ccxxxvii. the malfoy problem
Hermione nervously patted her plaited hair for the thousandth time, then forced her hands away. Her teeth dug into her lower lip, and she sighed.
Naturally, Lucius Malfoy would not stoop as low as his son and agree to meet her in a Muggle building; he had opted for a Wizarding establishment in Coventry, outside of London. It was a gentleman's club, a brick building hidden behind thick wards meant for stuffy lords to find peace from their witches and families, suitably far from the purview of London society. It wasn't a brothel or the like—Merlin no—but it wasn't the kind of place a Muggle-born witch felt comfortable walking inside.
Sirius strolled alongside her in his Animagus form as Hermione entered the building, thrusting her shoulders back to appear as if she belonged there. Of course, the host saw right through her and scowled, looking ready to throw her out without a word. Hermione rushed to speak up as he approached.
"I have a meeting with Lord Malfoy," she said, adopting her best privileged airs, feeling absurd. She must have looked absurd, because the host very nearly rolled his eyes before dipping into the appropriate bow.
"Ah, yes. Lord Malfoy's guest. He's been waiting."
He gestured her toward the corridor, the rest of the grand house quiet and empty. He brought her to a door, leaving her with a sharp word not to wander elsewhere.
Hermione grimaced as he took his leave. "I don't know who he's more afraid of peeing on his carpet; me or you."
Sirius huffed, then nudged her knee with his nose, clearly knowing Hermione was stalling.
"Yes, yes. I'm going."
She rapped her knuckles on the door twice but didn't wait for permission to enter. She simply shoved the door in and stepped over the threshold, bracing herself.
It wasn't a large room, but what it lacked in size, it made up for with auspicious decor and revolting splendor. The wood paneling had the tell-tale grain of a scarce magical tree from the east, and gold fairly dripped from the long chandelier arms that curved away from the overhead fixture toward the walls like festoons. Flowers of crystal burst from a delicate vase, diamonds glittering in its base.
The room's sole occupant appeared unmoved by its granduer, seated upon a large padded chair at the table, turned so he could watch the embers pop and snap in the deep-bellied hearth. One slim hand held a cigar above a glass tray, and when the ashes fluttered from the end, they vanished into thin air.
Hermione felt rough and poorly hewn standing there, while Lucius Malfoy matched the interior in easy refinement and careless deportment. Though, for all his good looks, Mr. Malfoy made for a poor host by ignoring her completely. Sirius shifted forms and brushed by her arm.
"Malfoy," he said, sharp, and the other man merely sniffed.
"Your nursemaid can wait outside, Miss Granger," Malfoy said without looking up. "Or I can see myself out."
Neither Sirius nor Hermione moved for a moment, then Hermione nodded to her guardian. He opened his mouth to argue, then stopped, huffing. He jerked the door open, stepped through, and slammed it shut. Hermione felt the echo down to her bones, and his absence made her all the more uncertain.
No, I cannot be uncertain. He'll smell it like a shark sensing blood in the water.
Mr. Malfoy lifted the cigar to his mouth, drew in, lingering, then casually flicked the rest of it into the fireplace, dismissing the smoke with an idle wave of his hand. Only then did he deign to glance in Hermione's direction—brief, dismissive. "I know why you're here, girl. You're wasting my time."
"That's not my intention."
Malfoy stood, adjusted his cloak, then turned the chair toward the table rather than the fire. To Hermione's relief, he resumed his seat; she'd feared he'd been about to leave, but he'd simply made himself more comfortable, leaning his cane against his leg. His hair had been gathered at the nape of his neck by a ribbon, and when the light glanced off his high cheekbones, Hermione noted the shimmer of a glamour glowing like highlighter against his skin.
"Whether or not that's your intention, you are wasting my time. People talk, Miss Granger, and lately people have quite a bit to say about you."
Hermione swallowed but didn't let Malfoy's scathing tone put her off. She marched up to the table and pulled out the opposing chair without invitation, taking a seat. She'd known it was possible the pure-blood families she'd reached out to would gossip and mention the Muggle-born girl opening conversations with them. She had hoped the gossip wouldn't reach Malfoy just yet, but she'd accepted the possibility of it happening.
