard the words "emphatic healing".
"Where's Hermione?"
"Miss Granger left with the Weasleys once we transported Harry to St. Mungo's. Lucius has returned home as well. As he promised, he left Ronald with his parents."
Mills repeated her previous groan, this time placing her forehead in the palm of her hand.
"You know it'll be hard to keep any level of normalcy at Hogwarts after this," she muttered. "I haven't known Harry, Ron and Hermione for that long, but when I started teaching here I immediately had the sense that, aside from you, they preserved a feeling of security here."
Dumbledore nodded.
"…Far be it from me to question your methods, Albus, but I'm beginning to agree with Minerva. This attack on Miss Granger was much too close for comfort. There has to be another way."
"And I agree with the both of you wholeheartedly. The risks seem to be escalating faster than I imagined. But just the simple fact that his attacks are becoming more violent doesn't disturb me."
"Then…what is?"
"I've only heard bits of rumors about the Maleficium Elixir in all my years of alchemy research. All I knew before the Order discovered the more in-depth information stored in Zabini's records is that it was a dangerous mixture with ties to the Dark Arts that could only be concocted through specific alchemic techniques. It works through the victim's circulatory system rather quickly, but the exact speed at which it works depends on how dark and deep the person's suppressed impulses lie. Sometimes it can work as fast as two weeks."
He shook his head slowly in disappointment. For the first time, Mills saw a reflection of self-doubt in the headmaster she had never seen before.
"I should have anticipated this," Dumbledore sighed. "Harry's been through much more than an adolescent should go through. If only—"
Mills gave him a hard stare. "It couldn't be helped, Albus, not even by you. Each person has their own fate to adhere to, however cruel it may seem. Fortunately for us, they don't always have to have sad endings, so long as we do what we're supposed to do."
…How much more so than now did that little axiom of Professor Mills' apply to Ron and Lucius. The controversy surrounding them was neck-and-neck in the race for attention with the war with Voldemort itself.
Ron's plan hadn't exactly definite—in fact, all that he told him was a seemingly contrived metaphor, once again involving wizard's chess. The example he had drawn from was an article from Witch Weekly involving two of Montague Knightley's favored moves in the game:
"…The first thing I do in a round is to place my pieces well, looking like I don't even know what I'm doing—deception, if you want to put it like that. You wanna let the opponent think you're a good guy, right? Every good chess player knows that. My second tactic is sacrifice. Of course you're bound to lose pieces in chess. The rook takes a pawn apart; the queen beats a knight over the head with her throne, whatever. Don't put all your hopes on one piece; you'll know you did it right when you lose a piece and you don't even notice it's gone…"
Ron didn't say much more, except that he assumed Lucius was skilled in making such elaborate schemes, and that he could be trusted to do the same now. Assumptions were dangerous, and Lucius was still doubting his own emotions, but Ron had pretty much sealed Lucius's fate when, yesterday evening, he gave him another one of those piteous looks before boarding the Thestral-drawn carriage that took him, Hermione, and his parents to the Hogsmeade Express. That single moment reopened a lot of old wounds.
It was just like the first time.
They weren't able to give each other a proper goodbye.
So enough games.
As Callisto Zabini asked him that day in the garden, "Well, Lucius? Do you love the boy or not?"
As Lucius wandered the dusty aisles of Hogsmeade, finding a suitable place to Apparate, the sunlight of the early morning gently touched the wood and stone which composed the lopsided buildings. It was a cold morning, made colder by the winds rolling off the lake's surface, that even his valuable, fur-lined cloak couldn't protect him against. As Hermione outlined so many times before, one couldn't perform this feat on Hogwarts grounds, but the rule didn't apply to the far edges of this small hamlet. Lucius often wondered why Voldemort's forces didn't just siege the town, stake out the castle, and make their final move. Then again, there were many other problems with management within the Death Eaters' forces that were more pressing.
Deception. Sacrifice.
These were words he was all too familiar with, but these principles were often used (quite heavy-handedly) to help Voldemort. This was a situation hanging on a silk thread.
Hmm.
