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




VIII.






Two weeks later, I was standing on the shore of Swiftcurrent Lake in Glacier National Park, Montana, trying to keep a strand of hair that had fallen from my ponytail out of my eyes. I was enamored by the towering Mount Grinnell that rose up from the lake like a grey stone sentinel, but the vastness of the sky, the freshness of the air—I had a sense of foreboding.

Why was I here?

Lucius was speaking to someone up the bank from the shore nearer to the hotel above, the rustic Alpine designed inn where we had spent the first night of our holiday.

We were to hike the five and half mile trail called Grinnell Glacier trail that day, and I had packed and shrunken a small arsenal of supplies into a small pack on my back over my pale blue fleece pull over. I was outfitted for a hike in a comfortable pair of denims, thick socks, and hiking boots, a rain jacket tied about my waist.

As for Lucius, an outsider might think he was some tourist who had a working knowledge of the outdoors in his heavy Muggle hiking boots, dark denims, black jumper over a longer, skin tight black sleeveless shirt, his long hair pulled back from his face loosely, a small pack on his back, spinning a walking stick cum old straight branch in his hand.

He was speaking to a ranger, I supposed, and was nodding as the Muggle spoke.

It was morning, and the breeze off the lake was cold. The hike was in a lower altitude, medium difficulty partly due to its length, and I was anxious to begin. I had stretched my limbs in preparation, feeling my wand handle jab into my ribs where it had slipped up from the belt on my denims in a Disillusioned holster at my right side.

The Muggles warned us of bears, of leaving the path, all the things any logical person would find to be a warning, but I suppose I felt a bit arrogant with a wand on my belt. If a situation became difficult or dangerous, I could Apparate, whereas Muggles would spend a good deal of time and vitality trying to emerge from the wilderness for help.

“Let us begin.”

Lucius had moved to my side, finally, and together, we began walking around the lake toward the trailhead on the north point of the lake to begin the trek along the other side.




He had stolen a tent from somewhere, he told me the night before in our suite overlooking Swiftcurrent Lake.

It was a two bedroom suite, he giving me the king sized bed, while he slept in the small full sized bed, never once bothering me, sneaking up on me, or insinuating himself in any way.

I asked him if he intended that we literally camp out in the backcountry, and he only grinned.

“My father, though the true aristocrat, was taken by Montana, or least, the mountains of Montana, in his youth. I never could discern how he had originally come to this place, but he loved it enough to buy an old house north of Missoula and spend much time, even in my childhood, there.

There was something about this place, I heard him say one time. It was not Alaska, he said, which drew people all around the world to bask in its wild beautiful danger. Montana was just civilized enough for him.”

We were sitting in the common living area, having had a fair dinner in the dinning room of the hotel. The near full moon reflected off the lake outside the window, and I, never one to overlook such a vista, kept my eyes upon it.

“Did he bring you here?”

Lucius chuckled, and I could see his murky reflection in the window. He too was staring at the moonlit waters.

“Only once, when I was a teenager. I hated it.”

“And now?”

I saw him shrug in the reflection of the window. “I appreciate the beauty of this place, the quiet. It is so far removed from anything I know, and that, in itself has appeal.”

But I was with him, the last symbol of his life as a wizard, and we had a rocky past, albeit not so strong as what I had with his son or his former master.

Thinking of his former master, I glanced at Lucius who was deep in memory. I could not recall if I had noticed the scar on his left forearm. I tried to recall the night in my flat at Trento after he bathed, but could not remember if I had seen or not seen his arm or any other part of his bare skin. I knew that after the fall of Tom Riddle, the Dark Mark had faded on the surviving Death Eaters to a faint brand.

I shivered, falling into memories of my own.




For early May, the elevation did nothing to temper the air with warmth. We had walked approximately two miles up into the sparse trees along the base of the mountains, and we had not spoken.

Lucius walked leisurely, which translated to me trying to catch up. His stride was much longer than my own. We were in no hurry, and I did not mind that I would lose sight of him at times around a copse trees, only to spot his pale hair again ahead of me.

Near noon, we stopped, after climbing up a particularly steep incline where the trees gave way to grey rock. I fetched my water bottle from my pack, letting the small bag fall to the gravel track that was becoming more rugged the further we hiked.

