Clarification:
In this story, Lucius is the year above James/Lily etc. I don't actually know the real age difference, but that's what this goes by.
I don't own any of the Harry Potter characters
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She regretted her decision rather quickly. Having been lead to the dungeons by McGonagall, Hermione was introduced to a younger, even more rotund, Horace Slughorn, whom she had been taught by the previous year. He beamed at her, apparently not interested in her unexpected arrival, but more so in her own ability with a wand, and, more specifically potions. She was modest, and made no attempt to inform him that her wand was not actually on her person- Dumbledore had arranged for her to visit Diagon Alley the next day, and she was silently pleading to go to bed and not wake up until her escort came for her at half eleven the next day. Unfortunately, it was obvious that Slughorn intended to introduce her to the whole of the Slytherin House, and so she was forced under scrutiny by hundreds of glinting eyes, which made her feel rather as though she were going to be eaten alive.
"This is Miss Hermione Planger," Slughorn announced, and instantly Hermione sought out the gray eyes of Lucius Malfoy, who lay sprawled across a sofa with something akin to suspicion in his expression. She looked at him pleadingly, hoping he would meet her eyes and realize not to answer. He noticed her, his fine eyebrows creasing atop his forehead, but he gave her the slightest, barely perceptible nod, shifting his body ever so slightly away to look at the girl to his left. She breathed a sigh of relief; nobody should know her real second name, she reasoned, not when she would reappear in fifteen years as Harry Potter's best friend. Especially, she added to herself, when those in question were to grow up to be the opposition, and could easily decide to blow her head off the moment she walked into Hogwarts.
"I'm positive you'll be sure to make her feel comfortable," he inclined his overly large head towards the seventh years in particular, and Hermione rolled her eyes. As if any Slytherin would bother to look out for anyone but themselves.
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She was sat in her own private dormitory – it appeared that seventh year Slytherin's received the grander things in life, presumably in case people like Malfoy decided that the school was below their standards- reading a less up to date version of Hogwarts a History than she was used to, when there was a sharp knock on the door. Initially, it went ignored, her reason being that it was surely a Slytherin thing to do, rather than being polite and telling the visitor she was just not in the mood... But then it repeated twice, and, with a groan of frustration and annoyance, she threw the door open and snapped, "what?"
Lucius Malfoy raised an eyebrow at her. "Now there's no need for the mood, really, is there Planger?" He smirked, straightening up and leaning forward to whisper conspiratorially, "or should I call you Granger?"
She stared at him for a moment, then recomposed herself. "I'm not in a mood, Malfoy; I just don't want to waste my evening talking to a brainless dork." She went to slam the door, but he stopped it, just as he had done before, and said softly, "So you don't mind if I tell people your real name? I'm sure it was just a mistake on Slughorns part that we all heard it was Planger so surely it wouldn't matter if..." he squawked suddenly as Hermione grabbed the V of his jumper and pulled him into the room, just as a blonde, plump girl with a pug-face turned the corner.
Having slammed the door, she rounded on him, feeling her blood boil as he stood there looking calm as anything, a smug smirk plastered across his lips as he looked at her.
"Careful Granger, they might get the wrong impression if they see you yanking me in her by my neck and slamming the door like some wanton mad-woman." She glared at him, biting back a retort, not daring to upset him in case he told someone her real name...
"So I'm assuming you don't want people to know?" His arrogance was sickly, it got under her skin and it made her cringe, but what more could she do than shake her head without arousing suspicion?
"Why?" His question was so abruptly cold, so harsh on her ears, she blinked. Despite being used to that icy tone in her own time, the boy he had been so far in this world was so different that there was no understanding how quickly he could change tact.
"I don't understand..." she said, feigning stupidity and knowing the instant her eyes met his that he didn't believe her.
"You're not retarded Granger! There must be a reason you've told me your name was Granger but everyone else believes you to be Planger... what is it?" His eyes had lost some of the happiness, the elation that she had seen in them the day before, and though it was barely perceptible, a mere shadow of what they would later inhabit, what she was so used to seeing, she felt herself shiver in fear.
"You must have heard me wrong!" Hermione voiced suddenly, struck by what she thought was a stroke of genius.
Lucius rolled his eyes. "Clearly you are retarded then! If I'd simply heard you wrong, you'd have spoken to me calmly and politely in the corridor, rather than drag me in here like you're some lust driven psycho with a bad hairdo!"
