A/N: There is art for this chapter on Ao3 (same title and username). It's also posted on my fic instagram: doodleholic_kayka_ficart

At half past ten on Wednesday, Susan Whitby had to leave the office to take care of her sick toddler. There was magical mucus involved; Hermione did not ask for further details.

At a quarter to one, Malcolm Baddock begged off for the afternoon due to a sour stomach. Again, due to bodily functions of potential disgusting effect, Hermione simply waved him out the door.

It was fine. She didn't need either of them for her meeting with Lucius Malfoy. If Hermione was slightly annoyed that her dedicated legislative staff were beings subject to inconvenient biological issues that also had lives outside work, it was her problem. It had nothing to do with the fact that the Wizengamot's interloper had left her flustered and flushing when he departed from her office Monday afternoon after his invitation to convince him to take up the lycanthrope cause.

Regardless, she didn't need them. She was still mentally working out how best to sway him, but Hermione was otherwise prepared for today's meeting, having read through the annotations he made in her binder. Cover-to-cover. Twice. Before making further notes and annotations of her own. Color-coded sticky tabs now jutted out from plastic the binder at odd angles.

She patently refused to even consider thinking about other ways to convince— Nope. Not thinking about it.

At twenty after four on Wednesday, Hermione received the most wonderful news she'd heard all day.

"Miss Granger?" Sebastian asked, hovering at her office door.

Hermione glanced up from the quarterly report she had been half-heartedly working on. She had always been an overachiever with regard to paperwork, but the sheer amount that came with this position had even her reconsidering her life choices.

"'Hermione' really is fine, Sebastian," she corrected tiredly. "Did you need something?"

"Right. Well. Miss Granger, this emergency request just came in, and all of our investigators in the Pest Division are on assignment or have left for the day. It seemed kind of urgent, so I didn't think it should wait until tomorrow."

"Oh?" Hermione asked, holding her hand out for the file as Sebastian summarized.

"There's an ashwinder infestation in an abandoned household at the edge of the wizarding neighborhood in Brighton and Hove. There are concerns muggle tourists might stumble upon them, as well as fire concerns if they hatch—"

This would take hours to solve, and she had absolutely no one she could spare to send out to do it, especially at the end of the workday; her department wasn't like the DMLE with twenty-four-hour coverage. Even her Dragon Restraint and Werewolf Capture teams were on a standard workday schedule with limited on call hours after the latest budget cuts. Her P.A. was right: it wasn't quite pressing enough to merit emergency overtime for the Pest Division. The paperwork alone would be an absolute nightmare, not to mention the inevitable resultant budgetary inquiry.

But very slight the prospect of half of Brighton burning down in a potentially catastrophic magical blaze was just pressing enough that it really would be better handled this afternoon instead of pushing it to morning.

"Thank you, Sebastian," Hermione said, gathering her pertinent belongings and stuffing them into the undetectably extended satchel that had replaced her beaded bag when it finally all but disintegrated last year.

If she hurried, she could avoid seeing Malfoy at all and push off the displeasure of his company onto poor Sebastian.

"Please let Mr. Malfoy know I stepped out on an emergency case and won't return for the evening."

She ushered her assistant out and locked her office, for all the good it would do in deterring Him.

With a hasty good evening to those she passed by, Hermione all but ran for the lifts as she pulled on her travelling cloak. She pressed the call button, pleased to have made such a tidy escape.

When it finally crept into view from above, her stomach sank and continued its downward trajectory even as the contraption itself came to a stop.

"Oh, bollocks," she muttered as the lift doors opened to reveal it single occupant: the ever impeccably dressed and imperious form of Lucius Malfoy.

For a beat, Hermione stared.

Lucius stared back at her quizzically before moving aside to make room for her.

With a bracing sigh, she reluctantly stepped onto the otherwise empty lift, pressing the button for floor eight. She put as much space between them as she could without being obvious about it, staring resolutely ahead as the lift began its ominously creaky journey downward.

This was still fine. So, she didn't get to shove this unpleasant task onto her P.A. It was probably better she handled Malfoy, anyway. Leaving Sebastian to it would likely have the man ending up with the address to her flat, or worse.

"And where precisely are we going?"

Ah. Right. She still needed to tell him they weren't meeting.

"We aren't going anywhere," Hermione replied sharply, as the dubious construction lurched down toward the atrium. "I apologize, Mr. Malfoy, but there's been an emergency request. I'll have to cancel our meeting for today."

"Send your field investigators. It's what they're for," he pointed out haughtily.

Hermione smacked her forehead as though this were the most brilliantly proposed thought in the world.

"Oh, why didn't I think of that? Why, I should just let you run my department, Mr. Malfoy, as you clearly are so adept at doing so."

