Author's Chapter Notes:

I'm sorry I'm so late on this update! I hope you all enjoy and let me know what you think!

Chapter 13:

"Luna! Over here!" Hermione called across the packed Starbucks (what, you actually thought a Muggle could come up with something that fabulous?).

"Hi, Hermione! You've got quite a bunch of snafflers over your head; Lucius give you a smooch earlier?" Luna winked at Hermione.

Hermione simply shook her head, amazed at how perceptive and yet … well, loopy, her friend could be. "We're meeting for dinner later. He's got a bunch of work to do at the Ministry before the promotions come up."

"You don't have any left, then?" Luna sipped her coffee hesitantly, cautious of the burning liquid.

"Oh, nothing too extensive - I had most of it done weeks ago … Lucius is a bit more of a procrastinator, not that he will ever admit to it." Hermione shook her head.

Luna nodded sympathetically, "Rolf is a bit like that too; but they're men – for some reason we find a way to live with it." She waved her hand airily, "So now start explaining! How long have you been married? When did you start going out? How? Why! There's so much to discuss!"

Hermione laughed, "Gods, I know, I know! And you! Rolf … you'll be explaining too missy." She wagged her finger at the blonde, "Well, the answer to the first question is fifteen years on Christmas, but we've really been together for about seventeen. As to that, you recall we were working together on the werewolf registration, right? Well I suppose it all sort of evolved from there."

February 2000

Vienna, Austria

"You set her up to it."

"I did not! Malfoy, will you stop it and focus! I do not care whether you are friends with my housemate or not, I do not care if you are unhappy that she finally contacted you, I do not care if you are merely trying to assess whether she has malevolent intentions towards your highly-esteemed person. I. Do. Not. Care. I do, however, care whether we finish this damn list or not by tonight. I, for one, would like to go back to our hotel, take a bubble bath, and get some fucking sleep."

He tried to avoid the images of her sliding around a bubble bath and slowly, seductively stepping out of the inlaid bath, water sluicing down her soft, silken legs. Legs that would momentarily be wrapped around his hips as he picked her up and pounded her into the … GOD DAMN IT.

"Well, why on earth is she inviting me to lunch then?"

Hermione let out a frustrated screech, "For Merlin's sake Lucius, I don't know. Maybe she wants to get to know her only other family member again. Maybe she wants to see if you've changed. Maybe she's lonely and wants to talk to someone her own age. For fuck's sake, I don't give a bleeding fuck – ask her your bloody self."

"Such rage. And I highly doubt it is the latter option, she could hardly tire of your intellectual chatter. I promise you, one hardly notices you're under thirty with that mind of yours."

Hermione gaped at him and then eyed him warily, "What have you been smoking?"

"I… pardon me?" His eyes wide, he attempted to process what she had just asked of him.

Hermione gestured at him wildly, "I asked what you've been smoking, or what potions you're on … surely you didn't just tell me that I'm intelligent and can converse."

"I simply meant that as a man twenty-five years older than you, I hardly notice the age difference intellectually. Your mind is far more mature than most at your age." He peered over the tome he'd been looking through, somehow looking down on her even as he complimented her.

Hermione glanced down at her hands, "Yes, well … well, yes, it is rather. I suppose that's why I have such a hard time relating to people my own age."

Lucius glanced back at his book, "Indeed. Now, what should I wear?"

Hermione threw her hands up in the air, "Sweet Circe. Lucius, do you, or do you not want to finish these tonight?"

He slammed his book shut, a cloud of dust rising from it and covering him from head to foot, "Hermione, we have all tomorrow to look over these as well. Has anyone told you that you are a slave driver? In fact, I put my foot down."

He slammed his book shut, a cloud of dust rising from it and covering him from head to foot, "I will not do any more work until I have eaten an entire meal away from books, smoked my cigar and had a shower to get off this accursed dust." He spat out the last word as he attempted to clean himself off with a Scourgify.

Hermione couldn't help giggling, "All right you pansy."

She stood and picked up the books on the table and left to place them in their original positions on the shelves, "Let's go back to the hotel, clean up and then go out to dinner ..." she glanced over her shoulder at him with an indescribable look, "or would you prefer to eat alone. I certainly don't want to dampen your evening."

Lucius gave a great huff of annoyance, "You would not be ruining my evening Miss Granger – stop fishing for compliments. We will have to work on that self-confidence of yours; it is far too low for someone like you." He nodded and walked off to the entrance of the library, while Hermione stood back in the stacks, mouth agape.

Hermione sipped her coffee slowly and peered over Luna's shoulder with unfocused eyes, "And so we went to dinner. And what a dinner! I think we were both so starved for companionship; that unending ache of being alone in a group of people – only a few of whom you can talk to, that we looked to the other, our former opposite to fulfill the void."

Luna asked softly as not to disrupt the other woman's reverie, "What of the others though, Harry, Ginny, everyone?"

Hermione ran a hand over her hair, "Ginny and Harry were too caught up with each other to fully comprehend, and it wasn't as though I could go to Ron. After the miscarriage, he and Lavender were tense enough … not to mention that debacle between him and I at Lucius' Christmas party. And really, after the war, we needed to form our own identities."

She shifted and took another sip, savoring the foam in her mouth, "Everything really changed during that Vienna trip. We got to know each other, we saw each other in a new light, a social light, beyond our previous interactions. And honestly, it was Vienna, the atmosphere, the spirit – we went to the opera and saw the ancient structures that next day – it was intellectual foreplay if nothing else."

She ran a finger around her coffee cup, "Stimulating the mind and through it the body, every tingle from a mythical tale and every moment of awe at what those former generations had accomplished, had the potential to, and did, arouse. I don't know if it was an unconscious approach by each of us or if it was inevitable."

"Our talks were certainly never full of rainbows and silly dreams, but arguments, memories, opinions, and prejudices – on both sides. I was still young, reeling from a war I was never prepared for in a world I had only known about for 10 years. He was facing a new wizarding world and being forced to revalue everything he'd known since childhood. We argued passionately sometimes and others cold fury was the ruler of the day."

She refocused on Luna's face with a sheepish smile, knowing that she had been rambling for awhile, "Oh, Luna, I can't really explain it – Vienna, Rome, it was both magical and logical, but then it ended. The project had its foundation and it was sent to some other department, I haven't any idea really – merely that it was published and accepted by the Wizengamot – and the Order celebrated it as a tribute to Remus and even Bill."

"Life felt like it was finally on track for me."

Chapter End Notes:

Whew, so I know its short but I promise more is coming. I've gone with a bit more of a narrative style in this chapter as I think it suits the feel and how I want the material to be brought across. I'll be going with this style for probably the next few chapters, so I hope you all can accept that :). And as regards my personal life, my husband is at home and is recovering nicely. Slow and steady, so the updates will be slow, but hopefully steady as well :). Thanks to everyone for their support!\/p\/p