I'm still alive. I think about this story every day. I'm taking a long time on this one, but it's for you all, because the more I think about the characters, the more I think that I will be better able to portray/manipulate/work with them. Bring them to life for you. Stay tuned, of course. You are all lovely.

She wasn't sure how she was going to handle this one. Great job, Ginevra. Sleeping with an interview subject hardly seemed professional, and if word got out that that was what she had done in order to score her story, she was going to be eviscerated, Amorin too. Poor Amorin. And then she got nervous, worried that Lucius Malfoy had somehow tricked her into the whole thing, and that he was planning to use it as blackmail should she write an unsatisfactory article about him. Fuck, fuck, fuck. Oh, you bloody idiot.

Still—

She spent the next week in an odd haze. A red wine-fueled haze. A masturbatory haze. A buzzing, trilling, honey-thick haze. She knew that it was the endorphins that were making her so odd. That her brain was attaching itself to him even as she spent her week sitting at her desk chair, writing out her article, chatting with her children. Seven days. Seven days in which she reached her hands between her legs and touched herself on the strike of every hour, having to duck into the bathroom at work in order to be able to make it through the work-day. Seven days in which she remembered what he looked like with his hair—long, silver, thick and male—falling out of its tie, sticking to his gnarled, wide shoulders. In which she remembered the feeling of his hands mauling her breasts, the huge palms covering her chest completely. The sink of his teeth into the back meat of her neck. And as the days led up to their next meeting—as each night passed and she dreamed about odd things—she got more and more—what? Nervous? Excited? Something.

He had seen her in his sleep, or something like that. And the times that he had wanted to send her an owl—to say come over and let me fuck you into the floor again. But he hadn't. There had still been a modicum of pride left somewhere in the cage of his old bones, and he had clung to it. And clung to himself. Jerked himself stupid in the confines of his shower. He had always had a libido. But he had assumed that that same libido was going to diminish as he got older. Being a sexagenarian had thrown him for a loop, for a while there, and he had thought that he was going to become less of himself—Clearly not. Because whenever he thought about her—curving her spine up underneath him to meet the sweaty bracket of his own body, the tangled mass of her red hair against his nose, the smell of her pussy spread across his groin, the way she had come, unassuming and without theatrics, around his cock—he became insufferably, cruelly hard.

So when she showed up for their next meeting, he had to sit down the minute he saw her because he was afraid that all of the blood leaving his brain was going to make him faint. Luckily, he could slide behind his desk and hide his lap that way.

She bumbled into the library in such a way that it looked as though they hadn't ever fucked—there was nothing overtly awkward in the way she moved. Her hair was half-falling out of its braid.

"Christ, you look like shit."

"Oh, thank you," she replied, rolling her eyes.

"Why?"

"Problems with James." She set her notebook down on the couch. "That little bugger." This second sentiment was muttered under her breath. He watched as she pulled her hair back again, loosening it from its original braid and re-plaiting it. Her shirt was undone just enough that he could see the full top curves of her breasts when she bent over. And when she straightened up, her nipples were pulled taut, brought into full contact with the material of the blouse. She didn't notice him staring at her. She was too busy getting her things organized.

"What is James doing?"

"Pulling girls. He's been getting caught all over Hogwarts. The randy bastard."

Lucius laughed. "That's the age."

"I'm assuming you were the same way." She sat herself down.

"Oh, yes. Though not just with girls."

"Of course," Ginny said, shaking her head.

"It was a different time, Ginevra. When I went to school. Everybody was involved with everybody."

"Who did you first kiss—boy or girl?"

Lucius thought for a moment. "I'm not sure. Boy, perhaps. The Slytherin dormitories were notoriously liberal in the 1960s and 1970s. Which is when I was there. Well, really, the whole world was notoriously liberal then."

"I wouldn't know," she said, and he realised that she was taking a dig at his age.

He decided to dig back.

"Were you sore?"

"What?" She looked shocked.

"After we had sex. Were you sore?"

He gave her credit—she didn't blush. She stared at him for a moment, as if trying to figure out his aim, and then she nodded.

"I bled for a few days."

All of a sudden he was so hard he could barely think. Something about that statement—that he had marked her, scored her so thoroughly on the inside that she had bled—aroused him. Incredibly so.

"But?"

She looked at him with an exasperated look. "But what?"

"But?" He prodded at her again.

"But it was worth it."

