AN :
Well, I can tell you honestly that I never thought I would write a Lucius/Narcissa fic. But then, what I want is not really a concern of my muse, who, I am convinced, needs to be locked in a little cupboard and fed nothing but toejam. If you read it, please review it.Anyway. This fic is for JenLynn who is such a wonderful reviewer that she deserves a whole fic to herself. So this is it. I hope you like it.
Oh yeah. Static! Where are you? I'm vibing you appreciation, luv. Cargo trucks full.
Disclaimer : All characters and setting belong to JK Rowling.
To Stop A Leaf From Falling
From the first time he saw her, Lucius Malfoy knew that he was going to marry her.
Lucius looked across at his wife now, who was sitting in the armchair across from him, her slender body drooping gracefully as she looked at the book she held in her hand. Outside it was a bright, sunny day, rays of light diffusing through the thick glass to weave onto the soft carpet. He looked at her and he remembered . . .
The first time he saw her was on Platform Nine and Three Quarters. She was standing with her parents, those two upright pillars of society who flanked her, proper and faintly disapproving expressions on their faces. Faces that were utterly dissimilar and at the same time identical. Different features. Same prototype : The Respectable Citizen.
He was startled by the amazing resemblance she bore her father. They could have been the same person, differentiated only by age. The same face, the wide, mobile mouth, the long elegant nose, the colourless skin, the queer gray eyes that seemed not to look at you but inside you.
He fell in love with her utter respectability first, he thought in later years. Everything so perfect, oh yes, so perfect . . . the trunk just worn enough not to look as if it were brand new, the carelessly worn robes, draped over long, aristocratic limbs, the straight unconscious arrogance of the posture. You could always tell from the posture -
He had watched her with a strange sort of jealousy when she said good-bye to her father. It was a very brief good-bye, unsentimental and almost curt, and quite unlike the gushing one her mother inflicted on her :
"My little girl . . . all grown up and leaving home . . . for the first time! . . . oh, Henry, how can you be so heartless! . . ."
Really quite an odious woman, he had thought with a vague distaste. The mask of respectability had fallen away beneath the need to exhibit herself. Obviously a woman who came from a lower class . . . Narcissa - although he hadn't known her as Narcissa then . . . would surely never be that crass . . .
Over the gushing woman's shoulder, he saw Narcissa exchange a quite unreadable look with her father - a sort of shared understanding - and Lucius knew, quite suddenly, why he had felt jealous - she was his after all . . . his from the first moment he laid eyes on her . . .
They hadn't sat together in the train - Lucius was careful not to lump himself with the hordes of other people that she would meet on the train. He had known with an instinctive certainty that he must play his cards very carefully when it came to this girl . .
He had planned their first meeting for weeks, deliberately avoiding a chance encounter. It was always so risky - Lucius thought, to leave things to chance -
It wasn't until the last day of their first year that he allowed her to meet him. He played his part well, careful to make sure that he came across as being properly aloof while not sealing himself off as untouchable. Too grown-up for the first year she was - but he knew that forbidden fruit was always the sweetest . . .
He also knew that nothing was more likely to grab a woman's attention that to have her believe that you are laughing at her . . .
He had left their meeting to the last day of term so that she would have the whole summer to think about him, to wonder, to anticipate their next meeting. . .
Narcissa was very important . . .
He must be very careful . . .
-
The next year, Narcissa sought him out, as Lucius had known she would. She had not changed much during the summer - she had yet to fulfill the startling beauty that was her birthright. Still, she was without the embarrassing awkwardness and insecurity of other girls her age that Lucius found painful to witness. She had remarkable - not poise, not quite - but poise's sister, self-control. She also had that distinctive air of self-assurance that always accompanied those who knew that they would come out life's winners. It was her birthright, much like the cast of features that her ancestors had given her.
She sought him out and they became companions. It was as if she knew as well as he did that they were meant to be together, by virtue of societal class and destiny, and accepted it. Accepted it as she had accepted everything else given her - without question, without query, without rebellion - Narcissa was one of life's winners . . . but she was also one of life's victims . . .
They were meant to be together - Lucius never doubted that; she was his - but that didn't mean that they loved each other . . .
Lucius loved her. He loved her as he had never loved anything else. He loved her with the fierce, savage, possessive love of a cold, reserved man - with the love of someone who has never loved before in his life . . .
But he had the disquieting thought, sometimes, that perhaps Narcissa hated him . .
He would catch her sometimes, looking at him in a way he didn't understand, a way he couldn't fathom anymore than he could read those queer gray eyes - it made him angry because he wanted more than anything to possess her, body and soul, and he couldn't because he didn't understand her . . .
At those times, he would stare back at her for a while, trying desperately to understand the meaning in that strange gaze. He would turn away, frustrated, and when he looked back at her, the strangeness would be gone, and in place would be the cool stare he knew.
He hated her father, because the man could understand a side of Narcissa that he was never allowed to see. But Narcissa never showed her father any more love than she showed him, and yet, Lucius thought, she was subtly indulgent of her mother, the loud, garish mother whom she couldn't possibly love . . .
The day Narcissa graduated from Hogwarts, four years after him, Lucius asked her to marry him, as he had always known he would.
She had said yes, calmly, without inflection or thought. He had always known she would - but the lack of emotion she accepted him with enraged him, enraged him as he had never been enraged before.