"Lucius, please," he corrected, ignoring her sarcasm. "And if I were to run your department, I would send out the investigators."

"There isn't anyone available, Mr. Malfoy," she said flatly. "Not everyone is trained in fieldwork, and without the incentive of overtime pay, it's hard to come by volunteers. I can't even pull Malcolm because both he and Susan had to leave work early today."

Hermione grimaced. Come to think of it, she wouldn't put it past him for Lucius to be responsible for that somehow.

Was it paranoid? Maybe. But was it possible? Absolutely.

"And I'm the head of the department. It's my job to make the workloads meet. So, I'm handling it," Hermione said with a finality that did not invite further conversation.

Malfoy, of course, invited himself to further conversation, anyway.

"One would then think an emergency request would be the purview of aurors."

Hermione snorted before she could catch herself. Aurors would only get involved in extreme cases that crossed, sashayed, and back-flipped into their jurisdiction.

"Yes. Well. It's not."

Lucius's eyes narrowed in suspicion.

"Is it protocol for the department head to go out to these calls alone?"

Hermione jutted her chin forward, grinding her teeth in the process.

It was true that going out on assignment alone went wholly against established safety protocol, but sometimes it simply couldn't be helped. And she certainly didn't need Him, of all people, pointing such out to her.

"If you haven't noticed, Mr. Malfoy, my department, despite being one of the largest in the ministry, is a mite strapped for resources. But then again, you clearly have noticed that. You were on last session's budgetary committee, weren't you? I fill in the gaps when necessary. And if that means I need to fill in on emergency house calls, then so be it."

He made a noncommittal 'hmm' noise that she shouldn't have heard over the loud whirring of the lift. It seemed that since this whole fiasco began, she was far keenly too aware of Lucius's presence for both comfort and sanity.

Can't this lift go any faster?

"What wretched creature are you even off to regulate and control?"

Hermione bit her lip as the lift finally reached the entrance on level eight, and the grate opened to allow them to spill out onto the atrium floor.

"Ashwinder infestation," she said, setting off for the floos at a brisk pace. "Some children stumbled upon multiple caches of eggs while playing in an abandoned house."

"Right, then," he replied.

That should have been the end of the conversation, but to her consternation, he continued to walk beside her. Hermione sped up, eager to see the back of him.

Her unhelpful brain supplied the beginnings of a wholly inappropriate image that she immediately quashed.

Er. No. Not the back of him. To not see him at all. She was eager to not see him at all.

With Malfoy's damnably long legs, he had no issue keeping up, his apparently ornamental cane clattering rhythmically as he easily kept pace.

They arrived at the fireplaces, and Hermione reached for some powder.

"The address?" Lucius prompted.

She drew up short, turning to address him.

"Why?" She asked, slightly confused as to why he would ever need it. "We can reschedule for tomorrow or make Friday's meeting longer if need be, but I really must be going."

"I'm going with you, of course."

Hermione blinked.

"No," she said slowly, nonplussed by his assertion. Lucius Malfoy getting his hands dirty? Not in this life. "You're not."

"Very well. Then I suppose I'm off to lodge a formal complaint with the Minister as to the conduct and egregious breaking of protocol by one of his department heads."

Hermione gasped, her arms dropping rigidly to her sides as she contemplated going for her wand. Narrowly, she decided against it.

"Maybe I'll make a similar report about one of the Wizengamot's continuing inappropriate behaviour."

She regretted her threat the moment the words left her lips. She had already decided she wasn't going to go that route due to the inconvenience alone. Malfoy just made her so angry that her mouth worked speedily, without explicit permission from, or consultation with, her brain.

That damnable smirk that Hermione was beginning to learn meant he was Up To Something she wouldn't approve of bloomed across Lucius's face.

"Oh, I'm more than happy to play this game, Miss Granger. Will you be making your report before or after going off on an unsanctioned, off-the-clock investigation without notifying anyone, much less taking a partner along? I'm simply asking so that I know when to time my own."

She couldn't believe him. She idly wondered if she could make strangulation look like an accident.

Probably not.

There were simply too many witnesses.

"Come now, Hermione. Tick-tock," Lucius said, striding past her to collect floo powder for himself, "Or do you relish hunting down ashwinder eggs in the dark?"

The strangled noise that erupted from her throat was not a growl.

Ripping her wand from her sleeve, Hermione leveled it at him. She could curse him. She ought to hex him for the vexation he had caused her for the past week-and-a-half.

"Finite," she cast.

Nothing happened. No tingle of magic being released. Lucius turned back to look at her, and Hermione tried it again, just to be sure.

"What do you think you are you doing?"

"Well, you're clearly under a spell. You'd never voluntarily offer to assist to no benefit for yourself. Much less if it involved any sort of manual labor," Hermione retorted reasonably.

