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A/N: This was written for the first ever LM/HG exchange for Shiv5468. My undying thanks to betas of dreams DreamyDragon and Persevero for some extremely spectacular work under the duress of constant hunger from food porn. Kudos as well to BlueParis for advice on hand-to-hand combat. Prompts will be listed after the last chapter.

Disclaimer: Character and world are the property of J.K. Rowling. No money made here.

They landed in an empty room, four white walls surrounding them with a door in the centre of one wall and a small window at the top of the opposite wall. Stumbling briefly to retain their footing, they each still clutched the Amazon package.

Hermione glared at Lucius. 'You. Should. Have. Waited.' She dropped her hands, leaving him holding the box. 'Oh, no! My wand! I had it in my hand when I grabbed the box. Do you have yours?'

Lucius reached for the holster hidden in a seam on his right trouser leg. 'My wand is also missing,' he admitted, swallowing the bile that arose with the realisation that they'd been disarmed.

'Bugger. I wanted to test the door for hexes before I try to open it,' she muttered. She approached the door and tentatively reached her hand out, hovering a centimetre away from the door knob. Her head tilted to the side for a moment before she clutched the handle. There were no nasty side effects, but unsurprisingly, the knob refused to turn.

She began pacing the length of the wall opposite the door. Minutes later, she switched to an adjacent wall.

Lucius watched the bizarre witch curiously. He counted her steps, roughly estimating the room's dimensions. Bloody fantastic. He was stuck in a three metre by three metre room with a witch who just barely tolerated him with civility. Hell, he had larger cupboards than this room.

Suddenly, she stopped pacing. 'Fuck me,' she mumbled under her breath.

'What did you say, Auror Granger?' Surely she wasn't...He shuttered that line of thought before he needed to Obliviate himself.

Granger seemed to miss his affronted look. 'I worked out how the Portkey evaded my detection spells.'

Lucius blinked. This was entirely unexpected. In his experience with Narcissa, long-suffering silences were always followed by angry outbursts and threats against his manhood. 'What?'

'Well, at first, I suspected I missed it because I was testing the contents of the box rather than the box itself. However, the thirty-first and fifty-seventh spells should have caught any Portkey charms on the box itself. Then, I thought it rather curious that the Portkey didn't activate until you touched it,' she continued yammering.

It was rather mind-boggling that the witch could recall the precise order and number of spells she had cast. Though, he admittedly had rather minimal knowledge of Auror protocol and training. Perhaps this was standard. He thought back to the mindless brutes who had invaded his home both before and after the war. Perhaps not.

'At that point the solution is rather obvious, don't you think?'

Oh, bugger. He'd stopped paying attention to the witch entirely. He tried to formulate a response yet needn't have bothered.

Granger rambled on, 'Well, of course, you see the solution. But it's rather curious that someone would go to the trouble of keying a Portkey to you specifically, don't you think?'

Lucius nodded, thinking that surely this could not be a good sign at all. A Muggle package, sent to him via owl, set to Portkey him specifically to wherever this was. As much as he loathed admitting it, it was fortunate that one of the many banes of his son's youth was stuck with him. Anyone from the so-called good side during the war was likely to regard her as a heroine. She could be a reasonable bargaining chip. Hell, if he played his cards right, given her Gryffindor tendencies, she'd probably volunteer for the role. And if their abductor was a former associate, at the very least he could use her as a human shield whilst he was running away.

They lapsed into silence. Presumably, she was pondering the particulars of their situation...silently, thank Merlin. Draco had whinged about the know-it-all, chatterbox, Mu ... Muggle-born witch every single summer or holiday he'd been home from Hogwarts. Every time he'd seen her at a damned Ministry function, she'd been blabbering on about something or other.

Perhaps he should make an effort to cultivate the witch's good graces. Aside from making their time in captivity more tolerable, she might be more inclined to intercede on his behalf when the next round of death threats arose. Failing that, if he ever summoned the energy and inclination to re-enter wizarding society, she would be a powerful acquaintance.

He watched her continuing to pace the room, rubbing her arms as she went. 'Are you cold? Would you like my jacket?'

She looked at him as if he'd turned orange and begun clucking. 'Erm, yes and thank you.'

He shrugged the jacket off from underneath his robes and handed it to her when she next passed the spot where he'd propped himself. She promptly rolled up the sleeves, probably wrinkling them beyond the hope of house-elf charms. Fortunately, she was pacing in the other direction and missed seeing him cringe at her abuse of his clothing.

Granger continued to pace. At first, her pacing was informative. He'd already determined the room's dimensions, and her steps were measured enough that he could tell the time as well. He counted the seconds and found that each circuit of the room took a minute and a half. He sighed. They'd been stuck here forty-five minutes since he'd made that determination. And given the hour she'd arrived at the manor, and the time it had taken to examine each box, it was likely to be well past five o'clock.

He stood by the declaration that had landed them here; whoever was threatening him, he wished they'd just get on with it. The bloody waiting was driving him to distraction. On Granger's fifty-second trip around the room, Lucius could tolerate it no more. 'For the love of Nimue, stop pacing!' So much for trying to curry her favour.

She scowled in his direction but sank to the floor. Moments later, her foot began jiggling.

'Are you always so fidgety, Auror Granger?'

She blushed. 'Sorry, I really need to use the loo. I was pacing to avoid thinking about it.'

At her words, the back right corner of the room shifted, and a small door appeared. Before he could so much as blink, Granger had crossed the room and pressed her back against the wall next to the door. She waited for the door to open. When, after several moments, it had not, she slowly reached for the handle, twisted it, and kicked the door open.