Helping Voldemort…chess…pawns…
Maybe Montague Knightley was onto something after all.
With a loud 'pop!', he disappeared with the night sky.
…It felt so strange, so unreal, to be pulling back into King's Cross Station in the last of October. He didn't even know it was permissible.
Except for a lone conductor strolling around the concrete surface, Platform Nine and Three Quarters had been a barren landscape. Rain had threatened the skies above London that evening, and it had been a quick dash to the Leaky Cauldron several blocks away. Their only advantage was that not many Muggles had been around, either to see them materialize on the other side of the train station or enter a building that essentially didn't exist. The weather was too dreary, much too menacing. Appropriate, being that it was only two days until Halloween.
It didn't help that throughout the entire trip, Hermione had been giving him a lingering glance, as if she knew he was keeping a dirty secret from her, and it wasn't exactly a weight off his burden that her silent accusations were more or less true. The glance then turned to a piercing glare when the two sat down at one of the ragged wooden tables in the Leaky Cauldron while Mr. and Mrs. Weasley talked to Tom at the bar for a minute. It was a while before Ron suddenly looked around the dim-lit pub a second time in wonder.
The room had been through numerous clean-ups; Tom could certainly testify to that. But he could still envision the flashing lights from wands right and left, the chaos, the sheer madness, all before he had blacked out and found himself at Lucius's manor. This was where it had all started…not exactly a romantic start, but he could no longer imagine his life if it hadn't happened…
"Ron…"
His head snapped up to look straight into Hermione's brown eyes at the mentioning of his name. Her lids were almost exactly level with one another, so they weren't exactly shouting, "I'm suspicious of your behavior", but now he was suspicious himself.
"Nn?" he grumbled, a bit worn-out from the journey.
"Do you...still have feelings for Mr. Malfoy?"
Ron was immediately roused. He blinked once…twice…narrowed his eyes…widened them again…and finally settled on a saddened expression. No puppy dogs, but it was still something to be pitied.
"Not really."
Hermione made a little grunting in her throat that wasn't exactly affirmative, which Ron picked up on. Then she gave him the full-frontal sigh.
"Doesn't sound like you got over him."
"Well maybe I haven't," Ron said, a bit irritable. He already knew what she was going to say. It was going to be an unnecessarily long treatise about how Harry attacking him had been too much of a opportunity for Mr. Malfoy to show up at Hogwarts and request taking Ron back, and how her oh-so-brilliant deductions led her to believe that this entire episode was even more of a reason to distrust him. Then he would respond (even though he was bad at holding up an argument with her), that none of her theories didn't fully account for what's been going on. Lucius was—
"I didn't mean it like that, Ron. I meant…well…"
An extremely long, hesitant pause on her part.
"I'm still not prepared to go so far as to say you should go with Mr. Malfoy, but I've decided I'm not going to do anything to stop you either. If he was—"
If Lucius was…, Ron pressed on mentally. Then her sentence changed direction.
"I've been thinking a lot about these past few days, and none of this makes even the least bit of sense. Mr. Malfoy wouldn't have given up so easily if his intentions had really been to lure you back to his mansion."
Ron lifted an eyebrow. Was he hearing a concede?
"He claimed no responsibility to the whole mess with Harry and the Malefecium Elixir—but of course no one in their right mind would admit that willingly. But I don't mean verbally either. People can give subtle clues as well."
"I…guess…so," Ron whispered, stumbling on his words.
"We've been through a lot in the past few years, right?" Hermione asked, her voice picking up speed and vigor, but still kept at a whisper so as to keep the two adults at the bar at bay. The gears in her head were steadily cranking up to full speed, and once Hermione got going there was no stopping her. Caught in the moment, Ron nodded earnestly.
"The whole matter of the Sorcerer's Stone was a mistake. We were concentrating too much on Professor Snape, but we really should've been watching Professor Quirrell. It was first year; we were all a bit naïve, but that one moment didn't make us perfect either. That's what makes me worry. I wouldn't put it above Mr. Malfoy to act like he had nothing to do with this."
Ron hung his head. That was true enough.
