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Hungry Thirsty Crazy	By : AndreaLorraine Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Lucius/Hermione Views: 47434 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
Author�s Note:� Holy crud, that took a while.�
I�m finally coming up for air.�
Graduate school officially sucks.�
Someone had asked me, wouldn�t people be trying
to figure out who the author of Faim is?� And wouldn�t there be enough to possibly
point a finger at Lucius, no matter how careful he is?� This is an issue I neglected for the first 10
chapters in favor of developing the relationship between Lucius
and Hermione, but the answer is absolutely � and the impact of that (among
other things) starts here.

She had looked everywhere for
him.� Or at least she thought she had; it
was a gargantuan house and he knew it better than her, so it was possible that
he had sought a hidden place in the wake of whatever strange chemistry had
exploded on them.� It didn�t seem like
something he would do, but she could no longer pretend that he was predictable.

�� He hadn�t
left.� His stack of parchment, quill, and
ink were on the desk, neatly stacked and weighted down as always.� His pills were still there, too.� One bottle had fallen over, blown by the wind
that had picked up in the aftermath of the storm.� With a sigh, Hermione closed the window.

�� It occurred
to her that now might be a perfect time to do the snooping she had wanted to do
earlier in the week.� He was either out or
in full retreat, so there was little chance of him walking in on her while she
did it.� She just wanted a look at all
his medications, was all�and perhaps those ever-tempting pages.� He hadn�t yet used her name.� What gumption he had, kissing her before he
would consent to speaking her name�

�� That made
her decision.� With one last guilty
glance around (she really was terrible at this), she sat in his chair.� She had never been much of an
investigator.� People tended to spy on
one another; she had seen the other girls in her dormitory do it and had no
doubt that they had gone through her things at least once.� Thankfully, her possessions were generally
uninteresting to anyone who didn�t enjoy books.�
Though she had sometimes wondered what secrets her roommates� trunks
held, she had never given in to temptation.�
Not even when Lavender Brown was �dating� Ron � and the temptation had
been extreme at the time.

�� So she was
wholly unaccustomed to this.� Her hands
trembled as she pulled the pill bottles toward her.� Goodness, she was going to have to look up
some of the drug names, as she had never heard of them before.� However, none of them were anything she had
suspected.� No sedatives or sleep aids
that she recognized, no anti-anxiety drugs, no anti-psychotics
� nothing.� It was entirely possible that
there were other medications elsewhere but that was a line she wouldn�t
cross.� Merlin only knew what she would
find if she went through his actual belongings.

�� She placed
the bottles back on the corner of the desk.�
They were out of order and she didn�t remember how they had been
arranged before she moved them.� There
were people in the world who wouldn�t notice such a thing, but Lucius would.� He
would know that she had gone through them or at least moved them.� She was absolutely miserable at spying on
people like this.� He would either be
angry at her or amused by her incompetence in an area that she had never wanted
to be competent in.

�� Ah, but she
could tell him the wind had scattered the bottles and she had just put them
back on the desk.� That was a plausible
excuse.� Problem solved.� Hermione blew a breath out between her lips.� The stack of parchment was steadily growing;
this book would be longer than Faim, that was for sure.�
She hoped that whatever she was about to read would not be completely
horrific, but if it was, it was her own fault for not being able to control her
curiosity.

�� She lifted
the paperweight and set it aside.� She
felt more guilty doing this than looking at his
medication.� He had made it clear that he
didn�t want her to read it before he was done.�
Even if it had been written in the form of gentle chastisement, he had
explicitly indicated what he wanted.�
There had to be a reason for it and she wasn�t sure she wanted to find
out what it was.

�� She picked
up the top page and turned it over.� It
was three quarters full of his elegant scrawl and there was a splotch after the
last word, as if he had rested the quill there while lost in thought.� Little things like that made him endearing;
it made her feel like she could get inside his head, if only for the fifteen
seconds he hesitated before starting a new sentence.

