Sixth Year, Part 1, 1996
She received exactly three owls from Lucius all summer, each one carrying a book and a brief letter. The first was another book on occulemency. The second and third were on defensive spells and shielding. She'd learned the protego charm when Harry taught it to Dumbledore's Army the previous school year, but Lucius's books offered variations of the spell along with other types of magical shields that were supposed to be more effective at blocking dark magic. The killing curse, of course, was unblockable, but she recognised that Lucius had given her a powerful tool in these books. If she could teach these to Harry and to the rest of Dumbledore's Army, it would go a long way toward helping them all hopefully survive whatever was to come. She practised the wand movements and the words to the spells separately, so as not to trigger the trace on underage magic outside of school. It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing.
Hermione was slightly disappointed that the letters from Lucius lacked emotion, but she supposed that he had to be careful in case they were intercepted. Voldemort certainly wouldn't want one of His Death Eaters involved in any way with a muggleborn. It was the third letter that excited her the most though. It contained an address in Kensington, along with a date and time and the request - that wasn't a request, more of a command really - that she be there.
Hermione was a nervous wreck by the time her appointed meeting with Lucius arrived. She'd dressed with care in clothes that were passable in muggle London but still respectable for a witch and had taken the time to apply Sleekeazy to her curls and muggle cosmetics to her face.
The address led her to an ornate and elegant white townhouse in what clearly looked to be a muggle area of London, albeit a very expensive one. She was even more shocked when Lucius opened the front door himself to her and ushered her inside. She'd expected an elf or a human servant of some kind.
"The name of the first book I ever gave you," he said harshly, shoving her against the now closed door, wand drawn.
She was momentarily taken aback and had to take a second to gather her thoughts before answering and shooting back a question of her own to verify identity. "'Occulemency: Protecting the Mind.' What was the nickname you called me the last time I saw you?"
"Pet. Because you fetched so nicely and came when called," he said with a smirk. She hated that she'd fallen back on that as a question to confirm identity, but it was the first thing that popped into her mind. She had a feeling though that she'd just cemented 'pet' as Lucius's nickname for her.
He relaxed then, apparently convinced she was not an imposter using polyjuice, but before she could also relax, he'd raised his wand at her and hissed, "Legilimens!"
Given his need for secrecy, she'd expected he might try something like this, so she'd done her best to put up mental shields as soon as she knocked on the front door. She'd practised all summer using the techniques outlined in the books he'd shared with her.
True to his word, Lucius was not a gentle legilimens. Pressure exploded in her head, and beads of sweat appeared on her brow as she tried to protect her mind and shove him out. She'd categorised her thoughts as an endless card catalogue in a library, with drawers one had to unlock, cards one had to rifle through, and then books one had to seek out before finding a memory contained within. When he finally released her from the spell, she was panting from the struggle to hold him back.
"Very good, pet," he said as he sheathed his wand and wiped her face with a handkerchief.
"That hurt," she whispered.
"The Dark Lord is rarely gentle when rifling through the minds of those He mistrusts."
"Is that - were you mimicking Him?"
"No. He is capable of looking into your mind with a very subtle touch, but if He is angered, it will be painful. Your shields will not hold up against Him, but I'm impressed you were able to do this much on your own. You will improve with practise."
He kissed her forehead then, making her want to swoon. She tilted her face up toward him, hoping he'd kiss her on the lips, properly, but instead he stepped back from her and ushered her further into the townhome.
"Come."
"Not a dog, Lucius. Not a dog," she said with a shake of her head as she followed him down the hall.
The townhome, which she learned had been built by his late grandmother Althea Malfoy, was decorated in blues and creams and golds. It was elegant and refined but also warm and welcoming. Hermione thought it was the most beautiful home she'd ever visited.
Lucius walked her down hallways and through rooms filled with paintings and antiques and velvets and silks, up stairs lined with elaborate wrought iron balusters. He said not a word to her, and she began to panic that perhaps he was taking her to the master bedroom. She wanted him, she did, but she wasn't sure she was quite ready for that.
They finally came to a stop outside a set of double doors, which he threw open with a flourish. She took a steadying breath to calm her nerves and then followed him into...an empty room.
She looked up at him in confusion.
"Draw your wand, pet, and let's see what you've learned."
"You want to duel me?" she asked incredulously.
"Not a duel. I gave you books to study. Consider this your practical exam."
The first hex flew before she was mentally prepared for it, and she dodged out of the way.
He made a disapproving sound at her. "No dodging. Block."
She threw up a shield before the next two curses were sent her direction.
"If you're attacked by more than one person, you can't assume you'll have time to move out of the way," he lectured.
He sent a spell into the wall behind her, ricocheting it back towards her. It was fortunately only a mild stinging hex, but she was not prepared for it.
