The Smell of Lavender.
By alloy
I wake up to the smell of Lavender; the scent of her lingers on my pillow, much like it does on my body.
The rain came while we slept, dampening the sweltering heat just a trifle, but smothering us with humidity.
The humidity persists day and night, and the storms, huge towering masses of cloud and lightning, barely alleviate the discomfort.
We came here to get away.
Here, four poster beds, with their smothering curtains, thick pajamas, and heavy nightgowns are nothing but foolish nonsense. Here, we sleep naked, the sweat pouring off our bodies, before even our thoughts turn to love.
They will install the air conditioner tomorrow.
I, Draco Malfoy, will let muggles into my home, and I will smile, and pay them for it.
Lavender cannot take the heat, and it is my fault we are here.
Little Lucius stirs, jerking me from my thoughts. I slip off the bed, and stand over his cot. His mouth pouts in a sucking motion. His discomfort ceases when I place the pacifier in his mouth. As I watch he rolls over onto his side, legs slightly sprawled. Lavender lies just so.
My father's namesake will be loved. I will break ten generations of hate and emptiness with this child, and the one forming in Lavender's womb. I will love them, and when my love, my stunted shriveled love, is not enough, she will love them, enough for ten generations.
He moves again, and I gently pat his backside until he calms. Would that Ronald could see me now.
Weasley arrived at Hogwarts with hand me down clothes, hand me down wand, and even a hand me down rat. It took me six years to realize the incalculable wealth in his heart.
Potter saw that straight away. The orphan child saw love when it was offered to him unconditionally and took it. I didn't offer him friendship. What I offered was at best a partnership, at worst servitude.
Granger offered him love, too, but she saved her heart for Weasley.
Lavender offered me love and I spurned her; despite me, despite all I could do, she persisted in offering me love, until it became too painful, until I saw my mother in her, until I ran away, until I joined the Dark Lord.
Then I understood hate!
My petty jealousies, my father's recycled prejudices were meaningless compared to the black hatred in the Dark Lord's heart.
One day I realized. Overlooking a devastated landscape that was, the day before, a village. I felt an aching where my heart should have been.
I didn't want this.
I didn't want this for Lavender, for our children. I missed Lavender.
The rain is warm against my skin; I imagine it sizzling against the dark mark on my arm, but only on my arm.
She comes to me. I feel her pregnant stomach against my buttocks, her swollen breasts against my back, her arms around my chest.
"Lucius?" I say
"I have the charm."
A listening charm, an idea stolen from the muggles, to alert us if the child wakens. Hermione had sent it with Ronald's twittering little owl yesterday.
"Why?"
"Why what love?"
"Why did you dance with her?"
I hold back a sigh
"Am I so ugly with this belly, that you need to find satisfaction elsewhere?"
"Lavender, you're beautiful, I don't need anyone else, I don't want anyone else"
Her tears on my shoulder are warmer than the rain.
"Then why did you dance with Hermione?"
"To save her, to save me, to escape the pack of blithering idiots who had invaded our conversation, because She asked me to."
"She asked you to. Does she want you?"
A soft chuckle escapes my lips, "Hardly."
"But you're rich," she hugs me closer, "You're handsome."
"I'm not Ron Weasley."
"I never understood what she saw in him anyway."
"I asked her. She said he made her feel safe"
"Safe? But they were always fighting."
"Who better to fight with?"
The lightning descends on the horizon like a curtain, bolts illuminating the whole sky, reflecting on our wet skins. We don't hear thunder, we won't tonight; the storm is well over the ocean.
"I always thought she would end up with Harry"
"With Potter? You believed that Skeeter woman's nonsense?"
"You didn't?"
"I fed it to her, I was trying to drive them apart."
"But they weren't together then?"
"I meant the three of them. I was trying to stir dissension in the ranks"
"You were evil then." She says grasping me just a little tighter.
"No, not evil. Pretentious, spoilt, self involved, but I wasn't evil, I just liked to think I was. Looking back, I think mostly I was jealous.
"Of Ron?"
"Of Weasley, Potter, Granger, all of them."
"Why do you do that?"
"What?"
"When you talk about school, you call them Granger, Weasley, Potter, but if you talk about today, or yesterday, you say Hermione, Ronald, Harry. It's as if they were different people.
"It's not them, it's me. I'm the different person, but my memories of then, all my memories until I realized I loved you, they're like those of a different person. I know things were different to the way I saw them, but I can't remember them any differently."
"Why their names like, like..."
"Like they're objects, sub-human?"
"Yes."
"I wasn't a very nice person."
"I still fell in love with you."
We stand in silence, as the rain eases just a little.
"Draco?"
"Mmmm"
"Do you still love me?"
"Of course."
"Don't patronize me Draco! I know you've seen her naked!"
I sigh inwardly; tonight she will be obsessed with Hermione. No matter what I say.
"Naked, bloody, bruised, near death! I was just happy it wasn't you lying there."
"Was she beautiful?"
"Ask Ronald."
"I'm asking you!"
"There was nothing beautiful on that day."
The words come unbidden whispered, "I am become death, shatterer of worlds." Had we become worse than what we defeated?
No.
We returned home to love, to rebuild; sometimes you need to destroy in order to create. Voldemort only created to destroy.
Lavender shifts her body against mine, her mood changing, whimsy.
"Do they still fight?"
"Yes, I believe they do."
"Why?"
"I always thought it got their juices flowing, as it were"
"You get my juices flowing."
I turn around toward her.
"I'm not a vase, you won't hurt me, Draco"
Her breasts, her belly glistening in the rain, in the moonlight. My own body responding to her nakedness, her scent. She leads me back inside the house, back into the bedroom, and I immerse myself in the smell of Lavender.