CHAPTER TWENTY

Her blood ran cold. Meet his father? Seriously? She kept telling herself over and over that he didn't know. Draco had no idea. Lucius hadn't told his only son, his heir, about the girl he once knew. He'd kept it to himself. …probably just another sign that he truly hated her.

'Now, now, Draco. Miss Granger obviously has other places to be right now.'

'Come off it, Father. Don't you want to thank the witch who made your being here possible?'

'Indeed,' was his simple and multifaceted reply.

Hermione turned on the steps and walked back toward the Malfoy men. She noticed that Draco was a couple of inches taller than his father. He was also a bit stockier, but that may have something to do with the elder Malfoy's living arrangements for the previous seven months or so. Now that he was free, Hermione was sure his elves would get him good and fed and back to a healthy weight in no time. She could already see the way his frame would fill out his rich robes.

'Granger? You alright there?'

She was embarrassed to have been caught daydreaming, but admitted that her mind was temporarily elsewhere. She and Lucius shook hands as Draco made what he called "new introductions" between them. Then Lucius did the unthinkable and asked Draco for a few minutes to thank Hermione privately for her role in his liberation. Draco agreed, citing a book he needed to return to the library, and promised to owl his father soon. Then the men shared a surprisingly heartfelt hug goodbye before Draco ran off and Lucius turned to Hermione.

'We meet again, Miss Granger.'

'Mr Malfoy,' she said, following his cue for formality.

'Perhaps we can go someplace a bit less exposed?'

Hermione led them down the hall into an unused classroom. The room still bore faint signs of the fighting that had taken place the previous May, but neither seemed to care. Lucius turned toward the door and cast a few charms. He warded the door from anyone who would seek to interrupt them, cast a silencing charm, and then he turned to face her. They stared at one another for a solid three minutes before Hermione broke the silence.

'Mr Malfoy, no thanks are needed. I was just doing what any decent person would have done under similar circumstances.'

'That's not true, Hermione, and you know it,' he replied rather sternly. 'No one else would have come to my aid, nor should they have. I'm not a good man. The only reason Draco was attempting to help me is because my incarceration at the Ministry meant the Malfoy vaults were all frozen. That would only change if I was freed or if I was sent to Azkaban.'

'He loves you, you know. He truly does. It was as if a weight was lifted from him when we received the letters that you were freed. I've never seen him look so young, and that's saying a great deal since I've known him since we were eleven! Joy like that isn't faked. You mean the world to him.'

'And what of you?'

'Me? Well, I know he and I are friends, but we've made it perfectly clear that… Why are you laughing?'

'You really think I care what my son thinks of you? I already know the answer to that! He calls you "Hermione" for Merlin's sake!' He calmed his laughter and spoke again in a softer tone. 'What happened between us, I can't even begin to fathom. I wished to speak with you not because you were pivotal in my freedom, but because I need to understand how we came to even be.'

Hermione sighed deeply before speaking. 'I'm sure you remember the battle in the Ministry when you came for the Prophesy?' Lucius nodded, and Hermione told the simple tale of how she'd been knocked back into a cabinet of Time Turners. That was how she ended up in the past. She explained how she just wanted to go about her time until she could come home, and that she was trying her best to not be noticed.

'Well, you did a bang-up job on that one, didn't you?' Lucius joked.

She continued on with her story, finishing when they'd spent the night together. 'I knew you would hate me in the morning. I knew that I was essentially using you, but I didn't care. I needed to be with you that night. Leaving you, walking away and knowing you were laying in that bed naked and accepting… It broke my heart. I don't know if you realized, but I charmed my scent from you and the entire room. I didn't want to make it harder than I already knew it was going to be. Andy told me recently of what I left in my wake, and I have to say that I'm not proud of myself. I wish I could… If I could have… You deserved better than anything I ever gave you… I was so afraid…'

Hermione's voice dissolved as tears overtook her. She knew that she'd already cried too much over this man. Her mother always told her that any man worth having would never make you cry, but that seemed to be all she was doing. Turning away from him, she walked toward the windows and looked out over the grounds. His arms came around her, surprising her. She'd not even heard him approach.

'Don't cry,' he whispered into her hair. 'It's all over now. You've nothing to fear any longer.'

'What are you doing here, Lucius? Shouldn't you be with your wife and son, celebrating your freedom, eating and drinking to excess? Enjoying your pureblood status instead of chatting up the Mudblood who ruined your life?' She meant the words to be acidic, but her tone was weak and weary, as if all the fight had gone from her.

'I saw you leave the Great Hall that day, after the final battle, and realized that we were both mere observers in the misery and healing of others around us. Even with my freedom, nothing really matters anymore. I have no purpose. Draco is safe, my wife is-'

'Your wife? Your WIFE Lucius? Do you have any idea how wrong this is for you to be here with me, a child, while your wife sits in the comfort of your grand manor and waits for you? Does she have any idea what kind of man you are? Does she know about us? About the things that you promised me in the darkest hours of the night? Is she aware of the words we've shared? The things we've done?'