"I assure you, my continuing presence is neither compelled nor disadvantageous. Now, lower your wand, Hermione, or I may not need to make the trip to the Minister myself, after all."

Malfoy pointedly looked around.

They were garnering a few odd looks— more than they had been when they were merely walking side by side. Hermione grimaced, none too gently shoving her wand back into its special pocket in her sleeve.

She rapidly replayed the previous five minutes in her head, unable to account for how they had ended up here.

She was wasting her time trying to figure out his motivations; she didn't need to waste further time arguing with the man. If he really wanted to go with her on what should have been a blissfully Lucius-free outing, there was little she could do about it at the moment.

Hermione briefly thought of lying to him and sending Malfoy ahead in completely the wrong direction, but he very well might be serious about going to Kingsley. Scratch that. If that steely, unrelenting, glint in his eyes told her anything, it was that he would definitely go to Kinsgley if he didn't get his way.

It wouldn't be a great look to be reprimanded so early in her tenure.

She flared her nostrils and let out a deep, disdainful sigh.

"Fine. We're going to the public floo in Brighton. I will not be responsible for you, and you will leave me to my work. Is that clear?"

"Mm, I do so love when a witch takes charge."

Hermione nearly choked on air. Okay, they were just going to pretend that never happened. Just like she pretended he'd never called her Her-moan-ie. She'd successfully not thought of that aspect of the inauspicious 'Luscious' incident in days. At least she hadn't until now. It was still a testament that pretending had to be good for something. In fact, maybe she could just ignorehim altogether.

Yes. That was the only way forward.

"After you, my dear," Lucius said, ushering her into the fireplace with a hand at the small of her back.

Hermione suspected it was a calculated move to make it distractingly difficult to ignore the prat. Especially when he didn't step away as Hermione grabbed and threw down the floo powder, stating their destination. In fact, Lucius latched on to her at the last possible second, his strong arms banding around her waist, tugging her into a wholly inappropriate mockery of an embrace.

He was warm and solid, crushed against her back, his breath coming in soft, heated pants against the shell of her left ear.

Hermione didn't breathe at all.

An interminable amount of time, oxygen deprivation, and spinning fireplaces later, she stumbled out of the fireplace into the overcast and overcrowded wizarding district of Seffusthaft. Or she would have stumbled, had Lucius not still held her in his unyielding grasp. His hands lingered but for a moment, as though to make sure she was steady before he released her without prompting.

Hermione jerked away from his burning touch and rounded on him. She despised a shared floo journey; it was cramped and dizzying enough as it was without the complication of, of, of Him, going along with it.

Going by the smug tilt of his lips, he'd enjoyed the entire little escapade a tad too much.

"Was that really necessary?" Hermione asked, her voice just shy of shrill.

"Absolutely, completely, necessary," he returned, his self-satisfied grin only growing.

When she got home this evening, she was going to conjure a Lucius Malfoy shaped punching bag so she could take out her ever-growing list of Lucius associated frustrations in a pleasant, productive manner.

"It was a justified consideration that you might have lied about your intended destination in a foolishly misguided attempt to leave me behind."Lucius regarded her imperiously before making a show of glancing around, "Though in this instance, you appear to have been forthright."

Hermione squared her shoulders and lifted her chin, spinning to storm off in the approximate direction of their destination.

There was absolutely no need to let him know that he had almost been right. Was she really so transparent?

"It's this way," Hermione called waspishly over her shoulder, leading Malfoy to the address that was on the border where magical met mundane.

Or she attempted to. Hermione had to jostle and jockey for every step on the crowded main street. Tourist season in a resort town was hellishly over-populated regardless of whether the tourists were muggle or magical.

She saw the cane out of the corner of her eye as Lucius fell into step beside her.

His damnable hand made an unwelcomely distracting reappearance gracing the small of her back.

"Shall we?"

Hermione didn't bother to look up at him; she could hear the smirk in his voice.

Even more galling was the fact that witches and wizards alike deferred to his passing and readily parted way for him. And not in the "Aaah, it's a former death eater, let me hide," sort of way either.

Hermione comforted herself with thoughts of imagined violence to his person. It was, perhaps, not the healthiest or sanest coping mechanism, but she had to do something because she had a growing, disconcerting inkling that Lucius Malfoy wanted more than to simply obstruct her legislative progress and get under her skin.

She should have just filled out the damned overtime paperwork for someone in the Pest Division to handle this. She could have already been halfway through a burdensome, unproductive meeting instead of whatever this little errand of foolishness was shaping up to be.

It was a tense ten-minute walk to their destination on her part. Malfoy acted as though he hadn't a care in the world, and Hermione rather suspected he didn't.

The crowds thinned as they reached the residential section, and Hermione seized the opportunity to break away from the interfering interloper at her side to walk briskly ahead.

