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Copacetic	By : alecto Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Lucius/Ginny Views: 8449 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I make no money off of Harry Potter

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Ginny sat at her desk, eating a messy sandwich. Amorin sat on the other side, trying to maneuver his own way around his own sandwich. She laughed at him as a drop of sauce fell out onto his trousers.

“Shite,” he mumbled, wiping uselessly at his pants with a napkin.

“Pig,” she replied, laughing through a full mouth.

“How did the interview go the other day?” His eyes were curious as he took another bite.

Ginny shrugged.

“It better be more than that, Weasley. We aren’t giving you a whole day off a week to just fanny about Malfoy Manor.”

“Yes, that’s what I’m doing. Lucius Malfoy let me fannyabout his family home.” Ginny rolled her eyes at her editor. “He was an absolute pillock, almost a pervert, and a general bigot. He was odd and disquieting and a shite, but I started my story and I started my interview, and I can handle it.”

“A shite?”

“Yes. But Lucius Malfoy has always been a shite.”

“True,” Amorin said, chewing. “Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t say that about our exclusive interview subject. Sorry.” He hardly sounded sorry.

“Ugh,” Ginny exhaled. “Exclusive interview, my arse. He’s incredibly self-serving and egotistical. Who sets up their own ‘exclusive interview’?”

“A shite,” Amorin said, laughing.

“Yes,” Ginny said back, guffawing, trying to keep bits of sandwich from falling out of her mouth. “But he’s odd.”

“What do you mean?”

“I had almost expected to still be somewhat scared of him. But he reminded me of a big bird—he’s completely caged in that Manor, by the way. I would hazard a guess that he never leaves, just sends servants out to get his shite. And he’s all bird-like in his motions—snappy and tilty and kind of elegant. Completely odd.”

Amorin shuddered. “I’m glad it’s not me, there. I can only imagine what things he has hidden all around that house.”

“I don’t want to think about it,” Ginny murmured.

“You’re probably going to have to.”

-

She had sat at her computer for days after their first interview and not much had come of it. She had bought herself a computer a few years back, mentally thanking her father for his wild attraction to all things Muggle and electric when she realised how much faster everything was with a keyboard. Now, her fingers stroked the keys absentmindedly as she sat.

There was something about Lucius that was stopping her from writing as she usually would. Granted, it was early in the interview process, but something felt different about the interview. She wasn’t sure if it was her discomfort with the subject matter, or with Lucius himself, but she needed to speak with him more in order to get a proper grip on things.

-

The next week, she had had to knock on the door, and it had taken a few minutes for someone—something—to answer.

It was not Lucius. It was a house-elf. A very, very disgruntled looking house-elf who stared at her until she spoke.

“I’m here to see Lucius.”

The words tasted odd in her mouth.

There was silence. Ginny resisted the urge to punt the creature that was staring at her malevolently.

“The Master is in the gazebo.” The house-elf levelled Ginny with a stare, and she stared back.

“Can you please show me where the gazebo is?”

She watched as the creature nearly rolled its eyes—rolled its eyes!—and then hefted a little sigh, skittering off abruptly, moving around her into the front lawn.

Ginny blinked, and then followed the elf around to the back of the house, and then gasped.

There was something soothing about the Malfoy gardens. Ginny could concede that, no problem. Whoever had contracted and planted them had been extremely talented. There was no shying away from boldness here, no mild-mannered white roses or muted baby’s breath. Instead, the entire garden that stretched before her was lush with oranges and reds and purples— étoile violette clematis and tiger lillies, Double Delight and Voodoo hybrid tea roses, Balkan peonies.

Ginny stood and stared. She had expected this to be a place of disarray, especially after the woman of the house leaving. She wondered if Lucius was the one who took such an interest in the gardens, had a feeling that there was more to the place that met the eye, maybe fields of orange poppies or blue salvia, maybe hidden fountains that lulled, maybe bowers. She smiled despite herself, loved the place. Beyond the bed of yellow roses that lay in front of her she could see the ubiquitous white peacocks, but they weren’t so haunting this time around.

To her right, there was a gazebo, and that was where the house elf left her. Beyond the latticework, she could see the glow of whitened hair, and so that was where she began walking to.

