Disclaimer: Original plot and characters are the property of JK Rowling. All original plot and characters are mine. Not intended for sale or profit. Please do not repost without permission. Hermione is to be considered of legal age in this story.

A/n: I posted this story ages ago, but it is now severely edited from its original content in order to comply with the censorship rules on this site (ie, someone ratted me out to the mods less than a day after I posted it, the traitors). A link to the original, mature, uncensored (better) version of this is linked in my profile. The Adult Fanfiction Archive is only intended for readers age 18+.

My entire idea for this story was sparked by an exquisite fanart by Diamond Tears; the link to the image may be found on my profile, please take a look!

Fallen Star

"How thou art fallen from the heavens, O Lucifer, Son of the Dawn!" - Isaiah 14:12

The name Lucius was Roman in origin. Hermione had looked it up. It was a derivative of the name for the god that heralded the dawn, Lucifer; literally the 'bringer of light'. Astronomically speaking, Lucifer the Morning Star was in reality the planet Venus – named for the Roman goddess of love – when it hung just above the Eastern horizon at daybreak.

At the tender age of thirteen, Hermione had found the juxtaposition of the 'goddess of love' and the 'bringer of light' to be a terribly romantic notion. She had also had a blinding crush on Gilderoy Lockhart at the time, so admittedly her priorities were not entirely in order. It was just the sort of cerebrally idealistic nonsense that appealed to romance novelists and the authors of greeting card poetry. But Hermione had been going through some kind of insipid adolescent phase in which such frippery appealed to her.

The point being, when she had first glimpsed the refined, nearly regal figure of Lucius Malfoy across the crowded bookshop, the etymology of the name had swirling around inside her head, she'd found herself transfixed and blushing. Still young and just starting to appreciate the male species in a new light, she had never known that a man could be beautiful.

But the name Lucifer had another, more notorious connotation. Hermione had looked that up as well. The translation error of a fourth century scholar had given the name Lucifer to Helel Ben-Schachar – 'Shining One, Son of the Dawn', an easy mistake to make - and in doing so, accidentally transfigured a deposed Babylonian king into a fallen god. Ever since, Lucifer had been synonymous with ultimate evil, the rebelling angel, enemy of Heaven, beautiful to behold, but a supreme tempter, and the father of lies.

It turned out his namesake was no different. If Hermione had thought of the demigod when she first laid eyes on him, she had remembered the devil when he spoke, his words liquid and sweet, but laced with poisonous cruelty and disdain in every drop.

It had been five year since that day, and still, each time she encountered the man, this same round of seeing and hearing and remembering cycled through her head. Not because she questioned the fact that he was a ruthless, avaricious, self-righteous, bigoted Death Eater (regardless of the Ministry's inquisitorial ruling in his favor after the Voldemort's demise three months ago). Rather it was because the sight of his devastating masculine beauty never failed to strike straight through her every cognitive defense to lodge in her chest like an arrow between her ribs. It always took a moment or two for her mind to catch up with the pounding of her heart.

This time was no different in that respect, though it was completely different in every other.

Hermione peered around the meticulously manicured sprawl of the garden in which she found herself. She sat upon an ornate stone bench carved of marble, set along a path of immaculate granite tiles that led to a pleasantly burbling fountain in the center of the space. Her robes were delicate azure silk, and they hugged her body flatteringly as though they had been tailored just for her. Her hair, always so unmanageable, had been tamed into a French twist, pinned in swirling whorls atop her head, then allowed to cascade back down in a fall of gentle curls. The breeze was heavy with the perfume of neatly arranged and perfectly pruned flowers as it threaded through the curling wisps that framed her face. Snowy white peacocks strutted with dignified languor about the lawns. The garden was lit with torches at intervals along the paths, and overhead, the night sky shone with stars so big and bright that it almost begged the impression of caricature or fantasy.

And it had to be a fantasy. Or more likely a hallucination. Or a Confundus charm. Or in any case, something not wholly natural.

She knew it wasn't real because only moments ago, Hermione had been walking down the streets of muggle London at midday. Right now she was meant to be meeting Harry and Ron at the Leaky Cauldron to buy school supplies for their seventh year at Hogwarts.

