Summary: "Why did you kiss me?" "I felt like it." Lucius and Narcissa have a late-night chat, aprox. 6th year.
Disclaimer: Mm...not mine, I'm not JK, don't own characters, inspiration to the lovely Liebling, etc., etc.
The Library was his favorite place to go when he was up at midnight, which he often was. It wasn't that he couldn't sleep, exactly; it was that he never tried. He often would stay up reading in bed, then slip off to the Library to return a book or get a new one.
Tonight, he was sitting at a table doing homework, or at least staring blankly at the page in his textbook. He heard something from the other side of the bookshelf, something suspiciously like someone pulling a handful of books out. He looked at the shelf, refocusing his eyes, and stared at a face framed between the books. Dark eyes, pale eyebrows, cute little nose.
"Hullo," it said.
"Hello," he answered back.
"What are you doing up so late?" it asked.
"Studying," he answered coldly. The face looked amused, then suddenly disappered and was replaced with books. A girl came round the bookshelf, carrying a sketchpad and wearing what might have been very good clothes but were now wrinkled and messy. He wracked his brain. Pale hair, Slytherin...Narcissa Black.
She pulled out a chair and fell into it like she owned it, throwing one leg over the chair arm as she leaned back, pulling at the collar of her shirt. "Why are you up so late?" she asked again, looking wide awake.
"Studying," he answered again. "You?"
She shrugged. "I'm a natural insomniac. I never sleep."
"Never?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. Narcissa pulled out a cigarette and lit one with a flick of her wand.
"Never," she said, inhaling. "I think it's some natural untapped ability. But Mum does say I spent the first three years of my life sleeping or crying, whichever was more inappropriate at the time." She took another drag on the cigarette and put her arm down on her knee, adjusting her skirt. "I was a redheaded baby," she added.
"I can't see that," he said, leaning on his book. "All the rest of your family has black hair."
If he meant to inimidate or impress her, it didn't work. She waved it off with her right hand. Her hair, he noticed, was messy and looked like it hadn't been brushed all day, but her fingers looked like they'd been painted an hour ago. "Yeah," she said, "Bella and Andromeda are dark-headed, but Dad's mum had blonde hair. Margoletta. Your great aunt, I think."
Lucius grinned, an unusual flash of white teeth that made him seem unusually handsome in the lamplight. "We're acting like our parents," he said wryly. Pausing, he gestured with his quill to her sketchbook. "You draw?"
"Yes," she said absently, tapping her finger against the top of the book.
"Can I see?"
She slid the notebook across the table, taking his homework and quill. "Trade," she said wryly. "I was drawing when I heard you snoring." She pulled something out of a pocket--a piece of charcoal--and set it on the table.
"I don't snore and I wasn't asleep," he responded automatically. He pointed to a picture of a face behind a candle, the first page. "Who's this?" Narcissa glanced at it.
"Andromeda. See the flecks in her eyes?"
"I don't often stare into people's eyes," he said dryly, turning a page to see a butterfly perched on the edge of a wand.
"You've been staring at mine," Narcissa said as she dipped his quill in the ink, still not looking at him. She began making lines across his History of Magic homework, but he didn't care.
There were many drawings--the sketchbook was dated nearly half a year ago. Andromeda and the candle, the butterfly on the wand, a daisy in the middle of cacti, a view of the lake, the Forbidden Forest, the chandelier in the Slytherin common room. One he found was uncompleted, and he guessed it was what she had been working on, even though it wasn't the only unfinished one. It was Narcissa herself, looking into a mirror. Reflected around her were shadowy shapes, many of which seemed to almost reach out of the mirror. He looked up at Narcissa--leaning over her page, biting her bottom lip in concentration, cigarette abandoned next to her as her hand moved over the paper. The lamp made long shadows across the paper but her face was illuminated, and he had a curious urge to sketch her face, if he had been an artist. As it was, he merely gestured at the page.
"Some people would say you have issues," he pointed out, tapping the shadowy shapes. "Paranoid much?"
"Everyone has issues," she said absently, pushing her hair behind her ear as she looked up at him, meeting his eyes for the first time. "I'm paranoid enough, I'd say." She looked down. "Here." She pushed his homework across the table and he looked down at it. A quickly sketched tree had one long straight limb, from which a cradle hung by two thin ropes.
"This from someone who doesn't sleep," he commented dryly.
Narcissa shrugged. "I've never had a dream--while I was asleep--that I can remember. Maybe that's why I'm an insomniac...I get bored wasting time staring at the back of my eyelids."
"I'd call that a personal issue."
Narcissa glared at him, meeting his eyes again, and he grinned. "Not clever," she said dryly.
"Oh, on the contrary," Lucius said, leaning forward across the table. "I'm very clever."
"And humble," Narcissa added. Lucius grinned again, leaned forward, and kissed her gently.
"What was that for?" she asked when he leaned back.
"I felt like it," was his nonchalant answer. There was silence for a moment as Narcissa closed her sketchbook and pocked the charcoal. She looked up at him, stubbing out her cigarette with one hand that was, he noticed with satisfaction, shaking slighly.
"Feel like doing it again?"
-fin-
Notes: There's so much I don't like about this fic, but overall I do like it. I took out a whole scene because I like smoking Narcissa. The end seems a bit abrupt and disconnected, though that might be me. I didn't like the beginning, either. But the middle I did like, even though it's nothing like Liebling's =P Please forgive any typos, this was written & HTML'd the same time in Notepad, as is most of my stuff. Anyway, review!