A/N – I knew that I would get a rather mixed response to this fic – Lucius/Ginny being much more controversial than Draco/Ginny – but I've wanted to do this for a while. Thanks for trusting me.

Disclaimer – I don't own Lucius Malfoy. Worst luck. Any medical quackings that occur in this chapter are of my own imagining.

Chapter 3
Narcissa had held all of the normal aristocratic pureblood disdain for house elves. She hadn't hated them, or held them in revulsion or contempt as some others did, but she thought them beneath her notice, only paying attention to them when the normal running of the household was interrupted. Her attitude was not unusual – it could be found in pureblood drawing rooms all over Britain – it was simply the way things were.

But Ginevra – perhaps because of her family's poverty, perhaps because she had simply been raised differently – treated them as individuals, actually thanking them for their services, inquiring after their health and welfare, calling them by their names, or at least the names that they would willingly give out to humans.

There had been a time, once, when house elves had not been anywhere near as benign and ineffectual as they were now – once, so the legends said, they had actually been a serious threat to human wizards, before they had been crushed and subjugated under one of Lucius' more ruthless ancestor's heels…

But either Ginevra had no idea of their dark history, or else she did not care. She treated them as equals, and they repaid her with slavish devotion. So when Libby, the leader of the house elves at the Manor, (Lucius supposed she held a rank equivalent to housekeeper) solemnly informed him that 'the Mistress' was ill and refused to get out of bed, he knew that they must be seriously concerned about her health.

What else would motivate them to approach him?

Sighing, he stood up and gestured for Libby to lead him to Ginevra's bedchamber. She had been given the rooms belonging to the Manor's mistress, that Narcissa had once held, and Lucius had moved into another set of rooms elsewhere. He knocked on the door, opening it cautiously when there was no response. Inside, it was dark, the thick velvet curtains were drawn against the morning light, and silent – the only sound was the soft susurration of faint, regular breathing. So, she was alive at least. The bed curtains were drawn, blocking out even more of the light, and he gestured to Libby once again.

The house elf drew open the bed curtains, revealing white silk sheets and tumbled red-gold hair. He tried not to notice that the youngest Weasley had become a beautiful woman, but focused instead on objective analysis – he was no healer, but in his Death Eater days he had learned to treat his own injuries, not willing to trust to the discretion of doctor-patient confidentiality.

She was breathing easily and regularly. He checked her pulse, gently and impartially grasping her wrist under Libby's eagle eye, and it was firm and steady. She was a little pale, but she had been pale ever since the funeral, and had refused to go outside into the sun where she might have regained some of her colour. He quickly waved his wand over her, scanning her as well as he knew how, but there were no obvious alarms – the only thing he could see wrong with her was her continued sleep.

And then he saw the bottle on the bedside table.

Libby saw it too, and her eyes widened; she snatched it up and sniffed at it, and held it out to him with an exclamation of dismay. "Dreamless Sleep!" she wailed, her huge eyes wide and brimming with dismay. "Mistress is taking triple-strength Dreamless Sleep!"

So she was, although only Merlin knew where she'd found it – she must have raided the specially locked and reinforced potions cupboard in the secret room, or else Draco had told her the combination before he died. The recommended dose of such strong Dreamless Sleep potion was less than a thimbleful, diluted in two hundred and fifty milliliters of water – by the looks of it, she'd drunk the whole, concentrated bottle at once. Lucius sighed. A minute amount would aid in a pleasant night's sleep free of ghosts, nightmares and phantoms. A whole bottle would send an elephant into a hundred year coma from which it would never wake…

Libby began banging her head against the bedside table. Automatically, he restrained her, not wishing to see her strangely authoritative manner debased by such foolishness – and besides, he couldn't think with such a racket.

"Libby," he said quietly, commandingly enough that he diverted her attention away from punishing herself, "fetch some of Professor Snape's supply of concentrated digitalis and some of his restorative potions and bring them down to the pond in the gardens. Get some of the other elves out there with towels and warming spells." With firm commands to follow, Libby regained her normal formidable composure, and even looked a little embarrassed to think that she'd almost made a fool of herself like a normal, common house elf.

Even among house elves, there was a rigid hierarchy. House elves in positions of authority did not act like those who followed them. And, in the same vein, what Lucius would tolerate in Libby – her protectiveness, her occasional disrespect – would be swiftly punished in a lesser elf like Dobby…

As she scurried off to do his bidding, filled with fire and determination to save her mistress, Lucius looked down at his young, impulsive, Gryfifndoric daughter-in-law, and wondered what on earth she'd been thinking. For the last two months she'd been grieving and moping, wandering through the house like a fragile, ethereal ghost, a shadow of her former self. He'd seen her file, knew that she was a strong, fearsomely competent Auror, respected of by all her peers, even that madman Moody. Or she had been, before Draco's death.

But surely even Weasleys did not indulge in such excessive displays of grief? Had they no pride? Weren't they told not to wear their hearts on their sleeves, and that one had to retain one's composure at all times? Draco may have disregarded many of his teachings, but he doubted he would find this indulgence any more pleasing than Lucius did. Quite irrationally, it angered him that this fierce, strong woman would so let herself down.

Perhaps that was why he decided to shock her out of it, rather than easing her through it as he might have done, had he been in a gentler mood.

