A Thief to Catch a Thief; a Death Eater to Catch a

In answer to questions, mostly LaBib’s, but you’re all in here somewhere!



• As for Lucius’s auror training, we don’t get to see that, we’re going from getting the uniform to five years later, I’ll go back and add a little sign that says “five years later” on it.



• He swapped sides somewhere before the final battle, I don’t think he’d let any of his previous ‘friends’ (ie. The Death Eaters) off the hook. I think he’ll use the threat of Azkaban as an excuse to do the right thing for once.



• He will have first met with Hermione when she first stepped into the auror department as fully qualified. And you’ll have to hold your horses (or hippogriffs/unicorns) and wait for the romance.



• And yes, the trousers are VERY tight and don’t leave much to the imagination.



• LaBib wants Lucius dressing and undressing, and seeing as I love her work, I’ll oblige her request – and I’ll even put him in the shower for you too! If anyone has a request they want to see – shove it in a review and I’ll do my best with it!



• Hermione is curvy, but she isn’t a top-heavy girl; she’s not flat-chested, but she hasn’t got huge boobs either – I’m not making her any bigger than a B cup – I want to create a Hermione to my specifications. I’m looking at creating a real woman with a body shape that doesn’t match the dummy in the shop window – actually she’s based on my housemate in that sense (and I’m dead, because she’ll read this and kill me! Lol!)



• Lucius trained within one year, Hermione took two – so, Lucius was a qualified auror a full year longer than Hermione.



• Draco… well, he’ll turn up, he has to – he’s building their new department! But he’s a minor character in this, but I won’t ignore him. I might just match him up with someone too… someone is going to have to look after him now his Mummy has gone.



• Lucius and money is equivalent to strawberries and cream – of course he’ll be in charge of the funding! And I bet that gets right up the accountant’s noses!



• All of them animagi – its an incredible skill, and I can see them all working hard to achieve it, probably with a bit of healthy rivalry; plus they can torment the minute taker with it! Some of the forms would be good escape routes, or in the case of the more aggressive animals, a weapon. (Though the octopus is only any use in an aquatic environment).



• I imagine a very laid back department when they’re not risking their lives to keep people safe – sort of in a ‘google’ kinda way (they have a fabulous manor of working, and everyone is happy, I saw it on a documentary). They’re all very close and have been brought together by some tough scrapes, they’re all more like siblings than colleagues.



• You can’t borrow Lucius yet – I haven’t had my fun! I don’t want to charge for him, he’s my pet, and I want to keep his self-esteem high, selling him might demoralise him… I’ll lend him out soon, form an orderly queue at the door. If you borrow him, his collar (with my name on it) stays ON! Lol!... though that implies that I DO own Harry Potter – and I don’t… oh, my head hurts now, that’s got me confused… I know just how to shift a headache though, a nice rush of endorphins… *runs off to find Lucius*



• (I can put Harry in a collar too, if you want? Anybody want Harry at their mercy? I can nab Draco too, any claimers for the younger Malfoy? There are also my original male characters up for grabs… the twins come as a pair…).



• The grammar mistakes… well, insomnia has struck again, and is 2:30 in the morning at the mo, I’ll go back and do some serious housekeeping when I’m awake! Promise.



• Hermione is a bit of a bad-arse, isn’t she, but in a “fighting for the good guys” sense!



• She’s all casual sex rather than romance; I don’t really think she has a romantic bone in her body, personally. I can imagine the f**k buddies (I’ll swear in the fic, but not in a A/N), but not an actual lover – well, that’s going to change *muhahahahahaaaaa*



• *Tugs Lucius back from where he’s looking at the reviewers at the end of the bed, growls at reviewers for diverting his attention from me.*



• Lucius with muscles – the aurors will have to be in tip-top condition, and I can see their department having its own gym. I always imagine Lucius to be quite “delicate” and slim, until joining the aurors he hasn’t had to do a single day’s hard work in his life; and once that changed so did his body shape. He’s no Schwarzenegger (that word is actually on spellcheck! LOL!) or Stallone (eh? So’s this one! Microsoft Word has a thing for action heros! ROFLMAO!), but he’s bulked up a fair bit. I like my muscles, but I’m not into the body builder look, a nice healthy medium is what I want.



• Getting them together… you’ll have to wait and see about that one! *muhahahahaha*











Right, On with the show, and chapter five: Telling Draco. Its a bit of a slow chapter, but it needs to be in here so I can get the plot moving along.









Narcissa was packing everything she owned into boxes, and anything she owned was classified as items that were not purchased with Lucius’s money… there wasn’t much. Lucius said she could take her vast wardrobe with her, what did he want women’s clothes for.



“You can’t just throw me out on the street!” she seethed, realising that the Black fortune wasn’t all that brilliant, most of it belonging to Harry Potter after her cousin had left him it in his will.



“I was going to throw you out onto the grass verge in front of the gate, actually.” Lucius sneered; he was still in his auror uniform and looked more menacing in the tight-fitting garments than his former Death Eater clothes.



“Where am I going to go?” she said angrily, she knew tears would get her nowhere, so didn’t bother crying.



“Doesn’t bother me – you made your bed at the Leaky Caldron, why don’t you go lie in it?” he hissed, his anger finally showing through.



“And how will I hire it?” she asked.



“I’m not knowledgeable in such things, but other Death Eaters talked about Knockturn Alley being a good place to pick up a whore – you’ve opened your legs for one man other than me, what harm would a few more do?” he said in utter menace.



