Disclaimer—I don't own any of JK Rowling's characters.

Thanks to everyone who's reviewed and put this story on alert!

Chapter Four

Revelation

Hermione's thoughts circled around Lucius's memories. Why did he want her to see those memories in particular? The first one showed he wasn't always a loyal follower of the Dark Lord. In fact, it seemed as if he was drafted into the Death Eater ranks by his father, and the Dark Lord had threatened his family to keep him in line.

But the second memory…why would he want Hermione to know about his mistress, Claudia?

"You're quieter than usual," said Ginny. She swirled her wine and took another drink. Hermione had been distracted, but she knew Ginny drank at least three goblets over dinner. The children were at Molly's overnight, so Ginny had drank more than she normally would have. "You're obsessing over work aren't you? You can't even relax enough to enjoy the little time you have to spend with us."

Draco shifted in his seat, as he realized what Ginny would say next. It wasn't uncommon for her to give Hermione long-winded speeches when she was plastered. They were always about how empty Hermione's life must be. How she needed to switch careers, marry, and push out a litter of offspring.

"Aren't you tired of all the violence and death? What about life? What about a husband and children?"

"Ginny," said Harry, his tone a bit sharper than usual. "You're pissed."

She glowered at her husband. "I'm afraid Hermione will wake up one day and see she's completely alone. What will she have if she stays on this path? Her career, and that's it!" She transferred her glower to Hermione. "Don't you want to fall in love? There's more to life than your job, Hermione. I know I once hated Draco-no offense Draco-but now I think he's the perfect man for you."

When Hermione and Draco became partners, Harry, Ginny, and Ron raised a number of concerns. There was a palpable tension between Draco and her best mates for a while, until Harry and Ginny grew to understand he was no longer the boy they'd known. Draco and Harry even managed to be polite to each other, though Hermione would never have called them friends. Ron, however, continued to loathe Draco, and the feeling was mutual.

"Okay, you've hit your limit," said Harry, and helped Ginny up. She allowed him to haul her to her feet, even as she protested his manhandling.

"Stop it, Harry. I want to say this," she slurred, and fell against his chest. "Look at what we have. I just want that for Hermione."

"I know," he said, and mouthed, I'm sorry, in Hermione's direction before guiding Ginny into the house.

Hermione watched them go with a shake of her head. Ginny's rant shouldn't have bothered her, especially since she'd heard it before. Yet, the words struck the lonely place inside her. Ginny had no idea how lucky she was. She had a good man who genuinely cherished her, and she mistakenly believed it was just as easy for every witch to find a man as devoted and wonderful as Harry.

Following the war, Hermione and Ron began dating, but she eventually reached the conclusion that they were incompatible. They had different goals in life. Ron wanted a family, and Hermione was too focused on her career to be the wife he desired. But most importantly, she wasn't ready for children. She still had things she would like to do before becoming a mother.

This became a bone of contention between them. Ron continued to press her to be more like Molly, and she became more and more bitter that he wanted to change her. Finally, their differences were irreconcilable.

After the break-up Ron refused to be in the same room with her, which had been painful, and Molly had given Hermione the cold shoulder. Both had expectations of her, and though she wanted to please them she couldn't remain in a relationship she was no longer invested in. Gradually she and Ron were able to be cordial to one another, and he married Lavender Brown. The two seemed happy together, which made Hermione feel proud for him, but a bit sad as well.

Her current love life was rather pathetic. She was a workaholic, and more often than not she used her career as a means to distract herself from the problems in her life. This was a coping mechanism she developed in order to deal with the emotional scars from the war. Since it was impossible for her to think of two subjects at once, she made sure that one subject was always something other than her bad memories.

"Just because you're a different kind of woman than Ginny doesn't mean there's anything wrong with your lifestyle," said Draco. He poured a shot of firewhisky and offered her one, which she declined.

As an Auror she was exposed to blood and guts day after day, and after a while it took a toll. Her research compounded that toll, as she was frequently immersed in violent memories. Before long she began drinking firewhisky on a regular basis, a practice that was not uncommon with Aurors. Having drinks after work, often as a group, was practically a custom.

