HP Fic Repost: A Brief History of the Malfoy Family--short pieces, ratings/ pairings as noted

In '71, Montrose names Lucius Malfoy as their first round draft pick. He's the first to be recruited straight out of Hogwarts since the War, and he's probably the best player of his generation. His signing bonus is record setting, and he keeps all of it despite the fact that he never plays a single moment of professional Quidditch. Two days before the season starts, the Ministry repeals the ban on non-Pureblood players, and at a press conference that afternoon Lucius publicly shreds his contract. He won't play with animals, he says. He has a black eye, a swollen cheekbone, three broken fingers on his right hand, and he holds himself like a man with broken ribs. He doesn't answer when the reporter from the Quibbler asks if he's been in a fight.

That night he takes the Mark, and for the first and last time his father tells him he's proud. He starts at the Sorbonne in January, only a semester late. Abraxes Malfoy dies a year later, and Lucius is inducted into Voldemort's Inner Circle in his place. He has the money to fix Malfoy Manor's roof, and he has the education his professors warned he'd regret not getting. But he never watches Quidditch again, not until his own son is old enough to play for Slytherin.
Summary: Lucius Malfoy's rookie card is the rarest and most valuable chocolate frog card in existence. Less than a dozen were printed. (Lucius) PG13



Lucius is nineteen when he falls in love with with a Muggle girl he meets in a coffee shop in Paris. She's older, beautiful, with straight dark hair that falls down her back. She's Israeli-born, British-educated, an Orthodox Jew who wears long flowing skirts and does not touch him publicly. Although he doesn't understand her faith, he admires it, even envies it. He has the Mark, but she has a star at the base of her throat, her father's number from Bergen-Belsen tattooed on her arm. He has the Death Eaters; she meets privately, at all hours, with earnest, grim young men with beards and braids.

He never sees her unclothed. He makes love to her in the dark, and her body is eager for him, but she never makes a sound. She brings him off with her hand sometimes, but she never kisses him, never puts her mouth on him. He never sees her pray, either, but he knows that sometimes she ties a scarf over her hair before she disappears. His father's God was a vengeful one, and hers is no kinder, if more just.

She's different than almost anyone he's ever met, and he thinks that's part of why he loves her. Everyone else he knows is lost, wavering. Even the other Death Eaters aren't fighting for anything but themselves. Lucius wants so badly to believe in something bigger, to have it all mean something. He's inherited his battle, his cause, but he hasn't made it his own. Not the way she has.

When she's killed, he's devastated but not surprised. He doesn't know the specifics of the game she was playing, but he knows the risks. He knows it was only a matter of time before whatever it was she was hunting caught up with her, and he knows she chose death over prison. He knows that some day he might face the same choice, and he knows he wants to live.

It's years before Lucius grows up enough to understand the difference between idealism and fanaticism. It's years before he realizes that the person Miriam most reminded him of is Bellatrix Black. It's years before he realizes how blind belief can make you.
Summary: The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. (Lucius/OFC), PG13




They took the first set out at dawn. It was cold, damp and foggy, and Snape, riding at Lucius's side, was hungover and bitter with it. "They don't pay us enough for this," he complained for the thousandth time. "Getting up in the dark in January, it's fucking insane." Lucius smiled a little, didn't answer. It made him think of Quidditch training, back at Hogwarts, getting up before the sun rose to run. Snape had never had the discipline for Quidditch. He despised physical activity of any kind.

But Lucius had missed this: the quiet, the sunrise, the feeling of being the only one alive. He shortened his reins a little as they started up the hill, and Rosy snorted in protest, arching his neck and piaffing like a dressage horse. "He's full of himself this morning," Snape said with a grin. "Think you can hold him?"

"Oh, he wouldn't dare run off with me," Lucius answered. "Would you, you bastard?" Rosy snatched at the bit, annoyed or amused, and Lucius laughed and rubbed a hand affectionately up the big chesnut's neck.

"Stop for minute," Snape said suddenly, reining in his bad-tempered bay gelding. "Before Donovan catches up to us. I want to talk to you."

Lucius drew Rosy up, letting him grab at grass like a greedy pony. Donovan hated when he did it, which was incentive enough. "What's wrong?" he asked.