�� She raised
her eyes to the top of the page.

�� and I wanted to strangle her, to wrap my
hands about her neck and squeeze until only crushed bone and sinew
remained.� Instead I took my son by the
hand and walked away from her.� My anger
didn�t abate for long, long minutes; even after I had passed off the child to
my wife and tried to isolate myself in the parlor, it
goaded itself into a greater furor.� When
my father stepped in to cast a disapproving look meant to propel me back into
social company, I think he saw it.� His eyes
went dark and did not lose track of me for many minutes afterwards.� Even after I excused myself to the loo, it felt as though he was just behind me, watching me.

�� I felt no such violence toward
him.� He had made life difficult for
me.� He had been cruel, distant, cold,
and unforgiving.� But he was predictable
and he had never once betrayed me.� It is
rather sad, though, when that is all the good a man can find in his sire.

�� I returned to them eventually but I
was careful to keep my mind trained elsewhere.�
Once the anger had passed a cold, hard determination settled in its
place.� I would get through this and then
there would be no more.� I had tried my
best to allow my son to know his grandparents, because I was glad to have known
mine.� It was not my fault � nor his �
that he was better off not knowing them.

�� Hermione
frowned and turned back a page.� She was
desperately curious to know what events had precipitated him cutting ties with
his parents.� She scanned the page.� Ah.�
There�

�� I heard her shrill voice, chastising my son
for something.� It raised a black
defensive anger in me; the gall of her, to think that she had any place
disciplining my child.� She would never
win any awards for her mothering.� When I
was younger I would accept her guilty love, but having a child of my own had
done something to me.� I could barely
stand to be in the same room as her and her hypocrisy.

�� I went to them, summoning my
control.� It was possible that the boy
had done something that warranted censure.�
I could see upon arrival that he had; one of the family portraits was
singed almost beyond recognition, victim to a game of exploding snap played on
the decorative table beneath it.� I had
done the same in my youth and received the hiding of my life because it was the
portrait of my father�s favorite aunt.

�� The house elf did it, Father!� my
son pleaded, and convincingly at that.�
Let it not be said that he isn�t clever; he knew of my intense dislike
for house elves.� I might have believed
him if I didn�t recognize the burn pattern on the painting.� Remembrance of the way it looked had been
forever branded into my mind by a beating that held the top spot for most
painful experience of my life � until the first time I was hit with the Cruciatus.

�� My mother put her hands on her
hips.� �He likes to tell stories, just
like his daddy.�

�� I don�t know if she spoke before she
thought or if she actually meant to take me back to the day that had fractured
my trust.� In any case, I nearly blacked
out with anger.� It came so swiftly that
it blinded me.� She didn�t try to
backpedal or make apologies for her statement.�
Indeed, she didn�t even seem to realize the verbal sin she had
committed.� That she could have forgotten the day I had faced every fear I had to
tell her what had been done to me, or that she still believed it was something
I made up for attention �� that made me
murderous.� My blood thundered in my
ears��

�� That was where the page ended
and where the next one picked up.� She
could feel his anger radiating off the page.�
It was one hundred percent justified.�
Really, she wanted to choke the life out of his mother, too.� She was not so sure that she would have let
her child anywhere near her parents if they were anything like his.

�� She reached
for another page, but something stopped her.�
He obviously had his reasons for asking her not to read until he was
finished, just like she had her reasons for wanting to be called by her given
name. Biting her lip, Hermione replaced the pages and put the paperweight on
top of them.

�� She sat
back, blowing a piece of hair out of her face.�
Then she twirled around in the chair � it was the kind that spun.� She had never realized how comfortable it
was, probably because she had been hesitant to sit in it.� She had also never realized how accustomed
she had become to Lucius�s presence.� Now, without it, the house felt bereft.

�� Hermione
sat for a while longer, lost in thought.�
Then she realized it was getting late and it would probably be best if
she didn�t drop off to sleep in his chair.�
She had no idea what his mood would be like when he returned;
regardless, she would rather not be in the way of it.