Then one morning after a night of drinking, Hermione woke beside a wizard she didn't recognize. They had shagged, only she'd blacked out and couldn't remember; she didn't even know the wizard's name. Waking up beside a strange man, half pissed and panicked by the situation, made her see that alcohol was not an appropriate method of dealing with the stress. Since that time she rarely indulged, save on special occasions, and even then she wouldn't imbibe much.

"Not everyone wants a family," said Draco. "Look at me. I'm supposed to be married to a pure-blooded witch by now. Should already have a son, in fact. That speech Ginny gave you is nothing in comparison to the speeches Mother gives me."

She smiled as she imagined what Draco's son would look like. Just like him, she knew: blonde and gray-eyed and inhumanly beautiful. Malfoy men might have questionable morals at times, but no one in their right mind could claim they weren't gorgeous. Especially Lucius…she yanked her mind away from that, uncomfortable such a thought had even occurred to her in the first place.

"Why didn't you marry a nice pure-blooded witch?" she asked.

It was a question she'd never asked him before because it would inevitably bring up what his father expected of him, and she'd found it was wise not to bring up Lucius if she could help it. Still, she had often wondered why Draco hadn't married and produced an heir.

"After what happened with Father and the Dark Lord I decided I would never allow anyone else to make decisions for me. And I don't want to settle down."

"I suppose the incessant bed-hopping hasn't exhausted you yet," she said.

He puffed out his chest. "I do have incredible stamina."

Hermione rolled her eyes and grinned, but sobered thereafter. "Ginny has a point, though. The only men I'm intimate with are killers. I see their memories, their darkest secrets…I don't know any normal, non-psychopathic men half as well."

That wasn't exactly what bothered her, though. What bothered her was that she was clearly okay with it. Otherwise she would have changed the situation long ago.

xOxOxOx

The following morning, the Auror division bustled with activity. Hermione, however, was in her own quiet bubble, as she'd erected a ward around her cubicle that silenced outside noises. Her legs were propped up on her desk and there was a file opened across her lap. She had been staring at it for the last few moments, her mouth an O of shock.

Claudia Thornvine was a Muggle-born. Lucius Malfoy had an affair with a Muggle-born. He had been in love with a Muggle-born.

"What's wrong?" asked Draco as he entered the cubicle. "Your mouth is dangling open."

She shut it with an audible clanking of teeth and handed the file to Draco. His lips went tight as he read the dossier on Claudia. "This can't be right."

"It is; I double checked. She was a Ravenclaw. Was in the same year as your father."

"Claudia was murdered," said Draco, after studying the dossier a bit more. "Death Eaters killed her, her parents, and her younger sister."

Had Lucius been involved in their murders? How had he gone from cuddling in bed with Claudia to possibly killing her?

Draco snapped the file closed with more force than necessary.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"It's hard for me to believe. My whole life I thought he hated Muggle-borns, but he seemed to actually have feelings for Claudia in the memory. Could the memory have been tampered with?"

"My pensieve basin is bespelled. If a memory has been altered in some way it will alert me."

This had become a necessity because many of the killers she'd collected memories from found it amusing to give her false memories. Over the years she learned all their tricks and how to counter them.

"Is there any way Father could have tampered with the memory without it triggering the basin spell?"

"My pensieve always catches it." She hesitated before deciding to say more. "Maybe your father isn't as prejudiced as he acts. He was strangely nice to me yesterday. And he owns a copy of my book. I think he was reading it recently because it was on the top of the stack."

"That is exactly what he wants you to think. He's toying with you."

"I know he's toying with me," she said. "That doesn't mean he's as prejudice as he seems. Otherwise he never would have had an affair with a Muggle-born witch. He wouldn't have even touched her, but he was holding her, Draco. I think he really did love her."

Draco's cheek muscle ticked. "I don't even think he's capable of love."

"He loves you. You didn't see him during the final battle when he was searching for you."

