The Influential Blacks

21 May 1972

Lucius quietly refolded his father's already heavily creased letter for the umpteenth time. Imagining that it would be too rude to directly ask his father just how influential the Black family was, he had written to him using every ounce of subtlety and social tact he possessed. His inquiry had been successful in the sense that he now held additional pieces of knowledge in his right hand.

Whether his new-found information should have delighted or terrified him, he wasn't quite sure. The Blacks were even more influential than he had accredited them to be, and whether as warning or simply as an anecdote, Lucius's father had mentioned the complete ruin that people tended to meet when they angered or opposed the Blacks.

The more he reflected, the more uncertain he felt about his future career and about Narcissa. The more he mused, the more he realized that how hollow his time spent with Narcissa seemed. Could he really envision spending the rest of his life with her? Could he even grasp what it would mean to marry her?

But whether his father had intended his letter to be as such or not, it contained a definite warning to not cross the Blacks, and he could not imagine a more sure way to do that than to break off his relationship with their youngest daughter.

Absorbed in his thoughts, the gradual emptying of the Common Room, the sound of the ticking Grandfather clock, the earthy smell of the salt and stone all faded until there was simply him, his thoughts, the crinkling sound of the letter as he turned it over in his hands, the rough feeling of its paper and the black ink smudges that danced across its page, ignorant of the message they conveyed.

A warm hand on his shoulder brought him out of his reverie. "Quite distracted, I see," Amycus grinned down at him, cheerfulness covering a residual fatigue and hesitating air. "I don't think you've so much as blinked since I was last here a few hours ago."

"I've just been absorbed in my thoughts. I don't even know when it became this late at night."

"Big, important thoughts, I'm guessing?" A teasing, playful grin with a hint of honest incomprehension.

"Thoughts about the future and my future career, so I suppose so," Lucius responded in a rather unresponsive way, still trying to tear his attention away from his thoughts and to the boy sitting next to him.

"Well don't stress about it. We—" A slight hesitation, as though he was listening to the sound the foreign-sounding word made when stumbling off of his tongue, "We can handle anything the future throws at us." The stone room was silent except for their quiet, unsynchronized breathing and the continual crinkling of the letter as Lucius turned it over in his hands, felt the sharp edges of the parchment with the pads of his fingers, the dog-eared corners against the flesh of his palm.

"I've been thinking about the future, too," Amycus's quiet voice covered the sound of Lucius's letter. "Have you been reading the Daily Prophet?"

"Yes, the New Order seems to be continuing its ascension to power."

"Er—that wasn't exactly what I was thinking of. Have you seen the articles about the protests? Of—of people like us?"

Lucius stopped crinkling the letter in his hands and gazed at him out of the corner of his eye. "What do you mean?"

"There was a particularly long article about them a while ago. Over winter break. Civil rights, social justice, those sorts of movements. There was a march for gay equality."

"Ah, yes, I forgot the articles themselves but I remember my father's derisive comments about them. What do you mean the protests were 'of people like us'?" Lucius gave the other Slytherin a cautious, hesitating, yet vaguely threatening look, as though he did not actually want to hear what Amycus had meant.

Oblivious to the expression on Lucius's face, Amycus replied in an explanatory tone reserved for the extremely obvious, "They were gays, protesting for gay rights. Have you never heard the word 'gay' before?"

"I know what 'gay' means," he snapped. "I mean, I'm not gay, so don't call me one."

An incredulous, disbelieving, shocked, expression appeared on Amycus's face before it was quickly tainted by annoyance. "Fine, you can use whatever word you want to classify yourself, but don't try and pretend that you're not gay."

Lucius whirled towards Amycus, his carefully-regulated emotions exploding into the rage-filled lines on his face. "Well if I want to succeed in the world, I can't be gay, and therefore I'm not! Do you know what society thinks of people like us? Especially all of the old families—the conservative, powerful ones which can make or break you. I've heard my father talk—they think gays are animals, abominations to humanity."

For a minute Amycus looked shocked, blown into utter speechlessness by the words. Finally, his words weakly crawled into the air—"Lucius, times are changing. The protests—we won't be thought of like that for much longer. We're just humans. We have hearts. We have a right to love." Lucius sighed, exhaling the enraged tension from his face and wordlessly smoothing out the wrinkles in his father's letter. "I've been wanting to talk about this, actually," Amycus courageously continued. "I think we should make our relationship public."

In a distant corner of his mind Lucius imagined that Amycus was probably significantly disappointed by the utterly horrified expression that appeared on his face, an expression which expressed the same thought as his words a second later: "Are you crazy?!"

"No, I'm not!" Amycus burst out at a volume almost rivaling Lucius's. "I'm sick of the feeling of shame that comes with us having to hide our relationship. Merlin, I love you, why should I have to hide that? There's nothing more pure or beautiful than love, and yet we treat it as though it's some repulsive abnormality! I feel like I can't even smile at you too much during the day, much less hold your hand or look into your eyes, and it makes me feel so hopeless, like I'm going to explode."

