Marrying Lucius Malfoy

When Selina entered the large, high-ceiling room that had been cleared for a twelve foot Christmas tree the next morning she drew more than a few gasps. Maxine Malfoy-Hahn's beady eyes widened in amazement, and when her head whipped around to whisper something to her sister, old unhappy Carew. Carew nodded agreeably, and her lips pursed as if she were holding down a truly unpleasant comment, and had Selina been a bit more confident the unabashed scorn she saw in the older woman's eyes would have been revealed as unabashed jealously.

Selina had always been proud of her hair and its bright color. It wasn't the normal orangey color that most 'redheads' had. It wasn't even the dark russet shade that many witches opted to dye their hair for. No, it was a bright, flaming, glossy red. Ever since she was fourteen she had worn it down to her mid-back. When it was straitened it hung a few inches lower.

But that morning her hair was nowhere near her back. Now the tips of her hair barely reached her chin. She had layered it, through some magical spell or another, for Selina was no hairdresser, and since she had straitened her hair for the holidays she looked perfectly chic. It had all been part of her present for Juno, and, clutching a medium sized box in her arms, she sat down in an isolated area farthest away from the tree. Maxine Malfoy-Hahn eyed her cousin-in-law with blatant disapproval but said nothing.

Lucius was the first to break the silence. "We're all gathered now. As it is a long lasting Malfoy tradition, the newest female to come into womanhood is the one who passes out the presents. For the past four years it has been my cousin, Dionyza, who has borne this honor. Now the job falls to my wife, for she is three years younger than Dion."

"Indeed," Carew commented, earning a rather nasty glare from Lucius, Lucifer, and Dionyza. Selina seemed too embarrassed to glare, a fact that did not escape the shrewd attention of Carew or Maxine.

"Thus I ask Selina to select the first gift to be opened this morning. Can you do that?"

Everyone turned to look at Selina. She had been clutching her box very tightly, and she looked oddly uncomfortable to be given such a task, but she stood with an ungraceful movement and started toward little Juno. The young girl beamed with glee at being chosen, for this had never happened to her before, and she took the package held within Selina's arms with gusto. She ripped the paper from the box in such quickness that her father became cross, but the little blonde cherubic child did not notice. She was utterly delighted with the doll contained inside.

The doll had been given to Selina when she was seven, incidentally during Christmas time. It had been just three months before Simon Julliard's parents and only sister, the last of the Julliards, had been killed in a magically induced explosion. The doll had been one of many that year, given to her by her mother, but Selina had long since grown out of it. The doll had sat forlornly at the bottom of a trunk, and Selina hadn't even known she had brought it to Malfoy Manor until two weeks before. Even so she hadn't had any use of it until the night before, when Juno expressed that she wanted "to keep pretty red forever".

The doll had originally been given brown, plaited hair and large blue eyes. She had been dressed in a lacey muggle frock of mauve, with two lace-up, high-heeled leather boots as shoes. During the night, however, Selina had magically removed the dolls hair and replaced with her own shorn red locks. She had charmed the dolls eyes bright green, much like her own, and she had cut up an old robe of hers to make a more modern day outfit. The boots were the only part of the original ensemble she had kept, though she had removed the laces to make them more trendy. The completed product had an unmistakable resemblance to its previous owner, but at the same time it had a unique look all of its own. However it looked, Juno was quite pleased.

"Mummy! Look at pretty red!" Juno waved the doll in her mother's face, and Elena gave Selina a grateful look.

"Thank you, Selina. It's such a lovely doll! And you've given it your own hair! Juno will be sure to write you a thank you note." Elena took her daughter on her lap, and Selina proceeded to pass out the numerous other gifts.

The morning went quite smoothly. Though there were quite a few complaints on the part of the Hahn children--"Mummy, where are our special dolls?"--in the end, everyone got what they wanted.

Lucius all but showered her with gifts. He gave her with several beautiful ball gowns, and, to go with the gowns, no less than a dozen pairs of glittery heels. Though she received many trinkets collected by him from his business related travels, her favorite jewelry came wrapped in a light blue box. Selina had often wondered what had become of the prize that her team had won from the Weasleys. She hadn't really understood what "dragon related products" were, but when she opened the box she found a gorgeously crafted necklace and a matching bracelet. The stones were of different colors--the necklace was blue and the bracelet red--but they both shone prettily.

