A/N: Sorry for the wait on this one! I was feeling lousy for a long time. Now I'm not!
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: EVENT HORIZON
It was drizzling in the dark outside of St. Mungo's, that late winter sort of drizzle that made everyone and everything in it utterly miserable for not only its cold and permeation, but for its existence due to spring's proximity. The drizzle was loathed, the bastard step-child of winter, wanted by none and a burden to all, its own existence curled in on itself with self-hatred, the impending spring further accentuating its cold misery. Warm, happy days could be seen in the distance, today was unwanted and stretched, hating itself like the last breath of winter's near-corpse that would soon decompose like a wraith into the fertile ground of springing lily blossoms, but not today, and it was the 'not today' part that made it worse. There was a stretching one experienced when today was resented deeply for everything that it was.
Hermione took out the invisibility cloak.
"Ah?" asked Lucius, clearly surprised by the arrival of such a thing.
"Indeed," she said, throwing it over them both. They'd planned to use disillusionment spells, but she'd decided on the way over that this would be far far more secure… as long as they kept their feet covered. Lucius was taller than Harry, quite a bit taller.
She would have never guessed in a million years that she would one day be skulking around under that cloak with Lucius Malfoy, but here they were, with the added bonus of some protection from the horrid drizzle. The front door of St. Mungo's was open, it being a hospital and all, and so they timed their entrance between a portly elderly wizard and a witch with purple haze floating 'round her head, dodging out of the way just as the door tried to close behind them. It was somewhat miraculous how they could move in tandem (mostly) when the situation required it.
In a moment of imbalance he veered away, so she took his arm in hers and held it fast. They moved quickly through the hall, avoiding the few workers and patients who were there at this time of night, and made for the hall they knew to be the one wherein Draco lived. The door wasn't open, but it was only a matter of time before someone came through, and so they waited near a potted plant that guarded them from being accidently bumped by passers-by.
Lucius gave Hermione a glance, then pulled out Narcissa's wand. Before she could object to whatever it was he was going to do, he'd already softly cast a muffling spell, allowing them to speak beneath the cloak as they waited. Still, they spoke quietly, perhaps with only a certain amount of faith in the limits of the muffling.
"Do you think we'll manage to get Draco to go along with it?" asked Hermione.
"I don't know," said Lucius, appearing pensive as he poked at the pensieve within his carry-all. "I don't know him anymore. There's something off about him."
"Yes, definitely off," said Hermione, feeling like that was an understatement, but Lucius glanced at her.
"No, I mean, besides the insanity," he said. "Something off about the insanity. Didn't you notice when he seemed to struggle for cogency?"
It was true there was a moment when it seemed like Draco was coming to himself, but it ended swiftly and in a way that appeared as if it were out of Draco's control. Having never been clinically insane herself, only the normal sort of insane, Hermione didn't know if this was something to be concerned over. Hermione tightened her grip around Lucius' arm.
"What if something or someone were keeping Draco insane to keep him from talking?" she whispered to him, gripped by the possibility.
Lucius just looked at her, as if he preferred, at the moment, to simply consider the idea. Hermione used her other hand to hold back the cloak to get a better look at Lucius. It was distracting when half of his face kept disappearing. After a moment, he spoke, his voice soft.
"How would we know?" he asked.
Hermione thought, biting her lip and glancing down at the tiles beneath them.
"Check him for wards," she said suddenly, looking back to Lucius.
"He isn't a house," said Lucius, a slight incredulousness crossing his features.
"No, no, of course he isn't!" said Hermione, somewhat excited by the prospect anyway. "But I think maybe… maybe if we used the same sort of approach, maybe we could find it."
"It's too bad we don't have Luna with us, isn't it?" said Lucius with a wry smile, and she kind of liked that smile. Why? Why did she like it? Was she growing accustomed to it? Never mind all that.
"Yes, well, we can't drag everyone around with us all the time, now, can we?" she replied, glancing over at the front desk at the end of the hallway.
"No, it wouldn't be nearly as cozy," he said with a smirk and then asked: "Would you like to sit down?"
How polite.
