A strangled choking noise drew Lucius's attention from his conversation with Leeds. Hermione's grip on his hand tightened as she squirmed in her seat, pressing her lips together in a flat line as flattering colour suffused her face. Her grip grew moderately painful as she turned glaring eyes upon him, tugging on his hand.
He leant to the side so his witch could viciously whisper a cryptic message in his ear.
"Turn. Them. Off. Right. Now."
Off? What in the—oh. Oh.
Lucius pulled his hand from hers, freeing it to fiddle with his signet ring under the table.
Hermione gasped sharply, covering it with a quick gulp of wine.
"Wrong. Way," she bit out through clenched teeth.
He ran his finger the other way along the crown of his ring, and she made a terribly interesting little whimpering moan.
"Lucius," she hissed, crossly.
Well, this simply wasn't going to work. He needed to see his ring to reset the charm, since it had obviously gone awry.
No one had yet taken notice of her plight, but the longer they remained at the table, the greater the likelihood that someone would, which would not be an auspicious beginning to their courtship in the public eye.
"Ah, come my dear. Let's get a bit of fresh air before the floor opens again," he said, standing and offering his hand.
She took it, standing awkwardly beside him, letting go as soon as she was upright. Hermione surreptitiously attempted to shift her weight to subdue the undoubted buzzing and fondling about her nethers.
Lucius offered his arm, and after a moment's hesitation, she clutched it for support as he walked them swiftly beyond the perimeter of the festivities. He abandoned his attempts to work with his ring whilst they were on the move, when the pinpricks of her fingernails digging into his forearm informed him he was simply making matters worse.
They'd made it slightly beyond the worst of the prying eyes, when she abruptly stopped walking with him.
"Lucius! Damn it!" Hermione growled, tugging at his hand to get to his signet ring, but her attempts only caused something quite interesting to happen judging by the way her knees buckled, and he was suddenly shouldering the bulk of her weight.
In that case—
"Loop your arms around my neck," He instructed, hooking an arm behind her knees and the other bracing her upper back as he swept her into his arms. After a beat, she did as bid.
He strode round half the circumference of columns before selecting one with a privacy balcony. It was an oddity for a September gala, but Lucius had never been one to question good fortune. Shifting Hermione's weight against him, he rapped a knuckle against the stone before stepping through to be transported to the platform above.
The entire room lay beneath them none-the-wiser to the pair of them as he lowered the witch so that she could brace against the charmed stone wall at her back.
"What the—How did you—Ah ung!"
Lucius muttered his own privacy spell and a muffling charm for good measure before returning to the matter at hand.
"Let's just take them off, and figure it out from there, hmm?" He suggested, rucking up her skirts and pressing them into her hands, "Hold."
"Yes, please," she agreed emphatically.
Lucius swallowed, forcing himself to perform his self-appointed task. He knelt before her, which was a frankly terrible idea upon immediate reflection, pushing her skirts up higher, into her hands, and out of his way before finally spying the culprit of their shared misfortune.
It wasn't one of the sets he selected for her, but a pair of her older, modest briefs he'd modified before their return. What he felt wasn't exactly repentance for his mischief, but he did rue the inevitable censure she would deliver and made a mental note to make it up to her somewhere less public.
Lucius hooked his fingers at the waistband.
"Oh, Lucius!" She panted, biting her lip before releasing it, "Wait, I'm—I'm going to—"
He tugged the offending garment down past her knees, gravity taking them the rest of the way to flop uselessly on the floor.
Hermione huffed and flushed as he looked up at her. He valiantly avoided the assuredly dooming view of her bared, quivering cunt, prying her fingers free to allow her dress robes to fall to cover her.
"I'm going to strangle you!"
Never before in her life had Hermione been so close to orgasm, only to have it so cruelly ripped away.
She leaned heavily against the wall that shouldn't be there—Ministry frippery she felt abstractly thankful for at the moment; she had no idea those little balconies were actually accessible and quite so accommodating—panting and vaguely furious as Lucius halfheartedly attempted to stop her underwear, to no avail.
