Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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

Chapter List
- 4
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- 6
“Oh, good. You’re early,” Lucius said as he opened the front door of the Manor for her.

“That’s charming. Not even a ‘hello, you look nice,’” she muttered, shoving past him, her cloak swirling around her ankles as she did so.

“Well, you’re covered up by that cloak. You could be wearing a swimming costume under there for all I know.” He sounded bored, was fixing his cuffs on his right hand. Ginny knew that his comment was ridiculous because he could clearly see the reams of blue material coming out from under the black outerwear.

He looked good. She could afford him that. The dress robes he had on were ridiculously expensive-looking, with silver mink fur around the collar. She could see the white button-up shirt from between the silver-embroidered lapels of the robe, and the white bow tie he had on underneath. He had tied his hair back with a black velvet ribbon. Even his leather boots were extremely well polished.

“Well?”

He was speaking to her.

“Well what,” she replied, terse and anxious.

“Well—take off that blasted cloak and let me have a look at you. If you look ridiculous I can’t take you tonight,” he said harshly, and with that, he stepped over to her and started to unbutton her cloak without so much as asking her permission.

“Get off of me,” she snapped, and shoved him back from her with brutal force. He took it well, his body solid, his fingers finishing the job of unclasping the garment before she managed to fully react, and he stepped a foot away from her as her cloak fell to the floor, unheeded.

There was silence. Ginny refused to meet his eyes for a moment.

She had gone shopping at some of the most expensive Muggle stores she had ever been in. It had been a long, long time since Ginevra Weasley had gone shopping for a dress purely for an event. Perhaps the last time she had done so had been before her children had been born, when she had had more money and more time and more fame, and had just been more. More slender. More beautiful.

It had taken time to find this dress. She had very nearly burst into tears when she had found something that had fit her properly and looked right.

The dress was extravagant. It was a lighter, iridescent blue colour, a shade that Ginny hardly ever wore. She had wanted to wear green, as it worked best with her hair, but she hadn’t wanted to stroke Lucius’ ego in any way. The material was a stiff silk, and made a comforting sound when she walked, a sort of shushing. It was an interesting cut, piled high on only one shoulder, the other completely bare, with wide bands of material wrapping around the bodice down to mid-thigh, where the dress suddenly billowed into a full and luscious skirt. It was the most expensive and beautiful and silliest thing she had ever bought, let alone wear.

She felt ridiculous in it, and yet also strangely soothed, as though its dramatic cut made it a sort of armour for the night she was about to face. When she had twisted her hair up behind her head and pinned it into a tight French roll, she had felt quite lovely for a moment, beneath the makeup and the hair products and the simple silver earrings she was wearing.

She hadn’t been able to afford the fancy jewellery she had wanted to buy to accompany the outfit.

Ginny finally got the nerve to meet Lucius’ eyes—but she found that she couldn’t see them properly.

His eyes were all over her, he knew that—from the creamy slope of her shoulder to the ample lines of her chest to the swan-like white of her exposed arm—she had somehow, somehow managed to pull it off flawlessly. Even in her tetchy state as she stood in front of him she still looked lovely, a pink stain working its way across her cheekbones. Lucius tapped, briefly, into her emotions, suddenly realised that she felt insecure in her attire and perhaps her body, and then thought it ridiculous.

He was quiet, looking at her hemline, her waistline—still slender after bearing three children to that Potter—the delicate boning of her wrists. He thought that she thought herself larger and ungainly, but she was wrong, there. There was a sweet softness to her body that made her succulently womanly. Even though the boning of the dress pulled her waist into a very feminine hourglass figure, the satiny flesh of her breasts was pushed up, creating a now-flushed and lovely cleavage.

She looked like a woman, something she had not done at any of their meetings, at any point.

Fuck. He was reacting to her, his body quickly becoming a turncoat.

“Well?” Her word exploded out of her, and she cringed for how desperate it sounded in the front hall of the cavernous house. He was so impassive that she was irrationally afraid that she had gotten it completely wrong, that she looked like some misled fourth-year at the Yule Ball.

And then he met her eyes full on—his were scorching, and she almost flinched at the intensity. And then—then the look was gone, and he was collected and inscrutable again, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

“It’s good,” he said, nodding.

Ginny’s eyes narrowed slightly, her eyebrows soft, and she looked at him as though she were determining something. And then she, too, let her look drop, and her arms uncrossed, and all of a sudden she was more confident, her head tilting back comfortably as she surveyed him.

“I couldn’t—I didn’t have any other jewellery to wear,” she said softly, breaking the silence, and Lucius looked her over, could see that she was right.

