CHAPTER EIGHT: A MAN AND HIS MANOR

It was hard to move while Lucius Malfoy was having a desperate moment with his own house, but eventually Hermione found the courage to do so. Her movement caught his shattered attention, and his eyes drifted upon her.

"Why would it?" he asked, his sentence unfinished, really. Perhaps he didn't have the ability to put all of his thoughts to words, but Hermione knew what he meant.

"Let's think about this, Mr. Malfoy," she said, being the current voice of reason. "Has Malfoy Manor ever done anything to cause injury or difficulty for a Malfoy before?"

"No," whispered Lucius, still shell-shocked. "No, it never has. Not once. I didn't think it could."

"Perhaps it can't," said Hermione.

"I don't think it can," added Luna, glancing around at the place. "I'm pretty sure it definitely can't. From the wards and the signatures of the magic, I don't think it's possible."

"So if the manor can't cause you harm," said Hermione. "It must have been protecting you."

"Not cause me harm?" asked Lucius, intensity growing on his face. "This isn't harm?"

He turned swiftly to the cavern of a dining hall and shouted, "How is this not harm?!"

Lucius' voice echoed back and forth, then faded away into the shaking rhythm of his breath. He was a violin strung nigh unto breaking and Hermione didn't know how to stop it.

"Take me back!" he commanded the house, his voice almost reasonable, but then it wasn't. "I said, take me back!"

The echoes seemed mocking, but surely not? Silence.

"Do you not serve me?" Lucius demanded. "If you do not serve me, then who is your master?"

Tense waiting, and nothing. Lucius paced a few mad steps, and then turned back to the emptiness and shouted, "Do as I say!"

He stood stiffly, and the silence was torture. Giving a furious cry, he turned to Luna.

In a small voice, Luna said, "It's … waiting."

"Waiting for what?" demanded Lucius.

In a smaller voice, Luna said, "I don't know."

His face descended into a thunderhead, but before the lightning struck, he turned and stormed through the door. After a moment, the silence was dotted by a crash. Probably pottery. Maybe priceless.

Hermione heard Luna sigh.

"This is really sad," said Luna.

Hermione could only wonder why the house did what it did. What was so dangerous to Lucius' well-being that the house decided it was a good idea to send him seventeen years into the future? And were the fates of Narcissa and Draco related to all this somehow?

"Luna… how long before Narcissa Malfoy's death did Mr. Malfoy go missing?" asked Hermione.

"Um," said Luna, caught off-guard by Hermione's sudden change of subject. "Three weeks, wasn't it?"

"Yes, I believe that's so," said Hermione, still thinking. "And Mr. Malfoy was constructing wards at the time he time travelled."

"Right, okay," said Luna.

"He was using Narcissa's wand to do it," said Hermione.

"Because Voldemort took his," said Luna.

"Yes, and so," said Hermione. "If the house took him out of the past to protect him, of what was he in danger at the time?"

"Maybe someone was breaking into the manor to attack him," said Luna.

"Wouldn't Narcissa and Draco have known?" replied Hermione. "They were here."

"Oh, you're right," said Luna.

"Maybe he was about to place a faulty ward?" stabbed Luna. "One that would blow up in his face?"

"Maybe… but why would that require seventeen years of time-travelling?" asked Hermione.

"It wouldn't," said Luna, stumped. "Do you think he's not telling us everything?"

Hermione laughed at that, because, from her experience, even asking that was dreadfully hilarious. In a painful way.

"Of course he isn't, Luna! He's Lucius Malfoy!"

-oOo—

Luna had gone home, having a family to tend to, and left Hermione alone in the manor. Well, she wasn't totally alone, she supposed, since there was a house-elf somewhere, probably scrubbing a remote corner of the manor, and a man also somewhere, brooding and perhaps breaking things. She decided to look for the latter person to make sure he wasn't breaking himself.

