Her stockings are visible, her perfume is French and her diction slurs like waves. He doesn't even look up when a deflated sigh vibrates through the oppressive air and the weight of another person flattens the stuffing beside him. Its dark like closed closet, a stifling, suffocating sort of dark that's making Narcissa sweat diamonds.
"No tears?" Narcissa asks pouting a little. James doesn't even realise she has spoken, he's too busy focussing on not being attracted to her. Narcissa is a very bad sort of person to be mingling with.
"What do you want?" He says, constructing his tone to sound arrogant when really all he feels is confused.
"I just want to sit here Potter, don't get so defensive so easily, you're spoiling the scenery," she drawls, spreading her arms and gazing out at the sweaty bodies that fill the Ravenclaw common room.
"Do you want some water? You seem…drunk," James says, catching her wrist with his warm hands to steady her tilting body and it's purely out of amusement alone but in Narcissa's state she's surprised by the gesture. She likes it when boys are considerate and polite towards her. Those are the kind of people she's attracted to, people who are kind to her and maybe that's why it isn't working out with Lucius.
She surveys James' face intently as if she's never seen him before; he is very handsome, a minimalistic kind of handsome, a handsome that leaves everything to his personality, a handsome that does not dictate his choices or what people think of him, a handsome that can only be considered an advantage. A perfect kind of handsome, she ponders.
"I like you James."
"I'm not sure you're in the right mind to be saying things like that Narcissa."
"No I'm not. But just so you know I don't like Evans."
"Oh really? Well me neither at the moment, so maybe we can be friends."
There's a pale mist that's rolled over the hills from the lake and down to the forest where they lie. It's a clingy sort of mist that chills James to the bone, a cobwebby substance that shrouds everything else in a doomed grey. All he can see is Narcissa's face looking at him, she gleams like a marble statue from years past, her hair glows like the moon and distorted shadows are being cast upon her cool chiselled cheeks. In that crystallised moment when compassion and empathy possibly glaze her face and she had seemingly plundered the sisters of Black of all their graces he thinks she should be preserved. It seems unjust for anyone not to experience the angelic simplicity of this kind of beauty.
"Tell me a secret then," James says, falling slowly backwards so he's lying on his back. He's more sober than he's acting and when Narcissa catches the clarity of his hazel eyes she realises it too.
"Okay, you start I need to think about it," she says, smiling slightly at the absurdity of Potter's antics.
"Okay well I never kissed Chloe green in second year."
"James that's hardly a secret. In fact it isn't one, she told everyone you hadn't. You can't really have expected anyone to believe you."
"Are you not going to tell me a secret then?" he snaps, a frown scrunching his forehead.
"Okay sorry, well, I've never gone to a quiditch match."
"What? Really? That's awful. Mmmh, well I don't actually like Professor McGonagall."
"I don't like my father."
"I don't want to become an auror."
"I miss my sister even though she is a filthy blood traitor."
"I wish I had siblings."
"That's not a secret and I wish…I desperately wish that I didn't."
"I think Sirius is crazy."
"I think I might be crazy, Sirius most certainly is, it runs in the family."
"I hate the Blacks so much and I can't decide whether you and Sirius are included." The torn leaves scattering the bed of the forest aren't soft at all and they scratch James' back as he sells his soul. He ponders romantic ideals for a moment and their real meaning and whether pungent dirt and rotting bark can be a substitute. It doesn't matter to him in the end because it doesn't matter to Narcissa. She doesn't care where they are just as long as it dark and out of the way. There's something wrong with that he thinks.
She hesitates for a moment, choosing to let her apprehension graze her face as her eyes flicker nervously to the sky. "I wish I wasn't destined to marry Lucius."
"I wish I wasn't so rich, I feel guilty because of it," he says glancing up at her trying to gauge her reaction
"I don't, I wish I was richer," she says with a sweeping smile that doesn't touch the ice in her eyes.
"You don't really," he murmurs, brushing his fingers over her wrists, he knows he's right, knows her and he doesn't know how.
"No, not really." Their eyes lock and Narcissa feels a shiver creep down the planes of her back.
"I have no friends." Narcissa glances away and soldiers onwards ignoring the knots in the pit of her stomach.
"I don't like Peter anymore."
"My father used the crucio curse on me one time and it triggered my…episodes."
"My father hit me once and my mother still uses it against him, she hates him I think and I know it's my fault."
"I had muggle stalker once when I was thirteen and I watched Bellatrix kill him, he got really obsessive so Bella told me it was for my own safety , but... I mean it was awful and she didn't even care."
"I killed a cat when I was ten by accident; I pushed it out of a tree to see if it would land on its feet. It's buried in the rose bush at the back of my garden."
