InsaneJournal

Character Information/Profiling
Full Name: Lucius Cicero Malfoy
Age: 43
Date of Birth: December 18, 1954
Sexual Orientation: Heterosexual.
House: Slytherin.
Blood Purity: So very pure.
Occupation: He lives off of managing his family estate - like many children of old money, his fortune is maintained through various business investments. He has his fingers in various pies, and is often listed as a "silent" (or not-so-silent) business partner. It's not a day job, but it does have a thrill-of-the-hunt aspect to it that he likes (knowing when to buy and sell stocks in various Wizarding companies), and it frees his time to plot, or meddle in, say, Ministry affairs - using favors owed him in order to play the part of a sort of freelance politician and unelected official when he feels that it's called for. And he gets to be his own boss! Nothing but positives!

Appearance: Lucius very deliberately cuts a striking figure. Genetics blessed him with height, porcelain skin, and aristocratic features (read: sharp cheekbones, prominent - but very straight - nose, and a pointed chin that has a tendency to lift itself into the air entirely of its own accord). Genetics also cursed him with a widow's peak and thin bone structure. He's learned to compensate for the first by growing out his hair, and for the second by standing in such a way as to frighten any living creature within an eyeing distance. Well, almost any living creature. He can certainly strike fear into the hearts of house-elves and children! His piercing gray eyes were inherited from his mother, and his father gave him the ability to look ultimately disapproving of everything around him. He keeps himself almost excessively well-groomed, when he's able. The stint in Azkaban left him a little worse for wear, but he's managed to bathe and shave regularly since then. There have been times when he's "borrowed" some of Narcissa's grooming spells and unguents to keep his skin, hair and nails in tip-top shape, but he'd never admit that to a soul. Particularly to his wife (although she's probably noticed that the jars deplete just a little more quickly than they should).

Played-By: Julian Sands. You won't find a better blond actor with a widow's peak who was born in the early fifties. You just won't.

Personality: Above all else, Lucius Malfoy is a proud man. Appearances mean a great deal to him, and he will go to great lengths in his attempts to preserve them. Yes, he's vain, yes he's arrogant, but his self-centeredness hasn't always worked to his detriment. An intense desire to impress others and look good led him well through his schoolboy years; it made him develop certain needed social skills - the ability to talk to others that would later evolve into the ability to talk others into doing what he wanted them to. He was forced to pay attention to people, to better learn how to ingratiate them to him. You couldn't tell people what they wanted to hear without knowing what that was, after all, and so Lucius ended up becoming a very observant person. This cultured charm earned him a lot of friends, a beautiful wife, and a great many political contacts. And, yes, he is a manipulative bastard, but look at his reasoning - he manipulated his way out of trouble while he was a student and later during the first skirmish with Voldemort in order to preserve his family name. He pulled strings to provide opportunities for his son. If you ask him, he would consider himself practically an altruist! It wouldn't be true, of course, but it would be something he'd try to argue. There are underlying, sadistic urges in parts of his brain. The kind of thing that makes you truly enjoy hurting lesser people (muggles), and that allows you to help do things like, say, unleash monsters in schools full of kids. That sort of thing.

Lucius does care deeply for his family, although he's secretive even with them. His love for his wife is a strained love, largely because he has a hard time believing that she loves him for anything more than his position and bloodline (that is because HE wouldn't love his husband for anything more than that, were he in Narcissa's place). He cannot abide looking weak or foolish in front of anyone - especially the people he actually cares about (his wife and son), and lately he has had some horrible missteps that have left him looking both. He is loyal to Voldemort on paper, but he resents his Dark Lord a great deal and feels that the man might have gone slightly towards the deep end while being dead; so his loyalty these days is mostly bred of fear than anything else - not that he'd show it. He hates that Voldemort has gone so far as to endanger his own son, but doesn't dare say anything against it. Lucius Malfoy is something of a coward, but not in the obvious, sycophantic sort of way. He's a closet coward, very bitter about his own cowardice, and extremely resentful about the fact that he is in a position where he can't ensure the safety of himself and his family. The end result is a man who is in a sort of mental turmoil, trying to live up to the expectations of far too many people under the burden of far too many personal fears, and completely unable to sort out who he actually wants to be. That sort of thing tends to give a person a headache, not to mention a terrible temper. He wasn't always so torn - it was largely his recent humiliation and stay in prison that left him this way. He's convinced himself that he's failed his family, his cause, and himself. It's taken some of the bite out of him (not that he wouldn't take it out on a ready victim, given the chance - the man knows some really nasty spells, and there are more than a few people he'd love to have a chance to show them to).

