CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: THE SINGULARITY
The dark halls of Malfoy Manor were punctured from time to time with flashes of light from passing windows, sometimes green, sometimes purple, sometimes solar white, and the blanket of silence was pricked with the sound of explosions and the rare shout.
Lucius, Hermione, and Draco moved in grim silence through the hall and towards the entrance of the manor, and perhaps it was the case that all three dreaded what was coming next. Upon reaching the ajar front door, Hermione saw the further ruin of the front gardens of Malfoy. What statues still stood before had mostly become rubble, fires burned in small patches, and where fires were not, there were blackened sores marring the once-peaceful grounds.
It didn't help that it was dark outside, but Hermione could see Harry taking cover behind a pile of rock-rubble (once a statue), Luna behind a fountain, and Ron encased in a powerful shield of his own making, forcing Hermione to admit that Ron really did become an exceptional wizard. All around were distant, dark figures, the figures of professionals, of aurors on the side of Shacklebolt, or perhaps aurors with something to hide, pressing into the manor grounds. Those men knew that they were doing, but Harry at the very least did too, and perhaps more so. As for Ron, Luna, Hermione, and Draco, they had been forged in the fires of war in youth, and it might have been the case that they came alive under the circumstances in a way in which they hadn't for at least seventeen years.
"Hermione!" cried Harry, spotting her.
A bolt of magic struck the rubble behind which Harry crouched, and Hermione fell into old habits.
"Acciund rock!" she bellowed, her wand thrust before her, and a large rock lifted from the ground and hurtled into the auror who had been bearing down on Harry.
"What was that?" asked Draco.
"I tweaked it," said Hermione, but with no time for explaining things to Draco Malfoy, she began to bolt across the grounds towards where Luna was ducking behind the remains of a fountain.
"Hermione!" she heard Lucius' voice cry from behind her. Let him try to stop her. This was what she did best.
A shock of purple magic arced towards her from the darkness and she deflected it as she ran. Two more jets streamed out and Luna deflected one and the other Hermione ducked.
"Expelliarmus!" she yelled, pointing at the most likely trajectory of the recent jet. A wand came with a spinning whistle through the air just past her face. The clattering of the wand in the nearby rubble was followed by a sharp curse.
Hermione tackled the back of the fountain next to Luna like a linebacker. Panting, she looked up at Luna.
"So what are we looking at?" she asked.
"Good Merlin, woman, how can you just run out in the open like that?" chided a breathless Lucius from her other side, who must have followed her without her knowledge.
"What are you doing out here?" demanded Hermione of Lucius, outraged that he would put himself in such extreme danger without conferring with her first.
He leaned one hand on the back of the fountain as he caught his breath and gave her a look, that she should be one to talk.
"They've broken through the outer wards," said Luna, immune to the usual contention of Hermione and Lucius. "I've put an especially dense one around the house itself, and we were trying to stall them until the three of you finished."
Hermione glanced around at their out-numbered-ness and came to the most obvious conclusion.
"It's time to fall back!" she called to Harry, who agreed.
"Fall back to the manor!" he called to Ron the wizard extraordinaire, who proceeded to cast out an array of dizzying streams of light for confusion's sake. In the pause of aurors trying to understand the fireworks, they got a head start to the front door. Harry and Ron gave covering fire until they were all inside.
Harry fell back against the barred doors with a thump.
"This is some nasty business you've gotten yourself into, Hermione," said Harry.
"Isn't it always when the Malfoys are involved?" asked Hermione, and they shared a hearty laugh.
Lucius and Draco were dour for some reason.
"How long have we until they can crack your ward, Luna?" asked Ron.
"I don't know," said Luna. "It depends on how good they are."
Everyone looked at Harry.
"I don't know who's out there," he said. "Sure, there are some aurors who are pretty great at breaking wards, but are they here? I have no way to know. It's too dark. This just blew open, you know, this whole mess you found."
"It's just awful, isn't it?" Hermione asked him.
"I told you we'd have to do it our way," said Harry, shifting his eyes to Lucius. "We should have done it earlier, and we'd have had the upper hand."
Lucius met Harry's gaze and replied, "I suppose when all else fails, brute force is last."
Lucius didn't look like he thought very highly of brute force, as if "brute force" was the Gryffindor way or something! How did he twist that around from "charging in, wands blazing"? Well, she supposed they weren't incredibly different, after all. She sighed audibly and impatiently and turned to Luna.
"Where are you headed?" Luna asked her, superseding Hermione before she could talk.
"The dining hall," she said, glancing at Lucius. He seemed to know what she was about, and a soft regret passed across his eyes.
"I'll cast wards to keep them away as long as I can," said Luna.
"Right then," said Harry, pushing up his sleeves as if preparing to do some especially tough work. "Get to where you need to be, Hermione."
