It was with great effort that Luna and Hermione dragged a bafflingly well-preserved but unconscious Lucius Malfoy out of the Grand Malfoy Dining Room (minus a dining table), and into the Equally Grand Malfoy Adjacent Sitting Room, where they laid him on the least spider-webby green velvet settee in the room to tend to his unconsciousness. To say they "laid" him on the settee wouldn't be entirely accurate; there was a lot of dragging, and maybe even some rolling, and through the whole ordeal Mr. Malfoy was probably better off being totally unaware of what was happening, as it could have been described as extraordinarily undignified.
Finally, however, they had Lucius laid in a more or less dignified manner upon the settee.
"Now what do we do?" asked Hermione, maybe a little out of breath. Luna was gazing at Lucius' sleeping face.
"Hermione, he hasn't aged a day," whispered Luna.
"I know," Hermione whispered back.
"Where has he been?"
Hermione just fell silent, because there were no answers, and instead took to studying the sleeping man on the dusty settee. Watching Lucius Malfoy sleep was intriguing in the way watching a sleeping lion would be intriguing; fascinating to see such a creature defenseless and in repose, but with the constant anxiety that at any moment it could wake and claw your face off.
"Do you think he's going to kill us when he wakes up?" asked Hermione, mostly rhetorically.
Luna chortled.
"You seem to forget the Malfoys joined our side at the end."
"They did," replied Hermione, but in a noncommittal manner, as if it was all dubious and it was hard for her to imagine Lucius Malfoy reformed after all this time.
"He probably won't," said Luna, settling.
"We should probably floo the Ministry," said Hermione, glancing around for the fireplace.
"Maybe," said Luna. "But maybe we should wait."
Hermione glanced at Luna, as if she were a lunatic.
"Why…?" she asked Luna, slowly.
Luna sat back on her heels. "Alright, there are some things that I've been thinking about. With all that magic in the dining room, and all the wards around, and Mr. Malfoy suddenly appearing like this the day we come in, and he's just exactly as he was when he disappeared seventeen years ago… and I think the house did it, and I think the house wants us to deal with it."
"The house, the house!" exclaimed Hermione, cursing the house in her mind. "Tell the house to get rid of the Muggleborn curse, if the house wants us to deal with … with that guy."
Hermione crossed her arms and regarded that guy. He stirred, and Hermione and Luna both shot back away from him, instinctively.
"Nghnnn," said Lucius Malfoy eloquently.
"Where's his wand?" whispered Hermione.
"It's over here!" Luna whispered back.
"That isn't his wand!" More whispering.
"Then whose is it?"
"His wand was destroyed by Voldemort!"
"Well, technically-"
"Shhhhhh!" Luna pointed at Lucius, who finally deigned to blink. Consciousness seemed to enlighten him, and he sat up in a flash and with a gasp. Hermione found she was pointing two wands at Lucius, in her haste to defend herself from lions.
To his credit, Lucius took a moment to take in his surroundings and the two women sitting near the settee before he made any rash statements or tried to kill anyone. Smoothing a stray strand of Malfoy blond hair behind his ear, he asked:
"Who are you?"
Hermione sat in stunned silence for a moment, wondering first why he didn't recognize her, then kind of briefly relieved he didn't recognize her (considering their interactions in the past), and finally feeling indignant he didn't recognize her (she was famous!).
"Mr. Malfoy, you don't recognize us?" asked Luna.
Mr. Malfoy sat and stared at them for a moment. Comprehension passed across his features like a clearing cloud. And then he seemed to visibly pale.
"Oh, Merlin," he said, and then stood up.
"Oh, no," he said, adding little to the discourse, but taking in the decrepit, unused state of the Grand Malfoy Sitting Room in which he stood. "No, no, no…"
"Mr. Malfoy?"
"No…." he said again, his gaze turning towards the outer hallway. "Narcissa," he breathlessly murmured as he turned on his heel and ran out.
"Mr. Malfoy!" called Luna. She turned to look at Hermione. Hermione suddenly felt like laughing, though she knew it wasn't the time to be laughing, but the whole situation was so absurd and terrifying and confusing and unexplained that Hermione didn't know what to do besides laugh. But she didn't. Barely.
So she stood up and followed Lucius Malfoy whichever way he went. He was anxiously running through the manor, calling out Narcissa's name now and again when Hermione found him upstairs.
"Mr. Malfoy," she said, but he only gave her a glance and moved on. She followed again.
