Chapter 37

A persistent tapping on my window awoke me. Damn it. My feet thudded heavily on the wooden floor, and I blinked a few times to see clearly.

 I wasn't exactly what you could call a morning person. Or, an afternoon person. Or an evening person.

In other words. . .

I was grouchy, and arrogant all day (with certain exceptions, of course). In fact, and I liked it that way.

I groaned out loud when I recognized the owl. It was Hades.

My father's owl.

Double damn it.

The black wax seal was unbroken, but, out of routine, I performed a Time-Turn Charm on it, just in case. This charm showed me what happened to the particular object it had been aimed at, as far back as I wanted it to. I didn't like letting anyone intrude on Malfoy Privacy. And the word privacy was capitalized for a reason.

With great reluctance, I unfurled the scroll.

Lucius,(Father never was one to write the word 'Dear' in letters, and neither was I)

We expect you on the 24th.

Your Father,

Byron Malfoy

Well, Father wasn't one to add pleasantries either. For once, I was glad he liked getting straight to the point. Then again, maybe his straight-forwardness was due to the fact that he was simply getting too old to write his own letters. Hmm, would it be too much to hope that he had already gone over the edge into senility? I discarded the thought; Father wouldn't have turned senile if he'd spent ten years in Twilus' footlocker with nothing but a pair of old quidditch gloves to converse with.

My mind drifted back to the letter. The twenty-fourth. The day before Christmas. Tomorrow. Inwardly, I sighed. It truly was such a shame that I wouldn't be able to spend Christmas Eve with Lily and her family (minus Petunia). They were definitely better to be with than my cold, sterile parents.

The only reason they'd told me to be there before Christmas was for the. . . festivities. I hated festivities. Festivities, in other words, was a place where the elite pure blood families thought up possible marriages and finalized contracts.

I hated these changes in my plans.

I would just have to give Lily her present a day earlier.

Oh, don't tell me you thought I'd forgotten! I was a Malfoy, and Malfoys didn't forget.

Besides, this eerily good long-term memory worked both ways, both, I might add, to my advantage: I always remembered a favor, and I never forgot revenge. Grudges, in my point of view, made life more. . . interesting. And so did favors. The kind I liked. Ahem.

I collected my bath things, and headed for the shower. Despite having taken one the night before, I still felt the need to do so. Ritual was ritual, after all, and I was horrible at habit breaking.

After the cold shower I subjected myself to (another unpleasant ritual; I soaked in warm baths at night most of the time, but mornings were simply made for showers that froze your arse off, or so it seemed), I was up and awake, albeit rather grumpy at having been woken up so early. Stupid owl. Didn't it know what time was time to wake me up? Then again, owls were nocturnal creatures, and they were most probably unaware of human time restrictions.

Speaking of time. . .

I checked the clock instinctively; it was eight o'clock. Lily was awake, then, and Petunia was. . . well, she was somewhere that wasn't here, that was for sure. She always seemed to disappear, and for that, I was grateful.

I walked leisurely down the attic steps, for all the world making it look like I was walking down a great ivory and gold banister. I smirked unconsciously. I could do that. I reached Lily's door and knocked.

The door creaked open, and, surprise surprise, Lily stood there in front of me, her hair a mess. She blinked solemnly (and sleepily too), before registering whom it was who stood before her (freshly showered, changed, and, if I could say so myself, looking remarkably handsome). And then, she slammed the door on my face.

I felt my eyebrows rise in surprise. She'd never slammed doors, it wasn't in her character to do so.

A minute or two later, she opened the door again, her hair brushed up in a messy ponytail.

"G'morning." I was shocked. It seemed I wasn't the only non-morning person in the house.

"Good morning to you too." Compared to her, I sounded cheerful. And that was really saying something.

"Thirty minutes. No, wait, make that ten. Okay. Bye." She closed the door again.

Interesting; a side of Lily I hadn't yet seen. And I'd thought I'd had her all figured out.

Of course, she was a woman, and women were all enigmatic (girls weren't though, especially not that Hufflepuff girl I'd gone out with [for around two hours] back in fourth year. . . )

I walked back up the stairs, not overly worried about Lily's reaction. I knew enough about women to know that even though I told her she looked beautiful whether she combed her hair or not, she wouldn't really listen until she looked good enough to satisfy herself.

This wasn't exactly the first time I'd seen her in the morning; she'd slept in my room more times than I could count. Then again, neither of us was grumpy when we woke up beside each other.

Ten, agonizingly slow minutes passed by, and I walked back down the stairs, towards Lily's room yet again.

And I knocked [again].

She opened the door, looking like she always did. Clean, fresh, and. . . pretty.

"Had a lie-in, did you?" I said, and she blushed.

"You know I didn't sleep until very late last night." 

"Yes, I suppose I do. Breakfast, my lady?" She nodded, and took my outstretched hand.

"We'll be alone, you know. Mum and Dad went to the doctor's. And Petunia. . . well, she's probably with Vernon this very second, plotting our gruesome deaths."

"For some strange reason, that doesn't scare me at all. We'll be alone all day?" I asked, trying, with great difficulty, to keep the hopefulness out of my voice.

She smiled.

"All day."

"That's good then; Mother and Father wish me to be at the manor by tomorrow."

"You're going home tomorrow?"

"I'm going to the manor tomorrow. Home, and manor. . . they're two very different things, Lily." I said, as I motioned for her to sit down.

