Disclaimer: The characters and canon situations in the following story belong to JK Rowling, Scholastic, and/or WB. I am not making any money from the publishing or writing of this story.
Chapter I
The Beginnings of an End & The Morning After
"In every end, there is also a beginning." ~ Libba Bray
Frustration.
It was something that she had felt almost accustomed to in the past few years, and looking into this room never failed to bring that particular annoyance to the forefront of her mind once more. The dim light that seeped in through the thick curtains painted the room in shades of grey, and the dark elegance was almost lost in the dust that coated the furniture in the absence of its former inhabitant. It had been a little over five years since Sirius had fallen through the Veil, yet his room still stood as a musty testament to his memory. She had told Harry to take the time to clean it, take the memories worth keeping, and Vanish the rest. As always, he had managed to refuse and avoid that section of Grimmauld Place altogether. Their last conversation about it had taken place that afternoon, and it hadn't exactly ended on a high note.
"Why do you keep insisting that I clean that r—"
"The same reason why you can't bring yourself to," Hermione interrupted, struggling with the urge to physically knock some sense into him.
"And why do you think that is, Hermione?" Harry asked cynically. "You always have an answer, so enlighten me. Sheer laziness, d'you reckon?" he continued, his face contorting into a snarl.
Hermione blanched before finally replying, "You can't bring yourself to move on. We both know I don't usually see eye to eye with Ron or the Weasleys, but everyone except you can see that your way of holding on is unhealthy."
Harry's eyes glinted sadly. "You were there through all of it, Hermione. Is there any healthy way to hold on? How can I not hold on? Winning the War should have been the end of it. Kingsley Shacklebolt may have been the best option for Minister of Magic, but his appointment actually made me feel guilty for even thinking about refusing to be the Ministry's poster boy. It's been almost five years, and what's changed? People are still leading their miserable lives, hoping for change and using 'the Boy Who Lived' as a figurehead for their problems."
"People will rebuild, Harry. You've given them the chance—"
"A chance that people haven't taken, won't take, Hermione. So stop nagging." Without a backward glance, he walked away toward his room, slamming the door behind him.
In a practiced motion, Hermione gestured at Madame Black's portrait and cast a Silencing Charm before the portrait's subject had the opportunity to start screaming obscenities.
It had been three years since Voldemort's demise, nearly three years since the world began to rebuild. It was slow going for the Wizarding populace. Escaped Death Eaters who enjoyed the chaos of decimating war had continued to plague the Wizarding world, most evading capture while they did so.
Yet, it had been an end of sorts that had come to pass, allowing her and many others a beginning. N.E.W.T.s had been administered to many after rudimentary rebuilding of the Hogwarts Castle had been completed. She had worried at first, but years of endless revision had ensured that she came through with admirable results.
However, some things had changed with time. The "Golden Trio," as they had been named by the various Wizarding periodicals, weren't as close as they once were. The strain of press conferences, interviews, and fame had made their baser qualities more pronounced. Time had exacerbated their differences.
Harry, the Chosen One, had jumped into a relationship with Ginevra Weasley, craving the Weasleys as a family to call his own. Their engagement, while expected, had been dominated by Ginny's desire for the spotlight. Hermione had expected the relationship to end sooner rather than later, but she hadn't expected it to end as it had.
Ron was content with the spotlight thrust upon him as well. As the youngest brother, his problem was how to handle the attention; at least Ginny had been used to it within the family. Even if the Chudley Cannons weren't the best team, the offer they had made for him was considerable. Ron jumped on the chance, so while the Cannons hadn't exactly won any substantial talent, they did gain publicity.
While Hermione studied for her N.E.W.T.s, refusing to do anything less, Harry had been content to receive honorary results for defeating the Dark Lord. Ron, willing to take the easy way out, had opted to do the same. Although Harry hadn't ridiculed Hermione for her choice, Ron failed to understand why she would put herself through the trouble. After all, if they were going to be together, she would need to make Ron more of a priority. With her job at the Ministry, that wasn't going to happen anytime soon.
Years of arguing and tension had been just that; there was no spark to their passion, no all-consuming flame that she had once fantasized about. The few months she had spent with Ron had made her feel caged, restricted from being able to do what she had planned and worked for. No matter how many times she had told him that she wanted to do well, that she wanted a career, and that she hadn't worked so hard for so long just to pop out a bunch of kids and stay at home taking care of them, he never understood.
The end of that relationship had been anything but quiet, and Hermione found herself at odds with many of the Weasleys in one go.
