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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
- 4
- 5
I'm back my lovelies! Had massive projects for finals to deal with, MAJOR drama with my ex to sort out, and while I'm still very busy I have time to write again for awhile, yay! I fully intend to write and post as much as possible. Maybe I can write enough to keep me ahead of the game for awhile and post chapters weekly so you're not all so strung out for months at a time, eh? Sigh, so sorry my darlings. Chapter 5 is here and I will be working on subsequent chapters for the Woman series and This Physical Fascination as well. Turrah and mwah, love reviews! Please leave one!

Chapter 5

Hermione finally gave up manually searching for the House Elf. She winced at the state of dust that trailed along behind her normally pristine Ministry robes, marring the tiny footprints her feet left in the wake of the layer of grime over everything in this wing of the Manor. She hadn’t dared speak out loud, afraid so much as a muffled sound given voice would wake ghosts of Malfoy past. There was a thought to chill the blood!

Giving up her quest, and now thoroughly lost, she called out softly. “Um, is there a House Elf here?”

With a quiet ‘pop’, the same ugly creature that had greeted her initially startled her into a giant cobweb just behind her, causing a shrill little shriek to emit from her throat. This seemed to scare the creature into backing away from her, waving its spindly fingers.

“I not’s be hurting Miss. Miss called for Tippy?”

Batting away the cobwebs and the errant, most annoyed spider that Hermione luckily did not see, she nodded quickly and scourgified herself, laughing a little bit as the tickling sensation washed over her.

"Yes, Tippy. Thank you for coming. You see, I’m lost!” Hermione gestured around, rolling her eyes at the grime and disarray.

Tippy shifted her hands on her miniature tea towel. “Miss should not be in this part of the Manor. Master would be most displeased.”

“Well, it’s not like he let me know where his financial records were. Can you show me where I can begin?”

“How far back does Miss need to go?”

Hermione shrugged and thought about it for a moment. “Oh, let’s start with the last fifty years.”

Tippy’s big eyes grew as large as dinner plates as she reached for Hermione’s hand and snapped her fingers.

They arrived in a space dark as pitch, and Hermione had the sensation of being in a vast room. Each tiny movement seemed to echo endlessly even though not one other sound permeated the black expanse. If it weren’t for the elf, she could have sworn she’d Apparated into space.

Hermione was about to Lumos with her wand when it was wrenched from her grasp. Instantly she flailed forward, searching desperately for her wand when Tippy’s small hand disappeared from her own.

“Give me my wand!” she yelled and was inundated with what sounded like a dull roar. Instinctively she crouched close to the floor, making herself as small as possible. She could have sworn she heard Tippy’s voice utter, “Fuck!” in a high-pitched squeak and then a garbled warble, elf language sing-song voice that brought a warm glow to the room.

Hermione peeked out from under her shield of arms and hair, letting out a hoarse cry as a mountain of papers resembling a parchment tidal wave onslaught crashed down around her. Instead of the expected smothering blanket crushing her, a sort of paper cave had enveloped her and Tippy, who was standing proudly just a foot away from her, Hermione’s wand clutched tightly in her fist.

Tippy shook the butt end of the wand at the owner of the slender stick. “You’s never cast spells in ‘dis room. Nope nope nope; never human spells. Master be very upset with Tippy if all Malfoy records go poof!”

Hermione digested what the elf was telling her as she cautiously sat in a criss-cross-apple-sauce position with her legs folded neatly, the top of her head heaving bits and pieces of her bushy hair toward the inner shell of the neatly cast force field, the static electricity making her resemble a Muggle who’d rubbed a balloon on the top of her head and held it there.

“I’s only give you’s this wand if you’s promise not to cast the humans magic, young Miss,” Tippy warned, her stern face almost comical.

Hermione nodded solemnly, biting her bottom lip to refrain from an all-out guffaw at this odd situation.

Returning the wand to its owner, Tippy shook her small head and gazed upwards at the piles of crushed paper around them.

“What in Merlin’s name happened?” Hermione gestured.

Tippy solemnly held her hands out to her sides, the tea towel still perfectly in place. “Miss caused the records to fall down. You’s was too loud. Tippy not have time to cast Muffliato elf spell before Miss made loud noise and all Master’s records go ‘boom.’” The elf grinned garishly at her.

“I did this?” she asked with disbelief, still unable to comprehend that they were still alive. “Can you get us out of this?”

