The Taming of the Shrew - Wizard Style - COMPLETE

_____________________________________________________

2-5-10 F


Thank you all for your lovely reviews. I so very much appreciate the time you take to gift me with your thoughts.

We are apparently split on Lucius’ choice of Headmaster robe for his first appearance. Some chose black, and some chose the dark blue with spangles. I guess he could have carried either off with his innate sense of style.


Don’t forget this chapter’s pics and responses, to be found at -

http://labibliographe.livejournal.com/61519.html

_____________________________________________________


Chapter Thirty-Five

Lucius’ Welcome Speech


“Good evening, students. Welcome to Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. My name is Lucius Malfoy and I will be serving as your Headmaster for this school year.”

A swell of murmurs swept the great hall and some feminine chattering floated above the general din. Several speculative, female faces among the older girls gave Lucius pause. He’d seen that avid look on females before and, remembering his wife’s warnings, wanted to nip it in the bud before he was accosted in a dark hallway.

He hurried through all the introductions of staff at the head table, explaining their specialties and who were Heads of House. When Draco was introduced, many of the girls in the hall sat up, peering as best they could around their classmates, and a high sigh raced through the benches.

The older boys’ faces in contrast, glowered at their perceived competition and Draco’s future as a teacher suddenly promised to contain a barrage of juvenile hexes and tricks for the new, young Potions Master.

The cold smile Draco returned to the assembled students promised a few tricks of his own in retaliation for any attempted transgressions. Sullen male students saw someone who was wearing the Slytherin colors in his tie and they understood he might not play any more fairly than they were planning. Battle lines were drawn.

Lucius smiled grimly to know that with his son taking the majority of the students’ interest, both male and female, he might have a chance to live in some small peace with his wife. Not all of the teen girl goo-goo eyes had refocused on Draco, however, and Lucius tackled the remaining hopefuls sitting on the low tables all down the hall.

“I would also like to present to you my wife, Hermione Malfoy.” At that a ripple of disappointed sighs and a few sulky frowns affected the hall’s atmosphere. “Stand up, darling.” As Hermione reluctantly rose, Lucius addressed the juvenile crowd, “If you have issues, of course your first choice of confidant is your own Head of House. If further help is needed, the Headmaster’s office is available on a strict schedule of appointments to be made through my wife, who will act as my assistant.”

A few groans and some grumbling could be heard, but they weren’t coming from the older boys who had perked up at the merciful inaccessibility of their handsome new Headmaster. The older boys could already see precisely how poor their pickings would be if the blond Headmaster entertained an open door policy.

It was bad enough that the junior Malfoy would be accessible to the girl students. The additional lure of a glamorous, fascinating ‘older man’ would plummet their possibilities to zero. How could they compete against either of the bewitching blonds allied to the well-known Malfoy wealth? Lines of girl students would trail down the entire length of the walkway to the Headmaster’s door if his wife weren’t in the way.

Several young men’s smiles lit the freshly shaved faces at the tables as that imaginary line of pubescent girls hoping for personal tête à têtes with their new Headmaster shrank directly in proportion to the disappointed feminine faces.

A few young fellows also gazed admiringly at Lucius’ wife. Most of the staff was younger and most of them were male, but few had the unusual physical attractiveness of the Malfoy family. That Hermione was claimed by one of the most handsome and rich wizards of their society meant most of the young men couldn’t help but speculate on what she had that would attract such a powerful man. She was pretty enough, but her attractions must be extraordinary in some manner to induce the Senior Malfoy to marry her. A few rowdy male students thought the school year suddenly had special promise.

Otherwise, only Neville Longbottom and his wife, Luna had any potential and at this first glance neither of them was the stuff to fire legendary, if callow, passions in the budding libidos of the students. But this new Headmaster and his wife and the new Potions Master, all quite famous and easy on the eyes, were another matter entirely. Many daydreams were begun on the spot.

The Sorting Hat ceremony was got through with the little ones sent to their new Houses and Lucius warmed to the sight of his newest, first-year students. They were so sweet, so young and innocent, like little fuzzy ducklings, and they brought back good memories of his own son as a small child when their lives hadn’t yet been so devastatingly disrupted by the return of Voldemort.

Lucius might have enjoyed seeing all the eager, and in some cases, frightened, youngsters welcomed into their places if the pressure of some of the older girls’ regard hadn’t ruined it for him. What was the wizarding world coming to when an almost middle-aged, pedigreed wizard felt hunted in a school, for Hecate’s sake!

