Lucius Malfoy had left Azkaban a free, acquitted man, showered with a plethora of apologies on behalf of the Ministry, promised high positions in exchange for the mistake made at treating a poor Imperiused victim as a perpetrator of violence - him! The good, honourable and venerable family man, whose father had showered St. Mungo's in charity and whose patronage kept wizarding arts afloat during the toughest years of the war, and in whose steps he was now following!

His very short stint in the Dementor-infested cold cells however left him shivering and just as cold, to the point where his own son recoiled and cried when being held, and he could feel Narcissa's hesitation in touching him when laying in their matrimonial bed.

He could see it himself when looking in the mirror. His complexion was now waxy, his fingers would quickly get clammy and icy, no matter how many times he would charm his gloves to keep his hands warm and toasty. He relayed his experiences to his father, who summoned him, his wife and his child to a newly acquired chateau on a French island.

In a crisp morning, in a crescent-moon shaped island that appeared desolate to Muggles, in a quarter populated only by the rich or the pure blood, most often both, the three Malfoy travelled in a cosy chariot led by Thestrals across salt marshes and sandy beaches, until they arrived in a villa that was decorated in a style very different from how his father preferred things, and Lucius realised that this style - gardens populated with multicoloured plants, magical birds flying around, changing colours, squeaking multicoloured bubbles, must have been the kitsch style of Margarita Gregorovitch, who indeed appeared from behind his father as they were welcomed behind the closed gates of the chateau.

However, this time, for the first time for Lucius to see, instead of her many gaudy and expensive necklaces that emanated a myriad of perfumes, she had his half-sister hanging off her chest.

In many, many years to come, Lucius Malfoy never thought of Claudia as his sister, or, technically, his half-sister. He thought of her as more of a niece when he had to, especially owing to the fact that she knew him as an 'uncle', but he mostly never really thought of her.

He tried very hard to not think of her, because when he did, he would be reminded of his own upbringing in the shadow of Abraxas Malfoy. But in later years, he came to realise that he and Claudia had not been raised that differently from one another.

See, Lucius Malfoy loved his son. He held him when his wife couldn't. In the dead of the night, after his wife had fed him, if he wouldn't still go to sleep, he'd have stars and constellations fly from his wand and travel across their ceiling until he would go back to sleep, and Draco, as a baby, was sure of his fathers love and loved him unconditionally in exchange. Lucius had never been sure of his fathers feelings for him as a child, as a son, from back when he could remember, and he certainly did not want his son to grow up to yield the same feelings Lucius held for his father.

He held his son, many times. And by the time Draco could not be held anymore due to him being able to walk on his own, Lucius was sure that Abraxas had only held Draco three times.

Once when he was sick, to measure his reactions.

Once after he had recovered, to measure the changes.

A third time, and the longest by far, for an intergenerational family portrait of the three still living Malfoy men.

But now that his father had a daughter, this one born from his second wife not as an heir, but from pleasure, as much as he hated to even associate the concept of his father with the concept of pleasure, he wondered if any of that would change his behaviour towards the blood of his blood. And in those few weeks they had spent in the French island, he found that no. It did not. His father was the same man, who ignored his child even when they were behind closed doors.

Lucius Malfoy would always maintain that Abraxas was only interested in children once they had the capabilities to understand his schemes and his sarcasm.

And if Abraxas would have ever heard him say this, he would have chastised his son, yet tacitly agree with him. Indeed, he did not care for raising his daughter in any other way than Malfoy children were raised and had been raised for hundreds of years. That was how Lucius was raised, that was how he himself was raised by his mother Claudia, and that was how her sister Lucretia raised her own child, and how the two sisters were themselves raised by the former head of the Malfoy family, all the way back that he could remember.

Although… Abraxas had to admit to himself that whilst she still had the strength, Aurora was much softer on Lucius than he would have wanted, and he wondered even now, more than thirty years later, if Aurora would have died earlier, if Lucius would have turned out differently. If he would have turned out more like him.

For now, however, with a heir already following in his steps so closely, he was not interested in how Margot was currently raising his daughter, and he did not care much for fatherhood in those early stages. Once the child could start being moulded into the son or daughter he wanted, that was when he would step in.

While Claudia was just getting used to crawling and spitting bubbles, she was of no interest to Abraxas beyond a few words of acknowledging her existence. In fact, he used to complain to a bewildered Margot, when he'd wake up with the infant in bed next to him, that he could not imagine why she would even think of doing such a thing as placing Claudia there from her nursery.

He was surprised, however, when she responded that she had never done such a thing, and that she would just sleep in the nursery herself, if she needed to feed Claudia overnight.

