A Tale of Two Wizards

Disclaimer: Not mine, although I wish they were... (except Ron, and Sirius, she can keep them!)

Moonlight Sonata

Fred and George were counting up the cash in their shop when the bell rang. George looked up first of all. He had a huge wide smile on his face, and he nudged his brother who breathed a huge sigh of relief. As the new customer revealed herself George’s jaw dropped almost to the floor.

“Hermione,” he gasped. “You’re HOT!”

Hermione shook her head with a warning gleam in her eyes, as someone had followed her in, that someone was Mr Lucius Malfoy, and George’s expression of lust turned to one of hate. He looked at the tall man, and speculated on what he’d look like bald.

“Thank you Mr Weasley,” Lucius drawled. “A compliment to one is almost a compliment to her partner.”

“Partner?” Fred asked. He stopped counting the silver pieces and put them in a separate bag ready to be taken to Gringotts.

“Lucius and I are engaged,” Hermione said. She showed them the ring. Fred dropped the bag of silver and they spilled all over the place.

“Clumsy,” Lucius said giving the other twin an insolent raise of the eyebrow.

“A word, Hermione,” George said taking her hand and leading her to the back of the storeroom before Lucius could step in and break them apart. George pushed his lips on hers and kissed her.

“What are you doing?” She asked pushing him off.

“Trying to kiss some sense into you! What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing? Engaged? To Malfoy?”

“George, Lucius is – is – well, for a start he’s – oh I can’t think what he is. But, I do like being around him, and he’s good in bed, and he’s not unintelligent, and for once I am having conversations about more interesting things rather than Quidditch! Lucius Malfoy is actually quite astute at times, and he – oh I have thought of what he is.”

“An evil slimy git who’s taking advantage of the best Gryffindor can offer!” George exclaimed. “Trust the Slytherins to take the best.”

Hermione laughed a clear crystal laugh.

“What do you mean, you don’t like me?” George’s face fell. “Why didn’t you ask me out?”

“I would have asked you to go with me to the Yuletide Ball, but I didn’t think you’d have accepted me would you?”

“I might have done if you got there quick enough, George,” Hermione answered. “I liked Viktor, of course, but I would have preferred to have gone out with a Gryffindor.”

George sighed and shook his head. Fred joined them shortly after holding the bags of money. He looked at Hermione.

“I’ve got PLEASANTER news,” he said. “I am going to become a father and my fiancée is Angelina Johnson.”

Hermione giggled.

“Oh, I am so happy for you, Fred,” she said flinging her arms around his neck.

“And what’s the big idea with you and him? Snape only came in the shop this morning to talk about plans for your rescue.”

“Severus walked in this shop to ask you for help to – to save me?” Hermione asked.

“Hermione,” George said in an exasperated tone, as if he was explaining something to a child. “He loves you.”

Hermione placed her expression anywhere, but at the two boys.

“Does he? He hasn’t exactly stormed in and taken me back has he.”

“Yeah, but, Hermione, Snape don’t work like that, he’s a calculating person he doesn’t rush in with a hot head he thinks about things. And he is only thinking of your safety.”

Hermione looked down again.

“I’m not sure guys. I mean they are both wonderful in their own way, and they both appeal to my intellect, and both make me laugh, and as for the sex… well, Severus is slow and subtle, and Lucius is bolder and freer. I can’t decide!”

Little known to either of them Lucius had actually crept in, and was behind the shelves, and listening to every word. He had equalised with Snape, which happened rarely… he had to work just that little bit harder to go that extra mile. How could he get that extra vote? He looked around this shop with distaste. The only way he could help her was by helping her friends.

He stepped into the group.

“Tell me, is your father still interested in cars with invisibility boosts?”

“How’d you get in here?” George asked.

“I, um, left the door open,” Fred said.

“Is he?” Lucius asked.

Fred and George shared an uncomfortable look.

“I don’t know, he could be,” one of them mumbled.

“An enterprise like that needs a good workshop I should imagine, plenty of muggle cars, and lots of time and,” here he stopped and gazed into Hermione’s eyes. “Money!”

“He’d never accept money from you, you racist bastard!”

“I give up,” Lucius murmured. “You’re probably right he wouldn’t accept money from me. But he would accept it from someone he holds in the highest regard.”

“Why do you want to help my father?” Fred asked.

Lucius did not like the interruption. It meant a minute away from her eyes. Hermione had to find something to fan herself with; she knew that once they were alone she would surrender to him again. The gaze was intense. Fred and George noticed the way he looked at their friend. They had sort of considered Hermione as a surrogate sister just as much as they considered Harry to be a surrogate brother.

