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Fanfiction by Gwendolyn Grace

Information § Fanfiction

The Waking Dragon

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Rating: PG-13

Genre: General

Author's notes: This story was originally written for a “Tom Felton Birthday Challenge” on FictionAlley, on September 20, 2001. It fits into my private HP universe, which includes consistent details found in “His Majesty’s Secret Service,” certain details in “Between the Lines,” and an upcoming story examining Lucius’s adult life, from his final year at Hogwarts through the immediate aftermath of Halloween, 1981.

Summary: Lucius learns about his pending fatherhood; Narcissa waits for her pregnancy to end; the joyous day arrives and Lucius lays eyes for the first time on his son.


December, 1978

“Happy Christmas, Mr. Malfoy!” the secretary called to him as he strode out of the office quickly. Happy Christmas, indeed, he thought, snarling. Nearly six before they got out of the meeting, and then old Rossiter would go on about everything the board had just decided. Finally, when Lucius just didn’t think he could take it anymore, he cut the older man off with a polite but insistent excuse and asked for his cloak. He was late.

He hurried out of the central offices of Horrie, Upham, and Waite (how they managed to stay in the cauldron business he couldn’t imagine) and pulled on his gloves as he started down Diagon Alley. Had it not been such a short distance to the restaurant, he might have Apparated. He only hoped Narcissa hadn’t been there long—or worse, that the Cravens hadn’t been waiting. As in-laws went, Narcissa’s parents were certainly acceptable, but it still annoyed him the way she spent time on them.

They had all three been waiting; but apparently the season worked in Lucius’s favour for once. Reginald Craven was on his third egg nog, and Penelope and Narcissa were giggling over something when he joined them at the bar.

“Mr. Malfoy.” The maitre d’ found them immediately. “We’ve held your table, sir,” he said in the manner of one who expects to be congratulated for doing his job.

“Good,” Lucius said, just as happy to get this yearly ritual over with.

The Cravens and Narcissa gathered up their drinks and followed the maitre d’ to a well-protected table couched along the wall, on a raised section of the floor. Narcissa took her seat between Lucius and her mother, leaving Lucius with her father on his other side. With perfect manners, both men helped their wives with their chairs before sitting.

“I take it your meeting took a little longer than you expected?” Narcissa said to him quietly as they opened their menus.

“No; Rossiter did,” Lucius said wryly. “I hope you didn’t miss me too much,” he continued gallantly.

“Not at all, dear boy,” Penelope Craven assured him sunnily. “Narcissa and I had a lot to catch up on.” She winked at her daughter.

Lucius raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” he said, eyeing Narcissa with half a smile.

She smiled back and mouthed, “Later.”

They got through dinner, the usual invitations for family Christmas at the Cravens, which Lucius declined smoothly every year, after which Narcissa placated her parents with an easy, “We’ll see.” He and Reginald talked about the “State of the World” while the women discussed robe hems or similar nonsense, and Lucius as usual agreed about politics, but argued Quidditch.

“Don’t be daft, son, of course the Falcons will be in the League Final this year.”

“I disagree,” Lucius said, gritting his teeth. Craven was a die-hard Falcon fan, and Lucius took perverse delight in supporting whichever other team looked good against them, just to tweak his father-in-law. “They’ve a solid team, I’ll admit, but the Wasps are only behind twenty points to overtake the Magpies, and from there it’s just a simple match against the Cannons.”

“Still, you can’t deny—”

“Yes, yes, there’s no doubt that Marlborough’s a fine Seeker, but they still haven’t recovered from losing half their regular players two seasons ago. No: it’ll be the Wasps and the Arrows—that’ll be a game worth seeing!”

“But surely you can’t be a Wasp man!”

“No, of course not. I’m simply being realistic.” He didn’t mention that the Magpies were about to lose a Chaser. It wasn’t his problem if the team didn’t have higher standards about hiring purebloods. But without their first-string team in the match against the Wasps, they’d be flattened. Lucius always played the odds.

They finished their meal, said their goodnights, and walked Narcissa’s parents to their waiting car. The street was still half full of shoppers, although it had been dark for hours, lit only by the fairy lights and softly glowing lamps of the season.

“What were you and your mother conspiring about all evening?” Lucius asked Narcissa, taking her gloved hand in his and leading her down the alley.

Narcissa smiled. “Oh, this and that….”

“Hm. You went shopping, then?” he concluded as they turned a corner and reached Narcissa’s magical two-seater, an anniversary present from her aunt and uncle.

“A little…. I also saw the doctor,” she said with a sidelong glance.

She could feel Lucius tense at the remark. “Is everything all right? I mean—haven’t you been feeling well?” he asked, covering his sharpness of surprise with concern.

“Well, no, I haven’t—but yes, everything’s just fine. Lucius,” she stopped and turned into his chest, threading her arms around him under his cloak. “You’re going to be a father.”