Just then the manor shook, like the shivering aftermath of a bomb strike.
"Run!" yelled Luna, and Lucius grabbed Hermione's arm and they ran.
During the running there were a few more shattering blows felt tremblesome throughout the manor, and the sound of Luna casting more and more wards, and Ron and Harry's urgent, coordinating voices growing distant as she, Draco, and Lucius reached the once-grand Malfoy Dining Hall.
It was quiet in the soft ashen darkness of the dining hall, and if Hermione pretended, she could imagine the manor wasn't being attacked at all, and it was just another night at Malfoy Manor, just another hour to discover more about Lucius Malfoy, and about his curious house. The manor shivered under the onslaught of Kingsley Shacklebolt's fear of discovery though, and Hermione couldn't pretend for another moment.
She felt terrible for it, for this house and place of so much time and knowing, besieged by the present wants of men; men of no mind to preserve its quality, of no mind to be aware that there was any quality to preserve in the first place, an ignorant, heedless onslaught that tore down that which could not be replaced. She was gripped all at once with a deep, agonizing sadness and she drew in a shaking breath and turned to Lucius.
He saw it on her face, and for once she was glad for her transparency.
"I love you," he said, as if that was the last time he'd ever be able to say it.
She responded by dragging him down to her by the collar and taking a kiss, one in which she hoped that everything she wanted him to know was communicated through osmosis, somehow. He fell into it, giving himself to her wholeheartedly and though they both knew their minutes, even seconds, were anxiously limited and that they had to get to doing whatever it was that they were supposed to do right now, right now, they delayed it like stubborn, headstrong procrastinators, for seconds, seconds, thirds.
Distantly they heard Ron shout and their kiss ended, but slowly, and like backwards melting, they, liquid, once again grew solid.
Draco stood sullen, his eyes on them but his body half-turned, as if he didn't want to see what he'd seen, but in his fascinated horror he could not look away.
"Guard the doorway," Lucius told his son.
Draco turned, wordless, and strode to the door, his wand out, and immediately took a position of defense, watching the hallway.
"I don't understand it," he said, his eyes still on the hall.
"Neither do I," said Lucius simply.
The conversation ended there. Well, that was brief.
"Lucius," said Hermione, touching his arm. She pointed towards the back-center of the dining hall, the place where she'd first seen him appear, crouched, newly brought from seventeen years ago, and the scent of him and old parchment had filled the air, and the lights showed it to be him, Malfoy-blond, masculine, but weak and faltering, a different man from the one she produced tonight. She hoped the offering of Lucius Malfoy, changed, was enough for the sake of the House of Malfoy on every level. Perhaps he had become more than enough, and it was possible that he had become that which he needed to become for the survival of Malfoy, et al.
Lucius moved to the place where she pointed and stood, a different man, his ancient heft diffused by rays of light. She saw it and was glad it would not be forgotten. At least he would remember it all, the one who it had changed the most.
Hermione knelt on one knee and pressed a hand to the fitted stone floor, feeling for what she wasn't altogether sure, but knowing that, if the house were ever to help them, it had to do it now, or it would never get the chance. They were besieged, and there was only one way to win this war; send Lucius back and create another universe, one in which this had never happened, except in Lucius' memories.
She felt, using all the magical discernment with which she had been blessed, inviting the house to urgency, offering herself wholly as protector of the House of Malfoy, determined to protect it with her will and all the strength she possessed. It stirred, or perhaps it ended its patient waiting, because she felt its magic stir beneath her hand and join with hers, a union of mortal and immortal equal cause and determination. Somewhere in the intervening weeks, her motives had slowly aligned themselves with that of Malfoy Manor, and that alignment, once clicked into place, started a clockwork that could only happen at that moment.
Magic swelled from the house into her and as the duality became the singularity, she felt a surge of everything the house knew present in her own intellect. The old, the knowing, the waiting, the seeping stones which formed its foundation laid by the ancient Malfoy, made for defense against a wilder time, the unrecorded struggles for survival against a darkness long forgotten, the beginnings of House Malfoy, respected, the determination of family bonds, the growth in unity, the wealth, the prosperity, the callousing, the forgetting, the House of Malfoy growing old like cracked, dried parchment, and the house feeling the stale air, waiting, waiting, perceiving the end under Narcissa Black and preventing it like a wall that would not be destroyed.
She stood and looked at Lucius Malfoy, delicate, mortal, infinitely precious to the house and to her.
"It's coming," she said.
"Hermione," he said.
She drew a breath and with it she filled herself with house magic, and she let her mortal, witch magic flow into it, and she knew this was what was needed, this was the only way to do it, this was what the house had been waiting for, because it was the only way to send him back, and the only way to save House Malfoy, and the manor itself. From its first stone, however, she knew Malfoy Manor cared not for itself; it was a thing of selfless patience. It was built for one purpose: the preservation of the Malfoy family. It would never lose that purpose for as long as a single rock of its foundation still stood.