"There's more to death than pets James," she murmurs, staring absently past him into the depths of the forest. And she's a ghost, pale and tired, with a look in her eye that promised you she'd seen it all. She is a ghost and he wonders why she's haunting him.
"I smoked my first cigarette when I was ten, Bella had been teaching Sirius, Merlin knows why, he tried to teach me but got bored and ended up teaching the house elf instead."
"Sirius is a pain, he's selfish and cruel and an absolute dick."
"I still like him though, I wish I didn't."
"I wish I didn't love Evans."
"I wish you didn't either." She stills abruptly. A moment of tension surges between them and then dissipates, unseen but not gone.
"You should stop chasing mirages," she mumbles, lowering her self so she's lying beside him gazing forward, up at the vast black sky. A sky that makes her feel so small and insignificant, a shock of nature that is so completely indifferent to them. She feels incredibly lonely when she thinks about properly.
"Cissa, such condescension isn't very nice," he sighs deeply as if drifting into a slumber.
She rolls her eyes at his blatant sensitivity, "don't get offended."
"I'm not."
"Go on then, say another secret," there's an urgency to her tone that James hadn't realised she possessed.
"Okay, fine. I think that you have your own agenda and most likely ulterior motives and that you really don't care, and that's enough to make me feel a bit better about using you, knowing that you're probably doing the same thing." And it's the closest they've gotten to acknowledging what the shamble of a relationship they've got strung shabbily between them is. Falling down but half repaired, their relationship gleams in the night and crumbles in the sun.
"Well you obviously are offended."
Narcissa muses on his words and loathes the sound of them, and when she is back in her bed, curled and imperfect she mourns the relationship that never lived.
The words seem to bleed together the longer she looks at them, they are indecipherable but she can't force herself look away.
She doesn't feel the pain she expected or the regret or the dread. Just disorientation seeping through her conscience, a disconnection between her mind and her limbs, a hollow sort of 'oh'. Her hands tremble slightly, she's holding her cracks together but she can feel the panic lapping at the edges of her brain, submerging her just that little bit more every time she breaths. But right now whilst she's present, perfect and whole all she can see and think is how lovely the curlicues embedded on the page are, and detachedly wonder how something so beautiful can bring about her ruin.
She cautiously folds the letter in half and then in half again and slips it into her silk lined pocket. A terrible thick silence has enveloped everything, all she can hear is her own heart thrumming with careless life, all she can feel is the blood gushing under her skin, all she can taste is her own bone dry mouth and all she can see are the words 'Narcissa we all expect you to say yes'.
And she thinks that there isn't anything left to think about because what does thinking help when you're a silly, engaged, pureblood girl.
She gasps urgently through the tears; the sound is watery and clogged more like she's being strangled than anything else.
"No, no. You're doing this to me; you're making me like her. You're ruining me Potter, you ruining us, my family, my life. Bellatrix," she cries the name like it causes her physical pain, shuddering and falling in within her self.
"Narcissa," he murmurs her name like it might pull her back to him, like his voice alone could retrieve her.
Her hair whips his face as she feverishly shakes her head and fights his hands and his help away. "No Potter, no fucking no."
"Cissa, Cissy. Narcissa! Just stop, we can... I don't know. Just calm down." She collapse's limply against his side, heaving sobs making her body tremble all over.
"Potter you don't understand, the, the magnitude of this," she snaps gesturing between them. "This is what happened to, to," she heaves again, "Andromeda. And I can't do it, I can't drag my family through mud and blood and all the rest of it again. I can't do it, I just can't," she trails off, resting her suddenly heavy head on James's shoulder.
"I know Cissa, but... but, I like you. A lot. And I don't want to lose you like that. We can figure this out I promise," he whispers, clutching her closer towards him.
"But how? This isn't going to last forever, at some point we're going to have to choose," she mumbles, exhaustion is visibly setting into her limbs.
"And I'll choose you," he says firmly, letting her curl further into him.
"No you won't," she says with a sleepy, knowing expression, "you'll choose Lily."
"We'll sort it out tomorrow," he says, ignoring what she has said and feeling her deep rhythmic breathes against his chest.
"You promise?" She murmurs as tiredness slams into her, resulting in her tear tipped eyelashes slipping closed and her lips slipping open in a silent yawn.
"Of course."
And she could be dead. She's so pale in the moonlight; her lips are tinged blue and her skin looks tautly stretched over her bones. And against the back drop of the stars and the lake James might be lost but he has a purpose.
"Break up with him, please Narcissa."
"No."
"I hate him. You hate. And I care for you; I just want you to be happy. I want you to be mine."
"Give up on Evans and I'll give up Lucius."
...
"I'll see you later."
"Narcissa, wait..."
