The Radiant

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“Go to sleep.” Her voice was low, and Lucius realised that she hadn’t been sleeping as he had thought she had been. “I can tell you’re awake. Your breathing is shallower.”

“What time is it?” His voice sounded dusty, and he stretched his arms over his head, groaning as his back clicked.

Ginny shifted and exhaled lowly. “Just past three in the morning.”

Lucius turned over in bed, reaching out blindly in the dark and feeling for her body. When his fingers closed around her slender wrist, he pulled her towards his thighs and chest, the bedclothes rumpling. Ginny let herself be moved, pliant, and sighed as her body came in contact with his, front to front, her forehead resting just below his throat.

“I can’t sleep.” He spoke over her head.

“Obviously,” she murmured, kissing his skin and winding her hands around his waist, his hips, his buttocks. “I can still smell him on the sheets.” Lucius’ body tensed under her wandering hands. “Don’t be afraid that I’m going to—”

“I’m not afraid,” he snapped back quickly, and then Ginny felt him flinch, slightly, as he realised how contradictory he sounded. She sighed.

“I knew Draco, too, Lucius. You have known him for twenty-six years as a father, and I knew him as a classmate and then as a lover and a partner. We each knew him a different manner. I had a feeling that he would demand some sort of tithe from us—that’s not to make him sound vindictive or childish. It’s just the way that Draco always was, even when we were together. An eye for an eye, in all fairness and all seriousness.”

Lucius hesitated a moment before speaking. “Yes, he was like that as a small child, too. At school?”

“Possibly. I wasn’t around him so much, then.”

“I knew as soon as Narcissa visited,” he sighed, bringing a hand up to rub at his eyebrows. “She must have guessed what he wanted, too. And you caught on quickly enough. Draco is a predictable creature sometimes.”

Ginny nodded. “Yes,” she replied. “But that’s why he’s so charming.”

“You shouldn’t praise a man’s son when you’re in bed with him,” he grumbled, carding fingers through his hair.

“Sorry. But I do have a question for you.”

“Hm?”

“You went along with it. You gave your assent far more quickly than I had expected. Why? I always get the sense that you’re so proprietary.”

Lucius sighed against her.

“How can I be a jealous man when it comes to my son? I took what was his. He brought you to the Manor when he hadn’t done that with a girl in years, and from the start I wanted you and I think I made that very clear.”

“You did.”

“He deserved some form of closure, and with the Malfoys—with any of the major Pureblood families—closure is never typical and always complicated—decadent—troubling. I knew, as soon as he hit me, what he would want, and as a father I wanted to give it to him—and as a romantic rival and as the man who took his woman, I was obligated to. When you signaled that you were fine with what was going to happen—with us, the three of us—I didn’t want to be the one who held it back. I didn’t want to be the lone party. I was aroused by it but I was also uncomfortable with it because it meant risking you remembering how it was with Draco.”

Ginny shifted, moving herself up his body, pushing him more onto his back, and resting her hands on his neck, making their bodies eye to eye.

“But were you forced into it? I don’t want you to have been forced into it—that would make me feel dirty and ashamed of myself for instigating everything.”

He shook his head.

“Nobody forces me into anything I don’t want to do, Ginevra. Have you forgotten who I am—who I used to be?”

She smiled slightly. “That’s true. And also, you’re annoyingly stubborn, too.”

He swatted lightly at her. “And—to be honest, to be completely honest—I always liked the feel of a woman between two men.”

“Have you done that often?”

“Often enough,” he murmured. “My younger days were very—very salacious, at times. Lascivious parties—more orgies than parties, actually. The older generations of Slytherin were depraved. Revels were exquisite, drawn-out affairs, and Narcissa and I both took part. She was just as fierce and libidinous as I was. Even more so, at times.”

“I can tell,” Ginny said. “You seemed to know what you were doing in terms of experience. And Narcissa—I feel as though she would have sex with me if I wanted it.”

Lucius laughed honestly, then, his body moving with the peals. “Yes, she probably would. She’s voracious.”

