A/N: Hi everyone! Sorry it took so long to get this chapter out to you, but since I am now back from vacation, updates will be more regular. Also, if you are a fan of my sequel to 'The Lover', then check out the new chapter there as well! Thanks for reading, I appreciate it more than you know and I get so happy to see your reviews, favorites, and follows! Get ready for some angst!

~o0o~

"Sirius!" Ginny managed to get out between howling bouts of laughter. She was shaking with the strength of the laughter, leaning against the hallway wall for support.

"What is so damn funny?" he asked, running a hand through his hair, but it immediately fell back into his face, looking even more perfectly disheveled than before and she laughed even more at the impossibility of it. She pointed to his legs before looking up at the ceiling of Grimmauld and saying, "Merlin, this is why I love you."

Sirius looked down at the tight leather pants he had put on for their first date out in public and then glanced at Ginny, who was wearing skintight leather pants as well, but Sirius much preferred the way hers looked. He fell into an easy laughter with her, feeding off of hers as it died down to just a flush and smile on her face, nearly making her glow.

"Well, you look sexy," Sirius smirked as he looked his girlfriend over. Although leather pants were a signature staple in his closet, he liked that Ginny had a similar sense of style. She was wearing heeled motorcycle boots to complement the black leather and a gauzy white shirt with some gold studs on the collar. Her hair was down and hanging over her pale shoulders beautifully.

"I told you to dress somewhat inconspicuously Sirius," she rolled her eyes, but it was more playful than anything as she grabbed his hand, secretly excited for the attention they would get. Before she managed to drag him down the staircase, Sirius pulled her back and knocked on Remus' bedroom door. When there was something of an agreeable murmur from within, he turned the knob.

"Goodbye lovebirds," he winked suggestively at Narcissa and Remus, who were cuddled up under his blankets. Narcissa popped her head up when Ginny filled the doorframe as well.

"Where are you two going?" she asked, somewhat dazed from what had just transpired between her and Remus. She was glad to see that Ginny had a smile on her face, as earlier they both had heard arguing coming from down the hall.

"Going out!" the red-head couldn't hide her enthusiasm and jumped about a half inch off of the floor in child-like excitement. Remus, ever the realist, finally lifted his head from the pillow.

"Do you two really think that is such a good idea?" he asked, glancing between the couple who looked very 'rock and roll' and every bit like they were a perfect match. Remus hoped for both of their sakes that this was it for them, as he wanted to see all of his friends happy.

"Don't start with me Moony, you two are going to face it soon enough, and like the both of you, I don't give a damn who is happy for me as long as I know it feels right. We were just stopping in to say that you have the whole house to yourselves. But don't make me regret leaving you two…" Sirius teased and his cousin blushed a bit, fiddling with the covers to push them up under her armpits and hide even more of herself.

"And Lacey hasn't stormed in in a fit of rage against my future daughter-in-law?" Narcissa asked with a grimace, knowing full well what she was thankfully missing at the Manor from a note from the brunette that had allowed her time to see Remus.

"What?" Ginny asked, her eyes wide in confusion as she and Lacey hadn't talked much since the awkward lunch interrupted by the Malfoys.

"I'll take that as a no and explain it later, have a nice time you two…"

"Mhmm, please don't start any trouble out there," Remus sighed as his goodbye to the pair.

"But Sirius," Ginny smiled widely as they both made to leave the doorway, "Trouble is your middle name isn't it?"

"Why yes, love, it is" Sirius said and closed the door behind him slowly, not seeing Narcissa's eyes roll so hard they nearly went to the back of her head as Remus laughed and tackled her back down onto the bed. Ginny slipped her hand into the back pocket of Sirius' leather pants as he fetched the keys for his flying motorbike and they were off.

~o0o~

Draco couldn't watch the scene in front of him for a moment longer, as his pride and heart could no longer handle it. Although his father had pushed his fiancée away, he wasn't eager to see what would happen next and took off in a run in the direction of the front lawn, knowing that Lacey was probably sprinting towards the apparition point just outside of the gates.

He was able to tackle her to the damp grass a few moments later and a few of the ghostly white peacocks on the lawn squawked horribly into the otherwise silent night, but the dreadful noises the birds made masked Lacey's screams and sound hits against Draco's chest.

"Get off of me!" she elbowed him in the solar plexus and as Draco reeled for breath, she managed to get her tall body off of the ground. Her disillusionment charm was gone, as was his, and Draco looked up at her red, tear-streaked face before she turned and started marching resolutely towards the gates of the manor.

"Lacey, fucking Merlin you hit hard, Lacey come back inside with me please! It's not like I'm not mad!" Draco yelled after her, wondering if his father and Astoria could hear any of their pain caused from the sighting. He ran after Lacey and tugged hard on her arm until she whipped around to face him, right in front of the large Malfoy crest shining in the moonlight on the gate.