"Mr. Malfoy—," she began, but Hermione swallowed her words as she stared at the older wizard and he met her gaze without issue. She'd prepared a speech for this meeting—had gone over it three times and done half a dozen revisions only that morning—but now she actually sat in the reality of the moment, felt the plush cushion under her backside, the extra heat of the fire, the hum of magic in the walls. She stared at Malfoy and found he didn't quite match the wizard in her memories. He'd always been an unpleasant man—a hard, severe sort of person with an expression to match, but there'd always been a humor in his face, a poncy superiority that lit his colorless eyes and curled the corner of his mouth. Lucius had none of that humor now.
Fatigue lurked in the blue blush discoloring his eyelids, wariness in the twitching tightness of his jaw, his limbs as stiff as a statue's. His flesh gleamed unnatural under the pretty glamour. A stray blow could have shattered him into so much dust. This was not a man who'd sit and listen to a young witch's impassioned speech on morals and values and doing what was right.
Hermione inhaled to quell her racing mind and thrust her speech aside. She knew he wouldn't listen, and so she would follow her intuition, just this once. She had to pray it would work.
"May we order tea?" she asked. Malfoy lifted a brow, clearly having expected her to say something else, and though he scoffed, he nonetheless ordered tea. He summoned one of the establishment's house-elves, and the poor creature brought along a steaming pot. Hermione poured them both cups, and when she sat down with her own, she breathed in the tannins of a rich, expensive oolong.
Malfoy didn't touch his. He sat as if on tenterhooks, hands on the table, waiting. Hermione did not keep him long.
"I need you to vote against Gaunt in the election at the end of the year."
"Ha," Malfoy said. "Presumptive chit. You've decided to cut to the heart of the matter, then? How Gryffindor. Allow me to return the favor: no."
Hermione didn't react. She continued to swivel the delicate silver spoon through her tea, watching the few loose specs of leaves eddy in the current. "When Draco came to you with my request, you must have realized what I wished to discuss, especially if you've spoken to any of the families I've written letters to."
"Of course I did. How you've not learned an ounce of discretion in Slytherin House, I cannot fathom. It's almost as if you're attempting to bait Minister Gaunt into making your life miserable."
Again, Hermione ignored his remark. "And yet, despite your disparaging thoughts, here you are."
Mr. Malfoy's hand hesitated ever so slightly, then reached for his tea. "My son asked a favor of me. So yes, here I am."
"I don't believe you."
"It hardly matters what you believe, Miss Granger." The particular emphasis he placed on the word made his meaning clear. It didn't matter what Hermione—young, Muggle-born, a woman—thought.
Hermione pursed her lips, her tongue pressing against the back of her slightly too-large teeth as if she wanted to spit at the wizard, but she kept her tone light, affable. "Did you know Minister Gaunt's very first piece of legislation was the MPA law? He pushed the Wizengamot to vote it through only weeks after his appointment."
"Do you mean to state purposeless facts for my consumption? I assure you, I had my fill while you were in residence at the Manor."
"Oh. So you must be aware he also allowed for the DMLE referendum in 1983 permitting the Department to search and seize suspected Dark items with warrants?" Again, Malfoy showed the minutest sign of hesitation, just as Hermione assumed he would. Very few people were aware of what she'd mentioned, as finding out involved following an old, tedious chain of paperwork back to Gaunt's office. "Or perhaps you didn't know. The Minister is quite fond of playing two sides of an issue against each other, especially when it suits his needs. Like the mandate issued through one of his puppet Department heads in 1983, allowing all items taken during raids to be reviewed and reallocated by the office of the Minster. A further addendum in 1984 slipped by in a law's footnote allows the Minister to freely garnish suspected seizures—to ostensibly fund the Aurory, though no accounting can be found on where that money goes." Hermione stopped stirring her tea. "I wonder how often the DMLE has gone through Malfoy Manor, and how often you paid fees, Mr. Malfoy. Gaunt probably told you it would all be swept under the rug at his discretion, that he'd bring the Department in line, when it was his will guiding them all along. He offers you bread, never showing the underside is thick with mold."