"Always cast your shield all the way around yourself. You should never assume the attacker in front of you is the only one there," he said before firing again.
He was graceful with a wand, and the spells he fired at her had a lot of power behind them. It was difficult to maintain her shield under the onslaught, particularly when he switched to darker curses. They continued in this manner for some time with Lucius correcting her form and offering suggestions to improve the strength of her shield or to switch more easily from shielding to offensive magic.
By the time he stopped and sheathed his wand in that familiar snake-head cane, she was exhausted and mortified at the way she dropped onto her hands and knees as she struggled to catch her breath.
He walked slowly across the room to her and stopped right beside her, his body casting a long shadow over her.
"That was… surprisingly proficient," he drawled.
"Is that supposed to be high praise?" she asked as she shakily pushed herself up off the floor.
He smirked at her. "For a mere student, your abilities are, shall we say, impressive."
Impressive. She'd practised shields and defensive spells against Lucius Malfoy, pureblood aristocrat, veritable wizarding royalty, and marked Death Eater, and he'd called her abilities impressive. She had impressed Lucius Malfoy with her magic!
Despite her exhaustion, an enormous grin spread across her face. She wasn't sure when she'd ever been more proud of herself than she was in that moment. For years she had read and studied and practised and revised and prepared and done her absolute best to prove to everyone that she was a real witch, that she belonged in this world.
She had impressed Lucius Malfoy.
"Really, pet, we must work on your countenance," he murmured.
"What?"
He shook his head slightly. "Every thought of yours shows upon your face. It will hardly do for you to return to Dumbledore with your every thought plain to see. He won't need legilimency when you look like that."
She slid her own wand back into her sleeve. "Like what? What am I thinking now?" she challenged.
His lips twisted into a feral smile. "You are most exceptionally pleased with yourself, aren't you, Miss Granger?" he said slowly. "Yes, you do respond well to praise."
His voice sent a shiver down her spine, making something inside of her involuntarily clench in the most pleasant of ways.
"Why shouldn't I be pleased? My occulemency skills have improved, even without having a regular partner to train me, and my shield held up against most of your assault, even though I've not had anyone to practise these new spells with me," she pointed out.
His grey eyes peered into hers, and she realised with a start that he'd taken a few steps closer to her, until they were almost touching.
"You want to impress. You want approval, from your professors, from your friends...from me," he said.
She tore her eyes from his, looking aside in embarrassment at how easily he'd read her. Perhaps her face really did show more than she wanted known.
"I do," she admitted softly. "Is that so wrong?"
"I'm pleased you want to impress me," he said. "It makes you happy to be seen as such a good girl, doesn't it?"
Oh God. What was it about his voice, about the way he could say words like 'good girl' and make them sound so delectably filthy? Her stuttered 'yes' was accompanied by a blush that spread across her cheeks.
He leaned in toward her, and the smell of his cologne was intoxicating. His breath was hot on her ear and throat as he spoke.
"Are you going to be a good girl for me, Hermione? Hmmm?"
He was so close, so very close to her, and why dear god was he not touching her already? Her body felt tense, coiled. Her eyelids fluttered closed, and her head fell back, exposing her neck to him. She felt his nose, his lips brush along the sensitive column of skin from earlobe down to where her neck met her shoulder. It was a light touch, teasing even.
"Please," she pushed out in a shaky breath. She wanted him to touch her, to hold her, to kiss her, to...to make her feel.
"Please what? Answer my question."
She was going to spontaneously combust if he didn't kiss her soon.
"Y-yes. I'm your good girl, Lucius," she gasped, hoping she wasn't speaking out of turn by calling him by his first name.
He lifted his head then at her use of his name, and her eyes slowly opened at the loss of his touch. He held her gaze for a long moment, and she wished she knew what he was thinking when he looked upon her.
She seemingly had her answer when his lips came down on hers. Yes, this, this was what she'd wanted for so long now! She parted her lips for him, welcoming his tongue and yielding control to him. He held her body pressed up against his own, and she wound her arms around his neck, happy to finally able to get her hands in his silky blond hair.
She could kiss him forever. This was such perfection, such bliss. She could not imagine anyone ever making her heart race like Lucius did, anyone kissing her with such dominance and control and passion. She felt his hands slide down over her hips and the curve of her arse before he pulled her lower body into his.
Oh god was that...she could suddenly feel something pressing into her lower belly, and she realised with a start that he had what felt like the an erection, or maybe the start of one. She had done that, she had turned him on so much. She instinctively pushed up onto the balls of her feet to make up for the difference in their heights and to better align their bodies. She was rewarded by a shot of pleasure through her body as the bulge in his trousers rubbed against her just so. She heard a soft moan and realised with a start that it came from her. Oh what he could do to her body without even undressing her! Hermione was overwhelmed.