�� She was
just about to stand up when there was a noise at the window.� It startled her until she realized it was
just an owl pecking at the glass.� Who
was sending mail this late?� Leaning over
the desk, she opened the window to admit the owl.� The bird was wet and miserable; it held out
its plastic-wrapped parcel and fluffed its feathers grumpily.�

�� Hermione
took the parcel and cast a drying charm on the owl.� It blinked at her, confused by its sudden
dryness.� With a chuckle, she went in
search of something to reward the bird with and found the remnants of Lucius�s dinner.�
Evidently Jo-Jo was still too fearful of interrupting a non-existent
liaison to have cleaned up.� No
matter.� Hermione set the plate in front
of the owl and it dug in gratefully.� She
spared a moment to wonder about owl nutrition; if people were constantly giving
the birds whatever they had lying around, it couldn�t be good for them, could
it?� Ah well, she wasn�t a veterinarian
or an animal healer and she couldn�t recall any prohibition against it.

�� The owl
must have flown a long way.� As she
unwrapped the mail that was mummified in layers of plastic wrap the bird
settled into a brief sleep on the windowsill.�
She didn�t mind its company so she let it be.� When she finally extracted the booklet from
the plastic, she saw that it was for Lucius.� A note was stuck to the front.

Lucius,

You might find the
article on page 36 interesting.

�P. Netherwood

�� The
signature was one of those stamps that said that whoever P. Netherwood
was, he signed an awful lot of papers.�
In spite of herself she did not put the magazine down.� It was called The Critiquill.� The subtitle read �For discerning readers of
wizard literature.�� Her eyes
widened.� Why had she, the queen of
books, never heard of this magazine?

�� She opened
it, aware of how easily she was fitting into her own stereotype at the
moment.� She didn�t care.� There were reviews and analyses of books she
hadn�t heard of before, eighty percent of which sounded riveting.� The remaining twenty percent seemed like the
kind of esoteric literature that perhaps five people would appreciate.� She read straight through until page 36,
noting at least three books that she was going to buy as soon as she got the
chance.� When she turned the glossy page Netherwood had mentioned, her mouth fell open.

An Open Letter to the
Author of Faim

By Aloysius Pound

We here at The Critiquill have fastidiously resisted the pull of your book.� We confess ourselves guilty of literary
snobbery; we believed that no book so popular with the masses could be of any
value to true scholars.� However, in the
six months the book has been out, it has garnered acclaim from critics all over
the world, many of whom we consider to be excellent judges of quality.� Therefore, two of our reviewers, C.P.
Bartholomew and Regina
Roundtree, have at last tackled the tour de force
that is Faim.�
They had this to say:

CPB: 5/5 stars

Faim is a chillingly entertaining read.� It overflows with the ebbing sanity of the
protagonist, who may indeed be the antagonist as well.� His prose is incisive, blunt, but also
contains an introspective beauty that lets the reader know that this author is
nothing short of a wordsmith.� This book
does what few in the history of storytelling have done; it weaves a tapestry of
people, places, and events that are singularly disturbing in a way that neither
beatifies nor condemns the protagonist for his role in it.� I have never before read a story in which the
main character was so abhorrent yet so justified.� He has drawn a solid line between hating a
person and hating what a person does.� In
these post-war times it lends a little more understanding to the fact that
those who wronged us are people, too � which is just
as uncomfortably humanizing as the rest of the book�s raw grasp for control in
a world where it is in short supply.� If
you haven�t read it, get to your nearest book shop or library and do so.� This is one bandwagon I am happy to jump on.

