Title: 10th Muse

Author: Calex

Rating: R

Disclaimer: I don't own any of this, the character belongs to JK Rowling, who thought of them. I own merely the plot

Characters: Lucius, Ginny, Draco, mentioning of Blaise Zabini

Summary: ". Malfoy's share. We share all our glories and our downfalls. Mostly, we share our spoils and somehow, on that bright Autumn late afternoon, much brighter than usual for England, I realised that she was not a prize. That she was real."

Chapter 1: The Beginning

I've always taken for granted, I think, this life that I have. I was born, scion of the Malfoy family. I had looks, money, power; I was intelligent, I knew how to live in the life of aristocracy that I was born into. I went into everything with both eyes open, always knowing what people expected of me. I went to Hogwarts, was a prefect; Prince of Slytherin house. Played Quidditch because Quidditch was expected, despite being born of a noble household. I had always had respectable results. Would have been Head Boy had that bloody Gryffindor Potter not been the Headmaster's favourite. Met Narcissa Black, married her. Got a son who looks to be the perfect future head of the Malfoy house. Rotted in Azkaban.

Ah, yes. Something I'd tried to forget, Azkaban is not exactly the place to be for a nobleman. However, I'd made my mistakes and I'd paid for them. And harshly. Very harshly. I remember staring at the cold, dank walls of my cell, hearing the malevolent wails of the rest of my inmates. I used to count the days, hours, minutes, seconds of my imprisonment, heard time moving in a distinctive tick, tock, tick, tock of a clock ticking time away. I went close to insanity, so very close. I had always taken so much care over my appearance, but in there, there were other things that were important. Like my health, my sanity. I passed away my time thinking up revenge. Potter.... Father and son, both the same. Taking a part in my downfall. I, who used to be the right hand man of the Great Dark Lord. The Great Dark Lord... what a joke. Nothing but a bitter, cruel joke. Nothing. Nothing but the signal of my downfall, my great fall from grace.

Well. I am not a Malfoy for nothing. I've been trained, by my own father, to not be affected by pain. I will endure, and I will live. And I have. I have lived. I have endured. And I will do so again. Five long years was I in there, five years of sheer, torturous hell I'd been through. Quiet, careful. Waiting for the right moment before I could get back and administer the hell that my enemies deserved... only to find that the enemy was at home. My darling boy's girlfriend-cum-fiancée. The delightful and darling Virginia Weasley. Ginny.

It'd been five years since I'd seen the halls of my home, five years since I'd seen or held my wife. Clapped my son on his back and told him "well done". Five years.... Oh how things can change in five years. The halls, I remember, were softer. The air of tense dignity that had always been in the Malfoy home was... lost. Not present. Gone. And I'd heard laughter, laughter in my home that wasn't polite, careful. It was carefree. No one to wait for me, I was standing alone, all alone in the halls. And when I searched for the source of the sound.... I saw the flash of sunlight, flashing from blood and cream. The flash of fire and ice on the carefully maintained dark green grass. Two figures intertwined and gentle, soft. They'd moved in a flurry of movement, as I made my presence known. Two pairs of eyes widened with shock, one grey... like my own. The other a dark, soulful, melting brown. Ginevra. The face of my lord's beauty.

I must admit to a kind of perverse sense of pleasure as her cheeks were tinted a bright red. How fetching she looked, in a simple pale blue frock with a straw hat clutched in her hand, grass in her hair and staining her dress. There was a spot of mud on her cheek that I so wished to gently wipe off... had I not caught the look on my son's face and knew that things were not as they seemed. Malfoy's share. We share all our glories and our downfalls. Mostly, we share our spoils and somehow, on that bright Autumn late afternoon, much brighter than usual for England, I realised that she was not a prize. That she was real. Imagine my shock, my own son, bringing filth into the family. A Weasley at that. The littlest one, the girl I remember looking down at when she was but 11, staring up at me with big brown eyes, fearless. Oh, how much those eyes had changed. Still fearless, but it had lost that softness, that naïveté. There was a hardness in those brown depths, now. A wariness. And, I was surprised to see, a calculative-ness. And she stared me down, that day, stared me down as I stared her down, both unwilling to give in. In the end, it was she who turned, but I must admit it was because that I'd had much more practice. Suddenly... suddenly she wasn't just filth. Suddenly she was more, so much more. I grew...intrigued.

Draco, my beloved son, had then shocked me, shocked his dear father, into an early grave. Or would have, had I not guessed for myself. He had proposed and the sun seemed to choose that very moment to glint off of the diamond ring that he had bestowed upon her that very day. My mother's ring. His mother's ring. The ring of the Malfoy's for centuries and she wore it on her finger. I had thought, somewhat detached, that it looked as if it belonged there. On her finger. And then... my wife. I remembered my wife, my dearest Narcissa, who had never taken that ring off. I had frowned, I think. Lines marring my face, lines that had not existed until Azkaban. And I felt... bereaved. I knew. And I stood there under the sun staring at my son and his soon-to-be-wife and I knew that my wife, my darling Narcissa... was dead.

Malfoy Manor was shrouded in darkness, the likes surpassing greatly that look on my son's face on that first day I was back. Black drapes were on each and every window, heavy black material covered each surface. Narcissa... the woman that I'd married and the woman that had borne my son. I remember when I first saw her, walking down towards the sorting hat, looking regal as a queen and unafraid. But I saw the clenched jaw, I saw the tight fist lying away from prying eyes. She was a Black, she didn't show weakness. She was only 11. I'd been drawn to little Cissa Black, watched out for her in Slytherin. She never needed assistance, but I persisted. She was three years younger than I was, but she was already a beauty. Pale blonde hair like the finest silk, eyes a deep cornflower blue and a flawless complexion like ivory stained with rose.

