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Divided We Fall	By : Remarkable Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Lucius/Hermione Views: 8607 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I own nothing pertaining to the Harry Potter fandom or its affiliates. I make no money from the publication of this fic. Do. Not. Sue.

Chapter List
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I wrote this chapter months ago, and have a second one in progress. I am not exactly sure where I am going with this fic but it kind of stared at me and said "Publish Me" so here you go. It will not detract from publishing more chapters on my other fics. Let me know what you think. Reviews are the window to my reader's souls and I crave them as a Dementor does your Kiss.

Chapter One

Lucius Malfoy sat at his solid oak desk, the fine polish reflecting his visage perfectly from years of house elf tender loving care. One had only to glance around the office to take in the extravagant opulence dripping from every surface. The atmosphere of Malfoy Manor was tasteful and purposeful in its design. The showcase was meant to astound and intimidate as well as protect the ancient family bloodline from enemies within its hallowed boundaries. Tucked away on the second floor, the patriarch of the family ran freshly manicured fingernails through silken blond locks. The impatient sweep brought his regal mane to rest on the couture gentleman’s suit he wore during hours he generally entertained business contacts.

The Floo has been a subject of much irritation as of late. Lately there didn’t seem to be anyone that cared to visit that didn’t want something from him; rather, demand something of him. Everywhere he turned a Ministry official was demanding a bribe, business contacts were dropping him from their dealings and even his own family had turned on him. All because he had turned his back on the Dark Lord in exchange for immunity from prosecution at the end of the war. It must have been a cold day in hell, because Lucius Malfoy was drinking a stiff one over a curse fallen from his tongue to Purebloods everywhere.

Unbeknownst to his accustomed nostrils, the air was rank with sweat, alcohol and piss. Many a night had featured Lucius slumped over his desk. Each successive day led him down the garden path of self-recrimination and the subsequent medication only alcohol could provide. He fooled himself into thinking others would never know. Wasn't he good at hiding everything else that was wrong with his life?

His family saw him as a blood traitor, wanting nothing to do with him. Draco had gladly stuck by his mother, spitting in his father’s face the fateful day he walked in to their packed trunks and a hastily written note being magically stuck to door of his office. They hadn’t expected him home, so it came as a shock to them all with the surprise encounter. His mind wandered back to that horrid day.

‘Draco, Cissy, what is the meaning of this?’

He had just completed his negotiations with the Ministry. With the war complete and his status as a dubious war hero secured, he had thought it well worth their steep price in order to protect his family from prosecution and shame.

It was a complete surprise when he stumbled upon their hasty departure. Their shocked and accusing eyes met his own startled ice grey ones, clearly about to leave, not realizing he had left his secret meeting early to come home and tell them the good news.

Draco glared hatefully at his own father, blood traitor to all he had raised the boy to believe. The Dark Lord may have fallen but there were still plenty of places to hide and strike out against those that had soiled their family name. He had never believed his own father would turn their family name into such a laughstock; a disgrace.

‘Father,’ he straightened, speaking coolly. ‘There is nothing you can say to stop mother and I from leaving. You have clearly shown whose side you are on. We have nothing more to say to you.’

Lucius had looked from Draco to Narcissa, panic washing over his normally austere mask. ‘Draco! What are you saying? I’ve done this for us- for you! For our family! I’ve not done anything to disgrace our family; it’s a matter of survival. What kind of life would you have if I were in Azkaban, or worse, left to be Kissed by the Dementors? The Dark Lord is dead and it’s a new world. One must change with the times if one is to survive in it.’

Draco sneered, a perfect imitation of his father. ‘Do you think I care about your pathetic sacrifices? I would rather have had a father that had died for the cause of the greater good and all that the Dark Lord stood for, than a coward that is now a Ministry lapdog!’ Draco’s fists tightened visibly at his sides, his right hand opening and closing as it itched to reach for his wand, but he wouldn’t fight his own father. He had promised his mother as much. Draco’s stormy gaze flicked to his mother. ‘Come mother, we’re leaving.’

‘Cissy?’ It was more a plea than a question. Lucius took a step forward but Draco’s hand snaked out to grasp his mother’s arm in warning.

‘Leave off. She doesn’t want to be married to a traitor and a fool. When the Dark Lord rises again we will be on the side of purity and victory, and we will spit on your grave when justice has finally been served over the pathetic Mudbloods that think they’ve won this war.’

Lucius desperately wanted to hex his son, but he didn’t dare turn Narcissa away from him, not while there was still a chance to sway her. Draco had been her sole comfort during his many hours away from the Manor during his servitude to Voldemort. He bitterly wished he had had the guts to whisk her away sooner, but his son was right, he had been a coward, and now his family was turning their back on him.

