Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter series. All rights belong to J.K. Rowling.
Warning: This story contains thinly veiled references to domestic violence and non-graphic rape.
A/N This story is a prequel to a previously published work, 'Glow'.
'Tis The East
She is the winter sun. Blinding in its intensity, so fierce that it should swallow you whole in its realm of violent glory. Looking from behind a wall of glass, you see the light and the warmth and all that everything that you would bet your soul to touch that sun-warmed snow would brand you with the brutal heat of a million stars.
On the contrary, to touch she is as cold as the dripping white icicles that hang from the windowsill of your dormitory window. Such a beautiful deception, this icy queen living in her icy castle. But when you look at her, you see the light and you see the chill that radiates from her skin, but right then you remember what so many forget.
Just because something is cold and hard and ice, doesn't mean that it is incapable of fallacy. She can break just the same as you or I, and that fact is equal parts comforting, and deeply, deeply disturbing. But in the end, we all break anyways. That is the only way you can live with yourself, as you watch as she is shattered into a thousand tiny pieces.
~()~
It's past curfew, and you are hidden away from sight in that little secret of yours, the cloak that makes you as insubstantial as dust. She walks down the dark corridors, the tip of her wand a wavering beacon amidst the nothingness. You can smell her fear. It coats everything, this innocent, human emotion, and shocks you for just a minute, long enough for her to walk into view. She is dressed plainly, white on white, her sunspun hair falling in soft waves down her back. You are absolutely spellbound.
She comes to a halt just outside the small alcove you are hiding in. You know she can't see you, but you hide anyway, pushing back against the crumbling stone. She stands there, immobile, for what seems like hours. A ghostly silhouette wrapped in buttery light, she is ethereal, otherworldly. She cannot possibly know where you are, but she stares right at you, her glacial cerulean eyes not moving a fraction of an inch as they bore into your soul.
Finally, she turns away. For a split second, her hair whips around her shoulder, exposing her neck, and you swear you see a flash of purple fingerprints marring her pale flesh.
Knox.
That night, for the first time; you truly see Narcissa Black.
~()~
Some beauty hides, furtively inhabiting the corners of our minds. The places people don't dare to look. Other beauty is loud; obvious, so blinding that you cannot see anything but her. When we're young, we all think we know what type of beauty we want. We yearn to shine with the light of a million blinding stars, and she is no exception.
Narcissa Black has that beauty; a cold, vicious beauty that cuts straight into the innermost corners of your psyche. It is only when you look back at this time in your life that you will see it. It is only with sad, useless tears that you will finally understand just how doomed this made her.
They all want some, every boy who stares at her with greedily drinking eyes. They want to suck out her soul, to steal her glowing loveliness until it buoys them up enough to make them hate themselves just a little less. Lucius Malfoy is one of these men.
After that late night spent pressed up against a wall, you notice her everywhere you go. Walking to class, thin tendrils of curling silk tumbling down her back. Entering the great hall for breakfast in the cold, gloomy mornings, Malfoy's crushing, waxen hands clutching tightly at her waist.
When you look at her, you don't feel happy. You don't feel warm, content, or satisfied. There is nothing but hot rains of anger and the curling smoke of sadness that can only come from seeing far away into the future; a future of dust, smoke, and iron.
She is icy cold; a sculpted princess with diamond bones and granite eyes. Looking at her, watching from afar, it always puzzles you. There is no red hair, no sweet smile, pink lips curling and green eyes flashing with ire.
She is not fire. So why does she makes you burn?
~()~
Your first real encounter is bitter. Tangy and harsh, but not entirely unpleasant. Like black chocolate. So dark that you can barely taste the sugar, but you know that somewhere, however insignificant, it's there.
It's terribly cliché, you know, but when you see her sitting by the Black Lake, she looks so lost and alone, and not like Narcissa Black, that you cannot help but call out to her.
"Black! It's late. What are you doing out here all alone?" You ask.
She turns sharply to look at you, skewering you with those iceberg eyes. She doesn't answer you, just turns back to the gently lapping ink that caresses her pale fingertips. You don't know what it is that makes you go to her. Curiosity? Pride?