The loss of companionship had made her regret her actions regarding her parents. Almost two years ago, she had gathered the courage to find her parents in Australia. Unfortunately, as she had been informed by Severus Snape's portrait, there would be no way to restore their memories to what they once were, especially given the so-called "ham-handed" manner of the charm she had used. However, even the blunt remarks Snape had levelled at her did not prevent her from trying to make contact and at least see that her parents were all right. The one meeting turned into many, and even though Hermione realized that she could never make them remember her as a daughter, she did manage to become a cordial acquaintance with the both of them. For better or worse, she couldn't bring herself to stay away.
The Department of Mysteries had been one of the few Ministry Departments to stay whole through Voldemort's reign, so when they had extended an offer to her, it had been difficult to refuse. Taking the offered position was a good way to avoid the guilt pooling inside of her.
Her work at the Department of Mysteries had become a place of solace, a niche to crawl into to escape the dreary world around her. Initially, she had been disappointed that she would not be able to design her own experiments or participate in any until she had worked under one of the more seasoned Unspeakables, but the research that came along with it all was fascinating. Books that had never seen the air outside of the Ministry in decades were hers to examine, and the various Pureblood families who had stained their names and reputations with the legacy of Voldemort had been detained in Azkaban, leaving their Manors and libraries as property confiscated by the Ministry until trials had gone underway.
Unfortunately for some of the more optimistic figures of law enforcement that were eager to show that they were in fact on the side of Kingsley Shacklebolt's term of reconstruction, they were overenthusiastic in their handling of cataloguing confiscated items. Many of them had forgotten to take along a team of Cursebreakers, and those that hadn't ended up blasted to smithereens the moment they stepped on the property were rushed to St. Mungo's for a variety of life threatening injuries.
The Department of Mysteries had a different tactic. As her supervisor, a tall, balding man who she had once thought of as a grandfatherly Unspeakable, had put it to her, you could do a lot more with diplomacy and words than you ever could with brute force. When she had brought up the fact that Death Eaters were unlikely to cooperate and respond to diplomacy, that grandfatherly image had dissipated and a determined, darkened glint of his eyes accompanied a rather grizzled smirk.
"Diplomacy does involve some negotiation on private matters, Miss Granger. Every family has its secrets, and the possibility of exposure may very well be more effective than an extensive stay in Azkaban."
Perhaps there were multiple reasons as to why the Department of Mysteries had withstood the test of multiple reigns of terror. At any rate, she no longer thought of the man as grandfatherly.
Looking through yet another ancient tome, Hermione absentmindedly pulled at a ringlet of hair, letting it bounce back as she continued to read the text. Dabbling in Time and the magic to manipulate it had long been classified as restricted and/or Dark magic, so any hints there were to reconstructing the process were weaved through illicit and sometimes ancient texts without any semblance of cohesion. Every now and then, she would pull out a Muggle pen to jot down a point of interest, but she really had no choice but to be content to simply read in the vast, luxurious setting of Malfoy Manor's library.
She had initially chafed at the thought of working in the ancestral home of the Malfoys, and having been imprisoned and tortured within its walls hadn't helped her sense of unease. However, months of research and the knowledge that the Manor's wards had been drastically altered to accept her by her blood and magical signature had made her slightly more accepting of her surroundings. Though she would continue to avoid the Drawing Room and other sections of the Manor like the plague.
"Have you found anything of interest yet, Hermione?" a baritone voice drawled.
Slow steps echoed along with soft thuds of a cane along the floor. Hermione looked up to find Lucius Malfoy heading toward her, his ancestral cane and new wand in hand.
While she did not doubt his presence was due to a combination of the wealth of resources he had at his disposal and whatever other conditions her supervisors had lorded over him, Hermione found herself at ease with the elder Malfoy. His previous allegiances and haughty composure aside, Lucius Malfoy had been one of the few people she found had formidable intelligence.
Galleons, bribes, and promises of brute force and violence could have only taken him so far, I suppose, had been the first thought to run through Hermione's mind when she found his questions and subsequent suggestions useful. A considerable reserve of acumen would have been needed to keep his arse out of Azkaban.
Narcissa's disappearance had been shrouded in a cloak of privacy, and the elder Malfoy's admittance of his late wife's choices of leaving him and relocating to one of her estates in Sweden had been the only thing to visibly break his composure. Regret and anger had etched themselves into the look he had given her when he had relented and answered her incessant questions about the former Lady Malfoy.
Draco had clearly chosen to support his mother in the separation, but he had grown up as Lucius Malfoy's heir, so he had little choice but to follow in his father's footsteps. It was obvious that Lucius was making an active effort to be a more supportive father, and it was clear that his care was unrivalled by that of anyone except Narcissa. However, anyone who had spent a good amount of time with the man could see that he had little patience for theatrics and whinging, and from what she could tell, Draco was almost worse than Ron.
