Chapter Two: Narcissa
"Narcissa? You're back already?" asked Lucius with a surprised drawl as she stepped out of their fireplace. He did not stand or approach her in any way until she staggered as she headed for the couch. "What's the matter? Are you ill?" he asked as he helped her to the seat.
"I don't know, Lucius," she admitted. "I felt fine, and then suddenly I became as weak as a kitten. I fear something is dreadfully wrong."
"Don't worry, my dear," he said brightly. "I'm certain that whatever it is, is should pass within a day or two. Perhaps you should pop off to bed? I'll see if I can find you a little something to make you comfortable."
"Yes, thank you, Lucius, that's a wonderful idea," Narcissa managed to get out.
When Lucius went to look for her, Narcissa was not in her bed. He checked the bathroom, but she was not there either. At a loss, he went out into the hall and looked both ways.
"Accio Narcissa!"
He found her in a broom closet, completely unconscious.
"What the devil?" he gasped as he pulled her out and carried her to her room. He lay her gently onto her bed and tried to shake her awake, but to no avail. "Narcissa? Narcissa?"
He took the Restoration potion out of his pocket and dumped it down her throat, rubbing it to get her to swallow, but she never did. Panicked now, he ran to the fireplace and tossed in some floo powder.
"Draco? Draco? I need you!"
"What is it, Father?" came Draco's voice. "Did Mother arrive safely?"
"Get over here. Now!"
A few seconds later, Draco stepped out of the fireplace. His eyes immediately went to the bed, where his Mother lay unmoving.
"What happened?" he gasped as he ran forward.
"She didn't feel well, so I went to get her something that might help, but all I could find was a Restoration potion," Lucius explained. "I figured it couldn't hurt—that if a spell had made her ill, the stuff could reverse the effects. But I found her passed out in the broom closet. She couldn't even remember how to Apparate to her own bed."
"I'm afraid there's nothing I can do, Father," said Draco as tears ran down his cheeks.
"Nothing?" Lucius demanded. "I spent all that money on your medical training, and you can't even save your own mother?"
"Father, it was too late by the time I got here," Draco defended himself. "If you had told me sooner, I might have—but no, this is not your fault, it's mine. I knew when she left that she didn't feel well. If I hadn't gotten distracted by the death of Hermione's cat, I might have gotten here sooner."
"Did you say Hermione's cat?" Lucius wanted to know. "Was Narcissa anywhere near that thing?"
"Well, yes, as a matter of fact," Draco answered, momentarily distracted from the grief that was threatening to take hold of him. "She was petting Minerva right before she said she wanted to go home."
"Right, then," said Lucius, his face scrunched up with intense concentration. "We go to Granger's now, find out what that cat was into. Let's just hope our favorite Muggleborn hasn't been handling that furry beast as well."
"I'm way ahead of you," Draco told him. "But, just so you know, it's very likely that Harry Potter has gotten there before us."
"Good, that will save us the trouble of calling in an Auror," he replied. His mind was far too preoccupied with Hermione's safety when he should be grieving for his dead wife, but he just couldn't seem to stop the flow of worried thoughts that assailed him.
He and Draco stepped into the fireplace and were soon stepping out of hers, and as soon as he was free of it Lucius' eyes were roving everywhere, looking for the woman they had come to see.
"Potter? Where is Miss Granger?" Lucius demanded.
"She's lying down in her bed," he explained. "She's been crying ever since I got here. I guess it's starting to get to her."
"Has she been holding that cat?" Lucius asked anxiously.
"Only a very little," Harry said. "I took it away from her to examine it."
"Try not to touch it much, Harry," Draco told him. "It may very well be a murder weapon—and a deadly one, at that."
"Murder?" Harry gasped in alarm. "Who's been murdered?"
"My Mum," said Draco, and Harry realized he was crying.
"I'll need to examine her, too, then," he told them. Draco nodded in agreement as he watched Harry running his wand over the cat, looking for spells that may have been cast on it. Lucius was nowhere in sight, for he'd gone immediately to check on Hermione.