RR: 4.5/5 stars

I found myself unable
to put this book down.� In spite of its
infuriating ambiguity (which is the cause of my slight rating detraction), one
can conceptualize the characters, the setting, and most importantly the
mood.� Emotions are sometimes hard to
convey in words but this author is quite gifted at finding ways to express the unexpressible.� The
story sizzles with anger, sexuality, and uneasy triumph.� It simultaneously revels and rages in the
human capacity for schadenfreude.� Faim puts the
reader in a curious state of mind, one in which everything seems to be cast in
a different light.� Because of this, the
power of this author�s story is so visceral.�
He almost forces you to think on topics most of us would rather leave
alone, for if you want to know the rest of his story you must face the
uncomfortable truths and lies.� Overall,
this is not just the story of a man damned almost from birth; it is also an
insightful commentary on the state of the wizarding
world and its many conflicts.� It may be
difficult for some to get through but it is definitely worth the effort.

Our reviewers have
spoken; Faim is worth the purchase.� I, however, find myself more curious about
things other than the story.� Namely, I
wonder about you, author, the anonymous person who
crafted this �memoir�.

Who are you?� Is this your story, or some fiction packaged
as a memoir to gain attention?� If it is,
congratulations, sir, you have successfully created a new marketing
scheme.� Conversely, if Faim is really your story, I hope you have found peace in
writing it.�

I must warn you, though,
that in winning us over you are now subject to our
staff and readers� inquiring minds.� We
are curious and we will strive to unravel your mystery.� Have you covered your tracks well, dear
writer?� Were you as careful as you
should have been in disguising your identity?�
We are as interested in you as we are in your tales, perhaps more, so be advised that we will do our damnedest to unmask you.� You had to know that in writing something so
sensational, you would bring this attention upon yourself.� We make no apologies, author, because we have
the feeling that you make none for the tease of your genius.

Yours,

Aloysius C. Pound
& The Critiquill Staff

�� Hermione put
the magazine down.� That had been high
praise for a magazine she could already tell wasn�t generally prone to giving
much.� However, it was a double-edged
sword.� She didn�t doubt for a minute
that the academia was buzzing over just who the author of Faim
was.� She knew Lucius
was meticulous.� The only people who knew
the secret of his identity were her and his publisher.� Of course, measures had been taken to prevent
both of them from talking, but nobody was perfect�

�� What would
happen if Lucius was found out?� Faim alone was
enough to put him back in prison; she was sure Soif
would only add to the list of his sins.�
But was there a way, short of his own
confession, to pin the activities in the books on him?� He knew what he was doing when he wrote
it.� He had crafted a cage of truths that
he could never be locked in.� She
expected nothing less of him, really.

�� He wouldn�t
be discovered.� She wouldn�t tell even
after the Vow was lifted from her.� The
publisher wouldn�t, because then his fortune would be lost.� If someone else managed to put the pieces
together, Lucius could deny it or dance around it. �She was fairly certain that the Ministry would
not issue an order for Veritaserum based on the
possibility that he might have
written a book about things he might
have done decades ago�

�� And she
couldn�t forget the terminus that loomed in his future.� If she knew him, and she was beginning to
think that she might, at least a little, he would reveal himself
posthumously.� A part of him yearned for
full disclosure.� Another part of him
wanted to spite the system that had screwed and glorified him.� He would enjoy the knowledge that he had made
people like what he had to offer and then taunted them with his glaring absence
for the consequences.� He was
exceptionally good at avoiding consequences � most of the time.

�� Feeling
very exhausted all of a sudden, she closed the magazine and left it on the
desk.� He would see it when he came
back.� The owl was still dozing on the
window ledge.� It wouldn�t do any harm to
let it stay the night; she could hear another storm kicking up outside and the
poor thing had already had one harrowing flight.� Hermione blew out the candles and went to
bed.

�� He still
wasn�t back when morning came.� It
worried her.� He had missed a dose of his
medication.� Would that be problematic?� What if he had really gone?� Abandoned the book and her and
everything?� He wouldn�t do that, would
he?� There hadn�t even been words
exchanged.� It wasn�t a fight.

�� Hermione
chewed her lip as she sat in the bath.�
Normally she was good at putting herself into the mindset of another,
but in this case she couldn�t begin to fathom what Lucius
was thinking.

