Disclaimer: I don't own anything but my imagination. I was inspired by another romance novel i read and J.K. Rowlings wonderful world. Enjoy!
Chapter 47
"Wrapped so Pretty"
"But he's fine-"
"He's not fine! I spoke with his wife yesterday. I want you to know that Draco has never been happier. I don't understand you Lu, he's a good kid, he's survived through so much hardship in his life already. He deserve a real chance to be happy. Why can't you see that? Why are you troubling him with our lives again?"
Lucius grew grim at the thought of his new daughter-in-law. He'd seen her enter the Veranda a few days earlier, and she'd walked right past him, Unaware that he was the stranger by the willow tree, reading the paper. Everything from that brief second came back just as if he were there at the Veranda that cloudy afternoon, holding his week old copy of The Daily Prophet. The one person in all the world he would have never given the time of day, would become the mother of his first grandchild. The night of how he nearly killed her rained down on him, the ugliness he showed her over the years, the hatred, his selfish attempts to fill his son with revulsion against the girl. How had he found the courage to love her, to even face her after all of it.
"I don't understand it," Lucius spoke from his dazed state. "How can he be so happy. . .shouldn't their past haunt them, how can she forgive him for all that he's done to her, and yet you can't find it in your heart to forgive me Cissy? I've been a good husband to you, I don't deserve to be treated this way."
She ignored his plea, she was numb to them now. She got a far away look upon her face, as if she could see something unfolding that Lucius could not see. "He loves her, he can't help it. She's going to be a wonderful wife to him and he deserves her."
Her brow furrowed, and her voice developed a huskiness that indicated the depth of all her hopes and prayers. "All these years we've waited for him to choose, to settle down and marry someone worthy of becoming a Malfoy, someone who'd loved him against all the wrong that followed with his past." She started with a merry-like laughter, until her eyes became moist against their lash. "Against every thing you've done to him, look at who he's chosen." She continued to smile into the wild blue. Her emotion was mixed with joy, peace, rage and anger all at the same time. She brace herself and regarded Lucius with troubled eyes. "I wish you could see them together, how beautiful they are, she's going to have your granddaughter Lu."
That time his chest tighten, and rose like bile in his throat. "A girl child," he said.
There had never before been a girl child born beneath the Malfoy name. He leaned back in his chair. "Draco never told me."
"I suppose he wanted it to be a surprise, he felt maybe it would please you more that way. You haven't exactly been the most approving about their union."
"Surprise me, this is my first grand-child. The first witch in over more than a century to be born of true blood with my family's name and they didn't feel I had the right to know."
She looked down at her plate, and then up at him, her eyes full of pain. "It's always about you, isn't it Lucius? From the very beginning everything has to revolve around you. What you deserve. How you feel things should unfold. What kind of mood you'll be in. Draco and I have built and nearly destroyed both our lives around trying to please you."
"That's ridiculous. Your blowing this whole thing out of proportion. All I'm saying is it would have been proper for either him or her to have informed me. This should be published and the world should —I was just —forgive me —I must be having some kind of mid-life crisis or something. I'm happy for them both, really I am. You're going to be a wonderful grandmother, I hope I can measure up. Narcissa let's just forget all of this happened and go back to the way things were before him, before Voldemort."
"I can't do that because you can't do it."
"You don't know what you're talking about."
"Someplace inside of you there's this knot of resentment that formed the day we got married. There's resentment for me, for ever making you a father so young in your life. You never said it, but you also despise me for what I done the night of the great battle. The other's turned against you because of it. Those that once went to great lengths for you, no longer knew your name. You suffered from my helping the boy that night, I know. And afterwards, you formed even more of a bitterness against me and it has never gone away, any of it. If you want me back, it's only out of habit. I don't think you like me very much, Lucius. Maybe you never have."
She wanted to tell him everything, the entire truth of how she fought on the side of the Order. How she was one of the many weak links that broke the chain of power he had on their world. Narcissa, did not regret her decision and she knew telling him meant only that she would be seeking his forgiveness, his understanding for her betrayal.
"That's absurd. You're over dramatizing this whole thing Narcissa. Just tell me what you want, and I'll give it to you."
"I don't want anything form you Lu. Right now, I want to please myself."
"Fine! Please yourself Cissy. I'm not standing in your way, but you don't have to run away to do it."
"Yes, I fell I do."
"But why Cissy? In the name of the gods, why are you blaming me for everything? Go ahead, make our son believe that I am such a bad wizard, tell my grandchild all the unforgivable things I've done with my life. The way I nearly signed her father to his death, and nearly cost my wife her life. Go ahead, let's write a story and sell it to the whole blood thirsty world, how evil I really am. Why not fill the pages with it all, the life and lies of Lucius Malfoy.Let everyone know the reason you truly walked out on our marriage!"
He was a bit shaken and ill to the stomach now and simply couldn't bare to look her in the face at the moment.
She regarded him levelly. "You know what I think? I think you walked out on our marriage the day you didn't protect me from the claws of your mother."
He felt his sickness growing stronger. She never gave in, why wouldn't she just let this end, why was she this way now. Why was his beautiful Cissy so cold, heartless, and cruel. Maybe he had it all wrong, maybe he hadn't nearly killed her. Could it be that he truly destroyed her, that his wife was truly gone, dead, lost to him forever.
