Prisoners of Love - A Mystery - COMPLETE

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Updated 7-13-07

Thank you all for the thoughtful and clever reviews. They warm me AND keep me on my fiction-making toes. Let's see...you had a few questions. ody how do I find time to write? Easy, I can't remember exactly what my husband looks like and I also write ahead. How do I write 'so well'? I have no clue. Except for the smut - that just rolls right off my fingers. Too bad I can't remember exactly what my husband looks like...

Margot Le Faye Why Hermione was framed, what is on her side of the cell that Lucius wants, and how soon before an escape - All good questions but they must be presented in their pre-set order in the story. Apologies.

And Atomic Kitten, if you review again, leave me an email please?

Now on with the show...
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Chapter Five

Night Shivers

Lucius jumped up in alarm when he saw what looked like Hermione keeling over in a dead faint or worse. Had those guards hurt her more than he thought? He rushed over to her, lifting her limp body and placing his hand over her heart while listening to her to be sure she was breathing. She was definitely alive – and soft and sweet and delicate and her breath stirred his face with the faint smell of fishy potato. Lucius realized she had just fallen dead asleep where she sat. Well, hell. Now he had to finish his exercises without his admiring audience.

He tucked her under her sheet and blanket, trying to make sure her flannel covered her as much as possible. He would have to bribe the guards into some more socks as soon as possible. Her little feet were ice-cold. They should have given her a prison uniform too, but they probably hadn’t had anything in her size. He would work on that, too. The more she owed him the faster his reward. He shoved the small voice jeering that he positively stunk of altruism into a dark corner of his mind.

Hermione turned over in her sleep, trapping Lucius’ hand under her. She pulled his hand down and snuggled up to his arm, rubbing it against her breasts and burying her face in his elbow.

Lucius didn’t want to contemplate exactly what portion of her anatomy his palm was touching. He really didn’t need that cruelty added to the ever-growing list of tortures that were making him more and more fascinated and tantalized by the little female.

“Hermione?” he whispered. No reaction. His arm was draped across her shoulder and he awkwardly tried to retrieve it while not disturbing her. The poor tyke had been subjected to so much, he supposed it wasn’t surprising that she should completely flake out, but he was feeling a little lonely with her asleep. He snorted at his thought. Lonely? After only one incomplete day in her company? He didn’t need her. He didn’t need anyone. He gently pried her tiny fingers off and slid his arm away, retreating to his side of the cell.

Lucius finished doing his exercises and used a shred of cloth and his sliver of soap to wash himself, glad Hermione was asleep and he could clean himself up completely, doffing his pants to do the job. He wrung out his washcloth over the central floor drain and hung it tidily on the end of his cot. Night had stolen into the room and the small space was lit only by a wisp of moonlight. Lucius was used to the dimensions of the cell so it was no trouble for him to dress again in his prison garb and tuck into bed himself. He was soon asleep and dreaming of a small, brown-haired sprite who harried and goaded him everywhere, kissing him into submission and confounding all his complex plans.


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Lucius groggily awoke, struggling up from a particularly lurid dream of gargantuan guards with oozing sores and perfect breasts chasing him. As he surfaced from his dream – or nightmare, he wasn’t sure which – the noise that must have awakened him started up again. There was a metallic rattling on the stones that stopped and started, stopped and started, coming from the other side of the room. Lucius looked at the high window, seeing it was still the dead of night. What was that racket? Was it coming from the next cell? He usually didn’t hear anything from other cells unless someone was screaming. Lucius sat up trying to decipher the source of the problem noise so he could solve it and go back to sleep. He had several things to accomplish the next day and he needed his rest.

More rattling came from the other side of his cell and Lucius peered into the gloom, unable to see much, but hearing a veritable cacophony of clatters. He would never get back to sleep with that ungodly racket bothering him. It seemed very close by and that made Lucius get up and follow the sound. It only took two paces before he was confronted with the rattle – it was Hermione’s cot smacking the wall and stone floor. What was she doing - jerking off?

He leaned down to remonstrate and saw Hermione was asleep but shivering like an aspen in a high wind, sending the cot into a frenzy of movement against the wall. He felt her face and hands and found she was beyond cold, she was freezing. She was so dead asleep she couldn’t wake up to help herself and her thin, wool blanket was obviously not enough to keep her slight frame warm.