"You know James, I think you're little bit obsessed with me," she murmurs, her voice tip toes up the scale, up and down, down and up in young, freeing giddiness.
Summer breeze whispers through his hair and his clothes and his pores and down his throat into his stomach, ballooning him until he floats on his back, no longer touching the prickly grass.
Her laugh trickles through the atmosphere, slow and satisfied and deliciously sweet.
Her fingers are curled around his arm and she still feels cold. James shivers when the tips of her nails brush his neck; he thinks of icicles and wonders if it means something.
"Not wholly obsessed I don't think," he replies, smiling through the words, beaming at her and her perfect face and pretty laugh and everything else that swallows him up in absolute enchantment.
The warmth of the sun and the overgrown grass and the flowers blooming briefly beside him fill him with deep contentment. He can't think of any place he'd rather be than here surrounded by beauty and hope of all kinds.
"No, not wholly. You have to save the rest of it for Evans, don't you?" It's not quite a joke and she hopes he doesn't realise how jealous she is. He still hasn't given up on Evans, still flirts with her, still asks her out, still loves her. Narcissa thinks she adores James, and she hates him for it.
"Narcissa, come on don't ruin it," he sighs, he sometimes forgets who she is, even when she's in love Narcissa Black can't rein in her spite.
"No of course not, because this is perfect," she snaps sarcastically, anger flashing across her face like lightening. The grass hardly seems as soft to her and the breeze not as light and flowers not as lovely. The smell she finds sickly and the creatures in the forest are racking up a riot. And Potter doesn't love her. So really what's good about this place at all?
"Narcissa, what is it now? What's not perfect about this? How have I failed your standards so magnificently now?" He exclaims in frustration. His face creases into an angry scowl and Narcissa glares back, but more tamed and tailored, it's venomous and freezing- her practiced glare. The one that makes her look intimidating and mean but also collected and beautiful and James hates her that much more for controlling and perfecting even that.
"Just fucking glare Narcissa, it doesn't have to be flawless. You don't have to look pretty all the time. Just glare at me; shout at me; let yourself get mad and red and wild!" He shouts again, louder this time because the wind has picked up abrasively and is carrying his voice away from her.
Grey, grumpy clouds stretch across the vast brooding sky, concealing the merriment of the sun's warmth that was present just a few moments ago, casting them both into a cool shadow. The fine hairs along Narcissa's spindly arms prick up and she shivers delicately.
"How about no, how about fuck off," she says thinly, he's killing her inside pulling apart everything she needs, her sense, her walls, her heart.
"You leave then, if you don't like me, go. Unlike you I have other people to hang out with, people who are actually pleasant to be around."
"Oh okay, you and your mudblood loving friends. Sounds like an absolute ball Potter. I mean with their sullied blood and dull minds you couldn't have picked better companions."
He laughs a poisonous, terrible laugh, "Narcissa you aren't worth one thousandth of what Lily Evans is. Muggle born and all," he says slowly and cuttingly with a knowing smile that says he is aware of exactly what this means to Narcissa.
She lurches away from him like a viper; she can feel his traitorous blood all over her like a disease.
"You're revolting," she says, her voice low and ugly.
Picking her self up off the ground, she dusts her self off, brushes away the hair that has fallen into her gaze and wipes the corner of her mouth where her lipstick might have smudged. James frowns and watches her do it, he can feel himself losing her; feel her retreating within her self with out him.
Daisies are entwined into her pale hair and she pulls them out one by one with her shaking hands and throws them in James' face. He says nothing and she leaves.
The ground cushions her feet as she walks away. The grass caresses her bare soles and she realises with an awful gutting feeling that she's forgotten her shoes. She cries all the way back to the towering castle, the silent choking sort of tears that hurt your throat and stream down your scrunched up face uncontrollably. They were her favourite shoes after all.
She is livid and heartbroken all at once and she can feel herself crumbling. James Potter is in the process of ruining her and she is useless to stop it.
She's Narcissa Black, but barely.
I can't keep loving you
She scratches it into her desk when no ones watching and she isn't listening. Lily Evans almost succumbed to James cheap blandishments that morning and everyone saw it, saw her hesitate, saw her mint eyes dart around and saw the way she said James rather than Potter. Sirius clapped him on the back grinning and told him that the end was nigh and Narcissa felt bile rise in her skinny throat as she realised how true it was.
"You coming?" James grins, grabbing her arm and tugging her out the door.
"What? No. It's sunny."
"It's beautiful, let's go outside," he says confidently, in the same tone he uses on teachers, an all knowing tone. And Narcissa is already convinced because what on earth could go wrong when James Potter is so sure?
"But people will see us," she argues gleefully in a way that suggests she isn't really arguing at all.