Hermione stared at him, momentarily aghast. Sure, her hair wasn't perfect, but it was nowhere near as bushy as it once was, and at least today there was no dust and debris cluttering it up.
"You know," she said, calming herself down slightly, "if you didn't clutter up your sentences with sexual references quite so often, maybe you'd find someone who actually wanted to drag you in by your neck. Though I suppose being a seventh year virgin must have its perks... I suppose it looks good when arranging marriages and suchlike doesn't it?"
His eyes glinted dangerously, and Hermione wondered if that retort had perhaps taken him too far. Would he run into the common room and advertise her name for all to hear? Merlin help her if he did!
"How very naive you are Granger," he said softly, stepping closer so that he was an arm's length away from her. "Nobody gets to seventh year as a virgin in Slytherin. We like sex. And though I'm sure it's incomprehensible for a privately tutored little nerd like you, who shows up to take her N.E. having never even shown her face before, we know that Slytherin's are the best people for sex." He looked at her assessing, up and down, then shrugged. "And though it pains me to say it, if you need..." he searched the air for the word, then smirked, turning his face back to hers and leaning even closer to whisper "deflowering," before returning to normal volume, "I'll be happy to assist you, so long as you don't mind me wearing a blindfold, because brunette boffins really don't do it for me!"
"I'm not a boffin," she replied calmly, "nor am I a virgin." And she wasn't! Sure, she only had limited experiences – a tumble under the Quidditch stands with Ron last year, and a drunken one night stand with Seamus Finnigan could hardly be classed as giving her great sexual prowess, but at least she'd had something. And besides, it was little or none of his business anyway; she would not be requiring his services.
He gave her another glance over, then flashed her a dark smirk, before swiftly replacing it with a solemn mask, his eyes narrowing and making her throat tighten as he surveyed her with scrutiny. "Why did he think your name was Planger?"
Hermione sighed. Evidently, he would not back down unless she told him the truth... so she did, at least in part.
"Because I told him that it was?"
"Why?" Lucius' arms were crossed over his chest, and the shirt he wore clearly accentuated well defined biceps, momentarily distracting her as she wondered if he was still that well defined under his robes in her own time. Dragging her thoughts away from his body, she met his eyes and spoke again.
"Because he doesn't need to know my real name." There was no irony in her voice, no trace of sarcasm, and he looked at her carefully for several moments.
"He doesn't need to know?" He asked, disbelief on his face. "Do you not think he has some vague idea of who you are?"
"No, I do not," she said, smiling.
Lucius narrowed his eyes again, and then sat himself on the end of her four-poster bed, leaning his back against a post casually. "I looked you up... Planger I mean..." he was curious, and it showed. His fingers were fidgeting, tapping restlessly on his arm. "You did your homework, didn't you?"
"How so?" She asked with false sweetness; she knew exactly what he meant, she just had no idea that he would figure it out.
"I looked at the old wizarding census for the name Planger... Rosetta Danga disappeared twenty years ago with her childhood sweetheart Andrew Planger, and they haven't been really noticed since; hermits, I believe would be the appropriate term. They haven't shown their faces at any public conventions, they didn't make it public when they married, and there's no real trace of them since about eighteen years ago, when they were said to be living in Sussex, talking of a family, but wanting to home-tutor, not send them to boarding school like Hogwarts..." He looked at her, daring her to challenge him. "Are you with me so far?"
She nodded, wondering how far he had looked into the lives of her fake-parents.
"But I don't see why you'd choose them as your fake parents; one was a muggle-born, one a half-blood, and neither was particularly bright or interesting. In fact, I can't imagine a worse pair of people to claim relation to. He was arrested for murder of a neighbouring town's vicar, and she's been twice convicted of performing magic in front of muggles. You're not stupid enough to want to be related to them, so I suppose the only reason you could want to call yourself by their name is so you have some timid link to this world, and have a name that's not too far gone from your own, so it's easy to remember." He stood up, striding towards her and bracing his arms on either side, face coming to within an inch of her own as he whispered venomously, "who are you, and how did you get here?"
Hermione gulped, and though fear was squeezing tightly at her stomach, it was not that which made her do so, but the closeness of his mouth, the hint of mint on his breath and the waft of his cologne in her nostrils. "I'm Hermione Granger..." she said honestly.
