Chapter 21 - Cherchez!, Part 1
January 27th 2004, 11:30 am
Malfoy Manor, The Corridors Leading to the Library
Hermione's mind had been so absorbed in trying to understand Céleste's words, she had barely noticed that she had gripped Lucius' biceps muscle.
Apparently, neither had he.
Until, at the same time, they both became aware of her hand on his arm.
Hermione hesitated, unable — or was she unwilling? — to let go, caught in the slow-dawning captivation that seemed to fill his eyes; the warmth and solidity of his muscles. He was real, reassuring; a human being in the midst of all the portraits.
"She did," he said softly.
"She . . .?" Startled out of her immersion in Lucius, his reactions, and her reactions to him, Hermione scrambled to collect her thoughts.
Immediately, she removed her hand and stuffed it into the pocket of her jeans.
The change in Lucius' eyes almost made her wish she hadn't; distance clouded them, before he glanced briefly at the portrait of Céleste, who now had her back to them, brushing her long, silver hair. Hair exactly like Lucius'.
"You asked if she said 'noblesse oblige,'" he said. "I am confirming that she did."
"Oh, yes, of course!" She had to focus now. "Was it important to her? The idea? Was it something she often said?"
His eyes flickered slightly as he thought. "My father, perhaps . . ." he said. "Perhaps, once or twice, she said it to him."
"Do you know why?"
Lucius gave a soft laugh. "I imagine he was being himself," he said. "Noblesse oblige was never an important precept for the Malfoy family. You've met enough of us now that you don't need me to tell you that." A slight quirk of the eyebrow. He was right, but Hermione blushed anyway. "My mother was . . . different, I suppose." He shook his head. "I really don't know; I was ten when I last saw her alive."
Hermione had the strong suspicion he was not telling the whole story. But what could she do? If she pressed him, she would either invade his boundaries, or unprofessionally breach hers.
Lucius cleared his throat deliberately. "Has Potter left now?" he asked.
Hermione nodded. "I was coming to find you," she said. "When . . . well, I ended up here." She gestured towards the portraits.
"Should we return to the library, then?" He sounded oddly hopeful and, she thought, somehow determined. "I think I and my family have wasted enough of your time."
The Library, 2:30 pm
They were sitting on opposite sides of the long table Hermione had turned into her personal office. Lucius found her ease in his library strangely endearing and rather admirable.
She had been tortured in this house; she had just shown the scars to his father, of all people. But here she was, elbow deep in rolls of parchment and books, quill out and furiously scribbling notes as though everything was right in her world.
Lucius had unearthed a large scroll that, unrolled, covered the expanse of table between them. It mapped the layout of the library and their contents in visual form, and included notes about enchantments active in various sections.
Unlike Hermione, however, he was not really concentrating on his work. Any attention he had the scroll was just a cover for thoughts and feelings percolating under the surface.
He had the same question as Hermione. Why had his mother said 'noblesse oblige?' He could just about remember. Abraxas had said something that upset her. . . something about her brother throwing away his birthright, and then . . . I'm damned if I'm going to let you bring my son up the same way! Lucius could hear his father's voice; but nothing else, no context, no images. Then —
Quand ton oncle vient. His mother again. When your uncle comes . . . something would happen, when your uncle comes. Noblesse oblige, chèri.
Lucius closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. This was insanity. He must be remembering her words incorrectly; Antoine de Châtillon was known to have died before Lucius was even born, at the end of the Muggle war. He would never have come. Either Lucius had mistaken her words, or she had been deluded.
She had been a delight; her magic had been a delight, and Lucius, once, had thought, childishly, that all magic was like hers. Before he was a Slytherin, before the world disabused him of this silly fantasy; before she died, and Lucius had . . . adapted; used everything she had shown him as an excuse to justify following his father and Voldemort; serving his own ambitions; and ultimately betraying everything she would have wished for him.
The more her portrait spoke, the more he missed her. Elle lui manquait. The French was so much more eloquent than the English, so much more accurate. She was missing from him. From the ten-year-old whose every feeling Lucius had tried to forget. From that arrogant, unprincipled teenager in yesterday's dream. From the man they had both become.
She was missing from him; and Lucius was missing from himself.
But.
She was only a portrait. She was a portrait and she was dead.
He swallowed, took a breath, and turned his attention to the parchment map. The answer was still the same; the only possible salvation the same — as he had resolved in the drawing room, and clung to earlier by the portraits when he directed her to return to her work for his sake more than hers.
His only choice was to help Hermione Granger with her search.
Hermione tried to read back the notes she had been writing for the last ten minutes, but found her handwriting to be almost illegible.