Bewildered himself now, the next night he merely pretended to be asleep, and followed his sleeping routine as shown by Margot - he would go from on his back to his side, raise his head, open his mouth slightly, and breathe slowly and deeply, in through his nose and out through his mouth. He kept his eyes half-closed however, and watched as in between layers of white eyelashes, his daughter willed herself by magic, in the dead of the night, illuminated only faintly by the moon, in the most quiet of movements, right next to his chest, and was watching him intently. Her big green eyes were a spitting image of his own, that almost made him uneasy as she looked at him with his own gaze. She stared at him in the dead of the night for Merlin knows how long, watching his chest rise and fall, his nostrils flare, and she would slowly crawl close to him, absorbed.

By the time she could form memories, Claudia had stopped doing this and would have no recollection of ever having been enthralled as an infant by her sleeping father, and Abraxas, in the fog of old age, had forgotten about this peculiar incident.

The act, however, softened him somewhat towards his own flesh and blood, especially when it came to the magic used only to be able to be close to him. And so, the next times when she would fall asleep on the armchair, or on the thick rug, or in any place that was not her crib, soothed by Margot practising ballads on her violin in the library, he would pick up the sleeping girl in his arms, holding her at his chest as he put her back in the nursery.

In the dead of the night and with no witnesses, he would do so each time Claudia would fall asleep on a surface that was not her crib, and later, bed. He would wait for her to be deeply asleep, just as she did to him when she was an infant, and he would slowly carry her to bed, inhaling the soft and pleasant fragrance of childhood emanating from her, brushing her dark hair between his fingers as Margot would lull the night with gut-wrenching tunes from a hidden, deep corner of the manor.

He continued it until he realised that for the past few times, his daughter -she may have been seven, she may have been eight, she may have been almost ten, Abraxas could not remember for the life of him- may not have been as asleep as she claimed to be. The last time, in particular, on a cold and snowy night, she would simply not let go of him. She crossed her arms tight around his neck and her legs around his ribs, and she refused to let go, while still pretending to be asleep, knowing full well that if she acted as if she were awake, she would then have to listen and let go at his command.

But the command never came, and he decided to simply sit down at the edge of her bed, and very much unlike him, he held onto her, as if they both knew that this would be the last time for either of them to express a depth of emotions that one did not want to hear, and the other did not have the vocabulary to fully utter.

From then on, Abraxas stopped carrying her, and would simply tap her shoulder until she'd awaken, and gently ask her to go back to her room.

"Come on, girl, you're big enough." he'd reply to her yawns of discontent, watching her drag her feet to her room.

Claudia, in the same manner as Lucius, learnt from a young age not to question Abraxas Malfoy, at least not vocally. He was neither physically nor verbally violent, yet the poison dripping from each of his words was enough to instil in each of his two children, raised a good thirty-year span apart from each other, a sense of early obedience, which would then mutate into different forms of rebellion.

It took Lucius many years, many of them after their father had already died, to realise just how alike they were in this regard, and even more years to discuss the topic of Abraxas at length.

But back in France, however, she was just an infant, and was many, many years away from being able to reflect on their father. And Lucius was too busy trying to rid himself of the image of Dementors gathered at his cell, trying to feed onto his memories with his mother, with his wife, with his son - with the only people that gave him joy without asking for anything in return.

He wondered, many times after the birth of his son, after the birth of his half-sister, watching Narcissa tend to Draco and then Gregorovitch holding the infant, how his life would have turned out if he had had Aurora a few more years.

"You seem lost in thought." Narcissa whispered in one of those moonlit nights in France, after she had put Draco to bed and decided to join him in the garden.

"Do I?" Lucius feigned surprise, waving away the hazy memories of his mother's smile as he pulled his hair back. "I was enjoying the music." he lied, only now having noticed a tune carried by the wind.

"She does play well." Narcissa agreed. "It's probably for her kid, but I must admit that Draco has been sleeping better than he ever has when he falls asleep listening to this."

They both sat next to each other, looking up at the moon, pondering their next steps, for what seemed like hours, barely realising that Gregorovitch had stopped her playing for a long time.

Lucius did not know whether it was the sun, the food, the absence of British wizards that knew he had been accused -falsely and with prejudice, as he reminded them!- of being a Death Eater, the presence of a variety of aristocratic and noble wizards in whose circles he could and would find entertainment each night of his stay, but he slowly started feeling ready to return in full force. Rebuild the Malfoy family name. Single-handedly.

He had to have his father back off, and in one of those clear, warm evenings, as the sun was starting to paint the cloud in pink and orange hues, Lucius found himself ready to have that conversation.

Every Friday evening, a Portuguese witch, trained in some mourning-longing-singing technique that Gregorovitch must have explained five times before, would climb on an enormous rock hill facing the sea, and sing her longing-songs as the waves would rise, and would only stop when the water started pooling at her feet. It would inundate the house in long, drawn-out notes of solitude, unless the main door would be locked, yet not a single person in the house wished to lock the door and stop the singer. Rather, Lucius knew by the beginning of the third week already the ritual of each member of the Malfoy family once the waves would start rising and the first notes would be carried by the wind.