The manor still had a derelict and ancient aspect to it, since the house elf, whose name she'd thus far failed to learn, had only had one day to clean it up. House elves did work fast, though, because she saw many obvious signs of housekeeping in the main areas of the house. Despite that, Lucius really did need several house elves to keep up the place, she realized, but she committed never to divulge her realization.

The March rays of afternoon sunshine slanted through windows in diagonal beams, bringing color and effervescent dust-light as they came. Hermione wanted to throw all the windows open and air it all out; the dust, the weight, the heaviness, the ancient sadness. Sometimes the light struck a velvet curtain and its color would radiate, discovered by her fresh eyes after years of dim obscurity, sometimes it would fall on the painstaking parquet of a floor, long-forgotten until now seen and recognized, and her roundabout search for Lucius Malfoy brought her to appreciate some of the finer, lost details of Malfoy Manor… and perhaps to be sorry for them.

She heard a clink in a nearby room and went to investigate, secretly hoping Malfoy Manor didn't have any ghosts. Through the open door sat Lucius at a mahogany desk, in a room that looked like an office. The room appeared to have been cleaned and nothing looked broken, which were good signs. He was in the process of pouring brandy in a snifter, which was probably a bad sign.

She knocked lightly on the doorframe and called, "Mr. Malfoy?"

"Do you know the good thing about waking up seventeen years later?" he asked, not even looking up at her while he finished pouring the brandy.

"Er, what?" asked Hermione.

He closed the bottle of brandy (probably expensive, no… make that exorbitantly expensive) and held it up slightly as he glanced at her. "This is even better well aged, and I didn't have to wait."

Hermione cleared her throat and hoped Lucius wasn't planning on getting hammered. Maybe it would deter him if she crashed his party. She sat down in the chair across from his desk.

"Why are you still here?" asked Lucius long-sufferingly.

"I wanted to ask you some questions," said Hermione.

Lucius peered at her.

"You know, sometimes I wonder if you're a golem," said Lucius as he sniffed his brandy.

"A golem?" asked Hermione, who had never once in her life been compared to a golem.

"Yes, made of clay, or something," said Lucius. "It's your reactions. They're just so terrible. It's like you're not a person, but instead someone who was created to be a person but never quite figured out how to be a person. Sometimes you almost get it, you almost do something that makes you seem real, but then it's back to analyzing this, or reacting badly to that."

He sipped his brandy, and she didn't know what to make of his analysis.

"Fine," said Hermione. "Sometimes, yes, I react poorly to things, or I don't know what to say, but I don't see how you can decide what I am like or not like, for you barely know me and for most of the time you've known me we've been horribly adversarial, so what's to know from that?"

"I suppose," said Lucius. "We didn't have to be adversaries."

"Yes, we did!" said Hermione.

"How?" asked Lucius.

Hermione couldn't believe what she was hearing.

"Shall I name the ways?" asked Hermione, almost laughing from the ludicrousness. "One, I'm a muggle witch. You hate muggles, and muggle witches, and anyone who isn't wholly pure-blooded."

"Do I," stated Lucius.

"And two, you were working for Voldemort," she said. "In case you forgot, I was not working for Voldemort. We were, as you say, in a war. On opposing sides. Fear and loathing all around."

At this, Lucius looked very interested and leaned forward, his elbow coming to rest on the desk with that strange grace of his, and asked, "Do you really still think there were only two sides in that war?"

Hermione paused as this was not something she had ever considered to be different from what she knew.

"Y-yes…?" the word started to come out as an affirmation, but somehow ended as a question.

"Black and white for you, isn't it," he said to her. "Everything. Black and white."

"Well, it was clear everyone was either for Voldemort or against him," said Hermione, though at the same time she was realizing it couldn't possibly be as clear-cut as that. "Despite… personal circumstances… everyone had to choose a side in the war."

"That's right," said Lucius, both arms leaning on the desk now, but he was lazy about his movements, like all the rage from before had been dealt with, or locked away, and with one hand he cradled his snifter of brandy. "And thus we all instantly became black or white in your eyes. I'm black, you're white. I'm a bigot, you're open-hearted. I'm evil, you're good."

