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Catch and Release	By : AndreaLorraine Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Lucius/Hermione Views: 19606 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Harry Potter and his universe aren't mine and I'm not making any profit from the writing of this fanfic.

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�� Lucius didn�t go far.�
This part of the world interested him.�
It was the cradle of several major Muggle
religions, borne in a time where the line between the magical and Muggle worlds was less defined.� He did often wonder about the prophets of Muggle religion and whether or not they had just been
exploitative wizards and witches.� No one
knew for sure.

�� He could
pretend all he wanted that he wasn�t strongly attracted to the magic that
lingered faintly in the air.� All the
while, he just watched the Muggles�wondering how they
could possibly be oblivious to it.� It
was everywhere.

�� Why didn�t
they feel it?� Did wizards and witches
have some kind of sensory ability that they didn�t?� Why hadn�t anyone studied these things?� Most importantly, was he so bored that he was
actually thinking about the very minute biological differences between magical
folk and Muggles?

�� Yes, he
was.� Sighing and popping an olive into
his mouth, he tried to force himself to think on other things.� For a moment the exquisite saline taste of
the olive distracted him.� Then, as it
was apt to lately, his mind flickered to the woman he kept writing postcards
to.

�� Their swim
had been interesting.� Very
interesting indeed.

�� It had
relaxed her.� In that state of mind, the
slight lines smoothed from her forehead and her lips went slack.� He had never seen her at ease; each and every
time they met, she was angry, determined, flustered, afraid, or some variation
of those.

Not so in the water.� He wondered what her animagus
form would be, should she ever discover it.�
Yet another surprising and perplexing facet to this situation; if dolts
like Sirius Black, Peter Pettigrew, and James Potter could become animagi (not to mention that godforsaken wench Rita Skeeter), then what was stopping a brilliant witch like Ms.
Granger?

He couldn�t say why it frustrated
him so.� The old Lucius
would have attributed it to some central flaw of inferior Muggleborns.� That thought didn�t even cross his mind
now.� It had become abundantly clear that
Ms. Granger was far from inferior.�
Rather, it seemed more like she had allowed others who were to pull her
down to their level.

Well, he could do nothing about the
company she kept, so there was no use dwelling on it.� Other things were far more titillating.� The plain truth was that Ms. Granger had a beautiful
body.� Her shape was soft in a way that
suggested she wasn�t afraid to eat, yet didn�t neglect herself.� She wasn�t perfect but she wasn�t shy.� Her choice of swimwear, a navy blue bikini
with little white anchors printed all over it, indicated a level of comfort
with her body.

�� He directed
his thoughts elsewhere as he distractedly ate another olive.� It was probably pointless to spend time
thinking on it.� She was not the kind of
woman he could easily seduce, and even if she was, he would have to maintain a
level of vigilance that would make any sort of intimacy uncomfortable.

�� They were
and would always be enemies.� She had tried
to arrest him several times and her Stinging Hex had served to remind him how
strong she was.� He required no more
proof than that.� This thing that existed
between them was volatile, largely dependent on her moods, and for all he knew
it was some ploy to trick him into letting his guard down so she could make
good on her threats to bring him in.� He
wouldn�t have thought she was the sort of person who would use those kinds of
tactics; they were too subtle for a Gryffindor.

�� Ah, but
houses were just houses, and once placed in the real world, people often became
much more than the generalized labels of their youth.

After the Dead
Sea, Hermione gave up trying to arrest him.� He always got away.� However, if she tried to be civil, to talk to
him and just exist with him, he would stay longer and longer.� They talked about everything and nothing.� He was a disturbingly good conversationalist.� Heaven help her, she was actually starting to
like him, in that familiar way of a hunter and its wily prey.�

She wouldn�t admit to looking
forward to his postcards, because she didn�t.�
Absolutely not.

So far he had led her all over the
world; she had received good-natured taunts from every corner of the earth.� He bought her dinner in Sri Lanka a few
weeks ago � the fourth time they had dined together.� It was all professional, of course; just
another part of her plan to get him comfortable in the hopes that he would let
his guard down.� Yes.� That was the plan�

She�d received another postcard
yesterday.� This morning she had followed
him up to the room he was renting under a Disillusionment charm.� It was scarcely more than a bed, a light, a
sink, and a small, screened-off loo.� It was certainly not the kind of lodging she
expected Lucius Malfoy to
seek out.� Then again, she didn�t expect
to be covertly meeting him in Amsterdam,
either.

It wasn�t messy, but she did notice
certain things that surprised her - namely, a pair of condom wrappers in the
small trash bin.� She must have sniffed
her disdain out loud, because his head snapped up and she saw him smile in the
mirror.

