Prisoners of Love - A Mystery - COMPLETE

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Updated 11-11-07


Thank you all for the lovely reviews and interesting insights. And thank you to the new reviewers, I know the first review is the hardest. But we authors love reviews - every single one is appreciated. So -- Scented body paint for all. Choose your flavor.


Sheherazade Glad you like licorice. Many do. But to be honest, I hate the stuff. Can't even smell it without wanting to...um, well, I don't like it. But I needed green and either black or gray or silver for Slytherin colors. Who wants (ugh) gray paint? And silver sounds toxic to eat. That left black.

Bri-Ana It's still a mystery about who the villains are.

Damiana The pesky bad Lucius was fixed. Thank you.

dynonugget Re Snape's knowledge. He knows about their mind bridge. Lucius told him chapters ago. What else can I say? Umm, nothing now. Sorry. 8-)

Citten I would love to see Hermione tied up, too.

lilbitbord I hope you are feeling better now.

Dee Dee As usual you are very astute.

Scary Bear Hair Paint by numbers! Why didn't I think of that?

Finally some resolution between our two...


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Chapter Thirty-Six

Anger



The two lovers had tucked into bed together after washing each other in a fast shower, where Lucius finally got his quickie and Hermione was simultaneously relieved of her forced feminine fasting from her pregnancy. He settled her against him under the covers and began idly licking a small feminine ear and fondling a plump breast when Hermione pulled on his hair, looking straight into his icy, puzzled eyes with a wicked grin, “Starting with your trickery with the open sores in the prison, you’ve always been one step ahead of me. I liked having you in the dark for a change. Did you think maybe the paint was permanent?”

“Was that what that was all about? Sweet Sibyl, you certainly know how to hold a grudge.” Lucius would have been affronted if he’d had even a mite of strength left to deploy any.

Hermione chided, “That’s nothing. I’m still mad at you for outfitting Draco’s Slytherin Quidditch team with Nimbus 2001 broomsticks, trying to gain an unfair advantage over the other teams.”

“My Gods, that was years ago. Should I be alarmed at this trait of yours? Will it also be years before you forgive me for detaching myself from you?” Lucius went a little cold at this possible twist in their efforts to put their marriage back together.

“As to that, I couldn’t say. I don’t want us to be ‘detached’ any more, but I do think we have a ways to go before all the hard feelings dissipate – on both sides.” Hermione’s eyebrow rose in question.

“Are you asking if I’m angry with you?” Lucius verbally stepped sideways, unwilling to admit his deep anger with her for seeing other men while he was left in his tiny cell.

“Oh, no,” she said, “I’m quite certain you are – I can feel it as though you were announcing it from the top of Hogwarts. What I don’t understand is why. Will you tell me, Lucius?”

When he realized he was losing control of his anger and was beginning to focus it on her body, he released his hold on her breast and sat up on the edge of the bed, facing away and scrubbing his shaking hands over his lightly whiskered face, trying to bring his sudden eruption of rage back under his will.

“You’re angry,” she said simply. Several fraught moments ticked by as Hermione waited.

“Yes,” Lucius drew in a tortured breath and fought for a shred of calm to hold him together. He was deliciously sated, limp with it, and still the anger came.

“With me,” she responded.

“Yes.”

“It’s time, Lucius. You’ve held this in ever since you arrived on my doorstep and it’s eating you alive. Am I wrong in thinking I may actually be in danger from you? That you might hurt the baby?”

Hermione sat up in the darkened bedroom lit only by the ghostly radiance from the full moon through the trees outside their windows. She leaned back against the headboard, tucking a pillow behind her for comfort as she contemplated the moon’s faint illumination washing over her overwrought husband’s back, seeing his tightening, twitching muscles and sympathizing with the extremity of his anguish.

She had always wondered if his reaction to their parting had been as bad as hers had been, and over the months of their reconciliation she had had those occasional signs of a sudden escape of concealed temper which indicated maybe he had suffered just as deeply, but he’d never once asked her outright about her feelings at being wrenched away from him.

