(A/N: Throughout writing Vacillation, I tried to avoid adding author's notes in order to preserve the flow of the story. Since this posting is not a cohesive story and rather a collection of scenes, I'm afraid you will be frequently subjected to my thoughts on the different scenarios. I do hope this improves rather than diminishes your reading experience, as many of these scenes will require explanation.
I decided the inaugural posting should be two scenes focussing on Lucius and Narcissa's parents. The first in part addresses a question I have in general about the Death Eaters: why is Voldemort 25-30 years older than his two most favoured in the first war (Bellatrix and Lucius)? Despite Dumbledore's recounting of young Tom Riddle as revered amongst his fellow students, I do think he appealed more to the younger and more impressionable generation rather than his peers.
It also addresses a Vacillation-specific question: how did Voldemort come to be aware of Lucius's Swedish background and ability to speak the language in order to send him to liaise with the Volsung in chapter 7? Legillimancy can always be assumed, but I prefer this version of events. Lucius grows to be ashamed of his mother's ancestry; I do not think it would be something plucked easily from his mind.
The second scene, between Druella and Cygnus, is fairly self-explanatory. The only truly odd note is that, according to the Black Family Tree, Cygnus is 13 when Bellatrix is born. JKR has said in interviews that math is not her strong suit, and I imagine this dating is something of an error. Nevertheless, still I made Cygnus quite young at the time of their marriage (15 rather than 13, though Rodolphus still alludes to the scandal of Cygnus's youth at the time of his marriage in chapter 18).
Speaking of Rodolphus and chapter 18, the second scene here takes place shortly after Rodolphus's visit to Abraxas in the final scene of that chapter. And while that chapter turned out to be ridiculously lengthy, that last part was an important piece of the puzzle that is the relationship between Lucius and Narcissa, and I'd advise anyone interested to give it a second look.)
Wednesday, 20 December 1967
"I understand your position," Abraxas Malfoy offered the hollow, diplomatic words to the pale man seated before him, "but unfortunately there is little I can do to be of use to you at this point. The degree of scrutiny placed upon me since the attempt on Nobby Leach's life—" he would not refer to that Mudblood by the title of Minister, even now, after everything that had happened, "— has severely curtailed my ability to act in any way that would further your goals. You will not find in me an enemy, nor even a dissenter, but you must understand that it is equally impossible for me to stand as an ally; nor, I daresay, would you wish if of me in the grander scheme of things."
The other man opened a lipless mouth to reply, but before he could do so, the door burst open.
"Father? Mother said you wanted—"
"Lucius!" Abraxas hissed as his son pushed his way unannounced into the study. "How many times have I told you to knock?"
"But she said to go see you right away, I assumed you were waiting for me!" he huffed indignantly. Lucius regarded the stranger in his father's study with bright curiosity for a moment before turning his attention back to his father. "Anyway, I'm here now, but if you don't actually want to see me I'm going to go fly in the garden for a bit before supper."
"No," Abraxas corrected sternly. "You will stand patiently outside in the corridor until I have finished my meeting here, and then you will knock to be admitted, and then we will have a civil conversation."
"Rövhatt," Lucius muttered under his breath, kicking at the carpet as he turned from the room. Abraxas's eyes tightened with irritation.
"And how many times have told you not to use that language in front of me or guests?" he snarled, but Lucius had already slipped through the door. Abraxas exhaled sharply and turned back to the man before him. "You must excuse my son, he has much to learn about how a man behaves with any modicum of propriety and no natural inclination for such learning, it would seem." This would have to change immediately, of course. The generous leniency he'd shown the boy up until this point would be coming to an end today. He went on: "I hired the best tutors in the country to teach him Latin and Gobbledegook, but it's his mother's native tongue he'll insist on. I'd have put an end to it years ago but I didn't realize she was teaching it to him."
The visitor looked amused by his words rather than dismissive. "How old is the boy?"
