Four

Many thanks to Melusin for beta reading. Additional thanks to Chivalric for commenting and holding my hand through the writing of this story.

The Potterverse belongs to JKR; I only take them out to play.

Something tickled her nose. Still half-asleep, Hermione turned her head and snuggled back into the pillow. The pillow moved.

Her eyes flew open to stare at a rather nice male chest. Oh, right. Severus. She had... he had... and then they had. And then again. A smile spread over her face. Placing a kiss on the nipple that greeted her, she disentangled herself from the duvet and Severus's legs to go to the loo. A teeth cleaning charm seemed to be in order, too.

On her way back through the corridor, she met Severus. He looked as sleepy as she felt, his hair dishevelled.

'Erm,' he said, his eyes not quite meeting hers.

'Erm,' she said, remembering suddenly that she was very naked and that her hair probably looked like a bird's nest.

Silence.

Finally, Hermione drew a deep breath, took two steps towards him, and planted her lips on his cheek.

'Good morning,' she whispered.

Severus's arms came around her. 'Good morning. Sleep well?'

A warm wave of relief swept through her. 'Very. Are you coming back to bed?'

'Just give me a few minutes,' Severus answered, nuzzling her hair with his nose.

Back in the bedroom, Hermione crawled under the duvet, yawned, and promptly fell asleep again.

When she opened her eyes some time later, it was to find Severus sitting on the edge of the bed, wearing chequered pyjama bottoms and smiling at her. 'Hello there, sleepyhead. What would you like for breakfast?'

'Hello.' She blinked up at him. 'These aren't black.' She placed a kiss on the small of his back before her hand sneaked under the waistband. 'And they're in the way.'

Severus inhaled sharply. 'I do own clothes in other colours.'

'Mmm, I know. I've seen your white shirt. Still, black suits you.' The hand went exploring further.

Severus gasped. 'I suppose that means breakfast can wait.'

Hermione grinned and pulled him down to her.

Breakfast took a while.

*****

Hermione ran her wand once more over the book. The result was the same as the night before and the three times she had tried previously. Again, she picked the book up and turned it around in her hands. There was nothing new to discover. She sighed.

Severus wandered into the living room, a mug in his hand. 'You could just return the damn book to Lucius and be done with it.'

Hermione looked up. 'I could. But something's off, and I want to know why.'

'Why doesn't that surprise me? May I?' He extended a hand towards the book.

Hermione nodded. Giving him the book, she said, 'And I want to find out if it's something Dark.'

'Since it's Lucius, we...'

Two things happened as Severus touched the book: a brief flash of light, and then it transformed before their eyes. It shrank slightly; the binding became smoother, and the arabesque on the cover changed its shape into a new, even more intricately woven design with a faint silver glow.

'Now, that is interesting,' Severus said.

'What do you think just happened?' Hermione asked.

'No idea.'

Both stared at the book.

'Something must have activated a spell.'

'Hm. It changed when you touched it,' Hermione observed.

'But I've touched it before and nothing happened.'

They continued to look at the book Severus was holding gingerly in his hand. Hermione pondered what he had just said.

'No, you didn't.'

'Sorry?'

'You didn't touch the book before. It was always wrapped,' Hermione pointed out.

'Right. So why would my touch trigger the spell that caused the transformation when yours wouldn't?'

'It would have to be something that makes you different from me. Let's see. It could be because you're male. Or because you used to wear the Dark Mark. Or...' She shook her head. 'This isn't getting us anywhere. It's all speculation because we have no way to test our theories.'

'I agree. I think we should concentrate on the book itself.'

'Seeing that this book belongs to Lucius Malfoy, I suggest we check for more booby traps,' Hermione suggested.

Severus nodded. After he had placed the book carefully on the table, they both ran their wands over it.

'Nothing.'

'No, definitely no more catches,' Hermione agreed. 'Let's take a look inside. See if that's changed, too.'

She took the book from the table and opened it. The family tree and the detailed descriptions, listing every member of the Malfoy family...their births, life stories, and deaths...were gone. Instead, page after page was filled with an elegant script. The same handwriting that was on the contract Lucius Malfoy had signed. 'This seems to be a diary.'

She turned another page, which contained a drawing. Hermione took a closer look. 'Oh.'

'What is it?'

Hermione didn't answer right away but read a few of the entries.

'Well?'

'It seems to be indeed a diary. Lucius Malfoy's diary.'

'Let me see.' Severus peered over her shoulder. She turned a few pages so that he could see the content. 'Damn you, Lucius,' he murmured.

