Night's visitor

Night’s visitor

Disclaimer: Don’t own!

Chapter 2
Normal Day and…

Hermione froze in her place, as usual, since any movement would offend Pansy even more and then Hermione would be in even bigger trouble - not only because she was late, but also because she was “disrespectful” and “not following orders”.

Not that Hermione was obedient- everything she did was because of the punishment she would get if she didn’t- as often as she could she tried to make a point of ignoring orders, or working “in her own way”.

Had the Parkinsons known about the things that Hermione did that really was worth getting upset about, then Hermione was sure she would be fired at once. As it was they were all to thick headed to ever notice the real things, and therefore they came up with their own stupid ideas.

“Please miss Parkinson…” Hermione almost choked on the words. “Forgive me for being late. I will not…” She crossed her fingers “…be late again.”

Pansy snorted loudly. “I’m not stupid, Granger. I know you. You think that you are so much better than the lowly servant you actually are. You think that I am mean and cruel, but guess what Granger- you ARE only a servant and as thus in this household- you LIVE to serve ME.” Every word was spoken with venom, but it wasn’t the tone that made Hermione wince.

The words where true and that hurt. It would never matter what Hermione did in her life, she would probably never become more than a servant.

But Hermione still straightened her back and raised her chin. Her heart felt like a heavy stone but she would never give Pansy the pleasure of seeing how much it had hurt.

Pansy though, already looked like a satisfied cat.

“You will of course have no dinner tonight, as a matter of fact - none tomorrow either.
Make my bath now and bring my breakfast. Today I am going to visit one of my father’s friends. You will help me dress and carry down my luggage. While I am away, you will clean my rooms, scrub the floor, make my bed, wash my laundry, and clean the windows, dust and all that.” She stopped briefly to breathe.

”Then you can go to seamstress Flora and pick up my new dress. Do buy a bouquet of pink roses on your way home. The flowers in my rooms are at least one day old.” Pansy looked more pleased with herself.

Hermione sighed; it seemed like today was just getting better. Today was going to be one of the hardest in a while. Since Pansy had five big rooms on her own, cleaning them would take at least five hours, even though Hermione cleaned them two days ago, and seamstress Flora lived on the other side of town and it would take Hermione two hours to walk all the way there and then back.

And even after that her day wouldn’t end, when she hadn’t duties as Pansy’s personal maid, she had to help the other maids with their work.

“Get started, I am waiting AGAIN and I don’t have all day!”

Hermione said nothing as she turned and walked over to the bathroom.
Pansy’s bathroom was huge room, almost as big as her bedroom and probably five times bigger than Hermione’s room. Its floor was made of white marble and the tapestries were salmon pink with golden insertions.

The bathtub was twelve feet across with golden knobs, not to mention; it took ages to clean it, and therefore Pansy loved to let Hermione do it at least once whenever she felt more than usually insulted by Hermione’s “bad manners”.

Hermione turned the knobs and streaming hot water quickly began to fill the tub. From a small table beside the tub she chose two glass bottles. From the one with white oil, she poured five drops into the water. At once the water became scented of roses and jasmine. Then she closed that bottle and took up the other one with blue oil. From that one she poured ten drops and in a moment the water was sapphire-blue. She put both bottles back, turned the knobs and walked back into the other room again.

“Your bath is prepared.” Though Hermione was never real obedient, she had learnt at a young age to make her voice sound it. It wasn’t worth getting a reprimand for not talking properly.

Without waiting for whatever Pansy would like to complain about more, she then left the room. She knew that Pansy didn’t want help bathing and undressing so now she just had to get started with her other chores.

*

The Parkinson household had about fifteen servants, one cook, the cook’s three assistants, a gardener, three men working in the stable, and Mrs Cobb, with whatever purpose she had.

The kitchen was always hot and filled with noise. The cook, Mrs Smith, was a cheerful person and spoke at all times. She smiled at Hermione when she entered, and threw her an apple. It was a routine that they had done since the death of Jane, Hermione’s mother.

“Hello dear, woke up late again? It really isn’t healthy for a young girl like you to work so late…” She gave Hermione an apologetic smile and continued talking with Marie, another servant.

The tray with Pansy’s food stood by the oven and luckily the bread was still warm and the butter not melted, so Hermione could bring it up with her.

*

Pansy wasn’t finished with her bath when Hermione came up again, so she took the opportunity to sit down and eat her apple.

“Perhaps” she thought, “I can sneak down later and get another?”