Draco's eyes met hers before darting away. "Now you of all people are taking up for my father. He's influencing you already."

"This has nothing to do with his influence. I'm telling you what I observed during the battle. He was frantic with worry."

Again his cheek ticked, as it tended to do when he was angry.

"You said you recognized where Lucius and Claudia were during the memory," she said. "Do you have access to the cottage by the sea?"

"You want to go there?"

"Why not?"

Ten minutes later, and they had materialized inside the cottage. Hermione chuckled.

Opposite the loveseat was an old-fashioned television, complete with antennae. Nearby was an equally outdated record player and several racks of albums.

"He has decent taste in music," she said, chuckling once more at the irony that Lucius Malfoy owned a Billie Holiday record.

Draco glanced around in astonishment. "Mother and I never came here. We have so many properties…we thought this one hadn't been occupied in many years."

"I wager he came here often," she said, and moved toward the bookshelf that had caught her attention. "This is where he hid his Muggle things."

Many of the books interested her. The Catcher in the Rye. Crime and Punishment. The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Lord of the Flies. Arabian Nights.

On the bottom shelf was a photograph album. She Summoned it and opened to the first page. The picture was of Lucius and Claudia snogging the life out of one another. Every picture depicted a similar scene. Their clothing changed, and the settings changed, but they were always embracing or kissing. Oddly, she felt a stab of jealousy when she saw the want in Lucius's eyes as he looked at Claudia.

Draco joined her by the bookshelf, and she handed the album to him. "Tell me they weren't in love," she said, watching him flip through the pictures as she had.

His face flickered with too many emotions to catch them all. Then he threw the album across the room, Disapparating with a strident crack before the album even slammed into the wall.

She sighed and retrieved the photograph album. Maybe she shouldn't have opened her big mouth. Draco was overly sensitive where Lucius was concerned, and he had just been dealt a serious shock. Hermione was shocked as well, and Lucius wasn't even her father.

xOxOxOx

Hermione arrived at Azkaban at nine o'clock. Like the morning prior, Pearl escorted Hermione to Lucius's cell. This time, neither witch spoke, though Pearl hummed a rather jaunty tune.

Lucius was in the exact position as the last time she saw him-ramrod straight on his bed with the violet cuffs on his wrists and ankles. His black robe had a high collar, hiding the scar on his neck.

Draco had more delicate features than his father-he was almost pretty. (This was something she would never tell Draco, of course.) Lucius, on the other hand, had a more manly appearance, with his square jaw and bulky physique. Though she couldn't see his musculature under his robe, she sensed he had a very fit body beneath. Again those warm, little butterflies bounced in her chest, and again she was disgusted, and a bit frightened, by them.

Hermione knew what sort of man Lucius was. Her attraction to him was wrong, and horrible, and beyond inappropriate. He was a mass murderer. At one time she had loathed him and Draco...and now she was Draco's best mate, and she had those unsettling butterflies every time she was in Lucius's presence. She had certainly changed in the last decade, and her warped attraction for Lucius caused her to question what sort of woman she had become.

She Transfigured a chair and settled in, reordering the position of her trench coat until she was comfortable. "Do you care to explain why you gave me those memories and requested I return today?"

"You visited the cottage by the sea, didn't you?"

"Will you answer my question?"

Lucius stared at a place over her shoulder. "Did Draco view the memories?"

"Is that why you gave them to me? So he would view them and understand you better? Did you count on the fact that he would insist on viewing the memories with me?" Maybe he believed if Draco saw the memories, he would consider a reconciliation. This could be his motive for giving them to her.

"I wished to kill two birds with one stone."

Frustration welled in her. Could he not answer a simple question? He either sidestepped her queries or answered in such an enigmatic fashion she learned nothing from his response. She was half tempted to perform a Legilemens, but knew better than to do so. Not only was it an invasion of his privacy, but he would sense her invasion.

Hermione had meant to take control of the conversation, to steer it in the direction she wished, but that would be next to impossible. He was too much of an alpha male to allow that to happen.