As she neared, she could see that Lucius was sitting on one of his padded gazebo benches, and Ginny felt uncomfortable to see that he was cross-legged, his shoes off on the floor beside him. There was something about the pose that struck her as childish, and seeing Lucius Malfoy as childish made her feel awkward.

She refused to show that, though.

He was dressed in white linen—white linen shirt, white linen pants—and the effect was fascinating. He truly did look like some sort of odd angel. His head was turned, and he was looking out at his gardens. His hair was tied back loosely, and the wind had caught it, eddying it around his neck.

He heard her approach and turned to face her, the relaxed look lingering on his mouth and eyes for a moment more before he fully registered who she was and what she was there for.

“Hello, Mr Malfoy.” Her voice was even.

“You can call me Lucius.” His voice was just as even in his reply.

“Why?”

“It’s my name,” he replied, unfolding his long legs and planting his feet on the ground.

Ginny shrugged. “It seems a bit too familiar for my liking.”

“Just do it,” he said, meeting her eyes, speaking mildly, and she frowned slightly and then decided that it probably wouldn’t hurt the interview proceedings to use his given name.

“Fine—Lucius.” She made a show of pronouncing his name fully, and it felt odd on her tongue, thick and salty and male.

He smiled slightly. It was then that she noticed that he was drinking tea—he had a whole proper tea service set up, the tea pot and the scones and the petit-fours, and the sugar bowl, and the creamer, all done up in delicate purple and gold and pink china, everything laid out on a small table with a white cloth over it.

He noticed the direction of her gaze.

“Darjeeling,” he said, taking a sip.

“You’re very odd,” she replied, and thought about how strangeit was that he could be so masculine and yet so feminine at the same time.

Lucius shrugged, swallowing, and offered the plate of baked goods to her.

Instead of refusing, as he had expected her to do, Ginny took a thickly iced petit-four and bit the corner off of it, chewing thoughtfully.

“They’re poisoned,” he said gravely, and she nodded just as gravely back at him, taking another obvious bite and swallowing.

“They’re good.”

“I know.” He took another drag of tea and watched her over the rim of the cup.

Ginny noticed, now, the crows’ feet around his eyes, the lines that could be considered laugh lines if they were on any other person. Somehow, she doubted that Lucius Malfoy had distinguished laugh lines—although she had seen him laugh more than once since starting his interview the prior week. His age was evident, and yet it was not evident—evident in the way that his skin crinkled around his eyes, and the paler colour of his hair, and the way he took a single moment to think before replying sometimes, but not evident in the broadness of his chest and shoulders, and the liveliness of his physique, and the fullness of his mouth.

“You’re staring,” he said, putting down the cup with a delicate sound.

“Yes,” she said absentmindedly, still cataloguing his physicality. “You—what are you?” It was an odd question, and it had slipped out of her mouth before she could take it back.

He quirked his head at her, and she was amazed to discover that she could understand him perfectly without words. He was wanting to ask her for more information, but holding back, processing her question.

A covert smile was on his lips.

“Libertine.”

Ginny rolled her eyes at his one-word answer. “For all your intelligence and education, ‘libertine’ was all that you could manage?”

“You believe I’m intelligent?”

“I know it,” Ginny said, lowering her head to write on her pad. She missed Lucius picking up his teacup, smiling behind the rim.

“I’m glad that you can admit my superior intelligence.”

“I didn’t say superior,” Ginny said, looking up at him and scowling.

“How was your week?”

She blinked. He was making small talk.

“Er—fine, thanks. And yours?”

“Uneventful,” he said, sighing and looking out to the garden. She couldn’t tell if it was a sigh of pleasure or regret.

“What do you even doduring your days here?”

Lucius looked at her. “What makes you assume that I spend my whole days in the Manor?”

“Call it a hunch,” Ginny said, meeting his gaze.

“Hm.” He exhaled. “I run and manage all my accounts. I’m an investor.”

When he didn’t say anything else, Ginny raised her eyebrows at him. “And? So what?”

“Well, I took my father’s money and invested it into various—opportunities around the world.”

“Opportunities. That sounds like code for illegal things.”

Lucius smiled. “At one point, yes.”

Ginny grunted. “Charming.”

“I’ll spare you the details, then. But after the second war, it was easiest, and—suggestedthat I transfer everything to more accepted forays into the business world. So I did.”

“What do you invest in, then?”

Lucius shifted, and Ginny immediately saw that he was transitioning into business-mode.