"All of this," Snape said. "Don't you think? Lord Voldemort sent us here to accomplish something. Half the time you and Rosier both seem to have forgotten he isn't a horse. You're more interested in being leading jockey than you ever were in Death Eater meetings. What happens if the two of you forget to throw the damned race?"

Rosy lifted his lip, sneering at Snape the way only a thoroughbred horse could. Snape's bay pinned its ears and Snape touched it on the neck with his crop. He was a natural in the saddle, Lucius thought, though he didn't seem to enjoy it. He forgot sometimes that Snape was only eighteen, barely a year out of school, and that he still took everything unbelievably seriously.

"Look," he said, as reasonably as he could. "Rosy and I both know our jobs. We've been in His service a lot longer than you have. There's no rule that we can't enjoy ourselves doing them."

Snape scowled at him, and Lucius smiled as sweetly as he could. They could both hear the Range Rover's rattling engine. If Donovan caught them dawdling on the way to the gallops, it would be more than their jobs were worth, and never mind that "Mr. Riddle" didn't want anyone but Lucius on his horse. Reluctantly Snape sent his horse off at a brisk canter, and Lucius followed more sedately.

Everything Snape had said was true, of course. He would rather be on the back of a horse than in a robe and mask. He'd never planned to do anything with his life but play Quidditch; he'd been drifting since the day the ban had been lifted. But riding for a Muggle trainer was every bit as demeaning as playing Quidditch with Muggles, and he knew there was no future in it. While he wasn't sure this particular plan of the Dark Lord's was going to work out as expected--he rather thought that the Death Eaters had overestimated the importance of racing in the life of the average Englishman--he didn't disagree with the cause.

Snape was a dozen lengths ahead of them, and Rosy was leaning on the bit now, really pulling. Lucius let him go, feeling him eat up the distance with his long, steady strides. Didn't think about Evan Rosier, chubby and goodnatured and clumsy, whose Animagus form had happened to be the right one. Didn't think about the future, about Aintree, about anything but getting there first. That was enough for today.
Summary: There are things we do out of duty, and things we do for love. (Lucius/ Snape) PG13



He knows, the minute he sees her: this is the girl he's going to marry. She's on the other side of the room, and all he can see is her back; black dress, pale shoulders, fine, straight blonde hair past her shoulders, unmarked arms, narrow waist and rounded hips. "Who is that?" he says, and Severus turns to look.

"Narcissa Black," he says tiredly. "Slytherin, my year, Bellatrix's sister. Not your sort, at all."

"My sort?" Lucius demands. "What exactly is that supposed to be?"

Severus smiles, but it doesn't reach his eyes. Something is bothering him, Lucius knows. Tonight was meant to be a fact-finding mission—take Severus to Mandrake, get him very, very drunk, and get the truth out of him. But it's turned into something else entirely. "Lucius," Snape says. "Let me quantify your last dozen girlfriends for you: thin, tall, dark, deranged. Bellatrix is your sort. Narcissa's three stone too heavy, four inches too short, and ten times too clever for you. Besides, you don't like blond girls, remember? Not enough contrast."

"I like this girl," Lucius says sullenly. Inwardly he's listing them off. Miriam, who'd had legs like a racehorse and blown up French Muslims; Kath, who'd been the best seeker the Cannons had ever had before she'd chucked everything to work with starving Africans; Isobel, who was a distant cousin, and had wanted him to hurt her in bed.

He has to admit Snape has a point. He doesn't like blonds. And, more importantly, with the mark on his arm: no decent woman who knows what it means will have him. Narcissa is the sister of a known Death Eater, but if Snape's right about her, that only makes her more likely to spit in his face. Still, he wants her.

He walks up behind her and touches her bare arm. Her skin is like velvet, soft under his fingers. She spins around so quickly that her hair touches his cheek. "Who are you?" she demands. There is no fear in her voice, but there is no anger, either. This is a woman who has never been treated with disrespect, who has no reason to hate a stranger simply for being male.

A part of Lucius hates her for it. He wants to sully her, wants to fuck her up against the wall in the dirty alley behind the club, bruise her white arms, bite her pink lips. He wants her to cringe, wants her to cry, wants to mark her as surely and as clearly as he has been marked.

He looks, across the dance floor, at Snape leaning against the wall, his drink in his hand and his eyes on the ground. He's ruined as surely as Lucius is, but he's never seemed to mind. His scars are as old as Lucius's, as deep: he keeps them as private as Lucius does. Snape is what Lucius has, what Lucius is. Snape is dark alleys, black robes, white masks, waking up in the morning not remembering what you did the night before.

