A/N. Alrighty, I'm trying something new. This story is completely finished. Done. Finite. I have written every chapter to it already and I will be posting once a week. I've never done this before, so hopefully it ends well.
Here it is, people! I am very happy about the responses the first chapter got! I hope all 21 of you will review again, and then some! As always, thank you for reading, you amazing readers!
...~oOo~...
Chapter Two: The Governess
The pain between Hermione's eyes was gone. However, it was replaced by a new pain on the back of her head. It was more of a surface pain, and felt a little wet. That's when she realized she'd bumped her head.
Because she'd fainted. It all came back to her in a rush. Young Narcissa, short-haired Lucius, Baby Draco... She'd basically fallen down the rabbit hole and woke up in a world of madness. Feeling a relief that she'd fainted, Hermione concluded that she must have hit her head, or perhaps a book fell and hit her while she was in the library, and all of that had been a nasty dream.
"Miss?"
Hermione's eyes flew open at the sound of the tiny, gravelly voice. She stared at the ceiling for a moment, blinking and clearing her sight. She turned her head a little to see the source of the voice.
"Oh, Zippy, thank goodness," Hermione breathed, wiggling herself up into a sitting position. "I've had the strangest dream, you won't believe it."
One of Zippy's ears flopped downward, the elf-ear version of raising an eyebrow. "How does Miss know Zippy's name?"
"You... you brought me lunch..." Hermione said, brow furrowed. Sitting up sent a rush of her blood upward and downward too quickly, making black spots float in her version. She blinked some more.
"Zippy does not recall Miss for lunch..." Zippy said hesitantly. "Zippy will fetch Mistress Malfoy, tell her Miss is awake."
Hermione was about to open her mouth to catch the elf, but instead groaned in pain. The head rush was overbearing. She'd really knocked her head. Touching the back of her head, she felt the bandage and stuck her finger under it. Whatever the elf had put on the wound, it was almost completely healed. She began to unwrap the gauze when the door opened and Narcissa walked in.
Young Narcissa.
God, Hermione thought, rubbing her forehead. When would this nightmare end?
"You certainly know how to make an entrance, I will grant you that," Narcissa said, one of her perfectly sharp eyebrow raised in scrutiny.
From right behind her came a taller, most imposing presence. Hermione continued to mentally dub him as Short-hairted Lucius.
"Hermione Granger," Lucius stated in that deep, smooth drawl of his. "That's what the volunteer ID for St. Mungo's in your pocket said your name was. Is this true?"
"Yes..." Hermione said, but her voice was shaking.
"How old are you, Miss Granger?" Lucius inquired.
"Eighteen..."
"Perfect. Blood status?"
"Lucius," Narcissa said, a warning in her tone. "This is not a political matter."
"Blood status?" Lucius pressed further, ignoring his wife.
"Er... half-blood," Hermione lied quietly. She had no clue where she was or what happened, but one thing she knew for sure. If the Malfoys had no memory of her, and if she was in the era that she thought she was, she did not want to be caught in Malfoy Manor as a muggle-born.
Lucius paused for a moment, taking a drink from his tumbler. It was half-filled with an amber liquid. "Good enough," he said, willy-nilly. (Though she doubted Lucius Malfoy would consider anything involving himself to be willy nor nilly). "You're hired. Conveniently enough, you're in your bedroom already, so... make yourself cozy, I suppose." And he strode out.
Narcissa's eyes were huge, anger glinting in them dangerously. "Excuse me," she said politely, following her husband out, throwing the door shut behind her. But she spoke loud enough in the hall for Hermione to hear her anyway. "What are you thinking, hiring her? We don't know her!"
"Well, that's not exactly true," Lucius said back, her voice slow and casual. "Her name is Hermione Granger, she is eighteen, a half-blood, and volunteers at St. Mungo's. Sounds qualified enough for me."
"This is our son's welfare at stake!" Narcissa snapped. "You are putting him in danger by allowing that girl to take care of him! He needs someone with credentials, a clean record at the Ministry, pure bloodlines, references -"
"In case you've forgotten, Narcissa, my name isn't the most trusted in society right now," Lucius said, his voice sharpening slightly. "My acquittal left a lot of people unhappy. Our ad for a governess has been in the Prophet for months with no replies. Well, now we have one. We will monitor her accordingly, but we cannot afford to be picky. Now, give our new tenant a tour, for Merlin's sake."
His heavier footfalls retreated and there was a long minute of silence before the door was flung open once more. Narcissa looked frustrated, but kept a cool exterior with some obvious effort. "I apologize for my husband's abruptness. I assure you he will be more of a gentleman in the future." She cleared her throat lightly. "Now, if you will join me for a tour. This is, after all, your home from now on."
