The Wedding - COMPLETE

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Updated 4-28-07

Back again, folks. I rented a giant wind machine so I can blow kisses around the world to all of you who have reviewed my story. XXXXXX I am SO appreciative of your support. Each new review warms the cockles of my heart. (What is a cockle, anyway?)

I'm very lucky to have regular reviewers (YEA!!) and I see a few new reviewers have graced my list too. Thank you!


Lucius is grousing to get on with it and I don't want a wand up my ... so here 'tis.
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Chapter Twenty-Eight


Something Muggle


Lucius woke up alone in his bed next morning and found he was disappointed, missing his little fireball already. He was alarmed at his disappointment - it was much more comfortable for him, not needing anyone at all. Then he was angry with himself for being relieved when Hermione came sauntering out of his bathroom a few minutes later, drying her hair after a lovely, hot shower.


Her brown locks had been dragged down by the weight of the water, but already they were beginning to curl up again around her head. She went to the cherry wood bureau to find a bra and knickers, then strolled over to Lucius’ closet and disappeared inside. Five minutes later she emerged dressed for town. “Lucius, I’m going shopping. Did you want anything? I’m going to get hamburger and buns and some catsup and mustard.”


Lucius aimed a suspicious look at Hermione but only said, “No, there’s nothing I can think of. You’re dressed rather formally for the grocery store, aren’t you?”


“Oh, I’m meeting up with Ginny for lunch.” Hermione held up her hand, “Don’t worry, I promise not to drink it. We’re only going to the Leaky Cauldron anyway. I think we’ve both had enough of the high life for a while. See you for dinner.” She smiled happily at her husband and apparated to the foyer for her cape.


Hermione bought the groceries at a Muggle store and took them outside behind some cars, but had to wait awhile for an opportunity to apparate them one by one to her newly discovered kitchen between other customers coming and going. The thought of her kitchen drew a contented smile of remembrance from her just before she was finally able to apparate to the front door of the Leaky Cauldron. Ginny was just arriving, too, so they walked into the tavern together.


Hermione grinned, “That was an interesting evening, last night. I don’t think I’ve seen either of those two so much as bat an eyelash over anything before, but last night they were nearly falling out of the box. Some of those swear words were pretty creative. When Severus told the referee to quit jerking himself off, it was affecting his eyesight, it opened my eyes to another side of your husband, I’ll tell you!”


Ginny added, “And it was a revelation to me how Lucius told the Bombers’ team owner to get his wand out of his ass and control his players better. Oh, my, that was better entertainment than the Quidditch match.” Both women chortled with high good humor as they found a table near a back window. Ginny sat down and opened up her menu, but paused, lowering it again to peer over the top at her friend, “This reminds me, I have the sneaking suspicion that Lucius was not familiar with hamburgers. Or chips. Haven’t you had them at home?”


Hermione didn’t want to betray Lucius, so she merely said, “I burned them the only time I made them, so he wasn’t too keen on a repeat. We’d been snogging, so it was his fault anyway.” She smiled and hoped her little cover-up lie would satisfy Ginny while protecting her husband. Her first impulse was always to shield him and every time she did it she was awe-struck anew that he should affect her that way; he was a ruthless Death Eater whose exploits had been both cruel and merciless. He shouldn’t rate any mercy of his own. But spending a lifetime castigating and vilifying a man she had to live with would be counterproductive and tiring for her. She wanted to move away from the past and enjoy a future that looked like it might hold the promise of contentment, and perhaps even joy.


The two young women settled down to a companionable meal interspersed with laughter and gossip. Ginny always knew the choicest bits of gossip and Hermione had to assume that her source was her husband. The bits Hermione devoured were about Lucius’ past exploits and his dismal family background, which went a ways to explain some of his current behavior.


Hermione was clever enough to understand that Snape was delivering information to her about her husband via an innocent Ginny, but she didn’t say as much to her friend. What was amazing to Hermione was that those two seemed to talk about everything together. Hermione used that as a yardstick for what she needed to accomplish in her own marriage. She wanted to be friends with her mate as well as enjoying mind-bending sex. If she never got past the mind-bending sex, well…she just would, that’s all.


Hermione and Ginny finished up their meals, promising to get together again the following week, and Ginny apparated home. Hermione went to another appointment, arriving home midafternoon. She went to check on Crookshanks, who had been somewhat neglected lately, and asked him if he wanted to spend some time in the garden with her. At his happy chirping reply, she went next door to her new bedroom, their bedroom now, she gloated, and changed into one of her easy care sundresses, grabbing her iPod from one of Lucius’ silver boxes that she had appropriated for her own bits of jewelry.


She and Crookshanks walked down the hallways and stairs, reaching the back French windows and set out walking the gravel paths. At a small shed, Hermione fetched a basket and shears for cutting flowers for the dinner table. She surveyed the vast gardens, trying to make up her mind which types of flowers to use for her floral arrangement. She finally decided on a traditional bouquet of red roses and fern fronds for greenery. That entailed a bit of a walk because the roses weren’t anywhere near the fern grotto and her promise to herself for some exercise meant she had to walk everywhere in the garden. She put on her lovely, expensive earphones for the iPod and started humming along with her oldies but goodies. She was just bending over to get a couple of bigger fronds near the ground when she felt a hand on her shoulder and screeched in surprise.


Lucius stood behind her, angrily saying something. Hermione removed the earphones to hear him berating her for ignoring his calls for the last five minutes. “…you deaf? I’ve been looking for you and calling you, but you’ve decided to ignore me for some reason. I’m not aware that I’ve transgressed in any way,” Lucius fumed, internally worrying that she was angry about his withdrawal from her affectionate words the evening before, and that only made him more cantankerous.


