He was there, that clearing, the one where Hermione had first cut her hair. He could smell the fragrant grass. He lay so still that the moths lit on him, and their legs tickled his skin.

Was this...peace?

He closed his eyes and reached for Hermione, upsetting the moths, but his hand found only the stems and chutes of wildflowers.

"She isn't here, Lucius. And you shouldn't be, either."

Narcissa's voice washed over him. She was a vision, wrapped in a flowing white gown with her hair loose. He knew that she was dead. Only a specter.

"Cissy..."

She came to sit beside him. Her hands were transparent, but she wove together the stems of white asters as if this meant nothing. Lucius watched her, entranced. There was much that he wanted to say, but he couldn't seem to think of any of it.

"Don't stay here," she said softly after a long lull. "It's pretty, but sometimes prisons are."

He hit consciousness too fast, like a man jumping into a cold river. It slammed him with sensation - sight, sound, smell - and he could feel every inch of everything. It was a horrific shock after being so deeply lost in his brain and Lucius could only gasp and curl up among the bedclothes.

There were others there. He could hear them, feel them touching him, but many minutes elapsed before he could respond to them.

"...Malfoy! Mr. Malfoy, please, speak to us if you can."

He forced his lips to form words. "Hermione. Where..." His voice was small and hoarse.

A healer's face swam into his vision, and the man smiled. "Ms. Granger is fine. Once we send word, I'm sure she'll be here."

His muscles, which were coiled tightly with fear, pain, and tension, went slack with relief. He lay still and let the healers poke and prod him.

"Everything seems to be all right," the healer said, mostly to himself. He exchanged a cryptic glance with one of his colleagues. "Do you know what the date is, Mr. Malfoy?"

"I know that it was June when he sent us away."

"June...of what year?"

Lucius opened his eyes. "1998." He did not like the way they were looking at him. The healer, a tall man with dark hair and light eyes, frowned and touched his arm.

"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, Mr. Malfoy, but today is April 4, 2001. You were missing for over two and a half years, and you've been in the hospital since New Year's Day."

He could only stare at the healer. Two and a half years they had been stuck in that hell. Two and a half years. It had not felt that long, but then again, they had lost all concept of time. Days, weeks, months, years...time was only demarcated by the changing of the seasons, and they had no way of knowing how long each season lasted in a world built entirely on Voldemort's whim.

Voldemort...

He leaned forward, gripping the healer's robe. "What's happened? What..." He couldn't adequately frame his question.

What is the world now?

He could see a deep pity in the other man's eyes. This was when they would tell him and it would all become real. This was when he would have to accept that his family was dead and gone, and no matter how ready he thought he was, no matter how resigned, it would still be a blow. Lucius braced himself.

The healer opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was dashed away by the sound of the door flying open and smashing against the wall. Everyone in the room jumped and turned.

"I'm sorry. I got here as quickly as I could." The man in the doorway leaned against the frame, panting. "He's waking up?"

The healer stepped away, clearing his vision and allowing him to see what he already knew by the voice. Lucius felt his body begin to shake, controlled by adrenaline, joy, disbelief, and things he couldn't name. He was dizzy. He was so happy that it hurt.

"You're alive." He drew a ragged breath, still unable to process the simple wonder of his son standing there. "You're alive."

And the wave broke inside him, pounding ashore and stealing all sense from him.

Draco sat in tired daze, watching his father sleep. He was sure that he had bruises from how tightly his father clutched him. It had taken a half an hour for his left shoulder to dry; his hands still remembered the feeling of the other man trembling.

It had been a shock for his father to reappear after so long, and even more of a shock to know that he had been trapped in some awful place with Hermione Granger for all that time. What was more disconcerting was how close the two of them had obviously become. Her first thought upon waking had been for his father, and the healers said the first word out of his mouth was her name.

The healers told him, also, that wherever they had been, whatever they had lived through, it had taken a tremendous toll on both of them. For Lucius's part, charms and spells showed at least two old broken bones that had healed naturally, and there were new scars all over him. He was thin, nearly emaciated, and dirty. He had never known his father to be anything but meticulously clean, and the only time he had seen him otherwise was after his escape from Azkaban. The man they had pulled from the mausoleum looked like he had seen more of a war than the world he'd left behind.

And today...well, it was the first time he ever saw his father cry, and he hoped to all that was holy that it would be the last, because it was terrifying.

