AN:

On AO3, this is published as a one-shot and attached to the series, The Fixer Universe, instead of being included in the main fic as it's own chapter.

Interlude of the Past

July 1995

Her fingers laced through his…

His lips praying along her skin…

Her leg hitching higher up his hip…

His brow pinched in determined concentration as she sings for him alone…

Their hearts racing and the air thick as they lose themselves in one another, the darkening world forgotten…

Sweat misting their skin…

Sworn promises of forever, sealed with each kiss and touch they share; each one growing louder as euphoria and the fantasy that spins into reality approaches…

Holding her close with his lips in her hair as her fingers continue to explore and study him as if he were as precious and rare as her coveted tomes; his heart full of her and his body sated but addicted to the feeling of her love.

It had been a perfect year of falling for her and earning her love and belief in him. A perfect year that had given way to a perfect night. A perfect night that was the beginning of an undying devotion for her and her dreams; her happiness and love, his only remaining ambition.

Ordinarily a heavy sleeper and groggy crouch upon waking, Marcus woke easily and blissfully under the soft squirming of Hermione's nude body that ran flush along his. Brushing her beautiful and wild tangle of curls back from her neck, he traced the delicate line down and across her shoulder with his lips. Her body went pliant under his ministrations and she sighed in her sleep, turning into him to seek out more as if his touch had awoken new reflexes within her. Lightly tracing his fingers down her side and around her stomach to come up her chest until he was banding his arm beneath her breasts, he mapped the love bites he had hungrily and possessively littered her flesh with.

Every moment with her had been a dream. During a year that had started off with embarrassment and rejection, she had been a beacon. A shining light amongst the darkness others hadn't realized enveloped him. Though at the start it had not been of her own volition, she had sought him out and taken his hand, guiding him into a new life. She was an angel at his back; a fierce, little protector against hurtful words and thoughts not only slung at him from others but against that which he battered himself with.

He had thought it an impossibility that a witch as frighteningly intelligent, compassionate, and lovely as she, would look upon him. That day in December when the Yule Ball had been announced had changed it all, because she had. Her wide, whiskey colored eyes had looked at him and into him and found him to be what she wanted. And the sweet, self conscious, tiny angel that she was, had thought he wouldn't return her affection. In that moment he had been wiser and more knowing than she. For unlike the rest, he knew what a treasure she was and how her already pretty face and captivating mind would only grow and become even more enthralling as she shed the doubts that grew from the unkind and thoughtless words of others.

She had spoken with an endearing candidness of how she hoped he would seek her out as his date for the ball and though he couldn't go, his heart had soared. And from then on, she was his and he was hers though in truth, he had been hers for sometime before that. And he would remain hers for years to come; her love and touch the only one he ever wanted to feel for the rest of his days. She was perfection and though he was slow to grasp a great many concepts even with her patient tutoring of him, the wonderful gift that was being seen as worthy by her was not one he ever struggled with.

Finding that while she stirred under his touch, Hermione didn't come awake, Marcus left behind several more whispers of his lips along her hairline, cheek, neck, and shoulder before untangling himself and slipping free of the bed. Though high up in Scotland they were, the summer sun greeting the day at an annoyingly early time, the woods around the ramshackle, stone cottage he had purchased for the potential he saw in its façade, were still valiantly blocking out the lightening sky of early dawn. Softly trekking down the stairs back to the main floor, he looked about the chaos of the unfurnished living room for his wand. Finding it under his jeans, he quietly went halfway back up to the loft and murmured a series of silencing charms so his witch could continue to sleep in peace and he could be free to move about the cottage without fear of waking her.

Satisfied with his work even though she probably could have done it with a single spell and silently if she was really determined, he went to where they had unceremoniously dumped their trunks in their haste to enter the final course of learning one another. Moving things about inside his own, he pulled on the first pair of joggers he found — bypassing a shirt as he kept glancing down with a sort of awed smugness at his chest to see where her nails had marked him — and fished about until he found the very small box he had received by owl a few days prior and had obsessively been carrying on him ever since. Sitting down on the dirty floor the rest of the way, he glanced back up to where Hermione was sleeping and with a manner that spoke of him guarding a secret far more nefarious than what he was keeping, he opened it, giving himself another speech about finding his courage so he could properly ask her to marry him.

