Chapter 3

"Fourteen pieces" Lucius smiled as he matched up the mosaic frame and slotted the new piece into place. He was in an unusually good mood, thinking back to the old woman and how he had neither tortured nor killed her "I must be going soft" he teased himself. Shaking off these thoughts he tried to make himself concentrate on the job in hand. Once he had the piece in its rightful place he sat back in his chair, raising his arms and crossing his hands behind his head he decided it was time to pay Tempest another visit.

Tempest was just leaving Madame Aelita's as Lucius arrived. As she stepped out of the doorway Lucius approached her "Ah, just in time I see" he said smoothly.

"Mr Malfoy, to what do I owe this … pleasure?" she replied without sincerity.

"I have come to request your company for dinner tonight."

"Oh?" she replied, thinking she misheard him "sorry, what did you say?"

"Dinner, tonight, I have made reservations at…"

How presumptuous of the arrogant bastard she thought and was tempted to tell him this, but instead she replied…"I am afraid not, I have plans tonight."

Lucius was shocked, he was unused to being turned down and it annoyed him. "Do I understand you correctly? You are turning down my offer?"

"Yes Mr Malfoy, I am indeed turning down your offer!" she responded as she turned on her heel and walked away. Leaving Lucius stunned into silence behind her.

By the time he had regained his composure and moved to follow her, turning the corner she had just gone around he found that she had once again vanished.

Upon his return to Malfoy Manor he was in a foul mood. His poor house elves went running for cover, so much for their masters earlier good humour, his threw his cloak over the nearest of the elves. "No-one ever tells me no!" he hissed as he stormed into his study. Filling a large crystal tumbler with fire whiskey and sitting in one of he fireside chairs in his study. All he required now was two pieces of the mirror and that bitch stood in his way of getting one of them. She intrigued and infuriated him, how dare she turn him down; he would ensure she paid for that snub.

To the wizarding community they saw Lucius as a faithful follower of Voldemort, but to Lucius Voldemort was merely a means to an end. Lucius hid it well, but standing behind Voldemort and supporting his ridiculous plans and schemes allowed Lucius to formulate his own plan. Once the mirror was complete he would destroy that mudblood son of a muggle and show him how powerful a real wizard, a pureblood wizard could be. He would bring the world to its knees before him and all he needed to do this was two pieces of glass…

It was another two days before Lucius tracked down the information he required. When the owl carrying new documentation arrived Lucius was stunned and could barely believe his eyes, he had to read the message several times before it sank in.

"The mirror is here? It is right here in my own bloody house?" he raged.

According to the information he had received, Lucius' father himself has bought the piece of mirror before Lucius was born. Slamming his glass down on the desk he ran upstairs to the very top of the Manor and into the attic. Stumbling through the darkness he ordered the elves to light the candles in the huge room, right at the far side of the attic he found the trunks and crates containing his fathers' belongings. He searched through a crate of books until he found what he was looking for; his father had always kept meticulous accounts, going through each book from before his birth until he found the entry he required. There it was in black and white, the date his father had bought the mirror and how much he had paid for it.

With this information before him he searched through another trunk until he found his fathers diaries and located the correct one stuffed right beneath the others in the bottom of the trunk. Sitting back with the correct diary in his hands, Lucius opened it and looked for the date his father had acquired the piece of the mirror.

"Trust my father to make a diary entry about every damn move he made…" Lucius scoffed reading the entry:

"I have acquired a piece of the legendary mirror; with this I will gain more power than the world has ever seen. All I need do now is track down and acquire the other 15 pieces."

Lucius Laughed out loudly at the diary entry "poor father" he mocked "all ambition and no action." He read the diary entry again "you failed father … but I will not!"

The problem now facing Lucius was where his father would have hidden the piece of the mirror; this was not mentioned in the diary and Lucius himself had never actually seen it in with his fathers' belongings.

Frustrated Lucius stood to leave and threw the diary back into the now empty trunk and started to walk away, stopping in his tracks he turned back to the trunk; the sound of the book hitting the bottom had been wrong … hollow somehow. "You have got to be bloody kidding me!" he almost laughed at the absurdity of the situation. Dropping to his knees he tapped on the base of the trunk, it was quite obviously a false bottom. Picking up a candlestick from the top of a crate nearby he removed and threw to one side the extinguished candle before using this candlestick to smash through this false base. As the light seeped into this bottom section that had been hidden for so long, he saw nestled in the bottom a bundle of cloth. Taking this out he unwrapped the fabric and there safely inside this was the piece of mirror.

Lucius was ecstatic for a moment and then he remembered who had the final piece of the mirror… and he smiled coldly.