This was a completely unacceptable state of affairs.
"Leave it. How good is your privacy charm-work?"
Sparing her his attention, Lucius sniffed disdainfully, "My charm-work is impeccable."
Her knickers would heartily disagree, but pointing that out would only lead to an argument and continuance of her rotten luck, which was not what Hermione wanted or needed at the moment.
Before she could chicken out, or overthink, Hermione grabbed Lucius's cravat and tugged him down to her level.
Their earlier kiss in her office had been soft and warm on the edge of heated, but this kiss was a clash of fire from the start.
Her lips crashed against his, teeth nipping at his bottom lip as she pulled him closer. Lucius's hands came to rest at her waist, steadying her, but she was not in the mood for restraint. Not now. Not when she was so painfully close to the edge.
"You are going to finish what you started," Hermione demanded against his mouth, her voice husky and commanding in a way she had never heard it before.
She was so beyond the capacity for embarrassment at the moment that she couldn't bring herself to care. He froze, as if he did not believe his hearing.
"Come again?"
"No, I'm trying to come for the first time," Hermione groused.
Lucius pulled back slightly, the silver of his eyes reduced to slivers with how wide his pupils had grown. Half desire, half incredulity. "Here? Now?"
"Yes, Lucius, right here. Right now." Her fingers tangled in his silky hair, mussing it as she'd always wanted to, pulling him back to her. "You think I want to just waltz back down there in this state?" She hissed, grinding against him, her body still thrumming with unfulfilled need. "I can barely stand."
He blinked. Twice. A slow, wicked smile spread across his face. "Well, I can't have your discomfort on my conscious now, can I? It would be most irresponsible of me."
His hand fell from her face, grazing her breast as it slid down her side, bunching the fabric of her dress robes once more. Hermione's breath caught as his fingers traced a teasing path along her thigh.
"This was not how I envisioned our first time together," Lucius lamented.
And she had never envisioned a certain encounter under his desk with an uninitiated third party witness. If nothing else, their encounters could not be described as mundane.
"You can make it up to me later. Now, Lucius, please."
His fingertips finally brushed against her slick heat, and Hermione's head fell back against the stone wall with a soft thud. She should probably reciprocate—drive him as mad as he was driving her, but a small, vindictive part of her relished in this moment of selfishness.
"Very well," Lucius drawled, his voice a silken caress that sent shivers down her spine. "But I'm holding you to that promise of 'later' occurring in the very near future."
One long finger slid between her folds, and Hermione bit her lip to stifle a moan. After all the torturous teasing from the enchanted underwear—what ought to have been her safe knickers, she might add—his touch was almost too much to bear. Her hips bucked involuntarily, seeking more pressure, more contact. Lucius obliged, sliding one finger inside her while his thumb found her sensitive bud.
"So wet for me already," he murmured against her neck, his lips trailing hot kisses along her pulse point. "Had I known how delicious you'd be like this, I might have activated that charm at dinner intentionally."
"You wouldn't have dared," she gasped, her fingers digging into his shoulders as he added a second finger, curling them in a way that made her see stars. His pace, however, was infuriatingly, purposely slow.
"Wouldn't I?" Lucius asked, his voice pure sin, as he worked his fingers expertly against her inner walls. "I think you enjoy the possibility of us being caught. Why else would you have me teasing you here, on this balcony, where anyone could potentially discover us?"
"They won't," Hermione said boldly.
"They could," Lucius countered, "But you enjoy the risk."
His thumb circled her clit with deliberate precision, and Hermione felt herself climbing rapidly toward the peak she'd been denied moments before. Below them, the gala continued in blissful ignorance while Lucius Malfoy systematically dismantled her with nothing more than his fingers and filthily cast aspersions. No matter that they were true. For both of them.
"So do you. Now, faster," she commanded breathlessly. She could blame him for being a terrible influence, but perhaps, in this case, it might be the other way around. But that was too much thinking for the day, and Hermione was beyond caring about propriety or the fact that they were only barely out of sight above a room full of Ministry officials. All that mattered was the coiling tension building inside her.
