Chapter 18

Chapter 18

"You want me to what?"

"I wouldn't go that far, old friend," Severus snarled. "Believe me, want has nothing to do with it."

'Like dogs at a bone.' Hermione hugged herself tighter, glad that she couldn't see the fury contorting their faces. Not when the cause of the anger was her fault, even if they weren't venting it on her.

"Too true," Lucius sneered after an overly dramatic pause. "I would have thought you'd jump at the chance to be rid of me."

"Make up your mind! Either act like an insulted Hippogriff over being requested to take this potion, or because I'd like nothing better than to see the back of you. You can't have it both ways."

'Make that two dogs fighting over the same worthless scrap...'

"I've had enough of your dictating! Keep it up and you'll find yourself banished to your hovel, you filthy..."

"Stop it!" Hermione turned her head to glare over her shoulder. They both had their wands drawn, sparks flying from the tips. Time to intervene...She quickly darted between them, a hand on each tense chest. "Both of you."

They both lowered their wands, but Lucius shrugged off her hand and had his finger pointing at her nose before she could blink.

"As for you, madam, I do not appreciate being made a tool just so that you can escape the procreative demands of the law."

Hermione flinched, his words yet another twist on the metaphorical knife embedded in her heart ever since her appointment at St Mungo's.

"Silencio," Severus hissed. The charm rippled the air right in front of Hermione and stole the words from Lucius's tongue before he could say another word.

His face bright red with fury, Lucius raised his wand, eyes narrowed dangerously and one of them twitching.

'Expelliarmus!' Hermione deftly caught both wands in her free hand and chucked them – and her own – into the corner of the room. With emotions running so high, it wasn't a good idea for any more spells to be cast. At this rate fists would be flying next...or one of them would have an explosion of wandless magic to match her occasional lack of control.

Severus caught hold of her outstretched arm and used it to gently draw her behind him. Hermione glared at the back of his head. While understandable that he felt overprotective of her, she could take care of herself thank you very much! She moved to stand next to him and elbowed him in the ribs when he tried to shift her behind him again.

"If you had let us finish explaining before you exploded, Lucius, you would know that this isn't some kind of ploy. Not that sort, anyway."

"What do you mean?" Lucius demanded, his nose in the air. Haughty, affronted body language, but unfortunately it just made him look ridiculous. Particularly when Hermione was about a head shorter – the sight of his nostril hairs was not exactly awe inspiring.

"I'm infertile," Hermione snapped, that knife twisting a little more each time she admitted it. Was it better or worse that she felt more angry than upset now?

Lucius's jaw dropped. He closed it with a snap, his cheeks flushing scarlet. "I do apologise. I had no idea, you must believe me. If I had any idea, I would never have made such a faux..."

"Sometimes sorry is not enough," she stated, mentally counting to ten in an attempt to keep her cool. "Well, now you know. Anyway, if you want to stay married to me, take that potion." Hermione pointed at the vial on the table behind him. "If not, fine. It's your choice." She walked over to the door.

A warm hand touched her shoulder before she could leave the room. She shrugged it off.

"Hermione?" Severus asked.

"Sorry," she muttered, still facing the door. "I just need to be alone for a while."

"If you're sure that is what you want." There was only a hint of the pain Severus must have felt in his voice.

"No. But when I'm in company at the moment, I just want to be alone. And vice versa. That said, being alone is better than being in the same room as you two." Hermione winced. Where was her tact when she needed it? Oh well, might as well completely chuck said tact out of the window... "If you hadn't noticed, you fight like Hippogriffs in rut at the moment."

There was a moment of silence. Exchanging looks, perhaps... "We could make a truce. For you."

Hermione shook her head. "You've already done enough."

"There's nothing I wouldn't do!" Severus called after her as she slipped out of the door.

She paused, torn between turning back and fleeing. Hermione turned her head to look back over her shoulder at him. "I know. I do appreciate that. Very much so." She smiled sadly. "But sometimes there's nothing you can do."

