A 200-word drabble for the Secrets challenge on xoxLewrahxox's forum.
BEWARE! The two last lines are Part Two spoilers. I loved those lines, they inspired me the whole drabble – that, and Lucius being ...
Secrets
Write a fic with a word count of more or less an exact multiple of 100 words dealing with a HP character (or characters) and a secret of some sort. They can be sharing secrets, keeping them, discovering them, or anything else you like, as long some sort of secret is involved.
Lucius Malfoy is not familiar with blunt truths. He has always danced around those expertly, playing with façades and layers of meaning.
Lucius Malfoy is a living enigma, subtle and cryptic and never quite thorough in speaking his mind, each and every word a carefully calculated clue and yet a secret.
(Lucius Malfoy knows of the hidden dynamics of this world. He knows thousands of unsaid, painful things and how to use them.)
Lucius knows, and feels his own downfall second – by – second, anticipates it even, with sharp, excruciating lucidity.
He sees his wife's lips tremble, hears his son scream at night, wanders his beautiful house and watches everything fall apart.
Broken, shattered, stripped of their last strengths, the Malfoys keep up their façades with the desperate, frenzied will of the truly hopeless.
They pretend this agony is nothing but shadows and delusion.
They pretend that once more, they will rule the world.
(they try, even, to believe it themselves.)
Lucius fights with everything he has left to keep the lie going – the last thing holding his family together.
But he knows his one final truth – or perhaps lack thereof.
"How do you live withyourself, Lucius?"
"I don't know."