Written for the 2nd annual: 'Can You Write a Romance?' Challenge! on HPFC. My pairing was Lucius Malfoy and Merope Gaunt. My word was necrophilia. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT NOTICE: This story is a complete and total crackfic. It is completely insane (and mildly disturbing hence the rating), but written with (mostly) proper grammar :D I hope you enjoy it (and the… strangeness…)

Curiosity Killed the Cat

By silver-nightstorm

Summary: Never did Lucius Malfoy think he would fall in love with a poor witch, especially one who was dead long before he was born. Complete and total crackfic.

XX

He found out about her purely by accident. He wasn't intentionally snooping, he was just… curious. Curiosity killed the cat, but Lucius Malfoy was no cat. He was a Malfoy. And anyone with the balls to compare a Malfoy to a cat would suddenly find himself lacking the very appendage required to point out the fact in the first place.

The point was that Lucius was not a cat, and therefore his curiosity couldn't kill him.

At the time of his snooping, Lucius Malfoy was a Seventh Year student at Hogwarts. He was the Head Boy, Slytherin Sex God, Notorious Womanizer, and a Death Eater in Training – all at the tender(ish) age of seventeen. The title most relevant to his snooping was that of 'Death Eater in Training'. Lucius Malfoy (who was most certainly not a cat) was curious about the supposed dirty blood of his master.

And who was he but a humble, egotistical, Pureblood-Supremacist to investigate?

As one of the few who knew of the Dark Lord's original name, locating information on the wizard was laughably easy. For the supposed menace to Mudbloods worldwide, Lord Voldemort was surprisingly careless with his personal paperwork.

In all fairness, Tom Riddle Jr. was firmly convinced that he had Incendioed all those documents years ago.

But as Lucius perused through the papers, he discovered to his extreme disappointment that his coveted Lord was a dirty half blood like the worst of them (except for maybe that First Year Severus Snape, the boy was clever and looked quite promising). Lucius had to acknowledge that the wizarding blood his Lord did possess was of the highest quality. He was, however, still doubtful on the subject of his Lord's mental stability because of his Muggle blood. His mother, an absolute dolt, fell in love with a Muggle. Lucius was about to turn his nose up to the woman and include her in the ranks of 'Those to be Treated with the Utmost Disgust' when the corner of a small square of paper caught his eye.

A photograph with the caption 'Merope Riddle : 31 December, 1926 : Deceased'.

The photograph was of a bed in one of those Muggle hospitals. The bed held a young woman holding a wailing baby in her arms. The woman was completely oblivious to the baby's plight; her eyes were closed and her dark hair formed an exquisite halo around her head. She was garbed in a much too small paper gown that did little to hide her full breasts and luscious curves. Lucius just stared. He stared and stared and stared.

The woman… she… she was beautiful.

She was resting on the bed with a calm peaceful serenity, completely opposed by the wailing child in her arms. Lucius' brows furrowed as he saw the caption. Deceased. The beautiful witch (for she was obviously a witch, and his Lord's mother at that)… was dead. Lucius felt his world crumble down around him.

He had fallen in love with a photograph of his Lord's dead mother.

XX

He researched her with the single-minded intensity of one hopelessly obsessed. He tore through obscure documents in Muggle towns merely to catch a glimpse of her name. He found out everything about her, her birth date, her family history, her life, her memories, her favorite foods… the location of her grave.

And he visited her (or, at least the places she used to frequent). He visited her hospital where she had died, he visited her home (carefully hidden from suspicious eyes), he visited the house that she lived in with her enchanted Muggle lover. He visited her grave.

He broke down. He threw himself to the ground, sobbing as he wrapped his arms around the tombstone and held on for dear life. And suddenly, he had an idea. It was a crazy idea. It was absolutely bonkers. But he was desperate, he was in love. He was obsessed. He needed to be with her. Alive or dead.

That night, Lucius Malfoy became a gravedigger and necrophiliac. He looked dashingly handsome the entire time. After all, he was a Malfoy. Some sense of propriety needed to be maintained. Try as he might, his room smelled like decay for the next few years. Constant cleansing charms only went so far.

XX

Lucius sat in his private chambers on his lush loveseat, Merope next to him. He sighed as he brushed her dark hair out of her decomposed eyes. She was absolutely perfect. But he had bad news for her.

"Merope, dear?" he ventured quietly, taking the corpse's hand in his. "I have something to tell you. Do you promise not to get angry?"

She didn't respond. Lucius took it as a yes – that was what he'd been doing for the past years.

"I… I have to get engaged to a pureblood witch," he said. "Narcissa Black. We will be married. We… we're expected to… to have children."

She didn't respond.

"I… I don't want to do that with her!" wailed Lucius, visibly upset now. "The only one I want to be intimate with is you, Merope! You have to understand!"

She didn't respond. This time, Lucius took it was a cold rebuff.

He raised his head haughtily, removing his hand from hers. "I see how it is," he said, his grey eyes flashing maliciously. "You don't appreciate me. Fine. I'll send you back to where you came from!"

With a banishing spell, Merope's body turned to dust. Lucius Malfoy looked scathingly at the pile of dirt on his pristine carpet before he broke down.

"Come back to me!" he moaned. "Please, Merope, I'm sorry! Come back!" No magic could reform her body, just as no magic could bring her back to life. Lucius Malfoy had it bad. Necrophilia at it's worst.

XX

Lucius Malfoy lived the rest of his life as a violent, depraved, self-serving, grave-robbing, disturbed individual. His every waking moment was haunted by her. In public, he was the perfect poised bastard but behind closed doors he could frequently be found sobbing over a picture of a hideous woman holding her newborn son in her lifeless arms.

When asked about the mental stability of her husband, Narcissa would merely blow off the comment while she noted in her mind (with a little grim satisfaction, Lucius was never kind to her even when they were together at Hogwarts) how curiosity really did kill the necrophilic cat known as Lucius Malfoy.

XX

What? I don't even know what that was. But hopefully it was strange enough that you thought to review ^^'