Of course it had been worth it. He hadn't had the carpet cleaned in that room yet. He didn't think he ever would.

"I'm sorry that I yelled at you about Draco."

She gave him an odd look. "What?"

"I lost my temper, and I shouldn't have."

"You were jealous," she said, and her voice was a croon.

He gritted his teeth.

"Say it."

He was silent.

"Say it, Lucius."

As she said his name he remembered how she had said his name before—before, when he was on top of her and inside of her—how she had cried Lucius, god, please, Lucius in between whatever rough and animalistic sounds they had made, how she had said Lucius, please, Lucius, Lucius. Maybe she didn't remember. Maybe he was making it up.

Ginny watched him. He was staring at her.

"I was jealous."

But it wasn't spoken with any malice. He enunciated each word with devastating calm and intent, and she felt heat up and down her thighs just from watching him speak.

"Glad you admitted it."

She bent her head to write a shaky note.

"Idiot," she mumbled.

"I heard that."

"I know."

He rolled his eyes and scratched absentmindedly at his wrist with one hand.

"What do you want to talk about today?"

"The dark arts," she said, completely calm, no stammering at all. He gave her a look that seemed to be impressed.

"Straight for the jugular."

"Obviously."

Lucius tilted his neck back and forth, and she heard it crack from across the room.

"Ask."

This was dangerous ground they were treading on, this eerie détente, this pretending at openness. He was prepared to answer as much as he could without giving away all of his secrets—but then again, he did have secrets to share. That was the thing about those secrets. If you kept them inside of you, they shredded you up. He had them to spare.

Ginny stood.

"Well, this is clearly a wooden floor, and from the way my footsteps sound, I know that there's something down there. Storage place?"

He laughed.

"You're very smart. Ginevra mine."

Ginevra mine? Two bright minds wheeled helplessly at that slip.

"—But it's a decoy."

"Why would you make a decoy so difficult to find, then?"

"See, you're smarter than most people, though you don't always think so."

His words were so much more prescient than she would ever admit, and they cut to her heart, no turnstiles, just throughways.

He continued. "And because you're smarter than most, you've stumbled upon the third-least important decoy."

"On a scale…"

Lucius laughed. "No. That I won't tell you. Although…" He paused, and thought. "I could give you free rein of the manor and let you find what you find, see what you can see. You'd have to be a brave soul to do that, though. Sometimes people get—lost."

"I'm sure they do," Ginny said, her palms a little sweaty. "But Lucius" and here she saw his shoulders roll forward towards her even she was sure he didn't want to show that. "why the dark arts at all?"

He thought again, and took a much longer time of it. When he answered, his mouth had dried together and so there was a dull click as he opened it.

"I shall give you one level of one answer today." She nodded. "The dark arts are so beautifully insidious. They call out to you, like the Slug Club—you know. You were in that." She nodded again. There was something too viscous and deep about the way he was speaking, almost in commiseration, and she didn't want to mar it with her words. "They call out to you because…because they attract sometimes the best and brightest. They are a bigger challenge. To be able to muck about with human life and human desires—love, lust, anger, betrayal—to be able to make potions or spells that adjust and alter those—it's a heady thing, Ginevra. You'd be good at. You would have been good at it. And I was good at it—at being sucked into it, completely cognisant of what I was doing. An opal necklace that took lives, that cost galleons beyond measure. A feather that wrote vitriol to whomever it drew up letters to. Art, Ginevra. My relics are sometimes art. And sometimes mementos. And sometimes weaponry, things that got me through a specific time. But mostly, I do not have to worry about secret caches because so much of my dark arts lives here." He lifted one long finger to his temple.

She was speechless, writing maniacally to get every single hypnotic word down on paper.

There was a moment of quiet.

"I wanted to come inside of you."

The statement was so stark and so sexually blunt that Ginny's head jerked up, her word scrawled off unwritten on the page. Lucius had moved so quietly that she hadn't even heard him. He was now standing at his window, his hands clasped lightly behind his back, and he was looking out at the gardens.

Ginny was rendered speechless for a moment. Lucius turned his head to look back at her over his strong shoulder. She was struck with how—almost—coy he looked, his hair long and light down his back, his chin tucked to his shoulder, his eyes looking at her.

She met his eyes evenly.

"I wanted to send you home with my semen dripping out of you."