"Please, I need you—inside."
Lucius swore, though his other hand was already working deftly at the fastenings of his robes and trousers.
Hermione watched, transfixed, as each button surrendered to his elegant fingers. The soft rustle of expensive fabric, the glint of his signet ring, her very empty, very needy cunt weeping and eagerly awaiting his cock—her heart hammered against her ribs, anticipation of the long awaited moment making her dizzy.
"You're taking forever," Hermione complained.
His eyes flicked up to meet hers, molten silver burning with barely restrained desire. "Patience, my dear. Some things are worth savoring."
She scoffed, but finally he was there, hot and hard—the length of him gliding against her over-sensitized folds. Even in indulging her, he still refused to give her what she needed.
"Damn it all, Lucius, stop teasing!"
He chuckled darkly but finally, finally obliged, positioning himself at her entrance and pressing into her heat slowly, teasingly, before withdrawing nearly completely. Before Hermione could complain, he captured her mouth, sinking into her with a smooth thrust. Hermione's nails dug crescents into his shoulders as her body adjusted to the delicious stretch of him filling her completely, her eyes fluttering closed at the welcome intrusion.
"Gods," she breathed when they finally parted for air.
"Indeed," Lucius agreed, his voice strained with the effort of restraint. His forehead pressed against hers, silver-blond hair creating a curtain around their faces. "Do you still wish to strangle me?"
"I will if you don't start moving. Ask me again when we're finished," Hermione replied tartly, rolling her hips experimentally against him and savoring his sharp intake of breath.
His hands slid beneath her thighs, lifting her higher against the wall for better leverage. "Then I'd better set to work on swaying your opinion in my favor."
The first proper thrust drove the air from her lungs. The second made her forget their need for discretion. By the third, Hermione could scarcely remember her own name, let alone care about their precarious location.
Lucius set a relentless pace, each thrust driving her higher. The stone was cool against her back, a stark contrast to the scorching heat where their bodies joined. His mouth captured hers, swallowing her increasingly desperate sounds as the tension coiled tighter within her.
"You have no idea," Lucius murmured against her lips, "how often I've imagined having you like this."
"In public?" Hermione laughed breathlessly.
"Of course not. All to myself. Although—"
He pulled out completely, disregarding her disappointed groan and moue of protest.
Before she could complain more vociferously, he spun her so that her arms braced on the stone railings of the balcony, her skirts rucked up and magically pinned to her back. They both could see the muted, colorful partygoers leaving the dinner tables and moving on to the dance floor, completely unaware of them, as he slid back into her from behind.
"Your little exhibitionist streak is admittedly a thrill I had not anticipated," Lucius whispered in her ear, nipping her earlobe before moving on to lave open-mouthed kisses along the column of her neck, "What would they all say if they knew prim and proper little Miss Hermione Granger loved having my cock buried deep inside her while they danced unwittingly below?"
The words, filthy and forbidden, sent a shock of pleasure through Hermione's core. She pressed back against him, meeting his thrusts as her fingers gripped the stone railing.
"They'd—they'd never believe it," she gasped, her eyes fixed on the ignorant crowd below.
The juxtaposition of the fairly innocent revelry downstairs with their current debauchery was intoxicating.
"No?" Lucius's hand snaked around to find her clit, circling it with practiced precision. "I think they'd be jealous. Envious that I'm the one who gets to see you like this—desperate, wanton, begging."
"I'm not begging," she denied weakly, even as her body betrayed her, pushing back against him, seeking more.
His rhythm faltered momentarily as he chuckled. "You aren't. Not yet."
He slowed his pace deliberately, drawing out each thrust until Hermione wanted to scream with frustration. His fingers stilled against her most sensitive spot, providing just enough pressure to tantalize but nothing to satisfy. Lucius was far too adept at bringing her close before cruelly denying her.
"Lucius," she warned, trying to move against him.
His free hand came to rest on her hip, holding her still. "Yes, Hermione?"
"Stop playing games," she hissed, trying to squirm against his grip, her pussy throbbing needily all the while.
