Beyond the Veil -- COMPLETE

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Updated 2-15-08

I want to thank those who are taking the time to write me a review. I'm always interested in knowing how the story is received and I'll try to answer your questions, if doing so doesn't get all of us ahead of the way it needs to unfold. Lucius and Hermione have to keep a few secrets to enhance the tale.


AthenaMalfoy - The 'New Wave' is the name of the movement (and the unknown mastermind) behind the decimation of the wizarding world. It's a name rather like 'The Third Reich', encompassing all the destructive activities being visited on the magic folk.


Scary Bear Hair - I think twelve years of Azkaban followed by running for his life amid the ruins of his magic world might be enough to make him peevish. Not that he's known for his sweet temper anyway.


tambrathegreat - I've seen 'It Happened One Night' with her hitching a ride by showing her leg. Good movie!

Hope you enjoy their continuing journey...


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Chapter Four


Lucius


Three miles down the dusty road they came to a small farm sitting well back from the lane and surrounded by a kitchen garden, a chicken coop and several children of various ages, the youngest ones running around while the older ones were busy hoeing the garden. Well, that answered the question about the inhabitants of this strange, new place. Humans. Relief sketched across Lucius’ face.

A dilapidated barn stood a ways behind the little house, but what attracted the magical pair was the smoke coming out of the chimney. Lucius hoped that meant adults were inside. He wanted some answers about where they were and he didn’t think children would have the necessary details he required.

Lucius turned to Hermione, “Stay here for now. I don’t know who these people may be or where we are. If anything unpleasant occurs and I need to intervene, I don’t want to have to worry about your safety. If everything is okay, I’ll come back and get you.” He looked around them and saw a ragged hedgerow struggling to grow along the lane fifty feet further on. “Stay behind there while I’m gone so no one comes along and bothers you out here.” Lucius pointed to the dark green forlorn bushes.

“You want me to hide? It’s only an old farm.” Hermione was thirsty and hungry and wanted to sit down on something better than the ground.

“If it turns out to be only an old farm you’ll know it in twenty minutes. If it’s anything else, you’ll be a distinct liability to me. Besides, you look rather seedy with your rumpled skirt and a jacket many sizes too big.”

Lucius’ stolid, unblinking stare intimidated Hermione in spite of herself. A slight shiver skittered over her skin as she remembered that this man was – or had been – a rather dangerous Death Eater in his time. She would do well to keep that in mind. Being penned up for twelve years in Azkaban likely hadn’t made him into a choirboy.

Lucius continued to stare down his little associate. In actuality, besides thinking of her safety, Lucius also didn’t want her to be an unwitting witness to any unscrupulous methods he might have to use to turn this encounter to his, or rather, their advantage. He needed money, food, and information and he wasn’t interested in hearing the little witch drone on about the illegal, illicit, or immoral way he gained those things for them. He’d already pegged her as too morally rigid for their current circumstances. She’d only make his life uncomfortable the more she knew of any less than lawful contrivances he used on their behalf.

Hermione stared back at her partner, trying not to look completely cowed. His new sentence after the downfall of Voldemort had been twenty years, but looking at him now one wouldn’t have supposed the man had spent twelve minutes in prison, much less twelve years. He looked every inch the Pureblood aristocrat he’d always seemed all those years ago, even though he was only free of prison now because of the disaster that had befallen the entire wizarding world. He looked so perfect, if rather pale, while she felt a total fright.

“Why are you dressed so well? You don’t look like you’ve spent twelve years in prison.” the little, never-ending question mark asked, dislike and suspicion coloring her attitude towards the overbearing wizard’s continual orders. She didn’t like being pushed around by him as though she were mentally deficient.

“Do we have to discuss this now?” asked Lucius, annoyed once again at the little witch, but secretly a little pleased that he apparently wasn’t too old to catch her attention. She just kept staring back so he impatiently huffed, “Fine! I got these clothes from my estate. Sorry I didn’t have any prison stripes to impress you with. I ate decent meals in Azkaban because a benefactor made sure I was fed properly and kept clean and warm in prison. He also sent me a few books occasionally, mostly improving sermons. The bastard has a nasty sense of humor.” Lucius had also received the odd girlie magazine and the blond wizard didn’t know if the gesture was meant kindly or as an additional torture, but based on the sermons he suspected the latter.