�� Oh,
relax,� she said out loud.� It had only
been one night.� In all likelihood, he
would be back before the day was out.�
Everything would be awkward but fine.

�� He was not
back by nightfall.� She had caved to
curiosity and checked his room; all his things were still there.� Now she had passed from simple worry to full
blown concern.� He had not gone and done
anything stupid, had he?� Surely he would
not be so upset by one misstep that he would�

�� She apparated back to London.� It was pointless since she couldn�t really go
around asking after him; people would think she was crazy.� There was nothing in the newspapers, though.� No news was good news, right?

�� She slept
terribly that night.� She had instructed
Jo-Jo to wake her the moment Lucius reappeared.� Hour after hour, the elf was absent.� Hermione knew the little thing was just as
worried as she was.� She had even gone to
Malfoy Manor and asked the other elves if the master
had been about; they said no.� Lucius was well and truly missing in action.

�� She had
tried to touch his mind and beseech him to come back.� The connection was still there but all she
got was a stony silence on his end.� She
pressed against it, hurled thoughts to it, begged it, but it never
wavered.� Conversely, no matter how open
she left her mind, he never once tried to grasp for it.

��

She was lucky if she got two hours
of sleep.� When she woke she knew she had
to do something with herself or she would go mad.� She left a note for him on the desk to
please, please let her know, somehow, that he was all right, on the odd chance
that he might return while she was out.�
Then, with a queasy resolve, she walked out the door.

The beauty of the day mocked
her.� Inside she was a mess of worries;
she imagined that if her consciousness could be assigned an image, it would
look something like a house torn apart by a tornado.� There would be bits of wood and brick and
siding everywhere, a car flipped over, and the refrigerator six miles away in a
bog.

�� She tried
to concentrate on the sun as it beamed down at her.� Its rays said that everything would be all
right.� It was too nice a day for
upsetting events.� There was a reason for
his absence.� There was a reason for
everything.� The trouble was, with him
the reason was sometimes worse than the reality.

�� Distracted,
she ran her hands along the sturdy sunflower stalks as she passed the
field.� They were a bit prickly; the
sensation gave her something to focus on.�
Then there was wheat.� She skimmed
her hand around the silky stems, wondering what they would eventually be turned
into.� Flour?� Pasta?� Bread?

�� Too quickly
she was walking into the small town.� It
was early but the piazza was booming; it seemed a bit overwhelming yet she
forced herself to walk among the scurrying natives.� Perhaps she would pick some vegetables and
meats from the stalls and have Jo-Jo cook something�

�� The day
wore on and she was amazed that she was shopping, buying trinkets and trying on
pretty sundresses, when internally she felt close to panic.� She had never been so worried for anyone in
her life.� Since the moment all this had
begun, she was acutely aware of how easy it might be to tip his balance.� She hoped to high heaven that she had not
done it with her silly reaction to kissing him.

�� It had just
been too much to process at once.� Her
mind couldn�t reconcile how good it felt to kiss him and how cardinally wrong
it was at the same time.� Now that she
had time to think, she could see that it wasn�t wrong.� He was a man, she was a woman.� He had changed for the better and expressed a
genuine, non-threatening attraction, which her body had responded to in kind.� It was just her stupid brain that couldn�t
cope with the suddenness of it.

�� She loved
her intellect, really she did, but sometimes it got on the way.� She wanted to analyze everything.� She wanted to assign logic and meaning to
things that didn�t necessarily involve either.�
Like kissing Lucius Malfoy.� And
worst of all, her mind always wanted to overrule her body, knowing that it was
only a web of flesh and bone and sensory receptors.� But just because it was didn�t mean that it
was wrong.

�� Yes,
liking, affection, and love were cognitive things.� They were abstract mental concepts.� But they were invariably intertwined with the
body; that was why one�s heartbeat quickened, one�s stomach filled with
butterflies, and one�s skin tingled in proximity to the person they loved.� Not that she loved him.� But damn, did her body react to him�and she
couldn�t discount the fact that perhaps it knew better than her brain on this.� Her brain was what remembered; her body could
forget.

