Chapter Text
Session Fourteen:
Lucius Malfoy knelt on the cold concrete floor, naked, hands bound behind his back, completely exhausted. His head hung down, hair falling around his face on either side like a curtain to block out his surroundings - a place he should not be at all. A place he did not deserve to be.
He could hear footsteps behind him, pacing. Impatient? Angry? Probably. He was trying her patience, and he knew it. Then the steps grew louder and a hand gripped his hair firmly, pulling him erect again.
“When will it be enough, Lucius?” Her voice was an intense whisper in his ear.
“I’m so sorry,” he whispered in return, his throat raw.
“Then talk to me.” She sounded so frustrated with him. “What’s it going to take? What more are you going to force me to do to you?” Then she moved around to stand in front of him, shifting her grip from his hair to his chin, forcing him to look at her.
He’d once called her Mudblood. He’d watched as the Dark Lord and his servants tortured her into unconsciousness in his own house. Now he was in her territory, helpless, stripped of everything. He had nothing left. No identity, no pride, no self-respect. No excuses. No lies.
“Please, Hermione,” he begged, then waited for the correction, anticipating the sharp sting of her hand as she released his chin and slapped him, leaving the burn of her handprint behind on his cheek.
“Miss Granger to you,” she reminded him sternly. “Will you forget that again?”
“No, Miss Granger,” he answered quickly. Then he dropped his head, part from exhaustion, part from respect.
He truly had come to respect her. Hermione Granger was no child, not anymore. She was a woman, a powerful, proud, confident woman with well-deserved standing in the Ministry of Magic and a powerful witch, one most would not dare to cross.
Hermione walked around to stand in front of him again. “Why do you do this to me?” she asked him as she took his chin, lifting his head to meet her eyes again, their mysterious depths dark and unyielding. He blinked his own, forcing himself to focus. “Why do you push me like this?”
“Hermione,” he whispered, his voice pleading with her.
She moved to slap him again, but pulled it instead so that her hand simply rested on his cheek. He was taking things too far. “Miss Granger, Lucius," she reminded him. "I thought you said you would not forget.”
“Miss Granger,” he agreed. “I’m sorry, Miss Granger. I’m so sorry. Please continue. Please.”
He pleaded with her with his eyes, having nothing else to offer. He was at her mercy, and he knew it. He also knew he had no reason to expect mercy, no reason at all. He knew that she was his best, only hope - for so much now.
She sighed deeply. He was pushing her patience too hard, but there was so much more to be done. He needed more time.
Then she straightened, concern written all over her face, and took a step back. “No, Lucius. Enough is enough.”
He dropped his head, knowing that he’d failed again.
***
An hour later, Lucius had been watered, fed, and tended to and lay asleep. It was two in the afternoon. She really ought to go to the market but couldn’t just leave him, not like this, still so fragile, everything so fresh.
Not for the first time, Hermione sat on her tiny sofa with a cup of tea and wondered just how the fuck this had happened.
Her loft space was large, but very open, something that had never bothered her before when she was living alone. She’d been perfectly happy to live, eat, and sleep in the same space, divided only by use and various interruptions to line of sight where pleasing. The clever placement of furniture or the use of dividing screens prevented her from being able to see her dirty dishes from the bed and that sort of thing.
Its unique nature and exposed beams in the ceiling had made it quite easy to hang the chains Lucius had insisted on. The space had allowed him to also bring in a variety of other elements of torture over the past several weeks - no, it had been months now. She shook her head in disbelief as she glanced over at her sleeping flatmate.
She sighed as she thought back over the past months. It had started so slowly, so unexpectedly.
Basically with a stalking.
Lucius Abraxas Malfoy - the slipperiest of the bunch with regard to the former Death Eater cult. A snake of a person, somehow he always managed to place himself just far enough away from the actual evil taking place that he had plausible deniability, despite the fact that Hermione knew quite fucking well that he was neck deep in the planning and execution of all of it. She’d absolutely despised him and for very good reasons.
After the Battle of Hogwarts, he’d been the one to evade justice, perhaps not completely but so close it was laughable. Instead of paying for his crimes in prison, the snake slipped free somehow and skulked away to Malfoy Manor to lick his wounds, she supposed.
