I went wild with this one.
But had they changed? 3 weeks before their defection, Lucius had been crouched on the floor before Harry, who was now inviting his wife to sociable teas, desperate to name him and betray him entirely. They had killed Sirius, his blood and marriage relatives, whether through plotting or by dealing the final blow. Did the differentiation matter? Could there ever be enough repentance for what happened to Ginny Weasley at just 11 years old? Does money, buckets of it flowing in every direction, sometimes still fix everything?
Lucius was aware, as he had been many times in his life, that yes, it was money, money he had not even earned, that buoyed his station in life. When he was younger there had at least been some illusion of beauty and intelligence and quick wit that made him seem like he had gained his place by merit; now he was a shadow in his own grand prison. Most likely he would simply be forgotten in a year's time, except by a few he had personally wronged, and when it was over he could slip back to his wife's side. Those who had seen it before would let it happen again, hesitant to do anything else, and someday he would be at their parties, no one sure who had invited him but no one caring to ask him to leave, either.
He and Narcissa had never felt like zealots, not like Bellatrix or the Greys or the Carrows. They had kept one foot in reality. They could sit at a dinner party of entirely mixed company and be charming. Lucius had been on the Hogwarts Board of Governors for years, and never put a foot anywhere that discomforted people, at least not to the point of arousing accusations of prejudice, not until the moment when he began to fear the worst again and it all started slipping out of his fingers. Merlin, half-blooded, miserable little Severus Snape had been their best friend for 25 years, hadn't he?
So, had they changed? Did it matter?
"I think he looks marvelous with a tan, don't you?" Narcissa asked Lucius when their brief whirl of a Christmas was over. Draco was adamant in his letters for months leading up to it that he would only have Christmas and Boxing Day to spend with them, that they should not expect a lengthy family holiday and certainly not expect that he would be changing his mind about his new trajectory in life. So he had come and gone in a rush, leaving behind an extravagant pile of sweets and spices and jars of harissa. He had been much more relaxed, really more relaxed than Narcissa thought she had seen him in his life, but also quieter. His life sounded happy, but they couldn't get much detail about anything. He said he spent the weekends doing whatever Toby and Annabelle and the children did, going to museums or the beach. Work was an unremarkable 9 to 5 with a desk and an abacus and instructions to follow. At night he studied until he was tired and then went to sleep. While he was home, he showed no interest in seeing anyone beside his parents.
"He's a marvelous young man. And he gets his good looks from somewhere." Lucius gestured at their wedding portrait, framed on the dresser. "Even if we're 100 now."
Narcissa considered the photograph from where they were lying together in bed. It didn't show much movement, just the two of them looking at each other and smiling and then returning to face the camera.
"We were certainly very good-looking," she decided after consideration of the high, lacy neck of her dress and the ring of flowers in her hair. Lucius wore dress robes with wide velvet lapels, the black and white photograph belying the fact that they were a deep violet in color. His hand was squeezing hers so tightly you could see the wrinkling of her skin. "And I suppose very lucky."
His mother was dismayed at his arrival through the Floo.
"You only have a suitcase," she said as she hugged him.
"Because I am only here to take my N.E.W.T.s, Mum, and stay a few days after that. I never promised more."
"No, but I thought maybe a few extra weeks…"
He had to stay at Hogwarts during the exams; it would have been impractical to go back and forth with the grinding schedule. Upon departing for that he looked somehow pale again, his lips pressed together tight. Everyone who was coming back for the exams would be in one makeshift dormitory all together, and it was not a mix of people he relished seeing.
"At least you'll have something good to tell them," his mother soothed. "They'll see how you've moved on."
"I don't know that anyone is going to be asking," he countered as they stood next to the fireplace, staring into it with apprehension.
"Just focus on the tests," Lucius advised. "If it's anything like how it was when we were in school, no one will be talking."
Finally he came back, and still had a week off to spare, and they could enjoy one another. He thought he had done well on the N.E.W.T.s, and Blaise, who had returned for another year of school despite hardly needing it, had injected Draco into his small circle of friends in their limited downtime. When he arrived home the morning after his last exam, Narcissa thought he seemed hungover, and this small lapse of his eternal frozen shell pleased her. She sent him off to nap and promised a celebratory dinner.