"I suppose we might as well," she replied, moving to sit and lean against the wall. "Not much seems to be happening at… what time is it?"
"An ungodly hour, or so they say," he replied, sitting beside her.
The invisibility cloak pooled around them and Hermione felt existential.
"We're ghosts, aren't we?" she asked.
"Less than ghosts. The ghosts can't even find us," he replied.
"I wonder, do we really exist here right now, if no one can see us or hear us?" she mused.
"Do we exist anywhere?" he went on.
She turned her head to look at Lucius, who seemed so calm for a man who wasn't supposed to exist at all, especially now and the way he was, considering time and circumstances.
"I wonder if you're real," Hermione said, a smile curling at her lips. "Or a fit of madness in my mind, designed to pull me out of the rut in which I found myself."
Lucius appeared vaguely amused.
"You're not supposed to be real, you know," she said, sighing.
"Am I not?" he replied, pushing out against the invisible barrier of the cloak, expanding and retracting the mini-universe they inhabited at his will. Like a god. "Tell me then, what am I supposed to be, if not real?"
"Well," said Hermione, glancing down at her hands. "I suppose you're supposed to be dead."
"Death is real enough," he said.
She pushed out the cloak a little, wielding control over the universe in her own way.
"But it's mysterious," said Hermione. "No one knows what happens once you pass through that door. It's… the event horizon."
"Event horizon?" inquired Lucius.
"Um… black holes."
Lucius just looked at her.
"Imagine a portal through which one can never return, and once you pass into it, you will never be the same," said Hermione. "But you can never know how you'll never be the same until you pass through it."
"And so it is forever a mystery," he said.
"And also that makes it … I don't know… not as real," she said. "Because it can't be experienced."
"Well, it can."
"Yes, I suppose it can," she said. "But I can't go there, then come back and tell you about it."
Hermione went quiet. Lucius leaned a little on her arm.
"What about ghosts?" he inquired.
She shook her head.
"No?" he asked, prodding for her thoughts.
"As you approach the event horizon, you slow. Well, you don't actually slow, but you appear slow to all who observe you, and seem to never change, and for long after you've passed into the black hole itself, your image lies near the event horizon, stretched into a facsimile of what you truly were, like a phantom."
"And this is what you think a ghost is? An image of what once was and has long since passed in reality?"
Hermione shrugged a little.
"It is clear they've never gone all the way through, isn't it?" she asked.
"Hm," he said. "What a deep conversation."
Hermione let out a soft chuckle.
"This is what happens when you sit in St. Mungo's Psychiatric Ward under an invisibility cloak with your once-enemy now-co-conspirator at 3 a.m. and have gotten very little sleep for days," said Hermione with authority, for she knew.
"We'll get some sleep in a few hours, probably," said Lucius.
His arm, as it leaned against hers, was connected to a shoulder which was perfectly positioned for her to ever-so-slightly rest her head upon, and maybe she did and maybe she didn't, for this was her universe and also Lucius' and no one could prove anything. She sighed and closed her eyes while she impossibly denied time and circumstances and skirted reality.
"Hermione," he said. "You're a very adroit girl."
Oh, brother. A girl? Was she seventeen again? She was, however, too comfortable to object, so she figured she would just allow him to talk freely. Who knows, maybe he would talk himself into a hole. A black hole. It was all very amusing deep inside her, in the place that wasn't half-asleep and sitting on the floor behind a potted plant in St. Mungo's.
"Not only are you resourceful and surprising, but loyal and dedicated. I suppose that is the perfect description of a Gryffindor, isn't it."
What? He wasn't saying Gryffindors are stupid and bull-headed, and moronically heroic? She wasn't even a Gryffindor anymore. She hadn't been one for almost twenty years. Why was he even talking about that?
"And, I must admit," he said, meandering, "You're very enjoyable to fight with."
"With which to fight," she objected softly.
"Who would ever say, 'You're very enjoyable with which to fight'? That just sounds terrible," he said, chiding her, though without conviction.
She shifted towards more comfort, which may or may not have meant leaning upon his shoulder with the conviction that he previously lacked.
"You could have just said, 'I love fighting with you'," she murmured.