Lucius wants nothing as much as he wants to wash the blood from his hands, as much as he wants to be someone else. He can't walk away from the mark, from the Dark Lord, but he can walk away from Snape. He can walk toward this girl.

"My name is Lucius," he says. "Dance with me," he says, and after a minute she gives him her hand.
Summary: The night Lucius met Narcissa. (Lucius/ Narcissa, Lucius/ Snape) PG13



"He's a difficult child," Malfoy says, " and his mother has spoiled him abominably. I should like him to go to Durmstrang—but the Blacks, I am told, have gone to Hogwarts for time immemorial. And what is the boy's education next to that? Still, I think you will find him clever, if lacking in discipline."

Snape does not say that in his admittedly limited experience, nine-year olds--particularly previously untutored nine-year olds--generally lack both cleverness and discipline. He is well aware that he is doing this favor not for Malfoy but for the boy. Children do not need redemption, but children grow up, and fall. It is dark business the boy's parents will be about this summer; if the boy can be kept out of it he may have a chance. If he has not been ruined already.

"Draco, this is Professor Snape," Narcissa says. "He's going to look after you this summer, while Daddy and I are away." The boy looks Snape over with empty gray eyes, uninterested. He is small for his age, very fair, very like both his mother and father—who after all are cousins.

When the Malfoys have gone Snape looks for the boy and cannot find him. It is an inauspicious start to the summer. He sets the house elves to the task and retires to the library. More than half the books he finds are ancient, rare, and very dark indeed; it is a collection he both envies and fears. He runs his fingers down the crumbling leather spines and closes his eyes, imagining for a moment that it is he who is master here; that these words are his to learn—or burn.

When he opens his eyes Draco is standing before him staring, for all the world like a boy at the zoo. Snape brushes lightly, tentatively, over his mind, wondering what he is thinking. His mind is like his father's, quick but unorganized. The boy is hungry. Lonely. Uncertain. He has heard things about Snape—flash of white skin, dark robes, pain, no, he will not think of his father so. And, under that, curiosity. There are things Snape could do to him, that Draco might enjoy.

Despite himself, Snape grows hard. Despite himself, and despite all legality, morality, decency, he wants the boy. But this is no ordinary child, is it? This is Lucius Malfoy's son and heir, a boy brought up alone, unnaturally so. A boy whose father has an unsavory reputation, and not only where Muggle children are concerned. Who knows what sort of dark games Malfoy's son has learned to play, what sort of terrible traditions he is an initiate of? The mind beneath Snape's is not wholly an innocent's.

He wants to take the boy. And why not? Clearly he will not be the first. A part of Snape shudders at this; a part of him knows there can be no justification. But the boy's wrist is narrow, delicate, and Snape's fingers close easily around it. The moment he crosses the line in his mind, there is no going back. There is no fear in the boy's mind, only anticipation. Snape likes that.

He could break the boy's wrist this way, if he isn't careful. He likes that, too. He can feel the boy's pulse fluttering under his fingers as he closes in. It has been a long time since he hunted such delicate prey; this was Malfoy's game and they gave it up after the war. There are things he could teach this child that even Malfoy has not stomach enough for.

Children were fragile, was the problem. They reacted unpredictably to magic, particularly to Unforgivable Curses. Malfoy had never really developed the precision necessary. Whatever he had done with the boy, and Snape was sure he had done something: it had almost certainly been limited to sex. His mind is untouched. Snape could destroy him so thoroughly there would be nothing left to resurrect. He has gone, in the space of a moment, from the boy's savior to a predator.

He does not stop to think what he is doing or why, only pushes the boy facedown on the rug. Draco doesn't protest, but Snape can almost hear him thinking. He isn't panicking, not quite, but that's more a tribute to his father's training than Snape's handling. Snape likes his stillness because it makes him think of frightened animals, Muggle children with huge dark eyes and bleeding mouths. Makes him think of himself and Malfoy, younger than this boy, being given as pets to a half-blood tyrant. They had not panicked; it had not preserved them either.

The boy beneath him is Lucius Malfoy's son; debauchery is Malfoy's heritage. That clever mind is devoted, already, to its own interests. Those icy eyes will never show pity, empathy, or gentleness. You cannot redeem a child; children are without sin. You cannot save such a child as this. You can only use it.