At first, she’d thought it meant he hadn’t suffered like she had, but Hermione had come recently to understand from Snape that he’d been perhaps more traumatized by their separation - she’d had a purpose to accomplish with Lucius’ appeal and a new little life inside her, a physical offshoot of Lucius to protect, while he’d been left to stare at the four stone walls of a cell with too much time to think and feel.

Lucius shuddered and hunched his shoulders, needing to avoid that horrible truth, that there had been times he’d been so very close to lashing out at her physically - the misery and pain, the suffering he had endured, all bursting from him without warning and worse, without control. It was wrong and frightening and he couldn’t stop his reaction, his intense rage at his wife for leaving him in the prison while she went free, free to be with other men. He knew better, he did. Logically, he knew she wasn’t a wanton, seeking out a variety of other wizards for a good time, all the Daily Prophet evidence to the contrary. She’d been a total innocent when she had met him. He had been the one to introduce her to the world of physical sensation. But he was viciously, deeply, unbearably angry with her anyway. He’d been ripped in two and she hadn’t. Sometimes he hated her for that.

“Azkaban was inconvenient before you came. After you left, it was hell. The only good time was while you were there.”

“You mean when all you wanted to do was use me?” Hermione’s spleen was now also making an unexpected entrance as she decided to follow her own advice and let go of her own rigidly controlled anger. Maybe it was time for both of them to clear the air. “It was a simpler time, I’ll admit. Simpler, happier, great regular sex. What more could you ask?”

“Stop it!” Lucius was appalled at his wife’s outburst. Hadn’t she got over his defection yet? His heart sank into a deep well of hopelessness.

“I guess I was your innocent prey from the first moment I was shoved into your cell, wasn’t I? A stupid dupe, happily spreading my legs for your momentary pleasure, rather like you’d expect to treat a servant at your exalted level of society.”

“It wasn’t like that!” he cried. “Stop it, dammit! Don’t say those things about yourself – about us. It wasn’t like that at all, tidbit, you know I didn’t treat you like a Knockturn Alley whore. I married you. I certainly didn’t have to. Oh, well, yes I did after that universe-altering kiss I thought to punish you with.” Lucius frowned, still questioning his passionate reaction these many months later. “So stupid of me - I didn’t see that coming. But two nights of tucking you under me and that mind-blowing kiss and I knew Jax was never going to get a chance to have you. Only me, ever, ever me.”

He gazed at his little lifeline earnestly, “You know I had no part of your being set up for stealing those papers. Or you being put into my cell. I was actually hoist by the same petard you were, being too nosy in the Ministry’s business. I found out from Scringeour I’d been framed just as you were but only after I was released the second time. All I did was work the event of your incarceration to my advantage, trying to get under that horse blanket.” He chuckled mirthlessly, “And then I was hoist again, this time by a single kiss from a feisty little firebrand with a brain equal to mine.”

“So how do we get past this piece of smoking wreckage we call a marriage?” Her slight smile acknowledged his encomium.

“I think I was happier in the cell in Azkaban,” he finally said looking over at her.

“If you want me to go,” she inhaled to lessen the sudden pain, “I’ll go.”

“No! I mean I was happier with you in our cell at Azkaban.” Lucius’ gray eyes stared starkly at his wife, his deep unhappiness displayed for anyone to see. “Ever since I’ve brought you home to Malfoy Manor you’ve been miserable, forcing yourself to live with me and probably wishing you’d never become pregnant.”

He sighed, “I can’t blame you. I know I’m the one who created this mess.” A tiny smile lifted a corner of his mouth, “And you should take note of the date and time, because this is a momentous occasion, me taking the blame for anything.” Lucius knew his faults as well as anyone, but his severe internal discomfort at admitting any mistakes always outweighed his wish to stand up for his blunders. And to give him credit, there were usually very few to own up to due to his fanaticism for thinking and planning ahead. Unfortunately the gaffes he did commit were usually doozies.

