Lucius had always been fascinated by hair. Hair defined family. He had decided this when he was too young to even brush his own, to know properly everything which "family" entailed. It didn't matter who someone was on the inside, their hair would out them. Just look at the Prewitts. Loud and obnoxious and freckled and common and if that wasn't perfectly personified in that rats'-nest red hair of theirs he wasn't a Malfoy. And oh! was he a Malfoy. Perfect and golden and pure, a beacon of good breeding and impeccable cunning to which all wizards should aspire to be, identified by perfect, pure, platinum strands of hair which never fell out of place (Not in public, anyways. Not where anyone would see.). Yes, Lucius Malfoy took great pride in his hair, even at the ripe old age of sixteen, when boys were expected to be boys and forget such important things as personal grooming—but of course, Lucius Malfoy was above that. He took great pride in maintaining the perfect persona of Malfoy; even in the depths of the night his pajamas were silk and his hair was brushed and held back by an elegant tie. It simply was. There was no alternative.
This fascination with personal presentation naturally lent itself to fascination with other peoples' presentation. Longbottoms were brunet and stolid, proudly not Dark even if not always Light. Lovegoods were dirty blond and flyaway, holding off madness more by point of view rather than point of fact. Macmillans were a bright golden blond, Hufflepuffs to the man. And Blacks… well, Blacks we interesting. Not the men, because Black men were notorious for stubbornness and little else, really, and honestly, weren't most of the Ancient Houses the same way? No, what was interesting about the Blacks were the women. Of the three Black women he knew, each simultaneously upheld and cut down his theories. Oh yes, they were Dark and wild like any Black, but—and perhaps it was a manifestation of the unspoken Black madness—the pattern he saw in other Houses…simply wasn't there. Perhaps it was a manifestation of the infamous Black madness, perhaps it was because the Blacks of his generation were horrendously reclusive, never going out unless to another Ancient House (And however Noble House Malfoy was, Ancient it was not), but he couldn't pin down the pattern. It was distressing, really. And all their fault.
He met Andromeda first as a first year, being led to the common room he had heard about so often as a child. She was the fifth-year prefect of that year, and he was a young, impressionable boy. It was natural that she made an impression. Andromeda's hair was like her, appropriate and dark and pinned up, like the Slytherin princess she was. Her words were carefully chosen and perfectly executed, her robes tailored and symmetrical, prefect's badge shining like so many ornaments, like the jeweled comb given to her by Rodolphus Lestrange which she wore just as prominently.
She was well-timed smiles and appropriately-pinned hair and neat, helpful hands. Even as a first year, he had seen that. She spoke with careful articulation and words which came directly from Therias Nott's Guide for Good Breeding and the standard course textbooks. Her robes were exactly the correct length, her prefect's badge polished and straight, her thoughts well-received or kept to herself. Everyone respected her. Even those older years, coarse and taunting to any who caught their interest, the ones his father would have called "uncouth, ill-bred cretins little better for anything other than-"(and here his mother would admonish him softly, "Not in front of Lucius, dear" so he hadn't exactly known how that statement ended but he had been certain it applied). If Andromeda Black was in the room not so much as a syllable of their typical language would have passed their lips. If it had, Lucius had suspected the guilty party would have shortly found himself without the use of said lips and no recollection of who to blame for it (Lucius now suspected that no one would have tried all that hard to help them find out, either.). No, Andromeda Black was a princess among peasants, and the Young Lord Malfoy had known that she would crush him without mercy if he tested her. He had quickly decided that he would much rather have her appropriate good will than her scorn ("A Malfoy always knows when he should retreat," was another thing his father said often, but this one was imparted as a lesson, rather than overheard from firewhiskey-loosened lips). She would graduate before he was old enough to do anything more than yap at her heels anyways. He would perhaps be her equal once he was actually Lord Malfoy, but certainly not before, and he had known that even at eleven, with all the arrogance and braggadocio which comes with the age.
Yes, Andromeda Black had certainly been personified by that carefully pinned-up hair of hers. Pity she had let it all down. Let everyone down, really.
Bellatrix he had known since he was young—not well, of course, since her mother had thrown a fit when word had gotten to her about the contract their fathers had been planning and insisted that a Malfoy, even the heir, was not worth marrying to her precious Bellatrix and swapped the playdates to the younger Narcissa, but well enough to have her measure before Hogwarts. It was the most ill-kept secret in a family whose secret-keeping skills were notoriously sieve-like that Bellatrix was an especially wild child, though "precocious" was the term her mother used. "Willful" was another word for it, he supposed. According to his father, so was "absolutely raving." One didn't necessarily need to know Bellatrix to realize this was true, of course. One only had to look.