And the boy—the boy wants to be used, the way a weapon wants to be used. The boy knows his purpose. The boy is still curious, under the fear. Snape does not waste time or tenderness or magic on him. Snape's weight is enough to hold him, and his clothes tear like paper, under Snape's strong fingers. The boy does not struggle, though his body is tense and stiff.

Snape has no more kindness in him than Tom Riddle did, but a part of him is appalled at what he is doing. A child, who will be one of his students; everyone else he has had this way was Muggleborn, no more capable of thought than an animal. This boy knows what he is doing, and in time will make him pay. This boy is a Malfoy, and Malfoys always turn on their betters.

This, this one sin, is something no one will forgive. Both Lucius Malfoy and Albus Dumbledore will kill him for it. But the boy is a delectable morsel; he might even be worth dying for. Snape could have him, and Obliviate him—but Memory Charms are not always effective on children, and sometimes they are too effective. He could use Imperius, but the Ministry would be alerted almost immediately.

If Snape wants the boy he will just have to take him the old-fashioned way. The boy is already barebacked; Snape can see the gleam of white skin beneath torn cloth, the awkward jut of the bones of the spine. How easy it would be to unlace his trousers with his free hand, easier still with a charm. The boy will have bruises on his wrist already, and what are a few more? Snape can leave bite marks on the back of the boy's neck, or ring his collar with them.

Can penetrate the boy with a finger, first, use a lubrication spell if necessary. There is a potion that would be perfect for this, if only he'd thought to prepare it in advance. He is not a small man, but he is not so large that he would do the boy permanent damage, either. He could push his way into the boy, an inch at a time, and know that even if the boy screams the House Elves won't answer.

The boy would be tight; there is no question of that. Whatever Malfoy has done with him—Snape concentrates, the boy is thinking of pale hands and long pale hair and burning pain—it can not have been enough, often enough, to prepare him. Narcissa Black is as protective as a wolf with a single cub; she knows her husband's history well enough to keep him away from their son when she can. The boy would be tight, the boy would bleed, the boy might scream, or worse—might cry. Snape had cried; Malfoy had not.

It would take only a few thrusts, and then it would be over. Snape cannot imagine lasting long. And then he would mop the boy up, make him promise not to tell, and then spend the rest of the summer avoiding him. Snape's soul is so black another sin like this can make little difference. The boy is a victim and no blame will adhere to him. Only, Snape knows that victims have a way of turning vicious. Kicked dogs often have the worst bite. He cannot save this boy but he can damn him.

He rolls away. The boy stays where he is. "Go and get changed," Snape says, and the boy scrambles up and goes without a word. He's not a fool, whatever else he might be, whatever he might become.
Summary: What if what you do to survive/ Kills the things you love. (Draco/ Snape) NC17 chan



There have been six regnants of Malfoy Manor in the last four hundred years: Anthony, Lucia, Claudia, Pegasus, Octavia and Lucius. Their names are everywhere, scrawled on the pages of the books in the library, etched in the mirrors, engraved on the forks, on the frames of their portraits, on their tombs in the crypt beneath the chapel. Draco was made to memorize their names very early on-All Lords Can Play Only Lutes.

His father wants him to be perfect. It's what Draco wants, too. What he expects from himself. So he does what Lucius tells him to, no matter how hard it is. He's only sorry he can't do better. Draco is five, and he speaks English and French and he can read Latin. Sometimes he forgets things-the future tense of the verb to have-and he has to be punished. That's okay. It's what dragons do. His father hits him six times, one for each of the ancestors, with a ruler on the palm of his hand. Draco doesn't cry. Malfoys don't, and dragons don't, not unless there is something to be gained from it.

Draco is six, which his mother says is an unpleasant age. He is small and pale and prone to sulking. He has tutors to teach him Greek and Aramaic, Arabic and Sumerian, Quidditch, geometry, swordsmanship, marksmanship, manners. He is already far behind his father at the same age, but Lucius is sure that with suitable incentives he will be taught to succeed. He has difficulty deciding between the carrot and the stick.

