A/N: I am exploring new territories here, folks. I actually like Lucius Malfoy. Yes, that's right. I like him. However, I will not be changing his, 'I-am-god' attitude…yet, anyway. He fits in perfectly…I promise, nothing awful.
***
All her hours were yellow sands,Blown in foolish whorls and tassels;Slipping warmly through her hands;Patted into little castles. Shiny day on shiny dayTumbled in a rainbow clutter,As she flipped them all away,Sent them spinning down the gutter. Leave for her a red young rose,Go your way, and save your pity;She is happy, for she knowsThat her dust is very pretty.
~Epitaph For a Darling
Lady
Dorothy Parker
I manage to shake the
memories away, and I calm down a bit.
The numbness has faded away
to a dull ache.
"Pluto! Do you have your wand on you?"
Wand?
"No, but someone's is on the
floor. Why?"
Yes,
why? Magic isn't allowed over the
summer. And I don't think she's a
healer—no, I would have known. The only
one of them that's a healer is—
"Give it to me."
What?
"Sephie,
you know we can't use magic over the holidays! We'll get in trouble with the Ministry!"
"It
doesn't matter, Luke! She's the best at
Charms here, and maybe she can save Mum! Who cares about the Ministry?"
Really,
Lucas. You shouldn't be such a stickler
for rules.
"Lumnamo,"
I hear one of them whisper. Warmth
fills me again.
Thank
you.
"It
worked!"
I
am warm.
I
can think. I can see. The world is no longer spinning.
Thank
the Gods.
***
"Lucius."
"Hmm?"
"Do
you have anything to do tonight?" Ariadne was sitting on her boyfriend's lap,
successfully distracting him from his work.
"Not
at the moment, but I will if I can't get this work done. Get off, now." He sounded irritated.
She
slid off in shock. "Luce, that's the
first time you've actually not wanted me on your lap."
"I
have to finish this, Ria," he replied, not looking up from his desk.
She
sighed. "Well, will you at least come
to a club tonight with me, Severus, and Dinah?"
He
looked up. "That Muggle girl is
coming?" His face had a look of a
mixture of disgust and dislike.
Ariadne sighed. "For the last time, she is not a Muggle,
she's a witch, and a Slytherin at that. And she's seeing Severus, so be nice."
He
raised his eyebrows. "Severus and
Banks? You mean they weren't together
before?" He looked at her dubiously. "At school, we all thought that they…"
She sighed. "I know what you thought, but they were just
friends. They got together last month
at a club. They were playing that
song—the one I made you listen to with the French lyrics?"
Lucius nodded. "I rather liked that song. And, if I recall correctly, I rather liked
what we did after we listened to the song."
"Anyway," Ariadne continued,
rolling her eyes at her boyfriend's one-track dirty mind, "they were playing
that song, and they danced, and then Dinah whispered the lyrics in Severus'
ear. He went all stiff and looked at her
like she was Heir of Slytherin. Then she
kissed him, and one thing led to another…I'm just surprised it took them so
long."
"Hmm," Lucius said
uninterestedly, looking at his work.
"Come with us, please?" She took up her previous request." Oh, come
on, Luce. Please? For me?" She batted her eyelashes at him.
Lucius
stood and encircled her with his arms. "You are so cute when you beg."
She
rested her head on his chest. "You're
always cute."
He
kissed the top of her head. "You too,
Elf."
"I'm
so lucky I found you." She breathed in
his scent—after-shave and coffee, mixed in with a bit of cologne. Ariadne could never get enough of the way he
smelled—or of him, for that matter.
"Yes, you are." He kissed the top of her head again.
She
sighed. His major flaw was his ego—he
would never be rid of that. Oh
well. She could live with that—after
all, it was kind of cute when he was trying to be macho.
"So
you'll come then?"
He
sighed. "Yes, if you'll let me get back
to my work." He looked at his desk
longingly. "I need to finish this…"
She
stood on her tiptoes to kiss him. "But
Lucius, L love, I had other plans…" she whispered suggestively.
He
sighed and kissed her. "What's the
use? I'm not going to get anything
done, not with you around."