Maybe he was now trying to goad her by being perverse—but Ginny didn't find it perverse. She could feel her insides clench in arousal, but she sat still and stared placidly at him. Lucius raised his eyebrows to her, and then turned back, looking straight ahead out his windowpanes.

He continued talking.

"And if Potter had gone down on you, he would have tasted me."

Ginny closed her dossier with a muted thwack. Her hands were shaking, but mercifully, Lucius couldn't see it. He was still standing with his face to the windows. She thought that he was probably smiling that smug smile, and she frowned in reaction to that thought.

Ginny stood, and gathered her things.

As she turned to leave the library, effectively ending their session early, she looked behind her at Lucius' back, the length of his hair, his buttocks. She spoke.

"We're officially divorced, now."

She missed seeing Lucius turn in surprise. He only caught the door closing behind her.

The letter arrived the next day, written on creamy parchment. Ginny pursed her lips as she saw the huge owl that delivered it. When she opened it, she flinched.

Come out for dinner with me.

That answer was easy. She picked up her pen and wrote directly on the letter.

No way.

She had really wanted to write no way, buddy boy, but that seemed too colloquial, as hilarious as it was. In all honesty, the whole damn thing was hilarious. He found herself tittering with ridiculous and unstoppable laughter as she watched the aft of his owl bobble away into the sky.

The next letter came back only an hour later.

Alright, so then come over for dinner.

Ginny rolled her eyes.

No.

Yes.

No.

Yes. You ended our last session early, you ninny.

She took a few hours before finally responding.

Fine.

It wasn't giving in, really. She was making up the time that they had lost when she had ended their last session early. And that was what she told herself as she attached the letter to the owl's leg and sent it off.

Ginny walked past him into the foyer of the Manor, taking off her cloak and handing it to him. Lucius raised his eyebrows at her treating him as if he were a house elf, but took her cloak anyways and hung it in the closet. This was decidedly not a date that they had agreed on for an interview, but she had to make the most of the situation in order to catch up.

Yes, that.

"You look nice," he said, blatantly running his eyes up and down her body.

"Thank you."

"I suppose we're celebrating your divorce tonight," he said, his voice smooth.

"No, we are not," she replied, making sure that her tone was firm. There was such potential for the situation to get so out of hand, and she wasn't sure that she wanted to fuck him again, despite the fact that she was wet already and that he was looking at her with a hard stare. There were so many odd, dangerous strings attached to that—to them. Once was fine. Twice—and more—was scary.

He laughed.

"Are you on edge?"

"Yes," she answered, honestly.

"You do look nice, though. You look like a woman for once."

"Charming."

She had spent more time than she had cared to admit on her appearance. It was only just a simple black dress that she was wearing, but she had wanted to look at least somewhat put-together, and so she had actually brushed her hair and pinned it up. And had worn a good bra. Not that he was going to see her underwear, but it was still nice to have on.

He was standing far too close to her, had somehow crept up on her during her ruminating.

"For chrissakes, Lucius," she snapped.

"You swear like a Muggle."

"They swear better than us!"

He still hadn't stepped off. If she wanted to, she could have reached out and flicked him on the nose. She supposed that she had known what sort of pact she was entering by coming here tonight, but it soothed her ego and her morals to pretend that she didn't.

He grabbed her hand with his and licked between their combined fingers in such a quick and erotic gesture that she lost her steel for a moment. And then—

"You think that you're going to get to fuck me tonight." Her voice was nastier than she meant it to be.

He laughed at her, and it was almost an unpleasant sound. "Aren't I?" He looked pointedly at her dress, at the soft swells of her breasts that were showing. "I've already fucked you. Remember? And despite your fighting, you certainly gave it up easily enough when it came down to it. How common."

He didn't want to be cruel to her like that, but with her verbally sparring like that, going straight for his throat with her awful words, especially when he had only just wanted to see her—still. He could hold his own. She was a mere child, when it really came down to it. And some of those thoughts were played on his face, because she reacted.

Ginny snarled and lunged towards him, pushing forward with the explosive power of her body. Lucius looked slightly surprised, but also reacted far faster than she had expected, snapping both of his arms up so that his forearms framed his shoulders, his hands grabbing her wrists in vise grips. She gritted her teeth and railed against him, shaking back and forth in his arms like a tree held in a storm.

"Let me go."