It was not really a surprise. Her mind felt, honestly, addled. There were just too many thoughts, questions, ideas, all competing with each other.
She stole a quick glance at Lucius, his head bowed over the library map. He looked so intent on working, and she could only wonder why.
Perhaps he had thought back to the origin of this arrangement, McQuoid's reasoning, and decided that he wanted her out of his house as soon as possible. Or was he trying to gain the forgiveness he thought he didn't deserve by over-zealously helping her?
Or perhaps he was just absorbed in the challenge, for its own sake. Because, God, she wished she was!
But she couldn't stop thinking about 'noblesse oblige,' and, more than ever, she had the feeling that she was missing something; that she was going about the search the wrong way and heading up a blind alley.
Now she was even starting to think they were looking for the wrong books in the wrong places. Abraxas' collection had seemed so obvious and right. But, by chance, she had found Dark magic in Narcissa's gardening book! If a member of the Malfoy family had concealed the most important book on Dark magic for centuries, perhaps they had done so with more subtlety than some nasty protective spells.
And then — Lucius. Again, she glanced quickly at him, hoping he would look up, but he did not.
Her mind still dwelled on Céleste; and the uncanny coincidence with Harry's revealing the code name of the Aurors' informant was only half the problem
Céleste Malfoy, 1936 - 1964, the plaque beneath the portrait read. Now Hemione calculated the years in her head. Céleste had died when Lucius was ten years old.
She thought of herself at ten years old. If her mother had died, either of her parents, she would have been devastated. Worse, even, than the pain she felt now at their separation from her. She had died and left him alone, at ten, with his horrible father. She couldn't imagine that Abraxas had been any kinder to a ten year old boy than he had been when Lucius was eighteen, in that soul-destroying dream.
Shit, the dream! They still hadn't managed to talk about it.
She actually believed Lucius when he said he wasn't consciously practising Legilimency. Yes, a part of him might want to show her the scene with Allegra, she thought, and the Imperius curse. But he wouldn't want to share his branding with the Dark Mark; the agony of Azkaban. He was unambiguous that he couldn't be forgiven, and both of these introduced . . . well, ambiguity. Of the most heart-breaking kind.
But she had to do something, say something. And, yes, she must maintain boundaries. But, the fact was, the personal and the professional were now intimately connected. She didn't actually have the right to interrogate Lucius about his life, his family and himself; but she had the right, even the obligation, to do what was necessary to find the Almanac.
"Lucius!" she said, so sharply, that his head snapped up, and she felt a little silly and rude. But she'd started now. Her mind raced. What should she begin with? I saw your dream about the Dark Mark. Why does your appearance change so dramatically, from tired to . . . dazzling? Even, skirting the edges of protocol: Harry said the informant's code name is Noblesse Oblige, and your mother said —
Her voice got the better of her brain and she blurted out, "Did Narcissa practice necromancy?"
It was probably as good a start as any, she thought, as she watched Lucius hesitate. None of the options were exactly comfortable.
"I sincerely hope not," he said and, to Hermione's great surprise, he gave a half-smirk. "I should not like to find Cygnus Black's Inferius lurking around the corridors. My father's portrait is already enough trouble . . ."
Hermione rather wanted to laugh, in fact, her lips twitched with the urge. He was so unpredictable; his mood changed from one moment to another. When he was charming, it was very difficult not to go with it. But she could not allow herself to be deflected.
'I'm quite serious!"
She stood up and pushed her chair back, reached to the end of the table where she had left the gardening book, picked it up and waved it at Lucius. His expression showed that he recongised the book. Hermione opened the book to the page with the turned-down corner, and read from it.
"'— the Necromantia Minima spell. An ingenious adaptation of lesser necromancy, suitable for domestic use.' What the hell is 'lesser necromancy?' Surely necromancy is necromancy? And it's illegal! And," she brandished the book again, "this is Narcissa's book and the page for this spell has been bookmarked!"
There was a pause and then, "Yes," he said stiffly. "She used the spell, as I believe the book describes, to grow flowers and keep them alive in unseasonable weather."
"Well, yes. But it's still necromancy. So —"
"It's quite harmless," Lucius broke in. "It cannot be used on sentient creatures."
"But," Hermione persisted. "It's still Dark magic!"
Lucius shrugged. "Isn't that what you're here to find?" he said. "In the home of a notorious Dark wizard."
Frustration bubbled in Hermione's throat. He was far from stupid, and a part of her thought he was being deliberately obtuse; while a part of her had to acknowledge that he wasn't actually privy to all her thoughts and that she would have to explain. "Yes, but I think," she said, more patiently, "we might be looking in the wrong places. And maybe it's my fault. I've concentrated on major areas of the library, looking for obvious books and categories of books. But what if there's a more subtle enchantment . . .?" She trailed off, as her mind caught up with what he had said. "If it's Dark magic, how can it possibly be harmless?"
