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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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For your reading pleasure! I don't normally respond to reviews but I thought it might be nice for you loyalists!

circe: Yes, Hermione will have something to say about Lucius' treatment of the elf, but that will be minor in comparison to how he treats her! Severus is a bit of an opportunist in this fic. He retains his loyalties to the school and his friends but, at this stage in his life, he is very self-serving as well. Good thing Minerva is around to keep him in check tee hee!

MarksPet: I hate making Tonks a cheating bitch, but, what can I say? She's horny, Snape's there and well, let's just say it'll be an ongoing bit of juicy side plot. The more the merrier, eh? It will be a bit before Hermione and Lucius "get it on". This needs to simmer and come to a slow boil. In the meantime, Severus will entertain us, and not just with Tonks! *hint hint*

HarryGinny4Eva: You get your wish and get a few amusing anecdotes to chuckle at in this chapter. Thanks for your review and enjoy!

surfmistress: No, Pomona does NOT know he is raiding her greenhouses, and if he knows what is good for him he will not let her know either! I cannot say how much Minerva knows, however. Let's just say she knows more than Snape thinks she does! Oh yes, there is some confrontation served up cold for you in this chapter with LM/HG. Hope it is up to your standard!

Um, I hope I got everyone! If I missed you, thank you for reviewing I lurve them!!!! If you haven't reviewed don't be shy, I do take requests and ideas to heart!!!

Without further ado, chapter 3, which I stayed up til one am writing! Ha!

Chapter 3

“Fuck.”

The epithet seemed fitting and had flown from Lucius’ mouth before he had a chance to rein it in. It seemed that diarrhea of the mouth was another side effect of his prolonged drinking binge. Hermione Granger stared up at him with a rather indignant look on her face. She did not seem any happier to be standing in front of him than he was to see her there. His reverie was broken by her sharp retort.

“Now that pleasantries are out of the way, are you going to invite me in, or are you going to make me stand here all day?”

The rudeness of her greeting shocked him into a momentary silence as the young witch shoved her way past him into the foyer. Lucius remained staring at the place she had so recently vacated for a full half minute before closing the heavily ordained front door, slowly turning to the impudent woman. A staring match ensued and Lucius was mildly impressed by her ability to hold his icy grey stare without blinking. In the end, it was his eyes that began to water from the dryness that seemed to permeate the manor. Feigning dust, he brought a gloved hand to the bridge of his nose and squinted a few times, careful to sound as put-out as possible.

“Miss Granger, what are you doing here?”

She rolled her eyes at him and huffed. “I assume you have been informed of a Ministry official being sent to look over your financial affairs?”

He nodded, pursing his lips and toying with the fingertips on one gloved hand.

“Well, you’re looking at her.”

Lucius picked at the fingertips of the other gloved hand. “You can’t possibly be serious.”

“Mr. Malfoy, I am very serious. Trust me, I have better things to do than come to your home and blow smoke up your arse.”

Lucius raised one eyebrow and glanced at her curiously. The little chit sure had an attitude problem. It simply wouldn’t do to allow her to speak to him in such a manner. Clasping his hands together in front of him, Lucius leaned forward a bit for emphasis.

“Miss Granger?”

“Yes?”

“Get. Out.”

He smirked when her mouth dropped open and then audibly clicked shut. Hermione’s eyes narrowed.

“Look, Mr. Malfoy. You don’t frighten me. All of the Slytherin posturing in the world isn’t going to put me from my task. I’ve been given a job, and that is what I intend to do. Now, if you will kindly show me where you keep your ledgers and particulars, I’ll just be getting started.”

A slow rage was beginning to simmer deep within the blond aristocrat. He didn’t like being told what to do. Malfoys were the ones to give orders, not take them. While he knew he’d have to comply with the Ministry official, this particular choice had not been what he’d envisioned when taking into consideration handing over his financial empire, or at least, what was left of it. He moved forward, deliberately placing himself well into her personal space. The small witch backed up several paces until she bumped into a marble bust of his great-grandfather just at the base of the grand staircase.

He brought his face to within six inches of hers, her hot breath coming in measured pants as he moved in even closer. Intimidation always did the trick.

“Look here you mannerless, impudent little girl. I am only going to say this one time, and be advised, I do not like repeating myself. There are many people I have to answer to at this stage in the game, but a Mu- Muggleborn , wet behind the ears, facetious, swotty little Know-It-All is not one of them. I don’t care if the Minister for Magic himself sent you here. You are going to march that pert little behind right out of that door and tell them that Lucius Malfoy demands a proper representative be sent and not some poor excuse for a witch. If they don’t like it, they can stuff it up their posturing arses. I will not be handing lock and key to generations of the Malfoy empire over to the likes of YOU!”