'This is what I think it is, isn't it?'

'Yes.'

'So, Lucius Malfoy has sent me halfway across the continent, chasing after a diary that contains meticulous records of all his little trysts.' Hermione flung the diary back on the table and started to pace the length of Severus's living room. The book slid off the table, turning twice around its axis before it landed on the floor, open, its spine pointing upward.

Hermione stopped her frantic pacing to pick it up. She glanced at the open page and froze. She stared at it for a while, then she sat down and flipped through the rest of the book until she stopped at another page that caught her attention. She raised her head. 'You're in this book.'

Severus came to sit next to her on the couch. 'I suspected as much.'

She showed him the page on which he and Lucius were pleasuring a dark-haired woman. 'Please, tell me that isn't Bellatrix Lestrange.'

Severus made a disgusted noise and shook his head. 'No. There are some things even Lucius wouldn't do.'

'These drawings are very elaborate.'

'Yes, Lucius is a man of many talents.'

Hermione looked at the drawing again. The woman was comfortably reclining on a large bed, the head of much younger Lucius visible between her legs, while Severus was sucking her nipple, his hand playing with her other breast. As Hermione watched, Severus's image placed kisses on the woman's neck before he moved to her other nipple. A little pang was tugging at her heartstrings. It was one thing to assume that Severus would have had a shag at some point in his life, to have visible proof of it felt...she wasn't sure how it felt.

'Did you do that regularly?'

'No. A few times,' Severus answered.

'Did you like it?'

Severus hesitated. 'It was nice,' he said very quietly, looking anywhere but at her.

She sidled a bit closer to him on the couch, leaning her head on his shoulder. They remained sitting like that for a bit before one of his hands wandered under the shirt she had borrowed from him that morning.

His touch on her skin felt oddly reassuring, allowing Hermione to get back to the question of the diary. 'Do you think that's why the book transformed at your touch?'

The hand stopped playing with her breast. 'Huh? Oh, the book. I don't know.'

Hermione looked at the drawing again, trying not to become diverted by Severus's caresses and what the two men in the image were doing. Slowly, things began to fall into place. 'It was Lucius.'

'Sorry?'

'Lucius saved your life. In the Shrieking Shack, didn't he?'

Now, she had Severus's attention. 'Yes.'

'So, you owe him a life debt, and you two have a history.'

Severus was silent for a moment. 'Yes.'

'Exactly how close are you?'

'Close. He was the only real friend I had.'

'So I see. Had?'

'I spent nearly two years at his French estate after the war. We disagreed about my travel plans. I haven't seen Lucius in nearly eight years,' Severus explained.

'That must have been some disagreement,' Hermione observed.

'It was.' He didn't offer any more information. Instead, he asked, 'How is he these days?'

'I don't really know. Ginny sees more of him than I do since he's her father-in-law, but I think he's a bit lonely. Ginny and Draco live in London, and Narcissa left him shortly after the war.'

Severus nodded. 'I know. It was blow for him. Regardless of what the diary seems to imply, he's very much a family man.'

'That's what Ginny says, too. They get on reasonably well. I think she's even come to like him.'

'He can be very likeable if he wants to be. And from what I gathered, he genuinely regrets many of the things that happened.'

Hermione shook her head. 'I still find that very hard to believe, but even I can see that he tries.'

She thought about what Severus had just said. 'So, he saved your life, which means you owe him a life debt, and you two are, or were, very close. Hm. That still doesn't explain why the book would reveal itself to you. Unless...'

'Unless?'

'...it's keyed to your magical signature. I've come across similar spells in my work. People would charm an object so that it would only respond to the specific magic of another person and transform into something else. Apparently, it used to be rather common...either as a gift to a friend or a loved one or as a way of getting rid of your enemies.'

'That makes sense, yes. And Lucius would definitely know about this type of magic. But why?'

'I know. This opens up more questions than it answers.'

Since Severus didn't add anything to that observation, Hermione turned her attention back to the book and continued to flip through it. A tiny nagging reminded her that, strictly speaking, reading someone else's diary wasn't right. She ignored it, too intrigued by Lucius's entries and the drawings that accompanied a number of them. Contrary to what she had thought at first, he appeared to have recorded events that had been important to him: his wedding, Draco's birth, Draco's first flight on a toy broom, family picnics as well as erotic adventures. A surprising number of entries had Severus in them. Lucius seemed to have considered him an important part of his life, judging by the space he was given in the diary. She had to admit that Lucius was a good writer. And a good artist. She looked again at one of the pages that showed Severus and Lucius with a woman and couldn't resist reading what he had written. Lucius definitely had a way with words. And not only with words, it seemed.