Lucius directed the meal to begin and he thankfully sat down, horribly aware of numerous mascaraed eyelashes fluttering at him from nubile faces. He reached over to cover Hermione’s hand with his own, not only to demonstrate to the assessing females that he was taken and had feelings for his wife, but to gain a little solace for himself.

The weight of all those pubescent girls’ stares made him feel like he was being devoured - raw. He sneaked a look at his son down the table and saw a similar reaction as Draco realized he had become a heartthrob. It was a very uncomfortable dinner.

Lucius thought it was as well Draco had refused the office of Head of Slytherin. His work would never have been done. Instead, they had shanghaied a teacher from a lowly Ministry accounting position who had leapt at the last-minute opportunity to take on the Head position and also teach Arithmancy at his old alma mater. It was still somewhat unclear if the animosity was aimed entirely at Purebloods or also at Slytherins so both Lucius and Severus had decided that if Draco wouldn’t do it, whoever took the job would have to be a Pureblood, but given enough administrative authority so the young man would have some chance of keeping his skin if the atmosphere got any more hazardous.

That in itself had been a nightmare, finding a Pureblood who was Slytherin and capable of keeping that crafty, conniving brood in line, given the small salary offered. At the late date that Draco had stepped into the Potions slot and refused the Head position, which was to have gone to the departed Potions Master, Snape had resorted to rummaging through the Ministry personnel files and got, if not precisely lucky with the new Slytherin Head of House, at least adequately prepared for the school year storm to break.

~~~~

“My Gods, Hermione, you weren’t exaggerating about the adolescent girls stalking me. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought I was standing up there naked. That was the most uncomfortable I’ve been in a long while.” Lucius was disrobing and hanging his clothing in the closet as Hermione set about turning down their bed. When he left the closet, she in turn put away her robes.

“I see I’ll have my work cut out for me,” Hermione called from the closet, “depressing any pretensions of the more determined girl students, although it looks as though there is an unexpected dividend in having Draco teaching this year. He’s going to deflect some of the feminine panting away from you for which I can only be grateful.” A nasty snicker came from the wardrobe doorway as Hermione emerged in her regular nightie - her skin. “Poor sod, he’s going to hate being hunted as much as you do. Instead of targets on your backs, there will be pretty red hearts with arrows through them decorating your butts.”

“I hope you have an unusual password for your office,” she added. “Don’t be surprised if you still get an enterprising witchette flying through one of your windows on a Quidditch broomstick to be with her new idol.” Hermione laughed at the horrorstruck visage of her spouse. “Death Eaters are amateurs next to a moonstruck, teenage girl.”

Lucius moaned. What had he let himself in for? Was this what Snape had put up with every year in his classes, seeing those avaricious, little lipsticked faces mentally disrobing him? No wonder he had taken a malicious delight in making them cry.

Lucius tried to remember. Had he ever been like that? Not with any of the staff. That was a line no one thought to cross back in his school years. As a blond, budding Lothario he had spent his time working his way under the skirts of quite a few students - numerous Slytherin females and a quite few Hufflepuffs, who were total pushovers for a smooth, sympathetic line.

Most of it had been because he was a randy, teenaged boy with more hormones than he knew what to do with, but a bit of his behavior was sheer defiance of his mandated marriage when he left Hogwarts. Narcissa had been more circumspect, but she had essentially done the same. He, at least, had had one year after school to be a bachelor. Narcissa and he had been married the moment the ink was dry on her diploma.

Tonight it was the brazen overtness of it all that he found appalling. No subtlety anywhere. He and Draco were both beefcake on the hoof. Times had certainly changed.

Was there also a tinge of that increasing contempt for the Slytherins or Purebloods coloring the young women’s open behavior toward them? That was the most unwelcome thought of all.

~~~~~~

After two weeks and hundreds of hours of irritated or fawning parents, lazy suppliers, reams of Ministry forms, and other sundry pleasures of the Headmaster’s life, Lucius was headed toward his apartments one evening, looking forward to a hot cup of tea laced with firewhiskey when he spied a loitering girl student where she shouldn’t be.

“Miss, uh, mmm, Miss!” Lucius stalked up to the slim, brunette witch wearing a blue robe who was skulking in the hallway outside his office. He couldn’t remember all the students’ names, there were too many of them and they all wore their hair the same. Teenagers!

