L\'amore è tre quarti di curiosità

Title: L'amore è tre quarti di curiosità (Love is three quarters curiosity)
Author: ianthe_waiting
Rating: MA/NC-17
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Romance, Humour, Mystery
Warnings: M/F, SoloM, Oral
Summary: Hermione literally collides with trouble in an alley in Northern Italy, which will lead her through a process called ‘falling in love.’
Author's Notes: The title is a quote by Giacomo Casanova. Sorry to disappoint, but Lucius, god of sex, is not too prevalent in this fic as he is in some other things I have written. Please withhold the tomatoes and other produce you might throw in my direction. This is also an attempt at humour, contrasted to my usual ‘dark’ scribblings, so forgive the dryness, eh? Oh, and this ficlet is once again in 1st person POV. Enjoy!




L'amore è tre quarti di curiosità





III.



I gave him five hundred Euro after using the automated teller machine down the street from my flat. He blinked at me, not sure what to do with the notes in his hand.

I smiled at him, but my expression was not kind. I was telling him, without saying a word, to go away. I had fed him, cleaned him, and now I wanted him to go away.

“My wand.”

Sighing, I pulled the dark wood wand from my coat pocket and slapped it into his hand.

“Use it against me, and you will not live long enough to regret it,” I whispered as a Muggle couple passed by us, eyeing Lucius curiously.

He smirked, and I knew what he was thinking. Killing him would bring the Italian Magical authorities on me, and not him, they would not see him, and I would have to explain why I was using a Killing Curse on thin air in the middle of a Muggle street.

I sniffed, and turning on my heel stalked back toward Via Rosmini.

Lucius Malfoy did not follow me, but I felt his eyes upon my back until I turned the corner and began to jog along the busy Via Rosmini toward the bus depot. I wanted to get as far away from him as I could. I could have Disapparated as soon as I found a secluded place to do so, but I jogged instead, my Muggle trainers getting good traction on the cleaned sidewalks.

A little hiccup in my plans, that was what I thought to myself over and over again. If Lucius Malfoy had not accosted me, and I had to aid him, I had planned on taking a bus to Stenico that day and tour the castle, something I never was able to do before during my visits.

I bought my ticket, boarded the bus, and was out of Trento in perhaps twenty minutes of leaving Lucius Malfoy with a handful of one hundred Euro notes.

I should mention that I have a wonderful salary as an Unspeakable. I live quite frugally, and save. Giving Lucius Malfoy five hundred Euro was not going to set me back at all. Of course, it was not much money, but it was enough to get him a few meals, a small hotel room, and perhaps an idea to stay away.

There was the matter of this curse, but I had decided, watching him drink my coffee in my kitchen, that I would investigate one Edwinia Glump when I had had my fill of Northern Italy before returning to Britain.

I went to Stenico; I toured the castle and viewed the primitive frescoes, and enjoyed my solitude. I had only bought a one way bus ticket, and Apparated back to Trento just as night began to darken the sky at about six in the evening.

Lucius Malfoy was not haunting the lobby of my apartment building, and he was not in my flat. Except for two things, I would not have known Lucius Malfoy had ever been in my flat. First, and most obvious, was my ruined armchair. I did some impressive Charm work to repair it, but it still did not look as nice as it had before. I had already dispelled the Transfiguration on the ottoman when I coaxed Lucius out with me to give him the money.

The second thing, which I found as I was brushing my teeth before bed, was the ragged dark green ribbon he had used to pull back his hair resting on tiled floor under the foot of the sink. It was a forgotten piece of him, and I stared at it near my toes for a long while, my toothbrush hanging out of my mouth.

I, for some stupid reason, stuffed it in my coat pocket as I left the bathroom for bed.





The difference between my Trento flat and my Islington flat was the color of my bedding and furniture and that in Britain; the far wall in the living slash bedroom is lined with books stacked floor to ceiling on bowing wood slat shelves. To be honest, I hate having too much space because in my mind, it is just more to clean. The floor plans are similar, but instead of large floor to ceiling windows as I had in Trento, my Islington flat had large two sash windows and space to sit on the sill.

Simplicity, that was my preferred aesthetic. In Trento, simplicity is much easier to obtain, since the flat there was used for my holidays and quick weekend retreats, and it was newer, as I had not had the time to clutter it up yet.