By the end of his little tirade Lucius discovered he was practically on top of the young woman, his index finger jabbing her in the chest while his other hand rested just behind her head on the face of his forefather. The slip of a witch was straining her neck to look up at him with cold fury in her whisky-brown eyes. Her rose petal lips were drawn up tight, arms rigid at her sides, undoubtedly grasping her wand, itching for a chance to hex him.

With a final upward jab of his chin and an ugly sneer he moved back from her, allowing her to skirt around him to the door. He didn’t bother to turn around but blew out a silent huff of relief when the door opened. The last he heard from her was her lilting, angry voice coming back at him.

“This isn’t over, Mr. Malfoy. I’ll be back on Monday morning, and you shall have your answer then.”

Hermione tried to slam the door, but the heavy thing only closed smartly behind her, locking itself as she exited the manor.

Lucius staggered over to the bottom of the marble steps to the grand staircase and sat down heavily. What a fucking nightmare.

“God, I could really use a drink.”

---

Hermione was so angry she could barely see straight. It wasn’t as if she’d volunteered for this crappy assignment in the first place!

A stint at the Ministry as an intern had seemed like an ideal place to start following graduation from Hogwarts. She would get to work in the various departments and figure out what she liked to do, where she might best fit in and exactly where her passions may lie. So far, she had been shuffled around to three different departments and been given every bit of grunt work they’d been able to pile upon her. Never one to complain, she threw herself into every job and exceled with whatever they’d given her.

Hermione Granger was not a quitter. After shoveling manure for six weeks for the Department for the Care of Magical Creatures, enduring another six weeks of lecherous innuendos from the old geezers on the Wizengamot, and then six more weeks of being the spell test dummy for the Department for Spell Development and Regulation, they’d finally shuffled her on to the Affairs for Wizarding Finance and Futures.

It was a stupid name for a department, but of course, everything in the Ministry had some archaic reason for why it was set up for existing or working the way it did. There was no sense in bucking tradition, as she’d been told many times.

Hermione had managed to edge her way to the back of the room when her current boss had searched the rows of lackeys for this particular job. As soon as Malfoy’s name was mentioned she tried hard to make herself scarce. Anything to do with Malfoy Manor was not on her to-do list during this particular lifetime after the torture she had endured at said residence during the war.

Just her luck, at that particular moment, the rest of the room had suddenly cleared out when all of the other employees discovered there were various pressing or urgent matters to attend to at their own desks. Of course, Mr. Jenkins had spotted her meticulous form clinging to the bookcase at the back of the Finance Department’s central atrium.

Bobby Jenkins was a short, rotund, jolly little man with a long, thin grey beard and half-moon spectacles reminiscent of Albus Dumbledore. In fact, the high wizard was an idol of his and Mr. Jenkins had no less than five portraits of Professor Dumbledore positioned in prominent displays about the department. He took every opportunity to reference the one time he had shook hands with the famous wizard over twenty years prior at a Ministry luncheon of some sort. The fact that Hermione had been in such close proximity to the former Headmaster was a source of great interest to Mr. Jenkins –and great annoyance to Hermione. Mr. Jenkins took it upon himself to send her up to Hogwarts as often as possible to speak with the elderly wizard on barely worthwhile assignments. It was nothing that couldn’t have been taken care of by owl, but it seemed Hermione was doomed to have her temporary boss live vicariously through her for the time being as she was forced to repeat every detail of her meetings with the former Headmaster.

The strange little man immediately beset her with this ‘very important, delicate matter of national trust’. He had explained that as a tried and true war heroine, and smartest witch of her age (gods she was so sick of hearing that!) he was sure this ‘little’ project would be no object for her. Of course, he expected a full report by Monday morning on the status of the Malfoy family financial empire.

Hence, Hermione was most irritated by the lack of reception by her wayward host. It wasn’t as if she had expected a warm welcome and a hug. Malfoy’s attitude had pretty much been spot on. The real kicker was the fact that he had quite effectively ejected her from the Manor, thus forcing her to report back her very first failure as an intern and bring Mr. Jenkins back with her Monday morning to reinforce her instatement as the Ministry Official assigned to Mr. Malfoy’s financial affairs. The man was infuriating. She had so wanted to hex that self-assured sneer from his face. And Hermione wasn’t so dumb as to have missed his little near-miss, slip of the tongue where he’d almost called her a Mudblood instead of a Muggleborn. Oh, how she would have loved to have had that to report back to Mr. Jenkins.

