The plot thickens! I honestly don't know where it came from, but here it is, happily developing this fic into something more than PWP ;).

Thank you so much to everyone how has read, kudosed, and commented! You continued support is what keeps this story going, even if it's only very slowly.

A big thank you to Kyonomikofor her initial feedback over a year ago (can you imagine?), and to TheLastLynx and Riptide whose alpha and beta work is the only reason it didn't take one year more for this chapter to be updated. You all made so many important comments, and they definitely improved my story! 3

Have you seen that I have a new aesthetic for Appendices on AO3 or tumblr? I_was_BOTWP gifted me with this amazing aesthetic and I'm still so happy whenever I look at it. Thank you, dear friend!

This story is cross-posted from AO3 where it's usually updated one or two days earlier than ffn. My username over there is sarena.

Disclaimer: All rights belong to JK Rowling and her publishers. I just borrow the characters and the world for a bit; the plot (as little as there is) is mine, though. This is a non-profit work, and no copyright infringement is intended.

ooOoOoOoo

Throwing a quick glance at her wristwatch, Hermione barely suppressed a curse. Again, the time had flown by without her even noticing, and now it was lunchtime already. She'd wanted to write Malfoy much earlier; her evening plans had been derailed by her superior, however, who'd requested she take over the review of an object for the DMLE. Work at short notice for the Auror office was often unpredictable; she'd probably have to work a late shift today.

Parchment and quill ready on her heavy wooden desk, she scribbled a short note cancelling tonight's appointment with Draco. Disappointment tugged at the corner of her lips as she closed the small scroll with a drop of wax and the press of her personal seal. It would have been nice to spend time with him. Their intellectual exchanges were stimulating, and not only those, if she were honest with herself. She squirmed on the chair, feeling an undercurrent of arousal she was intent to push aside immediately.

Despite the relatively short cart ride to the bank-owned owlery, she'd rolled the message in her hands so often by the time she got there that its edges were a bit crumpled. The air smelled of feathers and litter, a scent she would always associate with Hogwarts' owlery and the bittersweet memories of her youth. She cooed at the next free owl and gave it a gentle stroke before she fixed the message and sent it off to Draco with an oblique smile.

On the opposite side of the room was the row of owl PO boxes. Her own was designated 'H. Granger, curse-breaker,' and as expected, she found the folder of her latest ministry assignment in it. Judging from her brief skimming of the outline, it would keep her thoroughly busy for a good while. With a heavy sigh, she picked up a quick late lunch at the 'cafeteria' in vault 712 before dutifully making her way back down to the vaults.

"Good afternoon, Mr Sombel," she greeted the goblin sitting in the cart. He would take her back to her office beneath them, below even the deepest vaults.

"Afternoon, Ms Granger. To your office, as usual?" The goblin acknowledged her with an infinitesimal jerk of his head before he turned the wheel and tapped a couple of ledgers with the long nail of his index finger. Hermione braced herself against the erratic acceleration with a white-knuckled grip on the handle on the inside of the cart. The sudden movement always made her a little nauseous. On top of that, the involuntary recollection of a shirtless Draco with his appendages winding around her limbs, caressing them, didn't help her keep concentration on keeping her stomach settled in the least—or on anything else, for that matter.

"Yes, thank you." The dark liquid in her cup sloshed against the invisible containment charm she'd used so her drink could survive the trip down to her office despite the goblin's precarious driving style. Relieved to be able to get out again, she exited the cart at their destination and muttered an absent but polite goodbye. She faced her door. The established combination of enchanted key and handprint to open the office doors was a bit of a hassle with her arms full, but after rearranging the food and folder in her hands, she managed it.

As soon as she had closed the door behind her, Hermione renewed the air-cleaning charm to get rid of the stifling stench which still leeched from the ancient walls of her office. It probably was a relic of its previous life as a potions laboratory. While she regularly changed the display of her panorama window, she sometimes felt the oppressive atmosphere of being so deep below the surface. The array of lush plants on her faux window sill helped to lighten the mood on most days, though. Taking a deep breath of the refreshed, slightly flowery air, she hung her thin outer robe onto one of the simple coat hangers behind her door, setting her food and drink on the free part of her desk.

Her eyes grazed over the small pile of leather-bound booklets. She'd brought Abraxas' journals with her on a whim this morning. She knew she wouldn't have much time to work on them, but the vague, nagging feeling in the back of her mind wouldn't leave her alone. As if the fact that she constantly had to remind herself to pour less magical power into her spells didn't make her uneasy enough anyway.