"Nothing of significance," she replied, setting aside the tome after marking her place. Her time spent with senior Unspeakables and the Purebloods they had managed to compromise with had altered part of her outlook and some of her mannerisms. Being a babbling, know-it-all swot had been her role to play through her years at Hogwarts, but an increasing amount of cynicism coupled with the constant threats to have it all blasted out of her were enough to help tone that aspect of her personality down. Hermione watched in silence as Lucius went over to the crystal table behind the desk and unstopped a decanter to pour himself a glass of the amber liquid within it.
"Drink?" he asked, indicating the set of decanters.
"Cognac, if you will." Hermione sighed, closing her eyes.
"I daresay someone has had a long day," Lucius remarked while pouring another glass. Bringing it over to her, he continued, "You usually decline anything more potent than a glass of wine."
"I don't doubt tomorrow will be longer, Lucius." Hermione no longer felt odd addressing him with such familiarity, but waking up next to him after many nights of research and the habit of seeking his thoughts out on a fairly regular basis had introduced a different sort of tension that wasn't entirely adversarial. And after their torrid scene at the Ministry's remembrance gala last week, the rumor mill had been churning like no other. After all, it wasn't every day a Malfoy publicly came to the rescue of a member of the Golden Trio. Though the last time had been considerably more significant and at least worth the ink.
While she occupied herself with breathing in the scent of and tasting what was no doubt very old cognac, he quirked an eyebrow, glancing at the relatively small stack of tomes in front of her, leaning back in the chair across from her
Acknowledging the nonverbal cue, she answered, "Research is the least of my worries. I'm expected to attend the funeral of Ginny Weasley. I don't know what possessed Mrs. Weasley to invite me, but I can't leave Harry to it. Not alone. And despite last week's gala, the Golden Trio is expected to come together again."
"Such sentimentality," Lucius murmured while swishing the contents of his glass around pensively. "Or perhaps it is simply loyalty. In any case, the sentiment seems to be in high demand in this world," he muttered as an afterthought.
Hermione suppressed a snort. "I hadn't realized it was an overrated sentiment until after I joined the Ministry." Taking another slow sip out of the glass in her hand, she was silent for a moment before softly continuing, "I think I should regret the loss of those ideals, but I'm no longer sure I can bring myself to do so."
Lucius chuckled, raising her ire. Before she could say anything, however, he commented wryly, "Such is the way of life, my dear; those who survive are left to their cynicism, and the ideals of youth slowly fade away." The haunted look in his eyes was much more intense than what the mirror had reflected back at her of late.
Despite the jaded gaze and conversation, Hermione couldn't help but feel the warmth that spread through her at his proximity. Now if only she could convince herself that the warmth she felt was just a result of the alcohol.
When she woke up the next morning, it was an absolutely beautiful day. The sky had appeared as a vast, exquisite expanse of sunlit blue. It had been the first day of its kind for a couple of weeks. London, while fairly charming on these days, was often a somewhat dull place when it rained; the atmosphere was one that tended to induce the desires of refusing to get out of bed and staying underneath the covers. It was a feeling that had pervaded her senses every time she had the opportunity to reflect on what life had become. On the whole, however, Hermione Granger woke up feeling that today was going to be a good day.
She yawned and slowly got up, looking around her room at Grimmauld Place. The musty curtains let small rays of sunshine in through the cracks between the heavy material and wall surrounding the window. Pushing open the curtains, Hermione let the sunlight stream in. For a moment, she stood there, basking in the warmth of the light.
A sudden knock on her door interrupted the moment of tranquillity.
"Hermione? Are you awake?" Harry asked on the other side of the door.
She sighed softly and answered, "Yes, Harry. You can come in if you like."
The door creaked open, letting in Harry and the rest of the gloom that emanated through pervaded the house. After stepping in, he took a look at her and softly asked, "It's ironic, isn't it?" When Hermione failed to respond, he continued. "It was beautiful the day she went missing. The morning George found her body was clear. If her funeral wasn't in a few hours—"
"It's better than standing in the graveyard while it rains, Harry," Hermione interrupted. She had seen him moping much too long to stand for it on a day where nearly everyone else would be doing nothing but. Wincing at the sharp tone her voice had taken, she attempted to soften the statement. "Ginny always did hate the rainy days," she mused softly.