What would it be like to be the woman on the bed?

A sudden wave of heat went through her body, leaving a conflagration in its wake as her eyes returned to the drawing, fixing on Severus's naked body, the way his hands moved, his hair falling forward over his face with the tips grazing the two thin white scars on his neck.

The two thin white scars. A niggling thought tried to get through the lust-filled haze in her brain: the scars, the book.

'This is after the war,' she said.

'Yes.'

'Hm. How long did you say it took you to recover from the snakebite?'

'About a year. Why? I've already told you that.'

'So this would be roughly, what? Fourteen months after Voldemort's fall? One-and-a-half years?'

Severus glanced at the page. 'I suppose. Are you going to tell me at some point what you're on about?'

'How come Lucius still had this book to write in when it was allegedly confiscated by the Ministry a year before?'

They looked at each other.

'That would mean...'

'Exactly,' Severus confirmed.

Closing the book with a snap, Hermione said, 'I think it's time I had a word with my client.'

Severus pulled her closer. 'Let's not be hasty. You might want to think about how best to approach this,' he murmured into her hair.

Hermione snuggled into his embrace. 'Mmmh, any suggestions?'

'Why don't you get your things from the hotel, and we'll take a day or two to plan? The book isn't going anywhere.' His mouth trailed little kisses from her ear down the side of her neck.

She tilted her head to give him better access. 'Sounds like a reasonable plan to me,' she said.

*****

The house-elf led Hermione through to the garden. The little she could see of the large country house, or rather mansion, she amended her observation, looked as grand as expected but surprisingly cosy at the same time.

A garden table surrounded by two chairs and a bench stood in the middle of a stone terrace that looked out over the grounds. Lucius was sitting on one of the chairs, reading, a cup of coffee in front of him. He rose when Hermione stepped out onto the terrace.

'Good afternoon, Miss Granger. Thank you for coming. The weather is so nice, I thought we could sit outside. Would you care for a cup of coffee? Or do you prefer tea?'

'Good afternoon, Mr Malfoy. Coffee is fine, thank you.'

He waited until Hermione was seated on the bench before he sat down again. A cup of coffee appeared in front of her. She took in her surroundings, the view over miles and miles of slightly curved hills full of green vineyards. It was pleasantly warm with the soft breeze smelling of spring.

Lucius gave her time to take a sip from her drink before he said, 'You have good news, I presume?'

'Yes.' Hermione took the wrapped book out of her bag and handed it to Lucius.

He peeled the cloth back and pulled out the heavy tome bound in ancient black leather. He turned it around in his hands, examining it from all sides. Hermione tried to breathe regularly as she watched him closely. A frown had begun to appear on the wizard's face. He ran his hands over the title page and finally opened the book, flicking through a few pages before he closed it again.

'I'm afraid this isn't the right book, Miss Granger. It seems you have been misled.'

'That is strange. The book looks exactly as you described it to me. Maybe you forgot to mention a significant detail?' Hermione asked.

'I'm afraid, Miss Granger, this isn't the book I was looking for.'

There was a slight shift in the air as Severus Apparated right onto the terrace. He strode over to Lucius. 'Perhaps this is what you were looking for?' he asked, dangling the diary before the other wizard's eyes.

For a second, Lucius looked even paler than usual. 'Severus.'

'Lucius. You're getting sloppy. The wards still recognise me.'

'I suspected you'd be back at some point.' He rose.

'Did you, now?'

Hermione watched the two men standing motionless, staring at each other, tension palpable in the air.

Silence stretched between the two wizards.

Then Lucius nodded once, briefly. 'Severus,' he said again.

Severus inclined his head a fraction of an inch. 'Lucius.' Then, he extended his hand.

Lucius took it, holding it still for just a moment before they shook hands. 'It's been a long time,' he said in a voice Hermione had never heard from him before.

'Yes,' Severus agreed. The two remained standing across from each other for a moment longer, unspoken things passing between them.

'Men,' Hermione muttered under her breath as she continued to watch them.

Two pairs of eyes turned to look at her, one black and one pale eyebrow wandering upward. She smiled sweetly at them.

'Fancy a cup of coffee?' Lucius asked.

'That would be nice,' Severus replied, folding his form onto the bench next to Hermione.