Malfoy stared at her, and Hermione slid her spoon for her cup, gently tapping it on the rim. She lifted her cup by the scrolled handle, placing the rim against her lower lip. "You know who he is, who he is a part of." She sipped. "You also know who Harriet is."
The wizard's lip curled. "Be very careful in your assumptions, Miss Granger. It almost sounds as if you're accusing me of belonging to a certain illegal organization that doesn't much care for your kind."
"And if I was accusing you of such?"
"Then how stupid are you to be in a room alone with me?"
Hermione's stomach lurched, but she kept herself steady, pretending to drink tea until she felt assured her voice wouldn't quiver. "I know why you're here, and I know it's not because Draco asked you."
"Oh? Enlighten me, then, before I tire of this farce and Obliviate it from your mind."
Hermione lowered her cup, her hands unsteady, forcing them to fold together in front of herself. "I lived in your house for years. I would pass through the halls late at night, leaving the library or the study, and I would hear conversations. I…I would see the bruises, Mr. Malfoy. When a law failed to go through, when an unflattering article was published, I would see you return, and I would see you falter. The stilted way you walked, the glamours you wore—and I know it hasn't stopped. It's accelerated, it's…spread." She shifted in the chair, swallowing again. "He was upset after Crouch's death. He was upset at how it made his Ministry appear incompetent when one of the Tournament's main organizers went 'missing,' and he took that anger out on you…and Narcissa. He sent her to St. Mungo's last spring."
One of Malfoy's pale hands formed a fist on the table.
"I imagine you can't accept that. You can barely accept the abuses being committed upon yourself, let alone your wife, or potentially your son. You understand, don't you? It won't end with you or with Narcissa. Especially not now, what with Gaunt having formed new…alliances."
Hermione allowed her gaze to drift from the wizard toward the fire, then back again, steeling her nerves. "Others of my association believe Gaunt sent you to the Dark Lord's side in June, but I don't. Surely you spun him a story later about carrying information back to him from You-Know-Who, and yet…you were too quick, Mr. Malfoy. Too prompt to answer the call. I imagine it was almost a relief to feel your old master returning, and in those moments before arriving in the graveyard, you weren't thinking about Gaunt. You were thinking about yourself and your family—for how better to counter a man fashioning himself as a Dark Lord than with the Dark Lord himself?"
Silent moments ticked by, heavy and ponderous, though Hermione didn't allow her words to steep too long. "It must have disappointed you to realize You-Know-Who is no different than Gaunt, that your gamble had only compounded your metaphoric debt. This isn't what you wanted when you bought into the snake's words all those years ago. He promised you power, prestige—a magical utopia in which magical kind are not beholden to the laws of Muggles. He is not the first Dark wizard to do so, and won't be the last—and like his predecessors, the visions he has preached have broken apart at the seams, leaving only a weak, tattered tapestry barely masking the monstrosity he has twisted our society into. You can see it. You know everything is falling apart."
The longer she spoke, the less composed Mr. Malfoy's face appeared. Oh, it certainly kept its clean, well-polished beauty, but fault lines appeared as the skin around his eyes tightened, and his pallor reached ghost-like hues. "If you're so convinced of my loyalties," he uttered on a breath. "Then why chance meeting? Why bother asking for what you know I won't give? What I won't risk?"
Hermione interlocked her fingers. "Because I'm not finished with my scenario, Mr. Malfoy."
He blinked, and Hermione took that as permission to go on.
"You arrived in the graveyard in June seeking a way to rid yourself of Gaunt, and instead found a twisted, half-human monster, the mere shadow of the charming leader You-Know-Who once presented himself as. As the Muggles would say, you found yourself between a rock and a hard place, already forming plans to obscure your planned dissension to the Minister. However, as you bowed and scraped and applauded, the Dark Lord told you something quite interesting."
Hermione's eyes narrowed, and Mr. Malfoy didn't look away.
"He told you Harriet's the Girl Who Lived. The real one."
Malfoy held himself so still, he seemed to barely breathe.