‘Cissy, please…. Don’t do this. Don’t leave me. I can make it right, I… I’ll make it up to you. Just give me a chance. Please.’ His voice cracked piteously. If anyone had been privy to the exchange, their jaws would have dropped at his pleading tone.

Narcissa turned her gaze from the son she had been considering during the heated exchange to the husband she still dearly loved but was feeling so betrayed by. She felt as if she were being torn in two, but she couldn’t bear to lose her son, not after losing three other babies before him to miscarriage. The multiple hexes wrought on her as punishments from the Dark Lord for various transgressions of Lucius had taken their toll. There was nothing he could do short of prostrating himself before the other escaped Death Eaters that would rectify his mistakes in her eyes.

Lucius felt his breath hitch when the pain of the past few months staggered from her lips in a torrent of incoherent screams that were reduced to wracked sobbing, unable to put into words the hurts that boiled over from her tortured soul. She was pulled into Draco’s arms that wrapped around her securely, the hate clearly burning in his eyes.

‘Do you see now, what you’ve done to her? What you’ve done to us? You’ve turned your back on us. That’s what you’ve done.’

‘What have I done that is so terrible? Loved my family? Done everything in my power to keep you safe? You have no concept of what I have done for you and your mother, none at all.’

‘And what about mother? How many times was she punished for the choices you made? You weren’t here when she lost the last one, were you father? You were off with your little mistress at one of the Dark Lord’s revels while she bled out on the floor of the Manor, tended to only by house-elves and a doddering old healer!’

‘What do you want from me? I couldn’t very well be everywhere at once, Draco! Merlin’s hoary bollocks! You know very well what was expected of me, or do you forget the service that comes with taking the Mark? Oh, that’s right, you hid behind the very person you are now accusing of ruining this family, your own father! How dare you blame me for your mother’s suffering! We all had to make sacrifices during the war and I am not at fault for all that has come to pass. I did what had to be done, as did we all!’

Lucius was panting from the fury of the exchange. He stood no closer to changing the mind of his sobbing wife or hating son. There had been no indication they had not stood behind him in the past. They had hidden their disappointments and hatred well. The aristocrat had no idea where this sudden about face had come from – unless –

‘You’ve been talking to Rodolphus, haven’t you? Lestrange has talked you into hating me. That lying snake is only telling you what he thinks you want you to hear to turn you against me. He’s using you for the family’s money, to tide him and the others over until they figure out a way to bring the Dark Lord back again, which will never happen! Surely you see the folly in his words! Nothing will bring him back, Draco, it’s only a matter of time until the Ministry Aurors track down the lot of that scum and lock them away! Please, if you care anything for your mother, do not drag her into this. I may not be able to sway you, but do not make her suffer. She will be safe here, and even if she despises me, I will continue to care for her.’

He could tell the words were falling on deaf ears. Draco had already turned from him, his mother wiping the corners of her eyes with a fine linen handkerchief embroidered in fine stitch with the Malfoy family crest. The irony of the gesture did not escape him. His shoulders slumped in defeat at his son’s parting words.

‘You sealed your own fate when you turned your back on everything the Malfoy family stood for. We don’t want your money or charity, Father. We just want to be left alone, to be with the people who would stay true to what may not be the easy path, but that is the right one. I am ashamed to be your son, and from today on out, I no longer consider myself to be of your seed.'

As if in slow motion, Narcissa wretched herself away from Draco and, with eyes lowered to the marble floor, shuffled her feet ever so lightly before standing in front of her husband. Tear-stained cheeks rose agonizingly up to greet her husband with finality. Lucius observed from a detached part of his mind the cold band of gold that dropped into his upturned palm. Her wedding band.

‘Goodbye, Lucius.’

They were the only two words he would hear from her ever again.

The sound of Apparition reached his mind distantly as they cracked out of existence and from his life. The only two people he had truly cared about, gone. He had done everything for them, and they had turned their backs on him like the traitorous scum they believed him to be. A coward, his son had branded him. Perhaps, but it was all for them, and in the end, it had all been in vain.

The solid tapping of an owl against the tall window behind him snapped Lucius from his pointless reverie. Rising to let in the insistent bird, he recognized the solid black owl of Severus and a rolled parchment grasped in the birds claws. The owl flew to the perch made convenient for the numerous missives that made their way to the Manor to wait for his reply, plucking a generous owl treat from the bowl attached to the perch.