Bellatrix was a cacophony of contrasts, something that shouldn't be that was. She was brash and cunning, spoilt and pliable. She was dark, glossy ringlets, gracefully half-pinned from her face so that she could easier see who she was cursing. She was the click-click of heeled boots across the floor, refined and measured, before a shouted taunt to some mudblood first year. She was fiercely independent and yet worshipped the ground at her ever-perfect sister's feet. She was the driving force behind the Gryffindor rivalry, but her attention was just as easily taken by a Ravenclaw breathing too loudly while scuttling away from whatever misfortune she had decided to heap upon the victim-of-the-day. Her dresses were provocative and her robes conservative, and Lucius had to wonder how much of her madness was truly madness and how much was simply the result of an already-spoiled favorite daughter realizing how much more fun it would be for everyone to believe her to be (Of course, just now he was fairly certain her madness was entirely genuine, since she was currently screaming at someone and he could hear her from four rooms and at least one silencing charm away; and Druella Black would probably dab her eyes and say what a dear she was, how excited for her wedding, but his late mother would have rolled over in her grave to hear a daughter of hers behave that way in public and Lucius supposed that just highlighted one more difference in Blacks and Malfoys. For a Malfoy, madness, like wild hair, was unacceptable and everyone knew it, but with Blacks, it was expected.). Bellatrix was as dark and childish and cruel and wild as she colored herself and it only got worse as she got older.
So Bellatrix confirmed his theory about presentations telling more about people than the people themselves do, but at the same time… Lucius supposed it was a good thing Druella had favored Bellatrix so much as a child, since he wouldn't trade places with poor Rodolphus Lestrange for the world. Though he also supposed that if Andromeda had done her bit then his trading with Rodolphus wouldn't have been so bad, if only because Andromeda was actually sane, or at least behaved that way until she ran off with that idiot Hufflepuff mudblood of hers.
He adjusted the sleeve of his dress robes and went to go meet his fiancé for their first official appearance since the contract was approved.
He had known Narcissa, in the way people whose ancestors were cousins and whose parents have monthly meetings to hammer out business ownerships, heir expectations, dower amounts and the like over tea must, prior to Hogwarts, of course, but it wasn't until the Slytherin-Ravenclaw flying lesson that he could truly say he had known her.
Narcissa had struck him, at first, as a watered-down, younger version of her eldest sister, all neatly-pressed robes and softly-manicured hands. She wore her glossy, mousy ringlets laid neatly at her back, braided away from her face, in such a way that it was as if she woke up, expected them to behave, and they had. He thought her pliable and comfortable and above all, safe, and he could honestly say he wasn't certain what it was that clued him in on the fact that he was wrong. Perhaps it was the expectant quality of her speech, as if she knew the world would fall directly at her feet if only she asked. Perhaps it was the curious, assessing glance she graced him with before mounting her broom. Perhaps it was the defiant not-glare, as if she had intended to glare and somehow trapped the thought safely behind her eye before it could reach the muscles that would make it happen, which directly followed that glance and directly preceded a pragmatic-and-not-at-all-too-hard kickoff from the ground. No, now that he thought about it, that last part was probably it.
The subsequent years hadn't helped clear his confusion, either. Narcissa was a continual puzzle for him, made all the more important by the negotiations his father periodically sent him updates on. She presented herself as the perfect Black daughter, not so pliable and in need of protection as Andromeda but not so mad as Bellatrix. In fact, she seemed positively normal, other than her curiosity-apathy-almost-dislike of him. She studied and gossiped and made friends and kept up with and ahead of her Ravenclaw classmates (and wasn't that a burr in his boot—that this girl he couldn't figure out in the first place could best him here too, where he had received the best tutors and the best books and the best genes and was continually told he was the best.) and remained utterly mysterious to him. Yes, he knew what she would act like, but that was a mask. He knew it. She knew it; worse, she knew that he knew it—yet never reacted. He expected something—reveling, sheepishness, an increase in the intensity of her mask—but received nothing. He knew her actions but not her motivations and that galled him.