"Dragon stones, Selina," Lucius explained. "Dragons have a knack for finding beautiful stones such as those ones. They can have whole caches of stones stashed away. They're considered quite valuable, because it's so hard getting a dragon to part with its stone. There were three of these in the prize package, and I requested that I have two. Snape got the other one, though Merlin knows who he's going to give it to."

What could have been a nice moment was ruined by Lucius's bitter attitude, and, after making sure he knew that she thought him to be rude, Selina continued passing out presents. She finished late in the morning, and then the entire family sat down for brunch. The rest of the day was uneventful, unless you counted Lucifer accidentally spilling hot broth in Lucius's lap at Christmas dinner eventful. Selina herself could barely repress giggles as her 'husband' all but somersaulted backwards out of his chair and stormed out of the dining hall. Lucifer looked apologetic but not apologetic enough to get up and follow his brother outside.

At the end of dinner everyone said a stiff goodnight to each other. Maxine and Carew leered rudely at Selina's back, and Elena gave a small wave. Dionyza offered to walk with Selina back to her room, but Selina made the excuse that she was headed to the library. In all truth she was headed out to her garden. It had been far too long since she had tended the flowers and other plants in her small plot, and besides, she needed to get out and think. Returning to her rooms only briefly with the purpose of grabbing a thick velvet cloak, Selina was out on the backgrounds of Malfoy Manor within minutes.

~*~

During the course of their Christmas dinner a small snow storm had started up. Common sense told Selina to turn back, but too much was on her mind to pay attention to common sense. Thoughts tumbled about her head, most of them focused on her unborn child and her distant husband. It might just have been her, but Lucius had been acting...strangely. Half the day he had stared broodingly at her and the other half he had spent pretending he didn't notice her. His infuriating behavior was, at the very least, as annoying as paper cuts.

She missed her friends desperately. Without Pamela's good natured cheeriness or Riley's sarcastic remarks surviving Christmas dinner with the Malfoys had been nearly unbearable. As she reached her garden she counted the millions of ways that Maxine and her bratty children had irritated her. Her tense frustration all but evaporated when she stepped into the small garden, which remained untouched by winter. After strolling about for a minute Selina began to shed her thick, winter's clothing. Soon she was wearing only her thin shawl and equally thin garnet dress that set off her red hair.

Selina became lost in time as she tended to her flowers and the few vegetables she had chosen to plant. The sky above her was an unchanging blue, and when no night came, Selina forgot that there might be people worrying about her. It wasn't until she heard a low, beckoning call that she stopped watering her gardenias.

The sound didn't return for a few moments, and so she listened with strained ears for a moment or two before crediting the noise to her imagination. She went back to watering gardenias, and she had moved on to planting pansies by the time that the sound came again. This time she was sure that it was real, and when the call came for a third time she became aware that it was human...and male. Her body went rigid with shock, and in an instant she had stood and rushed to the garden door. She opened it a crack, and then she slipped out into the cold night air, forgetting her cloak and shawl and warm winter's clothing.

It was Arielle DeSanders.

And the male calling her was Lucius.

~*~

Lucius always met with Arielle after the Christmas Day dinner. Usually having wild, meaningless sex was all that could erase Narcissa's cold, icy behavior and his relatives gratingly annoying personalities. A few hours in the arms of Arielle and he would be able to face his family the next day.

But this year was far different.

Lucius hadn't slept for over twenty-four hours. He'd gotten maybe three hours of sleep the night before, the rest spent wandering the manor and thinking of his kiss with Selina. He had fallen for her, so suddenly and without a bit of warning. As of the present he had no reason why he should love her. All that he could be sure of was that he was indeed besotted with his wife.

As much as he might come to love his wife, Lucius knew he wouldn't change overnight. He had no desire to give up his dark and arrogant lifestyle. It suited him just fine, and not even love could whittle away his opinion. But that did not mean he was unwilling to concede his habits just the tiniest bit.

That meant that Arielle had to go.

Lucius had owled her and asked her to meet him in the backgrounds of the manor. Arielle had done so twelve-o-clock, dressed in her usual too-tight-to-be-respectable clothing. Perhaps it was the effect his family was having upon him, but her tart like behavior served only to annoy him that evening. Lucius suspected Arielle had sensed his agitation, for she kept her distance and stared at him oddly. They had disappeared into the woods in utter silence, as they most often did, and Lucius finally decided to speak.

"You're being let go. I don't need either of the services you provide me any longer." His voice was steady, and though he looked at her he wasn't at all seeing her.

