Sunday, 16 March 1980
When Lucius and Narcissa came down to the dining room in the morning, it was just in time to see the neatly laid out copy of the day's Daily Prophet incinerated in a brief inferno.
"I… Rodolphus?" All other pressing questions aside, Lucius was fairly certain he'd never seen his friend awake this early in his entire life. "What are you doing here?"
"Just wanted breakfast!" he announced loudly, tipping the combination of what Lucius and Narcissa would have eaten together onto a plate and sitting down. Narcissa took her seat cautiously, and flicked her eyes at Lucius with a gaze so clear she may as well have spoken out loud: Deal with this.
"Are your elves not feeding you?" he asked snidely, but at a second irritated glance from his wife he amended, "Was there anything you wanted to discuss over breakfast?"
His mouth was full so he simply shook his head, but shot a meaningful and unsubtle look in Narcissa's direction. Lucius ground his teeth.
"I'm not terribly hungry this morning," he lied pointedly. "Perhaps you and I should go to my study then?"
Rodolphus nodded quickly and swallowed. "Excellent idea," he agreed, rising noisily to his feet. "Lovely to see you, you look positively radiant," he informed Narcissa sweepingly, reaching out to touch her stomach. Before he could make contact she swatted his hand away and, unperturbed, he followed Lucius from the dining room. Once they reached the study and Lucius had closed the door behind them, he raised a scathing brow and turned to his friend expectantly.
Rodolphus took a deep breath. "Look… There's something I need to tell you and I wasn't sure how'd you'd react so I didn't want to say anything in front of Cissy. I thought it would be best if you didn't read about it in the paper either."
Rodolphus paused and Lucius snapped sarcastically, "Oh, really? Were you behaving strangely back there? I hadn't noticed."
For this remark he received a vexed glance before at last Rodolphus continued. "Laetitia Avery— sorry, Nott— is dead."
Lucius was not sure what he'd been anticipating, but it certainly wasn't this. He sat down abruptly. "Lettie's dead?"
Rodolphus nodded in affirmation, and handed Lucius a drink— he hadn't noticed him pouring it. Almost absently, he took a sip. "Circe, that's a tragedy. What happened?" A new thought occurred to him. "The baby?"
"The baby is fine, Nott has his son. But… I don't really know the details, apparently the labor didn't go well and…" he broke off with a mournful shrug.
"Well, despite your utter lack of tact I suppose I appreciate you not saying anything in front of Narcissa, she's already worried enough about—" he stopped suddenly. "What do you mean, you didn't know how I would react?"
"Weren't you sleeping with Lettie?" Rodolphus replied easily and without real concern. He'd found a handsome set of gobstones on a shelf and was handling them carelessly. Lucius was not even angry about the blunt query, just nonplussed.
"I haven't been since I was a teenager," he said incredulously. "Why would you think that?"
"I figured if you and Francesca were still—"
"I'm not sleeping with Francesca either!" he interrupted loudly, his irritation now growing. "Gods, I have to deal with Narcissa's paranoid jealousy and yours?"
He frowned, thinking for a moment. "What about that American witch you were spending so much time with a few years back?"
Angelique. "Ah, well, alright, yes. I was sleeping with her. But that was while Narcissa was still in France," he defended quickly, and then wondered suddenly if it perhaps might have been better to let Rodolphus go on thinking he was carrying on affairs. He wasn't sure how the other man would weaponize the knowledge of Lucius's strict fidelity to his wife, but if anyone could unearth a way to do so, it would certainly be Rodolphus Lestrange. "And besides, foreign witches don't really count," he added belatedly, hoping to add a sense of disinterest to the previous declaration.
Rodolphus looked amused. "What about foreign wizards? I'm sure Cissy will be relieved to hear her's didn't count either because he was French."
"I'm not discussing this with you any further," Lucius snapped haughtily. This announcement did not seem to surprise Rodolphus, who headed over to the fireplace.
"Can I use your floo?" he asked and, without waiting for a reply, dumped the entire contents of the snuffbox above the mantle into the flames. "Knockturn Alley!" he announced, vanishing without a farewell. Lucius rolled his eyes and headed back into the dining room.