There was also the matter of Crookshanks, who seemed to be eternal, and shed on everything I owned. I dared not take him to Trento, and while I was gone, Ron fed him as he lived only a Tube stop away from me.

Speaking of Ron, besides the occasional lunch or favour, we rarely saw each other. He worked above in the Ministry, I below. The same can be said with Harry, who was far too busy to do a favour for me as he now had a family to take up his time.

When I returned to my Islington flat a week after meeting a certain ‘invisible’ Malfoy, I found that Ron had already been by that day and set out cat kibble for Crooks. He left a note on the kitchen counter, asking about his souvenir from my long awaited extended holiday.

I had bought little in the way of souvenirs. Besides my carpetbag of clothes, I had brought back a bowl of minestrone, a new batch than the one I had given to Lucius Malfoy. I could never prepare a pot of minestrone in my Islington flat as well as I could as when I was in Italy…

In the week after walking away from the man with the money I had placed in his hand, I was as good as my word to meet with James in Venice before I left. The vampire did not mention my odd behaviour and treated me to a late night tour of the Gallerie dell’Accademia, and I nearly forgot why I had imposed myself on my supernatural friend in the first place.

By the time I was back at work, I was still grappling with the idea of what Lucius Malfoy had told me.

Edwinia Glump was registered with the Ministry, as all hags were. Hags were still classified as ‘magical creatures,’ though everyone knew how much hags resented being considered ‘creatures.’ All the same, hags, if they did not want to be hounded by the Aurors, were registered.

I was not surprised to find that Edwinia Glump was a resident of Number 48 Apartment C, Knockturn Alley.

Hags, as every student at Hogwarts learned in their basic DADA courses, is a human-like female, a magical being, not quite a witch, and usually unpleasant to look upon. Where hags came from, is, again, another one of the world’s mysteries. However, it is well known, you do not, under any circumstances, offend a hag. And if what Lucius said was true, if Edwinia Glump was spawned of Black Annis, whatever curse was put upon him would not be broken by the magic of human witches or wizards. A hag’s magic was ancient and powerful, working along a level that no human could obtain.

This led me to believe that hags were a sort of natural creature as much as a dryad or naiad was an embodiment and representation of the natural magic that existed in the earth itself.

At any rate, I went to Knockturn Alley three days after returning to work, and found Number 48 lodged between a pub and a boarded up apothecary.

I knew that I could potentially be walking into more trouble than Lucius Malfoy was worth, but if I were somehow involved in the workings of a powerful curse, I wanted to know more as to why.


The corridor outside Apartment C reeked of urine and rubbish, and I could hear rats somewhere chewing away at what sounded like teeth against bone. I could not repress a shudder, but I knocked tentatively on the door and took a step back.

The door opened immediately, banging open, more like it, and in the doorway, with bluish smoke wafting out in sickeningly sweet waves, was a short, hairy, and bulging eyed hag.

Edwinia Glump looked like a cross between Mad-Eye Moody in drag, and Hagrid’s fur dress suit, only in black. The hag’s long, lank black hair hanged to what I assumed was her waist, and under it, she wore a pink dress ala Dolores Umbridge. If the hag were not so disgustingly hideous, she would have looked comical.

She reeked of acidic overcooked potions, and her face was like melted yellow wax, and warty to boot. Her bulging black eyes considered me for a moment and then she smiled, her long, yellowed teeth crooked and riddled with rot. She stood as tall as I did, but her height only seemed to compress her features in an unflattering way.

“What a pretty young witch!” she exclaimed, but her voice took me aback.

Edwinia Glump had the voice of a seductress, smooth and silky, and not at all fitting with her body.

I hid my amazement, and straightened.

“Edwinia Glump?” I asked, trying to keep my voice level and businesslike.

“I am she?”

Again, the voice, which I thought might have a trace of enchantment.

“Hermione Granger.”

On habit, I extended my hand to her, and she stared at it as if I were offering her a dead cat, which, I should add, would appeal to a hag. To my disgust, she took it and shook roughly. Her hands felt as her face looked, like melted wax, but with long painted red nails and several silver rings, simple bands, about her thumb and smallest finger.

I resisted the urge to wipe my hand into my wool coat when the hag released it.

“Are you selling something, darling?”

I swallowed. “No, madam, I am here to inquire about a curse you cast approximately five years ago.”

No need to ‘beat around the bush,’ as they say.

