Prisoners of Love - A Mystery - COMPLETE
folder
Harry Potter › Het - Male/Female › Lucius/Hermione
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
41
Views:
77,244
Reviews:
999
Recommended:
2
Currently Reading:
1
Category:
Harry Potter › Het - Male/Female › Lucius/Hermione
Rating:
Adult ++
Chapters:
41
Views:
77,244
Reviews:
999
Recommended:
2
Currently Reading:
1
Disclaimer:
I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
Sharing Space
_____________________________________________
Updated 9-22-07
Your reviews are fantastic! My only problem is that each chapter brings one or more reviews that spark me to adjust the story, so I'm spending time adding to it as we go along. I must say, you all are plugging plot holes and strengthening the story line amazingly. Thank you!
Citten Sorry, no 'clothes shopping' with an explanation. I wrote, "Shopping, clothes, redecorating - to some extent all your wishes will come true." First, my weasel words, "to some extent" mean it will all happen in a greater or lesser amount. And notice I didn't use the two words, shopping and clothes together. Sorry for the miscommunication. I am sorry also that I made it sound like all of it would be happening in the next chapter. More miscommunication, I fear. The ideas are scattered in the story, not all together. I hope I've sufficiently clarified things. Probably not, though...
So, how are the two lovebirds getting along?
_____________________________________________
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sharing Space
They had a late lunch at the dining table before Lucius reluctantly decided to apparate back to his estate to gather some possessions for a longer stay, grumbling that he could have had an elf do it. No sympathy was forthcoming so he whisked himself away. Hermione cleared up the lunch mess with her wand and trod up and down the short hall a few times for a bit of exercise and also to get the fidgets out worrying that Lucius wouldn’t come back. She didn’t want to venture outside in the snow, afraid with her slightly unbalanced frame she might take a tumble on an icy patch.
Nearly four endless hours later, Lucius reappeared in the middle of her parlor toting numerous items to guarantee his comfort in his new – home. He was still having trouble thinking about the tiny house with anything but claustrophobia, but he had weighed his wife’s safety (and his delicious erections) against the solitary comforts of his luxurious estate and decided he needed to stay with her until her time was near. Then she was coming back to live on the estate and he wasn’t going to take any denials from her. Her position was now as the wife of a socially prominent wizard.
He fretted at how that was going to play with his uppercrust set, but if anyone could ram a Mudblood wife down their throats, he could. His health, both physical and mental, came before their persnickety preferences, and he had also found out the hard way (or perhaps the soft way) that Hermione was necessary to his functioning libido. He was lured just as surely to her as lost travelers were to the light of a Hinkypunk. And without her he was just as adrift as those poor wayfarers.
It angered him some that it wasn’t only the physical, or even mental, attraction that swayed him. It was those things and more. He’d felt the slight tendrils of it the moment she’d landed in his cell, at first dismissing the sensation as nothing more than sexual deprivation, but by not being able to get away from her the attachment had grown to the point where he’d desperately and dishonorably detached himself for those nightmarish months.
The mental bonding was bad enough - he didn’t want to look any more deeply at his other apparent addiction. Snape had to be wrong – Malfoys didn’t succumb to the plebeian emotion of love, such a banal and low-class mental state. He thought maybe it was some sort of obsession with her that he might be able to overcome with enough exposure. But so far he wasn’t holding out much hope.
He could lie to himself all he wanted, but he knew this added addiction was only growing and now he had angered her with his poor behavior, compounding his problem. He’d met her before – why hadn’t he felt these compelling forces then? Had she been too young? He’d been thirty-eight when he’d met the child Hermione in Flourish and Blott’s. He didn’t remember much except for a little girl’s frown and his son’s antipathy to her. At the time he’d been much more focused on the Potter spawn. After that he hadn’t had much contact with her until the unfortunate affair in the Department of Mysteries. And after his first unpleasant incarceration all hell had broken loose.
He also doubted she had cast a spell on him. He would have known – his powers were still much greater than hers. And she hadn’t known she would be thrown in a cell with him. Had she? Was the entire affair an intricate scenario to…what? What could be accomplished? No, he sighed, it was what it was. Why would anyone go to the trouble to become pregnant by him? Ah, to rephrase, why would she go to the trouble? Obviously money wasn’t very important to Hermione or she would have been at his estate demanding her due months ago. He just had to hope to Saint Guinevere she had the same obsession as he or his life was going to be lived under her dainty little thumb. What a disgusting choice – living ‘under the cat’s paw’ or with a limp dick.