Taking big bites, she ate her tuna sandwich quickly without really tasting it, so immersed was she in recapitulating the little bit of last evening's translation they'd done. The answers to Malfoy's unexpected transformation just had to be somewhere in these lines. Even if they weren't expressly described by Draco's grandfather, she still hoped for references to other, perhaps much older records. With an absent swirl of her wand, she cleaned her hands and vanished the few crumbs which had fallen onto her notes.

Hermione pulled the journals closer to her with her fingertips, pushing a few of the strands of hair which had escaped her bun behind her ears. She hadn't slept nearly enough during the past couple of days. Before she began to proofread the last handful of pages of her translations, she set her wand alarm, and then closed her eyes to centre herself. The short thirty minutes she was allowed for lunch were barely enough to concentrate on what she'd done already, so starting a new entry of Abraxas' diary wasn't feasible. She'd have to allot much more time for that.

When the melodic ring of her alarm reminded her to get back to her paying job, she'd finished her tea just so. Whenever her focus diverted only a little, images of Malfoy's well-snogged lips and burning touches invaded her mind. Cursing her fickle brain, she grabbed the folder of the object she would start working on today and began to read.

A good half an hour later, lips pursed in face of the meagre information the Aurors had provided her with, she left for the high-security containment sector two levels below hers. Conveniently, the goblins had installed a circular staircase at some point during the 1950s. It was narrow, but it was still quicker and less upsetting to her stomach than the carts.

Gringotts praised themselves on being wizarding world's oldest and securest bank—especially after they'd managed to employ Hermione Granger, the only known witch who'd ever successfully broken in. Of course, they were also renowned for even more tightly-secured facilities carved much deeper into the stone below London to contain the utmost questionable objects in private possession.

Finishing the sequence of advised protection spells on herself, she entered the lab. She folded her sleeves up to her elbows to free her wrists for spellcasting. Their latest acquisition was laid out on the sturdy stone table in the middle of the room. Her eyes narrowed as she took in the item. It wasn't that big, maybe the size of two thick books put together. She stepped closer until her hips leaned against the edge of the working table.

At first sight, the box looked simple enough; only on closer inspection did its opulent decoration become noticeable. Various kinds of wood, now darkened by age, had been used to create an array of delicate inlays. Hermione recognised elder and black limba among them. She tapped her pen onto the current page of the notebook in her hand and contemplated the trees' magical uses. Considering the violent nature of the object, elder wood might have been used to strengthen communication with the darker aspects of magic. The main corpus of the box appeared to be made entirely from black limba, a wood she knew was associated with substantially enhancing one's control over Dark Magic. Infused with the right—or wrong, but that depended on the point of view—type of spells, the little chest would prove a powerful obstacle against accessing its contents, solely due to its makeup. Hermione doubted all the effort had been made to contain anything less than an artefact of immense magical power, but she would have to wait until she broke through its protection.

She scribbled down her observations and studied the item again. Its pattern on the polished surface was winding and convoluted in a way which made it difficult for her eyes to focus on a specific area. She couldn't confidently distinguish the different features. Their constant meandering made her want to reach out and trail her fingertips over the lid. Hermione felt something tugging subtly at her mind, compelling her to do just that.

At once, she pressed her eyelids shut for a few seconds and breathed slowly through her nose. The object was influencing her, and she needed to regain control immediately. Something flared inside of her as she took a couple more steadying breaths, both to fight the influence as well as to calm the sudden feeling of anger. "Sneaky," she mumbled a few moments later, documenting her preliminary findings immediately. She had only read about this kind of charm but never seen one.

The box, as simple and innocuous as it appeared at first sight, had caused severe burns to its former owner. Unfortunately, that witch had refused to reveal where she had got it from. She also didn't elaborate on which spells she'd used. Just the memory of the interview the Aurors had conducted with the stubborn witch made Hermione huff with indignance. Not only would it have helped the curse-breakers but also the healers at St. Mungo's. In fact, it would be generally quite beneficial if people would only be more honest sometimes.

