Lucius Malfoy's Second Wife - COMPLETE

The character of Lucius Malfoy belongs to J.K.Rowling. I am only borrowing him for a while. No copyright transgressions are intended and no profit is made.


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Chapter Twelve - Sadness

Lucius was in a rage. Olivia didn’t know her place and a few hours locked in her old bedroom would show her she did not have the ordering of his home. He was Master there, not her. She had been slowly creeping into the running of the household over the past two months and he was going to put a stop to her attempts to control his very existence. Even as he fumed, his anger started to lessen. Her ‘interference’ was always to do something nice for him, he knew that. It was just hard living with someone younger whose outlook was still so unjaded and optimistic. So youthful. He sat in his ministry office where he’d apparated in anger, dithering about going home and letting her out. Just then his tattoo started to hurt. He was being called by Voldemort. Now she would have to stay in that room for a while longer.


Olivia tried the door, then the windows, but everything was sealed shut tightly. She tried to apparate out of the room but couldn’t. She tried to reverse the spell but no luck. She sat on the bed feeling weepy and angry and sorry. She hadn’t handled that well. She hoped she wouldn’t cause the elves any problems. After awhile, she started to feel sleepy, and the air in the room was becoming very stuffy. Slowly she realized that no new air was entering the room. Don’t panic, she said to herself. She tried calling Minnie. Minnie apparated outside the door but couldn’t come in.


“Minnie, I think the air in this room is being used up and I am having more and more trouble breathing. Can you fetch Master? Tell him it’s an emergency, Minnie. Now.” Minnie disappeared from outside the door. A few minutes later she reappeared outside the bedroom door.


“Can’t find Master,” Minnie squeaked. “Sorry.”


Olivia was getting slowly foggier. She didn’t want Lucius to blame himself if anything really bad happened, even though she was very annoyed that he was out of touch when she needed him. She knew it had just been an accident, and Lucius hadn’t meant this to happen. The air was slowly being used up and she felt groggy. Olivia sat down at the escritoire by the bed and wrote him a note saying she loved him. She wrote telling him she knew it was an accident and didn’t blame him at all and added that he probably had meant ‘Fermum Portalis’ instead of ‘FermumTotalis’. It was extremely important that he understand…something…something…what?... because…because… she hadn’t told him…had she?...no… and now she was sorry. By then she was finding it hard to stand so she lay down on the floor where there might be more air.


Lucius came home a short time later to find a distraught Minnie. “Master, help Mistress.”


“Livvy?” Lucius whisked to the bedroom immediately, removed his spell and opened the door. The lack of air caused him to have a coughing fit but he ran inside instantly. He looked around before he discovered Olivia on the floor barely breathing. He spelled the windows open and brought her to one of them, but she was deeply unconscious and didn’t rouse.


Lucius sent Minnie for the doctor and tried to breathe more air into Olivia. The doctor arrived within three minutes because of Minnie’s urgent message and took over from Lucius, assessing her symptoms. He conjured an oxygen cloud and had Lucius place her in it. Lucius was beside himself trying to hold Olivia. The doctor, Dr. Bennett, gently held him back, saying she needed to breathe the oxygen. He pushed Lucius out of the room while he worked on Olivia.


It was more than two hours later when Dr. Bennett emerged from the bedroom to find Lucius pacing in the sitting room of the apartment, looking haggard. “She’ll recover, Lucius, and she’ll be fine. She’s asleep now, not unconscious.” He took them both to Lucius’ study to sit down. “Lucius, I’m sorry to tell you this, but she lost the baby. I know it’s not much comfort, but she can have others, you don’t need to worry about that. I’m not sure she even knew about the baby herself.”


“What? She was pregnant? Sweet goddess, I didn’t know.” He whispered again to himself, “I didn’t know.” Lucius was now doubly devastated. It was all his fault. He’d lost them their child. He felt sick.