"Don't be stupid. But maybe this is what you like?" His ruminating wasn't cruel. It was more as though it had just dawned on him. He let go of her arms to see what she would do, and expected her to kick him in the testicles—of course, emasculating him—but instead she grabbed a large hank of his hair, moaning at his pained grunt, and she pulled his face down to hers. She directed his mouth away from hers, however, and pushed his lips into her neck.

Why was it like this? They were flames to tinder, sparking against each other, whether it was fighting or fucking. She was too old for this. He was too old for this. She was nearly forty. He was past sixty. They were supposed to be—what? She was supposed to be focusing on her divorce, her sullen teenaged children, avoiding Harry, and Lucius—he was supposed to be calming down, accepting older age, relaxing—

He bit her, hard, and she exhaled in a low, pressured sound. As his tongue ran up and down her neck, she resisted the urge to shudder. His tongue was broad and rough, and she pictured him pinning her down to the floor and licking between her legs, licking at her clitoris like a large cat, and she grunted at him.

"Yes. Yes." Her voice was stark in the emptiness of the darkened Manor hallway. He was sucking brutally at her skin, and Ginny realised that he was marking her. She pinched at his back, digging her fingernails in. "Fucker," she mumbled. "Fucking barbarian."

He exhaled against her neck, not quite laughing, and she was reminded of how horses breathed out, the undulating sound of animalism.

Ginny let him shove her up against the foyer wall, his hands pushing her skirt up around her waist, sliding under the band of her underpants, pulling them off of her so quickly that she forgot to breathe for a moment.

He held her underpants up, and brought them to his nose, inhaling deeply. Ginny watched, fascinated and horrified, as he closed his eyes briefly, cataloging her scent, her arousal. When he opened his eyes, he crammed the piece of clothing into the pocket of his trousers. She snapped her teeth at him, and he brought a hand up to her throat, holding her tightly, forcing her head back against the wall. With his other hand, he quickly undid the stays of his trousers, letting them fall to the floor, stepping out of them.

When he released her neck, his arms came under her, and he hefted her up in one solid motion, balancing her weight on his forearms.

"For an elderly person, you are certainly strong." Her words were meant to be cruel.

Lucius laughed sharply in her face, and then bit her jaw, sliding inside of her, so hard that he didn't need to use his hands to guide himself in.

Ginny swallowed audibly at the sensation, his stretching her, the thickened fire between her legs, and she crossed her arms over his back, one hand holding onto his hair, the other spanned across his ribs. His hands dug into the flesh of her legs.

He held her there for a moment, pausing, all the way inside of her, but not moving.

Ginny swallowed again, and he pulled back, staring at her hard. She didn't flinch but met his gaze evenly, the pulse in her throat ticking.

"Fuck me," she whispered onto his face, his mouth. "Fuck me hard."

She hadn't talked as filthy as she had been lately since she had been a young woman. But she wanted to impart onto Lucius the need that was curled inside of her—she needed him to batter her, to take her as hard as he could, to make her come as hard as she could around him, yell his name or obscenities or something, anything—just to shake it up, just to take her mind off of her grey family situation, her being alone.

Lucius made a sound that was halfway between a groan and a growl, and his fingers tightened on her skin as he moved—mercifully moved—and he began a hard, measured pace. Ginny threw her head back, hitting it against the mahogany-panelled wall, as that familiar burn started between her legs. He was holding her immobile at a phenomenal angle, and she felt her calves jerk uncontrollably, her hand winding tighter in his hair. She tugged, and he skipped a beat, his thrusts stuttering. She did it again, and he grunted, pushing her harder against the wall and in turn pushing deeper inside of her.

The portraits were staring at them, open-mouthed, and Ginny was so aroused just from the thought of it, at the thought of all of the pure-blooded relatives watching them fuck against the wall, and on Lucius' next in-stroke, a thoroughly wet sound rang out from between their bodies. She refused to be ashamed. Lucius swore out loud, and clenched his teeth. He was staring down between their bodies, watching the thick and wet length of himself disappear into her. He couldn't tear his eyes from the place. Ginny, in turn, watched his face, even as he watched the two of them fucking. He seemed almost amazed in the way they fit into each other.

He sped up, and she moved forward, burrowing her head into the thick muscle between his neck and his shoulder, keeping her face hidden from him. If she let her head hang back, it was going to knock against the wall from his demanding pace, and so she crossed her arms over his back, and held onto him, digging her nails in, gasping onto his skin.

