To Love Life Again
Chapter Two
How to Light a Fire…
“Oh, pardon?”
She stared at him, seeing for the first time.
The blonde hair. The gray eyes. Why didn’t she recognize him right away?
He gave her that half-hearted, half-grumpy smile again and she knew why. If this was Malfoy, he had changed a lot. He looked…nice. And happy.
“I’m Andrei MacElroy, you’re Hermione Granger, we’ve been expecting you,” he said, plunking Crookshanks in the hearth rug. “And we’re right glad we’re having a Fitzgerald over here again. Aunt Patty, she just went to Waterford with Jack and Kathy for supplies.”
All through this light speech of his she watched him suspiciously, but he busied himself with toweling Crrokshanks’s fur and then he picked up her bags.
“They meant to go yesterday, but the doc Kathy was seeing for her sonogram didn’t come in yesterday, so they decided to wait until today, to shoot two birds with one stone and all that. They meant to come back before you even had your feet in Dublin, but I guess this squall detained them, if not Aunt Patty’s friend, Deidre.”
He turned to her and only raised his eyebrows at the look she was giving him, a little bemused now, perhaps thinking she was just winded from the trip.
“I’ll take these up to your room for you. Do you want to come up with me and see it and have your tea there, or do you intend to keep me and Ron company for awhile?”
“Andrei MacElroy?”
“Hmm? That’s right.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Five years this July.”
Hermione gasped again. “And where were you before that?”
“Wicklow. My ma was from there, and she and me da were farmers until they both passed on in a car accident around June five years ago.”
Hermione felt the heat in her face. “Oh. Oh, I’m sorry, I just””
“That’s alright, Hermione. You’re asleep on your feet, come on to your bedroom.”
There was a lilt in his voice when he said her name. Hermione almost wished he’d called her ‘Granger’, just so she could make certain”but what was she doing”insisting that this man who was kin to her was Draco Malfoy?
If she wasn’t so chagrined she could have laughed. She’d made a fool of herself. Of course, this wasn’t Draco, however much the two men looked alike.
They climbed up the angled staircase to the third landing. They passed several doors before they stopped, at the very end of the hallway.
“You’re not in the guests’ floor. This used to be Kathy’s room before she moved in with Jack down in the village. Aunt Patty figured you’d like the windows. One in the east, facing the hills; and one in the north, facing the sea.”
He opened the door with a flourish. Hermione caught her breath.
Even in the dim glow of the lamp Andrei turned on, the room looked light. The furniture was all white French provincial, with charming pink quilts and throwovers obviously hand-made. Pink lace curtains charmed her to rush to the windows, and there she stood transfixed at the view of the rain falling on the hills and the hills seeming to embrace each drop. She stepped to face the other window. The ocean greeted her there, waving her welcome with its calm surf.
Andrei placed her bags at the foot of the wooden bed. At the sight of the thick pink and purple quilts, Hermione wanted nothing else but to drop there. But Andrei was looking at her, and she couldn’t be rude twice.
“It’s very lovely. And the view is…peaceful. I can’t see how Grandma left this place.”
“Well, she ran off with your grandfather is what I heard.”
Hermione looked at him, smiling uncertainly. “Love makes us insane sometimes, you know. You don’t have to be surly about it.”
“Who’s being surly? Sorry.” He looked around the room, obviously aggrieved that he was the one stuck with welcoming her. Maybe his speech about the absence of the family and about the room had run out. Definitely very grumpy for an Irishman. Didn’t Ginny say it would be easy to take a handsome Irish lover here and start a reckless affair? Hermione was safe from that, she smirked inwardly.
“I’m sorry again for my prying awhile ago, Andrei. And thanks for everything. You can leave me now, if you have something else to do.”
He sighed and shook his head. “Aunt Patty and those two had better come home soon,” he mumbled as he walked to the door.
“I can help you with”” Her breath caught in her throat before she was able to say it. “”with Ron. I can help you with him, if you like. He seems a very agreeable baby, anyway. Is this the first time everyone left him to you? How old is he?”
Andrei rolled his eyes and did smile again. “Six months last week. And now he’s got another sibling on the way. You don’t want to look at the list his mother left for me. Well, I’ll just be downstairs if you need anything. Dinner should be ready in an hour.”
He closed the door as if he was afraid the faintest click would bring her discomfort. Hermione shook her head. The man was a contradiction.
She filled her lungs with the heady air from the hills and the sea combined and lowered herself onto the bed, sinking her fingers in Crookshanks’s fur. “I got here, lovie. I’m alright.”
