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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.

Chapter List
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�� The stack
of postcards in her drawer was becoming so large that she had to bring some of
them home for fear of them taking over the desk.� She shouldn�t keep them there, anyway.� It was too risky.

�� Padma had noticed her collection and just smiled at her
whenever she got a new one.� She wasn�t
sure what the Indian girl thought about them or who she thought they were from.�
Hermione doubted very much that Padma
suspected the sender was Lucius Malfoy.

�� She
sighed.� Why did he keep sending
them?� Wasn�t it clear enough that she
was finished with whatever strange game they had played?� She had not responded to a single one, and
yet they continued to arrive every few weeks like clockwork.

�� Most often
they were blank.� If he wrote on them, his
comments were restricted to brief descriptions of what he had seen and
done.� Some of those things she envied
and some she did not.

�� Today�s
postcard finally deviated from that formula.�
It was from Thailand
and it said:

�� Am I really that bad?

�� She placed it on the desk and
her forehead followed, resting upon the colorful rectangle of paper.� No, he was not that bad.� He was not bad at all.

�� In all his
time running loose in the world, he hadn�t done anything to harm anyone.� She had seen a part of him that was
vulnerable and unhappy and regretful.� Paradoxically, freedom, not incarceration,
was the thing that finally rehabilitated him.�
Freedom and exposure to the rest of the world, coupled with total exile
from the familiar corner of his.

�� He was not
a bad person, not anymore.� She wasn�t
afraid of him.� She was afraid of how he made her feel.

�� In the week
after their liaison in Amsterdam,
her brain had been filled with cotton wool.�
She couldn�t stop thinking about him.�
She couldn�t sleep.� Every
unstructured moment caused her mind to stray to the way he looked, the way he
felt, and the way he made her feel.�

�� He had made
her feel powerful and weak at the same time � and she loved it.� It was frightening.� So, too, was the little ache she felt in her
chest whenever her mind replayed his eyes flashing up to hers in the mirror,
skittish, curious, and sad, or remembered the tone of his voice when he asked
about his son and his grandchildren.

�� That day
was her final straw.� All along she had
felt a grudging sort of affection for the man that exasperated her so; she just
denied it.� She denied her way right into
his bed.� What made it even harder was
that she knew he hadn�t planned it.� He
had not summoned her there to seduce her.�
There wasn�t a single reason left to despise him.

�� And he kept
sending postcards.� That told her that
their coupling wasn�t a fluke.� She meant
something to him.� Hermione wasn�t sure
what; he probably wasn�t sure, either.�
She sighed.� She didn�t want to
mean anything to a fugitive and certainly didn�t want him to mean anything to
her � but denial only worked for so long.

�� Two nights
later, she gave up and went to Thailand.� She was too late; Lucius
was nowhere to be found, and that made her feel shockingly bereft.� Now she had no choice but to wait for the
next postcard�if he bothered to send one.

�� It took
three weeks, twenty-one long days in which she increasingly prayed that he had
not given up on her.� She was keenly
aware of how life could emulate the thwarted romances in movies.� If he gave up after so many rejections it
would serve her right.� She would never
be able to find him again.� Logically she
knew that was a good thing, but it didn�t feel good to her heart.

But now, at last, the postcard had
come.� It was a grand struggle to wait
until the workday was over and even more difficult to sit through dinner with
Harry and Ginny.� As soon as she escaped,
she changed her clothes and left without any idea of what to expect once she
got there.

She found the beach on the postcard
easily � at least more easily than most.�
It was on a secluded corner of the island, one that would only be
accessible to Muggles by boat or helicopter.

�� Once there, she stood and gaped.� It was one of the most beautiful places she
had ever seen.� The moon hung over the
water and cast a soft light on the small shoreline.� It was a semicircle of white sand, and in the
middle there was the weather-beaten skeleton of a ship that had run aground long
ago.� It was surrounded by high cliff
faces on all sides.� Perfectly
gorgeous�and perfectly isolated.

�� A splash
drew her eyes to the water.� In the
daytime she knew it would be a brilliant blue but right now it looked black and
mysterious.

�� Lucius?� she said softly.

��

�� He had
quite nearly given up on her.� Sending
the postcards was more a habit than anything else now.� Though a part of him had known that she
wouldn�t respond, another silly part of him foolishly hoped she would.� He had not realized how strong that hope was
until he felt it slowly being crushed.