“That was low.” She replied.



She continued to move around their – no, his – bedroom, gathering anything that had a soft blue glow to it, packing it safely into the boxes. The house elves were also seen as Lucius’s property, so they weren’t allowed to help her. The news had spread quickly among the little green gossips, and they actually didn’t want to serve the woman who’d been having an affair while married to their master. House elves mated for life, and took great offence when married witches and wizards had affairs or split up.



“Draco is a grown man, I will tell him the truth and let him make his own decisions about the matter… but first, I want to know why you did it – what did he have that I didn’t?”



Narcissa stood up from where she was bent over the boxes, she had expected him to ask, and she honestly didn’t have an answer to that question; but he expected a reply, so she let her mouth do the work, the words bypassing her brain in the process.



“I’m not sure; all this auror nonsense was taking you away from me – you weren’t home as often, and when you were you were tired… I was bored with waiting at home for a husband who was worn out and sweaty from work! I needed a bit of excitement, and then he came along and it was fun. All the sneaking around was good fun. I saw keeping it quiet from you as a challenge – and I was winning for six months before he got tagged.”



“You were bored?” Lucius seethed, “All you had to do was talk to me – I could have arranged something, some more time off work perhaps. Though, I am glad you didn’t go to him just for sex – that would have been a dent in my ego.”



“No, he wasn’t all that good in bed – not like you…” she purred in a voice that normally put him at her mercy, which normally made those ridiculous trousers painfully tight for him… today they didn’t shift.



“I am going to speak with Draco. Goodbye Ms. Black. You know where the door is, if you are finished packing before the six hours is complete.” He said, and without a backwards glance, he left for his study to use the floo. But first he dispatched an owl to Rita Skeeter – giving her the rights to an exclusive interview with himself about the separation.





***



Lucius stepped into Draco’s office to find him wearing a pair of low-slung muggle jeans that showed his pale blue boxers, and a plain white tee shirt.



“Draco, I have some… grave news.” He said softly.



Draco turned in the swivel chair, placing down his wand and ignoring the miniature three dimensional model he was making. “You haven’t used that tone of voice with me since I was six and hid under my bed in a storm… what’s happened?”



Lucius fell heavily into the leather office chair behind Draco’s cluttered desk, wondering absent mindedly how his son was such a success when he was so utterly disorganised, “It is about your Mother…”



“Oh Merlin! Is she hurt? Where is she? What happened?” Draco said rapidly.



“Calm down, physically she’s fine…”



“What do you mean, ‘physically she’s fine’?!” Draco said acidly.



“If you’d let me finish, I’ll tell you the whole tale, not snippets…” Lucius said, giving Draco a tired look before placing his wand tip on the silver fastenings on the front of his leather armour and letting it fall open, “I found your Mother in a rather compromising position with a Death Eater I have been chasing for years – thus the marriage is dissolved and Ms. Black is packing her possessions and will not be returning to the Manor.” He said simply, there was no need to go into all the details.



“Mother was having an affair?” Draco whispered, slumping into a chair. Malfoy marriages might not be perfect, but they were faithful – you either had sex with your spouse or went without. His mother had to be very desperate to risk her security by sleeping with someone else.



“Yes, and apparently has been for six months… that reminds me, I need to destroy the sheets and purchase new ones.”



“In your marriage bed!” Draco said in utter shock – wondering who this other woman was and what she’d done with his Mother. This wasn’t something she’d do, was it?



“She said she was bored and didn’t like me coming in from work sweaty and tired.” Lucius said with bitterness. “Draco, you are a grown man, and what you choose to do in this situation is your decision – I just wanted to tell you the truth.”



Draco looked thoughtful for a moment before dropping his head into his hands. “Is this my fault?” he asked with tears in his eyes.



Lucius didn’t think twice about pulling the young man into his arms and rubbing his back, “No, our marriage was one made for political reasons by our parents when we were babies – it was doomed to failure at some point, it was a wonder you were even conceived! Never doubt that we love you and never think this was any problem caused by you… I think we only stayed together because of you, we wanted to make sure you had both parents to raise you… we were a bit rubbish, but I think you turned out alright in the end”



“Is she still at the manor? I want to go talk to her.” He whispered, tears in his eyes; he’d never seen them argue or fight, and presumed their marriage was fine – not an act to keep him happy.



“As far as I know.” Lucius said, shrugging off the auror armour and folding it in his lap; he realised he was in desperate need of a shower after the raid and the day’s events.



“What? No ‘What are you going to do?’” Draco asked, shocked.



“No. As I said, you are an adult and are perfectly capable of making your own decisions in life – though I need to have a chat with you about designing a new department for the aurors and remodelling the atrium at the Ministry.”



“Oh. I’ll come home tonight and bring my sketch book too – do you know what you want built, and a price range?” Draco said, shrinking a few items into a rucksack ready to go to the Manor.



“I’ll nip into the office on my way to the solicitors – I’m going to give Narcissa a lump sum cash injection in compensation and then cut all ties with her – I might want to leave her with nothing, but I can’t just throw her out and have her starve, you’d probably attempt to kill me, and then I’d have to arrest you for it.” Lucius said, a small (fake) smile creeping onto his face.



“Thank-you for being honest with me.” Draco said, turning to apperate.



“I was never anything less than honest with you, but my opinions were a lot to be desired of, son.”



Draco left, Lucius remained sat in the chair for a little longer before putting his leathers back on and apperating to the solicitors office and then the ministry.