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




VI.

My famous vampire friend could have expressed the moment in words better than I ever could. My friend would write of the analogy of love and war, or how anger can quickly evolve into passion. As for me, I can only say that Lucius Malfoy’s kiss was loaded with a mixture of things, all of which made my body respond.

I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him closer.

Anger, desperation, fear, self-pity, self-indulgence, it was all in the kiss, which deepened when he groaned into my mouth, his tongue dueling with my own.

The kiss lasted a century, but like all time, it eventually ended with us both stumbling back. I wiped my mouth with the back of my nearly numb hand, but I could not get rid of the taste of him. As for Lucius, he was staring at me, blinking, as if seeing me for the first time.

It was awkward.

I regained my bearings quickly, but Lucius was still staring, and then he asked a question, one so shocking that I think I actually stumbled back further from the impact of his soft and breathless words.

“Who are you?”

The wind was making every bone in my body ache, and I turned my face away and stared back to the village of Sister Bay, my hair flying into my face.

Lucius knew very well who I was, but did not. I was not the girl whom his sister in law tortured in the front parlour, nor was I the girl who seemed to be attached with a Sticking Charm to Harry Potter’s side. I was my own being now.

I began to see how he had been thinking when he found the ‘key’ to his curse.

He still thought of me as ‘that’ girl.

I was thirty-one years old, and I had made my own life the best I could. Lucius Malfoy would, naturally, not know me at all.

The hazy moments post-osculation passed, and we were standing on the icy, rocky shore of Lake Michigan.

How it came to be that I was back in Missoula, Montana, is yet another mystery.





Lucius regained a modicum of self, and stood tall on the same street corner across from Sterling Savings Bank, as if he were a statue erected in gratitude to his life.

He was man who had so much pride that he almost reeked of it.

The bank, which did not appear any different after the attempted robbery than it had before, was open. I almost expected it not to be.

I will not bore you with everything I did inside while Lucius waited outside, claiming that if someone were to come in again to rob it, they would meet him first. He then muttered something about the terrible security of the Muggle banks.

“How Muggle banking can exist without goblins or goblin enchantment is dumbfounding,” he had said.

I opted to draw out enough money that Lucius could use for six to eight months if he budgeted. While I was waiting for the currency to be counted and handed over, I wondered what he would do with the money. Would he use it to try to adjust into a Muggle’s life?

The robbery, I learned later, was a topic of the small city’s rumour mills. Personally, as I was drawing out large sums of money, I was sure the banker was quite suspicious of me, but did not seem to recognize me at all. I was nervous to have so much money on my person when I walked out of the bank, moving down the snowy sidewalk, Lucius gliding along at my side.

“No one remembers much about the robbery,” I told him, my voice fraught with a type of airy wonderment. “Did you modify their memories before I was shot?”

Lucius said nothing, but stared down at me as we walked.

The ‘rumour’ was this: men attempted to rob the bank early in the morning. No one was hurt badly, but the older security guard was knocked unconscious. Somehow, but no one seemed to remember, or were too busy trying not to draw attention, the robbers were incapacitated and the police swarmed the bank and ‘saved the day.’ There was no mention of hostages, or a tall, pale man waving around a twig and bright fireworks streaking through the lobby. No one was killed, but the mastermind of the robbery, the man who had shot me, had gone ‘off the deep end,’ or so I was told. All the money was returned, and there was not much of a story to tell.

However, rumours flew. It was generally accepted that the police had thrown a canister of ‘knock out gas’ through the window, and everyone was fine, but had itchy throats and eyes after the ordeal.

I had worried, on some level, that the AMC would be investigating, but the Muggles did not mention, how would they? We were not followed, as if we had not been in the bank at all.

All the better, I decided.

I veered off the street and into a service alley, where I finally stopped and turned to the pale man, far enough off the main street not to be noticed. The banker had given me two large banker’s bags with the cash inside, and though I had to sign several forms for the release of such funds, I felt as if I had a target on my back or a sign over my head reading ‘this woman is carrying a large amount of money, please mug her.’

“You should shrink these,” I said, drawing out the bags from under my coat, where I had carried them under my arms. I wished I had shrunk them myself, but I did not want to bring any more attention to myself than I already had.

Lucius glanced to the mouth of the alley before drawing his wand as if Conjuring it from his coat and did as I asked. His brand of silence and compliance immediately had me wondering.

