And we're back! :-)

Chapter 15: Till Death

Sadly, mid-January found both of them returning to work. The Ministry had not ceased to exist while they were gone and their holidays were now over. And now they returned on equal footing; Lucius was no longer her secretary.

In the public eye they seemed to no longer have any sort of relationship at all. Mircea passed straight through Lucius's office and into hers without speaking to him and remained there unless work called her elsewhere. The door to his office was always at least ajar if not fully open. No one saw them speak more than a few words to one another. And neither of them mentioned the other or seemed to take any interest in conversation about their co-worker.

It was a clever idea. While before everyone had guessed that the emotional politics of their office was tangled and messy, now it seemed they simply no longer cared. Whether there had been a huge blow out or whether they had just "hit and run," no one knew. Whichever it was, it seemed to have taken care of all feelings between them. The new chill in their relationship seemed to match a growing chill in the Ministry as well. The Ministry had always been dark, being underground, but now it was a very tangible darkness, one that seemed to press in on you from all sides.

Mircea had been very strict about the idea that they could bend no rules and could blur no lines. There was to be no fooling around and no idle fantasizing. In this way they were able to keep hidden the passion that broke out like wildfire when they returned to the privacy of Malfoy Manor.

The rest of January and February was spent in this way: complete separation while at the Ministry and complete absorption in one another while at the Manor. The Death Eater meetings had trickled down to only a few a month now that the Dark Lord had left on some sort of personal quest and Severus was being kept very busy with small rebellions at Hogwarts.

The lull had allowed Mircea time to think as well. She and Lucius could not just disappear, not now; they needed to wait for a time when the other side could take them in. It was the only protection they would have and she wanted to be sure that Xeno's daughter would vouch for them. The girl knew she had saved him (she had shown her the memory of the event) and Mircea was hoping all of the high moral talk coming from Potter's side was not just blather. Otherwise, there was no hope for herself and Lucius; they would be found and they would be killed.

One March evening, Mircea was hunting around in Lucius's potion ingredients when she heard a loud fuss in the main hall. Shouting echoed down the corridors along with Bella's cackling. Mircea could feel the hair at the back of her neck stand up at the sound. They hadn't had to contend with a worked up Bellatrix in a very long time, and Mircea was not looking forward to whatever it was that had inspired this change of mood.

"Brother! Mircea! Get down here! NOW!"

Mircea gritted her teeth at being summoned in this way but slowly and imperiously made her way to the grand staircase. She arrived after Lucius had already reached the foot of the stairs and saw Fenrir holding a bound goblin. The goblin looked like he wanted to sink his teeth into the neck of every person in the room, but he was now badly outnumbered and obviously hexed. Mircea felt pity for him. Where she was from, goblins were closer to the wizarding community than they were here in the West, even to the point of occasionally donating ancestor's finger bones for wandmaking. There were legends of the Codrii Vlasiei witches and wizards descending directly from goblins and they were well respected for their advanced knowledge of elemental properties.

The goblin's eyes settled on Mircea and he looked her over closely. His eyes narrowed but he did not speak to her, which surprised her; she had half been expecting an onslaught about how she should know better or how she was filth. Either was pretty standard for almost any interaction she had with anyone over the past year.

"You two," Bella grinned at them, "will be hosting this creature on behalf of the Dark Lord."

"And why?" Lucius drawled. It was so easy for him with Bella. There were many times where the manner was affected as a cover for true fear, but with Bella it was always very real. She was crazy and a good case for why Pureblood inbreeding was a bad idea.

"Do you need an explanation, brother?" she spat back.

"Your sister divorced him and got herself killed. He's no more your brother than I am your sister."

Bella turned slowly to Mircea. Mircea realized she probably should have been silent but it was a little late for that. Her hand went to her hip where her wand was currently hidden away. Bellatrix's lips parted when the goblin began to struggle and shout. Everyone's attention was refocused back to containing him, sparing Mircea for the moment.

Bella explained venomously, "He is here because he must be kept close at hand for my own personal needs."