“Aren’t you supposed to be in your common room?” he said, his voice heavy with resolute authority. “You need to - ” Lucius sucked in a shocked breath. “Stop that, young lady! One does not touch another person without their permission and you definitely do NOT have mine.” Lucius swiped a small hand off his derriere. My Gods, now she was focused on his crotch. Was she ascertaining if he was getting aroused? What kind of females were they raising nowadays?

“Headmaster Malfoy, your hair is so bewizarding. We learned that word in class yesterday and it describes you perfectly. I just had to use it.” She gave him a simpering, coquettish smile, then squealed, battering Lucius’ eardrums, “Oh, I do adore when you glare down at me that way. It just gives me shivers all over. Especially between my-”

“That’s quite enough from you, young lady,” Lucius hastily intervened. My Gods! These young women were shameless! “There are social boundaries, which you are trampling into dust. I see you are a Ravenclaw. I’m appalled at your behavior. I thought Ravenclaws had more control. Your Head of House shall hear about this. As of now you are in detention for a month and no Hogsmeade weekend for you this Saturday, either.” He hoped that took care of one of the pack who made his time off with Hermione at the Three Broomsticks nearly unbearable with their stares. If he could just remember her name to report her…

The threat of detention was no deterrent to this brassy female; the young, willowy witch was blatantly reaching up for his hair and he hurriedly stepped away. Lucius primmed his lips with disapproval, but he just couldn’t let the girl’s atrocious malapropism go. “And the word is ‘bewitching’, not ‘bewizarding’. You can’t change the gender of that word.”

“Oooh, sir, thank you,” she gushed, easing forward. “You don’t know what it means to me to have your personal, private attention,” she fawned, trying to slide her hand down his inside trouser seam through the front gap in his robe.

“I am not giving you my…oh, Great Guinevere, never mind,” and Lucius Malfoy, Premier Death Eater/Retired, scuttled away from the sixteen-year-old nympho in defeat.

Lucius stomped into their bedroom, ripping his tie off and throwing it onto the bed as he growled, “Hermione, you’ve got to think of a way to get those baby vixens-in-training off of me. They are beyond my ability to cope. I can’t walk down the hall without being pinched. I’m a mass of bruises and not only on my rear. I’ve had a couple of painful lessons with groping hands on my groin. What makes them think they have the right to do that? Am I sending signals I’m not aware of?”

Hermione was once again seated at her small vanity table that she had set up for herself in the bedroom with a mirror and the few toiletries she enjoyed. It kept the bathroom free while allowing her to have convenient access to her personal items. At the moment she was sitting in her old Quidditch team jersey attempting to drag her brush through a snarl in her curls as she watched her husband wrenching his clothes off in a most un-Lucius like manner, slinging them down on the floor, disgust evident in his frustrated movements.

Lucius looked so morose, Hermione felt sorry for the platinum-haired sorcerer, knowing she had scant comfort to offer. “I hesitate to tell you because frankly you don’t need any encouragement in your opinion of yourself, but to many females you’re rather like a masculine bitch in heat.”

Lucius’ head whipped up in insulted outrage over both her jab at his perfectly normal, healthy self-esteem and her bald, indelicate description of him as some sort of male houri.

Livid wasn’t too drastic a term for Lucius’ glare, so she hurried to explain, “It doesn’t always have to do with looks – I’ve known one or two other men who were given overdoses of animal magnetism and they really weren’t handsome at all – their looks didn’t matter. I’m not certain what it is – perhaps weird pheromones, or their strutting attitude or the way they can make you feel like you’re the only female in the world worth knowing, but it’s something I don’t think you can turn off.”

She valued her life too much to mention that Snape was another recipient of the strange allure some men had. He was an example of a man not needing to be film-star handsome to be magnetic, but Hermione knew better than to offer him as an example to her husband.

Lucius sat down heavily on the side of the bed, “If this keeps up, I’m going to get truly hurt, if I don’t hex one of them first. I think it’s not this fatal attraction you’re gifting me with, I believe it’s that I’m a Pureblood. The natural boundaries of good manners they would give to others are broken leaving me vulnerable to young minds which are apparently even more susceptible to this taint we’re experiencing than adults are. The teachers are getting misbehavior in their classes they never had before, even from the Hufflepuff children!” He ran his hands through his hair, messing it up, “I may have to start wearing my Death Eater armor.”

