A/N – Suddenly I have inspiration by the bucketful. I've got three other stories to work on, but I feel that if I don't get it down it'll be gone for good if I wait. Bloody muse never turns up when I want it to.

All right, technical notes:

Lucius was 41 (b.1954) in OotP, which was set in 1995. So, if he has been in prison for 12 years, this is set in 2007, and he is 53. I'm sure that you've all read those fics where wizards have longer life spans than muggles, so I will now invoke authorial privilege and borrow that nifty plot device. However, those fifty-plus years make him a most interesting wizard – if, as I have always assumed, he joined the Death Eaters straight out of Hogwarts (or even before), he would have joined in 1972. Draco and Harry were born in the fateful yr of 1980, so he had at least 8 yrs as a Death Eater. Growing up in the 60s and being active in the 70s, some of the more eventful years (especially for terrorism) of this century, this gives us some intriguing material to play with.

Having said that, Lucius is one of the most mercurial characters I have ever written. He seems to have a different personality in every story I write. Most certainly, this Lucius is quite, quite different…

Disclaimer – I don't own anything. Don't sue.


Chapter 3 – The Measure of a Man's Life.


Word got round, as it always did. Even as Moody and Tonks were visiting Azkaban, Hermione had drifted over to visit the one man she had never thought she would call friend, or even ally – just to see his reaction to her news.

She had never quite got out of the habit of needling Draco Malfoy.

He was seated at his desk behind piles of paperwork, his thick white hair unruly and messy, the equivalent of a thundering scowl – a faint crease between his brows, his mouth thin and set – marring the usual impassivity of his face. He looked up quickly as the door opened, ready to freeze the poor sod foolish enough to disturb his concentration, but when he saw her the annoyance subsided a little, and he even dredged up a polite smile.

"Granger," he said neutrally, "I'm a little busy. Can't it wait?"

"This is interesting, Malfoy," she assured him. "I thought you might want to hear the truth of it first, before you got it from garbled office gossip…"

Almost reluctantly, he sighed and put down his quill. "Very well, Granger, spill. Tell me all." He looked expectantly at her – almost certainly feigned – and she wondered, not for the first time, that she could ever have thought he had no sense of humour.

She grinned toothily, seated herself without asking on the only other chair in the room. "Are you sure you're ready to hear it?" she teased.

He raised a brow, picked up his quill and focused once more on his paperwork.

She gave an exasperated exclamation and threw up her hands. "All right, all right! I give up, I'll tell you."

He turned his attention back to her, smiling just a little smugly.

"Moody's going to get your father to help on the assassination case."

His face blanked, lost all traces of expression. "Oh?" His accent sharpened, became clipped, cold. "And why should he think Lucius would possibly agree?"

Hermione blinked. She had known that Draco had broken with his father after he had been imprisoned, but she hadn't known the bitterness still ran deep, even now. It was a little disconcerting, in a way, to think that he could harbour this much emotion, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. "Moody's offering to release him from Azkaban."

Draco smiled, razor sharp and mirthless. "Of course. A new chance at life. No doubt he was strangling in there, with nothing more to do than meditate…"

"Well?" She demanded. "Do you think he'll accept?"

Draco didn't answer, but stood up abruptly and went over to the window. His right hand was shoved into the pocket of his robes, and she thought that it might have been clenched into a white-knuckled fist – but sometimes with Malfoy it was so hard to tell. "Will he come here?" he asked, finally back under control, but not meeting her eyes.

"Yes," she said simply, somehow not as amused as she thought she would be.

He said nothing more, but turned back to the window, engrossed in memories or thoughts that only he could share. She left him there in peace, and closed the door behind her.


After she had gone, he relaxed the frozen mask and unclenched his fist, let himself examine the very mixed feelings Hermione's news had aroused.

Lucius, you old bastard…

You always did say that nothing would ever keep you down.


As they came out into the sunlight and made their way to the barge, Lucius looked at Moody and raised a brow. "Do you have any more of those?" he asked, indicating the almost finished cigarette.

Moody took it out of his mouth, examined it. "I didn't know you smoked, Malfoy."

Lucius shrugged. "I don't – not now, anyway. But back when I was young and stupid…" The crooked smile appeared, just for a moment.

Moody passed him another cigarette.

Tonks eyed Lucius with great fascination as he lit up and took a long, leisurely drag, exhaling with every sign of pleasure. This was not the man she'd known growing up as a half-blooded witch caught between her father's muggle heritage and her mother's High Clan one. The Lucius Malfoy she remembered had been the epitome of the archetypical High Clan Lord – elegant, faintly sinister, always perfectly in control; the kind of man who could and would carry the whole weight of his responsibilities with what appeared to be the greatest of ease.

