Hermione lay in her bed and stared at the ceiling. She blinked, and a solitary tear wormed its way down her cheek. Hermione swiped angrily at it and sniffled. In her mind, she was dropping purple liquid on her tongue, and a moment later, she was an enemy of Lucius Malfoy all over again.
She'd told Ginny about the antidote. Ginny had been immensely relieved that the antidote was available, that Hermione didn't have to wait six months to take it. It was a miracle, Ginny had said, that the potions shop had been able to obtain the finished product. And Lucius was willing to pay for it, which endeared him to Ginny just the tiniest bit. Ginny made no bones about the fact that she still personally hated Lucius Malfoy, and she assured Hermione that, soon enough, Hermione would, too.
Hermione clutched at her blankets and thought of so much, there in her bed after her conversation with Ginny. She thought about how Horace Slughorn had died attempting to brew the antidote. She imagined Slughorn, burned from head to toe after his cauldron exploded. She remembered the crowd outside Madam Pomfrey's office saying they weren't certain Slughorn would make it, the way Lucius and Hermione had met eyes because they both knew exactly what had happened.
Hermione thought about Narcissa. She was a Blood Purist, and she was bigoted and wicked. But she was Lucius' wife, and when Lucius had kissed and touched Hermione and let her touch him, he had cheated on Narcissa. He was an adulterer, Hermione thought, and Hermione played half of the part in that. She was just as responsible for the pain Narcissa would feel as Lucius was. She was just as culpable in all of this. She had brought a married man to climax with her hands. She had kissed him, over and over again, when Narcissa Malfoy was waiting for him at home. Hermione tried to feel guilty about that, but all she could think was that she wanted Lucius Malfoy with every ounce of her being.
She thought about Draco Malfoy, whom Hermione still disliked immensely for the way he'd treated her. You'll be next, Mudbloods. You filthy little Mudblood. What he'd done to Buckbeak. The way he'd been snide and cruel for years and years. All of that was because of his upbringing - because of the way Lucius had fathered him. Wasn't that so? Wasn't it true that Lucius Malfoy's parenting of Draco had contributed to Draco's unkind nature? Hermione tried to be angry about that bit, but all she could think was that Lucius was a victim himself.
Lucius. Lucius, who had kissed Hermione with gentleness she would have never expected of him. Lucius, who had held her in his arms and let her touch his bare shoulders and chest. Lucius, who had whispered against her lips, who had told her she was beautiful. Lucius Malfoy, disavowed Death Eater, who had declared that he no longer harboured negative feelings about Muggle-borns because of the Draught of Magnes.
What would happen after the antidote? Would he be disgusted at what they'd done together? Would he think himself a Blood Traitor? Would he do something to harm Hermione? She felt fear, all of a sudden. What would Lucius Malfoy do to her once they'd taken the antidote to the Draught of Magnes? Part of her didn't want to know. Part of her wanted to tell Lucius to send the antidote back. A not-insignificant part of her wanted to go back to his chambers and strip her clothes off and give him her virginity. But she knew that they both needed the truth. They both needed to know what lay beneath the surface. If that meant being enemies again, then that was what it meant.
Weary and crying, Hermione shut her eyes and tried to force herself to sleep. But sleep never came, and when she heaved herself out of bed in the morning, she felt heavy and had a pounding headache. Whatever came to be, she told herself, was what would need to be. There was nothing to be done. They had to take the antidote. Knowing that couldn't erase images of Lucius from her mind, though, and Hermione dragged through her day like she was swimming in honey.
Two days later, Hermione made her way into Classroom 3C with tears boiling in her eyes. She sat down next to Ginny and folded her hands on her desk. She didn't intend on taking notes today. If Lucius demanded it of her, she would do it, but she was too upset, being here in his class, to focus today.
It seemed that Lucius was distracted, too. At one point, Gemma Carlisle from Slytherin had been finished reading her paragraph for a solid thirty seconds before someone cleared their throat to get Lucius' attention. He huffed a breath and droned for Ginny to keep reading, and he stared down at the textbook in his hands with a glassy-eyed gaze.
Towards the end of the lesson, when he had told the class to quiz a partner in preparation for an upcoming exam, Lucius neared Hermione and Ginny's desk and slid a folded parchment down onto the surface. He met Hermione's eyes for a moment and then walked away, off to the Slytherin side of the room. Hermione looked at Ginny, who raised her eyebrows curiously. Hermione unfolded the parchment and read,
Meet me in my office before dinner.
Hermione shut her eyes and folded the parchment again. She whispered to Ginny,
"It's tonight. We're going to take the antidote tonight."
"Oh, good," Ginny gushed, and Hermione shot her a glare.
"I don't want to hate him."
"You want to feel what's real, don't you?" Ginny asked. Hermione's chest stirred oddly, but she finally nodded and said,
"Yes. I want to feel what's real."