“Outside of that I had a lot of time to rest,” Lucius favored her with a raised, ironic eyebrow at that revelation of the obvious. “I did exercises every day as there wasn’t much else to occupy my hours, and the rest of the time I wanked off.” Lucius enjoyed the sudden wince on Hermione’s face as it bloomed redder than a radish. “NOW can we get on with this?”

Hermione was wrong thinking that prison hadn’t changed him. Lucius had spent a long time with nothing better to do than contemplate the entirety of his political aspirations, his cultural and social beliefs, and his dynastic heritage, not to mention his poorly performed parental responsibilities. He’d weighed his personal behavior long and hard against the goals he’d been taught from childhood were immutable and paramount in his life and come to some caustic, but necessary truths for himself. Those damned sermons had impinged on him a bit more than he cared to admit.

Lucius had decided to let go of his Pureblood beliefs, which had done nothing but make his entire life a misery and a mockery; he’d stupidly followed a halfblood for Merlin’s sake, who had ruined both the blond wizard’s future and his family. He had decided in prison to begin again, turning over a new leaf. As long as Lucius retained his own power and wealth, he just wanted to live a quiet, hedonistic life; he didn’t care who ran the Ministry of Magic now, not that it made any difference any more. The Muggles could live in peace with his goodwill. He was going to try to be more considerate of others (if it didn’t cost him major personal setbacks) just like other people did. Lucius smiled mirthlessly down at his tiny colleague. Those major changes in his life were going to be severely tested already, he saw.

His first test of those new tenets was standing right beside him, ripping up at his authority. A Mudblood. He was paired with one of the most irritating, if intelligent, Mudbloods of his time. As he looked down at the curly-haired witch, Lucius still felt the echoes of his adamant stance against the hated Muggleborns, as he now should call them, but while incredibly exasperating and increasingly disrespectful at times, she was his only connection, his lifeline to his past. He didn’t want to be separated from her.

She knew nearly everything of what he had been and done. It had all come out at his trial and she had been there. The Mudblood witch knew the worst of him, therefore, he needn’t hide his true self from her. That was oddly comforting to the ex-Death Eater wizard. Lucius had thought he was going to die when he went through the Veil. Nothing else was ever going to be as bad as that. Not even a prickly, uppity, little Gryffindor with a button nose and the hardened self-defense techniques of a newborn kitten. He was ready to make a new start as he’d planned in prison despite his new sidekick.

Lucius knew that Hermione was less sure of erasing the past and starting anew with him, though. If Hermione ever found her footing in this new place – wherever they were – Lucius was well aware he could be kicked to the curb without ado as he watched her sail off into a life that didn’t include him. He was well aware she would rather wear blinders and refuse to address the unpalatable fact that Potter himself had testified that neither Lucius nor Narcissa had lifted a finger in the battle against the defenders at Hogwarts.

The two Malfoys had singlemindedly searched for Draco leaving the entire last battle to others to fight, and in fact, Narcissa had actually helped Harry, albeit for completely self-centered reasons, while Snape owed his life to Lucius who had returned to the room in the shack to retrieve his Death Eater hood and found the dying wizard. Lucius had speedily apparated Snape to St. Mungo’s under the mistaken impression that Snape had been taken down by Harry whom Lucius had seen leaving the shack by way of the willow. Lucius’ own agenda by then had not included capturing Harry. He wanted only to search for Draco.

Lucius had quickly returned from the hospital to Hogwarts and joined forces with Narcissa, frantic to find his son. In their Magic Council trials Harry had spoken up for Narcissa for helping him, and again for Lucius based on his saving Snape’s life even though Harry had known that Lucius might not have saved Snape had he known Snape was a traitor to the Death Eaters.

Their actions didn’t entirely excuse them from blame, however, and all the Malfoys were sentenced to Azkaban, but Narcissa’s and Draco’s sentences were commuted to exile which they gratefully took, departing for the continent and leaving the senior Malfoy to the prison sentence he’d been handed of twenty years. He was lucky in a way, too - his sentence could have included snogging a Dementor.