She did not know how long they stood there kissing in the empty room. It could have been a few brief minutes, it could have been longer, but she felt bereft when he eventually unwound her arms from his body and separated them.
He held her gaze again and rubbed her kiss-swollen bottom lip with his thumb. His lips quirked upward in a smirk.
"Come, pet. We have much to discuss," he said before turning on his heel and walking out of the room.
~oOo~
He brought her to a sitting room with blue sofas and rosewood tables and tall windows that were framed with blue silk drapes and overlooked a small garden. A tea service was laid out for them, kept warm under a stasis charm.
Her body still thrummed with lust and unspent sexual energy, and she was confused as to why he'd stopped. He made her sit beside him on the sofa and serve them both tea, a delicious oolong with a hint of peach to it. She had to fight to control the shaking in her hands as she poured. She'd been attracted to him for so long, and being here with him made her so happy and yet so nervous.
She wanted to ask him why he'd stopped when they both obviously wanted so much more, but he'd moved on already to another topic.
"I truly am impressed with the progress you've made. May I assume you wish to learn more?" he asked.
"Oh, yes! Yes, I want to learn whatever you can teach me." She wondered if he noticed the double entendre in her words. Yes, she wanted to learn magic from him, as much as he was willing to share, but he also made her desire knowledge of a more carnal sort.
"You must understand that for centuries, Hogwarts provided a more diverse curriculum, covering far more aspects of magic than what it provided now," Lucius lectured. "They've long provided a Defense Against the Dark Arts course, and indeed there are valuable lessons to be learned there, should one have a competent teacher - which they've not in decades. Over the years though, what they consider 'dark' has expanded to encompass many spells, curses, hexes, and jinxes, that are neither light nor dark but fit into more of a grey area."
She frowned, uncomfortable with the idea of entire realms of magic being out of reach.
"Why would they do that?"
"Most of the blame can be laid at the feet of Albus Dumbledore. You must understand pet that after he defeated Grindelwald, he had magical Britain in the palm of his hand, and he used that power to reshape the curriculum to suit his wants and needs. The Board of Governors did not oppose him, nor did the Ministry of Magic. The result is generations of wizards and witches coming of age without an adequate education. It's entirely possible that the Dark Lord would not have been so successful had the populace been better educated, had they been taught to wield magic Dumbledore considered too dark."
Hermione gasped at this news. It had always bothered her that it was so difficult to access books in the library's restricted section, but she hadn't previously made the connection between what was not taught and Voldemort's rise to power. Banning entire segments of so-called 'grey' magic or preventing children from learning it felt inherently wrong to Hermione, akin to muggle book burning.
"And you can teach me these things?" she asked hopefully.
"Indeed I can, pet. We will need to meet regularly for you to apply what you learn in my books, and for you to practise your occulemency."
She set her tea aside and turned to him eagerly. "I would be happy to do that! I cannot thank you enough for offering to teach me! There's so much I want to learn, so many gaps in my education. You have no idea - it's so hard to come into this world as a muggleborn, knowing NOTHING about magic or that this entire other hidden world exists until the age of 11!"
He frowned, and she wondered then if it was wrong of her to remind him of her muggle upbringing.
"Tell me how you learned of magic. I want to hear about how you came to be in our world," he said thoughtfully.
She smiled in relief, pleased that he was interested in what she had to say. She went on to explain to him in detail about her first bursts of accidental magic as a toddler - moving items to her that had been out of reach - and how her parents, trained in science, did their best to come up with reasonable explanations for what she did. She told him how Professor McGonagall had come to her home on her 11th birthday, nearly a year before she'd be able to attend Hogwarts, due to her September birthdate, how she'd begged her future head of house for information about the magical world, for books and resources and knowledge, how she wanted to do everything in her power to fit in as a witch because she'd felt so out of place in the muggle world. She explained her frustration at realising she was at such a disadvantage compared to children who'd grown up in magical families, at the cultural differences no one warned her about in advance, at her confusion over being thrust into a new world without adequate preparation.
He listened intently, occasionally asking questions. She was surprised when he asked, with apparent genuine interest, what she thought would have made the transition easier.
"I was fortunate that my September birthday meant I had almost a year to read books like Hogwarts: A History and learn what I could. Harry was raised by his muggle relatives, and his birthday is at the end of July. He barely had any time at all to learn about the magical world before he came to Hogwarts. I expressed magic years before Professor McGonagall came to see me. Surely someone knew I was magical even then. Why didn't someone come sooner?"
"Would it not have been too tempting then, knowing there was another world you could be part of but knowing you had years to wait?" he asked.
"But why wait? Why isn't there some sort of transition program for muggleborns to expose them gradually to the magical world and teach them about it long before they come to Hogwarts? At a bare minimum there ought to be a class offered to first year muggleborns on wizarding etiquette and culture, but really, we should learn that before 11."