"And what? We'll laugh in all their faces and kiss some more, kiss until I lose count and you lose count and the sour faced gossipers grow bored," he says, pulling her against his side where she fits so perfectly snug. Narcissa entwines her fingers through his and lets the spontaneous breeze carry her along.
"Life's too short to spend it in shady corners of Hogwarts where only furtive lovers and ghosts dare venture."
Narcissa laughs, feeling the sunlight kiss her cheeks and James' arm around her shoulders, slack and reassuring. Their footsteps echo around the empty corridor, briskly and in tune, the sun is high in the sky and its rays filter through the glittering windows, and everywhere is light, light and space and brightness, the very air seems more purified and exhilarating.
"Fine let's go."
"Your eyes are grey, Cissa."
"Yes James I know, and you are very, very drunk."
"Not a pretty grey, they make you look sad. More like the mist grey. You know the one? A doomed grey, your eyes are doomed."
"Go to sleep James."
Dear Diary,
I say in truth my dear that no one has ever been loved quite as wholly as James Potter by me. No love found as sincere or honest as mine in him.
But I realise the futility of dead words in a book when I can hardly dream of speaking them aloud.
I pray he means what he says when he says he cares for me and that he will choose me and that they come from a candid heart. But I fear that I am only cheating myself when humouring such gruesome ideas.
Yours truly,
Narcissa.
"James, my life is awful," she murmurs solemnly. She glances up at him as she clasps his warm, large hands in hers, her eyes are wide and melancholy, sadness seems to peek through her collected exterior. They are sat on the floor of the green house; it's cold and completely black except for the slither of moon light fusing weakly with the clouds. It highlights their faces just barely, the whites of their teeth and eyes, everything else is a dim shadow of features.
"Don't think about it now, enjoy this moment. There's nothing wrong with this moment right now is there?" He says softly, tilting her chin.
"No but this moment won't last forever James," she says and it's a warning that he understands. Times are moving swiftly and moments are falling into place and their moments don't have any a place at all.
"I know Cissa but enjoy it whilst it's going on right now and then when it's finished we'll have other moments and they won't be bad." He's trying desperately to regain her but she's drifting further and further away by the second, he can feel Lucius and Bellatrix over his shoulder tapping their watches and locking Narcissa's shackles.
"Yes, I hope so," she says with a small smile, she doesn't believe it though, she can't imagine any moments remotely bearable without James. Her family have fallen apart, her sisters have abandoned her, she has no friends, she's betrothed to a man she dislikes, she's utterly alone and she loathes herself and everything she is. She has no hope of a better tomorrow, all has is James and when he's gone she will have nothing except the beautiful, pure blood that runs through her veins.
She gazes deeply into his hazel eyes and she can feel her breath sync with his and her heartbeat scatter. She can feel butterflies fluttering in her stomach and flying up her throat and pushing her lips to his. She pulls him closer towards her so she might perhaps have a break from being so lonely. James holds her face and wishes that she didn't have to look so sad, wishes that she could be happy, wishes that he could be the one to make her happy. She runs her fingers through his hair and down the pearls of his spine and she wishes that she could tell him that she loved him, right now in this both happy and sad moment, wishes that if she did he would say it back.
"You've got such small hands its ridiculous," he says pulling away, smiling and twirling her hand within his. She smiles at him and kisses his jaw and he pulls her onto his lap. They sit like that for a few minutes just kissing and wishing and eventually they stop and they both know that this thing they have between them has to end.
Their lips touch ever so briefly, tenderly, like fluttering petals in a feeble wind. Electricity races through James veins, his heart lurches as if it would almost leap up into his dry mouth, and then it begins beating like an anxious humming bird. He trembles in anticipation, shuddering as if his nerves are fizzing with acid. And the sensations should seem unpleasant but they actually make him feel alight with magic and fire and pure, wild joy.
He deepens the kiss and it's as if he can feel the immense passion within her and which seems to stream from her pores and her core. Her hands are threaded in his hair and his are around her waist pulling her closer because he knows that he really can't bear to lose her now.
James wants to go slow, to drink in all the silence and her striking, shimmering beauty, to smell the strange narcissus smell that is borne faintly on the wind, to listen to the slightest murmur, to feel her skin on his finger tips and her mouth on his own. This moment is being imprinted into his mind and deep into his imagination.
"James, James," she says, pulling away slightly so their fore heads touch but their lips don't. Her leafy eyes glitter with hope and tears and trust. "I think I love you."
He falters for exactly one third of a second. See's her red hair whispers her sweet name and forgets about the narcissus scenting the wind
"I love you too. Lily, I've always loved you," he whispers, cupping her face with the hands Narcissa adored so much.
He sees red and thinks white and hopes it doesn't matter.
The end
Please review x J.k owns all the ideas and characters not I.