The next morning, Lucifer was woken by Hermione. She explained that everyone else was completely afraid to wake him and risk his wrath, and they knew sending her into his room was the safest bet by far.
"Molly said we are taking care of those doxies in the drawing room today right after breakfast," Hermione said, leaning against his bedside table. "She was a bit hesitant to suggest it after what happened yesterday, but she didn't want to put it off any longer."
"I could just torch all of the doxies if Sirius doesn't care about the curtain," Lucifer suggested as he swung his legs out of bed to get dressed.
"You can't go around torching and exploding everything," She said, thoroughly enjoying the view.
"Why not?" He asked as he pulled his trousers up.
The rough fabric brushed against the freshly knitted, sensitive skin he had acquired from yesterday's blast. He took a brief moment to adjust himself and his boxers underneath before moving to reach for his shirt.
Hermione took a moment to answer, trying to tear her eyes away. "Because there's no 'fun' in that if you don't try to critically think it through, Lucifer?"
"Yeah?" He asked, about to pull his shirt over his head.
"Can you wait a moment to put your shirt on?" She had blurted the question out without thinking. Lucifer paused, his lips curving into a sharp smirk. "Uh... I mean... that's a rather direct way to admit you want to see my upper body shirtless, Hermione."
Hermione's face burned to the point of her cheeks changing to a deep, violent crimson. "That's completely not what I meant!" She yelled, feeling entirely flustered all of a sudden. "I meant your scars... I wanted to ask about them..."
Lucifer looked down at his bare torso, his chest and abdomen mapped with faint lines where the wood had been pulled out, layered over marks. "Oh..." He paused, looking into her frantic eyes. "I'll tell you about them some time later, deal?"
"I'm holding you to that," She said defensively.
She stood up and walked toward the bedroom door as he finished pulling his shirt on, letting out a small grunt from the way the movement tugged the deep muscles underneath.
"Oh, yeah," Hermione added, her hand on the doorknob. "Molly also said that she found a nest of dead puffskeins under the sofa."
Lucifer was the last one to enter the drawing room after breakfast, and Molly said absolutely nothing about his tardiness. The room was dark, musty, and smelled of centuries-old neglect. He saw everyone standing in a line with heavy cloth tied over their noses and mouths. Hermione handed him a clean strip of fabric, which he painfully tied around his face.
He wasn't about to ask for help from anyone; he was simply too stubborn, and pure pride had nothing to do with. She also handed him a large spray bottle filled with a thick, black liquid. "Doxycide, nice."
"I've never seen an infestation quite so bad," Molly said, her voice muffled through her scarf as she looked at the windows. "What that House-Elf has been doing for the last ten years—"
Hermione wanted to argue, but thinking of Kreacher, she found it incredibly hard to defend his domestic record. "If he hadn't been left entirely alone with Sirius' mother's portrait..."
"Well, you're right about that," Sirius said, entering the room and pulling the heavy door shut behind him. "Being locked up alone with that shrieking banshee for ten years will drive absolutely anyone mad." He chuckled, carrying a heavy, bloodstained burlap sack.
"I've just been feeding Buckbeak," he said when he saw Lucifer looking at the stains. "I keep him upstairs in my mother's old bedroom. She's not exactly using it anymore." His smirk was unmissable.
A loud, clanging bell suddenly resounded from the ground floor. "Must be Kingsley," Sirius muttered, turning on his heel to leave the room.
Molly was currently bent over a guide book that Lucifer recognized immediately. 'Wanderings with Werewolves' by Gilderoy Lockhart.
"You've got to be kidding me..." Lucifer said, letting out a heavy sigh.
"What?" She looked up from the pages, her brow furrowing.
"A book by Lockhart? Seriously?" He tried to remain entirely calm, but after how useless the celebrity wizard had proved to be, he wanted to incinerate text right then and there.
"The man was a complete fraud," Hermione spat with venom, her hatred for the book's thief flaring. "And even I absolutely hate to admit this, but the information about Magical Creatures in his books was at least accurate. He stole the data from highly competent wizards, even if he had no idea how to actually deal with himself."
Lucifer exhaled a slow breath. "I know. That's how I figured out the Golden Egg hint during the tournament as well." His voice, for a brief moment, sounded gravelly and thick from the dust, and Hermione found the tone to be oddly, intensely attractive.
Molly looked back down to the text. "Right, you lot. You need to be remarkably careful, because doxies bite, and their double rows of teeth are highly poisonous."
"Because of course they are," Lucifer said snidely under his breath. He looked at the buzzing curtains, his mind analyzing the pests. 'Doxies... venomous, parasitic little pests. Yet their eggs contain a highly concentrated, volatile magical binding agent. Perfect for stabilizing dark hexes or reinforcing potion longevity if harvested correctly.'
"I've got a bottle of the proper antidote right here, but I'd much rather nobody end up needing it today," Molly warned.
"If anyone ends up actually needing it," Fred started with a grin.
"It'll probably be Lucifer, given how his weekly track record is going," George finished.
"Not funny," Hermione said sharply.
