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Chapter Text

The cart rattled violently as it descended, sparks flickering from the rails. Hermione pulled her cloak tighter about her shoulders, though it did little to stave off the chill of the deep vaults.

The campaign to rid Gringotts of cursed artefacts had been announced as one of the Ministry’s flagship programmes. After Voldemort’s defeat, no one could be certain what dark objects remained hidden in the ancient vaults. The work was slow and thankless, but necessary.

She had volunteered for the inspections, naturally.

Her companion sat stiffly beside her, gloved hands resting on a silver-topped cane. Lucius Malfoy had made his opposition public, loudly denouncing petty Ministry officials pawing through the inheritance of wizarding houses. The Wizengamot had overruled him. Rumour had it he had appealed directly to Kingsley, who had permitted him this one concession: that he might be present while his vault was examined.

The cart juddered to a halt before the heavy door. Hermione stepped out first, wand already in hand.

“I do hope,” Malfoy said mildly, as he followed, “that you will not find the older protections too perplexing, Miss Granger. Many of these wards were devised long before the Ministry existed.”

Hermione watched him turn the key and press his palm to the goblin’s seal. The door swung back with a low groan.

“I’ll manage,” she said curtly.

The vault stretched vast and echoing before them, its stone walls lined with shelves of objects: boxes chased with silver, piles of parchment, even pieces of armour dulled with centuries.

Hermione lifted her wand, its glow casting long shadows as she began a systematic sweep.

“No resonance of dark magic here,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “Bindings of this sort… fifteenth century, perhaps?”

“Thirteenth,” Malfoy replied coolly. He had followed her in, his cane clicking softly on the flagstones. “Acquired in Byzantium. My ancestor had a discerning eye.”

She glanced back at him, about to retort, but thought better of it. His pride was a wall, and she had work to do.

She catalogued one object, then another, the minutes sliding past. At last she came to a pedestal in the back of the chamber. Upon it rested a carved stone box, veined with pale lines like bone.

Lucius Malfoy slowed as he reached her side. For the first time, his expression faltered. “That,” he said, quietly, “I do not recognise.”

Hermione raised her wand, casting the familiar diagnostic charms in quick succession. Nothing: no curse, no residue, not even the faint echo of protective wards. The object seemed curiously blank.

“That’s strange,” she said, frowning. “It feels like nothing whatsoever.”

She hesitated only a moment before reaching out, fingertips brushing the cold stone.

At the same instant, Malfoy’s gloved hand moved towards it. Whether to stop her or to examine it himself, she wasn’t sure. Their hands touched the stone together—

—and the vault dissolved.

For an instant, there was only a sensation of falling sideways, the air pulled from her lungs. Then the world reassembled: high walls, a great hearth flickering with embers, chandelier dripping wax. The air smelled of dust, old wood, and something faintly sweet, like lavender left too long in drawers.

Hermione staggered back, wand raised. They stood in a house - old, grand.

Malfoy’s eyes moved slowly over the walls, the portraits, the heavy beams. His expression was unreadable.

“This,” he said quietly, “should not exist.”

She turned sharply to him. “Where are we?”

He hesitated, then said, voice measured: “I believe it is the Malfoy Manor… as it once stood. Centuries earlier, before the reconstructions. Before the fire.”

Hermione’s grip on her wand tightened. “You mean we’re inside a memory? Some kind of illusion?”

His gaze lingered on the fading portraits. “If this is an illusion, Miss Granger, it is astonishingly elaborate. No - this place has substance. But it should have been lost to time.”

Hermione looked at him, then around.

Her first impulse was to assess. Air, walls, light - all seemed tangible, solid under her wand’s touch. She pinched the bridge of her nose, taking a deep breath. Think. There had to be a rational explanation.

A ward? Perhaps some long-forgotten Malfoy enchantment, a protective spell that had endured for centuries. But why transport them here, and not simply bar the vault?

She paced slowly, wand alight, scanning walls, hearth, floorboards. Could it be tied to the artefact? Perhaps it had absorbed latent magic over the centuries, waiting for a trigger. Or a convergence - she remembered the overlapping of protective wards she had seen in some Ministry reports. Maybe this was one of those… except on a scale she had never encountered.

She decided to conduct a controlled experiment: move an object from one side of the room to the other. If it turned out impossible, it she couldn’t grasp it, it was all just a façade and they were not truly bound.

She reached for a nearby candlestick, lifted it, and set it down a few paces away. Solid.

She began testing for residue of any familiar spells. She moved from corner to corner, muttering diagnostic charms under her breath, marking each negative result with mounting irritation. Nothing.

Across the room, Lucius was silent. He had not followed her, nor interrupted. He stood a little apart, his cane resting lightly beneath his hand, his pale gaze travelling across the chamber with the slow precision of a surveyor.

Hermione looked at him irritably, “Are you going to help?”

He barley glanced in her direction. “Haste seldom clarifies matters. One must first observe, Miss Granger. Then act.”

“I don’t see how observation alone will bring us any closer to—” she began.

He interrupted softly, but authoritatively, “And I do not see how exhausting yourself with charms you know will fail is a better use of our time.”

Hermione bit back her retort and returned to her scan, but she felt the prickle of annoyance beneath her ribs. He was not wrong, precisely - but she had no patience for the superiority in his tone.

Hermione had spent what felt like hours pacing the room, scanning every beam, every shadow, every seam for a clue.

At one point, she moved to the great double doors at the end of the hall. It might be that simple.

She laid a hand against the door and pushed. The heavy wood creaked open. Hermione stepped forward—

—and found herself staring once more into the hall.

She stopped dead, spun back. The doors stood open behind her, but beyond them was nothing: no corridor, no passage, only the same space she had left.

Her throat tightened, a flicker of panic she refused to indulge. “We’re trapped.”

Lucius had remained standing at the far end, eyes sweeping the room with careful scrutiny.

He inclined his head slightly. “Contained, at least.”

He moved toward a faded settee, sat down, and crossed his legs.

Hermione stopped mid-step. “Are you quite certain it’s wise to… sit? We do not know what any of these objects might do.”

He glanced at her, unruffled, the faintest lift of one eyebrow. “You did check for curses. And the furniture seems solid enough - we might as well use it.”

Hermione had no energy left for arguing.

Slowly, she lowered herself to an armchair opposite him, wand still gripped in one hand. They sat in silence.

Finally, Lucius spoke, in that infuriatingly measured tone of his. “I am fairly certain, Miss Granger, that this is a version of the Manor. But a version only. It is constantly undergoing subtle alterations.”

Hermione raised her wand slightly, looking around. “Alterations?”

He gestured toward a bookshelf across the room. “That book,” he said quietly, “note the colour of its spine.”

Hermione looked. It was a deep burgundy. She watched for a few seconds. “It remains the same,” she said.

“Observe longer,” he said. “It changes gradually. I doubt you noticed, engrossed as you were in your measurements.”

She looked again. Sure enough, the book’s spine was now midnight blue.

A slow, creeping sense of unease replaced her panic.

“So… subtle fluctuations. That would explain why my charms didn’t work - they’re for diagnosing stable objects.”

He inclined his head. “And there are other anomalies, of similar character. I would suggest, tentatively, that the construction of this space is deliberate.”

Hermione’s mind raced. “You said this is a version of the Malfoy Manor. And we were transported here from your family vault. So it is likely all a creation of the Malfoy magic.”

Lucius kept looking at her, a silent prompt to continue.

“Understanding it and finding our way back might depend on your heritage.”

He nodded slowly.

“Following this assumption, I would advise you caution, Miss Granger.”

“Why?” She raised her brow half in challenge.

“Because,” he said, his expression unreadable, “If this place was built on my heritage, it might be dangerous for people with yours.”

They agreed to explore the adjoining rooms.

Hermione turned toward a side door. It opened into a library, vast shelves rising into shadow, ladders leaning against them as though waiting for a reader. Her heart lifted despite herself. At last - something useful.

She hurried to the nearest shelf, wand tip glowing over the titles. Many were strange, but she recognised a few: arcane treatises, rare charms, records of lineage.

Lucius stepped in behind her.

She felt the shift before she saw it. The shelves wavered, narrowing, shrinking into polished cabinets. Velvet drapes unfurled across the windows, a chandelier shimmered into being overhead. A drawing room, elegant and appointed - yet half-merged with the books. A wing-backed chair stood where a pile of tomes had been. A set of decanters gleamed upon a shelf still crowded with leather-bound volumes.

Hermione stopped short, blinking. “What—”

Lucius’s cane tapped once on the new floorboards. “This is a drawing room, in the Manor,” he said softly. His tone was mild, but there was tension in it.

“But it was a library,” Hermione insisted, gesturing at the shelves that still lined one wall, though pressed oddly against the velvet curtains.

“It seems,” he observed, “to be both.”

She frowned, stepping back into the hall. Instantly, the books winked out of existence, leaving only the drawing room.

She re-entered: shelves reasserted themselves, crowding against chairs and cabinets as though the room could not decide its form.

Her stomach tightened. “It’s changing,” she said, her voice low, “in response to… us?”

Lucius regarded the space in silence, eyes narrowed, as though testing a hypothesis.

“When I entered, I recognised this as a drawing room.”

Hermione frowned. “But I wanted a library. I was hoping for one.”

Their eyes met across the strange hybrid of shelves and chairs.

“So it gives us what we expect,” Hermione said slowly.

“Or what we believe,” Lucius returned, his tone clipped but calm.

She looked back at the shifting space: books and velvet crowding one another, each waiting to dominate. “That explains the fluctuation. It’s not confused. It’s… accommodating us. Both of us.”

They stood for a moment, listening. The fire popped once in the grate, though Hermione could feel no warmth.

Then, above them, came a sound: a dull, deliberate thud, echoing through the beams.

Hermione’s hand snapped up with her wand. Another thud followed, slower, heavier, and then silence.

A book toppled from the shelf, landing open on the floor between them. Its pages fluttered by themselves before fixing on an engraving: a serpent, coiled tightly about a house uncannily like the one in which they stood. The ink gleamed, too dark, as though it had just been written.

Hermione’s throat tightened. She looked up sharply, meeting Lucius’s eyes. The room had fallen utterly still, but she knew with chilling certainty that it was watching them.

Chapter Text

Lucius sat in the high-backed chair across from the girl, cane balanced between his fingers. She occupied herself by sketching diagrams in the dust on the arm of her seat, lips moving faintly as though rehearsing theories to herself. He said nothing.

She had no right to be here. Not on Malfoy grounds, not around Malfoy magic, not even in the Malfoy vault. That she had once fought in a war and stumbled out alive did not qualify her for this. A war heroine, they called her - self-righteous, insufferable, more clever than wise. Too young. Too inexperienced. And, Merlin help him, a Muggle-born. If fate had a sense of irony, this, being trapped with her, was it.

He folded his contempt inward, smoothed his expression, and let silence hold.

But silence did not yield answers.

The magic here bore the stamp of his family, and yet it resisted him. That thought gnawed at him. He recalled fragments of Malfoy enchantments - rooms that reflected the mind, vaults that shifted, curses tied to bloodlines - but vaguely, too vaguely.

His father would have known. His father had insisted he learn more, but Lucius had always preferred to master what mattered: the levers of influence, the gestures of control, the weight of presence in a room. Enough to protect, to secure.

And now, perhaps, the answer lay beyond his reach.

Unless…

His gaze shifted toward the staircase. The library.

He rose without a word to the girl and ascended the staircase. The shelves welcomed him, rows of leather and gilt, titles he had half forgotten. He let his hand drift over the spines, weighing where to begin.

Then - footsteps. Soft, measured.

He turned sharply. A figure passed the doorway. For an instant he thought it must be the girl - come to pry, to meddle. But the height was different, the tilt of the head, the hair falling like a sheet of silk. His heart lurched violently.

“Narcissa,” he breathed.

She did not pause. Her steps receded into the corridor.

He followed, every part of him taut with disbelief. His cane struck wood in uneven rhythm. “Narcissa!”

The footsteps led him to a wall.

No, not a wall. A portrait. One that had never existed.

Narcissa looked out from the frame, rendered in paint with such exactness it stole his breath. Her eyes, pale and sharp, fixed him.

“You were a disappointment.”

The words landed like a curse.

“You bent the knee when you should have resisted. You dragged us into chains. You let the Dark Lord turn our house into his den. And you call yourself a protector?”

His throat worked, dry. “Narcissa—”

“You made us beggars in our own halls,” she went on, her voice rising with Black steel. With contempt. “You thought cunning enough to survive, but it was cowardice. You kept Draco alive, yes - but at what cost? A son taught to crawl, not stand.”

Lucius’s hand tightened on his cane until the silver serpent’s head bit his palm. He knew - knew - this was enchantment, trickery. Yet her words cut deep.

Her painted gaze sharpened. “Pray that Draco carries more of me than you. He will need it, if he is to be a better man than his father.”

The breath left his body. She had never said such words aloud. But she had looked at him that way, more than once, in the waning years before her death. The quiet disappointment. The unspoken reckoning. And now, painted lips were giving it voice.

