Starving Works

Prologue - Homecoming Day

19 May 1872, London

    Diagon Alley was choked with activity on that May day the boys got home from Spain. Witches, mothers and wives accordingly, in long gowns and period robes, their hair coiffured elegantly and beautifully, waiting anxiously to see their wizard of choice. It was an era in history that witches stayed at home and raised the children, a time none too proud in many of these women's hearts later in life.

    A young woman with brown hair done up in curls dashed around amid the crowd, looking at every face to see if the man she loved was there after all. Her long burgundy dress was dusty from her trip from the Malfoy home in Bath to London, riding a horse furiously through most of the city because the amount of magic in the air for the soldiers' return eliminated all chance of Floo or Teleporting. She didn't much enjoy broomsticks, they were slow and they tended to look rather funny in Muggle London. It annoyed her that no one had yet developed a more convenient way of transportation.

    What Lady Malfoy had said kept running through her mind. 'You ought'nt be begging my leave, Miss Granger, for there is no leave to beg. It is I who should beg yours, because you have what I missed a lifetime ago. I will not stand by and see you sabotage your own happiness for my son's. Go to London. So, I beg your leave, Miss Granger, but get out of my house!"

    The girl had stared at Lady Malfoy, the regal, Italian-born matriarch of the most powerful and influential Wizarding family in southern England. Her supposed future mother-in-law was telling her to go to London to meet the man she truly loved as he returned from the war in Spain, a war she had desperately tried to throw herself into after Fred's letter had come, but was barred from doing so by Lady Malfoy's son because he loved her dearly. He was much like his father and had never realized he was only clutching a sparrow tighter and tighter until all breath would eventually be squeezed out of her.

    She couldn't see her love's face anywhere in the crowd. The joyful cries of witches and children and servicemen could be heard up and down the street as families were reunited. She was beginning to wonder if he had even survived. She didn't know. Her heart was thudding in her breast. She didn't know where to turn.

    Finally, she fell back against a wall, her shoulder hitting the rough stone. She bowed her head and let the tears come. A woman nearby looked at her, "Your man not come home?" she asked. She didn't answer. Her shoulders were shaking too hard from her sobs.

    An hour or so passed, and most of the people went home to have more private celebrations of the return of their soldiers. The Darkness had been thwarted once more. The girl had sunk down to the ground, her back against the wall. It had finally dawned on her that she had given up everything she had to come here and be disappointed. Of course he wouldn't come. She'd gotten a letter from Fred Weasley saying he was dead, hadn't she? It was nothing but a letter delivered posthumously by an owl that had gotten lost in transit that had made her think he was still alive. How could she have been so stupid to have believed that he could have survived the war? He wasn't a soldier. He was an athlete, a scholar, a wonderful man, but not a soldier. He wasn't built to fight.

    She looked up and noticed the Weasley clan moving in one integrated unit. The four surviving brothers, the parents, and only sister were crowded together in the street, hugging and sobbing like mad. Fred saw her and smiled sadly, but made no effort to approach. The eldest brother Bill, the youngest brother Ron, and the smartest brother Percy stood with him. Their mother had her arms fastened so tightly around Bill it seemed she was cutting off his air supply. The little sister, Ginny, had her arms wrapped around Ron's middle. Their father had an arm around each of the other two boys. All four looked weary and horrified in their own ways. Miss Granger could see it in Fred's eyes; she knew he'd watched his twin brother murdered with those eyes, directly in front of him. She couldn't imagine what that must have been like. She didn't have a huge family of brothers and sisters and parents to mob her and tell her it would all be all right someday. In fact, she didn't have much of a family at all. Her mother had died giving birth to her younger brother, who died of polio seven years later. Her father was little better than a vegetable, spending his days propped up in a chair in his study in the family manor. The Granger family name had a lot of money attached to it, and he would live out the rest of his days in comfort, but poor Hermione had entire lifetime ahead of her and no one to holiday with.

    Fifteen minutes after the Weasleys moved on, she stood up. She couldn't take it anymore. She resolutely brushed dust off her skirt, patted the pocket at her waist to make sure her wand was still in place, and then set off down the street. She looked around once or twice to see if maybe she'd missed him, but to no avail. Fred hadn't been lying to her. He really was dead.

    On that somber thought, she went into the Floo office and went home.

    What she didn't know was that five yards down the street, Oliver Wood was running for her. He had been all the way down by Gringotts, unable to get anywhere near the Leaky Cauldron end of the Alley through the crowd. It had made him infinitely depressed, and he knew she had given up on him after all. Fred had told him before he left that Draco Malfoy would be asking her to marry him, and anyone in the Wizarding world knew that when a Malfoy proposed marriage, the girl didn't have much of a choice.

    Then, deep in of his dark thoughts, he had looked towards the apothecary on a whim and had seen her. She was wearing her hair up and a burgundy dress. She looked, if possible, more beautiful than the last time he'd seen her. And, she was there, waiting on some unquenchable hope that he wasn't dead after all. It was then that he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that she did love him.