In the meantime he simply wanted to protect her and his unborn child from any stress or difficulties. And shag the stuffing out of her every chance he got. Now that was a definite perk. Life could be worse. He’d already proved that.
Lucius didn’t know he was going to be meeting her parents or he might have reconsidered the limp dick.
“What did you bring, Lucius?” Hermione was looking over the small boxes, knowing they had to be charmed back into a normal size so Lucius could then move the contents throughout her home. There were quite a few boxes and she wondered where all his things were going to fit.
“Just some extra clothes and a few of my business documents – and my owls, of course. I’ve put them in your little backyard shed with the hoe and rake and such.”
Hermione could just see the owl droppings polluting her clean little garden shed and fumed. When they moved out, she’d make Lucius clean it up. The idea of Lucius doing owl dung duty brought a slight smile to her face.
“I added some books from my library I thought you might like to read.” He was beginning his campaign of seduction onto his estate early. He saw her little smile and congratulated himself for thinking of the books. He tucked that bit of knowledge on his spouse away, glad to know she was so easily pleased, never understanding she was envisioning her immaculate husband covered in owl pucky.
“And,” he mentioned nonchalantly, unilaterally changing their evening routine to include the cocktail ‘hour’, “I brought some of my favorite firewhiskey for before dinner cocktails, although I know you won’t be having any.” He began increasing the size of a couple of boxes. “I did want to know when you were going to see the healer again. I wish to go with you to meet him and be apprised of anything special I need to provide either before or during the birth.”
“Well, first of all, I have a female healer, and she’s the same healer Molly has used for all the Weasley children so I have complete confidence in her. Second, I don’t like the idea of you coming with me.” Hermione was taken aback at Lucius’ demands for entry into the intimate female details of what she’d been tackling alone for over six months.
Lucius scowled briefly, “As my revered grandmother use to say, ‘Hard Horklumps’. I’m involved in this event and I’m going to make sure I have all the information I need to protect you and our child. I need to know, Hermione. If anything happened to you, who would I contact? You were basically living here alone and you could have fallen or hurt yourself somehow.” Lucius lifted out some clothing and shook them before walking across the hall and hanging them in the bedroom closet. He moved over to the small bureau and called, “Is there any space in your bureau for some of my things?”
Hermione stalked into her bedroom to her bureau and opened a drawer, took out all her lingerie (and her spelling bee medal) and put them in with her stockings and socks in another drawer. “There, all yours. Anything else?” she asked, peeved at his invasion. She hadn’t truly thought through the ramifications of him actually moving in with her when she had taunted him to stay in her small digs.
Lucius retrieved more clothing from another box and filled his new drawer with some socks, some gloves, his hair ribbons, and a few folded shirts. His ties, he hung in the closet over a hanger, bothered anew at her splashy collection of colors, this time succumbing to the temptation to comment, “Merlin’s balls, tidbit, your closet looks like an explosion in a paint factory. Is there any color you won’t wear?” Lucius limned his hand along the dresses and blouses lined up on the hangers, making a snort of disgust. “Some of these colors were in fashion when Caesar was screwing Cleopatra. Ugh!” he pulled out a blouse in a singularly repellent shade of bright yellow. “Don’t they use this color for crime scenes?” He turned to Hermione who had stomped over to the closet, slamming it closed nearly on Lucius’ fingers. He wasn’t deterred in the least. “I’m having Madam Malkin take you in hand when we move to our estate. You can’t wear some of those colors without warning innocent people to cover their eyes.”
“This insulting lecture comes from a man whose wardrobe consists of every shade of BLACK known to mankind,” Hermione looked daggers at her insensitive spouse. “However do you manage to coordinate your ensembles with all those clashing BLACKS? I’m going to wear exactly whatever I wish. If you don’t like it, buy sunglasses.”
Hermione guiltily knew there was a grain of truth in what Lucius was saying. She didn’t have much dress sense and had never had the knack of making her clothing coordinate, but it also would never have occurred to him that she might be on a tight budget. She had thrown every penny she could earn into buying her little cottage. Her clothes were mostly selections from the exclusive boutique down the street known as Ye Olde Thrift Shoppe.
Her parents had offered to help her out, but she wanted to be independent. It had been easier at Hogwarts when all she needed to wear were school robes most days. One quick glance at her husband and she knew her hard-won independence would be ground up like so much mandrake root under his ‘benevolent’ regime. Her clothes would be only the first victim of his dominant personality. Maybe Madam Malkin could at least teach her the secret to a more fashionable look – someday, when it didn’t look so much like a surrender of her will to his.
