The Morning Sun Does Come
Five months before:
Her fingertips brush over the paintings on the walls of the safe house where they meet every few weeks.
“Those are gaudy things,” he says.
She jumps at his voice and turns towards him, then back to the painting.
“They’re not,” she replies. “In the Edo period of Japan, people would often hang these sorts of paintings in their houses to ward off spirits. They depict ghosts. Evil to repel evil.”
Now :
He thinks about that conversation as he walks through Malfoy Manor. The portraits lining the walls here depict ghosts as well, his long dead ancestors. They didn't repel evil like she explained, instead inviting it in. He could feel the ichor of the malice curl behind his ears to rake black fingers through his hair.
Four months before:
“What do you think this one is about?”
He stands in front of a painting of a man and woman with a rooster in their arms, giving it what looks like Sake.
She’s beside him, arms wrapped around his and leaning her head on his shoulder to study it.
“The kimono she wears, longer sleeves are usually to represent unmarried women. If I were to guess…they’re lovers.”
“And the rooster they’re getting sloshed?”
She laughs, becomes serious and tightens her hold on him. Whispers, “With the rooster’s crow comes the morning sun. The end of their time together. ”
Now:
He usually kept her secret coin of contact in a hidden hole in his bedroom wall, but he’s being called to attention more often now. He tries to ignore the burning through his pocket while he listens to Dolohov’s plans.
A year before:
“They sent you?” he asks incredulously as Granger slips through the door of the tea shop turned safe house. He’s agreed to meet with an informant for safe passage, but he never expected her.
She simply shrugs. “They did.”
Now:
He rushes from the meeting, past the gates and wards of the Manor. He apparates straight to the tea shop.
Two months before:
“Do you see the gaze in the man’s eye?” She asks, pointing to the barely there sliver of eye that peeps out from behind the woman’s head in the… erotic…painting. “And their hand placement? His hand on her neck, hers on his cheek. The sensuality of sex.”
His hand on her neck, hers on his cheek. “How do you know all of this?”
“I read,” she says against his lips.
Now:
He knows the moment he lands on the porch of the tea house that something is wrong, but slips through the door anyway. He’s immediately bound with an Incarcerous with her already bound and on her knees.
“You’ve been careless, young Malfoy,” A masked Deatheater says from his right. A click of his tongue. “A traitor, such a shame. Any last words?”
Draco only stares at her and smiles, a tear slipping down her cheek. “It seems the rooster has crowed, Granger.”