There was a pause. Was it a loaded pause? She didn't have the focus to know. Where was the event horizon, she wondered.
"What a boorish statement that would be," he said, dismissing it.
"Oh, yes, I'd forgotten you must always speak in vagueities and subtleties," she said. "It is the purebred way."
"I merely prefer not to engage so directly… in any way," he said. "The less one engages, the more freedom one has."
"Mm, Malfoy platitudes," she said, her admiration wholly facetious.
He nudged her.
"Isn't nudging against purebred rules?" she asked.
"I'm not a horse," he said. "The term is 'pure-blooded'."
She found that funny for some reason, and had to laugh, though she kept it quiet into his shoulder.
He sighed, though she felt it against her hair more than heard it.
"Well, I suppose I have no such limitations, my blood being as sour and uncouth as it is, and I can say and do anything I want," she said.
"Such freedom you possess, Miss Granger."
"But I don't love fighting with you," she said.
"Don't you?" he acquiesced.
"No, it's unpleasant. It makes me upset and I always end up sorry."
He didn't reply, and with her head on his shoulder her gaze was averted enough as well as the feeling was confidential enough to where she could say what she said next.
"I love talking with you," she said. And then after a moment of silence, she went on, "You're intelligent, you have depth, you possess interest in a broad range of subjects, you've spent your life cultivating who you are, and though I sometimes don't like the choices you make or the way you go about things, sometimes not at all, you're the most interesting person I've met in a very long time."
After he said nothing, she went on, "I understand if you don't engage. You must, after all, keep all of your options open, mustn't you? It's your way, after all. But I'm free to speak as I wish because that is my way. That's not to say there isn't a certain satisfaction I receive from fighting with you, tempered with self-loathing. I don't want to fight, but if that's all I can have, that's what I'll take… because anything is better than nothing."
She felt time stretch. Would this event horizon be like death, or a black hole? Would it be one from which she could never return to tell about it?
"Miss Granger," he spoke into her hair, and his voice soft and warm and the words more personal than anytime he had ever said her first name. "I feel the need to stress to you the necessity that our investigation be unfettered by the complications of romance."
A chill ran through her at those words, and the event horizon loomed before her in sharp detail. It was there, it was reachable, and it could be breached by one step. She didn't know it was there until it suddenly was, and its sudden appearance came as a shock. The last time he said those words he was talking about she and Thomas, but this time he clearly meant she and himself. And he spoke it like a request, like he needed her to comply, because he couldn't do it alone. Oh gods, when did there become the idea of they? There was only one way to respond. Denial and ignorance, obviously. Her best friends: Denial and Ignorance.
"Of course," she said, lifting her head from his shoulder and turning to gaze the other way. "How could I really entertain the idea of dating Thomas? He's lovely and all, but we're not suited."
When Lucius didn't respond, she added, "It won't be a problem, I assure you." She laughed a little and said, "I mean, it could never happen. How silly!"
There was still silence from Lucius, and she wanted to pull up her knees and bury her face in total humiliation, but she kept herself from it, only just. Lucius Malfoy, if anything, was very good at using silence to his benefit. Finally, after painful seconds that felt like minutes because time was stretching and so was she, he spoke.
"I only say it because we all need to remain focused."
She nodded, still resisting any urge to glance at him, but trying to behave normally and if she were actually calm and not losing her mind. It was quite the inner-wrestling-match.
"All of us," he said carefully.
He said it in a way that might have been construed as an admittance, or it might not, because he used his careful, curated, impartial nobility voice, wherein every timbre and inflection is under utter, utter control. Regardless, she couldn't probe for clarification, as well she shouldn't, because they'd both just agreed on the perils of concurrent romance or any distraction of the sort, and she believed it. He was right, she knew he was right, and it was all true.
Still, the tension was almost unbearable for her at that moment. She stared at the doors to Draco's hall and tried to will someone to come through them and end it. As if the gods of door-opening heard her pleas, the sound of someone on the other side came to her like the song of an angel and they both stood without speaking, because they both had waited for this with anticipation. She wrapped her arm firmly through his and he was pliant and willing, because they each wanted to be sure to move in the best possible tandem, but also because they were in agreement about many things.