And that was how Hermione accidentally became Draco Malfoy's governess.
...~oOo~...
Days passed. And then a full week. Then almost a month Hermione was doing a good job of keeping up the charade, she thought. Her salary was quite sizable, so she was soon able to buy a new wardrobe, along with materials for her job. Since Draco Malfoy, at this point in the universe, was two, Hermione was less of a governess and more of a nanny.
She had notebooks with mealtimes and time for play and times for lessons and times for walks. At first, it was beyond weird caring for a little boy that looked so much like her childhood bully, but she kept telling herself that this was a different boy. A nasty-tempered and stubborn boy, yes, but a boy deserving of unprejudiced affection nonetheless.
The first week was the hardest. Draco refused to cooperate with her on any level. He still spoke no words, no sentences, but he sure did know how to say, "No!" It was the only word he ever vocalized. Hermione had a growing feeling that he was capable of saying words, he just chose not to. After all, her understood her just fine, pointed at things in books, and knew how to communicate his wants and needs wordlessly.
It reminded Hermione of one of her cousins, Christopher. Christopher refused to speak until he was nearly three. The problem was, he was a the youngest of four older children, who attended to his every need and spoke for him. He had no need to communicate, because everyone else was doing it for him.
So, oftentimes, when she knew it was almost time for lunch and they were in the park for a morning stroll, she'd ask Draco, "What do you want?" Most of the time he'd stare blankly back at her, and start getting fussy. She'd ask again and again until he was jumping angrily in the stroller and motioning at his mouth. At least he was making it clear he was hungry.
Hermione woke up one morning and looked at her calendar. A month. An entire month, living at Malfoy Manor. Dragging her hand down her face and pushing her hair out of her face, the one-month mark was a wake-up call. She couldn't do this forever. She needed to find out how this happened and why.
On her first night in Malfoy Manor, Hermione had crept out of her bed and made her way to the library. It was locked tight. She'd slipped the library into conversation a number of times with Narcissa, but she usually just said, "Any books that you need for Draco can be bought. There is nothing for him in there." Any conversation with Lucius Malfoy at all ended with him topping off his glass of brandy and stalking moodily out of the room.
Lucius drank a lot. He seemed to be a mellow drunk, but generally intolerant of company. He retreated into his study after every meal and spent most of his day there. Sometimes, Hermione would hear two voices in there, deep male ones, and suspected he had a visitor, but never knew who. She made it a point to keep out of Lucius's business.
Hermione reached out to her calendar, swiped a big X through the box of the day and started getting up. Draco was an early-riser and she usually tried to get up before him because if she didn't, he'd go off to bother his parents, and she would usually get a disapproving scowl from both of them for it.
And some mornings were like this one.
Hermione had just swung her legs out of bed when her door creaked open. Squinting into the light now pouring into her room, she expected Narcissa and instead got a little boy climbing onto her bed.
Draco was a very handsome little boy with curly blonde locks, soft as down, and big grey eyes that shimmered with silver. He had a dimple in his left cheek and tiny hands. Draco hefted himself with great effort onto her mattress and dropped himself into her lap. He was wearing a blue-striped nightshirt and a nappy. His curls stuck every which way and he looked ready to start the day.
"Come on," Hermione said with a grunt, standing up and lifting him with her. "Let's get you dressed so we can get you to breakfast."
She knew she couldn't put off changing his nappy, so she strolled out into the hall in her pajamas, which were a pair of Snitch-patterned shorts with a drawstring and a camisole. It was the most naked she'd been outside of her bedroom, and never before had she been without shoes, but she knew her duties.
Hermione was halfway down the corridor to Draco's nursery when she heard a throat being cleared behind her. She gave a little jump and turned around to find Lucius Malfoy. He was already dressed, in a white tailored shirt, trousers, and leather shoes. He was unshaven, though, a blonde scruff lining his chin and upper-lip.
His gaze was scrutinizing and not entirely pleasant. "Good morning."
"Good morning," Hermione returned, readjusting Draco on her hip. Lucius usually went out of his way to avoid talking to her, so the fact he was paying any attention to her at all was out of the ordinary.
"How are you liking your stay here?" he asked, in the way a host would ask a guest.
Brows crinkling a little, Hermione said, "It's lovely. I am... enjoying the work."
"Good," he answered slowly. "Did you play Quidditch?"
"Huh?" Hermione said.
"Your shorts," he said, looking at her thighs pointedly.
"Oh," Hermione said, realizing. "No, I did not. A friend of mine did, though."
There was a long, awkward pause.
"My wife says I should be kinder to you," he said out of nowhere. "That is what I am attempting to do. Be... kinder." His said the word with distaste.
