InsaneJournal

Who: Lucius & Narcissa Malfoy
What: Coping with Grimmauld aftermath
When: Tonight
Where: The Manor, in the library
Rating/Warnings: Low, TBA

The pain had gone from debilitating to merely intolerable in time to let him carry out his orders without substantial difficulty, and he had expected it to go away once he'd made his amends - but when he had arrived home it had still been with him. He had shut himself in the library and waited for it to pass. He couldn't have slept, and so he hadn't gone to bed. It would only have disturbed Narcissa, and truth be told he wasn't sorry for an excuse not to face her while his Mark was burning. He knew very well what would have been going through her mind - the same thing that was circling endlessly in his even now, a full day later, the same thing that had reduced him to pulling a book off the shelf for the first time in years and trying to think on anything else.

Easier said than done, in a room this dark. He always came here specifically because it was close and warm and a little gloomy, but struggling to make out undersized text about some war he'd forgotten the details of in his second year at school after two days of no sleep at all was only adding a headache to his already considerable troubles. When one of the elves scampered nervously in to offer him a glass of water for something like the tenth time, he gave it a sharp kick to the side before it could get the words out. "You can build up the fucking fire," he growled, even his own voice grating miserably on his nerves. "And get out. And close the door behind you, for once." They always forgot.