"Let go? This is a shock." Arielle seemed neither outraged nor disappointed. Perhaps she believed he was joking.

"I'll refer you to an associate of mine. He can't pay as well, but it's the least I can do." Lucius wanted this to be over as quickly and painlessly as possible.

"Can't pay as well as you? I see." Arielle's tone had acquired an odd bite. She had realized, once Lucius mentioned money, that she was indeed being fired. What's more, she didn't seem to like it one bit.

"Don't make a scene, and don't get snippy with me. It's not as if you'll be totally unemployed. This man, Johan Fritz, will pay you enough money so that you'll be well off. Just not as well of as when you were my secretary."

"And your mistress. Tell me Lucius, why can't I simply be your secretary. I know that you don't use me the other way any more, but why lose me completely? Someday you might change your mind...Especially when your new brat comes around." Arielle had probably meant to sympathize with him on what she assumed to be an unwanted baby, but he gave her such a look that she instantly knew differently. "Ah. Now it's more clear. You love her."

She said this in an extremely condescending manner, as if he had suddenly became extremely stupid. Lucius looked away from her. "That's extraneous to the point, Arielle," he said coolly.

Arielle began to cackle. "You've fallen in love with her! You've fallen in love with your wife! That's just rich! And I bet that you're keen on her to love you back!" Arielle had always been slightly off stable, and maybe that was why Lucius had been so taken with her, but suddenly she stopped laughing and glared at him. "Surely you must know that she hates you. She'll never love you." The air was frigidly cold, and when she breathed puffs of clouds swirled out of her nostrils. "She'll never love you."

Though Lucius had known that what she said was true--after all, he had been telling himself that all day--it hurt coming from another's mouth. It hurt quite badly, in fact. And so he lost his temper. He didn't explode into a tirade, for when Lucius Malfoy was at his absolute worst he became not irrational and mindless but extremely cold and calculated, but instead he began saying terrible, heartless, awful things to his now ex-mistress.

"And who would you be to talk, Ms. DeSanders? You're just a hooker. Not a cheap one, mind you, but a hooker all the same." When he saw the expression on Arielle's face he decided to continue. "I suppose you thought you were different from the rest, maybe even above them, because you were expensive. But no.

"Who are you to speak to me about never knowing love? You've long ago settled for being second best. You're a terrible underachiever if you actually like being a mistress, and you're a terrible idiot if you think I'd ever have married you." A terrible look came over Arielle's normally pretty face. Lucius knew that he had hit a sore spot, and he decided to run with a good idea. "Tell me, Ms. DeSanders, just how many mistresses are currently married to the man that employed them? How many men divorce their wives only to remarry their personal whore?

"None. Because you're lot is supposed to be a public secret. Everyone knows I have a mistress, but nobody knows your name. And besides--marrying my mistress would be settling for second best. And you know how awful I am at that." Lucius finished his tirade, and, a very smug look came over his face when he saw how shaken Arielle had been. For reasons he might never know, she looked horrified, as if he had held up a mirror to her and forced her to take a good look. For a second a tear or two made her eyes shiny, but just as quickly as they had come, they were gone.

And then things got ugly.

Arielle had recovered from her verbal shakedown, and she looked murderous. Her eyes blazed with anger, fired by humiliation, which Lucius knew never to be a good combo. Arielle looked as though she was searching her mind for a suitable comeback when she saw something behind him. A slow, wicked smile caught on her lips, and suddenly she had flung herself on him.

"Oh, Lucius, you're right. Your wife is a horrible woman, and the baby is such a mistake." And then she kissed him, nice and hard, like they used to. Lucius was, at first, confused and disgusted by Arielle's actions. But then he heard a twig snap, and a pained snort, and the crunching of snow as someone raced away out of the woods.

Lucius knew without looking that Selina had heard not the heart of the conversation but only what Arielle had said. And she had no reason to disbelieve otherwise. She had no reason to believe him if he told her he was lying. In fact, she had no reason to want a baby anymore.

And then he felt disgusted only within himself, because he had been taken by the second best, and in losing that battle he had lost more than dignity.

"I'll deal with you later, Ms. DeSanders. And believe me, it won't be your cup of tea," Lucius snarled at the smirking blonde woman. He shoved her roughly out of his way and started off at a fast jog in search of Selina.

~*~

There she is.

DeSanders kept her part of the bargain, pet. I'll pay her after we're finished.

Or you could just kill her.

Our Master would not like our informant dead. It would greatly displease him.

And catching us here wouldn't?