“Mines. Salt mines, emerald mines. Silver mines. Tobacco plantations. Dragon ranches. Peacock husbandry. Raven and owl aviaries. Apiaries. Beetle and ant harvesting. Eagle breeding. Dittany farms. Plots of lavender and sunflowers. Orange groves. Wheat fields. There are others, but those are some of the more interesting.”

Ginny had her mouth open.

Lucius laughed. “It amazes you—doesn’t it, Weasley? That someone can be so rich.”

Ginny clenched her jaw so hard that she could feel her teeth compress into each other. Another day, another casual snipe at her family. Instead, she held her tongue and scribbled notes.

“How rich are you?”

“Do you want an exact number?” He looked amused.

“If you want.”

“Around 900 million pounds,” Lucius murmured, sipping his tea.

Ginny dropped her pen. “What?”

He swallowed and set his cup down. He liked her reaction to his wealth. Obviously she had known that he had been wealthy, but apparently he had never given anybody a proper number before. He watched as she bent to pick up her writing utensil, and as she scowled at him as he laughed.

“You heard me correctly, little one.” And then he watched as her face contorted into an expression of disgust at his pet name. He had called her that just to see what she would do.

There was something about her that was making him want to test her boundaries. He remembered Ginny Weasley. Of course he did. She had stood up to him when she had been very young, and he had remembered that. Of all of her stupid family—inane, gormless eyes, stupid, freckled faces—she had been the only one who had appeared intelligent, fiery, somewhat all there.

But she seemed odder, now. Something was going on in her life, and while she was the one who was slated to ask questions of him, he was going to find out about her.

She made a sound in the back of her throat, and he smiled at her.

“Refrain from calling me that.”

A sweet breeze had picked up, and the smell of nicotiana wafted towards them. Ginny inhaled lovingly, closing her eyes as she did so. She could, at least, appreciate his garden, layered rows of luscious flowers.

He watched her in her moment of vulnerability. For only a few seconds, she let her guard down as she inhaled the scent. He watched the muscles in her neck move, the way her hair eddied around her shoulders.

Then she spoke.

“Do you do this yourself?” She waved at the flora with her hand, her eyes open once more, asking the question that she had wanted to ask from the beginning.

Lucius nodded.

Ginny raised her eyebrows.

“I like to garden,” he said, not quite defensively, but almost.

“Rooting around in the dirt?”

“There is something—soothing about it.”

“I never liked it,” Ginny replied.

“You just like the end product.”

“Yes,” she said, hiding a smile.

It struck her, then, how odd they looked, the two of them sitting and talking as some sort of old friends, Lucius so casual in his clothes, with his sweet china tea cup, her with her legs crossed casually, her writing pad balanced on one knee.

Lucius watched her curiously. How antagonistic their last meeting had been, but yet also how interesting—and here they were, today, sitting and talking nearly civilly. She looked good in the late light of the day, the slight breeze catching her bright hair and curling it around her chin and shoulders. His eyes tracked her movements interestedly, noting her genuine laugh lines and the deep brackets around her mouth. She had had a lot of laughter in her life, it seemed. He liked that. It was the yin to his yang, the orange burble of a chuckle to his silvered coolness.

Then he shook off the thought like a dog emerging from water, and hardened his stare once more.

She watched him.

“I’m—” He trailed off for a moment and stared up at the wooden roof of the gazebo. Ginny watched the sharp jut of his Adam’s apple as he swallowed once, quiet in thought. “I’m—wanting to show you the garden.”

She raised her eyebrows at him.

“Come on. Get up.” When she was still sitting a second later, he looked slightly exasperated. “I’m not going to murder you and bury you under my nasturtiums,” Lucius said.

Ginny pondered his statement for a moment. The both of them suddenly realised the realism of his words—that 30 years ago, it was possible that he had done that very thing. How many unmarked graves were there across this lea of land, she wondered to herself.

He looked pained, but then she stood, and the look disappeared from his face.

“Don’t you dare offer me your arm,” Ginny said, abruptly, at him.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he replied back, cool as silk, and just like that they were back in a familiar territory. His voice was a knife, and she was a shield.

She flicked her hair back over a shoulder, grabbed her pen and pad, and walked with him down the steps of the gazebo.

-

“What do you think?”