�� She tried
on another dress.� It was a little
old-fashioned looking, cut like a dress that a woman would have worn in the 50s,
but the pattern, colors, and details were modern.� It was something she wouldn�t have worn in England.� She was not in England.� The shopkeeper, a thirtysomething
woman who looked like a transplant from a couture shop in Rome
or Milan,
anointed her in just the right accessories.�
Forty minutes later she walked out of the shop looking like a different
person.

�� This worry
for him was making her a different person.�
In fact, she was spending his money like it was going out of style, as
if that could somehow bring him back.�
She was aware of it as she watched people go by beyond the veil of her
sunglasses.� More than a few gave her
curious looks; dressed like this, she was mysterious, someone they wanted to
know more about.� Especially
the men.

�� She trailed
her hand in the clear water of the fountain she was leaning against.� In the heat of the midday sun, Hermione
wondered who she was hiding from.� Very
likely it was herself.� It was the woman
who desperately wanted Lucius Malfoy
to come back, to stay in her life�and to kiss her again.� More than kiss her�

�� She moved
on.� There were more shops and more
things she didn�t need.� She tried to
blow the remainder of the 700 Euros leftover from his ridiculous bestowal.� But she found that as soon as she handed the
last bill over, for another dress she�d be too self-conscious to wear once she
returned home, more money materialized in her bag.� And no matter what she did, it would not
diminish.� That son of a bitch had
spelled her purse.

�� Hermione
sat at a table at an outdoor caf� and drank sparkling water.� It wouldn�t do to get heatstroke again,
because now there was no one around to take care of her.� As the afternoon wore on, she returned to the
food stalls and purchased an assortment of everything.� The resourceful little house elf would be
able to make something out of it�

�� So she
trudged back up to the villa laden down with bags, not entirely sure where the
day had gone or if she felt any better.�
Defense mechanisms were wonderful things, but in the long run they
tended to make the situation worse�so lost was she in her ruminations that she
missed the fact that the windows were open.�
She had left them closed.

�� When she
walked in, though, it was impossible to miss the glaring fact that he was
back.� The bags fell from her hands,
probably bruising the produce she had so carefully selected.� She opened her mouth to speak and the words
promptly died when she realized what he was about to do.

�� The stack
of parchment that was Soif was in his hand.� And that hand was quickly moving toward the
fireplace, which glared and crackled with new flame.� She saw it like it was slow motion.� He was going to burn his manuscript.

�NO!� she shouted.� It startled him enough that he paused.� Slowly, he turned.

�� Why are
you still here?�� His voice was hedged in
ice.

�� Don�t do
it, Lucius,� she said softly, barely even
comprehending his question.� She worried
for the manuscript like it was a hostage, a real live person that he could kill.

�� I asked
you a question!� he said sharply.� �Why
are you still here?�

�� You never
told me to leave!� she shot back.� �And
I�m not going to.�

�� Yes, you
are.�� Confirming her fears, he turned
and made the motion of throwing the papers into the fire.� However, her summoning charm was quicker.� The stack of parchment narrowly avoided the
flames and flew across the room into her outstretched hand.� When he turned, his face was livid.�

�Get out.�

�� No.�� She tucked the papers into one of her bags
and put the straps around her arm; he could not summon it unless he wanted to
summon all of her.� And if that happened,
she would fight him tooth, nail, and spell, and she was certain that he had
seriously underestimated her ability in an altercation when provoked.

�� Get out!�� It was a shout this time, vicious and
enraged.� It stirred a slight peal of
fear in her.� He hadn�t raised his voice
to her before.