It had been over a month since Ginny had stormed out of Grimmauld Place to "clear her head." It was hardly any secret that she wanted desperately to be in the spotlight, to be photographed as part of high society, but Harry's ambitions had conflicted violently with hers. The loving first phase of their relationship had been long gone, but that hadn't kept Harry from trying to make it work. Two weeks later, she had been found mangled in a ditch with the Dark Mark cast over her.
Harry gave her a small, wavering smile before a look of depression morphed onto his face once more. "The last time we spoke before she disappeared was to argue," Harry said, his last words fading into a soft, choked whisper.
This time, Hermione let the curtains fall and walked over to him. Putting her arms around him, she told him, "You can't have known that then." As Harry slowly broke down in her arms, she rubbed his back in small circles and tried to be comforting.
Hermione sighed and tried to muster up some sadness at Ginny's gruesome death, but pity and sympathy for Harry were what she felt most strongly. Hermione's attempts to be friends with Ginny had stopped long before Ginny's relationship with Harry had started. She had never had very many friends before Hogwarts, and the snide comments that had started the rift between her and the fiery witch had initially been ignored on her part. Close friends were a scarcity, and the unravelling and loss of friendships treasured as memories throughout the war were just another series of blemishes that had marred their lives.
The burial had gone off and finished without any of the outbursts Hermione had feared. Perhaps it was a good thing that Ron and Molly were so subdued. It would definitely make offering her condolences a much simpler task.
Perhaps she could even be sincere.
At any rate, the only time she had spoken to Ron thus far was to greet him when she had Apparated in on Harry's arm. He hadn't seemed surprised that they would come in together, but it might have been because he had finally accepted that her feelings toward both of them were those that an older sibling would have for reckless younger brothers. The lack of anger made it much easier to swallow the pride that had stood in her way of apologizing.
For the meanwhile, however, she had no problem losing herself in her thoughts and gazing through one of the windows of the small chapel in the outskirts of Devon. Her composed reflection was superimposed upon the glass, a combination of the reflection from within the chapel and the cheery atmosphere outside it.
It was no longer a reflection Hermione could truly identify as the one she grew up with.
Rubbing shoulders with the upper echelons of the Ministry and society had forced her to learn the cosmetic charms that she had never bothered with during Hogwarts. She had grown into most of her mother's features, and had learned to make the time to apply those charms to enhance the best of those features and tame her bushy mane into a much more manageable cascade of thick waves. While she was by no means stunning enough to grace the glossy covers of Witch Weekly, she turned enough heads.
Unfortunately, the wary, haunted look in her eyes transformed her more completely than anything else had. If the War had been the worst of it, she might have passed for a naive young woman, but taking the steps to move on despite the prolonged terror had stripped her of the optimism that most would expect her to have.
"I'd have expected you to look a bit more cheerful, Hermione. I can't say I didn't know that there was no love lost between you and Ginny."
Hermione tore her gaze away from the window to see Ron approach her. "There is a little something called tact, Ron. I'm not so foregone into hatred as to have lost all of mine," she replied. Giving him a wry twist of her lips, she continued, "Although it is nice to know that you noticed." Clenching her teeth and taking a breath, she decided that now was as good a time as any to make the first apology. "I'm sorry for having things," she gestured vaguely between them, "end the way that they did."
"I suppose I shouldn't have run to Mum afterward. Or at all really. I'm sorry we couldn't work it out too," Ron acquiesced. After an awkward moment of silence, he stuck out his hands and asked, "Friends?"
Hermione nearly laughed out loud and threw her arms around him. "Friends," she said softly, smiling.
Harry, vaguely preoccupied with his conversation with Fleur, hadn't noticed his two best friends on speaking terms once more until Bill tapped him on the shoulder.
"I think it's high time that you and Hermione come back to the Burrow every now and then, Harry," Bill suggested, gesturing over at the other side of the chapel where Hermione and Ron were now talking somewhat animatedly.
"Oui, and our cottage as well!" Fleur chirped and lightly pushed Harry toward Ron and Hermione.
As Harry walked toward the window, Hermione noticed him and dragged Ron to meet him halfway. Harry smiled at the familiar sight and felt a fresh pang of pain when he realized that Ginny used to do that as well.
When neither Harry nor Ron said anything after a moment of staring at each other, Hermione quirked an eyebrow at the both of them and sighed. "I'll let you two grieve in peace."
Hermione walked out to the point where she and Harry had Apparated in an hour or so earlier and disappeared with a small pop.
A moment later, Hermione appeared at the Apparition room of Malfoy Manor with a swirl of her cloak. As she made her way down the corridors, her midnight blue cloak billowed slightly behind her with each step. When she stepped into the library, she stopped short at seeing Lucius at his desk.