She struggled through Ancient Runes, once again too distraught to take notes. Her mind was a frenzied mess of emotion. Should she take the antidote? Should she go back to loathing her Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, the married man she'd touched and kissed and whispered to in darkness? Should she feel disdain for him again? For what, Hermione asked herself? For the truth to be made manifest, for her mind to be independent and clear. That was why she would do it, why she would drop the antidote onto her tongue and let feelings of enmity come flooding back. It was why she would tell Lucius to go back to his wife, why she would be glad she hadn't had sex with him. The truth was the most important thing in all of this, and she needed to know what was real again.
After her last lesson of the day, Hermione made her way back to Classroom 3C. Her heart hammered a war tattoo in her chest, her breath hitched and caught in shallow pants in her nostrils, and her ears and cheeks were flushed hot with anxiety. Her eyes burned severely, and she felt queasy. But Hermione forced her feet - left, right, left, right - to make their way through the classroom and up the stairs leading to Lucius' office. The office door was open, but Hermione still knocked a few times before stepping inside.
"Hello." Lucius stood by the window, staring outside. Hermione noticed that his fingers were brushing up and down the curtains she'd Conjured for him, and a single tear worked its way from her eye. Hermione swept it away and said thickly,
"So you've got it. It's ready."
Lucius, still facing away from Hermione, reached into his robes and pulled something out. He held up a vial that gleamed in the twilight that was streaming through the window. The liquid in the vial was lavender and translucent, and the vial itself was ornately decorated crystal. Hermione couldn't breathe then. There it was. The truth, right there in Lucius' hand. Access to her mind's right state, held aloft by Lucius' long, thin fingers.
"I suppose we ought to just go ahead and do it," Hermione said, and Lucius slowly turned around. His pale eyes and his lips were tight, and suddenly he looked older than he'd ever appeared to Hermione. His jaw clenched, and he said,
"I should like one last kiss, if you don't mind."
Hermione bowed her head. "I don't mind."
She saw his dragon-hide boots approaching her, and then she felt his fingers beneath her chin. He slowly tipped up her face and stared down into her eyes, searching. He was studying her, she thought then, for his gaze traveled all over her hair and face and body. He was making a mental impression of this, of this moment in which they did not hate each other. He wanted to remember what it had felt like to want her, to like her. He bent, and he brushed his lips very gently against Hermione's. She sighed, and when he kissed her again, he deepened it. His tongue probed between Hermione's lip and tangled with hers, dragging across the roof of her mouth. He suckled her bottom lip and pulled his teeth over it, and she moaned softly. She held onto the front of his robes as if she were going to fall. Then she reached up and drew her fingers through his long, silky blond hair. She wanted to remember the feel of it. She wanted to remember the sensation of being kissed by him. Even if she'd hate him in just a few minutes, she wanted to know forever what this had been like.
"It's time," Hermione whispered, when at last Lucius dragged his mouth from hers. He shook his head and shut his eyes, pleading,
"Let's not take it. Let us simply keep on like this and -"
"You are my teacher," Hermione murmured, still stroking his hair, "and you are a married man. And we were enemies, you and I. This is all pretend."
"I find that I rather like this game of make-believe," Lucius said, his voice catching just a little. Hermione's eyes leaked another few tears, and she hummed,
"I will miss you, Lucius. Or maybe I won't. I hope I do. I hope I miss this, just a little bit."
At last, with a shaking breath coming from between his lips, Lucius took a step back and held up the crystal vial of lavender liquid. He unscrewed the vial's lid and pulled out the crystal dosing stick from inside. A single drop of the antidote fell back into the crystal vial, and Lucius said,
"One drop on the tongue, Young's Potioneers said. The effects of the Draught of Magnes should be eliminated immediately."
"Are you certain this is the real antidote?" Hermione asked. She tipped her head and demanded, "What if they've sold you something different?"
"I had Wagner Schmidt test it," Lucius assured Hermione. "I almost hoped they had sold me a placebo potion, or perhaps some very expensive purple water. But Herr Schmidt said with complete confidence that this is indeed Antidote to Draught of Magnes. He also recognised the crystal vial as having come from Pozioni Barra e Giordano in Venice, a potions shop renowned for making rare concoctions."
"So this potion will grant us the truth," Hermione nodded. "It's time to go back into our own minds, Professor Malfoy."
He looked wounded at having been addressed that way. Hermione reached out and laced her fingers through his left hand and squeezed a little.
"Thank you, Lucius," she said sincerely. "I've enjoyed this accident far more than I should have done."
"As have I," he agreed. He sighed and chewed his lip for a moment, and he confessed, "Do you know, Hermione Granger, that I had begun to lose all my sensibility for you? When you dropped the Draught of Magnes in the corridor, you kickstarted a bout of madness within me, and in this moment, I don't mind at all. I am grateful you and I… ran into one another that day. So."
"Please remember," Hermione said thickly, "that Draco is right. Astoria is right. Muggle-borns deserve respect. Narcissa is wrong. Please, even if you hate me again, just try to remember part of that, all right?"
He pursed his lips and shut his eyes tightly, and then he said in a stiff tone,
"Let us proceed and get this over with, shall we?"