Being here is something that needs to be done, for our cause. For our Master.

He's not my Master.

Or so you tell yourself, dearest pet.

I can kill you too, you know, for calling me that. And the girl, too.

Our Master wouldn't like that either, pet.

Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.

Eh?

Frankly my dear, I don't give a damn. Now shut up and listen up; the girl's upset, and she's getting careless. She's an easy target now, so round up the others and follow my lead. I get the first blow, and then she's all yours. Understand?

Completely...

~*~

Selina ran like a bat out of hell, but to her it felt like she was running deeper into it. She knew she shouldn't at all be surprised. After all, Lucius had never really liked her. He might think her terrible, but she usually thought the same of him.

But to say that their baby was a mistake...It was a painful blow. Selina had never expected her 'husband' to love their child, but she hadn't expected him to hate it either. She had fled, of course, because she could not stand to face the man that she had married. She could not stand to see on his face his hate for an unborn child.

Finally Selina stopped running. She had exhausted herself, and, to make matters worse, she didn't know where she was. She had not run deeper into the woods, but she had run in a zigzag pattern through them, ending up in a place far north of the manor. Selina knew that the area around Malfoy Manor was magically preserved to be much larger than Wiltshire would allow. Ms. Laverne had given her a rough picture of the idea one morning, when Selina wondered aloud how Malfoy Manor could have such a large territory.

"Oh, you silly girl, isn't it obvious--no, wait, you're American, and you wouldn't understand the concept. You see, about one-hundred-fifty years ago, when places across Europe really started developing, wealthy purebloods felt threatened. Why? Because now muggle might stumble upon their manors and estates and properties, and then they'd start asking questions, and, well, you get the point.

"Eventually a wizard named Gravis Hammond found a solution. He was a smart man, and he came up with an extremely complicated spell that created ex-mat. Ex-mat is short for extraneous-matter. It was still in this world, so it can't be considered a dimension, but basically it takes all the matter of a small area of land and transports it somewhere else, making it seem gigantic to those with magical blood. To muggles and the like it's some crumbling house. But the Malfoys bought a colossal piece of land, large enough to host two towns and one eight-hundred acre forest, so don't ever get lost. They'll be no neighbors to help you home."

No neighbors to help her home. That was just her luck! Now she was out in the dark, utterly lost, and totally alone. Or was she? Selina began to feel as if something were watching her. The skin on the back of her neck was hot, as if someone were staring a hole through her. And then her neck actually began to burn, and Selina realized, with a terrifying jolt, that someone was actually trying to burn a hole in her neck. She let out a cry, and then something strong and hateful and fierce kicked her legs out from under her, and she collapsed with a pained gasp.

The events of the next ten minutes ran together in one drawn out, blurry sequence. All Selina knew was that, with every second, she hurt a little bit more. At one point a hard, booted foot flew out of nowhere and kicked her dead on in the chest. In doing so the breath was taken from Selina's lungs, and a new kind of pain started to take over, but she comforted herself that no one had gotten a good kick at her stomach, or at her baby.

She had just begun to wonder if these people were muggles, and if she had just wandered completely out of the ex-mat that Malfoy Manor resided in, because as of yet no one had used magic. But she thought too soon. She barely heard a woman cry, "For my sister!" and then "Crucio!"

Before Selina could place the curse with its side effects a pain so intense took over her entire body. She stopped caring about her baby then, and she began to scream. It was as if a white, hot, scalding pain was coming out of every one of her pores. Except it wasn't just scalding and fiery--the pain was freezing and frigid and wiped any memories of warmth from her mind. Combined, the two different sensations were hell, and though unconsciousness was never granted to her, Selina fell away into her own troubled, off-balance world...

~*~

Not so far above Malfoy Manor and its grounds two figures watched the half-dozen figures or so torture the redhead. Both were tall, but they stooped tremendously to get a better view of what was going on below them. The duo was made up of a man and a woman, and the woman seemed more upset about the writhing young woman than the man did.

"Don't say it," the man said, placing a hand on the woman's shoulder. "Don't you say it. We've saved her once. She has to fight her own battles sometimes."

The woman snorted and spat. "That isn't a battle," she hissed, slamming a slender fist upon the table. "That's a massacre!"

The man tensed. He did that often, and it annoyed his female companion to no end. But such was her state that she did not care to notice. "But she can't die! She's in that world for a reason! She has to find it, and you know that!"

"I know that fate will make its own course. Even we aren't great enough to understand the future, and how destiny works."