�If I had known you were going to
sneak in, I would have cleaned up a bit.�

She ended her charm.� Hermione wanted to yell at him for not
noticing that he�d been followed, though why she should care was beyond
her.� Something else came out instead.� �So you sleep with Muggles
now?�

He blinked, confused as to how
she�d reached that conclusion.� �Is there
a reason I shouldn�t?�

�Oh, I don�t know, that whole �I�m
a big bad pureblood wizard and everything and everyone else in the world is
beneath me� complex?�

�I will admit that I enjoy when
women are beneath me,� he smirked.

�You�re disgusting.� Is that what you do, just�just�sleep with
every pretty woman you come across who�s weak enough to cave to your charms?�
she demanded, unsure why it bothered her so much.

He turned and eyed her a little too
perceptively.� �That is said like someone
who hasn�t had a good shag in a very long time.�

In spite of herself, she
flushed.� Then her annoyance kicked in
and she ground out, �That�s none of your business.� What if you get someone pregnant?�

He turned away.� Water ran and he splashed some of it on his
face before reaching for a razor and shaving cream.� The question lingered as he carefully shaved.� The silence was only punctuated by the
occasional tapping of the razor on the edge of the sink.

�That would be impossible even if I
was stupid enough not to use protection,� he murmured when he was finished.� �The Dark Lord sterilized me.�

Hermione thought that she�d
misheard.� �What?�

�You heard what I said.�

�He�what�why?�� It didn�t make any sense.� Why would Voldemort
sterilize one of the very people he wanted to propagate?

�Any number of reasons, I suppose.� I was a failure.� My son was a failure.� He wanted to punish me, to demean me, to send
a message to his other followers.� Maybe
he was angry that he couldn�t have children after all the dark magic he�d put
his body through, or perhaps he was just bloody insane.� Choose whichever you like.�

She sat heavily on the edge of the
bed.� For whatever reason, that
confession took the wind right out of her sails.� Her anger dissipated.� She wasn�t sure what to say, but the silence
wasn�t uncomfortable.� He went about his
routine as if she wasn�t there.

�How?� she asked.

�I�m intact, if that�s what you�re
asking.� Even the Dark Lord stopped short
of genital mutilation.�

�So it was a spell?�

He nodded.� �Such things aren�t hard to find if you know
where to look.� They used to sterilize
squibs and werewolves if they went in for procedures at the hospital.�

That wasn�t so hard for her to
believe.� There were similar incidences
in Muggle history.�
The wizarding world was by equal measure more
and less tolerant; she hoped it didn�t still go on today.

He changed his shirt.� Hermione tried not to look at his tattoos, so
out of place on a man that had once seemed prim and perfect.� There was a dragon on his right shoulder that
wasn�t done in crude lines like the others.�
This had come after Azkaban.

�Did it hurt?�

He glanced up.� �The sterilization or the
tattoos?�

�Both.�

�Yes,� he said.

The awkwardness was tangible for
the next few minutes.� Hermione didn�t know
what to say.� Lucius
just continued with his routine, running a brush through his hair and then
painstakingly braiding it.� She felt
itchy watching him, out of sorts because she could not push his confession from
her mind and because he had spoken it to her in the first place.� He could have just made some snappy reply
about birth control.� There was no reason
for him to be honest.

What possessed him?� The same thing that possessed her, she
supposed � that thing that made her come and see him time after time, place
after place, and not do what she knew she ought to.� With a sigh, she dared to look at him.� He was sitting on the floor for there was no
other place to sit; she occupied the bed and that was as far as the apartment�s
furnishings went.� He was right in his
assessment that sitting next to her on the bed would
cross the invisible line between them.

Hermione realized quite suddenly
that every other time they had met it had been out in public.� A social scene provided a strong buffer
between them; it afforded them some kind of safety.� Alone as they were, that safety was gone.� That was why they both felt so strange.

�
She had to say something or she would go mad.� Quietly, Hermione voiced a question on a
subject she had always wondered about, unaware that he, too, was thinking of
questions�but none that he would address to her.

�What do the Azkaban tattoos mean?�

He looked up, eyes slightly
startled, as if he had forgotten she was there.�
Of course she wasn�t silly enough to think that was actually the
case.� Perhaps no one had ever asked him
that question before.

�They don�t mean anything,� he
replied in a voice that seemed too calm.�
�They are an old type of warding designed to prevent inmates from
harming one another.� The higher your profile,
the more protection and therefore the more tattoos you get.�

In spite of herself, Hermione was
impressed.� She�d never thought about
that and every time she meant to ask Sirius about the tattoos, her attention
was diverted elsewhere.� Now that the
answers were right there in front of her she couldn�t control her curiosity.

�Do they work?�

He nodded.

