Second Year, 1992-1993

She was still secretly dwelling on the blond wizard when she returned to Hogwarts for her second year. As with any situation, when Hermione Granger wanted to know something, she went to the library, and this was no different.

While Harry practised quidditch and Ron played chess with his friends in the Gryffindor common room, Hermione sought refuge in the library, setting aside her schoolwork to research the Malfoy family. In the "Pureblood Directory," she found a history of magical Britain's 'purest' families. She devoured the section on the Malfoy family, learning that the family's ancestral home was located in Wiltshire, although Armand Malfoy - or Malfoi - had come to England from France. The estate in Wiltshire was a gift from the muggle King William I. Hermione's eyebrows rose at that. She knew from her history of magic texts that wizards and witches had once lived openly among muggles, but seeing it as part of someone's family history was rather spectacular.

As she read on, she had to grudgingly admit that she could understand why Draco Malfoy was the way he was. His ancestors consorted with kings and queens. They moved among the upper classes of both the muggle and magical worlds prior to the Statute of Secrecy. The book waxed on about notable members of the Malfoy family, and Hermione sighed wistfully. She didn't care about the trappings of wealth, but that history, to come from so many who'd played important roles in the muggle and magical world... No wonder Lucius Malfoy walked as if he ruled the world. He practically did. Her fingertips grazed gently over pictures in the directory of famous Malfoys. It was written in 1930, so Lucius wasn't there, but she looked for hints of him - the icy grey eyes, the sharpness of jaw, the pale colouring that made him stand out so in her mind, in the photos of his ancestors.

"Conflict in Magical Britain: the 20th Century," detailed the rise and fall of both Gellert Grindelwald and Lord Voldemort, and in the pages of text, she found more information about Lucius. During Voldemort's rise to power, Lucius held various positions in the Ministry of Magic, and in the final years of the war, he was rumoured to be among Voldemort's trusted inner circle of followers. Hermione's eyes widened in horror as she read about his arrest in late 1981 and subsequent trial before the Wizengamot. No one disputed that he was marked - Lord Voldemort's skull and snake mark was branded on the inside of his left forearm - but he claimed innocence, insisting that he'd been under the imperious curse and had not acted of his own free will.

Hermione felt conflicted as she read. He'd been a Death Eater, a follower of the dark wizard who murdered her best friend's parents. The idea that she was fascinated by him, attracted to him in some way made her feel more than a little dirty. It was wrong.

And yet, she couldn't help herself.

She devoured every bit of information she could find in the Hogwarts library about his trial and the trials of other Death Eaters following the war. Many were sentenced to Azkaban, but Lucius was among a handful found not guilty. The verdict made Hermione feel if not innocent and least less guilty about her secret fascination with the man. Surely the Wizengamot would not dream of letting a guilty man go free! He must have presented compelling evidence of his innocence.

She tried to imagine what it must be like to spend months under the imperius curse, one of the wizarding world's few unforgivable curses. How horrible to have someone else controlling your body, your mind! At 13 and brilliant but still rather naive about the world, Hermione felt sad for Lucius Malfoy. What was it like to be under a curse like that? Was he capable of enjoying his life, his time with his baby son? Did he remember anything he'd supposedly done during that time? How horrified he must have been to emerge from the control of the curse to see that horrid mark on his arm!

As Hannah Abbott and Susan Bones doodled Gilderoy Lockheart's name all over their parchments, Hermione scoffed at her classmates' silly infatuations, all the while surreptitiously clipping stories from the Daily Prophet. Alone in her dorm with her bed curtains drawn, she saved snippets of information about Lucius Malfoy, small bits of newsprint providing scant glimpses at his life. He was everywhere. He sat on the Hogwarts Board of Governors and on the board at St. Mungo's Hospital. He was an advisor to the Minister for Magic. He was even part owner of the Puddlemere United quidditch team. She dutifully clipped every moving photo of him, pressing it carefully into a notebook she kept locked in her school trunk.

The photos and the bits of information about his life were proof to Hermione that her childish crush was acceptable. He was an upstanding member of society. Surely if the Wizengamot believed him guilty of horrible crimes under Voldemort, they would have sent him to prison or at least ostracized him from the community. Yet she had proof in scraps of newsprint that he was well-respected, a leader, a philanthropist even.

Draco's inclusion on the Slytherin quidditch team might have been an annoyance for Harry, as it escalated their rivalry tremendously, but it was a godsend for Hermione because it meant that every time Slytherin played, Lucius Malfoy would be in the stands watching. This was proof to Hermione that he was a caring and devoted father. There were a handful of parents who came to the school's quidditch games, particularly for the end of season championship match, but Lucius was there every single time Slytherin played Gryffindor. Hermione didn't particularly want to sit through the other houses' games, but if Slytherin was playing and Harry and Ron wanted to go to the match, Hermione went without complaint so she could watch Mr. Malfoy from afar.

Lucius - she'd begun to think of him as that rather than the more formal Mr. Malfoy, or Lord Malfoy per the title he technically held - usually sat with Professor Snape or any other visiting school Governors. He was always fastidiously dressed in formal dark robes, his long blond hair usually tied back to keep it out of his face in the wind. He didn't yell or cheer exuberantly, but she mentally noted his applause and his expression of genuine pride when Draco played well. He was restrained in his emotions and gestures, but he seemed to truly enjoy watching his son play. It only further endeared him to Hermione.

