Chapter Text
2001
Post-War Year 3
The incantation left her mouth smooth as glass. Her wand sliced through the air in a practised arc, elegant and exact.
“Ars Mundi Elementa.”
For a heartbeat, nothing. Then a flare—sharp, sputtering. A stuttered pop of magic burst from the tip of her wand like a broken firecracker, followed by a puff of ozone and the sickly crackle of heat against stone.
The leyline didn’t bend. The spell didn’t take.
Hermione Granger was hurled three feet backwards by something that hadn’t been in any of the theory. She hit the edge of her kitchen table with the sound of a badly tuned piano and landed flat on her arse, skirt bunched halfway up her thigh and a candle rolling lazily across the floor, shedding wax like tears.
She stared at the ceiling. Then blinked.
“Well, that was dignified,” she muttered.
The air was thick with failure and sulphur. Her wand lay a few feet away, faintly glowing at the core—just for a moment—before dimming like the last ember of a dying fire.
She didn’t move right away. Her lungs were doing that ridiculous tight flutter again, and there was an unpleasant prickling in her fingertips, like the magic had tried to escape through her skin. Again.
When she finally stood, her knees protested. She stepped over an overturned teacup and picked up her wand with the same care one might use for a wounded animal—or a live wire.
This time, she didn’t try to cast anything. She just held it.
No spark. No hum of power thrumming beneath her palm.
Her wand felt... sullen.
“Brilliant,” she said under her breath, and turned to the cluttered desk beneath her sitting room window. A quill lifted to meet her halfway—and then plummeted as if winded by the effort.
“Double brilliant.”
Hermione reached for it manually—like a Muggle—and flipped open the thick leather-bound journal already smudged with soot and fingerprints. The title embossed on the spine, Experiential Manifestations – Class V Curses, was beginning to flake.
She dipped the quill in ink with shaking fingers and began to write:
Attempt #17: Ars Mundi Elementa.
Spell misfire. No leyline alignment achieved.
Magical recoil: forceful, internal.
Post-cast: wand unresponsive. Weak luminescence; no residual warmth.
Symptoms: pins and needles in extremities. Temporary magical dissociation?
Incantation verified. Movement accurate. Magic... not.
She stopped, the nib bleeding ink into the page, then added:
Suspect siphoning effect worsening.
The words sat there, stark and treacherous. Siphoning. Worsening.
Hermione exhaled through her nose and stood. The flat was too warm now—again. The bloody temperature charm was fluctuating, and her jumper clung damply to her spine. One candle near the hearth had melted into a grotesque puddle over the rim of a stack of old Charms journals, dangerously close to setting fire to an entire decade of Spellwork and Substances Quarterly.
She muttered the cooling charm. Nothing. She repeated it—firmer, more precise.
The air shifted. Then spiked colder than a Scottish winter. Her breath misted. The candle snuffed itself out in protest.
“For fuck’s sake.”
She shook her wand and marched to the window, flinging it open. A gust of London air shoved in, brisk and sharp, catching the edge of a Ministry letter pinned to the bookshelf. It fluttered down and landed with the familiar gold seal facing up.
The last one they’d sent.
A reminder of her upcoming review. Of her magical “irregularities.” Of the polite, professional suggestion that she consider a “wellness sabbatical.” How civilised. How thinly veiled.
Hermione ignored it. She returned to the hearth, knelt, and began combing through a pile of parchment scrawled with the chicken-scratch shorthand only she could read. Half a dozen rejected counters, three modified purification rites, and a half-finished Arithmantic grid that looked more like a crop circle than anything coherent.
She lit another candle—by hand, with a match.
The irony wasn’t lost on her.
“Come on, come on,” she muttered, flipping through a notebook marked Residual Dark Magic – Unclassified Variants. “Dolohov. You unoriginal bastard. What the hell did you lace that curse with?”
There were notes. So many notes. Colour-coded tabs. Cross-referenced quotes. In one margin she’d written: Draco claimed he used a modified siphon. Check for wand core alignment.
In another: Interference with magical source vs channel?
And beside a crumpled receipt from Flourish and Blotts, folded into a margin: Curses that taste like metal. Manifestation: copper tongue?
Hermione’s hands were steady now. Too steady. That kind of steadiness only came from deliberate control—obsessive, clinical detachment. It was a scholar’s calm.
And underneath it—beneath the ink stains, the lemon balm tea gone cold on the side table, the to-do lists and reinforcement charms and sharpened precision—she was terrified.
She just wouldn’t let herself say it.
Fear. That word. That softness. That sliver of weakness.
It sat, unspoken, behind her molars like a splinter in the tongue. Hermione Granger didn’t do fear. She did cataloguing. She did rational deduction. She made spreadsheets for interpersonal conflicts and designed index systems for heartbreak. She did not tremble at candlelight or stare at her wand like it might turn traitor.
Except… lately, she did.
Her hand drifted unconsciously to her side—low ribs, left flank—where the scar still curved like a seam that hadn’t been sewn quite right. Smooth to the touch, but wrong in the deeper way. The kind of wrong that tugged when the weather changed. That hummed faintly when she walked past a particularly high-security ward. That pulsed, sometimes, when she dreamed.
Ten potions. That’s what Pomfrey had prescribed.
Ten little vials lined up like soldiers at her bedside. Each with a wax-sealed label and a taste that could strip varnish off an oak floor. She’d choked them down every morning for two months with her teeth clenched, because even post-trauma protocol at Hogwarts came with a timetable. Pain, trauma, survival—all very neat, if you wrote it down properly.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” Pomfrey had said, bustling between patients with her usual no-nonsense briskness.
Hermione had nodded, polite and hollow.
Alive, she’d thought. Yes. Thank goodness.
The scorn settled in now, thick and unpleasant.
Because maybe Pomfrey had missed something. Maybe everyone had. Maybe surviving wasn’t the victory it was cracked up to be—because what was a witch without magic?
She blinked once, slow.
And then it came—unbidden, uninvited—the memory folding over her like wet silk, sudden and suffocating.
The Department of Mysteries. Marble black as grief. A silence too wide for any room.
They’d been running—her trainers smacking stone, heart pounding a tempo of dread. Harry had shouted something. Luna was bleeding. And then Dolohov appeared from the shadows, wand raised, face slick with sweat and the twisted satisfaction of a man who’d waited a long time to hurt someone clever.
The curse was silent. No name, no warning.
Just a slashing arc of violet, fast and violent, aimed too high to be lethal, too low to miss.
And then—
Heat. Not fire—worse. It was like her blood had tried to boil and freeze in the same instant. Her lungs seized. Her side burst open in white-hot agony, a tearing sensation so sharp she thought she’d split in half. She crumpled before she could scream, her wand skidding uselessly from her grip.
Everything blurred at the edges. The room spiralled. There were sounds—distant shouts, running feet—but they felt far away, like voices underwater.
The floor was cold. Her hand twitched toward her wand. She couldn’t breathe properly. There was this unbearable weight in her chest—tight and unrelenting—and something wet dripping from her ribs to the stone beneath her.
Not blood. Magic.
It was her magic. She felt it. Fleeing.
No one had believed her when she’d tried to explain that part later. Pomfrey had called it shock. Kingsley had nodded gravely. Harry had squeezed her hand, and Ron had said it didn’t matter, she was still the brightest witch they knew.
But she knew. She’d felt it—the drag, the pull, the wrongness. Not just pain. Extraction. Something had been taken.
It hadn’t felt like an injury.
It had felt like theft.
The present crept back in—slow and sour.
Hermione sat still, the candle flickering beside her, the notes spread out like battlefield wreckage. Her side ached, phantom-deep. She shifted her hips in the creaky chair and pressed her hand over the old scar, fingers splayed like she could hold it in. Like she could stop it, whatever it was, from draining her further.
Pomfrey had said she was lucky.
Lucky.
Hermione laughed—once, low and bitter.
Then she did what she always did when the fear started whispering: she got to work.
Charms encyclopaedias, medical grimoires, cursebreaker logs, and one particularly suspect tome bound in something that looked disturbingly like snake skin.
She rolled her sleeves back. Ink-smudged forearms, hair pinned in a haphazard twist, one curl dangling stubbornly against her temple. She didn’t tuck it away. She needed it—something human, soft, to anchor her while the rest of her spiralled into the increasingly unavoidable conclusion:
She was losing her magic.
Not rapidly. Not cleanly. But insidiously. Like a leak in a pipe hidden behind plaster—too slow to notice, too late once the damage had bloomed black across the walls.
She ran her fingers down the open page of Subversive Spellcraft: A Comprehensive Study of Cursed Siphoning, skimming the margins she’d already filled in tiny, spidery script.
Not consistent with hex damage. Hexes burn. This… seeps.
Overuse fatigue ruled out. See wand logs, last 60 days—output steady, no fluctuation until Week 3 post-New Year.
Magical imbalance—no core dissonance detected. (Repeated at three different times of day. Same results.)
Possible bloodline-targeted curse? Voldemortian in origin?