Lucius stood there in thought for a few seconds, attempting to come up with any solution that didn’t include what he had already realized he would have to do. He just hoped when morning came, Hermione would believe his story of her freezing, but he couldn’t worry about that. He decided it had to be his bed. She would screech the walls down if she found him in her bed in the morning.

He picked up the shuddering little feminine bundle and carried her over to his cot, tucking her into the warmth he had just left and putting his own socks on her frozen little feet in self-defense. Having those unadorned tootsies up against any sensitive part of him in the night would give him frostbite. He went back to her cot for her blanket and rolled her up in it, then pulled his blanket over them both, settling her against him, spoon style. As she warmed up, her shivering lessened and finally she relaxed into his arms and he was able to nod off.

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“What are you doing in my bed?” Hermione woke Lucius with a clout to his head.

“Ouch!” Lucius woke from a sound sleep, attempting to protect himself from flailing knees that were trying their best to emasculate him. “Stop it, you little harpy. Look around you. You’re in my bed, I’m not in yours.” Lucius rolled off the cot and stood up. “Before you get all excited, listen!” He rubbed at his injured head and, feeling a few tangles, ineffectively sifted his fingers through his unkempt hair trying to tame it, annoyed even more that Hermione was on his comb, which he kept under his mattress.

Hermione covered her flannel bosom with a blanket corner, slowly realizing she was indeed in Lucius’ bed, not her own. “How did I get here? Why am I in bed with you?”

Hermione was wound up and ready to spout off some more but Lucius held up an authoritative hand, “I would like to say it was because you can’t resist me and begged me to take you into my bed, but this time that isn’t what happened. For the future, who knows?” He shrugged shoulders that were stiff from his cramped night’s sleep. Odd, he thought, I must not have moved at all after I tucked her in with me.

Lucius favored his little interloping cuckoo bird with an annoyed glare, “To make a short story short - I woke up in the middle of the night because you were making so much noise on your cot. You were freezing and shivering to the point of slamming your cot against the wall and floor, so I bundled you into my bed, you warmed up, and I finally got to go back to sleep. Any questions? You may retreat to your own cot now, if you like. Your blanket is wrapped around you, so you may take that, too. If you need my socks, use them. I’ll barter for more from the guards. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to use the loo.” Lucius stepped over to the bucket in the corner, not caring if Hermione watched or not.

Before he could lower his pants, Hermione blurted awkwardly, “I’m sorry, Lucius. I guess I do vaguely remember being terribly cold.” She pulled up her blanket and stood, a small, dignified young woman who had slept with a vicious Death Eater and who was feeling furiously embarrassed by her momentary, unguarded physical attraction. Stepping over to her own cot in socks a great many sizes too big for her, she spoke quietly, “I appreciate what you did.” She nodded once decisively, “Thank you for helping me.” She curled up on her own cot and pulled her worn blanket over her head, facing the wall.

Lucius looked at her in puzzlement. Now, what was that all about? Was she perturbed that she had slept in his bed? Or that she had to be in the cell while he went to the loo? For once his keen mind missed the obvious. She hadn’t behaved like any woman who had ever been attracted to him before, and there had been plenty, so her weird reaction didn’t make any sense to him.

He waited until she was covered up and facing away, and then he did his business. His night up against a warm pretty female wasn’t conducive to a relaxed groin and he needed several minutes of reading the old newspaper to function.

For the first time he was sorry that she had to suffer the indignities of their living space, although his maiden effort at compassionate good will battled with his egotistically-skewed logic that insisted his ‘stiffy’ problem was her fault to begin with. All in all Lucius was thoroughly disgruntled as he sat on the uncomfortable bucket rim.