Ginny loosened one of her arms and slid it down between their bodies, stroking her clitoris mercilessly, keeping her weight balanced on her forehead against his skin.

"Fuck," Lucius hissed as he watched her touch herself, and the filthy and colloquial words made her clench around him. "Touch yourself, touch yourself—" His words were almost sobbed, as a prayer of sorts.

Ginny came sharply, sinking her teeth into Lucius' thick shoulder, biting down so hard that he began to bleed. She cried out quietly into his skin, accidentally rubbing the blood across her cheek.

Lucius barked as he dropped one of her legs, unknowingly hoisting the other so high that she flinched as he drove into her again—because it was deep, it was too deep all of a sudden—as he surged into her in staccato bursts, and then she felt his semen hot inside of her, burning her up from inside, clinging to her.

He fell forward heavily, dropping her other leg, sliding out of her, his body leaning against her, pushing her into the wall. His head was buried in the crook of her neck, and hers in his. He was breathing quickly and raspingly through his nose, his breath cooling her damp skin. Ginny kept her arms around his broad back, her fingers stroking mindlessly. She felt his semen wet on her thighs, inside of her.

"I'm on birth control, by the way." Her words were murmured. "Thought you might like to know that."

He didn't raise his head. "Good."

As if she wanted another child. As if he needed another Malfoy heir. She felt his come drip out of her, thick and rich, and she wondered if it was falling onto the polished floor below her.

He reached between her legs, and she could feel his hand shaking because it ricocheted between her upper thighs, and he cupped that hand to her, and she realised that he was keeping the semen inside of her body.

She shuddered against him. All of a sudden she felt tired and almost ashamed at giving in to the basest instincts that she had. It was like she couldn't fucking think around him, now. Like once they had opened those gates, all of the residual anger—or grief, or insistence, or whatever it was that had been between them for their entire lives—ignited and came pouring out of her.

"Why do we keep doing this?" She reached behind his body and began un-sticking the ends of his hair from his damp back, doing it unthinkingly.

He held back the shudder that wanted to rumble through him. He couldn't help it. As soon as she touched his hair—ever—he had to fight the urge to become pliant, to moan.

Lucius' mouth pulled away her skin as he spoke. "Because I want to." His eyes tracked to her face. "You have blood all over your face." He looked down at his shoulder. "Christ." The blood from her wild bite had congealed on his skin, partway down his chest.

Ginny grimaced slightly, but didn't apologise. Lucius licked his thumb and wiped, hard, at the skin of her chin and her lips, cleaning the red off of her.

He licked his thumb, tasting his own blood, and then bent, almost jerkily, to her face, kissing her slowly, wetly. He tasted like metal and heat and salt. Ginny bit softly on his lower lip, and he pushed against her automatically, his body reacting accordingly. He made a sound into her own mouth, something between an exhalation and a groan, a wholly physical and brainless reaction, and his hands slid between her legs, playing softly in the thick wetness there. Her body twinged, out of her control as his fingertips brushed over her clitoris.

He moved from her lips to tug on her ear with his teeth. "You have the wettest, best cunt I've ever had." His words were murmured, low and damp, into her ear-whorls.

Ginny scratched her nails down his back in retaliation for his crudeness.

"I'm hungry," she replied.

It was not the response that he had been expecting from her, and so Lucius laughed, dropping his hands from between her legs and stepping slowly away from her. Ginny shrugged and pulled her dress down, extending her hand toward him, her fingers snapping.

"Give me my knickers."

"No," he said just as solidly, pulling his pants up over his legs. He turned away from her as he did it, propriety still in odd place, and she admired the hardened curves of his buttocks before the material of the pants covered them.

"I don't want you using them to do some sort of Death Eater voodoo magick," she sniped.

"You idiot," he replied, turning back to look at her.

And there it was—the reversion to being antagonistic, being snappy. Ginny felt more comfortable being cruel to him, anyway. He glared at her for a moment, and she sighed, pulling her dress down properly.

"Can we eat?" Ginny didn't smile at him as she spoke, but her eyelids softened a little, and his squared-off stance became less severe around the edges of his shoulders in response.

Lucius tilted his head at her, extending an arm.

"Because I'm still hungry."

"Of course you are," he said. Laughed. Laughed a little more, and she joined, and they laughed hard to each other, knowing it was a mistake, but laughing anyway.