My Bad Faith

I spent the majority of that day in my study, I held A Greater Power by Dunkin Height on my lap and glanced repeatedly over the words. My mind must have been wandering; I did not understand a bit of what I read. The words were a collection of letters crushed together by the pure will of the author. At some point I became acutely aware of the presence of Renee, our house servant. She had her black hair pulled into a tight bun at the base of her head and wore a pressed white smock over her robes.

Malfoy Mansion, as large as it was, employed only three servants and three house elves. I never felt the need to have anymore than what I did. In addition to Renee, the mansion had Lee, the gardener (as many would know the Mansion had a spectacular garden filled with varieties of beautiful and lethal foliage), and Abagail, my wife's chambermaid. I never quite understood the matter concerning the girl, as the others were just as capable to draw Narcissa's baths and mend her clothing, but she insisted, so I allowed that Abagail remained under my salary. It was a pity I should spend more money than necessary on a servant I did not need, but it was a luxury I could afford. I had a policy to keep my servants in their place- inferior. To achieve this, I never called one by name. Only "you."

A Greater Power was taken from my hands, and I looked up angrily. Renee kept her owl eyes on me as she calmly turned the book around and placed it back in my hands. She then produced Ambrosia and offered it to me, which I quietly took. We nodded and she returned to dusting the room. Nothing had been said, but we were both at n understanding- and ten Galleons would be deducted from her next pay. My mind was preoccupied, full of thoughts I did not welcome or know how to analyse. I closed my book, now right-side up, and prepared my cigar.

The bitter-sweetness filled my lungs as I inhaled, and my senses clouded, giving me a sensation of utter relaxation. I was then able to sift my thoughts without worry of outside distraction. Narcissa, my wife, was to have a child. I was the father. We were to have a child. We were to be parents. The idea struck me as lunacy. Whatever spirit or being ruled the cosmos, if any, was surely having a jolly good time laughing at us. A joke, of course. Everyone knew the life style of a Malfoy. Dark, mysterious, infamous, partygoers. We had no room in our current lives to raise a child. It would be impossible. Even I, with my primitive paternal instincts, knew that my life was not proper to rear a baby.

A baby. I was to father a baby.

Something inside me felt polar to my other thoughts, those primitive paternal instincts again, I suppose. This was some joyful event to be celebrated. An offspring. Heir to the Malfoy line. A proud, strong, respectable child who would grow to become a prouder, stronger, more respectable adult who would then become the proudest, strongest, most respectable and by far the most influential image ever. Boy or girl, theirs was the life of my child, a Malfoy. Malfoys demanded that air about them, a certain reverence. Malfoys were all powerful. Malfoys out lived the weak simply because they were Malfoys and therefore better than them. I suddenly didn't mind as much being a parent. Should I fail miserably, his -or heaven forbid, her- life would be set upon a pedestal and the name Malfoy would carry him places no other could go.

It was a moment before I realised I had smoked my cigar down to a stub and had no more left to puff. I snubbed the last bit of it into the empty ashtray and stood up. I left my book in my chair, intending to come back for it one day. I took a long journey through the Mansion with no aimable purpose. The corridors stretched as far as one could see in two directions, sometimes intersecting to reach all four corners of the world and even forked into five corridors at one point. Walls loomed intimidatingly over my head to support a gold guilded ceiling I knew was there, though could not see through the oppressing shadows. The granite walls betrayed the age of the manor, giving it an air of some fifty years old, when in fact the edifice stood for near some seven-hundred-thirty, each time dwelt in by an ancestor of mine. My footsteps echoed hungrily as I stalked down the corridors into unknown abysses of dark, searching wildly for that certain high pitch. The sound of my feet left me unsatisfied as I longed to hear a sharp note against my ears, perhaps to awaken me to reality and snap at my wits. Angry at the sound-absorbing shadows, I turned to my right and tore a large painting of some hoary headed relative and thrust it to the ground to hear it shatter. The frame cracked loudly against marble floor and wood splintered into hundreds of slivers. The noise reached that pitched and above. I was satisfied.