The man Draco had described, the one and only time he had ever confided to her, had been very, very different – bore more resemblance to the man she saw now, hair rakishly tangled, eyes narrowed against the brisk snapping breeze, contentedly smoking and speaking ruefully of his foolish youth. Oh, some resemblance remained – the arrogance, the authority, the sense of style – but it was the change in attitude that was the most striking difference.

She had not been as confident as she had seemed, when she had assured Moody that his plan would work. The childhood fears of her imposing uncle had led her to scoff at Draco's description; she could not have imagined Lucius Malfoy as anything more than the Lord of High Clan Malfoy.

But here he was.

Oh, here he was…


On the barge, inside the cabin, they sat around a battered table and Moody examined a thick, well-thumbed file stuffed with documents, reports and photographs. Or rather, he read it out, trying to get some kind of reaction from the enigma seated across from him.

"Caius Lucius Malfoy," he said pedantically, "only son and heir of Caius Marcus Malfoy, who was not only the Malfoy Lord, but…" he paused, "a greatly respected, high ranked Auror as well."

Lucius said nothing, merely stared at him impassively.

"I remember him," Moody said, reminiscing deliberately. "He was a great man, an example to the whole Corps. Slytherin or not, he had ironclad principles and he stood by them, no matter what…"

Though he watched, he could detect only the slightest flicker of irony before it was quickly masked.

"We were all devastated when he was killed in 1970. Where was it, again?"

Lucius obliged him dryly. "In some squalid little muggle war on the other side of the world. The gods only know what he was doing there, though." He leaned back in the chair. "Or, perhaps, you know…"

Oh, yes, Moody knew – but there was no way he was going to admit to it. He more than half suspected that Malfoy knew anyway.

"You finished school in 1971, and went overseas for six months. No one has ever quite managed to find out where you went, but there has been quite a lot of speculation. There are some who say you did the Grand Tour, others who say Moscow, and still others who say the training camps in Northern Africa…"

Lucius blinked slowly, gracefully. "Moscow? Training camps in Northern Africa? Whatever for?"

Tonks choked on her tea. Lucius reached out to pat her on the back.

Moody continued. "And then you returned to England, and, in what I cannot believe is coincidence, the Death Eaters suddenly unleashed a devastating campaign…" He stopped, suddenly enraged. "For God's sake, Malfoy, why did you do it? You had the whole world at your feet; you could have had everything and anything you ever wanted just for the crooking of a finger. Why the hell did you turn to Him?"

Lucius gave him a long, unreadable look, and Moody noticed that his eyes – cool, distinctive Malfoy silver – were not just cold; they were utterly and completely indifferent.

"Why not?" he asked, as if it were the most reasonable question in the world.


Once upon a time, he had worshipped his father, admired everything he said and did, strove to be just like him in every possible way. But it was hard, trying to live up to his father's ideals in this changed world, where progress – usually so slow, in their world, but which could not be denied forever – was overtaking the traditional ways and traditional mindsets, where suddenly everything that their Clan had held sacred for generations was worthless and outdated.

And then, just at the most vulnerable stage of his adolescence, where the way he viewed the world through mature, adult eyes was formed and set, his father was taken away.

And everything he had said was suddenly wrong, and he was left alone to cope with the fall out…

So he did the only thing possible to him at the time. He had repudiated everything his father had taught him, and had gone as far as he could in the opposite direction – out of spite, stubbornness, or a desperate need to find himself, he didn't know.

And as he shaped his life in defiance of his father's, he told himself he didn't care, that it didn't matter – but he did care, and it did matter – but there were some things that were too fundamentally ingrained in him to discard.

The Malfoy estate and lands.

Their paramount position in the endless politicking intrigues of the High Clan.

And the countless tenants, retainers and dependents who depended on the Malfoy for their livelihood and survival.

So, when seen from a certain point of view, he and his father were not so very different after all…

A thought that both terrified and gratified him.

But when it came down to bare facts pinned down in black and white on paper, the differences became horribly apparent.


A/N – So, whose pov was it, in that last section? Draco's, or Lucius', or both? I find the parallels fascinating.

Auror!Marcus Malfoy – this is something I've been thinking of doing for a while, but could never find anywhere to put it. I've always thought it would have a great effect on Lucius. The idea was inspired by Lady Erised's stories, where Snape comes from a long line of famous Aurors, and actually was one himself before he turned.

"From a certain point of view…" Obi-Wan Kenobi's sophistry, from the Return of the Jedi.

And of course I don't condone smoking. I just think that Lucius would very likely have smoked in his foolish, reckless youth – everyone did in those days, didn't they?

Thanks to all your wonderful reviews. Feedback of any kind is most welcome.