Narcissa walked serenely along the final steps of the path from Hogwarts to Hogsmeade, absorbing the unusual quiet that accompanied her decision to go alone. While usual trips with Aurelia in previous years had not necessarily been boisterous, her beloved cousin possessed a certain brightness of spirit that occupied any opportunity for a still moment. This, coupled with Narcissa's choosing to maintain a markedly large gap between herself and the rest of the Hogwarts students who had already rushed into the release of a weekend's freedom, created a tangible hush that cocooned her in her favorite form of privacy.
Content in the company of solely her own thoughts, she hardly noticed Lucius detach from his new girl friend and sink to a kneeling position in front of Gladrags Wizardwear, with the feeble purpose of tying his shoe. That is, until he rose from his stance at the precise moment the crunch of the road beneath her feet alerted him to her close proximity. She halted her progress along the rock and dirt route and surveyed the sight before her: his hair had grown longer—and would have appeared shaggy, had he not styled it loosely back—his form remarkably more Herculean, and his face—most shockingly—appeared slightly aged—considerably less like the boy she had grown up with and more like the man she now supposed he was becoming.
At this appearance of shadowy stubble along his jaw, a certain hollow in his cheeks, and a sense of authority in his eyes that was suddenly merited, it occurred to Narcissa how little contact she had had with him over the past few months. She noticed him watching her at meals and in the Common Room… and the increased intensity in his gaze on the nights she returned from weekend courtings with Romulus. But she had not realized until this moment that heated glances and icy glares had been the full extent of their communication since the first night of this term.
She felt, in part, compelled to smile, embrace him like the old friend he was, and tease him over the increasing length of his hair, but there was a certain hardness in the set of his mouth and a spark of dark humor in his eye that deterred her. Instead, she chose to fortify her ego and said, "My, you're a master of subtlety. I suppose the rest of them didn't notice there aren't actually any laces on your shoes."
Frankly, this hole in his plan had not occurred to Lucius, for he had spent very little time thinking on it. Rather, he simply noticed an opportunity, and after an extended period of time in which he had absented himself from her, he could not resist the chance to be nearer. As a result, when she spoke, he had nothing prepared to say—the only thought that crossed his mind was the unmistakable flash of silvery blonde hair he had witnessed so many weeks ago in the Lestrange mansion bequeathed to Romulus.
At his lack of response, Narcissa scoffed and continued on into the village, seeking to reestablish her privacy, but Lucius simply fell in step next to her, eliminating any chance of Narcissa spending this time alone.
"Shouldn't you be catching up to your new girl?" she questioned in an attempt to be rid of him, for his closeness was causing a mix of feelings deep within her she wished not to dwell upon.
"No," he answered bluntly and continued with condescension, "I think it rather a better use of my time to establish you're actually here, and not simply my imagination playing tricks. You're rarely in school over the weekends, after all."
She slowly turned to look at him, a sly trap of a smile on her lips and in her eyes, "And why would you be imagining I'm here? Does your mind spend a great deal of time dreaming of me? Is your new girl not enough?" She sought to mock him openly and arrogantly, for the obvious similarity in appearance between his current girlfriend and herself irritated her quite fully. "And I hardly feel it is your responsibility to know where I spend my time."
Without another word to him, she stopped in her tracks and turned into Hengist's Haunt, the bar named after the founder of the village who was still rumored to reside in apparitional form in his favorite corner of the liquor cellar, and the preferred location of of-age Slytherins for Hogsmeade visits. She was hoping to finally loose his company, but noticed with a cantankerous glance behind her that he had followed her like an impertinent shadow. She huffed in frustration and coldly continued to the counter, muttered, "Just give me a bottle," to the bartender behind the bar (who had routinely snuck her alcohol of choice into Hogwarts grounds), grabbed the large bottle of Firewhiskey and the glass he handed her, and stomped away into the darkest corner of the bar, Lucius behind her the whole while.
With a withering pout, Narcissa slid into a booth and slammed the bottle on the table. "Do you intend to continue this bullocks all day?"
He slid in next to her, took the bottle, filled the glass, and drained the liquor in one fluid movement. She shifted as far away from him as she could in the narrow booth, seeking to establish a boundary between them. He set the glass back on the wooden surface, and with a slightly dazed look now in his eyes said, "Were you really going to spend all day drinking alone?"
"Of course not" she spat, removing the glass from his hand and filling it herself. "This,"she raised her full glass of bitter spirits, "is an attempt to tolerate you and your insufferable ego if your presence must continue."
He laughed fully as she drained the dark whiskey from the glass, and she glared at the appearance of his charm in the broad smile that stretched across his face. He waved his hand in the air as if clearing away all that had been discussed while in the bar. "Regardless," his voice was low, nearly a growl as he spoke, " it is not where you spend your time, but who with." As he thought on her spending so many weekends alone with Romulus, his jaw clenched and hand contracted into a fist beneath the table—he could not tolerate the thought of her spending time with any man but himself.