That last one made her pause. She tapped her quill against the margin, leaving a trail of ink dots like Morse code. Voldemort hadn’t designed spells to win battles. He’d designed them to leave messages. And Dolohov… Dolohov had been one of his pet projects, hadn’t he? A man who didn’t just kill but liked to make it memorable. The kind of Death Eater who used a blade when a wand would have sufficed—just to watch someone bleed.
She stood and crossed to the bookcase behind her desk, dragging down a file folder labelled Restricted Magical Detainees – Ministry Oversight Copy. The parchment crackled with classification charms as she opened it.
A thick dossier of faces stared back at her. Grainy black-and-white moving photographs of those who had survived the end of the war long enough to be tried. Some looked haunted. Some defiant. Some, like Mulciber, leered even in two dimensions.
She flipped past names.
Rookwood. Thicknesse. Travers.
Dolohov—page missing. Right. Suicide. He’d slit his wrists the morning after sentencing, right there in the holding cell. The Auror assigned to the watch had been suspended for a month. The internal memo had tried to call it “regrettable.” Hermione remembered reading it with a strange, silent calm.
She’d added extra sugar to her tea that morning.
Let the bastard rot in whatever circle of hell housed men who carved curses into girls and smiled about it.
Her fingers stilled on the next name.
Lucius Abraxas Malfoy.
Even the ink on his profile seemed expensive. Darker. Cleaner. The photo showed him sitting stiff-backed in the Ministry holding cell, shoulders squared, expression remote. Pale hair slicked back like armour, the same hauteur in every line of his posture. He didn’t blink. Didn’t move. Just stared out from the page like he was observing her in return.
Notorious. Imprisoned. Dangerous.
She lingered on the text.
Sentence: 25 years. Eligible for parole review post-Year Ten. Status: Incarcerated, Azkaban North Wing. Class-A Magical Threat.
Primary charges: aiding and abetting Dark Lord activity, curse experimentation on civilians, smuggling of restricted magical artefacts. Secondary charges: bribery, obstruction, coercive magic use on Ministry personnel.
Intelligence Note: Known for spellcraft experimentation and ritual theory. Particularly active 1995–1996 in developing curse modifications for Dark Lord inner circle. Work believed to have supported field applications of siphoning hexes, among others.
Her hand tightened on the edge of the folder.
Of course. Of course it had been him. Or someone working from his notes. The elegance of it—the subtlety. Not a dramatic withering curse. Not something flashy or traceable. Just... quiet unravelling. The kind of thing only an elitist sociopath with a god complex would consider a success.
She snapped the file shut.
The candle beside her guttered, flame sputtering once before choking out.
She didn’t relight it.
The flat plunged into shadows—half-light from the window, soft with the gold haze of early evening, just enough to outline her silhouette against the bookshelf. A faint breeze slipped through the window crack, rustling the pages like a sigh.
Hermione stood there for a moment, unmoving.
Lucius Malfoy.
Her jaw worked, tight.
She had spent her entire adult life becoming the authority. The fixer. The witch who walked out of firestorms with three plans and a spare. She didn’t lose control. She didn’t beg. She didn’t need.
And yet—
Here she was. Depleted. Magic slipping through her fingers like dust. Running out of options.
You’re the brightest witch of your age, they said.
So why was she standing in the dim, half-warm hush of her own flat, contemplating walking into Azkaban to ask Lucius bloody Malfoy for help?
Her lips curved. Not a smile. Something colder. A tilt of the mouth that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
–––
Hermione had never cared for boats.
She’d once attributed that to a childhood seasickness incident involving a swan-shaped paddleboat and her father’s tragically misguided enthusiasm for “nautical bonding.” But now, skimming across a slate-grey sea in a Ministry-run vessel carved from blackened driftwood, she suspected the real reason was simpler.
Boats, especially this kind, were designed to make you feel small.
The water stretched out endlessly, dark and oil-slicked, its surface rippling in ways that suggested more than mere current beneath. Azkaban rose from it like a wound in the world. No beauty, no grace—just a sheer cliff of stone cradling a fortress that looked grown rather than built, as if it had clawed its way from the rock of its own volition and then refused to die.
The prison clung to the edge of the island like a curse.
Salt air leaked through the boat’s seams in slow, sickly wafts. It clung to her lips, metallic and dry, like old blood and rust. The water looked black, but occasionally light would catch on something far below—something too smooth, too symmetrical to be natural. Bones, she thought. Or teeth.
The boat didn’t rock. It didn’t need to. It simply cut forward, straight and silent, propelled not by wind or wave, but the hum of ancient Ministry magic—deep, stabilised, regulated by enchantments designed to make escape not just unlikely, but existentially impossible.
Hermione wrapped her cloak tighter and glanced over the edge.
A part of her had expected the old Azkaban to have died with the war—the howling tower of misery, the Dementor-choked hell Kingsley had sworn would never exist again. And in a way, it had.
But the bones remained.
Warden Cassel met her at the dock.
“Granger,” he said, offering her a gloved hand and a sardonic smile. “Can’t say I expected you. Not unless someone’s rewriting the regulations on conjugal visits.”
She gave him a flat look, stepping off the boat with the grace of someone almost used to magically-induced vertigo.
“Not today,” she replied. “And not with anyone here.”
Cassel chuckled. “Pity. Malfoy might have cried from sheer shock.”
He turned, leading her up the stone incline that wrapped around the outer fortress wall. She followed, boots crunching against the gravel path. The wind here didn’t howl—it pressed. Heavy. Saturated with the sound of distant waves and something darker beneath it: a low thrumming, like a spell cast too deep into the ground and left to rot.
The entrance to the main prison was a thick iron door, blackened and warded, sunken into the cliff like a secret that refused to be buried. As they approached, Cassel placed his palm against a glowing rune—standard magical access protocol—and the door groaned open with the wheeze of something old and reluctant.
The wards hit her first.
Not pain, exactly. But a queasy, metallic pressure that coiled low in her belly and dragged upward. Magic suppression wasn’t brute-force anymore—not since the reforms. It was subtler now. Humane, as Kingsley had insisted. But it still worked. Her wand, tucked beneath her coat, throbbed faintly against her ribcage like it, too, was holding its breath.
“Feels like nausea,” she murmured, following Cassel inside.
“Good,” he said. “Means it’s working.”
The interior corridors were dimly lit, enchantments pulsing beneath the stone like veins. No torches, no Dementors. The last of those had been exiled years ago—chased out to the Northern Wastes where nothing living dared follow. Azkaban was sterile now. Clinical. Almost peaceful in its chill brutality.
“It’s cleaner than I expected,” Hermione said as they turned a corner.
Cassel snorted. “You should’ve seen it before the renovations. There were cells with blood still in the cracks from the first war. Some of them smelled like...” He trailed off, then grinned. “Well. You’d have appreciated the archival value.”
“Delightful,” she said drily.
They passed a pair of guards—both young, both armoured in lightweight enchanted leather, not the dragonhide of old. One nodded to her. The other looked curious, too curious.
“Word’ll get around fast,” Cassel murmured, catching the glance. “We don’t get your sort here. And Malfoy hasn’t had a visitor in… what, eleven months?”
Hermione didn’t answer.
Cassel slowed as they reached a narrower corridor. No windows here—just stone walls, heavy doors, silence pressed into the mortar like a second enchantment.
“North Wing. High-risk, but stable. No physical restraints unless they misbehave.” He keyed another rune at the wall. “The interview room is warded, and yes—very secure.”
“I wasn’t worried.”
He gave her a look. “You should be.”
Hermione folded her arms.
Cassel leaned in, lowering his voice. “Word of advice? Don’t think he’s broken. Some of them go quiet in here. That doesn’t mean harmless.”
Hermione raised a brow. “Neither am I.”
Cassel studied her for a moment longer, then inclined his head.
“All right, Granger. You’ve got twenty minutes. Unmonitored, per your request. Press the wall sigil if you need extraction.”
He stepped aside.
And Hermione, despite every reasonable instinct and the very specific chill in her bones, walked through the reinforced door—toward the man who might be the last person in the world who could help her.
The room was not large. Rectangular, functional, windowless. One wall bore the faint shimmer of a two-way scrying charm, layered with sound-baffling runes. There were no shackles, no iron bars. Just a single heavy table—iron, if she wasn’t mistaken—and two chairs with shoddy upholstery, a clear half-hearted attempt at comfort. The torchlight overhead was warm, almost soft, as though someone had decided harshness was no longer fashionable.
And yet, despite the Ministry’s attempts to humanise this place, the air still felt... sterilised. Not clean, but emptied. Like something had been hollowed out and never quite filled again.
Lucius Malfoy sat at the far side of the table, perfectly still.
He did not rise.
Of course he didn’t.
He simply looked at her—assessing, unreadable, composed in a way that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with inherited poise. His long fingers were folded over one another, elbows resting lightly on the tabletop as though it were a private salon rather than a penitentiary. His hair was pulled back at the nape with a dull grey tie—cheap, Ministry-issue—but still sleek, still blindingly white. The robes were Azkaban standard, the fabric plain and undyed, but he wore them like tailored wool. Crisp at the collar. Smooth at the sleeves. Not a wrinkle in sight.
