CHAPTER 9: Bloody
The next morning, it didn't take that much work for Hermione to arrange a hefty extension of her project at Malfoy Manor; she merely explained that, starting today, she would be doing more work for less payment, and all parties were thrilled. They even allowed her to keep employing the house elf for as long as she wanted, for, as far as they knew, she was paying for the elf herself. Hermione continually denied herself the "pleasure" of ruminating over the fact that Lucius was basically getting her to do all of this as he wanted, and how it certainly was a lot of bother and possibly extremely dangerous to her personally and professionally.
She arrived at the gates of Malfoy Manor ahead of Luna, who wasn't coming until after lunchtime, and noticed Lucius in the gardens studying a crumbling fountain. The stepping stones of the front lot looked forbidding to Hermione because she didn't know if the lousy muggleborn ward was still in force, so she turned to the distant Lucius.
"Mr. Malfoy," she called, waving.
Nothing.
"Mr. Malfoy!"
Mr. Malfoy continued studying the crumbled masonry and seemed to have no idea he was being called or even that anyone else existed in the world but himself. Hermione glanced again at the forbidding stepping stones.
Maybe he'd lifted the ward already? She had definitely reminded him to get rid of it several times.
Hermione was not a woman of endless patience, and so she experimented with the first stepping stone, and then, since that one didn't forbid her, she went on to the next.
The prickling began. She fled.
Outside the gates again, Hermione began to wonder why she didn't just keep a flask of pure blood handy at all times, anyway. Surely that stuff would be useful for all kind of applications.
"Mr. Malfoy!"
Why was he not responding? She rolled her eyes.
"Lucius!"
Still nothing! She was rapidly forming a promise with herself to acquire a flask of Malfoy pristine baby-pure blood for herself by any means necessary. If she ever hoped to get anything done today, she was going to have to go back in. What's the worst the ward could do, anyway? Make her feel bad?
Glancing around, and with a huff, she vaulted back into the Malfoy grounds, determined to reach Lucius' attention before she could totally impale herself on his anti-Hermione ward. Bolting, she made it halfway to Lucius before it became painful.
"Lucius!" she called, and he turned immediately.
"Oh, there you are," he said, as if she hadn't just been here for the past ten minutes, trying to get his attention! The pain very quickly accelerated, though, far more quickly than she had estimated, and it began to blind her senses. She quit noticing Lucius and whether or not he was there or really whether sight existed at all, or anything existed besides this pain and pressure, and the last thing she thought before entirely blacking out was that she'd made a mistake; the ward didn't increase pain on a multiplied scale, but on an exponential scale, and how very interesting yet such a bad, bad miscalculation.
-oOo—
When she became aware of anything again, it was of a unique, red pounding in her skull, a deep fuzziness, and the difficulty of rousing herself enough to open her eyes. She was a fighter, though, and she did, in fact, finally persevere in opening her eyes. She spied curtains, green, shifting in a breeze coming through a sunlit window, and she wondered dimly how she got there.
Soft velvet was beneath her. It was a couch, kind of hard, actually. She rolled off and clambered to the floor. The impact roused her a bit more and, after three tries, she rose to her feet. What was this pain in her head? Everything tilted for a moment and she lurched sideways through a (conveniently open) door onto the back promenade. Had she been in Lucius' office? She didn't remember a couch being in there.
All other questions were totally eclipsed by a sudden tidal wave of nausea. Hermione made a rush for the nearest bush, and literally fell into it and was able, somehow, to use it as a makeshift sofa after becoming sick off the edge of the promenade. Nausea solved, she relaxed in her shrubbery and stared at the sky, allowing the sweat to cool on her face. It was at times like this that one cares not for how one looks.
"Hermione?" she heard Lucius' voice call. How odd, to hear him say it like that. She became too busy thinking about his voice to remember to reply, and so he called again. "Hermione!"
