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She hadn’t had this feeling in fourteen years. She hadn’t sat in that chair in fourteen years. But now, she did. She did every evening, after dinner, when Lucius took his cloak off the wall, kissed her soundly, and left to do his master’s bidding. Every evening, Narcissa would watch the door close slowly behind him and then she would count to twenty, making sure he was gone before she walked slowly to the chair and sat down.
Fourteen years ago she had been a mere child. Fourteen years ago, she hadn’t understood the implications of her husband’s job. Fourteen years ago, her son was only one, and he would sit on her lap with her until her husband returned home. Fourteen years ago, she was happy.
Now, her son was away from her, her son was in the confines of Hogwarts, where he was safe under the watchful eye of Dumbledore, who always came back, rising from the ashes of resentment like a phoenix, but it wouldn’t be long until Draco left the school. It wouldn’t be too long until her young son, the son that bore no trace of her heritage but looked only like his father, would join the Death Eaters too. And Narcissa would sit in the chair, only watching, only waiting.
She knew very well what would happen if Lucius didn’t come home. There would be an owl. The plain, brown, government-issue owl that would deliver a message asking her to come down to St. Mungo’s. There would be a body for her to identify, maybe just parts.
It wasn’t easy being the wife of a Death Eater. Fourteen years ago, there had been a son to occupy her. He had squirmed on her lap, playing with her blonde hair, running his little fingers over her smooth skin. Then he would fall asleep, her arms wrapped around her. Even a woman like Narcissa Malfoy couldn’t escape her age. There were slight lines around her eyes. Her skin seemed to be thinner, more like paper. She was gaining weight, no matter how little she ate or how much physical activity she attempted to get. There were threads of gray in her blonde hair, which was no longer a lustrous blonde the colour of corn. Instead, it had faded to the silvery blonde of her husband of son. She had no son to sit on her lap and occupy her attention.
Instead, she had cigarettes. She smoked them one after the other, straight from the package, lighting them by pressing the end of one to the other. She had no use for a holder, she wasn’t going to use one of the ridiculous things to preserve her image in front of phantom subjects.
Her eyes played tricks on her. She had always been far sighted, but she rarely wore her glasses. Every few minutes there would be a movement in her peripheral vision, and she would jerk her head, expecting to see one of St. Mungo’s owls careening towards her.
If it weren’t for Sirius’s dratted house elf, her husband wouldn’t be out there right now. It had come to her, blathering its nonsense about the Order of the Phoenix, and Narcissa had been compelled to tell her husband. Voldemort had risen again, even if she withheld the foolish thing’s information, her husband would be called away on some mission or meeting anyway.
Narcissa knew very well that either Harry Potter or Sirius Black was going to die. She hoped it was Harry Potter, if not for satiating the dark lord, but for the fact that-despite everything he had done- Sirius was still her kin. She most decidedly didn’t like him, but she did love him, she was bound to it by her blood. She still loved Andromeda despite her betrayal of the family, and she still loved Bellatrix despite the fact that she had disgraced the family name by actively working for Voldemort.
Actually dirtying her hands was too uncouth for Narcissa. The Ministry of Magic was not a competent government, but Dumbledore was a tremendous foe. Narcissa knew better than to throw her lot in with Voldemort, she preferred to sit atop the wave, riding it until it broke and left her standing with the victorious side. She had interesting information for both sides, and she knew it could be a valuable bargaining chip for both her and Draco.
Lucius fought with, for, and beside Voldemort. If her fears weren’t unfounded, he would die for Voldemort too.
Narcissa’s first instincts led her to survival. Her secondary instincts led her towards loyalty.
She lit another cigarette, blowing the smoke out into the night air. She didn’t want to admit it, but she regretted giving Voldemort the information about Sirius. Not only was he family, this seemed like a stupid time to use the information. Voldemort was needlessly endangering his Death Eaters’ lives and reputations so he could possibly get to Harry Potter.
Why couldn’t he just have Severus poison him in potions?