She
giggled, slipping out of his embrace. "Go back to work, Luce. I have other things to do." She had changed her mind. She wanted to go dancing with him, so she
had to let him work. There were other
things she could do.
"What
could possibly be more important than me?" Lucius looked indignant.
"Robes." She grinned impishly at him. "I need robes. All the ones I have are black. I need red ones for Polviety."
"I
remember how worried you were that you wouldn't get in," Lucius mused, going
back to his desk. "That was stupid."
Ariadne
rolled her eyes. In his own, special
way, he was complimenting her. Really,
he was. He just wasn't very good at it. If you added that to Severus' inability to
comfort anyone, you had your basic jerk. And if you added Remus' cheating, you had your perfect jerk, lacking
only the really good shag, because while Lucius was great, Remus wasn't that
good, and Ariadne really had no desire to know what her brother was like in
bed.
"Yes,
Lucius, it was," Ariadne agreed, not wanting to get into a "discussion" about
it. "So, I'm off to buy my robes—I'll
see you tonight at eight? At Severus'?"
He nodded irritably. "Fine."
She
sighed. Lucius was always working. He never took a break. And it wasn't as if he even needed to
work—despite his protests otherwise, his inheritance would last him until he
died, and then some. The Malfoy family,
unlike the Snape family, had wisely kept their money, not gambled it away on
Quidditch matches.
She
disappeared after giving Lucius a kiss on the cheek, reappearing in Diagon
Alley. She swiftly walked towards Madam
Malkin's, shaking her head. Lucius was
such a workaholic. He needed to get
some fun in his life—fun that didn't solely involve sex, although that was
rather fun.
Ariadne
grinned at that thought as she entered the shop, humming softly to
herself. She went over to look at red
robes for school, and scowled when she saw the selection.
"Must
they all be maroon?" she sneered quietly, fingering several robes. "Why not dark red, bloodred? Or even pink. Anything is better than maroon."
"At
least you aren't wearing yellow maternity robes, dear," said a voice from the
other side of the rack.
Ariadne
tried to peer over the top of the rack, found she was too short, and went over
to the other side, muttering angrily about her height.
Molly
Weasley stood on the other side, her stomach rather enlarged, looking at
maternity robes. She sighed as she
fingered the regular robes longingly.
"Again,
Molly?" Ariadne asked, looking at Molly's stomach. She had already had two or three children, all boys, if Ariadne
remembered correctly.
Molly
sighed. "It's only my third, dear. And I'm a fair bit older than you, so this
could be the last."
Ariadne
tutted. "You can't be more than ten
years older than me, Molly. So you're
what—thirty, thirty-one? Come now, you
aren't too old to have children. Goodness, it could be years before I have children—if I ever get
married, that is."
Ariadne
knew Molly from the hospital that Ariadne had worked at while
apprenticing. Molly had been a nurse
there, and they had quickly bonded, being the only two women there under the
age of seventy.
"Oh,
you'll get married, Ria. Arthur tells
me that you're with that Malfoy character now, what about him?" Molly winked at her. "You never know…though Arthur would hate to
see you marry him, always going on about how much he hates the man…" She trailed off suddenly, seeming to think
she had said enough already.
Ariadne
sighed. "Lucius isn't a bad man,
really. And he hates Arthur just as
much as Arthur hates him. Really and
truly. I happen to like your husband,
though…I saw him at the Ministry a lot whenever I went in to see my
father…rather nice to me…I harbored something of a crush on him when I was
eleven or so."
Molly
smiled fondly at the mention of her husband. "Well, I've never been particularly fond of the Malfoys myself, but…if
you're happy, dear." Molly sighed and
nodded at Ariadne. "I've got to run,
dear. I promised Bill I'd buy him a
Fizzing Whizbee, and Charlie wants a toy broom…I'll see you later." She left the shop in a hurry without
purchasing a robe.
"Oh,
I am," Ariadne whispered into the fabric of the maroon robe she was holding. "I'm so happy."
She stood there, holding the robe, for a bit, ignoring the curious looks the clerks were giving her. And years later, she would tell her future daughter-in-law that it was then that she knew.
She
knew then, at that very moment, in the back of Madam Malkin's, clutching the
ugliest robe she had ever seen, that she was going to happy for a long
time. And nobody could ever tell her
otherwise.
