Hermione's life as she knew it was slowly but surely slipping away from her grasp and any control that she had over it was all but gone by the wayside.

Her marriage to Ron was over when he had walked into their home after finishing work one-afternoon last week and proclaimed whilst he did love her, he was no longer in love with her and he had now grown and evolved as a person and found someone else to occupy his time and his heart.

It wasn't the fact he wanted to leave that hurt her heart and tore it out, it was the fact that he had cheated on her for the past year while lying in their marital bed beside her and pretended as if everything was still hunky-dory and there was nothing at all untoward going on. Hell, up until a few days before he left she assumed everything was fine, he would kiss her on the cheek and head off to work and then come home and kiss her once again.

Never in a million years did she think he would do that, never did she suspect that from the moment he kissed her in the morning till the moment he walked in the door at night that he was at work sneaking around with the other woman and she really didn't know him anymore.

Not only was her heart tearing into a million pieces over that but her workload was exponential right now and she was finding it hard to cope. She was certain she was losing a vast amount of hair every morning when she tugged the brush through her wild curls, but she was too tired to care right now. Being the Minister for Magic was not easy and now with Ron declaring his undying love for the bitch he worked within magical law enforcement department her life would get a lot harder when the Daily Prophet came sniffing around for a story. She would have to address the marriage breakdown sooner rather than later so Ron and his newfound lover could assume a normal life instead of running around behind everyone's backs. She had asked him for the courtesy of keeping things on the down-low until such a time she could announce it herself.

She felt like a right idiot for not seeing anything was going on under her nose, and now that she thought about it and analysed she thought perhaps the other woman always looked Hermione down her nose on the off chance she went to see Ron in his department, almost like she was jealous. She wished she had had saw the signs earlier she then again she had never assumed Ron would do anything to betray or hurt her.

She now had No husband, a job that asked more of her than she could physically give and had her looking at least ten years older than she was with at least two silvery strands of hair starting to peek through and an errant wrinkle here or there. She wasn't getting any younger and she wanted to have a child by the time she was thirty-six years old. That was her grand plan and so far, that too was an absolute fail, she was on the slippery slope teetering almost at forty years old and she had yet to conceive a child and her body clock much like a ticking timebomb towards nothingness. She would be surprised if she had any eggs left to fertilise.

She hadn't fallen pregnant through lack of trying, no, right up until his revelation they had been actively trying for a child but she had never fallen much to her dismay and sadness because Ron's family had the fertility of a harem of horny rabbits and yet he failed to produce a single off-spring so surely it had to be her she assumed.

And now at the three broomsticks at the bar, a tumbler of heavy whisky clutched in her hand tightly as if she were dependent on it as her lifeblood. Tangled hair hung loosely around her face as her head slumped forward gazing into the whiskey as if it were about to tell her a story or swallow her up and tell her it would all be ok. It never did.

"Ah, the best way to cure a broken heart." A deep male voice roused her from her deep mood souring thoughts.

"What makes you think I'm trying to cure a broken heart?" She whispered back not even cocking her head to the side to see who was talking to her.

"I've been there before. The slumped shoulders, the despondent look deep in your eyes that look as if you have all but given up hope and the will to live, here to drown your sorrows and cloud your inhibitions in the hope the heartache will lessen and you will feel more human. Trust me, the drinking is just a temporary band-aid fix, sooner or later you have to tear the band-aid off and the sadness and desolation will come flooding back in wave after wave of pure misery."

The corners of her lips tugged just so in a sad, small smile. "Thank you for the insight, Mister Malfoy. Always coming out with pearls of wisdom," she bit a little too harshly but he didn't recoil.

He had lost both Narcissa and Draco during the war, both died at the hand of their maleficent overlord just before Voldemort himself was slaughtered at the hands of Potter. He had become a recluse for years before anyone had seen him out again in public. One day as if a switch turned on, he was back out wandering Diagon Alley and getting on with his life and they all assumed his heart had finally mended enough for him to function as a normal human once again.

"You know me, Mr's Weasley, always happy to help."

He watched as she cringed when he addressed her followed by her slamming the entire contents on the whiskey down her throat.

"Did I just hit a sore spot?" An eyebrow quirked and lips twitched softly as he beckoned the bartender to bring them both new drinks.

"No," she panted as the afterburn of the whiskey ailed her.

"I saw the way you cringed. Is there something going on in your life that your adoring public hasn't caught wind of yet? Interesting."

"Loose lips sink ships, Malfoy. I would appreciate if you kept any of your revelations and what you think to yourself for a while, yeah?"

She spun on her seat sideways to study him. He still had his chiselled jaw and his long blonde hair. He still had an air of arrogance around him and he still dressed well. He was still handsome as much as she hated to admit it, something she thought of him the very first day she ever met him all those years ago. He looked a little older but as a pureblood wizard his genetics fared well, and he aged a lot slower than an average person.

"Marital problems?"

She didn't answer. The small glimmer in her eye and the twitch of her cheek told him otherwise.