He swallowed. The portrait Narcissa did not move again. Her silence accused him as surely as her words had.

He stood there, staring into eyes he knew too well, words echoing in his skull even after her painted lips had closed. He forced his hand to relax on the cane, forced himself to breathe. Malfoys did not falter. Not before enemies, not before allies. Not even before ghosts.

Footsteps creaked on the stair behind him.

“Mr Malfoy?”

He stiffened. Of all moments—

Lucius did not turn. He would not let her see his face.

“I am occupied, Miss Granger,” he said. The words came uneven, betraying him.

She stopped a few feet away. He could feel her eyes flicking from him to the portrait and back again. He turned, finally, and saw it: her gaze softened, unexpectedly gentle.

Something hot and sour surged in him at the sight.

He cut it off at once, his voice sharp. “I will be working in the library. Be kind enough not to follow, lest it vanish.”

Her mouth opened as if to object, then closed again. She nodded once.

She gave him time.

When at last she sought him out, she paused at the threshold, unwilling to risk disturbing whatever balance kept the shelves intact. With one hand she tapped gently on the doorframe.

Lucius looked up from a table spread with books. His posture was composed, his expression smooth once more. No trace of the man who had stood stricken before the portrait of his late wife.

“I only wanted to tell you,” Hermione said, keeping her voice carefully neutral, “that I found the kitchens. There’s food. I was intending to eat and wondered if you’d join me.”

For a moment, he merely regarded her. A flicker passed behind his eyes - reluctance, pride battling practicality - before he inclined his head in a single, controlled nod. He rose and followed her out.

“I’ve noticed something else,” she said as they descended the stairs. “I’ve seen at least three dawns now behind the windows. And every clock in this house shows a different hour. I think we need to try measuring time ourselves somehow, or we’ll lose track completely.”

He only watched her.

The kitchens were just where she had found them, vaulted ceilings, long stone counters, the air faintly warm as though fires had only just been banked.

Then Lucius stepped in behind her. At once, the space shifted.

The long counters melted into polished sideboards. The tables reformed, draped with linen, silver set neatly at each place. Tall-backed chairs appeared, and sconces on the walls lit with a genteel glow. The scents of roast and sugared pastry remained, but the effect was no longer a working kitchen. It was a dining room.

Hermione almost laughed. Of course. He’s probably never eaten in a kitchen in his life.

She took the nearest chair and sat down. After a fractional pause, Lucius did the same.

The table had reset itself from soup to pheasant on its own. Platters drifted to hover near their hands, wine decanted itself into crystal.

Lucius did not so much as raise an eyebrow. Hermione couldn’t help thinking this was the closest he had ever come to elf-service without the actual house-elves present.

They ate in silence for a time. She found the food disquietingly perfect - hot, fragrant, every bite just as it ought to be. Too perfect.

Finally, he set down his fork.

“You are correct,” Lucius said, his voice smooth and measured. “We cannot rely on the clocks. Nor, I think, on candles, shadows, or any other household device. This place will turn them against us.”

Hermione stilled, fork halfway to her mouth. He had been listening.

He went on, gaze coolly intent on her across the table. “But there is one measure the house cannot counterfeit. Us. Our bodies. Biological time is older than enchantments. Hunger. Fatigue. The rhythm we would normally follow. If we each keep account of those, separately, we will know whether the house seeks to tamper with us. And if we compare notes regularly, any discrepancy between your account and mine will reveal where it meddles.”

Hermione blinked. The idea was undeniably sharp - sharper than anything she had come up with while trying to puzzle out the problem on her own.

“That’s…” she hesitated, unwilling to hand him the satisfaction of open praise, “practical.”

Lucius inclined his head slightly.

The platters shifted again, pheasant melting into sugared pastries.

Hermione had a distinct impression of being listened to, overheard.

She pushed the pastries away, but the plate slid back toward her hand with gentle insistence. Her stomach tightened.

Then the candles guttered all at once. A low hum rose in the walls, a vibration she felt in her teeth. The table shimmered - and suddenly, where there had been roasted pheasant and sugared almonds, there was rot. Meat grey with decay, fruit sagging, wine black and sour. The stench hit like a blow.

Hermione shoved her chair back, gagging. Across from her, Lucius’s expression barely shifted, though his knuckles whitened on the serpent’s head of his cane.

The hum grew louder, mocking.

Hermione forced herself to breathe through her sleeve, brain racing. A charm wouldn’t hold - not here, not against this. She tried anyway, a sharp Finite - and the decay only worsened. The house was toying with them, punishing their attempt at order.

Not real, she told herself. Not real.

Her stomach twisted again. Except - no, it growled. Hunger hadn’t gone. If the food had truly gone bad, the ache would have dulled. It hadn’t.

Her breath caught. That was it.

“It’s not the food,” she said quickly. “It’s us. Our senses. We can’t trust what we see or smell, but—” She reached for a dish, though her hand shook. The stew within looked like black sludge, but she conjured a goblet and siphoned a portion into it. Then, closing her eyes tight, she cast a diagnostic charm for magical composition.

The goblet glowed bright green. Rich broth. Fresh. Nutritious.

Hermione exhaled with relief. “It’s fine. It’s safe. The house only wants us to think otherwise.”

Lucius’s eyes flicked to the goblet, then to her face. He said nothing, but the tightness in his shoulders eased fractionally.

Hermione pushed the goblet toward him. “If you don’t trust your eyes, trust the magic. It’s telling the truth.”

For a long moment he didn’t move. Then, with deliberate slowness, he lifted the goblet and drank.

The goblet still glowed green in Lucius’s hand when the stench abruptly lifted. One moment the table reeked of rot, the dishes crawling with decay. The next, as if some unseen hand had grown bored, it all snapped back. Perfect again.

Hermione sat back, her heart still thudding. “It gave up,” she murmured. “The moment we saw through it.”

Across from her, Lucius replaced the goblet, his expression unreadable.

She straightened. “That must be it. If we can’t break the enchantments, we have to outthink them. Prove they can’t fool us. Once we do, the house will move on.”

Lucius considered her, fingertips resting lightly on his cane. “Not unlike a duel,” he said at last. His voice was calm but sharper than before. “Each strike answered, until one party yields.”

“Except it won’t yield,” Hermione countered. “It will just change tactics.”

His mouth curved, though whether in irony or agreement she could not tell. “Then we must change faster.”

She looked down at the table and drew a slow breath. Her nerves still trembled, but a thread of determination wove through them.

“All right,” she said firmly. “Every enchantment. Every trick. We treat them the same way. Find the weakness. Expose it. Make the house move on.”

Lucius inclined his head, as though acknowledging an equal in this single matter.

They ate. And for the first time since entering the Manor, Hermione felt as if they had taken something back - a sliver of ground in a game that was only beginning.

Chapter Text

Dawn came and went twice more, both preceded and followed by deep night.

Lucius sat across from her, silent as ever, eyes fixed on some distant point in the hall. Hermione caught herself glancing at him, noting the sharp line of his jaw, the measured stillness he maintained despite the strangeness surrounding them.

Minutes passed. Or perhaps hours - it was impossible to tell.

She had pulled a book from the shelf, hoping for a distraction, and as she opened it, the pages blurred and twisted. The leather cover pulsed, then the spine shifted beneath her fingers. In an instant, the book’s body elongated, scales unfurling in the dim light. A small snake wriggled in her hands.

Hermione yelped, instinctively trying to shrink back.

Lucius was on his feet in moments, wand raised - not at the snake, but at the table beside them, where a small stack of objects floated. He muttered something under his breath. Hermione, following his lead, directed a diagnostic charm at the snake.

It stopped coiling. Just another trick.

Hermione exhaled, gripping the leather spine if the book. Her pulse slowed.

Lucius regarded her for a moment, expression unreadable. Then he returned to his seat as if nothing had happened.

Time had stretched endlessly, or so it felt. She was tired in a way that had nothing to do with her body - her mind spun, alert to every shift in the Manor, every flicker of light, every false shadow. She sank into a chair, rubbing her eyes.

Lucius watched her for a long moment. Finally, he spoke, voice low, careful: “You should rest.”

She hesitated, shaking her head slightly. She didn’t trust the house - and she didn’t trust him either, though the sharp tension between them had dulled to a tentative truce.

He seemed to have guessed her thought.

“We do need sleep at some point, Miss Granger,” he said reasonably. “If you are willing to trust me to stay awake, to watch the house while you rest, I will do the same once you awaken.”

She studied him, noting the precise, unflinching seriousness in his posture. Slowly, carefully, she nodded.

He gestured toward a corridor. “Guest rooms should be here. I would advise you to take the nearest one,” he said.

The hallway shifted subtly as she walked and came to a stop before a heavy door. She lifted her wand and cast diagnostic spells over the wood, the handle, the hinges. Nothing flared. Satisfied, she opened the door.

The room was vast, luxuriously furnished: high ceilings, tapestries along the walls, a massive bed piled with blankets and pillows that looked impossibly soft. She approached it slowly, testing her footing. The surface seemed solid, stable.

At last, she climbed on top. The sheets smelled faintly of lavender and something older and comforting. She closed her eyes, her wand resting at her side.

He remained in the main hall long after she had retired. The echoes of her retreating footsteps faded, leaving only the faint, unsettling silence of the Manor.

Reluctantly, he admitted to himself what he had resisted all day: the girl was bright. Her mind - logical, unflinching - had given them more advantage than his painstaking search through the library. Against a house that toyed with perception and time, her clarity of thought mattered. And if they were to find a way out… they might need to collaborate.

He stood, intending to inspect his own room, while detouring carefully to avoid Narcissa’s portrait. His steps slowed as he reached what should have been a corridor. A wall now barred the way. Odd. It seemed like the wing he remembered, where he had slept, did not exist in this older version of the Manor.

His study, then.

The door swung open easily. The space was familiar, yet subtly altered: bookshelves leaned differently, objects he had handled a thousand times were slightly askew, papers and ledgers in places he did not remember. Still, it was his. Enough so to inspire a measure of comfort.

He approached a sideboard and poured a glass of whiskey, noting with faint surprise its rich aroma. Better than his own. The Manor, in its older form, had certain advantages.

He took a slow sip, allowing the warmth to settle through him, and let his eyes drift across the shelves.

Strategising came next.

He noted how the Manor’s magic had been comparatively mild so far. Beyond a few illusions, nothing had struck at them - no true harm, just fear, disorientation. A test.

Perhaps, he thought, the house recognised the Malfoy blood within it. His heritage may have tempered its cruelty.

He swirled the whiskey, mind already moving ahead. The next course of action awaited. They needed advantage, leverage, some way to win the Manor’s game rather than merely endure it.

The girl’s strengths were obvious: logic, quick assessment and action. But she lacked context - knowledge of this house, of its wards, the pureblood history and customs.

He, in contrast, could grasp and read the subtleties she missed. He could anticipate. And, crucially, he knew the lineage that underpinned every corner of this place.

He began to envision the Manor as a warded space designed long ago by his ancestors. He wondered how he himself might have set it up against intruders, down to every illusion, every fear-inducing trick.

His gaze fell to his cane, the familiar silver snake coiled around the handle. It gleamed faintly in the dim light, so ordinary he had never given it a second thought. As he traced the curve with his eyes, and something clicked.

Snakes. Two snake illusions had appeared since their arrival. The Malfoy crest.

Then Narcissa’s portrait. Family, legacy, weakness.

The food next - lavish at first, then rotted before their eyes. A symbol of everything the Malfoys had always professed to stand against. Sanctimonia Vincet Semper. Purity will always conquer, that was the family motto - and they were being punished with decay, its opposite.

He let the thought settle.

It seemed that the house conjured by Malfoys played its games through Malfoy symbols. Perhaps those same symbols could be turned back against it. He did not yet know how but the principle seemed clear.

Heritage was the language here, and he could speak it.

A sound disturbed his thoughts. Soft footsteps echoing down the corridor. Lucius’s shoulders stiffened. He thought of Narcissa again and his hand tightened on the cane.

Then another figure emerged from the gloom.

The girl. Hair tousled from sleep, wand in her hand, eyes wary but clear. She was looking in into rooms as she was passing, evidently looking for him. Their eyes met and she paused.

“I thought it was your turn,” she said quietly.

Lucius exhaled, though his posture remained rigid, controlled. “You could have rested longer.”

“You should get some rest too.” She approached, still not quite entering the room. “We agreed, didn’t we? One awake, one asleep.”

“Very well. If you insist, I will take my turn.” He rose slowly, letting the serpent-headed cane strike softly against the stone floor. “But be wary. The house may try a new tactic once you’re alone.”

She gave a small, taut smile. “I’ll be ready.”

He studied her for a moment longer - her logical steadiness, her quickness to adapt. Useful qualities.

Then he inclined his head and withdrew.

Hermione hesitated a moment after Lucius left, then, wand in her hand, padded down the corridor. If the house wanted to play games, she might as well choose the ground.

She turned toward the room she had entered once before - the one that had been a library for her. The thought of testing it again sent a shiver down her spine, but curiosity and defiance carried her forward.