Hermione pivoted on her little stool, contemplating her mate. Even she was now occasionally struggling against a weird compulsion to behave meanly to him as she simultaneously wanted to strip the rest of his clothes off and kiss everywhere. And bite. She was fairly certain she hadn’t been tainted with this odd compulsion before she came to Hogwarts, but she didn’t know what had changed to make her vulnerable to the weird coercive sensation. She had begun her marriage disliking her husband intensely, but this odd obsession was an entirely different itch that now needled her. If this feeling was affecting the young female students with their raging libidos, Lucius might very well be in some danger.

She was definitely feeling the same lack of restraint as the girl students, but the compulsion to touch and fondle and pinch was acceptable coming from her; she smiled to think Lucius wouldn’t notice that her behavior was somewhat more aggressive than it might have been without the fomenting hostility that she could sometimes feel bubbling inside her.

Part of her hoped he was joking about the armor, but the other saner part wanted him safe. Her ricocheting feelings seemed to calm down whenever Lucius gave her a dose of vigorous sex and he did that so often that so far she hadn’t mentioned her odd emotional swings.

“I have a question,” she interrupted Lucius’ disturbed thoughts and he looked up at her. Oh-oh, that was his ‘I’m slowly losing my temper face’. He was already past rubbing his fingers together.

“Are you going to ask if I invited this behavior?” Lucius slammed a hand against one of the bed’s footposts, incensed.

“No, of course not,” impatience laced her voice, then she realized her husband was not only upset at the invasion of his personal space, he was worried about that nasty implication of perversion the Ministry had leveled at him. “Lucius, if anything or anyone accuses you, I’ll see to it that we get clearance for a Pensieve or Veritaserum, if I have to zap every member of the Wizengamot in the balls myself.”

When a tight, tired, but sweet smile curled up one side of her mate’s expressive mouth, she continued more calmly, “The teachers who are being persecuted – are they Slytherin or Pureblood or both?”

Lucius gave her question a moment’s reflection while he mentally ran through the background of his teachers. “We chose mostly Purebloods for teachers this year so they are being harassed quite a lot. Only two Pureblood teachers being set upon are also a Slytherin, and that’s Draco and the Head of that House. I know Draco is getting his share of unruly students. I think he must have his own way of handling his disrupters – I don’t get many of his students sent to me for disciplinary action.”

The Senior Malfoy knew Draco’s Slytherin background made him equal to any insubordinate children’s attempts to derail his classes, but Lucius craftily didn’t mention Draco’s unorthodox methods to Hermione. “Unfortunately,” the blond wizard said instead, “part of the unrest is merely inexperienced teachers dealing with rambunctious students. Why?”

Hermione sat idly tapping her hairbrush against her thigh, leaving a pink imprint on the delicate skin as she thought over the possible pattern. “This gives us a tiny piece of the puzzle toward understanding more precisely who is being victimized. It sounds as if neither you nor Snape has been able to tell for sure if the casualties of this hidden threat are Slytherin or Pureblood or both. Based on your microcosm here, I think we are looking at a persecution of Purebloods, not Slytherins. Has Snape felt any of the pressure that you have? He has a high profile position, so if all Slytherins are being targeted, he should be under attack in some way.”

“We thought of that, but because he is married to a Pureblood and they are both Slytherins, we couldn’t tell if any of the pressure he’s been sensing - for example, the drying up of some of the funds for Hogwarts - came from him as a Slytherin or his being married to Narcissa.” A cynical smile quirked his lips, “Or it was just the Ministry being cheap.”

But Lucius thought over Hermione’s postulation and nodded, “Yes, now we can see farther into this mess. It does appear to be Purebloods rather than Slytherins; all the Pureblood teachers are reporting problems regardless of House. It’s been difficult to tell in the wizarding world in general because many Purebloods are Slytherins and the ones who aren’t, like the Weasleys, aren’t much interested in confiding their personal problems to us. We, meaning the Slytherins, haven’t a reputation for altruism, so any questions asked by us about the social or financial problems of other Purebloods who aren’t Slytherins tend to be looked at with some suspicion.”

“This does put us forward, just like Snape and you hoped it would,” Hermione chimed in. “If we can concentrate on the persecution of the Purebloods here, feeling confident that we are on the right track, then any other contretemps at Hogwarts can be written off as the normal brangling that would have occurred anyway.”

Lucius gazed at his wife, “Has anyone begun bothering you because you’re married to a Pureblood?”

