January 14th

Cursed? Lucius was cursed? How?

Hermione was torn between her immediate wish to understand, to analyse and to compartmentalize, and the uneasy feeling in her stomach at the sudden anguish on Lucius's face.

There had been a time in Hermione's life when she had always been able to keep her head cool, no matter what she was faced with. But after Ed, that ability had weakened. She still had her brains, but couldn't push her feelings away that easily anymore. And if she did, it took a lot of energy. But she had a feeling this was one of those moments when staying sharp was essential, so she did her best to focus.

"What curse?" she asked, with less eloquence than curiosity, as she fixed her eyes on him.

The guilty expression on Lucius's expression did not make her feel better. He took another few steps, taking hold of one of the bedposts as if he needed the support. She had been upset about his keeping his past with Eloise Rosier secret, but if his demeanor was anything to judge by, this was actually worse.

"A single male child and no more", Lucius said quietly. His eyes flickered between hers as he softly added: "Didn't you notice the pattern when you read my family history?"

Hermione shook her head. She had read that book a hundred times back and forth - both for her own amusement and for the sake of the finding their attacker. She'd always had a feeling that there was something she was missing. But she never read anything about a curse!

"It's been a secret well kept within the family", Lucius continued, "But no Malfoy has had more than one child for centuries. We never speak of it, but every son - and his wife - are informed what to expect."

Hermione frowned. "That's what Narcissa meant? The reason she should only expect one child?"

Lucius nodded. "Eloise came to me after our, after the event. She told me she was pregnant", he told her, "but I denied that it could be mine. Shortly after, she married Greengrass, and though I was relieved to get her out of my hair, I spent months tormented by the idea that they might be the one to raise my only son. But then Dapnhe was born, and it turned out I was right."

Hermione shuddered, both at the sudden chill to his tone, and at the thought of what might have happened. Had Eloise tried to trick him consciously, or simply hoped for the best? Hermione thought of the short glimpse she'd seen of Lucius's interactions with his parents in the pensive. He'd been so relieved to find that his father wanted him to marry Narcissa and not Eloise - and she suspected an illegitimate child wouldn't have been something Lucius would have liked to admit to him...

As the scene at Malfoy Manor played out in Hermione's mind, another face introduced itself: Lyra.

"But... what about Lyra?" Hermione asked. The answer to that question was evident though: Lyra and Lucius couldn't look more different - he was tall, pale and angular in his features, she had been short, dark and with a heart shaped face and soft eyes.

"Adopted", Lucius confirmed. He looked away from Hermione and rubbed his face, causing loose strands of hair to fall around his face. "The curse stands", he stated. "There are no exceptions."

"What about our baby, then?" she frowned.

Lucius walked over to the window. It was dark outside, but the snow reflected the streetlights, and cast a pale glow on his face. He clenched his jaw. "I don't know", he admitted.

"You've never questioned -?"

"No", he said with emphasis. "I know she's mine, I just don't understand how."

Hermione put a hand on her belly. No more than one child. And yet this baby within her was so strong, so present, so real. How could it be? Lost in thoughts, she only faintly registered footsteps coming closer. She looked up when Lucius put his hand close to hers, and they both felt the baby change positions in there.

"I've always known I could never have more than one child", he whispered. "That's why I've been slightly... overprotective. I've been consumed with the idea that any second something will happen to take it - take you both - away from me. The attacks only fed into that fear."

He's always known, Hermione thought to herself, feeling sad for him to have carried this fear alone for so long. He should have told her, unburdened himself.

Always known. She frowned. He'd always known - without telling her! Her eyes snapped up to meet his, and again - he looked away. She took a hold of his chin and forcibly turned his face back towards her.

"You didn't tell me", she said in disbelief. "When you proposed, I asked you about getting kids, forming a family, and from your manner of speaking, one might have thought you planned on fathering a whole bloody football team!" Her voice grew louder with every word, until she was practically yelling. "You didn't give me the tiniest hint, but you knew, or you thought you knew, that we couldn't!"

Lucius's submitted to her anger. His eyes were pained, begging her to understand, but she was too angry to care. She let go of him and stepped away from the bed. She had already been pregnant when they had that conversation, but he hadn't known it. When had he been planning to tell her that she could never have biological kids with him?

"This is what you would call an omission?" she spat, wiping tears from her eyes. "You'd base our marriage on a lie?"

"I told myself that perhaps it was only one child per marriage", Lucius sighed. "Or that we might adopt. Or that you might not be too keen on children anyway. Anything… And then somehow you were pregnant, and I didn't want to frighten you. I wanted to forget it myself." He paused and shook his head. "I should have told you."