“In helping your father I’d be helping the woman I love,” Lucius said. He gazed back at Hermione. He offered her his arm. “Come on, sweetheart, it’s home time.”

She smiled weakly at the two boys and shrugged her shoulders. She kissed them both on the cheek.

“Goodbye my dears,” she said. George lifted a hand to his cheek. He smiled with a dazed expression on his face. They apparated clear out of the shop.

“Now I know why Ron fancied her so much!” Fred said. “George?” He turned to his brother. He shook his brother. “GEORGE WEASLEY!” He shook him and whacked him on the head.

“Yeah, what?” George said.

“Forget her, George, if it weren’t Snape or that git it would be ickle Ronniekins!”

George muttered something about how unfair life was when it came to love.

“Anyway we’ve got to go home I have an announcement to make, hopefully mine will be much better received.”

****************

Snape was pacing up and down in the library. He realised he had to go to the Weasleys and talk to them about his plans; he knew a restraining charm would have to be in order. He went to the fireplace and looked at the supply of Floo Powder, he should have got some of that earlier on when he went to Diagon Alley. He took a pinch and stepped into the fireplace.

“The Burrow!” He said loud and clear.

He stepped in and looked around at the scene before him. Arthur and Molly had jumped when their fireplace crackled and Snape stepped out into their living room, but Harry and Ginny gave superstitious stares. He rolled his eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Harry asked through clenched teeth.

“I thought we were friends now, or at least, not enemies,” Snape replied. Something strange had happened. This was not the same atmosphere as his last visit. Everyone was rather subdued and morose. He was going to crack a joke about somebody dying, but thought when he opened his mouth it would be in poor taste.

“That is a moot point,” Harry said. He got up and went to the kitchen. “Cup of tea? It’s a pity we’re well out of arsenic.”

“Harry, it’s not his fault that this has happened,” Arthur said. Severus looked at Arthur and began to feel a friend and ally in him.

“What has happened?” He asked. He was genuinely confused.

“Lucius Malfoy,” Ginny said. Her voice not as full of hatred as Harry’s, but it weren’t friendly. “He came here this morning and gave us some rather disturbing news.”

“Which was?” Snape asked. Harry came back with a cup of tea; Snape took it and tried to offer a friendly smile. Harry looked back with a malevolent green glare. Snape really felt like he had made progress the other day, but it seemed his tenuous friendship with this boy had already broken. He was rather hurt by this.

“Lucius Malfoy and Hermione Granger are engaged!” Molly announced in a tear strained voice.

Snape dropped the mug of tea on the floor; it splashed all over his trousers and he winced in pain. He felt it burn, and scald into his flesh, Ginny immediately sprang up.

“Trousers off now!” She ordered.

He need no second command. Harry tried to hide Ginny away from Snape unbuckling his trousers, but she thrust him aside with a withering glare. He hopped out of his trousers, and his stark white legs were throbbing and sore, red burn marks covered the shins. Molly gasped. She went to get a bowl of cold water and Ginny helped him down onto the seat. Harry stood aside from the situation, as did Arthur, but for a different reason. Harry wanted to see Snape suffer! It was a shame it weren’t a third degree burn going through to the bone.

Snape did not cry or wince or yell when Molly put his feet in the bowl of cold water, she splashed it all over his legs.

“Are you all right?” Ginny asked. Her voice, and eyes were full of concern, and she ignored Harry’s rather vicious glare. She sat down next to him and rubbed his arm with her hand and looked closely at him. She noticed that Snape had pretty long black eyelashes, and that his eyes when you really peered into them were a rather dark brown. He smiled bravely, as Molly decided to get some ice cubes; she wrapped them in a towel and pressed it hard on his shins.

“I’m fine,” he gasped a little.

“I don’t suppose you’d want another cup of tea?” Harry asked coldly.

“If these ice cubes could match the coldness of your tone, boy, then my burns will be cured,” Snape replied sardonically. “Yes, as it so happens, I would LOVE another cup of tea!”

Harry muttered, as he stomped into the kitchen with Arthur following. Arthur turned Harry around, his blue eyes looked hard at Harry. Harry was reminded of Dumbledore, a younger Dumbledore. Then it hit Harry. Were the Weasley’s and Dumbledore related?

“Look, Harry, I don’t know why you still think he’s the number one villain. You know as well as I do that he’s sorry for what he did to Dumbledore. I believe he is, and if you delve down deep enough you do to. Now stop being childish. Be a man and help him!”

“He’s not sorry for taunting Sirius or for hating my father!” Harry said through clenched teeth.

“That is another form of childishness you are going to have to get over! I knew your father and he weren’t perfect Harry, he had his faults and at times he showed hints of arrogance, Sirius, though innocent of being your parents traitor weren’t innocent in other areas was he? He almost killed Snape when they were mere children, Harry. Would you forgive someone who would plan your death?”