With that, he dipped the crystal stick into the vial and brought it out towards Hermione. She trembled as she held out her tongue. The antidote was sickly sweet as she swallowed the drop and watched Lucius dose himself. He closed the vial and tucked it back into his robes, and he touched at his forehead as he whispered somewhat frantically,
"I do not wish to hate you, Hermione."
She started to cry in earnest then, choking a little as she mumbled, "I don't want to hate you, either."
They stood in silence for a very long moment then, each of them staring away from the other. Hermione eyed Lucius' desk, examining his chair as she waited for feelings of hatred to come rushing back over her. Lucius went to the window again, staring outside with his arms crossed over his chest. There was a very long quiet, an interminable, heavy blanket of uncertainty settling over the office.
Suddenly, Hermione felt herself back in Malfoy Manor, lying on the ground as Bellatrix carved the word Mudblood into her flesh. Suddenly she was viewing Lucius Malfoy at the Battle of Hogwarts in her mind. She could hear his silvery voice at Hagrid's hut the day of Buckbeak's execution. She could see his snarl, could hear his cruel words, could sense his acceptance of wickedness.
And then she thought of how he'd told Narcissa that he didn't want to speak to her whilst she maintained views against Muggle-borns. She thought of touching his cock, of kissing him, of speaking softly to one another. She thought of his muscled flesh, of him telling her she was brilliant and beautiful. She thought of him defecting from Voldemort, of him striking a deal with Kingsley to ingratiate himself back into society.
"L-Lucius?" Hermione said softly. He turned around, and she watched his throat bob. She blinked a few times at him, and she froze as he took three slow steps towards her. He shook his head and insisted quietly,
"I feel no different."
Hermione's eyes went wide. "What do you mean?"
He scoffed a little and nodded. "I'm sure it's all rushed back into your consciousness - all the terrible things I've done to you. I stood here thinking about all of that, too. And then I realised something."
Hermione just gaped. Lucius let out a quivering breath and said,
"The most intelligent, prettiest witch I have ever known is standing in this office. Muggle-born. She was my enemy. But hostis anima mea est, Miss Granger. I feel no hatred toward you."
"Lucius." Hermione tried to inhale and exhale properly, but it wasn't working. Suddenly her face was in his hands, and he said down to her,
"Your parents… they make people's teeth better. Their methods are rudimentary at best, but it isn't as though your dentist parents deserve death simply because they don't possess magic."
"You're still poisoned," Hermione whispered, but Lucius shook his head and said,
"No. I was poisoned by my father, by the Dark Lord. I was poisoned by Narcissa. I was poisoned by my own blood. It was the Draught of Magnes that was the antidote all along, Hermione."
Hermione stared and tried to steady herself. He bent down, his lips a hair's breadth from hers, and he murmured,
"I want to kiss you."
"Then kiss me," Hermione hummed back. Lucius crushed her mouth then, marching her back towards the wall and pressing at her shoulders. She bumped into the stone and planted her palms upon the rough rock, her hair grinding against the wall behind her. Lucius kissed her ferociously, licking and sucking and nipping and soothing. She kissed him back for all she was worth, and when at last the kiss broke, she told him,
"I don't hate you. I forgive you and I want you. Have I gone mad?"
"I think," Lucius said, smirking, "that you and I are very sane now, Hermione. And now we know. It was real all along."
"Draught of Magnes is not a love potion," Hermione whispered. "It is a peace potion. What exists between you and I… Slughorn's assignment didn't do that to us, did it?"
"No." Lucius pulled out the vial of Antidote to Draught of Magnes from his robes again and studied it. He set it down on his desk and said, "Now you know the truth."
He bent and kissed her again, and as he did, Hermione realised that he was right. Now she knew the truth. And the truth was that Lucius Malfoy no longer despised Muggle-borns. The truth was that Hermione Granger forgave Lucius for what he'd done. The truth was that he wanted her, and she wanted him. That was the truth. That was what was real. Hermione felt so dizzy her knees gave out, but Lucius swept an arm around her and held her up as he kissed her.
A shock of panic struck Hermione through as she contemplated that they were in his office. Because, after all, he was still her teacher. And he was still a married man. She yanked her face from his and shook her head frantically.
"Mrs Malfoy," she whispered, but Lucius' pale eyes flashed and he said,
"Narcissa has gone to live with her parents, owing to Draco and me having become apparent Blood Traitors. I will be writing to Narcissa, and to the Ministry, to formally request a divorce."
"This is all my fault." Hermione squeezed her eyes shut. Lucius kissed her forehead and said,
"Yes. It is rather all your fault. And I thank you most sincerely, Miss Granger. My eyes are opened. I can see, thanks to you."
She leaned against his chest and breathed him in, the smell of leather and the sea filling her lungs. She cinched her fingers on the front of his robes and mumbled,
"This is what's real."
"This is the truth," Lucius affirmed, and he touched his lips to her forehead again.
Notes: Well, well, well. As Lucius said, the Draught of Magnes was the antidote the whole time. Now for Lucius to rid himself of Narcissa, for Hermione to confess to Ginny what's real between her and Lucius, and for Luna to do a merry little "I told you so." ;)
Thank you as always for reading, and a massive thank-you for reviewing. I am so grateful for feedback.