"How so?" She bit delicately into a muffin.

"A home is somewhere you're comfortable. . . Malfoy Manor is hardly my idea of comfortable. It's stiff, rigid, whatever you want to call it. This place," I gestured around, a buttered piece of toast in my hand, "is homey. But then, I don't really belong here."

Silence.

And silence meant yes. She agreed; I didn't belong here. 

"Lucius," she gave a small smile, "you don't have to pretend to like muggles for me, or anything." Reaching for my hand, she covered it with hers. "I like you—love you, even, just the way you are. You're an arrogant bastard sometimes, and you'd most probably fit into that Dark Wizard description Garednon gave us, but I still love you."

If only she knew. Would she still love me after? After I became a murderer? After I became a Death Eater?

But that didn't change the fact that she loved me now; never mind later.

"I know." I stood up, and leaned over the table to hug her. "I love you too." If anybody saw me—Parkinson, Snape, Crabbe or Goyle—they would have laughed. Lucius Malfoy was getting too schmaltzy over a woman.

Then again, it wasn't just any woman, it was Lily.

Moments passed, moments where we finished our much-neglected breakfast.

"Are we doing anything today?"

"Well, I called Jillian, but she wasn't home, and neither was Nads. Not that we can't do anything alone." 

"Like?"

She peered outside the kitchen window, where snow was falling gently from the gray sky.

"Looks like we're in for a white Christmas, hmm? How about a snowball fight?"

"That wouldn't be a bit, oh, I don't know, juvenile now, would it?"

"Lucius, honestly, stop acting so mature. I've never stopped being a child at heart." This was too true. Lily. . . radiated innocence.

She stood up, and grabbed my arm, literally dragging me to the coat stand. She then proceeded to put an assortment of woolen scarves around my neck. The final touch was a shapeless bit of wool, which I assumed to be a hat. I looked at the mirror.

And nearly fell over.

Lucius Malfoy looked. . . like. . . a red cheeked muggle.

What the bloody hell?

Since when had I started look pink and. . . and. . . healthy?

I'd looked pale and I'd liked it.

Lily misunderstood my reaction.

"Well, I know it doesn't really look like a hat, but it was supposed to be. That was the first thing ever I knitted." She shrugged apologetically, and smiled.

I looked at her for the longest time, just drinking her in. Then I asked her a question I never would have asked anyone else.

"Could I have it?" Her eyebrows rose. "I mean, that is, if no one's using it or anything. . . because really, it's just adorable. I like how it looks on me." The last part, we both knew, was a blatant lie. Yes, it looked all right on me (anything looked 'all right' on me), but it wasn't exactly something that enhanced my looks to their full potential.

"It's yours." She leaned over and kissed me at the tip of my nose.

"Thank you." This time, I did the kissing, and, let me tell you, the kiss I gave her was much less. . . chaste than the one she'd given me.

She finally moved away long enough to ask me if we were going to go out, or stay in and snog all day. Need she ask?

"Snog. Definitely."

She rolled her eyes, and pulled me out of the door.

"Let's build a snow fortress."

"What about the snow fight?"

She paused, in thought.

"We each have our own fortresses, and the snow fight happens later."

I reached for my wand, and she stopped me.

"No magic."

"Melting spells?" I asked hopefully.

"No magic of any kind," she said forcefully, with her prefect voice that brooked no nonsense.

I hung my head.

I should have known.  

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

"First, Lucius, my fortress was so much nicer," Lily was saying, as grumpy as I'd ever seen her.

"Ah, but mine was nice and strong." I paused, eyeing her over my mug of hot chocolate. "You see, Lily, when you build fortresses, make sure they're strong. Very strong. Then you make it look nice." 

"And your hands didn't freeze off, packing all that snow?"

"No, not really." My hands looked perfectly fine.

"Let me see." She took mine in hers. "This is so unfair. . . dratted sensitive skin." Just as she let go of my hand, I reached for hers.

"There's nothing wrong with sensitive skin," I said, smirking slightly, "it feels nice."

"Well, I doubt my hands would ever be as smooth as yours. It's like you haven't done a single chore your entire life."

"I have!" I protested.

"And when was that?"

"Er. . . detention! You were there, you saw me cleaning up that wall." She rolled her eyes.

"What about before that?"

My brow crinkled in concentration.

"I polish my own broom, you know. At least the house elves don't do that for me." I shrugged, and leaned back on the chair.

So what if I hadn't done any manual labor? I was a Malfoy, and we simply didn't do those kinds of things.

"What about cleaning your room? Or washing the plates?"

"No, and no. Why do it when the House Elves are there? They like cleaning the house. I imagine they even like being abused."

Her eyes widened.

"You hurt them?"

"When they annoy me, yes. Some of them truly are irritating." She gave me a look of mild disbelief, which made me feel rather guilty. I had to change the topic, and I had to change it soon.

"I haven't given you your present yet, Lily."

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A/N: Finals. Sem-Break. Enough said. :D

Thank you to all those who reviewed! I don't have time to do any individual review things though, so thank you to: Paige, Sarah, Briana Marie, Anastacia-Gwydion

Review!!! I'll be back from vacation in a few days, and I expect to have some reviews in the inbox! Please? *puppy dog look*

*Lucius apparates behind her, and gives the same puppy dog look*

Please???

**SUGGESTIONS FOR LUCIUS' PRESENT TO LILY, ANYONE? WRITER'S BLOCK**