"I have to tell you something," Draco said as their dinner plates sat mostly empty and the candles were beginning to burn into their sockets. "I've accepted a real job at the bank that I'll start when I'll go back. Not anything to boast about, but a good start in the international accounts division, and it's a bit more than sitting at a desk all day waiting for more figures to be put down in front of me."
"That's wonderful, Draco," Lucius said, smiling and nudging his wife under the table to do the same.
"And I –" He stopped and took a sip of wine, put down his glass and drummed his fingers on the table for a moment, and then took another sip, more slowly. "I got married."
Narcissa let out a soft shriek and covered her mouth with her hands while his father simply stared at him, dumbfounded.
"You never hinted there was anyone you'd be getting married to," Lucius finally said.
"Well, there has been. Almost since the day I got there. She's English too, and they had a welcome party for me..."
His mother was still in shock, watching as he drew a chain out from under the collar of his shirt and took a gold band off of it, and placed it on his left hand.
"You do know the Greengrasses, don't you? They've been gone a while, but Astoria was born here."
"Is that who it is? Astoria Greengrass?"
"Yes."
"Well, that's a...good match," Lucius bravely went on. He reached out for his wife's hand on the table. "I do think we would have both liked to see your wedding though, Draco."
"I understand that. But we wanted to do it, and I didn't want to have it here. I didn't want anyone here to be able to know anything about it. Now I'll leave, and if it gets out it gets out. There's nothing anyone can do about it. I didn't want her exposed to a poll in the Daily Prophet or any other silly thing."
"And is she..." Narcissa was finally finding her voice. "It is unusual, I think, to decide so quickly..."
"Were you pregnant when you married so quickly? At least she's been out of school for a year."
"Draco!"
"I'm sorry, but you have to admit your relationship was not a model of personal decision making at the start."
"Let's all calm down," Lucius said. "Let's drink a toast, and I'm sure there will be plenty of time to hear everything."
They had their champagne, and with their second servings Draco's cheeks began to glow and his mother could embrace him with excitement. Lucius put together a velvet purse of galleons for him, and Narcissa took him to her closet to examine jewelry. They resettled in the sitting room, and a picture was produced of him with a very slight, brunette girl clinging to his side as they both smiled into the camera. She was wearing a white crocheted sundress and he a kaftan.
"Please tell me this isn't from your wedding," his mother moaned.
"Well, we didn't have a 200-person gala wedding without you, Mother."
"But were her parents there?"
"Someone had to be there. Just them and the Nevilles, I swear."
"But when will you bring her here? Can't she come now, now that we know?"
"I thought you'd come for Christmas. Or before, whatever you like. She's setting up a house with her mother while I'm here, and there's a guest room. Wouldn't you rather come enjoy the heat?"
"Can I write her a letter at least?"
"Of course."
"I want to do it now. I hope she doesn't think you told us when you got here, and I've been ignoring her…" Narcissa left them, and Lucius switched the empty champagne flutes for rocks glasses.
"I think I'm supposed to dispense some stern, manly advice now, I'm afraid," Lucius said as he settled back into his chair. Draco half smiled and nodded his assent. "You are very young, Draco. I know we were too, but that doesn't mean it was the best idea. I hope you plan to keep enjoying your freedom together for a while before settling down."
"Her parents weren't too happy either. I've already made all the same promises a dozen times over."
"It's good to know that our generation is at least warning against it, even if we can't make you listen. They were arranged too, I think, although they're quite a bit older. I never had a chance to know them well."
"I have to admit that I was afraid of coming back to England and finding myself arranged to someone. I figured if we were already married there would be nothing to do about it."
"I'm sorry if there was ever an impression of that. I would never do that to someone else after all the misery it caused."
"Misery? I thought you two were basically milking the system."
"Ah," Lucius's eyebrows went up as he realized, and he reached out for the decanter again. "I thought you knew. It seemed like everyone on earth knew. They set it up for me and Andromeda first. I spent 10 years thinking I was going to marry her when I wanted your mother so much more, and as you can see Andromeda certainly had her own reservations."
"That's insane."
"It really was all very foolish. To this day I don't know how much money or whatever else was exchanged, or what happened to it. Neither side wanted for anything to start with, and a lot of people's lives would have been ruined if it had gone through the first time."
"And you and Mum would have gotten married anyway, if you could have chosen."