"If I go back into that house I will kill her and I really do not want to go to Azkaban tonight," she said slowly, with a scary glint in her light blue eyes that reminded Draco of his father.

"You won't kill her," Draco shook his head although not quite convinced, "Besides, I wouldn't let you. I want that pleasure." He tried to come off as joking, but there was hurt in his eyes as well.

"I don't want to see him Draco."

"But you have to!" Draco tried to reason with her. He didn't know why, but after all of this, he couldn't help but feel they were friends in some odd way, and he wanted an ally in his fight as well, "You can't just walk away!"

"Watch me," Lacey told him, trying to blink away the kiss that seemed to have permanently affixed itself into her frontal lobe. The recent memory was everywhere, and it had mattered so much to her that it scared her.

When she turned her back to him again and her hands touched the gate, Draco whipped out his wand from his suit pocket and cast a quick Petrificus Totalus on her. He watched her tall frame freeze and then fall back to the ground with a thud. With a heavy sigh, he performed a Locomotor and levitated her in front of him, walking slowly back to the front doors of the manor and making sure she was in the safety of the ballroom with the doors locked before lifting both spells.

"What the fuck! I'll fucking kill you Draco!" Lacey yelled, her voice reverberating off of the empty ballroom walls. As she rolled over and attempted to stand up, she reached for her wand that she had slipped in between her cleavage under the high neck of her dress and found it missing. One look at Draco confirmed that he had it.

"Now I'll really fucking kill you," she nearly growled, getting onto her feet.

"You are starting to remind me of my Aunt and it is a bit psychotic Lacey, so shut it down and I'll give you your bloody wand back alright?" Draco told her and watched as Lacey attempted to control her emotions. She looked down at her cocktail dress and tried to brush off the wet grass from the lawn and reached up to feel the messy state of her hair. She looked a wreck, but was still beautiful nonetheless, and nothing about her face looked amiss except for the faint tear marks.

"Sorry, I'm sorry…" Lacey apologized, realizing she had nearly been ready to Crucio Astoria and was ashamed of it. That wasn't like her. She knew she had a bad temper when it came to Quidditch and wouldn't hesitate to play a little rough and dirty, but she had felt like a different person out in the gardens. A person positively consumed with jealousy and rage over one little kiss.

"It's fine," Draco sighed. They looked quite odd, the pair of them in the expansive and empty room, "Dammit!" he suddenly turned and pounded his fist against the wall, putting a sizable dent into it and Lacey immediately rushed over to him, taking his hand.

"It's not fucking fine," he finished, finally letting her have her wand to do damage control on his hand, "I thought Astoria was it for me. I thought she was different but at dinner everything that I hated in girls suddenly came out in her, and I had no idea she was like that…it was like she had been acting the whole time…"

"I'm not judging you Draco," Lacey said, turning his hand over in hers, "I understand. Girls can put up fronts. They can lie. They can be other people if they want to be."

She knew this better than anyone, and she also knew how complicated it could be to do so, "Just be happy it happened now before you got married and found your father shagging her up against some family heirloom."

Both Lacey and Draco fell into a painful silence, both playing that scenario out in their separate heads and torturing themselves with it. Finally Draco spoke, "He pushed her away out there Lacey."

Her blue eyes met his and she seemed to be trying to judge if he was lying or not, "It doesn't matter…"

"It does matter. Look, I'm not such a bastard that I am eager to see two relationships ruined tonight!"

"He still kissed her for a moment, I'm not an idiot…" Lacey's anger was boiling back up uncomfortably in her body.

"Well can you blame the man? She's a good…" Draco went on, and then stopped abruptly at the murderous look in Lacey's eyes.

"Fuck you, I don't want to hear it!" Lacey yelled at him and once again Draco felt obliged to apologize, realizing that he had never apologized so much in one night and the feeling in general was quite foreign to him.

"Merlin, Lacey I'm sorry, fuck," Draco ran his hand over his face and couldn't help but think about what Lacey had said. His father had kissed Astoria for a moment, albeit an extremely brief one, but it gave him painful flashbacks regarding Pansy. Now he had a wedding nearly all planned that he wouldn't be going to.

"He's a fucking….UGH!" Lacey groaned, stamping her heels like a child trying to get her way and turning her back towards Draco, looking across the room at the large windows that looked out upon the dark gardens. As far as she could tell there was no one out there anymore and her stomach seemed to somersault at the thought that Lucius may have taken Astoria elsewhere.

"You love him, don't you?"

Lacey's head whipped around and she studied Draco's very serious expression, "No, I don't love your father."

"You are a good liar Lacey, I have to say," Draco smirked, rather impressed. She turned her body fully towards him once again and placed her hands on her hips.

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"You are a skilled Occlumens, where did you learn it from?" Draco questioned.

