The next morning, Lucifer was woken up by Hermione.
She explained that everyone else was afraid to wake him and risk his wrath, and that they knew sending Hermione in to wake him up was the safest bet.
"Molly said today we are taking care of those doxies in the drawing room today after breakfast. 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 got out of bed to carefully get dressed.
"You can't go around torching and exploding everything," Hermione said, enjoying the view.
"Why not?" He asked as he just pulled his pants up, brushing up against his scarred areas he got from yesterday, taking a moment afterward to adjust himself and his boxers in them before he moved to put his shirt on.
Hermione took a moment to answer him, but not to think of her own, "Because then there's no fun to try and critically think it through...Lucifer?"
"Yeah?" He asked, about to pull his shirt on.
"Can you wait a moment to put your shirt on?" Hermione thought nothing of her question.
"Uh... I mean... that's a weird way to ask wanting to see my upper body shirtless," Lucifer said, with a smirk.
Hermione's face burned to the point of her cheeks changing to a deep red.
"That's not what I meant!" She yelled, feeling flustered all of a sudden, "I meant your scars... I wanted to ask about them..."
Lucifer looked down and saw his scars he'd gotten over.... "Oh..." he paused and looked at her, "I'll tell you about them some time later, deal?"
"I'm holding you to that," Hermione stood up and walked to the door as he finished pulling his shirt on, groaning from the way he moved his arms, shoulders, and the muscles underneath.
"Oh yeah, she also said that she found a nest of dead puffskeins under the sofa...."
Lucifer was the last one to enter the drawing room, and Molly said nothing about his tardiness.
He saw people with cloth over their noses and Hermione handed him something, which he painfully tied around his mouth.
He wasn't going to ask for help from anyone, he was just too damn stubborn, pride had nothing to do with it.
She also handed him a large spray bottle with black liquid inside, "Doxycide, nice."
"I've never seen an infestation so bad," Molly said with exasperation, "what that House-Elf's been doing for the last ten years-"
Hermione wanted to argue, but Kreacher, she found it hard to defend him, "If he hadn't been alone with Sirius' mothers' portrait..."
"Well, you're right about that," Sirius said, entering the room, "being alone with that shrieking banshee for ten years will drive absolutely anyone mad." He chuckled and Lucifer saw him carrying a bloodstained bag, of what he didn't know,
"I've just been feeding Buckbeak," Sirius said when he saw Lucifer looking at the bag, "I keep him upstairs in my mother's bedroom. She's not using it anymore," his smirk was unmissable.
A loud, clanging bell sounded from downstairs, "Must be Kingsley," Sirius said and left, pulling the door shut behind him.
Molly was bent over a book that Lucifer recognized to be a book by Gilderoy Lockhart, "You've got to be kidding me..." Lucifer said, sighing.
"What?" Molly looked up at him to see what was wrong.
"A book by Lockhart? Seriously?" He tried to remain calm, but after how useless the man proved to be, he wanted to just torch the book right then and there.
"The man was a fraud," Hermione spat with venom, "and even I hate to admit this, but the information about Magical Creatures in his books were at least accurate, even if he had no idea how to actually deal with them himself."
Lucifer sighed, "Fine," his voice, for a moment, sounded gravelly, and Hermione found it to be oddly attractive coming from him.
Molly looked back to the book, "Right, you lot, you need to be careful, because doxies bite and their teeth are poisonous."
"Because of course they are," Lucifer said snidely.
"I've got a bottle of antidote here, but I'd rather nobody need it."
"If anyone ends up needing it," Fred started.
"It'll probably be Lucifer with how his track record is," George finished.
"Not funny," Hermione said, remembering how Lucifer looked before and after getting the chunks of wood out of his body; nothing about that was funny to her.
Hermione may have had some lewd thoughts when he was naked for her and couldn't resist dreaming about giving marks of some of her own.
Molly had them all positioned evenly in front of the curtain, "When I say the word, start spraying immediately," she said, "they'll come flying out at us, I expect, but it says on the sprays one good squirt will paralyze them. When they're immobilized, just throw them in this bucket."
She stepped carefully up beside them, her own spray bottle in hand, "All right- spray!"
Lucifer sprayed and a second later, a fully grown Doxy flew out of the fold in the material.
It had shiny beetle-like wings whirring to keep it airborne, tiny needle-sharp teeth bared at him, and its fairy-like body was covered with thick black hair and its four tiny fists were clenched with fury.
Lucifer nonchalantly sprayed it, which immobilized it in midair and it fell to the floor with a loud thunk, causing dust to fly up from the carpet.
He tossed it into the bucket and continued on, "Fred, what are you doing!?" Molly said sharply, "Spray that at once and throw it away!"
"Right-o," he heard Fred say brightly.
He paid no mind to what anyone was doing while he set forth with his task.
The de-doxying of the curtains took most of the morning.
It was past midday when Molly removed the protective scarf she had been wearing and sank into the sagging armchair.
The curtains were no longer buzzing; they hung limp and damp from the intensive spraying; unconscious doxies lay crammed into a bucket on the floor, a bowl of their black eggs beside them.
Crookshanks had started to sniff it, and Fred and George were shooing him away.
"I think we'll tackle those after lunch," she was pointing at the dusty glass-fronted cabinets standing on either side of the mantelpiece.
They were crammed with an odd assortment of objects: a selection of rusty daggers, claws, a coiled snakeskin, a number of tarnished silver boxes inscribed with old languages Hermione didn't recognize and, least pleasant of all, an ornate crystal bottle with a large opal set into a stopper, full of what Lucifer recognized as blood.
The doorbell rang again and Molly said she'd be right back with sandwiches.
Immediately, everyone but Lucifer rushed over to the window when the door latched shut behind her.
It wasn't that he wasn't curious, he just couldn't move quickly, so he didn't bother getting up.
"Mundungus? What's he brought all those cauldrons for?" Hermione asked.
"Probably looking for a safe place to keep them," Harry said with a hint of loathing in his voice, "Isn't that what he was doing the night he was supposed to be tailing me? Picking up dodgy cauldrons?"
"Yeah, you're right!" Fred said in an 'aha' moment, "Blimey, mum won't like that..."
Fred and George crossed the room and stood by the door.
"Sounds like Mundungus is talking to Sirius and Kingsley..." George muttered, "can't hear properly... reckon we ought to-"
Before George could say anything further, the sound of a shrieking banshee was heard again through the house, but this time it was very clearly Molly Weasley, as Lucifer had destroyed Sirius' mothers portrait, "WE ARE NOT RUNNING A HIDEOUT FOR STOLEN GOODS!"
"I love hearing Mum shouting at someone else," Fred said with a satisfied smile on his face as he opened the door an inch to let her voice fill the room more easily, "It makes such a nice change."
"-COMPLETELY IRRESPONSIBLE, AS IF WE HAVEN'T GOT ENOUGH TO WORRY ABOUT WITHOUT YOU DRAGGING STOLEN CAULDRONS INTO THE HOUSE-"
"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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