But Voldemort was too stubborn to have anyone else do what he so desperately wanted, and so Harry Potter would die by the hands of the Dark Lord.
Narcissa forgot about Lucius for a moment as she snorted in laughter at the thought, and smoke curled from her mouth and nostrils. She briefly considered packing it in right there, walking calmly out the door and apparating to Hogwarts, where she would tell Dumbledore everything she knew about the Death Eaters. She didn’t know where else he would be. Draco said he had been sacked, but Dumbledore was a part of Hogwarts, and Hogwarts was very much a part of Dumbledore.
Harry Potter would win. He led a charmed life.
Voldemort had led the cursed one, and they met in the middle.
The thought of Lucius sobered her again. Against every convention of aristocratic marriage, she loved her husband. She never had thought that she would, but there it was. It was Lucius who kept her from moving herself to the winning side. She could never betray him like that.
She wished she could. She stared glumly out into the night, anticipating and dreading the moment when the owl would come zooming out of the air. “Sacha,” she said, listening for the crack that signified the house elf had appeared.
“Mistress?”
Narcissa turned and looked down at the elf with pity for the first time. “Get me a gin and tonic, please. With… actually, just a gin, please. Thank you.”
The elf looked stunned but apparated without a word. Narcissa Malfoy had perfect decorum in public, but in private, she found that kicking a house elf could usually take out enough of her frustrations against the idiocy of the general public. It was a habit that Lucius had picked up from her, and perhaps it was a blessing that Draco wasn’t taught within the home anymore, she didn’t think the elves could handle the abuse.
The house elf left the drink on the table in front of Narcissa, also laying down another package of cigarettes. Normally, Narcissa would have punished it for presuming that she wanted more, but instead she was grateful for the gesture. She was going to drink herself to sleep until that owl from St. Mungo’s had to peck off her face to get her to wake up. “Bring me the bottle as well,” she commanded the elf.
The bottle of gin had just been placed in front of her when the doorbell rang. Narcissa stood and answered it herself, gasping a little as the effect of half a cup of straight gin made itself known.
Severus Snape stood grimly in the doorway. “Narcissa,” he said, “perhaps I should come in.”
“Perhaps you should,” Narcissa said crisply. She stepped aside though, wondering what he was doing there. She wasn’t used to people inviting themselves into her home.
Severus stood in the middle of the hall looking a little lost and bewildered. Despite everything he was and represented, Narcissa liked Severus. He was much like her, riding the wave to see where it would break.
“We, you, er,” Severus looked decidedly uncomfortable. For the first time, Narcissa thought he looked frightened, and for the first time in a long time, he wasn’t composed. “Maybe I should take you to sit down.”
“Whatever it is you have to tell me, do it here.” Narcissa reached for her gin glass, taking another sip and making a face as it burned down her throat.
Severus was facing her, he was still staring at the doors into Malfoy Manor. “The Ministry of Magic was raided. Lucius has been taken to Azkaban.”
The delicate crystal glass slipped from Narcissa’s grip and shattered on the floor, but other than that, the hall was perfectly still. “You’re lying.”
“I wish I was, Narcissa.”
“Why weren’t you taken?”
“I am at a school under the rule of Delores Umbridge, I can’t very well disappear for long periods of time without explanation. She is not like Dumbledore.”
Narcissa wished that she had the theatrical flair of her sisters. She wanted to scream and yell and cry and throw herself on the floor and weep into the puddle of gin. Instead she stayed rigid, her body balanced on the small of her back. “You’re lying, Severus.”
“They were alerted by several teenagers that had accompanied Potter,” Severus looked regretful at saying ‘Potter’ in front of her, as if it were a particularly bad word. “The lord was thinking that Potter would be cocky enough to come alone.
Narcissa crossed her arms and turned away. “Voldemort needs to learn that what he does is not what Potter would do.” She tried to ignore Snape’s earlier comment about her husband. If she ignored that long enough, Lucius would walk through the door, tall and solid. He would wrap her in his arms and kiss her, even if Severus was there to bear witness to the fact that the Malfoys loved each other.
