Chapter Seven
Loving Life
“I…I was shocked that’s all. We’re infamous sworn enemies, and then you went away to England after I slapped you in front of everyone during the graduation ball. And then you came back just when I… Although it happened only recently, you’ve been a wonderful friend to me all the same. What makes you think I’d hate you if I knew who you really are?”
The woman, seated on a rock by the pond, impatiently flicked her bushy brown hair back, but her expression was not impatient. Instead, it was kind and amused, her brown eyes twinkling as the man in front of her sighed and grinned nervously. He stopped tearing up the grass beside him and looked up.
“I wasn’t thinking of that actually. Can you imagine the taunt all Ardmore would do if everyone gets wind that it’s old Patrick now in love with Maude Alice?”
The woman wore an indignant expression before she suddenly blushed. Then she smirked. “Are you?”
“Alphonse is.”
“You’re that anxious not to be made fun of?”
“This anxious to be right for you, is all. Thank goodness Fitzgerald is a common name.”
“And thank goodness I used to hate you so much that I didn’t know your second name.”
“I’m so sorry for that, Maude Alice. I know how much I must have hurt you, insulting you all those years ago because of your ability.”
“The past is past, Alphonse.” Almost absently, she reached out and took a lock of his blonde hair and played with it, her eyes far off. “I used to think I’d do nothing else but weep after Dillon died, like my namesake, but I learned from her instead. Maude could have been happy forever if she didn’t choose despair over her faerie lover’s devotion. I’d rather have the happiness.”
“With me?”
“Not necessarily, but yes, if you ask.”
Hermione opened her eyes and winced at the glare of the sunlight. She had never before drawn her curtains at night, because she always woke up early. But now it was noon. She could feel a lightness in her head brought by sleeping just when the sun was rising, and she could feel Springrain fretting beside her, walking up and down the bed, meowing pitifully for food.
“Sorry, doll,” she whispered, stroking the kitten. She pointed her wand at the door. After a second, a can of cat food breezed in. Hermione opened it with the key attached. Springrain jumped down from the bed as Hermione leaned over and placed the food on the floor.
She watched Springrain eating, willing her mind to stay blank. But it wouldn’t. With a sigh, she pointed her wand at the windows. The drapes swung shut. In the gloom that descended, she recalled her dream. Her grandparents.
And she recalled Andrei.
No, Draco.
She left her bed, kicked off her wedges and changed into a shirt and jeans. She began to pace, staring at the millions of dust motes suspended in the shaft of sunlight slicing the dimness of the room from a gap in the curtains.
She didn’t know how long she carried on like this, but when she threw open the drapes at last, it was to the mellow light of an afternoon fast approaching evening. The birds were calling sweet things to each other like friends making last-minute exchanges before going home, and Hermione breathed in the salty, clean scent of the air, not quite standing at her window, but bathed in its light.
Springrain was meowing again. With a laugh, Hermione picked her up. “I’m starving, too!”
~ * ~
“Where have you been off to? Did you and Andrei have a spat so soon? And on a ceili, too! You both just disappeared last night,” Aunt Patty said without preamble, as soon as Hermione was within earshot from the bar. The regulars were at their tables, making no effort to hide their indulgent smiles and titters.
“You don’t look good,” Darcy whispered. Kathy laid a hand on Hermione’s forehead.
“I will probably faint if you go on gossiping about me instead of giving me food and drink,” Hermione replied, snappily enough that everyone left her alone, at least until she finished the tuna and steak sandwiches Kathy served her. Jack was on one table with a laptop, and judging by the number eleven on his forehead, he was deep in MacElroys’ books and not liking the submersion. That left Draco presumably upstairs or somewhere with little Ron. She drank her Chardonnay as if it was water, but it did nothing to quell the hyperactive doings of her stomach.
When Darcy came over to refill her glass, Hermione shook her head and covered her glass with her palm. “I’ll just have water now, Darcy.”
Darcy was encouraged with Hermione’s honeyed tone. She poured Hermione some Perrier and then lifted the flap and sat beside Hermione, giving her a nudge, hip to hip.
“Tell me what happened then?”
“Do you know my grandparents?”
Darcy looked surprised and disappointed but nodded just the same. “Oh, Maude Alice. Of course. Everyone loved her. But she moved off to England, you know.”
She looked around; Kathy and Aunt Patty were peering in from Jack’s shoulder at the laptop over in the other side of the pub, fussing.
“I don’t know if Patty or Kathy has told you, them being related to Alphonse after all, but he used to be Patrick around here, and he used to torment Maude Alice in their younger days, it was quite the village stir whenever they fought and Patrick was quite the village black sheep because of it. And then his family moved to England when his mother remarried. When he came back, he was all different, and introduced himself to everyone as Alphonse, his second name.