“There’s nothing wrong with the bareness of your collarbones,” Lucius said, matter-of-fact, and Ginny blinked. “But you’re right,” he continued, adjusting his tie and tilting his head at her. “One moment.” Before she could blink again, he had turned and disappeared.

Ginny flicked at her nails confusedly.

He reappeared a moment later, and walked purposefully over to her. Ginny resisted the urge to back up, and instead held her ground, staring at him. He eclipsed her, the scenery behind him, was full in front of her, and she inhaled subtly, could smell him. He smelled nice, like musky pine and chipped quartz and, strangely, rose. It was soothing, and her mind was slightly numbed, and she didn’t react properly when he lifted his arms. She did, however, react when he reached his arms around her neck. Ginny fought the urge to smack him away, a vestige of her war days, and instead gritted her teeth.

“What. Are. You. Doing?” Her voice was rock and diamond.

“Stay,” he said dismissively, as though he were talking to one of his peafowl. Her eyes widened, and just as she was about to bat him away, she felt the ropey coolness of a necklace upon her breastbone, and he stepped back fluidly.

Ginny said nothing, but turned instead to the hallway mirror, silent as she surveyed her appearance. The lighting was dim—half of the candles were extinguished in the foyer—but she could still make out the thing that he had draped around her neck.

“Opals,” she said quietly.

“I like them,” he replied nonchalantly, twiddling over her shoulder with something on his shirt. He seemed to be obsessed with his appearance, and she wondered if that was a manifestation of nervousness. If so, he was hiding it well.

“Whose necklace is this?”

“It didn’t belong to Narcissa, if that is what you are wondering,” he said tersely, his eyes still not meeting hers in the mirror. “It’s belonged to my side of the family for years, but for some reason, opals are often looked down upon. Funny, that.”

Ginny was struck with how much of a couple they looked, side by side in the hallway mirror, Lucius over her shoulder because of his height, and she swallowed quickly, taking four steps backwards, jarring him in the process.

He looked at her, almost quizzically.

“Aren’t they supposed to be bad luck?” Ginny hated how her voice was almost quavering.

“I guess we’ll see.” His voice was low, and the words had an odd feeling of finality.

---

Lucius had taken her in a coach and four. She had shaken her head at that, reminded of the Muggle tale of Cinderella. He had, actually, held the door open for her, but then had ruined the moment of chivalry by barking at her to “hurry her arse” and she had purposefully stepped on his leather-shod foot with her pointed high heel as she had walked past him.

His hiss of pain had been pleasing to her ears, but she had ignored him, settling into the coach, leaning back against the leather seat and arranging her lovely material around her. She had felt as though she was a cloud, a meringue, a lovely dessert.

Once inside, Lucius had sat back heavily in his own seat, across from her, and had promptly closed his eyes. She had felt the lurch of the coach starting, and for the following forty minutes had watched him silently.

---

When the coach had slowed to a stop, Lucius opened his eyes.

Ginny was struck with how old he had looked, just for those forty minutes. There had been something vulnerable in him, something very real. She wondered if he was at all looking forward to the night. She was not, really, and yet was. She was curious to see what his world was like, but she also had a nagging suspicion that he had not been to one of these gatherings in a very long time. Ginny wondered if she had saddled herself with a pariah.

She shoved those thoughts out of her mind. She was the pariah, really. She was considered a blood traitor by these people, and yet she was not scared.

On the other side of the coach, Lucius was thinking, his mind a maze of despairing thoughts. He watched her as her fingers absentmindedly came up to the necklace he had clasped onto her, her fingernails clicking subtly over the jewels. She seemed unused to the opulence, but yet interestingly comfortable in her dress.

“I’d prepare you for tonight, but I just—I feel too tired to.” He saw no sense in lying. He felt exhausted and they hadn’t even started the night properly yet. His entire body ached—his shoulders were tense, and he could feel a cold sweat starting between the blades and under his arms.

She turned her head to look at him in the dim light of the carriage, and he was interested in her luminescence. The opals seemed to cast a reflective light off of her face.

“Anything I should definitely know?”

“Follow my lead with utensils at dinner. Don’t hit anybody. There will probably be a dance. I don’t know. I don’t know.” He exhaled.

Ginny stared at him. “Are you alright?”

“I feel very tired all of a sudden,” he murmured, and then blinked once, and sat up straight, exhaling again. “Bugger.”

That was when she laughed out loud, breaking the terse silence of the coach. Lucius looked at her curiously, his mouth softer than before.

“What the hell are we doing here?” Ginny’s question cracked with the roils of her laughter. “I’ve gone a bit hysterical. Oh, god.”