Seven is the number of perfection and when Draco is seven Lucius teaches him about sex. Draco finds the anatomy lesson redundant and the act unpleasant; Lucius dislikes his squirming, and they are both unhappy with the end result. Narcissa wonders if after all ambition is worth the price she's paid. Draco carves the names of the founders of his house into the table in the library, the trees in the wood: Anthony, Lucia, Claudia, Pegasus, Orion and Lucius. He's having trouble remembering that sort of thing.

At eight, Draco is smart enough to recognize the carrot for what it is and foolish enough to balk at the stick. Lucius no longer finds him so appealing, and his tutors no longer find him such a pleasure to teach. There is talk of his father taking over his lessons, but Lucius is a busy man and it comes to nothing. Draco fences well and has a gift for languages and mathematics and magic, but struggles with logic and theory. He is only average at Quidditch, and both of his parents find his manners abhorrent and his attitude abysmal.

Draco is nine, and often angry for reasons he cannot explain. He memorizes the unflattering portions of the Malfoy family histories and recites them at meals; flies his broom in the halls, and runs away twice, the second time getting as far as Diagon Alley before he is caught. His looks have almost entirely gone and he is an awkward, pale and sullen child. Lucius begins to wonder if Narcissa has played him false.

When Draco turns ten Lucius summons him to his study for a discussion. Draco sits up very straight in his chair, and stares at Lucius in a most disconcerting manner. Lucius is tempted to hit him straight away, but doesn't; it would be unfair and Lucius always plays by his own rules. Instead he quizzes Draco extensively on a variety of subjects, in five different languages, and is dismayed to note that Draco's knowledge far exceeds his own. He's disappointed and a little angry but Draco doesn't stay to rub it in. He's gone, slamming the door so hard behind him that Pegasus Malfoy's portrait falls of the wall and the frame cracks.

Lucius sends Draco off to Hogwarts two weeks after his eleventh birthday, and he feels nothing but relief when he sees the train pulling away. He takes Narcissa's hand as they turn to go, and he thinks that it might stop her tears if he tells her they can try for another child. He'd be gratified if he knew that somewhere between London and Hogwarts Draco is telling stories to his engrossed audience-and most of those stories start with the words "My father…" and end badly.
Summary: Not everyone is cut out to be a parent. (Draco, Lucius) R


Her body is strange to him, so different from a man's body, from Lucius' body. She is lovely, without her clothes; softer and rounder and warmer than he could ever have imagined-if his imagination wandered in such a direction. He makes love to her with his eyes closed, and he pretends she is Lucius and she pretends he is. There are things we do for ourselves, for our friends, for love, that we hate ourselves for after. This is not one of them.

She says his name when she comes: she remembers he is himself and he remembers who and what she is not. She has none of Lucius's ferocity, none of his desperation, and yet she is a thousand times more dangerous than Lucius ever could be. He thrusts into her gently, unused to the wetness, the warmth that does not burn but comforts. It would be wrong to bruise such beauty, the way it is right to mark Lucius's. He sees for the first time what Lucius saw in her: that she is not a replacement but another person entirely.
Summary: The pendulum swings both ways. (Lucius/ Severus, Lucius/ Narcissa, Severus/ Narcissa) R


He had said it once, to Voldemort, and had never been allowed to forget it. I regret, my lord, that I have only one son to give for my country. He had not meant it then, and he did not mean it now; if anything the opposite was true. He would have given any number of countries to keep Draco safe. He sat at the head of the table, at Voldemort's council of war, and the white smooth parchment under his hands was no whiter and no smoother than his son's skin. He received the tribute from wizarding colonies across the sea and the silver was no brighter, no finer, than the silver of Draco's eyes. He led a raid on Hogwarts at moonrise, and the triumph of victory was nothing to the triumph of fatherhood.

He had said it once, quick careless flattery, words meant only to amuse. They followed him everywhere; they might have been branded on his arms, twined around the Dark Mark. I regret, my lord, that I have only one son to give for my country. His wife taxed him with it; his leader mocked him for it. It was as if the words ran at his heels with his hellhounds. He heard them even in his sleep.

Voldemort was lost, and with him the war. Lucius spent three months in Azkaban and was set free to watch his son grow up. He felt like Abraham, reprieved at the altar with the knife in his hand. Draco was quick and clever, generous and ruthless in turns, the kind of son any man would be proud to have. Lucius loved him the way he had never loved anyone or anything, more than he had ever dreamed he could love anyone. Draco made him capable of love, capable of kindness. And still the words haunted him, only one son for his country, echoing like the scream of an animal sacrificed in the dark. His own words, his pride and his foolishness.