He brought himself closer to her, not enough to be touching her, but enough that she could feel the radiation of his body heat. "And how did you get here?" His teeth were gritted as he spoke in her ear, but he twisted his head to meet her eyes and whispered "legilimens," so quietly she could barely hear it. Only when she felt him nudging at her mind did she begin to throw up the barriers that she had built over the last months, attempting to push him away from her consciousness. He was stronger, breaking down her walls as though they were mere polystyrene blocks, and so she threw at him all those things that would tell him nothing but what she wanted him to know; buying her first wand; casting the first spell of her life; the terror of clambering on a broomstick for the first time; sitting in her childhood bedroom aged fifteen with all of her spell books surrounding her; and him, running towards her in the corridor with a gleeful smile on his face... He pulled out of her mind and glared at her with venom, because though he had seen proof that she was a witch, she had shown him nothing of Hogwarts, other than her initial sighting of he himself.
"How did you get here?" His voice was gravelly, as though he were about to burst in anger.
And rather than lie, she simply said, "I have no idea."
----
Lucius had left suddenly, pushing her aside and leaving the room in anger. She hoped that he would tell nobody, but understood that she had little control over that now. Her heart had pounded for hours after he'd left, blood pumping through her head at speed, and she had had a great deal of difficulty breathing. She was terrified and disorientated; she had no wand, her friends were not even born yet, and the man below all others that she would trust was the one person in the whole of the school besides Dumbledore and Hermione who knew who she really was.
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Morning came, and she was glad to leap from her bed in the knowledge that she would be in Diagon Alley shortly, a wand clasped firmly in her hand, away from the worry of her own identity. She walked into the Great Hall only briefly, snatching a slice of toast from the rack before leaving again to walk around the grounds. She had briefly caught Lucius' eye as she entered, and he had looked at her with a mix of venom and curiosity that made her stomach churn in a not altogether unpleasant manner. She traced the same steps that she and Harry had taken in fourth year shortly before his first task in the Triwizard Tournament, and wished more than anything that he were taking this walk with her too. Along the lake was the familiar beech tree, under which she and Harry and Ron had spent many summer days, laughing, reading, revising, hurriedly writing the last paragraph of an overdue potions essay... she closed her eyes, wishing more than anything to be returned, counting to ten, and reopening them.
She could have cried.
A familiar mop of black hair, unruly and sticking up at the back, was making its way towards the beech tree, atop a lanky, quite skinny looking boy who walked backwards with several others. When he turned, she recognized the glasses, the shape of his face, the smile that tugged at the corner of his mouth as he laughed, and she nearly called out to him, wanting to wave, to tell Harry that she was back... and then her eyes fell on the younger forms of Remus Lupin, –scrawny, a little pale to look at and with straw-like hair that fell across his eyes- Sirius Black, -handsome, more so than she was expecting, with a shock of black hair that achieved an elegance that her own would never achieve- and Peter Pettigrew, almost identical to the man she had met four years ago. She was instinctively moving towards them, not sure what force carried her, when she heard a silken voice which she recognized but despised all at once.
"Planger!" She stopped, and a moment later Lucius was stood in front of her with suspicion on his face. "They're Gryffindors," he informed her bitterly.
She looked at him blankly, as though she didn't understand. "And..?"
"And, we don't talk to them," he said gruffly. He reached out and grasped her elbow, steering her in the opposite direction. Hermione shrugged her arm away from him and he rolled his eyes. "Don't get all high and mighty about it," he snapped, "it's how things are, it's how things always have been and how they always will be." In an added undertone he muttered, "how in the hell did you get sorted into Slytherin anyway?"
She glared at him, and Lucius could have sworn there were daggers in her depths as she did so. "Perhaps I got sorted, not because I'm a bigoted arrogant pig, but because I'm actually ambitious and cunning?"
Lucius looked down on her, turning his whole body to look at her and grasping both elbows nearly painfully. "You're not fooling me Granger. Everyone else might believe you're just a crafty Slytherin like everyone else, up to no good and playing the fool, but I'm not buying it, and if you're not careful, you'll end up in trouble for it."
She shrugged out of his hold and glanced at her watch. "Thrilling as this was," she said sardonically, "I have to be somewhere. Goodbye." She turned towards the castle and began striding forward.
Lucius rolled his eyes up into his head. "How convenient for you..." he drawled. "Unfortunately, the somewhere you've got to be is the somewhere that I've got to be, so how about we both go to where we need to be and be done with it?" He looked at the back of her head as she froze, turning to look at him with utter revulsion.
"There is no way that I am going anywhere with you!"
Lucius didn't even bother to look taken aback, a smirk etching itself onto his face as though someone were chiselling his features slowly into the most wonderfully attractive, sickening look she could have possibly imagined. "What a shame, then, that I have your allowance from Dumbledore to pay for a wand and spell books..." He raised an eyebrow and motioned towards the gates. "Shall we?"
