A/N: I will totally be going back over this story at some point to edit and make clarification changes, I simply just don't have the time at this point. Work is running me so ragged lately I even have stress dreams about messing up my work haha. This chapter took a little longer because of that, I needed to take extra time at night to reread and expresses the story correctly without rushing it. I will say though that Lucius's actions at this point are meant to be a bit unknown, I was originally inspired to write this story while rereading Johann Goethe's Faust. It is a bit of a Faustian tale and Lucius is still a man who is very well within shades of grey with his own self serving purposes. But it will start to make sense as the story goes why he's drawn to Hermione and how they come together and how his past affects the now.

(also just a song I listened to a lot while writing this one: Can't See - Useless by Oingo Boingo, it reminds me a lot of my tales version of Lucius in his past)

Chapter Four / Cry, Mon Dieu

If it's not one devil then it's another.

His mothers voice echoed in his mind from time to time. Still chanting her chastising phrases even through the grave. His thoughts lingered on the realisation that she was by now a mere skeleton alone in a cold tomb. Buried alone by request, to death was the only reprieve she got from her vows to the man who made her life a nightmare. He wondered if her beautifully coiled hair still clung to her, it was always so tightly gathered in life and he couldn't imagine her without it, even in that state. He'd seen mummified remains before in display and a few even had small clumps of hair still welted to their skull, the skin fused to the bone by the fleshiest parts filled with fluid long disintegrated leaving only husks of shrivelled skin barely covering bones. Even through centuries of preservation rituals none had ever perfected a way to capture the life that once sheltered inside of the bodies. He wondered if souls had colours and if they did what colour would his mothers be? It was a morbid thought, but what else had he to think of when all his memories of her alive were often just as morose. Tainted and bloodied by the waking memory of his father, haunting him like the ghosts of Malfoy Manor. He'd often wondered if he was perhaps one of the unseen spectres of the manor. Maybe he could even see him now, huddled into corners covered in ratty filth covered scraps of clothing. Watching him vigilantly in silence knowing his son had become the helpless disappointment he always predicted he'd become.

It was infuriating knowing he possessed an unknown supernatural strength but that it was just outside of the grasp of his scarred and weakened hands. The hands that had committed such sins that would forever marr his soul, if he had one even left. If his soul had a colour he wagered it was most certainly blackened. If vampires lost theirs, when did his leave? Had it shed him like a snake skin writhing on to the afterlife without him? Perhaps like the art in the museum talked about, it had glided along the surface of the Duat to face it's trials and be weighed against the feather of Maat. When it inevitably would lose against the feather his soul's heart would hurdle into the massive snapping jaws of Ammit to be pierced and shredded into oblivion by the crocodile. To die once again and aimlessly wander the underworld and the in-betweens without a place to belong and with only it's sorrow echoing for all time. Could a man even have three total deaths? The museum certainly did not cover that.

He did regret not spending more time venturing into the studies on vampires and their archaic tomes. He'd only personally known a creature like him once, one that he hoped had a soul. He couldn't imagine her without it, not with how gentle she was despite her circumstances. Though it was many years ago in his youth he could still remember the feeling of twisting his arms through the silver bars of her cage to touch her cheek in mournful caress. While the bars only left small bruises on his arms, if hers touched them she burned. Of all the things he'd done to displease his father, she was the worst of his sins in his fathers eyes. He didn't regret what she meant to him though, he could never regret that. How it ended he would regret until the day he died though. With his eyes closed he could still conjure those times in his mind as though it was just yesterday.

Endorphins had surged through his body each time she withdrew blood from him but he was addicted to the rush and the close contact. The feeling of her teeth sharp as daggers as they punctured his forearm down to his wrist still flitted through his mind. In his later years he'd read literature confirming that memories formed in painful moments retained an easier to recall process due to how the brain stimulated the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala. It was like a personal achievement to have some morsel of information to try and rationalise how he felt. When his fathers rhetoric bore down on him he used the scientific to rationalise his past indiscretions and for some time it did work. If the creatures by nature elicited a dopamine response while also causing physical pain then maybe he never really did love her after she turned, perhaps it was just a design by their nature to ensure he'd share to her his precious life source. Of course, he didn't really believe it deep down, but that's the nature of man too yet again. A human folly to deny and look away from the memories that are the most bittersweet even when the brain biologically leaves them nearest to the front to access.