"As opposed to your corporate needs," Lucius smirked back at her.

This time, Bella would not be distracted and she slapped him across the face. It was everything Mircea could do to keep herself from reacting.

"You will both fulfill this very simple task: keep him here and do not let him escape. Two more incompetent individuals could never be found!" Bellatrix turned on her heel and led the werewolf away with the goblin between them.

After a few days, Lucius and Mircea were able to glean that the goblin was named Griphook and that he had been taken from Gringott's. The only reasonable conclusion was that something very valuable to the Dark Lord was hidden away in Bella's vault. But why she would bring him here? It seemed to give away every aspect of the big "secret" except what the item actually was. It was recklessness that Mircea did not usually associate with the Dark Lord, which led to only two conclusions: either he had no idea that Bella had done this or this was an error that stemmed from the importance of that object.

"Well you are objectively wrong," Lucius murmured into Mircea's hair.

"I can't be wrong. Not about where I would like to be," she teased back, turning and pressing her lips gently to his.

"The correct answer is' wherever you are, Lucius."

She smiled coyly at him. Mircea had to remind herself every time he did this that she needed to balance his need to be needed with her desire to check his ego. But it was growing on her. He was more committed to her than she had really thought him capable of.

It was early April and they had now been together for little over three months, but it felt like much longer. The pair had taken to hiding up in the attic once it warmed up and they had made it cozier with the things they found. Currently, they were curled up together on a large tiger skin rug, with Lucius in a satin smoking jacket and Mircea in a blue kimono, both of which they had found in the various trunks in the attic.

"Do you remember that time my wand obeyed you?" she asked, laying her head on his shoulder.

Lucius ran his fingers through her long curls and sought for recollection of what she was talking about. "Ah! Yes. That time you felt me up."

Mircea scoffed at him. "Please tell me that is not how you remember that."

"Of course it is. I never expected you to fight back in that way. It was disturbingly arousing."

"Disturbingly?"

"Allowing for the fact I wanted to put your head on a pike, yes."

Mircea smirked at him. " Well, my point was that that moment was what changed my mind about you. "

This piqued Lucius's interest and he propped himself up on one arm to look at her. "Why?"

"My wand obeys no one but me. Until it obeyed you. That wasn't something to ignore. Remember: the wand picks the witch or wizard."

Lucius lay back down and pulled her to him, thinking as she ran her hand absently over his exposed chest.

After some moments of silence he spoke again. "When you told me your real name."

"Hmmm?"

"That was the moment you were ... more."

Mircea nodded and stared at the exposed attic beams. She was tempted to try to do more with the room but she was also terrified of being caught. She never wanted to make the very simple and very critical mistake of assuming no one could catch them, that no one would find where they hid or what they were doing.

Which piqued another question for her.

"When did you first feel ..." Mircea let the thought trail.

"Sexually attracted to you?" Lucius finished, looking amused. He had been hoping she would ask. "I am only too glad to elucidate. Do you remember when you gave me this?" He pulled the jacket back to show the scar on his belly.

"Of course."

"And you bathed me?"

Mircea flushed involuntarily.

"Had you met me in a different time, all this dancing around each other would have ended. I wanted nothing more than to take you then and there."

"That was incredibly disconcerting for me at the time. But I'm glad," Mircea mused.

"And ...?" Lucius wheedled. "You must reciprocate." This was the real pleasure of the conversation for him.

"Do you remember that night you were blackout drunk? I was distant the next morning?"

"I remember the beginning and end of that, yes."

"You kissed me. You pressed me against a wall and kissed me the way I had always hoped you would."

Lucius stared at her for a moment, mouth a little agape. "I'd apologize but apparently this worked in my favor. How can I remember none of this at all?"

"I wondered the same thing the next day. You would have gone to bed with me if I had let you."

" Did I say anything? "

"You told me had promised never to tell me how you felt about me. And that I was 'horribly scarred' but a lot of other nicer things."

Lucius puzzled over this for a few moments. "I wonder what that was ..."

"Half a bottle of whisky."