From the look on her face, he knew that there was little she would like less than to go to Diagon Alley with him, but she walked forwards, despite the suspicion clearly crinkling her pretty face. "Why am I going with you?" She asked.
He looked at her in amusement. "Because I'm Head Boy, and Dumbledore has left again, meaning that McGonagall can't leave. The other teachers have jobs to do and the Head Girl's in Hufflepuff, and even you, annoying as you are, don't deserve to be lumbered with Miss Goody-Goody MacMillan."
Hermione felt a faint blush stain her cheeks at that, but hid it behind a mask of impassiveness, retorting quite unnecessarily, "at least I might be able to have an intelligent conversation with her. It's more than I can hope to glean from you at any rate!"
Stopping, Lucius turned to her and said, quite softly, "look Granger, I don't know you, I can't say I like you, and I'm bloody certain the feelings mutual, but will you please, for the sake of my sanity, just let me be and pretend to be civil for the day?"
Though she didn't really think he deserved it, she nodded; after all, the young man in front of her had not done anything on the same scale as the older man she had known. Perhaps, for her own sanity as much as his, it would be better to simply 'be civil' as he requested. "Alright," she said softly, "but only if you buy me lunch!"
He had just been readjusting the gleaming Head Boy badge on his chest, and at her words his hand slipped, stabbing his finger and causing him to release a torrent of expletives that she wasn't sure she had even heard before. "Lunch, Granger?" He asked, his eyes wide and face drawn.
"Well, since my breakfast was minimal, and I'm not the most agreeable person on an empty stomach, in the interests of civility I would say that taking me to lunch would be a good move on your part," she smirked, a smirk worthy of the man himself, and looked at him innocently.
"A good move on my part," he said, "and a chance for you to burn a hole in my wallet!" He paused, before reluctantly saying, "Fine. We'll go to lunch, but after that, I'm afraid you'll have to accommodate me!"
She retreated slightly at his words. "Accommodate you how exactly?" she queried shakily, and the sneer on his face was enough to make her instantly regret it. He closed the gap between them, placing his hands on her waist and leaning forward to whisper enticingly in her ear. "Whatever way I please..." he felt her shiver, amusing him greatly, before pulling away and laughing at the expression of worry on her face.
"Oh don't be such a prude," he insisted, "I'm only messing around Granger. Do you really think if I needed 'accommodating' I'd come to you? I've got half of Slytherin house more than willing to engage me, do you really think I'd require your services? Besides, inexperience just doesn't push my buttons."
Hermione felt the anger bubbling in her stomach, fuelling her retort as she snapped back at him, "just because I am not willing to prostitute myself like some common tart does not mean that I have no experience!"
He laughed, eyes dancing, and she realized that he had been teasing her the whole time. She huffed in anger, then began striding towards the exit to the Hogwarts grounds. Lucius caught up with her, holding out an expensive looking flask. She blinked in confusion, then shook her head. "No, thank you. It's far too early in the day to lower myself to such..."
"It's a portkey, Granger," he drawled. "Contrary to your own beliefs, I don't actually want to be seeing you pissed off your face. Dumbledore gave me special permission for this one- he even lowered the wards for us to get in and out easily- , so just put your hand on it and stop thinking the worst of me!"
"I'm not thinking the worst of you!" She hissed. "I'm seeing it for myself thank you very much!" Not strictly true, Hermione told herself, since in contrast to what she knew he was being a perfect gentleman, but he didn't need to know that, did he?
"I thought we were going to be civil?" He said tiredly. When she didn't move or make any reply, he reached out, grabbed her hand and pressed it onto the flask in his other hand. She gasped as it began to glow blue, before feeling the tight squeeze that accompanied portkeys and apparition.
----
It wasn't like she remembered. The shops were different, the windows less colourful, the names less interesting and the people more conservatively dressed. Though she reasoned that she had only ever really visited at the height of tourism and shopping season for the younger generation of witches and wizards, it seemed that even the few young stragglers were dressed much less comfortably than she would have wanted. Though she had been provided with clothes that McGonagall had considered 'suitable' – a pair of drainpipe jeans and a black t-shirt-, she stood out like a sore thumb, unlike Lucius, who, she now realized, looked rather smart for a casual visit to Diagon Alley, wearing a black shirt and trousers, with a light jacket over one arm. Looking at him, she was struck immediately by an innate appreciation of his good looks, and a sudden wave of fear overtook him. She was in a strange time zone, with a man she barely knew anything of, except that he was to grow up to be a psychotic killer, who was slave to a man who would willing kill anyone in his way of power. She was terrified, but then there was a role of something else; excitement, intrigue, everything that she had found herself attracted to whilst travelling with Harry and Ron.