The note had only one line.

He's awake.

Hermione waited for the sight of his irises with laughable anticipation. Some might think her mad for sitting and waiting, waiting for a man to wake up, but she wouldn't be able to function if she was anywhere but here.

They had told her that he would never wake up. His brain must have been deprived of oxygen for too long; he would be comatose forever, or until some secondary condition claimed him. Draco accepted it with a quiet kind of grief. Perhaps it was easier for him, since he had already thought his father was gone.

It had taken her much longer to capitulate. Perhaps it was hope, or perhaps it was denial. It seemed monstrously frightening to acknowledge that she would never again hear Lucius's voice, watch him in quiet moments, smile internally at all the little quirks she had come to know, or wake with the security of knowing he was there.

But in the last month, she had been able to start letting go. To relax, to remember who she had been before Voldemort's trap. There were things to be done in this new world, and she could no longer allow herself to wallow in a place of fear and uncertainty. She had to emerge mostly whole on the other side of all this. A piece of her had been lost to that other world, and another piece to Lucius, but there was enough left to gather up and go on with dignity.

He would want her to be happy. He would want her to be brilliant. It was with those things in mind that she had taken the dive head-first back into her old life.

Now he was awake. Hermione felt tears begin to burn in her eyes, but she fought them back. Right now, she would only be happy that he had returned. She reached for his hand and held it as she waited.

Draco told him that Hermione would come. As sleep cleared from his mind, he knew by instinct - by magic - that she was here. He could feel her small hand within his.

Lucius opened his eyes. And immediately, setting his glance upon her, he knew that he had lost her. Her hair was long, and there was a ring on her finger.

She shrunk from his gaze. Tears filled her eyes. "It's been four months. I didn't think you'd wake up. They said you wouldn't. I..."

Four months. It had felt like mere minutes spent in the clearing with Narcissa, but those minutes had translated to months in this world. He had wasted so much time without even realizing it. He couldn't expect her to wait so long for him. And what did they have, anyway? Love borne of mutual torture was a twisted thing, and best left behind in the place that had created it.

He squeezed her hand, his heart fracturing. "Are you happy?"

She swallowed and brushed at her tears with her free hand. "Yes. I think so, yes."

"That is all I want."

Hermione sniffled. "But what about you?"

"I have Draco," he replied softly. If he didn't, he might have fallen apart, but with his son alive and well, he knew he could go on.

She looked away, her face miserable. Now she knew how he had felt that night in the castle of the twelve dancing princesses. She had found the world of painful choices, a world in which every possible solution was fraught with a thicket of barbed emotions.

He looked at her hand, her delicate fingers entwined with his, the fourth crowned with another man's ring. It hurt. Yes, it stung, but that was how he knew that all of it had been real. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it.

"I am too old for you, anyway."

It took some time for him to recover. Draco was there every day to encourage him, and also to shelter him from the hordes of people who wanted to know what happened in the two and a half years he'd been missing. Hermione didn't speak of it and neither did he. All she said, when asked, was that she wouldn't have survived without him, and he said the same of her.

He caught Draco staring at him sometimes. His son wanted to ask, but maturity had lent him the self-control not to.

He did not hold back in his own questions for Draco. He asked about the war, about Narcissa, about all that had come to pass. Draco explained that Narcissa had been killed almost immediately after he was sent away; she took advantage of her closeness with Bellatrix and got her to drop her guard enough to knock her out and take her wand. She nearly succeeded in setting Draco free. Unfortunately, she was caught at the last moment and murdered without preamble by her enraged sister. She had been hastily buried in an unknown location. Only Voldemort and Bellatrix knew where, and as they were both dead, no one else would ever know.

After her death, a rift had formed among the Death Eaters. Many were horrified at what was happening right before their eyes. Much could be said about purebloods, but family had always been paramount in the way they did things. Bellatrix's betrayal of Narcissa was unthinkable, and the fact that most supported her madness gave the more sensible among Voldemort's ranks pause. They were supposed to be fighting for the dwindling pureblood contingent, not depleting it further - and certainly not at the whim of a half-blood.

The defection happened soon afterwards. A dozen broke ranks with Voldemort, and they took Draco with them. It took a great deal of negotiation, but they quickly reached an accord with the resistance and the complexion of the war changed. With dissent among his ranks, Voldemort became irrational, paranoid, and in another two months, the war was over.