Tippy nodded. “Of courses, Miss. Tippy fix.”

The elf screwed her eyes shut and murmured another foreign incantation, rocking back and forth, her fingers clenched together in a Zen-like posture. The magic of the elf seemed to seep through the barrier and slowly shift the mountain of paper off of their temporary shelter. In slow motion, the tidal wave of parchment flew up and away, righting itself precariously.

Hermione would never cease to be amazed by what magic could do.

When all of the stacks were back in place, Tippy cast the necessary spells to protect both them and the ancient stacks.

Hermione stood and gawked. “Tippy, I only need the last fifty years. Not the last thousand!”

Tippy waved her arm around. “This is only last twenty years, Miss. Malfoy family very, very busy. Very important family. Lotsa papers.”

Hermione gulped. Perhaps she’d gotten in over her head. “Okay…. Which stack is the last year?”

Tippy pulled her along to a corner of the vast room that was overwhelming in its own right, gesturing to three ginormous stacks of papers.

“This past year slow one for Master.”

Slowly shaking her head, she mouthed one word. “Shit.”

Long, pale fingers drew down over Severus’ tired face. Now that they were all seated, he had to figure out how to tell Lupin that his appointment for Defense teacher was a complimentary nod to the Werewolf population, one forced by the hand in a public show of the Ministry to garner its ever two-faced public image of “non-discrimination in the post-war wizarding world.”

Non-discrimination, his arse.

Oh yes, the Profit would love to get ahold of this tripe. He’d hoped to avoid the to-do. If there was anything Snape hated, it was having to deal with Lupin’s lack of grace in accepting anything that wasn’t earned through his own hard work. He snorted inwardly. The stupid man would think of the job as charity. Went to show the world why the wolf hadn’t done anything more to better himself in position or status over the decades since school. Self-loathing got you nowhere in any society.

Remus gestured to the crumpled parchment on the Headmaster’s desk, flicking his tawny eyes from the paper to Snape’s obsidian glare.

“I won’t do it.”

Minerva folded her arms, her thin lips pressed together in a barely suppressed smirk.

Tonks opened her mouth to speak, but one finger from Snape raised in her direction had her teeth clicking loudly together as her jaw snapped shut.

Mildly surprised by his girlfriend’s reaction to this simple gesture, Remus was distracted by that same bony finger pointing straight at him.

“You will accept the Ministry’s position and be thankful for it, you ungrateful shite, and I’ll tell you why.”

Severus wanted to crow joyously when Tonks’ hair turned black, Minerva gasped and Remus nearly jumped from his chair.

“Sit the fuck down or I will Silencio all of you,” he continued, specifically directing this comment at Minerva, who supposedly had been the only person who had received a copy of the dictatorial missive from the Ministry concerning the true nature of the assignment. The fact that she had let it slip to the couple was an oversight to needle him that he did not intend to let go unpunished. For now, he would file away her grievous transgression in the back of his mind.

Remus appeared to hedge while he hovered just above the seat of his chair before withering obstinately against the tall back of the seat.

“Let’s hear it, but this better be good or I’m leaving, and no amount of begging will make me come back to this Goddess-forsaken castle.”

Severus didn’t restrain his sneer this time. Oh, this was going to be good. Clasping his fingers together on the desk, he smoothly rose and began to pace about the room. He knew Minerva hated it when he did that, and all the more to unnerve the others as well.

“You have me at a disadvantage, Lupin,” he began. Snape could almost feel the wolf’s back stiffen in surprise. The Headmaster was not above admitting his mistakes, only submitting them verbally when they were tempered with returned truths.

“There are many qualified to teach the Theory of Defense,” he began once more, resuming his pacing. “Theory and practice, as we all know, are two different breeds of duck.”

He paused just above Nymphadora’s chair, inhaling her scent. Ahhh, so she was aroused by his voice and presence? All the better to torture her right under her boyfriend’s nose. Lupin probably thought her cunt was wet for a bit of wolf cock. Not tonight, he thought, again distracted.

Damn woman was throwing him off track!

“Where was I?”

“Ducks,” Minerva supplied, sighing with vaulted irritation.

“Ah yes, ducks. As I was saying, you cannot effectively teach Defense without really having the skill to back up the practicality of knowledge. As Order members, we’ve all the experience and more in abundance, yes?”

It was a rhetorical question, and the group sensed this, so he carried on.