“Well,” Hermione pertly rejoined, “in essence, I guess I was deaf. I had my earphones on listening to music.” She gestured to the earphones slung around her neck and the iPod attached to her waist.


Lucius narrowed his eyes, “If you’re going to ignore me, do it without making up stupid lies, please. Using earmuffs to pretend you didn’t hear me is ridiculous.” Lucius crossed his finely muscled arms in annoyance.


Hermione got sidetracked for a few seconds, gazing sappily at her husband’s sexy biceps, but when he growled, “Granger…,” she snapped back to the present and removed the earphones from her neck. Catching hold of a hank of Lucius’ hair, she pulled his head down and put the earphones against one ear.


He almost reared back from her pull on his hair, but he heard faint music coming from the earmuffs and he let her put it next to his ear. Amazing! There was music coming from the earmuffs. What an odd combination. Muggle, of course. He listened for a few seconds, then she let go of his abused hair and he straightened, snatching the earmuffs from her hands. He put the earmuffs on his own head, and listened some more to the plaintive voices singing about losing ‘that lovin’ feelin’’. “What song is that?” he asked.


“I was listening to the Righteous Brothers, when I took the earphones off. The song was, “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’”.


Lucius nodded, still listening. Then he removed the ‘earphones’ from his head and started to inspect them. “How do they work?” Lucius’ ferocious intelligence was hard at work, trying to analyze how something so small – and Muggle - could provide a whole array of musicians and be portable besides.


Hermione explained the iPod as best she could knowing she didn’t have a good enough understanding of electronics to be able to satisfy him.


Lucius said, “You’re bringing more and more Muggle things into our home. I’m not sure I approve of mixing their nonmagic world with ours. I want to have advance warning before any more nonmagic items show up on the estate. I live here too, and I don’t like having your toys showing up without any input from me.”


Hermione wasn’t very pleased with Lucius’ attitude, but she tried to understand his animosity from his point of view. If she were faced with magic showing up all over her home and she was a Muggle, she’d be upset too. She stolidly asked instead, “Why did you need me?”


Lucius handed back the earphones and said, “The elves are at a loss for the food you sent to the kitchen. They don’t know what needs to be refrigerated and what some of the items are. They asked me because my name was on the bags. Why is my name written all over bags of groceries?”


Hermione bit her lip. She’d been doodling his name like a smitten schoolgirl on the bags while she waited to apparate with them to the kitchen. Oh dear, what to say? She looked up at her inquisitive spouse and decided to come clean – a little. “I was doodling your name. Just to pass the time while I waited to safely apparate the bags to the kitchen from a Muggle store.”


Lucius stared at her, a look of incomprehensibility on his face.


Oh, sweet goddess, she knew what the next question was. Hermione cringed inside.


“Why?” Lucius watched as a red blush bloomed on his wife’s face. He smiled devilishly and ran his fingers down her flushed cheek, enjoying her disgruntled embarrassment.


Damn. He had to ask. “It’s just what girls do. Oh, never mind.” Hermione irritably looked around for Crookshanks, but he was gone, probably out scouting something smaller than he was to best in mortal combat. He’d been strictly warned not bring any more dead gophers onto his bed - she’d narrowly missed sitting on the remains of the last one. She put her earphones on and turned back to the unfortunate fern.


Lucius pulled the earphones off his wife again, “The elves, remember?”


“Yes, yes. I know. I’ll go help them when I’ve finished cutting the flowers.” She watched, now in a crabby mood, as Lucius disappeared, presumably to his study. She quickly finished cutting her greenery, then returned to the shed and created her bouquet. Whisking to the dining room with her centerpiece, she placed it at the center of the table, and then jumped to her old bedroom to look through a few Muggle magazines for a picture of a hamburger to show the elves.


She got distracted a bit looking at the fashions and remembered she wanted to buy some casual clothes for her husband. After a few minutes of imagining Lucius in old jeans and a tight white tee shirt, she remembered the burgers, found a picture right away and soon had the elves learning how to make burgers. After that she apparated to the master bedroom, promising herself a lovely soak in the green marble bathroom. It had been a busy afternoon.


Lucius returned to his study, pondering his wife’s behavior and her obvious blush. He vaguely remembered that girls in his Slytherin house at Hogwarts liked to write their first names with the last names of boys they liked. Definitely a girl’s pastime. This was probably similar. It was another token of her caring for him. He was being beset with a barrage of affectionate behavior from her and he knew he should be extremely leery of her romantic advances as anything more than a manifestation of physical interest, but he was having a harder time every day keeping her at a distance.


She was basically living in his pocket now and he wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. Or how he felt about it. He didn’t want to trust her with his emotional vulnerability, but his recoil from his wife’s affection the previous evening made him wince. He didn’t want to hurt her, but he must have done. Yet today, she was writing his name on grocery bags. Could he really trust her a little? He was intensely aware of her sexually, did he want more from her? Could he accept more? And most important, was she truly offering more?

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I see Lucius wading into a pool of emotional quicksand called Hermione. She looks innocuous at first, but she's going to be more than he can fight. He's slowly going to get sucked in deeper and deeper until he's completely submerged in her. Bwahhhaahaa (that was an evil laugh).


Lucius is so confused at this juncture he's not certain what to do, poor baby. Hmmm. Now what can I add to the mix to make it even more messy? (Looks around at all the regulars) Yes, Hermione Malfoy? Do you have an idea?


My recipe for doing a review (tested in my own laboratory so I know it works): Open a review box right next to the story you are reading and type in thoughts as you read instead of waiting until you're finished and can't remember all that you wanted to say. Well, (clears throat in embarrassment) that's why my reviews are always so long-winded. So now you know. (Of course, long-winded may be your idea of review hell, so use at your own discretion.)
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