After five years of no communication, Lucius had divorced his wife from his prison cell realizing she had abandoned him. He had been glad to hear that Draco’s sentence had been dropped a few years later, allowing him to live in England again as an adult. Draco had moved back into the Wiltshire mansion, now married and a father himself, telling Lucius he had a little grandson. The occasional moving picture of his grandchild had given Lucius the determination to survive his sentence, having so little else left. He’d never spoken to Narcissa again.

Using his acclaimed role in the late war, Snape had seen to it that Lucius had enough food, warmth and general comfort in his prison cell to repay the blond wizard for his life, but beyond that Snape and Lucius had no contact except through Draco.

Lucius Malfoy’s basic personality had always been grounded in political pragmatism rather than any rarified, noble perspective and for him the ends had often justified the means, but after years spent wearing his disgusting prison uniform, Lucius wryly acknowledged that he had never looked good in stripes and when he got out of prison he had promised himself he was going to make certain he never wore them again.

There was still a razor edge of predator lurking within him, but by and large he was now willing to work with others rather than bulldoze them to gain his ends. Browbeating was just so enervating these days. He wasn’t getting any younger and the energy it required to back up his intimidations took more out of him than he wanted to expend when clever compromises could facilely gain him nearly as much without the hassle. People were generally rather stupid.

Overall, prison had somewhat blunted his self-indulgent attitude, softening him enough to allow him to better blend with the more laissez-faire worldview and philosophy of his fellow wizards and witches. Muggles and Magic folk – live and let live. It was fatiguing to know now that his original idea had been right all along. The Muggles had been dangerous to the magic folk.

Still, the laissez-faire Muggle ideology, although it still galled him some, had perhaps some merit in this new unknown time and place and he was willing to try to live by the more egalitarian idea – even if certain tiny Mudbloods were presently making that vow extremely difficult to abide by.

Lucius felt he had wasted more than a quarter of his nearly two-hundred-year life span in pursuit of a hopeless goal and he didn’t want to fritter away another minute in useless endeavors. He was now bent on enjoying life – or he would have been if The New Wave Master hadn’t crushed his world.

In contrast, his little companion seemed to have retreated from life, burying herself in the bottom level of the Ministry. His memories of her, though scarce, were of a brilliant member of the Golden Trio, a dedicated young firebrand firmly against Voldemort’s political aims. He knew she had been in his son’s class so that would now put her at thirty or thirty-one. She looked drawn and tired, and…gray. Her entire ensemble, if one could deem it such, was gray, nearly as colorless as her present personality. What had happened to her to quench the fire she’d had so much of years ago?

Her personality wasn’t entirely downtrodden though, if that slap he’d not earned was any indication. He was feeling the sharp edge of her tongue more and more. Maybe under all that gray there was still someone who would be worth knowing. He didn’t want to contemplate parting from her – not just yet. Like Hermione, he was reluctant to let go of the one person who was a link to their former, destroyed world. Plus, if her trim ankles and calves were any indication, the little witch had some world-class legs he wouldn’t mind wrapping around his waist if the opportunity arose. He was so horny even the cow had been flirting with danger. Twelve years of wanks did not satisfy.

Lucius stood there, acting as menacingly as he could without letting an amused quirk of his lips slip out and give away his playacting, waiting for Hermione to hide behind the bushes. He was hoping his old reputation would pass muster and overawe her into doing what he wanted.

Hermione stamped her gray walking shoe to show her irritation, but finally stomped off and disappeared behind the scraggly plants, flinging resentful looks behind her. She sat down on more hard ground, letting her irritation vent in kicking at the dusty rocks that made her ground floor seating a minor torture.

She was beginning to get a definite picture of just how Mr. Malicious Malfoy had risen so high in the Death Eater ranks. His bossy, superior attitude was so inbred he never saw anyone else as an equal. Hermione willfully decided the seagull incident had been an aberration.

Well, she fumed, she hadn’t been as rich, or powerful or…or…as beautiful as he – it was sooo totally unfair for him to have those long, lush eyelashes and those eyes! – Hermione’s silent tirade slowed down as she got momentarily lost in contemplation of Lucius’ gorgeous eyes. The little witch blinked and scrambled to remember her snit. Oh, yes - well, she may not have had all his assets, but she hadn’t gone to prison! So there!