    And he was ashamed, because he had never believed her in his soul. Even when they were lying in his bed with just the candlelight to illuminate their faces, her pale curves and her shining dark hair. No matter how many times she had told him that she did. No matter how hard she had cried when he told her he was going off to Spain to the war. He had never believed her, because she was so many billions of miles above him. She was brilliant and talented and all he had been was an athlete with tolerably good marks at Hogwarts. All he cared for in the world was Quidditch, at least until he met her.

    But when he saw her standing near the apothecary looking like she was about to cry, he knew she loved him. His throat closed up and all the muscles in his back seized. He let out a strangled cry of happiness. He ran towards her, stopping only once to grab the shoulders of a complete stranger and say, "She loves me!" to him.

    "Hermione!" he shouted but she did not look, did not seem to hear. "Hermione!"

    She did not hear him at all and his fleeting happiness derailed when she turned into the Floo office and stepped up to the fireplace. She was gone. She loved him, but she was gone. If she was gone, it wouldn't matter if he was alive or dead.

*

    Fred Weasley hadn't been able to believe his eyes when he saw Hermione Granger by the apothecary. She was marrying a Malfoy, was she not? What on earth would she be doing on Diagon Alley on Homecoming Day? However, he was tired from the war, and he was tired from his tearful family reunion. His heart was heavy, he was traumatized, he couldn't think rationally. Perhaps he was imagining her.

    He knew that she still clung to the same irrational hope he did. Maybe her love was really still alive, maybe his best friend was.

    He had hung back at the ice cream shop, mostly to talk to Edgar, the crotchety old wizard who ran it, and partly to watch Hermione to make sure she didn't end up falling asleep like some gutter rat. He wasn't stupid or uninformed. He knew what Muggle London was like, and as difficult it was for him to think, Wizarding London wasn't a whole lot better, just with fewer orphans and whores and beggars.

    It was while he was loitering about Edgar's that he spotted Oliver sprinting up the street like a God-damned madman towards Hermione, who looked sad and broken. Fred choked on his mint and pumpkin swirl with cashews, which garnered him a glare from a prim witch in fuchsia robes and a matching hat. He was tempted to snap, "Well, it's not everyday that you see a dead person running down Diagon Alley, now is it?" at her, but opted not to because he had more important things to worry about.

    He dashed out into the street himself, only to see Hermione duck into the Floo Office and vanish. He shook his head, took a bite of his ice cream, and stalked up to his old friend. "Lovely of you to engineer your own death, Oliver," he said, his voice carefully controlled.

    "Oh, yes. Sorry 'bout that," came the reply. Oliver stood very still and stared off into space, features lax and pupils dilated.

    "You're a prat, you know."

    "Don't I." A statement, not a question.

    "So, where've you been, since you're obviously not dead?" asked Fred, chewing noisily on a nut. He raised his bright red eyebrows and glared not completely good-naturedly.

    Oliver paused, dark eyes conflicted. "Well, Weasley, it's complicated," he said finally.

    Something broke in Fred and he scoffed. "Complicated? I'll tell you bloody complicated. Watching your twin brother's soul get blown to bits in front of you, leaving an empty shell! Having to write to your best friend's girl to tell her that he's dead! Having to watch your best friend's girl destroy herself out of grief, which includes marrying into the worst family in the bloody, sodding Wizarding World!"

    Oliver watched him wanly. "You don't want just an apology."

    Fred stared at him as though he'd suddenly begun spouting large bubbles from his backside. "You're damn straight I don't just want an apology!" he shrieked.

    "Then what do you want, Fred?" said Oliver tiredly. "My blood? Fine. It's yours. I don't really have a lot of use for it, anyway." He locked gazes with Fred. "You can even have my soul for George if it pleases you." His voice was low and lethal.

    That really stung Fred, and he made sure it was obvious. He turned away. He couldn't believe that someone would say something like that to him, especially someone he had thought to be his closest friend! He felt like crying, if he'd have known that would solve anything. Unfortunately, he knew that tears didn't solve anything if you weren't a female desiring something. "That's not fair, Oliver," he said in a ragged voice.

    Composing himself and looking distressed, Oliver shrugged. "She came," he said in a voice that wasn't wholly his own. "Didn't you tell her I was dead?"

    Fred rolled his eyes and tried to rein in his anger. "Of course I did. You were, to my knowledge, quite dead. Struck down by a curse, I believe the official limitation was." He frowned and shook his head. "I really can't imagine why she would have come. She's not stupid."

    "I hear she's marrying Draco Malfoy," said Oliver, looking down the street, taking in the shop fronts and the English breeze and feeling hollow.

    "Next month." Fred couldn't think of anything else he could say that wouldn't result in his having to consume a large quantity of Glumbumble secretion to keep from shouting at Oliver hysterically.

    Oliver squared his shoulders and nodded slowly, understandingly. Grimly. "Well, then I suppose there isn't much else for me here. If you see her, don't let her know I was ever here. Salut, Fred," he said gravely. He tipped his hat and set off towards the Leaky Cauldron for Muggle London. Fred watched him disappear through the brick arch, then went into the Floo office himself.