�� She stood
her ground.� �I won�t.� Not when you�re like this.��

�� Like
what?� he demanded, prowling in front of the fireplace.� �Tell me what I am like!�

�� Something�s
bothering you,� she replied, trying to remain calm and placid in the hopes that
it would bring him down from whatever anxiety was rattling him.� �Just�just tell me what it is, and we�ll talk
about it, and you�ll feel better.�

�� He laughed, a harsh, choked sound.� �What world do you live in?� Because I should like to
visit sometime.� No�no, there is
nothing to talk about, now give me those
fucking papers.�

�� She
swallowed, fighting the urge to take a step back.� He was frightening her.� She could feel the air in the room shivering,
wavering against the power of his anger.�
And something else, too, something she couldn�t quite identify.� He was walking the knife�s edge, just barely containing
himself.� He was right to tell her to
leave but she simply could not live with herself if he did anything stupid in
her absence.

�� All
right,� she said diplomatically, �maybe talking about it won�t fix it, but
neither will running away.�

�� Other
people run away,� he spat.� �Why can�t
I?�

�� She could
not believe she was about to say this.�
�You�re not like other people.�

�� Silence
hung between them, punctuated by the crackle and pop of the wood in the
fireplace.

�� He shook
his head.� Some of the anger had leached
out of him, but none of the intensity.�
�No.� I am tired of the charade, tired to death.� I am sick of pretending that things
matter.� None of it matters.�

�� Hermione
held the bag full of papers against her chest, her fingers twitching.� What in the name of Merlin had happened?� �It matters, Lucius.� Millions of people have read your book--�

�� She
couldn�t have known it, but that was the wrong thing to say.� His face contorted as his anger returned full
force.� It was so strong that she
actually felt a current of electricity searing along her skin.

�� SHE read the book!� he thundered,
interrupting her mid-sentence.� �It was
on her bleeding shelf!��

His long legs were carrying him
toward her and her mind panicked.� The
bag of parchment fell to the floor as she struggled for her wand.� Now she did back away, nearly stumbling on
the heels she had purchased not three hours before.� There was no point in getting hurt for a
stack of parchment � but damned if she was going to let him destroy all the
effort and artistry and the stupid thing that had dragged her into this situation
in the first place!

�� She
vanished the bag with a flick of her wrist, just as his fingers were about to
close around it.� He was very still.� When at last he looked up at her, his eyes
were unlike anything she had ever seen.�
She didn�t think it was possible to layer so many emotions into one
deadly glare.� There was pain, fountains
of it, and rage that made his pupils dilate into wide black pools.� There was also hate; real, unadulterated,
crackling hate.� Anything she thought she
had seen in his eyes on previous encounters now seemed like nothing more than
casual disgust.

�� Hermione
took another step back, her wand trained on him with a trembling hand.� This was a dangerous game.� If he wanted to destroy the book and never
write another word, what did it matter to her?�
It was not her business if and when he quietly (or not so quietly)
self-destructed.� She should not care for
the therapeutic value of telling his story, for he was the one who had made it
so traumatizing in the first place.�
Aside from one encounter, he had made his own choices.� He had done this to himself.

�� And yet,
she couldn�t suddenly stop caring.� She
didn�t know when she�d started.� It was
outside her abilities as a compassionate person to walk away.� In spite of the way he was looking at her,
she believed in his word.� She believed
he wouldn�t hurt her.

�� He rose to
his feet with a slow grace that belied his ragged emotions.� Then, in the space of a
blink, he apparated away with a quiet pop.� She stood frozen in his absence.�

Oh, God.� She had been right.� He wouldn�t hurt her�but he had never made
any promises about not hurting himself.

��

A/N 2: It�s important to note that Lucius
is not just being an irrational brat here � there is a genuine reason for his
behavior, which you�ll discover in the next chapter (though I have hinted at it
in this one).� Fortunately, most of the
next chapter is written because I just kept going with this one, and when I
realized it was 20+ pages, decided to split it into two chapters.� Part two will be up by Thursday.� In the meantime, can you guess why Lucius is rattled?
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Hungry Thirsty Crazy