Immediately, the hag’s black eyes became less bulbous and narrowed.

“Are you from the Ministry?”

“I am, but I am not here on Ministry business, madam,” I quickly clarified. “I am here on personal business.”

Again, Edwinia Glump studied me, and as if finding me suiting, she smiled again.

“Come in,” she purred.

I did not want to enter her residence, but she beckoned with her waxen hand and long fingernails.

“I shall not let any harm to come to you, young lady,” she purred again.

I followed, albeit, mechanically, and entered the sharply scented flat, letting the hag close me in with the slamming of the door. She pushed my gently into the main room, which was half the size of my living room, perhaps less, and through the bluish, acrid smoke, I found the couch the hag pointed to. The piece of furniture was lumpy though it was draped with an intricately crocheted throw in reds and blues.

“Tea?” the hag asked from somewhere behind me.

“No thank you, madam, I would rather not take too much of your time,” I said honestly, and tried not to cough from the smoke.

“Suit yourself…Miss Granger, was it?”

The hag shuffled, not walked, around the couch, to sit across from me in an equally lumpy armchair with another crocheted throw draped over the form, this time in black and silver.

“Yes, madam.”

“And you say you are here on a personal matter concerning a curse I cast five years ago?”

The smooth purr was disconcerting, and I sat on the edge of the couch, holding my coat closed at the hem, knowing that my wand was in my coat pocket and within easy grasp.

I only nodded, afraid if I opened my mouth, I would begin coughing.

“Then you are the one,” the hag cackled, and clapped her strange waxen hands together.

I, again, only nodded, but I wondered why I should have…

“So, you’ll be wanting to know the details, eh? Why I cursed that fool? Why you think you are being singled out?”

“N-naturally,” I answered, trying not to sneeze as a tickle reached my sinuses.

The hag sat back in her chair and smirked, making her nearly non-existent lips curl.

“You know the man I cursed, I presume.”

Unfortunately, I wanted to say, but only nodded again, trying to ignore the growing tickle in the back of my throat.

“Then you also know he is a conniving little human bastard who would warrant a curse.”

I said nothing.

The hag’s bulbous eyes narrowed again, and she was considering her words.

“Five years…not nearly long enough. Then again, to break the curse, he has to fall in love, mutually, and that in itself might just prove impossible.”

The cruelty of the curse was well constructed I had to concede.

“He must have told you that he offended me. That he did. The night I cursed him, I suppose I was in a very foul mood, and maybe I should have stayed home instead of popping down to the pub for a few pints of bitters…”

The hag was almost unaware of me, talking more to herself than to anyone.

“Human men,” she muttered in disgust and then seemed to realize I was listening, and smiled. “Do you have someone?”

The question made me squirm, as it was very personal.

“No.”

The hag tutted. “A pretty little thing like you not having a man…” And she laughed again, her laughter like a husky roar of a lioness in heat.

“That man, Malfoy, he came into the pub under a storm cloud, and as he drank, the storm filled the pub. I will admit, I was slightly intoxicated, but he…he was well on his way to drinking himself to death…running his pretty little mouth about how horrible all women were, how deceitful, how disgusting, how manipulative.

I was intrigued at first, but as he went on, I grew disgusted. The filth that came from him was just as bad as my granny’s…”

The hag paused, not explaining what she meant by her ‘granny’s filth,’ but I had an idea. Hags, as a general rule, are quite foul mouthed. Edwinia Glump, I imagined, was quite refined, for a hag.

“Even the landlord was getting a bit perturbed by Malfoy’s filth. So crass, coming from a man like him…”

The hag’s eyes grew distant, and her mouth curled into a strange smile that would make Voldemort shy away.

“Then,” she sighed, continuing, “he turned his attentions to the other patrons in the pub, insulting them, or hanging on them as if they were old school chums. Everyone knew who he was, of course, and even the worst of us try to keep our distance from an ex-Death Eater.

You can take the power from a man, but not his demons…” she mused.

I finally had to cough, and the hag smirked. The smoke was still wafting from somewhere in the flat, but I was too concerned with keeping my attention on the hag, who might slit my throat as look at me, than finding out if the ramshackle apartment building were on fire.

“He insulted me,” the hag said simply.

“Lucius mentioned quoting something?” I supplied, my coughing subsiding, but leaving a terrible itch and throb in my throat.