Because
she was going to marry him.
***
I remember my wedding.
The
details are blurry…the world is blurry. The memories inside my head are blurry.
It
was a huge affair. Of course. Lucius…he wanted it that way.
Lucius had to
have the biggest wedding of the year. The best wine. The fanciest
dress.
My
dress…I didn't want lace, or sequins, or anything of the sort. I wanted something simple. Lucius wouldn't have any of it.
I
smile at that memory. The fights we got
into over my dress…
"I
don't want lace, Luce! It's
impractical!"
"All
of the bride robes have lace! It's a
wizarding tradition, you know that!"
"No
wife of mine is going to have a simple dress, dammit!"
"What,
so you won't marry me if I don't have lace?"
"Yes!"
So
I had lace.
I didn't care
about the wedding…I was never one of those hopeless romantics…I never spent
hours on end talking with my mother about being proposed to or the perfect
man. Actually, I never spent hours on
end talking to my mother about anything.
Nine
hundred and eighty-two people attended the wedding.
Nine hundred and eighty-two people to sit and watch you walk down an
aisle, waiting for you to mess up. Nine
hundred and eighty-two people to listen to the vows that you wrote for your
husband. Nine hundred and eighty-two
people casting their fake smiles on you as you leave the huge chapel, arm in
arm with your new husband.
Nine
hundred and eighty-two people came to the reception.
Most of the females
of that nine hundred and eighty-two wanting to dance with your husband, not
even caring that he was married. Most
of the males there staring at you with looks of lust on their faces.
Then there was the small fight that broke out between the people that I had invited and the Death Eater friends of Lucius…
Still, it was a
nice wedding.
Oww!
Damn stomach. Can't leave me alone, can it?
Oh! I'm sweating from the pain. Trying to live is harder than It thought it
would be. I will—not—give—up.
Think
wedding. Think wedding. Think escorting James Potter and Severus out
of the room so that they wouldn't kill each other. Think Severus coming back in and proposing to Dinah. Think Dinah smacking him across the face for
fighting, then fainting from the shock of being proposed to.
Lucius
wanted a wedding the guests would talk about for ages.
He got it.
I still have that robe that
I held in Diagon Alley. The one that I
was holding when I knew I was going to marry Lucius. I've yet to wear it. Sometimes, when I feel sentimental, I go and look at it. Touch it. Feel it. It reminds of why I
love Lucius so much.
Sometimes I wonder where I
would be if I hadn't married him.
I wouldn't be in this much
pain. That I know.
***
Ariadne and Lucius Malfoy were sitting in the best, most expensive suite in the best, most expensive wizard hotel in the Alps. It was the last day of their two-week honeymoon, and they had decided to spend the day together in their room. Or, more specifically, in the spacious bed that was in their room.
Ariadne
lay on her back, Lucius on his side facing her, arm flung over her
stomach. He rested his head on hers,
and she buried her nose into his collarbone.
"Luce?"
Ariadne said quietly, a thought occurring to her.
"What?" He lifted his head and kissed her forehead.
"I
know you're going to want to do this," she began, playing with his fingers,
"but I don't want you to pay for the rest of my time at Polviety. It's only a year—remember, I told you, they
moved me up because of my skill level—and I worked so hard to save up enough
money, and I don't want that work to have been for nothing, so I'm going to pay
for it."
Ariadne
had worked her ass off at a magical hospital in London for two years while she
was apprenticing, doing things such as scrubbing bedpans and changing
sheets. It took her fifteen months to
get promoted to nurse, and that was when she had befriended Molly Weasley. None of the other nurses believed Ariadne
could heal because she was so young—only eighteen or nineteen as opposed to
their seventy.
Hell would freeze over before Ariadne let some one else pay her way through school. Not after all of the work she had done. Stubbornness was a Snape quality, and Ariadne had the worst of it. She would pay her own college fare if it killed her.
Lucius
sounded confused as he replied. "Actually, darling, I had thought you would drop out."
Silence
followed this statement as Ariadne processed it. Drop out? He wanted her
to drop out? After she had worked so
hard to get the money to pay? Plus, she
wanted to be a healer. He had to be
kidding. There was no way she was
leaving, he knew that.
