The Fearsome Name of Riddle

PART 3: Nervous Start

Lucius spent a lot of his time thinking about his mother after rifling through what was left of her things that had been hidden up in the attic. His fingers ran across another picture, one where he did recognise her face. The image was browning and fading as she smiled at him, one hand on his eleven year old shoulder, the other on the side of his four year old brother's face. He wasn't sure if it was magic or just genetic luck but his mother didn't seem to change much in the pictures of her with her children, even though over a decade had past she still looked the same to him. Perhaps it was simply a childish wish for his mother to never leave him, that she would remain young forever but that logic had no place when he knew that she was dead. 

"Is that him?" His son's voice snapped him out of his thoughts. "Your brother, I mean. I never knew you had a brother." 

"Octavian," Lucius mumbled, rubbing his thumb over his brother's giggling face. He used to hold such resentment but that all felt idiot after so many years. "Yes, that's him. My mother's favourite, we never did really get along." 

He passed the picture over to Draco as his son joined him on the sitting room sofa. That same Chesterfield style furniture, adorned in dark green leather that had seen so much throughout the family's history. Lucius watched the pale haired boy as he looked at his grandmother. They were quite alike, Victoria and Draco Malfoy. Both had softer features and a naturally cold stare. Sometimes, when he looked at Draco, he could see his mother in his son's pale blue eyes. 

"You don't really look alike," Draco commented, looking between his father and his uncle. Octavian had dark, curly hair where his father's was long, straight and white. Lucius had crystal blue eyes and Octavian’s looked near black in the ink. "More like opposites. I wouldn't have guessed you were related if I didn't know." 

"He always did look more like Voldemort… back then anyway." Lucius chuckled to himself, trying to imagine his brother looking a bit like a snake. "He hated it, but Octavian grew to be so much kinder than the rest of us. He had the best side of our mother."

"Not something you caught onto," Draco said with a slight smirk. 

"No, unfortunately not." Lucius knew that he was joking, even if only a little, but he still heard the truth in it. 

#####

September 1st 1965

Lucius Malfoy felt sick. His stomach churned in the dark of the late night hours. Hogwarts had been the most exciting thing in the world to him up until that moment. Bellatrix had called him coddled. Andromeda had tried to comfort him like some infant. The thought of going somewhere like a boarding school without his mother was starting to terrify him. He could barely remember the days when she had avoided him like the plague. She had always been there to protect him. His mother was the woman that would move the Earth if he asked her to. How could he live away from her for months at a time? 

As he stood in his mother's doorway, Lucius glared down at the dark brown curls tucked under her nose. He couldn't help but feel jealous. Octavian took all her time, even when he tried to reach out for her, she watched Octavian. It had been the baby boy who had brought her out of her fear and grief. When Victoria had finally let Lucius go around the house on his own again after Obsidian’s death, she had sunk into the same kind of melancholy that had gripped her at his birth. Lucius knew to stay with his Uncle Abraxas and leave her be. He had expected her to scream the way she used to when Octavian would escape Abraxas’ grasp, but she didn't. She picked him up and held him like he could cure all her tears. 

Lucius stepped across the threshold into her room. His eyes had grown accustomed to the lack of light in the time it had taken him to actually go in. Everything seemed grey, from her dark green sheets to the wood of her side tables. He walked up to the edge of the bed, annoyed by the common sight. His brother did it every morning. Fortunately, he wasn't one to bound around the house and wake everyone up but Octavian would walk into their mother's room and go back to sleep. But that morning felt like her time had been stolen.