The door opened easily. And yes - shelves met her eyes once more, lined and endless. A library again, thank Merlin. She stepped inside, her pulse steadying slightly.

Her fingers trailed along the spines until she drew out a heavy volume bound in dark green leather: Rare and Obscure Charms. Settling into a chair by the hearth, she opened it, eager to lose herself in something rational and safe.

The text was fascinating. Complex enchantments she had only ever seen referenced in footnotes, spells with strange, precise uses. She leaned forward, hair falling over her shoulder, utterly absorbed.

But as she turned another page, the language began to shift. The crisp descriptions of charms bled into something else - narrative, not instruction. At first, she thought it was an allegory slipped into the text, some wizard’s way of storytelling. She kept reading, curious.

Her stomach tightened.

The tale described a young woman seated in a grand library, reading a book late at night. The room, the chair, the fire - all exactly as they were now. Then the details became unbearable: her hair, the fall of her sleeve, even the way her wand lay just within reach on the table.

Her eyes darted over the next line.

A great serpent uncoiled behind her, black scales glistening, its jaws opening wide as it struck, tearing into her, spilling her dirty blood across the library floor—

Hermione snapped the book shut. Her chair scraped loudly against the floor as she bolted upright, wand raised. She spun, breath ragged, eyes searching every shadow, every corner.

But there was nothing. Only the fire in the grate, the silent rows of books, the steady beat of her own pulse in her ears.

She stood frozen, alone in the vast, echoing library.

The kitchen was empty, the air cool and still. Hermione descended cautiously, her nerves raw. She told herself she wanted something to steady her - and sure enough, when she thought of tea, there it was. A steaming cup on the wooden table.

She sat, hands trembling faintly as she curled them around the mug. The heat seeped into her palms, anchoring her. She sipped slowly, willing her pulse to settle, though the picture from the book still burned behind her eyes.

The scrape of footsteps on the stairs jolted her. She half rose, wand lifting, until Lucius appeared in the doorway.

His gaze swept over her once. “What happened?”

She pressed her lips together. There was no use pretending - he saw too much - but she also wasn’t about to confess how shaken she felt. “Another of the Manor’s cruel tricks, as expected,” she said lightly, though her voice was thinner than she intended.

Lucius lingered at the threshold, studying her. For a moment she thought he might push, demand details. But then he inclined his head slightly, as though accepting her answer at face value.

He approached, and as he did, the kitchens shifted subtly around him - shelves and counters rearranging themselves into the familiar form of a dining room. Hermione allowed herself a quiet smile at the Manor’s mischievous attention to detail - and the amusement settled some of her nerves.

Lucius poured tea into a cup with his usual deliberate precision and set himself at the table.

A short silence passed, broken only by the gentle clink of china. Then they began to compare notes, as they had agreed they would. They concluded that a full day must have passed.

Hermione hesitated. “Do you think… someone might be looking for us?”

Before he had a chance to respond, her expression faltered, and she answered her own question. “We can’t know that. A day passed for us, but outside it might be different. Could be minutes, could be weeks.”

They looked at each other.

“Well,” he said, setting down his cup with care, “Trapped, under the threat of from my own house, and in your presence, of all people - hardly the morning I anticipated, but one adapts.”

Hermione blinked, caught off guard by the uncharacteristic light tone.

Still, she recognised the effort to ease the tension and, despite herself, allowed a small, grateful smile to touch her lips.

Chapter Text

The corridor stretched on longer than she remembered, its sconces burning with a steady, unnatural flame. Hermione kept her wand raised, every step measured. She had the uneasy sense of being watched - again.

Something flickered at the edge of her vision. A shadow at the far end, detached from any source. She stilled, heart beating faster. By the time she blinked, it was gone.

“Did you see—?” she began.

“No.” Lucius’s voice was even, but close, as though he’d moved a fraction nearer without thinking.

They carried on in silence until another disturbance: a door beside them creaked open with the slow inevitability of a sigh. Hermione swung her wand towards the darkness within, but the door eased shut again before she could take a step.

Her nerves jangled. “I don’t like this.”

“Nor I,” Lucius murmured. He sounded less dismissive than she expected.

They turned a corner, and there, halfway down the wall, hung a gilt-framed mirror. Hermione glanced into it, only to feel her stomach lurch. It reflected her alone. Lucius was absent, though he stood beside her.

“Merlin,” she whispered.

Lucius’s expression sharpened as he studied the glass. “An attempt at disquiet. Nothing more.”

But the Manor was not finished. The next mirror reflected Lucius alone, with Hermione missing. She felt the breath catch in her throat.

And then a third, larger mirror. Hermione stepped closer, almost against her will. This one showed them both - but interchangeably, one or the other, never both at once.

She turned sharply away, nausea coiling low in her stomach. “All of this, the shadows, the mirrors, it’s trying to separate us, isn’t it?”

Lucius inclined his head, his tone measured but with an edge beneath. “Divide, then weaken. Which suggests that the very opposite is required.”

Hermione nodded, grateful for the steadiness in his voice. “Then we don’t separate. Not even for a moment.”

A long pause, before he said, “Agreed.”

The Manor did not take their resolution kindly.

No sooner had the words left his lips than the sconces along the corridor sputtered violently, shadows coiling downwards into writhing serpents that slithered across the flagstones. They hissed in chorus, scales glinting in the sickly light.

Lucius stilled. The snake on his cane glimmered silver in the half-dark, and he drew it forward, raising the carved head as though it were alive. He cast a signature spell and focused sharply on willing the house to remember itself - to recognise his blood, his right.

The conjured serpents faltered, recoiled, then dissolved into smoke.

The girl exhaled, wand still raised. “That was—”

“Petulance,” Lucius cut in, lowering himself into calm. “The house makes its displeasure known. Nothing more.”

He did not indulge her with further explanation. Instead, he turned with perfect composure and announced, “We are going to a drawing room.”

The words were purposeful, an anchor for both their expectations. And so, when the next door opened, it revealed just that: a drawing room. The bones of the space were steady - chairs, low table, a hearth - though details flickered and shifted, uncertain of whose vision to obey.

Lucius noted the pale blue curtains with private disdain. They were her doing, clearly.

They settled into the room together. He did not miss the irony. A day ago - was it only a day? - he would have welcomed nothing less than her constant presence. The decision to remain side by side sat uneasily with him still. But it was sound strategy. He could hardly fault the logic.

And the truth was, the more time he spent with her, the less he found himself minding. Force of habit. He had grown used to her presence, the sound of her voice, her ceaseless reasoning. And she was useful. That was why, earlier, in what passed for a morning, he had broken the strained silence with a dry remark, a calculated touch of humour to ease her nerves. He would have her sharp, focused. Nothing more.

Lucius chose an armchair of dark leather and settled back, cane balanced across his knees. He gestured faintly for her to do the same.

The fire flared obligingly, though the flames burned a strange pale green.

The girl chose the armchair opposite his, settling with her wand still across her knees. For a while, they sat in silence.

At last, she spoke, her voice quieter than usual, though it carried clearly in the stillness. “Earlier… the Manor listened to you.”

Lucius regarded her steadily, fingers resting on the serpent’s head of his cane. “It remembers blood,” he said, matter-of-fact. “And old loyalties.”

She nodded, thoughtful, then hesitated. “Does it… want you here?”

An odd question. He let the pause draw out before answering. “The Manor wants obedience. I reminded it where its allegiance lies. I think it only worked because it was another empty illusion, meant merely to scare.”

Her brow furrowed, as though she might press further, but she let it go. She shifted instead, eyes flicking to the curtains.

“Do you think the Manor could be breached from the outside?” She glanced at him, then added quickly, “Harry and Ron will start looking, eventually.”

Lucius paused, weighing the thought. “If they do, it could prove useful. The ward may not be as impervious from the outside as it seems to be from here.”

She nodded, but her hands fidgeted slightly in her lap. After a moment she said, almost hesitantly, “And… Draco?”

He stilled. For over a year now, silence had stretched between them - a chasm he had not known how to cross. Ever since the war, Draco’s eyes, if they met his at all, had been cool, distant. Disappointed. And Lucius, shackled by his own failures, had not known whether to reach for him or let him go.

Narcissa’s painted face rose unbidden in his mind, her voice echoing yet again. Lucius did hope that Draco had inherited more of her strength than his own shadows.

Outwardly, he schooled his expression, tilting his cane across his knees with studied indifference. “My son,” he said finally, voice even, “is unlikely to notice my disappearance. And we should not depend on him if he does.”

She looked at him as if she wished to ask more, but thought better of it. She turned her gaze back to the fire. The silence that followed was heavier than before.

The fire had burned low, hissing faintly in its unnatural green, when Lucius finally rose.

“I see little profit in remaining seated and passive,” he said. “Shall we?”

They left the drawing room, Lucius a step ahead, cane tapping lightly against the flagstones.

“The gallery,” he said, almost to himself. “If it hasn’t shifted, we might learn something of the house’s… tastes.”

It was, at least, a direction.

The way began as it should: a mirror he half-recognised, a console table placed just so. He had walked this way countless times, and the familiar rhythm of door, sconce, door was steadying.

Until it wasn’t.

The details thinned, repeated themselves with unnerving precision. The mirror again. The table. There should have been windows at the far end, tall enough to let in proper light, but the windows did not appear. The corridor lengthened, sconces repeating in flawless measure.

He slowed, a prickle at the base of his neck.

“We should have reached the gallery by now.”

The girl stopped too, scanning the hall. “You’re certain?”

He gave her a look. “Quite, Miss Granger.” Then, more evenly: “At first the way was correct. Now it isn’t.”

A sconce guttered abruptly, flame dimming to a whisper. Another followed, and another.

The change came brutally fast. One moment the corridor stretched on in unnatural repetition - the next, it fractured. Staircases dropped away into shadow, side-passages opened like wounds, turns appeared where none had been before.

Lucius halted, cane grounding him as his eyes adjusted. The house had reshaped itself into a maze - one meant to disorient, likely to exhaust.

He caught himself marking each candle, noting which guttered lower, which trembled near to extinction.

The girl lit her wand. The white glow flared but did little to fight the encroaching dark - the candles seemed to drink from it, sputtering out one by one as if resenting her interference. She tried again, but each time the light pushed forward, the sconces answered by failing.

A losing game: too many, failing too quickly. Within minutes they would be blind.

Beside him, the girl’s gaze had sharpened. Her eyes tracked the pattern of each dying flame. She lifted her wand, aimed not at the dark ahead but at the candle about to fail, and murmured a spell he didn’t recognise. The flame steadied, holding its strength a moment longer.

She tried again with the next one, and again with the next. In every direction, the sconces flared weakly back to life, kept from collapsing. The passage no longer plunged into blackness, though the light remained faint.

When she looked at him, Lucius understood without the need for words: she would hold the maze at bay, but he must decide the way.

He hesitated briefly. He knew the Manor’s bones, even if this grotesque mimicry sought to twist them. The gallery had vanished, but if he treated this as the eastern wing, then - left, right, down a flight of stairs, a corridor that bent back, another descent, a long passage, two rights more - yes, it might bring them to the main hall.

“Here,” he said quietly, indicating the first turn.

She moved, her wand flicking to stabilise the faltering candles. The pace was grueling. Each turn they made, another passage opened. Each stair they climbed or descended, another stretch of sconces threatened to collapse. Time seemed to hold its breath as Lucius pressed them on.

By the time they should be nearing the great doors of the main hall, the girl’s movements had slowed. Her wand dipped slightly as she forced yet another faltering flame to hold.

Lucius slowed.

“Tell me,” he said, voice edged with command, “what I can do to ease the strain. What are you casting?”

She drew breath, steadied her hand. “An extension charm,” she said. “I… adapted it during the war. Cast on Lumos.”

The ingenuity of it was striking. It kept the light bound and sustained, threading magic into the flame itself rather than expelling it outward. Subtle. Clever.

“Show me the pattern,” he said.

He cast alongside her. The unfamiliar spell sat awkwardly on his tongue, but it worked - the candles held. Together they carried the light through the final stretch, until at last the doors swung open and the oppressive weight of the maze dissolved.

Lucius lowered his wand, exhaling slowly. He had steered them true, but only because her brilliance had bought him the chance to do so. One without the other would have failed.

He felt something like respect raise in him.

He turned to her, studied the exhaustion in her features, and allowed himself a single, measured truth. “An elegant piece of magic,” he said. “Truly admirable.”

Her eyes widened slightly at the admission. After a beat, she inclined her head. “Thank you.”

They stood in the main hall. Hermione pressed her back against the cold stone pillar, wand still raised. She was about to speak when the sound came.

A scrape, low and harsh, from one of the side corridors. Then another. Not footsteps. Too heavy.

The thing emerged slowly from the dark: a hulking chimera-like beast, lion’s body rippling with muscle, serpent tail thrashing.

Hermione’s mouth went dry. She stayed rooted, praying it was only a vision meant to frighten them. But the hairs on her arms prickled.

She risked a diagnostic charm - simple and clean. The spell confirmed it. Not illusion. Not projection. Real.

Her stomach lurched.

“Here.” Hermione whispered. Together, they slipped back into the shadow of a side passage. Her heart hammered as the beast’s claws scraped closer, echoing against the floor.