“Maude Alice was in mourning then, because Dillon Connor, who could have been your grandfather instead, died of heart disease. It was so sudden; they never even knew he was ill. Anyway, this new Alphonse began to see what Maude Alice really was, and unsurprisingly fell in love, and then he snatched her away from us to England, none of us getting wind that he was the same Patrick Alphonse Fitzgerald who was Maude Alice’s sworn enemy until Maude Alice herself spilt the fact when she had too much mead on the ceili the spring after they were married.”
Hermione laughed right along with Darcy at the end of her long tale, but her stomach was all the more in a frenzy then. And she felt light-headed. Probably from the several glasses of wine Darcy had tried to loosen her tongue with.
“So, where’s Andrei?”
Hermione raised her eyebrows in what she hoped was detachment and not surprise at being asked the question. “I”I was just about to ask you that. I’ve last seen him last night at the ceili.”
Darcy shrugged, gave Hermione a pat on the shoulder and went back to the bar. “I thought he was probably still passed out on your cottage stoop, as the men hereabouts do after they’d had a drink to drown out an argument with their fair ladies.”
~ * ~
He was gone. Where did he go? Surely he wouldn’t leave his family here just because she decided to take some time off before talking to him, so that she wouldn’t have to break any of his bones? And yet, now knowing who he was, perhaps he was in England now, sulking and cursing and calling her all the pretty old names he used to hurl at her”
She shook her head and came to a stop at the edge of Maude’s Pond. It did look like the head of a dragon. And the stream that fed it, the stream that looped from there to her hill like a gigantic, tangled ribbon was like a symbol of her inner turmoil.
“Are you still in turmoil, really? Or are you just being intractable?”
Hermione whirled around, and if it weren’t for the man’s quickness in getting hold of her arm she would have known how it was to land in an Irish pond in early spring dusk.
He had brown hair and blue eyes, such piercing cobalt-blue eyes that spewed sparks as if Hermione had done him some grave wrong, when he was the one who had made her nearly jump out of her skin and be soaked in a pond besides.
“Pardon me, but I don’t know you. Good evening to you,” she managed to say cordially, before turning away…and almost walking into him.
Her surroundings were beginning to spin before her eyes but in spite of this confusion, she could hear distinctly: chimes.
“Learn from your grandmother, and from the stream before you, a stream formed by a foolish woman’s tears. She loved dearly, but she was foolish nonetheless. Unlike your grandmother, who was wise. Learn from her. I am nearing my end, and I am getting impatient. So there, colleen.”
Hermione frowned, at the words and at her hazy vision. But then the chimes began to fade, replaced by the call of the various birds and nocturnal creatures stirring, and then everything became clear and still again. She swayed, steadied herself, and found herself alone.
~ * ~
She didn’t bother to retrieve her rental Volvo at MacElroys’, but walked all the way up to her cottage, finding it calming after her strange encounter with that blue-eyed man. The dusk was deepening, pink turning into lilac and lilac turning into navy, and stars starting to appear. She looked up at the sky, feeling no confusion at all, but frustration because Draco was nowhere just when she wanted to talk to him and get everything over with.
And yet, she couldn’t help remembering, he had been there when she needed him most.
Something white winged through the horizon. Hermione quickened her pace. Hedwig hated to be kept waiting.
When she finally made it upstairs, she saw the white owl perched on her table eyeing the white kitten pacing in Hermione’s bed. Springrain paused every now and then to imitate Hedwig’s stare, head cocked to one side and unblinking. Hermione laughed. Hedwig glared at her.
“So you’ve met. Hedwig, this is Springrain.” She picked up the kitten and nuzzled it, to show Harry’s owl that it was special to her, not to be harmed. “Springrain, this is Hedwig.” Likewise, she stroked Hedwig, showing her kitten that this was a friend. “Be nice to each other since you’re both snowies.”
Hedwig held out her leg, blinking at Springrain in recognition. Springrain meowed once and flopped down on the floor, licking her front paws in an endearing way.
Hermione sat between them and unfolded the note and recognized Ginny’s hasty handwriting, the strokes long and sharp and billowy.
“Hermione,
We’ve been looking after your library as you asked. I can’t believe the books you inherited from Professor Dumbledore! If Minerva could see them now, she’d be green with envy. I remember the books were divided between the two of you, but still…Merlin!