He sat next to me on a low boulder, the mountain rising up like a spike from the earth at our backs, the land, and the lake stretching out before us from our vantage point.

When he did not speak, I could almost imagine that I did ‘like’ him, and after I drank my fill from the bottle, I passed it to him, without thinking.

His hand touched mine, and I shivered before I thought much of my mindless action. Glancing to him, he nodded to me, taking the bottle to lift it to his lips. I saw that he hesitated, but it was for only a split second, before drinking after me, gulping down the water, but not emptying the bottle.

Had he thought he would germs ala Mudblood? He had kissed me, twice.

He thanked me for the water, passing it back to me to cap the bottle and stuff it in my pack again.

The exchange was benign, but it was on my mind for the next mile.





The Grinnell Glacier, or what remained of it, was slightly disappointing. We had met other hikers coming back, obviously having started out earlier than we had.

We stood above the steep drop down to what was now a lake, and stared at it for a long while. The wind whipped about us, nearly knocking us back, and in the air, there was a memory of what was once a majestic testament to the will of Mother Nature.

“It is like realizing that the Mona Lisa is only a small portrait, thirty by twenty-one inches of condensed sublimity, surrounded by hundreds of tourists and admirers trying to stand just before her, to be held in her gaze…” I whispered over the wind.

He stared at me as if I had said something quite profound. Perhaps I had…

“It makes me sad,” I finished, turning my back to the once glacier.

“It makes me angry,” he admitted.

I smirked. “Because we came too late?”

“In part.”





Something happened after that moment, it continued to happen as I began back down the trail. I felt as if I could tolerate Lucius Malfoy.




We opted to take another trail back, which would take us the rest of the day, and possible have us finding a place to pitch camp. We looped around Lake Josephine to the east, finding the trail not so rocky or sparse. The trees that rose up around us made me think that we were truly, for once, in a forest.

It was awing.

Perhaps my perception had changed somehow, for there seemed to be more colours, the air fragrant, warmer.

In a deep cut vale above a stream, we sat down to eat a packed meal, sitting on a mossy rock with out boots hanging over the edge and the plummet to the water below. We sat close together in a beam of sunlight filtering through pines.

The silence was comfortable, and I tried not to analyze how it could be so.

When we began hiking again, no longer caring where we went or if we should head back to the hotel, we walked side by side, talking.

I felt high. The elevation, or the clean air, had made me high.

I was getting to know Lucius Malfoy, something I never would have imagined as long as I lived. When he was not being a complete bastard, I found he was quite loquacious about matters that we found mutually interesting.

Things I learned about Lucius Malfoy: as an adult, he did enjoy nature, he even liked to fish though to look at him, you would never imagine such a thing. He enjoyed art, and since his sequester from the magical world, he had taken the time to see great Muggle masterpieces, as a Muggle would see them. He enjoyed music, and lamented the loss of his gramophone still in the Manor in Wiltshire. He enjoyed doing the puzzles in the Prophet, and would save them as clippings, or he had, when he lived as Lucius Malfoy in his Palladian Manor. He enjoyed reading and making up research projects to further inform him of the customs of ancient or primitive cultures. He enjoyed some Muggle conventions, discovering the cinema during his curse. He enjoyed the quiet, contemplative moments, but most of all, he enjoyed the company of a person as well versed as he in matters he found important or pertinent to existence.

At the moment, I was this person, though he mentioned Severus Snape several times in passing.

I learned that he hated several things as well, and was torn between his biases and his new discoveries.

I learned Lucius Malfoy was a man.




Falling in love, I have read, can occur unexpectedly. I have also read, it can occur gradually.

As for me, I was gradually beginning to see.

Night fell, and we found a clearing far enough off the trail not to be noticed by Muggles, and Lucius took the initiative to pitch the tent with his wand. The tent he had ‘stolen’ was very much like the tent I knew Arthur Weasley had borrowed for the Quidditch World Cup with a few differences. The inside was far more luxurious, and far warmer.

However, despite the luxury of a built in central stove, a small food preparation area and a simple toilet, there was one thing about the tent that made me remember Lucius Malfoy had intended to use our ‘holiday’ for something more than enjoying nature.

There was only one bed.

The softness of my face that had made me smile during the hike, hardened into a scowl.