He and the rest of true seventh years had sat their NEWTs a month ago, the normal days of testing having been moved up to accommodate the Triwizard Tournament. Judging from the year prior, he hadn't expected his results until mid-July having not gotten the first set until mid-August, about six weeks following the conclusion of the last test. However with his father's position and influence in the Ministry — along with the vested interest in putting to bed the shame that came with having a son who couldn't manage to pass his final year of schooling — it had only been about two weeks before he had received his scores. Thanks to his witch's militant revision schedule and having sussed out that he was highly motivated by the promises of her amorous attention, he had not only scraped together the required scores of Acceptable to claim his inheritance and meet the British and Irish League's set standards for signing new players, but he managed two marks of Exceeds Expectations in Herbology and Care of Magical Creatures.

Having received his scores during a free period in which he was running drills with Viktor, he had flown his broom back up to the castle and dismounted with haste to seek out Hermione. Halfway to the Ancient Runes classroom though he had changed course for the Divination tower and plucked Lavender from the exodus of students as the clock tower chimed the end of lectures. Stashing her in an empty classroom with him, he obsessively worked at wearing her down in his effort to get his witch's best friend to let go of her closely guarded secrets. Finally winning her over — though it was truly a hard fought battle — with the reveal of having spoken with her father over the spring holiday and through further correspondence after about his intentions in marrying Hermione upon her completion of her schooling if she would have him, Lavender gave up the state secrets that were his practical witch's starry eyed side.

Leaving him in the classroom, the blonde had sprinted to Gryffindor tower and back in impressive time, her arms overburdened with wizarding and muggle wedding magazines that she used to piece together a collage of Hermione's ideal engagement ring. He was unsurprised by her simple, inexpensive tastes and had taken the collection with him to draft letters to a jeweler, realtor, and to the Montrose Magpies, attaching his scores and well documented statistics while having played for the Slytherin house team. They weren't Puddlemere and at best they were a second rate team but they would keep him as close as he could get to Hogwarts — and thus Hermione — without giving up quidditch altogether and living in Hogsmeade itself. The blending of the different stages of their lives being the driving force behind every decision he had started making when he had set out to improve himself to become someone worthy of earning, and keeping, her love and respect. She was it for him; the one who showed him forever in her eyes and he wanted nothing more than to love and treat her with the reverence such a gift deserved.

Closing the ring box — his heart thundering like a herd of centaurs rallying for rebellion — he shoved it into his pocket and heaved himself up from the floor. The small home he had purchased for its triangular distance between Montrose and Hogwarts, allowing him to Apparate with ease to both, was in dire need of repair and cleaning. It was quaint and had a storybook charm he knew she would love, but it was still a long way off from the home of her dreams she had seen in a realtor's window in Cambridge. However, until she was done with school and he had put away enough galleons to purchase her dream with little help from his family's money — the one good thing he'd been raised with being the mentality that one should live off his own income and the interest of his wealth so as to always insure a secure future for his wife and children — it would do. Knowing there wasn't much that could be done for the cleanliness of the once forgotten home until she was awake and could walk him through muggle cleaning practices, having been raised in a rather affluent lifestyle where elves tended to everything leaving him without the knowledge of even basic cleaning spells, he set to making Hermione breakfast. Something Samuel and Martha had been teaching him over the school holidays he had spent with the Grangers instead of his own family who had believed him to be on globetrotting holiday with Adrian.

