Silk defined him so well. Lucius Malfoy the polite, Lucius Malfoy the sweet, the refined, the aristocratic.
When he thought about it, it had always been there... on the thin, motherly hands of his first girlfriends at Hogwarts, stroking his still short hair. "Your hair is as soft as silk." On the edges of the intoxicating, glossy lips of the young men he picked up in dark alleys or on docks. "Your skin is soft like silk." Formulaic compliments, between two low moans and gasps, from the slender but solid bodies against which he rubbed in the shadows.
Pff, listening to them, the word lost all meaning. But it still summed up the vanity of his existence.
Silk, the silent movement of the snake.
Silk, the artifice of comfort and safety.
Silk, the sparkling brocade dresses of a woman who could only be a mother.
Silk, the secret of his thoughts in his lonely mind.
And Silk, above all, the tension he felt towards the bright-eyed boys.
Silk, the intense exultation he felt as he slid down the slope of pleasure.
Silk, the soft envelopment after the crisis.
And he forgot everything...
Forgotten, the disgust and the tightness in his throat; forgotten, the web of lies.
It slipped over his face like a shroud. It filled his mouth and ears.
The sex, the thirst: everything was pearly and white.
Everything was so white...
But that wasn't true beauty, he knew.
True beauty was the interwoven whiteness shaped by the darkness, he was in love with.
But all he knew now was the darkness of his soul and the snowy clarity of pleasure, as well as the insurmountable idea of what he had lost.