Sanctuary. Just as soon as he thought the word, Patrick felt his temper flare and his hand clenched at his side, still incapable of thinking about the way Hilda left him without suffering a reaction to it. He wasn’t that bad. The life he gave her wasn’t that bad.

Was it?

“Hey! Mrs. Malfoy!” He didn’t have a plan, he only knew that this woman was closer to his wife, to his baby, than he was at the moment and Patrick hoped she could be a stepping stone to getting at least part of his life back. “You look like you could use some help there.” @narcissa-istic​

The animal count of the manor was currently up from twelve albino peacocks to one giant, china-patterned snake, and eight hyperactive kittens. It was bliss.

Lucius was sprawled on one of the divans, Narcissa’s head in his lap, one of his hands absently playing with her hair. He was in what passed for casual clothing for him, dark slacks and a button-up shirt rolled above his elbows, the first few buttons undone in a rare display of dishevelment. Every so often his eyes would stray to Narcissa’s stomach, conscious of the life growing there, but there were eight small lives in front of them which comprised a much more pressing matter. 

“I suppose we couldn’t just call them all ‘darling’ forever,” he lamented, reaching out and lifting a little calico one of the floor from where she was being bullied by several of the others. 

He wasn’t stupid when it came to creatures, but he didn’t actually think it required any special skill to notice that something was off. “Is it just one?” He asked, hoping that it wasn’t something that was causing issues with the entirety of the peacock army the woman seemed to have. @narcissa-istic

Many of the other pureblood heirs Lucius’ age were already married with children, and he couldn’t deny that even though the constant pressure of his parents hanging over him was gone, Lucius still felt out of place about being so... behind. Except he wasn’t anymore. Narcissa was heavily pregnant and neither of them had even had to really work that heard to get there. The last few months had been stressful indeed but doting on his pregnant wife was one of Lucius’ favorite pasttimes now. 

That, and showing off. Which he was doing right now, sitting beneath the summer sun at an outdoor cafe with Narcissa across from him, having taken the day do last-minute baby shopping and also rub it into people’s faces that Lucius Malfoy was no longer to be laughed at. 

Lucius ticked off another day in his mental calendar, not sure if he should laugh or cry at the fact that he had now successfully eluded his wife for precisely ten days. On the one hand, this allowed him to put off the conversation he’d been dreading since the engagement was first announced. On the other hand, avoiding her took a significant amount of time and energy and he knew, rationally, that he was really only delaying the inevitable. 

He’d taken to sleeping in various guest bedrooms, and the house elves made sure that he got a quick breakfast tray before heading off to work so that he didn’t have to pass by the kitchen or the dining room. They’d also, at his request, taken to warning him whenever Narcissa left the house and returned so that Lucius had ample time to hide or shut himself in his father’s old office under the pretense of getting paperwork done. 

At that moment, though, he was out in the giant greenhouse, surrounded by newly-blooming flowers, having returned not long ago from a particularly stressful meeting with a foreign delegate. He’d stripped down to his shirtsleeves and rolled them up to his elbows, and was going through a series of meditative stretches that served to calm his racing heart and ease him into several ballet positions. It was always nice to be able to do this in the filtered sunlight through the greenhouse panes, but he never would have dreamed of it until his mother finally left the country a week ago. 

He was just rising onto the balls of his feet when he heart a rustling behind him, startling him so much that he fell from the rise and half-collapsed into the nearby tableset. 

It was Narcissa. Merlin, it was Narcissa, looking beautiful and nothing like the rigidly-composed woman he’d spent their courtship with. 

A lump rose in his throat, and he shakily righted himself, automatically spinning the Malfoy signet ring around and around his finger. 

“Narcissa- I,” he began. “Hello.”

Lucius’ stomach was still working itself into knots as he made his way up the Malfoy Manor drive and pushed open the front door. There was no arguing that Narcissa had made his life better. He was more confident now, he felt loved, and in her arms he never felt insecure or in danger of replacement. She’d wrecked vases and burned portraits and toppled statues, flung open curtains to let in the sun, in her pursuit of making the manor a true home for them. Sometimes she just walked around the house in a silk robe and declared that they should have champagne for breakfast, something that would have given his mother a heart attack at the impropriety of it all. 

Except that his mother was still on sabbatical in France, giving Lucius “Time to get to know your wife,” which was her code for, “Time to man up and do your duty for the line.” Which... well. It hadn’t been awful and that was about all Lucius was prepared to think about that.

The rest of his time he’d spent on work, artfully dodging Death Eater duties, and spending time with her. Or being trapped in animal shelters with Sirius Black, but ultimately he’d call it a positive encounter considering the cardboard box with eight screaming kittens he was carrying, pressed against his chest, because after spending several hours with all of them he just couldn’t choose.

“Narcissa?” he called, his voice echoing in the vast emptiness of the entryway. “Light of my life? I have a surprise for you!”

I hope you like cats.

“He’s so small,” Lucius murmured, not even glancing at his wife because it meant he’d look away from Draco. It had been almost a month now, but Lucius still sometimes couldn’t believe that they were parents. More than ever before, the skull and snake tattoo on Lucius’ forearm filled him with dread, because he had more to lose now that he ever had before.