"Well, that's not exactly how I would put it-," she began, but he went on, and though his voice was quiet and languid, somehow she had to listen to it.

"Without black there would be no white, without bigotry, there would be no acceptance. Without evil there would be no good. Don't you see that it is I that makes you good? Without me, you'd have no distinction at all. You'd have to find someone else to crucify in order to prove your own existence."

The last statement came out with a tinge of bitterness and he took a sip of his brandy.

"Mr. Malfoy," said Hermione, disturbed and desiring to protest.

"What a funny view of the world you have," said Lucius, and then he considered the snifter in his hand. "So thus I hypothesize that you, Miss Granger, are actually a golem."

"I am not a golem," said Hermione.

"That's exactly what you would say if you were a golem," said Lucius, a smirk playing on his face.

"And that is exactly what I would say if I were not a golem," said Hermione.

"Then how will I know if you are or you are not?" asked Lucius. "Oh, no," he said, sighing. "Trust is once again required. What a tragic circumstance, because how can the darkness possibly trust the light?"

"And vice versa," added Hermione.

"You know it can't, of course," said Lucius.

"Can't it?" asked Hermione.

"Well…" said Lucius. "Can you think of any circumstances where it can?"

"I'm sure there are some," said Hermione. "Trust must be possible under some circumstances. There's always a way for everything, isn't there?"

"And now you're thinking in grey," said Lucius with a smile. "There you go. Keep it up."

Hermione groaned, but he had a point that she wouldn't dare recognize.

"Mr. Malfoy," she said, intending to go on.

"Call me Lucius," he said. "You're thirty-odd years old, not a teenager at Hogwarts."

"I-I'm afraid I can't," said Hermione.

"Why not?" asked Lucius.

"It feels… weird."

"Oh good greek gods," cried Lucius. "Of all the things to feel weird about in these circumstances!"

"Fine," said Hermione, fully meaning to say his name next, but upon opening her mouth to speak, she found herself entirely unable to. She shook her head. "No," she said. "Nope, can't do it."

She suddenly burst out laughing at how silly that was, and she realized he laughed, too.

"That's alright," he said, swirling his snifter. "I'd rather not call you by your first name, either."

She couldn't help herself from a short, outraged laugh.

"Then whyever did you ask, if you had no intention to return the favor?" she inquired.

"I don't know," said Lucius with a faint shrug and something of a smirk. "I just wanted to see if you would do it."

"You're silly when you're drinking brandy while suppressing large quantities of grief and rage," said Hermione.

"How direct you are," Lucius replied whilst the humor drained from his face. He then added, wryly: "I suppose it all just brings it out in me."

He stood to face the window behind his desk.

While the afternoon waned outside and distant, rolling hills faded into sienna, Hermione found she didn't know how to proceed with a silent, brandied Lucius. Moments passed, some awkward, and others that almost passed as tolerable. Hermione realized she had to say something, but she didn't know what, and she had to call him something, but now "Mr. Malfoy" seemed awkward, as if it were an admittance of her inability to be a mature, responsible adult, and perhaps it would cause him to have less faith in her to solve his problems, and even further yet, it might make it more difficult for her to ask him the questions she'd come here to ask. That came first, didn't it? Getting answers to the questions she'd come here to ask? Or should it? Was there something wrong in the way she tried to solve problems? Did Lucius have a point, a possibly very valid point, about Hermione's bad handling of other peoples' problems? Why should she do anything differently? Hadn't the things she had done before brought her great professional success? Hermione got things done. If it was required, she did it. But maybe, just maybe, she didn't pay attention to who she steamrolled in order to do it.

"Lucius," began Hermione, half-hating the sound of it on her tongue.

"Oh, look," said Lucius, his voice strangely flat. "You did it."

Was he mocking her? She stood and leaned her hands on his desk.

"Lucius," she said, this time meaning it, and meaning it for reals. He turned and gave her his full regard, and it was funny how something like calling him by his first given name suddenly made her feel like that she was, for once, on something closer to equal footing with him. Closer, but not on. She straightened and asked, "May I ask you some questions?"

