The Taking of Tea

CHAPTER ELEVEN: ALL PLEASURES AND ALL PAINS

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questioning;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured
As April’s green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evening, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.


With assurances that he would return, Malfoy had left her seething in the corner, still laughing as he warded the door behind him. She had spent the better part of an hour searching the room for any weaknesses, but without her wand it seemed fruitless. Finally deciding that one risky possibility seemed to be her only possible means of escape, she tore a length of fabric from the hem of her robe, wrapped it round her first, and punched through one of the large windows.

Her first punch wasn’t strong enough, and only sent her hand bouncing back from the sturdy glass. Could the glass be magically reinforced somehow? It was unlikely to be warded, as the windows didn’t seem to open or close. Spreading her feet to gain a sturdier stance and throwing the hardest punch she could muster, Hermione broke the glass with a small shout of triumph. The shatter seemed impossibly loud, and she cringed for a moment in fear that she’d been heard. Shaking that worry away with the knowledge that fast action was best, she continued to break the window, keeping low to the floor so that she could wriggle out when she’d done enough damage. When the jagged hole seemed wide enough to shimmy through, she did so, biting her lip as the edges sliced through her robes and into her skin. She pushed completely through with a nasty gash to her ankle, at set off at a run.

And immediately cursed her haste; she had no idea where she was, and even in daylight, the thick forest was foreboding. She’d run a few yards into the thick of it when she realized that she was leaving a trail of blood behind, and stopped to examine herself. The scratches on her arms seemed minimal. There was a slice on her right side that hurt like hell, but it didn’t seem to be bleeding excessively enough to worry. Her ankle was the culprit. A large shard of glass had apparently broken off in her last kick free and imbedded itself in the bone—she couldn’t pull it free, and the blood coming forth was plentiful. Sitting down in the leaf bed of the earth, she sacrificed another length of robe to tie a tourniquet above the wound. With that finished, she looked about, wondering what the hell to do next and feeling very afraid. The blood from her ankle was likely to attract predators, not to mention leaving a handy trail for the death eaters to follow. Sod it, she thought, getting back on her feet. Her only chance was to run.

And run she did, keeping up a breakneck pace that cramped her sides and often sent her tumbling over rocks and tree roots. Each time she scrambled up, wiping the dirt and blood of scraped palms against the fabric of her shortened robes and hurrying on, never daring to look behind her. Surely the forest ended somewhere, she thought desperately, the purpling sky that marked west chilling her with cold and exhaustion. When the pain in her ankle became blinding, she paused to retch, and when the painful cramps in her sides seemed to bar breath, she slowed to a walk. When night fell and the sickle moon failed to penetrate the dense canopy, she began to cry. Hot tears that she rubbed across her face to clear some of the dirt, choking sobs that she tried desperately to keep quiet. The trees were endless, and the leaves and branches were beginning to rustle with the sound of nighttime animals. When next she tripped over a fallen branch she stayed down. Sleep was too risky, but she desperately needed to rest. Just for a moment.

In that respite she heard something coming closer; the density of the debris on the forest floor made quiet movement impossible. Listening and hoping hard that it was herbaceous, she discerned the syncopated steps of something that walked upright. She had just decided that lying absolutely still was her best bet when she heard someone mutter “lumos,” and saw the accompanying yellow light a few yards away. Drawing on the last stores of her adrenaline, Hermione got to her feet and took off at a sprint, slowed down by the necessity of favoring her good ankle.

It was strange to be so nearly without sight. She could see the tree trunks only when they came very near, and so the noise of the chase became almost deafeningly loud; she could hear her own limping gait in the “swush” of leaves, and the quick strides of her pursuer coming closer.

“Petrificus Totalis!” Boomed the rich voice of Lucius Malfoy.

No, no, no, she thought, hearing his quick steps approaching and finally seeing his face, flushed with anger as he took hold of her by the shoulders.

“Stupid girl,” he hissed, shaking her still form, “you’ve caused me no end of trouble. Did you honestly think you’d escape?”

Several responses came to mind, none of which she could voice. She wondered if he would simply kill her now and leave her for the scavengers. No. Surely Voldemort would want to drag her corpse through the dust. And feed her to his dogs afterward, given his god-complex—too bad the bastard didn’t have an Achilles heel. Releasing her from his grip, Malfoy pointed his wand at her chest and said “Finite Incantatem.” Released from the spell, Hermione collapsed to the ground, Malfoy’s wand still pointed at her.

“I certainly had to try,” she said, answering his question. “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t?”

“You’re filthy.”

“Literally or figuratively speaking?” She asked, bubbling up with strange, demented laughter.

In response he got down on his haunches, giving her a gentle push onto her backside and taking hold of her ruined ankle. It had swollen considerably and turned an ominous shade of blue. To her utter surprise, he removed her shoe and sock and held her foot very gently, as if it were a small animal. He palpated the wound in her ankle before taking hold of the glass with thumb and forefinger, pulling it out with a quick and vicious tug. Understandably, Hermione pulled her foot away in response to the pain, but Lucius quickly grabbed hold of it again with a growling admonition to “hold still, for heaven’s sake.” She obeyed, for no reason other than the fact that she was in extreme pain, and stayed quiet as Lucius removed his wand from a robe pocket and waved it over the offending ankle, muttering at the same time a series of incantations that Hermione couldn’t decipher. Not because of distance—Hermione was rather short, and the length of her from foot to head was brief—but because he was being very, very quiet.

It was unsettling, because Lucius Malfoy was not quiet. He was theatrical, pompous, half dandy and half villain. Or was that the Lucius of her childhood? She really didn’t know the man, not that she’d ever had any inclination to make the situation otherwise. She had expected him, if not to kill her straight off, to drag her injured person back through the woods, paying no mind to her broken ankle other than to smile gleefully at her pain. But this was something else entirely.