* * *

As Hermione's footsteps faded away, Severus turned on Lucius. "Now look what you've done!"

"What I have done...you...I..." Lucius protested, and spluttered to a halt. "Well, I suppose I may have put my foot in the proverbial dragon dung, but it was completely unintentional!"

"That may have been, but what of your...womanising ways, for lack of a better term?"

Lucius snorted contemptuously. "Don't be absurd. Even if I wanted to indulge in other women, there are none to spare at present."

"You know perfectly well what I mean!" Severus yanked Lucius close to snarl in his rival's face: "She is my wife."

Lucius extracted his collar from Severus's grip and leaned away, wiping his face with the back of his hand. Drama queen! Severus was positive that he didn't really spray that much spittle around, even when his blood was boiling like at present. Hermione certainly never complained.

"Absolutely, old friend. She just happens to be mine, too."

'You had better be careful, old friend,' Severus fumed to himself, 'or you might find yourself impotent instead of merely sterile.'

He stretched out his hand, his wand answering his wandless summons from the corner of the room where Hermione had thrown it. The other two wands twitched but stayed where they were. Once his wand was in hand, Severus used a non-verbal spell to retrieve Hermione's. It seemed Lucius was not aligned with his replacement wand enough yet to call it to him unaided. So much the better...

Severus thrust his wand against Lucius's throat. "You gave your word that it would be a marriage in name only."

Lucius swallowed hard, Severus's wand digging in a little further as he did so. "Now, Severus, our bride has expressed her displeasure with fighting."

"Our?" Severus demanded, shifting his wand to rest against Lucius's pulse point.

"Perhaps I misspoke. You suggested a truce?"

"Yes. You keep your word and I refrain from sending you to join Narcissa," Severus replied, with a jab of his wand for emphasis.

"Very well, you've made your point." Lucius winced, and rubbed at his throat where he could. "Kindly lower your wand. For Hermione's sake, I'll keep my hands to myself, and we shall do our utmost to keep from quarrelling like an old married couple."

"Agreed," Severus snapped, and reluctantly lowered his wand. The most Lucius meant by this truce was that his efforts at seduction would be more subtle, presuming that the slippery bastard meant even a word he said. Even if he did, he'd soon revert to his wicked ways.

It would be down to Severus to mask his anger, and not just from Hermione. Lucius would only provoke him further if he broadcast his feelings, and if Hermione found them mid-fight...well, that was to be avoided at all cost.

"Must I really take this?" Lucius had the vial of sterility potion in his hand and eyed it in much the same way as he would a peacock dropping. "Your handiwork may be safe, but it's sure to taste absolutely revolting."

"Actually it's virtually tasteless." A lie, but compared to some it was mild. Nothing like Skele-Gro, for instance.

Lucius uncorked the vial and had it at his lips when he paused. "But I'm a Malfoy! The purest of the pure."

Severus muffled a disbelieving snort as a cough. Compared to the Weasleys – to most other pure-blood families, too – the Malfoys were new blood.

"Virility is paramount. I can't do it."

"You do already have an heir," Severus pointed out, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at Lucius's dramatics. "What's more, there is an antidote. Once Hermione has found an alternative to the whole legal sham, you can marry whomever you please and have as many Malfoylets as the manor can hold."

"Still, is there no other way?" Lucius huffed. One would think he had an impotence draught in his hand, not a reversible sterility potion... "You could try to solve whatever fertility problem afflicts her. Are you the best potions Master or not?"

"You of all people know that I cannot do anything for infertility!" Severus snapped. "I couldn't stop Narcissa's miscarriages, or make it possible for her to conceive again after Draco."

Lucius flinched. "I know. But Hermione is a different woman, and her problems..."

"Are very similar. She'll have difficulties conceiving and a very high risk of miscarriage. She also said the Healers told her that she can only carry one child to term, even if that child is stillborn. Sound familiar?"

"I thought it was a problem limited to pure-bloods!" Lucius staggered back, almost spilling the potion in the vial.