He believed he had severed every
feeling he had for her.� What those
feelings were, he wasn�t entirely sure, then or now.� But he had blotted them out, pushed them into
some little corner of his mind that locked away a lot of other memories he
didn�t care to examine.� Lucius was frequently amazed that the sting of being
ignored by her stirred up more pain than recollections of being tortured.

It was because he was faultless in
this case.� Those other things he had brought
upon himself.� This�he had only acted on
instinct.� He had done nothing to hurt
her, nothing to spur her to reject him so coldly.� Nothing except exist and bear the name he
did.

He had not yet crossed over into
resenting her, but he knew he was close.�
Every thought of her was now tinged with anger.� For the most recent postcard, he had agonized
for nearly an hour over what to write, if anything at all.� He had cycled through a great many unkind
comments, then through a bout of melancholy that made him want to spew all
kinds of maudlin statements, and at last through a sort of bitterly curious
resignation.

The plain and simple fact was that
the world was a lonely place if you were traveling it alone.� He had been doing just that for nearly three
and a half years now.� All he wanted was
to have a home, a place that was his,
and at least one person that cared about him to live in it.� The continuing knowledge that he didn�t have
any of those things was a type of penury that drained the soul.

Had he wanted, he could have
settled down in some corner of the world with a Muggle
woman, built a house or bought one, and started a life.� He could have done that, but it would be a
charade at best.� It would only be a
matter of time before he went mad from the lack of magical expression, or
before he was found and dragged away.� He
couldn�t make himself someone else�s problem.

Hermione was no different.� He knew he ought to get on with resenting
her, let those feelings catalyze into whatever they were meant to be�but the
moment he heard her voice, so timid yet so hopeful, his stomach dropped
out.� It felt like everything was
squeezed out of his head, everything except the conflicting emotions of
disbelief and sheer joy that she was there.

�I�m here,� he responded at last.

The earlier splash was clearly made
by him.� He was in the water.� Slowly, she moved towards the line of the
tide, marveling at how gently the water lapped at the shore.� Hermione paused to remove her shoes and
sighed at the feeling of the soft, cool sand between her toes.

�� It�s
warm,� he said.� She could see him now,
faintly, a blond-topped shape in the water.�
She was encouraged by the lack of anger in his voice.� Hermione had half-expected a series of
scathing insults to issue from him when they met again; Merlin knew she
deserved them.� If he felt that anger, he
wasn�t showing it.

�� I don�t
doubt it,� she murmured, wondering where this encounter would go.� She sat, letting her feet stray into the
water.� He wasn�t lying about the
temperature.

�� Come in.�

�� No.�

�� He said
nothing, resting in the shallows on his stomach a few feet away from her, chin
propped thoughtfully on his hands.�
Hermione shook her head in amazement.�
She could see his piscine tail flicking lightly in the water.

�� You really
are a merman.�

�� Not really.�
�The tail that so distracted her rose
above the surface, giving her an iridescent flash of scales.� �I�m a fish.�

�� A fish,�
she repeated.

�� Yes.�

�� Then how?�

�� I learned
to control the transformation.� I can
stop it with only half of my body changed.�
All I need is the tail and the gills.��
The aforementioned tail dipped back into the water.� �The larger size is advantageous, as
well.� Less chance of
being eaten in the open water.�

�� The danger
inherent in swimming around the deep blue wonder of the ocean had never
occurred to her.� With some anxiety, she
asked, �Have you almost been eaten?�

�� Better
than almost,� he chuckled.� �I was eaten by a grouper.� Unfortunately, he did not get to enjoy his
meal for very long, since I transformed back.�

�� Hermione
grimaced.� That was a grisly end for the
grouper, but there was nothing else Lucius could have
done.

�� It was
around that time that I began working on moderating the transformation.� Everyone thought I was a merman, anyway��

�� She looked
up at him.� His eyes were so luminous in
the moonlight.� He did look like a merman
� the kind in idealized stories.� Real merpeople were not generally as easy on the eyes.

�� I want to
see,� she said softly.� She had never
before heard of anyone who could control their animagus
transformation in such a way.� Until now,
she had believed it was all or nothing.�
However, Lucius was a very talented wizard,
and one who had a great deal of time on his hands.� Those two things usually resulted in
something amazing, terrible, or both.

�� He tilted
his head and gave her a penetrating look, but then beckoned with his hand.� Hermione rolled up her pant legs and waded
into the shallow water.� Once she was
close enough, Lucius closed his eyes; in mere seconds
his body shrunk into the compact form of a fish.