Amycus paused for a gulp of air before passionately continuing at his steam-engine pace, "And I know that people won't necessarily regard our relationship favorably at first, but they'll get over it and frankly—it doesn't matter. We're not going to be at Hogwarts much longer so it doesn't matter what the masses of students think of us, and now that I'll be moving out soon, I don't care if my mother and stepfather disown me, because nothing is as important to me as you."

Lucius gaped at the dark-haired boy, whose eyes were sparkling with a passionate intensity, who was almost out of breath from having said so much so quickly. After attempting to remember how his vocal chords worked Lucius broke the screaming silence that had followed Amycus's words with a whisper. "But—Amycus—that'd be career suicide."

Now it was Amycus's turn to gape and, after a stunned silence, whisper "There are more important things than careers."

Another screaming silence absorbed by the sturdy stones of the Common Room. "Amycus, I've been thinking, too." Lucius swallowed nervously, tried to ignore the squirming, sickly mass of nerves that seemed to have accumulated in his stomach. His voice cracked on the next words. "I don't think we should see each other anymore."

The expression on Amycus's face was identical to as if he had been run through with a sword. And then, as though he was trying to grasp the threads of a rapidly unraveling safety rope, he hurriedly spoke in an almost panicked manner, "Merlin, Lucius, we don't have to bring our relationship out in the open. That wasn't an ultimatum, it was a suggestion. I'm fine if we continue to keep it hidden, really."

"I know. I just—I've been thinking. Not just now, earlier, too. And I think we should stop seeing each other. Completely." Lucius stared intently at his hands and the letter he was tightly squeezing between them, unable to bring himself to look at Amycus's dark eyes.

Without another word, Amycus stood up and shuffled back towards the dormitories as if he was a ghost. "Time, I'll give him time. He can't mean it." His tiny whisper was quickly devoured by the cold, gray, salty stones.

Lucius crumpled the letter in his hands and angrily threw it in the fire, watching as it became nothing but embers, smoke and ashes.

25 May 1972

Rabastan unquestioningly accepted that Lucius had suddenly stopped spending any time with Amycus and had instead returned to his old friend. Narcissa, likewise, found it outside of socially acceptable behavior to ask why Lucius no longer talked with Amycus in the hallways and had suddenly started eating every meal with her. The most she did was say, one day at lunch, "I'm so glad that you've had so much time to spend with me the past few days."

"Well, I think I finally have my priorities right," Lucius gave a hollow, pre-planned grin.

In a slightly quieter, conspiratorial sort of tone, Narcissa told him, "Some of my girlfriends said 'Lucius is spending so little time with you. He must be having an affair.' But I knew they were just jealous," she finished her sentence with an adoring gaze into her boyfriend's eyes.

Even if he was sure that none of Narcissa's friends knew of his relationship with Amycus, Lucius still felt himself tense up. Was it an even an affair, what he had had with Amycus? The word felt awkwardly shaped in his mouth, as though it didn't belong there. Affairs were what old, lecherous married men did, driven entirely by lust and hormones, destructively unaware of the hurt they could spread to all of the involved parties. What he had had with Amycus felt natural, simple, requiring no thought because it just felt right.

"I would never cheat on you, Narcissa," Lucius comforted her in her a well-rehearsed loving tone and, for good measure, gave her a peck on the cheek. "I'm sorry if I haven't been spending very much time with you. I assure you that I will remedy that." Would now be a good time to ask her? He had already written to both of their fathers and obtained permission for his plan. (Perhaps "plan" was not the best word, but considering how much thought he had given to its execution, it seemed an appropriate word choice, if nothing else.) When he thought logically, he knew it was the best course of action, because it would help his future career immensely. The difficult part was silencing the part of himself that still looked for Amycus in the hallways, the part of him that still stayed up late hoping Amycus would somehow magically appear, the part of him that could still taste Amycus's lips and the part of him that could still hear Amycus avowing the importance of love.

He shook his head, as though to clear his head of such thoughts. No, if anything, now would be the best time to enact the plan so as to keep himself from thinking of Amycus.

"Narcissa, I wanted to ask you something." There, it was out. No going back now. Time for the next step of his plan. He dove into his book bag and pulled out the small black box. When he got down on one knee Narcissa's questioning look turned into one of shock and excitement, the corners of her lips uncontrollably forming a smile. The surrounding Slytherins turned their attention to the unraveling events, and this effect rippled down the table, silencing the conversations in its wake. "Narcissa Black, will you marry me?"

Thunk. Lucius's eyes flickered unwillingly towards the sound and were greeted by the sight of Amycus's shocked eyes meeting his. The dark haired boy's cup of pumpkin juice was lying on its side, seemingly forgotten as its orange liquid rolled off of the table and onto his robes in a steady drip. His shocked face seemed a bit paler, sicklier than usual and there were dark circles underneath his eyes. Was he getting sick? Had he not been sleeping?

"Oh, Lucius, I will, I will marry you!" Lucius whirled his head back to the blonde-haired girl, just in time to accept her tight embrace. The rest of the Slytherin table, who had been eavesdropping on such an interesting event, exploded into applause as he slipped the engagement ring on her finger. When Lucius chanced a glance back in Amycus's direction, his spot at the table was empty, save for a knocked over cup of pumpkin juice.