Draco explained it all to him. The horcruxes, the Elder Wand, the last battle at Hogwarts...everything. Many were dead, but what mattered most was that Voldemort was destroyed.

Since then, the world had been quietly licking its wounds and limping towards recovery. The Death Eaters who had remained with Voldemort were dead or incarcerated. Those who had defected had served an instrumental role in turning the tide of the war, and so they received little more than fines and community service once all was said and done. Many of them now worked to rebuild and express the concerns of purebloods in a more constructive manner. They were not really afraid of half-bloods, Muggle-borns, and Muggles; they were simply afraid of losing their own place in society, and watching the traditions they had lived by disappear in the flood of progress.

Draco was heavily involved in all of it - reconciliation, politics, law, rebuilding, and the slow redemption of pureblood wizards and witches. Lucius was proud of the way he had employed the Malfoy fortune; his son was generous but keen, and was getting twice the return on investment, not always in galleons.

Draco encouraged Lucius to join him, but he couldn't abide the public eye anymore. After having only one other companion for so long, even ten people in a room could paralyze him with anxiety. The fact that nine out of those ten people would likely pester him with questions or expect him to behave as he had before was enough to make him a hermit.

He braved the crowd only once; he went to Hermione's wedding. He pretended at normalcy for her, though he knew that there was nothing normal about him exchanging pleasantries with the Weasleys, nor in him putting someone else's desires before his own.

He watched her marry Ronald Weasley. Draco's eyes were on him, all too perceptive, and strangely enough, two others were observing him, as well. Harry Potter looked suspicious. Molly Weasley looked sad. What a strange world he lived in.

Hermione had the same thought as Ginny helped her to affix her veil. Everything felt too easy, too right. The war had made Ron the man she always dreamed he could be. Passionate, strong, noble, and, by some miracle, articulate. He certainly had his moments, still, but his stubbornness had faded into something quieter, and he now knew that nothing was worth prolonging a grudge. She had fallen for him with dizzying speed.

But...

She looked in the mirror. Ginny stood behind her, her face radiant with a smile. The redhead leaned down to hug her from behind, blinking tears out of her eyes.

"I'll finally have a sister," she said softly.

"What about Fleur?" Hermione replied.

"I'll finally have a sister I like."

Together, they giggled, and Hermione was able to push away the doubt.

In time, he bought the books. He read with trepidation, but it soon evaporated when he realized how much Voldemort had perverted these tales. Many were dark, violent, even frightening, but they were meant to be tales of wonder and of morality. The Dark Lord had twisted them into instruments of torment.

Especially Sleeping Beauty. When he read it, he understood how the Muggle paintings inspired by it could be so beautiful and so ethereal. It was not a story of cold, nor of death, but one of jealousy, love, and fate. It was a story of the beauty and terror of love, made as simple as a rose and its thorns.

The roses Hermione brought back in her pocket had been planted outside the mausoleum during his convalescence; she hoped that they would grow and commemorate all they had been through. Grow they had. The roses became something of a sensation, for they bloomed with unrestrained vigor in the cooler months and hibernated in the summer, and when their petals fell, they shattered like red Venetian glass.

They climbed in a mad tangle all over the white stone monument, wrapping it so tightly in thorny vines and blood-red blooms that it was impassable. Lucius didn't mind. He knew he wouldn't be resting there. Just last week, in the far reaches of the grounds, he had spotted an area that was overgrown with white asters.

He was shopping for his first grandchild when next he saw Hermione. He thought he was imagining things; he sometimes did, and wondered if his mind was really as whole as everyone believed. She stood in front of a shop among Diagon Alley's hustle and bustle, dressed to ward off the mid-autumn chill. Her hair was short again.

Lucius went to greet her, conscious of the cameras and whispers that followed. Normally it would have distressed him, but his anxiety was tempered by the way her face lit up when she saw him. All he could think of was how much better she looked this way. He invited her to have dinner with him and she accepted, and they were both stunned at the ease with which they could pick up where they had left off.

"You have something on your mind."

Hermione looked up at Lucius. It was their seventh dinner together, this time at his new home. The Manor had been converted into a war museum and he had no objection to that, as long as he retained ownership of the grounds. This place was cozy enough.

Lucius was right; she did have something on her mind, and it needed to be said. She meant to tell him during each of the previous dinners, but their conversation flowed so naturally to other things that she didn't have the chance.