Lucius rolled his eyes. "Not that. I hated you. I wanted you to die. I would drink and smoke my way through the nights and dream of ways you could die. Now I lie beside you and dream of ways to -"

Mircea covered his mouth with her hand, muffling the explicit thought she knew was going to follow that. Lucius just winked at her.

"You were talking in your sleep again," she informed him, taking her hand away from his mouth.

"This is highly uncharacteristic. What did I say?"

"You said something about lacewing and dragon claw."

"Then I would assume I was dreaming about potions. But I haven't dreamed of that since before Azkaban."

They both fell silent, looking at one another. Neither needed Lucius to verbalize that this was because this was the first time he had been happy since before Azkaban; they both knew it.

"In any case," Lucius said breaking the silence, "should all this end tomorrow, I would indeed be out buying lacewing and dragon claw." He looked her over for a moment. "And of course you would be politicking for office somewhere."

"Of course?"

"That's your motive if I'm guessing correctly. To get inside the broken system and fix it. You obviously hate the Ministry and with good reason, and yet a promise of a job in the Ministry is what brought you here. For reasons I do not understand you seem to believe that politics can actually make something better. "

"You've never been on the other side of this," Mircea exclaimed. "There are a lot of us who aren't even represented in the system itself. We have true complaints - things like roaming werewolves and potions good shortages and con men who take advantage of the lack of oversight and sell unsafe magical houses that kill children when they collapse - and there is nowhere to take them . There is no one from our countries in your government . We are effectively told we should just shut up and deal with this . You want to know why there are so many more Dark witches and wizards in the East? The Ministry does not give us any choice! That must change. "

"Come here ..."

Mircea was caught off guard as Lucius kissed her deeply and passionately. He broke off the kiss and held her face in his hands.

"You're crazy, Persephone. Well and truly crazy. But you're the only Death Eater I know who's motivated by something other than self. You are far too good for me, all heritage and all breeding aside," Lucius explained. And he meant every word.

"Well we all know that," she murmured teasingly.

Lucius paced the grounds. It was truly spring now. The trees were beginning to leaf and the flowers were budding. Grass had covered over the winter's muddy stretches, and daffodils were popping up here and there.

He had known Mircea for almost a full year now. It was hard to believe it had been both that long and that short of a time. She had turned his life completely on its head and he felt the need to act. They had conversed about a month previous in early March about their relationship. Mircea had stated that she wished they wouldn't live as if they expected to die, that she wished they could have a relationship with some sense of future. Lucius had never thought of this before but she was right: they were both assuming their deaths, and therefore the relationship stalled with nowhere to go. But he was going to remedy this.

Lucius Malfoy reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring box. Opening it slowly he looked for the millionth time at the antique silver ring, its large marquis diamond shooting fiery rainbows as the sun hit it. He snapped the box shut and smiled to himself before heading back into the manor.

Two evenings later found them walking through the freshly blooming garden maze.

"Continuing recent reminiscences," Lucius began, smiling at Mircea, "do you remember that little altercation we had out here, once upon a time?"

"How could I forget?" she smirked back. "I believe I told you to get mauled by a hippogriff."

"You have always been a spiteful little witch."

She tried to throw a punch at him but he pulled away from her and with a teasing look darted off down a bend in the maze. Surprised at the odd behavior, Mircea chased after him.

They reached the long covered walkway where this fight had once taken place and she stopped running, a hand flying up to cover her mouth. The entire length was covered in tiny, firefly-like lights that floated and blinked in the night. And in the center of it all stood Lucius, one hand stretched towards her.

"Lucius, this is lovely! What is this for?" she said, meeting him and placing her hand in his.

Without an answer, Lucius slowly bent to one knee. Mircea's pulse rocketed.

"Persephone, I love you. I cannot promise you a long or happy life, but I do not want to continue to live as if we are dead. I will marry you if you will have me."

Mircea stared at him, her hand still in his, and her mind whirled. Marry? She would never marry. She had always been perfectly sure of this, for at least a hundred different reasons. First of all, to tie yourself to someone forever? She had spent a lifetime avoiding this very thing. And Lucius Malfoy ? The Ministry lapdog turned cowardly slave? The most arrogant, unbearable, misogynistic man she had met in recent memory? A divorced ex-con? Never!