A man in exile, perhaps—but not in disgrace.
“Miss Granger,” he said, voice smooth as ever. Polished marble, just beginning to chill. “How very… unexpected.”
Hermione closed the door behind her. It thudded with a deep, deliberate finality.
“Malfoy.”
She kept her tone clipped. Businesslike. Neutral. Not quite rude, but close enough to dissuade any attempts at civility. She crossed the room without invitation and took the seat opposite him, placing her hands on the table. Her fingers left the faintest print in the cold iron surface.
He didn’t blink.
“I must admit,” he drawled, “when Warden Cassel informed me I had a visitor, I assumed it would be some bureaucrat with an agenda. Not the Golden Girl herself. What an honour.”
She bit back the urge to roll her eyes. No good would come of giving him the satisfaction.
Instead, she reached into her satchel and withdrew a file. Thin. Tidy. It landed on the table with a soft slap of parchment and metal fasteners. Lucius glanced at it, then back at her.
“So,” he said, tone shifting minutely—slipping from indulgent to alert, “what does the brightest witch of her age want from me?”
She looked him dead in the eye.
“There’s a curse,” she said. “Residual. Unstable. Buried under layers of shielding and ritual weave.”
“And you think I invented it?”
“I think you know who did.”
He smiled—not widely, but with that particular Malfoy curl, all implication and teeth.
“I’m listening.”
She gave him the symptoms first. Flat, clinical. No embellishments. The misfires. The fatigue. The wand responsiveness. Her magical output stats. His face remained impassive, but she watched the way his eyes flickered—not with concern, no, but calculation. He was charting her like an Arithmantic equation. A puzzle, not a person.
When she mentioned Dolohov, his smile sharpened.
“Ah,” he murmured. “Antonin.”
The name curled on his tongue like wine.
Hermione sat very still.
Lucius leaned back slightly, fingers tapping once against the table’s edge. “That explains the pomp of it. He never could resist a bit of flourish when he borrowed something of mine.”
Hermione’s heart thudded once—hard, then faster.
“You’re saying this was your work?”
“Not exactly.” He angled his head. “The spell itself was designed under the Dark Lord’s direction, but Antonin... well, he added his own texture. I’d almost be flattered if it weren’t such a crude application.”
She stared at him.
“It’s eating me,” she said quietly.
“Yes.” He nodded once, with the detached gravity of a man commenting on a weather report. “That’s the intention.”
Hermione inhaled slowly.
He continued, almost academically. “The curse was developed in the early days of his return. Experimental siphoning—subtle, layered, resistant to common detection. The spell doesn’t attack your magic directly. It corrupts the connection between wand and core. Undoes you from the inside. Not quickly. That would be too merciful.”
“And it was meant for Muggle-borns?”
“Of course.” He smiled again, all polish, no apology. “Consider it a long, slow… correction.”
The words dropped like stones.
Hermione looked down at her hands, watched her own knuckles whiten. The scar on her side gave a faint, traitorous throb.
Across from her, Lucius seemed almost serene.
“You look well,” she said suddenly—because it struck her, absurdly, through the cold rising in her throat.
“I am.” His gaze flicked toward the wall, briefly. “The new regime prefers reform to rot. They’ve traded Dementors for discipline. I have a schedule. Literature. Assigned coursework.” He smiled faintly. “They’re making me study Muggle sociology. It’s either sadism or comedy—I haven’t decided.”
“You sound bored.”
“I am bored.”
His eyes locked with hers again—silver, unblinking.
She let the silence stretch, the torches crackling softly above them. The stone beneath her boots radiated chill, but the room itself was too warm, like the Ministry feared even a single draft might remind its inmates of punishment.
Azkaban had changed. She’d known that, intellectually. But seeing it—like this—was something else.
Lucius Malfoy did not look like a prisoner.
He looked like a man momentarily inconvenienced.
Finally, she said, “And you think you deserve otherwise.”
“No,” he said, and for the first time his tone shifted—just a touch. “I think I deserve curiosity.”
Hermione sat back, crossing her arms.
“This curse,” she said slowly, “is unravelling me. I’ve tried everything. Every book, every specialist. Even the Unspeakables couldn’t isolate it. I didn’t come here to barter pleasantries. I came because you're the only one left who understands it.”
He didn’t respond.
Instead, Lucius studied her. Not the way a man looked at a woman—but the way a man might regard an artefact of ancient design: worn down, but valuable. Dangerous, in the right context.
“I thought you’d be older,” he said after a moment.
Hermione blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Older. Harder. More like the woman the press made you into.” His eyes dropped, once, briefly—just enough to register her jawline, her fingers, the slope of her neck. “You’re still soft around the edges. Despite it all.”
She held his gaze, fury steadying her spine.
“You have no idea what I’ve become.”
Lucius leaned in then, ever so slightly, the motion impossibly elegant.
“Oh,” he said, voice velveted and precise, “I think I do.”
The silence after that buzzed.
Hermione swallowed. “So. Do you know the counter-curse?”
His expression shifted, almost imperceptibly. The flicker of something withheld. Deliberation, perhaps. Or delight.
“That,” Lucius said, “depends.”
“On what?”
He sat back, neatly folding his hands again.
“On what you’re willing to pay.”
Hermione did not flinch.
Not visibly.
Internally, though—well. Her spine had gone stiff, and her stomach had that unfortunate tight, swooping sensation she usually associated with broomsticks and the smell of antiseptic.
“I’m not here to negotiate,” she said evenly.
Lucius didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. Just looked at her in that way he had—languid, composed, as though she were a particularly intriguing riddle he intended to solve at leisure.
“No,” he said, almost gently. “You’re here because you’re running out of time. And options.”
Hermione inhaled through her nose. Controlled. Steady.
“The Ministry authorised a deal.”
That caught his attention. His expression didn’t change, but she saw the stillness sharpen. A kind of alertness—silent and pointed, like a blade pressing just beneath the fabric of conversation.
“I’m listening,” he said.
She reached into the file, withdrew a folded parchment with the Ministry seal pressed into the corner. Thick, official, already beginning to curl at the edges from the damp of Azkaban’s air.
“You’re currently eligible for parole review in your tenth year. This agreement shifts that forward significantly—two year probation beginning December 31st. If the terms of magical aid and cooperation are fulfilled to the satisfaction of the Ministry.”
Lucius looked at the paper, then back at her.
“You arranged this.”
It wasn’t a question.
Hermione’s mouth flattened into something that wanted to be a smile and failed. “You’re not the only one with connections.”
“I see.” He laced his fingers together, slow and deliberate. “So the Ministry’s little miracle witch is willing to bend the rules. How very… Slytherin of you.”
“I’m willing to do what’s necessary.”
A pause.
Then: “You came alone.”
Hermione narrowed her eyes. “Would you have spoken to anyone else?”
Lucius smiled, and it was pure theatre—just enough teeth to make her pulse tick faster, even as her fists curled against her thighs beneath the table.
“No,” he said. “But I do find it interesting. That you’d rather risk facing me, alone, in a place like this, than trust anyone else with what’s happening to you.”
“I don’t trust anyone else to understand it.”
He leaned forward. Not much—just enough that the air between them tightened. Enough that the flickering torchlight caught in the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, and for a moment she saw just how tired he wasn’t.
“And you trust me?”
“I don’t trust you. I’m using you.”
Lucius laughed softly. “At least you’re honest. That’s rare, these days.”
Hermione stood her ground. Even though her throat was dry. Even though the scar beneath her ribs had begun its dull, familiar ache. Even though Lucius Malfoy’s voice was doing that thing again—sinking under her skin, low and unhurried, like a velvet rope slowly winding around her wrists.
“You’ll help,” she said. “If you want out. That’s the deal.”
He nodded once. Acknowledging. Not agreeing.
“I’m sure it is.”
Hermione narrowed her gaze. “Don’t play coy. You said the curse came from your research. That Dolohov used your notes.”
“I said it resembled my work,” he replied, adjusting the fold of his sleeve with maddening composure. “But spells of this nature are like potions—temperamental, corrupted through variation. Each caster leaves a mark.”
“You recognised it.”
“Of course I did. Do you think I forget what I’ve made?”
He said it like it meant nothing. Like memory was a filing cabinet he could open and close at will, regardless of what spilled out.
Hermione’s voice dropped. “So do you know the counter-curse?”
Lucius looked at her for a long moment. And then, deliberately, leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking faintly beneath him.
“I might.”
She bristled. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting—today.”
Her jaw clenched.
Lucius tilted his head slightly, studying her. “You want absolutes. Control. That’s always been your problem, hasn’t it?”
“My problem is my magic is dying by degrees.”
“And you hate that it’s slow. That you can’t outwork it. That it doesn’t care how clever you are.”
She said nothing.
He leaned forward again, just enough that she caught the faintest scent of something she couldn’t name—sterile stone, ink, and something older. Something that might have once been cedarwood, stripped down to its bare essence by time and penitence.