"He turned fourteen last month." Even as the words left his mouth, Abraxas wondered suddenly if he was mortgaging his son's future by declining to offer his own. He could see the sly interest on the man's strangely distorted face, the calculation in his bloody-looking eyes. In three short years Lucius would be of age and perfectly poised for nearly unending opportunities, and Abraxas had sufficiently positioned his own self as useless to this Lord Voldemort's aims.
Lord Voldemort. Abraxas would have sneered at the introduction had rumours of this man's power not already reached him in Wiltshire. Despite being the head of one of the oldest and wealthiest Wizarding families in the country, Abraxas still would never think to style himself as Lord Malfoy; wizards had existed for a millennium in England without a king. Though of course certain Muggle traditions had twined themselves inextricably with magical ones prior to the Statute of Secrecy, titled nobility had never been one of them. The name Malfoy was enough to command the same respect as "Your Grace," or perhaps even "Your Majesty" at certain points in the family's storied past— there was no need for superfluous flatteries. Lord indeed.
With an easy, unconcerned confidence, Lord Voldemort rose to his feet.
"I understand your position, Abraxas," he demurred, and though his words dripped with civility, there was still an air of superiority to them. Unearned superiority, Abraxas's mind supplied insistently, even as he rose as well and offered his hand. "I do appreciate your time."
And perhaps he did, but his hand and demeanor were both icy as he swept from the room.
The boy was slouched against the wall of the corridor with an indolent grace uncommon in one so young. He seemed to be arguing with a nearby portrait about the current length of his hair, but fell silent at once and straightened up when he spotted the visitor exiting. It was obvious that he had no idea who this man was, but his father hosted only the most important men in his private study, and he'd been trained to show them deference. Moreover, this strangely menacing-looking visitor commanded a certain respect in his own right.
"Good afternoon," he greeted, flicking his wand at the portrait and hissing "Silencio."
"Good afternoon… Lucius, was it?"
Lucius nodded and waited expectantly for the stranger to identify himself, but the man did no such thing.
"Your father tells me you are in your third year at Hogwarts. Tell me, what electives are you taking this year?"
"Arithmancy," Lucius answered promptly, if without much interest. "Ancient Runes, Care of Magical Creatures, and Divination." His lip curled slightly in disdain upon naming the last of these.
A child's mind was an easy thing to peruse, and this one was not particularly complex. He was still thinking of Quidditch. The Slytherin team had won last year, but this year looked less promising. The captain was new, but Lucius was sure this was not the problem: everyone underestimated the importance of a Beater, but it was difficult to compensate for Rodolphus's absence.
The Dark Lord did not convey a flicker of interest upon the unexpected but familiar name, though nor was he disinterested in the information. Rodolphus was one of his most promising followers. Of course, he could not claim full responsibility for the younger man's zealously violent nature, but he had had good results thus far in directing Lestrange's destruction towards useful ends.
This one, too, would grow to be useful to him, the Dark Lord decided. Even if his father refused assistance, he could wait a few years and secure the loyalty of the son— a better acquisition anyway, to have the young Malfoy heir and not the aging patriarch in his service.
Lucius's gaze had become suspicious at the prolonged silence. However before he could speak again, the Dark Lord continued.
"I believe your father is waiting for you," he told Lucius silkily with a conspiratorial smile despite knowing that Abraxas's upcoming address would crush the boy, effectively ending his childish aspirations and contentments. "I'm sure I'll see you again in a short while, Lucius Malfoy."
Thursday, 9 September 1971
"Druella," Cygnus sighed as his wife sank gracefully onto the garden bench beside him. "There's something I need to talk to you about."
"Yes, mari," she replied readily, folding her hands neatly in her lap and gazing up at him expectantly. He sighed again and tore his eyes away from her steady gaze— he hated to disappoint her, he always had. Her decades in Kent had never quite erased the Parisian lilt to her words, and while some might sneer at the notion of a foreign wife so clearly evidenced, he had never grown tired of the music in her voice.