Unfurling the scroll, Lucius scanned the short message from his long time, and only, real friend left over from the war.

Lucius,

I received your message and request for assistance. I will, of course, provide you with whatever potions or information you require, as I am able. As for your second request, I feel it best to discuss the matter in person. If it is agreeable to your person I shall Floo over at eight p.m. this evening.

Severus Snape, Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Lucius smoothed out the thick vellum embossed with the Hogwarts crest as the Slytherin wax seal crumbled into pieces on the desk. He had no choice but to let the Ministry take a hand in his financial affairs. The sheaves of paper were suddenly swept off the desk by his long arm in a fury of movement that sent them scattering in a whorl across the floor. Snape’s bird seemed unruffled by the mess, only pausing the scarfing of the entire bowl of owl treats to cock its head at the irate human. It chirped once and stuck out its leg.

He had done everything to prevent the long tendril of the Ministry into his home, but now was faced with little choice. With his financial empire near collapse, and hence, a full third of wizarding Britain’s economy with it, he had been backed into a corner by the very actions which were meant to save his family and lift the Malfoy name above the very treachery the name still apparently represented to society. Draco was right; he had failed them all.

With a sigh that could only be described as petulant, Lucius bent over to pick up a blank piece of parchment. Scribbling a quick reply to Snape and seeing it off with the bird, he retired to his study to drown his sorrows in the common man’s poison he used to abhor- Firewhiskey. Its burn reminded him of how fruitless the past six months had been since the rejection of his family. Six long months of desperately trying to stem the diarrhea of funds drained from his Gringotts vaults as one after another, supporters of the Malfoy name spurned him like a leper in a medieval village. New investors were almost impossible to come by, not yet trusting his tenuous ties with the Ministry despite the third class Order of Merlin he had been awarded.

Six months of the Manor slowly falling into a ghostly hollow of what it had been as three wings were closed off from the memories that haunted him. Long months of drinking himself day after day into a stupor, desperately trying to drown his sorrows with liquor. Snape had kept him well supplied with hangover potions and had not said a word other than to offer support. Lucius felt guilty, raising his thick tumbler with a shaky hand to down the rest of the vile stuff in one gulp. Snape had his hands full with the school. Old McGonagall didn’t feel up to task of Headmistress in the end.

It wasn’t fair, dammit! With a snarl Lucius whipped the tumbler into the fireplace and watched dispassionately as it shattered into a thousand pieces. Why was it that Snape’s tale of serving as a double agent, hoisted to every front page in the country by Saint Potter portraying Snape as the bloody Hero, got all the glory and Lucius was left wallowing in wretched misery, good for nothing but propping up the Ministry’s coffers and staying out of the way now that his part was said and done?

“Fuck.”

He spoke more to himself than to anything in particular. This was no way for a Malfoy to act, but really, he didn’t give a damn anymore. His last shred of dignity would be gone when the Ministry sent their latest official snot-nosed lackey to take over his financial empire. Than he’d be nothing but a puppet to make the occasional appearance wherever needed, and sign whatever papers that got shoved under his nose. He hoped against hope that Severus would be able to influence who was sent to the Manor.

Lucius leaned back into the gilded, high wing-backed chair and closed his eyes. The next thing he knew the Floo was being activated and Severus was stepping through, long velvet official school robes flaring behind him in dramatic Snape fashion. Lucius squinted in the dark room to his friend looking down his long nose at him with an imperturbable gaze.

“Lucius.”

“Severus.”

Snape reached down and extended his hand to Lucius. Shaking his head, Lucius indicated the chair opposite his own for his friend to sit. The regal looking Headmaster schooled his features, waiting without judgment for Lucius to speak. The decline of Lucius’ mental state had not escaped his notice, but he was not one to interfere unless asked to do so. As a friend to this man for an odd twenty some years, it would not do to force an issue where it wasn’t warranted. Lucius had suffered enough of his pride being wounded and trod upon. Snape would be there for Lucius just as he had been toward the end of the war when Lucius had approached Severus to take him to Dumbledore for help in defecting to the side of Light.

Lucius ran his fingers through his hair and shook his head slightly.

“I’m sorry my friend, where are my manners? Tippy!”

A house-elf Apparated into the room. “Yes Master Malfoy, what can Tippy do for you and Master Snape?”

“Fetch a bottle of my finest Bordeaux, the older the better.”

Tippy wrung her hands together, her big eyes shifting back and forth between the two formidable men. “Tippy is sorry, Master. Tippy must remind Master that all of Master’s stores were seized last month by the bad people that broke into Master’s house.”