Her laughter made him feel a bit better, and a bit more open.

“It’s been a few good years since I’ve been to one of these society gatherings,” Lucius said quietly.

“I gathered as much,” she replied.

“I may be just as gauche as you are,” Lucius said, almost smiling.

“Well, let’s get pissed on champagne and be outrageous. I’ll try to not embarrass you in front of your peers, though,” she said, still laughing a little.

“Fantastic,” he muttered, adjusting his collar as she threw the door of the carriage open, a full gust of wind blowing in.

---

Ginny stood at the large windows of the formal ballroom. The Parkinson house was nice enough, and so far the evening was nice enough, if not a little boring.

She thought it might have been from the shock. When the front door of the mansion had opened and Violet and Atticus Parkinson saw the trademark red Weasley hair standing there beside the trademark light Malfoy hair, their eyebrows had shot into their hairlines.

Ginny laughed to remember as Violet had taken her hand, gob smacked, and had held it briefly as Lucius had exchanged pleasantries with Atticus. Atticus, for his part, had kissed the top of her hand with dry lips, his eyes still peculiarly wide.

“What an—interesting—dress, my dear.” The slightly barbed comment from Violet’s still stunned lips didn’t slide unnoticed by Ginny, but she had had a lot of experience with cruel Slytherins, and this had been on the mild end of the scale. Ginny had smiled brilliantly and replied “it’s Muggle,” before inclining her head and walking off with Lucius.

Their hosts had stood silently in the foyer, watching their retreating forms.

Lucius had insisted on taking her arm and walking her through the grand ballroom, and Ginny had almost laughed out loud at the stiffness of his elbow joint, the absolute grace that he held himself with. Even though he had confided that he hadn’t really wanted to be present at this gathering, he still had the entire façade down pat.

Maybe it was the haughty, cold tilt of his face, and the harsh slant of his nose that he looked down, and maybe it was the similar expression that she adopted as armour, but as they made their way across the—stunningly beautiful—room, shocked looks abounded but nobody made cruel comments.

Ginny, for her part, was busy absorbing the scene. Maybe she was misinformed, but she had expected something a little more illustrious, something with beautiful people fanning themselves, slumped insouciantly against the marble walls, swilling champagne, flirting outrageously. Perhaps in the past these gatherings had been like that, but the people she was eyeing now—as she was being surreptitiously dragged across the floor by her mulish date—were older. It was a sea of grey hair and silvered moustaches. Everyone looked perfectly dapper, with the occasional gaudy monstrosity of a dress or an ascot.

Maybe the war had stunted the prior and incredible malice of the pureblood society. Ginny had so far been underwhelmed with the lack of barbed remarks—she had been expecting to be verbally flagellated. Instead, she felt a great sort of sadness pervading the entire situation. The once-illustrious families of pureblood society now all looked tired, so much older than they were. Everything seemed a bit ragged around the edges.

She was now sitting beside Lucius on a divan. He had gotten them both a glass of champagne.

“Everyone looks tired,” she mumured.

“Everyone probably is.”

She was quiet for a moment, and then spoke again. “It seems like just—a big show.” She was talking quietly so that only Lucius could hear her observations. Even as she spoke, she kept her face bland and almost arrogant so that nobody else could divine what she was murmuring to him.

He swallowed champagne and nodded, the slightest movement. “I’m glad that you noticed that, too.”

Ginny resisted the urge to snap her head around in surprise at how he had just agreed with her. He sounded almost amicable, when usually he was trying his hardest to rile her. There was obviously something about being amongst his old peers that was either weakening him or building him up—she couldn’t tell.

“This society is crumbling, really. Everyone denies it, but it is,” he continued.

“Why?”

“Why is it crumbling? Or why do people deny?”

“Er—both, I suppose,” she answered.

“Well, it’s crumbling because it has no place in this world anymore. Try as we might, the Muggle influence is leaching into our world, and—in some regards—they are surprisingly advanced.”

Ginny gaped at him.

“Close your mouth. Are you trying to catch flies? As I was saying, with such advancement all around us—welcome or not—we are quite evidently lagging. And there is nothing to do except wait for the demise of this society and its rules. And as for why people are denying—well, change is hard, is it not?”

“It is,” Ginny agreed.

He brought a hand up to his face and rubbed at his eyes—quick enough so that nobody would notice and pounce on his outward display of weakness.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m all right,” he murmured, taking a sip from his flute. “Are you all right? Dinner is soon.”

“Bugger them all,” she whispered back. “I don’t care what fucking fork I use.”