He inclined his head. "You're right. But in this case the only harm was to Narcissa. If you read further down the page, you'll see the magic requires a little of the wizard's blood. The ritual tired her; she had to take a nap after performing it. But," his eyes took on a wistful expression, "she thought it worthwhile to keep her Plumeria alive. She loved them and Wiltshire was not kind to them."
There was a new sensation in Hermione's throat now; not frustration, but something very like a lump. It was fascinating, moving, to see this man who for years she had thought of as pure evil, a caricature and two-dimensional, bare little pieces of his breadth, his life, his capability for love; and astonishing that he continued to do so in front of her.
This had not been the intended direction of the conversation. But she had wanted to know more about Dark magic sources in the house and, as tangential as all of this was, she felt she should follow where it led.
"Are the flowers still alive?" she asked.
Lucius scanned her face, then, "They are," he said, clearly, again, leaving something unsaid, evading something, but she let it go in the interest of making progress. She was pushing the boundaries now, hers and his; she didn't want to push so much that he got up and left the library again.
"Could I see them?" she asked. "Perhaps?"
Several moments passed, then he stood up. "Apparate us to the grounds," he said.
The Grounds
Lucius knew now that the easy, flowing apparition was not Hermione's doing. It had been the same when he had apparated to the corridor. He had, formerly, been adept at apparition, but not to this degree. He could not explain it.
And, now, in Hermione's presence, about to look at the Plumeria flowers and to conceal yet more of his newly discovered magic, he could not think about it.
He would have preferred not to come out here with her again. She had not seen the flowers the last time they were here. But she was capable of visiting the grounds at any time she chose; flowers blooming in the snow would not go unnoticed, if she explored.
She got out her wand and performed a warming charm, on both of them, although Lucius did not require it.
"Over here," he said, and led her towards the plants, trudging through the snow that had apparently become even deeper since yesterday.
Yesterday! It seemed as though a lifetime had passed since then.
The flowers came into view, and Hermione let out a little gasp. They were fully blooming now, the leaves green and lush, the stems covered in glowing pink and white.
"Oh, they're beautiful," Hermione murmured. "It's hard to . . . it's hard to believe that Dark magic could produce something so . . ." She shook her head. "So . . . alive and lovely, I suppose."
A little warmth surged in Lucius' chest. It was hard to believe that Lucius Malfoy had produced something . . . anything 'alive and lovely.' And yet, he supposed she was right — he had brought them back to life, and without the Necromantia Minima spell. And while he did not understand how, or why, and could not tell Hermione that the work was his, her pleasure in the flowers gave him pleasure.
"Lucius," she said. "Yesterday. Before you left the library and then invited me to come out here with you. You were asleep, and . . ."
Her voice was soft, tentative and so serious, every part of Lucius became intent on her and what she would say next.
"I think you were dreaming, and I think I saw your dream." She swallowed. "Your father . . ." She glanced at him. "Voldemort …"
Lucius knew exactly what she had seen, and his feeling of pleasure ebbed away.
She had been right; somehow his thoughts had invaded her mind, although he had no idea how. For all he knew, it hadbeen Legilimency
It now occurred to him that all this magic might be the softening of his mind from everything he had gone through and everything he had done. But that was too easy, and it did not ring true with him; there was no way out of responsibility, not any more. At the very least, he would have to talk to her about this, or let her talk to him.
". . .Voldemort and you," she said as, at the same time, Lucius said, "You saw me."
They eyed each other, each waiting for the other to break the impasse.
"We should talk," she said.
"If we must . . ." Lucius reluctantly agreed. He would talk to her, of course, if she wished. But about this? One way or another, this might shatter him; because she would hate him, or because she would refuse to. Still . . . "Remember the Firewhisky we drank?" he asked her. If there was ever a legitimate occasion for alcohol, it was now.
She nodded.
"It's kept in the cellar close to the kitchen. Think of the taste of the whisky. Imagine a kitchen below the ground floor of the manor, and take us there."
She couldn't do it, of course. Her bearings, her knowledge of Malfoy Manor were not sufficient to apparate to the kitchen. But under all the fear, the damage, the Ministerial propriety, her self-confidence was always there, simmering; and, inncreasingly, she showed it to him, it gushed out of her. And she was self-confident enough, he believed, and flustered enough, to think she could at least try to apparate them.
While, unknown to her, the real apparation would be performed by him.
Author's Note:
Thank you very much for reading and for your responses x
