Chapter Text
Hermione’s office smelled faintly of ink and tea. The lamps burned low, casting their light over precarious stacks of parchment and the battered oak desk.
She was laughing still – had been laughing since they stepped in from the echoing corridors of the Wizengamot.
Lucius sat, cane resting across his knees, hands folded, allowing himself the indulgence of watching her with what he hoped passed for mild patience.
“I swear, Lucius, you could have knocked him down with a feather. Proudfoot’s face—”
“—resembled,” he cut in, voice level, “a man discovering for the first time that other people are not, in fact, ornamental furniture. Quite a shock for him, I should imagine.”
She burst into laughter again, almost doubled over where she sat on the desk’s edge.
“Or Flint,” he continued, “who appeared on the verge of apoplexy when your motion passed. I did briefly hope for it. A medical emergency would at least have shortened proceedings.”
Hermione gave a mock gasp, eyes alight. “You’re dreadful.”
“I am accurate,” he corrected smoothly. “Which is altogether worse for them.”
That made her laugh again, softer this time, but with the same unguarded warmth.
It spilled over him like sunlight through a high window.
He thought, again, of the chasm between them – his sins, his name, the years he had on her – and told himself, as he always did, that to imagine more was folly. What he had was enough. A late afternoon in her office, her laughter in his ears, the privilege of being near.
“They never stood a chance,” she managed at last.
“Indeed not. Though to see them attempt resistance was… diverting.”
She exhaled, still smiling, and shook her head. “I don’t know what I’d do without you sometimes.”
The words were tossed off lightly, thoughtlessly – but they struck him. He looked away, fixing his gaze on some stack of reports lest his expression betray him.
Without him. As if he were not the one orbiting her.
He inclined his head, controlled. “I expect you would manage quite capably, as you always do.”
She rolled her eyes at him, fond but exasperated. “You never take a compliment, do you?”
On the contrary.
He hoarded hers, every casual praise tucked away to polish in the quiet of his mind. They sustained him. They made him foolishly, unreasonably glad.
“I choose not to indulge in exaggeration,” he murmured.
Hermione shook her head and slid down from the desk, riffling among her papers.
“I wanted to show you what I have in mind next. Housing reform. Specifically, for half-blood families who’ve been historically edged out of—”
“Yes,” he interrupted smoothly, eyes flicking down the parchment. “Yes, you will of course require strategic support, detailed knowledge of the property laws – tiresome work, but essential. I happen to be competent in such matters. How very convenient.”
Her lips curved. “You’d help with this too?”
“Help?” He raised a pale brow. “My dear, I would rescue it from certain mutilation at the hands of our esteemed colleagues.”
She laughed, shaking her head again. “Well, in that case, I’ll send you the draft tomorrow.”
Lucius inclined his head in acceptance.
His mind was already tallying: weeks, perhaps months of meetings, of late evenings poring over statutes, of her voice carrying across a table as she argued her point with fire.
More time. More of her.
And he would take it, shameless in this at least, because the alternative was her absence, and very thought was unbearable.
“You see,” he said, settling back into the chair, tone as bland as ever, “the true reward for today’s labours is not the motion passed, but the prospect of seeing the Wizengamot endure yet more of our joint company. One must cherish such small mercies.”
As Hermione laughed again, he let himself imagine that it was him, not just his wit, that she cherished so.