Lucius acted as though the sleeping arrangements were of no real concern and went about, pulling Stasis fresh food from his bag for an extraordinary dinner. He continued our conversation about the interesting geology of the park around us, nonplussed.

I sat near the stove on an armchair that smelled slightly of mothballs, rubbing my feet after removing my boots.

“What will you do after the curse is broken?” I asked, speaking over his amused comment about the Native American belief that the mountains of the park were the ‘backbone of the world.’

He had been placing dinner rolls on the camp plates as I asked this question, and paused to glance up at me.

I wondered then, without conversation, and the ease of which it came, if I were seeing the true Lucius Malfoy, unhindered by thoughts of the curse, thoughts of how to break the curse, and the years he spent removed from the world he was born into.

Just as my face had hardened, so did his.

“Would you believe me if I said, I had not thought so far ahead?”

“No.”

He grinned, and the face, the man I had known as Lucius Malfoy, the ex-Death Eater, was before me.

“You are asking what incentive you might have by ‘falling in love’ with me?”

He passed me a plate of cold pheasant, cranberries, asparagus with what looked and smelled to be a ginger sauce, and a buttery dinner roll. My mother would have smiled at such a balanced dinner. Then, passing me a fork, he leaned away from me, settling back into the second armchair which was only a foot away from my own before the open door of the fire in the stove, casting flickering, warm light over both our faces.

“Why not?” I sighed finally, resting my plate on my knee.

My answer/question seemed to rankle his façade, and he began eating, as if to give him time to answer his own question. I took the time to eat as well, thinking of nothing but that the food was good, better than what I had eaten in the hotel dinning room.

“I am not cruel.”

I choked on my loose cranberries and cast about for something to drink.

Lucius passed me a glass, something he must have extracted from his bag, as well as the white wine inside the globe.

How insane to have cold pheasant and wine in the middle of the Montana wilderness.

I drank and the choking and coughing subsided.

“…only to those you hate…” I rasped.

“That was not what I meant,” he answered smoothly, a glass in his hand as well, poised before his sculpted, pale lips.

I blinked at him, and resumed eating my tart cranberries.

“I never laid a hand on a woman, no matter what you might think of me. Striking a woman is a cowardly act.”

True.

“I will be kind, gentle… I will spoil you, if you allow me. Give into every indulgence.

I will be your slave.”

I dropped my fork onto the carpets of the tent, and nearly allowed my plate to slip from my knees.

He said these things so casually that the manner in which he said these words was profane. Yet, they were not words that I associated with love. They were still words of desperation, loneliness.

I had enough to eat, and as picking up a silent cue, Lucius took my plate from my knees, placing it on the floor on the other side of his chair where he had drawn the wine glasses. When he finished, he mimicked the motion, but drew the frosted bottle of wine and refilled my glass perilously perched on the arm of the chair.

I would have thought his words, almost an admission, would cause him to draw in on himself, but, it was Lucius Malfoy—so proud that even his desperation kept him from slipping away.

“I would gladly have you on my arm, in my home, in my bed, if you wanted it to be so. Those are incentives, are they not?”

Stunned, that was the closest emotion I felt, but I knew, these words were not enough.

I sat back in my chair, picking up my wine and drinking deeply, the bittersweet taste perfectly blending with the food on my palate.

“What is love to you, Lucius?” I asked before licking wine from my lips, the heat from the stove only adding to the growing heat of alcohol suffusing my skin.

He considered my words seriously.

“How should I know?” he chuckled, suddenly. “I think it might be something so wonderful and so terrible that tomes upon tomes have been written upon it. It is a curiosity, focused on one person…”

His laughter died away, and again, he considered.

“I know what I would like it to be,” he whispered into his wineglass.

“And what is that?”

My glass was empty, and when he finished his sip, he automatically refilled it. The man was trying to get me drunk, but to be honest I really did not care. The fewer inhibitions, the fewer qualms I would have with ultimately sharing the only bed in the tent.

“A never ending passion. A holiday that lasts and lasts. A fascination that never loses its charm. An orgasm that does not leave me exhausted…”

Yes, I was quickly becoming drunk, because I was beginning to fall in love with him—that is, as long as he remained soft spoken and honest with me.

“Do you love me?”

Lucius’ eyes flashed to mine, and he stared at me, stricken by my very direct question. Slowly, in the warm flicker of firelight, his face softened.

