Hermione began a series of katas, her muscles beginning to loosen and relax as she moved. She dipped and twisted and kicked, her wand hand beginning to move in a choreographed counterpoint, swishing and flicking, jabbing and circling as defensive and offensive spells were chanted silently in a graceful dance of death. This was what had kept her alive, collecting bounties of werewolves and vampires and similar undesirables. Cunning spell work with muggle combat skills. Very few in the wizarding world did any sort of true physical fitness, relying on fancy spell casting for combat, but Hermoine found it only sensible to be able to dodge a curse instead of countering it. The large dueling chamber she had found in Malfoy Manor had easily lent itself to her purpose and she had transfigured several rugs into practice mats so she could work more simply.

The exercise also helped her think, to arrange her thoughts and plan, something she had been forced to do more and more of after beginning her association with Draco Malfoy. Association, what a cold word for what stood between them. By the time they had returned to his trendy London town home her things had already been placed in his bedroom, and her protests had been cut off in the most effective way possible, one that involved them both and left them panting on his sheets, sweaty and exhausted.

She couldn't decide at first if he was attempting to exhaust her into agreement with all his plans, or if his libido really was that active. She now knew. He had the sex drive of a veela in heat, and seemed to be single handedly attempting to drive her into a happy, satiated coma. She recalled that in school he had been referred to as the Slytherin Sex God. At the time she had made faces of disgust and put her nose in the air, refusing to believe anything of the sort. Now, well, she knew what all the fuss had been about, and damned if it wasn't true.

She kicked, twisted and spun, wand dancing in increasingly violent patterns, spells she had always had too much conscience to cast coming perfectly to memory. She always had perfect memory. A sudden unbidden image of Severus, his face taut with impatience, moving her hand, showing her the twists and flicks of spells he thought she would never use, Dark curses of his own design, and several the creations of Lucius Malfoy, Bellatrix Lestrange and the Carrows. Pain stabbed her suddenly, her heart seeming to contract in her chest. It had been many years since she had been struck by such grief, and she was unprepared for the force of it. She had wondered if he would have approved of she and Draco, but could almost see him shaking his head in disgust at her useless angst.

"Really, do you seriously think that you should be taking advice on a current lover from a dead lover? And in what sad reality should I give a good damn whom you sleep with now that I am gone? Use your own judgment, witch, and take responsibility for your choices and you will satisfy any expectations I might have had of you." Yes, that would have been the Severus everyone knew, and she would have looked into his eyes and seen that as long as she was content, he would be as well. Well, as long as she didn't compromise her standards with some dolt who was no match for her in power or intellect. She grinned suddenly, the grief passing as quickly as old grief often does, leaving only a bittersweet wistfulness in its place. He would have appreciated this plan, and doubtless demanded that she lead Draco a merry chase if only to rid him of a bit of that bloody arrogance. Maybe she already had, but that didn't mean that she necessarily needed to stop doing so. She smirked, and it was not a nice expression. After all, she learned it from the best.

She headed for the shower then, intending to read more in a fascinating book she had found in a case in the Manor library. She could barely make out one word in five, it was in some odd form of ancient English, she thought, but there was something else mixed in, something that she dared not even attempt to read out loud, as the first time she did she could feel the magic begin to crawl over her skin, and it was old indeed, old and powerful, and something that redefined the difference between Dark and Light and was far older than either.

"It's called Ivernic. There are words in almost every language that have their roots in it if you go back far enough." She looked up in surprise as Draco entered the study, his eyes on the book as if it were a particularly dangerous animal. "Can you understand any of it?"

"At first only perhaps one word in five, but the patterns have started to emerge and I think I am getting a better grasp. I've never heard of Ivernic before, who spoke it?" His lips twisted, and he took a chair carefully as far away from her and the book as was possible.

"It's not a dead language, just a very rare one. You haven't been reading it out loud, have you?" She shook her head, and watched him relax just slightly, a frisson of discomfort running down her spine. Draco was not afraid of the book or the language, she sensed that, not that he was afraid of much of anything at all, but there was a wealth of cautious respect in his face, and just a bit of something she couldn't identify, longing, perhaps, but that made no sense at all.

"I started to try to read it phonetically at first, but I could feel magic just in the language," she admitted. "I thought perhaps reading aloud was not the best idea." He barked a laugh.

"No, not the best idea with that, not at all. It's possible to drive someone utterly mad just by speaking to them in Ivernic, well, depending on what you say, of course. The other person does not even need to understand it." She understood then and dropped the book like it had caught fire.

"It's one of the five languages of magic, isn't it? One of the originals." He nodded, and accio'd the book back on the table.

"The book itself isn't dangerous and is quite ancient, Hermione, no need for such melodrama. Ivernic is the high speech of the elves, a language so purely magical that simple conversation with intent is the equivalent of spell casting."

"The elves went extinct thousands of years ago," she protested. "It has to be a dead language." He shook his head.