“From the first day in our cell, you… alarmed me. I couldn’t quite understand my discomfort at an intelligent, if naïve, young woman beyond wanting to get under that bilious flannel tent as soon as possible.” He looked over at his wife, puzzled at her silence.

“Go on,” she said feeling better at his admissions, “I’m enjoying this hugely.” She smiled, amused at his grimace of mock disgust.

“You owned me. I couldn’t bear it,” he said, referring to his defection.

“No, Lucius. I loved you. There’s a vast difference between the two.” She gazed at him, this impossible man she adored. “First, I have never wanted anything more than to live with you, always. Well,” she mulled, incurably honest, “after that first kiss, anyway. And how could you even entertain the thought that I might not have wanted to have your child? Lucien is the most precious gift you could have given me. Get over yourself, Malfoy. Did you know that if I hadn’t been able to release you from prison before your term was up, I was prepared to come back and live with you there? Of course when I found out I was pregnant I wouldn’t have been allowed.”

Lucius’ chin came up and he drew in a shocked breath. He stared mutely at his wife, knowing he wouldn’t have done the same for her. Would he?

“And I would never have allowed it. But they don’t let visitors live there,” he said.

“True, but I would have offered to become an inmate, to be treated the same as you for the rest of your prison sentence. I looked into it later and that is allowed – for a monetary consideration, of course."

“I…don’t know what to say,” Lucius gave his wife a sad smile. “I don’t truly think I would have done the same for you.”

“You know,” she looked pensive, then her eyes started twinkling, “I think you might have, once you knew that your equipment wouldn’t rise to any occasion but mine.”

Her husband’s eyes narrowed in consideration of her salient point, then crinkled in appreciation. To know that without her he was little more than a eunuch, but with her he could have glorious sex any time he wanted as long as he lived in a small square cell for four-plus years. Merlin’s beard! That certainly put a different slant on the issue. “Well, you know, I believe you might be right.” Lucius stiffened, “But how did you know I couldn’t get it up with anyone else?”

Uh, oh. Hermione hadn’t meant to allude to her knowledge about that. “Now don’t be mad, but Severus -”

“”Snape! How the hell did he know?”

“Yes, well, Severus said you’d been practically blasting your sexual frustration into his mind for months when he visited you before you returned to me. He said even his occlumency had trouble blocking your upset. It was one reason he maintained you were in love with me.” Hermione winced, “He thought I should know so I would be more gentle with you in case your, umm, ability didn’t come back right away. He was looking out for you, Lucius. You can’t blame him for that. And in the event, there was no reason to worry, was there.”

“I think it was more like his nosy legilimency trying to unearth the source of my…” Lucius trailed away, realizing he was coming uncomfortably close to divulging his ill health and drug use to his wife. He changed tack slightly, “Well, I was in a foul mood sometimes. That’s all.”

Now feeling exposed thanks to his damned blabbermouth friend, Lucius said a little peevishly, taunting her in the familiar way they used to do in prison, “Aren’t you the least dismayed that I would make the decision to live at Azkaban with you only for sex?”

Hermione’s mouth quirked, then a slow smile built until finally she began laughing out loud. Her hands covered her mouth to try to stifle the merriment but she was helpless, her eyes watering with her laughter as she went into yet another uncontrolled peel of mirth at her husband’s confusion.

When Lucius’ face began to resemble a thundercloud, Hermione grinned, “Wake up and smell the Azkaban sewage, Lucius. Your cock is in on the secret and has been all along. I guess your big head and your little head don’t communicate much. “Oh, Lucius, you fell in love with me.”

“I know that, tidbit,” he said gently, and now it was his wife who was shocked. He didn’t smile and Hermione felt a frisson of fear touch her at her husband’s strange statement.

“But…but…”

“I was given that particular epiphany the morning Otto told us that Jax was coming for you in the evening. I asked you to marry me if you recall.”

“Well, sheesh, Lucius, you could have said so,” she fumed at all the lost time they’d spent hiding their personal feelings from each other. They were so alike it was disgusting.

