Prisoners of Love - A Mystery - COMPLETE

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Updated 10-20-07

I want to thank you all for your enlivening encouragement and support. A big hug especially to my staunch reviewers who give me feedback, chapter after chapter. Thank you for your faithful written reassurances.

A few of you asked questions or had comments that needed a reply:

LeahLove Don’t cry. I don’t think it’s any secret my stories always have a happy ending.

Utopia I find your analysis of the mystery fascinating. Just fascinating. Hermione’s pregnancy was mentioned by Arthur Weasley at his workplace in the Ministry. Word got around.

Citten Sorry, Madam Malkin does not make an appearance. Forgive me.

Scary Bear Hair I’m not counting chapters or elapsed time, just patiently waiting until you feel right about your next chapter and post it. Good writing takes time. And yours is very good.

JW Hermione’s certainly not against the idea of house elves (as long as they aren’t exploited). She’s just being snotty about depriving Lucius of his luxuries, wanting some payback and to teach him he can’t have everything his own way, not that her plan is working all that well.

Everybody have on their dancing shoes?


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Chapter Thirty

The Dinner-Dance



Her parents had willingly driven Hermione to a country lane outside the more populated areas where Lucius was waiting dressed in his fur-collared cape to pick her up. He was interested in the horseless conveyance but didn’t have time to ask questions. The dark wizard knew of automobiles, of course, but didn’t own any, there being no reason to clutter his estate with the things. His closest brush with autos was the Knight Bus, which he abhorred as inconvenient and unpleasant to ride. This auto didn’t look too bad to ride in, though.

Hermione hadn’t thought through how she was to get to the function if she was not willing to apparate and seeing the coach and four thestrals waiting for her had come as an unwelcome surprise, but she knew better than to complain. Lucius was already jittery about some of her self-imposed limitations with the pregnancy and it would only cause an argument. He was still adjusting to the changes in his lifestyle and habits engendered by living with her. She wondered exactly how his previous marriage had managed to last so long if he had had the same limited patience and resistance to compromise for Narcissa’s foibles.

One good thing happened as Hermione was led to the coach waiting in the lane. “Otto!!” she exclaimed looking up at the driver’s box, “Is that you?” Hermione turned to Lucius for an explanation of why their former prison guard was now their coachman.

“H’lo Miz Malfoy,” Otto nodded at Hermione from the high perch at the front of the luxurious coach. “Mind the thestrals, they’re ready to fly. They bin in the stable too much an’ they wanna go.” Otto held the reins firmly against the tossing of the animals’ heads and their stamping feet.

“Get in, Hermione, I’ll tell you how Otto came here as we go,” Lucius helped Hermione with the steps into the coach, following her into the plush interior. The cushioned seats were covered in a forest green, deep pile velvet with silver piping. The walls of the space were given over to padded leather in black studded with sparkling nail heads that on closer inspection revealed themselves to be diamonds winking in the moonlight.

“How long will we be in the air, Lucius?” Hermione wasn’t much for any sort of flying – she’d never wanted to play Quidditch and this would be much farther off the ground. Her one brave act of flying to the Department of Mysteries aside, she was always unhappy to be very far off the ground unless she was in something solid like a building.

“Not long, tidbit. Perhaps twenty minutes.” Lucius relaxed back against the cushion and pulled her up across his lap, soothing her with a black-gloved hand gently caressing her belly through her dress cape.

Hermione leaned into Lucius burying her face in his exposed neck. This evening his hair was pulled back with a dark blue silk ribbon. She didn’t want to see outside the large windows, so Lucius pulled the matching green velvet drapes across them and held her closer, nuzzling his face into her soft curls, then kissing the top of her head.

“Tell me about Otto,” came a muffled voice from under Lucius’ chin.