The hag snorted, waving a red nailed hand toward me. “Posh, just overly romantic nonsense interspersed with bile.

He called me beautiful.”

I blinked, and involuntarily cocked my head to stare at the hag. Again, the hag was laughing.

“That is really what offended me. He did not tell me I was beautiful because the bottle had somehow made his vision change, magical rose coloured lens descending from the heavens to rest before his eyes…he called me beautiful as an insult.”

Imagining it, I could see what the hag meant. A subtle phrasing of words, a tone of voice, something as complimentary as calling a woman, or a hag, beautiful, could be turned into a grievous insult.

“He went on, unable to denigrate anyone but the only female creature in the pub that night. I was a terrible goddess, his Kali, his Circe, his wife…”

The hag fell silent, and her waxen face contorted.

“I hate human men,” she muttered angrily. “So pompous…”

The black eyes fell upon me, and in them, I could see she was appealing to me somehow. I nodded.

I could understand how she might feel, being insulted by a man whose wealth and beauty made him known to even a hag who had only limited dealings with humans. She had thought him interesting, perhaps worthy of a brand of admiration for his long flaxen hair and refined features. She may have respected that he was formidable wizard, only to be insulted by him simply because she was not beautiful at all.

I could understand this very, very well.

“I cursed him. I am sure he told you the conditions of the curse?”

I nodded again. “Never to see another magical being, no magical being will see him, as if he never existed?”

“In part. If you can see him, remember his name, you know then the second half of the curse.”

“That is why I am here,” I mumbled.

The hag folded her waxen hands on her pink clad lap and regarded me with muted interest.

“What is it you need to know, Miss Granger?”

Time for business.

“Why me?”

That was the foremost question in my mind, the most important.

The hag, as I feared, shrugged. “Fate? Karma? I did not have a specific person in mind that would be able to see him at all. I can see him, of course, but I would rather not…

Do not be mistake that I might have some grudge against you, Miss Granger.”

I sighed. “You would not have a clue as to my past association with Mr. Malfoy,” I said in a whisper.

“No. I only know you from rumour, the War… To be honest, I have little interest in those sorts of things…”

“The condition of breaking the curse…” I continued. “He has to make me fall in love with him and then have sex with me?”

The hag shook her head, her lank, long black hair shifting around her strange face. “It must be mutual…like falling in love for the first time. So filled with anticipation and anxiety, it has to be real.”

“Bloody unlikely.”

The hag laughed. “Too good of a curse then?”

I was the one who shrugged this time. “It is taking its toll, but now that I have been involved…”

“The curse cannot be lifted,” the hag stated quickly and firmly. “Once a curse wrought by my kind has been cast, it must run its course.”

I frowned. “No counteraction with another curse?”

“None.”

Damn.

“And if I don’t…” I trailed, pausing to consider my words. “If I don’t actively try to break the curse?”

The hag smiled, “Knowing the Malfoy, he will hound you until he believes he can break the curse, or he will always be cut off from the magical world and be forced to live as a Muggle.”

I snorted. Lucius Malfoy living as a Muggle? He had not done a very good job of even dressing appropriately for a Muggle world.

“You could have him killed?” the hag suggested, a leer darkening her waxy features, reminding me that I was not speaking to a human witch.

“Not easily…” I sighed.

The hag laughed, but it was a different sort of laugh than before. It was the sort of laugh a woman reserved for more private moments, a laugh between female friends…

Odd.

“Only you and I would know, that’s the best part,” the hag cackled, slapping her knee and rocking in her armchair.

I thought it a bad idea to laugh along with the hag, but a part of me was.

“Then, if I want him out of my hair, without killing him…”

“Fall in love with him,” the hag laughed. “Maybe you’d do him some good. By the looks of you, you are not a witch who cares much for the pompous attitudes and arrogance of a man like Lucius Malfoy.”

That much was true. But how in the world would I ever make myself fall in love with someone so reprehensible?

“Love potion?” I asked, hopeful.

The hag, whose laughter finally faded, shook her head sadly. It seemed as though she would not have wished my situation on anyone like me. There is so much about hags I would never understand, including the mechanism of their magic.

“Falling in love is not a life sentence, Miss Granger.”

I felt an eyebrow arch.

“The passion, the anticipation, is as fleeting as fart in strong wind.”

Interesting analogy, one I would have to remember.