Hermione was hungry and scared and annoyed with everything and everyone. And he wasn’t making anything better, pushing her behind a bush and just abandoning her. She wanted him to come back right now! A frightening thought skittered across her mind. He wasn’t just trying to sneak away without a scene, was he? Hermione peeked around the bush to see where Lucius was going and saw with relief he really was walking toward the farmhouse. Her heart rate slowed down from its increasingly frantic pounding and she realized she wasn’t ready to let go of the stupid Pureblood’s company, cavalier and overbearing though he was.

Lucius had maintained his pseudo-scowl until he was certain his little companion wasn’t coming out again, then he strode down the path toward the farmhouse. Coming into the yard, he drew the notice of the children, the oldest of whom ceased hoeing and came over to him.

The young man said, “Me Pa’s gone t’ the village. If yer wanting me Mum, she’s inside.” When Lucius nodded slightly the boy said, “I’ll bring ye to ‘er,” impressed by the stranger’s quality clothes and his regal air although he didn’t see any horse or coach that had brought the stranger. The boy thought that odd, but moved off ahead of Lucius, expecting him to follow as the youngster made for the door of the small farmhouse. The house was painted neatly with whitewash and the door had been proudly painted a glossy green which the Slytherin liked, but the whole of the place bespoke a scarcity of funds and Lucius figured there wasn’t going to be much monetary help coming from this household.

“Mum, man here t’ see ye,” the young man waved Lucius in through the doorway and retreated back outside.

A middle-aged woman glanced up from her seat where she was mending some coarse-looking material. She took one comprehensive look at her guest from his head to his toes and rose from her chair, curtsying. Her face took on a frightened cast as she waited for Lucius to make clear the reason for his visit.

Lucius, caught off-guard momentarily, reflexively made a brief bow. “Madame,” he said. The woman’s dress was very old-fashioned, being all the way down to her ankles and with a limp fichu tucked around her shoulders anchored in the front of her dress. Lucius held back a grimace – the dress was gray. What was it with that horrid hue anyway? Why would any woman ever choose to wear such a depressing color? He had noted that the children had been dressed in homespun-type material similar to the cloth their mother was repairing. He sighed to himself. A very poor home then, but at least the youngsters wore a few more pleasant colors. And what the holy hell was a fichu? His mind answered, ‘a scarf’. Lucius didn’t have time to be spooked by his thoughts as the woman started speaking.

“Were you needin’ me ‘usband, then, milord?” she asked, worry criss-crossing her face.

Lucius had been rehearsing his story in his head for the last few miles he and Hermione had traveled on foot and though the label ‘milord’ had surprised him, he trotted his fabrication out now for his hostess.

“Ah, no, Madame,” Lucius said in his best French-accented English. “My wife and I are traveling on le pelerinage… um, the pilgrimage, you understand.” He noticed the slack-jawed blank look he was given. Perhaps the woman didn’t know what a pilgrimage was. “We are on our way to visit your local, ah, ‘ow do you say, cathedral?”

The woman said, fear rampant now in her face as she sidled toward the open doorway, “Frenchies! In me own 'ome! Silas! Help!”

Lucius didn’t know why the woman was carrying on as though he was about to ravish her. Ugh, he was not yet that desperate. Maybe he’d never be that desperate – he thought he might even choose the cow over her. She turned and ran out the doorway to yell some more and Lucius decided it was time to retreat before that youth came to his mother’s aid. He used his wand to knock open a window so it would appear he’d left that way, then apparated away and reappeared on the hidden side of the hedge.

“Well, that was not a sterling success,” Lucius scowled, sullenly brushing leaves off his coat sleeve from having apparated too near the bush. “The housewife became hysterical when I merely told her we were on a pilgrimage and she started yelling for her son. Do you suppose we’re in some sort of commune?” Lucius was royally peeved and embarrassed at the total disaster his innocuous visit had disintegrated into.

“Yes, I did hear some caterwauling coming from the farmhouse. That was the woman’s reaction to you?” Hermione couldn’t help the snigger that escaped before she attempted to rein in her laughter. “I guess she just doesn’t appreciate a lordly Malfoy. I can’t imagine why.”