“Actually, not much,” Hermione said, “so it is interesting that whatever is causing this slow meltdown affects mostly the Purebloods themselves. Not their non-Pureblood family members except collaterally. Snape is getting some backlash from the general antipathy toward his wife, I guess, but his isn’t a convivial nature and he isn’t a great one for making bosom friends. Except for you, of course.”

She rose and went to sit beside the tired wizard. He looked beaten down, not only by the increasing financial tangles of his own wealth, but now by the incessant ambushing he was enduring in the hallways of the school. She sat a minute fiddling with her hairbrush, then slowly, she ran it through his disordered hair and placed the brush in his hands.

“What is this for? Is my hair tangled?” Lucius lifted a hand to test his locks, combing through the pale strands with his fingers, but finding them smooth and sleek again.

“No,” Hermione shook her head, setting her curls dancing, “I thought you might like to take some of that helpless feeling out on me.”

Lucius’ eyebrows rose almost to his hairline. “What? With the hairbrush? Why? You haven’t done anything.”

“May I ask you another question?” A soft smile lit her eyes while the rest of her face remained a calm, blank canvas. A faint urge to bite his chest was ruthlessly corralled as she fought the tendrils of artificial anger she recognized as part of the danger Lucius and Snape had identified.

“Only one more? This must be my lucky night. I’m usually subjected to an entire catechism about my day.” Lucius set down the brush on the counterpane and finished undoing the buttons on his dress shirt, then pulled it out of his trousers and removed it, throwing the wrinkled Egyptian cotton garment on the floor with his robes and jacket. He flung his black loafers off his feet with solid kicks making them fly in the general direction of the wardrobe, then stood and began opening the placket of his pants.

“Was that a ‘yes’?” Hermione clarified.

“Hmmm? Oh, yes, you wanted to ask a question. That was a ‘yes’,” Lucius replied, stepping out of his pants and tossing them onto his shirt.

“Well, then,” Hermione took a deep breath, “What happened to my green leather collar?”

The blond wizard froze, his naked body poised over the stack of clothing he’d discarded, in the act of picking them up. A pair of astonished gray eyes widened and he stared dumbfounded at the small witch sitting quietly, twirling the hairbrush he had laid aside, her faded team jersey riding up on her slim thighs. He could see the mark she’d made with her hairbrush still pinkening her skin. Suddenly he wanted to make some more marks on her.

“You are asking because…?” his heart had jumped clear up into his throat, all his misery completely gone at the intriguing if confusing question.

“I think our collars meant something to you. Something that when you introduced mine to me, I didn’t understand. Not in the way I believe you were offering it. Am I right?” Hermione sat calmly, discussing an issue that Lucius had thought was dead and buried in their marriage.

He stood up, oblivious of his rapidly growing member as his soft, needy, gray eyes tracked back and forth between the mark on her thigh, his wife’s winsome face, and the twirling hairbrush, asking his question without words.

Hermione sighed, knowing she would never hear the words, not after all the pain she had caused him, so she did the next best thing. She rose and stepped up to her husband and placed the hairbrush in his unresisting hand. “Where and how would you like me?”

Her gamine grin arrowed straight through his heart, erasing all the acrimonious words that had ever spilled from her mouth. Lucius began to grin, too. His hand grasped the handle of the brush firmly, now lightly slapping it against his thigh. “First, I’d like you naked,” he waved the hairbrush at her jersey.

Hermione smiled coquettishly at her husband, “Do you like being spanked? You told me once not to do it unless I meant it. Then you mentioned ‘someday, perhaps’. For tonight, shall you be traditional, oh, great master in your marriage?” She whipped the offending jersey over her head and stood, one hip slanted with one hand saucily on her hip while idly twirling the jersey with the other. Her breasts gently swayed in time with the twirling jersey. She hadn’t bothered with knickers and her narrow strip of fuzz riveted Lucius’ attention for a moment before he raised his eyes to hers.

“Hellcat,” he breathed, enthralled, and his pale eyes started to glow silver with his excitement.

tbc...


_____________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________


I suppose everyone wants to sign up for Potions. And Lucius may need a bodyguard if anyone wants the responsibility. I'd love to hear from you. Reviews and ratings gratefully accepted and answered. Don't forget to check out my responses to the last chapter's reviews and this chapters' pics at -

http://labibliographe.livejournal.com/61519.html

.
.