"Mr. Malfoy!" she said again, with more insistence, and she touched his white sleeve.
Lucius flinched away, as if burned. He also looked a little outraged.
"Do not touch me," he said to her sharply, too sharply. Annoyingly sharply. She didn't deserve such sharpness when she was only trying to help this… this… ugh, she really didn't like Lucius Malfoy.
"How is it that you are even in here?" he asked her, as if she had no right to set foot in Malfoy Manor, which she, actually, kind of didn't. But whatever! His response led her to believe he was very aware of the anti-Mudblood ward still in effect on this place and that was just infuriating.
"Some of your more questionable wards are ridiculously easy to circumvent, Mr. Malfoy," said Hermione, unable to restrain her tongue.
"Oh," replied Lucius, glancing her over once. "Well. You'll have to tell me how you did it."
As if she would just want to hand that information over to him so he could improve the stupid jerkwad ward! As if she were just waiting for the opportunity to assist him because of his superiority in any way possible!
"I forgot," replied Hermione with a smile.
Lucius's eyes narrowed.
"How old are you?" he asked her after a moment.
"That's kind of a rude question," she replied.
"Alright, fine, what year is it?"
"...2015?" Hermione slowly replied, putting the pieces together in her mind.
He might have visibly paled before, but it was nothing compared to this, as he almost fell against the doorframe, his hand bracing his weight, but his face looking weary, weak, and pained.
"You've travelled in time," whispered Hermione, as if the ideas turned and clicked together in her mind at the same time as the words left her mouth. "You've time travelled," she said again, looking at Mr. Malfoy with wide eyes, despite hating all of his guts times infinity, because it was just that astounding.
Lucius, for his part, only stared back at her breathlessly, as if the slow, screeching turn of gears and cogs in his mind were revolting against processing this clear but unwanted conclusion. After a moment, he blinked hard and looked at the hand which still braced him against the doorframe.
"And Narcissa…?" he breathed as a question, his eyes trained on his own hand, as if something in him was afraid to ask, didn't want to know, probably didn't want to ask Hermione of all people, but had to know, and had to know now.
Hermione was suddenly hit with the feeling that she really didn't want to have to answer this question, and despite loathing Mr. Malfoy with all the loathings of a thousand burning loathings, there were limits to her loathing and she wasn't a cruel person, after all. Her hesitation caused him to look at her, something heavy in his eyes.
Compelled, she said, "She's dead."
She was taking the band-aid route, not that Mr. Malfoy would know what a band-aid was, but one swift blow would hopefully take some of the sting out. His breath caught, and he held it, and then exhaled in a swift puff. Slow blink. Mr. Malfoy was a bastion of control, Hermione had to hand it to him.
"And Draco?" he asked her, soberness in his gaze.
"He's alive," replied Hermione, relieved to give some good news. Or fair news. It was really only good news on the surface, since Draco had lived his life in a psychiatric ward, but… Hermione took it and ran with it because Lucius' relieved sigh relieved her as well, somehow.
"When did she die?" he asked.
"Shortly after you did," replied Hermione, and then: "Well, you didn't die, but everyone thought you did, and it was just a few weeks afterward, I think." Now she was starting to babble stupidly, but she couldn't help it. "And I have been thinking about it, and nothing sits right about her death because the wards should have stopped anyone who came in to attack her, since they apprehended her afterwards and all, and I wonder if it was-"
"Please stop," said Lucius, holding up a hand. He looked tired. Hermione was embarrassed. "Not now," he said, and brushed past her down the hall without another word.
And just like that, Lucius Malfoy had made her feel like a stupid, mannerless, lesser human. It made her feel very indignant, but the man had just, in a way, lost his wife. She couldn't give him a piece of her mind, not like this.
She found Luna downstairs, in the dining room, studying the lingering magic from the whatever-it-was that happened to produce Lucius Malfoy.
"It's definitely house magic," said Luna.
"Of course it is," said Hermione, resigning herself to the fact that anything that happens here is because of the stinking house.
"Did you ask Mr. Malfoy about it? Did he do this?"
"I don't think it was on purpose," said Hermione. "He seemed surprised by the, um, year."
"Maybe this wasn't his intended result," said Luna. "But maybe he was doing something when it happened. Did he say?"
"I didn't really ask," replied Hermione, again feeling kind of stupid.
"Oh," said Luna. "Maybe we should ask him."