"What did Rodolphus want?" Narcissa drawled, flicking listlessly through a copy of Witch Weekly. Before her pregnancy she never would have bothered with such trash, but as the months progressed her attention towards reading material had waned when it came to anything not directly related to the child growing within her. Lucius returned to his seat, considering his reply carefully. He hesitated a moment too long, and her blue eyes narrowed and shot to his face in razor-sharp suspicion.
"Lettie Nott died in childbirth," he blurted. She would find out sooner or later, and likely put the timing together anyway. "Rodolphus didn't want to say anything in front of you, due to your, erm, condition. He was trying to be considerate."
"That was considerate," she agreed in honeyed tones, and for a split, wildly optimistic second he hoped that might be the end of the conversation. "Far more considerate than any motive I'd ever ascribe to Rodolphus Lestrange." Her voice became ice as she glared at him. "Tell me, dear husband, what drove him to rush to the Manor and deliver the news to you in person?"
"Difficult to say, really." Lately, when they argued, Lucius had absurdly found a part of himself longing for the early days of their marriage, and the opportunity for a fair fight with biting repartee and no real injuries. He felt himself entirely disadvantaged by her pregnancy. His heir grew in her womb, it was a trump card he could not ignore, and thus he was obligated to appease her whenever humanly possible. Yet he'd never been forced to grapple with her wildly unpredictable anger before; her stony silences and biting lashes he was well-accustomed to, but he likened this new form of sparring to facing a dragon unarmed, crippled, and ultimately unwilling to cause the beast any harm even if he were able. Despite all of this, his pride forbade him from merely acquiescing to her demands and remaining silent before her taunts. "You know that trying to trace any sort of logic in Rodolphus's actions would be a fool's errand," he continued as lightly as he could, avoiding her gaze and reaching for a crumpet. He never made contact with the glutinous baked good however, as it shot out from beneath his fingertips and hit the far wall of the dining room with a scarcely-audible thwack. His gaze followed its trajectory with a small frown, and, refusing to spare a glance at his wife, he reached for a scone instead.
This time, the silver tower that prettily displayed a wide variety of breakfast pastries was whipped away, slamming against the the wall with a far more satisfying crash. Lucius let his hand fall upon the newly bared table, his fingers drumming in irritation. "These temper tantrums are very unbecoming for an adult woman," he snapped, rounding on Narcissa at last. Her wand was drawn and lips were pressed tight with fury. "When our son is born, is this how you intend to teach him to behave when—"
The rest of his admonishment was lost in an inarticulate yell, because this time it was he that was flung across the hall. Lucius sprang back to his feet at once, whipping out his own wand with a snarl of fury, but, with a brief look at Narcissa's swollen midsection, he did not raise it. This did not slow her advance or soften her demeanor, however; she swept across the room and seized the front of his robes with her free hand, jamming the slender length of wood against his throat. It would be false to say he did not recognize the the witch before him, although the woman he saw was certainly not his wife.
"You were sleeping with her," she accused with a lethal hiss, sparks spitting from the end of her wand and searing the pale skin of his neck.
"Yes." It was a gamble with absurdly high stakes, but fortunately it paid off— her face slackened in shock at the admission, and her grip loosened for a heartbeat. He acted at once, seizing her wrists and holding them behind her back, pinning her struggling body against his. "Yes," he repeated, "I was, a decade ago when I was at Hogwarts!" Lucius managed to extract the wand from her grip and, having disarmed her, he released her and returned to his chair at the head of the dining table. "You can have this back when you've gotten yourself under control," he added, though a glance at her expression told him that she was no longer a threat.
Narcissa sank back into her seat as well, pinching the bridge of her nose and resting her other hand on her stomach. Wordlessly, he placed her wand on the table, but she did not reach for it.
"I hardly need to tell you that your behavior is highly reminiscent of—"
"I know," she breathed, shooting him an anguished glance. All the rigid fury had seeped away, and she looked drained and exhausted. The pregnancy was taking more than a physical toll on her— they were both aware. "I feel rather sorry for Bellatrix, for the first time in my life. If I had such wild emotions like this all the time, I can't imagine we would have turned out so differently from one another."
