Title: Diverging Reality
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters: 1991
Chapter: 13
Word Count:
Warnings: Lucius, Voldemort

Edited by: eiliagh
AN: I'm feeling mildly better.

"Tell me, Lucius, your marriage contract is finally coming to an end, correct?" Voldemort asked, placing a pile of papers to the side. He stared at Lucius as the man looked over his own paperwork. Lucius placed his paperwork down onto the table he was working on, removed the rectangular reading glasses from the bridge of his nose, and set them on top of the paperwork.

"Yes, my lord," he replied. He crossed his legs and sat back. "Narcissa and I have talked about it, and she wishes to find herself again. While we have obviously made love, mostly for the familiarity, her interest has never truly laid in the male form when it comes to a partner."

"So I take it that the two of you only slept together because of that familiarity and the fact that you both wanted more children did you come together," Voldemort said, smirking at the barely there blush that spread over Lucius' cheeks. "You really must relax. I am more or less myself now, and will not curse you if you are blunt."

Lucius hummed, smiling as he relaxed in his chair. Flicking his tied hair back over one shoulder, he watched the other man turn back to his paperwork, red eyes reading over things. "Draco is taking the fact that we both had our parts to play in society well enough. We never hid that we had to act in public by the time that he turned sixteen, and that we would most likely allow our contract to dissolve. We could have ended it when he started Hogwarts with one of the clauses, but we decided to wait until it naturally finished. We didn't see a need to do it before then."

"And now that it is dissolving?" Voldemort asked as he continued to work. Narcissa had finally worn him down on using Pettigrew for the ritual now that he was at a point in his recovery that would make the rat barely a squib at the end of it. But it would also take him down for a good two days as he recovered and he was going to be on a tight leash for the week after. He had plans on doing it before the Christmas holidays in two days.

Lucius hummed as he thought as Voldemort wrote down a reminder to speak with Severus about the needed potions. "We do care for each other. Deeply. And we will always care for each other. There is no doubt about that fact. But I do not think that we are good for each other as a married couple. She wishes to explore her options, and frankly, so do I."

Voldemort looked up and raised an eyebrow at him. "There is a tale that has been going around that has piqued my curiosity."

Lucius huffed at him. "I have always been one to sleep with whoever strikes my fancy. I won't lie. Like most wizards and witches of our world, I'm not picky. My father just happened to be one of the few that had restrictions on who I could and could not take to my bed. Luckily for him, he couldn't place that into the marriage contracts since that would go against the Black Family charters about lovers. True, there have been contracts where a person is unable to take another lover until they had a child, which we did have in ours, but there was nothing about who we could or could not sleep with."

"I did hear that there were a few times where you slept with Severus," Voldemort teased. Lucius smiled softly at those memories of a time that they had cared for each other in such a way.

"At the time, I was simply helping him to discover a few things about himself. We had a bit of wine, we slept together and he walked away with an appreciation of a lover who knew what he was doing in the bedroom," Lucius said. "Yes, I was his first, but at the time he did not trust many. I am just glad that you had never forced him to join the raids."

Voldemort hummed as he put his quill to the side, finished with the various bits of paperwork that would allow Lucius to do what he needed while he was down. "Yes, so am I. But also by that time, I knew that if I had tried to force him on the raids, it was likely I would lose my potions master and I had already invested so much that I wasn't taking that chance," he stated. "Even in my insanity, I knew where his hard lines were."

Lucius smiled softly before he turned to his paperwork. "The holidays officially start tomorrow afternoon and the children will be heading home two days later. I will be gone for most of that day, taking Draco home and being with my child. After that I will be busy for a good chunk of the day after. Heir Black-Potter wishes to see me for an update about the contracts and talk with me about a few other things," he admitted. "He also says that he will meet with you over the Easter Holidays. Narcissa happened to let slip that you will most likely be indisposed for a few days and he does not wish to interrupt your healing," he continued.

Voldemort nodded as he looked to his planner, finding the week of Easter and noting when he would be free. He tapped on the day that the train would take the students home, and the day it would take them back. "The Friday after school lets out for the holidays will be free if he is willing. I can meet him at Gringotts in one of their meeting rooms at around noon. My estate manager can send him a letter of the official time and place if that is fine with him," he said. Lucius wrote that down on a scrap of paper before he tapped the paper, placing a privacy spell onto it.