He flashed a dark grin at her as he noticed the look of perplexity on her face, and then he pointed mockingly towards a familiar, though slightly less shabby shop; Ollivanders.
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The first time she had visited this shop, she had been amazed by the amount of boxes, the piles of wands one on top of the other, just waiting to be tried and tested by her... she had been rather disappointed, in honesty, when the third wand she had tried had been the one for her, and now, standing up and looking at the vastness of the room, she wondered if the same would be true. She was shocked out of her trance by Mr Ollivander appearing from behind a shelf, looking slightly younger than she remembered, but maintaining the same gentle expression which had put her at such ease in her first year.
"Mr Malfoy," he said, his eyes falling on Lucius before she herself, "surely you have not broken your wand?"
"Of course not," Lucius smirked, jerking his head in Hermione's direction. "This one needs a new one... she broke hers."
Ollivander looking at her, scrutinizing her to the point that she wanted to cover herself up with her hands. "Surely," he started, "you are too old to be purchasing your first wand, my dear?"
Hermione shook her head. "It's not my first... I misplaced mine."
"But I have never seen you here before, and I never forget a sale."
She shook her head. "I didn't buy it here. I bought it in Bulgaria when I was on holiday with my family... Gregorovitch, I think it was."
Ollivander raised an eyebrow, but nodded in agreement. "Yes... that would be true of Bulgaria... in which case, what type did you have?"
"Vine wood and dragon heartstring," she said reflexively, then swore inwardly, wondering if they would even use vine wood as wood yet, especially if she was claiming it to be Bulgarian... she could only hope, she reasoned, and when his showed no sense of suspicion, she breathed a sigh of relief.
"Ah yes, a good choice... hmmm..." he headed over to the nearest shelf, then pulled four different boxes off with the knowledge of a man who regularly organised his shelves. "Try this," he said, holding out a sleek black box. She removed the lid gently and nearly gasped at the similarity between this and her own wand. It was the same wood, the same length, with just a little extra thickness. She picked it up, and was almost disappointed to find that there was none of the initial goose bumps that she experienced when she had picked up her true wand. She waved it, briefly, speaking a half-hearted "wingardium leviosa", yet already knowing that it would not yield the same results as her own. The quill box on the desk shakily rose a centimetre above the wooden surface, then cluttered to the bottom. Ollivander snatched it back instantly, looking unreasonably insulted. "No," he said stiffly. "This is most definitely not the wand for you!"
Hermione looked down at her feet, feeling Lucius' smirk on the back of her head and wanting to turn around and slap him in order to wipe it off his face. "Try this," Ollivander said, holding out another box, this one deep red in colour, containing a shorter, stumpier wand of a darker wood. The result was the same.
----
She stood there for the best part of two hours, waving wands and speaking incantations until her throat and arm ached. Two other customers came and went in the time between her entering and coming across the right wand for her.
It was presented to her in a deep green box, which was long and slim, and on opening it she found a plush silk cushion of silver, on which lay a dark, long wand which seemed to call to her like none of the others had, and more so even than her own first wand had achieved. She hardly dared to touch it, not wanting to be disappointed by the results. It called to her like nothing else; she could have sworn she recognized the wand itself, and yet she couldn't possibly have seen it before. Looking at Ollivander, she gulped, then gently took the handle in her trembling fingers, feeling it heat her from the inside as she lifted it from the box. With a devious smirk at Lucius, who had settled himself into a chair and looked utterly bored, she thought the incantation for her infamous canary charm, sending three yellow canaries swooping towards the dozing Slytherin. She shrieked in delight, just as Lucius leapt up, wand in hand, face of thunder, waving vehemently until the three birds disappeared.
"So you found one then? Finally! I was beginning to think you were a squib." His drawl was confident, but there was a slight edge to it and he kept his wand drawn.
Ollivander smiled at Hermione with more warmth than he had managed to muster for the rest of the meeting. "A good choice, if I may say so. Elmwood and dragon heartstring... it seems that dragons become you," he inclined his head politely and took the wand from her fingers, placing it back in its box and smiling gently. "That will be thirteen galleons, if I may."
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