AFTER DARK- Lucius Malfoy x Reader

Dangers and Dives

I sat in the minister's office as he shuffled through a large stack of folders on his desk.

When I'd first entered, he'd beamed at me.

He'd stood up and asked, "How are you doing Ms—?" then stopped abruptly, coughing like mad to make it seem accidental.

He hadn't want to say my father's last name.

He regained himself, and asked me to sit as he poured me a cup of tea and placed it on the other side of him desk.

It sat steaming in front of me and I hadn't made any move to take it.

I'd received an "urgent" owl after lunch— requesting my immediate presence at the office of the minister.

And now he was trying to offer up small talk, moving much too slow for someone who wanted to discuss time sensitive matters.

"We missed you at the honorary assembly," he'd said as he continued to search through the stacks.

"I was sorry to miss it," I lied.

It looked as though he'd found the folder he was searching for—and he placed it in front of him without making any move to open it.

I glanced at it, then back up at him.

"How are you doing?....Truly?" He asked with genuine concern.

"I'm fine. Thank you," I said curtly, "What was it that you had to see me so urgently?"

"Ah, yes... well. There is a serious matter that has arisen..." he said opening the folder.

"A package addressed to you was intercepted," he said looking at me over his glasses and interlacing his hands on the table as he leaned slightly forward, "It contained an object intended to kill the recipient—kill you."

My eyes went wide.

He continued, "We think those still loyal to Voldemort have begun to retaliate against those who played a large part in his downfall—which was a one of the main reasons why we began to monitor the mail of...certain actors—people like you."

What he meant to say was those names who had been published in the paper.

It had been a reckless thing to do, in my opinion. Protecting anonymity for safety reasons should have been the priority after the war.

Even if Voldemort was gone, the prejudice that allowed him to rise wasn't. Of course his followers would retaliate after going underground.

Though the ministry had wanted more transparency in court proceedings to mark the "newly freed wizarding world" from "corruption", it had been pretty sloppily executed without much forethought.

My face had been plastered all over the major newspapers and no one had even asked me permission to go public with my story—not the media, nor the government.

But monitoring my mail without telling me...

"Why hadn't anyone told me about my mail being monitored?" I asked, in a rather accusatory way.

"I—" he looked confused, "I thought Mr. Malfoy told you? He was highly adamant on extra security measures for you—including the monitoring  your mail—after the publications came out... He was quite distraught about the whole thing."

He lifted his brows as if thinking about it, "I'd assumed he'd said something to you... Maybe it slipped his mind?"

Of course he wouldn't tell me that vital piece of information. He probably had some idiotic reasoning as to how it would be "better for me if I didn't know."