It wasn't until after Christmas that she finally caught a glimpse of Mrs. Malfoy in the newspaper. She knew that Lucius was married - Draco regularly crowed about the sweets his mother owled him every week at Hogwarts - but she'd conveniently chosen to ignore that as her crush flourished into the beginnings of an obsession. All of her fantasies about someday engaging in stimulating conversation with Lucius, conversations in which he acknowledged her intellect and was impressed with her keen mind, conveniently ignored that there was indeed a Mrs. Malfoy at home in Wiltshire.

The Daily Prophet had run an extra page of photos from the Malfoy family's Yule Ball, an annual event that raised funds for St. Mungo's, and front and center was a photo of the Malfoy family. Draco looked stiff in his dress robes and bored out of his mind. Lucius looked regal and so very handsome, very clearly the lord of the manor. And Mrs. Malfoy… Narcissa Malfoy was stunningly beautiful. She was tall and slender, like the supermodels who walked the runways in muggle fashion shows, with long blonde hair piled up on her head. She had a hint of a sneer on her face, which made her look haughty and cold, but she was still gorgeous.

Hermione's mood was further soured by the on-going drama surrounding the mythical Chamber of Secrets. It hurt more than she'd ever admit to Harry or Ron when Lucius's son called her a 'mudblood' and said she'd be next, and then to add insult to injury, she wound up in the hospital wing as a half-cat following her botched attempt at polyjuice. Narcissa Malfoy was beautiful and perfect, and she, Hermione Granger, was a bushy-haired, buck-toothed half-cat. It was so unfair.

It might have been worth it if Harry and Ron had figured out who the Heir of Slytherin was, but all they'd done was eliminate Malfoy. She had tried to tell them beforehand that it wasn't him. Had the Malfoy family been directly descended from Salazar Slytherin, it surely would have been mentioned in the "Pureblood Directory."

Once recovered from her cat hair mishap, Hermione spent the bulk of her spring searching for answers about the Chamber of Secrets. Finally one cold, damp night, she stumbled across the answer in the far recesses of the library: a basilisk! It had to be a basilisk! She had to let Harry know! In her haste, she ripped the page on basilisks straight from the book.

She made her way carefully through the castle halls, basilisk paper clutched in one hand, mirror in the other. She was nearing the last set of stairs that would take her to Gryffindor tower when she caught a glimpse of the basilisk through the mirror.

Being petrified was awful.

She'd heard somewhere that sometimes people in a coma could hear what was being said around them. Petrification was similar, she supposed, but her eyes were open and frozen. This was perplexing and disturbing, as she was alive, but she wasn't breathing and she wasn't blinking. She didn't want to think on this, and yet she couldn't help it because she had nothing else to do but observe whatever was in her range of sight, listen to what was said around her, and think.

It was during this miserable period of petrification that she came face to face with Lucius Malfoy again. She did not know why he was there or what he was doing, but he suddenly appeared in her field of view as she lay helplessly frozen on the hospital bed. He tilted his head at her as he studied her frozen physique.

"Miss Granger. We meet again," he said quietly. "So unfortunate that you find yourself in such a state."

His eyes were so cold and so penetrating that she would have shivered if she'd been able to move. He stepped back as if to leave but then stopped as something caught his eye. His hand, clad in a black leather glove, reached out to her own frozen extended hand.

"What's this?"

'Yes! Yes, oh please, yes!' she thought frantically to herself. She'd been clutching that basilisk paper for ages, and no one had even noticed.

He deftly plucked the paper from her hand and unraveled it. His eyes widened in surprise before they met hers again, and his mouth turned up in a hint of a smirk.

"A basilisk. That is...oddly fitting I suppose, given the connection to Salazar Slytherin. I see the rumours are true. You are indeed a clever girl, Miss Granger."

He thought she was clever! He'd touched her hand and thought her clever, and she couldn't help but think him clever as well for he'd found the paper clutched in her hand when no one else had, not even Madam Pomfrey had noticed! For a brief shining moment, she was so proud of herself: Lucius Malfoy was impressed with her! She wished she could smile at him and explain how she'd discovered the basilisk.

She watched in frozen silence as he rolled the scrap of paper back up and carefully inserted it back into her hand. She silently pleaded with him to take the paper from her hand again, to tell Professor Dumbledore, Professor McGonagall, even Professor Snape would be acceptable at this point. SOMEONE needed to know!

"It is strange, is it not, that a mere slip of a girl figured out what the hapless faculty here apparently could not? I wonder how long it will take them." He seemed to be at once talking to her frozen form and to himself.

She screamed at him in her mind as he turned on his heel and walked away.

His actions that day puzzled her, and continued to puzzle her after Harry told her Mr. Malfoy was the one who put the diary in Ginny's cauldron, and that he'd attempted to curse Harry for freeing Dobby the house elf. Could Mr. Malfoy have known what horror would be released from the Chamber? Or did he just want to plant a dark object on Arthur Weasley's daughter to embarrass and discredit him? She'd missed so much during her petrification, and the version of events as told by Harry and Ron was far from unbiased.

She wasn't sure why she didn't tell Harry or anyone else about Mr. Malfoy's brief visit to the hospital wing.

It was the first of many questionable decisions she would make where he was concerned.

Thank you so much for your lovely comments. I know Lucius/Hermione is a somewhat controversial pairing, and I was unsure how this story would be received, considering that it's rated M, and she's 12 at the beginning. As with any story I post, constructive feedback is always welcome. Thank you to Ariel Riddle for your encouragement and to lovergurrl411 for your invaluable feedback and that really amazing music video.