Now, abruptly she was elsewhere, and it was night, and she had never seen this place before, and she had certainly never owned such exquisite robes or worn her hair in such a sophisticated style, she had no idea how any of it had come to be...

And strangest of all, she wasn't nearly as worried about all this as she should be. Wasn't it normal to be disoriented, terrified even, if you blinked and were suddenly somewhere different?

Yet apart from puzzlement at this new development and curiosity as to where she was, all she felt was calm. Hermione tried to summon up a normal reaction, but it wouldn't come. It was like all the fear and worry and confusion in her mind was bound up somewhere else.

Then she saw him, and as always, all higher thought processes fled to the recesses of her mind. He emerged from shadows under the boughs of a nearby tree, his long blond hair shining against midnight black robes, and paused as his silver-grey eyes locked with hers across the expanse of the garden. His gaze was startlingly intense as he took in the sight of her there, and it distracted her for a long, lost moment, before she made herself remember who he was.

He was Lucius Malfoy, and his beauty was only skin deep.

That thought lodged firmly in the front of her mind, she shot to her feet and backed away, wary of a trap. She briefly searched the folds of her robes, but as suspected, her wand was not on her person. After all, why would an abductor, real or hallucinated, leave her with her wand? She felt suddenly very vulnerable. Malfoy may have greased his way out of Azkaban with galleons, but whatever he claimed, he had been a Death Eater. Which meant she may well be in grave danger right now.

Ah, there was a bit of that fear at last. Fortunately, she was good at transfering fear into anger, and she made herself hold her ground beside the fountain

"Mr. Malfoy," she snapped, half frightened, half furious as he at last caught up with her. "What's the meaning of this? Where am I? How did I get here? What do you want with me?"

"And a good evening to you too, Miss Granger," he replied, his voice silky and patronizing. Hermione felt her cheeks heat in spite of herself, the seventeen year old young woman still harboring shades of that insecure thirteen year old that had never quite got over the devastating dichotomy of the man in front of her. Another measure of her fear fed into anger. That was good, she could use anger. Anger straightened her spine. "I shall be more than happy to explain this little deviation from your busy schedule," he continued ever-so obligingly, "if you would but give me a moment's leave to do so."

Hermione opened her mouth to say something stinging. Then she closed it with an audible click, crossed her arms, and gave him an impatient nod. See? She could be cooperative. He returned her acerbic nod with a raised eyebrow and turned to gesture expansively at the scenery.

"As to where you are, these are the central gardens of my estate in Wiltshire," he informed her, his tone acquiring a veneer of pleasant politesse, as though they were old friends making small talk. "However, in truth, this is only a facsimile of the gardens. We are in reality meeting in a neutral ground between our minds."

"Like… a dream?" Hermione wondered skeptically, searching desperately for some solid conversational ground now that she was relatively certain she wasn't in immediate danger of being hexed. If she were, he'd have done it by now.

"If you wish," he replied, managing to sound indulgent while simultaneously insinuating that she should be enormously grateful that he was indulging her and implying that it was nothing at all like a dream. How did he do that so annoyingly well? No one should be able to say so many different things at once. "As to how you came to be here, I fashioned this mental landscape so that we might have a more comfortable setting, and brought you here so that we might have a little chat."

Hermione carefully refrained from scoffing. "Comfortable for you, perhaps, on you home territory," she returned evenly. Her eyes narrowed with deepening suspicion. "A chat about what?"

"So refreshingly direct," he commented with another small smile, but it was stilted and his tone told her it was anything but. It amazed her that he seemed to think she was being rude, when he'd just admitted to essentially kidnapping her mind. What could he possibly want with her? "Yes, it is perhaps best to move things along."

Never looking away, he extended his cane from the folds of his cloak in one black gloved hand. It passed over the basin of the fountain, and though the spouts continued to gush into the well, the surface of the water smoothed to a glassy stillness.

"Look," he invited with quiet command, a hint of a fox's grin curling the corner of his lips and lending an air of scorn to his tone. But his eyes seemed ready to burn through her with their sober intensity. "There is the topic I wish to discuss."

She held his eyes for another wary moment, then pursed her lips and turned to stare down into the quiet pool. The water made a perfect mirror, reflecting the unnaturally bright stars overhead, but beyond the surface, its depths descended, window-like, onto a scene from another place.

Hermione paled at what she saw there.