Hermione had been furious when she’d heard the news and had fervently hoped he’d rot there all alone, forced to confront himself at last. And to Hermione’s satisfaction, as time passed, even though his fortune and family name were still mostly intact, the man’s personal life had fallen apart. His wife, Narcissa Black Malfoy, had left him. Next, his son, Draco, had moved away and begun a new life that involved marrying and even had a baby on the way, something Hermione wasn’t sure Lucius even knew since he’d chosen to slither away into hiding, probably gone to spend money and boss people around abroad. Good riddance.
In short, over the past ten years since Voldemort finally fell, her only thoughts of Lucius Malfoy had been uncharitable at best and very vindictive at worst but honestly mostly absent as she’d moved on with her life. She’d almost forgotten about his very existence.
Then she’d begun to spot him as she came and went each morning and evening from work at the Ministry of Magic.
***
Months Earlier…
He sat at a table at the cafe across the street from the main doors, still as elegant and blond as she’d remembered. Her first sight of him as a girl had sparked awe and appreciation, that regal bearing, that amazing head of hair. Then of course he’d opened his mouth and completely destroyed her first impression with her second, that he was an evil, supercilious, bigoted, elitist, cruel, self-serving, conniving son of a bitch.
“What the absolute fuck is Lucius Malfoy doing here?” she’d wondered that first morning.
The second morning, she’d realized he was watching her come and go, not just traffic - her. His expression had been very neutral, no threat, no question. Just observing.
By the third day, she was ready to confront him, so she did. As she left work that afternoon, she asked a coworker to keep an eye on her as she spoke to someone at the cafe. She didn’t think there’d be trouble in a public place. She had no idea why there might be. Voldemort was incontrovertibly dead, and the Battle of Hogwarts was a decade ago. The world had dealt with it and moved on. There was no more fallout to be had.
“I’ll keep it short,” she promised her lookout and crossed the street.
He looked up from his empty table at her approach. He was past fifty. She knew that from her review of his records, old enough to be her father. However, wizards were notoriously long lived, so the years didn’t show on him like they would a non-magical human. But as she studied him quite openly for a moment before speaking, she could see that even if age hadn’t marked him, care had.
His clear grey eyes - so like Draco’s - looked tired. He was thinner than he ought to be. His clothing was impeccable, but very slightly mussed around the collar, as if he’d been fiddling with it. His long blond hair was clean but needed to be brushed. The otherwise smooth strands were slightly tangled at the temples as though the wind had been tossing it about or as if he’d been worrying it nervously. Either would explain.
Overall, he gave the appearance to her of a man making his best attempt to appear pulled together, but who clearly wasn’t. Why the fuck not? she thought. He still had his wealth, his family name, his manor, his freedom. He still had his life, unlike so many others for whom she still grieved. Time had dulled the fury, but the pain was still there.
After she stared at him steadily in the eyes for a long moment, he broke the contest and looked down at the table to his hands folded together in front of him.
“And?” she asked simply.
“May I speak with you, Hermione?” His voice was soft and formal.
“Miss Granger.” She was not on a first name basis with this monster of a person.
“Miss Granger.” He took a deep breath in and out, spreading his hands before him on the tablecloth before looking back up at her where she was standing while he remained seated. “I have come to you to ask for…” He paused and swallowed and looked away this time, just over the heads of the other diners who seemed completely disinterested in them.
“For what?” She pressed sternly when he remained silent a bit too long. “Do not waste my time.”
Her tone seemed to shake him a bit and he nodded to himself almost imperceptibly. “For penance.” Then he swallowed again, harder this time.
For what? Hermione found herself utterly gobsmacked. “I’m sorry, would you repeat that for me?”
“Could we go somewhere more private?” he asked softly, leaning toward her slightly.
“I do not wish to have a private conversation with you.” And she walked away.
Was she curious? Yes. Was she going to entertain any ridiculousness with Lucius Malfoy? Absolutely not.
So she ignored him morning and evening for another solid week. He always sat at the same table off to one side, just watching her. When she allowed herself to look a bit closer, she could see that his slightly disheveled nature was growing worse over time. By the tenth day, he didn’t even watch her. He just propped his elbows on the table and leaned his head into his hands.
That afternoon as she left, she found him just where she’d left him that morning and sighed, rolling her eyes as she crossed the street.
“Go home,” she ordered him, like she would a dog. Then he looked up at her, his grey eyes more than tired. Now they appeared to be lost. His jacket was dusty, and his hair hung lank and lifeless around his face.
“I can’t.” His voice was strained and husky as if with disuse. “I can’t go back there. Please do not tell me to do so.”