"Merlin, I hope so. Although I would have had to be brave enough to actually ask her."
"Oh, come on. It's not that hard," Draco teased him.
"You've done it, and I haven't. Just one of many things."
"It was scary, actually. Especially for us, because I knew everyone would think it was crazy. At least you and Mum knew each other forever."
"That probably blinded me to how seriously I felt for her."
They talked about other things for a while as the fire died: the house they were renting, the advice Draco had gotten from Astoria's father as they had the same serious conversation, her work in a nursing home that she hoped would lead to her studying healing. Eventually Lucius started to fidget in his chair, and Draco reminded him they had days left to talk.
"I'm tired too," he said, leaning forward to put his glass of melted ice on the coffee table. "I can help you to bed, if you like."
"No, your mother will come back. Don't disrupt her routine."
"Ok." Draco put his elbows on his knees and stared down for a minute. "Are you really getting better? I know you'll be a free man again soon, and I thought I might see you doing more…something."
"I don't think that being a free man is going to change much for me, yet," Lucius admitted. The room was almost totally dark by then, except for candles burning in sconces, and there was some safety in that. "I really am better, because I was so hurt before. If I get better than this…that remains to be seen. No one will promise it, so I've tempered my expectations."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"It isn't so bad. I'm just stiff, that's all."
"Sure. Well, if she's really coming for you I'll go to bed now."
"Hold on, Draco. Just let me give you…let me tell you this. You've already shown me you're a better man than I was, but I have to say it. I know you will do anything for her. If you have children I'm sure it'll be the same. But there are things that can't be taken back, and you can live to see those things hurt them while you have to stand there and watch. I know you would never make alliances like I did, after everything it did to you, but it doesn't have to be that serious. It can just be…it can come from anything you do thinking you know best. It can come from the fear of seeming to go backwards."
Draco considered all of this for a moment, and waited to see if his father would go on unprompted, and get at the heart of it. The apology, the remorse, the black and white regret of pride. But he seemed to have frozen at the edge.
"Thanks, Dad. Good night."
Narcissa held herself together bravely, even happily through the rest of the week. She and Lucius kept getting to bed too late to really talk, beyond astonished repetition of the facts back and forth, and the days were very full. They visited her parents and tried to break the news in the least shocking way possible. Narcissa insisted on imagining a wedding registry and purchasing at least half of it, and Andromeda even visited the Manor for the first time since her own engagement, and met her nephew, and shared some understanding glances with him as he stumbled over the reasoning behind an elopement. Narcissa had a feeling a wedding gift would be in the mail to Morocco that very afternoon.
"It is astounding how much one person can look so much like both of you," she observed as she stood an arm's length away from Draco. "Although mine never looked like either of us, or at least not if she could help it."
"I think he's growing into being just like his father," Narcissa said. "Boys take longer to come into it, you know. But look at how his shoulders are about to tear open this shirt."
"Mum, please. I'm sure this one shrunk in the wash."
"Still. Don't you agree, Andy?"
"It's almost as if Lucius was here with us now," she joked, knowing he was just behind her back.
But the tizzy of it all ended with a newly monogrammed trunk jammed full of linens and plates and silverware sent along with the promise of a visit, and Draco disappeared, happy to leave in a way he obviously had not been happy to arrive, and as the green flames were licked away Narcissa's eyes immediately filled with tears.
"Married without us," she whimpered, turning into Lucius's chest. "Married in front of nobody at 18, in secret, because of what I don't know –"
"He's 19 now."
"He was 18 then! Don't needle me, Lucius, not over this."
"I'm sorry. But unfortunately he is aware of our own track record."
"We were at home. It was all properly done and –"
"Imagine if your mother had known about what we did at the Three Broomsticks. Imagine if we even told her now!"
"Lucius, why are you insisting upon rationalizing this? Doesn't it hurt you too? He wouldn't even bring her here, for Merlin's sake."
"It was a shock, of course, but I suppose…I've just come to terms with the fact that it's going to be different. It's all because of things I did, and it would be foolish of me not to know that. I never thought he would do this, but I haven't exactly imagined him returning home happily any time soon either."
"Do you really think they're going to stay there forever?" she said, dread in her voice.
"No, I don't, but I think we can only be exceptionally patient while we wait for him to come back."
