Jealousy Broods

Narcissa couldn't help resenting it. She'd known what she was getting into when she married a man in love with someone else, but that didn't stop her from wanting to hex that someone else every time she saw him. He knew this, and did his best not to give her any reason to be cross with him. That made her even more furious, because there wasn't any practical reason she could blame for wanting to blast the man into oblivion every time he so much as looked at Lucius. Her Lucius.

Another person would say it was karma, for all the times she'd played with other people's emotions like toys, but she was not so judgmental of herself as that. But it was killing her, knowing that every time she and her husband made love - and for a while they had been going at it like rabbits; Draco had not been easy to conceive - it was his picture under Lucius' pillow, his name more often than not that he screamed into the night. She hated it with drop of blood in her body.

She knew she could offer Lucius more than that bastard could. He was broken, burned, corrupted with years of self-hate and deceptions and murder, uncaring of his appearance and terminally formal. She was still beautiful, still charming, unfaded, undulled by age or wear. She still had what he had already lost.

But Lucius didn't care. He only wanted him.

When Lucius had proposed, she had asked him why. He'd looked at her with those defeated eyes that held so much sadness his heart must have been breaking that very instant, and had said hollowly, "The Malfoys need an heir." And she had understood, and agreed. She'd spoken her vows, borne their son, served her purpose.

They didn't even share a room anymore.

Severus always made appearances at the Manor for Draco's birthday and over Christmas break, playing godfather, although his eyes strayed just a little too often for Narcissa's comfort from one white-blond head to the other. If Draco noticed, he didn't comment. Narcissa wondered, not for the first time, what they talked about during the school year, when they didn't have to worry about being overheard. She knew her son dropped by his office at least once a week to unwind and chat. Did he ask about Lucius? Did it even come up? The youngest Malfoy was not so dense that he could have failed to see the electric and totally exclusive looks in his father's and mentor's eyes whenever their gazes met at the dinner table.

It was almost always Severus who broke them off.

Draco liked him, looked to him for guidance in a way he never had with Narcissa or even his father. Would he take her son away from her, too? No, he was far too ethical for that, at least when it came to Lucius and Lucius' family. They were off-limits in his eyes, as noted by the fact that she had never seen him touch Draco, not even when he was at his godfatherly best.

But Lucius was another matter entirely. Narcissa knew, by way of a strategically placed house-elf spy network she deployed on occaison, that Lucius' bed was seldom slept in when Severus was visiting, and she didn't need an elf to know where he was or what went on in that room.

And she couldn't help resenting it.