He finished his work by tapping his wand to her bruised skin, creating the horrible “crack” of setting bone and a swell of intense pain. She gasped for breath and gasped again as he crawled up her body, pressing his palms into the fecund earth on either side of her astounded head, holding himself above her with straight, tense arms. They were long arms, but he was still terrifyingly close, the spice of myrrh and smoked tea overwhelming the smells of the forest. He said nothing, and did nothing but inspect her face.

She did the same. His eyes, round and a bit close-set, were a strangely single-toned shade of blue. Robin’s egg blue, sky blue, the blue of swimming pool water. A single, flat, and eerily vivid Technicolor. His brows, meticulously groomed, were the same Aryan blond as his hair, and were raised in a mild expression of interest. His lips were wide and pale above a lantern jaw, and bracketed by the lines of impending middle age. The space between those lips and his roman nose bore a deep cleft, and it wore sweat, as did his high forehead.

Normally, sex between new partners involved some kind of preamble—the coded words and gestures that signified goal and agreement. In what may have been his first effort to buck tradition, Lucius shifted his weight onto one powerful arm, and placed the hand of the other on Hermione’s sex. He curled his fingers over the rough wool of her robe, over the cotton of her skirt and the silk of her underwear and pressed, hard, with deadly but muted accuracy. What he expected to feel, or thought he felt, through the layers of dress Hermione had no idea, but he continued by slowly settling his hips against hers, pressing the unmistakable ridge of an erection against her as he slid the offending hand up her body with the noise of skin against cloth.

Arms now free, he ran the backs of his fingers up her chin, across her high cheeks and curved forehead, up into the roots of her hair and then down, back through the soft curls, stopping here and there to brush away leaf and dirt. He took her hands, which were passive on the ground, and put them to his own face. His skin was exceedingly soft and without a hint of stubble, even so late in the day. She traced the shells of his ears, the straight arrow of his nose, the textured skin of his lips. He opened his mouth when she traced the seam between bottom and top and she stole her fingers inside, tracing the wall of straight teeth and the pointed ends of sharp canines. He bit gently on the pads of her fingers and thrust his hips against her, his eyes a question.

When she thrust back he stood up, some of his usual grace replaced by the weary joints of increasing age. He shot her a grimace that was half a smile, and a subtle acknowledgement that he was indeed human. Which was a terrifying prospect, somehow—a real and complex Lucius Malfoy seemed too daunting. He removed his cloak and spread it over the ground, reaching a hand out to Hermione and pulling her up. Her robe was a pullover affair, and he bent down to grasp its hem. When he reached her waist she began opening and closing her mouth, desperate to say something—whatever it was that should surely be at the front of her consciousness—and succeeded only in looking like a dying fish.

“Have you changed your mind?” He asked mildly, though he continued with the robe until he’d pulled it over her head and cast it aside. The idea that Malfoy saw her as anything other than an “it” was not frightening, but it was overwhelming and bizarre. But then again the whole thing was bizarre, wasn’t it? This whole world of spells and unicorns, of damsels and villains. Right now, the straggling white-collars of London were probably taking the tube home, living the dull drama of sex and debt and family conflict, opening the doors to their flats and settling in for a night of football. And she was here, with a fairytale rake in this visceral, medieval, strange corner of the world. If it were a dream, the pinch of sex would surely wake her.

She sat down on the cloak, pulling off her remaining shoe and sock.

“No,” she told him, “I haven’t.”

Standing before her and looking impossibly tall, Lucius toed off his own shoes before sitting down beside her. He pulled away cashmere socks to reveal long, narrow feet before settling himself down so that he sat with legs outstretched.

“Come here,” he told her, unbuttoning the cuffs of his sleeves. Hermione rose to her knees and shuffled over to him, feeling a bit awkward. She had never been much good at sex, really—she found it impossible to clear her mind during the act. The whole thing just seemed so far from her self, just a perfunctory thing going on below, and often her thoughts wandered to subjects having nothing to do with the intensity she failed to feel.

Lucius lifted her onto his lap and pulled her by the waist, so that they were hip to hip. He bent his knees so that his feet were flat on the ground, and laid her back across his lap, the gravity of the position pushing her even harder against his erection. Hermione chose not to bother with holding her head up to look him in the face. Instead she let it loll back, long hair falling down his calves, and looked up into the black sky. Lucius traced a hand from the tip of her chin to the base of her sternum, pausing to measure the breadth of his hand against the column of her throat, feeling her swallow in response. He brought both hands to the collar of her blouse, pulling each pearl button from its hole until he could spread the top open, letting it hang down across his thighs to reveal her white skin and her simple bra, bright and Griffyndor red. There was a jostle of movement and a tap of his wand, and then the material disappeared, leaving her skin to wrinkle in the cool night.

His hands swept up her ribcage and around her breasts in wide circles. He paid them reverent attention, tracing their rise and fall, testing their weight in each palm, brushing over her nipples with his thumbs, slow and persistent until she ached for his mouth. As if sensing her need, Lucius hooked his hands beneath her arms and pulled her up from his lap, setting her flat on the cloak and shifting to straddle her waist.

“Such a pretty little thing,” he whispered, then closed his mouth over her left breast. His hands went to her knees, pushing up the hem of her skirt while he caught her nipple between his teeth, sweeping over it, back and forth, with rough licks from his tongue. Hermione sighed and let her cheek fall against the soft cloak. And there she saw the shoes that he’d discarded—- grey boots of soft calfskin.


A/N: tee-hee. Excerpt of poem cribbed from Wallace Stevens.