Aside from his personal set of rules, birthed from his pride and need to maintain certain appearances and not disappoint certain people, Lucius is fairly amoral. He was essentially raised in a world of his own, and has a hard time sometimes remembering that he is not the center of the universe. Hell, he often doesn't even bother remembering that other, lowlier people - such as Arthur Weasley - have thoughts and emotions akin to his own. He certainly wouldn't see the validity of them, so what would be the point? Lucius has always been a petty, snobbish man, solidly and irrecoverably immersed in his own arrogance.
Draco is his pride and joy, but it hasn't always been smooth sailing with the boy. He was absolutely thrilled when Draco was born for the usual reasons: his family name would continue, and his family was essentially - as far as he was concerned - complete. Watching Narcissa go through what was - from his perspective - a horrible series of ordeals in order to conceive, Lucius had made up his mind not to have any more children. A sterilization potion became a silent part of his general routine. The baby was perfect in his eyes. What was possibly less-than-perfect was Narcissa's complete involvement with it. While he knew it was completely natural and expected for a mother to make her entire world her son, Lucius couldn't help feeling a small pang of loss. When his wife lavished attention on their son, memories of when Lucius was the center of her universe would flicker through his mind. This resulted in his being a little colder to his son at times than he necessarily had to be. Lucius was very able to justify being hard on Draco, lest the boy become soft with his mother's babying. Besides, Abraxas hadn't exactly been the softest father, either. Patterns repeat themselves, after all, and that brings us to history:


History:

It was a particularly icy day in December when Abraxas Malfoy and his second wife, Lavinia, had their first and only son. He hadn't been their first try. Abraxas wasn't a particularly fertile man, and his first wife was rumored to have been barren. She died tragically after ten years of wedded ... arrangement, and Abraxas was, naturally, heartbroken. In order to assuage his grief, he fell in love with a girl thirteen years his junior. A Slavic witch whose father he had business ties with. He liked her accent, and claimed that her youthful vigor inspired him. It certainly inspired something, as she had three pregnancies - two of which were unsuccessful. The third produced a sickly, pale infant who nevertheless grew into a somewhat healthier, pale boy. The sole heir to the Malfoy fortune and estate. Lucius Malfoy was doted upon by both of his parents. His mother favored his company to his father's (possibly because her youthful vigor inspired nothing with her own son), and his father was delighted with his ability to survive things like ... being born. He was made to feel like a success from the day he breathed air, you see, and there was no reason that the trend shouldn't continue, as far as he was concerned.

Part of being the Malfoy heir involved being shown around to friends and business associates of the family like a prized possession, so Lucius Malfoy was raised to be social. He never really lacked playmates, although he did expect them to bend willingly to his rules of play. They usually did so, with their parents' encouragement, if nothing else. Lucius was inspired by his father (though not in the same way his father was inspired by his mother), who never had any issue bending the will of his associates. In fact, his father was considered an overall impressive, powerful man, and - like many sons of impressive, powerful men - Lucius wanted nothing more than his approval.