She and the house understood each other completely at last.
Dimly she heard Draco shout and she turned in her house-enduced omniscience to see Harry, Luna, and Ron having fallen back to the dining room entrance. The house shuddered, the scent of smoke filled the air, and, distant through the door, was the bright lick of flame. Don't worry, she told the house, I'll save you.
Luna saw her and gasped.
"Hermione, you've house magic all around you!" cried Luna.
She supposed she did. Harry and the others took up defensive positions and Luna managed to cast a last ward around the dining hall right before curses and blasts from the attacking aurors fell against their defenses.
"Hermione! Get behind something!" cried Ron.
She was standing in the middle of the dining room, seemingly defenseless, after all. It didn't matter, though.
"They can't touch me," she said, and the house gave her power beyond mortal, and lest her charge be harmed, she shot magic in a thick, shimmering shield to either side of her, curving behind like a massive globe, to encase Lucius Malfoy.
At that moment aurors charged into the room, pushing Luna's defense back and back, but were paused by the intensity of Hermione's shield. It seemed as if all stopped in that moment to stare at Hermione Granger, or what Hermione Granger had become, and she could see Kingsley Shacklebolt among them, his face belying his traitorsome past, the cruel slow crushing of decades of duality, the fear of discovery, and the vulnerability of his mortality. She knew him in an instant and the magic around her pulsed, radiating with her heartbeat. She felt as if she'd become a god, knowing she had the power to crush his physical form, but no crushing would match that misery which had been of his own making. It wasn't necessary.
"I am the singularity," she said.
"What the Merlin?" Kingsley Shacklebolt said. He didn't understand, and this Kingsley Shacklebolt never would. This universe was nearly over.
"I am the creator and destroyer of universes," she said. She was.
"Stop her!" cried Kingsley, though she knew he didn't understand what she was and that made him afraid. In his fear he wanted whatever she was doing to stop, but he was too late. The aurors sprang into motion to destroy the last of their defenses, to breach to Hermione and ultimately Lucius, but she knew that even in their professionalism and training and skill, they were hesitant and afraid and held back, if only a little, because of the great unknown.
It was time to send Lucius back, to begin again, and it would be a new beginning, not only of this particular story, but of the House of Malfoy, because with the knowledge and the change within Lucius Malfoy came the fresh air the House had needed, had waited for, for centuries.
Sometimes one has to be brought near extinction to recover one's soul.
She turned to Lucius and he seemed to have stood dumbfounded throughout the ordeal, but she loved him, and she and the house loved him, and it was so deeply that she felt it resonate in her bones and the house felt it in its foundation, the love with which ancient Malfoys, laying stone upon stone, had hoped for the greatness, security, and wisdom of those who would hold its future, and she wished upon him hope for the future that would come in another place, at another time, removed from this place and time.
"Lucius," she said.
"Yes, Hermione?" he replied, soft.
"I am and will always be the Warden of Malfoy."
He fell silent and his gaze lay upon her, and she knew he didn't fully know what that meant, but perhaps someday he would, and he felt gratitude and unworthiness and humility and the heavy burden of the task which rested on his shoulders and a wary hope that he might accomplish what was necessary. His glance flickered towards Draco and she perceived his thoughts in an instant.
"Draco will be fine," she said.
He believed her. She was satisfied.
She shifted to pull the magic around her with pondering heft like the great lifting of a Titan, and it swirled slowly, then faster into a spherical vortex, glowing golden with Lucius at the center. Behind her the pandemonium of aurors and allies slowed and grew silent, and it didn't matter whether they fought or lived or died because this would all be gone, forgotten, given up, released, and this would end, and the House of Malfoy would not end.
There was a silent pulse which thrummed from the center of the sphered vortex, and it repeated, not heard but felt, like an absence of space-time, and it beat again and again, faster and faster, drawing all matter into its center from within its reach of spherical gravity and releasing relentless pulses, breaks in space-time outward, through everyone here and there and everywhere.
Lucius Malfoy and the matter within the sphere folded upon itself, creased, bent, shifted, collapsed into a point of infinite density and without all became the holy dark.
-oOo-
DAILY PROPHET - MONDAY, FEBRUARY 14TH, 1998 - EXTRA
YOU-KNOW-WHO TURNS OUT TO BE A LOSER; WAR IS OVER
GOLDEN TRIO TO BE AWARDED HIGHEST MEDAL OF MERLIN PLATED IN GOLD
It is a glorious day in the wizarding world, not one that has seen the likes since the law was passed to stop burning witches; You-Know-Who is has finally been vanquished at last! Let the celebrations begin!