Her image still lingered in the dark recesses of his mind, his sweetest memories of her from his youth. Harder to recall even though he often wanted to be able to remember every blemish on her skin and every strand of her hair as it gleamed in the sunshine. Oh her hair that he loved the best, mahogany brown hair long and framing her delicate face. Delicate curls forming just above the tips of her ears and winding tighter as they spiralled further down. Beautiful warm toned skin that even in her vampiric state still shone a light glow that the sun once kissed with it's light. Though her eyes were no longer the same after, he still remembered them fondly before she'd been turned. In the right light they held a burning ember of honey yellow flecks scattered through their creamed coffee base. The sweet colours of her face always reminded him of his favourite summer days down by the woods, through the fields of rye and along the creekside. Alive with so many plants and creatures and sounds and in the right moments you could lay beneath the sky and feel the warmth spread over you, easing away all the chill inside your body and soul. Her scent even reminded him of the fields with notes of jasmine and blackberries and somedays a smoky musk like a freshly stoked bonfire. Years after her death he'd found himself scouring every perfumery in the city to find a bottle that encapsulated that scent he longed to smell just once more. She was truly the one thing that made him feel alive in those troublesome days of his childhood. Though a few years his senior, his schoolboy crush was apparent to everyone despite how much he tried to hide it. He was petrified of her seeing him as a silly young boy when she was the first person who'd ever looked at him with eyes full of tenderness and kindness. When she'd held his hand to lead him over the rocks through the creek and keep him safe from falling in it was the first time he'd ever held onto someone. While his nannies may have held onto his hands when little, they'd been instructed to treat him with a different level of certain detachment at a still very young age to raise him to be the independent and composed head of the household one day.

There was never an inkling in his mind in those days that her life would play out in the manner of a Greek tragedy. Back then all he could think to dream of was running away with her once he was old enough and graduated from school. Stealing away with her in the night like criminals to be married abroad and never return to the lives they both hated. It was never to be but it seemed his dreams never really did turn out how he wanted them. He was away at school for the term when she shed her mortal life and turned into a creature all at his fathers hand. It was a horrid plot he had come up with after he noticed his son growing so close to a servant. A lowly servant who worked their kitchens and cleaned their rooms. The sin worthy of death in his fathers eyes. Such a petty thing to ruin someone's life over. To chain them to a wall and torment them for days on end before turning loose a starved vampire on them. His aim was her death but the poor sad sack who was let loose on her still clung to it's morality and refused to drain her after feeding itself sufficiently enough. Possibly even just desperate and clinging to the fact that it now had another person to touch, to talk to, to commiserate with. When his father returned in a furious swell of emotion he strode in through the sun and grabbed the vampire by the back of it's hair while it was turned towards the wall in fear and thrust it forward into the light. The maids whispered in hush tones to young Lucius when he returned home how the monster howled and screamed like a banshee for ten whole minutes while it slowly incinerated from the inside out. It had to have been the worst death he'd ever even imagined but knowing that his beloved had witnessed it first hand and watched while her only companion died just because of her. Nothing could compare to the thought that she would carry that with her for however long she lived. His dreams of an escape with her hand in hand started to fall apart in front of his eyes and he knew there would never be a way for them to survive this together. He'd have given his life for her if he could have. Fate just didn't agree with his sentiment.

Why he'd even agreed to be part of this experiment to be turned in the first place was still a bit lost on him. Part of it was the fear, the fear of knowing that death was in the future and judging by the war was going it was likely going to be soon for him. If he didn't die on a battlefield then he'd certainly face a swift execution for treason. The outcome either way was bleak and it was beyond tempting to have immortality dangled in his face. His selfish need to persevere if only for himself reared its ugly head when he almost immediately accepted the offer. A private part of him knew though that he'd still accept if only to bare his cross for the sweet woman he once loved and lost. He felt he owed it in some way to understand what she felt that moment before she lost her human life, what fear she must have felt coursing through her as her heart reached its final beat. What her eyes must have seen when they looked at him with a preternatural glaze tinged with a saccharine but ominous wine red that glimmered in the moonlight. The shaky watery glow in her eyes reminded him of the ocean, tremoring back and forth through undercurrents. A quaking ocean of blood that drowned him and all he ever wanted.

In the end it didn't matter what the reasons were or why he said yes because even if he said no he was still likely to be thrown to the dungeons with the starved creatures just for the dark lord's amusement. He had fallen greatly from his good graces for some time and was barely hanging on by a thread for any standing amongst the ranks. There were plans for the war that he could not abide by and while he did not speak out loud against them, his disdain was plainly clear and it was not received well. When pushed and prodded to partake in the deploring festivities he did not waver and excused himself one too many times for the dark lord's liking. No matter how morally grey he strayed he could not stomach some of the activities the others not only enjoyed but looked forward to. Every time he stood before them in action all he could recall was being the nervous little boy watching his father attacking the servants. Unflinching and unmoving but holding back the bile rising in his throat. He worried he may never stop being that little boy in his mind no matter the mask that he wore before others, even his family. If immortality offered any perk, it was that his family would see him physically as the monster he felt he was inside.