Severus smiled mirthlessly. "Perhaps now you'll realise that there is no difference. Regardless of parentage, all wizards and witches have Muggle blood."

"Then everything I believed is a lie?" Lucius whispered, on the edge of Severus's hearing.

Severus rolled his eyes. Married to a Muggle-born, living under the same roof as that Muggle-born and a half-blood, Lucius had only just caught on? Perhaps the Malfoys really were the 'purest of the pure'. Inbreeding might explain such obliviousness.

Lucius shook his head slowly. He still looked a little poleaxed as he raised the vial once more to his lips. This time he drank it.

"Ugh! Tasteless, you say? The only thing tasteless is your sense of humour." He glared at Severus, who merely smirked back and raised a mocking eyebrow.

Lucius shot him one last poisonous look, then turned his baleful glower onto the empty vial. "And of course, now that I have taken this, it occurs to me that there might have been another way: what if Hermione had become pregnant with twins and safely carried those to term, hmm?"

Severus looked at Lucius in much the same way as he'd looked at the average Hogwarts student. "Quite apart from the fact that the Healers' tests imply that it is virtually impossible to satisfy the addendum those hypothetical twins would have to have different fathers. The addendum's stipulations don't allow for that, or have you forgotten the one-husband-in-bed at a time part?"

"Oh. Yes. That even after a child is conceived, the father-to-be – and only the father-to-be – is required to maintain sexual congress during the first trimester. That was something I was advised to do during Narcissa's pregnancies." An old sadness shadowed Lucius's eyes. "Not that it seemed to help."

That aspect of the addendum sounded like an old wives' tale, but it must have some sort of practical usage. Not that it mattered in their current circumstances ...

"Regardless, Hermione cannot fulfil the demands of the addendum. I will do my utmost to help her should she ever want to try for a child, but to raise false hopes now would be cruel. We both know how likely I am to succeed." Severus exchanged a hopeless look with Lucius.

"Yes, it is rather a moot point," Lucius agreed. "And I suppose not trying right away makes sense. We do have other things on our plate."

"Indeed." Getting rid of the law came to mind. There was no point in Hermione running the emotional gauntlet of miscarriage after miscarriage, not when she needed her full concentration for other things. The ever-present fear of miscarriage if she was pregnant would only distract her.

There was also Hermione's age to consider. She was not even twenty yet. Without the law, she probably wouldn't even think of having children for another decade. And now they should be freed from the demands of that law...

"...suppose all we can do now is wait." Lucius's voice interrupted Severus's musings.

"What?"

"Wait until both of us have been inspected by the experts at St Mungo's," Lucius said with exaggerated patience. "I presume this potion of yours is meant to be undetectable, and only reversible by you."

Severus scowled. While what Lucius said was true, Severus did not appreciate the implications about his skills. "It will be fine. You may have had a son, but there has been all that nasty business with your old wand. I have no convenient broken wand in my history."

"I'm never going to be allowed to forget that, am I?" Lucius huffed, crossing his arms across his chest. Before Severus could do more than quirk his lips into a nasty smile, Lucius changed the subject. "But we both also have the excuse of our exposure to Dark magic. I'm sure that the Cruciatus has long-term effects. And scions of pure-blood families such as us are well-known to have fertility problems. Why else are we only children?"

'Conveniently forgetting the lesson you so recently learned about magical blood already, eh?'

Severus shook his head. Why did Lucius have such a large library if he didn't bother to learn from it? "If that was the case, the Healers would have mentioned Hermione's exposure to the Cruciatus as a factor in her problems. They did not."

"But...for the love of Morgana! That means we risk Azkaban if your handiwork doesn't stand up to scrutiny."

"Give the man an Order of Merlin, he finally catches the snitch," Severus muttered. "Of course there is a risk. There's a risk of arrest – even dissolution of the unions – even if they don't discover anything untoward. All the addendum says, after all, is that infertile unions are annulled."

Lucius stared at him for a long moment. "Do you mean to say that I just unmanned myself for no reason?" he asked in a dangerously calm voice.