She closed her eyes.
~ * ~
“Merlin,” Draco muttered. But it wasn’t burning his thumb and forefinger on the kettle that made him mutter. It was Hermione Granger. Couldn’t she just get on with life and erase that stupid lost-puppy look on her face? And where did Potter and his wife get the nerve to send her here, complicating his own life and making him”
What? Vulnerable? Concerned?
“Oh, crap!” He had poured the hot water on the uncovered soup tureen instead of the teapot. Ron giggled from his high chair. Draco stuck his tongue out at the toddler, making him wriggle more.
Draco took him and placed him on his playpen, to be safe. And then he went back to the kitchen, finished arranging the food in their right containers and picked up the tray. He knelt down by the playpen and whispered to Ron, “Stay put, now, I’m going to bring this up to our guest.” Ron waved at Draco as if he understood before grabbing a rubber banana and cramming it into his mouth.
Sighing, Draco got up and mounted the stairs. Outside and on the roof, he could hear the rain. It calmed and vexed him at the same time. Merlin, he hadn’t had these foul mood swings since he cut himself off from the Wizarding world and shed his old foul name.
He rapped softly on Hermione’s door. He let a second pass and then opened it himself. He only realized what he had done when he was already inside the room”what if she’d been dressing? He slowly re-opened his eyes…The room was dark. The lamp had automatically turned itself off. He could hear the cat purring. He switched the lamp back on.
Curled around her cat like a fretful child around her doll, Hermione slept.
Draco snorted at himself inwardly and laid the tray on the bedside table. Why was he likening this witch”the cleverest witch in England”to helpless things? He looked at her and grimaced.
Even in her sleep, she wore that lost-puppy look (a phrase he’d gotten from Kathy. “Jack, do you want my lost-puppy look before you get me that perfume?”). A lost puppy. You’d think she didn’t have Potter and her parents and all those Weasleys.
With a shake of his head, he tugged the extra folded coverlet from under the cat and spread it over Hermione.
~ * ~
He huddled deeper into his jacket. A mist cloaked Ardmore and he could feel its chill to his bones. Still, he needed this walk. Ron was asleep; he was never the kind of infant to wake before morning, so Draco snatched his chance. The rain had abated but solitary drops descended like soft bullets on his hair every now and then. Hermione was still sleeping it off, and that was good. In the morning, he would be able to ignore her”
“What time is it? Of course you know this place now, but you can’t be too careful of our legendary bogs.”
Draco unclenched his teeth and let out his breath. “What are you doing here? I thought I’d seen the last of you years ago.”
“Well, life has a habit of jarring us every now and then, hasn’t it?”
“None of your pretentious philosophy! Why can’t you leave me alone? Was this your doing, sending Hermione Granger here?”
“You know her?”
“You know her?”
“I will know her as I know you. Why don’t you come inside? I could offer you drink.”
“I don’t want your drink. I want your departure from my life.”
“Do you think I also enjoy this, bearing your irascibleness? Believe me, your wish is also my wish. I wish to depart, but it’s as much my decision as your fate is yours.”
“We’ve talked enough about fate, old man; it’s an old, battered and foul subject.” Draco turned away, only to gasp.
“You will never turn your back on me when I am speaking with you, for I am not an old man, Draco Malfoy.” Far in the distance, lightning flared and thunder cracked. And then, after some seconds in which the wind whispered loudly, all was calm again.
“Certainly I am not pleased that we met again, my dear boy. I was happy when I thought we had already parted. But then, here you are. Perhaps, I could make use of you”and Hermione Granger as well.”
Draco stared into those blue eyes and emitted his own sparks. “Don’t do that,” he said through gritted teeth. “We’ve both been used enough.” But his companion only smiled and patted his shoulder.
“I will say goodbye now. When you feel like talking, or listening”” The blue eyes twinkled in amusement. “”the Green Dragon is ever open.”
~ * ~
Hermione opened her eyes and pulled the blanket around her tighter to her body. She was shivering, and starving. She brought up her arm and squinted at her wristwatch. It was five in the morning? She marveled at that. Never before had she slept this long.
She leaned over the bed when she heard Crookshanks lapping at something. Oh, how nice, someone had fixed him a bowl of milk. Andrei? Or had the other MacElroys arrived already?
She saw the tray of food on her bedside table first, and then as she tucked into it, noticed the dying embers in her fireplace. She groped for her wand from the inside pocket of her coat, found it, and in quick jabs locked the door, warmed her food and set fire roaring in the grate. She stowed her wand back inside her pocket. Crookshanks gave her an admonitory mrowl and then trotted over to the fire. She threw a muffin at him.