Severus’s voice was vaguely amused despite the situation. “You could advise him better?”
“I have no intentions to directly advise Voldemort. I’m not sullying my hands that way.”
“Yet you saw reason to inform him of Sirius Black’s affection for Harry?”
Narcissa blanched. She felt older and more foolish than she ever had before. Finally, she said quietly, slowly, and threateningly, “don’t blame me for this.” Severus said nothing. She turned slowly to look at him. His dark eyes were almost expressionless, showing only a slight disdain. “Don’t blame me for this,” she repeated. A sardonic smile only quirked at the corner of his mouth.
Her wand was on the table, next to her cigarettes, so she physically attacked him. It was a mixture of her loathing, fear, and the gin that sent her propelling towards him, attempting to get his face with her clenched fists. He casually held her down, as if she were a small child to be indulged. Narcissa, while tall, was quite slender to the point that people often called her delicate, or when they were feeling less charitable towards her, fragile. Fragile suggested rooms full of dusty antiques, things that crumbled under human touch. Narcissa Malfoy had done a lot in her life, but she had never crumbled. Even now, her inability to harm Severus Snape just added to her frustration and distaste for the word ‘fragile.’ She swatted at him again, catching the bottom of his chin with her chewed fingernails.
She knew just as well as he did that she hated herself more than him at the moment. She struggled until her fatigue and drunken state caught up with her. She stopped, and with as much decorum as she had ever possessed, she calmly lay down on the hall floor, her blonde hair surrounding her head like seaweed, soaking up the mud from Severus’s boots and gin from her own smashed glass. Severus stared down at her in obvious astonishment as she primly crossed her ankles and folded her hands over her stomach.
“Narcissa,” his voice clearly inferred the fact that she had gone stark raving mad, “what are you doing?”
She smiled thinly, “you wouldn’t understand, Severus, unless you were a Black sister.”
Growing up, whenever her sisters tired of her presence, they tended to lock her in unattended rooms. Sometimes it was the wine cellar, but they knew that their father most decidedly didn’t approve of this. Their favourite place to lock her was in one of the empty storage cupboards for the brooms. Flat and rectangular, the cupboards were very much like stackable coffins built into the transportation house’s walls. After a while, Narcissa didn’t mind it. She pretended that their rage was not towards her know-it-all tendencies, and insistence on following them everywhere, it was jealousy of her fair good looks and impeccable manners. The first few times they had done it, she lay calmly in the dark, pretending she was a princess from a fairy tale. She abandoned the fantasy because the first several times, the rescuer had been Justin or Michel, the broom attendants. The last time she pretended she was a princess, she heard excited male voices and the sounds of brooms being removed from the cupboard next to her. “Just take a broom from that one,” she heard a disembodied but familiar voice say. Her cupboard had opened, a hand grabbed her knee, and then another male voice let out a horrible scream.
“There’s someone in there!”
Narcissa kept still until a set of hands grabbed her by the legs and pulled her out.
“Narcissa?” Sirius hauled her out of the cupboard in utter astonishment. “What were you doing in there? You nearly gave Remus a heart attack.”
“Why do you think I was?” Narcissa spat, dusting her clothing off. “THEY stuck me in there. I’m sorry Remus,” she added as an afterthought. James Potter was there. Sirius tended to only invite his friends over when he was staying with Narcissa’s family. Her parents couldn’t tell the difference between Sirius and James, and only took meals with Andromeda and Bellatrix, because they were legitimate adults, having passed their OWLs with flying colours. James and Remus were strictly forbidden from visiting Sirius’s house, and from what Narcissa gathered from her own mealtimes with the quartet, Peter felt tremendous guilt in going alone.
“Who’s they?” James asked. He and Peter were standing against the wall, studying her as if she were some sort of sideshow novelty act.
“My sisters,” Narcissa said. She opened another cupboard and handed Remus a broomstick. “Sometimes they get bored of me.”