Lucius didn’t speak for a moment. He gazed into his wife’s perfect, clear, brown eyes and watched as her lips moved again. She began to swim a bit in his sight, turning hazy around the edges.

“Lucius?” She said again, more urgently. “Say something.”

Then Lucius understood the problem. He had forgotten to breathe. “Ah,” he began. “Aha.” That sounded a little better. He grinned stupidly. “You—how did—how—I mean h—what—no, stupid question—how do you—I mean, when?” he sputtered, remarking that he sounded utterly unlike himself.

Narcissa laughed her rich laugh. “Aren’t you glad I didn’t make you do that in front of Father?” She laughed again. “Well, it’s really early—I’m only a week or two along, but I just knew something was different…so I went up to Dr. Fletcher’s this morning and…there’s no doubt. Sometime next August, or so, we’re going to have a baby.” She looked up into Lucius’s eyes, as if trying to confirm his feelings on the matter. “That is what you wanted, isn’t it?” she asked, her voice just barely tinged with threat.

“What? Yes, of course,” Lucius scowled, and then realised she was teasing. He burst out laughing and twirled her around before kissing her deeply.

“Good,” she told him when they surfaced for air. “Because one’s all you get. I’m not ruining my figure for the Malfoy name, no matter what you think.”

“Well,” Lucius said with a mocking sigh, “that’s what I get for marrying the prettiest witch in England,” he told her. They shared another laugh, and he insisted on lifting her into the car before driving them home. For once, he didn’t even mind the magical machine.

September, 1979

“This is getting old,” Narcissa said under her breath as she lowered herself into the chair at her vanity. What had been “a little bundle of joy” according to the nurses at St. Gerard’s Center was turning into a huge parcel of pain. Her sister-in-law had told Narcissa that Lucius’s father had a lift installed in the house, which Lucius had taken out after his father passed away long ago. In the last two months, Narcissa came close to killing her husband for his lack of foresight at least once a day. That was when the mediwizards told her to stop Apparating in case it hurt the baby.

She was huge. She was bloated. She had to pee every ten minutes. She’d forgotten what her toenails looked like (thank heavens she had the elves for her pedicures). And to make matters worse, she could feel her son-to-be moving around.

“I know you want out as badly as I want you out,” she told him testily. “Get a move on, already,” she said encouragingly, reaching for her brush and pulling it through her blonde hair briskly.

He was certainly taking his time. She was almost three full weeks overdue. Dr. Moritz had seen her every day for the last two weeks, and announced only three days ago that the baby had turned around.

“Any day now,” he told her with an unctuous smile.

“Isn’t there anything we can do to…speed this along?” she had asked imperiously.

“Well,” he told her with a sigh that clearly said, “I’m the doctor, you’re the patient,” “we can give you a potion to induce labour, but let’s give it a little longer. The natural course is usually the best, don’t you think? After all, you know the old saying: never tickle a sleeping dragon.”

Narcissa had smiled and said of course, she agreed, but wondered exactly how long her nails needed to be to scoop the man’s eyes out like two grapes in a pudding. She almost demanded that Lucius engage another mediwizard, but something held her back.

Now, sitting at her vanity so far from the table she could scarcely reach her makeup, she had the oddest feeling that instead of a baby, she was growing a parasite, that would devour her from the inside out. A huge tapeworm that would make her feed it until she wasted away from her own starvation, while the creature grew larger and larger. Shuddering, she sighed heavily and applied her eyeliner.

It didn’t help that Lucius was increasingly absent. She got on well enough with his mother, but relations between them were always less strained when Lucius was there to act as a buffer. But he was so busy lately, with his business interests and of course the other matter. And her.

He’d come back, she told herself. It wasn’t as if she could provide any physical comfort at the moment, after all, and why should he stay tied to her in this state? More than ever, she was glad she’d laid down the law about that before they married. An heir was necessary, of course, but one child. And one only.

“So come on and do something,” she told her belly. And then, she felt him move.

It was a different kind of moving than she’d felt before. She remembered his first kick, back in April, and Lucius had come straight home from his meeting to feel his son’s movement. He reconvened the meeting by fire call, so he could be on hand. She even remembered distinctly waking in the middle of the night last week, when, it turned out, the baby was flipping over to lie head first so he could be born. But this was entirely new. Could it be…?

She stood labouriously and immediately felt a cramp so hard she cried out. Her house elf, Libby, answered the summons nervously.

“Mistress?” she squeaked, but then saw Narcissa gripping the back of the chair. “Ooh!” She exclaimed, her eyes widening, and popped out of sight again. Moments later, there was a knock.

“Narcissa?” It was Lucius’s mother.

“I think we’re starting,” Narcissa called out between panting breaths.