They held their breath. For a moment she thought - hoped - it would pass them by. Vanish into wherever it came from.

But its head turned, all sets of eyes trained on the darkness where they hid. It was hunting. The serpent tail hissed, striking at the air.

“Run,” Lucius breathed, and they did, darting across the hall, ducking behind another archway just as the chimera lunged. The crash of its body hitting stone shook dust from the ceiling.

Hermione’s chest burned. They couldn’t keep fleeing. “We have to capture it,” she whispered urgently. “Contain it safely.”

Lucius’s reply was sharp. “That is a lovely sentiment, but no. We need to kill it.”

But she was already stepping out, leveling her wand. Light shot from its tip, the petrification charm hitting the beast’s forelegs.

For one wild second, she thought it had worked. Then, with a sickening twist, two new legs tore their way out of its flank. It roared and came on, more furious than before.

Lucius barked a command - quick, precise - directing her to the lion while he took the serpent. His curse struck true: the snake’s head shrieked once before disintegrating into nothing.

Hermione’s spell faltered. Still tired from maintaining the candles, her arm wasn’t steady enough and her aim slipped. The jet of light went above the lion’s head, harmlessly.

The best turned on Lucius. Its strike was brutal and sudden - claws raked across his upper arm, tearing through fabric and flesh. He staggered back and fell against the wall.

Something hot surged through Hermione - guilt, anger, fear all tangled together. She sprang forward before she could think, driving her wand upward. Her spell struck between the lion’s shoulders, clean and hard.

It let out a fractured scream before its body folded in on itself and vanished into the air.

Hermione turned sharply.

Lucius remained braced against the floor, his good hand pressed to his shoulder. Blood seeped fast through the fabric of his robes. His face was pale, but composed. He tried to heal the wound, angling the wand awkwardly with his weaker arm, but the spell fizzled uselessly against the torn flesh.

“Stop,” she said, more sharply than she intended. She crossed the marble floor in three strides and caught his wrist. “You can’t reach it properly. You’ll make it worse.”

He met her eyes, gaze cool despite the pain.

“You will let me tend this,” she said, voice firm with the kind of authority she had not meant to claim.

Shockingly, Lucius Malfoy obeyed. He allowed her to steer him towards the broad steps of the hall. She pressed him down onto the lowest one, the marble cold beneath them, and raised her wand with a steadiness she did not feel.

The pain was blinding, white and relentless, blotting out the marble floor and the wreckage of the fight. Lucius braced hard against the flagstones, but his breath was shallow, his vision pricked with dark flecks.

The cut burned, every movement dragging the wound wider.

The girl’s voice reached him through the haze - sharp, insistent. He barely registered the words, only the authority in them. When her hand closed around his wrist and tugged, he let her. It was easier to follow than to argue.

She pressed him down onto the steps of the hall. The marble was bitterly cold through his robes. He allowed that too.

She fumbled with his robes, muttering under her breath, and the tugging at fabric jarred the wound. Lucius pushed her hands aside and worked the fastenings himself. He drew the robe away from his shoulder, baring the torn shirt and the raw, blood-slick flesh beneath. The effort made his vision swim.

Her wand hovered close. She examined the wound with brisk precision, her voice low and measured. “The tendon’s torn. I’ll need to mend that first, then close the rest. It will hurt.”

Lucius gave the smallest nod. Words were beyond him.

The first spell burned. His jaw tightened, but he made no sound. She worked quickly, carefully, her concentration absolute. Not the hand of a trained healer, but of someone who had practised under fire, who had learned enough to keep people alive in the worst of times.

He watched her through half-lidded eyes. It struck him - faintly, dimly - that not long ago he would have flinched from her touch, recoiled at the thought of her wand so near his skin. Now he was too exhausted to care.

And yet… exhaustion did not account for all of it. She worked with brisk, unshowy competence, her voice steady, her spells precise. He found himself oddly reassured by it, even as pain flared with each incantation.

She leaned closer, steadying his arm with one hand as she traced her wand over torn muscle. Her touch was light, almost delicate, and he became uncomfortably aware that it had been years since anyone had touched him so. Not since before the war. Not since Narcissa.

A strand of her hair brushed his jaw. The faint tickle was absurdly distracting. For one mad moment he felt the urge to reach for it, to brush it back, to know its texture between his fingers.

Lucius shut his eyes and buried it at once, forcing the thought down where it belonged.

Circumstance. Blood loss clouding his mind. It will all soon pass.

The last of the bleeding slowed under her wand, the edges of the wound drawing closed. Hermione exhaled, the spell finally settling into place. She lowered her hand, flexing her fingers to ease the cramp that had set in from holding steady so long.

“There,” she said quietly. “Try moving it - gently.”

Lucius adjusted his grip on his cane, then shifted his injured arm. His face betrayed nothing, though the smallest tightening at the corner of his mouth told her the pain was sharp. He rolled his shoulder once.

After a pause, he inclined his head.

“Thank you,” he said. The words were simple, precise, and - coming from him - surprisingly weighty. His gaze flicked toward the dark stretch of the hall. “I would suggest that we move back to the drawing room before something else appears in these halls.”

She nodded, more relieved than she cared to admit. Together they crossed the vast floor, until the door opened onto a space of armchairs and firelight. Hermione sank into one, letting the warmth of the hearth bleed into her bones, while Lucius settled opposite.

For a few moments, they sat in silence, the fire cracking in the grate. Hermione’s thoughts were still in the hall - on claws against marble, on glowing eyes and a serpent’s hiss.

“It wasn’t random,” she said at last. “That beast.”

Lucius glanced at her, the firelight throwing his profile into sharp relief.

“A chimera made of lion and snake,” she went on. “It was meant for us. A tailored threat.”

“I thought as much,” Lucius replied evenly. “That is why I pressed for us to attack our own symbols, not each other’s.”

Her brows knit. “Why not the other way around?”

He rested his uninjured arm along the chair’s armrest, gaze steady on the fire. “Because I think the Manor is intent on pitting us against each other as much as against it. A Gryffindor striking down the serpent, a Slytherin the lion - too neat a symmetry. Too tempting a trap. Better to refuse the script it offered.”

Hermione considered this, and despite the weight in her chest, found herself almost impressed. “And if you had been wrong?”

“Then we would both be dead, and my theory would at least be unassailable.”

Hermione allowed herself to be quietly amused by the phrasing, then shook her head.

“Still, we already knew the Manor was watching us, so I think that’s not the part that matters here.” She drew in a breath. “Today proves the Manor isn’t confined to tricks or illusions. It can do us real harm.”

Lucius’s eyes narrowed slightly. “An escalation.”

“I think so.” She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “Before, it tried to disorient us. We could reason our way out. But now - it’s willing to draw blood, even yours.”

The fire popped, sharp in the quiet.

Lucius regarded her evenly, though there was a gravity in his tone when he spoke.

“Then we must assume every step forward will be contested. And that whatever game the Manor plays, it is not yet finished with us.”

Hermione’s gaze flicked up to meet his. He held her eyes for a moment, his expression as composed as ever, but there was no mistaking the steel beneath it.

Chapter Text

Lucius woke with a start, the unfamiliar softness beneath him jarring. For a moment he could not place where he was, or why his arm ached so bitterly when he shifted.

Then memory returned in fragments - the chimera’s roar, the bite of claws, blood on marble - and her voice, insistent, telling him he must rest first this time.

Hermione.

He caught himself on the name, wondered since when he thought of her in such familiar terms, then let the thought slide away. It was of no consequence.

He sat up carefully, the room resolving into its details: firelight flickering across high-panelled walls, shadows stretching into corners.

When they had agreed not to separate, not even to sleep, they had chosen this room for its practicality. Two beds stood against the far wall, but it was the hearth that anchored the room - broad, crackling, flanked by two plush armchairs.

Hermione sat in one, book in hand, her figure outlined by the fire’s glow.

He rose, smoothing his robes, his hair, making himself presentable out of long habit. The stiffness in his shoulder was sharp, but manageable. Crossing the room, he joined her at the fire.

She looked up and - to his mild surprise - smiled. At him.

“You should rest now,” he said quietly, lowering himself into the opposite chair.

She marked her place in the book without protest, stood, and moved about the room in soft, efficient motions.

He kept his eyes on the fire, the crackle of logs a steady rhythm, until he heard the faint rustle of blankets as she lay down, the last shift of her weight, the soft exhale as she settled beneath the covers.

The fire filled the silence, steady and warm, and for the first time in longer than he cared to admit, the quiet did not feel oppressive. It struck him that he had grown used to solitude, to the measured distance of others, even in his own house. Companionship had become something theoretical.

And yet here she was.

This peculiar bond of enforced circumstance, of facing danger together, relying on one another not out of preference but necessity - he had expected it to chafe. Instead, he found it steadying.

His gaze shifted, despite himself, toward the bed. He could not see her face, only the outline of her form against the fire’s glow. The rise and fall of her breathing was even, unguarded.

There was an intimacy to it, he realised. To sit awake while another slept in one’s presence. To be given the silent permission to watch over them.

Lucius looked back to the fire at once, as if caught in a trespass, and let the crackle of burning logs pull him back into his thoughts.

The day passed in fragments - sleep, a meal conjured in wary silence, hours in the drawing room beneath the mantle of watchfulness neither of them named. They had ventured through the corridors as well, together always, but the Manor lay inert around them. No shifting walls. No guttering candles. No monstrous shapes at the end of halls.

Nothing.

Lucius felt it in the marrow of his bones: the waiting. He caught it in her, too, though she carried it differently. She walked a fraction too quickly through empty rooms, eyes flicking over mirrors and doors as though expecting them to betray her. She held her wand nearer than before, and though her voice was measured when she spoke, its cadence was clipped, deliberate, as if speech itself had become another form of vigilance.

The real Manor had never been silent in this way. Here, the hush had weight. Each creak of the floorboards rang like a warning. Each clock that marked the hour only underscored the fact that time was passing without incident.

It should have been a reprieve. Instead, it was suffocating.

By what they supposed was evening, as they returned again to the drawing room, Lucius caught himself half expecting the armchair to bite when he lowered himself into it. His cane rested against his knee, his hand poised upon it though there was nothing to fight.

Across the hearth, Hermione sat rigidly upright, book in her lap, though he doubted she was reading - she had not turned a page in some minutes.

It was odd. He was injured - shoulder stiff, movements slower than they ought to be. She was exhausted, shadows beneath her eyes betraying the strain she tried to mask. Together they were not at their sharpest, not by any measure.

An ideal moment, then.

The Manor had shown itself capable of cruelty, of calculation. This should have been when it struck, pressed its advantage. And yet the silence held, the rooms behaved.

Lucius’s fingers tightened on the head of his cane.

The quiet pressed in, until he heard himself speak without having made the decision.

“That spell you used in the maze,” he said, his tone measured, as though it were a calculated inquiry and not an impulse. “The one that held the candles. How did you devise it?”

Hermione looked up, caught off guard. For a moment, she seemed to weigh whether to answer at all.

“It’s… an adaptation,” she said finally, cautious. “I created it during the war. We needed spells that could hold under pressure. I had been studying extension charms before - it struck me that they might balance weaknesses of other spells. So I tested it.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but restrained.

“And have you… invented others?”

A hesitation, then the smallest nod. “A few.”

That might have been the end of it. Yet something in her reserve pricked at him, and before he knew it, he was pressing further. “I should like to hear about them.”

This time, when she looked up, the surprise in her eyes was quickly followed by something else - something brighter.

Tentatively, she began to explain: layering protections, binding enchantments so they reinforced each other rather than collided, charms bent in directions they were never meant to go.

And as she spoke, the hesitation bled away. Her words gained speed, her hands moved to illustrate, her eyes lit with the unmistakable fire of conviction.

Lucius listened. More than that, he found himself asking questions, again and again.

Privately, he noted the change in her. The tension that had marked her face these past days melted into animation. Her eyes shone, her whole presence sharpened and warmed.

It was… magnetic. Not only her mind, though that was formidable. It was the energy itself. A force of will that seemed to kindle the very air around her.

At one point, she paused mid-flow, eyes intent on his, and asked, “And what about the older spells - traditional pureblood work? How did families like yours preserve them?”

The question struck him oddly. He had braced, instinctively, for a note of judgement in her tone, some residue of the righteousness that had marked the war years. He had expected contempt, or at the very least suspicion.

But there was none.

Her voice was calm, curious. She wasn’t challenging him - she was simply asking, with the same eagerness she had shown in discussing her own invention.

It was disarming.

For a moment he considered withholding, keeping the old magic close, as he always had. But, slowly, he began to speak. He told her of the way certain lines had refined spells until they carried a particular family’s signature. Of enchantments designed to be taught only within blood, locked into objects, passed down like heirlooms. He explained the weaving of charms into architecture, the way walls themselves could be coaxed into watchfulness, not through brute force but centuries of layered craft.

She listened, her eyes sharp with fascination. No scepticism. No disdain. Just interest - real and hungry.

