Thank you all for your patience in regards to this story! So frightfully busy, I haven't had much time for updates in the last few months. But now that my Lucius is away in Mauritius, so I'll be updating more frequently until Christmas. Let me know what you think!

Hugs,

Lana

All morning, Hermione kept herself busy doing research for her next article on the new Transfiguration theory. The whole flat had felt eerily empty, despite the contrary. The whole city, really, seemed cast under a spell of early August laziness. Even Ginny slept in later than usual and was currently napping on the living room sofa.

Normally, Hermione would have welcomed a few hours' reprieve from her questions and tangents. Normally. But not today. Today, she needed a diversion; she needed noise and distractions. She had been brooding for days, although her mood was more ruminant than penitent. Her memories of Harry's surprise party gnawed upon her.

Was it worth it? Which is worse? To be quiet, or to be cruel?

You were a fool, Hermione Granger. A fool to trust him. A fool to convince yourself it was harmless. You knew better, didn't you? You did. You did nothing. Nothing. A kind of cruelty by omission. Iphigenie's silence. Agamemnon's violence. Was it worth it? Which is worse?

It wasn't the first time Lucius had done something to upset her. He had been cruel before and he had been violent. But he'd never, ever been both. What happened to Ron, the way Lucius had hurt and humiliated him — left no illusions that it was all for her sake; that he'd done it, somehow, to defend her honor. But no. These were not chivalrous acts. They sprung from a place of spite; a place of jealousy. Now that Hermione knew such a place was alive and thriving within him, there was little to dissuade her that in some still uglier moment to come, he might let his demons loose upon her as well.

That, she supposed, was the thought that haunted her and why solitude seemed so poisonous to her this morning. Without Ginny's twaddle, she had nothing to drown out the deafening grind of her mind and its mastications. Hermione needed to fill up the empty spaces, to keep her thoughts buoyant, and her imagination at bay. So she did what any self-respecting, half-hysterical, confused young witch would do: she dissociated and disappeared into her books and parchments, mesmerizing herself with new spells.

There was something sort of seductive about testing out new magic. And something oddly calming as well. Soon, the memories were cropped out of her consciousness, and she let herself tumble, naive as Alice, down a dismal tunnel through which nothing and no one could follow.

But even in Wonderland, Lucius was waiting.

Hermione couldn't say that she was angry at him. At least, she didn't think she was. However, she'd become cooler towards Lucius since that night; she'd withdrawn from him. She didn't do it by intention, but by instinct, retreating into herself. While it was awful enough to be walled off from him, it was much worse to watch him allow it. With a stoic, almost monastic constraint, Lucius kept his distance from her. He respected her boundaries and had scarcely talked to her since the morning after their car tryst.

Perhaps he, too, was feeling guilty. Perhaps he wasn't. Either way, the reciprocal sangfroid was starting to destabilize Hermione.

She wanted him still. She always would.

It wasn't a dilemma of desires.

Hermione wanted his charm, his tenderness, his wit. And there were more than a handful of moments when, even amid her doldrums, she wished he would just demolish those walls she'd been so meticulously building around herself. She didn't want to be the first to come to him. Despite his vicious display at Harry's surprise party, she still loved him. She feared admitting ... feared of saying it first. Love was a subject that Hermione couldn't pretend to master. Yet she felt that these past few days were pulling them apart. She was afraid that time's passing, in its invisible and inviolable dimension, had already begun to divide them.

That's why she was foolishly defying time by still working on a spell she should have completed an hour ago; she could pretend this way that time was arrested. The doorbell sounded, but she didn't budge from her seat. Let Ginny get it; Hermione wasn't expecting anyone. Then Lucius Malfoy's voice touched her like a killing frost when she heard him speaking to Ginny. His voice withered her. Slowly, she lowered her wand, interrupting the spell, but remained in her room, aware that her bedroom door was wide open.

He knocked on it and said, "Is Miss Granger in?"

"That line is tired, Mr. Malfoy. Let it rest," Hermione cheekily replied.

He chuckled softly, and Hermione heard him step across the threshold. She tensed, trying hard not to tremble as his breath bristled over the back of her neck. Hermione felt his hand on her shoulder, and her eyes fell shut.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

Ready? Ready for what?

As if reading her mind, he said in a softer tone, "You've forgotten. We're to go away today. I'm taking you to Mustique."

Mustique? Oh.

She nodded in remembrance. "I did forget. I'm sorry."

Hermione opened her eyes, just wide enough to see his reflection in her window, looming behind her like a storm cloud. He tightened his hold on her shoulder.

"You've had other things on your mind." His other hand came up to trace over her collarbones, leaving a trail of red hot flares in his wake. He noticed the pile of open books on her desk. "I see you had a busy morning."

She shrugged. "More or less." Then added, "I'm not packed yet."

"No?" He let his hands slide lower, grasping hold of her hips. "Then I shall wait."

She raised her eyebrow at him. "You'll be bored."

"I doubt can help me with a gift idea to keep me occupied."

Was he kidding? Should she be offended?

"I need something special. Something unique," he continued.

"A gift?" Hermione glanced at him askance. "For whom?"