Anyway, while I was doing routine dusting, this book fell at my feet. (And I had to Floo Mum for some pain-relieving potion afterward, mind you). It has no title, and it is in chirography. You know what I’m talking about. You’ll have to conjure it, because Hedwig protested bringing such a weight, and Harry, too, of course. You know he loves his owl.
The book dropped on its spine (no damage at all, I assure you) and opened, and when you’ve just been nailed by a book, you can’t help but stare at the words while you’re waiting for someone to pull it off of you. So I saw something in it about your Blenkinsop Waterbut, page seven thousand forty-nine. I’m dumbfounded, to say the least. If this is your Waterbut as well”it’s not quite a common name after all, is it?
Okay, gotta go now, the pot’s screaming. Will write again soon.
Love, Ginny.”
Hermione had a hand over her mouth. When her amazement was past, she took her wand from where she hid it in one leg of her jeans and conjured the book. It landed on her bedroom’s carpet with a thud. Springrain and Hedwig both jumped.
The cover was old, battered black leather and as Ginny had said, bore no marks at all that suggested what it contained: no other than the unpublished autobiography of the greatest headmaster Hogwarts had ever had.
She riffled the pages nippily but gently, until she came to page seven thousand forty-nine.
Her eyes zoomed from side to side down Dumbledore’s neat and compact script.
“…Nicholas told me a very interesting story, a sidelight that led him to persist in Alchemy. He was in China at that time and looking into the ancient Chinese elixirs. Going down the steep hill from a sanctuary, he chanced upon an inn, which had an English name, surprisingly enough: the Green Dragon. Nicholas was weary and at the end of his tether, because he was getting nowhere in his scheme and he’d just received an owl from Perenelle telling him to go home and just let her be.
He entered the place, and asked for a drink. The publican introduced himself as Blenkinsop Waterbut. I don’t know if this is indeed his name, or my dear Nicholas was just in a temper while recalling this. Blenkinsop was candid enough to say how foolish Nicholas was. I could imagine Nicholas breathing fire at that.
After quite an exchange I won’t repeat in this recount because even though I am not intending this for publication it is always wise to think of the future and of children, Nicholas left the Green Dragon, all the more determined to save Perenelle. He succeeded of course, and became known as the master of Alchemy. The consequence of this was that when I sought him, I had a hard time looking for his Secret-Keeper, an introverted woodcutter who spoke only to the oyster mushrooms. It took a great deal of magic to transform into one, and then I had to be clever not to terrify him to death when I spoke.
Nicholas and I agreed the Philosopher’s Stone needed to be destroyed. But I agreed to keep it for him for some time and see if we could indeed keep it. All this discussion after I have resumed my human form (which required the help of some potions Perenelle cooked up handily). And then Nicholas told me about Blenkinsop Waterbut, half-laughing, half in tears.”
Hermione closed the book before she passed out. China! And Nicholas Flamel, who had made the Philosopher’s Stone hundreds of years ago!
So Mr Waterbut did live chiliads.
And he was not a wizard at all, certainly.
And she met him again awhile ago, in his true form.
~ * ~
She weeded the garden beds every week, getting lost in picking flowers for hours at a time, so that when she went in the house, either Springrain would be mrowling moodily or black smoke coming from the kitchen would greet her.
She’d bought a new stack of books from Waterford and Dublin on her trip there with Kathy and Darcy, in which they also shopped for clothes and some very girly baby things though it was still too early and Kathy had barely begun to show. Afterward, Hermione’s legs were cramped for an hour, but she relished it.
The cottage also looked new, because she’d had its exterior repainted, turning the white walls into cream, and the fading yellow trim into green. The villagers approved, and had brought her cake and cookies, welcoming her anew as if painting the house was a symbol of her officially moving in.
Perhaps she was.
She had already sent a resignation letter each to St. Mungo’s and the Ministry departments she was involved in.
And here she was scrubbing and polishing and dusting, preparing her house for guests for the Summer Solstice Ceili.
She found it a little surreal, not being entrenched in work or anything. But she liked it, simply living for herself, playing with her cat, taking care of her blooms”all of which she knew now, down to how much water each variety preferred”and reading Muggle and Wizarding literature, merely for pleasure.
She was content and happy and could ask for nothing more.
But she wasn’t being completely truthful about that.
~ * ~
Aunt Patty was grilling Molly over the latter’s pumpkin pie recipe. Kathy and Ginny had their heads together on the sofa, giggling every now and then and throwing amused looks at their husbands, who were among the men guzzling down wine and beer near one of the tables. The only rose among them was Darcy, drinking as enthusiastically, but deep in conversation with Charlie. Fred and George were far apart from everyone else, and seemed to be talking to someone, or maybe testing a new product on that unsuspecting someone. Merlin, she only hoped they’d be quick with the Memory Charm. She had long ago given up trying to rein them in with their stuff. Besides, she was too high-strung with worrying if someone might fall down from being poisoned by her cooking. She had made a ham, a cake, a stew, and platters of finger foods.