“Oh, lord,” Lucius said, swallowing down a chuckle with another swig of champagne. “Can you just watch me and try to follow my lead?” She started to speak but he held up his hand. “I realise that it is not in your nature to follow, but just for this once. For propriety’s sake.”

Ginny stared. He looked almost beseeching.

“Oh, fine.”

“I take it you were revelling in the idea of prying apart a crab with your fingers and the dessert fork, and seeing your hostess’ aghast face?” Lucius almost laughed at the look on Ginny’s own face.

“Perhaps.”

He was acutely aware of her body. The divan was small enough that he could feel the heat of her. They were not touching, but still their bodies were close together. He could smell her from where he was sitting—salt and night queen flower. It was an odd combination.

“I don’t really want to be here anymore,” Ginny sighed.

Lucius looked sideways at her.

“And neither do you,” she continued, without even looking at him to verify.

She could feel his gust of a sigh through the subtle expanse and tightening of his ribs, which were against her own torso.

“That’s probably true.”

“You were right, though.” She felt his surprise at being called right by her through the tension of his skin. She continued. “There was no way for me to understand this bloody society unless I did witness it. So—good call on bringing me here.”

Lucius laughed, but it was an odd laugh—sort of bitten off and sharp. She winced at the sound of it.

“You’ve—miraculously—held up your end of the bargain.”

Ginny resisted no longer—she snaked a hand between their bodies and pinched him as hard as she could.

Lucius’ face changed into a tense mask as he held in his bark of pain.

“Ouch.”

“Don’t be rude,” she mumbled, swigging from her glass.

“You drink like a sailor.”

“I grew up around brothers, moron.”

“Watch your damn tone.”

Their exchange was hardly cruel. Their insults, throughout their time spent together over the past weeks, had become rote and smooth, exchanged with a thread of good-natured intelligence, with an overlay of past-bred aggression.

Somewhere, a tone chimed.

Ginny frowned. “Is that the call to dinner? How goddamned pretentious.”

Lucius fought his own urge to pinch her, and instead stood with a suffering sigh, extended his hand to her.

Ginny loosened the frown on her face, and, after a moment of inhaling, extended her own hand up, and took his fingers with her own.

---

After dinner, Ginny watched as the couples danced across the floor.

“They look good at this, at least.”

Lucius was over her shoulder, observing as well. He hummed an assent. “They’ve been bred to do this since childhood. We all have.”

“Are you going to ask me to dance?”

Coming from any other woman, the question might have been unbearably coquettish, and he would have refused, suspicious and weary. But she had asked it with a simple, frank look on her face. She was not angling for his cock or his wallet. She genuinely wanted to know if he was going to ask her to dance. Lucius liked that. And because of that—

“Well, can you?”

“Dance?”

“Can you at least waltz?” Lucius asked the question under his breath. Ginny laughed out loud at the look on his face.

“Yes, I can,” she replied. “My mum taught me in our kitchen.”

“Lovely,” he replied sarcastically, and took her hand. “Put down your damned drink.”

Ginny complied, and Lucius led her out to the dance floor. Without any preamble, he pulled her body into position, a safe distance away from his own, and placed her hands on his shoulder and in his hand. His other hand went to her back.

The span of his hand was pleasant. She had never before realised how large his hands actually were, how long the fingers were that spread across her back. She tilted her head back slightly, looking him in the face. He appeared to be faraway, thinking of elsewhere, but as his peripheral vision caught her movement, he looked back down at her, his eyebrows raising slightly, his mouth gently pursed. Their eyes met, and Ginny instinctively crossed hers, making her pupils go awry. When she refocused her vision, she noticed him trying not to smile.

“This party is boring,” she whispered to him.

Lucius gave her a look.

“You were the one who wanted to come,” he answered back.

“For research.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t just to steal a dance from me?” From anyone else the comment would have been slightly flirtatious and funny, but from Lucius it sounded calmly arrogant.

Ginny pinched his shoulder and he frowned at her.

“Stop pinching me.”

“You’re the one who invited me. Are you sure that you just didn’t want to look down my dress while dancing?”

“Perhaps,” he answered, but he sounded distracted and was looking elsewhere, over her shoulder. She wished that she had worn higher heels.

“Are you all right?” Her voice was almost whispered.

“What?” He tore his attention away from the rest of the crowd and looked down at her.

“You look—well, you look bloody awful,” Ginny murmured. It was true—but maybe she was the only one to notice. Outwardly, he appeared pristine—every hair in place, every facial expression held immobile and frozen. But there was an extreme tiredness to his eyes, dark shadows starting to appear under his lower eyelashes. She mentally chided herself—she had spent so much time with Lucius Malfoy that she was starting to notice his subtlest facial changes.