His stoic expression was disconcerting.

He was planning something.

I had half a mind to ask him what he wanted with the money, why it had to be Missoula, Montana, but I did not. Instead, I took a step back from him, and lifted my chin and straightened my back.

I wanted to say ‘you are on your own,’ but instead, our eyes met and he sighed. A gust of winter air blew through the alley and made his pale hair dance about his stoic face, forcing him to raise a hand to brush a strand from his grey eyes. It was a casual motion that had my insides squirming.

As much as he did not know me, I supposed, I really did not know him either. It did not matter, to be honest.

“Go on then,” he rumbled, his voice low, deep, and defeated. “I can manage from here.”

I stared at him, my eyes narrowing. He had what he needed, and he was releasing me?

I was not going to argue.

How many seconds or minutes passed as we stared at each other, I did not remember. However, I found myself standing in the Great Hall of Union Station, Chicago, as if Missoula, Montana, and Lucius Malfoy never existed or had been the strangest dream.





I had not lost my job, though I did get a thorough reprimand from my department head when I returned to work three days after my ‘official’ sick leave day.

I moved as an automaton, wracking my brain to understand what had happened to me and why I felt as if I were confusing dream with reality. Half of me felt that if I just turned around, Lucius Malfoy would be standing just at my elbow, his face set in a ever-fixed scowl, demanding something of me that would take me from my comfort zone.

I worked late to make up the days I missed, but after a month, I moved and worked as if I never had laid eyes on Lucius Malfoy in my life. It was easy to forget, too easy, and though part of my subconscious was on alert, I ignored that part of my psyche.

After a month and into the next, spring was on the air in London, and I had switched to a lighter coat, placing my dark red long wool coat in the closet to draw out a tasteful long denim trench coat better suited for spring or autumn. I moved through my life as I had before Lucius Malfoy, I even made plans to visit Trento on an extended weekend I had coming up in April. Trento in spring is a glorious place with cool mountain air and blooming trees.

I finished my project in the D of M with great success nearly wiping out my indiscretion of missing three days of work from my head’s mind. I was already assisting on a new project with a colleague, which held promise. I visited Harry and Ron, I called my parents in Melbourne, I began combing out the winter fur from Crooks’ coat, and fell into my old routine.

Life was understandable—no mysteries.





Of course, life is never so understandable or so simple.

I was preparing for my long weekend in Trento by going to Hogsmeade and to Honeydukes to prepare a gift for my vampire friend who had responded to a letter I sent to tell him that I would be returning to Italy for my holiday. Ever trying to improve his confections, he asked that I would stop by the sweet shop and procure a few items he would like to study and adapt for his own shop in Venice.

James, never a wizard, only knew of Honeydukes from my descriptions. If the vampire lamented anything about his supernatural state, it was that he had never known of true witches and wizards in his mortal life. It was only afterward; when he himself was imbued with magic that he came to understand that the Muggle world was a layer above or below the magical world.

James was rather fond of Blood-flavoured lollipops, finding them a novelty, which they were, and I was to bring a box of that confection with me, among other things.

I arrived in Hogsmeade on a day after work, the spring weather not quite reaching the Highlands yet, and shivered as I began up the near empty streets to Honeydukes. What people I did meet on the street knew me, and nodded politely as they bustled on their way to wherever it was they needed to go. Honeydukes would close at seven in the evening and as I entered, I found that there were only a few people inside besides the proprietor, Ambrosius Flume, who was talking to a man and woman at the counter.

The bell on the door twinkled to silence as I stood inside the door, relishing the smell of spun sugar and the warmth of the lamps above my head and the heat in the shop itself.

Honeydukes brought a wash of good memories of youth, and I inhaled and sighed to exhale.

However, as I let my mind click back to my reason for coming into the shop, I looked at the other customers closer, but my eyes were drawn to the man and woman talking to Mr. Flume at the counter.

Long, pale blond hair.

The man and woman both had blond hair, but the man, who stood much taller than the woman, had a shade of blond that made my heart seize in my throat and my face palpably draining of blood and warmth.

The man turned his head to the woman, a smile on his lips as Mr. Flume began chuckling about something, and immediately I knew whose back I was staring at.

Draco Malfoy.