He looked thoughtful.
"You know, when you think about it, it would make everything so much better. I know some of Vol- You-Know-Who's supporters are opposed to the presence of muggleborns in the magical world, saying that we don't respect their culture, but we don't KNOW it. No one helps us adjust. No one tells us much of anything. We can't help but bring muggle culture with us because it's all we know!" she continued.
He patted his large hand on her knee, making her shiver at the feel of his hand on her bare skin.
"You've given me much to consider, pet."
She smiled, proud that she'd had such an open dialogue with Lucius, that he welcomed and valued her opinion.
"I have books I will give you today, on some of these grey areas of magic. I want you to read them all and begin practising the wand movements. We will meet again here before you return to Hogwarts for you to show me what you've learned. I will test your occulemency skills again then as well," he said.
Her face fell then, realising that their time together must be coming to an end.
"What is it?" he asked, noting her concerned look.
"Are you sending me away, then?" she asked.
"I would prefer not, but I have additional obligations and cannot spend all day here with you."
"When I go back to Hogwarts, will I be able to see you?" she asked hopefully, remembering that he'd said they would meet to practise.
"Of course. I cannot guarantee how often, but I have not invested time in teaching you just to ignore you. You are...most unexpected, but I find myself delighting in your company."
She grinned, so absurdly happy that he wanted to spend time with her, that he considered her an worthwhile investment.
"Thank you so much, Lucius. Words seem insufficient, but I am so grateful for your willingness to teach me," she said softly.
"Come then, let us retrieve your new books."
He presented her with three more books on offensive and defensive jinxes and hexes that she'd never seen in the restricted section of the Hogwarts library and then sent her on her way with one last lingering kiss and a promise he'd invite her back.
~oOo~
True to his word, he met with her again at the townhouse before she returned to school, requiring her to slip away from Grimmauld Place to meet with him. Just as before, he verified her identity at the door and tested her mental shields. Just as before he brought her to the empty room, which she learned was a formal dueling room equipped with protective charms to keep it from being blasted apart. She demonstrated what she'd learned, and he provided instruction, correcting the occasional wand movement, testing her ability to perform non-verbally. He was pleased with her progress, and she was thrilled at his interest.
Just as before, they returned to the room with the blue sofas for tea and conversation and additional occulemency practise. This time though when he finished testing her mental shields, he pulled her into his lap, making her straddle his thighs as he snogged her senseless. This time was so much better than the last because he pinched her nipples through the soft fabric of her blouse and the lace of her bra before putting his hands on her hips and showing her how to roll them so her damp knickers rubbed just so against the hard bulge in his trousers. This time he unbuttoned her blouse and bit gently at her nipples, wetting the cups of her white lace bra. This time she figured out how to move her body so his trouser-covered erection bumped her clitoris in just the right way to send little shocks of pleasure shooting through her body, and he groaned in pleasure and latched onto her neck with his perfect, sinful mouth and gripped her hips hard enough to bruise as he moved her against him.
This time instead of being left wet and wanting, he whispered dirty words in her ear and guided her movements until her knickers were soaked, and she cried out as something deep inside of her shattered, and she came hard and breathless on top of him. She collapsed against him, resting her forehead on his shoulder as he held her pelvis tightly cradled against his own.
"So good, such a good girl for me," he murmured into her curls.
"That was amazing," she breathed out.
"Oh pet, there is so much more I can do to your body," he promised. "And I will, as soon as you come of age."
She lifted her head to gaze at him.
"Really?"
He smirked. "I have so many plans for you, starting with your birthday."
"You want to see me on my birthday?"
"September 19th, correct?"
"Yes. How did you know that?" she asked in amazement.
He snorted at the dazed expression on her face. "I was a school governor, pet, and you were the one student who consistently bested my son. Of course I looked at your file."
She blushed at the simple explanation, embarrassed that she had initially thought he'd sought out information about her in recent weeks because he desired her.
"Unfortunately, as your birthday falls on a Thursday this year," he continued. "I will be unable to see you that exact day, but the following Saturday is a Hogsmeade weekend, and I will be with you then."
The expression on his face told her that there would be no arguing. She would have to find a way to get rid of Harry and Ron for the day. It was not the first time she chose between Lucius and Harry, and though she didn't know it at the time, it would not be the last.
~oOo~
Thank you so much for all of your comments and feedback about this story! I'm overwhelmed by the response. I don't normally travel from work, and I've not fully unpacked from last week, but I'm headed out of town again on Tuesday. I am going to try very hard to get another chapter edited and posted for you before I get on the plane Tuesday morning. In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed this update. I can't wait to hear what you think now that Lucius and Hermione's relationship is taking a more intimate turn.
For my Jewish readers, chag Pesach kasher vesame'ach. For my Christian readers, Happy Easter!
-Elle