"Back so soon?" Lucius asked, raising his eyes from the stacks of parchment in front of him to meet hers.
"I've been to enough funerals this past year to last several lifetimes, and two of the people who genuinely care to have me at this one still grieve for the dead." She tossed off her cloak into the reading chair she had become accustomed to using.
"One would think you would be used to emotional outbursts; I can't see why you wouldn't be when you spend as much time as you do with Harry Potter and the Weasleys," Lucius mused as he returned to signing paperwork. He missed the half-hearted glare Hermione levelled in his direction as he continued, "There are no doubt more intelligent colleagues among those in your department, colleagues who are apt to have some grasp on the concept of decorum."
"I would thank you to not express your opinion of who I prefer to be around in my spare time, Lucius," Hermione said through gritted teeth.
Lucius quirked an eyebrow slightly, but that was all the indication he gave as to whether or not he heard her as he continued looking through one of the stacks of parchment that littered his desk. Malfoy Enterprises was still a formidable corporation, and despite the large fallout in Wizarding England, there were apparently many divisions flourishing on the other side of the pond.
"It's all more Galleons to help pay reparation sums for this administration," was the way Lucius broached the subject. "They can hardly expect me to run a multinational corporation from the cell of a prison, now, can they?"
Hermione hummed absentmindedly in response and went to seek out the tomes she had marked to finish researching by the end of the week. Her deadline was coming up, and while she might be able to extend her time with what she had, her superiors at the Department were getting rather impatient.
They should have salvaged the Time Turners when they had the chance, thought Hermione. It would have been much easier if they had perfected the spellwork before they destroyed what was left of them.
She brought the tomes back to her chair and table, sat down, and continued where she had left off the other day. The constraints of traditional time travel had been extensively paradoxical, and there wasn't much she had been able to make out of the philosophical and magical texts that blathered on about the complexities of it all. Alternate universes parallel to the one they lived in were the only explanation she had been able to flesh out, but the problem with the Time Turners she was responsible for recreating was that they had dealt with dimensions that had knowledge of the past, and with minute jumps, that knowledge hadn't been wiped out of existence.
"Lucius, how would you go about attempting to manipulate alternate universes?" asked Hermione. After a moment of silence, she looked up at the lack of response and frowned when she realized that Lucius seemed to have left his desk some time ago. "Where in Merlin's name is the arse when he might actually be useful?" Hermione looked upward, searching for patience, and tried to ignore the frustration that was building up. "Cici!" she eventually called out.
It took a while for the house-elf that Lucius had assigned to her to pop up in the library. Hermione had no doubt that it was her own fault for starting S.P.E.W., and while she still held the belief that elves should be treated with some equality, it had become awfully difficult to try and free elves that had begun to avoid her like a particularly nasty disease.
"Missy Granger is callings for CiCi?" The house-elf seemed on the verge of cringing when Hermione asked for Lucius to be summoned to the library.
"But Master is demandings that us elves don't bother him—"
"Take me to him."
Cici's eyes seemed even larger than most house-elves' as her expression changed to one that could be construed as an odd combination of surprise and horror. "Buts..." she started, only to cower at the look Hermione directed at her, trailing off into silence as she did so.
In retrospect, she realised that there was no doubt a genuine reason for the house-elf's reluctance. Cici and all the house-elves of Malfoy Manor were well aware of the fact that Lucius Malfoy was to be at Hermione's beck and call when he wasn't pandering to various other bureaucrats who had a part in allowing him to retain a majority of his assets. Perhaps it may have been concern for their Master's dignity, but Hermione had never stopped to take that into consideration when she had barged into his rooms with the single-mindedness that had drove her through successful bouts of research.
In any case, she hadn't expected to find him with nothing but a towel around his waist.
The theories that she had been attempting to string together slowly fell apart as she ignored them in favor of perusing Lucius Malfoy's rather fit body. It was almost unfair that he looked as good as he did, but at the moment, she could hardly complain when presented with the view. After having considered no one other than Ron for so long, it felt different looking at someone else with anything other than a passive glance.
"What exactly necessitated your presence here right after my bath?" There had been a slight note of frustration imbued within the question. The look on Lucius' face when he realized that she had been standing in his doorway while he had been drying his hair was a mix of surprise and exasperation.
"I needed an opinion besides my own," Hermione answered after a moment. She felt proud at the lack of a tremble in her voice as she continued, "Time might simply be another dimension, but what would you say links it to alternate universes? And how would one go about one manipulating them?"
Lucius pinched the bridge of his nose, closed his eyes, and took a slow breath, pondering whether or not to even try answering the question as he was. "My dear," Lucius started off in a rather strangled voice, "provided you can give me some context, I would be more than happy to share my thoughts on those topics with you when we're both clothed. Dinner should be ready shortly anyway."
