Nightcall

“How have you been finding it, Granger?” Malfoy asked through the receiver, “Hopefully the Manor is comfortable? The library amenable to your nerdy needs? Auntie Bella suitably sparse?”

Hermione sighed, rolling her eyes.

“Actually, Draco, I wanted to talk to you about that,” she began.

From the other end, Draco groaned audibly.

“She had one job,” he hissed, and she could so easily imagine his expression, the pale point of his nose flushing the same rosy hue as his cheeks for all of two seconds.

“You told her to stay away from me?”

“No, not exactly,” Draco backtracked, “I just told her not to be a bother. She could– you know– see without being seen.”

Hermione worried the corner of her lip.

“And why would she need to see me? Observe me, Draco?”

Draco let out a high, cold chuckle.

“I’m not expressing myself very well. Perhaps I have hypothermia. The slopes are taxing, you know,” he muttered.

Hermione smirked, in spite of herself.

“Is Chamonoix everything you could have dreamed of and more?”

“Oh yes. The illegitimate descendants of Victor Frankenstein are roaming all over the place. And it seems we’ve finally landed upon something mother cannot do with perfect precision. Snowshoeing.”

“How thrilling,” Hermione smiled into the receiver.

“So what has Auntie Bella been like with you?” he murmured, almost tentatively.

“Strange,” Hermione said immediately, “I think she hates me.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not the case. You’re literally just her in a different font.”

Hermione let out a gasp of mock affront.

“Are you joking? I’m nothing like her. She’s volatile and capricious and terrifying and—” She broke off abruptly, realizing that she was about to say something totally inappropriate. Attractive.

“You’re both scarily brilliant. It’s intimidating. I actually feel like you’d have a lot in common if you just sat down and hashed it out.”

Hermione shrugged, forgetting Draco couldn’t see her.

“She sort of indicated that she murdered her husband,” she said lightly, hoping Draco would find the situation funny and eccentric.

But the other end of the line was swallowed up with ominous silence.

“Oh,” he whispered at last, and Hermione’s heart faltered.

“Draco, did she kill her husband?!” Hermione almost shouted into the phone, “I thought she was joking?”

“No, no. Of course she didn’t. He disappeared. That’s all. Presumed dead, and all that,” Draco babbled.

“You don’t sound convinced,” Hermione groaned.

“I am. Convinced. I’m just battling frostbite as we speak. And being terribly brave about it.”

“Stop changing the subject.”

“I’m not. I’m just being vulnerable with you about my frozen extremities. Don’t bite my head off, Granger.”

“So she definitely didn’t kill her husband?” Hermione pressed again, feeling ridiculous.

“Definitely not. She’s just got a bizarre sense of humor,” Draco chuckled.

“Your family is something else, Draco,” she muttered, sighing, and leaning back on her bed, “Have you heard from Harry at all?”

“Here and there. He’s home for the break with his family. They must be obsessed with him because he’s hardly answering his phone,” Draco bit out bitterly.

“Don’t worry. He’s obsessed with you. He’s probably just busy,” Hermione soothed, biting her cheek.

“I dunno, really,” Draco whispered, sounding more exposed than Hermione was used to.

“Your Aunt asked me if I was in love with you,” Hermione shifted gears, hoping it would cheer him up.

“She didn’t!” Draco shrieked, horrified, “Her gaydar must be broken.”

“Have you told her about Harry?”

“Not yet,” Draco’s voice tried for cool and collected, but she could sense the insecurity lurking under it.

“They’re going to love him, Draco. Especially if he makes you happy.”

“I hope so. It’s just complicated. More than you know,” he hummed lightly across the phone.

***

Hermione spent the rest of the day considering Draco’s words. Perhaps she and Bellatrix would get along, if only Hermione could find some way to please her. To entice her out of her shell. To melt the glacial exterior.

It was maddening, how her mind returned in an almost compulsive loop to the woman she was currently residing with.

Bellatrix.

Even thinking her name was a kind of paralysis for Hermione. The rippling drama of those syllables.It was unfair, really.