'Drama queen.'

"No more than I have. If we are all classed as infertile, the Ministry should have better things to do with their time than to split us up. After all, their confounded marriage law is not just for procreation, but also to pair up – marry off, even – the population."

"The sooner we have those check ups, the better," Lucius grumbled. "I hate waiting."

* * *

Severus was inclined to agree with Lucius, but at the least the other man didn't stand to lose much if it all went tits up.

He left Lucius to his grumbling and went in search of Hermione. Until judgement day came (otherwise known as his check up at St Mungo's), he would spend every moment that he could with Hermione, waking and sleeping.

Hermione was in her bedroom, her attention on her mercurial monstrous cat, currently purring in her lap.

Severus sat down beside her and tentatively put his arm around her shoulders. After her earlier words, he wasn't sure how welcoming she would be of his company.

She leaned into him and turned her body to wrap her arms around him, resting her head against his shoulder. Her cat settled across both of their laps, purring even louder. Claws began to knead contentedly at Severus's lap. It was just as well that the fabric of the clothes he wore was enchanted to resist explosions, which made the mangy half-Kneazle's attentions merely tickle.

* * *

The next twelve days gave Hermione a nasty sense of déjà vu. The last time she had felt this on edge had been when she was on the run with Harry and Ron (before the latter left them, something that still hurt to remember). At least this time she was not responsible for feeding a couple of boys as bad tempered as if they'd somehow had PMS. And there was no god-forsaken camping, either.

But frankly Hermione would take the camping over this torturous wait. Heck, she'd take wearing the Riddle-infested locket again over this. Maybe another interrogation by Bellatrix, although she'd need clearer memories of that to be sure.

She tried to keep herself occupied by scouring Malfoy Manor library yet again for anything that could be of use in finding an alternative to the law, but it was too connected to the current situation. She just couldn't concentrate, her mind whirling in a vicious circle of worry.

Like her own, the notification owls for Lucius and Severus's check ups arrived the day before the appointments. The reminders only added to the tension.

Lucius went to his check up six days after her own, and returned with the news that Severus's potion worked as intended. He had also seen Draco, so was more concerned with the way his son all but ignored him. From what Hermione could gather from his ranting, Draco just stiffly greeted him in passing, and told him to expect an owl within the next month, purposefully keeping Lucius in the dark.

Hermione retreated to her room, where Lucius never intruded. She couldn't bring herself to care about the bee in Lucius's bonnet. Not when she had far more serious concerns on her plate. Just because Lucius had passed unscathed through St Mungo's checks didn't mean that Severus would too...

Severus stayed with her in her self-imposed confinement, Crookshanks – far past his initial reserve by this time – curled up on his lap.

Five days after Lucius's check up, the house-elf assigned to her brought a horribly familiar-looking envelope with their breakfast. Severus tore it open only to confirm that it was the notification before he incinerated it with his wand. The house-elf – Tricksy, yes, that was her name – glowered at Severus, muttering obscenities under her breath as she cleaned up the ashes. With one last glare at Hermione, as if it had been her fault, Tricksy cracked away.

Hermione spent a sleepless night in Severus's arms, all too aware that just because the sterility potion worked didn't mean that the Ministry wouldn't arrest Severus on suspicion of foul play. They would no doubt already be suspicious after Lucius's check up.

And...there was still the possibility that their marriage would be dissolved despite their efforts.

In the morning, Hermione tried to give Severus the same send-off he'd given her, to no avail. She was too stressed, tense and exhausted for making love to be comfortable. In truth, so was he.

All she could do was cling to him as if she'd never let go.

Severus bent to kiss her tenderly, disentangled himself from her, and then he was gone.

Hermione buried her hands into Crookshanks's fur, her sight blurred by unshed tears. Her throat burned with the strain of keeping the sobs suppressed, her breathing ragged.

There was nothing she could do but wait.

* * *

AN: Many thanks to Kribu, Septentrion and JunoMagic for betaing.