The scene was about midday, in the middle of a roadway in muggle London. Two cars had collided just before the intersection, one of them hissing and smoking where its front end had been dented in. There were people running and shouting beside the other, milling around the front bumper. A break in the crowd showed her what they were all gawking at.

There Hermione lay upon the pavement, eyes closed, still as stone, one arm trapped under the car's fallen bumper up to the shoulder. She could not make out any rise in her chest to indicate she was breathing. Her hair, fanned around her head like a wildly halo, was slowly soaking into a spreading pool of vivid red blood that pulsed mercilessly from the back of her skull. It grew around her head in all directions, rolling outward over the reflection of the night sky like sunrise rolling over the horizon at daybreak to consume the stars. It was almost as beautiful as it was terrifying.

A flash of memory hit her like a bludger – glancing both ways before she stepped off the curb – the flash of black and silver out of nowhere, the roar of an unseen engine – the blare of a horn, the squeal of tires on asphalt, the greasy stench of exhaust – surprise and pain – someone shouting, someone crying – then sinking blackness sucking her down, down, down…

Hermione found her legs would not support her as the breath whooshed out of her all at once. She would have fallen if a strong, leather clad hand had not gripped her arm at the last instant, lowering her gently to kneel on the cool granite of the path beside the basin. She wrapped her fingers over its stone lip in a white-knuckle grip as though it were the only solid thing left in the world.

Small wonder now, why suddenly appearing in this idyllic garden had not roused her anxiety; she had not been pulled into a terrifying situation, she had been escaping one.

"Dear me," Malfoy commented with mock sympathy as he peered down into the scene in the water. "That is quite a lot of blood. Too much, I think. I doubt even those barbaric butchers the muggles refer to as surgeons could do anything about it now…" His eyes flicked over to meet hers in the reflection of the pool above the horrific scene. "I do believe you are dying, Miss Granger."

The beautiful garden world began to tilt slightly. Hermione forced herself to suck in a deep breath and willed herself notto faint. It would do her no good. Whatever realm of the mind she was currently occupying, it was appallingly clear that if she lost consciousness now, she might never regain it.

As she wrenched her vision back into focus, something in the scene caught her attention. Back from the crowd, almost beyond the borders of the vision, she spied a familiar face. Lucius Malfoy stood in the shadow of the nearest building, gripping his cane tightly in one hand as he stared unblinkingly at her broken form. His eyes were slightly glazed and utterly unblinking and his lips moved in the silent continuous chant of a spell. If the people around him were aware of his presence, they gave no indication of it, though she did note that all approaching onlookers seemed to conveniently veer off in another direction before they could cross his line of sight – and break the spell that must be keeping her mind intact.

Closing her eyes for an instant, Hermione gathered her thoughts and tried to sort through them. Bottom lip trembling slightly in spite of her resolve to show no weakness, she turned and looked up at the wizard standing beside her.

"That spell… you're keeping me alive," she observed uncertainly.

"Yes," was all he said.

"Why?" she whispered, swallowing hard against her trepidation. He was, perhaps literally, the very last person on earth she would ever have expected to save her. It made no sense. And it made her intensely nervous that she now lived or died on the whim of this heartless man.

His eyes lingered on the water for a moment more, expressionless, before he turned his head to meet her eyes once more.

"To save you, of course," he replied smoothly, his voice and mien betraying nothing but perhaps a speck of mild annoyance. "Please do not flatter yourself that I would waste magic on you if I merely wished to show off my gardens."

He extended his free hand to her. Hermione nearly refused on principle, but she actually doubted she had the wherewithal left to stand on her own and even through her shock and fear, she intensely disliked the idea of kneeling in front of him. Not to mention that it suddenly seemed like a very good idea to humor him in this farce of civility.

She placed a trembling hand in his. The leather was startlingly warm and soft after the cold bite of the stone, and when she had gained her feet once more, the texture of it as it slid away from her skin was almost too real. She shivered, and looked up at him, frightened and at a loss. She was totally at his mercy, and she had seen precious little evidence that Lucius Malfoy possessed any quality that could be termed 'mercy', or that he even knew the meaning of the word.

"Save me?" she prompted tremulously, focusing desperately on the one glimmer of hope she could see in this situation.