Fortunately, we were saved by the golden trio, Harry Potter and his two friends, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who were instrumental in tracking down and destroying the horcruxes which kept You-Know-Who alive for so awfully long –
Hermione put down the paper and stared into space.
"This feels strange," she said, and then she looked at Harry. "Does this feel strange to you?"
"Tell me one part of any of this that isn't strange," he replied, a grin on his face.
He had a point, and she found his grin infectious.
"Hey Hermione," said Ron, with a sandwich. "What's that on the back about the Malfoys?"
"What?" she asked, turning the paper around, searching the back page, and finally finding a tiny article in the corner. Ron and Harry crowded around to read with her.
LUCIUS MALFOY AND NARCISSA BLACK MALFOY SPLIT!
According to close sources, the seemingly impenetrable couple Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy have separated, and Narcissa is planning a permanent move to France to live with a distant cousin. It is rumored that pending divorce papers have listed "irreconcilable differences" and Lucius will maintain full ownership of Malfoy Manor along with Draco as heir, and Narcissa is making out with very little if any of the Malfoy wealth. One must wonder, what did Narcissa do? Did she really give it all up so easily? Watch this space for more gossip and news!
That was actually really surprising.
"I'd always assumed Lucius and Narcissa were ironclad," remarked Hermione.
"I guess the war didn't work out for them," said Ron, perhaps gloating due to so many years of persecution.
"Just another casualty," said Harry, not caring. "They're lucky they're not dead or in Azkaban."
"I suppose so," said Hermione, tossing the paper aside and preparing to accept medals of war valour and forgetting all about the Malfoys for a long while.
-oOo-
A few years later, Hermione picked up the paper again (as was her wont) and a small article caught her eye:
Lucius Malfoy named top assistant to new Minister of Magic Kingsley Shacklebolt
Now, that was a very surprising (and extremely disturbing) bit of news about Lucius Malfoy. How in the world did Lucius Malfoy get himself named as the Minister's right hand? He was Lucius Malfoy, for crying out loud! Didn't anyone learn anything around the wizarding world? What's next, "Voldemort's remains to be dug up and experimented with"? What did they fight for if Lucius Malfoy can so easily get back into power? Was it all for nothing?
With an angry grumble, she forcefully threw the copy of The Daily Prophet into the rubbish bin and stalked towards her office in the Ministry's Library Sciences Department. She didn't deserve an office at her age and experience, but they just gave her one because she was Hermione By-Merlin Granger. She wasn't about to hand it back since it was free and all and they were offering, and she really did need somewhere to keep all the books she'd been recovering since the fall of the dark side. Some of those things were dangerous and needed to be kept away from the general populace.
Flinging open her office door of wood and frosted glass, she was struck by the scent of old parchment from her recovered books, and something else. Something hard to define. Autumn… and a thousand memories. The first she'd expected, but the last two…?
There was a man sitting in her office chair, reading a book, one of her books. He seemed so mild and un-intimidating that it took her at least three seconds to realize it was Lucius Malfoy.
She blinked.
"Mr. Malfoy," she said, chill, a greeting that wasn't a greeting.
He looked up at her, and he did not look like Lucius Malfoy at all. He was, clearly he was, but he wasn't the same. She supposed the most drastic thing was his hair had been cut to look like a Roman. Like a Roman? Why on earth would I think something like that?
On closer inspection, the more subtle things were the most different. He looked at her without judgment, with a strange gentleness on his face, even a tinge of sadness. But why? Was this a trick? It must be a trick.
She responded by putting her proverbial shields up.
"Miss Granger," he replied. "I suppose you're wondering why I've invaded your office with my unwelcome presence."
She had to hand it to him, he'd hit the nail on the head right there.
"I am indeed," she replied.
"I wanted to know if you've ever considered pursuing politics," he said.
"Why would I do that?" she asked.
"Because I believe you have an innate talent in leadership and intellect," he replied.
She almost choked. Actually, she kind of did half-choke. It was embarrassing.
"You certainly believe no such thing!" she said.
"But I do," he said, looking so very sincere. He terrified her, he was such a fine actor.
"Don't even begin to say that's the case!" she cried. "You despise me! You find me "lesser"! You think I'm the worst type of thing that can happen to the wizarding world!"
She couldn't believe how quickly he'd brought her to tirade. He looked satisfied by her tirade, as if he'd expected it, or wanted it, or was relieved by it, or all three.
"War changes everyone, doesn't it?" he asked her, an undefined sadness passing across his eyes. Maybe he had been through some things. He certainly looked like he'd been through some things. How much can anything change Lucius Malfoy?
He stood all of a sudden and replaced her book on a desk pile with more care than she would have given.
"Think about it," he said, and he moved past her and through her door. "Good day, Miss Granger."
He was gone, except that scent of autumn and a thousand memories…
She felt a strong sense of déjà vu and denied herself that she was drawn to smell it again.
-oOo-