In the kitchen with its counters far too low for his tall frame making him begin a catalog of things their home would need to have made custom to accommodate their vast height difference, Marcus fiddled with the wireless until he was able to get it to tune in to one of the muggle radio stations. Moving about as he hummed the few familiar tunes from the music of a decade prior, he properly unpacked the food they had shoved into the refrigerator having had more important desires clawing at them last night than the need to organize. With fruits laid out and getting cut under a charmed knife and cured meats rolling themselves up and arranging on the platter, he set to making the batter for Martha's secret pancake recipe — a box mix with buttermilk instead of water and extra butter — as a new song began to play, the tune catching his attention and making him listen attentively as the lyrics came forth.

Jessie is a friend

Yeah, I know, he's been a good friend of mine

But lately something's changed that ain't hard to define

Jessie's got himself a girl and I want to make her mine

And she's watching him with those eyes

And she's loving him with that body, I just know it

Yeah, and he's holding her in his arms late, late at night

You know, I wish that I had

Jessie's girl

I wish that I had Jessie's girl

Feeling oddly affronted by the singer's covetous words for his supposed mate's girl, Marcus grumbled, "Bloody backstabbing wanker," changing the station to spare himself the secondhand feeling of betrayal.

Humming along to the much more pleasant, if slightly melancholic, new release of some muggle named after an animal, he continued to work the batter as Hermione's mum had taught him, with a pan warming on the hob.

There is so much a man can tell you

So much he can say

You remain my power, my pleasure, my pain, baby

To me, you're like a growing addiction that I can't deny

Won't you tell me, is that healthy, baby?

But did you know that when it snows

My eyes become large and

The light that you shine can't be seen?

Lost in the lyrics and calming task of cooking, both working in tandem to settle his nerves and relieve him of his suddenly developed tick of patting his pocket as if the ring would spontaneously disappear, he was caught off guard in a way he hoped to never experience again as his father said, "Well look at this: my idiot son, the heir to a Sacred line, acting like a filthy muggle servant," his voice dripping with harsh disdain.

Setting the bowl down, Marcus fought the urge to look up to the loft or over at Hermione's trunk as he asked, "What are you doing here?"

"Go ahead boy, ask what you really wish to know. How did I find out about this disgusting shack where you plan to keep your mudblood whore?"

"Don't call her that," he snarled, stepping around the counter.

Waving off his son's flaring anger as if the insults to Hermione were as insignificant as a fly, Malcom Flint sneered, "Honestly, where you stick your prick is of no concern to me provided you don't spawn any half-blooded bastards. Besides, looking at the state of you, it would seem her blasphemous kind are at least good for something, even if it's only spreading their legs."

"Watch your tongue," Marcus enunciated, stepping closer as he felt his hands begin to ball into fists. "I will not tell you again."

"Oh, fucking hell! You genuinely believe yourself to be in love with the girl, don't you? This is absolutely hilarious.

"What did you think would happen, Marcus? That you would fall in love with your little tutor and ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after, forever sullying our family name with each mongrel you pumped into her?

"Did you honestly think I would allow such a thing?"

"I don't give a shite what you think or, 'will allow,' me to do. If the idea of me being with her displeases you so much, then fuck off! No one is forcing you to watch or even acknowledge our existence."

"It's not too late to have you disinherited. Think about that. All your money, gone. Not a single knut to your name. What then? You think your little ingénue will stick around while you muddle your way through a career for a lackluster team? She won't.

"Mudblood or not, witches are all the same. You may fuck her like she'll never experience again but what is sex and love when faced with money and security? She'll leave you the moment you cease to be able to bring into existence whatever fanciful dreams you two have spun in this little nest of yours."

Actually beginning to laugh at how little his father knew of Hermione, Marcus called his bluff and said, "Fine, go ahead. I've survived just fine without the money since you cut me off until I retook my NEWTs. I managed then and I'll manage now. Want me to sign over the account right now to make it easier on you? Let me get a quill."

"You wouldn't…" his father hissed, revealing his hand.

"I would," he smirked. "See I'm not as thick as you think, father. I've already spoken with Balthazar — which I assume he breached client privilege about and that's how you've come to find out about us. The Flint family trust stipulates that you can still disinherit me if I besmirch the family name in some way but there's a clause that stipulates that in order to do so, you have to fully disown me. That means, no family name for me and no heir for you. Which would be highly problematic for you since you can no longer manage to get it up. The Flint name will die with you. Meanwhile, I'll get to go on happily filling my witch with a quidditch team's worth of children who could have carried on our name and seat in the Ministry.