Ginny smiled, and then was quiet for a few minutes. “I won’t leave you for him,” she said quietly, rubbing her face against his neck.

“How lovely,” he breathed.

“Don’t be so nonchalant,” she continued, her hands kneading at him. “I saw how scared you were when Draco arrived.”

“Malfoys don’t—get scared.”

“Ridiculous! Lucius,” she said. “You looked so terrified that I was going to up and leave you after everything had been said and done. I would never do that,” she said firmly, meeting his eyes in the darkened room. “I would never do that. And I would never, never do that with your son. I had Draco. I was with Draco. We made love all the time. But we didn’t talk like this. We didn’t fight like this. We didn’t live together. I had what you think I want, but it’s not what I want. I want you—I don’t care that you’re older than me, or that I can’t change some things about you. It’s you I want, every day. I become so wet around you.” She grabbed his hand and slid it between her legs. “Even while Draco was inside me, it was you who made me so wet—you, crawling up the bed, you, touching me, you coming inside of me. I couldn’t stop looking at you—how beautiful you looked, how fierce, how sexual, how deviant. You—sharing me with your son, allowing him to touch me, allowing us that, was the ultimate act of ownership over me, and I liked it. The anal sex—the ultimate act of domination—proclaimed you as lord and master over me, even if for that moment, and it felt right.” Ginny rubbed her hips against him, and he could feel, indeed, how wet she was, how hot the space between her thighs was, as if she were radiating desire.

He exhaled and pulled her in tighter to his body, and she let herself be pliable, molded to his contours.

“What on earth happened to all the bravado that the Lucius Malfoy of yore had?” She asked the question quietly, and he paused for a moment before replying.

“What happened to the innocence that the Ginny Weasley of yore had?”

“That’s a good point. I guess we change. We all change. The two of us changed—the War helped with that. It’s no matter. I don’t think I would have wanted to be with him, anyways—that old Lucius.” She licked his neck, sucking on the skin lightly, inhaling his smell and humming in pleasure.

There was a moment of silence.

“What if I can’t say that I love you? What if I say that I can’t love you?”

Ginny was still for a beat, thoughtful. When she answered she spoke right into his ear, her lips brushing his skin.

“Then I will continue to love you until you love me,” she whispered. “I shan’t stop.”

“What if I can never say it?”

“Then I’ll love you doubly hard.”

“That’s a large deficit to make up for, Ginevra.”

“I don’t care. We’ll make love, and I’ll talk of love, and I’ll tell you I love you. And you’ll think of love, and you’ll wonder about love, and you’ll compare this love to Narcissa’s and to Draco’s and to every other person who has ever said the words to you. And it will saturate every level of our lives together, and I think that will be enough.” She lay down on his chest, her entire body on top of his, her length spanning down him.

Lucius brought his hands up and rubbed her back slowly and rhythmically.


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He found her in the solarium the next morning, wearing a long, green nightgown and reading from a book of Walt Whitman’s poetry, her tangled hair tied up into a bun. As he stood in the doorway, he admired the lean line of the back of her neck, the way the white skin was bruised with mouth-sucked bruises and thumbprints. Her shoulders were marred with teeth marks, and Lucius felt a frisson of pleasure of seeing her in such a state. He stepped out of the doorway and into the room.

When Ginny heard him enter, she gently set the book down and turned to greet him. He noticed her swollen lower lip, the slight stubble-burn she had down the front of her neck and along her collarbones.

If he had been worried that it would have been awkward, he needn’t have.

“Good morning,” she nearly purred, her voice a creamy rasp, and he smiled in spite of himself. She held her arms out to him, opening and closing her hands in an almost child-like manner, and Lucius ambled over, his hands in the pockets of his dressing down. When he was in front of the loveseat, she tilted her face up to him, and he bent down, kissing her softly. She inhaled as he sucked her tender bottom lip into his mouth and traced along it with his tongue. As he released her and moved to sit beside her, she sighed.