In lieu of response, Malfoy took two steps back, slowly extricating his fingers from the confines of one glove. He extended the bare hand in front of him, and Hermione wondered for an instant if he expected her to take it. But he wasn't looking at her – he was looking at the sky. She followed his gaze upward, and gasped in reluctant wonder.

One of the too-bright stars was slowly plummeting from the sky towards them, shining like fire through diamonds and casting cool rainbows through the night air to dance in the shadows. Its descent slowed as it neared, drifting down in a winding spiral until it came delicately to rest upon a pad of air and light just above Malfoy's extended hand.

"What is it?" Hermione breathed, entranced in spite of herself by its pulsing brilliance. She could not seem to look away, her mouth almost watering from a sudden, searing want of it. It pulled at her senses in pulsing waves that echoed through her entire body.

"This," Malfoy intoned quietly, watching her intently, "is a piece of my own life. A small portion, but large enough to sustain your own when imbued through the Vita Sortis ritual." He paused. "Should I find myself motivated impart it to you, that is." His arm extended slightly towards her, giving her a better view of its sparkling radiance –

the god of the dawn offering her a star that would bring light back into her world. "Do you want it?"

Hermione opened her mouth to reply with a desperate, enthusiastic 'yes!' Somehow she managed to swallow the word back down. Because Lucius Malfoy was not the herald of the dawn. He was the tempter and the father of lies.

"And what are you asking for in return?" she demanded, proud of the steel in her voice as she ripped her eyes away from the dazzling star to level her pride at his machinations.

Her words startled what might actually have been a genuine smile of amusement to his lips.

"It is surprisingly good to know that we understand one another, Miss Granger," he replied dryly. Then his face fell, with a quickness that staggered her, into a stony mask of deceptive, vaguely threatening calm. "My son's life is in danger. In exchange for this piece of my life, you will protect him with yours."

Hermione felt her eyebrows climb her forehead.

"Protection?" she frowned. "What from?"

She almost asked 'and why would you want me to be the one to do it', then her brain caught up with her running mouth and stopped her from accidentally talking him out of saving her life.

Lucius sighed and looked away off into the night. His fingers closed around the radiant orb and he stepped away from her, meandering off onto the lawn. For a panicked moment Hermione thought he was withdrawing his offer, but he stopped a few feet away, gazing up and out into the night vast chasm of the starlit night above.

"My dear, demented sister-in-law is the cause of it all," he spoke with his back to her, his voice both rueful and colored with a bored disdain. Hermione followed him out onto the grass, inching around until his profile was just visible in the flickering torchlight that shone off his platinum hair. "Narcissa was…" he paused and cleared his throat. "As you know, my wife died in the crossfire the night the Dark Lord was finally overthrown. Bellatrix took her sister's death quite hard. You see, she no longer acknowledges any relation to Andromeda Tonks, so it felt to her as though the last of her family had been killed. For some reason she… blamed me for Narcissa's passing…"

His stone mask of polite insincerity broke open for an instant, a look of pained remorse surfacing over his features before he forced it under again.

Hermione cocked her head at the unexpected sight. There was no doubt in her mind that the display of emotion was entirely for her benefit and she wasn't buying what he was selling. But at the same time, she had seen enough ill-concealed sorrow on the faces of her allies in the weeks following the last battle with Voldemort, as the funerals and memorial services came and went. There was no mistaking it; not even Malfoy could manufacture that kind of anguish. Buried somewhere under his myriad layers of brutality, insincerity and staid aristocracy was a grieving human heart.

She couldn't bring herself to feel sorry for him. How many hearts had he broken in just the same way? But the very fact that he did indeed possess emotions other than cold hate, seething rage and cloying smugness both startled and fascinated her. In spite of herself, she took a step closer, listening now with more than just an ear for how she could get what she needed from him.

"Being the venomous little backbiter that she is," he continued, "Bellatrix decided to punish me for destroying the last of her family with an attempt to destroy the last of mine. Before the Aurors caught up with her, she had just enough time to snare Draco with a rather sticky curse."

He paused and glanced in her direction, sizing her up as though weighing one last time whether he really wanted to deal with her. At last he sighed and appeared to throw all caution to the wind.