“Shite. You are correct Tippy, my mistake.”

The house-elf gaped at his Master. Master never admitted to being wrong. “Is there being anything else Tippy can get for Master?”

“Do I have any more bottles of Firewhiskey left in the kitchens?”

“Yes Master! I puts away two cases for Master just last night.”

“Fetch a fresh bottle and two clean glasses for Headmaster Snape and I.”

“Right away, Master!”

Lucius reached into his breast coat pocket for a silver case, flipping it open and offering an expensive clove to his friend. Snape inclined his head while Lucius lit two of them with his wand, proffering one to Snape. The two sat in a comfortable silence for several long minutes while Tippy returned and poured fresh tumblers of the stark amber liquid.

Snape tried hard not to curl his nose at the stink of sweat, stale alcohol and even faint urine that was rank throughout the room. Lucius may not have noticed, but Snape’s keen nose could pick up scents most others could not due to his long years of working with various potions ingredients. He had only accepted the cigarette to mask the smell that made his stomach churn. He hoped Lucius would get to the point so he could return to his own study and the female company waiting for him there.

At last, Lucius looked up from nursing his drink and smoke. “Thank you for coming.”

Severus inclined his head slightly once more, still waiting.

“It is difficult for me to ask of you for more than you have already done. Your friendship is…. the only thing I have left that is good in my life.”

Snape shifted uncomfortably. He was not used to emotional displays and did not exactly want to get into it with his drunken friend.

“Think nothing of it. If it is within my ability to provide, it is yours. You know that.”

Lucius smiled a little just then and flicked the ash from his smoke into the fireplace. “You are a good friend, Severus. One day I will repay the debt in whatever manner I am able.”

“Yes, of course.” Get on with it man, Severus thought, flinging the rest of his cigarette into the flames while finishing his glass.

“What can I do for you, Lucius?” If the man wasn’t going to come out with it, a little prodding was in order.

“You know I wouldn’t ask if I-“

“Yes yes, just spit it out!"

Lucius frowned at Snape’s impatience, but realized he couldn’t put it off any longer. “As you are aware, the Ministry is sending someone to take over my financial ventures, as per the agreement I signed as part of the immunity contract if my finances were adversely affected by my position at the end of the war, and of course as a way to ensure their continued patronage.” Lucius spat out the last word like a bit of dog shite that had fallen onto his tongue.

“Yes.”

“Well,” he paused again for effect, “I know you have great influence in certain departments within the Ministry, and I was wondering….” He trailed off again, much to the annoyance of Snape.

“You want to know if I can hand pick who they will send to look over your affairs.”

“Yes.” How very perceptive, and it does not sound like he will refuse my request.

“You overestimate my influence with the department heads. I can place a few words in the right places, but my first priority is the stability of Hogwarts. I cannot allow my position to become ensconced in politics.”

Lucius allowed his shoulders to slump dejectedly. It had been too much to hope for anyway. If the wrong oaf got ahold of his books he would be a pauper, much like that damn werewolf that worked for the Order. He could only hope the Ministry had enough common sense to send someone with resources to shore up his own financial brokers and enforce the contract clauses so many of them had broken. It was in their best interests, if they expected the Malfoy fortune to continue feeding the government vaults which lined the pockets of many a politician.

Snape pinched the bridge of his nose between a thumb and forefinger as the stink began to overtake his senses once more and cause the onset of a headache.

“I will see what I can do, but this is the last time I can stick my nose in your Ministry business, Lucius. There are already those suspicious of our alliance during the war. I cannot afford to allow them to undermine what I have worked so hard to achieve after rebuilding the school.”

“I understand. Thank you, old friend. You won’t regret it.”

“Think nothing of it.” Snape waved his hand dismissively as he rose from his seat.

Lucius stood and clasped hands with the dark man, shaking them firmly. Severus reached into the depths of his cloak and pulled out a small pouch, transfiguring it to a much larger size.

“Your potions. Please use them sparingly. I do not have access to my old labs like I used to and the school budget for potions is not inexhaustible. Do take care of yourself.”

Lucius knew this was the closest he would ever get to hearing that Snape cared about him as he would a brother. Nodding, he accepted them gratefully and watched as Snape took a handful of Floo powder.

Looking over his shoulder, Snape muttered, “I will send my owl Caerus when my inquiries have been made. Expect him by the end of the week. Good evening.”

With a flourish of his cape and an intoned, “Hogwarts Headmaster’s Study,” Snape was gone in a swirl of green light.

Lucius slumped back into his chair and drank the rest of the Firewhiskey straight from the bottle.
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Divided We Fall