Either way, you approach her at an even pace, the dewy grass silent beneath your feet. You sit down right beside her, but she does not move an inch. She doesn't even look at you. It's like that for a while. Just you, her, and the giant squid. When she does speak, it nearly gives you a heart attack.
"What do you want, Potter?" She whispers sharply.
It takes you a minute to answer. You have become overwhelmed with it all. There are the trees, with their monster-hand shadows, the full, pinky white globe that lies heavy amongst the clouds, and then there is her. The curve of snow. Snow and blood.
"Nothing. I don't want anything from you," You tell her.
She nods, but still won't look at you. You're staring at her neck, transfixed by the expanse of spilled milk with a dash of wine.
"Really, I just saw you here. I never catch you without lover boy, so maybe I'm a bit curious," You add, in a softer voice.
She laughs harshly, unexpectedly. It weaves through the wind and becomes the air, swirling around you like a whirling dervish. Her voice echoes in your mind.
"'Lover boy'? You think 'love' has anything to do with it? Typical. Gryffindors and their happy endings," She retorts.
You confess that, even though this is Narcissa Black, the Slytherin Ice Princess, you're just a little shocked at the sourness that seeps from her voice, like mildew leaking from a box of old, unwanted memories. You've always considered yourself carefree, and as you stare at this chaos of glass and frost, you see another side of life. Poison as wine, killing you slowly.
"Happy endings? Sometimes. Maybe I just don't know anymore," You mumble.
It legitimately bothers you, this assumption. Sunshine and rainbows? Hardly. But still, you admit that you have not even come close to the astringency that seems to have molded itself over her lovely skin, that has painted itself behind her eyes.
She looks at you for the first time that night, and you are surprised to see that her eyes are really far purpler than the cool blue you thought. Lavender, maybe.
"I do know. I know everything there is to know about happy endings. I think I always have," She says, almost to herself.
She gets up, and without looking back at you; she walks away, bleeding into the night until she becomes nothing more than a smudge of white against the black light of darkness. Maybe it was the light, or lack thereof, or maybe just a trick of your eyes. But as she looked at you that final time, you swear that you saw something.
Small and cold, it was a little shimmer of ice water, melting like blood from her sad, violet eyes.
~()~
It's a cool, breathless day. The sky is grey, but not heavy with the weight of rain-filled clouds. There is an odd stillness, a break in time that you can feel in your very bones.
Perfect quidditch weather.
You do your warm-up lap around the pitch, the tranquil air buzzing through your body, turning you inside out. Unwittingly, you cast your eyes around the stands, and pretend to look for a splash of crimson on lime. Instead, you find your eyes absorbed by white chocolate and plums, the ghostly beauty with the hand-shaped bruise resting like evil glitter on her left cheek.
You cannot look at her anymore, even as her indigo eyes latch onto you as if you are her last chance at hope. Her last chance at anything. Anger rises in you like a tropical tide, and it is all you can do to keep silent in your brutal pain. As the whistle is blown, you begin your search for that elusive little bullion ball, furious emotion urging your broom faster, making your eyes that much sharper.
You are surrounded by red-gold bumblebees and floating vipers with their silver-green teeth, but all you can see is dusty wine stains over spilled milk. Your determination stems from a place you'd rather not acknowledge, a place deep within you where only one person can live. The score is 100-80 for Slytherin, when your fingers close around that shiny, fluttering thing. The Golden Snitch is your freedom, this day, and as soon as you have secured victory, the ground meets your feet and there is fire in your blood and ice in your eyes.
Lucius Malfoy's face is too easy a target, you think, as you smash your fist into it, over and over again. It's silent all around you, but all you can see is the blood that you're spilling, filled with the cruelty and malice that you know resides behind that faithless smile.
Eventually, you are forcibly removed from him, and scolded profusely. You receive two months straight of detention, but really, you couldn't care less. It's with a smile on your face that you walk away, because you know that you have spilled the blood of a monster. So what if it makes you a monster yourself? This day, none of it matters.
Nothing matters but the small curve of coral lips and the look of something like awe in those brilliant lilac eyes. Nothing matters but those eyes.