"But it wasn't as if he was skulking around. His only worry had been to bring you back home. That could be taken either way, so…"
"You're still not sure," Ron finished for her. Hermione nodded.
"Look, I'm sorry if I was a little hard on you the last time. It's just…uh…erm…"
"I'm not good when it comes to picking enemies."
"It's not like that!"
"It's exactly like that; you don't have to be nice about it. You never are, anyway," Ron groused. Before Hermione could offer a rebuttal, he added, "and I don't know what it is about Luc—Mr. Malfoy that I trust. You're just gonna have to go along with me on this, okay?"
"Hm? On what?"
"…"
Ron had no idea what forces or otherworldly powers Hermione suddenly acquired over the space of three seconds (in all truth, it was the fact that his eyes automatically shifted in all directions). Whatever it was, all of a sudden a light went on behind her eyes and she almost shouted out indignantly:
"You're meeting back with Mr. Malfoy?!"
"Ssshhh!"
Ron reached over and clamped a freckled hand over her mouth, his eyes darting around again to see if anyone noticed what happened. There weren't really that many people in the pub to notice anything anyway, but it seemed as if the Weasleys were wrapping up their conversation with Tom.
Hermione mumbled angrily through his hand before removing it forcibly.
"Ron, you can't!"
"I thought you said you wouldn't stop me."
"I didn't think you'd rush the situation!"
"I'm not rushing! If we wanna see each other again, it has to be now. I s'pose You-Know-Who's gonna plan something else when he's through with Harry, then nobody'll be able to do anything. Mr. Malfoy works for us now, Hermione. Trust me," he repeated, this time with a more pleading tone.
Hermione bit her lip, mentally strangling herself over what to do. If she agreed, it wouldn't be Ron she would have to put her trust into, anyway. She was even ready to go so far as to say that everything which hung in the balance right now depended on his next movement.
But Ron looked so sure…
She sighed.
"Certainly sounds like you know what you're doing…all right. Whatever I can do to help, I will. Just—just don't die, okay? It's bad enough Harry's been turned into some kind of monster."
Remembering that, Hermione was almost to the point of tears, until Ron put a reassuring hand on her forearm.
"I'll be fine, Hermione. I wouldn't do anything like this if I didn't have a reason. As for Harry, I'm sure the Order and Dumbledore's got something planned. Dumbledore's brilliant, right?"
Hermione nodded hesitantly, and then Ron suddenly looked alert. She heard footsteps coming towards them and hastily wiped a backlog of tears from the bottom rims of her eyes. Tom said they could use a vacant room on the second floor to Floo back to the Burrow, Mrs. Weasley reported, and herded them upstairs. It was on the landing that the two friends' eyes met one more time.
Whatever had led Ron to this decision, Hermione hoped it'd be that same trait that saved him.
…"I've returned to the manor. There was something I had wanted to tell you while I was there, and I could have, but you understand it was far too risky."
"I certainly don't have an argument against that. So, what it is? Did Weasley mention anything interesting?"
Lucius held his breath, peering straight through the darkness of his study. He was grateful that it was only words, and not empathic emotions, that was transferred during the process of Occlumency. Not that it was usually within a Malfoy's nature to be guilt-ridden…
"As a matter of fact, he did say something that struck me as strange."
"How strange?"
"…Strange enough that we may have to involve His Lordship…and that sniveling rat."
(End Chap. 42)
Me: (wipes sweat off brow) Whew. We haven't had good Hermione and Ron interaction since…well, since never.
Harry: What about Chapter 32?
Me: (shrugs) Meh. For those out there who crave action, it'll be coming up very soon. We're now entering the Era of Ron's Return…and you know what that means.
Ron: More older-man action for me!
(Draco turns green again, Plushie digs around for his camcorder, while Lucius…squeals? O.o)
Me: But before that, we're gonna briefly turn our attention to a corner of the story we haven't been turning to in a while. I swear, that corner's getting dusty as hell. I would say the chapter's coming up soon, but we all know what happens when I promise that. Maybe if I do the opposite, the reverse will happen…like reverse psychology! (points to you) DON'T review…you know you (don't) wanna!