"It also means that everyone in the peerage will know you no longer have an heir and will whisper as to why that is until it eventually comes out that your former son chose the muggleborn Hermione Granger — who by the way will undoubtedly have a reputation and clout to rival that of the Malfoys by the time she leaves Hogwarts — over his family's galleons. Either way, she and I will end up sullying the family name. Just one of them will speak more negatively upon you than upon me.

"So, why don't you start playing the long game, father, and just accept that I love her, that I will be marrying her, and get over your antiquated prejudice? Then you can come out as a staunch supporter of what others will see as our torrid love affair and be the father-in-law to a witch who very well could one day become Minister of Magic if it so suited her fancy?

"Now go think that over and fuck off! I don't want the presence of your bigoted arse upsetting her when she wakes up."

With a cold laugh, Malcom responded, "I don't know how it happened but you really are quite stupid." Then, shooting his hand out ot grasp his son's throat, Malcom slammed Marcus's face into the counter and snarled in his ear, "I was trying to be nice, a good father, by only threatening you with the loss of your inheritance but I see you're going to need much more motivation than that, so how's this:

"You are going to pack your things and fucking leave this place with me, right now. Then you will take a Portkey I have already procured for you and you will go play your stupid sport in Spain with a team I've already signed a contract with on your behalf until I tell you otherwise. You will do all of this without speaking a fucking word to your whore."

"And if I don't?" he rasped, digging his heels in against his father's blood supremacists beliefs, even as he choked off his air flow.

"If you don't, then I will be forced to hand over the information about Potter's little mudblood's family and their whereabouts."

Smiling as he thought he could again call his father's bluff, Marcus taunted, "You don't have that information. And even if you did, you wouldn't know where to begin with navigating the Muggle World to actually follow up on it."

Pressing his face harder into the counter, Malcom responded, "Oh don't I? Martha is from very old money and the daughter of a lesser muggle noble and is very prevalent in society charity work. Samuel was a poor, common student she met and fell in love with during her time at that teeth school.

"The Grangers now work as some sort of barbaric tooth healers in a suite of healers' clinics in London. I believe the exact location is in Mayfair on Park Street. Quite expensive real estate if I'm not mistaken.

"And if that isn't enough for you to believe, what about the fact that they live on Templewood Avenue in a lovely brick Edwardian? Or that your mudblood's bedroom has a beautiful view of the back garden to which Maratha Granger tends to herself and that your sweet whore's bedroom is in rather frilly and girlish shades of pink, which is surprising given how plain and unadorned she is? Or that during your spring holiday when you were supposed to be in the Canary Islands with Pucey, Warrington, and Montague, you were instead at her home in Hampstead, learning to live without magic, wanking to the sight of her playing with her cunt for you, and sharing her bed with her where you two continuously got up to far more wanton acts than any self respecting parents would have allowed their daughter to engage in."

"I'm not leaving her," Marcus doubled down, his vision blurring from the continued lack of oxygen. "You can't make me."

"Not even if I promise that by leaving you'll spare her parents a slow and painful death, as well as prevent me from forcing you to watch as Greyback gets to ravish her? You forget, the Dark Lord has returned and while we will be forced to remain quiet for a time as he slowly stretches his reach once again, the ways of the last war will return as well. And when they do, we'll kick them off by using your sweet witch until she's begging us for death and curses having ever fallen for you with her dying breath."

"Fine," he relented, screwing his eyes up against the image his father was painting. "I'll do it. Just don't hurt her."

Hissing in his ear, Malcom demanded, "You'll do what? I want to hear you say it."

"I'll leave with you, I'll go to Spain, I won't come back to Britain, and I'll do it all without speaking to her."

Letting his throat go and shoving him to the floor, Malcom viciously cooed, "That's a good boy, now grab your trunk and let's go," while Marcus coughed and sputtered on his eagerness for air.