"It's not believable, is it? She's small for a fourteen-year-old and underwhelming at first impressions. Not at all like Longbottom, right? And yet…she escaped the Dark Lord. She escaped. And when you came across her in the graveyard, you pointed her away from the Death Eaters. You told her how to escape because she's the Girl Who Lived—our world's best hope against You-Know-Who and his other personalities, and you want him dead. You want Gaunt out of power and the Dark Lord out of your house before your family suffers. They will suffer, Lucius. We will all suffer. You took a risk for the first time in your life because the writing is on the wall, and the sword is due to swing. I chanced meeting with you because I hope your self-interest has enough prudence to know our situation cannot continue."
Malfoy's eyes found the fire again and remained fixed upon those simmering embers. His hand—still a fist—shook on the table. The longer he went without speaking, the more Hermione feared she'd miscalculated, that she'd pushed at the wrong moment and he wouldn't—.
"They assigned my family another ward."
Hermione's brow furrowed, caught off guard by his sudden segue. "Oh?"
"They would hardly leave the space open; you yourself are aware of how competitive the most prestigious Houses are under the MPA law. The Ministry placed a new Muggle-born in my home at the beginning of the month. A blond boy, not entirely unlike Draco in appearance. Quite like him, in fact. Barely eleven years old."
The implication didn't occur to Hermione immediately, but it overwhelmed her an instant later, a sudden, horrified wave that had her slapping a hand over her mouth as if she might be sick. A child. A Muggle-born. A Muggle-born at the Manor, the Manor where—.
"The house-elves can't get the blood out of the carpet," Malfoy said, his tone flat, empty. He kept staring at the fireplace. "He forced Narcissa to watch, and I had to bury what was left of the body. Before the snake could get to it. I imagine he also killed the parents to ensure they cause no problems when Yule arrives and their son does not return home."
Hermione didn't know whom Malfoy meant—Gaunt or the Dark Lord—but it didn't matter. It was too late.
"You are naive, Miss Granger. So terribly naive to what He is capable of."
"And so you would let him continue? When you have the means at your disposal to stop him? War is not easy, Mr. Malfoy—and I assure you, that is exactly what we intend. It will be war, or it will be death for all of us."
Hermione stood, unable to sit still and composed any longer. Another boy was dead—a child, having not even started at Hogwarts yet. Hermione could not pretend she wasn't affected.
"Harriet has her trial soon."
Malfoy softly tutted, sounding distant, unmoored. "I had wondered when you'd ask for me to give your little friend freedom."
"I'm asking no such thing; criminal trial votes are in body, not volume, and you are only one body among many. No, only the truth can sway the minds of the Wizengamot, and I must place my hopes in facts and Harriet's barrister."
"Then what is your point in bringing it up, Miss Granger?"
"My point is, Malfoy, that certain details of that evening are bound to come out, especially if Harriet doesn't mind her tongue. Maybe at the trial, or perhaps at a later date. Some of those details could possibly include a certain blond, pure-blooded wizard aiding her in the graveyard." Malfoy's head snapped around at that, his eyes widening. "The Wizengamot might not believe her. The public might dismiss it as rubbish—but if those details got back to interested parties, I'm sure that wizard's life would be in peril."
By now, fine droplets of sweat had appeared on Malfoy's brow. "You wouldn't," he said. "You wouldn't. Because it wouldn't just be my life—."
"It'd be Narcissa's. It'd be Draco's." Hermione raised her nose in the air and willed herself to be cold, to be emotionless as stone. "And I don't want that, but I cannot tolerate watching the Wizarding world place power in the hands of that maniac for another three years. I cannot stand by and do nothing. The question is, what will you do, Mr. Malfoy?"
The wizard watched her as if he'd never really seen Hermione before, and after a moment of startled gawking, he settled and almost seemed to smile. "Well played, Miss Granger. Well played."
Hermione walked toward the door without saying anything else. Her hands shook, and her eyes burned. Her mind overflowed with images of Terry—and a nameless blond boy, torn from his family, torn too soon from this world. She wanted to go home.
"You'll have my answer soon."
"I'll be waiting."
A/N:
Hermione: "I brought a gift."
Lucius: "Is it blackmail?"
Hermione: "It's blackmail."