“Thank you,” he remarked, voice dry. “That is charming.”

“But seriously—”

“I’m fine. I just feel tired. This gathering has taken—a little more out of me than I had anticipated.” He could feel his shoulders bunching under her hand, and willed himself to stop. In truth, he was exhausted. He wanted to go home and curl up under a heavy duvet, or, at the very least, escape to his coach and lie down on the bench in there. Today was one of the worse days, and he had been foolish to persevere with still going out.

Ginny pinched his side again.

“Don’t be naughty,” he said.

“I’m not a child,” she replied, frowning back at him.

“Stop frowning. The others will wonder what is wrong with us.”

She was about to reply that he had been the one who had frowned first, but instead she sighed and shut her mouth.

His movements were economical—no grand gestures in dance, here, but elegance. A younger Lucius of yore might have spun delicately, used more elaborate hand movements, but the Lucius of the present conserved his energy through concise and measured movements.

“This party is boring. You’re right,” he said, his face and voice deadpan. Ginny nodded.

“When can we leave?”

Instead of chiding her as she had expected, he thought for a moment. “Tradition dictates probably another 45 minutes at the least.”

Ginny rolled her eyes.

“Behave,” he murmured, still looking over her shoulder. “We can at least dance for some of that.”

“Good,” she said, and she noticed him looking down at her in mild surprise, as if he were shocked that she could ever consider dancing with him a good thing. “Well, you’re a nice dancer,” she clarified defensively.

He had a smile on his face that was almost smug, and so she pinched him again.

---

Riding home in the coach, Ginny resisted the urge to rest her head on Lucius’ shoulder, instead opting to tilt it back against the headrest opposite, her eyes slipping closed.

“Are you tired?”

“No, I just wanted to look at the inside of my eyelids for a while,” she retorted. “Yes, I am tired. I’m rarely out this late.”

“It’s only half-twelve,” Lucius said, looking at his pocket watch, but his hands shook as he made the motions, and Ginny noticed, though didn’t comment.

“When you have children you fall asleep earlier.” She pried her high heels off and threw them to the floor of the coach, pressing her thumbs into the soles of her feet.

“I know,” he said. “Draco was notorious for keeping Narcissa and myself active throughout the day.”

At that statement, Ginny raised her head to look at him.

“What? Did you think I never played with my child?” He frowned at her. “I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t the best father in some regards, but when Draco was wee I was extremely hands-on,” he said, his mouth still hard and turned down at the corners. “And then—things—picked up in other—aspects—of my life, and I—” he hesitated, looking out the window at the rain lashing, “I abandoned him, in a way.” Ginny watched his hands clench in his lap, a little surprised at his outpouring.

Then he collected himself, and he looked back at her with even eyes.

“I’m assuming our parenting styles were different,” he said, cynically.

“Maybe,” Ginny replied.

“Draco was always wanting to ride brooms. Always. He broke his collarbone because of that at age six. I thought Narcissa was going to flay me.” Lucius smiled slightly. “As I was the one who had given him his first toy broom. He had, obviously, gone too fast on it and had fallen off, hitting himself on the edge of one of our fountains.” Ginny smiled at that mental picture. “He screamed. Oh, god, how he screamed. Didn’t cry, just screamed at us. And then Narcissa screamed at me.”

“How old were you when you had him?”

“I was 26 years old. Older than some of my pureblood compatriots, but still not at all ready for a child.”

“And Narcissa—”

“Was 25. We were old enough, I suppose,” he said, thoughtful. “But a screaming child shakes up your day-to-day life. I even considered cutting my hair short.”

She burst out laughing at that.

“I considered that, too,” Ginny said. “I was only 23 when James was born.” She trailed off slightly, remembering. “I was definitely too young. People that age are supposed to be exploring and having adventures and having lots of sex with different people, not married and with child.”

“Have you talked to Potter lately?”

The question was so random and so abrupt that Ginny blinked. Lucius was watching her, outwardly placid, and she grimaced.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Have you?” He pressed the question, and she shrugged slightly.

“Sometimes. We are trying to be friends. Or friendly, at least. This is entirely inappropriate for me to be talking about with you, by the way.” Her words lacked vitriol and he shrugged carelessly.

“I don’t care what is appropriate or not.”

“Sometimes you do,” Ginny said softly. “You care about propriety. Make up your mind.”

The coach jolted slightly and she bounced in her seat. She missed that his eyes went directly to her breasts, his sight absorbing the movement of her chest.