She would not apologize and he would not take her in his arms to console her; it was not their way. But he reached out to enclose her wrist gently, briefly, in a small act of conciliation.
Friday, 25 April 1980
"There you are." Lucius arrived in the entry hall at the same moment Narcissa slipped in from outside carrying a tiny bag from a shop whose logo he did not recognise. She quickly shut the door behind her and turned to him, beaming winningly. He did not return the smile, as she oddly seemed to be holding the door closed with her foot.
"Hello, Lucius," she effused.
"What are you doing?" he asked suspiciously. After a moment of silent calculation she gestured him forward and when he reached her, to his utter shock, she pulled his face down to kiss him deeply. While he'd been enjoying a certain increase in her amorous affections as of late ("The healers say it's still just hormones acting up, all very standard," she'd explained matter-of-factly while climbing on top of him shortly after waking that morning), this was unprecedented. Narcissa leaned heavily into him and cupped his jaw in both her hands, gently backing up and leading him to press her body between his own and the wall. It almost worked— he very nearly did not notice the door crack open over his shoulder.
Lucius whirled around at once, and she dropped her face to her hand in embarrassment. "Oh for fuck's sake, Narcissa," he growled in exasperation. "This is the sixth time this month! How much more could you possibly need?"
She had the decency to look chagrined as a veritable army of house elves, some their own and others on loan from the shops to deliver her purchases, began to stream in with dozens (what seemed to Lucius to be hundreds) of parcels of all shapes and sizes. "It's not what I need Lucius," she defended hotly. "It's what our baby needs. Don't you want him or her to have the absolute best—"
"'The best' does not mean you need to clear out every store selling childhood wares in London!"
She bit her lip. "I suppose it wouldn't help matters if I told you these were from Paris," she muttered. "The selection in London is really inferior." He spun back to her, grey eyes flashing, but before he could speak she thrust her hand into the minuscule bag she still gripped and held up an exquisitely wrought silver rattle and swirled it gently. "Beautiful, though, isn't it?" she asked softly, and it truly was: it made a gentle whirring sound, simultaneously low and high pitched, an ethereal, otherworldly whooshing... mermerising, really... Lucius felt a drowsy calm begin to creep over him...
"No," he snarled, snatching it from her hand and feeling his irritation flood back at once. "You are not using an enchanted rattle to get out of this!"
Thwarted, she pushed out her lower lip and dropped her gaze. "But, Lucius," she protested, her tone soothing as her fingers found the lapels of his robes, "It's not as though you can't afford it or we haven't the space for it." She arched her back slightly and he knew what she was trying to do, but rather than roll her hips seductively against his, the movement only served to push her ever-expanding midsection firmly into his abdomen. Curiously, this had perhaps an even greater effect upon him, and his expression grew gentle at last.
"You'll spoil him terribly," Lucius warned, but there was no malice to his words. Narcissa grinned once more, sensing her victory as he stepped back. "No more shopping trips like this, you haven't even had a baby shower yet, it's distastefully excessive."
"Yes, Lucius," she agreed quickly. "Only the essentials."
His eyes narrowed— he suspected she would have an argument ready from now on for why every superfluous outfit or wildly expensive toy that she brought into the Manor was 'essential'— but decided to let it go. "I hope you told the shopkeepers to send me the bills of sale for accounting purposes, at least?" he asked resignedly as they headed towards the dining room. Narcissa hesitated.
"Yes but... well... they might be labeled as grocers when they arrive."
Lucius rolled his eyes. "You thought I wouldn't notice that our food expenditure had increased a hundredfold in the past thirty days?"
"Well, I am eating for two."
Monday, 19 May 1980
Supper in town with Augustus Rookwood had run late, and it was nearly eleven by the time Lucius returned to the Manor. As expected, his wife had retired for the evening. However, as he approached the bedroom, with its door left invitingly ajar, he heard the sound of her voice from within. He could not distinguish the words, but felt a surge of irritation that she would allow anyone into the place where they slept, even if only her mother or sister, who he assumed to be the likeliest visitors at this hour. He listened for several seconds to determine who the intruder might be, but could not make out the sound of a second voice. She could not be flooing— there was no hearth within. Finally he pushed the door open to find her tucked into bed, long hair in a plait over her shoulder and both hands resting in contentment on her jutting belly.