Gregorovitch would sling her daughter at her chest and go towards the sea, and they would not see her until the dead of the night. Abraxas would go to his room and smoke his pipe, which Lucius was surprised he still not only had, but still indulged in. Narcissa would take Draco in their bedroom and open the windows wide, and almost dance with him at her chest. Draco, surprisingly at his age, would be quiet for all those hours the Portuguese witch was singing, and would not make a single noise of discontent - he would bottle them until the singing had fully finished, but not a second before.

Lucius himself would climb to the balcony on the second floor, and lay on one of the chaise lounges, closing his eyes as he reflected on his next steps. And he prepared to do this the moment he started hearing the gut-wrenching notes, and figure how he would start the conversation with his father, only to find Abraxas Malfoy himself on the balcony, looking towards the sea, hands clasped behind his back.

Without a word, Lucius joined him and stood to his right, gathering his own hands behind his back. He was unsure whether his father took notice of him, and turned his head, finding himself examining the profile of Abraxas Malfoy. For the first time in many, many years, despite having looked at many portraits of his father throughout the years, despite having faced his father throughout his life, and the endless meetings had in his office or in the drawing room, despite having complained for months to Narcissa about his father not officially retiring from his political tactics and handing him the reins, Lucius Malfoy only now realised just how old his father was.

His platinum-blonde hair was fully white now, and his hairline started receding. His eyes, under which he had had to fight not to cower under as a teenanger, seemed tired and apathetic, and were surrounded by wrinkles from his permanent scowl. Scowl which he wore on his face even now, even with-

"Can I help you, Lucius?"

"I was simply looking at you, father." Lucius stated amused, turning his face away from his father.

"What for?" Abraxas's brows furrowed, and he turned to face his son, vexed.

"Ah, for no reason. The French weather suits you, don't you find?" He paused, measuring his words carefully, ensuring they come out in as casual of a manner as possible. "Compared to our gloomy England. I've certainly been quite revitalised staying here myself. I suppose, for you…"

"Perhaps."

"It is a wonderful place."

"It would be, if I didn't despise this house." Abraxas stated as a matter of fact, turning to face his son.

It was Lucius's turn to appear vexed, as he saw a glint of humour in his father's eye - was that a joke? From his father, from Abraxas Malfoy?

"Margot had arranged for this house by the time I came. The birds, the furniture, the design of it- My God, I would burn it to the ground with Fiendfyre if I had the opportunity. But alas, perhaps… Perhaps I am too old to fight on these matters anymore."

"Perhaps."

Silence reigned between the two Malfoy men for a good few minutes, as they listened in to the faceless, nameless voice seemingly emanating through the air around them, until Abraxas found himself breaking the sanctity of their silence.

"If your mother were here, she would have tried to convince me to step back from watching over you and taking over certain matters now that you are married and have a son. In fact, if my own mother were here, she would perhaps have convinced me to do so. I visited your great aunt Lucretia earlier, before your arrival, and she had told me as much."

Lucretia Malfoy, Abraxas's mother's sister, had moved to France with her husband for reasons that Lucius was not quite sure about, as that all happened many years before his birth. However, he knew that she and her husband - who had taken the 'Malfoy' name, instead of the other way around- had somehow schemed her way to the top of the French Malfoy branch. Lucius knew that Abraxas was visiting his mother's grave in France at least once per year, yet he never thought much about the French branch of the family, regardless of the fact that Lucretia was not only British born and bred, but both her and his grandmother had attended Hogwarts.

He had seen them at his wedding, and at his father's wedding, and he'd read the card they'd sent when Draco was born, however he never talked much to her - after all, she was as much of a stranger, as, say, Narcissa's own great-grandfathers were to him, in spite of her having spent a good portion of his youth helping Abraxas in raising him after the death of his mother.

"Well, then, if great aunt Lucretia is saying as much-" Lucius sneered, yet his father stopped him.

"When is the last time you have visited your own grandmother's grave, Lucius? Or your living Malfoy relatives, for that matter. If I were you, I would pay her a visit, with Narcissa and Draco, before your return to England." Abraxas said, before stepping down from the balcony.

He figured what his son wanted, and he would give him that. But before that, Lucius had to hear some things that could not come from himself. They had to come from someone else, another Malfoy that could have Lucius listen, and have him set on the right path of being a Malfoy, and ensuring that he would not make the same mistakes he had almost made when following Voldemort, putting his family and his own child in danger.

—-

Author's note: Here's a little fun nugget for readers that made it this far: when Abraxas says that he is 'too old' to argue with Margot, he doesn't believe that, he just doesn't want to say that he loves her too much to tell her that he finds her home decor tacky

Re-uploaded as I have had to make a small modification towards the end of the chapter, to clear up an aspect regarding Lucius's upbringing.