“That’s what she called me. A lord. Next time we’ll send you in and see if you do any better. For now I suggest we cut across this field behind us so we aren’t seen from the farm. I believe I should prefer to avoid that particular family for now.” Lucius frowned in ill-tempered confusion, “I can’t understand what set her off. I used a French accent, hoping to appear trés stupide so she would feel she was magnanimously granting me her vast knowledge of the locale. But the bitch just screeched ‘Frenchies’ and yelled for her son. Well, some Muggles are extremely xenophobic, I guess.”

Hermione frowned at Lucius’ casual, vulgar appellation for the woman and his unvoiced but obvious antipathy toward Muggles, but kept silent and merely trudged after Lucius across the lumpy field lying fallow in the midday sun. Quelle surprise that he should still be harboring his destructive ideas about nonmagical humans; his lifelong hatred of Muggles appeared to be alive and well.

Hermione figured the dark wizard was too canny to say so aloud, but he probably still silently thought of her as a Mudblood. The little witch decided that she had better be careful to watch for the precise moment her usefulness to this dangerous man came to an end so she didn’t come to an end also. Her unquenchable desire to cling to his companionship made her a possible mental case, but the feeling was so strong she had to accept it as almost a directive. It was probably her sense of self-preservation. His innate aura of power could shield her from whatever happened in this strange place they had literally fallen into.

They crossed the wide field and finally edged their way into a small wood where the walking was a little easier due to a small ride that ran through the trees. They walked for three or four miles until they came out onto a broader thoroughfare, a wider dirt road which catered to the occasional wagon and coach as well as travelers like themselves, on foot. The smell of water became more noticeable, and the seagulls wheeled overhead, calling to each other in their raucous voices.

The two pulled up short as they gazed at the intermittent flow of humanity in front of them, then slunk back into the wood a ways and sat down on the ground stunned.

“Where are we?” asked Hermione in a daze. Her pupils were as big as saucers, nearly eclipsing the brown of her eyes and making her appear almost blind.

“WHEN are we?” Lucius whispered, appalled.

The two sat staring at each other for long moments trying to come to grips with the shock of their new reality. Hermione’s lips began quivering and she tried desperately to keep from crying. Their world was more out of reach than ever. All those people were either dressed for a masquerade or the Veil had sent them to sometime long ago. Neither Hermione nor Lucius had ever seen coaches on Muggle highways, yet a few had rolled by their hidden spot already.

Lucius recovered first, gaining his feet and carefully edging forward toward the road again. He watched for some minutes from the shelter of the trees as several more travelers passed by on the road, which was only a matter of fifty meters from where he stood. He observed a number of men walking, but only one woman escorted by a man, probably her husband as she was holding onto his arm. They both carried small bundles that looked like soft-sided luggage with handles. Their clothing was nondescript, various shades of browns and that detested gray. The husband had a longish coat buttoned down the front and scuffed boots. He wore an old felt hat that had long ago lost its shape. The woman wore a bonnet that framed her face and tied under her chin with some limp ribbons. A bedraggled pheasant feather graced the near side of her headgear.

Lucius sized them up as poor, but carefully cataloged the look of the clothing they wore. Being something of a clotheshorse himself, he had an eye for fashion so it was easy for him to remember the details of the apparel he saw. He began assessing their own bleak situation, quickly deciding the two of them needed to fit in with the populace and not draw attention to themselves until they knew more of the place – and time – they’d landed in.

They were both hungry and had nowhere to sleep. They would soon be thirsty again, too – a small, gurgling stream in the woods had offered only a temporary respite from that problem for a short while. Hermione had thought to transfigure a small canteen to take some of the water with them, but even that wouldn’t last long. Until they knew exactly where they were, any spells, including the simple ‘aguamenti’, giving them water from their wands, would need to be done out of sight.

The woman and the boy on the farm had spoken English, if a low-class dialect, so Lucius posited the definite possibility they were still in England. But had the Veil taken them back in time? Or to some sort of alternate or parallel reality? He and Hermione needed to know more and quickly.