~()~
A few weeks of stolen glances pass by before you can truly be with her again. The library is always busy; something about the dust that settles thickly on the shelves and the musty scent of aging words is just so lovely. You've gained rare permission to enter the restricted section, and brushing your fingers along the painted spines of the books, something quiet and divine reaches your ears.
Singing.
Following the high, melodious voice, you reach a little alcove set into the aging wall that you hadn't noticed before. And there she is. The singing is emanating from a small, velvet-bound book with strange symbols on the cover. She sits with it in her lap, her delicate eyelashes fluttering over the cheekbones beneath her closed lids. Tranquil loveliness and brittle beauty, she seems so breakable right now that you fear to disturb her, so entranced as she is. You're about to turn away and leave her in this fragile moment of tender peace, when her eyes snap open.
"I recognized your footsteps," She says, her voice naught more than a breath of wind.
"My footsteps? I've never given much thought to my footsteps," You sit down beside her, and you feel her blaze in your bones.
"What's that book, anyways?" You ask.
She shuts it swiftly, little clouds of dust blooming in the musty air. The beautiful singing stops abruptly, and it makes the entire room seems just a little bit darker, deeper. Shadows turn to ghosts, the creak of a floorboard becomes a scream for mercy.
"It isn't a book. Not really. There are no words, no pages. It binds between its covers The Song of Making," She tells you.
"I've never heard of that before," You confess. She smiles briefly, her eyes never leaving the scarlet cover of the tome.
"Most haven't. The elves believe that is was responsible for the creation of our world. The song recorded in this book is a mere echo, but the real thing is so painfully exquisite, that it destroys any mortal who is fortunate enough to bear witness to it's melody," She explains, tucking a stray curl behind her ear.
You open your mouth to reply, but she cuts you off, her voice suddenly sharp.
"You shouldn't have done that, you know,"
"Done what?" You ask, puzzled by her sudden animosity. The sudden subject change throws you.
"At the quidditch game. You shouldn't have done that," She sounds choked, repressed. Unwittingly, your eyes narrow, and you feel something like betrayal crawl up your throat.
"Well, I'm sorry if me being angry about seeing you with a bruise the size of China on your face was inappropriate," You retort, sarcasm dripping from your words.
You expect fierce retaliation, because Narcissa Black is defined by her pride, so you are surprised when she suddenly becomes very interested in her shoes, refusing to meet your eyes.
"I just meant that it was dangerous. Lucius doesn't like it when people get the better of him," She mumbles, a strange vulnerability lacing her words.
You can't help but soften at this. There is something so sad about this ice queen sitting here with her knees to her chest, whispering melting words in this dark, lonely place.
"I know he does. I know," You whisper, looking down at her small hands, clutching that book like it is her salvation.
Suddenly, she looks up, and you are not on this planet anymore. There's a little twist of cherry lips, stars in that purple sky, and you feel a delicate softness (lips?) press to your cheek. One kiss, and she's gone.
~()~
You can barely remember what has happened this night, this night that will define her starburst of a life. You are sitting in a window seat on a stagnant night in May, the air silent around you. Moonlight brushes the corridor, highlighting every little crack, each fissure in that grey, stony resistance. Your eyes are closed, eyelashes resting like dust on your cheekbones, when you smell that scent you've come to recognize. The scent that strikes a violent, fearful beauty into a heart you thought was made of red geraniums and a pretty flask of lime juice.
She comes to you, milk and chocolate, riding on the winds of some baleful battle taking place inside her skin. You can see the blood, the evil glitter, the ice pick that has been driven over and over again into this beautiful sculpture of water, forever frozen. She comes to you, and you can feel the lure of satin sheets and the lair of a monster with silver eyes, hiding beneath her lilacs. She touches you, and you want to cry, because there is a hardness in her that you have never felt in your life. She is ice and glass, and she is trapped inside these walls of polar grief, reaching for you with both hands outstretched.
You are a good man, you've always thought so. Known so. That's why, when she offers herself to you, frosty blue beauty dripping from every pore, you cannot deny her. You hate yourself, as you do the only thing she's ever really asked of you. As you try to fill with love a place that you know will never be whole again. Ice cannot heal. It simply sits there, waiting for something warm enough to melt it into something that isn't so hard. So painful. You hold her and feel her and as she touches you with her paper skin, as she latches onto you like there is nothing in this world but you, you can feel her melting.