Lucius smiled at his fierce wife being in a funk about flying knowing she couldn’t see him, but he readily explained, “When I was in prison Otto was always amenable to my occasional requests and he never asked for much. He helped me with various of my little projects when it didn’t put him in jeopardy so when I was released I asked him if he wished to care for my stables. The elves do the cleaning, but they have difficulties taking care of such large, strong, unruly animals. Otto’s abiding interests are fishing and horses. He has an affinity for the thestrals and it seemed a good fit. He’s taken up fly-fishing in local streams so the job suits both of us.” Lucius had never told Hermione of his owl system and he wasn’t going to ever, not wishing to bring the apocalypse down on his head.

“That was kind of you, Lucius,” the muffle said.

“Well, I thought so. It is of course gratifying that you think so, too.”

Lucius received a half-hearted pinch at his waist for his light mockery, but all it did was make him laugh and hug her.

Soon they were landing and with a small jolt, came to a halt. “We’re here Mr. Malfoy,” called Otto from the top of the coach. “Want me to bring the coach up to the front steps?”

“If you will, Otto. I’d rather not walk far tonight.” Lucius didn’t want Hermione to have to walk too much over any uneven ground, but he also didn’t want either of them exposed too long outside his estate or in public areas like the grounds of the building where the dance was being held.

The coach pulled up to the front steps of the Wiltshire Wizards Country Club and Lucius set Hermione gently back on the seat, got out and then helped her alight.

Lucius guided his wife through the pretentious portals of the country club taking her over to the checkstand to leave their capes. When Lucius drew off his cape, Hermione’s eyebrows shot up. Her dress exactly matched the color of his robe, both set in a dark blue. Hers was a chiffon draped to flow over her outsize belly, but his was in a rich dark, heavy silk with a subtle sheen and a front placket festooned with diamonds and sapphires set in platinum, the same as her jewelry. She reluctantly applauded his sense of uniting them visually for his Pureblood friends. The Slytherin mind at work, she surmised sardonically, giving deviousness it due.

They entered the ballroom as nearly the last couple, looking for their assigned table amidst the many others, all of the surfaces covered in white damask, with lovely floral arrangements centering each round expanse. The blooms scented the entire room with exotic fragrances and Hermione inhaled thankfully after feeling a bit nauseous from the ride and the horsy smell of the thestrals pulling their coach.

Hermione quickly saw one advantage to this stodgy assembly. The Purebloods must have somehow managed to condense nearly all the boredom of the magic world into their own highly select parties. No wonder the festivities of her own set were so much more entertaining. There couldn’t be any stodginess left anywhere in the magic world to blight the functions of her crowd when it was all used up for this affair. Little Mrs. Malfoy quietly enjoyed that fanciful thought, but kept her face neutral. She was learning quite a few new tricks from her shrewd, highbrow husband. Keeping one’s inner thoughts to oneself while showing nothing on one’s face was an important one. She had learned that lesson very quickly during their cutthroat checkers games in their prison cell.

Lucius kept her hand on his arm as they strolled among the tables seeking out their own seats, talking briefly to this man and that woman, many of whom gazed at Hermione in mute puzzlement while refraining from asking impolite questions. A few of them recognized her and she saw elegant feminine eyebrows hitch up on discreetly made up faces or narrowed male eyes trying to assess why she was with the Pureblood Malfoy. Their eyes usually bugged out when they noticed her advanced state of pregnancy.

Heretofore Hermione’s view of her spellbinding spouse had been merely of a rather self-involved, devious, extremely intelligent man who used his looks to advantage. Hermione now assessed her mate in his accustomed environs seeing for the first time the deadly power emanating from him. If she had to face that hotbed of spoiled, supercilious sophisticates, being at Lucius’ side would dispel a great deal of the malevolent reaction - overtly, at least.

Apparently Lucius hadn’t been spreading the word of his marriage too far and wide as of yet. Hermione had a sudden suspicion that this dinner-dance was his plan for disseminating the news and she seethed with abrupt indignation. How like him to skirt his responsibility for easing her way into his rarified world by turning her entry into a raree show. Her husband had a few choice comments coming his way when they got home.