Waving the wand over the device, she confirmed the suspected traces of Dark Magic and several layers of tightly-knit spells she was sure she had never seen before. Still, they felt eerily familiar, in an unsettling and ungraspable way. Shaking off her growing discomfort, she went through her mental catalogue of wards she'd encountered and read about, but while fragments fit every now and then, she couldn't puzzle them together. She inhaled deeply again to rein in her increasing impatience. Without a real grasp on the congruence with other spells, she'd have to consider these as rare blood wards, specifically designed to repel non-familial outsiders from accessing the presumed great treasure inside. That would also explain why the box had reacted so violently and the unwillingness of the injured witch to cooperate. In any case, it likely meant Hermione was faced with the insurmountable task of finding an appropriate blood donor to negate the wards. She would need more than a modicum of luck for that. It wasn't even clear if the suitable family was British. Hermione pulled a face. The uncomfortable alternative could mean weeks, maybe even months, of tedious curse-breaking to unravel the fabric of the magic.

She sighed. Combatting this type of magic was always draining.

As she adjusted and re-adjusted the grip on her wand a few times to regain her concentration on unwinding the first couple of magical threads, she felt her concentration slip. A part of her mind kept drifting off to Malfoy instead. His pale, smooth skin, only marred by his scars and the smattering of coarse hair. Small pink nipples which would pucker underneath her tongue. His breath hitching with anticipation when her hand would stroke lower, cupping his erectio—

She jerked back at the furious sting which hit her from the box. The pain was an intense spike, singing along her nerves as she quickly cast the mandatory series of diagnostic spells. Her hand shook, all thoughts of Malfoy forgotten for the moment. Thank the gods, there weren't those mysterious magical burn marks the injured witch immediately had seemed to bear after her failed attempts to open the box. Still, Hermione knew well enough that not all magical curses needed to show on the outside.

She cast a much closer look at her own inherent magical pattern and held her breath. It came up almost normal. A heavy sigh of relief escaped her lips. The small hitch in her core structure had appeared only recently, and she felt anxious about it. She just hoped the examinations at the specialised healer this morning would be concluded within the promised two days.

Shoving the encounter to the back of her mind, she studied the seal with furrowed brows and carefully reached out. The object rattled with threatening magic now. As she began to go through the obligatory good curse-breaking practice, she could sense her wand grazing against an invisible barrier just above its surface. Touching it with more force gave no different results; it was intransigent. She cast a sequence of regular and altered opening spells, in vain. All other common and uncommon unlocking charms she knew turned out to be just as ineffective. At one point, she got so desperate that she even grit out an open sesame although she'd have wagered half her precious book collection that it wouldn't have worked anyway. She rubbed her temples. Her fingers got slightly sticky from perspiration. If the usual procedure didn't work, she'd have to resort to more extraordinary methods.

Hermione scrutinised the object for another moment and then cast the spell once more that had provoked it to sting. Analysing the effect of her approach, she realised that the protective charm had lost a fraction of its power. Still, it hit her shield with enough impact to make the magic flare up as it licked along the expanse of it.

Could she possibly wear out the protective charm?

Five hours and a handful of curses continuously increasing in volume later, a thick layer of sweat covered her forehead. A few curls had escaped her bun and now stuck to her damp temples and sticky neck. She felt elated, although she'd drained large reserves of her magic in a comparably short time. The uppermost part of the complex magic was frayed enough to try to disband it completely, but she'd need a longer break first. Maybe it would be better to get some sleep. Forcing herself to a sequence of deep and slow exhalations, she slumped down into the chair she'd dragged from her desk and wiped her face with a conjured towel. The thought of how long it would take her to get into the box at this rate quelled her contentment, though. She might not be able to lift the curse any time soon.

Appraising the box from a different angle of view, Hermione noted a slight change of its colouring when she tilted her head just so. A spot seemed to marr the otherwise flawless surface. This shouldn't have been possible as the box was guarded by such heavy wards. She leaned closer and tried different perspectives, at the same time being careful not to get ensnared by the deceptive inlay, until she could safely determine the location of the tiny dot on the embedded surface. With a renewed rush of vigour, she grabbed her magnifying glass and zoomed in, blinking a couple of times to clear her field of vision.

The speck was a tiny crest. Three black ravens were depicted, topped by an arm which held a sword, and a skull surrounded by acantus leaves. She didn't have to increase the zoom of her glass to know the family motto written beneath it.

Toujours pur.

It was the Black family crest.