"Now you're going to blame me for the sins of an old woman."
"That's not what I'm doing. I'm just tired of living with the pain, living with the past. I'm tired Lu, tired of that part of you that hasn't forgiven himself for knocking up poor, undeserving Narcissa Black. I'm tired of having to remind myself everyday that he had to suffer the consequences. He's still with you, the boy who thinks he deserves everything better than the cards he was dealt. He's never gone away.." Her voice grew soft and weary. "I'm tired of living with the guilt of loving you so much, tired of giving everything to only you."
"Then stop doing it! Whatever it is that you fell you're doing to make you so unhappy just stop. I haven't made you live that way. You done it to yourself."
"But I had to, it was the only way to love you, the only way to stay by your side —all those years. I was so weak, such a fool don't you see, I didn't know how to undo it, and I watched you, I stood by and watch you take our son down the same road. He exhausted himself all of his years, as a child just proving himself to you, wanting to earn your love. But you never loved him, not once. . .have you? Have you ever loved the son I've given you?"
Lucius didn't speak. She was crazy, of course he cared about his son. "Do you want to go through with the divorce Narcissa is that what this is leading up to, tell me what you want?"
He went numb.
"You are a selfish, cruel man. You misused your family for years. Do you know what I want. I want to start my life over. If I could have one wish, I would want us to meet each other again without the darkness, without the bloody past, just two strangers. Then once I found out who you truly were, and you knew who I was. Then, if we didn't like what we found out, we could walk away. No obligation, no family, no commitment, I wish I could go back and there be a balance of power."
"Power?" fear churned inside him. "I don't know what you're talking about."
She regarded him with a look of pity that cut right through him. "You really don't see it do you. All those years Lucius, all those years. I was just a girl, just a young foolish girl so madly in love with a boy, that the world felt she didn't deserve. In our marriage you had all the power and I had none. And I just won't live that way any longer."
She spoke so patiently, like an adult explaining something to a child, and it enraged him.
"Fine!" He completely lost his ability to think clearly and acted on raw emotion. "You can have your fucking divorce Narcissa Malfoy, and I hope you choke on it. Do you understand."
He threw down a satchel filled with gold galleons, he didn't bother to count, shot up from his chair, seized his serpent cane, and stalked out of the room, his black cloak bellowing behind him. He didn't look back. As he hit the wintery, wilderness beyond the hotels entrance, he realized he was sweating. She'd turned his life upside down from the day he'd met her.
And she wanted to talk about power! From the time they were young lovers, she'd had all the power to twist his life out of shape. If he hadn't met her, everything might have been different. He wouldn't have ever come back to their hometown. Catchpole, would have become a distant memory.
He would have been involved with the Ministries top International's rather than meagerly waiting around London. He would have traveled the world, went abroad. Became the type of famously known wizard he always dreamed of being. Became so great, they knew his name as far as western America. A million possibilities would have been open to him, if he hadn't been forced to marry her. But because of her, he had a wife and a son to support, so he finished school and gone back home with his cloak-tail between his legs, taken over his parents affairs, managing their accounts, multiplying their small fortune that was locked away in Gringotts. His parent's greed was so endless that he had not inherited a single bronze knut until they both were good, cold and buried.
Resentment was seething inside of him. . . .
He'd had the course of his life planned out before he could do anything to stop it. He was too young to understand where his mother's true devotion was. She was so fucked up in the head. Once she had finally died, Lucius learned that she left him only a portion of their family's fortune. The other half she'd written off to support his cause.
The Dark Lord not only toyed with his life like a slab of hogs meat, he also played with his family's wealth. Lord Voldemort controlled nearly all of it. And without his permission or without a sound vote from the other Deatheaters, his hand and his wallet was tied.
One vote and Draco would have to learn magic second hand working on side jobs and hard labor, one vote and Hogwarts would have been his son's daydream rather than his reality, one vote and they would have been poorer than the Weasley's.
Between her and his cunning mother, they both fucked up his life forever, and now she blames him. He stopped in his tracks. The blizzard, cold, winds blowing a rivulets of snow around him, it was so thick that he could barely make out the lights of the hotel behind him. All the blood rushed from his head. Jesus! She was right.
He dropped to his knees right there upon the snowy ground and lowered his head into his hands. Seconds lapsed, turning into minutes. He was shocked to feel his own icy cold tears pouring down his face. His long, pale hair whipping wildly against the storm.
Kneeling there, unable to see anything —suddenly he could see everything, the truth became transparent.
She'd been right when she'd said he'd always resented her, but he couldn't see it. He had become like his mother and his own father, where his bitterness and cold-hearted nature had become such an old and familiar pattern that he hadn't recognized it for what it was.
She was right. After all this time, he felt she still shared the blame.
The many ways he'd punished her over the years came flying back in his face. Slapping him as brutally as the wintering winds. The at-fault guilt he held her to, the indirect put-downs, his blind stubbornness when she only wanted to protect him. The list went on and on, all those little punishments he inflicted against this woman who was the closest thing he had to a soul.
Kneeling there, freezing, he pushed his fingertips into his hair and shook his head. She was right, she had been right about everything.