“Hermione, at least try to smile. You look like a Dementor has flown up your dress. It’s not at all complimentary to me, tidbit. Do remember where we are.”

“I’m sure everyone has pretty well figured out it wasn’t a Dementor who found his way under my dress, Lucius.” Hermione said sweetly, beginning to be extremely irritated that so many of this gathering were surprised at her presence.



Lucius pressed her hand on his arm in warning, hearing her soft voice for the exasperation it was, “These people furnish some of my – er, our wealth through financial deals and investments.” Lucius nodded distantly to a fat, old pruney-faced dowager in a glaring orange taffeta gown, which rustled loudly as she waddled away toward the open bar, remarking in a carrying voice to her escort, obviously her son, that she’d never seen such a sight - a Malfoy with a Mudblood. Reginald Hardcastle, one of several of the Magic Council who had voiced his opposition to Lucius’ release during the Appeal, cast an inimical eye on the Malfoys before steering his mother toward their table and away from the bar where she’d obviously been at least once already.

Lucius gritted his teeth inwardly, but never slowed his progress or lost his pleasant social smile, daring anyone else to speak up. Everyone knew that old bat, Millicent Hardcastle was senile, however, she was probably echoing the sentiments of everyone in the room.

Lucius’ task of getting the Pureblood world to accept his wife was going to be difficult to achieve, but not impossible, not for a Malfoy. The blond wizard had more natural imperiousness and hauteur in his little finger than the rest of the cliquish group had altogether. His thumb was also firmly pressing down on most of their financial carotids. He would succeed. The alternative of losing Hermione wasn’t an option. Neither was losing his position in his circle.

Hermione decided maybe she wouldn’t wait until they got home to give her husband her opinion of his devious behavior. “Well, I assume our marriage is news to these people, Lucius. You really expect me to smile at all these flabbergasted snobs who are taken by surprise when you could have made more effort and let the information become general knowledge before tonight? I’m sorry but I find it almost impossible to look benignly at a wizard who wanted you to rot in prison.” Hermione nodded at the retreating back of Reginald Hardcastle as she affixed a vague half-smile to lips that would rather spit nails at her maddening husband. “One of several on the Magic Council, I might add. I guess I’m going to be the evening’s entertainment through no fault of my own. Just don’t expect me to enjoy being put on display for your highbrow friends.”

“The solicitor said Reginald Hardcastle spoke against me. Well, I’m not terribly surprised by that. He was probably part of the majority of the Magic Council if my solicitor’s account is complete. I’ll have to ask for a full list of those members who were most against me at the meeting. Oh, and I forgot to alert you that I did NOT mention to Scrimgeour our problems in the prison. I want to explore those irregularities myself first.”

Lucius smiled coldly at his ‘exalted circle’ as they traversed the large room. Hermione was right – he’d put off announcing his marriage to his cohorts and she was paying for his reticence – even though it hadn’t been that long since he’d decided to reclaim her.

Lucius sighed inwardly as the dismaying truth sank in. This witch would never play dutiful, submissive wife waiting patiently on his pleasure. It was coming home to him that no matter where they lived, Hermione wouldn’t ever take a back seat to his authority.

He had to remember he wasn’t always the most important person in his marriage any more and perhaps he’d have to rethink his relationship with his tidbit. She wasn’t like Narcissa who had always been a negligible afterthought to his plans. His confident plans to settle her into his estate and show her a wife’s secondary place began to unravel. He felt beset on all sides.

“Do you have to retaliate? Can’t we just move on and let that whole Appeals mess sink into obscurity now?” Hermione asked, worrying about Lucius’ interest in the individuals who wanted to keep him in prison, and that had included most of the Magic Council. She wanted peace for her marriage, not social upheaval. After all, her child had to be raised in this milieu and making enemies wasn’t going to be beneficial to a halfblood in this rarified circus.