“That’s terrible,” was James’s definitive opinion. He had a lot of definitive opinions. He liked to share them over toast in the morning, blackberry jam oozing from the corner of his mouth. With table manners like that, Narcissa could understand him being forbidden from Sirius’s house.
Peter looked nonplussed about the whole thing. His parents were close with both sets of Blacks and he had spent a fair amount of his formative years being tormented by Andromeda and Bellatrix. Remus was still looking as if he had accidentally grabbed a corpse inappropriately.
“You, er,” she knew Sirius wasn’t overly fond of her and so his offer was a struggle, “we’re going to practice some Quidditch. You could… er, play too.”
Narcissa felt something akin to affection for her loathed cousin. “I’ll just hold you back,” she said, before brushing past them all and out into the yard.
From that day on, Narcissa couldn’t comfortably imagine being a princess in waiting, because it brought to mind images of being saved by her least favourite relative (excluding her sisters, who she found more reasons to hate than to love) and his degenerate friends. So instead, every time her sisters put her in a full body bind, shoved her into the cupboard, and then lifted the spell before giggling maniacally and shutting the door, she plotted revenge. Not the simplistic revenge of sticking nightshade in their bed sheets and dungbombs in their lingerie drawers. Narcissa Black liked her revenge to be more visible. Although they were her sisters, and she did love them very much, she didn’t like spending time with them. They were just another irritating presence like Sirius. However, while Sirius was benign in his oafish boy way, Bellatrix and Andromeda were vindictive and cruel in a way that only sisters can be. On dry, dusty days, locked in her Quidditch coffin, Narcissa plotted her revenge. It wasn’t revenge so much as it was just a life plan. She would do better than both of them in every respect.
In retrospect, lying on the floor in the grandiose foyer of her mansion, she had. Narcissa Malfoy was the beautiful, elegant wife of Lucius Malfoy. Andromeda had married not only a muggleborn, but one named ‘Tonks’ at that. Bellatrix had done fourteen years in Azkaban, and was likely back there that night.
Now, though, Narcissa was no better than them. Her husband was in a cell next to Bellatrix, and Malfoy was a muddied name. There was no shame in being Narcissa Black again. It was such a respected surname that no one would think to associate her with the murderer Sirius Black, even if she knew the unfortunate truth of both their relation and his affiliations.
She would have to renounce her husband. The Daily Prophet would come to call, she expected. She would have to owl Draco, tell him that he is in no way to pronounce any type of support for the Voldemort. He is an innocent. But Dumbledore should be able to keep the reporters out, he was good for that back when she attended Hogwarts.
Lucius would be released soon enough. He could bribe someone in the right place, or the Dementors would go to Voldemort. He would be home soon enough. Narcissa wanted to save her family, she didn’t care which side of the war won, so long as she could choose that side. Lucius would just have to deal with that, she decided. She would tell him before she took what little information she had to Dumbledore, but it hadn’t changed her mind. She and Draco were going to ride the wave out, and they were not going to drown in the aftermath.
Narcissa was only vaguely aware of Severus speaking to her. “Pardon?” she finally said.
Severus sighed and started again, “it might please you, Narcissa, to know that your sister is safe and was taken from the scene by the Dark Lord. She is also the one who killed Sirius Black.”
Her stomach seemed to fall out of her body. She felt like someone had put a wand between her ribs and muttered ‘lumos.’ “Sirius is dead?”
“Yes,” Severus seemed neither saddened nor elated by this news. There was no grimness in his voice, no conviction. He was detached, as if he were simply telling her what the weather was like in Yorkshire. “They were dueling in the Ministry of Mysteries and he fell through the veil.”
“But my vile sister is alright?”
“Would you prefer them both dead or in the hands of the Dementors?”
“Perhaps.”
It had been Sirius who had taught her how to dance that same summer. Not the stiff formal dancing that her parents sent her to lessons for, the type of dancing that normal teenagers did, dancing that was fun. It had been another afternoon when Sirius had pulled her out of the broomstick cupboard. “Why do you let them do this to you?” he asked incredulously.
