Lucius prowled past the infestation of Cornish pixies without a second glance, much to the disappointment of the brown haired intern that tripped over a tumbled desk in an attempt to look like she knew what she was doing, as the stern young pure blood walked past. Beth stood up, her cheeks red and her robes dusty. A sigh escaped her lips and she focused her attention or getting the last blue pest back into the gilded cage.

Beth had only been working at the Ministry of Magic for a month. Her first day was the start of this inner turmoil that had taken over her. She had just left the office of some horrible man named Yaxley who hadn't enlightened her at all about anything she would be doing. Yaxley despised Beth, but had to endure her because the Ministry had been required to hire a certain amount of mudbloods to meet its quota. So she felt it was on purpose that he had sent her to an out of bounds elevator, which had recently been cursed by an owl sent by someone and was spurting fire every five minutes, and would have lost her eyebrows and cardigan if Lucius hadn't paused outside the elevator and cast a quick spell with a sharp flick of his wand and a raised eyebrow. Beth had stared wide eyed at his calm attitude, caught his gaze, and then lost it as Lucius turned around without saying a single word.

This mysterious man, with pale skin and long blonde hair, was the only thing on Beth's mind every day she went to work. She had only found out his name when she saw Yaxley, her supervisor, talking to him by the statue in the foyer. It was just another mistake to pause near the two wizards, as Yaxley turned and snapped at her to deliver some memos, Lucius had purposefully seemed to avoid her glance.

So Beth has suffered a month of brief glimpses but to no avail, her heart beat a little faster now every single day at the prospect of seeing him. But two things she knew, one he was of a pure blood family of very high importance and secondly her Muggle born status would not even put her on his radar, let alone in his thoughts. But yet she still couldn't help imagining a day in which Lucius would stop her on an errand or drop by her desk and just let her know he knew she existed.

It was the same today, Beth walked back to her desk daydreaming about the way she would have liked her Cornish pixie incident to go – which involved a pixie turning into a giant monster and Lucius stopping to throw her aside and defeat the pixie and then picking her up and asking with deep sincerity if she was okay – when a hand-written note lay at her desk in wait of her return.

Intern,

Please take the elevator down to the department of Mysteries,

and deliver the accompanying letter to Mr Malfoy. He is

expecting you so do not tarry and please send him my best

regards.

Yaxley

The department of mysteries scared Beth, it was dark and cold and she felt like every happiness she had ever known had been extinguished. She walked quickly, her footsteps echoing loudly, she felt frightened of every shadow. She followed the directions Yaxley had given her and turned down to the offices before the mysteries began to become more mysterious than she wanted to find out. The second office on the right had a shiny brass plaque on the door that read 'Malfoy' and there was a small 'p' and 'b' initialled under the name indicating the family's pure blood status. Beth bit her lip and knocked lightly and then felt as if she was being silly and knocked again louder. A cold voice softly issued from behind the door.

'Come in' it said with unspoken reluctance.

Beth pushed open the door, it creaked painfully, the office was a lot bigger than she had expected. There was a huge green marble desk, two rows of bookcases either side, a large stain-glass window which depicted some sort of Slytherin history. The only other things in the room were a coat rack with a billowing black cloak hanging like a dead Dementor from it and a wand holster with a silver snake head leaning against the rack. The wand itself though, was placed in a silver holder on the front of the desk where a name plate usually sat. And what was sitting behind the desk was a straight-backed man in black robes, his blonde hair was tied back and his blue eyes intent on the person who had obviously interrupted something which was obvious due to the piles of parchment in front of him.

Beth didn't know what to say, her fingers trembled around the letter and it was so hard to look away from the blue depths of Lucius' eyes. He leant forward, his elbows placed on the parchment making it crinkle under his weight. His eyebrow raised as he spoke.

'Can I help you?' he said, his voice less hard now. His hands entwined and ducked to support his pointy chin.