No one emerged, and eventually Granger inched towards the door and cast a quick glance inside. 'Oh, thank Merlin!' she cried before rushing into the little room and slamming the door behind her.

A couple of moments later, she exited the room, visibly relieved. Lucius rolled his eyes.

He waited a good ten minutes before availing himself of the facilities. When he returned to Granger's company, she was seated at a small writing desk, scribbling furiously on several different-coloured pieces of parchment. Lucius craned his neck from several paces away from the desk. 'Are you sure it's wise to be writing case notes on something this room has given you?'

Granger whipped around in her chair, startled. 'I'm not so dim-witted as that, Mr Malfoy. The runes written at the top of the page will prevent anyone but you or me from reading what I've noted here.'

Lucius's eyes narrowed. 'A series of runes will do that?' he said flatly, refusing to let his voice betray any hint of curiosity, or that he might be the slightest bit impressed.

Granger nodded and tore off a scrap of parchment. She began scrawling her runes at the top, and then he could no longer read the slashings of her quill. She lifted her quill and looked at him, smirking at his blank expression. He was quite certain he was better off not knowing what the cheeky witch had written.

For several moments, she continued taking notes on the parchments he could read. He scanned the tops of the pages. Theories. Facts. Suspects. Questions. Tasks. The witch was incredibly organised. He reached for the page of suspects only to have his hand slapped...slapped!...by the witch.

'I deserve to know who has put my life at risk, Auror Granger,' he retorted, rubbing his hand.

'And I'll let you know my conclusions once I've obtained significant credible evidence,' she replied, turning to face him. 'If I tell you now, it will only taint your answers to my questions.'

While her company was likely to be insufferable, perhaps being trapped here with Granger would be worth the agony; finally, he had Auror resources committed to his case. Decent Auror resources from the look of things. Perhaps if he could win her over, then he could regain a bit of influence in the department.

His machinations were interrupted before they could begin, as Granger pondered out loud, 'I wonder if the room will feed us.'

Nothing happened.

'I'm hungry,' she stated.

In the centre of the room, a small table set for two suddenly appeared. Moments later a serving plate materialised, piled with sandwiches and crisps. Lucius strolled to the table and seated himself, sniffing at the simple fare. Ham and cheese. This was not dinner. Merlin, it didn't even pass as a decent lunch. Granger stood up from her desk and joined him. She picked through the sandwiches and complained to whomever or whatever was listening to their conversation, 'Is it possible to get a sandwich without meat?'

A minute later, two sandwiches appeared on her plate. Granger lifted up the corner of each and sneered. 'A chip butty and a crisp sandwich? That's hardly nutritious. Could I have a mozzarella and pesto sandwich instead?'

Her plate emptied.

'What was in that?' Lucius asked with disgust.

Granger grimaced. 'White bread, butter, and steak and pepper crisps. I may have lost my appetite entirely. Steak....' She shuddered.

Lucius silently gave thanks for his decidedly simple fare. At least it was edible. He took another bite of his ham and cheese.

Several minutes passed and nothing appeared on Granger's plate.

'Erm, perhaps just a cheese sandwich?'

Two pieces of white bread with a slab of Cheddar in between appeared on her plate. She reluctantly picked up the sandwich and took the smallest bite possible. She scowled at the ceiling, as if the sandwiches had descended directly from the floor above. 'This is passable, I suppose.'

They ate in silence until parchment and quill appeared next to the serving platter. 'Oh, what's this?' Granger picked up the parchment. 'It seems to be asking what we want for breakfast, lunch, and dinner tomorrow. I wonder...' She scribbled something onto the parchment. The words didn't fade. 'Excellent! I'll be having curried aubergine and ginger-poached pears for lunch.' The witch looked ridiculously proud of herself as she completed the rest of the left side of the parchment. She handed the parchment to him and returned to her pitiful sandwich, which was seemingly more palatable than before as she began eating earnestly.

Lucius filled out the parchment and sat back in his chair, placing his napkin on his plate. 'This room rather reminds me of a room at Hogwarts. The Room of Requirement, we called it.' Lucius smiled ever-so-slightly as he reminisced. 'I wonder if the room is still there.'

Granger stared at him, her mouth open and full of sandwich. 'You must be kidding. No, you're not. Of course the Room of Requirement is still there! Your son used it to smuggle Death Eaters into the castle the night that Dumbledore was killed!'

Lucius wondered how he'd forgotten that detail. 'Draco and I did not have much opportunity to play catch up over such details while the Dark Lord occupied our home.'

Her jaw clenched. 'And was it beyond you to pay attention to the details of his trial? Or were you so preoccupied with saving your own skin that you couldn't be bothered?'

He stood from his chair and leaned across the table, his teeth gritted, and eyes narrowed. 'My son means more to me than my own life. Do not make presumptions about my family, Granger.'

Granger took several deep breaths. 'What time is it?' she barked at the room. A clock appeared on her desk. She sighed. 'Nine o'clock. Look, Mr Malfoy, it's been a long and stressful day. I've still got notes to write, but I could write them any time. Do you want first or second watch?'

Lucius stared at her coldly. 'So long as I can have a hot shower,' he over-articulated to the room, 'I would prefer second watch.' He paused when he heard the sound of running water emanating from the bathroom. 'How many hours of sleep will you grant me, Auror Granger?' he asked, sneering.

'If I can get a cup of coffee,' she announced, 'then I should be able to stay alert until about three o'clock.'

'I suppose that will have to suffice,' he replied before stalking off to the shower.

A/N: Beta of dreams, dreamydragon, has noted that the kidnap by Portkey plot device was used in the most recent round of the SS/HG exchange. I've not read the story in question. I've lifted the kidnap by Portkey plot device from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire all on my own. :)