"Maybe…"
Hermione didn't look forward to talking to Lucius again, but it was clear there were questions that needed asking.
"Would you do that so I can study this before all the magic residue is gone?" asked Luna, and Hermione's fate was sealed.
Finding where Lucius Malfoy had gone in all of Malfoy Manor wasn't an easy task, and Hermione wasn't even sure she wanted to find him. Under the best of circumstances, probing for answers from a man who had just been given very bad news would be unpleasant. Under these particular Malfoy-esque circumstances, Hermione found herself very much a procrastinator. She wandered purposelessly from room to room, taking in the grand, dusty splendor of delightful days past and mournful days present. It was her fortune that Lucius was nowhere to be found in any of the rooms.
Just as she was turning back to return to Luna empty-handed, she passed a large window overlooking the side-grounds of the manor which held the graveyard of Malfoy, and at present, the living Malfoy standing beside a miniature stone monolith.
She gazed out for a moment, taking in the drizzle (it looked very unpleasant) and the mud (she was wearing flats, curse it all) and the silent, motionless figure of Lucius Malfoy (forbidding). She almost moved on and went to tell Luna she didn't find Lucius. Almost. It would have been easy, but Hermione never let herself off easy, and she kind of hated herself for that. Heaving a deep sigh, she went to find the way out to the side-grounds.
Her footsteps felt too loud as she approached Lucius by the grave of Narcissa Malfoy. He made no indication he had noticed her, and why not? She felt like an elephant with the noise her steps were making on the gravel path. It was the most effective thing he could do to make her feel even more like a total heel. She wondered if he was doing it on purpose, or if it was so ingrained in his upbringing that it came as second-nature. As she stopped nearby, with blessedly no more footstep noises to make, he ignored her completely and she was forced to take in the mournful scene.
To say it was drizzling wasn't completely accurate; it was misting, and further on, as the Malfoy grounds fell into rolling hills, puffs of fog clung in the hollows, moving slowly like tepid ghosts against the just-budding leaves of grass in spring green. Everything was grey and green, like it is in earliest spring, and waiting to erupt into riotous sun-sparkled life, but not yet. Now it would be cool and misty and uncomfortable, because it wasn't time.
Lucius had the presence of mind to put on a dark cloak before coming out here, and his hair had been tied back in a neat queue. He made a fine statue, with his stupid good-looking face, as he stood over Narcissa's grave, and he belonged here, and Hermione could almost imagine he would never move again, and the graveyard would be forever shrouded in mist and fog, and the whole scene would forever spell out "melancholy".
She had to interrupt him, but she didn't want to. It was enough. She turned to leave, plebeian elephant steps in gravel and all.
"Miss Granger," said Lucius.
She stopped suddenly, so surprised by his voice that she forgot to be annoyed at the strain he was putting her through.
"Yes?" she asked, turning to find he was looking at her with a guileless grief-stricken face.
"Why am I here?" he asked.
She was pretty sure he didn't mean it existentially.
"I'm afraid I don't know," she replied, and as disappointment clouded his features, she quickly went on,"But I mean to find out."
Oh, good grief, was she so still a Gryffindor that she had to protect/help/aid/rescue everyone, even him? She wanted to poke herself in the eye. Still, she did mean to find out, because that's what she did: find out stuff.
Lucius looked at her critically.
"Why?" he asked.
He didn't trust her?! How very dare he!
"Because it doesn't make sense," she replied.
"No, it doesn't, but how does it concern you?" he asked. Politely. Politely!
Hermione looked back towards the house, then said to Lucius: "Luna thinks the manor wants us to help you."
That sounded really stupid when she said it out loud, but she stood her ground, inwardly hoping he wouldn't just burst out laughing at her. But of course he'd never do that. He would silently label her a lunatic in his head and brush her off, to never speak with her again. Like all horrible people do.
Lucius, in actuality, did neither of those things. For a while, he seemed to be turning things over in his mind. His hand landed flat on the top of Narcissa's grave as he gave it a brief gaze, and then he let out a soft sigh that blended into the foggy grey-green landscape like just another shrouded mist.
He glanced at her.
"The house told you that, did it?" he said.
Hermione stood with Gryffindorian determination and said, "Yes."
She was actually not totally sure about the house thing, but something gripped her. Something heroic. She wouldn't drop her gaze from his.
"Very well," he said imperiously, giving her a once-over measuring-up glance. "You may assist me."
It really took everything she had not to take off her shoe and throw it at his head.