At a slight press of a small hand on his back, Lucius turned, wand at the ready. “Hermione!” he warned in a growl, “Don’t sneak up on me if you please, unless you want a crucio in the face.”

His petite companion glared up at the annoyed wizard, “Don’t you think I’d warn you if someone were trying to catch you unawares?”

“Not if they had already silenced you first,” he returned, goaded by her alarming naïveté.

“Oh. Well then, sorry,” she apologized, shivering a little in the shade of the woods. It was scary how much more in tune with danger this dark wizard was than she. It seemed almost innate to the man and Hermione decided not to dwell on the inimical background of her fellow adventurer. She couldn’t change history…well, if they truly were thrown back in time, maybe she actually could. She tucked that thought away for greater attention later. But for now she was hungry and wanted somewhere to relax and be comfortable and safe again. Her shoulders slumped as their dismal surroundings and prospects sent her hopes plummeting.

Lucius had already returned to observing the passing parade of travelers, memorizing more types of clothing, the styles of the coaches, some of which were not unlike the ones drawn through the air by his thestrals, and most of all the snippets of speech that floated to him on the breeze. The speech was English, certainly, and he could understand most of it, but again the dialect was low-class. Lucius thought that would make sense if the travelers were walking to their destinations. Higher-class travelers would be in those coaches he saw. There was a steady flow of humanity in one direction, and that meant a town of some kind. Lucius grabbed Hermione’s arm and retreated into the woods again.

“I want to find out where everyone is going. I think there may be a town not far away. Those seagulls of yours are getting thicker in the air and there’s a haze in the distance. Where there’s a town, there’s food and lodging.” Lucius leaned back against a small tree trunk at his ease.

“We could transfigure some food,” Hermione suggested without much interest. They both knew the food wouldn’t truly be sustaining as it didn’t have the same nourishing qualities any real food would give them and the underlying molecules might be unsettling to the digestive system. But the illusion would make their hunger pangs disappear for awhile.

“You may eat some dead leaves fashioned as a roast beef sandwich if you wish. I’m going to have the real thing once we get to that town.” Lucius eyed Hermione’s proper little gray blouse and slim skirt, which only went to her knees. “Your clothing will have to be transfigured, though. It looks as if the women of this time wear only long skirts. We can change the blouse a bit to emulate their styles, but the skirt has to lengthen. Shall you do it or shall I?”

Hermione had been watching the people passing also, especially the woman she’d seen and she decided she would do her transfiguration herself. Lucius would probably tart her up for sale. He was very keen on getting to that town and his roast beef sandwich. She didn’t trust any Malfoy with very good reason, but she didn’t want to be parted from him; her opposing compulsions were starting to spook her, so for the time being she wrote it all off to a shared, menacing unknown.

“I’ll do my own clothing. What about you? You don’t look like the men either.”

“Actually my clothing could pass, I think, except for the necktie. I’ll have to change it into the wraparound style they wear. And for now I’m going to create the illusion of my clothing being shabbier than it is. My formal clothing is too refined for the examples I see out there. I’d draw attention walking when I look like I should be traveling in a coach and four.”

Hermione hmphed at her companion’s snobby, if accurate, observation. His suit was beautifully made of fine wool and she guessed that the overcoat they had used for their blanket was cashmere. The cotton of his white dress shirt had been so soft to the touch she had surreptitiously petted it a few times during the night while he slept, just making sure he was still beside her, she assured herself. Egyptian cotton no doubt, with that silky sheen. She sighed – wealth did have some distinct advantages. Hermione looked sadly down at her serviceable work outfit and sighed again. How was she to make anything attractive from such depressingly bland clothing?

The little witch saw Lucius change his necktie into the style they’d seen and mourned when his rich clothing faded to a well-worn ancient garment more suited to a ragbag. He designed a floppy-brimmed hat from some of the detritus of the floor of the copse, which Lucius settled on his head, thrusting his hair up underneath to hide his distinctive pale blond locks.

Hermione took out her wand and thought for a moment, then slowly lengthened her skirt to her ankles and made the material thicker and looser, but defiantly changed the color to a dark, muted forest green. Her blouse, she recreated into a one-piece top for her skirt, making a dress out of the two pieces. She made the neckline modestly high, but added a tiny edging of slightly dingy white lace round the top for verisimilitude. “How does that look?” she asked Lucius who had been watching the proceedings.