“I might remember more,” he said softly. “With encouragement.”
Hermione's spine went rigid.
“You’re joking.”
“I never joke,” Lucius murmured. “I find it cheapens the mood.”
“You’re making this transactional.”
“It already is transactional,” he said, voice like crushed silk. “You’ve offered freedom. I’ve offered nothing. And yet you’re still sitting there, hoping I’ll give you what you need. That’s not negotiation, Miss Granger. That’s supplication.”
The word stung.
Hermione swallowed, heat rising, and fixed him with a look that might have scalded weaker men.
“I won’t beg.”
Lucius’s eyes glinted, all cool hunger. “Not yet.”
She stood. Not abruptly—but with control. Measured, spine straight, fingers carefully lifting the parchment back into her file. If she stayed, she wasn’t sure what she’d do—hex him, scream at him, or shatter into something less than herself.
“I’ll return tomorrow,” she said. “If you decide to be useful.”
Lucius smiled again, wider this time.
“If you want what’s in my head, I’m afraid you’ll have to offer more than what’s in your file.”
She stared at him.
“You’re unwell.”
“And you’re desperate,” he said smoothly.
Hermione turned before she could respond. The stone beneath her boots suddenly felt louder than before, every step ringing with restraint.
She couldn’t reply. Refused to dignify it.
The reinforced door hissed open beneath her hand. She stepped into the corridor like it might collapse behind her. The hallway air felt colder than before. Clearer. She could hear her own heartbeat again, thudding in her ears.
Cassel gave her a look as she passed.
“Well?”
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said tightly. “Same time.”
Cassel raised a brow.
–––
Lucius Malfoy did not fidget.
He adjusted. He arranged. He curated.
The interview table had already been wiped with the corner of his sleeve—twice, in fact, once horizontally and again on the diagonal. The single chipped teacup at his elbow was almost entirely ceremonial—lukewarm, steeped for too long—but he allowed the aroma to linger. Bergamot, a commissary gift from Draco. Sharp, faintly bitter. Like her.
He’d left his coursework out on purpose. A text on Muggle cultural institutions—flimsy binding, thinner logic. But he suspected the Ministry rather enjoyed assigning irony. That, or someone in Corrections was still salty about a twenty-year-old bribe Lucius had long since forgotten.
The room itself was unchanged—sterile and angular, with that faint metallic tang of defensive wards clinging to the stone. But he’d long ago learned that in captivity, the trick was to make anything—everything—yours. Even the waiting.
Which he did now.
Waiting for her.
He could feel it—an anticipatory hum beneath his skin, just this side of hunger. Not carnal, not yet. Something older. Like the ghost of an appetite. The echo of his old power, long since diluted but never entirely spent. Once, he could silence a Ministry subcommittee with a lift of his brow. Now—he curled a hand around the rim of his teacup—he commanded different reactions. Not from Wizengamot chambers. But from her.
And there it was.
The latch thunked. That iron shiver in the stone. She was coming.
Lucius stood.
Of course he stood.
Let her notice. Let her wonder if it was gallantry or condescension. Let her misread it, entirely.
The door opened.
Hermione Granger stepped into the room as if she expected it to bite her.
Hair pinned back with military efficiency, wand tucked out of sight but never far. She wore her caution like perfume—dense, ever-present, a touch bitter at the root. Her eyes swept the room, landed on the coursework first (a flicker of surprise—he noted it), then the teacup, then him.
“You’ve redecorated,” she said dryly.
He let his mouth curl, just enough. “One does what one can.”
She didn’t sit right away. He watched her take in the corners, the shimmer of the scrying ward, the faint indent in the chair opposite his—where the upholstery still held the ghost of her shape from yesterday.
Eventually, she sat.
Lucius resumed his seat only after she’d crossed her legs. Left over right. Deliberate.
“So,” she said. “Shall we begin?”
He lifted his teacup, took a sip, winced slightly. Cold. Shame.
“I do believe,” he said, setting it aside, “you’ve forgotten something.”
Her brow arched. “I don’t think so.”
“You’re here for my insight. My memory. My unique expertise.” He folded his hands, let them rest lightly on the coursework. “And as I recall, I’ve agreed to share that insight… conditionally.”
She went very still.
Lucius nearly sighed from the pleasure of it.
“The curse,” he said mildly, “is not a footnote. Nor is the counter-ritual. It’s proprietary work. Restricted knowledge, you might say.”
Her lips parted—just slightly. Fury, or breath, or both.
“I know you want something,” she said. “Name it.”
That was the best part. That flicker in her spine—rage trying to camouflage as restraint. The muscles in her neck coiled tight. Her wand hand twitched on the armrest, infinitesimally. She hated him. She needed him.
Lucius leaned in.
“For today,” he said, “you will end each sentence—each question, each remark—with a single word.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And that word is?”
He let the pause hang. One breath. Two.
“Master,” he said, softly.
There it was.
Revulsion. Ice-clear and instant. She blinked once, slow, as if someone had slipped a drop of acid behind her eyes. The silence that followed was not empty—it thrummed, thick with everything unspoken.
He watched her. Carefully. This was the point, after all.
Not to humiliate her—not exactly.
But to measure her. Pressure her. Map the perimeter of what she would endure.
Because Lucius Malfoy had spent a lifetime commanding rooms. And now, in this empty room with its sad little chair and Ministry-approved tea, the world had shrunk to one exquisite stage: her.
If she said it—if she chose to say it—then the leash was real. Not political. Not academic. Personal.
She inhaled sharply. “This is childish.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “You want the antidote? I want amusement.”
“You want control.”
He smiled with teeth this time. “And you knew that when you returned. So what will it be?”
Another beat of silence.
Hermione’s spine was iron, but her eyes betrayed her. Not fear—strategy. She was calculating. Running odds in her head. Wondering if the information was worth it. Wondering how much she could tolerate before she shattered.
Lucius let her do the arithmetic.
Let her stew in it.
“I’ll give you your answer,” he said, picking up a quill—slow, deliberate, purely for effect. “But I won’t say another word until you agree to my terms.”
She stood suddenly. Her chair scraped back, too sharp. She paced once—two steps—then turned. Fire behind her eyes. Fury in the twist of her mouth.
And still—
“I agree,” she said.
Lucius raised a brow.
Her hands balled into fists. She swallowed hard. Then—through gritted teeth—
“I’ll speak. As you asked. Master.”
A thrill so sharp it was almost giddy sliced through him.
Lucius didn’t respond right away. He let the word echo. Savoured it. Rolled it in his mind like the first sip of something expensive and illicit. It had sounded as sour in her mouth as he’d hoped—tight, bitten off, like a slur she’d been forced to memorise phonetically. She returned to the chair like it was an anchor—something to hold her steady before she unravelled. Her spine stayed rigid, knuckles pale against the arms, but her eyes refused to meet his.
Lovely.
“How quickly you adapt,” he said lightly. “I thought I’d have to sweeten the deal.”
She lifted her chin, jaw clenched. “Just tell me what you know, master.”
It wasn’t easier the second time. If anything, she said it sharper—like it hurt more now that it was real.
Lucius steepled his fingers. “Mm. And here I thought you were meant to be clever. That sounded awfully close to a demand.”
Her nostrils flared. “You said—”
“I said I might remember. With a bit of encouragement. I didn’t say you were in charge.”
A pause. Her chest rose, slow and shallow. He saw the war flicker behind her eyes—her need, her fury, her calculation. She’d hate herself more for begging, so she would simply obey. For now.
“What would you have me say, then?” she bit out. Then, as a bitter afterthought, “Master.”
He smiled. “Let’s start with something simple. Ask me how my morning was.”
She blinked. “You’re joking—”
He cocked his head. “Try again. Properly.”
Her tongue pressed against the inside of her cheek. Her voice was flat when it came, dead as Ministry parchment.
“How was your morning… master?”
“Better now.” He smiled, slow and self-satisfied. “Did you bring me anything?”
“You’re not allowed outside packages. Master.”
“Such a shame. I have so many cravings.” He leaned back.
Hermione stared at him like she’d gladly set him on fire if her wand weren’t under Ministry wards.
“I don’t have time for games, master.”
“And I have nothing but time.”
He let the moment stretch. She wouldn’t break—not yet. But she would bend. And bending was far more interesting. The breaking would come later. With mess. With skin. With heat.
Lucius let one hand drift lazily along the tabletop, drawing small, deliberate circles with the tip of one finger. The tension was delicious—silent, charged, coiled like a drawn wand not yet fired.
Finally, he said, “You want the information.”
“Yes,” she hissed.
“Yes…?”
Her teeth ground. “Yes, master.”
“Good girl.”
Hermione’s breath hitched—barely. Barely.
He let that one land, watched it ripple through her. Her shoulders went stiff again. Her mouth pressed flat. Her thighs—
—he didn’t look. Not yet.
“I’ll give you the first thread,” he murmured, voice low and rich. “Not enough to fix it. Not yet. But enough to keep the rot at bay. Think of it as… triage.”