In her bedroom, Hermione was curled up on her bed in a fetal position, and hot tears streamed down her face. Lucius burst in, took one look at her, and became immediately relieved.
"Lucius? What are you doing here?" Hermione gasped. "You could at least have knocked. I might have been indecent."
"My dear Miss Granger, I was simply making sure you were not dead," he said as he schooled his features into a milder form of his concern lest she see too much of his heart. "Are you quite well?"
"It's my cat that's died, Lucius, not me," she answered gruffly.
"It's your cat, and the last person who pet her, that's died, Granger," he told her as he began to pace about the room.
"But—" Hermione began, and then her eyes widened as she took in the full implication of what he was telling her. "But—why aren't you at home?"
"I felt a need to ensure your safety before allowing myself the luxury of grief," he explained.
"And now?" she inquired.
"Now, I'd like you to accompany Draco to St. Mungo's for a thorough examination," he said briskly. "I would not wish to leave you alone, only to have to come looking for your dead body come Monday morning when you did not report to the meeting of the Department Heads."
"Lucius Malfoy, that's a very insensitive thing to say," Hermione began to scold him.
"It may well be, my dear, but it is only the truth," he insisted. "While I am aware that emotions are running high at this moment, I would be remiss in my duty to one of my employees if I did not take every precaution to make certain she remained unscathed in this matter."
"I will go with Draco, if you insist," said Hermione. "But you ought to go tend to your wife."
"Of course I will, Hermione," he answered. "I know that you believe me to be an unfeeling monster, but if Kingsley was willing to put the past behind us and place me as Director of our division, why can you not attempt to do so as well? It's been five years since that nasty business was resolved, you know."
"But—but—but you're Lucius Malfoy," she reminded him as she sprang to her feet and moved a bit closer to him, pointing a finger at his chest but not quite touching it. "You were Voldemort's right hand man. How does one overlook that? You allowed me to be tortured in your own home—"
"And I have apologized for it more than once," he interrupted her. "Must I live in the past the rest of my life? Can you not believe that I've seen the error of my ways? A man can change, given the proper motivation. When I realized how wrong I had been, I went out of my way to learn what the real truths were. I assure you, I am not the man I used to be."
"Hermione?" called Harry, and the two of them raised their brows at each other
"Yes, Harry," she called, bolting for the door.
"I don't think you're going to like this," he said as both she and Lucius entered the kitchen, where he had the animal up on the table.
"What is it, Harry?" she wanted to know.
"Well, someone used a Stupefy on the cat, but that's not the most important finding."
"Get to the point, Potter," Lucius demanded irritably.
"There appears to be some sort of residue on your cat's fur," Harry pointed out. "Draco and I were able to work together to discover the nature of that substance. It's some sort of poison that's been rubbed into the fur. I don't think it originally was rubbed, but was sprinkled onto the cat. Unfortunately, when Narcissa pet her, this poison got into both the cat's skin, and hers as well. It was only a matter of time after that. The cat, of course, would naturally die sooner since she's much smaller, but—"
"-but Narcissa didn't have much more time than it did," Lucius finished for him. Then his eyes fell to Hermione as he said, "You do realize, Miss Granger, who that poison must have been meant for?"
Hermione was staring at Minerva with a mixture of sadness and terror on her face. "M-me? Why would anyone wish to poison me?"
"Hermione, think about it," Lucius said. "There are many people still out there who believe in blood purity. They would hardly wish for a Muggleborn to become a person of importance within the Ministry. It could have been one of a thousand people—maybe more."
"I—I don't understand this," she answered as a tear slid down her cheek. "The war is over. Why can't they just leave me alone?"
Lucius felt an overwhelming urge to wrap the frightened young woman into his arms and allow her to rest her head against his chest as she cried it out. He was just about to move forward when Harry Potter beat him to it. Feeling slightly resentful for this, he turned to his son.
"Draco, take the cat and Miss Granger over to St. Mungo's," he said. "Your Mother and I will join you there shortly. And son—try to keep the number of people who know about this to a minimum. We have no idea what—or who—we are dealing with."
"Yes, Father," Draco agreed, and did as he was told.