Lucius ignored her plaint, trying to assure himself it wasn’t her place to decide his behavior, but his chin rose a notch as he traversed the ballroom with a silent Hermione walking proudly by his side, her obvious condition causing no little whispered prattle in the ranks of the elite. The whispers weren’t all belittling, however, as among the Purebloods, pregnancy was much rarer than in the population as a whole. The Weasleys were a famous exception. More than one Pureblood family had eyed Ginny Weasley as a possible fertile candidate for their sons, but Potter had preempted them. The Weasley sons were less prized as the family name would necessarily not be their own for any offspring.

At least she isn’t cowering in the face of our reception which can so far only claim the distinction of chilly, thought Lucius, mentally taking names and grimly amusing himself with ways he could make so many of their lives miserable if they so much as turned a shoulder to his wife. And not bloody likely was he going to forget those who had taken a stand against him in the Magic Council. His world didn’t work that way. Luckily for them, except for a few who had trundled to the back of the room to avoid an encounter, no one was so stupid or so lost to his own skin that they didn’t recognize their parts tonight in this tacit shoving of a Mudblood down their collective throats.

Some few of the guests had obviously already heard of their marriage and were less inclined to gawk at Lucius and his companion. But most important of all, the women were focused on the ornate diamond and sapphire necklace that Lucius had placed on Hermione’s neck to complement the midnight blue chiffon of her gown and the delicate eardrops in sapphire to match. The dark blue gown color beautifully complemented her skin, a porcelain pink color with pale rose cheeks, but even its artful, flowing drape under her breasts couldn’t hide the obvious evidence of her ripened belly. Nor had it been intended to. Lucius had given Madam Malkin strict instructions to display his wife’s condition – without telling Hermione. The dressmaker knew who controlled the money and easily acquiesced to his wishes.

Lucius knew everyone saw he was also dressed in midnight blue, his robe glittering with the matching platinum placket of diamond and sapphires down the front of his chest as he moved under the thousands of floating candles in the air. Their matching clothing was a further mark of his territory and a clear warning. One pleasant result warmed him, however. Hermione’s awestruck look at his evening regalia earlier had pleased him immensely. It wasn’t often he saw unqualified approval in her eyes any more.

The whispers gained in volume as they passed through the crowded room, finally dimming only when the Malfoys came to the table near the front that had been reserved with their names. Five other couples were already ranged around the large circular table and Lucius made swift introductions, seating his wife carefully before sitting down himself. One couple didn’t need an introduction.

“Granger,” Draco nodded, acknowledging her distantly. He was sitting at the table with his date, Pansy Parkinson.

Hermione, looking suitably bored from long practice with her schooldays nemesis, merely nodded back.

“She’s a Malfoy now, Draco,” Lucius sent a mild smile to his son. They both knew it hid a slight rebuke.

“She’ll always be Granger to me, father,” Draco smiled back, the same chilly mildness reflecting his acknowledgement and his lack of concern. “You don’t mind, do you, Hermione?”

“If you don’t mind the occasional ‘ferret’,” she replied, confusing most of the others at the table.

Draco merely grinned and lifted the crystal glass of wine near him in salute.

Lucius’ quiet comment and tender settling of Hermione at the table had sent a silent but emphatic signal to his son and the others that any overt antagonism at the dinner dance wouldn’t be tolerated, but Draco wasn’t particularly interested in making trouble in any case. The Malfoy clan always paid attention to the main chance and Draco knew any schism he initiated between him and the little Gryffindor would part him from the Malfoy fortune.

More importantly, his father had been much more agreeable and open since his Azkaban marriage to Hermione and Draco was blatantly basking in his father’s less critical, more approving attention. Suddenly Draco’s own achievements actually had been praised here and there, rather than never measuring up to his father’s strict standards. If Hermione was responsible for Draco having a father who finally accepted and appreciated him, the junior Malfoy wanted to let her know he wouldn’t be causing any problems.