He scooped her up off the bed into his arms, even more displeased to find just how little she weighed. She was wearing a thick white cotton nightgown – shades of Molly Weasley, no doubt – and as he made his way through the house towards the gardens outside, the fluttering white drew attention like a banner and they gained a furtive following, house elves who had heard Libby's news and wished to see their mistress healed. He ignored them, striding out into the sunlight, through Narcissa's carefully cultivated gardens and flowerbeds, and towards a small, perfectly situated pond reflecting a drooping willow and aching blue sky.

Libby was there, potions in hand, waiting impatiently for him to arrive. He laid his burden down on the ground, took the digitalis off Libby, uncorked the bottle and poured two very, very careful drops into the bottle of restorative potion… That done, he lifted Ginevra's head and shoulders up, opened her mouth and pinched her nostrils shut, and poured the potion down her throat, stroking it, forcing her to swallow it all.

And then he picked her up again, waded into the pond, opened his arms and dropped her into the water. It was early November, and the water was freezing cold, and she was wearing nothing but a flimsy nightgown.

No one had ever accused him of being overlysensitive, gentle or compassionate...

Some thirty seconds after his impromptu dunking, long enough that he was beginning to wonder if he hadn't been a bit too rough, there was a thrashing and a great disturbance underneath the water. A few seconds later Ginevra broke through the surface, coughing and spluttering, breath heaving and choking, and turned her eyes onto him, recognizing him as the author of this sudden shock.

She was sopping wet and bedraggled, her hair was wild and tangled and festooned with pond weeds, and her nightgown was completely transparent and stuck to her like a second skin. But her glare should have incinerated him…

He kept his face impassive through force of long, long practice, but he could do nothing about the laughter he knew danced wickedly in his eyes – hopefully she did not know him well enough, yet, to recognize his untrustworthy humour. Soberly, he shrugged out of his over robe and extended it to her, taking care to remain out of reach so she would not try and pull him in as well.

With great dignity, somewhat ruined by her intermittent shivering, she took the robe out of his hands and wrapped it around herself, relaxing into the heat of the warming spell he'd thoughtfully placed on it for her. She did not acknowledge him in any other way, but clambered out of the pond and started on her way back to the manor, her back rigidly straight and her head held ridiculously high. Libby cast him one long, fulminating glance, and then followed after her, and once they were out of sight he allowed himself the luxury of one brief, extremely wicked smile.

Later that night, as they sat together at the dinner table, Lucius made his one and only reference to the incident.

"My dear Ginevra," he said absently, helping himself to a portion of roasted duck, "I do trust that you have had your fill of self-indulgent grief?"

She put her fork down slowly and turned to him. "I won't try any more sleeping potions, if that is what you mean."

"That is very good to know, my dear, but that was not quite what I meant." He gave her his full attention, no longer the amused tormentor who had dropped her into the lake, but once again the Malfoy patriarch. "When will we see an end to this moping self-pity of yours? You cannot lock yourself away at the manor forever. There are other, far more important matters, as Finch was trying to tell you last week."

Automatically, she stiffened. He knew she didn't want the responsibility of running the estate, and not because she was reluctant to take on such a difficult task, either. No, she was not afraid of challenge, but of the thought that she would be left taking care of Draco's legacy for the rest of her life. She was only – twenty-three, twenty-four – and would probably see another hundred years out before old age took her. Lucius could understand the reluctance to have the estate hanging around her neck – he had felt exactly the same when his father died – but more than that, it was as if she did not feel that she deserved control of the estate. And that he could not sympathise with.

"There are any number of others who would like to get their hands on the estate," she said challengingly, lifting her chin and staring him straight in the eye. "I'm sure they would be glad to take responsibility of it for me."

"They will take responsibility from you," he corrected mildly, not reacting to the poorly veiled threat. "Is that what Draco would have wanted?"

She paled at the unexpected viciousness. And then said, in a small, sullen voice, "No."

"But of course," he went on unheedingly, "this is not about what Draco wanted; this is about what you want. And you want to shuffle off your responsibilities to someone else because you find them too hard, too painful."

She did not answer, but he could see her wavering, see his imminent victory in her eyes. He remembered the last, shouted words she'd thrown at Finch before she stormed off in a huff last week.

"If you care so much about the estate, then bloody well look after it yourself!"

He could also see them running through her mind, through those dark, expressive, almost embarrassingly transparent eyes. And then…yes.

"I don't want to run the estate," she began tentatively. "But you controlled it for more than twenty years, didn't you? Can't you…can't you take control again?"

He shrugged. "Unfortunately, I am a convicted criminal…" he raised an ironic brow. Her face fall, but he continued on, careful not to spook her at this vital moment. "If I were to take control for you, it would all have to be done in your name…"

Temptation warred with her ingrained, fearful memories of him and with the developing trust she'd developed since she'd begun living at the manor, where he'd been so mild and indifferent, rather than menacing and ominous as he'd been in her youth. Her reluctance and her feelings of doubt and inadequacy won, and she looked up at him solemnly and asked him to take over control of the estate again, at least until she felt that she could handle it herself…

He smiled, mildly, reassuringly, taking care to hide his teeth, and assured that he would do his best.