“Fall in love, fuck, and the curse is broken. Sounds simple, but in your individual situation…” the hag trailed, folding her hands again over her knees. “I apologize, and as far as me saying that, I hope you’ll believe me.”

What a strangely polite and considerate hag! I think my worldview skewed slightly.

I inhaled, and for once, the air seemed fresher, cleaner. I did not cough.

“Is there nothing you can do? You cannot switch or transfer…?”

The hag, again, shook her head. “The Fates have made their choice, and you do seem like a nice young witch.”

Nice, as in a hag’s standards?

“To fall in love with such a man…” the hag began. “Well, let’s just hope five years has given him enough time to think upon his bad character.”

“Not long enough…” I muttered and began to rise.

“You’ll not mention me cursing Pure-bloods to the Ministry, will you?”

I was already moving to the door when Edwinia Glump appeared behind me, catching my sleeve.

“What is there to mention?” I asked with a weak smile. “Lucius Malfoy does not exist, does he?”

Edwinia Glump, the strangest hag I ever met, twittered a private sort of laugh and wished me luck.

I would need it.





As luck would have it, Lucius Malfoy was standing just outside the door of my Islington flat.

“How did you get in the building?” I asked angrily as I approached.

He said nothing, and in the light from the wall sconces in the corridor, his grey eyes flashed to study me. Lucius had been standing on the doormat, staring dumbly at my door when I found him, and at my words turned only slightly as if to look at a startling shadow darting across the wall.

Lucius was no longer wearing the clothes he had in Trento, and I supposed he had put the money I gave him to better use. He was clean, to begin, and he wore Muggle clothes. A long wool coat much like my own, but black and cut for a man resting over an outfit of black trousers and a dark grey jumper with a thick ‘fisherman’s’ knit. Lucius could almost pass as ‘normal’ if it were not for his long pale hair, loosely braided and falling over his shoulder.

“I ran out of Muggle money,” he responded finally. “Can I come in?”

“How did you find my flat?” I demanded, already digging into my coat pocket for my wand to unlock and dispel the wards on the door.

A pale brow arched as if to say ‘how do you think?’

Tracking spell.

I moved past him, brushing my shoulder against his chest, and opened the door.

“And no, you may not come in.”

I slammed the door in his face.

“I come proposing a deal,” I heard him growl through the door as I pressed my back to it.

I was angry, and not just because Lucius Malfoy was standing on my doorstep. Edwinia Glump’s words had made me angry, not because of anything she had done, not really, but what Lucius had done to warrant the curse affecting both our lives. Of course, the affect on the man on the other side of the door had been more severe, but the idea that he would continue to seek me out because I was the only witch he could see? I did not want to be burdened with him.

Why couldn’t he live like a Muggle and get on with his life?

Because the life of a wizard was all he had ever known…cannot teach an old dog new tricks?

I groaned even as Crooks rubbed against my booted ankles.

Lucius had been leaning toward the door, his hands on either jamb, when I opened the door and glared at him.

I moved to let him inside.

I doffed my coat and slipped out of my boots, and proceeded to switch on lights in the darkened apartment just as Lucius glanced about, surely noting the layout was similar to that of my flat in Trento. He even sat on the ottoman I had in the living area, a dark blue upholstered and narrower piece of furniture, avoiding sitting on a folded copy of the Daily Prophet from the day before.

Moving to the kitchen, I fed Crooks a saucer of cream and began making coffee. I never drank coffee after midday, but I had a feeling that I would need a ‘pick me up’ with Lucius Malfoy’s proposal waiting to be heard.

“Before the curse came into effect, I did something quite clever,” he began, grasping his hands before him, his elbows on his knees. I could feel his eyes watch me moving in the kitchen. “Before I went to the pub in Knockturn Alley, I had been to Gringotts,” he explained and I simply glanced at him, waiting for the modern coffeemaker to begin perking.

“You said…” I began, suspiciously.

Lucius shook his head, his eyes moving to Crookshanks who had leapt into the armchair nearby, watching the pale man with interest. I suppose Crooks was deciding whether Lucius was friend or foe, as he did with most people. I trusted my familiar’s supernatural intuition, however…

“I had the key to my vault, and I hid it under a stone near the gates of the Manor. If it were taken by robbers, I would have no means to do much of anything…” he mused, still staring at Crookshanks. “Of course, not being able to see another witch or wizard guaranteed nothing... Yet, I held to hope that I would find the one who would help break the curse. Now I have.”