Alas, she was stuck with a firm boot in her arse and defeat on her hands. Well, she wasn’t going to make it easy for Mr. Malfoy. If he wanted to be an arsehole, she would show him what it meant to fuck with her on her first day.

----

Severus groaned when the ridiculous eagle owl bearing the Malfoy crest on its tiny uniform tapped at his office window.

What the hell could Lucius want now?

He’d hardly had a moment’s rest with the upcoming preparations for a winter ball and the student’s growing excitement for the Christmas hols. The weather had been shite so the lot of them had been cooped up in the castle for days at a time, resulting in hex wars and a multitude of detentions and lost House points.

Snape hadn’t even had time for a proper shag since the last time he’d banged Tonks. The sexy Auror had been giving him the eye on her rounds but knew better than to approach him first. The only time she’d tried that he’d threatened her with a pink slip. Jobs weren’t exactly overflowing these days and he knew she couldn’t afford to lose her job. It was bad enough he was going to have to extend the Defense position to the goddamned werewolf again. His latest Professor had gotten herself knocked up and decided to leave for Italy in the middle of term.

Letting in the owl and taking the missive, he quickly scanned the paper and slammed it down on his desk with a bang that startled the owl. It hooted softly at him as a reprimand.

“Damn!”

Severus shooed the owl out the window. “There will be no reply.” The eagle owl hooted once more and took off into the cool November air.

Tossing the missive into the fire, Severus watched as the edges of the parchment were quickly consumed in a brief conflagration of acrid smoke and a cheery crackle that signaled the demise of the note.

Severus had warned Lucius he was only able to do so much influencing within the Ministry. Intent on keeping his word, the tired Headmaster decided that Lucius was just going to have to ride this one out on his own or seek help elsewhere. He could not afford to stick his nose into the politics of wizarding Britain any more. If the old coot Jenkins had sent the Granger girl for the job over Snape’s recommendation of Mr. Pucey, there was nothing more to be done. Obviously, the old man had his reasons.

Severus glanced longingly toward the book on his mantel that was hollowed out and contained a bit of something he kept for those extra stressful days. On an impulse he pulled it off the shelf and unwarded the false front of the book. Carefully opening it the right side up, he took a thin phial of bright blue liquid out of the line of phials still mostly filling the space inside of the book. He set the book on the edge of the mantle and pulled the stopper from the tiny bit of glass. With a soft exhale, he brought the edge of the phial to his rather well-endowed nostrils and inhaled deeply. Simply breathing in the cloying fumes had his muscles relaxing slightly. There was nothing like his homemade muscle relaxers.

Tipping it back quickly, he swallowed the entire dose in one go just as the door to his office banged open, causing him to jump and knock against the faux book on the mantle. With a sharp curse of, “Fuck me!” he gritted his teeth as eleven delicate vials of potion tinkled onto the floor, spreading blue liquid over the stone of his office. He stared in disbelief as it evaporated almost instantly into the air. Severus felt as if a large stone had just dropped from his stomach into his dragon-hide boots. That box had contained many hours of hard work, not to mention a good portion of his salary for the year. It was not irreplaceable, but damn near for a good long while.

The effects of the potion he had drunk were kicking in and his mind began to feel numb. Every muscle in his body felt loose and he felt slightly floaty. It was unpleasant in the wake of his raised ire. Spinning sharply on heel, he turned to greet the aggrieved transgressor.

Minerva McGonagall had one of the third year Slytherins by the scruff of his uniform, her eyebrows raised in that irritatingly matronly way that told him the student wasn’t the only one in deep shite. Without missing a beat, she pushed forward the trembling young man.

“Mister Hawthorne thought it would be funny to put laxatives in the Gryffindor’s pitchers of pumpkin juice this evening. Seeing as this is his third major offense this term, I have brought him to you for counsel.”

Her keen eyes swept to the book sprawled wide open, false front lay glaringly naked for the Head of Gryffindor to see. All that remained of his potions phials were the shimmery shards of glass dotting the landscape of rock under their feet. Minerva’s accusatory glare made him wince.

“Tea in my quarters at curfew, Headmaster. Don’t be late.”

With a derisive sniff the Deputy Headmistress swished from the room in a prim flow of skirts and petticoats.

Severus shook off the feeling of impending doom and cocked his head to the side before striding quickly and imposingly to the tremulous third year.

“Well, Mr. Hawthorne? What do you have to say for yourself?”

At least he still had the ability to terrorize students. If nothing else, it was a balm to his already frayed nerves.

The young man made a frightened noise in the back of his throat and yelped when Severus pulled his wand to ward and silence his office door. He had never seen the Headmaster smile before, and the lad was sure it was not something he was going to enjoy remembering in the future.
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Divided We Fall