"I will make sure he gets that message," Lucius said, nodding his head. "Tell me, are you planning on pushing a bunch of your paperwork onto me while you rest again?" he asked, sounding amused.

"Just a few things that must be taken care of or signed off on since I won't be able to," Voldemort promised as he finished writing out his list and putting it to the side. He smirked at the memory of the last time that he had done that to Lucius and the fact that the man had to keep a thick potion soaked towel around his wrist. Lucius hummed as he stood, Voldemort wincing as something started to regrow in his lower guts. Gazing at his lord from across the desk, Lucius shook his head before picking up the paper and reading over it.

"Most of this paperwork can easily be taken care of in the morning before I go in," Lucius said. He turned back to the table that he had been using, sitting down after he flicked his hair out of the way. He had no urge to sit on his hair. Again.

Voldemort watched with darkening red eyes before he sighed, his guts twinging and reminding him what was going on. Going through a pseudo-puberty during the potions process was an annoying part of it.

"Do tell your wife that I will be sending her manager a very large bank draft to buy herself something pretty for her time and energy," he said as he rubbed his face. "She was right about the fact that once more I am dealing with the hormone rush again," he said.

Lucius shuddered. He could well remember the rushes that came with a wizard's normal puberty years, and then the fresh rush when they hit their magical maturity between ages sixteen and seventeen. Harry had admitted once during a meeting that he had spent an entire summer locked away into his room, learning control over himself. Apparently Dobby had helped him by popping in with pictures of the hottest men, either half or fully undressed. Having the pictures randomly appearing in front of him had forced him to learn how to control that initial rush of 'want' and 'need'.

That had also been how he had found that women didn't appeal to him when Dobby had first started with female pictures instead of men.

"You could always try Heir Black-Potter's method of gaining control over yourself after you have healed," Lucius said. He smirked at the other man, Voldemort narrowing his eyes at it as he put his quill back down, having moved onto new paperwork.

"And that method is?" Voldemort asked him.

Lucius' smirk took on a decidedly amused edge as he shifted, resting his chin in his hand. "You could have your favorite house elf pop in on you randomly with pictures of those you consider attractive and show you them until you have learned to control that first rush of lust," he drawled. Voldemort gave him a long blank look, which looked odd considering that Voldemort only had a partially regrown nose and stubble for hair on his head and eyebrows.

"Are you tell me that one Harry James Black-Potter...had an elf pop up with pictures to turn him on until he could stop himself from reacting until a later time?" Voldemort asked, voice filled with bewilderment. His surprise showed in the raise of his eyebrows. Lucius nodded his head with a wider smirk. "By all the powers...How is it that this is the child that has sent me packing not just once, but four different times? How?" he groaned into one long fingered hand.

"It might have to do with your genetic history," Lucius mused as he tapped his finger onto the table. "I was thinking about how he did it, and if he's far enough down the same tree as you, there would still be some play of family protections that clashed," he said.

Voldemort groaned before rubbing at his face, pulling parchment close to write out a letter to his Gringotts account manager. He had to find out if that thought could be true. If it was, then someone had to have known that they were related and that meant the prophecy was fake. If they did know and it was a fake, he was going to have to find them and show just why you don't fuck with a Dark Wizard.

Especially after he had found out about the interesting fact that he had been under a compulsion that made him make more and more of the horcruxes beyond the first one. He was going to find out just who did that and strangle them with his bare hands. If he had been forced into a madness and had attacked someone of his family line while in that madness, and he found out who had done it, he would ask for magical judgment.

Mother magic did not like when people fucked with her chosen family lines. It didn't matter if they were New Blood, Old Blood or even Mixed Blood. She had already kicked his ass with the slow growth of his organs as it is, but the dreams he'd had had shown that She was very understanding about what had gone down and that he had been pushed into it, but he was to figure out who had done it to him first.

Lucius smirked at the man as he muttered about assholes who couldn't leave well enough alone as he wrote down his notes. He turned back to his own paperwork, intent on getting it done as his lord started to mutter death threats and promises of slow insanity to whoever it had been that messed with him in such a way.

It was so very nice to have his Lord back finally.