"But our games are what brought us here in the first place," he reminded her, his voice a silken purr against her ear. He punctuated his words with a single, deep thrust that made her gasp. "And I find I rather enjoy this particular game."
"Please," she finally relented, the word escaping her lips before she could stop it.
She felt his smile against her neck. "That's hardly begging. Please, what?"
"Please make me come," Hermione whispered, past caring about pride or propriety. "I need it, Lucius. I need you."
Hermione fully expected him to draw it out and tease her further, but his restraint seemed to snap at her words. His fingers resumed their skilled ministrations as his hips drove forward with renewed purpose. Each thrust hit something deep within her that made her vision blur at the edges.
"Look at them," he commanded softly, nodding toward the crowd below. "Look at how oblivious they are while you fall apart for me."
Hermione forced her eyes open, watching the swirl of dress robes and formal attire as Ministry officials, colleagues, friends, danced and mingled. The knowledge that they were merely separated from the gala by a bit of magic and height sent a forbidden thrill through her.
His questing fingers found renewed purpose in teasing her clit seemingly at random intervals as he relentlessly drove into her. The coil of tension within her wound impossibly tight. She was teetering on the precipice, so close—
"Come for me, Hermione. Only for me."
As if his words themselves held a magic connection directly to her core, her vision blurred white as she toppled over the edge into the oblivion of pure bliss.
Hermione's back arched as wave after wave of pleasure crashed through her, her inner walls clenching rhythmically around him. Her knees would have buckled entirely if not for Lucius's firm grip on her waist and the stone railing supporting her weight. Remembering belatedly that muffling and silencing charms could only do so much, she bit her lip hard to keep from crying out, as her body shuddered through the most intense orgasm of her life. Even still, she could not totally repress an indelicate keening.
Behind her, Lucius groaned low in his throat as her release triggered his own. His hips stuttered against hers, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her hip as he spilled himself deep inside her. For several long moments, they remained frozen like that, connected and panting, the sounds of the gala continuing obliviously below them.
"I believe," Lucius said at last, his voice rough as he slowly withdrew from her, "I know what went awry."
Hermione turned to face him, her legs still trembling slightly. She watched as he cast a wandless cleaning charm over himself before meticulously refastening his trousers.
Meanwhile, Hermione stood there panting and leaking him as she released the spell from her dress robes that helped them defy gravity while exposing her nethers. Her knickers still flopped about uselessly on the balcony floor. There was absolutely no way she was putting those back on as long as they were doing that.
"Oh?"
"Yes," Lucius presented his right hand, his damnable signet ring with its ostentatious "M" gleaming at her tauntingly. "Run a finger around the head once, clockwise."
She glanced up to his face to see if he was teasing her, but no, he was serious. She rolled her eyes, but did as bid, only mildly piqued when her knickers finally stilled on the ground.
"You can't be serious," Hermione said flatly.
She had been the one to trigger the spell? It must have happened at the table when she stilled his hand. So, it was still, technically, his fault by her accounting.
"Indeed. I'll make adjustments-"
"Lucius Malfoy, those were a pair of my old knickers—some of the ones you stole before giving them back. Did you enchant all of my under things?!"
"I am disinclined to answer that question at the moment, as we are presently at a height that might prove inconvenient for a fall." Lucius replied diplomatically.
"I can't believe you," Hermione muttered, half annoyed with him. But given the mutual enthusiasm of what they had both just been up to, she couldn't help but think they were oddly suited.
Still. Communication would be important going forward.
And a trip to the shops to pick up new underthings. Alone.
Hermione began to reach for her wand in its secret pocket in her skirts when Lucius stilled her hand.
"Allow me," he said, plucking her underwear from the ground and working them back up her legs. She obligingly held her dress robes out of the way, as he languorously completed his self-appointed task.
"What, you're not going to clean me up?" Hermione asked, raising an imperious brow. She could have easily done so herself, with or without her wand, but she was painfully curious as to why he hadn't.
"I must admit, I rather relish the idea of you leaking my seed into your knickers and making a mess of them for the rest of the night as I show you off."