When the boxes were empty, Hermione’s bedroom, bathroom, and closet were filled with an impressive array of necessities for her tall, elegant husband. Mercifully, the firewhiskey had gone on a small side table in the parlor. She guessed she was lucky that he slept nude and didn’t like underwear, or she’d have been choused out of another drawer for his undershorts and pajamas.
Hermione looked at her limited living space and sighed with resignation. If a female had moved in, there would have been less paraphernalia. The things her husband did just to keep his hands and hair in perfect shape were an eye-opening education in the habits of the very rich. Hermione was less certain than ever that she wanted to live in his rarified, wealthy world, but she looked down at her blooming waistline and knew that decision had been taken away nearly seven months ago.
**********************************************************
**********************************************************
The two conspirators met in a dark pub in Knockturn Alley where no one paid the least attention to who came and went, except to assess possible victims to rob. The two in the back booth didn’t meet the criteria and were of no other interest.
“I thought we were going to put an end to the two of them. What happened?
“They’ve disappeared. Malfoy shows up for various business appointments for a few hours then he’s gone again. The manure supplier for Malfoy’s greenhouses swears the blond wizard isn’t on the estate. We can’t get in and I don’t think it’s time to attempt any more overt action on trying to break his estate wards until we know for sure he’s there. Think how ridiculous – and dangerous – it would be to do all that work and then he wasn’t home. We would tip our hand for nothing.”
“Well, she’s missing too, and has been for months. I’ve watched Grimmauld Place but she never appears. Maybe she returned to the Muggle world. If so, she’s not a problem any more, is she? Our anonymous parchment to that Potter kid didn’t help. If he visited Granger he must have apparated because I followed him several times on broomstick and he only went to that Ron Weasley’s house and to the Ministry and once to a pick-up Quidditch game. I don’t want him to catch me following him. It was a close run thing a couple of times so I’m not doing that any more.”
“Well I don’t like the fact that they are BOTH missing. That makes me very nervous.”
“If she went back to the Muggle world, Malfoy would never follow her there. He hates Muggles.”
“Well, he married a Muggleborn, didn’t he? We can’t rely on his hatred to do our work for us any more. We’ll have to think of something else.”
**********************************************************
**********************************************************
tbc...
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
I'm afraid those two have a bit more adjusting to do before they settle into married bliss. And the villains are getting restless...
Reviews are definitely appreciated - it helps so much to see your views of the story so I know what holes to plug. You truly are weaving this story right along with me. My muse is delighted!
.
.
Updated 9-22-07
Your reviews are fantastic! My only problem is that each chapter brings one or more reviews that spark me to adjust the story, so I'm spending time adding to it as we go along. I must say, you all are plugging plot holes and strengthening the story line amazingly. Thank you!
Citten Sorry, no 'clothes shopping' with an explanation. I wrote, "Shopping, clothes, redecorating - to some extent all your wishes will come true." First, my weasel words, "to some extent" mean it will all happen in a greater or lesser amount. And notice I didn't use the two words, shopping and clothes together. Sorry for the miscommunication. I am sorry also that I made it sound like all of it would be happening in the next chapter. More miscommunication, I fear. The ideas are scattered in the story, not all together. I hope I've sufficiently clarified things. Probably not, though...
So, how are the two lovebirds getting along?
_____________________________________________
Chapter Twenty-Two
Sharing Space
They had a late lunch at the dining table before Lucius reluctantly decided to apparate back to his estate to gather some possessions for a longer stay, grumbling that he could have had an elf do it. No sympathy was forthcoming so he whisked himself away. Hermione cleared up the lunch mess with her wand and trod up and down the short hall a few times for a bit of exercise and also to get the fidgets out worrying that Lucius wouldn’t come back. She didn’t want to venture outside in the snow, afraid with her slightly unbalanced frame she might take a tumble on an icy patch.
Nearly four endless hours later, Lucius reappeared in the middle of her parlor toting numerous items to guarantee his comfort in his new – home. He was still having trouble thinking about the tiny house with anything but claustrophobia, but he had weighed his wife’s safety (and his delicious erections) against the solitary comforts of his luxurious estate and decided he needed to stay with her until her time was near. Then she was coming back to live on the estate and he wasn’t going to take any denials from her. Her position was now as the wife of a socially prominent wizard.
He fretted at how that was going to play with his uppercrust set, but if anyone could ram a Mudblood wife down their throats, he could. His health, both physical and mental, came before their persnickety preferences, and he had also found out the hard way (or perhaps the soft way) that Hermione was necessary to his functioning libido. He was lured just as surely to her as lost travelers were to the light of a Hinkypunk. And without her he was just as adrift as those poor wayfarers.