The house was easy to spot, if only because the property was an oddity for the area— standing alone and detached from its nearest neighbor with swaths of what might have once been a garden that had overgrown to the precise edges of failing wards and wrought iron fencing. What was likely a grand home at some point in the not too distant past had fallen into dilapidated disrepair. Even the front gate was missing.

The bleakly askew, and partially opened front door beckoned like something out of a muggle horror movie.

It was still infinitely preferable to lurking awkwardly outside with her current mortal enemy that had abruptly developed a predilection for touching.

"You may wait out here, Mr. Malfoy."

"I think not. We left the ministry rather publicly. Were something unfortunate to happen to you while you were alone inside… Well, I'm here to deter your rash impulses, am I not?"

Hermione grit her teeth. He was here because he was an interfering arsehole with boundary issues. She suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be ignoring him, anyway.

Nothing and no one stopped her from entering the former home, her great blond shadow following a few steps behind.

Many of the windows were boarded up or broken; the late afternoon light already dimmed by the clouds barely penetrated the gloom of the place.

The first clutch of eggs glowed warmly some ten paces ahead.

Hermione muttered an incantation, her bluebell flames springing from the tip of her wand to hover where she directed them. Her modified version of the flames floated harmlessly above her, illuminating where she walked across the rubbish-and-broken-furniture-strewn floor. They worked a treat, shining brightly without the need to tie up her wand with a lighting charm.

Taking stock of the house under better lighting conditions, she noted the upper floor was partially burned out. Regardless, she would still need to check all the nooks and crannies on both floors. Ashwinders were notorious for finding every little hiding space to lay their eggs.

Malfoy's nattering fell into the background as Hermione set to work.

She collected the first batch of frozen eggs, transfiguring a basket in the middle of the room out of some detritus. They would fetch a handsome price at the apothecary, which would be an excellent windfall for boosting her department's budget.

Hermione quickly settled into a comfortable rhythm: search for hot spots using a heat detection charm, find the eggs, freeze them. Malfoy's nearly stream-of-consciousness commentary made for unexpectedly pleasant white noise, likely because she refused to focus on a single word he was saying.

She chanced a glimpse at the frustrating wizard as she made her final rounds on the ground floor.

Just as she had cobbled together a container for the eggs, he had transfigured himself a fancy chair. Because of course he did. Hermione rolled her eyes and made her way up the rickety staircase leading to the second floor, Malfoy's dulcet baritone falling away behind her.

The light from outside was beginning to shift toward darkness, her conjured flames having to burn brighter to make up the difference.

It was more precarious up here, with her having to watch her step more closely, testing the floorboards to make sure they could withstand her weight near the burned areas as she worked.

She had just detected the first clutch of eggs when Lucius spoke again, his voice far closer than she expected him to be.

"It would be far more expedient for you to accept assistance, you know."

Hermione gave a sharp shriek and careened directly toward the gaping hole in the middle of the floor.

Fantastic. She had survived the war against Voldemort and risen to the top of her department only to fall to her death on an insignificant house call she should have never been on in the first place. There was a muggle Darwin Award waiting with her name on it.

Her forward momentum was stopped almost immediately as she was hauled back to collide with Lucius's chest. He'd moved to grab her, tugging her safely against himself, before she could even think to react with a spell of her own.

How utterly embarrassing.

"Careful now, my dear," Malfoy murmured in her ear. "We wouldn't want to add a trip to St. Mungos to our evening, now would we?"

Hermione squirmed in his arms. "Let. Me. Go!"

Malfoy tightened his hold.

"Are you going to attempt to leap to your death again?" She couldn't see his face, but she could mentally picture the patronizing, sardonic smile that undoubtedly graced it.

"Of course not, you absolute pillock! You just startled me before! Now. Get. Off!" She tried to elbow him, but the snake held fast. He was much stronger than she ever would have expected him to be. Some utterly stupid, girlish part of her brain tittered and swooned at this realization.

"My, my, that is a compelling invitation. Will you be doing the honors?"

Hermione's breath hitched and her brain fuzzed as one of his arms slid from its secure, safe location around her waist for its corresponding hand to grip the far more risky territory of her hip. He was ridiculously bold today, far more obvious in his. His— His flirting. Hermione was having a great deal of difficulty in continuing to pretend that he wasn't doing exactly that, but it made uncomfortable butterflies flutter in her stomach that he could mean any of it.

Anger was easier. Anger was the rational response. She channeled her focus into that instead of the strange heat— a heat that had nothing to do with fiery snake eggs— building somewhere it had no business being.

"Malfoy!"

"Lucius. My name is Lucius, Hermione. Perhaps were you to actually use it, you might find me willing to entertain your every whim and desire."