He swiped a trail of their mixed release from where it had dribbled down her thighs, pushing it back inside of her.
Hermione felt her face heat up, and she cleared her throat, trying to compose herself.
"Yes, well. If you don't hurry up, we're going to be right back where we started," she said snippily. "You have a lot to make up for, for that stunt, even if it wasn't intentional."
Lucius finally finished his task, pulling the waistband of her underwear back securely over her hips.
"Don't worry, dearest, I fully intend it before the night is through."
Hermione blearily blinked her eyes open as the morning sun rudely cut a swath of irritating, cheery light across her face. Her head throbbed with the dull reminder of too much… wine? No. Brandy. Very expensive brandy. Her mouth was as dry as parchment and tasted much worse. Her muddled brain belatedly registered the unfamiliar weight of an arm draped across her waist.
In mild alarm, she shifted, her cheek peeling away from a plush leather surface that most certainly was not her bed. The scent of the room—largely consisting of notes of sandalwood, vanilla, ink, and something warm and inviting—did not belong to her modest flat.
"Lucius?" Hermione asked, her voice embarrassingly husky—embarrassing due to the particularly lurid memories that began filtering through on why it was so.
"Mmm?" came the masculine, half-awake, reply. That wasn't the only half-awake part of him, but there was no way she was going to address the erumpent against her bum before she established the facts.
At least she hadn't imagined or dreamed the whole evening. In fact, she felt oddly light, excepting the burgeoning headache. Who knew that finally working out your sexual frustrations could feel so… nice?
"Why am I on the sofa?" Hermione settled on asking.
The first portion of the evening was crystal clear, the dancing, the schmoozing, their flagrant misuse of ministry property resulting in the most explosive sex of her life, rejoining the festivities for the barest amount of time to be deemed proper.
It was only after they skived off back to the Manor, his floo connection dumping them directly in his study to be precise, that matters began to grow a bit hazy. She vaguely recalled teasing remarks, and the brandy, of course. There had been more sex, in which she had challenged him to outdo their first secret tryst of the evening, and if memory served—alongside no longer needing to abide by the constraints of not being seen or overheard—he rather had. In retrospect, she thought the brandy had come after.
She wasn't quite surprised to see her fine dress robes strewn haphazardly over his desk chair and his various clothing articles equally poorly discarded. Though she had to admit that spying her gods-be-damned-knickers hanging from a sconce was a bit gauche.
He tugged her and Hermione obliged, turning in his arms to bear the brunt of his intent regard. Even clearly just woken from sleep, and his platinum hair in complete disarray, Lucius still looked like someone off the cover of the bodice ripper romances her mum used to favor. She was certain the same could not be said of her. It was just grossly unfair.
And for Circe's sake, would he ever stop making her blush? He wasn't even doing anything blush-worthy at the moment.
"You fell asleep on me after I proved to you, unequivocally, I might add, that I could indeed make you scream on command. Though before doing so, you declared that you were ready to go to bed, but I was not to step foot in your bedroom, if I knew what was good for me," Lucius recited with a smirk, "I've experienced what chaos you can muster when you are of a mind to. I'd rather keep my hair intact, thank you."
"Well, this isn't my sofa," she observed.
"No. I rather thought your flat might not be the best option, given the circumstances and your tendency toward rumination."
"Right," Hermione swallowed. That was a fair point. If she'd awoken alone in her flat this morning, it's true that she likely would have had a minor panic attack with regard to the fact that she had shagged Lucius Malfoy at least twice in one night. That coupled with the fact that she no longer had a familiar to comfort her, well… "Then why are you on the sofa? You have a massive four-poster bed straight out of a fairy tale. I saw it yesterday."
"You declined my offer to take you to more comfortable sleeping arrangements after denigrating my wards."
Hermione colored. Right. She might have made joking, half-drunken accusations of him having nefarious plans to trap her in his bedchamber and shag her all weekend. She recalled refusing to leave his study, not because she thought her wild accusations were at all close to fact, but due to being very, very sleepy, which was something she clearly hadn't clarified aloud.
