20 Facts About Lucius Malfoy (HP, 1116 words, 12+?)

[nopejr]

Title: 20 Facts About Lucius Malfoy
Rating: 12+
Word Count: 1116 words
A/N: Written for the Harry Potter Random Facts Fest.

1. The first time Lucius Malfoy met Narcissa Black, she slapped his face, open palmed and hard enough that her nails drew blood, leaving thin white lines that showed whenever his skin flushed; Lucius promptly vowed revenge.
    
2. Which wasn't to say he hadn't deserved the blow, of course.
    
3. Still, there was a such a thing as standards, and it was his duty to maintain them, regardless. Besides, it was no hardship to insinuate himself into her circle - Lucius was a past master of being generous in his own interest, turning physical fortune into social and back again and profiting immodestly from the exchange - and oh, so worth it for that dark gleam in her eyes when, three days later, she finds him lazily sprawled in her usual chair, holding her court enthralled.
    
4. Her eyes were bluer than his, her hair thinner, a touch darker, and pinned up in artful patterns while his own hung to his shoulders in thick platinum curls. A year difference in their ages, a few inches in their heights, though no difference at all in their blood; in the subtle richness of their darks robes, in the slight; mocking curl of their lips; in their carefully impassive positions on either side of the circle, like enfleshed angels, like infernal bookends.
    
5. The second time Narcissa tried to slap him, Lucius caught her wrist, dragged her close to block the rising knee. She had taken Christabelle d'Antoine from him, seducing his paramour with delicious disgust and then abandoning the girl to begging and public humiliation. Lucius had promptly bedded Bartholomew Nott, twisting affections until Bartholomew scorned Narcissa as a lovesick child, and then spurned him in turn. Narcissa was glorious in her rage, flushed, undone, casually violent, her sharp tongue slipping against his; their breath, their heartbeats, loud in each others' ears.
    
6. "You do have balls after all," she said, hand in his trousers, sharp nails pressing, and he chuckled, hiked her robes up, insisted over her protests there was a need to check she didn't.
    
7. They were snakes, sharp and dry, curling around each other in venomous heat; Lucius thought of caducei, of ouroboroi, devouring and devoured. She, arched against his teeth, leg draped over his shoulder, dug her fingers into his scalp and refused to say his name, not even once, not even when he could no longer hold them to the edge and they both went tumbling, crashing down.
    
8. Lucius proposed under mid-winter mistletoe. Narcissa accepted over New Year's nog. They were married at the vernal equinox on family ground, the black of his robes sucking in sunlight, hers swirling cream against the bright green of the long grass. As he swept her back to kiss her, discarding propriety for passion, the peacocks screeched from the cherry blossom trees.
    
9. The Dark Lord slow clapped approval. His wedding present burned on Lucius's arm, as did the lingering memory of those long, cold fingers so, so softly caressing his skin even as ink crawled agonizingly beneath it.
    
10. Two years, their star rising under the Dark Lord's black sun, insinuating itself throughout society, and one afternoon Narcissa comes to Lucius's study and pulls his hand to her belly; he goes down, onto his knees, his arms around her, his head pressed against her. She rests a hand, gently, on his hair. If there are tears, they are more of joy than anything else - besides, neither speaks of them.
     
11. Narcissa would not scream, though later Lucius found the ornamental trees had all withered to husks and had them replaced with an ornamental fountain. Pale, too pale, she clutched feverishly to the blood drenched infant while the healers busied themselves between her thighs. Lucius held himself at the window, hands so tight clenched the sill ripped his palms raw. Only after assurances to many to number, to thin to hold, did he go to her, kneel to hold her, to hold their first and necessarily only child.
     
12. And almost sixteen months later, Voldemort was dead, and Lucius and Narcissa were up against the wall in the nursery, hands on each others' mouth to muffle moans, coming together, and apart, and together, while Draco slept peacefully in his nearby crib and, on the other side of the country, years of trickling galleons were already forming a torrent to push them out of the Auror's way.
     
13. "Thank you for my new broom, Father," Draco said, and solemnly held his hand out and Lucius just as solemnly shook it - when he knelt, the boy almost came up to his shoulder - and then pulled him into a hug, saying "my little man, so grown up" over Draco's half-hearted protests.
     
14. "I'll get into Slytherin, Father," Draco said, under the whistle of the train, and Lucius clapped a hand to his son's shoulder and assured him there was no doubt on the matter. "The Sorting hat," he explained, "will do what you tell it to; it did for me, and for your grandfather. Both of them actually, so for Merlin's sake, don't think about Hufflepuff even slightly." They both shuddered.
     
15. "So like us," Narcissa said, shivering with disgust. "Horrible, hollow, magic-less things." He, agreeing, said nothing, pushing her back against a tree, the Quidditch World Cup stadium to one side, Muggles lofted into the air on the other, and did all manner of things until both had quite forgotten where they were or why, to the vast annoyance of their son who termed them "gross" and wandered off to watch from elsewhere.
     
16. Less than a year later, Voldemort rose. Things moved faster after that. The plan - the stupid plan to retrieve the prophecy. Damn that Snape. And to be so sorely used, so swiftly abandoned, while his dear sister-in-law cackled and crowed and made excuses. His son. His only son. His beautiful, bratty boy. It would not be countenanced. It would not be allowed. No, it would not be.
     
17. And she -- she was his agony, his ruin, his despair. She was his strength, his being, his obsession. Azkaban could not touch him. Riddle's indignities certainly could not. Allegiances were only words. A house was only stone. A wand was only wood.
     
18. And, seriously, who had only one wand? Ridiculous, ridiculous man.
     
19. Each in turn betrayed Riddle, then, their silence their rebellion and their saviour's freedom. Afterwards, away from the victors and the dead, Narcissa informed Lucius that she blamed him for everything, Lucius informed her that she was a spiteful harridan, Draco whined at them both about how he hurt and could they please just go home, and they huddled together, each touching the only things that truly mattered.
     
20. As revenge went, wealth, health, strength, family, and a perfect, undying love wasn't bad.