She was thirteen when I kissed her first. Lips soft as rose petals, surrendering to me, opening for me. We were destined to be together, us two. No one was much surprised, although she was younger. Things like that were looked down on in Hogwarts at those days. Thirteen... She was sixteen when she lost her virginity to me, on the very hour of her birth, she came for me with my name cried out in my ear. We got married on the eve of her nineteenth birthday and Draco was born a few months after that. We became the Lord and Lady of Malfoy Manor after... after my Lord had killed my parents. And I joined his ranks. I, Lucius Roderique Malfoy, son of Demetrius Alexander Malfoy, joined the ranks of a half-blood, a mockery of his own kind. He had no loyalty, but to himself. He was evil, merciless. Used whatever he could to whatever gain... and I was that gain. A Malfoy. The Malfoy heir. The Lord Malfoy. I was just 22 years old, filled with anger and impassioned by my parents' deaths. And he played me. Played me until my mind was wreaked with madness, made my soul and body feel pain that I had not felt before... and so I crumbled. And so I staggered. And so a Malfoy fell. Fell into the darkness that we had been dancing upon.

Narcissa... I remember the look in her eyes when she saw me after I came back. That look stays with me, haunts me even now that she lies cold and alone under feet of dirt, ensconced in her mahogany coffin, hands crossed over her stomach, white rose lying, with it's half opened head lying between her breast. Draco knew what to do, at least. I could give my son that. My son...apparently he was with the Potter boy when they killed Voldemort. He was next to him, had refrained from killing Voldemort. Potter had that pleasure, even Draco had the grace to let him have that small bit of vengeance. Bella, his dear aunt, wasn't so lucky. Bella was the one to have killed Narcissa. She was lucky to have Draco, I would have been much, much worse.

I was kneeling by Narcissa's grave the day I finally talked to the Weasley girl. My hair had been shorn off in Azkaban, and had now just started to grow back. It was short, much shorter than I've ever had it. I must admit that it looked better, now. The angles and planes of my face was open for admiration... at least that's what the mirror said. She had wrapped her arms around my neck and laid her cheek a top of my head, I'd let her do it for a few seconds before asking her softly what she was thinking she was doing. She had let go of me as though I had burnt her and her eyes locked on mine.

"I thought you were Draco," she'd said, quietly. I had only managed to shake my head as I locked eyes with her, watched the melting brownness of her eyes. Like melted chocolate. Like cinnamon, like mahogany. Her hair had been tied up in a ponytail, lying between her shoulder blades in a fiery tail. Rain dotted her hair, made the copper turn to the colour of blood. There was a flush on her otherwise pale cheeks and her nose was just slightly tinted with pink. The silence grew and she had finally turned to go, only I had laid a hand on her arm and she turned to me, eyes questioning.

"You don't have to go," I'd said. She stilled, searched my eyes, wondering, perhaps, if I really was that evil bastard that had slipped that infernal diary into her basket. I thought she was going to decline, thought she'd shake her head and leave, but she surprised me yet again. She nodded, albeit statically.

"Alright."

We sat in silence, looking at the headstone with the graceful carving on the smooth marble. I traced the words gently with fingertips, feeling alone and yet oh so aware of the figure next to me, her living warmth scorching through the heavy material of my robes. She was the one who broke the silence

"Draco put in what he said you'd have wanted to be said."

I looked at the headstone, then at her. She was steadfastly refusing to meet my eyes, looking at the carved words.

Narcissa Black Malfoy

Loving wife and mother

Her presence on this earth will be missed

"My reason, the physician to my love,
Angry that his prescriptions are not kept,
Hath left me, and I desperate now approve
Desire is death, which physic did except."

Yes... perhaps it was a fitting memorial to Narcissa. She did have an odd liking for that muggle poet. Shakespeare, I think was his name. Perhaps the last line of that particular sonnet had a meaning as well.

" For I have sworn thee fair and thought thee bright,
Who art as black as hell, as dark as night."

Ginny looked at me, a strange look in her eyes. I realized that I had quoted out loud, something I was prone to do in moments of loneliness.

"What are you looking at, child," I asked, harshly, but I'd realized that my voice had also gone husky with grief. A flash of compassion went through her eyes before it disappeared.

"It is a strange verse to say about a wife you are supposed to love," she had said, quietly.

"What do you propose you know about me?" I had said, harshly. I turned to her, eyes flashing cold fire. "What do you know of my relationship with my wife?" Her eyes were inscrutable as she said this:

"O, give thyself the thanks, if aught in me
Worthy perusal stand against thy sight;
For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee,
When thou thyself dost give invention light?"

With that, Ginny got up and left, left me staring at her departing back, her hair hanging out in rat's tails. The yellow shirt she wore clung to her figure, dark spots on the bottom of her dark blue jeans, hanging low on slim hips, showing the barest hint of bare, tantalizingly pale flesh. I had to shake myself, chastised myself for thinking these thoughts... I was kneeling by my wife's grave and I was contemplating the tantalizing bare flesh of my son's fiancée. I felt disgusted, I felt dirty... and I couldn't help but be intrigued and...and felt something that I had not felt in a long time. I got up and laid a hand on Narcissa's headstone, staring broodingly at Malfoy Manor, thinking about what was waiting for me back there. Then I started walking, walking towards my home, my son, my helpless, empty life...and Ginny.