Harry looked down on the floor. The kettle whistled and he poured the hot water in the mug to warm the mug up before he made the tea.

“Probably not,” he said. “He didn’t have to treat Sirius like that.”

“And you don’t have to treat Snape the way you are treating him, Harry, he’s doing all he can, and he’s doing it in a way that would protect Hermione the most. A snake in the wild strikes only when they’re provoked same with most Slytherins. Snape does not want to provoke Malfoy anymore than he has to – for Hermione!”

Harry poured the hot water into the sink, and then put the milk, and the teabag in, and poured more hot water in the cup. He waited for a minute or two, and then stirred it around. He put the teabag in the bin after he squeezed the last drops of it out. He picked up the mug, and then walked into the sitting room where Ginny was still looking at Snape. Snape was talking to her in low tones. Harry was shaking with jealousy at the intimacy that Ginny seemed to be sharing with Snape. Harry knew he was being paranoid, but he had already seduced Hermione away from Ron. What was to stop him from doing the same with Ginny? Ginny looked up.

“Here’s your tea,” she said. Snape looked up and outstretched his hand. Harry resisted the temptation to burn his hands, as they HAD been touching HIS girl! He gave it to Snape, and then he nodded Ginny to move over so that he could sit in-between the two of them. Snape rolled his eyes. When would the boy realise that the girl only had eyes for Harry?

“You’re going to have to stay the night!” Molly exclaimed. “There is no way I am going to let you out with your legs burning to a cinder.”

“They’re not burning…” Snape stopped his sentence when he noticed Molly’s look. He was immediately chastened. “I will stay the night.” Gods! How like Hermione. His poor sweet Mia, his love, his light, snatched away from him, he’ll get her back though, oh yes, and Lucius would rot in hell.

****************

Hermione and Lucius had apparated to somewhere, where she had not been before.

“Where are we?” She asked.

“I have three mansions,” Lucius said. “Wiltshire, England. Provence, France. And The Black Forest, Germany. We are in the Black Forest.”

Hermione raised her eyes in shock.

“We apparated to Germany?” She asked in a dazed voice.

“Of course, I thought you knew we could apparate to ANYWHERE, where we want to. I wanted to come to Germany.”

Hermione smiled a weak smile at this knowledge.

“Yes, but that has to be ministry approved you need a whole new special license after all sorts of tests!”

Lucius laughed a hearty manly laugh. He walked over to Hermione and picked her chin up.

“How sweet,” he purred, as he bent down to kiss her. Once his warm rough lips were on hers, she wilted. His tongue darted in and out of her mouth encouraging hers to play with it. Her insides went to jelly! He was getting harder to hate the more he did this. He eventually let her go.

“That is the law,” she murmured.

“I invented that law, but like Arthur, also invented a loop hole,” he said. “If it is only a short trip it is perfectly all right to apparate without all that. We’ll be here for one night only. Besides NOBODY knows about this little property. It’s my secret, even Narcissa didn’t know about this.”

“Draco?” She asked.

“Him? Definitely not, not with the way he talked!”

She allowed herself to look at the room they had apparated in. It was beautiful and grand. There was a black fur rug beside a roaring fireplace. She stroked her hand along a piano that was situated at the corner of the room with the moonlight framing her body haloing her in a silver glow. Lucius sighed. He had to admit it right now. He had fallen head over heels in love with Hermione. What had started out as an act of possession now turned into love. A dangerous and very deep love!

Hermione took her cloak off gracefully, and sat on the stool, and placed her fingers on the ebony and ivory keys. She closed her eyes and sighed. She started to play the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. Lucius shivered. That was his favourite, even if it were written by a deaf muggle. She noticed him watching her.

“Sorry,” she said. “I learnt the piano when I was very young and loved it ever since, I wanted to go to a music school and become a pianist but Hogwarts wanted me as well, so I gave up my music for learning magic.”

“You sacrificed something you loved for something you weren’t sure you were going to like?” Lucius asked in astonishment.

Hermione nodded.

“That was very brave of you.”

“Well, it was logical, as my dad said, magic is only a rather obscure branch of science and all in my family are scientists. It was the logical choice.” She sighed longily at the piano. Lucius stepped up to her.

“It seems you have had to make a lot of choices in your young life,” he said. “Most of mine were made up for me. Did you know Narcissa and I were planned when we were younger. Oh yes, our parents organised that one for us.”

Hermione looked at Lucius.

“If you could have chosen whom would you have married instead?”