    He knew better than to think while he was in the Floo tunnel, but once he was safely in his old bedroom at his parents' house, he sat down on the floor and stared at the bed George would never need again. His small, magically-light bag was sitting on his own bed. A single wooden chair not unlike the ones at Hogwarts was situated beside the larger of the two bedroom windows. Come to think of it, it was one of the Hogwarts chairs. George had shrunk it and stuffed it in his bag on their last day, claiming he needed some bit of memorabilia from the place. He and George had stripped the room down before they left for Spain, all their posters and pictures and such going into boxes in the attic with the family ghoul. Fred doubted he'd ever find it in himself to dig that stuff out again. He'd already gotten the one thing he wanted, a sepia photograph of George, himself, Hermione, and Ron on his and George's last day at Hogwarts, waving and grinning. Everyone had gotten their pictures taken that day, a professional photographer from Hogsmeade having come up to the castle to do it.

    The sky had been the perfect shade of cornflower blue, and utterly cloudless. Hermione had looked so beautiful that day. Ron had looked vibrant and alive. He and George had looked so young. But it had been too long and war is jading.

    He wondered what Oliver meant by his last statement. Of course, there was everything left for him. Oliver always had something Fred never did, and that was something Fred had never really envied. But the fact remained, Hermione loved the daft git, that much evidenced by the fact she had come to Diagon Alley that day. It meant that she was still clinging to the hope he was still alive. Perhaps Oliver was for the first time in his lifetime giving into weakness, admitting defeat-- how repulsively un-Gryffindor. Fred supposed it was a side effect of whatever secret thing he'd done for the Ministry and the War Effort that required his family and friends to think he was dead. If that was true, Oliver had changed more than he'd thought over the years.

    But what did it matter, really, if Oliver was gone anyway? Fred wondered, running his fingertips over the glass covering the snapshot of a happier time.

*

    "You're right," Lady Narcissa Malfoy told her irate son in a serene voice. "It was rash of her to say that. However, it very much is her place to say that she doesn't love you and she can't marry someone she doesn't love." She fixed him with her patented sizing glare.

    "But Mother," drawled Draco Malfoy, seething, "you and Father didn't love each other and you still married." He was pacing like a caged animal, back and forth, back and forth. Lady Malfoy itched to grab his wrist and make him sit down. He was making her very nervous and she'd never been much for menageries.

    Lady Malfoy shook her head. "The circumstances were distinctly different in that situation, Draco. Your father's and my relationship was difficult and I don't wish that on anyone, least of all a sweet girl like Miss Granger. I would strongly advise you to accept her rejection gracefully and move on to a witch who's slightly more receptive."

    Draco's eyes flashed. "You mean a witch who isn't in love with a ghost," he said, his tone cutting.

    "Yes, Draco. That's precisely what I mean," she told him. She made sure that by the tone of her voice there could be no mistaking on his part that it was precisely what she didn't mean.

    Perhaps Miss Granger was in love with a ghost. But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, or a terribly unexpected thing. Fred Weasley had only owled her that he was dead a few months earlier. A few months, Lady Malfoy well knew, was hardly any time at all to mourn anyone properly, let alone the love of one's life. There was no doubt in her mind that Oliver Wood was Miss Granger's true love, and if Lady Malfoy could see her way clear to be sentimental, she would have told someone else precisely what she thought. In any case, she knew that Miss Granger and her son were ill suited at best and doomed to destroy each other permanently at worst, and neither scenario seemed remotely attractive to her.

    She stood up and crossed the room to the huge aquarium that covered most of one wall. Her favorite part of the aquatic landscape was the pair of delicate silvery Ramora Lucius had smuggled in from India when Draco was twelve. Luckily, Ramora lived a very long time. She touched the glass. "Draco, in the ocean, you have to keep swimming, or else someone else will come by and eat you or you will drown. The Ramora is the only fish, Magical or not, that can remain still in the water indefinitely. It can anchor ships, you know."

    "What's that got to do with anything?" he asked, annoyed.

    She turned and met his gray eyes. "You are certainly not a Ramora." With that, she turned and left the room. In the corridor outside she found Miss Granger, looking frantic and devastated but alarmingly resolute.

    "Lady Malfoy," she said with tears in her eyes, "I've decided not to heed your advice. I want to marry Draco."

    This was a shock if there ever was one. "Why? What has changed?" demanded Lady Malfoy, her own gaze furious, her heart sinking miserably.

    "Nothing, unfortunately," said Hermione, sniffing. "I have been stripped of the lie I was hiding behind, that's all. Oliver really is dead." She shook her head. Lady Malfoy was caught without words. Miss Granger pushed past her and into the study where Draco was standing, a wretched, smug look on his face.

    "Unbelievable," muttered Lady Malfoy, tossing a glance back over her shoulder into the room. Draco had his arms around Miss Granger, who had her face against his chest, but his eyes were on his mother. He raised his eyebrows and elevated his chin a fraction of an inch as if to say, 'Oh, what were you saying, Mother?'

    She looked away and left them to their reunion.