I had not seen the man, in person, for many years. In profile, he did not resemble his father so much as he did the Black side of his heritage. His features were markedly sharper in the nose and brow, but he had his father’s chin and eyes. He had grown into his features which were not so severe as those I remembered when we were teenagers, but the shape of him, from behind, was that of his father. Even the long pale hair was his father’s.

The woman, who I assumed was his wife, Astoria, had a shade of blonde that was more of a honey colour, fitting for her deep blue eyes and pretty face. She was smiling, a laugh playing on her perfectly nude painted lips.

“Come Scorpius, have you found all you would like?” Draco called, his voice very different from his fathers, not so deep, not so dangerously sensuous, but playful.

Draco Malfoy was happy, and I wondered if the happiness had anything to do with the fact that Lucius Malfoy did not and perhaps due to Edwinia Glump’s curse, never existed in Draco Malfoy’s world.

The scamper of small feet broke me from my spellbound state as a flash of black ran just past my thigh, and a boy, approximately four years old with a riot of blond curls moved to his parents with his arms full of brightly wrapped candies.

The boy, Scorpius, was a miniature of Draco as I remembered him the first time I had laid eyes on the boy. A pink faced cherub with angelic curls, and a carefree and innocent mien…

My heart slipped back into my chest and promptly began to break.

This was what Draco Malfoy should have been all those years ago, unburdened, spoiled, yes, but innocent and happy.

I damned Tom Riddle. I damned Lucius Malfoy.

“Hello, Miss Granger.”

Both Malfoys had turned when their son arrived, and were now looking at me as I stood awkwardly, pale in the face, my lips trembling.

Draco had spoken and I inhaled.

I smiled.

“Mr. Malfoy,” I said with an inclination of my head.

Draco whispered to his wife, drawing out a wallet and passing it to her to pay for their son’s purchases before stepping toward me, still smiling.

I then wondered how Draco’s memory had been modified by the curse.

He wore long velvet robes, not black as I first thought, but a deep emerald that appeared black in a certain angle of light. He wore a fine business suit under the cloak, so different from Lucius, and he smelled like my own father—aftershave children give to their fathers.

Draco Malfoy was a husband, a father, and a man, and I had to admit, I was in awe of him.

“It has been some time, hasn’t it?” he asked, his grey eyes peering down at my face, but not with disgust or hatred, but honest curiosity.

“It has,” I agreed. “That is your son?”

Draco nodded.

I had only read an announcement some time ago about the birth of a Malfoy heir, and promptly forgot about it.

“He is a very handsome young man,” I commented.

Draco smiled; I suppose it was the types of compliment parents like to hear. With Harry’s children, I fawned on them, calling them pet names, which made Ginny ecstatic.

“Thank you. You seem to be well?”

I nodded.

I never liked this sort of small talk. “I work for the Ministry,” I added.

Draco only nodded, and I did not know how to interpret the motion. Luckily, I was saved by Astoria Malfoy and her son who had a bag of candy in his arms, his face a mask of sheer ecstasy.

“Well then, have a good evening, Miss Granger,” Draco said smoothly, a smile still on his lips.

I wished the family the same, and stepped out of the way to let them pass. The twinkling of the doorbell sounded their exit and I felt as if I had been holding my breath for ages.

A depression settled into my chest as pieces of my heart were chipped away.

I was envious.

The depression over the Malfoys was different from that I felt every time I went to visit Harry and Ginny. This depression was more poignant, painful. A realization came.

Lucius would never see this happiness in his own family, and never experience it for himself. How utterly wrong.

I went about the shop in a huff, angry, depressed, and wallowing in self-pity that was and was not my own.




My flat in Trento was just as I had left it, even the repaired armchair still looked like a shadow of its former self, the Charms I had used to repair it still not giving the piece of furniture much more that is original shape. It was this armchair that I collapsed into after a night in Venice with James, going to clubs, drinking too much wine, and laughing so much that my throat hurt.

James, despite being a vampire, knew how to entertain the living. He had a magnificent palazzo near Ca’ d’oro, which he said he had coveted as a mortal and only as a vampire, could own. It was in this palazzo that he had hosted a grand soiree of Venetian and foreign guests, Muggles and Magical, and, in which, a great party occurred.

The decadences of his mortal life continued into James’ immortal life. I suppose only Death Eater orgies, if the rumours had been true, could compare.

I returned to Trento, intoxicated, throat sore, feet sore from dancing, neck bruised from nibbles by men I met, and lips dry from all the kissing of cheeks and lips.