Hermione rolled her eyes and cursed her better nature for making her feel sorry for him, but she took a seat at the table next to him rather than across so that they could talk quietly.
“I’m so alone, H- Miss Granger. I spend my days completely alone.”
“You have house elves. I know you do. You aren’t alone,” she replied logically.
“The Manor runs almost entirely by magic. And I never see any of the staff. They do everything the same as always. Hidden from me.”
“At least they’re still working. I hope you’ve learned to treat them better.”
To his credit, he looked down at his hands, perhaps feeling a bit called out. She hoped so.
“I’m completely alone there in that gigantic house,” he admitted.
“Then leave. You’re out today. Go meet friends. Have tea with them instead of rotting away at a cafe stalking me.” This was ridiculous, she decided. She was not going to join this man’s pityfest, so she slid forward in her chair to stand.
“No, please don’t go.”
He gave her sad doe eyes, the biggest, saddest doe eyes she’d ever seen, so she groaned and slid back in her chair. “What?” she snapped at him impatiently.
“There’s no one to see. No one to do business with. No one who’ll speak to me. H– Miss Granger, I am invisible to the world. I’m non-existent, a non-entity.”
What poetic justice, she thought to herself. Malfoy expected the world to revolve around him, but instead the world had moved on, and it had left Lucius Malfoy behind as insignificant. Perhaps this punishment was worse than prison. Good.
He clenched his hands together tightly in front of him, but all his bodily energy seemed directed at her. “Order two cups of tea right now and see what happens,” he suggested.
Curious, Hermione hailed a server.
“Yes, Miss, what can I get you?” The young man asked with a friendly smile. “We’ve got a really nice Upland Bree today.”
“That sounds nice. Two cups please. Milk and sugar.”
The young man’s eyebrows raised. “Oh, are you meeting someone then? I can hold theirs warm until they arrive if you’d rather.”
The server looked right past Lucius as if he truly were invisible. “No, that’s okay. Go ahead and bring it now.”
Once the fellow departed, she turned to him where he looked sad but vindicated. “If you don’t exist to the rest of the world, why can I see you?”
“My guess is that it’s because you work for the Ministry of Magic. You’d have been excluded. You all probably wanted to keep an eye on me, but I believe I have been cursed.”
“Oh really?” That was indeed interesting. “By whom?”
“The Ministry I suppose. Likely as my punishment. Draco and Narcissa could see me, but as long as they lived with me, they were non-existent to the world too. I don’t blame them for leaving. For abandoning me to my fate.” He sighed deeply. “I have been cursed to be completely alone in the world, Miss Granger.”
“And why, exactly, do you think I care? Why do you think that bothers me in the least?” Only curiosity was keeping her there now.
“I’m here - with you, with you and no one else but you - precisely because you don’t care, Miss Granger. I could go to others in the Ministry. I could go to Potter. He’s an auror and by all accounts a good person. But I’ve always…” He paused then and swallowed, his eyes on his hands.
“You what? Don’t make me drag this out of you because I won’t do it.” She slid forward in her chair again.
“Please, Miss Granger, can we go somewhere more private to discuss this? Please. I know no one will pay any attention, but this is so difficult. Privacy would make it easier. I’m begging you. Please.”
Begging? Lucius Abraxas Malfoy, powerful wizard from a powerful family, wealthy beyond her ability to conceive, begged her for a piece of her time and attention?
That resonated. It resonated deep inside in a way she was not prepared for.
“Fine. We can take this somewhere more private. My office in the Ministry is open.”
He looked up at her as if struck. “No. Not there. Is there somewhere else? Anywhere?”
The only other place she could think of was her flat. Did she want this man to have any idea where she lived?
“I don’t trust you. It’s as simple as that,” she replied.
He reached into his inside coat pocket and retrieved his wand, but slowly with clear intention and using only his fingertips. Then he offered it to her. “There is no reason at all you should trust me, but I give you my word, Miss Granger, I only want your help. That’s all. I only want…penance. I can’t live like this any longer.”
Hermione studied him again for a long moment. She’d felt desperation before. She’d seen it before. She’d even seen it in his eyes when his family had been pretty much taken as hostages by the Death Eater cult he’d once led. And what she saw in him now was even deeper than that.
“Fine.” She took his wand and stuck it in her large handbag. Good luck finding it in there, Malfoy, she thought to herself with grim humor. “Come with me.”
Her loft was not far away. As she passed by people, they greeted and spoke to her, but not a soul commented on her companion or even looked his way. They simply sidestepped him like he was a hole in the sidewalk they wanted to avoid.