She remembered with a stab of fear how Lucifer had looked last night with wood splitting his torso; nothing about his vulnerability was funny to her. Though she had to admit to herself, she had still experienced a few incredibly 'lewd' thoughts when he was naked for her, and she couldn't resist dreaming about eventually giving him a "few marks" of her own making.
Molly had them all positioned evenly in front of the massive curtains. "When I say the word, start spraying immediately," She commanded. "They'll come flying out at us in a swarm, I expect, but the book says one good squirt of the Doxycide will paralyze them completely. When they're immobilized, just throw them into this bucket." She stepped up beside them, her own bottle raised. "All right—spray!"
Lucifer squeezed the trigger, and a split second later, a fully grown Doxy tore out from the heavy folds of the material. It had shiny, beetle-like wings whirring violently to keep it airborne, its tiny, needle-sharp teeth bared in a furious hiss. Its fairy-like body was covered with thick, coarse black hair, and its four tiny fists were clenched with primal fury.
He nonchalantly aimed and sprayed it directly in the face. The mist immobilized it instantly in mid-air, and it fell to the floorboards with a loud, heavy thunk, causing a plume of dust to fly up from the carpet. He tossed the frozen creature into the bucket and continued along the fabric.
"Fred, what on earth are you doing?!" Molly barked sharply from down the line. "Spray that creature at once and throw it away!"
"Right-o, Mum," Fred said brightly.
Lucifer paid absolutely no mind to what anyone else was doing, focusing entirely on his own section. The de-doxying of the drawing room curtains took most of the morning. It was well past midday when Molly finally removed the protective scarf from her face and sank heavily into a sagging armchair.
The curtains were no longer buzzing; they hung limp, damp, and smelling strongly of the chemical spray. Dozens of unconscious doxies lay crammed into the wooden bucket on the floor, alongside a porcelain bowl filled with their black eggs.
Lucifer had already secretly pocketed a few of the frozen specimens, dropping them into his private pocket dimension for future experiments. Crookshanks had slinked up, starting to sniff aggressively at the bowl, causing Fred and George to frantically shoo the cat away to protect their hidden stash.
"I think we'll tackle those after lunch," Molly said, pointing her finger at the dusty, glass-fronted cabinets standing on either side of the mantelpiece.
The shelves were crammed with an odd, dark assortment of ancient objects: a selection of rusty, curved daggers, heavy claws, a coiled snakeskin, a number of tarnished silver boxes inscribed with old languages that Hermione didn't recognize, and, least pleasant of all, an ornate crystal bottle with a large, flashing opal set into the stopper.
The vial was completely full of what Lucifer recognized instantly to be concentrated human blood.
The clanging doorbell rang down below once again, and Molly stood up, announcing she'd be right back up with sandwiches.
The moment the drawing room door latched shut behind her, everyone but Lucifer rushed over to the front window to peer down. It wasn't that he wasn't curious about the visitor; he just couldn't physically move quickly without his muscles aching, so he didn't bother getting up from his chair. He had firmly decided after yesterday's incident to stop letting his guard down or letting himself be vulnerable just because his girlfriend was in the vicinity. He needed his shields at maximum strength.
"Mundungus? What on earth has he brought all those heavy cauldrons for?" Hermione asked, straining to see through the glass.
"Probably looking for a safe place to hide them," Harry said, his voice laced with a thick hint of loathing. "Isn't that exactly what the idiot was doing the night he was supposed to be tailing my house? Picking up dodgy, stolen cauldrons?"
"Yeah, you're entirely right!" Fred said in an 'aha' moment. "Blimey, Mum is absolutely not going to like that..."
Fred and George crossed the room quickly, standing right by the door crack.
"Sounds like Mundungus is talking directly to Sirius and Kingsley..." George muttered, pressing his ear to the wood. "Can't hear properly through the timber... reckon we ought to—"
Before George could suggest using an 'Extendable Ear', the sound of a shrieking banshee echoed through the floorboards. But this time, it was very clearly Molly Weasley, since Lucifer had completely destroyed Walburga Black's portrait the night before.
"WE ARE NOT RUNNING A HIDEOUT FOR STOLEN GOODS IN THIS HOUSE!" her voice boomed up the stairs.
"I absolutely love hearing Mum shouting at someone else," Fred said with a deeply satisfied smile, opening the drawing room door an inch to let her voice fill the space more easily. "It makes such a nice, refreshing change."
"—COMPLETELY IRRESPONSIBLE! AS IF WE HAVEN'T GOT ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT WITHOUT YOU DRAGGING ILLEGAL CAULDRONS INTO THE HEADQUARTERS—"
"The idiots are letting her get into her stride," George said as he shook his head, "You've got to head her off early, otherwise she builds up a head of steam and goes on for hours. And she's been dying to have a go at Mundungus ever since he sneaked off when he was supposed to be watching you, Harry."
"I think I finally agree with her on something..." Lucifer said as a shiver went down Hermione's spine with how he said it.
She knew it had for everyone else if it did her, because she was rarely bothered with what he said or how he said it. Hermione wasn't afraid of him, but even he could send a shiver down her spine, and not just in the good sort of way.
George made to shut the door because he was tired of hearing his mothers banshee cries, when a House-Elf wandered into the room. Except for the filthy rag tied like a loincloth around its middle, it was completely naked.
xxxxxx
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