This statement aggravated Narcissa so fully she felt nearly compelled to slap him, but she refrained herself, for it was not an action appropriate for a woman of her class and rank. "Whom I spend my time with?" she responded incredulously. "Has the considerably lower rank of your current girl friend escaped your notice?"
"At least she acts her place," Lucius uttered with contempt, stealing away the whiskey, "and does not spend time with men who are scandalously her senior."
"Please," she hissed with age-old arrogance, "she is so nouveau riche you mine as well be dating a fetus. Her grandmother is American, for Merlin's sake. And scandalously my senior?" She cried with a laugh. "He is only eleven years older than me. That is hardly out of the ordinary for our kind." Narcissa swallowed a large gulp of whiskey, "There is absolutely nothing scandalous about our courtship," she finished coldly, knowing this last statement was in part a lie.
"There is a great deal disreputable when you accept his advances while betrothed to another," he replied.
Narcissa paused the midway progress of the glass to her mouth, for this was the most ridiculous assertion she could think of. "Betrothed?" she questioned indignantly, slamming the glass back to the table, the Firewhiskey sloshing beyond the containment of the mug and onto the wooden surface.
Lucius's countenance too grew dark, and she edged closer to him so as to emphasize the outrage in her words, "That agreement is only valid if you propose courtship the day I come of –"
He grasped her arm and pulled her closer, a sense of purpose and a spark of want in his eyes, "you belong with me."
"The day I come of age," she continued on, ignoring his statement, for she feared if she acknowledged it, the swoop of feeling that currently danced across her most sensitive nerves would overwhelm her. "You," she hissed, "did no such thing! It was your choice!"
He was not hurt by her obvious disregard of his words; in fact, he quite enjoyed how hard she was working to put them behind her—the uncharacteristic explosion of spirit she was currently performing. It caused a blush to rise in her cheeks and an incomparable spark of light to replace the cold and distant look she usually maintained in her eyes. Yet his favorite product of her anger was that she had chosen to shout in his face, causing her warm breath to tickle his skin, and the heat of her form to reach out to him. "I didn't think –" he began to reply.
"You didn't think what?" she continued over him. 'That I didn't have any other prospects? That I had any other thought in my head beyond a longing to be your wife? What? Was I supposed to sit around and wait for the great and proud Lucius Malfoy to get off his arse and honor an arrangement that had been agreed upon the moment I reached puberty?"
He could not help but laugh at her final question, it had not occurred to him she was aware he'd made his preference for her known to his father the moment he'd noticed she'd grown breasts.
"You repugnant, arrogant pig," she barked at his laughter. Her anger turned bitter at the apparent lack of effect of her words. She paused, turning to look over at the group of Slytherins who wandered in not long after she and Lucius had, sitting at the opposite side of the bar, and a terrifying smile illuminated her features. "Do you think I haven't noticed your newest tart resembles a desperate attempt to have me?" she questioned with menacing confidence.
The girl of subject had been repeatedly looking over at her boy friend from her seat amongst the other group, an increasingly threatened expression on her face. At this moment, she chose to look over to Lucius again, and Narcissa took this opportunity to smile—her little teeth sparkling through the dim light, sharp and dangerous as a wolf's—and blow her a kiss—effectively communicating her dominance, her ability to effortlessly rip this boy away from the girl in a matter of moments. The resulting look of extreme concern caused Narcissa to laugh fully, and her face was bright with the victory of captured and slaughtered prey when she turned back to Lucius.
In an act of complete callousness, he hardly cared for the girl Narcissa had just caused to be woefully insecure. In fact, he quiet liked seeing the vicious glee in her face, as he had always wondered if such a side existed within Narcissa, and was more than delighted to see it come to fruition.
Narcissa drew closer and dropped her voice to a night-dark whisper. "Is she an effective copy, Malfoy?" Each syllable was emboldened by her whiskey provided courage. "Does she kiss you the way you imagine I would? Hmm?" Lucius stiffened and the smile dropped from his face as she ran her hand with a teasing fragility up the outer edge of his leg. "Does she wrap herself around you the way I have in your dreams?" In her next words she sank her teeth deep into his pride, leaving barbed punctures in his ego: "Or do you have to spend all your energy pretending it's my hair you pull when she teases you right, and my thigh your hand grabs in stolen moments alone?"
Lucius was silent for a few following moments, his eyes glossed over, body entirely still, and Narcissa took these as signs of her triumph. Now that she had torn apart his ego, she would be free of his judgment for about a month or so, she estimated, as that was the amount of time required for his unabridged arrogance to rebound. She smiled contentedly, and began to wonder after how many books she would collect today from her favorite High Street bookshop.