"Hnnnhhgggggh," she managed, and then she closed her eyes and sighed deeply. The pain in her head really was subsiding, but it was just too much bother to try to form real words.
There were some footsteps.
"What are you doing out here?" asked Lucius' voice. "Why are you in this bush?"
Because it's comfortable, she said in her head. She dimly became aware of a twig poking her side. Why did he have to ruin everything?
He began pulling her out of the bush and she groaned, resistant to being pulled anywhere, but he proved to be far stronger and won, and he always won, and she hated that he always won. She pushed him, but it did nothing, for she was to be pulled and taken and carried away back to that horrible, hard velvet couch (probably green).
"I hate you," she mumbled on her side whilst being left on the couch.
"Porgy!" called Lucius.
She listened to Lucius give instructions to Porgy, and she felt a certain deep, immature satisfaction that he seemed tense, as if her being like this made him tense. She liked the idea of causing him discomfort, especially after this. In fact, she wanted to give him a piece of her mind right now. The house elf popped away to do whatever, and Hermione decided it was time.
"Lucius," she commanded, except it didn't come out that way. It came out more like, "Lrrssh…sss..."
How embarrassing.
He heard anyway, and when he spoke again, he was closer, perhaps kneeling nearby.
"What is it?" he asked.
She opened her eyes to look at him, and he was indeed kneeling on the floor beside her as she lay on the couch, and he appeared, dare she think it, concerned for her welfare like some kind of prince in a fairy tale, not the man who had decided to leave that horrible, incredibly offensive ward up on his house until it nearly exploded her head. He behaved like someone who actually cares, not the man of terrible, selfish qualities who only wanted her to stay alive so she could serve his own ends. It was his fault she had a ward-pain hangover (which is like a regular hangover, except multiplied by five thousand), his fault she was on this stupid, stiff couch, and his fault she wanted to…
She wanted to touch his face and tell him not to worry.
Cold fear melted through her mind, then froze over, hard, expansive, cracking, unyielding, and blinding.
In times like these, a person can gain superhuman strength.
She shot forward with the heel of her hand and barreled into his nose with all of her might. The connection was solid; the satisfaction was instantaneous and immediate and almost as brief as it began.
For a second or two, she wasn't even aware of anything else in existence, but then when she came back, Lucius was bent over, his hands over his nose, and he was trying to stand, and maybe trying to get away from her as fast as possible.
Finally on his feet, his eyes were distinctly dagger-filled as he seethe-asked: "What is wrong with you?"
Hermione was frozen between expressing the unique satisfaction which upper-cutting him in the nose had given her, and pleading total insanity. She could see his nose was bleeding and realized she'd done a pretty good job.
"Can you bottle some of that?" she tried to ask, but it came out slurred and messy.
He made a furious noise and stalked away, and she heard something shatter in the background. Another priceless vase?
"Porgy!" he yelled, before slamming shut what she could only assume was the door.
She decided now was a good time to go back to sleep. Maybe the couch wasn't that uncomfortable.
-oOo—
The next time she awoke, she was far more cogent. Judging by the sun in the window, it was probably early afternoon. Judging by the Luna sitting nearby, it was definitely after lunch.
"Luna?" she asked in that way waking people ask after others randomly. Luna turned from the book she was perusing right away.
"Hermione!" said Luna, sounding relieved. "How are you feeling now?"
"Uhm," said Hermione, sitting up, gauging herself, and finding herself surprised by the result. "Not terrible, actually. Did somebody fix me? My hand has blood on it. Might I ask whose blood this is?"
That was the sort of question Hermione generally didn't foresee herself asking.
"It must be Mr. Malfoy's," said Luna.
"Well, good grief, what did he do… die on me?"
Luna released a chuckle.
"I'm not really sure what exactly happened," said Luna. "He won't talk about it and he certainly isn't talking to you. Or, at least, that's what he said."
"I'm getting the silent treatment, now?" asked Hermione, maybe a little outraged. "For what, getting side-blinded by the racist ward he refuses to remove?"
