To Follow Knowledge Like a Sinking Star

Bellatrix tapped her long fingernails on the arm of her chair like heartbeats. Lucius didn't like the way her predatory eyes followed his son, or the scowl when her eyes darted back to him. There was no doubt why she was here.

Lucius wished desperately that Narcissa was in the room, able to change the topic away from the one looming like a Dark Mark over their heads, but couldn't shake the feeling that Bellatrix had purposely shown up as soon as Narcissa had gone upstairs for a respite. Lucius had shown her into the parlor, knowing the whole time the best option would be to send her away immediately.

"Draco is looking well," Bellatrix said. "Is my sister fairing well? After your brief absence, I mean."

"Narcissa is fine," Lucius said. "As you well know, as you visited her daily."

"So I did," Bellatrix smirked. Her nails continued to drum on the arm of her chair, and Lucius leaned back in his own chair, watching her warily.

"I'm not going to bite, Lucius," Bellatrix said in the false, flirtatious tone he remembered her using often in her youth.

They weren't young, not anymore, and the thought no longer terrified him as it once had. On the floor between them, Draco began to build an unsteady tower of red and green and blue blocks.

"Enjoy Azkaban?" The words cut through the room like the green flash of the Killing Curse.

"It was terrible," Lucius answered, no longer maintaining his composure, his voice thin and unsteady. He did not take his eyes off his son, who was toddling back and forth between a pile of toy blocks and the tower he was building against the leg of an antique table.

Bellatrix scoffed. "You are weak. I would not have lied - dishonored our Master - in such a way."

Lucius shook his head. "You would have had me abandon Narcissa? Draco?"

"Yes," Bellatrix said staunchly.

"For what?" Lucius snapped. "A chance at favor from a dead man?"

"He is not dead!" hissed Bellatrix. "He will reemerge, more powerful than ever, and you will regret this impudence."

Lucius laughed sharply, which caused Draco to jerk his blond head around to stare at his father, who hadn't laughed since his return. "Even if he does return, even if I am punished - I would never regret doing what was necessary for my family. You've never understood that, Bella. Maybe if you had a child--"

"I have devoted myself to ensuring that our world is the sort I can bring a child into," Bellatrix interrupted. "When the Dark Lord has achieved his aims, then I shall continue on the pureblood legacy. Only then."

Draco had stopped building his tower, and instead was sitting on the carpet looking at his father and aunt with a furrowed brow.

Lucius shook his head. "You don't understand," he repeated. "You never have."

"I understand family, Lucius," Bellatrix said. She stood, crossed the room and picked up Draco with a singly smooth motion, knocking over his tower as she stood. He obligingly wrapped his chubby arms around her neck, looking mournfully at the scattered blocks, and Bellatrix returned to her seat. "I've never birthed a child, but my sister's blood - my blood - runs through this one's veins."

"Your blood also runs through Andromeda's child's veins," Lucius pointed out calmly. "The halfblood."

"That abomination," Bellatrix spat, and traced a fingernail along Draco's hairline, trailing down his neck. Lucius did not tell her to stop, though his arms twitched to remove his son from her grasp. Draco's lip pouted out sullenly. "That is exactly why we must protect what we have left. Why we must keep faith."

Lucius didn't think there was much left to keep faith in. The Dark Lord, who he had once thought fearsome, had been defeated by a baby. A baby of an age with Draco, though he tried not to think on it often.

He had thought of it often in Azkaban, for those few, terrible days.

He would have done anything to escape those thoughts. He had, and now had to square his answers with Bellatrix, whose fervor still burned bright.

"He will look like you," Bellatrix said. She held Draco's chin tightly, angling his face towards hers. Lucius could see tears beginning to form in his eyes. "The chin, and the nose, and the cheeks. But the eyes - the eyes on this child are Black." Her eyes flashed on him, and she smirked as Draco began to wail. "He reminds me of Regulus, actually. The same lack of mettle."

"Give me my son," Lucius said coldly, in the same tone he had once used to deliver the Dark Lord's messages to the unfaithful.

Bellatrix squeezed Draco's cheeks even harder, nails digging into tender flesh. "You're the one who doesn't understand, Lucius. You don't see what this," her lips snarled in disgust, "practicality will cost you. Because He will return, and you will be revealed as the spineless worm you truly are."

She released Draco's cheeks, and Lucius snatched his crying son away from her taloned grasp. "Get out of my sight, Bellatrix."

There were half-moon indents in Draco's chubby, splotchy cheeks, indents that looked massive on the child's tiny face. The deepest one slowly turned red with welling blood, and Lucius resisted the urge to murder his wife's sister then and there.

"A worm," she hissed again, tilting her head back and peering at him through her midnight hair. "Raising his spineless offspring. I told my sister she made a mistake with you."

"I will not tell you again," Lucius hissed. His wand was in his hand.

"I'm going to find out what happened to our Master," Bellatrix said. "We will, us faithful, and you will reap what you have sown."

She turned on her heel and swept out of the room, robes fluttering. Lucius stared at the doorway for a long moment, wondering what all, exactly, had changed in these last few tumultuous weeks.

Draco was still sniffling in his arms, and Lucius did a spell to heal Bellatrix's markings. "You're worth everything," he murmured, in case his son had somehow cognized what Bellatrix had said. "No matter the cost."