Lucius gave her hand a squeeze and she looked down into his grey eyes.

When he had first conceived of asking Mircea to marry him, it had seemed very certain that she would jump at the opportunity. But now, from his position in the dirt on one knee, it was much less certain. After all, the first time they had made love she had then decided to get rid of him (for his own good, but still). And it had taken a month or so after that for them to stop fighting ugly and for Lucius to feel like she wasn't going to run away every time his back was turned. And she was unstable still. Neither of them knew the first thing about what healthy marriages looked like and both carried a lot of pride and anger. And what if she said no? They couldn't just go back and act like nothing had happened.

Lucius Malfoy now realized this was putting their entire relationship on the line. And so he squeezed Mircea's hand and looked up into her dark eyes.

When their eyes met Mircea's thinking shifted. He looked so sad, kneeling on the ground in front of her. He had changed . And he had changed her ; he had made her more stable and much stronger. Above all, she did love him. She had already placed her heart in his hands months ago. And this, this was a process symbolizing what she already knew she wanted: to be with him and him alone always and forever.

"Yes. Yes, I'll marry you."

Lucius was on his feet and spinning her around in a heartbeat. His unguarded joy convinced her that she would have regretted nothing more than saying no to him.

"And now you get this," Lucius grinned, pulling a ring from his pocket. The beauty of it amazed Mircea as he slipped it onto her left ring finger. Lucius was then surprised to see her move it to her right. "Doesn't it suit you?"

"Perfectly. But we wear our rings on our right hands."

Lucius did not need to ask who "we" was and while ten months ago he would have been furious as such a small slight, the current him accepted this without batting an eye.

"Where did you get this? You didn't leave the Manor did you?"

"How foolish do you think I am, witch?" Lucius laughed and they curled up together on a bench under the twinkling lights. "No. That was laid aside for such an occasion as this."

"Your family lays rings aside for secret second engagements?"

Lucius pinched her arm and she simply smiled up at him.

"You raise a good point, however," Lucius said, becoming suddenly more somber. "No one can know. This, as all else, must be secret."

Mircea sighed heavily and nodded, handing the ring back to him. "Then you keep this. There is something else we can do until the time arrives."

She walked off a short distance and pulled some wire from the arbor and deftly twisted it into two rings, sliding one on to Lucius's ring finger and one onto her own.

"Do you know this spell?" she asked him.

"I believe so. Young couples at Hogwarts made attempts sometimes."

Mircea examined his face very closely. It was haggard: the bags under his eyes had deepened and darkened, he only shaved intermittently now to hide how gaunt his face had become, and a scar cut one of his eyebrows in two. She knew her own face had borne the stress of the past year just as poorly. They were not a lovely, young couple with nothing to lose. They were old and tired and this engagement could kill them. And this spell was irreversible.

"Are you serious? About this marriage? Because if you aren't -"

Lucius pulled her to him with great force and kissed her until her lips were numb and she was straddling him. Mircea unwound her fingers from his hair and smiled dreamily at him.

"Would it kill you to say 'yes'?" she murmured.

"Would you prefer that?"

"Not at all."

Lucius grinned at her. Then, becoming more serious, he entwined his hand that bore the wire ring with hers.

" Muffalito . "

The spell cast by Mircea put them into a bubble of silence within the gardens. So no one heard the spell of Binding. And no one heard the suppressed cries of pain as the wires burned themselves into the very fingers they had once encircled. Mircea bit her lip until it bled and Lucius had stuffed his fist in his mouth and was biting the knuckles. Their hands remained joined and they squeezed tightly through the pain. But there was an intense pleasure connected to this as well. An electricity of sorts ran between them like a live current and they pulled each other close to better feel the other's pulse. It felt as if it was originating from the heart and it joined them more deeply than ever.