I suppose I could go into depth about the party, but the important event of the night, or early morning just before dawn, occurred after I returned to my flat.

I was in a dress of red and gold, far too daring and stylish to pass for decent in London, my feet crammed into three and half inch heels, and my hair coiffed in curls and red ribbons, my makeup, which had bee meticulously applied, smeared. I was beginning to doze in the chair after kicking off the heels across the living space, when a strong knocking sounded on my door.

I thought I might be dreaming. Rarely does anyone knock on my flat door in Trento besides the landlady or someone bringing an delivery only after I answer the call from the lobby door and allow them into the building.

The knocking grew more insistent the longer I delayed to rise to my feet and pad to the door. What I saw through the ‘peep hole,’ had me frowning and I unlocked the door and tried not to appear to far gone than I truly was.

“Signore?”

To have the Polizia on your doorstep just before dawn is never a good sign. Neither is a sleepy landlady in a robe and her hair in a sleeping cap, nor is a rumpled man in a black coat with long pale hair, sneering at you from behind the other two.

A conversation proceeded in Italian, and I was blinking all the while.

The short of it was this: Lucius Malfoy had been wandering up and down the street before the apartment building and as he forced his way into the lobby, the Polizia ‘happened’ to spot him. The officer immediately roused the landlady whose small flat was just off lobby to inquire if Lucius was a tenant. Lucius claimed to be waiting for me to arrive home and when I would not answer the door, he began to force his way in, thus, landing three people on my doorstep.

“Do you know this man?” the police officer then asked in Italian.

I said I did, but… And trailed, unable to force my mind to work fast enough to form a lie to diffuse the growing tense situation. My landlady was angry, and I sympathized with her. I could see she had questions. I had been a model renter, never disturbing the other tenants, or herself in the past, and suddenly to have a strange, pale man, most likely casting a spell on the door, breaking in?

“Please, this is just all a misunderstanding,” I began, saying in almost the same tone I had used in the diner in Wisconsin that there was no problem and the fuss was unintentional.

I tried to be convincing, and it worked as Lucius passed by me into the apartment, and I made my apologies to both the police and my landlady, who was dubious as to how well I knew the pale man. I often wondered if the woman was not a Squib at how intuitive she was…

And then, the door was shut and locked, the footsteps fading in sound down the steps, and Lucius Malfoy was in my apartment, already making himself at home.

I had yet to undress or wash my face. I had yet to stop my body and mind from buzzing from the wine I drank or the kisses pressed into my skin to make me feel as if my body were on fire with repressed need.

“I waited for two days for you to be here.”

He was standing just at the windows, looking out to the lightening sky.

“When your landlord in London told me you were on a short holiday, it took me some time to get here, and by the time I arrived, you had been in Venice for some time. I even looked to the sweet shop only to meet with a dead end.”

I was standing just by the kitchen counter, my thin sateen red and gold dress feeling far too little to cover my body in Lucius Malfoy’s presence. It had not felt so bare before my landlady and the police officer.

“I was just about through the lobby door, ready to come up to wait for you inside when the Muggle police stopped—“

“What do you want?” I asked suddenly, cutting off his words, which were not angry, but annoyed that I had not been where he could get to me easily, as if I were at his disposal.

He turned, dressed in a nice button down dark grey shirt, tucked into a pair of expensive black trousers. He wore a newer pair of boots, not dragon hide, but leather that would have cost me a month’s salary perhaps. He looked well, not so thin as he had been the last time he was in the flat. Lucius was well kempt, and from where I stood, I smelled a faint hint of rich cologne.

It was a stark contrast to the last time we had met in the flat.

“Money? Do you need me to somehow arrange for you to get more?”

I was tired and wished for a long hot shower, perhaps a self-administered foot massage, and a long sleep to recover before returning to London late the next evening.

Lucius stared at me, as if regarding my state for the first time. His eye moved over my bare ankles up the visible skin of my shins to my knees, up the skirt to my cinched waist, along the bodice of the dress to the low cut collar. I had worn a modern interpretation of a corset under the bodice that lifted my breasts high, forming an impressive curve of cleavage.

I felt like a trollop under his gaze.

He did not say a word, but sat down slowly on the ottoman, his elbows on his knees, his hands folding before him, a posture I had seen Lucius adopt several times since our more recent acquaintance.

“What do you want?” I asked again, a bit softer than before.