"Don't you always?" he replied.

He was framed by the burnt sienna hills and pink sunset skies of the grounds of Malfoy. She sighed lightly and went on.

"Were there any signs of danger right before you were brought to this time?" she asked.

"Brought by the manor to this time," he clarified.

"Yes," she said.

"No."

"None at all?"

"No."

She sighed again, swiftly this time.

"You were erecting wards?"

"Yes."

"What particular ward?"

"I'd just finished your favorite."

"Oh, the one that gives me immense pain for being muggleborn?"

"That's the one."

"Thank you so much for that," she said.

"Mn," he acknowledged.

"Was there anything unusual happening that day?"

"No, it was a normal day, if you can call general house arrest and constant unknown danger 'normal'."

"Ahem. Anything unusual happen that week?"

"A normal week," he smirked.

Hermione leaned on the desk.

"Mr. Malfoy-."

"Oh, it's back to that, is it?"

She paused.

"I'm sorry, I'm just not used to-."

"Don't act insecure when you're interrogating someone!"

"Mr. M-."

"You're a disgrace to your house and to everyone who supported you."

"Lucius!"

"Thank you."

She felt the knuckles of her fists turn white against the desk upon which she leaned. How dare he toy with her in this way! She was helping him, of all things. Or, at least, trying to help him.

"Why do you keep trying to make me angry?" she asked.

"Because it's the only emotion you express normally," he replied without any hesitation.

The answer came so quickly she didn't know how to process it.

"And because it's so very easy," he went on . "It's the only time when, for a moment, you seem like a person who might actually be aware of the human experience and not a mindless golem. The cleverest witch of your age, really! Who said that?"

"I think you're manipulating me," she said. "I think you're trying to make me do what you want."

"Well, you are doing what I want, aren't you?" asked Lucius.

And that was it. Something snapped inside of Hermione, because somewhere in her psyche she knew he was manipulating her and he was making her do what he wanted, and it made her furious.

"I do not do what you want!"

She snatched a hideous porcelain gnome figurine from Lucius' desk and vaulted it against the wall with all of her strength. It shattered into a thousand shards of violence and littered the floor with porcelain gnome bits.

"Did you want me to do that?" asked Hermione, her breath short.

"No."

"Hah!"

He looked at her with a deep loathing she'd scarcely seen on a human face, or any face, for that matter. Lucius clapped once and called, "Porgy!"

The house elf appeared at once.

"You called, sir?" asked the house elf who was apparently named "Porgy".

"Clean up those shards, please," said Lucius, glancing disdainfully at the shattered remains of the figurine.

"Yes, sir," replied Porgy.

The elf poofed away and within five seconds had poofed back with a little broom and dustpan in hand. He began cleaning, and it was a slow, awkward, painful process as Porgy scraped up the shards and every noise the shards made seemed magnified as Lucius stood silent and forbidding with his brandy snifter, and Hermione tried to remain silent and at least non-idiotic. Finally it was done, and Porgy bowed to Lucius.

"Will there be anything else, sir?" asked Porgy.

"No thank you," replied Lucius.

Porgy popped out of their immediate existence.

"Miss Granger," said Lucius, turning and giving Hermione a look that said he was fully aware he did not use her first given name. "Would you be so kind to join me on the promenade?"

She didn't know what else to do, for the anger had burned itself out, she had just broken his hideous gnome figurine, and she was beginning to feel a general sensation of remorse. Thus, she followed him out of the office door and onto the outside promenade.

Stepping outside made her feel smaller, since suddenly she was aware that there was much more going on in the world than just what happened in Lucius Malfoy's office. The tangled manor gardens spilled across an acre at least, and then beyond the wild hills faded purple into the distant dusk. All around the grounds were signs of life; birds, squirrels, and forest animals that had had seventeen years of running amok on these lands without a landlord to drive them away. Above them the sky spread out open and full of promise and knowing and a deluge of sunset pastels.