Eventually both sensations subsided. They remained still for some time, shaking a little, before they separated. Each bore a grey-blue circular scar around their ring fingers. Should they become entangled with another person, the scars would darken and spread, marking the unfaithful with blackened hands. It was borderline Dark Magic and generally frowned on in very "pure" circles.

But for two Death Eaters who had once been so alone in the world, it was a marriage.

Draco returned from school for spring holidays and this added a new, somewhat unanticipated complication to their engagement. He simply had to know. As much as Lucius wanted to tell himself that this was not his son's business, that was not true and he knew it.

Draco was unpacking when someone knocked at the door. He opened it to see his father standing in the hall.

"May I come in?"

"Yeah ..."

Draco stepped aside and Lucius quickly shut and spelled the door once he was inside.

"What's going on?" Draco asked. He turned towards the windows and let out a shout. Mircea had appeared in him room completely silently and was spelling the room as well. "What the hell?!"

"We have something we must tell you," Lucius stated simply, without preface.

"We?"

"Yes. Persephone and myself."

"Persephone?" Draco's voice was heavily incredulous and his lip was curling as he looked from one to the other.

"The witch you know as Mircea. Yes," Lucius clarified, trying to keep his temper.

"Oh Merlin's saggy balls ..."

"You will not take that attitude with me," Lucius snapped.

"Yes, it's criminal to take an attitude after you -"

"We're going to marry," Mircea announced.

Both father and son spun on Mircea, each half forgetting she was there at all. Draco sat heavily on the edge of his bed and stared at the floor.

"You cannot be serious," he said in clear disbelief.

"And why not?" Lucius asked.

"Because your relationship would get you both killed." He looked from one to the other. "Because everyone already suspects you're fucking and the Dark Lord is too busy to see it or you would both be dead already!"

Lucius yanked Draco to his feet more quickly than even Mircea had expected. After a short scuffle, Draco shoved his father away, sending Lucius stumbling into an end table. There was a simultaneous ripping sound and Lucius held part of Draco's shirt collar in his hand; Draco was seeing red now.

"I've cleaned up her blood!" he bellowed, his pale face taking on patches of scarlet. "I've grafted her back together like a puzzle! Do you want that for her again?!"

"Are you implying I do not care for her?!" Lucius roared.

"Why the hell are we talking like I'm not RIGHT HERE?!" Mircea shouted over both of them.

"Oh yes!" Draco spun on her. "No one would dare forget you are always here and ALWAYS ruining everything! We could have survived until you got here and shot everything to hell! Why couldn't you just stay out of it?!"

Draco turned to Lucius. "Please don't do this! I should matter more! Or at all!"

"You do matter," Lucius softened.

"Not enough! She's the worst thing that has ever happened to us!"

"Well your father does not seem to think so." Mircea held up her hand and at first Draco thought she was going to strike him. Then he saw the band of grey-blue.

His eyes searched his father's face and then his hand, finding the twin band where it was expected. Then he Disapparated with a loud crack.

Mircea turned away from Lucius, fighting to keep her calm. "How do we control this?"

"Excuse me?" Lucius's voice was calmer than she expected.

"We can't just let him go like this. Anything could happen. What do we do to control the situation?"

Lucius stared at her with disbelief. "Sometimes," he said slowly, "I really don't understand you at all."

Mircea watched him emotionlessly, waiting for him to explain.

" That 's my son . He 's not just some random child. This is not a situation . "

Mircea blushed slightly. "I'm sorry. It's force of habit."

Lucius nodded, straightening his jacket. "You're right about one thing. This does need to be dealt with. And it will be."

"Persephone? Can you come here a moment?" Lucius poked his head into the library.

Mircea followed him into the cellars, past Griphook and Luna and Olivander's cell and down toward the wine cellars.

"Through here ..."

Mircea entered unable to see as her eyes adjusted to the lack of light. Behind her there was a loud clang and she spun around to be met with a heavy wood and metal door.

"Lucius?"

"I said this would be taken care of did I not?"

"Father?"

Mircea spun back around to see Draco emerging from behind a shelf holding a bottle of Superior Red. Her eyes grew wide as she realized what this was all about.

