Author's Note: Weird. This one just sprang out of nowhere. It's my first and quite possibly only HP fic, as I'm usually to be found trying to marshal my Lord of the Rings muses into order, but the other day a certain Mr Malfoy appeared and required me to write this down. And when Lucius Malfoy requires something, what else can a girl do but jump to it?

Thanks to Becki for ideas and betaing, Laiqalasse for liking it first, and Eowyn for liking it on my LJ.

Disclaimer: They're not mine. They belong to J K Rowling and her publishers, and I'm only doing this because he told me to.



Lucius Muses


It isn't easy, always being the bad guy, always being the one the others hate and fear. They look up to you, certainly, but there's no doubt they hate and fear you. Even your only son, whom you are bringing up in your own image. But then, there's no other way to do that than to subject him to unrelenting pressure and criticism, constant indoctrination about the importance of purebloods, the Malfoy family pride, the family honour and the consequences of disgracing that honour, that pride. He's turning into quite a credit to you, but sometimes, when he looks at you with blank misery in his eyes, trying to hide behind that supercilious mask his dejection at having failed you yet again, you almost wish that you could throw your pride to the wind, take him in your arms and hug him tight. But then, he wouldn't take it from you, would he? He's too old for that, and too hardened by your disapproval. And you, surely it's too late for you to learn how to open up to your son. You know so many things, you are such a talented wizard, but you have no idea how to go about showing affection to anybody. Least of all your son, the focus of all your hopes and dreams, your own mirror image. The one who has the potential to become even greater than you; because that's what you want, isn't it? You want him to be worthy of the legacy you will pass down to him, you want him to take it and make it into something all his own. Secretly, don't you want him to be even greater than the one whom those idiots at Hogwarts dare only to call You-Know-Who?

You'd never admit, would you, that it breaks your heart to see him always trying so hard to be a good little Malfoy, just like his father? And you'd certainly never admit that the reason it does so is that he reminds you so very much of yourself, at the same awkward age.