"You won't like it," he continued, half in warning and half apology. She merely tucked a golden curl behind her ear and blinked patiently. Cygnus wasn't a man overtly given to vices, in large part because his wife found smoking and drinking distasteful, but he rather wished he had something to dull the sharp anxiety he felt at the moment and occupy his hands. "It's about Cissy," he admitted at last, contenting himself instead with withdrawing a pocketwatch and fiddling with the chain.
Druella's easy posture grew stiff at the mention of her favourite child in such a dismal tone, but she remained silent. All three of their daughters resembled him, with sharp and finely cut noses and cheekbones, evidenced Black traits, but Narcissa alone had inherited Druella's fair hair and cerulean blue eyes. And more than that; only their last born girl had embraced her mother's love of art, music, and proper social conventions. She was like her in so many ways, which made his news all the more difficult to impart.
"Oh, Ella," he sighed a third time, heavier now. "I know you wanted one of the girls to marry Evan; and before Sirius was put in that damnable house I'd hoped we had a husband close at hand for two of the three… But Andromeda leaving has changed things. You must know that."
"It's changed everything," she whispered, emotion strangling the words. He nodded slowly, staring off over the hills, determined not to see whether or not there were tears clinging to her long, dark lashes.
"She'll need to be engaged by the time she leaves school, like Bella was. Otherwise there will be talk wondering why she isn't, and that will make it all the more difficult for her to find someone suitable. People will think no one would have her after what her sister did."
"Fine, but Evan—"
"Evan is a good lad, but she can't marry your nephew. Not now that Annie—Andromeda, I mean— has gone off with a Mudblood. One blood traitor casts doubt on our entire family. If Cissy marries a cousin, it will do nothing to clear our name of this stain." He'd given it a good deal of thought, and come to the conclusion that the easiest thing (namely, a quick engagement and widely publicized wedding between Narcissa and Evan Rosier) would drag accusations of Muggle sympathies out for at least a generation, and he did not wish to subject his youngest daughter to such intolerable and undeserved derision.
"You are already thinking of someone," she guessed astutely, reaching out to take his hand. He squeezed her fingers, appreciative of the support even as she doubtlessly arranged a careful counterargument in her mind.
"I happened across Abraxas Malfoy at the club last week. To be honest I hardly expected him to even speak to me after An… well, you know. But he was rather decent, didn't even bring it up... unlike bloody Slughorn who tried to tell me he'd had the Mudblood as a student and that the boy was a nice chap…" he broke off in a growl, momentarily lost in rage at the recollection and forgetting that he'd once been a favourite of the professor. "That blustering fool, how dare a grubby-fingered, social-climbing—"
"Cygnus," she interrupted gently, reminding him to stay on topic.
"Right. Well, Abraxas and I spoke for some time after Slughorn left. His son is making quite a name for himself at the Ministry; hardly a surprise, of course, the Malfoys have always been a political lot. But young Lucius is apparently bright, doing well… a bit headstrong, but what boy isn't at eighteen?" He chuckled nervously, and at Druella's continued silence, came to the crux of the matter at last. "I was rather surprised when he said he thought a wife would settle the lad. But Abraxas doesn't waste words, nor say anything he doesn't mean."
"And who says Cissy can 'settle' him?" Druella demanded at once. "Why should she have to, even if she could?"
"Don't be ridiculous darling, if we raised one daughter who can manage the Lestrange boy, Malfoy's heir should give Cissy no trouble at all." Manage, perhaps, was not the right word, as Bella allowed Rodolphus the loosest of leashes in terms of his general behaviour. Still, she could usually be counted on to rein him in before tensions escalated irreparably over luncheon.