Our eyes met, and I stiffened.

His hands moved to his coat pockets and he pulled a small brass key, tied to a leather string, and held it out for me to see.

“The deal is this: you enter my vaults, take a sum that suits you, withdraw the rest, and I will disappear from your sight.”

I blinked at him, and then heard the coffeemaker click off. I turned away quickly and busied myself with pouring two mugs of coffee and setting out cream and sugar on the kitchen counter.

The soft clink of brass on the counter startled me, and there Lucius Malfoy stood on the other side of the counter, his face so pale, his eyes pleading.

“The goblins will recognize the key no matter who holds it, and as you would be the one holding it, surely they would believe the vault it yours…”

I shook my head, my brows furrowing, after placing a black mug before Lucius. “But…”

“I do not exist, and this vault has my name and my name alone on it. In five years, I have learned that not only am I invisible to magical beings, they cannot see me, my name… My name is invisible. I tried…”

He sank down onto a stool and pulled the mug towards him, cupping the warmth between his hands.

“I wrote to the Daily Prophet two years ago, as a sort of experiment. I wrote to place an advertisement, seeking the one who would break the curse. It was more like a wanted advertisement for an executive assistant. I did not sign my name to it, but gave a return address.

A reply came, asking for my name and informing me of the fee for the advertisement. I did not think a reply would come. I cannot even remember whom the reply was from, but I remembered it was someone who worked in the paper’s offices.

So, I continued the experiment. I sent two replies. The first was with my name written at the bottom and a few sickles for the fee. I waited, and three days later, another note came, this time asking if I was still interested in placing the advertisement.

No letter with my name was received, I found in later correspondences.

I tried sending letters to Narcissa and Draco, not signing my name, but giving a return address. I only ever received one reply, and that was from Narcissa. It was a short note, asking me not to write to her. She only had one husband, the man she married in Canada after our divorce. She had a son, but it was not any of my business, a stranger’s business, to pry into her private affairs.

The letters I sent with my name never received replies.”

I thought of the scrap of parchment I had found in his cloak with his name written over and over again.

“I searched through Prophet archives one day, knowing that there were witches and wizards all around me, but I could not see them. I never found mention of my imprisonment in Azkaban or mention of my marriage to Narcissa. Everything about me, that was me, was gone…”

I shifted on my bare feet and remembered my coffee.

In truth, I had not particularly imagined what it must be like to suddenly not exist to the world that shaped you. I had thought, though, about what it must be like to see Diagon Alley empty, but knowing, logically, it was full of people, family, friends, but you could not see them, touch them, or hear them…

It was a nightmare.

Lucius drank his coffee black, again, and I drank as well, sharing in his silence.

“Do you regret what you said to Edwinia Glump?”

His head snapped up. “Have you spoken to her?” he asked in a tense whisper.

I nodded. “Do you?”

He relaxed, a disgusted expression crossing his face. “Of course I do.”

But has it changed you at all?

I did not ask.

The silence continued and Crookshanks curled up on the chair and went to sleep. I drank my coffee, standing in my kitchen considering.

Even if I could access Lucius’ vault, what would I want with his money if there was anything at all left inside? I did not want money. I wanted peace of mind. However, if getting into that vault to get Lucius his money made him ‘disappear,’ what did I have to lose?

I set my mug down next to the sink and stretched my fingers out to slide the key and the leather string across the counter toward me. Lucius watched over the rim of his own mug.

The key was ancient, and as I touched it, I could feel the hum of magic embedded in the brass.

“What is the whole deal?” I asked, holding the key before my eyes, but looking past it to the pale man.

He grinned into his coffee.






The deal was this: Lucius would follow me into Gringotts, holding to my sleeve, and possibly see the goblins for himself. Once in the vault, he would take what he needed, I would take what I wanted and arrange for the rest to be transferred to another bank account, a Muggle bank account at Lloyds TSB. From there, he would personally transfer the funds to another bank in America, though I did not want to know why. After assisting Lucius in understanding the Muggle banking system, I would no longer be involved. No contact and no unexpected collisions in alleys or appearances on doorsteps…

Simple.

If only.

If only I knew the true power of a hag’s curse, I would have known that there is no skirting around the conditions of the curse.

If only falling in love were simple and uncomplicated.


tbc