It angered him some that it wasn’t only the physical, or even mental, attraction that swayed him. It was those things and more. He’d felt the slight tendrils of it the moment she’d landed in his cell, at first dismissing the sensation as nothing more than sexual deprivation, but by not being able to get away from her the attachment had grown to the point where he’d desperately and dishonorably detached himself for those nightmarish months.
The mental bonding was bad enough - he didn’t want to look any more deeply at his other apparent addiction. Snape had to be wrong – Malfoys didn’t succumb to the plebeian emotion of love, such a banal and low-class mental state. He thought maybe it was some sort of obsession with her that he might be able to overcome with enough exposure. But so far he wasn’t holding out much hope.
He could lie to himself all he wanted, but he knew this added addiction was only growing and now he had angered her with his poor behavior, compounding his problem. He’d met her before – why hadn’t he felt these compelling forces then? Had she been too young? He’d been thirty-eight when he’d met the child Hermione in Flourish and Blott’s. He didn’t remember much except for a little girl’s frown and his son’s antipathy to her. At the time he’d been much more focused on the Potter spawn. After that he hadn’t had much contact with her until the unfortunate affair in the Department of Mysteries. And after his first unpleasant incarceration all hell had broken loose.
He also doubted she had cast a spell on him. He would have known – his powers were still much greater than hers. And she hadn’t known she would be thrown in a cell with him. Had she? Was the entire affair an intricate scenario to…what? What could be accomplished? No, he sighed, it was what it was. Why would anyone go to the trouble to become pregnant by him? Ah, to rephrase, why would she go to the trouble? Obviously money wasn’t very important to Hermione or she would have been at his estate demanding her due months ago. He just had to hope to Saint Guinevere she had the same obsession as he or his life was going to be lived under her dainty little thumb. What a disgusting choice – living ‘under the cat’s paw’ or with a limp dick.
In the meantime he simply wanted to protect her and his unborn child from any stress or difficulties. And shag the stuffing out of her every chance he got. Now that was a definite perk. Life could be worse. He’d already proved that.
Lucius didn’t know he was going to be meeting her parents or he might have reconsidered the limp dick.
“What did you bring, Lucius?” Hermione was looking over the small boxes, knowing they had to be charmed back into a normal size so Lucius could then move the contents throughout her home. There were quite a few boxes and she wondered where all his things were going to fit.
“Just some extra clothes and a few of my business documents – and my owls, of course. I’ve put them in your little backyard shed with the hoe and rake and such.”
Hermione could just see the owl droppings polluting her clean little garden shed and fumed. When they moved out, she’d make Lucius clean it up. The idea of Lucius doing owl dung duty brought a slight smile to her face.
“I added some books from my library I thought you might like to read.” He was beginning his campaign of seduction onto his estate early. He saw her little smile and congratulated himself for thinking of the books. He tucked that bit of knowledge on his spouse away, glad to know she was so easily pleased, never understanding she was envisioning her immaculate husband covered in owl pucky.
“And,” he mentioned nonchalantly, unilaterally changing their evening routine to include the cocktail ‘hour’, “I brought some of my favorite firewhiskey for before dinner cocktails, although I know you won’t be having any.” He began increasing the size of a couple of boxes. “I did want to know when you were going to see the healer again. I wish to go with you to meet him and be apprised of anything special I need to provide either before or during the birth.”
“Well, first of all, I have a female healer, and she’s the same healer Molly has used for all the Weasley children so I have complete confidence in her. Second, I don’t like the idea of you coming with me.” Hermione was taken aback at Lucius’ demands for entry into the intimate female details of what she’d been tackling alone for over six months.
Lucius scowled briefly, “As my revered grandmother use to say, ‘Hard Horklumps’. I’m involved in this event and I’m going to make sure I have all the information I need to protect you and our child. I need to know, Hermione. If anything happened to you, who would I contact? You were basically living here alone and you could have fallen or hurt yourself somehow.” Lucius lifted out some clothing and shook them before walking across the hall and hanging them in the bedroom closet. He moved over to the small bureau and called, “Is there any space in your bureau for some of my things?”
Hermione stalked into her bedroom to her bureau and opened a drawer, took out all her lingerie (and her spelling bee medal) and put them in with her stockings and socks in another drawer. “There, all yours. Anything else?” she asked, peeved at his invasion. She hadn’t truly thought through the ramifications of him actually moving in with her when she had taunted him to stay in her small digs.