Slurping the savory chicken soup, she read her mental list of to-do’s. First thing would be to write Ginny and her mom. And then she could”
Hermione, I thought you’re on holiday?
Right. She could…well, she could go see Mr Waterbut again.
~ * ~
“No, my dear, they will be troubled that they have competition.”
Hermione laughed with him. Of course she wouldn’t tell the MacElroys about the Green Dragon, but she still asked Mr Waterbut. After all, he did know his grandmother. It made her wonder if the Muggles could access the pub. Apparently not. Just yet, though, she wouldn’t press him about how he met her grandmother.
“If they’re arriving today, who received you yesterday?” Mr Waterbut asked.
“Andrei MacElroy was there.”
“Aah.”
“Do you know him?”
Mr Waterbut shrugged and placed a tall glass of sour buttercream before her in her table. She sat by the window, watching the sunrise.
“He was odd,” she told Mr Waterbut’s back as he returned to the bar. “A little sullen. I hope the other MacElroys are cheerier.”
“You’re odd, too, you know, though not sullen.”
Hermione laughed again. “I can’t be sullen to a sweet old man like you, can I?”
“It would break my heart.” Mr Waterbut faked wiping a tear in his cheek with the clean rag he was wiping glasses with.
“Don’t worry, my dear Mr Waterbut, you’re safe from that.”
“As you are.”
Hermione nodded into her glass. “Yes, well, my heart’s quite safe now, because it was long broken.”
She looked up and drew in her breath when she found Mr Waterbut sitting opposite her.
“Hermione, the truth is this: hearts don’t break, they only bend. It’s up to us to allow them to spring back to shape. Don’t sit on your heart, colleen.”
~ * ~
She walked back to MacElroy’s, still dazed by Mr Waterbut’s words, and found a gleaming van beside the battered car and her rental Volvo in one side of the pub’s parking space. As she neared the door, she heard a high female voice.
“But where is she? You don’t think she went to Faerie Hill by herself, Kathy? What did you do, Andrei?”
And to Hermione’s confusion, they laughed at that last. She opened the door.
“Is that you, Hermione?”
Hermione nodded. That was all she could do because she was engulfed in thick soft arms, which smelled of lilacs and wine.
What was it with plump women and their expansive natures?
“Call me Aunt Patty, and this is my daughter, Kathy, and her husband, Jack Ryan. We’re so sorry we didn’t make it yesterday, but it was slushing so much my friend Deidre just wouldn’t let us leave anymore because we also got delayed by Kathy’s doctor.” She said all this in one breath, and while still hugging Hermione. At last, she let go and looked Hermione up and down, thereby giving Hermione the chance to see Kathy”who had red hair and brown eyes like Ginny; and Jack, a Celtic rogue with his dark hair and blue eyes.
“Well, have you rested? Did Andrei take care of you? Where have you been?” Aunt Patty asked, squeezing Hermione’s hand and leading her to a chair.
“You didn’t go to the cliffs again, did you?”
They all looked at Andrei: the smiles of the MacElroys slid off when they saw he wasn’t kidding. Hermione flushed. What was with this man?
“Of course I haven’t been to the cliffs. I just went to the Green”I mean, I just looked around at the greenery,” she finished rather lamely. She was too busy trying not to scowl at Andrei.
“That’s good, then.” Still not smiling, he turned to the direction of the kitchen, leaving Hermione under the bemused eyes of the MacElroys.
“What was that about? Did you two have a row about cliffs, Hermione?” Jack grinned.
“I”I don’t know.” Hermione forced herself to grin back.
~ * ~
“It’s a shame you never came when your grandmother visited us, you know. She was a dear to all of us, Maude Alice was.” Aunt Patty gave Hermione another helping of mashed potatoes and then heaped some more on her own plate.
It was lunch, and they dined in the private dining room of the pub, which was also sometimes rented out. It was only the three of them women, plus little Ron in his high chair. Andrei and Jack were manning the pub. They already had tourists even this early, and some local bachelors who couldn’t cook their own lunch if a stove sat beside them.
“I was busy with school. I’m glad I’m here now.” And Hermione was surprised to feel she meant it. “I like hearing her name. Maude. I wish my parents had given me that name, too.”
“It seems to have magic in it, that name,” Kathy said.