Dr. Bennett put an envelope on Lucius’ knee. “This was in the bedroom. It is addressed to you.”


Lucius stared unseeing at the envelope. “A child,” he whispered.


“Maybe you should open the envelope, Lucius,” said the doctor.


“What? Oh.” Lucius didn’t care about the envelope until he saw it was in Olivia’s distinctive handwriting. He was afraid to open it. Why didn’t he have the strength to distance himself from her, from the sharp stabbing guilt that was swallowing him? Would she tell him she wanted a divorce? Was his marriage over already? Did she hate him? He couldn’t blame her.

Dr. Bennett said, “She’ll sleep for several hours, probably until tomorrow morning. Call me if you need me.” The doctor apparated away from the estate.


Lucius took a breath and opened the envelope, pulling out the paper inside. He read that she loved him. When had that happened? he wondered, but he was surprised that he was less shocked than he should have been to discover she cared for him. She wrote that she didn’t blame him for the accident, as she called it. He went past that. Lucius read that she thought he had miscalled his spell saying ‘totalis’, not ‘portalis’. Now he felt even more miserable. He had said ‘totalis’ deliberately, not wanting her to get out a door or a window. But he hadn’t wanted her source of air to be cut off. He was innocent of intent there. Now their unborn child was dead. His fault. How could he face her? Or himself? He needed to be with her, to apologize, to atone, to do something. His call from Voldemort had put him out of communication at just the wrong time, almost killing his wife. And killing his child. Lucius was reeling with pain inside.


Olivia was affected by Lucius’ terrible pain to the point where she woke up from her drug-induced sleep. He needed her and…she cried out…her baby was gone. She couldn’t feel it anymore. She had been just under two months pregnant but had only known herself for a couple of days. She had wanted to plan a small celebratory dinner for them and tell Lucius then. Her grief swamped her. Now she knew why Lucius was in pain. His grief was dragging her into a downward spiral with him. She had to get to him. She called Minnie to her. “Tell Lucius I’m awake and need him.”


Minnie delivered the message and disappeared as fast as she could. Lucius slowly processed the little elf’s message. Olivia needed him. Olivia needed him. Yes, he needed to go to her. Where? In their bedroom? No, the other bedroom. He walked up the staircase instead of apparating. He couldn’t concentrate. She needed him. She would hate him. Their baby…they had a baby…no…


Lucius arrived at the door to the bedroom and Olivia reached out for him. Lucius saw immediately that she had known about the baby without a word being spoken. He sat stiffly on the bed beside her, not looking at her. She stroked his hair telling him she didn’t blame him. It was an accident. She knew that. Over and over she told him. Finally, Lucius took a deep breath and said, “How can you forgive me for this? I killed our baby.”


“No,” she said fiercely. “No! This was an accident. We need to mourn together, not blame ourselves, or each other.”


Lucius looked at her with sad eyes, “I keep thinking about Draco as a baby. I’ll never know this child, who he or she was… what could have been…., oh Gods, my own child.” He shuddered, “My uncontrolled anger killed…killed…I did use the word ‘totalis’. I wanted to close the windows. But I didn’t want to seal the room.” He knew he should be glad that Voldemort wouldn’t have a new recruit any time soon, but the actuality of losing his unborn child made a hole in his heart.


Olivia pulled him closer, “I know that. I knew it at the time. If I hadn’t been so pushy and self-righteous about a tradition I disagreed with, you wouldn’t have reacted as you did. So if there is blame, there is plenty to go around.” She clung to him and felt his terrible anguish tearing at her. She needed to soothe both their grieving hearts. To her, a baby had been a delightful concept and her loss was hard but she had only known of the pregnancy for two days. To Lucius who was already a father, the loss was more real and painful.


Lucius and Olivia spent the rest of the night in each other’s arms, trying to bring some comfort to each other. Olivia used her empathic skills to soothe his feelings of grief and culpability, which in turn helped her absorb her own feelings of loss. Finally they both slept.