"You're
joking, right?" she asked in disbelief. "You know how hard I've worked for this. I could get a job—"
"Yes,
but you're married now. Married women
don't work." Lucius said this as if it
were a fact, not an opinion, and it was undoubtedly the latter. Plenty of married women worked! Lily Potter, Molly Weasley, Jacqueline
Bones…and Ariadne was willing to bet anything that Dinah would work come next
summer, which was when Ariadne's brother's wedding was planned. They had decided to wait a year or so before
getting married. Severus was very
uncertain about being married. Ariadne
personally thought that he was afraid of children—he had never been a fan of
small people.
Ariadne
realized that telling her husband about the working wives she knew wouldn't
help he situation. Lucius was not fond
of any of Ariadne's friends, married or not.
Ariadne
sighed. "Lucius, this could be a good thing. After college, I could help bring in some
money—"
Lucius
jumped out of the bed and pulled on his boxers, an angry expression on his
usually expressionless face. "You don't
need to bring in any fucking money! I
have enough for us to live forever! And
no wife of mine is going to work!"
"So
what, we're back to this again?" she yelled, leaving the bed as well, searching
the room for her undergarments. "Like
the wedding dress—you'll divorce me if I finish school and work?" She found her panties under a heel and threw
the heel aside, narrowly missing Lucius' head.
"Yes!"
he yelled, throwing her bra at her.
She
caught it, so angry her hands were shaking. "So what am I supposed to do at home by myself, then? You know how bored I'll be?" She couldn't get the bra on; her hands were
shaking too much to hook the small hooks. "Shit!" she cursed, trying in vain to hook the
undergarment.
"Take
up sewing!" He went over to her, and
took the bra from her hands. He hooked
her bra for her, then put his arms around her waist, resting his head on her
chin. "Look, Ria," he said in a
slightly softer tone, "you don't need to go to school. You don't need to work. I can support you."
"But
Lucius, I want to work," she protested. "You don't seem to understand that."
He
softly kissed her cheek. "But you don't need to. And you aren't going to," he said firmly, tightening his grip on
her. "And I don't want to hear another
word about it."
Ariadne
sighed. It was one of the first times
in her life that she had ever given up on anything. Her motto had always been, "get what you want or die
trying." And now she was changing it
just so she could keep her husband happy?
Perhaps that
was what marriage was all about. Keeping your husband happy. But
shouldn't a husband want to keep his wife happy? Not a husband like Lucius, obviously.
Suddenly
Ariadne realized the absurdity of the situation. If someone were to enter the room at that point, they would see
two newlyweds in their undergarments, standing in luxurious suite in the
Alps—in the middle of July, no less.
It
was a rather nice suite, now that she thought about it. It consisted of a small kitchenette with its
own House-Elf named Linky, which connected to a bathroom with a shower and a
Jacuzzi that was easily big enough to allow a person of even Severus' height to
lay flat in it. The bedroom, however,
was the real treat of the suite.
The largest bed Ariadne had ever seen sat in the middle of the room, in front of a fireplace with a roaring fire that was charmed not to burn anything but the kindling in the fireplace. The room was lavishly decorated in red and silver, and the bed had blue silk sheets and a fur comforter. There was a small sitting are by a window that overlooked an enchanted park. At night, fairies would come out and dance.
It
occurred to Ariadne that she had married into vast wealth, and that she didn't
need to bring in money. What was the
point of trying to argue? She didn't
want to end her marriage before it had truly begun. Besides, she loved Lucius.
"Fine. I won't go to school." She sighed and leaned against him.
He kissed her neck. "Good. Besides, you need to stay home with the children."
"Lucius, dear," she said in confusion, turning around in his arms to face him, "we don't have any children."
He
captured her lips in a passionate kiss before saying, "I can remedy that."
The fur comforter fell to
the floor as Lucius pushed her down onto the bed.
After
they had made love, he played with her hair idly as he asked, "So, is all of
our make-up sex going to be like that?"
She
chuckled. "Gods, I hope so."
A/N: No one
hates me now, do you?
Disclaimer: I only own Ria and Dinah. And
the room in the Alps. Everything else
is JKR's and WB's.