When Snape had told him about the Azkaban marriage upon Lucius’ release, Draco had initially been horrified at a Malfoy marrying a Mudblood and relieved when his father had renounced the connection, but Draco had seen that the senior Malfoy’s temper had deteriorated over the few months after he had got out of prison, becoming miserable and making everyone around him miserable too. Lucius had visited Draco at his new home on the continent a few times and their relationship had strengthened, but his father’s health had begun to deteriorate as well as his temper and Draco had started to worry.

He’d asked Severus to keep an eye on his erratically behaving sire, not knowing what else to do from so far away. Snape had quietly taken over with his own brand of rehabilitation and Draco merely thought Lucius’ reconciliation with Hermione was the reason for his improved behavior and health. And it was – after Snape got through with him.

Draco still lived on the continent, but he felt happier visiting the Wiltshire mansion now than he ever had living in the place. So far Hermione hadn’t been in attendance during his few visits; apparently she was still living in the Muggle world, but Draco wanted to mend fences with her. Draco wasn’t stupid. He knew from sad experience she was not a person to have as an enemy, and especially not now that she was part of his own family. A judicious tightening of his hand on Pansy’s thigh kept his date from opening her mouth and initiating any abusive banter.

“I didn’t know you had remarried, Lucius,” the portly wizard, Harley Sherwood, opened the interrogation, leaning ponderously toward them from across the expanse of the damask. He was a comical vision tonight, with a puce cummerbund and bow tie adorning a tuxedo he’d apparently outgrown but refused to trade in. Another Magic Council member who hadn’t wanted Lucius freed. Lucius smiled at the straining cummerbund and wondered if Sherwood’s finances were unable to run to a new tuxedo.

Hermione, however, was not amused as she stared at the officious wizard who had asked the most challenging and censorious questions at Lucius’ Appeal hearing. He had definitely looked better in his black Magic Council robes. The condemning prat.

Looking around Hermione saw that nearly all the wizards and witches at the table excepting Draco and Pansy had sat on the dais when Lucius’ appeal was heard. Oh, joy. More members of the ‘Lucius in Azkaban Forever’ contingent.

Sherwood speared Hermione with a forbidding glance intimating that Lucius shouldn’t have wed outside their closed, inbred circle. He was also incensed that her relationship with Malfoy hadn’t been revealed in the Appeal.

Sherwood’s wife, also a Magic Council member, was no less condemning in her supercilious study of Hermione’s person from her curly hair, stopping a long second to scrutinize those magnificent sapphires and diamonds around Hermione’s neck, and continuing on down to the point at which her dress slid below the level of the table. The look implied that Lucius had not chosen well and had probably been trapped by the little upstart. The flaxen-haired woman’s thin lips tightened in disapproval and her voice dripped acid as she inquired with spurious sweetness, “When are you due, Mrs. Malfoy?” Clearly Mrs. Sherwood’s implication was that the conception had occurred well before the wedding.

The other couples, minus Draco who was speaking quietly to Pansy, avidly waited for Lucius to reply to this first volley in what the blond wizard wearily knew was going to be a long evening. He knew none of them really expected Hermione to answer the question. The powerful Pureblood spoke before his wife could reply, “I remarried nearly eight months ago, Madam Sherwood, and as you can see, my wife is very fertile. An indulgent smile was aimed at his wife by her fond husband, underscoring one major attribute that the little witch had brought to their marriage. “But because of her pregnancy, Hermione wasn’t enamored of the drafts in my mansion, preferring her own home. We have been discussing compromises for months and she has finally accepted living in my home because I installed central heating.”

Hermione fumed, but let her husband orchestrate this first foray into the enemy stronghold. After all he knew the rules and she didn’t. This was the first she’d heard about any central heating, however. She felt an idiot with the inane smile she was forced to keep plastered on her face as her eyes began idly roaming the faces at the table.