Before Hermione could wonder whether they knew her grandmother’s abilities, Aunt Patty added, “Oh yes, Hermione, we have another Maude here. Your grandmother is always referred to as Maude Alice, to distinguish her from the other Maude, who is said to have been the maiden who first lived in the cottage in Faerie Hill, way back when the Irish and English were still at war. She’s famous because it’s said she wept so much until the day she died when she lost her betrothed in a battlefield that a stream was formed by her tears, a stream that still flows there in that hill to this day.”
“It’s a sad story. Even the other version I like better which is that Maude wept because she had spurned a faerie lover, and he had cursed her to never love or be loved again,” Kathy made a face. “Maude Alice is different. Now that’s a sunny gal, wasn’t she, ma?”
“She had her own heartaches, too, Kathy. But she found Alphonse. It’s a shame they went to England, but they returned now and then, and by Finn, I’m glad they did, I could never forget Maude Alice’s smile. It was so sad when we learned she died, but we were all touched when we learned she had chosen to be buried here. Don’t be surprised when you see fresh flowers on her grave, Hermione.”
“And then Alphonse is also buried beside her. How sweet, those two,” said Kathy, giving her Ron a slice of carrot. “Are you going to be buried beside me?” she asked Jack when he peeped into the room to wave at his son.
“Are you kidding, Katherine?” he growled in mock disgust. Before Kathy could scowl at that, he kissed her quick on the lips. Kathy blushed. Jack grinned. “I’ll always sleep beside you, you know that.”
Aunt Patty rolled her eyes at Ron. Ron threw the carrot at his dad’s hair.
~ * ~
“Oh, I forgot to ask Kathy the result of her sonogram!”
“It’s a girl,” Draco answered morosely, not taking his eyes off the front of the car.
He saw her wince and chastised himself for being too snappy. But Merlin, he just couldn’t be all chatty with her. She didn’t know who he really was, and that was worse, because, knowing her, he knew she’d befriend him. And add to that his midnight meeting with that old barrel-belly loon. He scowled more. He couldn’t wait until he delivered Hermione to her cottage. He would then be free of her and her lost-puppy look.
It was raining again. He drove slowly up the hill in this ridiculous rental car Hermione had. He was just thankful he’d gotten used to driving by now, or he really would have been muttering imprecations aloud, instead of in his mind only. He chanced a side-glance at her. Big mistake.
“Have I done something, Andrei?”
“Er, no. Sorry.” He’d been saying that a lot lately.
She didn’t persist and he was grateful. For the next ten minutes of their drive, she remained silent. When he stopped the engine, she gave a little jump. He jumped, too. She’d been napping. Was he dreading looking at her that much that he hadn’t even seen that?
“Oh, my, how lovely.” She fished for her umbrella and got out before he could say ‘snitch’. He sighed and followed her.
She stood smiling at him while he fumbled with the key on the door. ‘It was charmingly arched. And how cute to have the knob in the center.’ He just nodded.
Inside, she grew quiet, drinking in the cozy warmth of the place. He looked around, seeing it through her eyes.
The furniture was old, the chintz was faded, but it suited the cottage that way. The cat leaped from its basket and sniffed around at the rugs, and when he pawed a glass figurine of a snowdrop, Hermione grabbed him and the trinket. She smiled as she brought it to the light. It gleamed and sparkled like a diamond blossom, and it reflected in her eyes”
“Erm, I’ll light a fire for you here and in your bedroom. So you can settle in.”
“Oh, that’s alright. I can manage”” But he was already at the grate.
“You know peat?” he asked, as he arranged bricks of it in the hearth.
“Yes, it’s made from moss, right?”
He restrained himself from rolling his eyes. “Yes, yes, well, it’s all you have here, because it’s what Maude Alice preferred. If you want wood, Aunt Patty would surely send you some. Or I could cut for you. Meantime, you just pile these here, they light easily enough.”
He turned to look at her and felt like she kicked him in the stomach, though all she did was sit there beside him. The glow from the fire made her eyes glint like it was gold. She looked so contented; for once she’d lost the lost-puppy look.
He thought now that it’s worse when she didn’t wear the lost-puppy look. She turned to smile at him. Yes, it was worse.
“Thanks, Andrei. Would you like some tea before you go?”
Merlin.
Author’s Note: Hmm, that “hearts don’t bend” thing doesn’t sound very original to me. I know I’ve read or heard it somewhere. Here’s the acknowledgment to that eloquent someone.
To Love Life Again by lucilla_pauie
Chapter Notes: Disclaimer: Again, all things Irish and some names are borrowed from Nora Roberts's Jewels of the Sun.I gave the title of my source as proof of confidence that I am not plagiarizing plot, character or dialogue--oh, except, Jo Rowling's characters, hehe. ^_^