When he went to school, he made sure to maintain friendships with all the right people, and cut a good impression in all the right classes. He made prefect, as he was supposed to, and he excelled in most of his education (there were some rough patches; for instance, he had to struggle in Potions, and his flying skills were laughable at first). He caught the eye of many lovely pureblood girls, and he selected the ones he dated with absolute care. Eventually, he settled on the youngest Black sister, a girl of fine breeding, fine taste, and a heart-melting scowl. In truth, he'd been forced to notice her. She was a delicate white flower when compared to her two black-haired sisters, an oleander blossom, and she simply stood out. Oh, he took his time with her, once he'd decided to pursue her. He was a patient man when it came to love, and he had been distracted at the time with various youthful causes (such as the purification of the Wizarding world - a notion that intrigued him and that had been bandied about by more than a few people in his social crowd). His parents had encouraged his interest, however, by sending dinner invitations to the Blacks, ensuring that - even after school - he would occasionally see Narcissa. It only made sense that he propose to her, and it only made sense that she accept.

At about the same time, Lucius was being wooed by a rather fanatical and exciting political faction. His friends and he grew very invested in what they thought was the New-Traditional wave of thinking. A back-to-basics movement that would - in theory - weed out the muggle influences watering down pure bloodlines. There were other compelling factors. Fancy talk about eradicating Wizarding dependence on non-wizarding species. Some were even talking about the extermination of non-allied creatures, all-out war with the opposition... all the things that made a young, privileged, self-righteous man's heart go pitter-pat. There were even foreign voices added to the dissent, some of whom were likewise close associates of the Malfoys (his mother having gone to Durmstrang, Lucius had several ties throughout Europe). Sure, a lot of it was fancy talk, but there was power behind it. When Voldemort appeared, the winds shifted. Suddenly, things seemed possible... and Lucius would be damned if he wasn't going to be on the winning side of a revolution. He threw his lot in with it, with the same excited tenacity that he threw his heart into his marriage. It simply made sense to him to do so.

Later, when things went South, Lucius changed his mind about that. Of course, there was little he could do; by the time the Dark Lord had fallen, Lucius was pretty heavily implicated in a great many "crimes against society." With a mind towards preserving his family name for his heir (and to keep his wife from despairing of him utterly), Lucius pled innocence. He concocted a story, and sold it with every ounce of charm in his body.

Half-surprised that it worked, himself, Lucius managed to walk away and continue his life. He mostly pretended that the stint with the Death Eaters hadn't happened, going so far as to sell many of the dark items he'd accumulated during that time. Hoping to secure a position of power in the political world, Lucius Malfoy did not want anyone in the Ministry to consider him a rebel. Being a threat was fine, being a traitor was not.

And then The Boy Who Lived had to turn up and throw everything into doubt, spurring up a sense of vengeance and justice that really would have been better left to his younger days. Lucius wasn't sure what to do, but was compelled to act. He started dreaming of the damned journal... a blasted thing he'd been keen on getting rid of for years, but couldn't bear to part with. It wouldn't let him. The plan had been ludicrous, in retrospect, but the temptation to act had been too strong, and he was able to pull it off and remain for the most part detached.

That became a lot harder when the Dark Lord actually managed a resurrection. Suddenly, what had been a revolutionary platform in the seventies became a crazy obsession, and things took a turn for the worse. Voldemort's plans were reckless, needlessly so, and Lucius ended up paying for that. Whoever was at fault, Lucius had to take the blame. His failure in the fight at the Ministry was his own, and he couldn't talk himself out of an arrest when he was caught so red-handedly. While in Azkaban, he was terrified that he'd lose everything - his standing, Narcissa, his son - he nearly went mad from it. That wasn't helped with the assurance that - if he did manage to withstand the onslaught of prison - he would surely be punished by Voldemort for his shortcomings as a Death Eater.

Then, having been released from prison into a world in turmoil, Lucius discovered that things could get even bleaker: the Dark Lord intended to take his failure out on Draco. His despair was palpable, but he didn't know what else to do save throw himself at Voldemort's mercy. He couldn't defy a man who essentially had a strong hand around the throat of his entire lineage. So he is currently still in service, and solidly painted black for it.