Lucius retrieved more clothing from another box and filled his new drawer with some socks, some gloves, his hair ribbons, and a few folded shirts. His ties, he hung in the closet over a hanger, bothered anew at her splashy collection of colors, this time succumbing to the temptation to comment, “Merlin’s balls, tidbit, your closet looks like an explosion in a paint factory. Is there any color you won’t wear?” Lucius limned his hand along the dresses and blouses lined up on the hangers, making a snort of disgust. “Some of these colors were in fashion when Caesar was screwing Cleopatra. Ugh!” he pulled out a blouse in a singularly repellent shade of bright yellow. “Don’t they use this color for crime scenes?” He turned to Hermione who had stomped over to the closet, slamming it closed nearly on Lucius’ fingers. He wasn’t deterred in the least. “I’m having Madam Malkin take you in hand when we move to our estate. You can’t wear some of those colors without warning innocent people to cover their eyes.”
“This insulting lecture comes from a man whose wardrobe consists of every shade of BLACK known to mankind,” Hermione looked daggers at her insensitive spouse. “However do you manage to coordinate your ensembles with all those clashing BLACKS? I’m going to wear exactly whatever I wish. If you don’t like it, buy sunglasses.”
Hermione guiltily knew there was a grain of truth in what Lucius was saying. She didn’t have much dress sense and had never had the knack of making her clothing coordinate, but it also would never have occurred to him that she might be on a tight budget. She had thrown every penny she could earn into buying her little cottage. Her clothes were mostly selections from the exclusive boutique down the street known as Ye Olde Thrift Shoppe.
Her parents had offered to help her out, but she wanted to be independent. It had been easier at Hogwarts when all she needed to wear were school robes most days. One quick glance at her husband and she knew her hard-won independence would be ground up like so much mandrake root under his ‘benevolent’ regime. Her clothes would be only the first victim of his dominant personality. Maybe Madam Malkin could at least teach her the secret to a more fashionable look – someday, when it didn’t look so much like a surrender of her will to his.
When the boxes were empty, Hermione’s bedroom, bathroom, and closet were filled with an impressive array of necessities for her tall, elegant husband. Mercifully, the firewhiskey had gone on a small side table in the parlor. She guessed she was lucky that he slept nude and didn’t like underwear, or she’d have been choused out of another drawer for his undershorts and pajamas.
Hermione looked at her limited living space and sighed with resignation. If a female had moved in, there would have been less paraphernalia. The things her husband did just to keep his hands and hair in perfect shape were an eye-opening education in the habits of the very rich. Hermione was less certain than ever that she wanted to live in his rarified, wealthy world, but she looked down at her blooming waistline and knew that decision had been taken away nearly seven months ago.
**********************************************************
**********************************************************
The two conspirators met in a dark pub in Knockturn Alley where no one paid the least attention to who came and went, except to assess possible victims to rob. The two in the back booth didn’t meet the criteria and were of no other interest.
“I thought we were going to put an end to the two of them. What happened?
“They’ve disappeared. Malfoy shows up for various business appointments for a few hours then he’s gone again. The manure supplier for Malfoy’s greenhouses swears the blond wizard isn’t on the estate. We can’t get in and I don’t think it’s time to attempt any more overt action on trying to break his estate wards until we know for sure he’s there. Think how ridiculous – and dangerous – it would be to do all that work and then he wasn’t home. We would tip our hand for nothing.”
“Well, she’s missing too, and has been for months. I’ve watched Grimmauld Place but she never appears. Maybe she returned to the Muggle world. If so, she’s not a problem any more, is she? Our anonymous parchment to that Potter kid didn’t help. If he visited Granger he must have apparated because I followed him several times on broomstick and he only went to that Ron Weasley’s house and to the Ministry and once to a pick-up Quidditch game. I don’t want him to catch me following him. It was a close run thing a couple of times so I’m not doing that any more.”
“Well I don’t like the fact that they are BOTH missing. That makes me very nervous.”
“If she went back to the Muggle world, Malfoy would never follow her there. He hates Muggles.”
“Well, he married a Muggleborn, didn’t he? We can’t rely on his hatred to do our work for us any more. We’ll have to think of something else.”
**********************************************************
**********************************************************
tbc...
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
I'm afraid those two have a bit more adjusting to do before they settle into married bliss. And the villains are getting restless...
Reviews are definitely appreciated - it helps so much to see your views of the story so I know what holes to plug. You truly are weaving this story right along with me. My muse is delighted!
.
.