�Even now?�

�No, they don�t function outside of
Azkaban.�

She shook her head.� �I can�t believe they�d do something like use
those horrid dementors, yet be thoughtful enough to
protect the inmates.�

Lucius
cast her a look, one that was the tiniest bit
cold.� �You didn�t listen to me.� I said they are designed to prevent inmates from harming one another.� There�s nothing to stop outsiders or
employees from harming prisoners, and they know it.�

Her mouth fell open at his
uncharacteristic bluntness.� It was on
the tip of her tongue to ask if anyone had ever harmed him, but she thought
better of it.� She didn�t want any more
of his honesty.� Not to mention she was
already disenchanted enough with the wizarding
world�s penal system�

�Why did you follow me today?� he
asked.� Evidently it was his turn.

Hermione shrugged.� �I just wanted to see if I could.�

His only reply was a frown.

She left quietly not long after
their conversation.� He had told her
something very personal, something he had probably never told anyone, and
neither of them really knew how to deal with it.� It had made him sullen and withdrawn.� For her part, Hermione felt disgusted � both
at him and for him.

She didn�t like these little
things.� No, she didn�t like the bits of
humanity that escaped him at random times, be it a bout of the hiccups, the way
his eyes would tear slightly if he ate something very spicy, or his laugh.� Merlin, his laugh�

He would not be laughing
tonight.� Nor would he be bedding any
pretty Muggle women.�
Somehow, Hermione just knew that.

��

Lucius
was restless.� He didn�t know what had
made him speak so openly to the intrusive little witch.� She was one of two people who knew what had
been done to him, very slowly and very painfully.� Narcissa knew and
had promised never to speak of it.� Now
Hermione Granger knew, too.�

He could have recited the words of
the Dark Lord to her, had he wanted.�
They ran deep in his memory.� He
had been told that he was a failure, his family was weak and useless, and that
if he ever failed again, his son would be sterilized, as well, to rid the world
of such feeble examples of magic.� Lucius didn�t care about himself.� The fear that Draco�s
ability to someday be a father would be taken from him because of his own
father�s mistakes was what made him ill with anxiety.

He felt that way now.� He was sick with the knowledge that he was
losing his ability to detect specific magical signatures.� An overall saturation of magic was different;
there were no indications that he was losing his ability to sense that.� But he had tried three times now to
specifically imprint Hermione�s magical signature into his senses so that she
couldn�t take him by surprise, something he had been able to do with frequent
success in the past, and all three times he had failed.� Today, she had followed him and snuck into
his miserable little room without him even noticing.� It was enough to make tears of frustration sting
in his eyes.

The books at the library in Alexandria had told him
that over a long period of time, magical suppression could have noticeable
impacts.� Unfortunately the books didn�t
elaborate much beyond that.� There were a
few narratives about extreme cases; those, however, were mostly Muggleborns who never knew of their magical abilities nor
learned to control them.� He didn�t fit
into that category by any stretch of the imagination, but regardless, the news
wasn�t good.� Most of those people had
gone completely insane.

His jaw was clenched so tightly
that he was giving himself a headache.�
With a deep breath, he consciously tried to relax.� It was safe to assume that he was not
suddenly going to go insane overnight.�
It was clear, though, that he needed a new plan.

He had hoped that Hermione�s
continued presence would somehow compensate for his inability to do and exist
with magic.� Now he was beginning to
think that the problem was not so much that he wasn�t around magic�it was that he wasn�t using his own.

There was no solution to that.� He couldn�t use anything more than very minor
spells; to do so was to risk being traced, discovered, and thrown back into
that god-awful prison.� While he had not
been severely mistreated in Azkaban, he had borne the ire of the guards on
several occasions.� That was karma; the
few who relished the doling of beatings, the kind that were just bad enough to
hurt like hell but not to seriously impair, were always people he had been vile
to at some time in the past.� He knew it
and that was why he took the beatings in stride.� Still, he just really wasn�t a glutton for
punishment � not anymore.� ��

All that thinking and he had truly
accomplished nothing, except to get himself very worked up.� Lucius rubbed his
hands over his face and sighed.� He
wouldn�t be able to focus on anything, but he needed something to do or else
he�d go mad.� So he put on his shoes,
left the claustrophobic little room, and walked.

Amsterdam
was like Istanbul.� He haunted its bridges and waterways longer
than he should have, taking magic in through his eyes, ears, lungs, and his
very pores.� Still, he didn�t feel
recharged as he had upon leaving Turkey.� Now he felt like an addict who only had
enough money to afford a very small amount of his chosen drug; it was in his
veins but it was little more than a five-minute buzz, not even sufficient to
blunt the knowledge of the withdrawal to come.�
He knew it wouldn�t matter whether he surrounded himself with magic or
not, but whatever transition awaited him would certainly be easier if he was
not entirely cut off from it.

He swam in the canals at
night.� That made the days bearable.� As much as he knew he should leave, swim on
to a place farther from the world that remembered him, something held him
there.� So he stayed.� He stayed and he waited for whatever would at
last drive him away.