Her gaze was scalding. “Why not give me everything at once? Master.”
There was more heat in it now. Not lust. Not yet. But something raw. Bitter. Breathing hard beneath the surface.
Lucius’s smile turned slow, like dusk spilling through a crack in the glass.
“Because I’m bored,” he said plainly. “And December is a very long way off.”
Hermione blinked.
He went on, voice soft but certain. “You see, Miss Granger… I’ve been left to rot in this place while the world decides whether I’m still worth fearing. And I’m not particularly inclined to be generous just because a clever little Gryffindor batted her lashes and waved a parole form in my face.”
“I didn’t—”
“Hush.”
He said it gently. Like a man correcting a pet. Her mouth snapped shut with an audible click.
Lucius tilted his head. “I could give you the whole cure today. I could rattle it off, piece by piece. Efficient. Clinical. Merciful.”
His eyes darkened—just slightly. Just enough.
“But I don’t want to get to the fun part too fast.”
Something in her expression faltered—curiosity, maybe. Or dread. It didn’t matter.
She didn’t know what the fun part was yet. But he did.
And oh, he intended to take his time getting there.
Lucius reached for the coursework beside him, flipped the cover closed with a tidy snap.
Then, without lifting his gaze, he said casually, “Tell me what you’re wearing.”
Hermione blinked. “Excuse me?”
He looked up. “You heard me, Miss Granger. I asked you to describe what you’re wearing. And, of course, you’ll end each sentence appropriately.”
Her voice was flat. “You can see what I’m wearing, master.”
His tone didn’t shift, but his gaze sharpened—like a chisel to the weak point of a fault line. “I didn’t ask what I could see. I asked you to tell me.”
She glared at him. “This is ridiculous.”
“Address me correctly or this ends now,” he said, nodding agreeably. “Be a good girl for me.”
Her nostrils flared. She shifted in the chair. For a moment, he thought she might get up and leave. But then—
She exhaled, and her voice came out stiff and clipped.
“A black wool coat. Mid-thigh. Double-breasted. Master.”
“Mmm.” He rested his chin against his knuckles. “And beneath that?”
A beat. Two.
She stared at the wall just above his head when she spoke again.
“A blue jumper. Fine-knit. Master.”
He let the silence stretch, not interrupting. Waiting.
Her jaw twitched.
“Grey skirt. Wool blend. Knee-length. Tights. Master.”
He arched one brow. “Shoes?”
“Boots,” she ground out. “Black leather. Low heel. Master.”
“Very proper.” Lucius folded his hands, nodding as if she’d just listed the contents of a spellkit. “And under the tights?”
She didn’t answer.
Lucius smiled. “Ah. There it is.”
Her eyes flicked to his again, and for the first time, there was heat behind the fury. Humiliation curling around the edges of her control.
He savoured it. “You wore knickers today, I assume. I do hope so. I'd hate to think you came to see me bare.”
She swallowed once, visibly.
“Well?” he prompted, silk-wrapped steel. “Let’s not lose our manners now.”
“Plain cotton. White. Master.”
Lucius tutted. “Disappointing. I expected more from you. Lace, perhaps. A little satin. But then—” He let his gaze travel, slow and deliberate, not quite reaching her thighs, but suggesting he might. “You were never one for frills, were you?”
Her silence was perfect. Brittle and crackling with rage.
“Mm.” Lucius studied her, thoughtful. “Tell me… what do you imagine I do, once this meeting ends?”
She said nothing.
He waited.
She shook her head once. “I don’t know, master.” The word slipped out quicker now, less barbed—like she’d forgotten to coat it in scorn.
Lucius let the silence stretch—just long enough to make her regret filling it.
“No?” he said softly. “Shall I tell you, then?”
Her throat bobbed once. She didn’t answer.
He took that as permission.
“I return to my cell,” he began, tone almost lazy, like he was recounting the steps to a familiar ritual. “I remove my robe. Fold it, of course—some of us still have standards.”
Her gaze flicked to the wall.
“Then I sit,” he continued. “In my chair by the window. The one with the torn cushion and the view of nothing.”
Hermione didn’t move. Not a breath wasted.
Lucius leaned forward slightly, as if sharing a secret.
“I take out the thought of you,” he said, voice low. “Of your voice. Of your clever little mouth around that sweet, submissive word. And I let that memory settle. I close my eyes.”
Her cheeks pinked, slow and unmistakable. She didn’t look at him.
He let that hang for a moment, then murmured: “Do you want to know what happens next?”
“No, master.”
“Oh, but you do.” He smiled. “I unfasten my trousers. Not quickly. There’s no need to rush. The image of you—rigid in that chair, trying not to flinch—is more than enough.”
She shifted. Barely. But he saw it.
“I stroke myself. Slow. Steady. Just enough pressure to match your voice when it shakes. I think about your mouth forming the word like it disgusts you. I imagine what your thighs must look like when you clench them beneath the table.”
Hermione’s ears had gone red now. She still didn’t meet his gaze.
Lucius tilted his head.
“Do you like that image?” he asked.
“No, master.”
He smirked. “Liar.”
She flushed deeper.
“I picture the set of your mouth when you’re trying not to react,” he went on, voice smooth, measured. “The way your lip twitches just before you force yourself to obey. I imagine what it would feel like to have you kneeling in front of me—not because I asked, but because you offered.”
Her breath stuttered once—quiet but not silent.
“Do you like that?” he murmured again.
“No, master.”
“Mmm.” He sat back, expression satisfied. “I finish, of course. That part’s inevitable. But I await the moment when I remember you’ll be back. That there’s more to come. That you haven’t broken yet.”
Her eyes finally found his—but only for a second. Just long enough for him to see the fury. The shame.
The interest.
He smoothed the line of his sleeve and lifted the coursework again, as if nothing had happened.
“Ask your question, Miss Granger.”
She licked her lips, furious, flustered, beautifully undone at the edges.
And when she finally spoke, her voice was low. Begrudging. Careful.
“What… is the first component of the reversal ritual, master?”
Lucius smiled.
Now they were getting somewhere.
Lucius allowed himself a small, private satisfaction—a blink-slow smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. She was exquisite like this. Rigid spine, a flush blooming in the delicate notch of her throat, hands clenched into scholarly fists against her own thighs. Not broken—just taut enough to sing when plucked.
He could feel her resentment like heat. But it was laced now with something messier. Something useful.
He let the silence linger, a velvet rope stretched taut between them.
Hermione Granger—still defiant, still rigid in her proper knickers—was waiting for his answer. The real one.
He sipped his tea, now ice cold. Grimaced. Pushed the cup aside with the faintest curl of distaste.
“Very well,” he said at last, fingers steepled, voice the picture of bored civility. “Let’s get on with your education.”
Her eyes flicked to him—sharp, suspicious, glittering with the embers of someone who already regretted asking.
Good.
Lucius leaned back in his chair with deliberate ease.
“The curse,” he said, “draws from your magical core. Not directly. That would be too crude. Too noticeable. No—it threads itself into your conduits, the channels through which your magic flows. The curse lies dormant at first, then activates in stages, gradually unbinding the connections between you and your wand.”
He let the phrasing hang, savouring the way her jaw twitched, just slightly, at unbinding. She hated losing control. Hated it more than she feared pain.
Which made her useful. Which made her dangerous.
“The decay appears as instability,” he went on smoothly, “followed by fatigue. Then misfire. Then collapse. Eventually, the body forgets how to house the magic at all. It dissipates. Permanently.”
He paused. Let her sit with that.
To her credit, she didn’t flinch. Her lips pressed together, bloodless.
Lucius tapped one finger on the table. “There’s a reason the Unspeakables couldn’t isolate it. The curse doesn’t show as a foreign object. It rewrites how your magic sees you. Tells it you’re no longer a suitable host.”
He smiled, slow and thin. “Rather elegant, if I do say so.”
Her hands clenched tighter on her thighs.
Lucius leaned forward again, all crisp precision and theatrical patience. “There is a counter-ritual. Of sorts. But it requires…” A pause, deliberately indulgent. “Preparation.”
Her brows knit, the first sign of open interest edging out her discomfort. “What kind of preparation, master?”
It was clipped. Bitter. And utterly, deliciously obedient.
Lucius resisted the urge to make her say it again. Later, perhaps. He hadn’t yet decided how much of her voice he wanted to own.
“A potion,” he said, as though they were simply revising for an exam. “Rare. Dangerous. Designed to draw out the latent curse channels and temporarily stabilise them. It primes the subject’s magical essence for ritual re-alignment.”
She didn’t speak. Smart girl. She was listening now, properly. Finally.
Lucius slid one hand into the folds of his robe and withdrew a thin slip of parchment. He unfolded it with a flourish, then laid it flat against the table between them.
“Black hellebore root, matured under moonlight. Phoenix feather, powdered—fresh, not processed. And a drop of blood from the afflicted—preferably drawn while the curse is active.”