If his words cost him his son, it will kill him. He can imagine how it will be: Voldemort in his great throne-like chair, and Lucius himself at his lord's right hand. McNair and Rosier will drag Draco in and throw him at Voldemort's feet, and Draco will not even struggle because he trusts his father to save him. Lucius has always saved him. Lucius will try to stand, only to find he is Petrified, his arms sealed to the arms of the chair. Voldemort will make him watch as they cut out Draco's heart and wait for him to die, all for a fool's promise made long ago.

One son, one country, one sacrifice, one careless, solemn vow. The best Lucius can hope for is to die before the war begins. One way or another Voldemort will take Draco from him. And Lucius will have no-one to blame for it but himself.
Summary: The price of pride. (Lucius) PG13



"Ah, to be young," Lucius says, "to be going with you." He's kept Draco standing at attention for the last half an hour while he flips aimlessly through his correspondence and makes a number of calls. By the time his desk is clear and the fire is out it's growing dark outside and Draco's meant to be reporting in in half an hour. His new uniform is stiff and uncomfortable and it's difficult to walk without tripping over his sword. He's in no mood for his father's patronizing platitudes, pointless reminiscing about the glories of the first war. He's been reading Muggle poetry about front lines and trenches and he does not want to die.

"I've always been proud of you," Lucius says; he's learned his lines well but he does not say them with much conviction. They are words and they mean nothing measured against the years of Draco's life in which he neither meant nor said them. Nothing you say to your son when you send him away to fight in an unwinnable war means anything. Draco doesn't bother to respond.

"Sometimes I think you aren't happy, Draco," Lucius says, as if anyone could be happy doing what Draco's doing. He's being the son his father's always dreamed of, marching off to fight in the war his father has fought so hard to make happen. His father is happy, his father is getting what he wants, a soldier who will prove himself worthy of being a son or die trying.

"I'm fine," he says, aware that he sounds like a sullen child. "Dulce et decorum est, after all." And he knows it doesn't come out the way he meant it, because Lucius is nodding. Lucius does believe, or at least he pretends to. Lucius did fight, in the first war, when he was Draco's age; he was Voldemort's Second even then. Lucius wasn't sent on useless reconnaissance missions, raids of Muggle brothels, brutal sorties no one survives. Lucius kept his hands clean even then.

"I have to go," Draco says-lies-because there's probably no hurry but he'd rather be anywhere but here. The sooner he goes the sooner he'll be killed or crippled; the sooner Lucius can start trying for another, better heir. A girl this time, brave and fierce and glad to be sacrificed at the altar of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. And Draco will never, ever have to hear another soliloquy about the Glorious Cause.

"Ah! Such enthusiasm," his father says, almost fondly. "I shall miss you, my boy."

There's no response to be made to that. Well, he could make a gagging noise, but even he knows how profoundly childish that would be. Instead Draco fumbles with his uniform coat and draws out the packet of letters he's written. One for his parents, one for Professor Snape, one for Blaise, one for Pansy, one each for Vincent and Gregory, one for Vincent's sister at Durmstrang he's always rather fancied. Pathetically few to sum up his life.

Lucius takes them, mercifully without comment, and deposits them in the drawer of his desk. He stands and salutes Draco, and Draco, after a moment's hesitation, salutes him back. It's all too sickening and maudlin, and Draco leaves without stopping to say goodbye to his mother or the house or the servants or the dog asleep on the rug in the library. And Lucius does not watch him go, but when he is gone sits for a long time looking blankly at an empty page in his account book.
Summary: There's such a thing as being too British. (Draco, Lucius) PG13



They bury Snape in the crypt at Malfoy Manor, at midnight and by torchlight, because they have not got a working wand between them. Narcissa is the only one who cries.

Draco's hands are shaking, and the flickering light renders Snape's grey face, his ruined throat, ghastly and obscene. There has been no time to wash the body, and Lucius has no prayers left in him. He presses gold coins into the wells of Snape's open eyes; he closes Snape's fingers around a hawthorn branch. He bends and kisses Snape's forehead, and then he pulls Snape's mask down and leaves him alone in the dark.