The fact that he took her at her word though, and didn't act against her explicitly stated wishes was oddly heartening.
"Well, you could have still left me here on the sofa and gone to bed. I'd have been fine. I can take care of myself."
"Of this, I am quite aware; however, I wish to…," Lucius paused, "take care of you. Emotionally. Sexually. Financially, if you'll allow it."
Hermione scoffed. "Be serious."
"I think you'll find I'm always serious. You simply choose to ignore what I say most of the time because you are the most uniquely obtuse, stubborn witch I have ever encountered. Nevertheless, I am restating my intention to court you. Properly. Improperly. How ever you'll have me."
Her heart thudded in her chest as his fingers traced along her arm, pausing briefly at her wrist before capturing her hand and pressing a kiss along her knuckles.
Her breath hitched when she saw it—a band of finely wrought silver and precious stones glimmering in front of her face. A bracelet graced her wrist—one that he had clearly placed there at some point the night before.
"Lucius, what is this? When did you—"
"Oh, fucking Merlin's wonky warty fuckstick! My eyes!"
Hermione's head snapped to the door where Draco stood, torn between gaping at the pair of them, his eyebrows nearly at his hairline, sputtering inarticulate noises still making their way out of his mouth. After a beat of the three of them staring at each other in shock, the younger man's self-preservation instincts finally kicked in and he shielded his eyes with a hand.
"Draco," Lucius said in an exasperated, world-weary tone at his son's antics.
"Father, this wasn't what I meant when I said you should be nice to her! This is too nice." He gesticulated with his other hand, but refused to lower the one covering his face to look at them. "Oh, Salazar. I take it back. Go back to hating each other. Please. Unless that's how you ended up here. Actually, don't tell me. I don't want to know."
Well, this was beyond awkward. Hermione tried to scramble out if their incriminating position, but Lucius's arm around her middle tightened, holding her in place.
"Hermione," Lucius chided lightly.
Right, it might be best not to accidentally flash Draco further on top of everything else. He could move his hand at any time. As it stood, her back and rear were partially shielded from the man's view by a small throw blanket that had obviously been chosen more for its stylishness than its function, and Lucius's nudity was largely shielded by, well, her.
It was mere luck he hadn't walked in on them a few minutes earlier and been treated to a full frontal view.
"Draco?" a muffled feminine voice asked from the hall. "Is something wrong?"
"Yes!" Draco agreed, emphatically. "Oh, I'm going to be sick."
The sounds of footsteps got closer.
"No, wait! Tori! Don't come in!" The younger Malfoy exclaimed dramatically.
"Draco, you're being ridiculous," Astoria said.
"No! Astoria!"
He foolishly waved his free hand behind him, as though to ward off his wide. The witch poked her head around the corner before pushing past Draco into full view, wide-eyed infant in tow.
"Oh, good morning, Lucius," Astoria said brightly, "And Hermione! It's wonderful to see you!"
The other witch actually sounded sincere. Hermione's left eyebrow began to twitch, but she remembered her manners. Such as they were. She wasn't sure there was any etiquette that covered being caught all but actively in flagrante by her former classmate—her bed fellow's son of all people—and his wife.
"Erm. Hello?" Hermione offered awkwardly.
Astoria beamed.
Draco, for his part, had pulled his hand from his face and was looking determinedly anywhere other than at the pair of them.
"Fucking hells," the wizard said, his voice cracking at the end.
Hermione traced his sight to her thrice be damned knickers, wishing she could sink into the floor.
If she'd had any inkling all and sundry would be seeing them, she would have chosen a nicer, more flattering pair.
"No. Just. Absolutely not. I'm off to go obliviate myself," the younger Malfoy announced, turning heel and striding back out the door.
Astoria rolled her eyes at her husband's dramatics.
"Well, I think he took that well enough," the witch said, offering a tentative grin. "I'll put on some tea. We'll meet you both down in the conservatory in a few minutes?"
She found herself baffled at Astoria's complete lack of shock at the situation. Hermione herself was shocked, and she was half the party involved.