It had been over a year since his wife had left him. Narcissa Malfoy neé Black had been his wife for over twenty years, and although it had been nothing but a contract for both their fathers at the time, he had slowly learned that he had become used to the companionship. If it wasn't for her, he would have never had the opportunity to hold his beautiful baby boy, his Draco, in his arms; he wouldn't have been able to watch the boy grow up.
He knew he wasn't what one would call a family man. Narcissa had never cared for much besides maintaining her image as one of the social elite. Both he and Narcissa had had their fair share of lovers, but when it came to Draco, both of them had tried their best to give him the best of everything. Narcissa had chosen to coddle the boy; he had attempted to preen him into a Malfoy worthy of the multigenerational inheritance that he would eventually receive.
His support of the Dark Lord had originally been expected; his father was one of the first Death Eaters as well as a touted member of the Knights of Walpurgis. Blood purity and the supremacy of magic were ideals that he had grown up with, but Voldemort's second reign and the subsequent lack of dignity he had suffered had gone a long way toward changing him. In the face of utter humiliation and the loss of the prestige he had been accustomed to, he had slowly grown to despise Voldemort. The turning point for him had been the near loss of his son and wife. When a family of one of the purest of bloodlines had been treated like nothing more than servants, pawns to be thrown to the wolves, Lucius had no choice but to see that the ambitions of his youth had led him into this predicament, into serving the deranged man who had called himself Lord Voldemort. Unfortunately, he had been powerless to stop the Dark Lord from torturing him, his wife, and Draco for their failures.
This administration, with Kingsley Shacklebolt as Minister and the Order of the Phoenix at the helm, had been much more gracious than their predecessors, yet their stance on Death Eaters had been harsh. If it wasn't for Narcissa's timely lie, Draco's feigned uncertainty, and his inability to truly serve either side by that point, Lucius had no doubt that they would have all found themselves locked in Azkaban for the rest of their lives.
These past few years had been a bit more eye opening. He had regretted that any earnings of the London based companies of Malfoy Enterprises had to be given up to the Ministry, but he knew it could have been much, much worse. Ironically enough, he had been dealt a better hand with this administration than he had ever had with his service to the Dark Lord. The part he found most surprising was the fact that he had slowly grown to like Hermione Granger's near constant presence at the Manor.
She had been every bit as intelligent as his son had claimed and more. He could almost understand why the Department of Mysteries had assigned her to recreate and expand the time traveling paraphernalia that had been destroyed during the War. He had worked with Unspeakables and their apprentices before; they were a lot who believed in independence with experience, and they had given quite a bit to the young woman. Perhaps it was because his only female companionship consisted of her, but he had grown fairly comfortable with her. Of course, she was hardly his usual type; he preferred willowy, lithe blondes, but Hermione had a certain allure to her, one that continued to draw him in despite his better judgement.
After making sure that the rest of his hair had been dried properly, Lucius donned a comfortable pair of trousers and robes before making his way toward the family dining room. It was a fairly small setting, almost intimate, and it had been the room that he and Hermione had dined in for the past month or so, after they had started bringing and discussing research over their meals.
Passion in the theoretical sense had a way of manifesting itself physically. Or it might have been the loneliness both of them had begun to tire of.
Dinner had been a very heated affair, and it had allowed Hermione successful insights into the mind-numbing details that had consumed her to the point of obsession these past few months. While she couldn't put her finger on the exact combination of existing spellwork she would need to alter the series of runes on the links of each chain or empower the particulates into the so-called "sands of time", the bottles of wine they had both managed to consume over the past few hours had managed to fill her with a heady sense of triumph while ridding them both of the inhibitions they prided themselves on.
"This would be much easier if you had fewer clothes on, Lucius," Hermione gasped as she struggled with one of the buttons on his waistcoat.
Arching a pale eyebrow at her, he released the nipple he was suckling with an audible pop. Before Hermione could protest, he stepped back, and with a gesture of his hand, Lucius divested himself of his clothes and stood completely naked in front of her, his erection jutting out proudly.
"Better?" Lucius asked with a slight smirk.
"Mhm," Hermione vocalized before stepping forward and kissing him passionately. She slid her hands up his torso and shoulders to wrap her arms around him, bringing him even closer. Without breaking the kiss, Lucius hoisted her up into his arms and moved them towards the monstrous bed in his suite. Hermione wrapped her arms around him as he cupped her arse and pulled her closer toward him to where she could feel his cock and his coarse pubic hair against her centre.