"I appreciate it," Hermione replied. This was surreal. "Thank you. Will this become... a normal thing?"
"Conversation between you and me? Goodness, I hope not. This is painfully uncomfortable and I hope never to repeat the experience."
"Fair enough. Now, if you'll excuse me." With that, she turned and walked into the nursery. It wasn't until she set Draco on the changing table did she realize Lucius had followed her. "Um... can I help you?"
"Not really," he said, offering up no further explanation.
Deciding to ignore his presence - it was his home, after all - she went on to strip Draco of his nightshirt and nappy and clean him up. She put a liberal amount of powder on his bum and slipped him into a pair of pants and a cardigan - all under Lucius's watch.
"Am I being evaluated?" Hermione finally asked, sick of being hovered over. Narcissa had clung to her for the entire first two weeks she was there. She'd thought she'd passed their tests, but maybe that wasn't so.
"Not quite."
"Then... is there a reason you're circling me like a vulture?" Hermione asked, too sleepy for tact.
Lucky for her, he seemed amused with her observation, a small quirk at the corner of his mouth. "Honestly? I'm hungover and am delaying meeting Narcissa for breakfast for as long as humanly, and wizardly, possible."
"I was under the impression you lived in a constant state of hangoverdom," Hermione said. She never did know when to shut her mouth.
A small frown obscured Lucius's features for a moment before smoothing out. "There is the rare occurrence of sobriety, somewhere between breakfast and lunch. I try not to make it a habit. Tedious thing, teetotalism is."
Shaking her head a little, Hermione lifted Draco high in the air to give his belly a raspberry, making him giggle like mad. She took him down from the changing table and put him into his big squishy seat by his large wooden block puzzle thing. It was a baby toy of some sort that Hermione didn't totally understand and looked a tad too much like a torture instrument. But Draco liked it well enough, spinning the wood bauble to his delight.
"He rather likes you," Lucius observed.
"I suppose so," Hermione said, folding a bit of Draco's laundry while she was there and sliding it into his drawers. The nursery was huge, with toys everywhere, a very big crib, a rocking horse that was probably the size of a real miniature pony, all green, silver, and dark hues. Absent were the bright blues, yellows, and lime greens of normal babies.
No wonder Draco was such a cranky prat. He was a deprived baby.
"He doesn't care much for me," Lucius said, his hands in his pockets.
"I'm sure he loves you," Hermione said, picking up a couple of toys and putting them in their respective trunks. Although, she wasn't sure if Draco loved his father. In the future he would idolize him, strive to make him proud, but... was there any real love?
Lucius said nothing, only watched on curiously as Hermione straightened up, shutting the trunks and pulled her wild hair back into a knot with the rubberband around her wrist. Previously, he'd thought her plain and uninteresting, but then he'd seen her figure from behind, those decidedly short shorts and her round rear. And as she walked around the room then, all heavy eyelids and bushy hair, he decided that she looked lovely when she was rumpled from sleep.
Lucius had no problem admiring other women. Some other, weaker, softer married men carried a guilt for looking at anyone other than their wife - Lucius was not one of them. Leaning against the wall beside him, he found he couldn't pull his eyes away from the young girl. She was narrow-waisted and had small breasts, but perky and shapely in a very petite way. Her hair was an unruly mess, but he sort of liked it - untamed and uncontrollable.
The floor was almost entirely clean by the time Hermione knew for a fact that she was being stared at. Slowly, she turned to Lucius and quirked an eyebrow at him. He said nothing and it frustrated her further.
"Would you mind taking Draco down to the dining room? I have to get dressed," Hermione asked.
"Why change? I rather like those shorts," he said with a smirk.
Hermione turned slowly towards Lucius, a suspicious look on her face. She saw the gaze he had fixed on the lower half of her body, and then the upper half, and suddenly felt very naked. Her eyes popped open wide in realization.
"Oh my God," she murmured. "Are you coming on to me?"
Lucius's expression turned indignant. "I am a gentleman, and gentlemen do not 'come on to' women. We compliment and court, but never 'come on to'."
Lucius Malfoy could boast about being a gentleman all he wanted, but Hermione was positive gentlemen didn't openly stare at a woman's rump. Suddenly very self-conscious, and feeling a little harassed, Hermione scuttled out of the room, walking backwards while doing so and crossing her arms modestly.
And on the way back to her bedroom, Hermione blushed. Never once in her life had anyone give her those head-to-toe, slow, rakish and appraising looks that you read about in books and saw in films. And somewhere underneath the weird, squirmy feeling, Hermione was oddly... flattered.
...~oOo~...
~ So Long And Thanks For All The Fish ~