So few people actually realize that the key to success lies not in how much money you're worth, though I'll admit that doesn't hurt. It doesn't really come with social stature either, as sometimes your successes will raise you on the social ladder, just as your failures will lower you into the sludge. In both stature and wealth I was already secure, you see, but only because I was a Malfoy, and not because of anything I'd done. Yes, there is a definite advantage in being the only son of the most influential and wealthy wizarding family, but there was no way I could have simply lived off the Malfoy name alone. My father believed that in order to be a worthy heir to his fortune and his surname, I must make my name mean something. I had to earn my place in the world, make my own successes so that when the name Lucius Malfoy was spoken in social circles it evoked a response. The secret to my successes in both business and pleasure came only after a great deal of planning, which inherently I am quite fond of for a number of reasons.
Planning allows for calculation and plotting. It encourages levels of brain activity that have a tendency to accumulate rust if not regularly exercised. When properly planned every situation carries the capacity for ultimate success by evoking the most primordial form of magic left in our world: focus. Focus is such a subtle form of magic that it is often overlooked, where even common muggles know its worth. Yet it would seem that even the most educated and well practiced wizards and witches of our age have forgotten its importance before implementing plans on such lofty things as world domination, thereby limiting their success ratio.
But I digress in my memory, and nearly lose my place, for we were talking about Narcissa. There was method to my discourse, believe it or not. It was my early memories of Narcissa that reminded me that success can only be obtained through methods of careful planning, and were there a woman born to rival my own capacity to plot and calculate it was Narcissa Black.
After the Yule Ball at Malfoy Manor, I sent an invitation to Black Mansion in which I asked Narcissa to accompany me to dinner. She replied that she would be delighted for an opportunity to further our reacquaintance with on another and asked for a specific date and time. I sent word that we should dine in Paris on New Years Day at 7:30 in a quaint restaurant I had become quite fond of over the years by the name of Fleuve Foncé. I was quite taken aback when Narcissa responded that she did not feel comfortable having dinner with me unchaperoned in Paris, but would happily join me at 7:30 in London on New Years Day at a restaurant she'd heard wonderful things about called Vidaccio's. In London she would not feel the need for a chaperone, she confessed, and signed her letter by dotting the i in her name with a little heart. How juvenile, I thought, while at the same time finding it somewhat intriguing. Little hearts and chaperones, why she was just a little girl. . .
I admit her missive threw me, and I wasn't even sure at first why. Was it the mention of a chaperone accompanied by that heart-dotted i in her name? No, it was more than that. I really felt that these were devices of some kind to convey a false-sense of innocence and naivete. Was she expecting me to try and take advantage of her? Had she heard rumors of my virulent promiscuity? I wrote that I would meet her there, but over the five days between our final correspondence and the evening of our first rendezvous I became ill-at-ease with the way she had taken charge of i my /i invitation to dinner and accommodated it to suit her own agenda, whatever that might have been.
"You're distracted," Rodolphus Lestrange noticed, sidling up beside me and pulling back on the reigns of the horse he was riding. "It's not like you, Lucius, to be distracted, and when it happens, I worry. What's on your mind?"
"Nothing," I said, but I had known Rodolphus for years and he had little difficulty when it came to seeing through me.
Knitting his brow, the two perfectly groomed and shaped black arches of his eyebrows drew together in disbelief. "Either you're last meeting with the Dark Lord didn't go as well as you had hoped, or you've gotten attached to one of your little female escapades." He knew me better than anyone at that time. My lack of a reply drew scoffing laughter from him, "Do I hear wedding bells in your future, Malfoy?"
"Don't be absurd," I snapped.
"Ah, but it is a woman, though?" he prodded. "Which one? Lunette? Arabella? Oh, don't tell me, I know. It's that saucy girl with the dark hair, what was her name?"
"Felicia?"
"Felicia," he groaned her name with masculine admiration. "She is absolutely delicious, yes, but I hardly picture her in the position of Malfoy heiress."
"She's not really my type at all, is she?" I sighed. I was thinking about Narcissa again, about the way she had twisted my plans back on me, almost reversing my invitation so that it was hers. "Fine, if you must know I'm having dinner tomorrow evening with Narcissa Black."
"Narcissa Black?" he astounded. "How did you manage dinner with Narcissa Black? She goes to dinner with no man."
"Really?" I hadn't heard that about her. Come to think of it, I hadn't heard much about her at all. "No man?"
"No man." He repeated. "Of course she's got half the guys in her year vying for her affection but she can't be bothered to give any of them the time of day. Now her sister, on the other hand. . ."
"Which one?"
"Bellatrix, of course. I hear the other one's got a spot for mudbloods."
"How disgusting," I could feel my lip curl into a distasteful snarl.
"Indeed," he agreed. "Now Bellatrix, she's something else."
"Hm, yes," I sneered, "Bellatrix." There was something about Bellatrix Black that rubbed me the wrong way. Perhaps it was how she'd sniped me in conversation at the Yule Ball, her quick wit and vengeful tongue carving into the very air around her like the sharp edges of her personality. Thinking back on it, I had gone into conversation with Bellatrix already feeling ill-at-ease, so it wasn't really because of anything she said. To me, the girl seemed less than sophisticated, somewhat wild, but not in an appealing manner. "Quite a tart then, is she?" I surmised.
"Oh, absolutely, but that's the beauty of it. She's a sure thing," Rodolphus laughed. "I hear you don't even have to take her to dinner, and she's not bad to look at either." That much was true. Bellatrix had an exotic, dark beauty that contrasted both of her sisters. "Not to mention she's absolutely wicked, from what I've heard. Why even the Dark Lord has supposedly taken an interest in her."
"Really?" I hadn't heard that myself.
"That's what I've heard. Whether it's true. . ." We were nearing the stables again and I was glad because the cold air had started to slice through my cloak. "So, how did you get Narcissa to go out with you?"
I shrugged, "I simply asked her."
He argued with me a little bit after that, insisting that it was impossible. No one just asked Narcissa Black out and got a straight answer. I didn't mention to him that she had maneuvered my invitation to suit her needs, but took great pride in the fact that I was a rare exception to some unspoken rule Narcissa had obviously put into play. Now, there are some who might believe that I went into that first date with her believing I was something special, that she had seen in me something she saw in no other man, but that isn't what I felt at all. In fact, I was even more skeptical than I had been prior to Rodolphus' information, and had grown more distrusting of her command over my plans.
I debated blowing her off completely, simply because it all seemed too easy after learning about her natural disposition to play hard to get. I didn't trust her, but in the end I realized that there was little she could do except attempt to humiliate me by standing me up, and if she did, there were ways of getting back at her that would throw her game of hard to get back in her face so she became harder to want. I brooded over it so heavily that by New Years Eve I was convinced that she was toying with me and had prepared myself for the worst, and in so doing, I had lost my focus.