Hermione’s mouth parted slightly. Her eyes flicked to the parchment, then to his face. “That’s unstable magic layering. Those ingredients—combined—would be volatile at best.”
Lucius was mildly impressed, but not enough to resist raising a brow in mild correction.
“Fucking hell. Master.”
“Exactly. Which is why it must brew for three days. Sealed, stirred every six hours, and protected from direct magical interference. The ritual won’t take otherwise.”
He watched her catalogue the information, that overworked mind of hers already slotting it into neat little boxes, building a grid of understanding she hoped would give her the illusion of control.
He let her have it. For now.
“And,” she said slowly, “this potion—both of us have to take it? Master.”
Lucius nodded once. “The ritual requires mutual magical presence. Shared intention. The potion aligns both core frequencies. Without it, the transfer would kill one or both of us.”
He didn’t mention which scenario he preferred. He let that dangle.
Hermione’s throat worked as she swallowed.
She sat back. Not to relax, but to create space. Space to breathe. Space to recover the illusion of distance.
Then, curtly: “You have the brewing instructions, master?”
Her mouth twisted around the word like it was a rotted fruit. He almost moaned.
Lucius inclined his head. “I do. Though I’m sure you’ll insist on brewing it yourself. Trust issues, I imagine.”
“Wisdom,” she said stiffly. “Master.”
His smile curled. “Call it what you like.”
She stood abruptly, chair scraping back against the stone with a screech of protest. Lucius didn’t move.
He watched her gather her things—file, satchel, those careful fingers twitching slightly as she tucked the parchment away. Her body was vibrating with reined-in tension, but her movements were precise. Even in her rage, she didn’t misstep.
A shame. He’d rather enjoy watching her stumble.
She turned for the door without another word.
Lucius followed her with his eyes—not hungrily, but with a possessive sort of curiosity. Like watching a library close for the evening when one still had questions to ask.
The door opened with a hiss, the runes unlocking.
She paused there, just long enough to register the weight of his gaze on her back.
She didn’t look over her shoulder when she said, “Fuck you.”
Then she walked out.
Lucius remained seated.
He watched the door long after it had closed. The iron slabs whispered shut with the finality of a tomb, but the air she’d disturbed lingered. Her perfume—faintly floral, maddeningly clean—still clung to the edges of the room like an afterthought. Like proof.
He reached for the teacup again, let it hover just beneath his mouth, then set it down untouched.
Three days.
Three more days of coaxing. Of pressure and performance. Of watching her unravel like a scroll in slow motion. He’d waited longer for less.
Lucius brushed a single finger over the lip of the teacup and smiled.
–––
The chair still held the ghost of her shape.
Hermione noticed it immediately—barely a dip in the sad, vinyl padding—but her eye snagged on it as she entered the room. Same interview chamber. Same soft-walled quiet, like a hospital waiting room designed by someone with no taste and less hope. The two chairs. The iron table. The faint shimmer of a scrying charm veined into the far wall.
Everything was the same. Except her.
She’d dreamed of Ron for the first time in ages.
They hadn’t lived together in six months. A slow, civil parting. No fights. No hexed possessions hurled through windows. Just… slow erosion. Two people who wanted to be close, but never seemed to breathe at the same tempo.
And yet, there he’d been in her dream—warm hands, sheepish smile, that same mop of hair she used to card her fingers through in the mornings. Only this time, when she’d said daddy—hesitantly, experimentally—he’d flushed, lowered his voice, and told her to say it again. Louder.
She had.
And then woken to a wet patch between her legs and a very specific kind of humiliation clawing at the back of her throat.
Lucius hadn’t even touched her. Hadn’t done anything but sit there like a smug little sadist with a vocabulary. And yet somehow, her own voice saying master had brought Ron into her bed like a ghost.
Now she was back. Because she needed to be.
Because Lucius Malfoy might be a manipulative, bigoted bastard, but he was also her only hope.
He was already seated when she arrived. Naturally. It was his game, his room, his schedule. Never mind the fact that she was the one with the legal documents and the Ministry clearance. The moment she stepped inside, she was simply... audience.
“Miss Granger,” he said without standing. “You’re punctual.”
She closed the door behind her with care, ignoring the faint damp scent that always seemed to cling to Azkaban’s edges—salt and old stone and something vaguely antiseptic, like the memory of blood washed too many times. She crossed the room, shoulders back, chin high, spine ironed into place. She would not let him sniff out her discomfort. Not today.
“Of course,” she said. “I wouldn’t want to waste your time.”
Lucius tilted his head. “Time is relative in a place like this.”
Hermione sat. Not delicately. Not carelessly either. She placed her satchel on the floor, crossed her legs, and met his gaze with a stare she hoped felt academic.
He watched her like he was mapping her. Not admiring, not assessing. Studying. She’d once heard McGonagall describe him in the Order files as a ‘scholar of discomfort.’ She understood that now.
“You’ve begun the potion, I assume?” he said, folding his hands atop the table like a professor ready to mark a paper he already knew was going to be disappointing.
“Yes,” she said. “Following your proportions to the letter. Hellebore root steeped under the window last night. Blood added this morning—fresh. Stirred anti-clockwise, sealed under a stasis ward. Brewing as we speak.”
She didn’t tell him she’d had to ask someone from Magical Containment to cast the stasis ward for her. That her own magic had fizzled on the final pass, the charm collapsing like wet parchment. That she’d stood there, wand trembling, heart pounding, pretending it was just fatigue.
A faint raise of one pale brow. “How diligent.”
“I like having magic,” she replied flatly. “Call it motivation.”
Lucius smiled faintly. “A shame. I was hoping it might be obedience.”
She didn’t respond. Didn’t rise to it. She just pulled her notes from the satchel and laid them out on the table in a crisp fan of parchment and ink. Clean. Tidy. Rational. All the things she clung to like a lifeline.
“Three days,” he drawled. “Once the potion’s brewed, the next step of the counter-ritual must begin immediately. And you’ll need to be ready.”
“I am ready.”
Lucius didn’t move. Just tipped his head slightly, a glint of amusement in his eyes that made her want to hex the smirk right off his perfectly carved face.
“No,” he said mildly. “You’re prepared. There’s a difference.”
Hermione’s jaw twitched. “Is this going somewhere?”
Lucius sat back, folding his arms like he had all the time in the world—and really, he did. His robe was as pristine as ever. The Azkaban fabric didn’t seem to wrinkle on him. Didn’t dare, more like. Even in captivity, he looked like he belonged to a cleaner, crueler century.
“Yes,” he said. “It is.”
He let the moment breathe. Let the silence stretch its limbs, settle between them like something warm-blooded.
Then—
“I’d like you to tell me about your most recent sex dream.”
Hermione blinked.
For a second, she thought she’d misheard.
She blinked again. “I—sorry—what?”
Lucius’s face didn’t change. “You heard me.”
Her lungs drew in air too fast. It made her chest ache. “I’m not giving more wanking fodder.”
He tilted his head like he was considering that. Then shrugged, graceful as always. “Then we’re done here.”
Just like that.
He stood—not dramatically. Not with flourish. Just smoothed his sleeves, as if she were a mildly disappointing houseguest he was politely preparing to show out.
“You said you wanted access to my knowledge. That comes at a price.”
Hermione’s stomach churned. “I’m already offering you your freedom.”
He turned away, already moving toward the corner of the room where the rune sigil would alert the guards. “No,” he said, half to himself. “The Minister is offering me my freedom. And truly—what are seven more years? I’ve always been quite well-behaved when properly motivated. I’ll make my scheduled parole.”
“Wait.”
Her voice cracked slightly on the edge of the word. Too fast. Too loud. She hated herself for it.
Lucius paused, one long-fingered hand raised toward the wall.
He didn’t turn around. “You’d like to continue, then?”
Silence hung between them like a held breath.
Hermione stared at the table. Her notes. Her hands. The way her fingers trembled ever so slightly, even now.
She swallowed. Spoke to the grain of the iron table, not to him.
“You want to see if I’ll debase myself.”
“Of course I do.”
She looked up, startled by the abrupt honesty.
He was watching her again. Carefully. Curiously. Not mocking her now, but studying her as if her reaction were entertainment he hadn’t yet grown bored of.
She didn’t respond. Wouldn’t give him that. But inside—under the cold press of the room, under the scar that still ached when she cast too hard—Hermione felt it. The splinter of something she hated recognising.
She’s never spoken of that side of herself.
Not to Ginny, even. Certainly not to Harry.
There’d been Viktor, once, long ago. And Ron, of course. A few others. Men who were kind, mostly. Curious. But never enough to make her offer anything. The idea of explaining—what she liked, what she feared, what she wondered about—had always seemed… exhausting. Embarrassing. Pointless.
Sex was... functional. Nice, sometimes. Safe. Or, if not safe, then at least forgettable.
Lucius Malfoy was none of those things.
“Fine,” she said eventually.
It felt like swallowing glass.
Lucius didn’t gloat. Not openly. He just folded his hands and leaned back, like he’d been expecting her surrender all along, and wasn’t particularly impressed by it. He was a man unbothered by resistance—because he knew what always came after it.