"Easy, Hermione," said Luna. "Just give him some time."
"Where is he?" asked Hermione, standing.
"Um, you probably shouldn't-," said Luna.
"Oh come on, tell me where he is."
"He's in the dungeon, working."
"Thanks, Luna."
She caught Luna's uneasy smile as she made her way out with an extremely purposeful stride, or at least what she felt like was "extremely purposeful". Good old Luna, she thought. Someone more annoying would have stood in her way and caused even more problems. With Lucius in the picture she had problems enough, and as far as this ward went, Hermione had had it. She had one-hundred-percent had it.
At the very bottom of Malfoy Manor, she burst into the dungeon aflame with righteous fury, and there he was, bent over a facsimile of a pensieve, but ready, with his eyes trained on her the instant she entered the room and a fist clenching a slender tool that perhaps could be used for murder. There was murder in his eyes, at least.
She smacked her fist on a table and the glass bottles and bric-a-brac rattled faintly in response, a percussive prelude to her forthcoming demand.
"Remove that ward, now, Malfoy!"
"No," was his reply, mild, quiet, but full of his kind of rage.
"Do it," she demanded.
"Or what, you'll punch me in the face?" His fist clenched around the tool in his hand. "Go ahead, continue to support my view on the barbarism of mudbloods."
She couldn't hold back a furious noise at his use of that word, especially considering, eighteen years ago, she'd been tortured by a pureblood, along with his pureblood consent, in this very manor.
"Hypocrite," she seethed. "Hypocrite! How can you say things like that and still live with yourself! How do you sleep at night?"
"I don't," he replied.
"Oh, shut it!" she cried, and shoved a table. Something wobbled and crashed.
"Control yourself," he said.
"How can I when I must deal with you day after day?"
Suddenly Lucius shot to his feet and loomed over the table. The tool in his hand (maybe a magical screwdriver?) had somehow become embedded in the wood of the table's surface.
"You must learn to control yourself," he said, each word emphasized with what was admirably controlled fury. What was he saying? Why was he saying it like that? Was he trying to mentor her again? The questions his behavior brought up in her mind diffused enough of her anger to allow her to see a few colors besides red.
Deep breath. She clenched her fists and released them once, twice. Alright, she could try. She could be a reasonable person. A more than reasonable person.
"Lucius," she said, addressing him while looking elsewhere, then deigning to look at him, but not being able to keep the glare from her gaze. "Please explain to me why you won't remove that ward."
He watched her like a lion tamer.
"It isn't safe," he said.
She opened her mouth to reply, but he went on before she could.
"That one ward prevents almost a hundred percent of the world's population from intruding on this property without permission. The number of actual pureblooded witches and wizards in this world are very few, and there are, of course, other wards to work on them, I suppose, but this one guarantees not only safety if, in the unlikely circumstance, someone were to wish us harm, but on top of that, it guarantees we will likely not be disturbed. Or discovered."
She felt her brow furrowing as she had to consider that.
"But of course, you never allowed me the chance to explain that," he said, irritation showing.
"Why didn't you answer me today when I called you?" she asked.
"You only called me once," he said. "And you were already too far in."
"I called you at least five times!"
He thought for a moment, then blinked.
"I couldn't hear you outside the gates," he said. "Must be a muffling charm."
"A charm to prevent you from hearing outside the manor grounds?"
"We'll have to get Luna on that one," he said. "I think there might still be wards in place that were set by the Aurors or Ministry."
"They set wards on the manor?" asked Hermione, surprised.
"Oh, yes," he said. "We were, of course, generally on house arrest, even if they didn't call it that."
Lucius un-impaled the table with his magical screwdriver.
Hermione sighed.
"How do you do that?" she asked.
"Do what?" he replied, but turning his attention back to the pensieve.
"Manage to always turn things around so I feel terrible after we have a row?"