And so, when she opened up her email just as dusk was falling on the Manor grounds, she gave a little involuntary whine. Her class schedule for the Spring semester had just been delivered, and she had a class lined up with none other that “Bellatrix Black Lestrange.” It was as though she had manifested it.

Feeling reckless, Hermione closed her laptop with a click, ignoring the hundreds of open tabs glaring back at her. She could make this work.

***

She found Bellatrix in the dining room, lounging in a chair at the head of the table, her head lolling back towards the ceiling. One hand was twisting distractedly in her dark hair, and the other held a crystal decanter of something red. Wine perhaps.

“Professor– Black?” Hermione began hesitantly, remembering the woman’s previous disdain for her married name.

Black gave no sign of having heard her, choosing instead to take a long drink from the libation in her grasp.

Hermione cleared her throat, trying a different tact, her face burning.

“It is a beautiful ceiling,” she managed, glancing up at the opulent chandelier which hung like an oversized goldfish over the table, and then, at the pastel colored frescoes that adorned the ceiling itself, fenced in by delicate moldings.

“Oh, are you an art critic?” Bellatrix drawled, a little maliciously, “How charming.”

Hermione shifted on the balls of her feet, annoyance pooling in her stomach.

“No. Although I suppose anyone who pursues some trajectory in the humanities ought to be trained in basic formal analysis,” she broke off, “What I am is a literature student. And I thought I’d tell you that I’m actually enrolled in one of your seminars next semester.”

“Perfect,” Bellatrix hissed, taking another long drink, “This week keeps getting better and better.”

“I thought perhaps–,” Hermione’s voice died in her throat. The whole premise of befriending Bellatrix now seemed laughable. Absurd.

“Never mind,” she whispered, taking a step backwards out of the room. She found she no longer had an appetite, anyways.

Just as she drew level with the door, Bellatrix’s voice sliced the silence between them.

“You thought what, Granger?”

For a moment, Hermione felt disoriented. The way that Bellatrix said her name was vaguely reminiscent of Draco’s form of address, but it was also entirely different. Gripping and possessive and condescending all at once. She shivered.

The older woman was maddening.

“I thought that since we're stuck here together for the next few weeks, we might– perhaps get a head start. I could do research for you. Or perhaps help you with lesson plans, or pick your brain about some of the pieces on the syllabus?”

“Which course of mine are you enrolled in?” Black inquired blandly, staring at her fingernails with a distinct lack of any enthusiasm.

“Gothic Literature,” Hermione supplied readily, “I’ve been terribly excited for it since I was admitted, actually, even though I know the seats fill up fast. I finally have priority registration this year because I’m an upperclassman–”

Bellatrix held up her hand and Hermione immediately quieted.

“And why do you think I would be equally excited, exactly? Why would I waste time working with an overzealous undergraduate, as a tenured professor of graduate students? I know that Draco vouches for your intelligence, but so far I haven’t seen any indication that your brain is anything special, Miss Granger. Perhaps your looks distracted my nephew. Clouded his judgment.”

An icy feeling of rage permeated Hermione’s chest, and she let out a bitter laugh before she could stop herself.

“What is your obsession with Draco’s and my relationship? For someone as lauded academically as yourself, I’d expect you to be a bit more interpersonally engaged. I’m not Draco’s type, and he absolutely isn’t mine, which you would know if you spent any ounce of time getting to know either of us beyond a superficial level.”

Now that she was speaking her mind, she couldn’t seem to stop.

“And I’ve actually been working on an Honors Thesis for the past three semesters, on the intersection of the supernatural in Gothic Literature and the advent of psychoanalysis, even though I’m technically supposed to be in my Masters to begin one at Black Hall. Druella, your
mother, had the rules bent especially for me. At the very least, I’ve read every single work on your syllabus multiple times, and published peer-reviewed analyses of some of them on the side. But yes, I’m sure it was my looks that won me Draco’s respect. ”

She was breathing heavily, each exhale a ragged, worn out thing.

Bellatrix was watching her with a perfectly blank expression. Her red lips opened and then closed again soundlessly.

“I don’t have time for this,” Hermione continued, some of her rage fading, “Goodnight.”

And with that, she bolted out the double doors and into the corridor beyond, her heart thundering away in her chest.