Hermione recoiled from the item and took a stuttering breath, her thoughts a wild disarray of possibilities and recollections. Against her will, she felt the cold steel of the cursed knife press against her, the sharp tip piercing the sensitive skin of her forearm. The scar seared up in pain. In reflex, Hermione rubbed one hand over it and grimaced. She pressed her damp and shaking hands against her thighs, and concentrated for several long moments on her lungs expanding and contracting.

When she felt more like herself again, she sat down at the desk positioned against the far wall from the examination table. Her pen scratched over the paper, making her grimace at the atypical chicken-scratch of her writing as she summarised today's discoveries.

The association of the box with the Blacks was an extremely unpleasant development. Hermione liked Andromeda well enough and managed to tolerate Draco's mum in little doses, but the remaining one of the Black sisters? Bellatrix had left the most profound impression by torturing her.

Quickly shoving the horrific memories to a distant compartment of her mind, she deliberately ignored the frantic pounding of her heart. Not even the view of the drawing room in Malfoy Manor had evoked such a strong response in her.

The lack of sleep and drain of magic must have affected her more than she'd realised, judging by how completely her thoughts had just drifted off her work again.

Skimming the bullet points on her tidy and neat list as her pen tapped an irregular staccato onto the paper, she pondered her options. Tomorrow she would remove the topmost layer of spells and then assess the logical steps imperative to open the box as quickly as possible. Hermione pursed her lips. It was a shame that the Gringotts Code forbade the involvement of strangers, otherwise she'd simply ask Andromeda or even Mrs Malfoy.

But while she was not to contact anyone outside of the bank, nothing prohibited her from looking for information in any place she deemed appropriate. Maybe that place turned out to be a pleasant location filled with books and even more pleasant company to conduct her research.

Just as the Malfoy library, for example.

ooOoOoOoo

Draco,

I'm feeling bad for cancelling our appointment. Can I make it up to you? How about lunch tomorrow?

HG

He chewed on the inside of his cheek, almost inclined to deny her a lunch meeting. At the same time, his desire to see her was steadily outgrowing his soreness for her earlier cancellation of tonight's dinner date.

Who was he kidding; of course he'd hoped to see her again as soon as possible. Maybe they'd even accomplish some research, too. He was getting past the point of denying his attraction, at least to himself. Now he needed to figure out a way to get her to come over more often.

Staring at the parchment in front of him, his fingers fondled the barbs of his quill. Like Granger, they were smooth when stroked in the right way, but stood on end if not. He was sure he'd find a way to stroke all of her just like she would want him to. She'd purr and keen at his touch, nipples pebbling under his affections. She'd squirm in rapture as all of his appendages would wind around her arms and bare legs, teasing the soft insides of her thighs until he'd be able to inhale her arousal. Her back would arch to get even closer to his touch—

Feeling his cock strain against his trousers and the skin on his back getting ready to burst, he hastily curbed his daydream. Of course, he could give in to the urge to jerk himself off about every time he thought of her, but that might just occupy most of his day.

Hermione, he began to write. He ran the top of the feather along his jaw, feeling a light shudder of pleasure running down his spine before he pulled his mind out of the gutter, again. He sighed; he couldn't seem to help himself.

I managed to free a slot in my calendar. I suggest we meet at the 'The Silver Unicorn' in Diagon Alley at 12:30. They serve a decent roast.

DM

It wasn't that he had a terribly busy schedule, to begin with, but he didn't have to tell her that. Torn between the earlier discontent and the current elation, he finished his answer with a flourish at the end of his initials and fastened the sealed scroll to Aures' leg. He scratched the owl's neck and head, and smiled at the low cooing sound she made before he sent her off.

Draco looked at the many pages of notes strewn across the desk. The past hours had been prolific despite his wandering thoughts, and the Reperio charm was a real asset in finding content and cross-referencing. He'd been able to narrow down a handful of descriptions and theories by his grandfather, and systematically listed them on separate sheets. His mind wandered to Hermione as he imagined her shining eyes, eager to hear his latest findings. She'd lean forward and grant him a glimpse of her cleavage, or maybe she'd even press against his side, stroking his additional limbs while she praised him. And then she would—

No.

Shaking his head to sternly dispel this very naughty train of thought, he piled up his notes. Whenever he thought of her, there was this weird feeling of free-falling below his ribcage. It wasn't an entirely unpleasant sensation, he decided.

Draco smiled in anticipation.

Please let me know what you think! Praise and constructive criticism are very welcome :). If you find a mistake, please don't hesitate to contact me on tumblr: o0sarena0o and I'll try to fix it as soon as I can.