"Thank you, Astoria," Lucius intoned imperiously, likewise completely unruffled, "We'll join you shortly."
"I can't believe Pansy was fucking right," Draco shouted from somewhere down the hall.
Pansy? Oh, Circe. If Pansy knew anything, it would be blabbed from the rooftops. How did she even—
"Relax, Hermione," Lucius said, smoothing a thumb over her brow.
She'd have to deal with Pansy later. Hermione thought she could only manage one world-turning crisis at a time.
"I can't relax. This is the single most uniquely mortifying moment of my life," she complained, burying her face in his chest so that she could pretend everything else did not exist for a moment.
This move, however, was a tactical error. It gave Lucius free rein to run his stupid, clever fingers through her hair.
"I assure you, that could have been much worse," he soothed.
Or attempted to. Hermione was not soothed in the slightest. She snapped her head up to glare at the wizard.
"How, exactly, could that have been worse? Your son and his wife just caught us naked in your study where we had clearly spent the night after shagging each other's brains out."
"Well," Lucius said, tracing a finger down her jaw. "If they had been a mere few minutes later, they would have received an encore show." His thumb lightly pulled at her bottom lip before falling away. "As I was on the cusp of seducing you again. Oh my, you're rather flushed. Are you feeling feverish?"
He brushed the back of his hand against her forehead. Hermione smacked it away.
"You know I'm not, you prat! This is your fault!"
What precisely was his fault was unclear, but she didn't think it mattered.
Lucius chuckled, the sound reverberating through his chest against her palm.
"You're quite adorable when flustered, you know. And if you do recall, I suggested far less compromising accommodations for the evening. Draco never would have entered my private rooms uninvited."
"Eurghf!" Hermione argued valiantly, attempting to extricate herself from his embrace.
"Indeed," Lucius agreed, tightening his hold before summarily apparating them directly to his rooms.
The conservatory at Malfoy Manor was easily Hermione's favorite room in the house. The curved glass and iron structure was beautifully offset by the veritable jungle of plant-life interspersed with seating areas—it even held a koi pond fed by a small waterfall.
Even so, no amount of ambience nor dappled sunlight could have made breakfast at the small mahogany table that sat innocuously to the right side of the room, anything less than a harrowing ordeal.
Hermione had dressed in yesterday's scourgified work robes (after having sent Lucius back to fetch her underwear and double-scourgifying those, of course. She'd never be able to look at that particular pair of trouble-inducing knickers the same way again. She idly planned to toss them in the rubbish at the first reasonable opportunity). Lucius, on the other hand, opted for what could only be construed as wizarding lounge-wear topped off by one of his obscenely fancy dressing gowns.
He'd tried to dress her in something similar, but Hermione established that under no circumstances would she be traipsing around the Manor, having tea with his family, whilst wearing his clothing, even if he was gracious enough to transfigure it into something suitably feminine. Lucius had honest-to-Merlin pouted over her recalcitrance, as though she were being the unreasonable one.
Hermione would have happily argued the point with him for the remainder of the morning if it meant avoiding his son and daughter-in-law. Sadly, Lucius quickly cottoned on, and it was not to be.
Draco spent the majority of the time spent at that horrendous little table gawking incredulously between them, squinting as though looking for something and constantly coming up short. Hermione was fairly certain that Astoria had even kicked him a few times when his behaviour was so blatant that it could only be construed as rude staring.
Astoria and Lucius carried the bulk of the minimal conversation, and Hermione had somehow, through a truly fascinating masterclass of manipulation, found herself roped into babysitting duty when she'd tried to make excuses to end the awkward encounter and leave the family in peace.
Thus was how she found herself some hours later, hair plaited away from her face as a protection against tiny, surprisingly strong, hands that had become much more adept at gripping stray curls in the weeks since she had last encountered them.
Not for the first time that day, Hermione wondered what on earth she was doing.
"You're rather alarmingly quiet," Lucius observed.
"Well, the baby is finally asleep, and I don't want to wake him. Who would have thought someone related to you, the fussiest wizard alive, could be even fussier?" Hermione returned lightly, aiming for humor.
