Title: A Fallen Angel

Author's Name: Addison Rae

Rating: PG13

Genre: angst, romance

Warnings: mention of adult themes, slightly depressing

Character: Lucius Malfoy

Summary: Lucius Malfoy mourns as he mulls over the life he had with his bride.

It feels so cold. Like your drowning, really. You feel as if you can't escape it. A bath of rushing, frozen water closing over you. Making it hard to see clearly. In reality, of course, you know that the rain is actually lukewarm, and your shortness of breath is attributed to the rather lengthy hike up that bloody hill.

She just had to pick this spot. Just to spite me, really. She picked the one spot that was singularly a world away from me. On the bloody outskirts of the property, so far it can't be seen from any window in the house. Just walking to it took almost fifteen minutes.

And still I oblige her. It's the least I can do. I did love her, at first. It was an immature love. That of a young man lusting after something for years, and then finally it being his. Even though MacNair and Nott had also protested and fought for her, her father had chosen me. The stupid man. Not that she would have been better off with either of them…

I listen halfheartedly, coming in and out of attention to the old wizard in much decorated robes droll on about the beauty of life, and the beautiful woman before us. It's all bullocks, of course, he never met her. But he was the one she wanted. Something about connections. She always wanted everyone to know her, to know what she had that they didn't. I blame it on myself. I don't believe she was ever truly happy with me, and making people think she had the world must have been a cheap, more respectable form of therapy.

Her name and her status meant everything to her. It didn't start out that way. When we married she was a vibrant, bubbly girl of eighteen. She was amazing. Her confidence astounded me. The woman looked as if she could take on the world with a toss of those honey-gold locks and a flash of the perfect, even smile.

Then, about a year after our marriage, the first revel. She came home sick, and furious. She retched and cried the night away, and the next morning, she had transformed. Into the cold, sallow woman I saw before me. The light had left her eyes, her smile seemed dull and performed. AS time wore on, the locks turned a pallid gold, lacking the luster and shine of yesterday. The smile became tarnished and uncaring, a mere show for those of a high enough station to be graced with it. But her eyes haunted me. They were full of sorrow, regret…pain.

It was all because of me. Because I had lusted after her. Because every moment of my seven years in school was spent trying to impress her, beating her boyfriends to a bloody pulp until they agreed to break her heart, leaving me there in the soft light of the common room fire, waiting to pick up the pieces. She never knew, of course, she believed herself to be cursed. She looked on me as a confidant, at times perhaps even a friend, but nothing more.

I didn't understand it. I could have any woman in that school, I told myself, young or old, why not this one? It made me crave her even more. Interest turned into attraction, attraction to desire, and desire to obsession. I should have her. I deserved her. None of the other little pansies came close to me.

That all changed when I entered an agreement with her father. Being a few years above her, by her last year in school I was already well-established, with the mysterious disappearance of my parents I had inherited a considerable fortune. I used it to by my way into the favor of many respectable persons, including most of the ministry. I gained a spot on the school board, and I waited.

On the eve of her graduation, I went to her father. I gave him an offer he couldn't refuse. His and his wife's lives, in exchange for his daughter. He, of course, accepted. She was informed after the ceremony, I have been told she left early, running to her room and refusing to see anyone for the rest of the night.

This would not do, I could not have an unwilling bride. I set about wooing her. A giant bouquet of pink roses arrived for her the next morning, complete with the congratulations of her future husband. Though I wasn't as tactless as that. The card was signed "Lucius." no premise of amour, nor the promise of a cold, uncaring husband, such as "Mr. Malfoy" would have presented. It left her guessing.

She arrived home to the Black Mansion, and awaiting her was a small, green velvet box. She opened it, I could only assume, to reveal the delicate, silver engagement ring she was wearing when we met for the first time since my leaving school. Along with a note, short, but detailing my …attentions to her. She was no doubt suspicious, especially as the next week passed with a single red rose on her pillow every morning as she awoken.

This process was lengthy, and annoying. I believed myself above sinking so low as to shower a woman with gifts and affections. The result, however, was more than satisfying. I was met on the night of our engagement party with a pretty, if not slightly shy new bride. Who was apparently testing the waters with her new fiancé. I made no move but to kiss her hand, and whispered how beautiful she looked in her ear, then I preceded to show her around the room, and nothing else was shared.

It was foolproof.

We were married the following spring, and the first year was perfection. Being newlywed, and naïve, she new little about me.

That changed.

After that night, the night of her first revel, she was a changed woman. I, for the first time in my life, was torn with guilt. My Lord had made me ring her, he said it was time she be introduced to her "duties". Her duties, turned out to be the wants and needs of every man in the inner circle. I was furious. I was jealous. She was broken.

I watched as the lid of the handsome, black casket was closed over the pale face of my wife. The rain began to fall harder, as if the heavens were releasing its joy that a fallen angel be set free. She had been an angel, before me. My Cissa. My love.