“A woman much like yourself, she was charming, beautiful, and warm, I would have been a much better man if I had married her I am sure, but my parents would not have allowed it, and neither did hers!”

“Why?”

“She was a Gryffindorian Muggle Lover, and I was a Pure Born Slytherin.”

“Do I know her?”

“Very well.”

Hermione thought of all the adult pure muggle loving Gryffindorians and could only think of one.

“Not Mrs Weasley.”

“Molly Prewitt she was then,” Lucius said. “Having you makes me feel like I have her back again. We were quite a team, but, well, interfering parents jumped in and broke us apart.”

Hermione got up, and put a light hand on his chest, and his heart beat under her palm. He stroked it and then he took it in his own. She felt her heart beat faster at that.

“So, why did you show me this place?”

“It proves that I love you beyond all recounting, and that I want you so much to trust me. Please, Hermione, I haven’t treated you ill or called you names all I have ever been to you is a gentleman.”

“I know,” Hermione sighed. She continued looking into his eyes, and he sucked her fingers keeping his eyes on hers.

“I’ve got something to show you!” He exclaimed.

He took her hand, and then he walked out of the door of the room he had apparated them in. He walked out of the adjoining room, which turned out to be a rather ostentatious sitting room. He then led her out of there, and then they were out in a wide banqueting hall. He led her out of the front door.

“Why don’t we just apparate?” She asked.

“I don’t want to,” Lucius said.

He walked into the woods. She had no time to contemplate their beauty, as he pulled her gently, but quickly through the flora, she heard owls hooting in the sky, and heard the scurrying of insects at her feet, but no time to think about them. Eventually, he stopped just behind what was obviously a clearing.

“Why have we stopped?” She asked.

Lucius went behind her and put his hands over her eyes.

“Do you trust me?” He whispered in her ear.

Hermione laughed nervously.

“I guess so,” she said.

“Then walk forward a few paces,” he murmured. His hot breath on her skin made her quite wild. She walked forward a bit unsteadily relying on him to break her fall should she do so. “A few more, I’ll tell you when to stop,” she walked forward a bit more and then he murmured, “stop.”

She did stop and then she giggled.

“Oh, show me, please,” she said bouncing up and down in girlish delight.

He uncovered her eyes and she gasped. Fairies were playing on the lake. The sort of fairies she had always dreamed of when she read the fairy stories in her youth. They were glowing all sorts of colours, and were skipping about, and dancing on the velvet black lake. The moon was reflecting in the water. Tears sprang into her eyes.

“Like it?”

“Oh, it’s beautiful,” she gasped. “How come this is never told about in the books at Hogwarts?”

“Hogwarts tends to focus on English history, and as an English Pure born Wizard I do understand that, but then there is a whole world out there to discover and take. How can we conquer the world if we don’t understand it first of all?”

Hermione turned around and looked deeply into his eyes.

“Yes, I suppose that is true,” she murmured softly. “Is there anything you feel you shouldn’t understand before you conquer it?”

“You,” Lucius murmured as he kissed her forehead. “I didn’t understand you before I tried to conquer your heart.”

Hermione placed her hands on his chest, and they burned his soul.

“Let me make love to you here,” she said. “Let me, please, take you here.”

“With all my heart,” he said.

She kissed him, it was tentative at first, and then he stroked her tongue with his, wanting her to play with him. She stopped kissing him, and pulled him by the top edges of his waistcoat, and she led him further along the shore. She stepped back a bit, and then unpinned her hair, and let it fall in soft golden brown waves that shimmered in the moonlight. He felt his throat tighten and constrict. She stepped closer to him, and unbuttoned his waistcoat to reveal a white lacy undershirt; strangely she was reminded of David Bowie in Labyrinth, she did not want to remove that. As long as she could feel his skin that would be enough. He enjoyed her undressing him. She turned around, and he unzipped the back of her dress, he stroked tenderly down her spine with the point of his middle finger making her shiver. She stepped out of the dress and she turned around. Lucius sat down on the ground and held a beckoning hand to her, she took it and they kissed each other passionately.

“Lucius!” She moaned, as he placed his hot kisses on her chest. She clutched tightly onto his head as she leaned on her back and he saddled her.

“Mya,” he groaned as she spread her legs apart and hitched them over his waist.

“Your hose, we have to lose them!” she exclaimed.

“Not yet,” he said kissing down her body, wanting her sweat to mix with the mud. “Let’s take this slowly shall we.”

A/N Just thought I'd entertain you with a funny story... I was on Ashwinder when my autistic sister stood over me and saw, in the corner of the screen, an artists picture of Snape and Hermione kissing, and she gasped in surprise, and pointed at Snape and said "That man naughty!" I just burst out into fits of laughter! Please review!