“You’ve not only been selected by the pompous, ostentatious flobberworms that work in Ministry Human Resources, I’ve hand-picked you to teach the whelps because you are the only truly humble mongrel around that will not take advantage of his position and use it to enhance the power of the growing werewolf community to sway greater pull within said pathetic Ministry. This school is mine to govern, and I’ll be damned to hell and back before I allow the Ministry to take over what is mine.”

Abruptly, Remus stood and straightened out his shabby jacket. “I think I’ve heard quite enough.”

“Darling, please sit down, the Headmaster isn’t done explaining-“

“I don’t give a fuck what Severus has to say! All of my life someone or another has owned me, and the Ministry wants me to be its poster boy for werewolf equality or some dumb shite, and now the bat is telling me I am under his thumb like some goddamned wind-up toy. Not on my wand!”

Minerva stood up, her game having tossed itself out the window of reasonable affability some time ago.

“Remus, please. I didn’t intend for you two to be at such ends. Let’s start again, shall we?”

Remus was striding quickly for the door, reaching it in several large strides. He stiffened once more when a wand was shoved into his back. Neither witch could see the ballsy move by the Headmaster on his potential Defense teacher.

“I’m warning you, Lupin. If you dare walk out that door you can say goodbye to your Wolfsbane potion.”

Remus snorted. “Any old fart can brew Wolfsbane.”

Snape allowed an unseen, ugly smile to curl over his lips. “Ah yes, there is that point. But what of the essential ingredient that makes it potent, hmmmm? I wonder who the sole supplier is of that particular item?”

“You bastard,” Remus whispered under his breath. “It was you. It’s been you inflating the prices for ground, blessed Moonstone!”

“What a clever creature you are. Wouldn’t it be a shame if the entire supply were tainted?”

“How dare you blackmail me, you filthy prick!”

Remus turned around swiftly, nearly nose to nose with Snape. The unyielding Potions master kept his wand trained on the chest of the man in front of him. Lupin’s breath was coming hot and heavy, his eyes slowly turning a bloody shade of gold.

Minerva stepped in-between the two posturing men. “Fools! Enough of this! If Mr. Lupin does not desire to play Professor, we shall simply have to seek out another candidate worthy of the position.”

“There is no other, and you know it, Minerva,” Snape replied in a tight manner, sheathing his wand to avoid a real confrontation.

Tonks appeared on the other side of the three. “What’s going on? I thought you’d decided, love,” she directed at Remus while glancing furtively at Snape when his head was turned towards the Deputy Headmistress.

All three turned to gaze at the Metamorphagus.

“What? Remus said no. That’s the end of it. Come on, hun. Let’s get out of here.” She knew this would piss off her lover, but the look in her boyfriend’s eyes was unmistakable, and only a good, physical bout of exercise or violence would allow the raised energy to capitulate the wolf’s satisfaction fully.

“I’ll do it,” Remus spat, a little saliva landing on the Headmaster’s robes. “Not for you, not for the Ministry, and not even for Tonks here. I’ll do it for the kids, and because I CHOOSE to. As far as I’m concerned, you better stay the fuck out of my way, Severus. You don’t know who you’re messing with. I’m not James’ and Sirius’ little sidekick anymore.”

Severus merely raised a brow in sardonic amusement. So the wolf had a little fire in him after all? That would keep things interesting around the castle. Things would be even trickier now that he’d be living on site. He’d have to really make sure the witch was scoured well after each session from now on. Lupin’s nose was infamous for sniffing out trouble.

“Very well. Report to the staff meeting tomorrow morning. Tonks is required to be present and you may both retire to the family quarters in the west wing. That will be all.”

With an imperious sneer he billowed to the back of the room and disappeared into his private quarters.

Minerva fluttered about and muttered apologies for Severus’ behavior. “Don’t know what’s gotten into him to treat his staff in such a manner, so very sorry, so very sorry,” she placated the couple as she ushered them down the stairs and out of sight.

With a tight sigh and a narrowing of her eyes, Minerva headed to the kitchens for a little alteration to the Headmaster’s dinner. A little crushed stinging nettle and masked laxative was in order to soften his surly attitude properly.

With a little hop and a skip belying the true extent of her eighty-some odd years, the Deputy Headmistress practically hummed with satisfaction as she disappeared down the stairs in the direction of the Hogwarts kitchens.
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Divided We Fall