He finally succeeded in conquering his unwanted rigidity and left the loo facilities. He next tidied up the living space the best he could, making his bed neatly and drawing his comb from under the mattress. Lucius preferred order if he could manage it and the small space didn’t offer much of a challenge. He sat on his cot and started to methodically work the tangles from his hair, just as he did every morning. When all the tangles had been banished, he took the merest iota of grease from his supply garnered from numerous supper dishes and rubbed it between his palms, then wiped it through his hair to make it lie down and stay presentable. Such a small amount didn’t have any odor that he could detect and anyway he was able to wash his hair once a week with some of the bucket water and the precious sliver of soap the guards had traded for one of his little presents. The soap was drying to his hair, hence the grease.

To complete his toilette, he ran a cleaning spell over his flaxen locks and rid his face of the short growth of beard, hampered a bit by no wand, but by using both methods he kept his tresses in healthy shape and his face clean-shaven. Lucius hated to be unkempt if he could avoid it. Hermione had nailed him with her pronouncement of ‘neat freak’. His obsessive attention to detail and order had also been a major factor in his rise in the Death Eaters, along with a superior mind and a zealous dislike for Muggles.

Lucius next applied his attention to his dark stone in the wall. No one seemed to be up this early yet, so he sat and contemplated the lump on the other cot. Was she sleeping? He wanted to get started on his project under her cot, but he couldn’t do anything while she was still on it. He allowed himself the luxury of grumpily sulking, balefully eyeing his cellmate’s blanketed body and wishing she would stir. He had hours before the guards came with the midday meal and she was wasting them for him. Plus he had to get through her morning embarrassment with the loo – he knew she would have to use it.

So far having her for a cellmate was more disruptive than one of Narcissa’s tantrums when he came home from the brothel smelling like sex. He had usually been true to his wife otherwise, but what did Narcissa expect when her version of intimacy was emulating a Petrificus Totalus spell? In a freakish moment of honesty he admitted to himself he’d purposely never bothered with a cleansing spell to rid himself of the scent of the harlot’s boudoir before returning home. It was his little punishment to his wife for being so frigid.

His own libido had been like boiling oil to Narcissa’s iceberg. He knew she didn’t like sex, deeming it sweaty and messy and ruinous for her hairdo, and when she had happily abandoned him to Azkaban with the fastest divorce decree one could get from a convicted felon, he wasn’t too bothered. She’d only stuck around the last time he was incarcerated because Draco was still so young.

Now he was in prison yet again and he knew Narcissa’s one remaining interest in their marriage, her social standing, had been dented more severely this time. His only concern was Draco’s reaction to a final split between his parents. Draco apparently had taken Narcissa’a side, because Lucius hadn’t heard from his son even once while in prison. Lucius continued to glower at his tiny interloper across the cell.

To be completely truthful - and Lucius had usually found that veracity was an entirely overrated commodity - he was sulking not about her oversleeping, although that was having an exacerbating effect, but about his miserable experience going to the loo because he couldn’t get rid of his morning erection, which had now returned to become his mid-morning erection and was threatening to become his noontime erection.

It was as though his cock had found a mission in life, to remind Lucius for every minute of every hour of the day that a young, beautiful, female was close by and it needed to continuously point in her direction to help Lucius along. He couldn’t even get relief with his hand. SHE would probably wake up just when he was getting to the good part and then he’d have blue balls to go with his damned ERECTION.

At that moment, Hermione peeked her face out of her cocoon and peered around, seeing Lucius sitting on his neatly made cot glaring at her. She had to use the bucket something fierce and had hoped Lucius would go back to sleep. Her heart sank at seeing his stern visage – those pale hypnotic eyes staring holes in her blanket – he seemed disgruntled for some reason. Why should he be disgruntled when she was the one who had to use the bucket? Hermione peeked again and ground her teeth. The damned man always seemed so well groomed, when she was sure her hair was sticking out in as many directions as a broomstick had twigs and it probably resembled the back end of a broomstick as well. Hermione folded back her blanket and rose from her cot, standing and silently regarding her companion.

“Tell me when to turn my back,” Lucius handed her his comb, waiting for her to move away from her cot so he could pull it away from the wall. He had to get control of his wayward organ and she was looking so adorable with her hair escaping in all directions that his problem only escalated. Lucius took a deep breath and thought of frog-faced Dolores Umbridge naked. His relief was immediate. He slid off his cot and stood up near the little witch, silently herding her toward the corner facilities.