"Who were you talking to?" he asked, more confused than wary as he began to undress. Narcissa cast her gaze about uncertainly, as though searching for a reasonable excuse. Finding none in the room, she admitted at last, "I was talking to the baby."
"Er... I've been out a few hours but surely I haven't missed the birth of my son?" Lucius confirmed, and she rolled her eyes good-naturedly.
"Don't be obtuse, the baby obviously hasn't been born yet. But sometimes it feels as though..." she sighed happily and sank back into her pillows. "I'm sure he or she can hear me, and it feels as though there's an understanding as well. I do it often when you're not here," she confessed with a little smile as he slipped into bed beside her and extinguished the lights with a wave of his wand. "I love being pregnant," she went on, finding his hand in the dark and lacing her fingers with his. "I mean... I'm ill all the time and my back and feet ache terribly but I just adore it. It's remarkable, being so in love with a little human you've never even met.
"It's easier, I'd imagine, to love someone before you know them," he quipped drily.
"What a thing to say!" she protested. Then, worried he was not speaking in jest, asked, "Surely you don't really feel that way about it."
"Well... I can only speak from personal experience, I suppose," he began slowly, and she nestled against him to encourage him to go on. "My mother loved me when I was a child." There was no doubt in his mind of this fact: from his birth she'd whispered to him in her native language, showered him with praise and affection, slipped him sweets when no one was looking, spent hours reading to and playing make-believe with him. "I think it was around the time I began to emulate my father that she stopped," he went on, trying unsuccessfully to keep his voice even. He'd turned away from her affection long before she'd withdrawn it, it was true, but he'd been a fourteen year old boy with too much responsibility thrust suddenly onto his shoulders. His father had little use for children but when Abraxas was implicated in the assassination plot on Leach's life, he needed the son he'd largely ignored up until that point to become the public-facing representation of the Malfoy name. Lucius had had no idea how to do anything of the sort— he cared little for anything besides Quidditch and girls at that age— so mimicking his father's behaviour in all regards seemed the only viable option.
He'd taken her affection for granted and selfishly misused it his entire life, but he would never forget the shock of seeing her look at him the same way she did her husband for the first time, with a wide but flat smile, her words correct but lacking any real warmth. He knew very well he'd never appreciated her love when she had given it, but the abrupt realization that he had lost it irrevocably had still been a stunning blow. It had been over the summer holiday after his sixth year. In unusually bright and sociable spirits, he'd come into her library and found her alone writing a letter to her sister. His question had been an innocuous one, asking only how his aunt— an aunt he could scarcely remember— fared, and perhaps due to the subject matter or his affectionate mood, he'd asked her in her native tongue, a language they hadn't spoken to one another in years. She had turned to him with a fixed expression of insincere friendliness, and chided in a soft but disinterested voice, "Don't use svenska at home, Lucius. You know your father does not approve." It had been a simple and truthful statement, but he'd understood the subtext at once: 'Do not speak to me so intimately; that is not the sort of relationship we have any longer.' He'd withdrawn at once and spent most of the rest of his summer with the Lestranges in Germany, and had never spoken aloud about the incident with his mother. It seemed a pointless tale to rehash.
"I did not think I even wanted it, but to realize so suddenly that it was gone…" he broke off and remained quiet for a long stretch. "She was the only person to ever love me. And she stopped when she saw the man I was growing into."
Narcissa did not reply, and he could sense by the uneasy quality of her silence that she did not know how to. He spared her the trouble by continuing in what was meant to be a flippant tone but perhaps came across a rather too sincere: "I hope, should our son turn out to be like me, that you will not be so similarly disappointed."
"Lucius," she breathed, as though a thousand meanings could be conveyed just in the syllables of his name. She did not know his mother well enough to dispute his claims, and she seemed to struggle to find anything more to say, so again he came to her aid.
"It's not the worst thing. It's a weakness to be overly fond," he pointed out reasonably.
"It is no such thing," she argued at once. "Love makes both parties stronger." It was something she believed unequivocally, but her voice trembled slightly; they'd never discussed such matters before.