Once inside, she decided she might as well become the gracious host and started a pot of tea. She also added some light refreshments to go with it, mostly because she was hungry and didn’t want to wait for dinner.
Malfoy followed her into the loft and stopped in the center of the room, then just stood there awkwardly, eyes down.
Hermione decided he was maybe respecting her privacy or something and was glad her personal items were tucked away. She’d just as soon Draco Malfoy’s father didn’t see her underwear lying about.
Once she’d finished preparing the tea, she took the tray into her seating area and called for him to please join her, gesturing at the one armchair she owned. The place was large enough for more furniture, plenty large enough, but she didn’t have company very often and then only one or two people.
Harry, Ginny, and Ron had moved out of the city - which she didn’t blame them for. The city was great for work, but Harry and Ginny also had a baby on the way and Ron and his wife constantly lusted after country life. They’d found houses just far enough outside town to give them that, but close enough to come in and enjoy the amenities when they wanted to. She was happy for them.
She had coworkers too, of course, but they also had lives and families outside of work, and apart from rare drinks together on a Friday afternoon, everyone pretty much left and went home to their lives.
Perhaps that was what tripped her over the edge from disdain to pity for Malfoy. She understood loneliness.
He hadn’t budged from his spot. “Sit.” She ordered and pointed again to the chair. “How do you take your tea?”
He told her in a subdued voice, as if he feared saying something wrong, but she simply prepared it and handed it to him. Then she curled up on her sofa with her own cup and took a sip. Once the comforting act of her first sip of tea in her house after a long day had been completed, she looked over at him, sitting so stiffly in her armchair.
“We’re private. Now talk. You want penance. And you’ve sought me out, just me. Why is that?” Curiosity once again warred with that resonance. She was finding it enjoyable to have him there so awkward and out of sorts and in her territory, not his. On her terms. She’d had nightmares for so long about the room they’d tortured her in. She recalled every painting on the walls, every item of furniture, even the smell of the room - old money and magic - a heady combination.
Her own place smelled like honey, lavender, and vanilla, soothing and warm - homey and comfortable. She preferred that.
His teacup rattled slightly against the saucer as he picked it up, so he set it back down again instead of tasting it.
“As I told you, Miss Granger, I can’t go on living like this. I can’t keep non-existing in the world. I know why this has been done to me. I know I deserve it or at least the world believes I do. So I am here to ask you to give me penance of some kind. Some way that I can pay for my deeds that suits you. Then you can go before the Ministry and tell them how very truly repentant I am and perhaps I can rejoin society, as it were.”
Malfoy had begun this statement still shaken, still tentative, but by the time he got to the end of his clearly prepared statement, Hermione could hear the pride beginning to resurface, she could hear the reluctance to ask anyone for anything. She could hear the old bluster shining through.
He wanted her to give him something else to do to pay so he could get out of paying for his crimes the way society had chosen. He wanted an out.
Lucius Malfoy didn’t want penance. He wanted reprieve. He wanted mercy.
Did he think she was some kind of soft touch? A pushover? The sweet young woman who would take pity on his lonely state and let him off the hook with a slap on the wrist?
“And once again, why me?” Hermione kept her voice steady and strong, setting aside her anger for the moment.
“Because you are respected. Because you were there. You were close.” He swallowed and looked down at his teacup. “Because you were held and interrogated in my house - though I had nothing to do with that,” he added hastily and looked up at her. Was that a touch of fear in his eyes? A touch of guilt?
“And? Go on.” Her voice remained steady and clear. Then she took another sip of her tea.
“I… From the time you were in school with Draco, I understood from his commentary that you were a very intelligent, thinking, reasoning person, Miss Granger. As jealous as he was of your intellect, he also respected it. I came to respect it too. And your strength and courage. We spent most of that conflict on opposite sides, but I quickly came to understand that you were a force to be reckoned with, perhaps more so for your youth.”
To Hermione’s surprise, that sounded honest. She allowed her eyebrows to raise a fraction at that, then sipped her tea and waited for him to continue.
“In my analysis of my predicament, I decided that you are the one with the power to make the change I need, you have the intelligence to know that what I am asking for is reasonable, and your emotional reaction to it is unclouded enough to allow you to do what you need to do without personal vindictiveness. You could remain separated from the job that I’m asking you to do in whatever way you deem fit - I trust you to remain impartial and not allow petty revenge to guide you.”