"Draco's defensive magic has been bound," he admitted with an air of finality. "It is still perfectly intact, mind you, but he cannot wield it in the slightest to defend himself." He sighed again, brow furrowing in what appeared to be long standing frustration. "I've called on countless curse breakers from around the world; not one of them has come close to a solution. Until something can be done, the boy is totally defenseless. If one of my enemies were to find him in this state, he'd be dead before he could blink. Or worse, it could take him hours to die… days…"

A muscle in his cheek jumped as his jaw clenched at whatever dark imaginings were playing out behind his eyes. Again, Hermione wondered how much of it came from his own experience. But despite all else she could count against him, Hermione's could not doubt in that moment that he was worried for his son.

Yet even so, none of this added up. What was this ritual that he was proposing to save her? Why did he want her of all people to protect his only son? Who were these enemies he seemed to think were after Draco? And how had he come to be on the same street corner as her just when she most needed to be saved?

She opened her mouth, intending to interrogate him mercilessly, when, with a suddenness that terrified her, something deep inside her body seized painfully tight. With a final defiant thump, she felt her heart go quiet in her chest. All at once her lungs didn't seem able to draw enough air. The garden tilted alarmingly and she was falling again, falling… strong arms materialized around her shoulders, pulling her in to sag weakly against a wall of warmth.

"The spell has reached its limit," Malfoy murmured in her ear. His breath was hot against the suddenly clammy skin of her cheek. "There is no more time for talk. Do you accept the bargain or not?"

Frightened as she'd been at the sight of her own blood on the pavement, it hadn't seemed real until that very moment. Not until she'd felt her heart stop beating in her chest. Terror clawed its way up her throat to sting tears from her wide, dimming eyes. She didn't want to die.

"Y…yes," she whispered feebly.

"Excellent," he enunciated, and she thought she imagined just a shade of relief in his voice. "Now do as I say."

He shifted her weakening form so that she was cradled in the crook of one arm, his cane with his wand falling to the lawn with a muted thud. The other rose before her, his hand filled with the light of fallen star. It was blindingly bright. A string of words seemed to flow from his lips like nectar, unaccountably sweet to her ears; she thought she heard the words he'd mentioned before – vita sortis – but her mind was filling with fog. She wanted to cry with her fear and confusion, but she couldn't find the strength. She was fading.

Then he tipped her head back and captured her eyes in his glittering silver gaze, and the fear and despair faded into the background. Even in its death throes her mind quieted before his cold beauty. His face betrayed nothing, but his voice was edged with a bizarre tension as he spoke the ritual words.

"Swear now - will you protect Draco Malfoy with your very life, until such a time as he is able to defend himself?"

"Yes," she breathed.

"Hermione Granger, I give my life into your keeping and receive in equal measure your vow of faith. Our lives are bound, our houses joined, so long as the contract holds."

Something about him was changed subtly, she noted distantly, as though from the end of a long tunnel. Color had risen into his cheeks and he was watching her with a strange ardor as the star pulsed, light licking at his fingers.

He told her how to respond.

"Lucius Malfoy," she murmured, "I accept what you offer, and give of myself in equal measure. Life for life. Our houses are joined, so long as the contract holds."

She felt a tremor run through the arm that supported her as he drew a deep breath through parted lips.

"Now place your hand in mine."

The effort of raising her arm was a struggle of Herculean proportions for her oxygen deprived body. It was almost too much to bear, too much to consider. How had she never noticed how heavy her body was before this moment? It seemed impossible that she had ever had the strength to move something so heavy…

"Hermione…" Malfoy's voice was low and commanding, and filled with a vibration of something primal that tried to raise the hair on the back of her neck, but failed, because everything was just so heavy… "Hermione, you must place your own hand in mine. I cannot help you. Look at light," he told her. "Look at the fallen star."

Bending his head down, he tucked his cheek beside hers and nudged her head sideways, forcing her eyes into line with the star in his hand hand. It tried to occur to her that his words and actions were incredibly strange, incredibly unlike him, that there was something she should be worrying about or objecting to… but her thoughts had become almost as heavy as her body…

The palm of his hand drifted into focus. With the darkening of her sight, the star had become a tiny sun, almost devastating to look upon. She was growing cold, and she found that she wanted it's raw, living heat with a depth of obsession that nearly made her cry out in agony. She did not want to die.