Looking up at the loft where Hermione remained sleeping unaware of what was happening because of the silent bubble he had wrapped around her, he snapped the lid of his trunk closed and followed his father out into the woods.

Back home and in his room, stuffing his school trunk and several others with not only his additional quidditch gear but the contents of his entire life, he wrote a letter for Hermione before summoning one of the elves to him, bidding them to grab Adrian.

Pulling his grandmother's promise ring free from its matching treasure box, he sliced his hand open and rolled it through his blood, changing the metal of one of the knots from white to rose gold. It wasn't the engagement ring he had planned to give her, but the magic of the ring when combined with his blood would act as a tether to his heart and affection, allowing Hermione to feel his love for her and seek solace from him even when he couldn't be near. Added in was a soft compulsion would bid her to keep it on her at all times for as long as she returned his love and the rose gold would remain until he let her go or passed on as his grandmother's true love had.

Placing the matching antique treasure box and frame into his school trunk alongside the camera he had used the night before to take endless pictures of her and them, he sealed both his letter and ring inside an envelope just as a half-asleep and very disgruntled Adrian appeared.

"It's sodding five o'clock in the bloody morning, mate. I thought you didn't need me for the Fidelius until later."

"Change of plans; no time to explain. I need you to do it now and take this to the cottage and give it to Hermione," he rushed, shoving the envelope into the hands of the only person he had trusted with the secret of his relationship. "My father found out."

Those words had the sleep vanishing from his friend's face as he confirmed, "Malcom found out?"

"Yeah, now do the fucking charm. She's already there and the deed is in her name so I just need you to make me her Secret Keeper. I need to know she will have somewhere safe to go when Britain turns back into a bloody war zone."

Handing off his trunks to the elf who had retrieved Adrian, Marcus felt his friend's magic wash over him and the sudden warmth of the secret kept location settling into the core of his being. Writing the address down so Adrian could find the location once he left, he wrapped his friend in a one armed hug, slinging his second broom over his shoulder as he clapped him on the back and said, "Thanks for this, Ades. Seriously, you're my best mate and I can't think of anyone else I would trust with this, with her. Please keep an eye on her for me, you know how much trouble Potter causes and how she's always at his side when it happens."

Hugging him back, he promised, "You know how much I like her, of course I will. Sweet little spitfire, that witch. And listen, send your letters for her to me until the term starts. I don't trust Malcom won't be watching your mail for the first few weeks you're gone if he's done this much to separate you two. Charm my name and address on them like I taught you and I'll reverse it when they come and forward them for you."

"Thank you, you're the best. Now please, go to the cottage so she doesn't wake up alone, okay?"

"You got it," he assured, taking the elf's offered hand to pop him out past the Apparition barriers surrounding the estate.

Checking his room one last time, Marcus rubbed the bulge in his pocket where Hermione's ring was at, promising her and himself, that he would do whatever it took to make the next few years go by as smoothly as possible, already wondering as to the likelihood of her parents allowing her to spend some of the winter holiday with him in Spain.

They would get through this and the coming war he was sure of it. Then after, he would make good on all they had talked about, dreamed about, and hoped for last night. He loved her with a singular devotion and knew no matter how long it took, she would always be the one to hold his heart.

Though he wasn't happy about the early start to his morning, Adrian was delighted by how well things were playing out. A few carefully worded and anonymous letters to Malcom had set everything into motion, moving Marcus out of the picture far faster than he thought possible.

He had fallen for Hermione more than a year ago when he had been laid up in the hospital wing following a quidditch injury and she was volunteering with Madam Pomfrey as she contemplated the career path of a healer. Back then, Marcus hadn't even been aware of her existence — too focused on the admittedly smart but vapid Ravenclaw chit he was dating. He hadn't even been able to remember Hermione's name. Then the fucking idiot that was his friend went and failed his NEWTs and was forced to repeat his final year of school.