“I care about propriety—often—in public. I care about propriety when I—when I feel—”

“Threatened,” Ginny finished, looking at him.

“I suppose,” he admitted grudgingly. He looked grumpy, as though she had figured out some startling secret.

“That’s why you’re so mercurial with your moments of propriety. Sometimes you act like a maniac, and sometimes you act like a gentleman,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It drives me crazy.”

“I’m glad to know that,” he murmured, looking out the coach window at the rain. “Usually I like rain but this is too grey for my liking.”

Ginny rolled her eyes at his changing the topic, and then noticed the set of his mouth. “Is something wrong? You look—er—upset.”

“No,” he said tightly.

She couldn’t for the life of her figure out where his change in demeanour had come from.

Lucius clenched his hands. He just wanted to get back to the Manor.

---

“Here we are,” Ginny said, somewhat brightly and completely unnecessarily, as the coach pulled up to the front door of the Manor.

Lucius had fallen asleep for the rest of the ride home after the last bits of their conversation, and Ginny had been open-mouthed at that. It surprised her that he was able to let his guard down enough around her to actually sleep. He had simply tilted his head back and rested his neck on the seat back, drifting off, and his breathing had become slow and deep and lovely.

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “What? Oh.”

“Really. What is wrong with you right now?”

“Sometimes I merely get very tired very quickly. I think it’s a dreg from my darker days—some sort of leftover stress from—spells. Spell poisoning, perhaps.”

“What?” Ginny shook her head back and forth. “Spell poisoning?”

“For lack of a better name, yes,” he sighed, and pulled his gloves on with fastidious—albeit shaky—motions. “Come.” He beckoned to her, and, still agog, she followed him out of the coach. His movements were as poised as ever, but Ginny could see the fraying around the edges.

They began the long and eerie walk to his front door. Ginny was looking at him, surreptitiously, through side-eyed glances.

“What are you staring at me for?”

“Well, you just told me that you have a long-lasting, malingering sort of spell poisoning, and you look as though you’re about to collapse on me. Why wouldn’t I be looking at you?” Her voice came out snappier than she had intended.

“So spirited,” he mumbled, and drew up to the front door, laying his palm flat against the wood paneling. The door swung open, and Ginny was intrigued. She had never before seen how the door to Malfoy Manor was accessed.

While she was pondering the door, Lucius grunted. Ginny whipped her head around to look at him, and noticed that he was propping himself against the doorframe with his left forearm.

“Do you need any—help?” She moved a step closer to him and reached out, her palm brushing against his robes.

“Don’t touch me,” he snarled.

“Oh, good god,” Ginny barked. “You waltzed with me all night. You can handle my hand on your body, you stupid arse.”

His forearm started to slide down the frame, and his face was paler than usual, tiny, tiny beads of sweat caught in the lightness of his eyebrows. His jaw was tight, as though he was holding his teeth together in effort.

“Don’t touch me,” he repeated as she wedged her shoulder in his right underarm, but the words were less vehement than before. Ginny rolled her eyes, and, after a quick moment of debating, slung her left arm around his waist.

He was solid and warmer than she had expected, and she very nearly let go of him in surprise, but held on, and began walking him over the threshold into the front hall of the Manor.

“Hello?” Her voice rang out. “I need a little help.” She wasn’t sure who she was yelling for, but hopefully someone or something would appear.

“Oh, shut up,” he hissed. “Don’t call any more bloody attention to this debacle.”

“No, you shut up, you stubborn pig. I don’t know where to take you, so I can’t use magic, and you’re obviously in no state to heave yourself anywhere. So unless you want to lie in your front hall all night—which I would be happy to do, by the way—you will just be quiet.”

He grunted in response, just as one of his house-elves Apparated in front of the two of them.

“Oh, thank goodness,” Ginny said. Lucius was not a light man, and her left shoulder was starting to fall asleep.

The elf’s eyes were wide. “You shouldn’t be carrying the Master. Usually we do that.”

Ginny darted her eyes over to Lucius, whose jaw had gone rigid. The elf seemed to realise its mistake immediately, and took two steps back just as Lucius swung forward with his cane, snarling wordlessly. Ginny lunged at the same time, taking a half step toward him, swinging into his reach in front of him, using her rusty Quidditch skills. Lucius’ cane hit her full force on her right thigh, and she resisted the urge to cry out, instead pushing viciously at his shoulders, forcing him back from the situation.

His face changed rapidly—moving from surprise to guilt to anger again, and then to uncertainty.