With the last vestiges of life left in her, she dragged her arm upward through air thick as molasses. Just as the last of her own inner light flickered and faded, her palm connected with his, their fingers lacing tightly around the radiant star.

Hermione cried out as the light of the star roared into her body, filling the dark and the cold, driving back the fog of death with blinding brilliant fire. Deep inside her chest, her heart gave an almighty THUMP and began, painfully, to beat once more. She gasped, and air, sweeter than mana from the heavens, flooded into her body. Her hand convulsed in his, tightening around the throbbing light that still spilled from between their interlocked fingers. It flowed through her, filled her, overflowed her… too much, too much, and even as it flowed in, it flooded back out – back into him, through the circuit of their joined hands. She was a river, and the torrent rushed through her, no where to go, and the only thing she could cling to was his hand, his body. His body…

Everything in her tightened and tingled, ached and begged. Just as she was sure she would explode into flames from the firestorm raging within her, the energy swirled low in her body. She pried open eyes that she did not remember closing and met the piercing gaze of the man that held her.

Gone were the insincere smile and the stony mask that hid his thoughts. There was only one thought in his head at that moment, and it showed clearly on his face.

"Th-this feeling…"

"Life…" he breathed against her neck. She felt his lips graze her collar bone and then they were both falling…

Her fingers fisted in his robes, so tightly that one heavy silver button was torn from its mooring, fisted tight in her fingers as he… as he…

"Aah!"

Just moments ago she had understood the horrific reality of dying. Now, in this moment as her mind was silenced and her body vibrated with sensation and energy, she vividly and unequivocally understood that she was alive. She gave herself to it, and for now he was not an evil and deadly enemy that had brought her friends and allies untold pain. For now, he was nothing but a devastatingly beautiful man that was bringing her unbelievable joy.

The light that lanced out between the gaps in their intertwined fingers in time with their breath. It burned broader, brighter, building, carrying her higher, higher…

The star shattered between their interlocked fingers, spilling white light over their bodies as she tumbled over a shining precipice.

The torrent of energy from the star blazed like an inferno. It gushed into her, hot and vital. As though some fracture had been patched and she was whole once more, it began to fill her up, burgeoned from the base of her spine until it radiated out into every inch of her body, and further, erupting in a luminescent sheen from her flesh as her back bowed off the ground.

He turned his head so that his lips were pressed to her ear.

"When you are ready, come to me. I will be waiting."

Then, too suddenly to understand it, she was ripped away from his embrace and falling upward; propelled like a rocket by the light inside her, rushing up, up, up with exhilarating speed, she burst through the darkness between the stars.

.

The first thing she knew was a low, incessant beeping. Next was the smell of disinfectant, plastic and ozone. Then came pain, and it was everywhere.

Hermione opened her eyes and groaned as the white tiles of the ceiling swam nauseatingly. She had to blink several times before she could bring her self to take in her surroundings. She was in a hospital room and there were tubes and wires coming out of nose and arms and chest every which way. A moment's panic flooded her as she recalled the accident, followed by relief to realize she had indeed survived it.

Those thoughts were rapidly displaced by the details of her unbelievably vivid dream. The beeping of the machine beside her head increased as her heart began to race. She shook her head, then immediately regretted it as it caused the room to spin.

"Head injury," she muttered to herself, scrunching her eyes closed as she waited for the dizziness to subside. "That's the only explanation for a delusion like that…"

The tiny flash of disappointment that accompanied the return of her rational mind took her by surprise, but she put it aside. Even if she could get past his evil personality and his unforgivable actions, it was still more likely to start raining nifflers than…

But as she reached for the call light, she realized there was something clenched tight in her hand. Frowning, and then grimacing as her muscles shrieked in protest, she turned her hand over and unclenched her fingers.

She opened her eyes to stare, astonished, at the gleaming silver button that had pressed an indentation of a serpent into the palm of her hand. When the nurse came in half an hour later to poke and prod at seemingly every single sore spot she could find, Hermione was still trying to figure out if she had been saved by an angel, or sold her soul to the devil.

.

A/n: Please remember this version of the story is highly edited down; but I still hope you have enjoyed it! To read the full version, please visit my profile.

There is more to this story! But until I have time to write it down, this will have to stand alone. Think of it as a teaser.

Would you like to read more? Please review!