Hermione kept her gaze fixed on a notch in the table, sharp and splintered, like a wand tip had cracked against it in frustration. Probably not the first.
“There was a dream,” she said. “Last night.”
Lucius inclined his head. “Naturally.”
She didn’t rise to the bait. Not yet.
“I was with someone. A partner.”
“A partner,” he echoed, mock-thoughtful. “How democratic. One of your little flings from the Department of Magical Creatures, perhaps?”
Hermione’s nostrils flared. “I’m not here to give you names.”
“Then give me details,” he said smoothly, “or we’re done.”
She exhaled through her nose. Sharp. Controlled.
“It started… like these things usually do.” Her voice was clipped, clinical. “Kissing. Touching. Hands on my waist. My thighs. He pulled me into his lap.”
“And how did that feel?” Lucius asked, lightly.
She bit the inside of her cheek. “Hot.”
Lucius hummed. “Go on.”
“His grip tightened,” she said. “Around my hips. I couldn’t move much. Just enough. I liked the pressure.”
“And did he speak?” Lucius asked, voice low. Almost curious. “Or was it just your hips doing the talking?”
Hermione ignored that. She forced the words out.
“I called him something. I didn’t plan to. It just came out.”
Lucius leaned in. “What was it?”
She stared at the wall.
“Daddy,” she said. Quietly. Like an admission, not a label.
Lucius exhaled, slow and delighted. “Well, well.”
She rushed ahead, her voice sharper now—trying to get through it before she lost her nerve.
“He told me to say it again. Louder. I did. And then I said—” She swallowed. “I said I’d been a naughty girl.”
Lucius made a sound low in his throat. It wasn’t quite approval. More like anticipation.
“And then?” he murmured. “What happened next, Miss Granger? Or would you prefer I guess?”
She hated how warm she felt. Her blouse clung under her arms. Her knickers were damp.
“I started begging,” she said. “For more. For him to keep going.”
Lucius tilted his head. “Did you ask nicely?”
Her jaw clenched. “I said—please, daddy. I told him I needed it. That I couldn’t stop.”
“And did you come?”
“No,” she said, voice low. “He wouldn’t let me.”
She could feel Lucius watching her. Peeling her apart.
“You sound embarrassed,” he said.
“I am embarrassed.”
“Because of the name? Or the begging?”
Hermione’s fingers curled into fists in her lap. “Because I liked it.”
She hadn’t meant to say that. Not out loud. It slipped out before she could catch it. And in the silence that followed, she wished she could reel it back in and burn it.
Lucius’s voice was soft. Almost indulgent. “Of course you liked it.”
He sat forward, hands still folded neatly. “You crave structure. Obedience. Rigid frameworks. And when that spills over into the bedroom, well...”
His eyes tracked over her like he could see straight through the fabric, through the skin.
“You’re just begging to be told what to do.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” she said, though it lacked venom.
“Flattery?” Lucius smiled. “Oh no, Miss Granger. That was diagnosis.”
She stood then. Abrupt. Too abrupt. The chair shrieked against the stone. Her knickers clung—tacky, damp—pressed humiliatingly against her cunt.
Lucius didn’t rise.
“You’ve got your answer,” she said tightly.
He tilted his head, mock-innocent. “Have I?”
Her knuckles were white against the table’s edge.
Lucius’s gaze dropped—slow, deliberate—to her thighs. Then back up.
“I think,” he said, with all the smooth cruelty in the world, “you’re wetter now than when you walked in.”
Her spine stiffened.
She was wet. Humiliated. And part of her—furious, aching—wished she were alone in her bedroom, two fingers deep, chasing release just to shut it all up.
Instead, she was here. In Azkaban. Under the smirk of a man who had once watched Muggle torture like they were polo matches.
Lucius sat motionless, except for the faint curl at the edge of his mouth. It wasn’t a smile so much as a victory mark—subtle, smug, and undeserved.
“Well,” he said, voice smooth and sinfully pleased. “That was illuminating.”
She gritted her teeth.
“I suppose,” he went on, “we should get back to the matter of your cure.”
“Finally,” she muttered, voice tight. Her hands itched to be doing something—writing, casting, strangling—anything to burn off the residual heat that was still pulsing behind her knees.
“Proximity,” Lucius said, tone now almost academic, “is crucial. The curse Dolohov used—it clings to magical channels in the skin. Threaded into the body’s field. The counter-ritual must be performed at close range.”
“How close?”
Lucius’s eyes gleamed. “Inches. No more than two. Any farther, and the magic will fail. Snap like a frayed wand core.”
Hermione stared at him. “That’s all?”
He blinked, faintly amused. “That’s everything. For now.”
“For now,” she echoed. “How convenient.”
“You’ve met me before, Miss Granger. You knew the terms when you walked in.”
She hated that he wasn’t wrong. Hated more that her body hadn’t cooled yet. That even now, her knickers still clung, warm and wrong.
Lucius rose with practised grace, like he’d been waiting for the cue. He reached into his robe—inner pocket, deliberately slow—and withdrew a narrow strip of parchment.
He held it between two fingers, then extended it to her like a delicate thing she’d dropped.
Hermione took it, careful not to brush his skin.
“Preparation instructions,” he said. “The potion’s next stage requires your blood again. Sleep well tonight.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Anything else?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
She should have turned. She should have left.
But instead, she stood still—watching him watch her.
“When you return,” he said, his voice rich and unhurried, “wear something that reminds me why I should be generous. My preference is at the bottom of the instructions.”
Her stomach flipped. Not dropped—flipped. As though the floor had shifted, and she hadn’t adjusted quickly enough to keep balance.
She opened her mouth. Closed it again. No clever retort came. Just the taste of heat and salt and her own pulse in her throat.
Lucius gave a mock bow. “Good day, Miss Granger.”
She didn’t say goodbye.
She just left, holding the parchment like it might burn her fingers.
Cassel was waiting outside. Not hovering, but close enough to note the paleness of her face and the stiffness in her shoulders.
“You alright?” he asked, tone quiet, respectful.
Hermione nodded once. Too fast. “Fine.”
Cassel gave her a look. Not probing. Just there. She couldn’t meet his eyes.
She tucked the parchment into her pocket, pressed her hand to the wand at her hip like it might anchor her, and walked straight past him without another word.
Her footsteps echoed down the corridor. Measured. Calm.
Nothing to see here. Just a girl losing her mind by degrees.
–––
She wore trousers.
Of course she did.
Lucius registered it the moment she entered the interview chamber—plain, grey wool, finely tailored. A turtleneck, no less, buttoned at the wrist and high at the throat, as if she were dressing for an ice storm.
Delightful.
“Miss Granger,” he said, not standing.
She nodded once, expression calm, composed—far too calm for someone who’d dreamt of getting fucked by someone she called daddy. But he saw it—the flush already beginning to bloom beneath the layer of war paint she called professionalism.
She sat before he could offer, which amused him. She hadn’t noticed the new cushions he’d arranged for her chair. Thicker. Softer. Just a little extra indulgence the Golden Girl deserved. Wouldn’t you agree, Warden?
He said nothing about them. Neither did she.
Lucius studied her from across the table, lazy as a lion in late sun.
“Did you follow instructions?”
There was no ambiguity in his voice. He didn’t mean the potion. They both knew that.
Hermione hesitated. Just a flicker. A half-second's pause where she warred with herself—and then nodded.
He smiled. Nothing sharp. Nothing showy. Just slow satisfaction unfurling at the corners of his mouth.
“Good,” he said. “Show me.”
Her throat worked. He imagined it straining around his cock, slick and desperate, too full to speak.
She didn’t move.
“Your trousers, Miss Granger,” he pressed, voice like silk on stone. “Remove them.”
There was a long silence. Heavy, dense, and exquisite.
Then, without a word, she stood. Unbuttoned. Slid the wool trousers down her hips with the mechanical grace of someone performing a surgery on themselves.
Lucius’s eyes drank her in—methodically, without haste.
The panties were lace-trimmed. Emerald green. Slytherin green, no less. The sort of soft, translucent fabric that left very little to imagination. And stitched, delicately, just off-centre—
An M.
White thread. Curved in script.
Oh.
Oh, she had followed instructions.
He let the silence stretch.
She shifted her weight—just slightly—and he could see her trying to decide whether to tug the trousers back up or leave them. She opted for stillness. Not defiance. But not surrender, either.
He was already hard.
Lucius steepled his fingers in front of his lips and regarded her like an artefact that had been long buried and polished clean.
“Well,” he said at last, voice quiet. “That is... meticulous work.”
A pause.
“Now. Let’s guess. What does the M stand for?”
She didn’t answer.
He tilted his head, pretending to muse. “Miss Granger, perhaps? A touch self-referential, but forgivable. Or magic, to remind yourself of who you’re doing this for?”
She was flushing beautifully now. From throat to cheekbone, a sunset of embarrassment.
He smiled wider. “Maybe it stands for Mudblood? No, I don’t think so. I think you know exactly what it stands for. I think you stitched it there yourself, because some masochistic part of you liked the idea of walking in here with my initial against your cunt.”