But everyone seemed to be enjoying, spilling out of the house in pairs and groups, dancing or talking. Remus and Tonks were among the couples, as well as her parents and Hagrid and Madame Maxime (who were still being ogled at by some children). It was quite a reunion. And she was touched at how quick they were to come and see her.
The sky was torn between day and night, giving just enough light to make the hill glow. She’d wanted to set up at the pond, feeling like undoing the negative atmosphere she had undoubtedly left there, but Aunt Patty had insisted that wouldn’t be right. Summer solstice should always be celebrated in Faerie Hill. Hermione agreed. She stopped fussing about and walked through the people, accepting compliments on her cooking and on her dress, a simple frock in silver silk, held up by a slender satin ribbon on her left shoulder. She walked until she left the ceili behind. She reached a lofty point and looking back, she was enchanted at how pretty the gathering was, all those smiling people, lit by the moonlight looking like nymphs and”
“May I have this dance, please?”
She smiled and turned around, allowing him to place his hands on her waist and turn her. The music still reached them, and along with it, that tinkle of chimes.
“Where have you been?”
“Have you been looking for me then?”
“Not particularly.”
“I’ve been at the Green Dragon, just mulling things over until he kicked me out.”
“You’re not referring to Blenkinsop Waterbut, are you?” “I’m sorry if I””
“Yes, him.” “No, I’m glad you left.”
They were quiet after speaking again that way in unison twice.
“I knew you’d say that.”
“Yes, quite. I needed to…live for myself without…You see, ever since I came to Hogwarts, I’ve had goals and purposes. When the war finished and Ron died, I felt like there’s nothing left for me to live for. Silly, isn’t it?”
“Yes, quite. It’s silly how you sound like you’ve been practicing this speech for a while now, maybe to your cat or in front of a mirror.”
Hermione’s lips twitched, but she pulled in her smile. “I have. And as I said, I needed some air. I was stunned. Though I’ve had suspicion of it for ages, it still hit my stomach. I’m actually related, even if only distantly and only by marriage, to the ferret! And if I hadn’t left you, or if you went after me, I would have jinxed you into oblivion or broken your perfect nose. I still feel inclined to, actually.”
“Really?” he asked, letting go of her waist and distancing himself in mock alarm.
“You enjoyed making a fool of me, didn’t you?”
“I was the one who always felt like a fool, as a matter of fact.”
Perhaps the musicians took a break to eat. It was silent, with only that distinctive and musical cling cling cling cling that seemed to come from underneath the hill itself, but surrounding them, resonating like a bird’s song. Hermione looked at Draco, trying to see the old nemesis she had in school, but she couldn’t picture that boy anymore. Instead, there was only Andrei, who had sung a silly sweet song to an infant, who had taken her to the Tower Hill, quiet but offering sympathy, who had given her a kitten, a new plaything so she wouldn’t get melancholy in the cottage.
She smiled at him.
~ * ~
Draco sighed as quietly as he could as he looked at her smiling at him. His heart was doing that trick again, hammering like mad in his ribcage. He could hear the chimes and they quickened, too, as if to keep pace with his lunatic cardiac muscle.
“You mistrusted me, perhaps? That was a deliberate insult”” Her smile was gone for now.
“It’s not that, Hermione””
“”seeing as you know I would have been glad to see you again! You never gave me a chance to thank you for avenging Ron’s murderer yourself,” she said quietly and sighed. “I could still feel the sting of your hand on my arm, when you saved me from the ignominy of murdering that woman.”
He got hold of her shoulder and squeezed.
“Merlin, you think I want to be thanked for killing my own aunt? As for everything else, I already said I’m sorry, what else should I say?”
“That you are falling in love with her?”
Hermione gave a small cry of surprise and Draco cursed and blushed.
The tinkle of chimes had risen to a crescendo and there beside them had appeared a young man with brown hair and blue eyes.
“Who are you, pardon?” Draco asked in forced calm.
He felt Hermione touch him on the arm. “Blenkinsop Waterbut, I presume, sir?” Draco gaped at her, and then at the man, who smiled, revealing too perfect white teeth.
“Only half right, madam,” the man answered, taking Hermione’s hand and kissing it. “My name is Niall. Lord Niall of the Faeries, over whose tower we are right now standing.”
“What?” Draco exclaimed, quite loudly, because the chimes were still ringing.