It was a new experience. Every other soul in his life had been pureblood, steeped in these traditions since childhood. For them, his knowledge was neither novel nor remarkable. But to her, it was discovery.

He realised he was enjoying this.

Enjoying her interest. He liked that it came from such a mind, quick and incisive. From a woman whose intelligence had already proved itself in ways few ever had.

Enjoying the way she listened, as though what he said mattered.

Enjoying the warmth of her attention, directed wholly at him.

Suddenly he became aware that he had leaned in closer, drawn in. What on Earth was he doing?

He sat back, spine straightening, gaze fixed on the hearth.

Hermione listened with rapt attention, her eyes fixed on him as he spoke. The words he offered - about bloodline enchantments, ancestral wards, the ways magic could be coaxed to cling to objects and walls - were unlike anything she had ever heard.

Knowledge denied to her by birth, locked away in family lines, now unfolding before her.

She had thrived on discovery since childhood, hoarding facts, spells, stories, anything that widened her understanding of the world. And this was a glimpse into a realm she had only ever brushed against, never invited to enter.

And the strangeness of it struck her.

Lucius Malfoy, of all people. The proud, aloof patriarch, polished and cold, from a world that had scorned her very existence. She would never have guessed that she would one day sit across a fire from him, speaking like this.

And he was not what she had expected. He was sharp, yes, but not only in the cutting way she remembered. Intelligent. Knowledgeable.

More than that, his voice - always so measured, so distant - sounded different now. Animated. There was something in the cadence, in the quickening of his tone, that drew her in against her better judgement.

Later that night, she tugged the covers around her shoulders and lay back, eyes tracing the soft outline of Lucius in the armchair. The firelight flickered across his back, casting long shadows over the polished floorboards.

She closed her eyes.

The crackle of the fire was the only sound. Somewhere in the distance, the Manor seemed to sigh around them, waiting, watching. And for a moment, she allowed herself the smallest, most dangerous thought: that in this stillness, in this shared confinement, there was a kind of fleeting comfort, fragile as the flames.

“Hermione!”

Her eyes snapped open.

The voice was distant, yet insistent. She bolted upright in bed, heart hammering, and Lucius’s eyes met hers across the room. His face remained blank, as if he had not heard the call at all.

But she had, again.

“Mom?” she whispered, though the word barely left her lips before the voice called again - this time urgent, panicked. Her pulse spiked.

She swung her legs off the bed and stumbled toward the sound, ignoring his question.

A faint shuffle behind her told her he was moving as well, but she paid no mind. Her focus narrowed to the sound of the voices - at first her mother, then both parents, frightened, calling out.

The Manor couldn’t have trapped her parents as well, could it? They were muggles. Vulnerable to this place in ways Hermione didn’t want to think about.

“Miss Granger! What is—”

She didn’t pause. “It’s my parents! They’re calling me. I don’t know how, but it’s them!” Her words tumbled over themselves as she stumbled forward, driven by the voices.

He moved to intercept, voice steady but insistent. “Stop! This is the Manor again, another one of its games.”

“You don’t know that. I have to check!” she called back.

The voices rose again, afraid and pleading. She broke into a run, heedless of her surroundings.

The space ahead stretched impossibly, twisting stairs and corridors into angles that should not exist.

Suddenly, the floor beneath her vanished. For a heartbeat, she plummeted.

A hand wrapped around her arm, yanking her back just in time.

She barely registered the weight against her before she heard the voices calling.

“I—” she gasped, struggling, trying to pull free, “I have to—”

“Enough,” he said, firm, his grip steady, unyielding. He forced her to stop and turn her to face him. “Look at me. Now. They are not here.”

Her chest heaved, panic still hot in her veins, but gradually, her eyes met his. The firmness in them, the certainty, anchored her.

Rationality, buried under fear, began to seep back. The voices dwindled, first faintly, then entirely, leaving only the quiet of the corridor around them.

She stepped back, still catching her breath, mm. “Thank you,” she said softly, the words careful but sincere.

He said nothing, only inclined his head slightly, watching her.

Chapter Text

They walked in silence, their footsteps soft against the shifting stone. She was pale still, her composure worn thin, though her chin was lifted as if daring the Manor to strike again.

When they reached the room, she gestured toward the bed. “I’m done sleeping for now. It’s your turn.”

For a moment, he was ready to obey. But strangely, he hesitated. He could see the fine tremor in her hands, the way her gaze lingered on the shadows. She was in no state to be left alone.

“Miss Granger,” he said carefully, “your parents are surely safe.”

She gave him a sad, fleeting smile, her eyes fixed on the fire. “I should have known it was an illusion from the start. My parents don’t know my name anymore.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

Her voice was quiet. “I altered their memories during the war. Made them forget me, forget magic, everything. Gave them new names, a new life in Australia. It was the only way I saw to keep them safe.”

He lowered himself slowly into the chair, his brows drawing together.

He was speechless at the enormity of it - the sacrifice, the loneliness it entailed. In his darkest hours during the war, he had still had Narcissa, and Draco, even if at times fractured and fraught. She had been alone.

And he could see it in her expression still - the hollow ache beneath her composure.

He was awed.

Softly, before he quite realised what he was doing, he said, “On our first day here, I saw my wife. She had been dead for years, and yet… there she was.”

Her gaze lifted to his.

He paused, not quite meeting Hermione’s eyes. “What she said to me was cruel - but it struck close enough to truth to wound. The Manor knows how to cut, Miss Granger. That is its method. It preys on what we fear. That is why you must not give in.”

For a long moment, neither spoke. The fire cracked softly, the Manor itself silent as if listening.

She was still shaken, the echo of those voices clinging like a chill that refused to leave her skin. She needed something to do, something practical to steady herself.

“May I check your arm?” she asked, her voice a touch too brisk.

He gave the faintest nod, and let her guide his sleeve back. She bent to inspect the shoulder, the spellwork she had done earlier. It was knitting well - better than she had expected, in truth.

The longer she worked, the more aware she became of him watching her. His gaze was not intrusive, not even particularly pointed, but she felt it all the same. Felt it so keenly that her hands grew clumsier than usual, and she had to force herself to focus on the wound instead of on the weight of his eyes.

Finally, she straightened. “It looks much better,” she said quietly. “You should take your turn at resting.”

Lucius rose and walked towards the bed. She turned back to the fire, letting the crackle of it mask the restless beat of her thoughts.

At breakfast, Hermione impatiently pushed her plate aside and spread a parchment on the table between them. The sketch was messy, ink smudged in places from where she had leaned on it.

“Last night, or - well, when you were asleep - I’ve been trying to make sense of it,” she said, tapping at the jagged lines. “This is supposed to be the plan of the Manor, and I tried to mark the traps on it. The more I look at it… I think there might be a pattern.”

Lucius leaned back in his chair, pale fingers resting on the serpent’s head of his cane. His expression gave nothing away.

“If we link these points chronologically, it looks a bit like a number six,” Hermione went on. “But it doesn’t mean anything - to me, at least.”

He bent forward slightly to look. His gaze flicked over the parchment, then away again with a faint, dismissive shake of the head. “Nor to me.”

Hermione frowned. “Then I started wondering - we had assumed the smaller illusions were there just to scare and confuse us. But what if they are part of it, too? The snakes. The mirrors. If I try to map those as well, the pattern…” She hesitated. “Well, I get lost. The house shifts too much.”

Without a word, Lucius extended a hand. She passed the parchment to him, and he held it in long fingers, his eyes narrowing. A silence stretched between them as he studied her lines, adding corrections with quick strokes of his quill. What had been a crude spiral began to resolve into something else - a cross flanked on one side by diagonal lines.

Lucius stilled.

“This,” he said quietly, “is not a six.” He angled the parchment toward her. “It is a letter. A G.”

Hermione blinked at him. “G?”

“For Guillaume.” His voice carried the polished certainty of someone reciting a fact etched deep in memory. “Guillaume le Conquérant. William the Conqueror.”

“The… muggle king of England?” she asked, baffled.

His lips curved in a faint, humourless smile. “And before that, Duke of Normandy. From him came the land grants that established the Malfoy line here in England. My ancestor was among those rewarded for his loyalty. This,” he tapped the parchment “is no accident.”

Hermione sat back, absorbing that. “So the Manor is drawing on that history?”

“It would seem so,” he said, almost grudgingly. His eyes had taken on a faraway cast. He tapped the other pattern. “A cross with tails. The banner Guillaume carried at Hastings.” He exhaled slowly. “That is why the Manor bristled when I tried to lead us into the gallery. There hangs a replica of the Bayeux Tapestry. I might have recognised this earlier.”

Hermione’s gaze returned to the parchment, to the bold letter that had seemed to grow out of her random scrawl. “If it’s a name… it isn’t finished. It should be G I. Guillaume the First. That would suggest: two more traps. If we mark and connect them, they’ll form a line, spelling it out.”

Lucius’s eyes flicked to hers, something sharp glinting there. “For you, perhaps. For those he conquered, he was William the First of England. But for my forebears…” His voice dropped. “He was Guillaume the Second of Normandy. G II. Four traps, not two.”

The weight of it settled between them.

Hermione stared at the ink lines, imagining what else the Manor had yet to unleash.

“Four traps,” she repeated softly. “And when the pattern is complete - what then?”

Lucius said nothing for a long while, his gaze fixed on the parchment as if he might wrest the answer from its ink. Finally, he admitted, “I cannot see it yet.”

Hermione folded her arms, fighting off a shiver. The Manor had a destination in mind.

The corridor stretched ahead in dim silence, their footsteps muffled on the carpet. Lucius walked a half-step behind her, cane tapping in rhythm with his stride. His mind was still on the parchment, and on Hermione’s sharp brilliance. She saw order where others would see chaos.

Hermione moved quickly, as ever. She reached the corner before him, her robes vanishing from sight as she turned.

A moment later, she appeared again, striding toward him. He raised his head, ready to ask if she had thought of something more—

The curse missed his shoulder by an inch.

Another flared toward him before he could speak. He twisted aside, the spell sizzling into the wall, blackening the panelling.

“What are you doing?” he demanded, incredulous.

There was no answer.

She advanced on him with cold precision, eyes hard, wand snapping through the air. Another curse grazed his sleeve, hissing as it burned the fabric. He conjured a shield in reflex, her next spell sparking against it with enough force to jar his injured arm.

“Miss Granger!” His voice sharpened, demanding sense, but she did not falter. Her gaze was all fury, stripped of hesitation, as though she had wanted this moment all along.

Lucius back-stepped, deflecting, the serpent-headed cane in his off-hand clattering against the wall. He could have struck her down - there were a dozen curses ready on his tongue. But the words tangled in his throat, refused to leave. The thought of turning his wand on her was abhorrent, impossible.

Another curse slipped through.

Agony ripped through his shoulder, white-hot and merciless, tearing open the half-mended wound. He staggered, breath shattering, as blood soaked the sleeve of his robe and dripped lightly down his arm. The world swam with the sudden flare of pain.

She pressed her advantage, sending two more spells toward him. His shield shattered under the first, the second forced him back into the wall.

Lucius braced himself against the panelling, vision narrowing. She knew where to strike - she aimed for weakness.

A single thought cut through the pain, sharp as a blade.

This isn’t her.

He lunged sideways, rounded the corner—

And froze. Hermione was there, the real Hermione, wand raised, a shield shimmering before her as another himself advanced, cold-eyed and merciless.

The surge of relief came first, but it tangled at once with fury, sharp and choking.

He stepped forward, placing himself in her line of sight. Their eyes met across the shimmer of the shield. For a heartbeat, she faltered, staring between two Luciuses, identical down to the cut of their robes.

Then she moved, swift and certain, pressing close to his side and turning until they stood back-to-back. He felt the warmth of her shoulder against his injured arm.

For a moment, he let himself feel it: her trust, implicit. Anger flared again, hotter than the wound burning at his side. This was what the Manor sought to shatter. It would not succeed.

“On my mark,” he murmured, voice low enough for her alone.

Her answer was steady. “Ready.”

They moved as one. Lucius raised his wand and sent a curse slamming into his double’s chest. The false Lucius staggered, eyes widening before the figure crumpled, dissolving into smoke that curled and vanished into the floorboards.

Behind him, he heard Hermione’s sharp incantation, the thud of her doppelgänger collapsing.

The corridor rang with silence, empty but for their ragged breathing.

Slowly, they turned toward each other. In the dim light of the corridor he saw it - the angry cut on her lip, bright against her pale skin.

His voice, when it came, was gentler than he intended. “Allow me.”

She blinked, startled by the tone more than the words. Then she nodded.

He lifted his wand with care, murmuring the charm. The wound closed neatly, leaving only a faint pinkness where the blood had been.

Her tongue touched the healed skin, eyes flicking up to meet his.

“Are you—” she began, but broke off. She was staring at his shoulder, where blood must have seeped through his sleeve.

Her brows drew together. “Come with me.”

Without waiting for agreement, she led the way to the drawing room. The fire had burned low, shadows stretching across the floorboards.

She wasted no time. “Show me,” she said.