Draco looked up in some surprise that his father had made any major renovations to their ancestral home. He kept his own counsel, however, merely sipping the table wine in his glass as he hid his expression from the others. Hermione was proving to be a formidable force in the Malfoy household and she wasn’t even living there yet. Draco had no doubts, though, that she soon would be settled in their mansion. Then she could watch out for her difficult husband. Draco snickered into his wine. He didn’t think his father knew the full extent of his new wife’s strong will yet. Their marriage would be an ongoing battle for supremacy, but Draco reckoned that for once the Senior Malfoy was going to go down in flames before a superior force. Draco chuckled to himself. Dear Papa was going to be pulled down by his prick.

Hermione meanwhile was covertly studying the snotty witch across the table from her. She was sure Mrs. Sherwood’s hair color was from the Diagon Alley Aphrodite Salon because she could see a sort of reverse skunk effect in the dark roots showing with an embarrassing uniformity at the middle part of the woman’s light blonde coiffure. So rich and such a cheapskate, waiting way too long to renew her dye job. Hermione’s smile was as artificial as the woman’s hair color.

“I must say,” Lucius went on, “my wife was absolutely correct, and the old place is greatly improved in several ways. The attic damp seems to have totally disappeared, I believe because heat rises and it dried out the area. I admit it is pleasant to enter my library and not need a rug over my knees to counteract the year-round chill no matter what weather we’re having. I should have done it years ago. I have been staying in her home most of the time when I wasn’t in meetings and such, and I was seduced by being warm without needing extra clothing or blankets. I didn’t want her to become chilled in her condition so the old pile now has piped in heat.”

Ah, thought Draco, so that’s where he’s been lately. In a Muggle home. Amazing. He gave his father a quizzical stare and Lucius had the grace to look a little conscious, but the senior Malfoy took Hermione’s hand in his and a slight smile stole across his face. Granger! Who would have thought, marveled the younger Malfoy. The sex must be fantastic, he decided. Draco knew his father rather well.

Instantly the tide of opinion at the table veered away from Lucius’ marriage and onto central heating which quite a few of the wives thought a marvelous idea. They were the ones more often home and in any case usually suffered more from their own drafts than their husbands. Suddenly the husbands were on the defensive getting nasty looks from their spouses that boded ill for any future dependence on old-fashioned fireplace heating. Even Sherwood’s wife was distracted by the possibility of a warmer home.

“Many of our older mansions might not be capable of being remodeled to add central heating,” a Magic Council wizard and another of Lucius’ business associates, Thaddeus Appledore challenged, anxious to head off any ideas his own wife had for renovations and inimically glaring at the wizard who had managed to get out of Azkaban yet again. Appledore’s commercial interests were taking a drumming against Malfoy’s greater resources now that the blond money magnate was free again.

“Wasn’t it fearfully expensive and ruinous to the structural integrity of such a stately home, Lucius?” Sherwood volleyed, supporting his Magic Council colleague.

“Surprisingly, no,” answered Lucius offering his charming smile all around the table, especially making potent eye contact with the wives who he wanted to gain as allies for Hermione and adroitly dampening a few sets of feminine knickers. All’s fair…, he thought.

“While there are no air ducts or passages built into the mansion due to its age, the ceilings are exceptionally high, unnecessarily high really. The high ceilings are part of the problem because with the warm air rising, the inhabited lower parts of the rooms remained cold. I merely had contractors in who created air ducts through the hallways tied to several different furnaces for each wing and they connected up each room with small vents to bring in the warm air from the hall ducts. The hall air ducts were hidden by dropping the ceilings only in the halls, but keeping the elegant ceiling designs on their newly lowered surfaces. I lost about half a meter of ceiling height and gained an entire mansion of significantly warmer rooms.”

By the time Lucius had finished making sourpusses of the thoroughly disgusted husbands, most of the wives were looking much more favorably on this little witch-wife who had held out against a very powerful wizard and gained such a wonderful advantage for herself.