"Yes, you should", she replied harshly.

Lucius took a step towards her, but she shoved him away and left the room. She had to get to the bottom of this. Lucius followed at a few steps distance.

"Hermione?" he asked, but she ignored him and made her way into the library, where she sat down on her chaise lounge.

"Accio Family History", she muttered, swinging her wand.

Lucius had followed her into the room, but she continued to ignore him. The book landed on her lap and she opened it, muttering under her breath. Too much. He was just too much. Was this really what he thought of her, that she'd have to be tricked into marrying him? Stupid, lying, arrogant wizard!

"What are you doing?"

"Shut up and let me think", Hermione snapped, "or I'll lock you out on the balcony until I'm done."

Hermione started leafing through its pages in search of the most recently added passages. Lucius fell to his knees before her, putting his hand on hers to stop her from turning the page. She looked up, very tempted to follow through on her threat. He'd never dare use magic to stop her anyway. The snow would do him good.

"I understand if you want to leave", he mumbled.

Hermione briefly closed her eyes, taking a deep breath. Lord, give me strength. She gave him her best glare and curtly replied: "No", before turning her attention back on the book.

"Why?" he persisted, placing his palm on the open book when she tried to turn a page. "I've lied to you and let you down. You deserve better."

"I don't need a 'why' to stay", she said angrily.

"But -

"You're a lying idiot, Lucius Malfoy, and I'm so mad at you right now that I don't even know what to say, but you are mine, and I am yours and that's that." She shoved his hand away from the page and met his gaze, "Now I'll give you a choice: you can either deal with your mistakes and marry me, or call it off and run away. Which will it be?"

Lucius stared at her for several moments before finding his voice: "I'm already yours."

"Good", she snapped, ignoing the irrational urge to smirk at his unusually submissive ways. "Now be quiet."

Lucius, obviously a little too apprehensive of her mood to sit beside her, stood up and went around to stand behind her so he could see what she was reading, while she leafed through the pages. From Lucius and his father Abraxas, she began turning the pages backwards through the 20th century, studying each generation up until the late 1700s.

She nodded to herelf. It was just as Lucius had said. Every generation had one male heir, any extra siblings had been adopted. And that was in spite of the book making assessments of the parents' marriages being particularly loving, or even passionate. And a nagging voice at the back of her mind kept calling her attention to one name again and again.

"Septimus Malfoy", she muttered, thinking her theory through one more time before she glanced over her shoulder and gestured for Lucius to come sit by her. "What do you know about the curse?" she asked when she could look him in the eyes.

"Nothing", Lucius answered guardedly. "All I have been told is that for generations, it has been the same. Nobody knows when it started, or the reason why."

"Well, it's fairly obvious when it started, isn't it?" Hermione said, pointing to the open page before her. "The last person in your family to have had more than one child was Septimus Malfoy, whose twin sons were born in 1782. The younger son had only daughters – eight of them, in fact – but the older, the heir, had only one male heir. The curse must have started with him."

Lucius couldn't believe it. He'd read that book more times than he could count and had never seen it. Hermione, on the other hand, figured it out in a matter of minutes. Her intelligence truly had no limits - it shone as brightly as her anger burned hot.

"Why was he cursed?" Lucius asked, fully expecting her to have already found the answer.

"Perhaps it was a punishment for something he did", Hermione suggested, scratching her tummy absentmindedly. "Every curse operates on certain conditions. We need to find out how it began, and under which circumstances it could be cancelled."

"Cancelled?" Lucius had never considered the possibility of there being an end to the curse.

Hermione arched an eyebrow in a way she had definitely learned from him. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

"None of your ancestors had a second child for nearly 240 years, and suddenly you do", she huffed. "Of course the curse has been cancelled."

Impossible. It's too much to hope for. And yet he did hope. It was small, but persistent. Lucius shook his head at himself. He couldn't have everything, surely? Not her and the baby. It was too good to be true.

"It's the only logical explanation", Hermione insisted.

"But – how?"

"As I said, it depends on the conditions of the curse", she shrugged. "My guess is that it was something you did that broke it." She paused. "What were you the first Malfoy to do?"

Lucius leaned against the back rest of the chaise lounge. "I was the first one to be a Death Eater", he began, rolling his eyes at the obvious irrelevance of that particular condition. Death Eaters hadn't exactly been a familiar concept in the 1780s, and most of his ancestors had been pure blood supremacists in one way or another anyway, "And the first one to stop being one", he forced himself to continue, "I was the first to get a divorce, and of course the first to –"

Lucius cut himself off, his eyes snapping up to Hermione's.