Lucius set aside his cane and shrugged out of his outer robe with deliberate slowness, the gesture more exposing than he cared for. When the injured shoulder was bared, her lips pressed into a tight line. The wound was raw and ugly, the fresh curse having ripped through the half-healed scar beneath.

She raised her wand, movements precise, and started mending. Cool magic spread across his skin, soothing the worst of the pain.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly as she worked. “That it hurt you like this. It must have been very painful.”

He inclined his head once, the only answer he could give.

But he understood what she was truly saying: how pain could drive a person past their restraint, how the Manor had wanted him to lash back at her in rage. She was wondering if he might have done it.

He met her eyes, his voice soft. “We prevailed only because we both refused to hurt each other.”

Her gaze did not waver, and neither did his. The firelight behind her caught in her hair, softening the harshness of the shadows around them.

He should have looked away. He did not.

The moment stretched, and in it something settled in him with a clarity he had not sought. He trusted her with his life. Trusted her more than he had trusted anyone in years.

Her touch anchored him in the thought. He drew in a breath, steady but careful, as though one wrong exhale might shatter the fragile balance between them.

He found he could not quite school the heat that rose in his chest, the startling recognition of what had already taken root.

Not obligation. Not necessity. Something else.

Emotion crystallised, undeniable.

Hermione let her wand fall back to her side, the spell finished. But her other hand lingered on his shoulder - his skin was warm beneath her palm, the fabric of his shirt rough with dried blood.

He didn’t move. Not even a flinch.

When she finally glanced up at him, she found his eyes already on her. There was nothing of his usual polished distance there. Only stillness, intent and unnervingly raw.

Heat touched her cheeks and she pulled her hand back. His eyes followed the movement.

She thought of the way he had stood at her back, of the words he had spoken only minutes ago: we prevailed only because we both refused to hurt each other.

That was why this silence felt different. Why his gaze felt different.

Hermione parted her lips, a question forming, but no sound came. She turned her head instead, looking toward the fire, hoping the glow might disguise the confusion she felt.

Chapter Text

Hermione scanned another shelf, tracing the spines with her fingers, frustration mounting. Dusty tomes on lineage, on obscure rituals, on the founding of old families - but nothing directly about William the Conqueror. Or Guillaume, as Lucius had so carefully corrected her.

She sighed, pushing another book back a little too sharply.

From the corner of her eye, she caught movement. Lucius leaned against the doorway, tall and immovable, his cane resting lightly in his hand. He hadn’t crossed the threshold.

Of course. If he entered, the Manor might decide to twist the library out of existence. He lingered because he knew she needed this space. The thought was oddly reassuring.

“Any success?” he asked.

“Not much,” she admitted. “Plenty of references to grants and holdings, but nothing that tells us where all this is leading.”

He considered her for a moment, then said, “Perhaps we should try the gallery again.”

Her head lifted. “You think it will let us through now?”

“We have already uncovered the connection. The Manor may not bother to conceal it further.”

Hermione closed the book with a soft thud and joined him. His stride matched hers as they walked the familiar corridor, the Manor unnervingly quiet.

They reached the door and it opened without resistance.

She blinked as they stepped inside. The gallery stretched wide, lined with portraits. The frames shimmered between heavy dark wood and gilt-edged mouldings, flickering back and forth in an unsettling rhythm. Gold, wood, gold, wood - her imagination and Lucius’s memory caught in conflict.

Lucius gestured toward the far wall, where a great stretch of embroidered cloth hung in careful folds.

“The Bayeux Tapestry,” he said.

Hermione stepped closer, her breath catching. Horses, spears, knights, stitched figures moving in endless parade across the linen. She raised her hand but stopped herself before touching.

“And beyond it, my ancestors.” He motioned to the portraits flanking the tapestry - stern faces, sharp eyes, variations of the same hair and features repeated down the generations.

Hermione studied them in silence. So much history, bound into these walls.

Hermione drifted along the gallery wall, pausing before the first portrait. The frame flickered between gilt and dark wood, but the figure within was steady: a severe man in armour, gaze turned toward some imagined horizon.

“Tell me about him,” she said, tilting her head toward the knight.

Lucius stepped closer, his cane clicking softly against the floor. “Armand Malfoy. He rode with Guillaume across the channel and was rewarded for his service with land. Ruthless in negotiations, if the stories are to be believed.”

Hermione’s lips quirked, just slightly. “That seems to run in the blood.”

His answering smile was quick, unbidden. He was absurdly pleased she had drawn that connection.

He watched her move on, her eyes alight with questions.

She stopped before a smaller canvas tucked between two grander frames. The frame flickered again around the figure of a woman seated in a chair, her expression calm, her hand resting on a closed book.

“And her?” Hermione asked.

“Isolde Malfoy. She lived during Henry II’s reign. While her husband concerned himself with court, she managed the estate. Letters survive - correspondence with abbots, stewards, rival families. It was said she governed more wisely than any man of her line.”

Hermione leaned closer, studying the details of the painted face. Almost absently, she said, “That book isn’t for show.” Seeing his raised brow, she continued. “See the wear at the edge? Whoever painted her had seen her with it in hand, often enough to think it part of her.”

He stilled, looking again. Indeed, the painted spine was rubbed in places, as though the artist had taken pains to suggest familiar use. Something he had never noticed.

She went on. “And the chair - it’s too large. It frames her, makes her look smaller. Whoever commissioned this wanted to show she was powerful, but only within boundaries. Not ruling - just advising, perhaps.”

Lucius watched her, struck. He had been taught the names, the lineages, the dates. He had memorised accomplishments as one memorises sums. But Hermione had looked once, and seen the struggle between image and truth.

He found that he liked it. Liked how her mind moved beneath the surface, tugging at details until they yielded another meaning.

He wanted to hear more. Wanted to ask what else she saw, what she would make of all the faces staring down at them.

And, foolishly, he wanted to know what she might read in him.

They had been in the gallery for what felt like hours. Hermione’s back ached from standing, her mind sore from trying to piece together connections that seemed always just out of reach. She was about to suggest they leave when a sound stopped her cold.

A long, heavy drag against stone.

Her skin prickled. She knew that sound. She had never forgotten it. The basilisk at Hogwarts, its monstrous body sliding unseen through the pipes, then the corridors - she could still feel the terror of it.

Her eyes darted to Lucius’s. He had heard it too. Without a word, they edged toward the door. Very carefully, they peered out.

Her stomach dropped. A massive spectral serpent glided along the corridor, translucent and pale, its coils endless, its head brushing the ceiling beams.

Fear froze her in place. For a moment, she was that girl again - young, heart hammering. But she shook herself. She was not a schoolgirl anymore. She had been through war. She had fought worse than this. She was not defenceless.

The door gave a faint creak.

The serpent stilled. Its head tilted, tongue flickering. Then it began to turn toward them.

Hermione backed away silently until she disappeared around the corner, and saw Lucius doing the same. The snake slid forward, stopping at the doorway. Its head hovered, tongue tasting the air. Listening. After a long moment, it turned and drifted away.

Hermione caught Lucius’s eye, mouthing the question: Do you think it’s gone?

Suddenly, the serpent burst through the wall.

Hermione barely swallowed a scream. Together they fled, bolting into the corridor, down the stairs. Lucius spun, wand raised, firing hex after hex. Spells tore through the air, shards of light striking true, but the serpent barely flickered. Its ghostly body let everything pass through.

They ducked into a room that couldn’t decide if it was a guest room or a music room - the bed shimmered into a harpsichord and back into a bed again.

Hermione pressed her back to the wall, whispering fast: “I’ve read about spectral snakes - they’re solid or ghostlike at will, but both forms can be stopped by binding charms. I don’t know how to conjure one though.”

Lucius’s expression was grim, but certain. “I do. It takes time.”

He began, his wand tracing careful sigils in the air, silver light spilling. But the serpent slid through the wall moments later, its massive head turning toward them. The floor shook with the force of its coil.

“Run,” he snapped.

They bolted again, breathless, until they squeezed into a narrow space between the stairs and the kitchen. Lucius raised his wand again, hands steady despite his pale face.

Hermione heard the scrape and the hiss drawing nearer. Too near.

She looked at Lucius, then at the corridor, at the serpent’s shadow spilling across the wall. Her decision was instant.

She surged to her feet.

Lucius’s head snapped up, eyes blazing. “What—” he began, but she cut him off with a shout, already sprinting into the hall. “Don’t lose concentration! I’ll distract it.”

The serpent lunged for her, massive jaws snapping shut inches from her. She darted left, then right, forcing it to follow, keeping its attention fixed. One fang grazed her leg - just a scratch, but it burned, sickeningly real. She ran on, gritting her teeth.

Up the stairs. She tripped, and her wand slipped from her grasp and clattered away. She hit the landing hard. The serpent loomed above her, jaws yawning wide, striking down.

She hurled herself down the next flight of stairs, body slamming against the floor below. Pain exploded in her side. The serpent slid after her, floating leisurely. She had nowhere left to go.

Her breath hitched. No wand. No time. The fangs dipped close, so close she felt the rush of air from them against her skin—

And then the serpent froze.

Hermione blinked up through the translucent body, chest heaving. Silver bands of light coiled around it, shackling it mid-strike. Beyond it, she saw Lucius, white-knuckled on his wand, silver streaming from its tip.

She lay gasping, pain radiating from her ribs, the serpent suspended above her, bound.

She moved before he understood what she meant to do. One heartbeat she was crouched beside him, curls wild, eyes sharp with fear. The next, she was sprinting straight into the corridor.

For one terrible instant, his focus wavered - but he forced himself back into the spell. If he broke concentration now, they would both die.

The hiss of the serpent rattled the walls, followed by the thunder of her footsteps. Lucius’s jaw locked. The sigils formed in perfect sequence, one after another, silver light carving the air. Every syllable of the incantation vibrated in his bones.

When at last the spell took shape, he rose to his feet and followed, his heart hammering an unsteady rhythm against his ribs. He moved quickly, his composure born of sheer will.

He found her sprawled on the stairwell, breath ragged, pain stark on her face. The serpent towered above her, fangs glinting as they descended.

Lucius lifted his wand and released the binding.

Silver bands snapped into being, coiling up the serpent’s body, locking it mid-strike. Its massive form shuddered, froze, suspended in the air like a grotesque statue.

Lucius waited a beat longer, then lowered his wand by degrees, every muscle strung taut.

Fury came first, untempered, like fire in a dry field. Reckless girl. She had hurled herself into the serpent’s path with no plan, no shield, no thought for the cost. She had risked everything on blind courage - and he had never known rage like this, not even in the Dark Lord’s service.

But beneath it, colder and far more dangerous, another truth pressed in.

He was shaken. His heart had lurched when she ran, and now, with the serpent bound above her, the echo of that moment clung to him like cold. He had imagined her gone and the thought had hollowed him in an instant.

Not his ally. Not the clever mind he relied upon. Her. Brilliant, stubborn, fascinating woman who had, without his consent, come to mean more with every hour they endured together.

The absurdity of it nearly made him laugh. It was preposterous, unbecoming, a betrayal of every careful boundary he had set for himself. And yet it was the only thing that felt real.

His gaze shifted downward. Her leg. The faint smear of blood. The way she pressed a hand to her side, trying to sit up. 

He knelt beside her, attending to the wound with a care he had reserved for no one. Then, slowly, he helped her to her feet. For a heartbeat, he held her steady, letting the closeness linger just enough to anchor them both.

“Hermione,” he said, the name slipping out before he could stop it. He caught the brief flash of surprise in her eyes - but she said nothing, made no protest. “You should not have done that,” he said, his voice low, clipped, trying to mask the raw edge beneath it. He could feel the tremor in his own restraint - afraid to let her see the depth of his alarm, yet desperate to make sure she understood the risk she had taken.

They stood there in silence, catching their breath.

Chapter Text

Hermione sat close to the fire, knees drawn in, staring into the flames. She had lost track of how long they’d been in this room. Long enough for the stillness to feel heavy, long enough for her thoughts to run in circles.

The soft clink of porcelain startled her. She turned and saw him - Lucius Malfoy, holding out a cup of tea as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

She blinked at it, then at him. She hadn’t asked. She hadn’t spoken at all. Yet here it was, exactly what she needed.

“Thank you,” she said quietly, fingers curling around the cup.

He inclined his head, the gesture too casual, almost studied. “You looked as though your thoughts had dragged you somewhere inhospitable. Tea tends to soften the edges.”

The remark was so measured, so very him, that she felt her lips twitch despite herself.

He sat beside her, settling with that precise dignity he never seemed to abandon.

He glanced at her, then at her cup. “Drink before it cools. I’m told tepid tea is one of civilisation’s cruellest affronts.”

The corner of her mouth twitched. “I thought you’d say the cruellest affront was, I don’t know, being locked up in a manor that tries to kill you?”

His brows lifted a fraction. “An inconvenience, certainly. But poorly served tea? That is barbarism.”

She laughed, a sudden, unguarded sound.

He turned his head, as though surprised, then let his mouth curve in something dangerously close to a real smile.

“Besides,” he continued smoothly, “the Manor has yet to offer me weak tea. I should almost appreciate it for that curtesy. At Hogwarts, on the other hand…” He gave a delicate shudder.