“I don’t let them do it to me,” Narcissa had replied acidly, “they just… they just do it.”
Sirius shook his head in amazement. “As much as it pains me to say this, Narcissa, would… would you like to spend the afternoon with me?” He paused, trying to look less earnest. “You know, I’d hate for you to suffocate in the cupboard. You are my cousin.”
“What about the other three?”
Sirius shrugged, “they decided to explore the grounds. I didn’t want to.” He smiled impishly. For the first time ever, Narcissa realized that her cousin was in fact a teenage boy and not a cardboard cut out trained to spew out stupid sayings. “Besides, I just got a new Ouroborus recording, and I’m dying to have somebody to dance with.”
“Even me?”
Sirius rolled his eyes, “self deprecation gets you nowhere, Narcissa. Now do you want to dance or not?”
“I don’t know how.”
As he taught her, another thing struck Narcissa, Sirius Black was one of the few boys she had ever met who was truly suited for having a younger sister. He was patient in teaching her simple steps, and mostly just advised her to improvise. That afternoon, Narcissa sincerely believed that when they returned to Hogwarts in the fall, she could learn to acknowledge the fact that Sirius Black was not a shameful family secret.
Her dislike welled up again at tea-time, when the rest of the Gryffindor four burst into the room like a particularly bad hurricane. Sirius left mid dance step. It was near to the end of the song, but Narcissa still saw that she was just an afternoon distraction. There are a lot of things thicker than blood.
Peter Pettigrew stayed in the room, though, after the other three had departed. He looked at Narcissa either critically or sympathetically, she couldn’t really tell. “Would you like to dance, Narcissa?” he asked softly, extending his hand. She nodded, because she thought she might cry. She wasn’t used to boys suddenly losing interest in her, even if they were related.
So she hadn’t cried that afternoon. Instead, a sad, soft song was playing, and she rested her head against the side of Peter’s neck and they danced very slowly around the room.
“I don’t think I understand, Narcissa.”
She sighed, closing her eyes as she spoke. “You can’t understand, Severus. You can’t understand what it is like, being a Black. Being related to… to them. Having your husband locked up in Azkaban. Your son locked away under Dumbledore’s gaze, and even that isn’t happening, because he’s been replaced by that foul Umbridge toad that should be hung like the criminal she is.” Narcissa sighed again, trying to hold back the tears that were suddenly threatening at her eyes. “My life has fallen apart, Severus. You’ll never comprehend this, because you are not a woman, and you are neither a Black nor a Malfoy. I have no identity other than my family. And now I am as much a disgrace as they are.”
“You weren’t caught at the Ministry, Narcissa.”
She clenched her stomach in her hands. Incipient fat, there. She was starting to sag, starting to fall apart. “My husband was. My name was. And somehow that’s worse than receiving the owl, Severus, the one asking me to identify his eviscerated body.”
“You’re a strange woman.”
He didn’t mean it in jest. There was no way that Severus Snape, a loner if there ever was one, could understand her situation. They stayed in silence until an owl fluttered through the open window, delivering her a letter. Another standard brown owl followed it. And another. Finally, a gray owl that wore a Daily Prophet collar around its neck. Narcissa sat up on the floor and dully took each letter from the owls. She showed no emotion as she read the Daily Prophet one, asking her for an interview, nor the owl informing her that her husband was in the custody of Azkaban. The one that got to her was one penned in script she hadn’t seen since her graduation from Hogwarts.
Narcissa,
I have never been good with these types of letters, but I feel that it is my duty to inform you that your cousin, Sirius Black, the last man in the noble house of Black, died this evening as a result of a misguided curse by Bellatrix Lestrange. I have several personal effects that I would like you to pick up, and foreseeing my reappointment to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I would like you to come and pick them up.
Albus Dumbledore
Someone else had made her decision for her. Sitting there, on the cold marble floor of her home, Narcissa Malfoy did something she hadn’t done in a long time, she cried. She cried for her husband, for her son, for herself, and for her sisters. Most surprisingly of all, she cried for Sirius Black.
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