Hermione didn't want to open an old wound, yet she had to. She drew a pattern in the condensation on her cup and spoke. "I'm getting a divorce. Ron wants children and I can't have them. The healers think it's because of Voldemort's trap." She chewed her lip. "I should have realized it. I never once had my period in there, you know."

His brows drew together. He had never thought of it, save for one niggling moment after they made love. Then, he had prayed that he hadn't conceived a child with her, not because he didn't want to or because he was concerned with blood purity, but because he would never want to bring another life into that terrible world.

"I didn't know."

"I figured it was taking a while to come back because we were so undernourished. Turns out I went in with a pair of working ovaries and came out barren."

"I am more sorry than you can know. But Hermione, Mr. Weasley is a fool if he lets that get in the way of his love for you."

"I'm the one who asked for the divorce. It's not fair for me to force him to live a life he doesn't want. He says it's all right, that he doesn't care, but I know better. He's not very good at hiding his true feelings."

Lucius sighed. "I'm sorry. I truly am."

"So am I," she said. "I had wondered why it seemed like that world was so much crueler to you. I just didn't know..."

He reached out and took her hand, enveloping it in the warm comfort of his own. They sat in comfortable yet solemn silence, doing an old dance that was very familiar - the one in which they did not speak of the truth that existed between them. Thirty minutes came and went before another word was uttered.

Hermione eased her hand from his and spoke in a small voice. "I should have waited for you."

He shook his head. "I shouldn't have stayed asleep so long."

Hermione waved a hand. "You had no control over that."

"I did, Hermione. I knew I could either move on or come back, and I stayed in the middle for far too long. I didn't know how much time was going by...how much time I was wasting. It seemed like only a few minutes for me."

She frowned slightly. This was the first time he had mentioned this to her. All along, she thought he was comatose, recovering from the near-suffocation in the coffin. "Why?" she asked softly. "Why didn't you want to wake up?"

"I..." he trailed off, looking at his hands. "I wasn't sure I could face the loss of Draco and Narcissa, and I was less sure I could stand to lose what we had. This world isn't the same."

"Thank God," she murmured, but she knew what he meant. In Voldemort's trap, they had only had each other; all previous identities fell away under the onslaught of danger and the need for survival. It made for an incredible level of intimacy. While neither of them would ever want to go back to that place, returning to the real world was daunting. Hermione remembered how overwhelming it seemed. It would have been that much more for Lucius. She had not changed much; he had changed completely.

The world wasn't ready for him to be the man he had become. She had seen it in the calls to arrest him, to send him to Azkaban immediately after their return. Only Draco and Hermione's protestations that he held no allegiance to Voldemort and that he had been sent away with her as punishment - as execution - made those out for blood settle. She was glad that he had missed all that.

"I'm sorry, Hermione. I'm sorry I made you wait. I have fought demons, faced werewolves, slain a dragon, but I am still a coward."

His words pierced her, so much that she wanted to burst into tears. He was not a coward. He had protected her, trusted her, believed in her. Dared to love her, physically and emotionally, even though it went against everything he had been raised to value. He loved her still, so strongly that he had watched her marry another man because she thought it was what she wanted. But most of all, he had remained calm in the face of certain death, and had smothered her fear with the gentleness of a parent singing his child a lullaby.

She pushed back from the table and slid into his lap, kissing him with as much humble passion as he had bestowed upon her in the dead kingdom. If Lucius Malfoy was a coward, she didn't want a brave man.

Lucius had forgotten how wonderful it was to lay with her, and how perfectly her body fit against his. He had never forgotten the day that he made love to her. He no longer had to cling to that one memory, for now they had made another.

Drowsily, she ran her fingers through his hair.

"We're really going to try this?" she asked.

"I don't see why not." Lucius was lying through his teeth; there were plenty of reasons why not. If they became involved in this world, it would be a tremendous scandal even now, and they would finally have to start answering questions about what had happened in that other place. He didn't relish any of it. But for her, the plain and simple fact was that he would do almost anything.

"It's uncharted territory."

"I think we excel at that, all things considered."

He felt her lips curl into a smile against his chest. "I suppose we are at our best with a blank map."

Lucius held her, nose and lips nestling into the curve of her neck. "Hic sunt dracones?"

"No," Hermione said, her fingers trailing teasingly down his torso. "Hic sunt leones."