"How goes the murder case?" he asked, after a silence had lengthened between them.

"You know I can't divulge any information about the case to you."

He gestured to the copy of the Daily Prophet resting on his desk. The deaths of Morta, Shane, and Finch were front page news. The majority of the details were absent from the article, as those would be suppressed from the media for as long as possible. "Finch was the guard who stole my recipe, I presume."

Hermione said nothing, and Lucius's lips quirked. "You're a stubborn woman, Miss Granger."

"You're just as stubborn, Mr. Malfoy."

"This hour will be a quiet one if we refuse to answer one another's questions."

She shrugged with a single shoulder, realizing it was precisely the way in which Draco shrugged. How many mannerisms had she learned from him over the years? "I enjoy the quiet."

"I've had ten years of quiet."

His tone, so filled with unexpected emotion, made her look at him more closely. She wanted to ask him if he really had loved Claudia and how he ended up loving a Muggle-born. Instead she asked another question, one that was in safer territory.

"What do you plan to do when you're released?"

"Travel."

"Where will you go? Will you return to the cottage by the sea?"

"I have no reason to hide any longer. The Dark Lord is dead." He seemed neither upset or pleased by Voldemort's demise.

"The cottage was where you went to hide," she said, nodding as her suspicion was confirmed. "Why did you collect those things?"

"Because they gave me pleasure."

"Even though they were created by Muggles?" she asked.

"Even though."

Hermione recalled what a cocky, rebellious teenager he was. Perhaps his collection of Muggle things was an offshoot of that. Maybe it was a way of giving his father a two finger salute.

"What happened to Claudia? Were you there the night she and her family were killed?"

"If you want the answer you'll have to view more of my memories."

"Upon which point I will return and ask you more questions about what I viewed. Why do you want me to continue to return here?"

"I'm not ready to tell you yet. When I am ready, you will know."

Vexation and curiosity continued to burn inside her."You are a pain in the arse," she blurted. It was precisely the way she spoke to Draco when he was being difficult.

Lucius laughed, and she couldn't stop her astonishment from showing. She had heard Lucius laugh before, and it always had a fake, haughty quality, or a low villainous timbre. But this laugh was one of genuine amusement and it was nearly contagious. Hermione might have laughed as well under different circumstances.

"What?" he asked. "You look as if you're staring at an alien life form."

"Maybe I am. Then again you are an incredible actor, aren't you? Who's to know which mask is the real one."

"I can't fake my memories. Your pensieve would have told you."

This was yet another thing he'd learned from reading her book. Speaking of…"Why do you have a copy of my book?"

"There's not much to do here but read."

"If I asked about the odd ring in the memory would you be just as enigmatic?"

The ring had stuck in her mind. He could have offered Hermione any number of memories starring Claudia, but he had chosen one where the ring was featured. It was hideous, as Draco said, and was not the sort of jewelry Lucius would typically wear. Logically that meant it had a purpose, but what? And why had he seemed reluctant to slip it on his finger?

"Tell me more of your theories about the killer," he said, abruptly changing the subject. "Surely the Ministry would have no problem with you sharing a theory with me. Or am I still a suspect?"

"Officially you are."

"But you don't think I'm involved. I know many powerful men-men like your killer. I might recognize him through a personality description. A profile, as you call it."

Hermione considered. He might be able to offer a viable list of suspects. On the other hand, if Harry discovered she was sharing information with Lucius Malfoy he would not be pleased. And though she was sure Lucius wasn't responsible for the murders, there was a nugget of doubt warning her she might be wrong. He had invented Compulsion.

Even so, Lucius made a good point. She would merely be sharing a theory on the kind of man she expected the killer to be. She would reveal no details about the case. After vacillating, she made her decision.

"As I said before, he's in a position of power," she said. "This would be a very controlling man. He would be ruthless once he had an objective in mind. He's extremely fastidious, perhaps to the point of compulsiveness. Therefore he would be well groomed, his clothing well tailored, his hair just so.