It seemed to take Lucius some time to take it all in as well, because though he walked beside her, he was quiet. The promenade lined the back of the manor like a long, narrow balcony, with three wide sets of stone stairs leading down into the Malfoy backyard gardens, and though the stone structure itself was still mostly intact, there were many signs of Nature's attempt to reclaim this piece of land for herself.

Lucius sighed beside her.

"It's going to take a lot to get this place back into working order, isn't it?" remarked Hermione.

"Honestly," he replied. "I hope somehow we'll figure out how to send me back so it'll never come to this."

"Yes," said Hermione. "That. I believe that if you haven't withheld any information from me regarding the circumstances of your time travelling-."

"I have not," he cut in.

"Then our next step is to use a pensieve on Draco," said Hermione.

"Very well, I'll let you work out the details," replied Lucius. "But what about finding out how to send me back?"

"I believe, though I'm not sure, that the only way for you to go back is for the house to send you back," said Hermione. "And for that you would have to gain the house's permission to go back."

Lucius grunted, and she gathered that he didn't like to ask permission from anyone for anything.

"And that is on the assumption that the house even has the power to do so," said Hermione. "It is one thing to hold a person in stasis while time moves forward."

"You believe that is the function with which the house did it?" asked Lucius. "Simply holding me in stasis?"

"Probably," said Hermione. "But I'll have to ask Luna if it looks that way. Regardless, it is another thing to move a person backward in time. Moving backward even a little bit requires powerful magic… but seventeen years seems almost insurmountable."

"Why would it hold me so long?" asked Lucius.

"I think it was waiting for something," said Hermione. "Something that would … I don't know… ensure the safety of its ward, the Malfoy family."

Lucius thought on that for a moment as they passed a knot of honeysuckle. The scent momentarily filled the air.

"Maybe it was waiting for you," ventured Lucius.

Hermione laughed.

Lucius cleared his throat and fell silent as they walked, which forced Hermione to consider his suggestion. The house brought Lucius out of stasis when she and Luna were there, not a moment before, not a moment after, and if Hermione really considered it, the moment the house chose was the moment Hermione determined out loud to solve the mystery of Narcissa's death.

"I think solving who killed Narcissa is the key," Hermione said suddenly. "The key to everything!"

"Oh?"

"The key to your disappearance, to Draco's madness, the house's behavior, everything," said Hermione. "And I think, maybe, your manor thinks I can do it."

Lucius considered that for a moment.

"I see," he simply said.

"Your manor is awfully sentient for a house, isn't it?" asked Hermione.

"I suppose," said Lucius. "It is old, after all."

As if being old made houses sentient.

"It's a little weird," said Hermione.

"And you say this after having spent your youth in Hogwarts Castle," said Lucius, a wry look on his face.

"Fine, but my house growing up was completely normal," said Hermione.

"Sounds boring."

"I never thought about it," she replied.

"And unsafe," he added.

"It's not like a family of orthodontists has to worry about being killed by rogue wizards," said Hermione.

"I have no idea what you've just said," he replied. "A family of what?"

"Orthodontists."

"I don't even want to know what that is," said Lucius.

"Orthodontists use wires and metal in order to straighten-."

"Please don't go on," he said.

"But-," she said.

"Just don't."

"Stop interrupting me!" she said.

"Then stop saying such unpleasant things," said Lucius.

"Says the former Death Eater."

"Touché," said Lucius. "But still, don't go on. I haven't the stomach for muggle contraptions."

Hermione grumbled.

"Why did you ask me out here?" asked Hermione while watching the darkling sky.

"I honestly can't remember," said Lucius.

And that, Hermione found, was just the right amount of absurd. She looked at him and laughed, and he seemed to find it funny too, in a longsuffering way.

"Tomorrow, then," said Hermione. "Tomorrow we begin work on the pensieve, and you, Lucius, you need to use that clandestine mind of yours to figure out how we're going to use it on Draco."

"You're clandestine, too," said Lucius, defensively.

"Yes, but you make me look like a girl scout. Good night."

-ooOOoo—