Hermione groaned in defeat, dawdling on her way to her fate. She was fast developing a real hatred for that blasted bucket. She tried to pull the comb through her snarled locks, finally giving up in despair and returning the comb to Lucius. Then she turned to the corner and gathered her courage. “Turn your back!” she directed, pulling off the lid of the bucket and raising the back of her nightgown, settling gingerly on the torturous bucket rim. She was finished in seconds, using the newspaper Lucius had been reading and adjusting her garment for modesty as she stood again.

The minute Lucius heard her stand up and take a step away from the bucket, he went to work, pulling her cot out from the wall and retrieving the slim piece of metal he’s been digging with from his cot.

“Hey! What are you doing to my cot?” She went over to the water bucket, splashing some of the fishy water onto her hands and stealing a swipe of his soap while she watched him retrieve a metal stick. “I was going to sit on my cot again. What are you doing? Oh! You’ve been digging under my cot. I forgot about that. What are you digging for? What do you hope to find?” Hermione wandered over to see what Lucius was doing to the floor under her bed.

“You may sit on my cot, Miss chatterbox, but try not to muss it up.”

Hermione rolled her eyes at his persnickety ways, but obediently sat on his cot. She settled, tucking her sock-covered feet under her and fixing her nightgown over her knees.

Lucius placed a bit of cloth on the stone floor and kneeled down onto it, flipping the comb back onto his cot beside Hermione. “When I’m finished, I’ll try to help you with the back of your hair if you wish.” He was concentrating on the floor and didn’t look up at her for any response.

Hermione instantly felt for the back of her hair to see if it was in bad shape, trying to pet it into submission, but the curls merely rebounded around her fingers like crucio’d serpents writhing on her head. “Does it look terrible?”

“No,” Lucius said shortly. He wanted her hair tamed so she wouldn’t look so tousled and sexy. The touchy little witch looked like she had been thoroughly used in bed and even Umbridge’s naked ass wasn’t saving him any more. He was on his knees scrunched over his personal pole problem as he started scraping at the seam between the rocks again.

He hated the way his senses were starting to act like iron filings, drawn to her, focused on her against his will wherever she was in the room, which was always, dammit. Gods, if he was attracted even when she was using the frigging bucket, he knew he had a major complication to contend with. He preferred to think he would have had the same nuisance were it any female invading his tiny kingdom. His digging took on a hint of desperation.

Hermione asked, “Lucius can I wrap up in your blanket? I’m getting a bit cold.” The high window was showing a narrow slice of cold, blustery day, increasing the cool air in the cell and Hermione’s small frame wasn’t built for withstanding lower temperatures with equanimity.

Lucius grabbed her blanket off her cot and tossed it to her, returning to his project. He was getting a bit dusty but his metal digger was making very good headway.

“Thank you,” Hermione said ironically. He hadn’t even looked at her and she was starting to feel like a Gryffindor at a Slytherin school reunion. He had his plans and his routines and she guessed she was an interloper to him. But he could have better manners, she thought, feeling alone. Her self-pity was starting to annoy her and she decided to do something – anything - rather than allow herself to sink into a useless despondency. She demanded, “I want to help. Tell me what to do. Do you have another digging tool I can use?”

The last thing Lucius needed was her snuggling up next to him and digging at the short seam. Merlin’s balls, he was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. He may as well have her doing some work while he suffered through this painful throbbing in his groin. He transfigured his tool into two of them, testing to make certain they were both still strong enough to work. Silently he held up the second tool and Hermione scooted down to sit beside Lucius.

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I saw "HP and the OotP" today and I loved the Lucius bits - there just weren't enough of them. I think there should be a spin-off, "Lucius Malfoy and His Magic Harem," starring all of us in supporting roles - supporting his head, his shoulders, his pecs, his waist and...I guess we'll have to get in line for the rest. HEY! No shoving.

On a more mature note:

I'll be out of town until Thursday, July 26 and so won't be able to post again till then. So I'm posting this chapter a little ahead of time for you all. (Clinks fork on a water glass to gain attention) AHEM!! That of course does not mean I won't be needing any reviews to read when I return. I'll be suffering withdrawal by then and will need a quick fix when I get home. Please be kind...
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