His arm was straight along the back of the seat, and she was leaned into him slightly. Her body moved with a litheness and looseness that could only come from a previous, deep night of thorough, brutal pleasure, and when she stretched beside him, so cat-like and so lazy, he was entranced by her languidness.

All of a sudden he remembered the plea that he had made of her in his study the day before, and Lucius made a choked sound.

As she turned to look at him, he realised that his face had, in all likelihood, gone a mottled red, which was an action so unlike the Malfoys that it made him blush harder, avoiding her stare and looking stalwartly up at the ceiling. When he felt her long fingers grasp his chin, he resisted her grip, pulling back against her as she tried to move his head so they could meet eyes.

“Come on, you big, stubborn man,” she hissed, and put a hand on either side of his face as she changed tactics, standing up on the sofa and placing a leg on either side of him, looking down at him from above. As she forced him to meet her eyes, she slowly sank to a seated position, wincing slightly as she did, tugging his head down with her movements, and Lucius sighed, and then reluctantly looked at her. “Why are you embarrassed, Lucius?”

“Are you sore?”

Ginny smiled at the change of topic, and shook her head slightly at his attempt. “Yes—but it’s a good sore. It’s good. It’s wonderful. But you avoided the question. Why are you embarrassed, Lucius?”

“I said too much yesterday,” he murmured, and then he flinched as she traced his lips with her thumb, dipping the tip of it into his mouth. All the while, he sat immobile, unmoving, allowing her to touch him but not pliant under her hands.

“No, you didn’t. Are you ashamed of what happened with Draco?”

At Draco’s name, Ginny felt his chest tense and his groin twitch, and she resisted the urge to laugh or grind her hips down into him, instead rubbing her cheek against his, humming slightly with pleasure. Lucius sighed, his eyes slipping closed over her shoulder.

“No—I’m not ashamed. I feel as though the storm has cleared there—inexplicable—but something has changed.”

“I agree. It’ll be a while, but I think that Draco will be back, and I think that he can be a part of this rag-tag family unit.” She tilted her head. “So you’re not worried about that.”

Lucius knew what she was referring to but refused to talk, his mouth closing.

Ginny continued. “Then are you worried about asking me to have your baby?” Lucius made a strangled sound and Ginny pulled back, looking at him. “So that’s it, then.” His cheeks were still splashed with red—those high cheekbones painted with colour—and Ginny looked at him solemnly, curling her arms around his neck and anchoring his head in place. “Why are you so ashamed of asking me that?”

“Because,” he began, having to clear his throat, “because I don’t want to pressure you—you never said anything about children—because I don’t want to impart any of my desires onto you.” He looked so uncomfortable that Ginny just wanted to cradle his head in her arms, but she pushed on.

“I always knew you wanted children, I think.”

“What?” He started and looked at her.

“You always had slips of the tongue about it.”

Lucius made another tortured sound and his head tilted forward.

“Why are you so ashamed about this? Don’t be! Don’t be,” she said, and nudged his head up, pressing her forehead to his, breathing deeply. They sat like that, her hands on either side of his face, her palms pressing into his cheeks and his jawbone, his eyes half-closed.

“It hasn’t been long enough—has it? Have we been together for long enough?” He looked up at her, slightly frantic, his eyes darting in small, quick movements, the pupils dilated.

“Lucius. I gave up parts of my family for you. I forfeited friends. I bent morals. Would I have done any of those things if I hadn’t thought that this relationship was bound to last? It doesn’t matter how long—it matters how much, love.” She smiled, nearly against his lips, and he exhaled a long breath.

“So—”

“So I’ll go off of my birth control.”

She could feel the immediate reaction that her words had on him—the arms that she had twined around his throat were pressed up against his pulse point and she could feel his heart-rate jump, jigging ecstatically, and the breasts that were pressed to his chest were pillowed against the cavern of that muscle, feeling the thudding of his heart reverberating through her own body. His body had been coiled, waiting for disaster, rejection, and instead it had been granted assent.

“What—what?” His hands tightened on her back.

“We can have a baby.”