Men from the Ministry come the next day, asking about Snape's body. Lucius lies to them, and he thinks that they believe him, because in the end they go. Lucius tries to be glad of that, at least. Snape was never meant for martyrdom. He wanted peace; let him have peace. Let him rot, there with the dead.

It is the only gift Lucius has left to give. He, who once stood at the Dark Lord's right hand, has no fortune, no prospects, nothing but his tarnished name to recommend him. Snape betrayed him, but he saved Lucius's son, and once he was Lucius's friend. Lucius understands why he did it, what it means to love: it may be that he alone of the Dark Lord's Death Eaters understands.

He misses Snape, more than he ever thought was possible. Snape had been bitter, and often cruel, and a traitor: Snape had been loyal, in his way, long after the faithful had fallen away. And Snape had made Lucius laugh, when he'd thought nothing would ever be funny again.

Snape had never believed, not in the beginning when Lucius had recruited him, not in the end when Lucius had wanted nothing more than to be free. Snape had been everything and nothing that the Dark Lord wanted in a Death Eater. Brilliance, reckless courage, deathless hatred, all of it wasted on a halfblood in love with a Mudblood.

Lucius had envied him, early on, because Snape had fought like a man with nothing to lose. Lucius has never stopped thinking of the things he has to lose, the things he's lost. He was never brave, not even when he thought the Dark Lord's cause was worth fighting for, not even when bravery was the order of the day.

He has nothing to be brave for now. He stays behind the wrought iron gates of Malfoy Manor. He loves his wife. He watches his son finish growing up, and teaches him what he can, and is grateful for the opportunity. He doesn't answer the door when Potter comes, full of questions about Snape; he doesn't starve, or freeze, or run out of books to read, although sometimes in the winter he thinks he might.

Three years after the war ends Narcissa falls pregnant. She is old for it, even for a witch, and from the start she has an awkward time of it. Lucius is desperately afraid for her. There is very little in the house of any value, that has not already been sold or destroyed. What there is, he takes to London, to Knockturn Alley, and sells. There is enough money to pay for a doctor, and for the deposit St. Mungo's requires, when Narcissa's time comes.

She is very ill after the baby is born. Lucius sleeps in a chair next to her bed and asks too many questions, until the nurses banish him from the hospital. By then he knows that there is very little hope, that they want him to have a night to prepare himself, to come back ready to stay by her until the end. He goes home, and paces the halls of his empty house, while Draco hovers over him like a house elf.

When he can stand it no longer Lucius goes down to the crypt. He has not been inside since they buried Snape. No one has. The dust is thick, undisturbed, on the uncarved lid of Snape's tomb. Lucius sinks to the floor beside it, and tells Snape everything. For once, Snape has nothing clever to say, no way of making it better.

In the morning he takes the Knight Bus back, a handful of early spring flowers from the garden in his hands. He does not think about the news that might even now be waiting for him. He does not think that this might be justice, come round at last, for all those he killed. He does not pray, or offer himself in trade. He is beyond all of that: he only endures.

He arrives to find Narcissa better, almost well. Her skin glows, her eyes sparkle, her hair falls around her in a golden cloud, and she kisses Lucius and admires the flowers he brought before she turns her attention back to the baby in her arms. Everything that was wrong is suddenly right again.

The next time Potter comes to interrogate him, Lucius is in the garden with his sons and his wife, and he cannot bring himself to lie or hide. Surely there is no harm in leading Potter down into the depths of the house, past the remains of a dozen generations to the spot where Snape lies. Surely it is not wrong that someone should remember Snape as he might have been, that someone should bring him flowers and light candles for him.

Between them Lucius and Potter lift the heavy marble cover from the tomb. Lucius is dreading the sight of Snape's body, crumbling here where there is little air or moisture and less light. He was present when the Ministry disinterred his father, searching for Dark artifacts, so he knows what to expect. But there is nothing in Snape's sarcophagus but a discarded mask, a crumpled cloak, and a few drops of long-dry blood.

Potter lets the slab of marble fall back with a crash, and turns so quickly that his robes stir the dust on the floor. But there are no footprints but his, and Lucius's, and the half obscured set Lucius left months ago, that lead only to the foot of the tomb. There is no evidence that Snape was ever there, in life or in death.

Lucius has no answers. He climbs the stairs, Potter at his heels, love and light and life before him, and the sound of his family's laughter to guide him.
Summary: This is how saints are made. post-DH (Lucius/ Narcissa) PG13