"What?" she asked expectantly, seeming to forget her anger for a moment as she shuffled closer to him.

"You", he said simply. He felt a smile slowly spread across his features.

Hermione, on the other hand, frowned. "What of me?"

"You broke the curse", Lucius said with confidence. "I'm the first Malfoy since Septimus to marry a muggleborn witch."

Hermione leaned back, disappointed.

"But we're not married", she objected, frustrated by the sight of his triumphant smile. "We weren't even engaged when we – when the child was conceived. Aren't those kind of things important to families like yours?"

"It depends on the conditions of the curse", he repeated her own words.

She grimaced, but Lucius grabbed her hands and for a moment she could feel his pulse throb eagerly under her fingertips.

"All I know", he said, "is that I had pledged myself to you irrevocably when we joined together. You asked me what I wanted that night, and we came to an understanding, didn't we? It wasn't legally binding, perhaps, but –" he paused as if to find the right argument, and when he met her gaze, his eyes glittered mischievously. "But surely this is exactly the kind of magic your beloved Dumbledore would have gone on about in a situation like this? The heart's intent, and such romantic nonsense?"

"Well yes, but..." Hermione still felt doubtful.

"I feel it", Lucius said, grasping her hands tightly. "I can feel it in the depth of my soul. You were right: the curse is lifted - and you did it."

"I suppose it's possible…" Hermione turned her gaze back to the book, but to stare at rather than to read. "All right, let's go with your theory for now", she said after considering the matter. "It means someone cast a curse on Septimus's bloodline which would last until one of his heirs pledged himself to a muggle born. What would be the point of that?"

Lucius frowned. "You mentioned punishment..."

"Yes, but to cast a curse like that, one would have to be really really angry, right? But with this curse, you were all more or less guaranteed an heir. Some would consider it a blessing to know there would be a son to inherit the estate and pass on the family name. Is it really that great of a punishment?"

"In a way, you're right..." Lucius sighed. He was quiet for a moment, making Hermione begin to wonder if she'd said something wrong.

"But imagine", he said quietly, "what it'd be like to know that you could have only one child, especially before the advanced health care of today. To live in constant fear of something happening to him: an accident, a sudden illness… And to wish for a large family, to have many children to care for and nurture, knowing you could never have it, nor offer it to your wife.

Hermione's eyes stung. It was clear that was talking of his own tears, sorrows, insecurities... Had this feeling of inadequacy also played its part in his relationship with Narcissa? Hermione's gaze lingered on him for a few moments, but he was quiet, looking towards the dark window.

Turning back to the book, and rereading the lines written of Septimus Malfoy, Hermione clasped a hand to her mouth.

"Septimus was a seventh child himself!" she exclaimed. "He was never supposed to inherit the title. But they all died before him..."

Lucius nodded. "The person behind the curse knew what he was doing."

Septimus Malfoy. Whatever he did, the person responsible for this didn't want to end his line. They wanted a muggle born in the family. Why?

Hermione touched the scar on her left arm. "A mudblood in the Malfoy family..." she trailed off. "Wouldn't that be the ultimate punishment to those who wished to protect the pureblood line?"

Lucius shook his head. "Most of us have thought along those lines", he admitted, "but surely, you remember what the healer told us? Whatever the original intent with the curse, in reality it is turning out to be a reward, a blessing. The magic of our child, of our continued line is growing stronger from our union."

Lucius thought for a moment and then continued: "One might say that my ancestors have punished themselves. We denied ourselves increased magical power for centuries - all because of the illusion of purity." His voice took a self-deprecating tone as he continued: "To think how easily the curse could have been broken! And we were the ones to reinforce it with every passing generation."

Hermione's hand found its way to his rough cheek. She found her anger, though simmering within her, hard to hold onto when Lucius leaned into her palm, briefly closing his eyes.

"Thank you", he said.

Hermione raised her eyebrow. "I think the key here is you choosing me."

"Perhaps you had to choose me back for it to work", he said. His grey eyes were calm, like the surface of a deep pond on a windless day.

"Perhaps", she conceded. Another pause followed. "We should try to get some sleep."

Lucius nodded his agreement, but instead of getting up, he asked: "May I kiss you? Or will you lock me out on the balcony?"

She smirked. "You'll have to try to find out."

She liked the way his eyes went from suspicion, to humour, to something she couldn't put a label on but which made her toes curl in anticipation. She liked the way one of his hands sneaked up to the base of her neck, and the way his lips brushed gently against her ear before approaching her mouth.

And in spite of everything he'd done, she liked what followed.