"You're not the only one who gets the honor of feeling terrible," he replied.
-oOo—
"How interesting!" exclaimed Luna, regarding the newly-discovered muffling ward.
By this time all three of them stood in front of the manor, facing the gate in the awakening bleakness of late March.
"Luna," said Hermione. "Is there any way for you to figure out who set this ward? Or when they set it?"
Luna considered.
"Well, obviously every ward, when set, has a unique signature that is special to the user," said Luna. "Figuring that out, while difficult, would actually be the easy part. Figuring out when would be extra hard, but I guess …."
Luna paused, and then blinked as something occurred to her, and went on enthusiastically, "Well, actually I could use the time signature on some of these old wards set by Mr. Malfoy and compare! Maybe that would give us a good idea, if Mr. Malfoy remembers when he set some of these wards."
"I do," said Lucius. "Considering it was only a few days ago, for me."
"Fantastic!" said Luna, ever blissful. "So I guess as far as identification goes, I could probably figure out what kind of wand set the ward, and then you two detectives would have to go figure out who it belongs to."
Hermione and Lucius glanced at each other.
"Thrilling, right?" asked Luna.
Hermione made a non-committal noise, and then Lucius possibly groaned.
"Well, we'll leave you to it," said Hermione, turning towards the house.
Lucius went along rather mildly.
"I've been meaning to ask," Hermione said to him as they returned to the front entrance of the manor. "How did you fix me after my run-in with that awful ward?"
"Mn," said Lucius. "You did tell me how to subvert it with pure blood."
Hermione glanced down at her hand, which really had more blood on it than anyone should ever have on one's hand. She glanced over to Lucius, who cleared his throat.
"I had to work fast, and it wasn't like I had a needle or anything."
"… Are you alright?" asked Hermione.
"Yes, of course I am," he said, shutting down any discussion of the sort.
They walked in a sort of awkward silence for a moment.
"Are you?" he asked, stilted, not looking at her.
"Am I what?" asked Hermione.
"Are you," he said, clearly discomfited. "Are you … well?"
"Yes, I… yes. Surprisingly, yes," she said with terribly embarrassing sentence structure.
"Well, in the future," said Lucius, reaching into the pocket of his robes, "I have something for you."
He pulled out a flask of blood and handed it to her.
"This is yours?" she asked.
"Who else's would it be?" he replied.
Hermione couldn't stop herself from turning it over in her hands, wondering what it was about this blood that made it more precious than hers. Or even what it was that made it different; different enough to where a ward could be placed to differentiate between hers and his, and only punish her for it. Still, he'd given it to her, and the flask held far more than she could ever need, and it was his fancy, sparkly, vintage-y pure blood that he was giving to her, the lame-o muggleborn extraordinaire, to do with as she would. In some kind of weird, surreal way, it was the nicest, most thoughtful thing Lucius Malfoy had ever done for her. She didn't know whether to feel annoyed about that or touched.
"Thanks," she managed.
"It's nothing."
It wasn't, though.
"You must be good with healing spells," remarked Hermione.
"Why do you say that?" he asked.
"I'm standing, for one thing."
"Ah. Well, as luck would have it, the house elf is actually very adept at healing," he said.
"Lucky us," said Hermione.
"Us, indeed."
This prompted sudden remorse from Hermione.
"I'm sorry I punched you in the nose."
"Mn."
"But I was offended by the muggleborn ward."
Lucius sighed.
"I was!" she said, convinced her feelings were worth acknowledgement.
"Yes, I know," he acknowledged.
"It might have killed me," she said.
"I know that."
Silence.
"Would you have even been sorry?"
"Of course I would have been sorry!"
Silence again.
Lucius gave a tsk and moved off toward the dungeons.
"Hey!" called Hermione after him, and he stopped.
"Yes?"
"Let's read those diaries," she said. "Can we?"
"Yes, of course, if you want," he replied, compliant, and it felt strange. "They're in the study."
-oOo-