That part sounded nervous, as if he were painting a picture to her of how he wished her to be, not how she actually would be.
She sipped her tea and let him stew in silence. She ignored him pointedly as if he were not there at all. She did this long enough that he finally broke.
“Please, Miss Granger. I can’t do it anymore. I can’t. If you refuse to help me, I don’t think I can go on.”
Did he mean that? Was he truly ready to mean that? Hermione wondered.
Did she want him to be? Did she want to see this man driven to doing something so drastic?
“I still don’t know what it is you have in mind as penance,” she replied after a long moment. “Do you wish to recopy the charter of the wizarding community? Pick up garbage from the side of the road? Plant flowers in a local park?”
A look of hope ran over his face for an instant, but she was pleased to see that he had better sense than that.
“No, Miss Granger. I understand that my deeds cannot be atoned for in such easy ways. I leave myself at your disposal - body, mind, and spirit. You decide what I need to do. I will…I will submit to it freely, without reservation.”
Then to her surprise, Lucius Malfoy, pureblood wizarding aristocracy, set his cup on the low table in front of him and knelt down before her, head bowed in what might look like defeat to some. Hermione wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure in the least.
“I truly do not believe you, Lucius. I do not believe a word you’ve said the entire time you’ve been here. Go. Get out of my flat. As they say, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”
Then she set her own teacup on the table, picked up a sandwich, and began to eat, ignoring him utterly where he knelt. She wondered how long he’d persist before giving up. She wondered just how committed he was to this.
Probably five minutes passed with him still kneeling there, waiting. Pleading with his body. The slight stiffness in his neck and head began to soften. His shoulders dropped a little. Then he looked up again at her with the doe eyes.
“Please, Hermione.”
“Miss Granger to you.”
Slap.
She slapped him with everything she had, rocking his head to the side and leaving the red imprint of her hand on his pale cheek. Then she waited for his response.
His eyes flashed with emotion, then closed. Which emotion? Probably fury, but she wasn’t entirely sure, didn’t care, and certainly didn’t back down. Hermione had no reason to fear his anger, not in her territory, not in the least. In this place, she was entirely in control.
She watched him breathe deeply for a few seconds. She assumed he was trying to get over the indignity of being slapped in the face. Well, he shouldn’t be surprised. He’d asked for this. He’d given himself to her, body, mind, and spirit. Had he meant a word of it?
“My deepest apologies, Miss Granger,” he finally replied respectfully as he opened his eyes again. “I misspoke.”
“You did. And more than that.” But Lucius Malfoy had no concept of respect, simply of etiquette. There was a difference he could not see.
He remained there, quiet and unmoving while she ate the rest of her sandwich and drank another cup of tea.
“I told you to go. Leave my flat. You say you will do anything? Then do that. Go. I don’t care where.”
He rose then, straightening his legs in clear discomfort as he winced a bit. Kneeling on her concrete floor for that long couldn’t have been pleasant. She didn’t feel bad. It had been his choice in the first place.
He walked out in silence and possibly defeat. Hermione wasn’t sure. She just knew that Lucius Malfoy did not need to ask her to give him penance. For one thing, she didn’t want the responsibility. For another, as much as he said she would be able to separate punishment and penance from revenge, she wasn’t so sure. She had an awful lot of unresolved anger from those days. Did he truly wish to risk her resolving it with him? Truly?
She couldn’t do that. It would be a profoundly unhealthy thing to do. She didn’t care what he was asking for. She would not become Delores Umbridge, getting her jollies on the misery of others, no matter how tempting the prospect. Absolutely not.
But could she just ignore him like the rest of the world? After the way he’d begged so desperately? She knew loneliness. She knew how awful her life would be without her coworkers during the day and lazy Crookshanks at night.
Malfoy just needed a dog. Then again, maybe even dogs found him non-existent.
Even as she rested her hand on her lazy cat’s soft back, feeling the purr vibrate against her thighs where he lay sprawled across her lap, she knew that a dog might help, but that it wouldn’t fix him. If he truly was completely nonexistent to the world, she could only imagine how isolated he felt.
As she lay down for bed that night, she wondered where he was. Had he given up and gone home, back to Malfoy Manor? Had he found an inn to stay in? Had he tried to leave the wizarding world to make his way in non-magical society, powerless and alone in a land that would be stranger to him than he could imagine?
Not her problem, she decided and went to sleep, her cat curled up against her back.