"For someone special." He smirked. "Someone unique."

"Is that so?" She pursed her lips, trying hard to play along. "For a witch or wizard?"

"A very young witch who is difficult to please." Lucius cocked his head. "I wouldn't want to pick out the wrong thing and look foolish."

Hermione eyed him coyly. "You'll look foolish either way, lavishing gifts on a much younger woman."

"Not a woman," he corrected her coolly. "A girl."

She frowned and slipped herself free from his grasp. "You must tell me more about her. Is she shallow? Does she like jewelry? There's hardly a girl alive who doesn't love a little jewelry."

He grimaced and shook his head.

"No? Then perhaps a nice scarf." Hermione walked over to her wardrobe and modeled a blue pashmina with great exaggeration, striking a pose. He chuckled again and came closer, caressing the wool with the back his hand.

"It's fetching. It is." He ran his fingertips over her cheek."It never gets cold enough for that sort of apparel where she lives. At any rate, I was hoping for something more whimsical."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him and slipped the scarf off. "Whimsical?"

He nodded darkly. "Tell me, what gift would have thrilled you, Hermione, when you were a tender, little sprite of six?"

When I was six? Hermione flicked her wand at her wardrobe, arranging for her summer clothes to fold themselves neatly into her trunk.

As much as she liked their little games, she was hardly in the mood to be infantilized by him and play along.

"I don't know. A doll. A bike."

He stepped aside, disregarding her choler. "Well, what about this?"

She watched impatiently as he lifted up on of her transfigured objects, a kaleidoscope, and fiddled for moment with the focus.

"I can see you, Hermione," he peered through, "wearing a blue nightgown. Bare feet. Your hair still sopping wet from the bath," without glancing up, he came closer, "I can see you by the tree the day after Christmas, lying on your belly beneath the piano bench, studying Sandow and wondering what's under his fig leaf."

He lowered the rim, and snatched out the card, wiggling his brows at her à la Groucho Marx.

Hermione flushed and rolled my eyes again — rhetorically this time. Idiot. He's an idiot. He just can't help himself, can he? She was careful to keep her face neutral as she struggled against the urge to giggle. His charming goofiness was an arme secrète — seldom seen, but never dead. He kept at it, making a beagle puss of the lenses, and a thin, traitorous smile split over Hermione's lips. She cursed herself for cracking.

"Yes," he set down the trinket, obviously pleased with himself, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, "I think this will do nicely. May I have it?"

"If you want. I can wrap it," Hermione offered, reaching under her bed for her box of gift wrapping accoutrements.

He leaned over, cocking his head. "Use the green paper, if you could. It ought to match her eyes."

Hermione sniffed and frowned as she unrolled the wrapping paper.

What is this game we're playing? she wondered. Who was this girl with green eyes? Was he making her up? She felt his eyes darting over her as she worked. Hermione felt his eyes following her hands as she sliced the paper and primly pressed the creases.

"Voilà!" She presented the package to him and summoned her quill. "To whom shall I address the card?"

He stole the pen from her hand. "To Leera." He winked at Hermione. "My niece."

Hermione's mouth fell open. "You, um..." She cleared her throat hoarsely, "you have a niece, Lucius?"

He nodded, jotting out a message on the remainder of the tag. "I do. Brilliant girl. She's just turned six. And you're going to meet her." He glanced up. "My sister, Lucilla, and her husband are staying at a resort on Mustique as well."

She ran a hand over her forehead, stunned. "You have a sister? Neither you nor Draco ever mentioned her before."

"Half-sister," he clarified, returning the quill back in her hand. "We're not close. But they're all I have in the way of family aside from Draco and my mother." His eyes flashed. "I'd like them to meet you, Hermione. I think it's important."

She was speechless. Utterly speechless. Her jaw was still hanging agape. He wanted her ... he wanted her to meet his family? She blinked, half expecting this to be a dream. She hadn't met his mother yet, but he was perfectly willing her to meet his whole other family. He 'thinks it's important'? Why?

Hermione could even begin to speculate, but she couldn't outright ask him either. On top of everything else that had been swirling around in the dim Charybdis of her head, she really couldn't add another mix into it, lest it be enough to drag the lot down for good and drown her with it. Nobler to take her chances with Scylla. Pitiful girl. Hermione remembered the nymph's horrific sea-change; the lurid depictions by Rosa and Rubens. It was a motif in Ovid, wasn't it?

Hermione shook her head. Girl gets punished because a monster fell in love.

"If it's important to you, then I'd like to meet them," she said, breathing out tensely.

He snatched her nightgown from the top of the pile in her trunk and made it vanish into thin air. She gasped in protest, but softened when he drew her to him by the waist. "You won't need it. I promise to do my outmost best to keep you warm."

Hermione forced a quiet laugh, her nose barely a hair's breadth from his lips.

"Now I'll ask again," he growled, "are you ready?"

Hermione didn't bother with packing along her books. She'd been cut off from him long enough. It was time — well past, perhaps. She slammed her trunk shut and nodded.

"Ready, Lucius."

Something told her that everything was going to change between them after this trip.

Everthing.