�

When Hermione retrieved her mail,
the presence of a postcard gave her an immediate shot of elation.� She was instantly annoyed by it.� She stopped outside of the lift and stomped
her foot in frustration.� She was not happy to get his postcard.� She wasn�t.

On the lift, she examined it more
closely.� Her emotions flip-flopped as
she took in a familiar scene.� Amsterdam?� Why was he still there?� It had been five weeks!� Was he out of his mind?

The longer he stayed somewhere, the
more chance there was that he would be recognized.� She wanted to believe that he had gone
elsewhere in those five weeks.� But then
why return to Amsterdam
again?

She turned the postcard over.� There was nothing written on it.� For some reason, that alarmed her.� There had never been a blank postcard before,
and by now she had quite a collection.

She was grateful that Padma was not in the office when she returned.� That meant that she could sit at her desk and
stare at and through the rectangle of paper.�
Of course it didn�t give her any answers, but at least she could think
for a few minutes.

Hermione knew that she was getting deeper
into this than she had ever intended to.�
Try as she might, she couldn�t pretend that she hadn�t developed some
kind of attachment to him.� She cared about him.� She had seen a side of Lucius
that few ever had.� Through all the
meetings, the dinners, and even those early games of cat and mouse, she had
made the acquaintance of a changed man.

What she didn�t understand was why
he was interested in spending time with her.�
For the first six or seven times they�d interacted, she had tried to
arrest and possibly maim him.� It had all seemed like great fun to him.� Hermione knew what it was like to have
someone on her trail, someone who could cause very undesirable things to
happen; it had never for a millisecond been anything resembling fun.

She sighed.� Maybe the blank postcard meant that he didn�t
understand why he continued to connect with her, either.� If that was the case she could at least take
comfort in the fact that she wasn�t the only bewildered one.

She was going in blind this time,
unsure of where to find him.� Perhaps he
figured that he no longer needed to specify since she�d been able to follow
him.� In her logical way, Hermione
decided to check out the places from before; maybe he had left some clue.� She never expected that he�d still be there.

He didn�t seem to react when she
walked in.� He was going about his
routine just like last time.� She knew
that he was aware of her presence; a slight tension in his back betrayed that.

Hermione stared at him.� Lucius worked a
brush through his hair as she watched.�
The blond strands were bordering on ridiculously long and they were tangling
at the ends.

�Do you want me to cut your hair?�
some unknown impulse made her ask.

�I don�t have a scissor,� he
responded succinctly, his voice slightly flat.

�I can transfigure one.�� She took a hesitant step forward.� �I�m good at it.� I�ve given my daughter a lot of trims.�

�How old is she?�

�Twelve, now.� Away at Hogwarts most of
the time.�

He nodded.� �It is�probably against my better judgment to
let you near me with a sharp object.�

�It�s probably against my better
judgment to get anywhere near you at all.�

They looked at one another for a
long minute.� Then Lucius
held the brush out to her.

�� He was
silent as she brushed his hair.� She was
amazed at how soft it was.� Hers had
never been that soft; she brushed a bit longer than necessary just to keep
touching the pale silk.� Then she aligned
her transfigured scissor and began the steady slice across his shoulders.

�� She hadn�t
cut straight hair in a long time.� Rose�s
hair was curly, like hers.� In fact, the
last time she had cut straight hair�had been the time she�d given Ron a trim
around the neck and ears, just before Roxanne�s first birthday party.� Ron�s hair was soft, too, and the color of
embers as they burned.

�� She was
evening out the bottom, chasing memories of Ron firmly out of her head, when he
spoke up.

�� Draco�does he have children?�

�� She looked
up and caught his eyes in the mirror.�
They both quickly looked away.

�� Yes.� He has two sons, Scorpius
and Antares.�

�� He
nodded.� His voice was barely audible
when he continued.� �How
old?�

�� Scorpius is twelve, like my daughter Rose.� Antares is eight.�

�� Lucius nodded again.�
�I don�t suppose I�ll ever know them.�

�� Her hands
slowed and then stilled at his words.�
She didn�t know how to respond.�
If he hadn�t even known that Draco had
children, it meant that Draco was not on speaking
terms with him.� Aside from that, he was
a fugitive.� They both knew he could
never go home.

�� I�m
sorry,� she whispered.

�� He reached
up and took the brush from her.� �That�s
good enough.� Thank you.�� Lucius brushed some
stray hair from his shoulders and then began to gather locks of it from where
they had fallen.

�� Moving
robotically, she crouched down to help him.�
She wasn�t thinking straight, because she could have just used her wand
to banish the blond clumps.� They reached
for the last bit of debris at the same time.�
Somehow, in the moment of awkward hesitation, the tension snapped.

�� Lucius lurched forward to kiss her and she wasn�t as
shocked by it as she should have been.
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