Lucius didn't take the bait.
"You know that isn't what I mean."
Hermione worried her lip and ran a hand through her hair. "I just. What are we even doing? It's all so fast that I don't know how to act, and I thought I—we—would have some time to figure things out before we started telling anyone. But with the gala, and Draco—"
It felt as though her life was shifting to something unrecognizable at breakneck pace and she had forgotten how to swim, much less keep up with the tide.
"I admit, I had intended a more tasteful discussion with my son, but what's done is done. And before you hide yourself away to ruminate over every little detail, what we are doing is courting."
"I don't ruminate. I just like to think things through," Hermione grumbled, looking away. "But I just don't understand why everyone needs to know that we're dating right away. Shouldn't we see how things go for a while first?"
Lucius sighed.
"I realize that this is, perhaps, different to relationships you've had in the past, but we are public figures, Hermione. Courting by its nature is a public presentation of intent. It would be far more scandalous for the pair of us if a secret affair was discovered down the line."
She supposed his reasoning was fair enough, even though Hermione preferred to keep her personal life private.
"The Prophet will publish a puff piece somewhere in the society pages for the old gossips to titter over, and it will be forgotten come next week."
"What?"
This was news to her. She knew the Prophet would be publishing a story on their werewolf bill, and both of them would likely be mentioned. There would also likely be some photos of the gala, and it wasn't inconceivable that the pair of them might show up in them. But a story about them? She hadn't ranked mention in the papers in ages—not since her very public break-up with Ron. Hermione had disappointed the gossips by keeping her appearances low key and her subsequent love life devoid of public interest.
Lucius was neither low key, nor uninteresting.
Even so, Hermione didn't know what such a story could possibly be about. Lucius had fobbed the reporter off when they started asking questions about a possible relationship. Unless—
"Did you speak to the Prophet without me?" Her voice held a note of accusation that she couldn't quite quash.
"Of course not," He replied, sounding vaguely insulted, "We were together the entire night."
That was true. There had not been many, if any, occasions during the evening when they had not been within hearing range of each other.
"Then how do you know there's going to be a story if you didn't organize it?"
"The Prophet is nothing if not predictable. I gave them the precisely enough that they will speculate on the page and come to a decision on their own. We will clarify and make a true announcement of our own once we are prepared to do so."
It wasn't the most horrible plan she'd ever heard of; she was actually fairly pleased to find that he had thought that far ahead, however—
"I don't exactly have the best history with the Prophet reporting on my love life," Hermione groused. "And Rita Skeeter—"
"Is in Laos, covering the recent, dramatic capture of Yaxley, or so I hear."
"What? They finally caught him?" Hermione asked in surprise.
Yaxley was one of the few remaining death eaters still on the run. He had gone to ground, and no one had seen nor heard from him since he'd slipped away at the battle of Hogwarts. After nearly a decade without a whisper, she'd thought any further captures to be unlikely.
"Well, that's… convenient," Hermione allowed.
"Isn't it just?"
Hermione Granger stepped into her flat late Sunday morning, surprisingly well rested, and, slightly less surprisingly, well shagged. (Scorpius had been an astonishingly easy ward overnight. Granted, Lucius had been the party responsible for handling the night-time upsets while she slept on. Regardless, they'd had plenty of free time to explore the newest dimension of their acquaintanceship and whether his assertions that he could make her forget her own name with just his mouth held water. Annoyingly, they did.)
She never could have reasonably expected to find the agitated red-head who sprang up from the sofa when Hermione emerged from the floo.
"Hermione Granger! Where have you been?! No, save it. I have a good idea of where you've been."
The Sunday edition of the Prophet was shoved into Hermione's hands, and there on the cover, just below the headline on her lycanthropy legislation was a magically captured photo of herself dancing with Lucius—completely clear to anyone who had eyes that something was going on between them.
Hermione's stomach sank to the vicinity of her knees.
…That article was decidedly not a minor titter of speculative interest in the society pages.
"Care to explain?"