He didn't understand her. He never would, he thought. If he hadn't been reading people since before he was reading books he would have accused it of being a trait of women. If he hadn't been reading her sisters easier than he read books for several days at that point and several years at the present point he would have accused it of being a trait of Black women. Even the Dark Lord hadn't been so difficult to read when his father had introduced them. No, this was Narcissa's trait, and hers only, and he knew it. He had nearly accepted that he would only ever know two things about Narcissa Black: she wanted the world to see her as entirely non-threatening and she didn't like him.
So when he knocked on her dressing room door to escort her to the ceremony and she answered, not politely as she had wont to do in the past, but excitedly, demanding he enter, he was immediately suspicious. When the door slammed shut behind him and there was a wand at his throat, he was even more so. Not exactly surprised—one of the two things he knew about her was, after all, that she didn't like him—but very suspicious. It only got worse when she spoke.
"Do you love me?"
"What?" He's certain that wasn't what he'd intended to leave his mouth but frankly can't remember what he did intend because of the incredibly threatening fifteen year old madwoman currently holding her wand to his throat and demanding answers to questions he doesn't know the correct answer to.
It seemed to be the correct response, however, as he felt the tip of the wand move away from his skin and felt, rather than heard, her breathe in relief. "Thank Merlin. I don't think I could have taken that on top of everything else."
"What?" Really, perhaps he had been cursed with something? He was normally much more eloquent than that, he knew. Perhaps he was coming down with something?
Narcissa angled her wand so that it was barely three inches from his nose. "Lucius Malfoy. Never lie to me."
That, he knew the answer to. "Never, dear," he replied, eyes not leaving the wand tip.
Suddenly the wand was much closer. "I said don't lie."
He swallowed—not gulped, Malfoys don't gulp—and thought. What had brought this on? It wasn't something he had done, he was certain of that. They hadn't spoken in weeks, not since they had officially signed their contract and even then it had been nothing more than a terse greeting and terser good day. Her friends? No, any drama between any friend groups would have surely reached him before now. Unless it was recent? No, not likely. Her sisters, then? Perhaps…but that whole affair with Andromeda had been over a month ago—and wasn't that saying something, when the Black family commanded enough power they could simply replace one bride with another in the space of a month. He thought until she huffed impatiently and turned away, the tense cast of her hands the only remnant of her previous anger.
"I apologize. That was…forward of me. We should go." She turned around and placed her hand on the door as if to leave.
He stopped her. "Miss Black," he began, and she flinched. "Narcissa," he corrected. "I will not do you the insult of lying to you. I have many obligations. Some will conflict with any promises you may extract from me, I am sure. I…am sorry about that. I, however, will promise you this: Malfoys take care of their own. And you will be a Malfoy one day soon. So I will do my best by you. I promise that." He felt a tightness in his chest he knew indicated he was speaking the truth. He just hoped she knew that.
For the first time in a long time, Narcissa did as he hoped. "That sounds… nice." She smiled at him, genuinely, for the first time he could remember.
"Of course, you won't quite look the part, but it's the name that counts anyways." And he promptly stuck his foot in it. Her forehead wrinkled, as if she were about to hex him.
Then she laughed, and raised her wand again.
(Later, after they had been through hell and back and raised a son and seen him married, he would tell her that was the moment when he first fell for her.)
(Right now he was rightly and properly terrified—because any Malfoy with sense knows when he should retreat and all of his senses were telling him to do just that before he ended up at his fiancée's sister's wedding with purple hair and no balls.)
In the coming months, many people would comment on her new hairstyle ("Oh Cissy your hair looks wonderful! What charms do you use?" "Narcissa dear, do stop this childish display. We understand you're excited, but I think dear Bella has given us all enough excitement for the year, hm?"). Admonishers walked away and mysteriously forgot their grievances, and flatterers would walk away feeling a bit put out, why did Narcissa Black get perfect hair naturally? It just wasn't fair, really. By the time they'd graduated (Head Boy and Girl, because he was the best and she was clearly perfect, who else would they have given it to?), no one remembered that Narcissa Malfoy had, in fact, been born looking like a Black ("Don't they make the loveliest couple? It's like it was meant to be!"). Well, except for Lucius. He never asked what she did that day or subsequent ones to enforce the Malfoy illusion (she would tell him, one day, when they were both so old and gray and had been through so much that that day at the beginning of their lives may as well have been a fairy story). He rather thought it tied up the holes in his theory nicely. And a Malfoy never questions something that brings him fortune.