"Together, perhaps. By weakening the individual. It is too much a sacrifice of self. Narcissa," he spoke over the beginnings of her demurral. "It's a silly disagreement." It wasn't, but it was not one he felt like having. "Let's both try to get some rest, shall we?" He knew it was not what she wanted to hear. She turned onto her left side, both for the sake of comfort and, he guessed, to face away from him. Undaunted, Lucius pressed his hands to the base of her spine, working upwards slowly, and she made a small, pleased sound.
"What do you tell him?" he asked suddenly, and Narcissa did not immediately reply. "When you talk to the baby," he clarified, "what sort of things do you say?"
"Oh... stories, I suppose. Old children's tales, Beedle's; sometimes abridged versions of novels that I enjoy; sometimes stories of things we've done and seen. I was talking about runespoor sanctuary outside of Ouagadougou before you came in. It's amazing think of all the marvels of the world that we'll be able to show him or her."
"Tabula rasa," Lucius added helpfully, pressing a kiss to the nape of her neck and trying not to dwell on all the ways he might potentially fail as a father.
Wednesday, 5 June 1980
When Lucius woke in the morning, a faint predawn light filtered into their chamber and Narcissa was sitting propped up by pillows, staring into space with a strange expression. For a few seconds he watched her, attempting to unravel the emotions he saw unguarded on her face— happiness, but fear as well. Excitement? She must be thinking of the baby, of what would certainly be coming in the next week or two. He reached for her hand, and she took it at once with a gentle squeeze.
"Do you have plans for the day?" she asked softly, seeming relieved when he shook his head.
"Just some post to answer," he elaborated. "Crouch is attempting to push through some legislation that..." but he broke off; it would not do to worry her about such things in her current condition.
"Will you stay here with me for a little while?" she requested and he agreed at once, sitting up as well, drawing her to his chest and stroking her hair.
"Have you decided on a name yet?" he asked mildly, and she hesitated.
"I like Maia, for a girl. Maia Malfoy." It would not be a girl, but Lucius decided to humour her anyway.
"One of the Pleiades— would we not then need to give her six sisters to keep her from growing lonely?"
Narcissa laughed. "I would not object to seven daughters, we certainly have the space for them." Her eyes shone at the thought of so many children, all her own, playing in the gardens; every one with a golden halo of long, flaxen hair and eyes of lapis or silver. And if one ran off with a Mudblood (not that any child of theirs would do such a thing), each girl would have five others to console her. To her such a family would be paradise on Earth; Lucius, however, groaned.
"I could not bear to be so outnumbered," he protested. "Besides, where would we ever find pureblooded husbands for them all?"
"Don't the Weasleys have seven sons by now?" she asked innocently, dissolving into giggles at the outraged sound her husband made.
"You're a cruel witch to make such a jest," he grumbled, placing a hand on her hugely swollen stomach affectionately. The sat in companionable silence for several moments before he prompted, "And... if it's a boy, what did you have in mind?"
Narcissa lifted his hand to her lips. "I can't say yet," she replied carefully, and he did not press her for any further details. "Lucius..." she sounded suddenly serious, and he frowned. "If something should happen to me—"
"No," he interrupted at once. "No, we are not having this conversation. Nothing will happen except that you and I will have a healthy child." He said this as much for her benefit as his own, and held her rather more securely in his arms. They'd been over the plan before, many times, and he reiterated it once more for both of their comfort. "Marlowe and an assistant healer and a small army of hand-selected nurses will be here the entire time. You've already written out notes to both our sets of parents and your sister and Ari Parkinson, and an elf will send them out the moment things begin so no one will be absent at the birth. Your room is ready with every potion one could reasonably need, and I think I've better stocked the cellar with ingredients than Hogwarts and St. Mungo's combined in case they need to make anything more on short notice." He pressed his lips to her temple. "And I shall be in the Manor the whole time, awaiting news that I have a delighted wife and strong son."
She smiled, a little wanly. "Very good. Then I suppose we'd better... get to it."
His brow lowered in confusion. "Get to what?"
"All you've just described." She bit her lip. "My contractions started just after midnight."