I. Birth and Death
The Sum of a Man's Life, or, the Life and Times of Lucius Malfoy
[we are born and then we die]
It occurred to him, when he realized it was finally over and he knew he was in the last moments of his life, that the best and worst thing about himself was that particularly revolting thing called love.
There were two things that Lucius Malfoy loved since he was little, and one thing he grew terribly and questionably fond of when he grew older. The first two were easy for any one who knew him to guess, and the last thing, he supposed, would lately be doubted even by the subject of the fondness. That was probably his only regret before letting go.
The first two being Money and Power, of course. And the last, well, he probably had the most to gain from Lucius's death, didn't he?
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Lucius's life, he believed, really only began when he was three. That was his first clear memory, beyond strange abstract images and feelings he couldn't place in any particular order. Lucius had very little use for his childhood, and spent little time dwelling on it, but that specific memory stayed as clear as if it had happened yesterday.
It was a rare day when his mother and father had been forced, for a reason beyond his comprehension at the time, to pass through the Muggle world on some errand. His mother's earrings were sparkling diamonds, he remembered, and he wanted them terribly. (He got them, of course, but it was much later. Even as a boy, he was possessed of a calculating patience.)
A dirty, filthy Muggle had followed them and harrassed them to buy some obviously stolen watches, like some bothersome dog. Lucius could still recall the perfect disgust on his mother's face; it summed up precisely how he felt about them later on in life. The man had smelled ungodly, and when he wouldn't leave them be, Lucius's father had ignored all Wizarding rules about behavior around Muggles and taken out his wand.
The man walked like a puppet into a busy street, where one of the motorcars barrelled into him entirely too quickly and he was swept out of Lucius's vision. He remembered wanting to turn around, too young to feel anything solid and definable and definite about the act other than curiosity; but his mother kept him walking firmly forward. "It's just a dead Muggle," she'd said, and sounded so bored he immediately lost interest.
He had admired and worshipped his father quite certainly after that, as any boy ought to. More improperly, he had also aspired to his mother's cool and aloof reaction to the entire spectacle. Both were things he grew out of, but at the time, he felt them most intensely.
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Lucius's father had more affection for his dogs than for Muggles. Lucius cared for neither. His father had two fine dobermans, Ceasar and Brutus. Lucius, as a boy, often hoped that they would kill each other. Not out of any particular resentment for them; he mostly left them alone, and they ignored him. But they occasionally got in his way, and his mother hated them, and they smelled. They were stupid and useless, and Lucius could not understand why his father chose to keep them around.
Once they even made his mother scream. They came in, filthy-pawed, and left black prints all over the fine new Persian rug, especially enchanted to keep her feet warmed in the morning.
When his mother screamed, Lucius decided to find out what exactly his father had done to that Muggle on the street when he was three.
Lucius mastered the Imperius curse just before he entered Hogwarts. Brutus killed Ceasar in a rather spectacularly bloody mess, on aforementioned Persian carpet, and was put down shortly after.
Thusly, Lucius had his first crush: power.
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When he went to school, he knew a few curses, probably more than the other boys in his class, though he would shortly be outdone when Severus Snape entered the school two years later. (Severus knew forty-two minor curses and some variations, and two Unforgivables, and Lucius made sure to tuck him safely underwing. They learned quite a lot from each other and contrary to popular belief, not all of it involved gasping and sweating and bleeding.)
The Harry Potter world, characters, and rights belong to JK Rowlings, WB, Scholastic, and not the to me. "The Life and Times of Lucius Malfoy" is a fan work created out of love and appreciation for Rowling's characters, stories, and worlds, and is in no way intending to infringe on the rights of the author and copyright owners.