Margaret Malfoy opened the door of the chamber and took her daughter-in-law’s hand. “Come along, dear, you’ll be wanting the bathroom,” she said competently, and led her there. “I’ve sent Lizzy for Dr. Moritz,” she said calmly as they made their way to Narcissa’s private bath. “And I’ll have Lucius notified as soon as we’re moving along.”

“Aren’t we—Ow!—moving along now?” Narcissa asked.

“Heavens, no, child. Your water hasn’t even broken. No, we don’t want to bother him until it’s nearly time.”

Lucius crumpled the scribble of parchment as soon as he read it. “Gentlemen, I do regret this, but we’ll have to reschedule.”

“What?” Cumulus Cuthbert, chief executive of the Nimbus Racing Broom Company, said as he rose from his leather chair. “But, the board’s assembled!”

“Yes, I know,” Lucius said as he gathered up his proxies and other papers.

“Lucius, if you leave now we don’t have a quorum of votes,” Cuthbert’s brother, Stratus, explained, trying to sound reasonable.

“It can’t be helped,” Lucius shrugged, shutting his briefcase decisively. “As I said, we’ll reschedule. Good day.” And he swept out of the room with no other explanation.

“Where are they?” he demanded as soon as he set foot in the foyer of St. Gerard’s.

The nurse at the reception desk cast him a baleful glance. “And you are?” she asked patiently.

Lucius gaped at her for a moment. “Malfoy,” he bit out, clearly taken aback to have to identify himself.

“Lucius?” a familiar voice called as steps came toward him down the hallway. “Thank goodness, come along, she’s nearly there, come along,” Madam Malfoy put her hand around his arm and let him escort her to the room where Narcissa struggled.

“One more,” Dr. Moritz was saying as they swung open the door.

Narcissa screamed. The sound was more blood-curdling than anything Lucius had ever heard, including Muggles he’d tortured. She was sitting propped on a bunch of pillows with her legs wide, her feet raised. Her eyes clenched shut as she pushed, her hair was wet with sweat.

“Good!” the mediwizard told her. “He’s crowning… one more ought to do it,” he coaxed.

“You just said one more!” she argued with him, then caught sight of her mother-in-law, and Lucius. “What the hell are you doing here?” she shouted at him.

Lucius felt his eyebrows rise. “I assumed I was invited,” he said dryly, coming to her side.

“Mr. Malfoy, you’re just in time. You’re doing very well, Narcissa, really, just one more and we’ll be right as rain,” Moritz said with the type of bedside manner only mediwizards could conjure.

“There, you see?” Lucius said, taking her hand. “Only one more—erk—” Lucius stopped as his wife twisted his robe collar tightly with her free hand.

“They’ve been saying that for an hour,” Narcissa growled at him dangerously. “If I had my wand, I’d—”

“Good!” Moritz said brightly. “When you’re angry, you push naturally, now come along…”

“Like to see you have to do this!” Narcissa shouted at him obligingly, and then screamed again. Moritz bent over her and then, suddenly, he held something large and greyish-red in his hands. He passed it off to the nurse, who waved her wand over it while he performed the spell to cut the umbilical cord. And there he was.

“Your son,” Moritz said proudly.

Narcissa opened her eyes again, slowly releasing Lucius’s collar and hand. Her nails had bit into his palms, but he hardly cared at that moment. They took their first glimpse of their child together. Bald, large, and squalling already, neither had ever laid eyes on anything quite like him.

“He certainly took his time coming out, didn’t he?” Moritz observed as he took the infant in his blanket back from the nurse and brought him closer to the parents. “But you see, it all worked out for the best. He’s perfectly sound, Mr. Malfoy, perfectly healthy, oh yes.” The baby made his presence known with another sharp wail. “And he woke up without needing any sort of tickle, didn’t he?”

“Tickle?” Lucius asked quizzically.

Narcissa held out her hands and Dr. Moritz placed the infant in her arms, reminding her to support the head. “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus,” she said wryly. “But you’re not asleep now, are you?” She asked him. She hated to admit it, but the doctor had been right. He was worth it. Though Lucius would never know that, she decided immediately.

Lucius smiled at his son, his heir, his future. “Draco,” he said, trying the name on for size. He reached out and held a tiny hand between his fingers. In truth, he was settling down now, tired from the excitement of being born, and as he closed his eyes and nestled in his mother’s arms, he did resemble a somewhat overgrown salamander. They had discussed a family name like Jareth or Phoebus, but at that moment, Lucius felt this boy needed a name that would distinguish him. That would be his alone, and not an ancestor’s. Especially when the day dawned on a world purified, where he need never fear death or disease or the dilution of his powerful blood.

“Draco,” he said again, sinking to whisper to his son, “Welcome to a new world.”

“Ahem,” Dr. Moritz cleared his throat nervously, motioning the nurse to take Draco away again to be weighed and measured. “Narcissa? I do need you to do one more thing….”

Lucius decided the hall would be a safer place to wait.

fin


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