However, her plans were once again to be disrupted, as she could not have been more wrong in concluding the meaning Lucius absorbed from her questions. His pride, yes, had been wounded, but he could attend to that later, for now his mind was ensnared with the scenes she had breathed life into. He had imagined them all before, of course, but to see them slip from dream to reality as they strutted forward from her lips was to have them as close within his physical reach as extending his fingers a few small inches to the hem of her skirt and push it upward until her garters gave way to the silky, snow-white promise of her flesh.
This possibility of her forbidden skin was the dawn of a flood full of wanting. His mind reeled at the thought of his hands tracing her curves, memorizing the particular fluidity with which her miniature waist became the hips of a woman, her long, lissome legs… The warmth of her beneath him, those legs—those legs—locking him close, divulging the longing for him she had kept within herself every moment he was near. He would kiss and bite along her neck the way he'd envisioned she liked, teasing the thin skin of her clavicle to the response of her hand gripping at his back—her hands: one he would keep locked in his above her head, the other would remain wherever she felt would best express her appreciation for his actions. His pupils dilated at the thought of his lips descending lower to the swells of her chest, kissing softly until she cried out his name in desperation—wanting more—and he would oblige because he loved the sound of his name as it crescendoed from her lips—his name…
"How many times have you called him my name in bed?" he replied, his voice equally threatening, now taking up her challenge. The arrogance fled from her at the sight of his intensity. He raised his hand and brushed her silvery hair away, cupping the side of her face, and bringing her so close his forehead came to rest against hers. "Hmm?" he mocked. As he held her gaze, she wanted to pull away, but could not bring herself to—not when her heart beat so hard against her skin she wouldn't be surprised if he felt it—not when her lips parted at the nearness of his, nerves aching with longing, humming with want beneath the thin rosy flesh. No. Not when she truly wanted nothing more than to clutch him closer, grip at his hair, breathe his name while they kissed, nipped, teased at hidden skin.
At the very thought, her eyelashes insisted upon fluttering to a close, for if she could not see perhaps it all would cease, and she would have control again. But as her eyes faded into black, her lashes brushed against his skin, and he took this moment to move minutely away. His lips now skimming the sensitive skin of her ear, he spoke—his voice so quiet and low she wondered if he was speaking at all, or if her mind was simply filling in where she would not allow her actions to go—"Can he do that, Narcissa? Can he make you want for it all without so much as a kiss?"
She released a small little gasp as his lips brushed the curve of her neck, his stubble scratching her delicate skin in an attitude she wouldn't reject. His other hand trailed through her hair and up her back, causing her to unconsciously press her form against his. He returned his attention to her face, and smoothly brought his lips to hers. Again, she willed herself to move away, to at the very least not respond to his advances, but at the contact of his lips every nerve close to his ached—nearly begged—for more. She responded against her better judgment, her lips working with his, parting at his prompting. Catching his bottom lip between hers, Narcissa lightly dragged her teeth across the thin flesh, teasing him, releasing her frustration in a manner most appreciated. The hand at her back gripped the curve of her waist, and at this impossibly close proximity she could feel the contours of his muscular torso through their robes. She raised her hand to the back of his neck, increasing the pressure of their connected lips, lightly raking her nails across the skin where his hair tapered away to expose flesh.
At this Lucius's lips descended to just below her jaw, nipping at her skin, causing her to release a high sigh of satisfaction. She felt him smile against her, and this, she felt, was the blessed action that caused her pride to interrupt her lust. Finally, she pulled away, but he held her just as close as they had been before they kissed.
"You cannot tell me," he breathed, "after that, that you have no feelings for me."
His smile was smug and proud and caused Narcissa to harden. "For you," she began, and broke his embrace, sliding away, her face now a stone cold pout. As she responded, the characteristically distant look returned to her eyes, "I feel nothing."
"Bullocks," he replied, venom sinking into each syllable. He grabbed her wrist as she began to stand, and as she turned to look back at him, she was startled by the determination set within his features. He rose to his feet as well—quite tall with his back straight and proud—leaned in, and spoke in a whisper. "You don't moan for a man you couldn't care less about, Narcissa. You feel for me, you feel quite a lot. I know it, you know it, and soon Lestrange will too."
"I didn't…" she started to deny vehemently, but stopped herself, for there was nothing she could say that would erase that one little slip of control. "Regardless," she continued coldly, "You wasted your chance, Malfoy… You've lost me."
"I never lose what's important to me."
She shook her hand free from his grasp, and shrugged, ignoring the shiver that ran along her skin at his words. "We'll see."
At that she turned away, and proceeded to leave him, placing a few sickles on the bar, and casting a smug glance at his girl, but never bothering to look back.