“You told me only once, whispering it just as you left the cell, leaving me no venue to return the favor, not with our interested bystanders, one of whom would have cheerfully reduced me to a charred outline on the stone wall for even breathing that sentiment to you. And then…” Lucius looked away at something in his mind’s eye that brought back the boiling anger that had begun this heartburning discussion.

“What? Then…what?” Hermione held her breath, not daring to touch this man who seemed to be on a rollercoaster of emotions.

He turned and looked her in the eye, his own wintry orbs stabbing her with accusation, “Then nothing. I spent day after day after day alone in a small square cell that had been filled with everything in the world to me and now was an echoing crypt. You said you loved me and I tried to hang onto that, but Otto brought me several Daily Prophets which detailed your social life and how you were appearing with a studly selection of young wizards at various elegant affairs.” His wintry eyes became glaciers.

“Oh, Lucius! No! That was the Ministry trying to retrieve my reputation after they had pretty much ruined it with their faulty prosecution. They thought I would be welcomed back into the bosom of the magic world if several prominent Ministry wizards were seen to be dating me.” Holy Hecate, was this what had been boiling in her husband all this time? She lightly touched his back, “That only lasted for about four evenings out and I called a halt. I was miserable and the photographers assigned to cover my ‘dates’ kept having to yell, ‘Smile’ so they could take their pictures. It was horrible.” Then her husband’s behavior sank in.

“Wait a minute!” Hermione jumped off the other side of the mattress and came around to face her husband sitting on the edge of their bed, “You didn’t trust me! Why couldn’t you have just asked Snape and found out the truth? Was that why you wouldn’t let Snape give you my messages? Did you think I was going to dump you?”

Lucius was getting more angry than morose, “If you had been shown the Daily Prophet for several days, seeing my name linked to prominent young Pureblood women in night clubs, what would you have thought?” He stood up to gain a height advantage, “DAMNED RIGHT I thought you were going to dump me. I’m many years older than you. Why would you want me when you were free and could have anyone? Anyone younger? Anyone not stuck in prison for years yet?” Lucius glared, “You saw what I looked like when I got out. You caused that.” He sat down again, suddenly deflated, “So you weren’t going out with other men?”

“Oh, Lucius, of course not. I was miserable without you. And within a few days after leaving Azkaban I knew I was pregnant. Then I was really miserable without you. My Sweet Goddess, why do we constantly forget we’re nearly mirror images of each other? We BOTH thought we were being dumped. When you came to me after work that day, you were dumping me for dumping YOU?” Hermione put her hands over her eyes, shaking her head at that sad miscommunication. “Pride and pigheadedness, that’s us,” Hermione sat down on the side of the bed next to her mate, dejected. Their hands crept together and clung.

“Those two months still make me shudder thinking about them, tidbit. I couldn’t concentrate to make anything transfigure. I didn’t eat much, and my various projects stopped completely. I think I just stopped caring. It was as though the most vital part of my being went dormant or left altogether. After over a month of nearly starving myself into an early grave, I finally caught hold of my downward spiral. Snape, the interfering bastard, worked on what vestigial conscience I own about leaving Hogwarts in a financial bind and I developed a burning determination to break the disastrous hold you had on me. You were out dancing all night and I was moldering away in a stone cell pining for you. My misery was transformed into hate. But it was partly hate for myself because even though you had gone on to other men, I still cared. I just determined to stop caring. I thought I could. I almost managed it for awhile. My solicitor never told me you had done so much to free me. I didn’t know you were the force behind the appeal. But later, even knowing that, I was still furious that you had been gallivanting around the nightclubs just after you’d gotten free yourself. I figured you stopped because you found out you were pregnant.”

“But you couldn’t stop caring. You came back to me. That was very brave of you, returning to what had hurt you so much before. I don’t know that I would have had that kind of courage.” Hermione was seeing his return in a different light now.