“You’re not serious.”

“Perfectly. The tea was appalling. One might have thought they brewed it with pond water.”

She shook her head, grinning despite herself. “Of all the complaints you could have had about Hogwarts, that’s the one?”

He steepled his fingers. “I make it a principle never to quarrel with castle architecture. Tea, however, is fair game.”

Hermione gave another laugh, unable to help it.

“And if you had been served proper tea?” she asked.

“Ah. Then perhaps I might have forgiven the draughts, the ghastly portraits, and the endless, tedious chatter about quidditch.”

She nearly choked on her drink. “You don’t like quidditch?”

Lucius arched a brow. “I assure you, I have spent a lifetime feigning enthusiasm. My son was a player, so I pretended to follow the scores. I have shouted ‘well played’ more times than I care to recall. But honestly, flying about on a broom, chasing a handful of balls? It is not sport. It is chaos in mid-air.”

She was laughing outright now, and the sound echoed strangely in the Manor’s stillness. He sat back, the faintest gleam of triumph in his eyes.

She was struck by something wholly unexpected: Lucius Malfoy was entertaining. His wit was sharp, his delivery perfectly measured - and when he chose to use it, the effect was entrancing.

She felt herself leaning closer without realising it, drawn in by this version of him she had never imagined: not the cold, distant aristocrat, but a man who could, when he wished, hold a room in the palm of his hand. A man who had, against all reason, just made her laugh until her sides ached.

“Why, Miss Granger,” he pressed on, tone as smooth and dry as ever, “Am I to understand you will insist on defending quidditch? I should have to lower my estimation of your judgment.”

She grinned into her cup, warmth curling in her chest. Then, before she quite knew what she was doing, she said softly, “You can keep calling me Hermione. If you want.”

He stilled. The next quip died on his tongue. For a long moment he simply looked at her, his expression unreadable.

Then, deliberately, as though testing the shape of the word, he said, “Very well, Hermione. And you,” he added, his gaze steady, “must call me Lucius.”

Her eyebrows shot up. Somehow, she had not anticipated that. Unease crept in - ridiculous, really, after everything they had faced - and yet she couldn’t turn back now, not after offering the change herself.

“Alright, Lucius,” she said quietly.

He inclined his head in acknowledgment, but she caught the way his eyes lingered on her, steady and intent.

A beat of silence stretched between them, filled only by the pop of the fire.

Then, with practised ease, he let the moment slide back into lightness. “Well, Hermione, I shall now consider it my duty to convince you of quidditch’s absurdity. If I can succeed there, I daresay I can accomplish anything.”

His voice was smooth, amused, as though nothing at all had shifted. But his eyes held hers longer than before.

They ate in the strange dining room the Manor had deigned to provide. He could not quite define the atmosphere at the table. Companionable, yes - but more than that. Animated. And warmer than it had ever been.

The silences that had once stretched between them were gone. Words came now, easy, unforced. She questioned, he answered. He teased, she retorted.

And he found himself wanting more.

He wanted to draw laughter from her again, sharp and sudden, to see her eyes alight. He wanted to impress her, to earn those moments when her focus locked onto him as if nothing else existed. He wanted her to interrupt him mid-sentence, impatient to counter with her own argument. To shake her head at him with that half-smile she wore when exasperated.

He had dined with ministers, charmed patrons, presided over tables filled with influence and power - yet he could not recall ever enjoying another’s attention, or their contributions, so entirely.

When the last plates vanished, Lucius rose and, on an impulse he could not entirely explain, suggested they take their wine through to the drawing room. Hermione agreed, and they moved together down the corridor.

They stopped short at the threshold.

A door had appeared where no door had been an hour before, set neatly into the wall as though it had always been a part of the architecture.

They laid their glasses carefully on the mantel, drew their wands and approached. No needless bravado. No hurry.

“On three,” Hermione said, scarcely above a whisper.

“One,” he answered.

“Two.”

“Three.”

The door opened with a slow, complaining creak. For a moment Lucius expected the house to mock them again - another trick meant to unsettle. Instead, the light fell across a regular room: chairs, a narrow table, a window with thin curtains. The room smelled faintly of lemon oil and linen, the sort of domestic scent that belonged to quiet mornings rather than malevolent games.

He stepped inside before he could stop himself.

“Morning room,” he murmured. “My mother used to have breakfast in a room like this.”

Hermione crossed the threshold after him, wand still raised.

“But it shouldn’t be here,” he added, warily. “Not in this wing.”

She looked at him, then at the room, puzzlement on her face. It did not fluctuate. Unlike the rest of the Manor, which fluttered and argued with itself, this room held steady.

Hermione’s flicked a diagnostic charm: a small, patient spell that ran along the skirting and thumbed the air like a searching finger. Lucius watched the charm’s track with a mounting unease.

It flared a flat, bright red. Danger.

“We leave,” he said, the words short. “At once.”

He moved to the door and held it wide for her. She came forward, but as she passed the threshold, she halted abruptly, as though she had met a wall. Lucius watched, throat tight, as she retreated a fraction and tried again. This time the resistance was even more definite.

He stepped through and back without hindrance.

They exchanged a look.

Lucius tried stepping through again, then returning, as though the barrier might reset itself. The doorway admitted him without the faintest resistance. He moved back into the morning room, and again out into the drawing room, and back once more.

Hermione could not follow. She pressed her shoulder forward, arm lifted as though she might batter her way through, but the invisible wall held fast.

“Together,” he suggested.

Her hand found his and they stepped forward at the same time. He passed cleanly through. She did not.

Hermione let go of his hand and drew her wand again. “Objects,” she said shortly.

A chair from the drawing room went sailing through the door and landed, unharmed, against the far wall. Lucius picked up a candleholder, passed it in and out several times. No resistance.

“It’s only me,” she said after a moment.

The calm in her voice unsettled him more than panic would have done.

She tried apparition next, but the Manor stifled it, as always.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Lucius caught a flicker of movement. At first, it was subtle - slight darkening of the wood, a narrowing of the space near the window - but gradually, the transformation became undeniable.

Where his mother’s morning room had been, with its pale curtains and polished wood, bare stone now met the eye, like the walls of a dungeon. The hearth receded, the chairs vanished, and even the scent faded. The room contracted around them until, quite unmistakably, they were enclosed in a cell.

Hermione moved methodically, wand in hand, circling the room as she scanned for wards and charms that might reveal the mechanics of the enclosure. Lucius’s attention flicked between her careful examination and the stark details of the stone around them - every corner, every ledge, every faint marking that might give a clue.

Then, from the high window sill, his gaze caught on something etched faintly into the stone. A rune.

“Hermione,” he called softly, drawing her attention. She looked up, eyes sharp.

He gestured toward the sill. “There. That rune - do you recognise it?”

She shook her head slowly.

“Go to the library,” she said quickly. “Find it.”

“No. We swore we wouldn’t separate.”

“Lucius - there’s no choice. You can leave. I can’t.”

His jaw tightened. But he obeyed, sprinting down corridors, wrenching volumes from shelves. He gathered every book on runes he could carry and ran back.

As he stepped back into the cell, his heart lurched. The space had shrunk noticeably since he left. The floor felt closer, the walls pressing inward. He looked up and caught Hermione’s gaze - she had noticed it too.

They bent over the pages together, flipping through the volumes with brisk, precise movements.

After what seemed like hours, but must have been minutes, Lucius looked up.

The window was gone now, only the rune remaining, still visible above the stone sill. There was barely room for two anymore, so he rose and retreated to the threshold, heart pounding.

Then Hermione coughed, pressing a hand to her chest. He noticed her breathing, shallow and uneven.

He rushed to the drawing room windows, opening them wide - but no air seemed to reach her.

Cold dread seized him.

The space was almost intolerable now - Hermione could only stand, her back pressed against the cold wall, her forehead damp with sweat.

He scoured the books frantically, until he found it - and the meaning fell into place.

“Blood,” he whispered. “The rune demands blood.”

Hermione’s hand went to her hair - slowly, as if this slight movement were an effort. She took out a hairpin, pricked herself lightly on the index finger get and touched it to the rune.

A sudden, low rumble ran through the stone. The ceiling seemed to shiver and drop slightly, dust falling in fine motes. The room itself shivered with displeasure, as though it had taken offence at the offering.

Of course. The rune demanded Malfoy blood.

He forced himself into the shrinking cell though he barely had room to move. He took the hairpin from her hand, pricked his finger and let the blood fall over the carved lines, mirroring Hermione’s earlier action.

The rune flared faintly, its light pulsing in slow, deliberate rhythm.

But it was not enough. Hermione swayed - he could see the strain in the set of her shoulders, the pale sheen of her sweat-dampened hair. The cough worsened, coming in wheezing fits now.

He could not wait.

Steeling himself, he drove his wand into his palm, drawing a fresh flow. Blood ran freely against the stone. He felt the room tilt slightly, and a faint dizziness clawed at the edges of his mind, but he forced it aside.

The rune brightened - significantly. The lines glowed with a steady, urgent light, responding now. It was working.

Then, a sound - Hermione’s legs gave way. She sagged against the wall, eyes closed. Her chest did not seem to move at all.

This was still not fast enough.

He pushed himself further, slashing again, higher on his arm and deeper into his flesh, letting the blood fall in a steady stream. The metallic taste filled his mouth and the air grow heavy as he gritted his teeth against the pain.

Finally, the rune blazed, sharp and brilliant, and then flared.

Lucius acted on pure reflex, gathering Hermione against him and dragging her out.

She lay limp, pale. He frantically searched for a pulse, his fingers pressing against her wrist, her neck. Nothing.

No. Not like this.

But then he felt it - a faint, almost imperceptible beat. Slow, irregular, but there.

Relief crashed over him, mingled with terror. He launched every healing charm he could think of, murmuring quietly under his breath.

Color returned slowly to her cheeks, her chest rising more steadily.

Another spell and her eyelids fluttered. Slowly, deliberately, they opened. Lucius felt a sob tear free from him he had not realised was waiting.

“Thank Merlin,” he whispered, again and again.

Her eyelids lifted with effort, and the first thing she became aware of was the rise and fall beneath her. She was leaning against his chest, half sitting.

For a moment, disorientation lingered, then her eyes caught his face. His expression - raw, unguarded - startled her. She had never seen him like this.

Then came the sharp awareness of how bloody they both were. His blood, she realised.

Slowly, carefully, she seated herself upright, and turned her attention to his arm. The wound there was deep, and another one marked the palm of his hand.

She murmured a few incantations, tracing the cuts with practiced care, letting the magic knit flesh and ease pain. His skin was pallid under her fingers, his breath shallow and uneven, yet his eyes held hers steady, even as he leaned on her for support.

Hermione sat back against the wall, the stone cold through her robes. The last memory came to her in fragments - the walls pressing in, the light of the rune above, Lucius stepping forward, pricking his finger to smear blood against the carving.

Her brow furrowed as she looked at him now. “I saw you” she said quietly, “trying your blood on the rune. But—” Her eyes dropped briefly to the remnants of the wounds she had closed. “Did the rune do this to you?”

He shook his head once, controlled. “No. That was my own doing.”

Her lips parted, but no sound came at first.

She hesitated.

This trap had been different. Until now, the Manor had threatened them both. But this time, it had been only her. He could have easily walked away, finished the last of the Manor’s tests alone. Instead—

“Why?” she asked, the word quiet, direct.

His eyes flicked to hers. There was no hesitation, no embellishment - only the barest breath before he answered.

“Because I could not watch it take you.”

“Why?” she pressed again, her eyes on his.

“Because your life matters to me more than mine does.”

Hermione’s pulse thudded in her ears. His words lodged somewhere she could not yet touch, too heavy, too startling to hold. She wasn’t—

Not now.

She drew a slow breath, forcing her voice into steadiness. “Thank you for saving my life.”

His hand moved, tentative, reaching towards hers on the floor between them. Instinctively, she pulled back, folding her arms tight around her knees, gaze fixed on the stone at her feet.

When she finally looked up, his eyes were still on her. He said nothing. Just kept looking, and the weight of it made her throat tighten.

She looked away first.

Chapter Text

The Manor was quiet, save for the faint pop of the fire in the grate. Lucius sat where he always did, in the armchair by the hearth, one hand resting on the carved arm, the other still and loose in his lap.

It was her turn to rest, though for the longest time, he had heard her shifting restlessly. Only now did her breathing settle into something like sleep.

He let his eyes fall to the flames. The memory of the cell came back with cruel clarity: the walls closing in, her chest rising too shallowly, that awful moment when her body went limp. The sheer, ungovernable panic that had taken him then.

He had not weighed the choice - there had been no thought. Only an instant and absolute certainty. He would bleed himself a hundred times if it meant her life. A thousand. The cuts to his arm had been no sacrifice - they had been necessity, as natural as breath.

And later, she had recoiled from it. Gently, but unmistakably.

He supposed he understood. He was not a man for her to return such feelings to, not even in the confines of this place where they had been forced into companionship, even shared warmth.

He had been a fool to let it go further. A greater fool still for confessing it. Yet what choice had he ever truly had?