"Professor Snape. When Harry was fed up with trying his hand at it, Dumbledore wanted Ginny to learn, seeing as she and Harry were closer than anything. And I was her best friend…and somewhat considered a weak link at the time…" Lacey answered.

"Yeah, I remember that no one really gave you your due credit, but you proved them wrong in the final battle," Draco complimented, once again finding the sensation foreign, but warranted. He had seen her hex the hell out of Deatheaters and nearly even him in the fray.

"Yeah, I did," she remembered with a proud smirk, "I take it someone taught you Legilimency then? Was it the same greasy man, rest his soul…"

"No, not Severus, my father. He is one of the best Legilimens I know. He's skilled as an Occlumens, but not like you. Nothing like you. I wouldn't have even known you were lying about loving him if I hadn't ventured to try…I mean, I've tried to get into your brain a few times in the last few weeks, but it's been solidly blocked. It's rather incredible. You let down your wall for a few seconds there in your tantrum and it was all right there…" Draco admitted and Lacey was both pissed beyond belief and rather proud of herself that her Occlumency had become so second-nature that she had been pushing Draco and most likely Lucius, out of her mind for a while now.

"Well, it hardly matters if I love him or not, tonight will be the last night I see him. It was a mistake getting involved with him," she sighed. More like a mistake agreeing to his stupid wife she thought to herself, making sure her walls were up once again before she did so, "I don't think your father knows how to love. He just knows how to fuck and buy a girl presents."

Draco winced at her bluntness, and had to agree with her on some points, but he knew in his heart that his father had loved his mother for a long time, and still loved her in a certain way. In his mind it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that he could love again.

~o0o~

"How dare you," Lucius sneered down at Astoria through gritted teeth. To his surprise, she did not seem regretful or even slightly scared at the menacing look on his face and even had the nerve to place her small hands on his chest. Lucius did not want to strike her, so he once again pushed her away, "Are you aware of what you are doing Miss Greengrass?"

"Of course I am, I thought…" she hesitated now, looking into his eyes and suddenly clearly realizing she had imagined any attraction to her on his part. However, she was more than shocked that he didn't eagerly reciprocate her advances, as most men usually did.

"You thought what? That I would be at all interested in you? That I would break up the impending marriage of you to my son?"

"Well," Astoria got a nasty glimmer in her eye, "I heard you came close to doing just that not too long ago."

Lucius fought hard to breathe through the anger filling up his body and puffing out his chest. His fists clenched so hard that his nails dug into the fleshy parts of his palms, "You are completely out of line and I would suggest that you leave immediately and consider yourself a single woman. I will not tolerate your presence in this manor ever again. Do I make myself clear?"

"Not quite, Lucius," Astoria got bolder the more he threatened her, which Lucius found both odd and a bit disturbing. This side of him-the truly dangerous side-rarely came out to play anymore and he gathered that she was not lying when she said Draco was not the man she wanted. Clearly she wanted a Deatheater, or something very close to one. Although that was part of his resume and in his past, he never wanted to go back to that place and was rather disgusted that some pureblood girls still lusted for things like that.

"Go," he ordered her again and still she did not move except to pop her hip out flirtatiously, but it was fruitless, "I won't ask you again, Miss Greengrass. I am not only horrified that you would think to come into my home with designs to seduce me, but to do so in front of my…" he faltered.

"Your what? Whore?" she raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow and she pushed her lips together in amusement, "You are telling me that you, Lucius Malfoy, the man I have heard so many rumors about from my friends that you have fucked, is attempting to stay faithful to some half-blood slut?"

"That is enough!" Lucius roared.

"Well, you don't even know what to call her!" her high-pitched voice rang out in cruel laughter and regret filled Lucius. All he could think about was how he had left Lacey in the lurch with Astoria, letting the red-head call her names and bully her all throughout dinner, with not so much as any reassurance from him. He hated himself.

"She is my lover and my mistress and my girlfriend and I care about her, as I have tried to tell you," he said with an acidity to his voice that made her stop laughing, "Now that that is clear, you will leave and I will make it my mission in life to make sure than no respectable man ever goes within ten yards of you again."

"You'll regret being with a slag like that in no time Lucius and it's a real shame too," Astoria sighed dramatically, letting go of any remaining shreds of dignity and clearly hoping he would come around but he stood there like stone, his cold eyes willing her to disappear.

"Lacey is so much more of a woman than you will ever be and I am ashamed that I ever let you anywhere near my son or myself," Lucius finished the conversation and when it was clear the irritating girl was not moving, he left her alone in the gardens and strode purposefully into the house in search of Lacey.

A/N: The L word kind of makes an appearance! Okay, so there is a part two to this chapter and it will be up within the next few days, but I wanted you guys to have something in the meantime for all of your amazing love. I would love to hear what you think!