Hermione stared in amazement.� He was so small this way.� She leaned forward and cupped her hands
beneath the water so she could see him better.�
He circled lazily in the water above her hands, his long fins flowing
gracefully.

Then, as if he was no longer
comfortable with the discrepancy in their size or in the small enclosure of her
hands, he slipped quickly between her fingers.�
A few moments later he broke the surface in his merman form.�

Hermione retreated to the shore.� Once again, she was dazed at the level of
trust he displayed.� She could have
plucked him out of the water, taken him between her hands and crushed him�and
while he could have defended himself by simply transforming back, her gut told
her that it was a risk he wouldn�t have taken at another time in his life.

He swam forward.� When the water receded, he pulled himself
gracefully up to her with his arms, the thick tail trailing behind.� Her eyes traveled from his face to his strong
shoulders to the line of his spine, protected by bone and pleasingly curved
sinew.� That was where his resemblance to
a man ended.�

The scales began at his
sacrum.� At first glance they were black;
at second, they bore a blue-green luster.�
The contrast with his pale hair, still long in spite of the trim she�d
provided, was beautiful.

�� As if he
sensed her inspection was complete, he finished the rest of his change.� The scales and short, translucent fins
leached away, fading into tanned skin.�
All skin � he wasn�t wearing clothes.�
She didn�t look away.

�� Once he had
his legs back, he rose up on his hands and knees and covered the rest of the
small distance between them.� A low throb
began inside her.� He moved with such
sensuality�such intent.

�� He paused
just in front of her with his hands resting on either side of her hips.� Lucius was in her
space and it was plain in his gaze that he wanted to kiss her.� He was only waiting for her consent.

�� Hermione
swallowed.� She wanted to apologize for
never responding, for pretending that she didn�t want to see him again.� She knew he was hurt by it.� The fact that he waited instead of just doing
as he pleased told her that; he wasn�t entirely sure that his advances were
welcome.

�Right now words seemed frivolous and unnecessary.� Every cell in her body yearned to touch him.� There was no denying their chemistry, strange
as it was.�

Impulsively, Hermione leaned
forward to place her lips against his.�
He kissed her like the last five months of her ignoring him had never
happened.� It felt like it was only a day
later, mere hours after their first encounter in Amsterdam.�
Only, his skin was still slick from the warm Ionian
Sea and his lips tasted like salt�

�� He moved
forward, pressing her down onto the sand, and she let him.

��

��

�� What she had
feared the most was true.� She couldn�t
keep her hands off him.� With every
coupling, the wall around her heart crumbled a little more.� It didn�t help that he was a very passionate
lover, forceful yet considerate, and that he never once left after they made
love.� He would stay curled beside her
until she had to leave�until the real
world beckoned her back.

�� For his
part, Lucius grappled with the same thing.� Initially he thought he was just satisfying
his need to do magic in the only way he could.�
That was a bald-faced lie.� If he
could have had any witch, any witch at all, he still would have chosen
her.�

Quickly he realized that he didn�t care if they made love or
not � but they always did.� Always.�

�� She bought
a boat.� No one quite understood, since
she had never before shown any interest in nautical pursuits.� Hermione wasn�t bothered by their
puzzlement.� She had a lot of money saved
up, not to mention a lot of vacation days, and with
Rose away at school there was no reason not to use them.

�� She was
living some kind of dream with him, a not-quite-reality.� She knew it, yet it was hard to care.� Long ago she had lost her fear of the power
of his presence in her life.� Now she
felt like a fraction of herself without him.�
That was just that.

�� She
wouldn�t label it, but in her gut she knew that a certain four-letter word had
grown between them.

�� It went on
like that for a long time.� Hermione
would work during the week and retreat to the boat on the weekends, spending
long Saturdays and Sundays languishing with him in the middle of the ocean.� He would mind the boat during the week,
living on it, going wherever he pleased and making sure they had enough
supplies.� On Friday afternoons he would
send her exact coordinates for where he was and she could just Apparate directly to the boat.

�� In time,
she began to spend Fridays with him, too.�
The Ministry didn�t mind if she only worked four days a week as long as
she could get all her work done in those four days.� It was barely a question.

�� Padma asked her if she had met someone.� Hermione didn�t bother to lie.� Padma was too
perceptive to be duped.� The other witch
accepted her evasiveness as to his identity and wished her well.� Hermione suspected she was just glad that her
office mate was no longer mooning over her ex.

�� Existing
with Lucius, Hermione wondered why she ever had.
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