The woman let out an odd sound, something like a sob without the tears. She didn't begin to cry, but she pointed an accusing finger at the man and whispered, "The years have made you a coward. You know that, don't you?"

"The years have affected everyone. I could say that they've made you reckless and stupid."

"I take that as a compliment."

"The dead don't take compliments."

"I'd like to see one of them try to off me."

"I, on the other hand, would not." The man looked almost fondly at his hearty, stubborn friend. "Have trust. Fate will work its way."

"I don't trust fate anymore. Watch and learn, and remember. If you won't save her then I will."

~*~

Lucifer Malfoy was roused from his deep, sated sleep by the loud, purposeful barks of his sister-in-law's crups. From the sound of it, Artemis and Apollo were hot on the trail of something...Or something was hot on the trail of them!

Lucifer groaned and rolled over in his bed, taking care not to disturb Maxine Malfoy-Hahn's personal servant, who had been all too happy to share his bed that evening. He had been forewarned by his brother about ignoring whatever the infernal beasts did, but something told him ignoring the crups could be a fatal mistake. He swung his legs over the bed, pulled on some simple slacks, and stumbled into the hallway. Much to his surprise, Dionyza was chasing the wild crups too.

"They know something," she whispered, and the cousins nodded in agreement. They took off after the resounding barks of Apollo, and chased them outside and onto the grounds...

~*~

Selina knew she was going to die.

It was an inevitable outcome. No one could be in so much pain and be expected to live.

No one should have to, either.

She only prayed that death would come soon.

But wait...

Something, or someone, was coming!

~*~

A series of barks erupted on scene. Selina barely recognized them as those of her dear sweet Artemis and Apollo. There was a wild screech, and a crunching of bones that was not her own, and another wild screech.

Something dark and dangerous was sweeping about. It was more of a feeling than a being, and whatever shred of sanity she had left, Selina could tell that the creature was furious! She didn't care though, because the searing pain hadn't stopped. Whoever was casting it wasn't at all intimidated by crups.

The pain continued.

And soon she wanted to die again.

~*~

Damn it! Damn it! Mother fucking DAMN IT!

Temper, temper, pet.

This is your fault. If she wasn't screaming then those fucking crup mutts wouldn't have come to save her. And if the fucking crup mutts hadn't tried to save her then the fucking relatives wouldn't have followed them! We have to abandon this mission! NOW!

I'll round the others up, pet.

She should be dead. I'll punish you, for ruining this.

Re vera, cara mea, mea nil refert.

Go to fucking hell.

What makes you think I haven't already?

~*~

Screaming.

Selina's screaming.

Selina was in pain.

Extreme, unimaginable pain from the sound of it.

Lucius, who had been looking for Selina, froze.

And then he began to run faster...

~*~

Lucifer and Dionyza arrived on the scene a moment before the figures fled. Lucifer saw only a lingering wisp of something, something extremely dark, but he forgot about the wisp when he saw Selina.

"Oh. My. God." Dionyza spoke in broken words, and she looked faint. She had just seen Selina.

Of course, neither cousin had known what to expect while chasing the crups through the dark woods and across the snowy grounds. When they had heard the faint screams of a woman they had increased their pace, as had the crups. They had briefly lost sight of the doglike creatures, but the woman's cries of agony had told them in what direction they should run. Upon nearing the clearing, both had heard the sound of vicious growls and screams that did not belong to the tortured woman.

Selina cries had been pained, of course, but who would ever have wanted to imagine something as gruesome as the state she was in? The young Mrs. Malfoy lay in a crumpled heap, stained with blood and covered in cuts and bruises and awful looking welts. Her right arm was bent a full ninety degrees in the direction opposite of what it should be, and her left eye was swollen beyond recognition. Artemis and Apollo crouched two feet from her, whimpering and immobile and unsure on how they should act.

Lucifer was frozen too. He wanted to help Selina, to save her if it was possible, but at the same time he was afraid to touch her. He hadn't seen anyone that badly hurt since...

"Selina!"

It was Lucius.

Now Lucifer had to act, to keep his older brother from hurting Selina even more in his desperation to save her. It wasn't an easy task to subdue Lucius, who was a good three inches, twenty pounds, and five years older than he was, but after a few well placed sedative spells and several nips at the heel from the crups he was able to stun his brother. By then Dionyza had levitated Selina into the air with her wand. Lucifer did the same with a slackened Lucius, and once again he was off, this time back towards Malfoy Manor...