"LUCIUS ABRAXAS MALFOY! Open this door!"

"I see you remember what I said. No escape, my love."

The familiarity of the drawling voice he used on those with no escape almost drove her mad.

" I shall be back in one hour . The two of you will settle this between you. "

The pair listened to the sound of well-polished handmade leather shoes leaving them alone together in the wine cellar.

"Well to hell with this," Draco growled. The bottle of Superior Red met its end against the wall closest to the teen. He made his way to a small window that showed a stretch of lawn and opened it.

"You won't fit."

"Oh really?!"

Mircea scowled in return for the sarcasm. She took a seat primly on a barrel of whiskey and watched Draco pull out a pack of cigarettes and begin to smoke one.

"You're a Healer."

"And?"

"You smoke? Seems contradictory."

"You're a strategist who's decided her best bet is to bed with a coward in the most blatant way possible. Also contradictory."

"Is that how you think of us? Two old, slow idiots 'fucking'?"

Draco stared at her. He wanted to say yes, but she seemed a little hurt and he decided to back down. He exhaled heavily.

"I don't understand," he said slowly. "I don't understand why this happened or why it is still happening. My father is a wreck. He ruins everything he touches. And now you want to marry him?"

"No ..."

Draco looked up sharply. The sadness in her tone was so clear it shocked him.

"Lucius is so much more than that. He's given me so much."

"Such as?"

"He's given me stability. I'm insane on my own. But your father holds me back, when he isn't busy supporting me because I've suddenly lost it completely."

"He was your secretary. Wasn't that degrading?"

"It's certainly meant to be. But all it did was prove how well we work together."

"My father? Work with someone? I don't believe it. My father struts and blusters."

" But he's different now . It's so obvious if you would just look . "

Draco slid down the wall to sit on the floor and stubbed out the cigarette, staring pensively at the ceiling. "I don't trust you. Not at all."

"Why?"

"My father returned to a world that did not want him back. He was intensely lonely. It would be very easy for anyone, let alone someone whose job it is to do these things, to take advantage of him."

"But what would I gain from that? You've said yourself that there is nothing to gain from all this."

"So then why do this? Why not just leave us alone?"

"Your father proposed. Did you know that? He got down on one knee and asked me to marry him. What do you think would happen if I just left now?"

Draco mulled this over.

"So you hooked him and now you're stuck with him?"

"No!" Mircea snapped, losing her temper. "Why is it so hard for you to believe that I love your father? He 'hooked' me! I was the one who didn't want this!"

This was not at all what Draco had been expecting. He was sitting up and leaning toward her, listening closely.

"Do you remember the Christmas Ball?"

Draco nodded.

"Do you remember that nice 'scene' at the end of the evening? I knew this could kill us and I tried to make him hate me so this," Mircea pointed at her encircled ring finger, "would never happen!"

"But why marry him now?"

"Because I love him! I love him so much that my greatest weakness is not being able to walk away and crush his heart for his own safety. I love him so much that I cannot be torn from his side without ripping myself in two! "

Draco stared at her for a while before standing and wandering off into the various rows. Mircea cursed softly to herself and buried her face in her hands. Maybe that had been too much. He was only a boy after all.

After about ten minutes, Mircea felt someone tap her on the shoulder. She looked up to see Draco standing over her with his hand outstretched toward her.

"What is this?"

"Truce, I suppose. I misjudged you. And if you love him that much, alright. I've known for a long time that he loves you."

She took his hand and smiled at his strong grip.

"You are important to him, Draco. I just don't think he knows how to show that."

"Clearly. The man has locked us together in a wine cellar."

"Well, since we've still got some time ..."

Draco grinned and went hunting for another bottle of wine.

This did not end the conflicts between the three of them. Draco was still completely convinced that the entire affair was incomprehensible and risky. But he knew that it was an affair of the heart for both of them, and that made it somewhat easier to swallow.

But all of these quarrels and conflicts quickly shrunk away before the biggest heartbreak any of them had ever known.