“Well, it wasn’t courage so much as despair.” Lucius had no intention of ever divulging his descent into drugs and he hoped his secret was safe with Severus if Hermione still didn’t know about it. “I was moldering away here in the mansion, having no real interest in my world, no real interest in anything or anyone and I was basically impotent. Talk about depression. I couldn’t seem to dredge up any enthusiasm for sex. Now that was scary, only wanting my wife who didn’t want me.”

“So scary that sex with another female was unbearable to you,” she said cheerfully. “I’ll bet you cringed at the very idea, didn’t you?”

Lucius’ chin went up and his pride leaped to defend his autonomy, but when he saw Hermione’s eyebrow go up in the same quizzical manner he used to depress others, he was undone. She was so very like him. Well, of course, that’s why he loved her. How could he not, when she was so nearly him? With excellent differences. And she was entirely correct that the thought of being intimate with another woman rather churned his stomach.

“And you know this how?” he inquired, trying for a distant superiority.

“I’m exactly the same way, of course.”

“You tried to have sex with another man?” Lucius growled in outrage before belatedly processing his comment and realizing he’d just told her he’d tried with another woman. That hadn’t been the ‘same way’ she’d been referring to and Lucius could have kicked himself.

“Oh, dozens,” was the blithe reply. Hermione tried to withdraw her hand from his, but he tightened his hold. Her twinkling eyes dimmed a little which belied her statement and Lucius knew with an inward grimace that his wife had caught the insinuation and now she was merely saving his faux pas for him. When had he ever crossed himself up so badly before? The one thing he had never wanted her to know he’d just slapped in her face. No woman wanted to know her husband had visited another female for sex.

“You’re right, it was ghastly,” he offered ruefully, hoping his wife would be generous about his lapse. “Nothing happened. The old flesh wand just sat there completely uninterested. The intensity of my embarrassment alone should soothe any jealous feelings you might wish to indulge in, but it was only a brothel.” He cringed inside, As if THAT makes a difference. Lucius doggedly continued to try prying his foot out of his big mouth. He guessed he wouldn’t be so condemning of Snape’s tattling seeing as how he couldn’t keep his own mouth shut.

“I was extremely angry with myself for even caring that you might be unhappy if you ever found out,” he offered. “My conscience was castrating me, but for what? Why should you care? You didn’t want me. You had all those other, younger wizards in your life. However, after that one instance, I spent most of my time alone in my library or with Snape trying to pull me out of the firewhiskey bottle. And by the way, he did say much that same thing.” Lucius decided to put away the disastrous evening with the Pureblood witch he’d brought home as having never happened. Really, he excused himself, nothing had happened then either.

“What? What same thing?” Hermione had lost the thread of the conversation when it sank in that Lucius had tried to have sex with another woman after he had married her. She understood that he had considered himself single again. And she also understood she was married to a very difficult, self-centric man, but just once in a while his behavior stung. She didn’t think she had anything more to worry about with him straying, but there were times she wanted to kiss him and wallop him in the same breath.

“Snape assured me I was still in love with you. He was rather vociferous about it. But the firewhiskey was louder. It said ‘so what – she doesn’t love you.’ and I ignored him.” Lucius wasn’t ignorant of his wife’s disappointment in him, but he felt the least said the soonest mended. He couldn’t go back and change history, but he vowed to himself that he wouldn’t be the source of any more disappointment to her. In the matter of other females, anyway. For the rest, he knew he couldn’t foretell what else might make her unhappy with him, and there would be times that they didn’t see eye to icy eye but that was part of marriage and she was just as likely to disappoint him now and then with her Muggle ways.

Lucius shrugged philosophically. He seemed to wind up in trouble occasionally with her no matter how much he tried to be aware of her viewpoints and that likely wouldn’t change as their personalities were both so strong-minded. But making up after a clash was worth any momentary irritation at being thwarted at getting his own way. Lucius started to smile as a delightful feeling of arousal began to tingle in the base of his cock. That sensation alone was worth any provocation his tiny wife threw at him.