His face was slack and incredulous. “It doesn’t bother you that it will be out of wedlock? That your family won’t be—”

“Stop trying to dissuade me from this, you silly bugger.” She kissed him. “We’d have a beautiful baby, wouldn’t we? All tawny and graceful and pale. Like a sylph. Hypnotic baby. Deep eyes.” She was murmuring her words between kisses, and eventually she felt a dampness on his cheek that she knew wasn’t from her lips, but Ginny refused to embarrass him further by calling attention to it.

“Yes,” he breathed, as he held her tightly. “Yes—exquisite. And smart as a whip. And strong and brave and beautiful.”

“Deviously smart,” she breathed back, and all of a sudden she felt her own eyes prickling heatedly, and had to bring a hand up to dash away a few tears that had fallen when she blinked, becoming trapped in the web of her eyelashes, trying to track their way down her face.

“We should go out,” Lucius said suddenly, still gripping her tightly.

“What?” Ginny was surprised at that—Lucius tended to stay in the Manor. He was nearly hermit-like in his reticence to go out into the outside world. She wasn’t sure if it was a sort of fear of the judgment of others, or an unwillingness to be stared at. He was such a rare person to see, for example, in the streets of Diagon Alley, or at a Ministry event, that when he did go out, he was goggled at. Ginny privately thought that in actuality, many of the women were staring at him not out of judgment but out of some other type of interest. Therefore, when Ginny needed shopping done, she usually went by herself. Previously, she would have dragged her brother or Hermione or even Harry along—those three had been her closest friends, aside from Luna—Luna, who was currently overseas in Malaysia helping her father research for the Quibbler and who had been gone for a year now—but since the days of friendship with the trio were somewhat shattered, Ginny had become more self-sufficient.

“Out,” he repeated, stroking firmly up and down her back.

“Out to where?”

“Out to dinner, maybe. Would you like that?” He looked at her, noting her open-mouthed stare. “I know that you’ve been venturing out on your own lately, and I feel like a—like a coward.”

“Well, I know that you hate the crowds—”

“I’ll make a dinner reservation for us,” he said, and kissed her, setting her down on the loveseat and walking to the owlery.

Ginny was left sitting on the sofa by herself, slightly surprised at his abrupt change in behaviour. She figured, however, that Lucius was channeling his elatedness at her giving him something that he so desperately wanted by, in turn, granting her something.

The night prior, after Draco had left, flushed and damp from the throes of sex, after Lucius had fallen asleep, after their talk, his tawny body sprawled out across the mattress, Ginny had extricated herself from his limbs and had sat up in bed and though about his stunted request for her to have his child.

She had never really thought about children. Granted, she was in her mid-twenties, and sometimes her body had twinges, times when she did want to experience being pregnant, giving birth, carrying a child for the man that she loved. But when she thought of her mother—the pain that Molly had gone through losing a child, the scrimping and saving that had gone on in order for the seven children to make it through, the absolute lack of attention that Ginny had received when she had been younger as a result of so many siblings—Ginny shuddered.

But this could be different. She didn’t have to end up trapped in her kitchen, wearing horrible floral print dresses that looked like they were designed for cauldron-shaped women, constantly cooking and cleaning and picking up after seven children. She didn’t have to follow in her mother’s footsteps in that regard. Lucius hadn’t expressed a need for a multitude of children. And maybe she could handle those many children—if they wanted to have many. If he wanted more. But he was older—the likelihood of that was lower than if Lucius was her age.

And they could be good parents—she could be a good mother. She was smart, and she was fierce, and she was caring, and together, the two of them would make such a smart, eloquent, beautiful child. And didn’t she want children at some point in her life? She hadn’t given it much thought, bouncing around from relationship to relationship. With Draco, there was no doubt that they would never procreate. But with Lucius—something within her was ignited, wanting to settle down, live a life of extraordinary adventure and love with him.

And sitting there, leaning against the headboard, looking down at the sleeping form of her partner, his halo-like hair framing him like Gabriel, like Lucifer, Ginny had made her decision.


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