Within moments, he had deposited her in the centre of the large bed, towering over her small frame briefly before he continued his previous ministrations. Suckling one breast and then the other, he made his way down her body until she felt him at the apex of her thighs. Hermione gasped as he caressed her wet folds and slipped a finger inside of her. Lucius added another finger and began to pump them in and out of her. Hermione whimpered as she got closer and closer to her release, and with a cry, her muscles clenched around his fingers as she came.
After a moment, she gazed up at him in a slight haze, her breath catching in her throat as she saw Lucius taste her essence on his fingers. When she moaned at the loss of contact, he smirked and moved to where his face was looming above hers.
"You taste divine," he whispered into her ear and then pressed his lips against hers roughly, letting her taste herself.
They lay there like that for what seemed like eternity; Hermione had sunk into the multitude of pillows that were arranged on the bed, and Lucius dominated the kiss while positioning himself right above her centre. He broke the kiss suddenly, but before she could protest, he grabbed her legs and entered her roughly.
"Lucius!" Hermione shrieked as he held himself still within her, shifting only his hands to gain more leverage into her body.
Lucius let out a harsh breath and his features contorted slightly as he held them still. Having adjusted to his girth, Hermione wriggled a bit, rolling her hips to seek the friction Lucius was denying them both.
With that, Lucius withdrew himself out of her before slamming into her again. Hermione arched her body upward to take more of him as he continued to thrust into her, unrelenting in his pace. With each stroke, she moaned a little as he alternated between filling her completely and withdrawing just enough for him to hit the spot that made her see stars. When the pace of Lucius' thrusts became more and more erratic, she felt his hand move from its place on her hip to just above her clit. Upon feeling his thumb brush against her clit, she felt herself tighten for another orgasm.
"Come for me, Hermione," Lucius rumbled as he began to rub against her clit in rhythm with his thrusts.
Her orgasm washed over her body, and she clenched around his throbbing member as she came. With a few more hard slaps of his flesh against hers, Hermione felt Lucius stiffen above her, and she heard him moan as his seed spilled into her.
After a couple of minutes, Lucius withdrew as he began to soften and collapsed almost gracefully beside her.
When Hermione blearily opened her eyes a few hours later, it was to the early morning sunlight streaming through the open windows and an empty bed. Thankfully, there was a measured dose of potion on the bedside table along with a small piece of parchment with Lucius' elegant script.
I have an early Floo-call and some errands I must attend to. In the meanwhile, this should help ease any consequences of last night's indulgences. ~ LM
Hermione downed it and felt the remnants of her wine and sex induced hangover melt away.
Now if only the thoughts that replaced the achy vertigo would do the same.
The funeral I attended yesterday could have happened years ago because of the man I just slept with.
Now that was a sobering thought that rivalled the potion she had just imbibed. One to make her question why it just took her just over a bottle of wine with dinner to lose any and all inhibitions that had prevented her from acting on any the tension that had been hovering over her interactions with the elder Malfoy this past month.
Lucius Malfoy was a man who was impeccably postured to intimidate, and even years after falling from grace to be held a prisoner within his Manor and being subject to the whims of a madman, he epitomized the image of Pureblood tradition.
She recalled the fascination and abject terror of her first impression of Lucius in the bookstore where he had slipped Ginny that diary without compunction. There was cruelty and hatred as well as disdain imbued within the glint of his grey eyes, and combined with his haughty presence and aura, the sneer he had etched upon his face was so much more threatening than any expression his son had ever managed to pull off. She had seen the man utter Unforgivable curses in boredom and sport, and even if he had refrained from causing damage in the Final Battle, there was no doubt in her mind that he had once been a part of Voldemort's inner circle for more than just the monetary resources he could provide.
Frankly, even though Harry had testified as to the Malfoys' relative innocence in the actions of the War, and despite catching a glimpse of the desperate man that he had been during Voldemort's final months, Hermione hadn't believed Lucius Malfoy to be capable of anything resembling humanity.
That had begun to change as she worked with him. It had taken her months of substantial conversation with the man to see the love he had for his son, his loneliness, and his dismay at his wife's treatment of their marriage contract. It had taken them months to progress beyond remnants of prejudice to constructive debate on some of the most arcane theories on Magic. Now, even when she put her mind to it, she had trouble reconciling the Lucius Malfoy the world had warned her about with the man she had come to know.
And on that discordant thought, she slipped out of the sheets of Lucius Malfoy's bed, Summoned her clothes, and made her way to Grimmauld Place.
Hermione relegated her thoughts of Lucius Malfoy to some other place for the time being. She had other things to worry about. Like tomorrow's deadline.