“You have an unsuspected talent for theatrics, and I like the color,” he said, giving her a backdoor compliment, “but you’ll need a cloak of some sort and a bonnet. Please, allow me.” He pointed his wand at a fallen log, carving off a slice, then swept his wand twice around the piece forming a long, warm gray cloak, which unfortunately looked and felt like the burlap bags she wrapped rare antiques with in the Ministry Artifacts Division where she worked. He swept up some twigs and made a bonnet like he’d seen on the female traveler and slapped it on Hermione’s head while she was trying to settle her cloak. She couldn’t see her bonnet so she took it off and examined it. The dark green color and the sedate design looked okay to her so she put it back on her head and tied the ribbons under her chin.

“Can’t you make the material in my cloak a little less coarse? I’ll be chafed in ten minutes wearing this.” Hermione added craftily, “and you’ll look like a miserly mate walking along with your wife sporting this monstrosity.”

“Mate? Wife?” Lucius negligently waved his wand and the material changed into a tighter weave, making the cloak hang better. “What mate?” He frowned heavily at the annoying little witch. She’d played him, he knew, but he’d fallen for her jibe of miserliness just the same. She had taken his measure on a weak spot for him, his pride. He would have to rethink her ‘poor, little weak me’ act later. It was beginning to look as though little Miss Granger had some unsuspected Slytherin depths.

He snorted as she changed the nondescript smoky color of her new cloak into a slightly darker green than her gown. “I thought you would like the gray color – you seemed covered in it. Gray shirt, skirt, even shoes. If you don’t like that horrid gray color, why do you wear so much of it?”

“I work in an area with a lot of old, rare objects, many of which are covered in grime. That color works best to keep me from looking like I stepped out of a dustbin. Did you think I liked that color?” she gritted, nettled by his comment, “It makes me look like I’ve just arisen from a crypt.”

“I agree,” muttered Lucius, resettling his new neckcloth more comfortably under his chin.

“Well, I do apologize for offending your sense of style,” Hermione sniped, offended by his insensitive remark.

Lucius looked up from his neckcloth at his tiny compatriot a bit startled. She certainly was showing signs of life after first impressing him as a downtrodden Ministry drudge with all the enthusiasm of a dead zombie and even less courage. His brows knit at his own silent description of his irritating colleague - was there such a thing as a dead zombie? Or was that just saying the same thing twice?

He shook off the errant notion as unimportant and went on the attack instead, “By agreeing with your own assessment of that color on you, have I wounded your delicate feminine feelings? Should I have mendaciously said you looked ravishing in that funereal color? Then you’d have thought I was either an idiot, color-blind, or I was pandering to your vanity. Lose-lose-lose for me.” Lucius cut off her reply with a slice of his hand, “We don’t have time for this useless bickering. I want to get going. Are you ready?” Lucius looked down, “Fix gloves for yourself and make those shoes into low boots with laces.”

He turned away and began walking toward the edge of the wood to the road, creating some gloves for himself from the forest floor detritus. He would dearly have loved some soft black leather ones, but he knew they would stand out like a tutu on a mountain troll, so he reluctantly made his into scratched brown leather, worn at the fingers.

Hermione snarled an unladylike epithet at his retreating back and pointed her wand at her walking shoes, changing them into scuffed ladies’ boots that ended just above her ankles. A quick pair of gray gloves made from some leaves and she hurried to catch up with the infuriating wizard, latching onto his arm just as he left the wood.

Lucius looked down at the mutinous face of his bad-tempered little ‘buddy’ and felt a bit better about being marooned with her in Merlin only knew where. At least she wasn’t going to be the enervating drag she’d initially appeared. Lucius chose a moment when no one was within sight on the road to insert the two of them into the unfolding drama of their new unknown and he let her hang on his arm as they stepped out of the woods.


tbc...


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Time for me to metaphorically pass the hat for reviews. Please let me know something you've liked about the story so far. Such a long chapter must have had something memorable in it...


Link to review is just below. Thanks!!

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