Mrs Smith didn’t like when Mrs Cobb or one of the Parkinson took away a dinner, and this time Hermione had managed to loose two… Hermione sighed, she didn’t want to be good for her own sake as much as Mrs Smith’s.

The nice old woman had helped Hermione many times, and Hermione didn’t want to burden Mrs Smith more by making her worry about Hermione’s punishment.

Half an hour later Pansy came out again in only a bathrobe. She wrinkled her nose at Hermione who still sat on the floor, but didn’t comment, and sat down by the table to eat. Twenty minutes later Pansy stood again and looked at Hermione.

“I want to get dressed. Take out the green and pink dress, but one wrinkle on the fabric and I will skin you with my nails. Oh, and don’t forget the matching shoes!”

Pansy’s five rooms each had a different use. This room was where Pansy changed and ate when she was alone. It lay between the bathroom and her bedroom and Pansy never let anyone come in there.

Her wardrobe was the room after the bedroom. Pansy’s habit to buy a new dress every week had made it impossible to keep all of her clothes in the original wardrobe. In the other two rooms Pansy often had her own parties.

The green and the pink one was a beautiful dress, but it really didn’t look good on Pansy. It wasn’t that Pansy was exceptionally ugly, just that with this dress on she looked like a rat, a very skinny rat with a pointed nose.

Of course Hermione never said anything about this. If Pansy wanted to use this week’s favourite dress, then she could.

Hermione helped her with the dress and then started working on Pansy’s hair. The hair was thin and quite short so it was easy to make detailed hairstyles. Hermione twisted the hair in a little bun, but loose so a bit of hair covered the neck, she then took two small silver clips and fastened them on the sides of the bun.

“I’m done.”

Pansy strode over to the little table and picked up her small handbag and continued out of the room.


“Don’t forget my other luggage. Carry it down to my carriage. Forget one thing and you won’t get any more meals this week.”


Hermione took a deep breath and counted to ten, she would not loose her calm. OK, so now she might get a backache for the rest of the day, as Pansy never packed lightly, but that was no big deal… she could do this.

She walked into the room-wardrobe and there five suitcases stood on the floor, waiting menacingly on her.

“Great! Only five. For a moment I thought she would pack the double.”

Hermione really wasn’t in a good mood when Pansy finally left. Her arms and back hurt and she felt a bit dizzy since the apple hadn’t been enough energy for this kind of work… And there were still plenty of things to do for the rest of the day.

The only good thing about the day was that now the entire Parkinson family was gone. That meant she could sneak down to the kitchen and grab some real breakfast before continuing working.

*
About seven hours later Hermione could be found dragging her feet after herself as she was walking to her room. The clock was barely five, but she already felt tired enough to sleep for a week. Her whole body ached, what she had felt in the morning was nothing compared to how utterly empty she felt now…

“Bloody…” grumbles, ”… I can’t even breathe without hurting!” She moaned, groaned and swore. “Even if Mrs Cobb comes running at this very moment, screaming about chores and punishment… I will not move from my bed until morning!” Hermione vowed silently to herself as she climbed the last step of the stairs and turned in the direction of her bedroom door.

It was the only place that could offer her any peace and quiet in the house, but it still felt like a prison whenever she walked through the door every day. It reminded her of how utterly alone she was in life, that the only thing she owned wasn’t hers.

“Stop it Hermione”, she thought annoyed. “Pitying yourself won’t help.” She pushed the door opened and closed it with a bang. “Prison sweet prison”, she muttered.

Then she noticed the open window. In the morning she might have been unsure whether she had closed it or not, but this time she could clearly remember closing it when Mrs Cobb had woken her up.

Someone had been here, in her room! She tensed and looked around; everything was where it should be, she wouldn’t have had the money to replace anything if it had been stolen.

“But I know that I closed it this morning!” She went to the window. The night air smelt of cold rain. She looked out over the other roofs. It was September and dark outside, but all over the town lamps stood and held some of the blackness away.

Suddenly a black shadow flew down from somewhere above and landed without a sound in front of her. To shocked to react Hermione was frozen in place as the shadow moved closer until it was only two feet away. There it lifted its cloak-hidden face so that Hermione could see the person inside the cloak.

It was a boy… no… a young man. He had the most intense grey eyes she had ever seen and a beautiful pale face, framed by hair so bright blond that it was almost white. Sitting there in the darkness with only the light from a nearby streetlamp illuminating him, he looked…

“I finally found you”, he said, his voice seemingly overwhelmed by emotion “…my mate.”