Their focus was singular, and as the orderly passed through, they slipped between the doors undetected.
The hallway was as clean and white as she remembered, with the occasional ghost wandering through or lingering like a homeless veteran of life's war. She pulled Lucius along and they looked through each door's window, looking for the familiar hue of Malfoy-blond hair. At last the younger Malfoy was found, wrapped up in a blanket on a bed within a door … that was locked.
"Of course they would lock the doors," muttered Hermione, as the muffling charm was still in effect.
"Perhaps an unlock charm?" ventured Lucius.
"It's possible the lock has a ward on it," she said. "But an orderly or a nurse would have a key."
"Filching a key off of a nurse sounds more perilous than charming the lock," replied Lucius.
"Not when you have nargles," countered Hermione.
Lucius seemed not to know how to reply to the idea of actually using nargles, but it didn't matter, because Hermione already had Luna's instruction parchment unrolled and was reading it. Luna seemed to understand Hermione's affinity for clear and concise directions:
HOW TO ACTIVATE NARGLES:
1.Make sure jar is at room temperature. Nargles become unpredictable in extreme temperatures.
2.Sing to jar in the tune of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" these words:
a.Nargles, Nargles, hear my song,
b.Steal the treasure, right or wrong.
c.Find what I seek, little elves,
d.In the cupboards and the shelves,
e.Nargles, Nargles, hear my song,
f.Go and get the _ (insert what you want here).
3.RELEASE THE NARGLES AND BE AMAZED
4.Please remember to place the attached noraberry in the jar to collect the nargles when they are done. We do not want free nargles running about. WE DO NOT.
"Hmm," said Lucius, who had been reading over her shoulder. "Do you sing, Miss Granger?"
Despite him using her formal name, it would never be the same, not since their time with the potted plant in the hall and he said it like that. She couldn't help but be affected by it. Nevertheless, she behaved more or less normally as she replied.
"Enough to do this, I think," she said.
So she began to sing, trying to ignore Lucius' possible smirking (although she didn't know, as she refused to look at him), and at the end line, she sang:
Go and get the keys from a nurse or orderlyyy.
She pretended that rhymed with the rest of the song in some parallel universe that didn't exist and then opened the nargle-pot. Nargles, or what she assumed was probably nargles, burst forth, around a dozen of them, small, blue creatures about the size and length of a green bean, all long, thin opalescent wings, stick limbs, and mischievous glances. They were wildly confused by the invisibility cloak, and so it took a long moment of awkward (and taken out of context, probably hilarious) fumbling to actually set them free. They flew off, silent and cunning. Well, she hoped they were cunning. Lucius turned to her.
"And now we wait," he said.
"I suppose that's what we do," she replied.
"Do you think they'll manage it?" he asked.
"It's worth a shot," she said. "Better the nargles get caught than us."
"Unless they trace the nargles to us," he said.
"How on earth would they trace nargles to us?" she laughed.
"Nargle-tracing," he said, smiling a little, knowing it was absurd.
"Of course," she said, finding herself kind of helpless not to smile at him. "All basic security systems include nargle-tracing."
"How silly of you to forget," he teased, and he looked to be fighting against a return smile.
"Have you ever seen a nargle before tonight?" she asked.
"No," he said, and then, after a pause: "It has been a very illuminating night."
She didn't know why, but she suddenly felt as if the breath had been knocked out of her when he said those last words. Maybe it was because she knew he was no longer talking about nargles, and maybe it was the close quarters in which they had been forced for some time now beneath the invisibility cloak wherein it was impossible to deny the presence of certain forces at work between them. She was a mature adult and wholly capable of tamping down this sort of thing for the greater good, and that is precisely what she intended to do, but for the moment she could find no fault in herself for being locked in his gaze as time stretched again more slowly towards the event horizon, because naturally she had to do something while waiting for the nargles to return.
His lips faintly parted and she allowed herself to watch, only meandering her gaze back up to his after she'd had as long a look as she pleased. As their eyes met again his pupils dilated, and that knocked some sense into her. She turned aside and looked down the hall, pinching herself in her side, hard.
