Draco
[the best time of your life]
It was inevitable that they should fight, father and son, but it didn't happen until Draco was nearly 18, leaving Hogwarts. Lucius didn't count the petty squabbles and pouts over this toy or that broom or Narcissa's attention. Those were quickly ended with a disapproving frown, or the worst, when the boy was quite young, a quick and painful spell. Narcissa had nearly never forgiven him, but Draco had quickly learned to step carefully around his father when he was in a temper.
They did not, though it would have been reasonable, have fights over the inheritance, or Draco's relative freedom to come and go as he pleased, or even Draco's future upon leaving Hogwarts. That everything was laid out and lined up before him pleased Draco secretly, and irritated Lucius though he was certainly the one who laid and lined all things out for his son.
Draco Malfoy was like his mother too much in that respect-- an overdelicate creature to be decorated and led about by someone more rich and powerful. His ambitions, or the ones he cared to act on, were petty like his mother's as well: creature comforts, inconsequential social squabbling, this bauble or that. One might justify these as the wants and ambitions of a boy, but that was no excuse in Lucius's eyes.
Narcissa's petty ambitions had at least landed her the affections of an ambitious man. Lucius gave her all the greatness that she would need.
But Draco... His son, heir to the Malfoy fortune, born in a position to wrestle fate to its knees, gave himself to the boy whom fate dragged along like a piece of driftwood in a current. Impure blood, flawed vision, friend of muggle filth.
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They fought over muggles, and at first it was innocently.
"Father," Draco said, over breakfast, while his mother sat reading the paper, "What is really so disgusting about muggles?"
Narcissa paled, and Lucius sputtered a moment on his coffee. He recovered quickly, setting his cup down: "Really, Draco, nobody asks why vomit is disgusting. It merely is." That at such a late age, Draco asked about such a constant of life... Lucius narrowed his eyes. "Damn Dumbledore for putting such ideas--"
"No," Draco interrupted him. Narcissa stood up suddenly, so that the paper fluttered to the floor. She didn't even look down at it, reaching across and grabbing a platter of sausages, forking several onto Draco's plate.
"You're looking so thin again," she fluttered, "Whatever are they feeding you at Hogwarts? Really, I should have listened to your father, they haven't the vaguest idea there about the needs of a growing boy..."
"I'm nearly grown, mother." Draco pushed his plate away, his eyes never leaving Lucius. A sausage tumbled onto his hand, and fine serving silverware clattered to the tabletop. But Draco hardly noticed; he didn't even look up as his mother nearly collapsed into her seat, her cheeks flushed.
Lucius frowned. "She's right, if you're speaking that way to your own mother."
Usually that would have been the end of it. But Draco did not quiet, his thin lips setting into a straight line under his refined, pointed nose. "No, really, I'm serious. I mean, I still hate them, I think. They're not very clever and they dress badly and they haven't got any magic, which is just unnatural. And they raise people like Potter," he added, but somehow he looked thoughtful instead of hateful, and it made Lucius's frown corrupt into a scowl. "But anyways I suppose we are disgusted by vomit because it makes us ill."
"Likewise with Muggles, then, Draco. Now eat your breakfast."
"I'm serious, father! Haven't you got an answer?"
Lucius sensed the beginnings of a pout from his son. Irritation made a vein twitch at his temple, but he took the excuse to smooth back his hair and his anger all at once. Lucius had often encouraged Draco's nearly petulant attitude, hoping to cultivate fire, vicious passion. But as Draco grew older, his sneering grew no more subtle, his poison stayed crude and unrefined. It was a constant annoyance to Lucius.
But evenly he replied: "Really, son, I thought you'd gotten over asking whether the sky is blue."
"That's not what I'm asking at all!"
"Isn't it?"
"Well Po-- someone at school was saying that--"
"I. Don't. Care. What some good-for-nothing schoolboy says, Draco, and neither should you. You do not like the rats that occasionally infest the wine cellar despite our so-called guaranteed and expensive warding spells. They leech off what we create without even understanding what they steal, filthying everything they touch... When a rat nibbles at your bread, do you smile and propose that you live happily side by side? No. You destroy it, before there are a hundred of them rampaging through your house."
Draco's jaw tightened immediately. "It's not the same," he said, his voice rising. "Rats are disgusting. Rats are not people."
Lucius's hand fisted in his robes. "My dear son," he forced out calmly, "Whoever has been telling you that Muggles are people?"
"No, one had to tell me, father." Draco's cheeks were streaked red, but his eyes were hard, like steel. There was a pointed haughtiness to his voice. "I can see it. It's obvious. What's the difference between us and them, besides magic? Take that away from us, and we're the same. We look and talk and think and react basically the same ways. And whereas they lack magic, they invent things. Things we've borrowed if only in the most rudimentary fashion, like casting spells on their trains and their buses."
He had expected his son to back down graciously; he did not expect Draco to react like the dragon of his name, fire and backbone. On later consideration, he was pleased. At the moment, he was furious.
His mouth twitched, and then he laughed, as if to cover up the chill that quickly burned as fiercely as his anger. "You sound like a Gryffindor," he sneered, "or that old prat Dumbledore. Do you even know what you're saying, silly boy? What separates us, 'besides Magic,' you ask? Tools separate men from monkeys; build and grace the stallion from the donkey. Yes, to a fool's eye, we may look the same, but only a fool would think they are anywhere *near* our level. Really, Draco... I would have thought better of you than to let some schoolmate fill your head with such ridiculous notions."
"Maybe you're the one with the ridiculous notions." Draco's fingers were entwined with the edges of his robes. He had dropped his chin, but his eyes were fixed on his father, glaring through the slashes of his bangs. "You don't even know what you're talking about. You haven't the slightest idea. You're just telling me everything that your father told you, and you expect me to be as naive as you were at my age. I'm smarter than that. I..." He stopped himself, suddenly, as if still afraid of Lucius's fury.
"Yes, my enlightened son, who nearly failed two of his classes this year?" Lucius's voice cooled as he got angrier. "I'm disappointed in you, Draco. I find you have decided to engage in misguided, baseless philosophizing with some... what must it be? Gryffindor? rather than doing what I did when I doubted my father. When I challenged him, I studied very carefully, and gathered evidence against him; and then I cut the very legs out from under him. Yet I still seem to be standing."
With that he turned his back, offering his arm to Narcissa. She took it, but she was studying her son with suspicious eyes, her face gone white. "See now, you have distressed your poor mother. Really, Draco." She flashed him a look, but he merely patted her hand. "Come now, my diamond, you know how you aren't to get worked up about these things. It isn't good for your health."
"Tell me father, was it very easy to cut out the legs from under a corpse?" Draco's manner was mockingly innocent, but his words were petty. "I can only assume that once you're dead, you shall also be lying flat on your back."
Lucius sighed tiredly. "If you wish to admit that the only time you will win this quarrel is when you argue with my corpse, then you are not half so smart as you profess. Your room, Draco. I will not repeat myself."
Lucius did not bother to turn back and see if Draco complied. He simply expected his son to. He likewise expected it when Draco sulked for a week following, and expected it when Narcissa plied him with sweets and presents to come out of it.
He did not realize that lines had been crossed far before their first true fight. He would not find about Harry Potter until four weeks later.
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.