I SPY || 𝕝𝕦𝕔𝕚𝕦𝕤 𝕞𝕒𝕝𝕗𝕠𝕪

Chapter 52. Confessions

Severus stared Lucius in the eye defiantly, daring the broken man to start a conflict. Lucius' jaw tensed, the blood vessels in his neck popping. His teeth were gritted, his eyes piercing the headmaster in his chair.

"Get. Your. Hands. Off. My. Daughter." Lucius articulated with a sharp tongue and a slight hiss. Astrid looked over her shoulder to Severus who stared Lucius down with little emotion, he simply placed down his quill slowly, and leant back in his chair. Even with Everly's small giggles echoing through the large office, the tension in the air was thick.

"You have no right." Lucius growled, raising his cane and pointing it at the headmaster. Astrid tugged on Lucius' black coat, trying her best to deescalate him from his trembling outburst, and calm the seething man.

"Narcissa had no right playing mother to her, but here we are." Severus drawled, raising an eyebrow. Astrid cursed internally, closing her eyes with a sigh for just a second, she had hoped to avoid this, a heated confrontation. It seemed the two men craved it though. Lucius launched himself forward towards his former friend. Astrid released Lucius' coat and pushed her palms against his strong chest, pushing him back, halting him in his step. He did not look at her. His crazed eyes were pinned on Severus. She looked up at his stubbled chin with pleading eyes.

"Lucius, please, ignore him." Astrid begged in a whisper, she ran a delicate hand up his chest, brushing his neck and cupping his cheek. She tried to guide him to look at her, but he fought her touch. Lucius gripped her hands, pulling them from his chest and face, then he cast Astrid aside, her slight frame stumbling from him with ease.

"Lucius!" She shouted after him desperately as she regained herself, but he was already half way to the headmaster's desk, his wand already drawn from his cane.

"How dare you!" Lucius's voice boomed, startling Everly and causing her to break into a sob, dropping her little red dragon to the ground. Severus broke eye contact with the furious Malfoy, his eyes casting down to Everly who cried and shrieked on his knee. With a sigh and a small tut he picked her little wailing form up and brought her to his chest, where he rubbed her back soothingly. Lucius stood in front of his desk now, his wand outstretched to Severus' face.

"Give me her." Lucius seethed.

"Look at the upset you've caused Lucius." Severus scolded, casting an eye not only over Everly who cried into his black robes, but over to Astrid, who watched helplessly from the side-lines with pleading shiny eyes.

"You've caused!" Lucius retorted; his lip curled.

"I? I who has been watching over your daughter carefully in her mother's brief absence?"

"You're playing father, Severus, with my child!"

"Do you hear your own hypocrisy, Lucius?" Severus sneered as he patted Everly's back. "You allowed your daughter to refer to another woman as mother, and then over-react to an innocent act of child minding."

Lucius wand arm began to tremble, his teeth gritted. He inhaled deeply, readying to cast whatever spell he deemed appropriate to free his daughter from Severus' clutches when Astrid's voice cut through the air.

"Enough!"

She marched up the small steps to Severus' desk, rounding it quickly, and took her child from Severus, who gave her up willingly. She perched Everly on her hip and held her head soothingly with one hand, stroking the back of her daughter's hair.

"If the two of you wish to have it out... fine, but it won't be in my presence, or my daughters." Astrid hissed, shaking her head. With a deep exhale she took Everly down the little steps and disappeared out of the office door, passed the gargoyle, down the corridor and into the grounds.