Hermione was also mentally coming to grips with her marriage to her gilt-edged husband and she decided she’d better keep a goodly supply of edible paint on hand to keep him occupied, because his attentiveness could possibly drift if he wasn’t reined in with sexual adventures at home. For such a complex man, he was ruled by his cock like any other. If she didn’t forget that, she’d have a good marriage. She smiled to think of what a grave sacrifice she was making, offering unending sex to her magnificent, inventive husband.

They sat together in the dark for a while, each occupied with their own thoughts, idly holding hands as they came to grips with yet another shift in their marriage.

Lucius finally spoke up, “Hermione? Who arranged for you to be seen with a succession of wizards? Who thought of that idea for ‘reclaiming’ your reputation?”

“Omigosh, do you think that was a setup to drive a wedge between us? So you’d be primed to kill me again?”

Hermione shivered and Lucius pulled her against him, inordinately relieved to feel her snuggle into his side with no hesitation. Even a failed infidelity would be difficult to forgive and he was passionately thankful Hermione was apparently allowing it to disappear as unimportant. He loved her even more in that moment, feeling as though he’d escaped a fate literally worse than death if she had renounced him. He guessed he did owe her something more for his failed infidelity.

“Hermione?” Lucius caught her eyes with his, willing her to understand how he felt about her, then said simply, “I’m sorry.” He waited, desperately unsure of his place with her, waited for her to bring him peace or living hell. He knew he was asking for the moon, but he couldn’t seem to blithely float past his blunder without her overt forgiveness.

Hermione looked up at her handsome husband, her heart sad for the hurt she had withstood, but knowing she had to release her anger and distress and move on. “I know. The circumstances and our unknown nemeses were to blame. And you felt yourself single again.” She laid her hand against his slightly stubbly cheek briefly, “I love you. Never doubt that. But just so we’re both clear before we consign this unpleasant chapter to obscurity, if I even suspect your cock has been poking its head out of your trousers around another female, we’re going to find out what happens when a cruciatus hits you square in the groin.”

Lucius hugged the bloodthirsty little witch tightly, kissing her mussed curls and resting his head on top of hers. “Thank you.” He would never tell her that he was quite familiar with just how that particular curse felt on his genitals. It was a favorite punishment meted out by Voldemort for infractions in his skewed universe. Lucius’ experience didn’t make her threat any less potent, however. The pain was excruciating.

Lucius heaved a sigh and dove in to the rest of their personal problem, “Now you tell me off, tidbit. I know you’re bottling up your anger, too. You can’t keep it inside forever. Maybe if you used the cruciatus on me it would help you.” He felt her little body tense up against his.

Hermione leaned back and looked at this man she couldn’t seem to keep away from. He was right, it was time for her, too. She nodded and let fly with her hidden feelings and oh, it felt good to say it all out loud, “You LEFT me! You left me to stagger on by myself. I hurt so much, I was afraid for awhile I’d lose the baby.” She heard and felt Lucius’ hard intake of breath and it gave her a bit of savage satisfaction that she’d caught him on the raw with that bit of news.

A shaky masculine hand trailed down from her curls to cup her face and turn it up to his. Lucius was shocked to his core. He’d not considered that possibility even once. Hermione had looked so calm and controlled when he had come to her home, her anguish hadn’t been apparent to him at all, which had added to his resentment of her. Ironic all the way around. “That was a solid hit, my love.” He gazed into her slitted brown eyes, then nuzzled her nose with his. “Let it all go, Hermione. You’re doing painfully well so far.”

She could see her mate was struggling to absorb the possibility he might have endangered his child, but he was willing to let her flay him with more of her repressed vituperation. Suddenly all her anger deflated, leaving her limp with dejection and remorse. “I don’t want to hurt you, Lucius. That only hurts me.” She explained more calmly, “You left me and I didn’t know how I was going to cope. Lucien actually helped keep me going after the first shock of your dismissal faded. I always knew, you see, that I would have to see you again because of the baby - that we would always be connected through Lucien. I think that knowledge helped me get through those bleak days without you. My tears ruined so many of the appeals parchments I was writing I had to use a kerchief tied below my eyes to catch all the crying I did.