I paused at a tall door built of sweet scented pine with great black iron rings bolted to it to wrench the heavy doors away from the threshold. I grasped at one ring with one hand and heaved the door open. The room was not lit, as it had not been used in nearly thirty years and smelled strongly of dust and metal. Producing my wand from an enclosed pocket, I shed light in the room with a simple spell, nodding at the things I saw. It was my room, once upon a time, as a story goes. I spent the first of my years in the room and coming back to it seemed to lift my spirits toward my child. The room was long with a minute cradle, compared to my current stature, in the west corner and a small bed lying close to the ground in the south. Both were, of course, empty, and both still made white linen turned grey and the silver threads fraying. Upon closer inspection of the bed sheets, the thread seemed of a strange make: not cotton, silk, nor flax, but something odd and strong. The rest of the room occupied a small white table and chair with an even smaller quill and unused roll of parchment. The colourless shelves lining one wall held more books than my current library, and it seemed unusual that I, as a child, had read each. Even stranger was that the room held no toys. No objects of affection or items of happiness. Had I none as a boy? Did I grow on literature and simple writings of my own imagination? As I circled the table in the center of the room, it occurred to me that the room was not furnished for a child of infancy to six years, but for a small person or as a prison. The future Malfoy heir. My robes grazed the floor, sweeping settled dust into the air to settle on my shoulders and the floor again. It dimly struck me that my feet made no noise as I strode heavily over to peer through my old books. The floor was covered in a thick woolly substance. The room was the only in the entire mansion with carpeting.

The room gave me a sudden ill-favoured settling in the bottom of my stomach and I hurried back to the corridor . I waved my wand with a forced, "Nox" and placed my hand on the black iron ring and pulled the door closed. With one last look inside, I realised my room had no windows. My spirits dimmed somewhat, as did the room when I shut the door. I loudly cursed my parents for having had a room in another wing. It was near suppertime when I discovered Narcissa sitting in a large chair facing a grand scale window on looking the gardens. She sat in genuine solitude with her graceful hands busily attending to something on her lap. I approached her, relishing in the steady click clack of my heal against stone to fill the void left by carpet. The sun burned the rest of the sky into violent flames as the sun set, shedding rays of pink and orange across my wife's flawless face and turning her hair odd colours. I sat in the chair beside her and watched as she took needle to cloth and pulled the thread taught.

"Abagail can do that for you," I said, pressing my back to the chair. "You might prick yourself.:

"She can't. This is tradition. The mother always sews the child's first baby blanket."

I looked at the white sheet in her hand and was reminded of the room I recently visited. "Choose a different colour."

She looked up, confused. "But white is neutral- how will we pick a colour if we don't know the sex?" She spread her fingers, except the ones pinching the needle, to ask her question.

"Silver is also neutral. I won't have white. No son -or daughter- of mine will ever wear white, is that clear?"

She nodded and placed the unfinished blanket to the side. "As crystal, but why?"

"White suffocates and imprisons. I'm leaving it at that," I said firmly, rising from my seat. "Come, Narcissa, it's supper time. Hopefully Dobby and the other two- what are they called?"

"Cola and Bidd, dear."

"Yes- hopefully they've prepared something that will agree with your stomach."

"I hope so, too." She rose and glided like melting ice towards me, taking my hand in hers. She looked up at me and I stared into her heavenly eyes. My wife's other hand reached up and graced my face, gently touching my cheekbone and jaw. She closed her eyes, bearing the delicate skin of her eyelids, and arched her neck to plant a light kiss on my mouth. I smiled against her lips and slipped my free arm around her back to hold her. Narcissa shifted to rest her head on my shoulder and I placed my chin on her silver hair.

"What was that for?"

She sighed. "I'm happy." There was a pause. "Lucius- do you still feel the same? About... about our baby?"

I held her tighter, gently smiling, knowing that she couldn't see it. "I'm more in the favour of the idea now, if that's what you're asking. I still have the same mind-set that we'll be failures as parents. Well- perhaps not you, my love. Even monkeys have maternal instincts that kick in eventually."

She pulled back, studying my face with a raised eyebrow. "Was that your poor way of trying a compliment? It was horrible, Lucius." She laughed airily and tugged at my hand that she held against her tender palm. "Supper, remember? I feel like having a steak, medium-rare,with a baked potatoe and steamed carrots and red wine."

"No wine. I've heard it's bad for the baby."

She smiled at me with the edges of her lips tied to the bottoms of her ears. "Yes, dear."

Narcissa did not get her steak that night but a nice pot roast heavily seasoned with pepper, though she did get her potatoe and carrots and she wished them. Instead of wine, she had three glasses of milk- a fourth upon my insistence- and a large bowl of pumpkin sorbet afterwards.

On our way back to our room for the evening, I stopped at the empty room next to ours. "The baby will sleep in this room." I tapped my fingers against the door to indicate.

"One door down? Dear- but... what if we are loud some nights?" She raised her eyebrow slyly at me and smirked.

I returned the grin. "Fine, then that room." I pointed to the room directly across from it.

She shrugged. "All right, but why so determined?"

"Because I hate my parents."

My wife tilted her head to the side in question but shrugged it off. "Come to bed, Lucius. The sheets will be cold."

I followed her into the room. "Yes dear," I said, then closed the doors for the night.