He initially didn't pay it or the fact that Hermione would be his tutor, too much mind. That was until his foolish, dim witted friend and his over appreciation for witches in possession with a level of intelligence that he would never hope to understand had gone and fallen for her. He couldn't really fault Marcus for that though. She was intelligent and beautiful and would undoubtedly be the most sought after commodity in a few years time. But then the unimaginable had happened. She reciprocated his feelings and attraction.

Hermione, his Hermione, the Brightest Witch of Her Age, had become a dewy eyed, lovesick schoolgirl for Marcus bloody Flint of all wizards. The moronic, troll brained, quaffale head who was having to do a Hogwarts first and repeat a year.

From the time he had been in the Infirmary for several days and all the months following, Adrian had tried to get her to notice him as something other than a platonic acquaintance. And though she hadn't looked, he had remained patient knowing that a prize like her wasn't something that could be so easily won. He would simply have to remain a fixture in her life and wait for when the moment came that she looked up from her little books and began taking genuine notice of the wizards in her life.

He had never imagined Marcus would be the one to make that happen though. Still, he had remained patient knowing their relationship would undoubtedly have a quick expiration date given how much she had to dumb things down for his understanding. But it hadn't. Instead, they grew closer and closer, falling in love before his very eyes until a few weeks ago he had happened upon a private meeting Marcus was having with his father in Snape's office.

He had started to go in to see his dad and ask why he hadn't known he'd be stopping by the school that day when he overheard their conversation. Proving his stupidity to the world, Marcus was inquiring about a contract offer he had gotten back from the bloody Magpies. They weren't near as awful as the Cannons but they were no Puddlemere — the premiere team that had been holding a position on their starting lineup for him while he repeated the school year. Not only that, he was having Adrian's dad look into the fine print of his inheritance – specifically what it mentioned in regards to marrying muggleborns and siring half-blooded children.

He was going to throw it all away. His dream and ambition flushed down the toilet over Hermione. It wasn't that Adrian didn't think her worth it, more the fact that he couldn't fathom taking such a risk both in his career and with his wealth for anyone. Let alone someone he would have to wait several more years for while they finished school and whatever further educational pursuits she went after, for surely she wouldn't be content with his grand designs for the perfect life — a wife who loved him and gave him a vibrant home filled with children who wouldn't grow up in the suffocating coldness he had. And even if she was, it still didn't justify his friend being handed the perfect life on a silver platter and turning it away.

It had always been a given he would go on to play professionally, being naturally gifted in both build and skill in the sport, whereas Adrian had to spend hours and hours a day to be even half as good. Then the professional offers started rolling in with one from Puddlemere — Adrian's dream team to have played for had that injury in his fifth year not made it so that a professional career was out of the picture. He was envious in the moment but knew even without the injury he never would have been good enough to play for them, so he had let it go.

His friend was then given a lucky break when they, and all the others, had put it in writing that they would hold a spot for him as he retook his NEWTs so as to meet the league's requirements. He went on to get the witch whose name a year prior he couldn't even remember, pushing Adrian right out of the way before he even had been given a chance to try for her. Finally in a culmination of months of growing envy, Marcus was going to throw it all away as if the life that was before him was offered to people every day. His wealth, his coming fame, all of it gone because he wanted to be close enough to fucking Apparate to his witch in case she needed him or he missed her.

Marcus had been given everything he had ever wanted without so much as trying whereas Adrian worked and worked and still fell short and he had had enough. He had taken the life Adrian wanted to live, so come hell or high water, Adrian was going to ruin Marcus and his ungrateful arse for having done it all.

Malcom had done the hard part and removed his son from Britain. From there, Adrian estimated that it would only be a handful of months before he managed to pull Hermione from Marcus and few more after that before he made her his. And the sweet ease of it all was that his friend was too fucking blind to see it all coming. Marcus had handed complete control of his relationship over with the belief that Adrian was someone as pure of intention as the Brown girl who simpered over the way the giant fool loved her best friend.

AN:

The songs mentioned are Jessie's Girl by Rick Springfield and Kiss From a Rose by Seal.