"The elves are no more dead than you and I, they simply exist differently. They conquered time long before our ancestors discovered fire, and they live between moments, here but not. That's why wizards and muggles alike thought that elves were immortal. They are not. Their life spans are not determined by linear time, but by intent. The lifespan of an elf is over when it feels there is no more point to its continuing, no more, no less."

"Can you read it?" he nodded. "Of course. My father made sure that I learned."

"Yet I don't think I have ever heard you speak it, have I?"

"No, and you should be damned grateful for it. That language to an unprepared person, can be far more insidious than the strongest Imperious, more painful than Crucio, and as deadly as Avada. All I would have to do is look at a person and command them to die, and if my intent was present they would die."

"That's your secret to wandless magic, isn't it? You are thinking in this language."

"That's a part of it, but by no means the whole. Mastery of wandless magic takes years of discipline, practice and no small amount of natural power. Lesser wizards and witches simply are unable to do it."

"The Ministry would see you dead in seconds if they knew this, wouldn't they? No wonder you handed over your wand without hesitation. A wand to you must be a useless toy."

"You give me far too much credit. I gave up my wand because it was that or my life, and I still quite valued my life. I did not know then what the source of wandless magic was. My father started off teaching me in the traditional way, concentration, focus and discipline. That is the only way most wizards do it, the only way most could. Even reading Ivernic can cause insanity in many wizards. Had I known that book was in the library I would have hidden it and warded the thing so no one but myself could ever read it. The simple fact that not only has it not harmed you, but also that you have begun to understand it without someone to teach you, it's quite telling."

"In what way?"

"Tradition, and I do not know if it is true or not, states that persons with fey blood cannot be harmed inadvertently by Ivernic and will have an affinity for it. I can see the possibility of fey blood in your bone structure and physical grace, though it would have been many generations ago."

"So it follows that you have that blood as well, doesn't it? Doesn't that give lie to the whole pureblood thing you used to espouse so heavily?"

"On the contrary, fey blood is the most purely magical of any, and Ivernic is the very first language of magic. Purebloods originally were only concerned with the magical heritage of their blood, not the fleshly component. Granted one could not be part troll or goblin and retain purity of magic, but to be partially fey was to command incredible power. It was only later that it was perverted to speak to bloodline alone."

"Say something to me in it, something harmless." He shuddered.

"No."

"Why?"

"It's a bad idea." He accio'd the book to himself and walked over to a glass case, intending to lock it away. Hermoine was out of her seat in a heartbeat, snatching it out of his hands.

"You said the book wasn't dangerous, and I want to learn it, Draco. If you won't teach me I will teach myself." He glared, and shrugged her off.

"I told you the book itself wasn't dangerous, I said nothing of the sort about the contents. It is dangerous in many different ways. You shouldn't spend a lot of time around fey items, it tends to have side effects." He placed his hand on a glass case and it opened, swirling eddies of magic testing his hand, then parting. He was about to put the book inside when, in a lightening fast move, Hermoine struck his hand, bouncing the book out of his grip and snatching it, apparating across the room and fairly hissing at him.

"You have no right to dictate what I do and do not study you arrogant bastard! I want to learn this, I can almost see the meaning now, you have no idea how close I am!"

"I know exactly how close you are and to what!" he shouted. "Look at yourself Granger, it's already an addiction. You can't put it down; you want to read it aloud. You want to see what happens when the magic responds to your every whim with no effort at all. Don't you?" She glared, but refused to answer. He glided up to her, his expression fierce in a way she had never seen it.

"You want to feel the magic in your blood. You never felt it before this unless you were holding a wand. You knew it was there, you could manipulate it like the tool that it was but you couldn't feel it. I'm guessing that the first time you held a wand and used it you were done for. That's the way it always works. You feel the magic through the wand, and it's hot and sweet and it makes adrenaline rush through your entire body. It's like an orgasm except that back then you didn't know what an orgasm was, much less possess the ability to have one." Hermoine was nearly hypnotized by his words. His description was more than accurate; it was terrifying in its perception. She couldn't move, the heat from his body was blasting hers, his eyes searing hers with molten mercury, she was dizzy.

"I think you'll acknowledge that I know a little bit about addiction, Hermione. You should trust me when I tell you that this is a path that you do not want to walk down." He slowly pulled the book out of her hands, his expression softening. "Let it go, love, please." It was the quiet concern that loosened her fingers from the spine at last and she watched as he locked it in the warded case, trying not to sob. He turned back and took her in his arms, rocking her like a small child.

"It will fade, I promise. Eventually you won't even care that it's there. Just give it time."

"It hurts," she gasped, trying to hold back the desperation. She had never been exposed to something like this before, never felt the agony of withdrawls. This alone should convince her that it was dangerous, she thought, and while her logical mind understood that, she was totally unable to convince her body and emotions. She wanted to scream and curse him, and worst of all she wanted to say some of the words in the book, some that felt cruel, felt cutting, even though she had no idea of the real meaning. Instead she bit her lips until they bled, and allowed him to hold her. She allowed him to lead her from the library, and she didn't notice when he Vanished the entire case containing the book, his expression resolute.