A Romeo\'s Nemesis

Lucius had always justified his decision to raise Draco in a loving a muggle-hating environment because, well... that was how he was raised and he didn\'t have the gall to be the least bit creative nor the bullocks to break any sort of ethical chain in the Malfoy line. Yes, \"Battering the World, one Muggle at a Time\" had always been his motto and he had eviscerated \"why\" over and over for Draco\'s benefit as a child. However, there were always exceptions as there are in every area of modern existence, and while Draco was at a stage in his life where apathy ruled his because of the calm and mildly repugnant cynicality of Lucius’ example, he wanted to set his emotionally poor son\'s mind ablaze with something indelibly brilliant - something akin to sheer genius, something... muggle.

Lucius chortled deviously to himself while bending across the musty old bookshelves, strewn with various outdated Dark Arts texts that he\'d stopped paying any mind to since the age of eighteen, and stretched toward a collection of multicoloured texts in a variety of thicknesses. Lucius suddenly frowned and stopped in mid-grasp; he didn\'t want to intimidate the boy too much, but this was something he held very close to his heart and wouldn\'t admit to anyone but his own heir.
Much to Narcissa\'s chagrin, Lucius’ hiatus from the bedroom was ostensibly do to severe migraines, etc., but while buried in one of the Bard\'s later works, Draco had stumbled in looking just as scheming as ever with candle trembling with ardent haste. He hadn\'t seen his father at first, crumpled up on the couch like a four year old instead of a 34 year old and shrieked softly when he\'d narrowly missed the glowing flaxen corona of his father when foot clambered up to several of the most horridly graphic books a teenage boy could covet.

Lucius smiled grimly at recalling Draco\'s fervent grousing thereafter about his supposed \"entry into manhood\" and \"the expectations to serve the Dark Lord without any education\" after he\'d been shooed away for the third time; Lucius couldn\'t very well have screamed at the damned sod for all he was worth, Narcissa hated Shakespeare at thought him a sentimental coot, like Dumbledore. Lucius hummed and tried to comfort himself by rocking back and forth in foetal position, barely cognizant of what a freak he must\'ve looked yet again, when Draco walked in. This time, there was no shrill exaltation.

\"Father, you\'re a sad, sad man,\" Draco chided, turning up his toes while bouncing with pompous delight.
Lucius looked stunned briefly, then regained his patronizing sneer and proceeded to refel, placating for Draco\'s sake.

\"Draco, when I feel sad, I will curse you and that will be evident. Otherwise, I am simply reclining and trying to rid my mind of the ceaseless ninnies from days\' work. What are you doing here anyway, looking for more dark texts?\" Lucius desperately wanted it to be just that, another tactless ploy at luring his sentimental, violent father into yielding his most damnable and oblique pieces over to a lusty and overanxious Slytherin teen - not bloody likely. Draco smirked, mirroring his elder with calculated poised; Lucius shivered.

\"Not this time father; I got sick of trying to surmise by myself just what the hell you do so late at night in here,\" Draco ran a finger along a particularly grimy encasement for rare artefacts over centuries old, \"dingy old pit.\"
Lucius visibly bristled; this was his favourite room!

\"You will have more respect than that, my boy, for something far more valuable than bloody Nimbus What and Firebolt Who Gives a Damn, you hear?\" Lucius rose from his blanketed encasement briefly to challenge Draco in stature alone; Draco\'s eyes widened slightly, ostensibly repentant.

\"Oh, Daddy, I\'m so sorry,\" he whinged, \"here, let me exhibit my extreme reverence for you.\" And with that, Draco Malfoy, sole heir of the Malfoy dynasty, chucked open the hermetically closed glass vault and threw the possessed monkey\'s claw to the ground with a smack.

Before Lucius could even think about his wand, he stared at the powdered carnage in disbelief. Still escaping from his own personal reverie, and finding the dejavous slightly overwhelming, he grasped Draco\'s waist firmly and dragged him down to the floor to shove his face in the mess.

\"You stupid filth!\" he shouted, launching into a succession of harsh neck half-throttles every syllable.
\"Why do you want to destroy something so precious!?\" Lucius stopped and gawked quizzically at his son\'s now tarnished complexion, lined with monkey-gore. Draco began to quiver and twitch as he did when he was a boy and about to expel a series of spasm-like cries that had wrought havoc upon Lucius’ audible comprehension ever since. Quickly, Lucius protected himself, cuddling the boy and picking him up off the floor.

\"Hear now, I\'m sorry. Shhh, use proper discourse now, not screaming...\" Lucius rolled his eyes in anguish as time ticked away and he still hadn\'t finished Act II of Macbeth, his most favourite scene to boot. Gasping for air form being quashed to his father\'s breast and strangely comforted by it, Draco meant to speak.

\"Father... I only meant to show you... I don\'t... I never...\" Draco choked and spluttered for a few more minutes until Lucius realized his vice grip wasn\'t helping matters. Finally, Draco stood to face his daddy full-on.

\"I never understood what that thing was for, but you always said it was very useful to the right sort of wizard... and I knew you prized it above many more obviously important items...\" Lucius growled at this obvious verbal diahreah and tapped his foot steadily, \"well, you always kept its purpose a secret. Now, I\'ve destroyed it and you\'re peeved which is fine...\" Lucius was just about to eradicate all of Draco\'s privileges for wasting valuable mental-escapism time when Draco finally got to the fucking point.

\"If you don\'t tell me just why you come down here almost every other night by yourself, and don\'t tell me it\'s to research black magic because it\'s totally not, you Dumby-lover -\" Lucius was about to tackle the little bastard, but Draco quickly piped in, \"then I\'ll burn all these multi-coloured thingies before you can say \"Mudblood.\"

Draco visibly puffed up as he knew he\'d won the battle. Lucius didn\'t acknowledge his stupidity but picked up his second favourite, truncated piece, Romeo and Juliet.

\"Yes, well... it\'s quite the coincidence you popped down tonight with such conviction Draco. I had a wee cabal of my own and was thinking of finally sharing with you something my father - or any other freaking Malfoy for that matter - wouldn\'t dare even spit on.\"
Draco\'s brow nearly jumped off his forehead, \"What are you saying, Father?\"
Lucius quaked with the excitement and apprehension mixed in his gullet.

\"I mean to say, Draco, that I come down here to read and loose myself in a muggle\'s preoccupations when he was alive... you know Shakespeare from school don\'t you?\" Placing the book tenderly on the coffee table, Lucius took Draco\'s hand in a surprisingly warm way (Draco was speechless for once in his obnoxiously dictatory life) and sat him down before it on the chaise. Lucius seemed to want to smile at Draco\'s slack-jawed reaction but couldn\'t bear to reveal himself so unabashedly when he could pilfer some of Draco\'s inhibitions slowly and with a father\'s visible emotionally evident reaction for a distraction.

\"This may come as a bit of a shock, especially from a man like me,\" Lucius choked and pretended to have sat on something sharp, \"but I admire the Bard\'s work tremendously and would like to introduce you to one of my greatest passions.\"
Draco suddenly beamed, again regressing into the six year old who always wanted to please. Lucius smirked wryly, \"Perhaps you will exhibit the same amount of adulation as I do for a man in time, Draco.\"