“What?” Hermione asked Draco, her eyes still on Niall.
“He’s Maude’s faerie lover, in the legend,” Draco answered.
“Whom she spurned, yes, and truly,” Niall said. “But I’ve learned my lesson, and with my atonement, I have done.”
At this, five women”faeries they must be, whose beautiful faces glowed like the moon”rose out of the ground beside Niall, and embraced and kissed him. Draco found himself squinting because of the dazzling sparkle of diamonds on their hair, ears, neck and wrists.
“And these are my daughters, Blesilda, Encanta, Kintana and Sopia. And my own, my precious, Lilias.”
Beside Draco, Hermione made a small and breathless ‘Oh’. The chimes had gone diminuendo. The faerie women were smiling at them, arm in arm with Niall.
“We have a stricter code for our magic than you do. We are punished when we curse out of spite. You know what I did to Maude. And so I was cast into your world, until the time came for me to conduct the Green Dragon. A thousand souls I needed to exhort or make happy before I could return to my own lands.
“Since you two are the last, and quite the closest to my own…past sufferance,” he smiled, “I want to leave you a remembrance.”
Niall reached into the collar of his gleaming indigo robes and pulled out a tiny vial on a chain around his neck. He pulled it over his head, joined Draco’s and Hermione’s hands together, and pressed it onto their palms.
“That bottle contains Maude’s tears. Tears of love which I had once begged to be given me, that was why I wore it around my neck. But now, I have love already. I don’t need those tears.”
He kissed Lilias gently, the chimes rang around again like a storm, and then they were gone, leaving behind a scent of musk, heady and sweet, and the vial, which turned into a diamond as big as a pebble, scintillating in the spring night.
Draco let out a small laugh. Hermione’s mouth was open. He nudged it closed. “So where were we before we were rather rudely interrupted?”
“Don’t be facetious,” she said, still breathless, staring at the diamond in her palm.
“I’m not facetious. Delirious, is all.” He smiled. And he still hadn’t removed his hand from her chin. She batted it away, blushing.
“About what?”
“Faeries popping out of the ground and leaving us a diamond that could buy half of Waterford, girls in the ceili wearing low necklines, my cousin finally thinking of getting a babysitter, and my other particular ‘cousin’ being friends with me. Plenty reason enough.” He looked back at the ceili as he spoke, and sat down on the grass. He almost didn’t sound like himself. Seeing that Lord Niall had loosened his tongue, more than likely.
Hermione joined him, giving him another whiff of that delightful scent she wore. “When we’re alone like this””
She stopped mid-sentence as the silence resounded with his neck cracking as he turned to look at her. She laughed. He rubbed his neck.
“When we’re alone like this, do I call you Andrei or Draco, cousin?”
“Do you wear shoes you hate if you can help it?”
“No.” And she nodded in understanding.
“I’m ashamed of most of my past. And everything I’m ashamed of stemmed from actions triggered by my old name. There’s no way I’d think of using it again especially now when””
“When what?”
He looked away. He couldn’t be thinking what he was thinking. Yet he was. He grinned and shrugged. “Oh, you know, I might share it with somebody else. Someone undeserving of being tainted.”
“Oh, I see.”
He turned to her and stared into those chocolate brown eyes. “Just so you know, that’s all.”
When her face began to glow pink, he looked away.
They stayed like that for some moments, the crickets and tree frogs filling in the silence.
“Look at me,” she suddenly whispered.
He obeyed, not feeling any other inclination anyway. Her cheeks were still glowing and in that silver dress, she looked like a faerie herself, and more beautiful than Lilias or the other four. Down at the ceili, the musicians had reassembled, and were playing a lovely slow tune on their fiddles and flutes.
“You’ve made a new life for yourself. I’m proud of you and…thankful of you. MacElroy is a good name. It suits you.” Her smile turned mischievous and she imitated his shrug. “And it will suit whoever you’ll want to share it with, I’m sure.”
It was a good moment to kiss her, and he did, briefly and gently.
She smiled, and together, they went back to the ceili.
Author’s Note: This story was made possible by JKR, Mugglenet, Mugglenet Fanfiction Beta Boards, Nora Roberts, Encarta, Google, Nestea Lemon and Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut. ^_^
And of course, my simply wonderful reviewers. Thank you so much! *bow*
(Oh and ‘wakas’ is not Gaelic, as you might expect. It is Filipino.
A ceili is simply, a dance. The Irish hold ceilis as the English hold balls.)
To Love Life Again is dedicated with much love and bubbly life to The Master Camaraderie of Wizards and Witches ~MaCofWiz~