When they were all settled with their cups, Lucius looked at the pair sitting across the table from him. 'Thank you, Miss Granger, Severus. I can't begin to tell you what a joy it is to be re-united with such a precious family heirloom.'

Severus snorted.

Hermione felt anger rising inside her. 'Mr Malfoy, I'm a bit confused as to which book you're referring to, now, since you claim the genealogy wasn't the book I was supposed to find. The other book,' she indicated the book Lucius was holding in his hand, 'is hardly a genealogy. With a fair stretch of the imagination, I'd be willing to call it a chronology of sorts.'

Lucius smiled. 'Let's start with this, shall we?' He pointed his wand at the genealogy on the table. 'Finite Incantatem.' The book returned to the novel it had been before she and Severus had Transfigured it to look like Lucius's fake genealogy.

'What matters is that you've found what I was searching for, so we don't need to bother ourselves with overanalysing trivial little details,' he continued.

Hermione fought down the urge to hex the smug little smile from his face. 'One should never overlook the importance of little details,' she said instead. 'Why don't we start with the question, how it is possible that you still had this book to write in when it was supposed to have been confiscated by the Ministry a year previously?'

'I'm sure I've no idea what you're talking about, Miss Granger,' Lucius replied smoothly.

'And of course, you accidentally misplaced the document that listed the items that were confiscated by the Ministry,' Severus added.

'Unfortunately, that is the case, yes. With the many changes in our world, only for the better I might add, I had so many things to take care of.'

This was not getting them anywhere, Hermione realised. She tried a different approach. 'Let me present you with a little hypothesis: for whatever reason, you employed me to find your book and then left a trail of breadcrumbs that would indeed lead me to it. So it looks like things went as you planned. What would interest me is: what do you have to gain from it?'

Lucius shrugged. 'A most interesting speculation but nothing more. Why would I risk the loss of something dear to me for a little entertainment?'

'But things didn't go exactly as planned, did they?' Severus interjected. 'You had found out where I was, and Wizarding Marseille is a very small community.

'I think you counted on the fact that Hermione would sooner or later come across Martine. Martine was in on this, wasn't she? She was supposed to lead Hermione to me to help her with the search for the book.

'But Hermione met me first, and Martine had to improvise. Still, it largely worked. We found your book and, as you had planned, it Transfigured back to its original form as soon as I touched it. Did you hope I'd be so angry to find myself in that book that I'd come running to confront you?'

Lucius remained very still for some time.

He picked up his cup, apparently realised that it was empty and set it down again; for a while, he didn't look at anything in particular before he said, very softly, 'It wasn't your anger I was hoping for.'

Hermione had followed the conversation between the two wizards closely. More and more pieces of the puzzle began to form a picture. 'No. Not anger. Whatever your disagreement was about, it was something that you said or did that made Severus leave, wasn't it? You hoped the diary would remind him of the good things you shared, make him aware of what he was missing.'

'Ginny wasn't wrong when she said you were brilliant.' Lucius looked almost defeated.

Hermione didn't know what to say. It seemed that Ginny had been correct. Lucius was lonely, very lonely, and he had apparently missed his friend so much that he had invested inordinate amounts of money and planning to get him back into his life. It made him seem less arrogant, even likeable. She suddenly realised that she would go to similar lengths to keep Severus in her life. A warm feeling spread through her.

Lucius's eyes darted between Severus and her. 'You two seem to get along rather well.'

'We do,' Severus said. 'You know, most people would have simply sent an owl.'

Lucius shrugged. 'How mundane.'

His statement made Hermione smile. He certainly wasn't boring. She still didn't appreciate the way he had tricked her, but she was willing to admit that his motives had been genuine, even endearing, though she wouldn't tell him that. Besides, he had paid her well.

'I have an excellent new vintage you might like to try,' Lucius offered.

'Your vintages are always worth a try,' Severus answered.

'Or, you could come for dinner.' Lucius turned to Hermione, including her in the invitation.

To her surprise, dinner with Lucius sounded like a good idea. She felt Severus's arm coming to rest around her shoulder. She liked that idea, too. Leaning into his touch, Hermione exchanged a brief look with him before she said, 'That would be lovely.'

*****

With an almost inaudible noise, they materialised in Severus's living room again.

'Do you have to go back to London right away?' Severus asked.

Hermione didn't know what to say. The thought of leaving made her throat feel very tight all of a sudden. Would he even want her to stay? She looked at him. His face was unreadable, but his eyes told her all she needed to know.

She put her arms around him and pulled him close to her. 'London can wait.'

~*~fin~*~