Lucius grinned, a disconcerting sight, if I have not mentioned it before.

“That question could have half a million different answers,” he mused.

“What do you want from me?” I asked, feeling only seconds away from either hexing him or passing out into a lovely sleep.

The grin did not flicker or fade.

“I want to fall in love.”




Lucius Malfoy had apparently learned not to underestimate me after knocking him about with my fists, so when I took a step toward him, my face dark with irritation quickly evolving to ire, he stood abruptly and placed the ottoman between us.

“I will make you a deal…”

“No deals,” I muttered. “If this is all you have to say to me, you might as well take up your coat and show yourself out, Mr. Malfoy.”

The expression of disappointment that crossed his face at that moment only further irritated me.

Yet, he continued speaking as if he had not heard my words.

“You are a handsome witch, Granger. I am a rich man, no matter that I might never be part of the magical world again. You saw only a fraction of my available finances…”

“Do you think me so petty as to care about your sodding money, Malfoy?”

No matter how tired I was, Lucius Malfoy, his kith and kin, seemed to bring out some hidden energy that would allow me to slip into a towering rage. I had a thought that I was not the only person who would slip into such a state where Malfoy’s were concerned.

Again, he did not seem to care about anything I was saying to him or that magic, sparked by my agitation, was beginning to crackle audibly over my skin.

“I could give you anything you want, whether it be—“

“Get out.”

He blinked, and in his eyes, I saw that he realized he had miscalculated.

I suppose that all he ever really knew of women was their greed. I could not speak for his ex-wife, but I knew that many a witch was attracted to his fey beauty only a bit less than they were attracted to his chequebook. Lucius Malfoy only knew so much because those were the only sorts who came ‘sniffing around.’ I, obviously, was not to be wooed by means of money. In fact, if Lucius Malfoy were truly a pauper, I might be somewhat attracted to him. As it was, he was still as proud, as ignorant, and as infuriating as ever.

“Let me…”

“Get out,” I ground out, my fists curling. My wand was currently inaccessible, in the pocket of my coat hanging by the door. Of course, a quick Summoning would remedy that detail, but if I could get the man away from me without any violence, I would prefer it.

“You haven’t even…”

“Continue speaking, and I swear by the gods…” I trailed, my ire already beginning to wane as my store of energy was being used.

He left, grabbing his coat in a flourish, and stalking past me, hideously angry, not at me, but at his miscalculation, and was out the door before I could turn to see him go.

Of course, this would not be the end of it all, but for the time being, it was enough.

Lucius Malfoy had stalked me back to Trento, and when I returned to London the next evening, still fuming, he followed me back to London.

I decided his sudden decision to pursue me was getting out of hand when I found he had somehow managed to enter my Islington flat to place sprays of flowers in large vases about the living area.

First, sitting closer toward the door, were arrangements of yellow carnations, which in the language of flowers meant ‘you have disappointed me.’ Further into the flat were vases of gorgeous red tulips, a ‘declaration of love,’ and violet lilac sprays with white clover, the first meaning ‘first sign of love,’ and the second meaning ‘promise.’

I tallied a rough estimate of the cost of the flowers and balked. The lilac was just beginning to bloom, and the carnations were hothouse flowers. The sheer amount of blooms made the flat reek of sweetness that I had to open a window.

If this was how Lucius Malfoy intended to woo me without actually confronting me, it was a waste.

Had he somehow been schooled by some hopeless romantic on the ways to woo a woman? The language of the flowers was a clue. It was dated, it was ridiculous, and it was wasteful. It also showed his ignorance. I hate hothouse and cut flowers.

I ended up vanishing the carnations, which galled me, but kept the lilac, which I do like. The lilac scent was clean and more fitting to my tastes.

The flowers, I would find, was only the beginning.

Two days after the flowers, coming home from work, I found a note slipped under my front door. It was a formal apology, written with a hope that I would consider a proposal. The script was large, bold, and I, only having a slight interest in graphology, interpreted the handwriting thus: the forward slant of the letters—high emotional expressiveness, the pressure of the pen pressed into the paper—stress, the angular letters—directness, etc.

Lucius Malfoy was desperate to break his curse.



The notes turned into full-blown letters, and the mode and means of how they began appearing in my coat pocket or in my letterbox in the apartment building, was due to some sort of Charm.