He was handsome; I could not deny this much. No matter how many years there were between us, Lucius Malfoy had an eternal beauty reserved for the few. Lucius was a Norse god, strength in his face and body, pale, yes, but not ice though he surely had affinity for such a thing. This was a man whose airs brought disdain in most people, but under it all, he was flesh and blood, ice and fire, a hero of an ancient epic.

Oh, how our lives would make for a good bard song.

And for a fragile moment, I could see myself at his side, his warrior queen with my strange amber eyes and wild chestnut curls.

Then, the moment passed.

“I barely know you, but…” he trailed, his eyes turning to the fire, the grey becoming mercury. “But, your strength is…”

He did not finish, but leaned forward to place his elbows on the knees of his dark denims and press the stem of his glass between his fingers. This posture was familiar, a brooding, casual posture, that seemed as natural to him as his maniacal pacing when agitated.

I knew this man.

I finished my wine, and Lucius did not move to refill my glass, so lost in the light of the fire and his own ruminations.





The sleeping arrangement did not seem to matter at all by the time he laid down next to me on the bed. We had just enough wine to make us sleepy and carefree.

Lucius lay on my right side, on his back, while I had naturally laid down on my right side, facing him. I was not used to sharing my bed with the exception of Crookshanks who usually slept on my pillow behind my head. However, the night’s cold had permeated the Charmed tent, and the warmth Lucius provided, nearly against me, was soothing.

Lazily, he moved to pull a thick blanket over us both, and I curled my socked feet together against his shin. He did not seem to mind.

I slept so deeply, so comfortably, that when I woke hours later; I was not surprised that we had drifted closer together in the centre of the bed, in a comfortable embrace. What woke me was a tickling at my nose, as I had begun inhaling the tips of his hair, which had fallen loose and tangled about his shoulders as he lay on his left side, facing me. He had his right arm draped about my waist, his left curled under the pillow, the bottom his arm acting as a type of pillow for me. My face was in his chest, and his chin rested atop my head.

It was intimate, and more importantly, it was warm.

He smelled of faint sweat from our hiking, and the trees. I had dreamt of something to do with those pines and hearty hardwoods.

When I pulled away, he made a soft sound of protest, but did not wake. I took the time to study him in the grey pre-dawn light that filtered in through cracks in the tent walls.

In sleep, he looked like a boy on the cusp of manhood, and I knew then that my thought about his agelessness was correct. Even though I could see the marks of age on his face, they were so superficial, so movable, that I tried to believe he was old enough to be my father.

I failed.

This man was made of finer stuff than mere flesh and bone, and I felt a jolt of envy course through me. I could hate him so easily, but as easily as I could love him? I wondered.

Slipping into my boots and finding my fleece pullover, I moved to stoke the fire, use the small toilet, and wash my face. I was not hungry, but knew I would be. If I wanted anything, it was coffee, which I had in my pack, a shrunken pot I could place on the stove to perk strong, dark coffee.

Before I began this ritual, I decided to step outside and inhale the clean morning air to clear my head of any conflicting thoughts that would eventually come about the man still sleeping in the bed.

The clearing was foggy, but high on the east faces of the mountains, I could see pink dawn stretching down to where I stood. The air was icy, and there was frost on the ground, so heavy that it beat down the high grasses and killing some of the more willful wildflowers in early May. The white plumed beargrass was untouched by the killing cold and swayed in a gentle wind around the deceptively small tent.

I began walking from the tent, ready to throw out my arms and welcome the day, so smitten with the cleanliness of the air and the silence that I felt as if I could burst into a song, which had no real words to it at all.

I had learned to love the vastness and the tranquility. Could I learn to love other things as well?

Of course, it was at this point, too far away from the tent to run to safety, that I realized that through the fog, I had come upon a large animal sniffing about the edge of the clearing.

What good luck I had, no matter how small, had run out as I faced down a grizzly bear almost as large as the black cab that nearly killed me in Islington.



There are steps one logically would take to preserve their lives instead of panicking and hastening their deaths. I always thought I was logical, but logic failed me.

The grizzly, the first I had seen outside of a zoo, was like a massive boulder with thick, brown fur, a head as large as one of Fluffy, the Three-headed dog’s, and eyes that were oddly similar to my own shade of amber. The bear raised its head and sniffed the air, and then, found me, staring, frozen, back at it.

