Hey, Soul Sister [Lucius/Narcissa]

Chapter Six

Transfiguration was the least of Lucius's worries. He half-listened to Professor McGonagall's explanation of how to transform a stack of books into a fully functioning wizard chess board while scratching lines into the corner of his parchment with his quill. He knew Narcissa had been trying to help him, to keep him from doing something he would've immediately regretted by attacking Rowle. It was precisely what he'd done for her on the train, and he appreciated the gesture. On the other hand, if he'd been able to reach his wand before she'd pulled him away, he would've done much worse than a Leg-Locker Curse, which was what Rowle had, in Lucius's estimation, deserved.

How dare he compare me to him? Lucius knew he was glaring daggers at the wall behind Professor McGonagall, and he hoped she wouldn't notice. He hadn't expected Rowle to turn the tables on him so quickly, at once trying to bring Lucius down to his level and publicly implying that Lucius would've liked to be the one betrothed to Narcissa instead. She hadn't noticed that part, apparently, or if she had, she'd kept quiet about it. That was good, because if she'd commented, he wouldn't have known how to begin to respond.

He wasn't certain which part bothered him the most. Was it what Thorfinn had said, or was it that Lucius knew parts of it were correct, no matter how much he would've liked to deny them? In certain ways, yes, the two boys were similar. They'd both signed themselves over to the Dark Lord for whatever that might require of them, and they'd both done things with the Death Eaters that would've gotten them arrested, had anyone else known about them. Both hoped to help create a world in which the balance of power tipped in the right direction: toward the Purebloods.

But that was where the similarities in their ideologies ended. Lucius knew Thorfinn valued women about as much as an expensive set of robes through which he hoped to garner the admiration and envy of those less fortunate, and on the rare occasions Thorfinn had entered into a relationship, he hadn't been secretive about his aversion to monogamy. He would never respect Narcissa or treat her as his equal, and the thought of her suffering through a life like that was enough to make Lucius wish he'd been just a bit quicker on the draw when he'd had the chance to strike. As much as he hated to acknowledge it, though, he believed the chance would present itself again soon enough. No one involved appeared to be planning to change their opinion, and things were sure to become heated again.

And then there's the other problem.

Apart from Augustus, no one knew about the silver shape that had materialized on Lucius's back the previous night. At first, Lucius hadn't believed his friend about its presence; it sounded like the type of thing Augustus would joke about, after the amount of discussions the two had held about Walden finding his soulmate and the time they had spent speculating on who theirs might be. But Lucius had gone to the mirror to investigate, and surely enough, there it had been: the outline of what looked like a silver lioness at the center of his spine.

He knew he should've been elated. The appearance of his soulmate's patronus was a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence, and it meant he was one step closer to finding happiness. Hopefully. The problem was that he had no idea to whom this particular patronus belonged. He'd only ever seen those of the students in his year who had been taught to produce them in the same Defense Against the Dark Arts class he'd been forced into as part of the school's core curriculum, despite how very certain he was that he wouldn't need to know how to defend himself from dark magic in the foreseeable future. Only roughly half of the class had managed to produce a corporeal patronus, and of those, none had been in the shape of a lioness.

For a moment, Lucius wondered what became of those people who couldn't form a solid figure with the spell. He assumed they simply had to keep trying, keep improving their magic until they succeeded. The alternative of never knowing which animal tied them to their soulmate was something Lucius couldn't bring himself to wish on anyone, except perhaps Thorfinn.