Clearing the Brush

He'd heard of course of the ancient myth - how quaint Muggles were with their concepts of age and history - of the curse that befell one possessing savage hubris. The references to condemnation and fitting punishments notwithstanding, the story was simply ludicrous.

The Gods were not to be trifled with, and had never been so easily fooled. One's eternal punishment, must be, by the very nature of fate, self-inflicted. Under the proper conditions, nurtured with only slightly unequal amounts of labor and influence, hubris could prove most influential. Misused, it was ruinous.

How far indeed for the mighty to fall.

Lucius snorted, his breath clouding the crystal pane, and continued to watch his son swat with idle hostility at one of the few remaining chrysanthemum blossoms with the long side of his wand until the calyx was bare. Something would have to be done about Draco.

He had been so very careful, given such exacting attention to every minute detail of the boy's upbringing, believing their future secure by virtue of his own magnificence. Noting Draco's renewed interest in damaging his expensive shoes with swift, unmeasured kicks at the low brick retaining wall surrounding Narcissa's prized Winter-Blooming Tentaculas, he turned from the window with a slow flourish and strode out of the sitting room.

The solid clack-clack of his heels on the polished marble had always been a comfortable sound, one of privilege and power, of finely tooled leather reigning over veined stone. He stopped short; breath caught in his throat. His thoughts paused over the notion of movement dominating over the long, slow strength of a solid, nearly invisible foundation. Of course he'd failed. Of course.

In an unconscious maneuver, Lucius tipped his head just a touch to the left as he began his stride again, his long silver hair flowing without effort over his shoulder and back into place, a comet's tail streaking behind him as he moved.

Motion had been his undoing, his own thrice-damned eagerness to move beyond the glacial pace his father had encouraged. Abraxas had known better than most what it would take to create a strong, invisible foundation; a lifetime of his own, and of Lucius', and perhaps even of Draco's. His aim had been true, and his methods uncompromising, but Lucius hadn't been able to bear the wait.

["Why should I waste my entire life building something that will never benefit me?"]

With a long-suffering sigh, Abraxas had walked him to the library and stood beside him as they examined the intricate carvings of the family tree. Eighteen generations of Malfoys looked back at him, shadows embedded in Mahogany, expectant, unfulfilled. This was to have been his responsibility as well.

["Each of your forbears, Lucius, played their part, did their work, and cleared your path. You will do the same for your heir. Much is already in place; our fortune, social influence, and political power grows with each generation. With your charm and skill, my handsome boy, you may accomplish a great deal more than many of your grandfathers. You may yet achieve dominion for yourself, or for your heir. Think of it, boy - not merely a throne of inscrutable power, but the wealth, prominence and respectability of an utterly unblemished name. Your forbears have labored to give you this gift, Lucius, with their subtle, elegant planning and delicate manipulations. This is the world I give to you; a world nearly ripe for you to pluck and rule. Work with dedication and patience for these next few decades and the rewards will be nearly beyond imagining."]

He had been so impatient, ravenous for the end game, that he'd foolishly believed he could manipulate the manipulations.

[If social power begat social power, the Dark Lord's influence - already heady and ravenous - could accelerate his own ambitions. He wouldn't swear it would be so, but he needed it with an urgency he dared not question.]

Foolishness.

Lucius stopped as he approached the door to the library, rotated on one heel, and entered. To the right of the doorway sat Narcissa, seemingly engrossed in a leather-bound volume he recognized as his great-grandmother Nechbette's memoirs. To the left, stretched the Malfoy tree, covering the entirety of the adjacent wall and wrapping around the corner, reaching toward the east windows.

His father's image scowled at him. He could find no reason to condemn it.

["Move with subtlety, my young son. Create an alliance and strengthen it. Put your energy into maintaining your existing relationships. Be magnanimous, but never give up control over that which you have dominion. Allow others to feel indebtedness, but never fear or guilt. Absolve a few debts, forgive a few trespasses. All will be returned to you a hundredfold in the gratitude of their children's children. Be ruthless in business overseas if you must, but never lose sight of the webs woven by others; the cheating businessman you berate in Marrakesh could have a powerful cousin in Paris."]