"I wonder where the nargles are?" she asked, focusing on the pain of her self-inflicted pinching. If he wasn't nearby, she would have smacked herself. And then thrown herself in a cold shower. And then possibly thrown herself in a vat of lava, never to be heard from again.
He didn't reply, but turned to lean back against Draco's door and exhaled slowly.
It was then that she determined to be courageous and Gryffindor about this, and honor his request for no-romance to the letter. It certainly wasn't nice to go around testing boundaries. They weren't here for making out under an invisibility cloak! They were here to rescue Lucius' son! In retrospect, she wish she hadn't just thought of the whole "making out under an invisibility cloak" thing. But whatever. She could be brave, courageous, and chivalrous, if that's what she needed to be. What was it that Don Quixote aspired to? "To love, pure and chaste, from afar"? She could do that. Although, who said anything about love? That was just absurd. Still, the general idea was a good one, one that she would adopt for the time being in order to keep this whole operation running smoothly.
A tired orderly came down the hallway pushing a laundry cart. As he passed, a number of nargles hopped clandestinely out of laundry pockets and around the orderly with admirable stealth. It was really rather amazing how they could seem to be everywhere around and on the orderly without him having any idea of their presence. They seemed to work together without audible communication, producing the orderly's keys, which they handled with silent precaution and precision, allowing him to continue down the hallway as they hovered behind, hoisting his key-ring betwixt the twelve of them.
"Brilliant," she found herself saying, as she admired the nargles' skill.
"I shall remember to call up Luna whenever I require something lifted," remarked Lucius.
"Does that happen often?" she asked with a smirk as she held up the cloak. The nargles returned to their universe.
He was evasive and perhaps somewhat coy as he replied, "Perhaps more often than you think."
She took the keys from the nargles and handed them to him as she said, "I doubt there is much you could do that would surprise me, Lucius."
He took that with a silent half-smile and kept his thoughts to himself as she dropped the noraberry into the pot and watched the nargles fly in like cats drawn to catnip. Securing the lid, she looked over the keys in Lucius' hand. So very many keys.
"So which one do we use?" she asked.
"I would say… the one with the room number on it," he said, and she suddenly felt like an absolute moron. Of course. Numbered keys. She sighed in self-defeat for missing the obvious.
Lucius patted her on the back.
"It's fine, Hermione," he told her with a wink. "You've been distracted."
Her eyes opened wide in outrage. She'd been distracted? As in only she? Was he now trying to imply that she was just so flummoxed by his magnificence that she couldn't think straight around him? Like this was a one-way street? Was he about to twist this whole story in that way, making him look like the lady-killer and her just a simpering hapless damsel caught in the blinding light of his glory? Not on her watch!
She opened her mouth to voice a cluster of outrage when his finger landed across her lips in protest.
"Wait," he said softly and she paused, waiting. The imperious vanity had left him and was replaced with sincerity, or at least as much sincerity as can be created on Lucius Malfoy's face. "The thrill when you make that look is only eclipsed by what you say just after you make that look. It is sure to both amuse and fascinate-," she felt a flash of fury, but he hurried to continue, "But we don't have time for that right now… as much as I wish we did." He looked like he really meant that. This man really likes fighting! He must have deep-rooted problems. And a pretty face. She tried to focus on the pretty face part. But not too much. Just enough to be productive. "Draco is in there and we have the key." And that's why we're here, was the unspoken truth between them.
He tested the waters by pulling his finger slowly away from her lips. She smiled at him.
"Lucius," she said. "Let's go get your son back."
-oOo-
Greetings, readers! Thanks for reading!
In this chapter it was revealed that I am a MAJOR SCIENCE NERD. Occasionally I go mad with scientific power and create rambling, obtuse physics metaphors in my writing. This time it was black holes. Do ya'll like black holes? I sure do! Except I don't like to be in them. Not at all. Total particle obliteration is NOT FUN. I admire black holes from afar for their ability to form solid galaxy centers, and occasionally cause matter to explode in fiery double-pole vortices.
Despite the fact that many authors say this, reviews really do help encourage me to write faster. It's true! So if you like, leave a review and it'll make my day.