"He's most likely married. His wife could possibly be a blonde. There's a high probability she's younger than him, perhaps by a substantial margin. He would not marry a woman he considered an equal. He would be the dominant force in the relationship and would be verbally if not physically abusive. His wife is probably meek and subservient, but would be as well groomed and put together as he is. He would not have a sloppy wife, nor would he have an unattractive wife. But you would not call her beautiful if you saw her. Maybe cute or pretty, but not beautiful.

"He's a voyeur and was probably caught peeping at one time or another, most likely when he was in his early to late teens. There might be old rumors about him exhibiting these sorts of behaviors. Probably girls who lived in his neighborhood or who attended school with him.

"The killer isn't from a wealthy family. And I doubt he's attractive, unless he became so once he became a man. As a young man, he was average to ugly. But he always pined for the beautiful girls, knowing he could never have them…yearning for their touch but also despising them…"

She blinked and swam back to the real world. "Does that sound like anyone you know?"

"It does, actually, save the rumors of voyeurism. Kent Blackburn."

Hermione blinked again. Kent Blackburn had already become a person of interest, as his wife had founded the Order of Venus, of which Morta was a member.

"So he's a suspect," Lucius said, after having read her much too easily. "Have you met him?"

"No." Hermione had heard of him but had never met him in person. She had seen his picture in the Daily Prophet a few times, particularly when he acquired his Wizengamot seat.

"He contracted dragon pox when he was a child. He was left with pock scars all over his face, arms, and chest. The scars are profuse and quite unsightly. Not many know this because he hides the scars with glamours."

Profuse pock scars would definitely cause the beautiful girls to ignore Blackburn or perhaps even cringe with revulsion, depending on how unsightly the scars were and how cruel the girls were. Hermione knew from experience that teenage girls could be very cruel. It was one reason she had so few female friends when she attended Hogwarts.

Blackburn wouldn't have been able to glamour the scars when younger. Maintaining a glamour sapped a wizard's magic, and the spell required a high level of skill. As a man, fully in control of his magic, he would have been able to conceal them, but not as a boy.

"What else do you know about him?"

Lucius explained that Blackburn was one of the youngest wizards ever to become a member of the Wizengamot. He was known for being stern, ambitious, and shrewd. His wife was in fact twelve years his junior. Narcissa, Lucius said, never liked her because she was too subservient to Blackburn.

"He treats her like a child. Often carping at her for her posture or dress or choice of vocabulary," said Lucius. "I never understood it. Personally I prefer strong, independent women."

"Was Claudia strong and independent?"

"She was strong in her own way, but not so independent. She could be clingy."

Now Hermione asked the question she had wanted to ask since entering the cell. "Did you really love her?"

"At first I began a relationship with her as a way of rebelling against my father, even though I made certain he would never find out. I didn't plan on falling in love with her."

That wasn't exactly a yes or no, but she suspected it was a yes.

"You were together for many years," she said.

"Since we were sixteen, until the day she died." He averted his gaze as if to hide the emotions her death roused in him. Lucius was either an amazing actor, or Claudia's death still caused him grief.

Hermione waited for him to continue, but he said nothing more. Knowing he had no intention of mentioning Claudia any further, she cast a Tempus and rose. "The hour's up, Mr. Malfoy."

"You should collect more memories before you leave. You do want to know how the story unfolds, don't you?"

She recalled how Claudia and her family were killed by Death Eaters. "I already know how it ends."

"But you don't know the details." Once more he was using her curiosity to his advantage. She did want to know the details.

"Depending on how Draco is when I see him, I might not tell him I collected more of your memories."

"That's up to your discretion."

She sighed. "Why are you toying with me, Mr. Malfoy? What do you have to gain?"

"That will be revealed in time."

Even more frustrated then before, she pressed the wand to his temple and gathered the memories, trying not to notice how close they were. Since she learned of Claudia and the cottage by the sea, Hermione had become even more sexually aware of Lucius, and it made her uncomfortable.

Maybe that's his objective, she thought. Then she shook her head. Lucius Malfoy would never be interested in Hermione Granger. It was too preposterous to even consider.