Over just a few years, between his departure from Hogwarts and the Dark Lord's fall, the change in his fortunes had proven more than visible - it had seemed almost insurmountable. Slughorn's ridiculous social meddling aside, Lucius had known he would be a leader almost immediately upon his graduation. Without the need to demean himself with low-level employment, he had been free to grant his benevolence on others in social investments that might have been worth perhaps a dozen families' indebtedness. Instead, he'd taken the short path, and as the Dark Lord grew in power, Lucius declined. His Lord's growing madness and bloodlust had driven Lucius farther and farther from his prescribed path, and with the distance had grown his trepidation.

He'd known it would be only a matter of time before his lack of commitment to the cause would prove his undoing to his perceptive Lord, and to his immeasurable relief, the matter had resolved itself in short order, without his involvement. With silent, grudging thanks to a mudblood baby, he'd found himself free to return to the slow, wise path his fathers had laid for him.

Oh, there had been obstacles. His trial, such a messy affair, had ended of course in exoneration, but the shame it had brought on the family name seemed impossible for Abraxas to counteract, and his father had died only a few short months later, a broken and bitter wizard.

Of course, none of this was as much of an obstacle for Lucius as it might have been for his decidedly less charming and handsome father. Lucius was attractive, had married exceptionally well, and was raising a promising heir. Combined with his wealth and abilities, he'd been confident he could rise above the "recent unpleasantness".

Which he did, naturally. Over a period of only a dozen years, he had succeeded beyond Abraxas' vision, and frankly, even his own. His hand at business was both ruthless and unimpeachable, and by the end of his first decade as Malfoy Pater, he had nearly tripled the family holdings. His inroads at the Ministry and in society - most significantly in the Hogwarts Board of Governors - were already yielding him significant social power. And with that idiot Fudge installed at the ministry, it would be only a matter of time before political power knelt at his feet as well. He knew he needn't have worried about seeing his legacy fulfilled through Draco; he would be able to fulfill it himself. He would be minister by the dawn of the new millennium, and a magnificent picture he would make.

Then it had come crashing down, in the unexpected burn on his arm, and the panicked rush to summon the long-stowed cloak and mask. He hadn't dared allow himself the luxury of pondering the implications, not at least until he knelt beneath his master's wand, pleading for forgiveness. The Dark Lord's return had been more than merely inconvenient. With his return to the role of slave, Lucius saw his inscrutable, unassailable power dissolve.

And what had galled him the most, what made it difficult for sleep to come for the better part of four years, was that his Lord's aims had been his own: to rule the ministry, to control education, and to amass wealth. In the Dark Lord's absence, Lucius had accomplished these things, had achieved them through nothing less than his own hard work and influence, and had done it in the delicate, elegant manner befitting a pureblood wizard.

This half-blood maniac, however, demanding nothing less than complete obeisance, had stolen the fruit of his labors, forcing Lucius and his family unto hiding and acts of intolerable brutality. Had the Dark Lord been sane, he could have been convinced to usurp Lucius' existing power base and expand it with subtlety and inevitable, graceful power. Instead, their legions were compelled into ham-handed failure with half-explained commands and full-voiced threats.

Impatience yielded bitter fruit. How could such a powerful wizard have not understood that simple fact?

Mudblood trash.

In ruins after the fall of the Dark Lord, the Malfoy name stood as a warning for the ambitious; for himself and his son, an object lesson on the value of patience and the delicate art of understanding one's enemies.

Lucius would never again wield the power he'd held so recently, and it was likely Draco would lose that privilege as well. Had he been firmer with the boy, taught him the quiet lessons he had learned from Abraxas, Draco might have grown into a fine man and wizard. His development arrested in turns by childish rivalry and demands for senseless brutality, he would be useless at the task of rehabilitating the Malfoy line.

Lucius turned and admired the cool elegance of his lovely wife. Her eyes still tracked the lines of text on the page before her, but he knew from her carriage and the slight stiffness in her shoulders, that she wasn't really reading. "Perhaps meaningful employment could be secured for Draco on the continent," he suggested.

She looked up, her expression unreadable.

"How is your health, my love?"

The corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly. "I am very well, Lucius, thank you."

He watched her carefully for signs of understanding, and was rewarded with the one casual comment he had hoped to hear.

"I expect I will ovulate on Thursday."

His smile was genuine, and for the moment, he allowed a small feeling of triumph to override any intellectual planning. He had time to put the rest into place. For now, he would join his wife on the small settee, and with gentle words and kisses, clear his family's path afresh.

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