Lucius was walking about ten paces ahead of her, the wind catching at his hair again. He had his hands in the pockets of his trousers, his stance casual.

“I like the colours of your flowers,” Ginny murmured, jotting down notes as she walked behind him, looking up occasionally to make sure that she wasn’t walking into a bed of roses.

“Thank you,” he said, his voice absent-minded, as he strolled along, occasionally thumbing at the velvety petal of a rose or a lily, sometimes bending to check the dampness of the soil underneath the plants with one long and extended finger. “It’s taken me years to get this garden looking as it does now. It was neglected for a few years, there.”

“During the Voldemort times,” Ginny said.

If she had expected him to flinch at the mention of the name that had been so feared, she was disappointed. He nodded once, a terse motion, instead.

“Yes. During those years.”

“When your dungeons were full—there was no time to plant peonies?”

His head moved quickly and he looked at her. There had been an edge to her voice that she had not necessarily meant to have, but she couldn’t help it. Their pasts were so different, so vastly different—and here they were, walking like old friends through his bloody garden. She was angry at herself for being so civil to him, yet knew that forgiving the Malfoy family had been necessary for her development as a person, as holding onto anger like that would have been so detrimental. She was at a mental crossroads, felt that she was betraying her past by being with a person such as Lucius Malfoy, but also felt as though it was necessary for her to do what she was doing in order to move forward completely.

“I’m sorry if I sounded sharp,” she muttered. “Old habits die hard.”

She didn’t need to say any more. He understood. He hadn’t even said anything to her to prompt the apology, as he knew there was nothing he could say. They were different, the two of them. They had different pasts.

“Fair enough,” he murmured, turning his head back to the flowers. “I deserved that. Many have said much worse.”

“Oh?”

“The one who was the most hateful was the Lovegood man, actually.” He sounded distracted but Ginny had a feeling that he was speaking in a half-minded manner on purpose, to deflect her.

“Luna’s father?”

“Yes.”

“You had his daughter in your dungeons,” Ginny said, shaking her head. “His only family member. His only child. Of course he would be upset at you.”

“You think I don’t know that?” Lucius had turned to face her, and the light was catching his aquiline features, the wind moving his hair about his neck. He looked inhuman. “I, too, only have one child.”

“Then why did you volunteer your dungeons?” They had stopped moving.

“Volunteer. That was not the word I would have used. And I hadn’t, my own child would have died. And that is that. If there is one thing I value—above all else, above blood purity, above history, above propriety—it is family.”

Ginny watched him and then nodded. “I can see that.”

“Don’t think I don’t live the past every day, Ginevra.” His voice had mellowed out again.

“Don’t think I don’t, either,” she said, looking at him straight on, and she knew that in that instant he remembered that one of her brothers had died at the hands of his colleagues because an odd, unfiltered look passed over his face.

“I suppose we all do. The nightmares Draco used to have—” He stopped abruptly, unsure of why he had started discussing his son, unsure if Draco would have approved of him revealing such intimate details.

“I know,” Ginny said. “He mentioned them to me, once.”

He looked surprised.

“We outgrew the ‘mortal enemies’ stage fairly quickly once Voldemort was removed from the equation. And I was never the one that Draco hated the most.” She smiled to herself. “Definitely not.”

Lucius frowned. There was something odd about the way she was smiling.

“I’d go as far as to say that we’re friends, now. He still hates Harry, though.”

“Who doesn’t?”

Ginny frowned at him. “You sound like a teenaged boy.”

“Did you date him?” Lucius looked at her from a sideways glance.

She laughed out loud. “No, I never dated Draco. But our sons are friendly, now, and so we have grown up. I like him more than Asteria, though. I think she regards me with suspicion.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Lucius murmured, idly fingering a tulip. He was mildly fond of his daughter-in-law, but she often had jealousy problems, and Ginevra was by no means an average looking woman. And with the way she had just covertly smiled while talking about his son—he was surprised that Draco had never pursued her.

“You don’t like Asteria?”

“She is fine. She is polite, and duty-bound, and she serves her purpose,” he replied.

“That’s so clinical.”

“Sometimes, clinical is needed. To strengthen and breed proper families.”

Ginny’s brown furrowed. “But we’re talking about people, not brood mares,” she said.

“Are we?”

“What about love?”

Lucius laughed a little, turning to look at her.

“What’s funny?”