She inhaled sharply. He watched her thighs press closer together.
He stood, slowly.
Walked around the table.
Didn’t touch her.
Just stood close. Enough for her to feel the shift in the air. Enough for the scent of her to reach him—that faint, musky note of arousal she tried to mask with powder and purpose.
His voice dropped.
“Lace. Narrow cut. The colour of House pride. And that little monogram… right where I’d grip you if you bent over the table.”
He saw her flinch. Barely.
Lucius didn’t touch her. Didn’t have to.
He let his words do it instead. Let them trail along her skin like fingers under a hem.
“You have excellent taste, Miss Granger. Slytherin green does look especially fetching clinging to the wet patch pressed against your cunt.”
He circled her slowly. Predator, orbiting. And she—frozen but upright—stood her ground.
Not defiant.
Not compliant.
Just… enduring.
And oh, if all Mudbloods looked like her—if all of them bent and broke and blushed like this—he might’ve made his ideology far more flexible years ago.
He moved back to his chair. Sat. Legs spread just enough for her to see the outline straining beneath the fabric—no apology for it, no modesty. He rather hoped it distracted her.
She still stood, trousers around her ankles, thighs smooth and pale, flushed faintly where the pressure of fabric had recently been. The soft curve of muscle gave way to the delicate dip at the top of each inner thigh—skin that looked too untouched, too untested, too pure.
“Sit, if you like,” he offered lightly.
She didn’t move. He wondered if she was worried about leaving a stain on the cushion. The thought made his cock twitch—sweet, reluctant shame, seeping quietly into Ministry-issued fabric.
“Or not.” He waved a hand, then reached for the slip of parchment he’d prepared. “You’ve earned the next step, after all. Such dedication must be rewarded.”
Lucius slid the parchment across the table with two fingers, watching her eyes follow the movement like a wand tip in a duel. Alert. Wary. Still half-naked, half-defiant, and entirely fascinating.
“Today’s offering,” he said mildly. “You’ll be pleased to hear it’s both practical and vital.”
She didn’t reply. That, too, pleased him.
He adjusted a cuff—unnecessary, but habit—and let his voice slip into the rhythm he used when lecturing Draco. The tone that implied he could, at any moment, shift to disappointment with surgical precision.
“The reversal will, for several seconds, transfer the curse into the caster.”
That got her attention.
Hermione's chin lifted slightly. Her brow tightened, just enough to betray calculation—not panic, no, but awareness. The kind of awareness one had just before plunging a scalpel into a pulsing artery.
“It’s temporary,” he said. “But dangerous if mishandled. The siphon won’t discriminate. It will root for the nearest magical source. If it isn't controlled, it’ll feed until it finds a collapse point.”
She didn’t speak for a moment.
Then, voice clipped: “How is it contained?”
He met her eyes. “A sigil.”
She waited.
Lucius let the silence stretch. He reached once again for the teacup he never drank from—lukewarm by now, steeped too long in nothing—but the ritual of it mattered. Something about the mundanity of movement made tension more unbearable.
“A containment glyph, to be precise. To redirect the siphon as it passes through. Think of it as a funnel. One designed to prevent magical splintering.”
Her expression shifted. Absorption, analysis. And then, inevitably—
“Where does the sigil go?”
Lucius tsked softly. “That, Miss Granger,” he said, voice like honey running over a blade, “is for next time.”
She looked like she wanted to throw something. Him. The table. Herself against the wall just to reset her own skin.
Her hands curled slightly where they hung at her sides. Still standing. Still bare from the waist down. But not broken. She was a creature of control, and now she was neck-deep in a game that punished exactly that.
He wondered if she realised yet—this wasn’t about obedience.
It was about exposure.
Lucius leaned back in his chair and let himself enjoy the moment: her flushed cheeks, the faint sheen at her inner thighs, the bite in her gaze that hadn’t dulled despite the silk-laced degradation.
“Is that all?” she asked, tight-lipped.
“Oh, hardly. But we’ve reached the limit of your current payment.” He smiled. “A shame. You’re such a quick study.”
She bent for her trousers then—quickly, mechanically—pulling them up with jerky precision and fastening them like armour. Her hands shook just slightly at the buttons. Lucius saw. Filed it away.
She moved to gather her notes, but he spoke before she reached for the satchel.
“I miss strawberries.”
She froze.
He lifted the unused teacup and swirled the contents absently. “Filled with clotted cream. Simple pleasures.”
She turned to face him, eyes narrowed.
“If you’re feeling generous,” he added smoothly, “bring some next time.”
She left without a word. But her ears were red.
Lucius sat alone in the interview room, fingers still resting on the teacup, and let his erection throb idly beneath the table. He made no attempt to conceal it.
She was becoming a problem.
A lovely, tight-laced, furious little problem in wet panties—who met humiliation with clenched teeth and scientific curiosity.
Lucius let the silence bloom in her wake.
She hadn’t slammed the door. She hadn’t even glanced back. But her scent lingered—powder, parchment, and something sweeter. The briny heat of her arousal. The trace of a woman trying very hard not to come undone.
He stared at the closed door for a long moment, then let out a breath that might have been laughter if he were a weaker man.
The rune at the corner pulsed blue.
Right on schedule.
Cassel entered with his usual scowl, boots scuffing against the stone as if to make a point. The man always looked like he’d rather be patrolling dragon pens than ferrying ex-Death Eaters to supervised interviews. And yet here they were. Day after day.
“Done with the girl?” he asked, tone neutral but not polite.
Lucius rose without rushing. “For now.”
Cassel didn’t speak again, just motioned toward the corridor with a curt nod. Cassel fastened the restraints—efficient, wordless, as if Lucius were luggage to be returned to storage. Lucius didn’t flinch. He never did.
Lucius followed, step for step, letting the chains attached to his cuffs rattle just enough to fill the air.
The walk back to his cell was long enough to make room for regret. Not that he felt any. But it was the sort of corridor that suggested one ought to.
Since Kingsley’s reforms, the upper-level cells had changed—new stone, spelled warmth, less screaming. A bookshelf now, bolted into the far wall. A desk with ink and parchment. A chair not designed to break the back after ten minutes.
Luxury, really.
Lucius paused in the doorway while Cassel undid the wards.
“You being helpful?” the Warden asked, eyes not quite meeting his as he removed the cuffs.
Lucius smiled faintly. “I always am.”
“That girl’s a damn hero. Order of Merlin, First Class.”
Lucius turned, slow and sharp. “Then why do you refer to her as girl?”
Cassel gave a grunt—noncommittal, gravel-edged. The kind of sound that wasn’t quite agreement, but certainly wasn’t protest.
The door shut behind him with a soft hiss. A whisper of locked air.
He stood there for a long moment.
The cell was quiet, arranged just so. A worn copy of some Muggle textbook lay open on the desk, spine cracked. The bed was neatly made. A pale scarf—Draco’s, forgotten once, but he never returned to reclaim it—was folded atop the bookshelf.
He liked the way it disrupted the order of the room. A trace of something… ungoverned.
Lucius sat in the chair. Slowly. Crossed one leg over the other. Rested his head against the back and stared at the ceiling.
His cock was still half-hard.
That was the trouble with restraint. It fed on itself. The more he withheld, the sharper the edge. And Miss Granger was nothing if not sharpened—to a point, to a purpose. All that anger, all that hunger, buried under Order of Merlins and tight wool trousers.
He let his eyes drift closed.
Her voice rose in his mind, tight and breathless—“Harder, Daddy, please.”
Not even meant for him. That was the beauty of it. She hadn’t given him anything—but still, it leaked out of her like perfume under pressure. She reeked of the things she refused to say aloud.
Lucius exhaled through his nose. Adjusted the fabric of his trousers where it strained.
His palm drifted lower, pressing into the weight of it—swelling beneath expensive fabric. He didn’t rush. That wasn’t the point.
Instead, he let the memory spool itself out like ribbon: the green lace, stretched tight; the delicate white “M”; the slight shift of her thighs when he mentioned how wet she was.
Lucius’s fingers grazed along the outline through the wool. Slow. Measured. As if studying the shape of need itself. A dull ache pulsed there—pleasant in its cruelty. He flexed his jaw, let the pressure build.
She’d stood there, lips parted. Didn’t sit. Didn’t beg. But close. So close. And her eyes—wide, furious, humiliated—had followed his every movement like prey trying not to flinch.
His fingers curled. Just a little pressure. Just enough to feel it through the layers. To acknowledge it. To entertain it. To permit the wanting.
He thought of her voice—of how it cracked when she asked about the sigil. Of the way she left, hurried, silent, skin flushed and damp beneath those trousers.
Lucius pressed his thumb into the fabric. Not fast. Not deep. Just a breath of friction, something to tide him over.
A man could wait. But waiting didn’t mean denying the hunger.
He inhaled through his teeth and let the heat simmer behind his eyelids. Controlled. Contained.
Like magic itself, just before the wand strikes.