“Lucius. Get a goddamned grip on yourself!” Her voice had reached her “mother” pitch—the tone that she used to neutralize her misbehaving children. It seemed to somewhat work on him, because he dropped his cane to his side, his body collapsing slightly. “I realise that you don’t want people to know your moments of weakness, but hitting an elf for accidentally revealing that you need help once in a while is not fine.”

She breathed in to say more, but that was when his eyes rolled back and he hit the floor.

---

He knew that someone else was with him. He could sense it even before he opened his eyes. And there was a fire in the hearth. He hadn’t set one. Someone had to have set one. He could hear the crackling and popping, could feel the warmth from where he was laying.

Laying?

Lucius opened his eyes and started.

Ginny was kneeling right beside him, her face a few mere inches away from his.

“What the—” he started, his voice not quite a bellow. He made as if to rise from the couch he was lying on, but Ginny slapped a hand into the middle of his chest and shoved him back down with a surprising strength.

“Lie down,” she snapped. His eyebrows rose. “You are a fucking broken man, do you know that?”

Lucius frowned even deeper at her statement. “That’s charming,” he mumbled.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

That was when he noticed that her voice was shaking—very, very slightly—and that she was looking away from him. A realisation flashed into his quick mind.

“Were you worried?”

There was a thick silence and she turned back to him, her face set stonily.

“Why did you just faint?”

She was avoiding his question. He stored that fact away for later.

“I told you. It’s some sort of spell poisoning, or something.”

“Or something?”

“I’ve never gone to a healer for it,” Lucius said. “I merely get easily fatigued sometimes, and if I don’t rest, I can—faint. It doesn’t happen too often, but it has occurred before, and I’m sorry if it worried you.”

The firelight was playing across his face, and from what Ginny could see, he was completely serious.

“You’ve never gone to a healer?”

“No,” he said, stubbornly. “It’s just something that I’ve noticed since my—my days. From the past. I don’t think it’s necessary to go see a healer about.”

“Why?”

“Consider it a penance.”

Ginny wanted to tell him that that was the stupidest idea she had ever heard, but there was something ragged in his eyes that made her stop.

“God,” she exhaled, dropping her head down onto the couch, her hairline touching his right arm. “What a fucking night.”

He laughed, then.

“I suppose you always receive more than what you bargained for—with me.”

“With any Malfoy, it seems,” Ginny replied, rolling her eyes. “Is this why you left our first meeting so abruptly?”

He wanted to ask her what she had just meant—that comment about any Malfoy, but he resisted. “Most probably,” Lucius said. “The exhaustion—it’s bone deep.” That was all he wanted to tell her on that subject. It wasn’t proper to expose his greatest weaknesses to somebody, much less the female Weasley. “That’s all,” he said, firmly.

“You can tell me when you’re tired, you know,” she said, tugging at a strand of her own hair that had come loose from the bun. “If you feel too exhausted to keep meeting or talking.”

“I’m not a fucking invalid,” he spat at her. Ginny moved back suddenly, taken aback at his anger.

“I never said you were,” she replied, voice careful.

“But now you know all my bloody weaknesses.” He had raised himself somewhat on his elbows so that he could yell at her more effectively. Lying down made him feel uncomfortable. He wouldn’t have put it past her to put a pillow over his face and try to smother him to shut him up. “I never asked for you to know all of my weakest parts,” he said, frustrated, his arms shaking with the effort of holding himself up. “And I don’t want these to be put in the paper.”

“These?”

He fell onto his back, his biceps giving out. “This spell poisoning. And—and these,” he hissed, gesturing vaguely to his back. “I hate that you know. I don’t want the whole world to.”

He shut up, then, breathing in hard through his nose and looking up at the ceiling. He hated losing his temper, especially around her.

“I won’t, then.” She straightened, standing up, her knees cracking uncomfortably as she did so. She grimaced, smoothing down the wrinkles from her dress. Lucius lay on the couch, watching her carefully with dark eyes. “I’m going home now. Open up a Floo for me.”

“I don’t do that.”

“I don’t care. It’s damn late and I don’t feel comfortable walking the grounds of the Manor in order to get to the front gate.” She stared at him, her arms over her chest.

Lucius stared back, and then sighed, rolling over slightly, and pointed his wand at the hearth.

“There. Go ahead. There’s powder in the urn on the far right.” It wasn’t exactly how he wanted to end the evening—on that odd note, a sort-of argument still hanging in the air, but it seemed that that was how it was going to end.

“You are so queer, keeping your Floo access permanently closed,” Ginny said, shaking her head slightly.

“Hm.” He grunted softly from behind her, sounding slightly strained, and so she set the top of the urn down on the mantle and turned back to look at him.