"Do you even love me?' he had shouted, almost bellowed at her, jumping up from the bench, his face red with anger and frustration, his fists balled, staring at the tall, slim figure sitting still on the bench, in the bright graduation robes Hogwarts made their students wear.
She had been quiet, thoughtful. "Do I love you?" she repeated, staring into space, her wide eyes glazed, unfocused. She answered, with a sort of surprise, "I think - I think I do, Lucius . . ."
"You don't love anybody." Lucius accused bitterly, his knuckles white and angry. "You don't love me, you don't love your father, poor bastard that he is, you don't even love your mother, I believe - the only person you love, Narcissa, is yourself - and half the time I don't know if you know who you are -"
"Mother?" she said vaguely. "Yes - I think I love Mother . . . Mother is so undemanding . . ."
It was a queer thing to say, especially since her mother made the most demands on her; to get good grades, to dress appropriately, to make a stunning debut in society. Lucius knew, in later years, what Narcissa had meant, though - her mother hadn't demanded anything of Narcissa herself, just of the surface Narcissa, not of the other Narcissa, the one who sat quietly inside herself, looking out at the world. . .
She had suddenly become businesslike, saying, "If you feel that way, Lucius, then perhaps we oughtn't to get married." She had started to draw the ring he had just placed on her finger - the finger with the vein that led directly to her heart - off, but he had stopped her with a caustic laugh and bitter, self-mocking words :
"Oh, we'll get married all right - I'm not going to let you go so easily . . ."
-
And so they had gotten married. Shortly after they had, Lucius had become a Death Eater, pledging allegiance to Lord Voldemort. He had told Narcissa one night as she sat at their dressing table, her white clad body still as her hand slowly drew a brush through her long thick hair. He started to get angry when she said nothing for a while, and the anger was only slightly appeased when she said :
"I always wondered . . ."
"What?' Lucius asked, his tone unconsciously pleading. Pleading for her to tell him - to make him understand . . . "What did you always wonder?"
"I wondered about you." She turned swiftly and went to the bed. She repeated, almost thoughtfully, "I wondered about you."
"I never knew you even thought about me." Lucius replied bitingly. He needed to hurt her - hurt her the way she was hurting him.
"I always think about you." She said simply.
-
Draco was born within a year of their marriage - the necessarily revered first son. Lucius felt that jealousy again when he saw Narcissa, her finely shaped head bending over her son - not protectively - a shock of uneasiness went through Lucius as he watched his wife nurse his son. Not protectively - more curiously, impersonally, as if Draco were a baby she had borrowed for a while - to examine . . .then he realized . . .
He didn't have to be jealous of his son . . .
He didn't have to be jealous of anybody . . .
-
When Lord Voldemort was defeated, that same year, Lucius was furious. Being a Death Eater was catharsis for him - when Narcissa infuriated him he went out and killed. Now his outlet had been blocked up - he had to find a new one . . . he couldn't take living with this remote, beautiful creature without a vent. . . a creature alien to him . . .
A creature he couldn't stop loving . . .
Anymore than he could stop a leaf from falling . . .
You could glue a leaf to a tree and it would stick. It would even look real. But slowly it would wither away and crumble, dusty fragments sweeping down to the ground, until only the part you had stuck to the tree remained . . .
That was what he had been doing, Lucius realized . . .
He had been loving someone who wasn't there . . .
Someone who had retreated far inside herself . . .
-
There were no children after Draco.
His mother couldn't give him love; his mother couldn't give him affection or a sweet, motherly caress, but queerly enough, his mother gave him the only thing she could give.
She gave him the curious, old beauty that she had. The beauty that set her apart from the others. The beauty that Lucius both loved and hated - hated because it masked something that he would never see . . .
Draco grew up an introspective child. He possessed Narcissa's way of retreating within himself and looking out at the world, but he also possessed Lucius' realism.
He also shared his father's love for his mother.
It made Lucius feel strangely bitter when he saw Draco, in his own way, try to reach out to his mother, and receive for his troubles a vague, blank smile that didn't mean anything at all.
Bitter because he knew . . .
Knew what?
He shrank from the reality of what he knew.
With every year, Draco retreated further within himself; with every subtle rejection from his mother, with every blank smile that became blanker . . .
It scared Lucius to see his son becoming more like his mother - all the more so because he desperately wanted to yank his son from the cool indifference, but he didn't know how . . .
He'd been living with coolness for so long that he'd lost what warmth he had had . . .
It scared Lucius to think that he might try and fail . . .
It scared him most of all to look at the creature he had married . . .
We belong together
, his heart whispered.They belonged together . . .
He loved her . . .
He looked at her now, his wife. The book had long fallen from her long, thin hand, and she was staring into the air, her eyes faraway and empty.
He still loved her so much . . .
But he knew.
Narcissa had long hidden herself, so well that she would never emerge again. She'd hidden beneath proper smiles and careful words, and society's demands that really didn't demand anything at all . . .
She'd hidden because she was afraid. Afraid of life, of what life entailed, the pain, the hurt, the grief, the bliss both of them had never been able to experience. She'd hidden, because she couldn't meet the demands both he and her father had placed on her, for love, for understanding . . .
For something of her . . .
He looked at her again and felt a bittersweet pang in his breast . . .
He loved her so much . . .
It was too late for both of them . . .
Lucius had a sudden thought, and in that moment he prayed fervently to a God he'd never believed in before . . .
Don't let it be too late for my son . . .