Lucius merely looked at her, removing his hands from her person but not saying a word in reply.

'You said that so long as you were living, no harm would come to me. When I told you that you shouldn't make promises that you had no way of keeping, you told me that you loved me and that you would always do your best to keep me safe. And do you know what? I believed you because I loved you too! Yet you stood there and watched while that sadistic bitch of a sister-in-law of yours tortured me in your drawing room! Hell, more than that, you said my name as if I meant nothing to you, and for what? To increase your standing with that madman? You knew-'

'I knew that if the Dark Lord came and Potter was found at my home, then he would grant me a boon.'

'You were cowardly, Lu… Mr Malfoy. Your cowardice nearly cost me my life.'

'And you know as well as I do what would have happened had I stepped in,' he spat, becoming genuinely angry. 'Bella would have killed Draco, not me. She would have killed him as a lesson to me. You saw what I was reduced to! I know you did. I am sorry for the way things happened, but my son had to come first.' As he turned to walk away, he left her with one last thought. 'Someday, when you have children of your own, you will understand.'

Hermione turned to look at him, but his back was to her as he retreated. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she'd heard a slight hitch in his voice when he mentioned her having children.

~*~*~*LMHG*~*~*~

'What did you say to Father yesterday?'

Hermione was caught off guard at breakfast the next morning, as Draco sat next to her and scowled. She really didn't know how to answer him, so she pretended to be chewing some food. As a rule, she didn't talk with food in her mouth.

'Oh cut the crap, Granger. I know you haven't eaten anything in at least a couple of minutes. I've been watching, trying to figure out the best way to find out what the hell happened yesterday! When I left you, sure there was tension, but I never expected your meeting to come to anger. Father was beside himself when he Floo called me last night! That was hours after you two spoke! What in the name of Merlin's pantaloons happened?'

She was at a loss. Should she tell him the truth? Lie? How did one tell someone they'd only recently become friends with that they'd had a Time Turner accident, gone back to when their father was in school, and fallen in love? Then when time caught up with them, they'd realized that they never should have gotten together in the first place? That she'd known they shouldn't have gotten together and yet she'd still allowed it to happen? And that his father was now apparently furious with her enough to tell his son that he was mad at her but not tell him why? Oh, what a mess she was in.

She took the temporarily easy way out. 'I think your father was expecting something more from our conversation. I'm afraid that I didn't have the answers he was looking for to the questions he had. When he calms down, I'm sure he'll feel better about our meeting.'

There. That wasn't a lie, per se. It was simply an avoidance of truth…kind of. Draco seemed to accept her explanation, but she could tell that he would need more answers at another time. For now, he let sleeping dogs lie and they went about their day.

A few weeks later, Draco received an owl from his family's solicitor. Hermione, who was sitting across from him like usual, watched the play of emotions on his face. When he was finished with the letter, he simply handed it to her and got up to leave. He walked away as she read over the missive, realizing why he hadn't said a word

Mr Draco Malfoy,

It is the duty of this firm to inform you that your presence is required within the next 72 hours in order to settle the transition of the estate of one Mr Lucius Malfoy to one Mr Draco Malfoy. Pending the dissolution of the marriage between Mr Lucius Malfoy and Mrs Narcissa Malfoy neé Black, all assets of said estate shall transfer to Mr Draco Malfoy. Therefore, we will need you to….

The letter continued on with some legal jargon, but Hermione had caught the point of the message: Lucius and Narcissa were getting a divorce, and Draco would be taking over as the head of the Malfoy family. She knew from her conversations in the past that the transferring of estates only happened when the head of house died or had decided to leave the family and fade into obscurity.

She almost dropped the letter in her haste to go after Draco. He'd already been gone from the Great Hall for a couple of minutes, so he really could have been anywhere. Fortunately for Hermione, her first thought of where to find him happened to coincide with where he actually was. Walking toward the back of the library, she swore she heard the telltale sniffles of someone who was crying. When she turned the corner to see him sitting at their table, no tears were visible.

'Did you know this was coming?' she asked him.

'No,' came his stunned response. 'Mother and Father always seemed so happy together. I mean, I know their marriage wasn't a love match, but they appeared to be so content with one another.'

'You knew their marriage was arranged?' she asked, the surprise evident in her tone.

'Most pureblood marriages are. Had he wanted to marry for love, there was a girl he used to speak of often, that I'm almost certain he'd thought I'd figured was Mother. From what I'd gathered, she was only at Hogwarts for one school year, but she'd made an impression on him. I heard Mother talking about her once. Called her a swotty little French girl who only wished to take what didn't belong to her. Father said that they were in the same year, and that she and Mother never interacted. There wasn't much further information that I could get. Almost seems as if Father wanted to forget her.' Draco laughed. 'Actually, there was one thing he would say, a habit he claims to have picked up from her that he only does when he's particularly pissed and melancholy: he tries writing her a letter.'

Hermione was confused. 'He picked up letter writing from her?'

'No!' he chuckled. 'Every time he would attempt to pen something to send her, he would crumble it up and throw it in the fire. He swore nothing he wrote was good enough.'