Lucius only wanted to sit up properly so he could push his hair back from his face. It was warm by the fireplace, but the exhaustion was so thorough that his arms were still shaking from before. He didn’t want to ask her for help, but when she turned around, she shook her head and moved over to him before he could tell her to bugger off.

“This is when I act my age, I suppose,” he said, his voice bitter and embarrassed.

“Sod off,” she replied, a half-smile in her voice. She sat beside him on the couch and slid her hands under his shoulders, pulling him towards her. Even as she moved him upright, he turned his head away from her. “You’re not elderly, you stupid pillock,” she said, trying to reinforce that in him, but he looked away from her, his jaw clenched.

Ginny sighed silently. He was one of the most stubborn people she had ever known. His long, silver hair was stuck to the back of his neck, the skin sweaty and flushed—from being so close to the fire, she supposed. Somehow the tie had come out of his hair in the shuffle from the hall to the sitting room.

It seemed that touch often worked well for Lucius. So Ginny shoved aside her rational brain, and reached out.

He felt the movement of her body before he felt her touch on his neck. He started, instinctively moving away from her, but Ginny was faster, closed her fist around the entire mass of his hair, and then he was stuck, unable to move any farther away.

“Let go of me,” he ground out.

“Don’t be fucking stupid,” she said, and tugged on his hair, moving him closer to her. “I’m going to braid it for you.”

“I don’t need you to do that,” he mumbled. Technically, he could just grab his wand and do a plaiting charm on his hair, but then she combed her fingers through the mass of damp hair at the nape of his neck, and he lost his thoughts, let his eyes slip shut. A shiver went down his spine.

Ginny raised herself to her knees to get a better vantage point. He had turned docile under her hands. Her suspicion had been right. She thought that maybe he hadn’t been touched enough during his lifetime—childhood, or marriage, or in the years that had passed since his divorce—and so now, when she laid her hands on him, it was a soothing touch. It reminded her of horses, and how they would stay under human hands.

His hair was beautiful. She touched it with envy, as her hair never looked as his did. It was so long—halfway down his back, a length that seemed at odds with his hyper-masculine being, the inherent male way that he held himself. But something about the odd dichotomy of his hair and his broad shoulders worked. She had been right in her very first evaluation of him—there was no blond left. It was all silver and white, streaming through her fingers like mercury, like spring water. She realised that she was sitting there, mindlessly petting him, but he was not complaining, and she had no urge to stop. His hair had always been such a point of fascination. And he smelled of salt and of lemon and cade, of fresh and deep things. Ginny let her fingertips wander up his hair, climbing to his scalp, and then she rubbed him there, letting her fingernails walk across his skin.

Lucius made a soft sound that was something between a gasp and a groan. Not many people—women—knew what an erogenous zone his scalp was. His hair was something that was usually kept bound back—during sex, during day-to-day relations—and so for someone to explore it as she was now doing made his mind tilt and spin. She was methodically pulling on sections of his hair, gradually relaxing his scalp piece by piece. There was a part of him that rebelled at what was happening—that, in his weakness, he was letting himself be petted like a cat—but the greater part of him was too absorbed in the physical sensations, too happy being touched to snap at her.

Ginny sighed. She had to go home—she was tired. It was late. The creamy silk of his hair felt nice across the heels of her hands and the joints of her fingers, but she couldn’t stay like this all night long. She began to separate his hair into three sections, coming out each one so that they were each relatively straight, free of tangles. He leaned back into her slightly as she began to braid the sections into a loose plait.

As she got to the end, Lucius held his hand out to the side automatically. She was confused for a moment, but then noticed that he had a black ribbon in his palm.

Ginny laughed, and the odd silence was broken. She reached out to take it, and tied it expertly around the tip of the braid.

“There,” she murmured, tugging lightly on the end of his hair.

“Thank you,” he replied, his voice very soft. He was still facing away from her, but she let him be, rising from the couch, her dress making satisfying sounds as she walked to the fireplace again.

“You did look very beautiful tonight,” he said, and his voice was so quiet that she was unsure of what he had said at first.

She turned half to look at him, her palm full of powder.

He was leaning back against the couch, facing her. The shadows under his eyes were dark purple and ghastly, but somehow they managed only to make his cheekbones appear that much starker, the bird-features of his face more handsome.

“Thank you,” Ginny whispered, and felt tears at her eyes. How lovely those words were. How she had missed hearing them for all those rote years with Harry. All at once, she threw the powder in the hearth and fell backwards into the trip to her flat. Lucius’ dry mouth, slightly open, was the last thing she saw.
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