As far as I knew, the bear was only passing through the clearing, our tent not in the way of its natural track. I had walked just far enough away from the tent to encroach upon the animal, and now, I was being considered by an animal with no human logic.

I did not run, which was a good thing, but I did not move at all, which was probably not a good thing.

I have only ever been paralyzed by fear a few times in my life that resulted in pain. I prayed to whatever god, that this time would not end with more pain.

“Back away slowly,” a voice whispered over the clearing, and I knew Lucius had come, standing closer to the tent, apparently awakened when the loss of my warmth in the bed was not enough to keep him sedated. “Do not make any sudden movements, crouch slowly, make yourself small…submissive.”

I complied, my eyes moving to the huge paws and claws of the beast. The bear grumbled, and turned its body toward me.

“Slow steps backward,” he whispered just loud enough not to arouse more attention from the bear.

What terrible, fickle luck. No matter how slowly I began to move, or how carefully, the fates took another swipe at me as the bear reared up on its hind legs and roared as if I had somehow offended its honour.

Was this normal behaviour of a bear, or was I so destined for misery?

I wanted to scream, not from fear, which was dissolving, but in sheer frustration. I did not need to be eaten by a large, wild animal. I did not need to soak my clothes with more blood or feel more pain.

I was a witch, for Merlin’s sake!

The bear charged, and Lucius shouted, his boots pounding on the ground, but I was faster.

My wand flew into my hand, and within a second, the bear was blown back in a flash of light and sound that boomed through the clearing like an exploding bomb.

Take that, fate!

The bear, the poor beast, ran away, lumbering into the trees so frightened that several small saplings were uprooted in the animal’s haste to flee.

Before I could congratulate myself, I was stumbling as Lucius collided with me, his boots slipping in the frosty grasses beginning to thaw as dawn’s rosy fingers touched the clearing. I was gasping for breath, body trembling from my anger, that I whirled on him and had my wand tip between his eyes.

He too was gasping, having run, when he could have Apparated, to try to save me.

“What the hell do you think you were going to do?” I screamed at him, my anger like boiling water from a natural hot spring, melting the frost of whatever sleep I had remaining on the edges of my mind. “Push me out of the way to wrestle a fucking bear?”

Lucius’ pale face flushed, and before he could answer, he had bent over, his hands on his knees to catch his breath.

I lowered my ‘death stick,’ but kept my anger pointed at him, yet turned to look at the edge of the trees where the bear had fled.

“What will it be next? A snake bite? Me falling off a fucking cliff? Bring it on, goddamn you!” I screamed to the forest and mountains, my voice echoing in the vast space of Glacier National Park, Montana, United States of America.





My anger abated, as we struck camp, not bothering with breakfast or coffee. It was as I was shrinking the tent to slip into my pack that I began telling Lucius all about my luck.

I did not really take a breath until we had hiked far away from the clearing and were traversing a path between trees in the still coolness of morning. Even when we sat down to finally take some breakfast, I did not stop.

He listened, nodding or frowning, thoughtful at my words.

“And now a bear…” I finished with a sigh, passing him a metal camp cup of strong coffee as we sat in the morning sun after leaving the forest for wider, sunlit valleys.

I told him everything, including the device I found on the twenty-third shelf.

“I have never heard of such a thing,” he said first, still thinking about the ball. “Of course, that is not surprising,” he added.

I felt as if I were sitting in the sun, drinking coffee with an old friend. Lucius Malfoy could be changeable.

“Are you sure this is not a case of self-fulfilling prophecy?”

I arched an eyebrow as I met his eyes over the rim of my steaming cup. To even suggest anything about prophecies seemed too…

He smirked and looked away.

“Not as dubious as a hag casting a curse on a person so they suddenly do not exist in their world, I suppose,” he muttered. “And,” he sighed, “you think our meeting, your sudden role in my curse, may have been brought about by this ‘ball?’”

I shrugged. It had weighed heavily on my mind. A curse of my own…

“Shall we divert our holiday?”

“What?”

He grinned, and I could almost hear the gears turning in his head. This was a man who would not pass up an adventure. Were all men like this?

“Let’s break in to the Department of Mysteries, for old time’s sake.”

I cursed, having spilt hot coffee into the crotch of my denims.