"Bellatrix could manage a manticore," Druella replied, and it was clear she did not fully mean this in the most complimentary sense. She found Rodolphus distasteful, despite his impeccable breeding. The French Lestrange branch of the family had died off during Grindelwald's rise in the first half of the 20th century, and she'd lost several relatives in the process. None as close, of course, as her beloved Aunt Vinda, from whose loss her father had never fully recovered. Bella was striking similar to Vinda, though Druella tried not to dwell on this fact. She'd been shocked but not displeased when her eldest daughter had announced, over breakfast during the spring holiday of her seventh year, that she was going to marry the Lestrange heir— the only heir left, to both the English and French lines— but that happiness had dissipated quickly upon meeting the man. Unlike her husband and his generous opinion, she could not dismiss him as merely a spirited boy, though he was only a year older than her daughter. He was large and loud and inexcusably unrefined, and despite knowing his mother had died when he was only eleven, she could not find pity in her heart nor be persuaded to consider him to be the son she'd always wished to give her family.
"And what about the accusations against Abraxas Malfoy?" she pressed. "He's still received by society of course, but people say there's no doubt he was part of the plot to poison Nobby Leach."
"Well, darling..." he twisted the delicate gold chain around his index finger several times. "That's part of it too. There can be no argument made by anyone that the Malfoys are pro-Muggle."
She blinked at him, aghast. "So if the rumours are true, and he did assist in the assassination attempt on Minister Leach, you would send ma fille into the home of a killer?"
"I'm sure the rumours are false!" he lied hastily, taking her hand reassuringly in both of his. "But it's just the perception that matters, my love."
Somewhat assuaged but still clearly skeptical, Druella nodded but turned away from him, the simple act of rejection twisting like a knife in his gut.
Cygnus had been young when he married Druella— likely too young. He was still in school, at home for the Christmas holiday, when his mother Irma had snidely announced that he would be wedding a French harlot. A rather shy, thin, pale boy, Cygnus had not found this notion as unappealing as Irma seemed to, but he had been stunned to silence when he discovered she had not been speaking of some hypothetical date in the future, or to some theoretical girl, but in fact meant that very summer to a young Miss Rosier.
Druella Rosier was three years his senior and had received dozens of marriage proposals already. His father, Pollux, was concerned that her parents might be tempted by one of these despite formally accepting the offer from the Blacks to marry the heir of Grimsden Hall, the ancestral seat of the family. This fear drove him to pronounce a betrothal that very evening, and the marriage had taken place a mere week after the end of term, before he'd received the results of his O.W.L's. Both sets of parents had emphasized repeatedly that this could be no more than a de facto marriage until Cygnus came of age, but from the moment he'd met his bride, he'd desired nothing less than a true union.
He'd been smitten at once. The only women he'd spent any significant amount of time around in his life had been his mother and her veritable double, his sister Walburga. In his eyes his new wife was an angel; soft-spoken, golden-haired, often smiling. If Druella was unhappy with the match, as he was privately certain she must be, at least in the beginning, she never let it be known. She had been a popular girl at Beauxbatons and loved her home dearly; the beauty of the High Weald held few charms to her compared to the scenic streets of Paris. Yet she bore her lot with class and gentleness, and in return, Cygnus was determined that he ought to make her life as pleasant as possible and grant any reasonable requests— and they were all reasonable. In the early days of their marriage she read him poetry in her native tongue. He delighted to hear her teach their girls the same language, and as soon as they could speak, his house was filled with French songs and rhymes and chatter. They summered in his ancestral house in her home country— a chateau in Blois he'd seen only once before in his life prior to his nuptials— and he gladly hosted her family and friends from childhood. She brought him great happiness; unlike other men of his generation, he never blamed his wife for the lack of a son, and so it pained him now to deny her wishes for her favourite child.
"I think she would be happier in France," Druella breathed, having regained her composure for one final attempt. "The Durands have a boy who will be of age in a few years, and Michel Perrot is still unwed— they were childhood friends…" But the plea sounded weak even to her own ears. There was no name she could offer that would trump Malfoy, and the idea of sending Narcissa off to the continent to be wed only underscored Cygnus's fear that people would assume a suitable match could not be found at home.
"Abraxas has invited us to the Manor for supper on Monday, and I've told him we'll be there with Narcissa," he told her gravely, and the matter was settled.