Bit by bit, those ice water tears drip down, down, down. They leave stains on your shirt and tracks on her face. You don't think you've ever seen anything more beautiful. You've never believed in God, but as the tears of her pain come melting down, you know that it's your warmth that did this. It's your heat and fire that makes this icy little girl liquefy her pain until it's nothing. Looking down at her spider silk hair spread across your pillow, you see Heaven and Earth holding hands.
You see God, here in this room, with perfection and beauty and everything you could ever want, lying right there, waiting for you to claim her. You can feel her tears in your skin, and as you stand there, looking down with the sun at your back, you feel her ice become your own, and you cry as you harden.
The door swings shut behind you as you leave God and love and beauty in the alluring dust of your undeniable fear.
~()~
Your date with Lily Evans, redheaded and filled with fire, is everything that it should be. She is everything you ever thought you wanted. Beauty weeps from every pore, warmth and comfort and something that feels just like home. She's perfect. So blindingly, innocently, gratefully perfect. And that exact reason is why you hate yourself more than have ever hated anything in your life.
She kisses you on the mouth after your afternoon spent smiling and laughing surrounded by bubbles and angels at Madame Puddifoot's. This is what you've always wanted, so why is it so hard, why does it feel like she is stealing your last breath, as her berry-stained lips meet yours? Why does it feel hollow, where your heart should be?
She's limes and red geraniums; really and truly the stuff of your dreams. All you can do is smile as she latches onto your hand, because it isn't her fault. It's not her fault that she is not a star, shining with the blindingly icy heat of the winter sun. It isn't her fault that she's warm and soft and kissable and lovable and just about everything a girl should be.
Nothing has ever been more horribly, hatefully clear. She is warmth.
But you crave the cold.
~()~
It's late on a bleeding Sunday afternoon in June when you receive her owl. The note is tiny, adorned with a small red geranium. It's mocking you, you know, this tiny, violently beautiful thing, because you should love it and want it, and you aren't even sure if maybe, somewhere deep inside of you, you do love it. Maybe there is hope for you someday, when you are nothing but an icy, melting old man.
The ice queen that melted before your eyes wants to meet by the Black Lake at nine o'clock tonight. You sit in the owlery for hours and hours that day, watching as the summer sun lends heat and light and something infinitely more valuable to the sky, as it sinks behind the clouds, shining as if this is it's last day to brighten the Earth.
As darkness descends, you wait by the window, seeing the curlingly manipulative night that you have grown to love so much creep into everything you can see, tainting it. You watch as ice steps forth to meet darkness, as she floats like a fairy on a cloud, to dip her pale, lovely toes into the Black Lake. She is dressed all in white, and it actually makes you laugh out loud. This cruel, beatific thing dressed in white. You have seen her soul, you know. She laid it out for you to see every wound, every scar, every hateful thought painted in technicolour behind her eyelids. She is lovely as she waits there, and it makes you breathe a little heavier when you remember that she's waiting there for you. White on dark, a little spot of ruined purity in this mess of a world.
Oh, sweet melting ice princess, melt no more. Don't let them shatter you. Your ice is your home. Don't you know? It's mine too, so don't worry. Maybe I'll see you there.
You know what she's going to tell you, when you walk down to meet her with love so fierce, glowing like diamonds in your eyes. She doesn't want you anymore, and you don't want her. Not in all the ways that matter, anyways. Maybe you need each other. But really, who cares? It doesn't matter that you feel like you will die without her, that the last breath you take will be the minute she says goodbye. None of it matters, because you've got a future, and that future does not include violence and darkness and raw power and true love. You're going home, to your little limes and perfect red geraniums.
You start down the steps, each one taking you closer to her. It doesn't matter, you think, it doesn't matter at all.
It doesn't matter that you can feel them now, her ice water tears. You can feel her searing, glacial pain trickling down your cheeks, as you walk towards your death.
FIN
A/N This was written for silverfox98's 'Brilliance, in Its Purest Form: A Challenge'.