Lucius turned his gaze back to the fire, its glow unsteady on the marble. He would master himself, as he always had. He would endure her rejection with grace.

And yet, he could not wish himself free of what bound him to her.

The morning was subdued. Hermione sat at the table with her porridge, hand wrapped too tightly around her spoon, her shoulders set. She was polite but there was a tension about her - an awareness in the glance she gave him before quickly turning back to her bowl.

Lucius let the silence hold a moment longer before disrupting it. “You appear to have survived the night without tossing all the cushions to the floor,” he remarked, tone mild. “I half expected to find the room stripped bare.”

Her eyes flicked up at him, startled, but the corner of her mouth twitched.

He leaned back, as though considering her critically. “No smile at all? I fear I must be losing my touch.”

Her lips curved before she could stop them. “You are incorrigible.”

“Ah,” he said softly, a spark in his eyes, “there it is.”

He poured another cup of tea, sliding it towards her. “Drink. You’ll need fortification. Who knows, the Manor may have devised a trap involving excessive courtesy - it would be just our luck.”

A breath of laughter escaped her.

The conversation wandered after that, observations and small jests, his voice light, coaxing her without ever forcing. He found himself watching the stiffness slip from her shoulders, her expression softening as she answered him more freely.

It was not the closeness of the morning before, but it was not distance either. By the time her spoon clinked softly against the empty bowl, she was smiling, and he felt - against all better judgement - that faint, foolish lift in his chest once more.

The meal drew to its close and Hermione set down her cup, fingers circling the rim. “The final trap,” she said at last. “Do you have any notion what it might be?”

Lucius shook his head. “None. We might search for clues again, if you wish?”

They rose together and walked the familiar corridor, their steps carrying them back to the gallery. The portraits watched as they passed - still dim, their painted eyes dull. The great tapestry hung motionless. They searched with care, hoping for some sign, but the gallery remained obstinately silent.

“It seems,” he said, “we will have to wait and see.”

Hermione hesitated, then spoke with a quiet steadiness. “Whatever it is… we’ve managed all the rest together. I think we’ll manage this as well.”

He looked at her. The awareness came, sharp and insistent: how she steadied him, completed him in ways at once intoxicating and terrifying. How he felt a better wizard, a better man, with her. He voiced nothing of this, of course. His mouth curved slightly instead. “Yes,” he said simply. “We make a good team.”

They waited the long hours. Meals came and went, the night passed with quiet conversation by the fire. Books were read, tea sipped, small laughter shared - but the Manor remained still.

At one such moment, Lucius glanced up from his book and caught sight of Hermione across the hearth.

The final trap, and then they might be free.

He felt a weight settle over him.

This - the quiet companionship they shared - was precious. In a single, clear instant, he understood that once they left this place, the hours like this would vanish. He would return to the real Manor, its corridors and portraits familiar but empty, and she would not be there.

Hermione glanced up and met his eyes. He offered her a small smile and returned to the book.

They were crossing the great hall on their way to supper when she saw it - a snake, this time no larger than the real creatures that haunted summer grass, coiled neatly about the handle of a side door.

Lucius moved at once, wand raised, and with a clipped incantation the serpent dissolved into air. An illusion.

Their eyes met. That was far too easy.

Suddenly, the door creaked, opening a fraction. Hermione drew a breath, forcing her steps forward, and peered through the narrow gap. A staircase descended into shadow.

“There should be a wine cellar there,” Lucius said behind her, his voice low.

Her stomach tightened. After the last conjured space, the idea of walking willingly into another unknown chilled her. Yet what choice remained? If the final trap waited anywhere, it must be here. And with it, perhaps, the only way out.

She set her shoulders and stepped towards the opening.

Lucius’s hand came down lightly but firmly against her arm. “No.” He moved past her, placing himself at the threshold, and began the descent first, his body blocking her view.

And shielding her against whatever waited downstairs.

She swallowed and pushed thoughts and emotions aside. Slowly, she followed.

The stairs led them down into a chamber far brighter than she expected, its walls lit evenly without torch or lantern. It was almost empty, save for a hearth, a plain table, and a great mirror mounted on the far wall.

Hermione’s steps slowed as her gaze caught on the glass.

It showed not the room they stood in, but Gringotts - the vault, the cart waiting just beyond, herself and Lucius stepping out into its light.

Drawn in spite of herself, she crossed the floor until she stood before it. The image held, unchanged. She reached out, her fingertips brushing the surface. Cold. Solid.

Her eyes flicked back over her shoulder. Lucius had not joined her.

He was standing very still, his gaze fixed on the table. When he turned, his face was pale.

“I know now what the Manor requires of us,” he said quietly.

Hermione crossed the chamber towards him. On the table lay a silver box, its lid thrown back. Inside rested twin ceremonial wands - older than any she had ever seen, their wood darkened with age, their carvings intricate and beautiful. Beside them - a folded sheet of parchment, yellowed and curling at the edges.

She looked up at him, waiting.

“I already told you,” Lucius began, “that my ancestor, Armand, came to England with Guillaume’s army. But before they crossed the channel, a pledge was demanded to cement their association.”

“What kind of pledge?” Hermione asked.

His eyes dropped to the box. “This was before the Statute of Secrecy. Guillaume knew of magic - knew what power it carried, and what danger. He would not accept such a force at his side without binding it. And so he required from Armand an oath. An Unbreakable Vow.”

A chill moved through her. She glanced back to the table and lifted the parchment with careful fingers. The script, though faded, was legible.

I swear my life and my blood, my strength and my will, to yours. Where you lead, I shall follow. What you bear, I shall bear. From this day forth, your fate is mine, and mine is yours. Until death unbinds us.

He watched her trace the faded words with her eyes, lips moving soundlessly. The silence seemed more oppressive than ever.

Something in him turned over, sharp and unwelcome.

He could make that promise right now - gladly, without hesitation. His life, his blood, his will - it was all already hers, though he had never meant it to be so. The Vow would only put shape to what he knew.

But there were two wands.

And it was different for her. He had seen as much in the way she had drawn back from him before. If she took this oath now, it would not be because she chose him. It would be because the Manor left her no other choice. Because the alternative was death in one of the traps. That made him—what? Her captor. And he would hold her with chains she could never slip or shatter.

He felt the knowledge settle like lead, as her eyes lifted at last from the parchment to meet his.

“I—” Her voice broke. She shook her head quickly, as if to clear it. “I need to be alone. Just for a moment.” She pressed a hand against the edge of the table, knuckles white. “Please, stay here. So the room doesn’t vanish.”

And before he could say a word, she turned from him. Her steps were quick, uneven. The door closed softly behind her.

The cold came on him gradually, a chill that had nothing to do with the air.

She stood in the corridor for what felt like an age, her hand against the wall, breath caught high in her chest. Her thoughts ran too fast to follow: the oath, the clarity in Lucius’s eyes when he explained it to her.

She pressed her forehead briefly to the stone, willing herself to calmness.

At last, she took a measured breath, then another, and she went back in.

Lucius was leaning against the table, head bowed, jaw set. At the sound of the door his head snapped up. His eyes found hers at once, but he said nothing.

She crossed the room and sank down against the wall. The stone floor was cold and hard.

After a moment, he moved too, lowering himself beside her. Not too close, but near enough that she could sense the tension in him, the way he held himself still.

“Perhaps…” His voice was low, even. “Perhaps we need not decide yet. It may be that the final test will shift in time, take another form. We have only to endure, as we have before.”

It was clear he did not believe his own words. They were for her sake.

She spoke softly, cutting in. “Are you willing to make that vow?”

“Yes,” he said, no hesitation at all.

She nodded, her gaze falling to the stone floor between them.

After a moment, his voice came again. “Hermione—Please, tell me what you are thinking.”

Her lips parted, and she spoke almost in a whisper. “I… I believe that we need to do it. But—” She drew a breath. “I’m afraid.”

He swallowed, as though the words cost him. “Of me?”

Her head lifted. “No.” She reached for his hand.

His grip tightened instantly, warm and steady. He lowered his eyes to their joined hands.

Her voice was softer still. “I’m afraid that this is all just another one of the Manor’s tricks. Everything I might be feeling - not real at all.”

His eyes flew to hers, searching.

Then his thumb brushed lightly over her knuckles. His voice was calm. “The Manor may test us, but it cannot touch this. Not what I feel.”

Hermione watched him for a long time. She drew a slow, steadying breath. “Then I will trust you,” she said.

She rose and started toward the table.

Lucius’s hand shot out, closing over hers, stopping her mid-step. “Hermione,” he said, quietly but firmly, “are you certain? Once this is done, there is no turning back. You must be sure.”

She met his eyes, seeing the gravity there, and nodded, swallowing the tremor of fear and uncertainty.

“I am,” she said.

Lucius’s grip on her hand softened, though his eyes never left hers. “Then we will see this through, together,” he said, his voice carrying an edge of insistence. “Whatever comes after. We will make it work, Hermione. I promise you that.”

She smiled faintly.

He reached for one wand and extended his other arm. “Are you ready?”

She nodded and placed her hand on his wrist.

He didn’t glance at the parchment - every Malfoy knew these words by heart. His eyes never left hers as he recited the oath.

When he lowered the wand, her hand closed around the other one. She read the words aloud, carefully, and the air around them shifted. A faint hum filled the chamber, tendrils of light curling and twisting, wrapping around them both. Tangible. Binding.

Almost instantly, the mirror behind them began to fracture, fine lines spreading across its surface. The glass smoothed into liquid sheen, stretching tall and narrow until it became the outline of a door.

Lucius’s breath tightened. This could be another test.

He stepped forward first, hand raised to bar her way. “Wait. Let me—”

But Hermione’s hand pressed against his arm, firm. “No. We do this together.”

For a heartbeat he hesitated, then inclined his head. Together, then. He laid his palm flat against the door’s surface. It was cool, shifting under his touch, and he stepped through, Hermione at his side.

The oppressive air of the Manor fell away. Cold stone, yes, but familiar, unchanging. Torches flickered over heaps of silver and gold, the ancient order of treasures untouched. No fluctuation, no distortion.

The Malfoy vault.

They turned as one to the great door. He braced himself for resistance, another trick. Yet when he pushed, the iron shifted, the seal giving way. Beyond lay the waiting cart, rails vanishing into darkness.

For a moment he only looked at it. Then he turned to Hermione and offered his hand. A small gesture - the courtesy he had withheld on their descent into Gringotts.

She took it and got in.

Chapter Text

Lucius sat in his study, the firelight shifting over the familiar order of shelves and ledgers.

It had been weeks since their return, but the echo of that other place lingered still, like a faint bruise beneath the skin.

The Ministry inquiry had been as brutal as he expected. His name had been drawn out like a foregone conclusion - suspect before question, guilty before proof. Yet when Hermione had stood and spoken, the air in the chamber had altered. She told them the truth: that both had been caught, wounded, forced into alliance, and that without such collaboration neither would have survived. The inquiry had ended not with his disgrace but with the confiscation and destruction of the cursed box. An ending far more merciful than any he had imagined.

And now, he was home. The real Manor.

Waiting for her.

She came to visit often - and he made it his mission to give her happy memories of this place, reasons to return. He built small havens for her here. Walks in the garden where the roses lingered against the autumn chill. Tea in the conservatory beneath glass streaked with rain. A blanket across her knees as leaves fell slow and golden beyond the window.

She carried her Ministry burdens heavily, and though he had long since lost the formal station he once wielded, he had means still, along with the vast experience and influence. Quietly, carefully, he put it all at her disposal. The right introductions, the discreet word in the correct ear, the funding to complete too modest grants. At first she hesitated to accept it. But he told her it was his delight, and more: that nothing would ever be done without her sanction. That he would not trespass upon her work, but only support it in the game the Ministry played anyway. In time, she accepted.

Sometimes, she would take his hand without a word and hold it. Sometimes she would lean against him as they read, or press a new book into his hands - muggle works, which he learnt to treasure because they were hers.

He let her set the pace of it all, never asking more than she offered, but seizing upon every gesture, every shared silence. He saw it for what it was: a place granted to him in her life.

Lucius was crossing the drawing room when it happened. The hour was late, the fire had burned low, and the lamps gave only a muted glow against gilt frames and polished surfaces.

He had walked this way countless times, but tonight his step faltered.

The intricate border of the rug beneath his feet seemed to stir, the dark threads drawing inward, coiling, tightening. For the span of a breath, a serpent writhed there, its body curving across the weave, head lifted as though to strike.

Lucius’s hand stilled on his cane. He did not dare move. But then he blinked - and the pattern lay as motionless as ever. Only thread, only dye, no more alive than the floorboards beneath his feet.

For a moment he remained frozen, listening to the sound of his own pulse.

It was nothing, surely. A trick of the eye, of the firelight. This was the same rug as always, his own house.

Wasn’t it?

The cold prickle along his spine would not abate.

A floorboard creaked in the passage. Then - her voice, tinged with warmth and laughter, carrying through the half-open door. “Lucius?”

His breath left him slowly, almost a sigh. He resumed his walk, each step deliberate.

He did not look down again.