Narcissa
[To have and to hold]
He would like to have said it was a storybook romance. Not because he cared for romance, particularly, but because it won sympathies so much better in important salons, and sympathy won allies so much easier.
He would not say she was not beautiful, because she was. She was breathtakingly so, and it was this that caught his eye before he thought to check her pedigree. The petty girls who fought like starving mutts for his attention claimed it was all glamorie and potions, but there was no proof: her beauty withstood all tests, including extreme emotions. More importantly, when he saw how the other boys craned their necks as she glided past, she became the diamond that he simply had to own. That she hung on another boy's arm at the moment mattered nothing to him. He did not see anything but her.
She smelled like the white winter roses that were his favorite, and though she remained aloof he knew her attentions were still his. He merely waited patiently, a man in the garden with hand extended, knowing the bird would eventually lose caution and alight.
The snow was falling when she came to him, his Narcissa, and he would always remember it fondly. She fled into the inner courtyard weeping, and his arms were open to catch her.
"My dear," he said, "What is wrong?"
But he did not hide his smile, or fail to meet the eye of Avery when he came smugly into the courtyard. She followed his gaze, saw his knowing look, but still she clung to him.
His fingers caught up in the rich gold of her hair, the waves of it soft under his bare skin.
"It's true, what you said," she sniffed, but her eyes were not swollen, and the tear only decorated her perfect cheek. "He's a mudblood."
He feigned shock and horror, but his disgust was real.
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.