Lucius wrote to me, always first mentioning a ‘proposal’ and I would scowl at his words then skim the rest, which was more like a treatise as to why I should read his reasons as to why I should allow him to ‘woo’ me.

With the amount of parchment wasted, I could have re-skinned a herd of animals.

The letters came daily, for two weeks. It was May, and the nice weather was darkened every time I found a letter in my coat pocket, which soon became the usual place to find the missive.

Soon, the day came, where I did not find the letter in my pocket as I went to work. I had half a mind to celebrate somehow that there was not a letter. I went about my day with a lightened mood, even volunteering to add more items to the ‘junk cupboard,’ where my day would take what seemed to be its darker turn.

As I mentioned, I had not thought much about my last visit to the warehouse, or the strange item I had found on the twenty-third rack up from the floor. I suppose my mind was too busy trying to find a sense of ‘normal’ after meeting Lucius in that alley, and whatever normal contemplative thoughts I usually had were diverted to a deeper part of my psyche.

I found the ball again and something clicked in my head, resounding so loudly that I nearly tumbled off my Conjured ladder.

Of course, I have mentioned this before, but everything in my world tilted and I found myself hyperventilating. I felt incredibly stupid.

Had I inadvertently altered the course of my destiny by being attracted like a magpie to a pretty, shiny object? Speaking of magpies…

I stared at the ball for a long while, my legs beginning to shake as I stood on a rung high above the floor, my hands aching from clutching the ladder so roughly. I think I cursed.

It was as I was walking home, opting to let the spring air clear my head, that I found a letter in my coat pocket.




As I walked from Angel station, I began reading, and it was as I read the letter that fate took a literal swipe at me, and I was certain that I had incurred bad luck.

The black cab barreled out of nowhere, and I, the letter, went flying through the spring air, as impact came immediately after stepping off the curb. However, it was more than my body and the letter that flew, but another person, whose larger body wrapped me in its arms. Someone on the street yelled, a passerby, and I found I could not breathe.

When a traumatic event happens, you can never seem to breathe. Of course, for me, the exception was the bank robbery in Missoula. I could breathe quite well then.

I flew, and already, I knew I was badly injured before I slammed into the road surface. The squeal of brakes and tires, the scent of blood, the warmth of those arms that held me, I sensed it all as if it were all that anchored me to the living world.

Bad luck indeed and all had to do with the man who had tried to push me out of the way of the black cab. The letter, my reading of it, my lack of attention due to the letter, the man, it was all bad, the worst luck. Destiny was trying to get my attention. It had it.

The collision with the road came, and whatever air I had in my lungs, was knocked loose through my teeth in a high hiss. I could feel my ribs breaking, my shoulder, where I had been shot before, shattering, blood spewing from my mouth after the hiss of air. Above me, around me, I could feel his body contorting, shivering from impact, but no bones breaking. I had taken the brunt of the blow of metal and glass.

I was unaware if my organs were intact, but the pain, exquisite and real, made me wish I would die.

Time, I had lost track of time again, but I could hear distant klaxons of emergency services and the shouting of the cab driver and the sickly odour of burnt rubber. People were gathering, but not so much looking at me as the man above me.

Look away, look away; I wanted to scream—nothing to see here! Not some mangled woman or a pale haired man shouting in her face in unintelligible words.

“…Mungo’s! Goddamnit, woman!” was all that came through.

I had blood in my ears.

Then, he was gone, emergency services had come and I was being lifted after much light being shone in my eyes. Then, I was in an ambulance, Lucius Malfoy, seemingly well enough to sit next to my cot, leaning over me as the emergency worker tried to push him away to save my life.

Everything happened too quickly, and I was conscious for all of it. Even when I was shot, I had kept conscious. I wondered if there was something wrong with my brain, or if my pain threshold was so high that I would not shut down to save my sanity. Maybe all the injuries I had sustained in the years during the War had tempered my body somehow, but I could only wish I were invulnerable to the pain.

As I was swiftly carted into a Muggle hospital, Lucius Malfoy at my side, holding my hand, his face a vision of true distress not only at my state but the alien atmosphere of the emergency department, I wondered if he had been following me without my notice. I also realized, now that I was being admitted to hospital, that I was affectively incapacitated, and prey to the man who was shouting like a lunatic that a ‘Healer’ should see to me before all others.

I wanted to tell him that as soon as we were alone, to take me to St. Mungo’s.