None of them would ask outright how she had done it, but they all wanted to know her secret. A few of them ascribed the reason for the dark wizard’s uncharacteristic benevolence to the treasured bulge currently hidden by the tablecloth over Hermione’s lap. Lucius Malfoy was definitely not known for his charity toward anyone weaker than himself and Hermione’s stock went sailing upward.

A few of the wives wanted to come over to the Malfoy mansion to see the changes for themselves and Lucius granted access, telling them to owl his house elves for convenient times. Most of the women had been there before and felt they could judge if the changes were too dramatic for them to copy in their own homes. A more natural general conversation ensued with the women veering off into opinions on home births versus hospital, discipline for children and other feminine topics that were incredibly boring to the men who lapsed into discussions on financial and sporting matters.

Lucius hadn’t really planned for the central heating to be anything other than an inducement for Hermione to move to his estate and to keep them both in a warmer environment, but his remodeling was paying additional dividends in his wife’s acceptance into their coterie. It was a start.

The meal served soon thereafter kept the table busy eating and talking between courses with interested questions to Hermione on how she had met Lucius and where they had been married. Lucius and Hermione had already decided to tell the truth because neither of them had anything to be ashamed about with being targeted for Azkaban by unknown assailants. Hermione’s first-hand experiences of the prison were lapped up by the cosseted wives to whom a chipped nail constituted a major disaster. She became something of a ‘heroine’ – again – with this new crowd of bored society women for having survived an ordeal most of them knew they could never have surmounted in her place.

Her previous experience of being celebrated for her role in Voldemort’s demise had been with her own peers to whom she was an accepted and lauded witch. This time, however, the elites’ ingrained distaste for Muggleborns was a new and unwelcome facet of the attention Hermione was garnering – for each comment on how they couldn’t have withstood her ordeal, came the unspoken addendum that they would never have been put in that situation in the first place, being above the troubles visited upon the lower orders.

She realized that although these women – and men - were fascinated by her tribulations, she was something of a sideshow freak act for them. True acceptance wasn’t forthcoming so much as titillated horror at the entire scenario. Lucius in contrast, was commiserated with as one of their own, even though privately several of the wizards would have liked him to stay in Azkaban forever. He had been maligned due to his status as one of them - Death Eaters weren’t the evilmongers in this set that they were in the more common magic circles - and his experience was even more horrible because the Ministry had dared to attack one of their premier males on evidence that had obviously been falsified since he was once more free. Who knew who could be next if the Ministry could send a Malfoy to prison?

That made the fear more real and close to these pampered rich, who hadn’t been really touched by the unfortunate incarceration of the lowly Muggleborn. Hermione could see that in some cases, unspoken opinion was even swerving toward the possibility the little witch had really deserved what she had gotten at the hands of the Magic Council. The Council members at the table didn’t by so much as a smile offer any kind of apology for their slipshod investigation and perfunctory trial. Hermione’s only true saving grace and spurious acceptance tonight was through her marriage to a wizard whom no one wished to cross for a variety of reasons and her unusually swift fecundity.

To give him credit, Lucius saw as quickly as Hermione that her acceptance by his peers was as thin as a promise of fidelity in a whorehouse and he needed to do more to solidify her standing. It would take some thinking for him to come up with a stronger wedge to gain her entrance into his circle wholeheartedly. And that began with the wives, not the husbands. His central heating would open a few doors for a while, but he hoped Hermione would be able to help him find a way to bring her into his world completely. His future would be too uncomfortable otherwise because her future would be insupportable and she might leave his social world. He really didn’t want to live in her bungalow for the rest of his life. Lucius’ guileful brain started to turn over ideas.

tbc...

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Draco has made an appearance. I hope he meets with your approval. I don't know why Draco insists on bringing Pansy to his social engagements. I suspect he's receiving inducements on the side, the dog.

The dinner-dance isn't over yet. Next chapter continues at this august event.


As always, I look forward to your reviews (I worry sometimes that I'm addicted, but I'm sure it's healthier than sweets or cigarettes.) Oh, oh, I feel a craving coming on... 8-)


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