When she had finished giving her presentation to her supervisor, Unspeakable Julian Rowle, she had expected more than the wary look directed her way.
After a minute or two of silent staring, she began to feel a slight throbbing behind her left eye. Words would be nice. While she couldn't stand failure, the wretched silence was somehow worse in the moment.
"You have my commendation for clearly putting some effort into the solution you just outlined, Miss Granger."
Hermione inclined her head in acknowledgement of the words, but she couldn't help heaving a small sigh at the tone in which they were spoken.
"You have your doubts that it will work as intended…" Hermione interjected with some disappointment.
Rowle ran his fingers across the long chain of her prototype, taking note of each of the Runes etched onto the series of links.
"In essence. Your attempt to structure the problem, so to speak, has changed the nature of the problem itself. Your understanding of how Time works is very modular in nature, Miss Granger." Rowle looked at his protégé speculatively.
"The Runes you have chosen," he continued slowly, "may very well add a host of contingencies that may improve upon some elements of the original design of the device, but the core failsafe — the limit on how far back the Turner's magic will enable a user to go — seems to be non-existent. The idea is to keep the damage to the original timeline localized. Your spellwork on the particulates themselves is off, somehow. Based on what I can determine from a cursory examination, you have not quite balanced the necessary elements."
Hermione frowned and started, "Sir, the version you have in your hands tested successfully in the Time Room. Out of the functioning prototypes, Professor Croaker suggested this was the one that felt to him the most similar to the originals his predecessor had forged."
Rowle almost chuckled. "I'm almost surprised you sought him out for another opinion on the prototypes." Tracing his fingers over her prototype once more, his ghost of a smile had disappeared. "Again, Miss Granger, you have my commendation on the effort you've put in. At this point, it may be more prudent to let Saul or myself finish your project. There is very little either of us could do as supervisors without micromanaging you."
Internally, Hermione was fuming. She had spent months researching and annotating countless texts and theories on time, and after countless hours in the Time room, she had essentially put a Time Turner in both Croaker and Rowle's hands, and all they would do was have Croaker take over the rest of the project. After a full two years at the Department, the least they could do was allow her to finish a project. One project! This was the closest she had come to a tangible deliverable without having it nicked by a more senior Unspeakable, and the sense that she was almost there was what was setting her on edge.
"With all due respect, sir, I believe I can alter the Runes and spellwork to incorporate a failsafe by the end of the day. It may not be the exact Time Turner that you were used to dealing with before they were destroyed, but it will be a device that meets the specifications I scoped out for my project at the beginning of the year."
When Rowle did not say immediately say anything in response, Hermione faltered away from the possessive tone she had taken. After all, she was chatting with the man who had essentially blackmailed half of Britain's Purebloods on the Ministry's behalf. Before she could actually backtrack, however, Rowle broke in.
"Very well, Miss Granger. You have until the end of the day to incorporate an effective failsafe. In the event that you cannot provide me with an improved prototype by then, I will go ahead and reassign this project to Saul."
And so Hermione found herself testing prototype upon prototype in the Time room, each row in the room containing different permutations of altered Runes and spellwork. With each hour, she added another short row of prototypes to test on cycle. She was getting closer to incorporating the failsafe into the Runes than she was the spellwork; none of the materials on the devices could maintain their structural integrity with the amount of power she was trying to infuse into them. If she wasn't careful with that last row of over-spelled prototypes, disaster would be inevitable.
Even if popping out to get Goblin-wrought metals was a cost-effective option, Rowle's last words to her this morning had ensured that it was not a time-effective option.
Thankfully, the other Unspeakables had seen fit to allow her the Time room for most of the day. She hadn't been disturbed at least, which had allowed her to focus exclusively on the multiple prototypes that she had set on different testing cycles.
Of course, it was only as she hurried over to the last of the most volatile of her devices that anyone did disturb her.
"Miss Granger?"
Hermione nearly swore out loud as she almost dropped the current prototype she had been tinkering with. Unfortunately, she didn't quite catch it before it knocked into a couple of the other devices. The moment the variations of particulates collided in a mess of spelled glass, her world flashed brightly.
And then everything went black.
Author's Note:
Hello, hello! If you're seeing this, that means you made it through this first chapter. ;)
Hugs and drinks for my lovely beta, Colette Nin, for helping me put this together!
And since both of us are new to the writing/beta'ing thing, any reviews would be greatly appreciated! They make us feel better, you see. And they feed the muse like no other. Also, since this is functioning as a preview/test of sorts, constructive criticism would be absolutely wonderful. So pretty please and thank you for taking the time to read and review!