“We don’t marry for love,” he said, a small smile on his mouth. “It’s a quaint notion, but it doesn’t occur in our society. I suppose there are couples who have either grown to love each other, or have loved each other by chance even before the engagement was arranged, but it’s—rare.”

“Did you love Narcissa?” She tilted her chin up to look at him.

He was silent for a few long moments, and Ginny wondered if he had tuned out. Then—

“In a way. I loved Narcissa in a way.”

“What does that tripe mean?” She had had enough of his roundabout questioning and answering and so she decided to go right for the jugular. “Just give me a straight answer.”

“I loved parts of her,” he said, looking away from Ginny and off into the orange distance of his gardens. “I loved her ferocity, and her dedication to me and the family. I loved how much she loved—loves—Draco and how much he loves her. Narcissa was wilder than people made her out to be, but so very balanced at the same time. When she knew that she was to be married to me—me, the beastly Malfoy, the one who was Voldemort’s right hand man, the cruel one—she did not balk. God, the way she looked on our wedding day. So calm. So stoic. She was always bound by duty, and always did her best to uphold it.” He paused, drew in half of a breath and turned back to Ginny. “And it was her quick thinking that helped to warm our image in the eyes of the Ministry. Her—with Potter.”

She looked odd, he noticed. There was an indeterminable look on her face.

“That sounds lovelier than you made it out to be,” Ginny said.

He sighed. “She left me, you know. That doesn’t happen. In our society—it just does not happen.”

“Divorce?” She sounded incredulous. “But it’s so commonplace—”

“Not in the Pureblood society,” he snapped at her. “I have become—I have become a laughingstock. Years ago I struck fear in the hearts of the vapid women and inane men of our society. I could stride into a room and people would stop and stareat me. They would shut up and listen to me. And now I am nothing.” He stopped, breathing heavier.

“Why do you care so much about what others thing of you?” Her question was not malicious or aggressive. She was genuinely curious.

“I just—I do. Appearances are—if you haven’t been reared in this society, you will not understand, Ginevra.” He turned fully from her and began to walk away.

“What? Are we done with that subject?” She scowled at his back and huffed to herself.

“Yes,” he called back, his voice on the wind.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she grumbled, staring at the mud on her boots. “Wait for me.”

“Hurry up,” he said, still facing away from her, but slowing his pace incrementally so that she could somewhat catch up to him. Still, he was farther away from her than she wanted.

“Wait,” she said, struggling to keep up with him, the heels of her boots getting caught in the muck, and so she reached out a hand, not thinking, to steady herself on his back.

As soon as her hand touched him, he whirled away from her, and she pitched forward, landing hard on one knee, feeling the wetness of the earth below immediately soaking through her one trouser leg.

“What the hellwas that for?” She stared up at him, gritting her teeth.

He didn’t answer her, and there was an odd look in his eyes.

“Don’t touch me,” he said.

“It’s not like I deliberately set out to touch you, you stupid, stupid man,” she snapped at him. “I lost my balance.”

“Inelegant,” he murmured, turning away from her.

She hauled herself up and lunged towards him before she could reconsider, landing her palms on his back. He turned away as quickly as humanly possible, grabbing her wrists in a very strong grip, and shaking her once, not hard, but enough.

“I mean what I said,” he hissed. “Don’t touch me.”

Ginny met his eyes defiantly for as long as she could, but finally she wrenched herself free from his grasp, shoving him away from her. He didn’t react to her touch on his chest, which she found odd.

“I’m going. Now,” she said, stepping away from him. “Don’t you follow me. I’ll walk myself to your gate.”

He made a move as if to come after her—not aggressively, but somewhat contritely—but Ginny darted back so quickly that he remembered that she had played Quidditch professionally for years, that she was more agile than he gave her credit for, and then, as he was digesting that thought, she was nothing more than a bright red blur across his gardens.

-

When the letter came from him, switching the day for their next meeting, he mentioned nothing of the incident in his garden, offered no apology. The letter was direct, and to the point, and professional as usual.

She did not find that odd. She had not really been expecting it, but she had mulled over the scenario over and over in her head. Something about her hand—her touch—on him had set him off completely.

She filed the fact away in her head. She kept it there, and turned it over in her mind, looking at it from all angles. Lucius Malfoy was human. He had shown a shred of scary, odd humanity, and that was not something she would forget.

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