“You certainly didn’t seem too happy to see me when I came to your Muggle house.”

Hermione smiled suddenly, disconcerting her husband, “I was ecstatic. And so angry I could have skewered you with your own cane. My heart was racing faster than a hummingbird’s wings and it was really difficult to talk over the rushing sound of my own blood in my ears. Seeing you was lighting me up inside like an inferno. I wasn’t ready for you to know that, though.” She reproached mildly, “You were so certain you were going to drag me instantly back to your territory. I decided that wasn’t going to happen and you know the rest.”

“Well, I’m happy we’ve closed up this schism that was dividing us. We have, haven’t we?” At her happy nod, he smiled, “I’m just grateful you love me. Otherwise I might have had a promising future working the night shift as a harem guard for all the use I was getting out of my eternally droopy dick.” He laughed, “You know how I was cured?”

Hermione looked up at her husband curiously, shaking her head, hoping it wasn’t another story she didn’t want to hear.

“I stood in front of your closet that first night in your bedroom and breathed in the perfume from your clothes. That instantly revived the memory of you tucked under me at Azkaban and I miraculously had the first hard-on I’d enjoyed since you’d left me in the cell.”

Hermione nuzzled into her husband’s side, but couldn’t keep from yawning. “Oh! Sorry. Suddenly I’m so sleepy I can’t seem to keep my eyes open. Letting go of all that miserable anger has completely enervated me. We need to discuss those Daily Prophets and the dating setup, but can we do it tomorrow?”

“I’m tired too,” Lucius agreed. “But I feel so much lighter. I can’t wait to cuddle Lucien tomorrow morning.” He grinned, catching her yawn from her and doing it too. He pulled Hermione against him, settling them both under the covers and they lay there, feeling each other’s warmth and love flow back and forth before they both slipped under the waves of a truly peaceful sleep.




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The first voice rasped, “I don’t know how Malfoy managed to see the breaks in the coach straps. But he must have done, or we would have read about the unfortunate, fatal crash in the Daily Prophet.”

“I know I charred them enough,” the second voice groused. “I almost got kicked twice by flying hooves when they reacted to my wand strikes. Those animals are damned vicious. The thestrals set up a racket when I slithered under the coach and burned the straps. I saw Malfoy’s big, dumb coachman hurrying back to them and I barely got away. He must have seen the strap breaks when he was calming the beasts. It was lucky he didn’t see me, because he might have recognized me.”

Unconcerned with his colleague’s close call, the first voice said dismissingly, “Well that can’t be helped now. It also seems as if there is more security being deployed in the Ministry lately. I don’t know if it’s because of the Minister reacting to the discovery the Granger chit was innocent and framed, or if that interfering bastard Malfoy has begun his own investigation into who set up his wife. Scrimgeour isn’t talking to the Magic Council or any of the Department Heads about the added security. He appears to be unilaterally adding security layers.”

The second voice added in a worried tone, “It’s almost as though Scrimgeour knows there is a clandestine movement to oust him and seize control of the Magic Council and Ministry. Doesn’t it seem like that to you?”

“He certainly hasn’t a clue about anything concrete or we’d have heard about it,” replied the first voice, “so I don’t think he has stumbled onto our subversive plans for the Ministry. I think he’s chasing after the miscreant who framed Malfoy’s wife, that’s all. I’ll bet Scrimgeour has been told he’d better find out who sent her to prison or Malfoy will do it himself. That could be dangerous for us. We’ll need to step up our attempts to remove that blond thorn in our side – and his interfering family.”

The second voice concurred, “We haven’t found a way into his estate yet, but I have another idea.”

The two voices faded away down the leafy path of the Muggle park.

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tbc...

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After all that I'm sure the two Malfoys are exhausted. Zzzzz...what? Oh, I guess I am, too. Whew, enervating chapter. Reviews are always welcomed with open arms. I'd love to hear from you. 8-)

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