"I'm sorry." He picked his own glass up and sipped liberally at the whiskey. "It was never my intention to intrude, only offer a listening ear to our dishevelled and heartbroken looking minister."

She waved a hand dismissively and turned away to grab her drink. The last thing she needed was him to see the tears glittering in the corners of her eyes and her lip quivering like a sheet in a breeze. She slammed the contents down once again and turned back to him trying to hold herself together.

"You can let it all out pet, you will feel better. I won't judge. Merlin knows I've done years of crying when I lost my family. It does get better eventually but for a while, you feel lost and alone like the entire world has stopped revolving and you just want to die."

She snorted. "I can't let the whole bar see their brave leader bawling like a baby to Lucius Malfoy."

Lucius looked around at the empty bar. "Yeah, full house tonight," his words dripped with sarcasm.

She smiled gently at him while trying to hold herself together with every fibre of her being. She hated crying in front of anyone at all. She would always save her tears for her pillow, but she felt so alone right now. Harry and Ginny had their own family, Ron had run off with another woman and her parents didn't want to hear her wail and scream to them about her broken heart and how terrible her life was, and she didn't really have any friends left. The only two friends she ever had in life well, yeah.

"I'm here to talk if you like. I won't bite and I promise you I am nothing like I was from years gone by. The death of my family changed me."

She swiped feverishly at her cheeks to mop up the stray tears falling down her face. She didn't really know if she could trust Lucius Malfoy as far as she could throw him, but she did know that he had indeed changed, and he was turning over a new leaf. She also knew if she didn't talk to someone she would implode.

"Fine. But not here in public."

o-o-o-o-o-o

"And that's basically the crux of it," she moaned a sad sigh cross-legged on her couch with a bottle of wine clutched in her hand haphazardly.

He watched her intently from his seat across the room in an armchair, perching precariously into the edge of the seat eating up every word she had spoken.

"So for an entire year, you had not even the smallest inkling that anything was going in?"

"Nothing. Not at all and I feel so stupid honestly." She pressed the bottle of wine to her lips and took a generous sip of the contents.

"And the other woman?"

"She's younger, skinnier, prettier and perkier. I can understand why he left me for her she wasn't long out of Hogwarts honestly, I looked her file up and she's just turned twenty-one," she spat bitterly.

"He left me with the apartment and everything in it of course. He said he would have felt bad if he took that too." She snorted loudly. "I'm the one that bloody bought it all, but he can shove this apartment and everything in it up has ass sideways honestly for all care."

"And there are no children, obviously?" He raised a brow in question. What had even happened to his life? Why was he sitting here talking to Hermione about her relationship breakdown? Was this what his life had become?

"Ha!" She mocked laughed as loud as she could partly due to her part intoxication right now. "I wanted one, we tried of course, and it never came to fruition. I'm not sure if it's me or what but I wanted one by the time I was thirty-six, I had my whole life mapped out and planned and now look where that got me." She upended the rest of the wine into her mouth and the held the bottle up to the light to confirm it was, in fact, empty before she got up to get another one.

"Yes, I was hoping to have had another child by now. I know that sounds like a harsh thing to say but the reality is if I don't expand the Malfoy line now before I can no longer do it the house and our entire fortune will be put into public trust and given to anyone who can prove they have even walked sideways past a Malfoy."

She traipsed back from the kitchen bottle of wine in hand. She stopped dead in her tracks and slowly turned to him.

"I'm not sure if this is the alcohol talking or if I am being totally insane here but hear me out. I want a baby; you need an heir. I know I am probably the last person you want to fornicate with let alone reproduce with, but it could be in both our interests to think about coming to an agreement." She sat on the arm of his chair.

The silence that hung in the air following her statement was thick and heavy and seemed to go on forever.

"I…I suppose that could work."

Purebloods were few and far between now and the ones that were still alive were either spoken for or too closely related. He needed to put a plan into action sooner rather than later or be faced with the harsh relation the Malfoy line was going to come to a grinding halt.

"I get weekdays, you get weekends. I get Christmas morning, you get Christmas dinner. Birthdays will be celebrated together," she said matter of factly, sniffing indignantly.

"Have you had something like this worked out in your head," he asked, perplexed.

"I mean… Yes. I needed a backup plan and I had been throwing the guidelines and rules around in my head. I don't mind sharing the child with you, Lucius. I am so desperate for a child I would do anything."

He pulled her swiftly from the arm of the chair, so she fell gently onto his lap, straddling him. The bottle of wine still clutched in her hand with vice-like force.

"Sex only. None of this catching feelings nonsense and it ends once you have conceived my child." He held her chin hard, forcing her to look into his eyes.

"Deal," she confirmed, happy with the deal that had come to.

He pulled her in close and dropped a chaste kiss on her lips. "Your whole world is about to change, Hermione Granger," he whispered softly before going in for another.

A/N: This has been bugging me for weeks this story. Swirling around in my head like a vortex and not letting me forget. I have no idea why I wanted to write something like this. I expect it won't be too long. Just something fun to pass the time.

It was going to be Snape, but I decided to give Lucius some extra love instead.

-Aliasmel1