Title: Sticking it to the Man
Character: Narcissa Malfoy
Summary: In the mid 70's Narcissa finds herself in the middle of a bar swathed in punk rock culture. The muggles decide she doesn't belong, but maybe she's more punk rock than any of them thought.
Prompt: Punk rock
Word Count: 1,099
A/N - So I'm just gonna say, as badass as I think Narcissa is, she is still not exactly a good person.
In September 1976 Narcissa Malfoy, very recently Narcissa Black, found herself in the middle of a swarm of muggles.
Three years out of Hogwarts with nothing to do, she had taken to accompanying her father to the Daily Prophet. He visited the paper often and was always welcome due to his generous contributions to the paper. That was when Narcissa had met Rita Skeeter, up and coming reporter. One year later Rita had invited her to a muggle club where she was doing research for some cushy piece she had been stuck doing on muggle pop culture.
The muggles swarmed around the bar and the band screeched a cacophony of loud noises. The music reverberated through Narcissa's chest unpleasantly. "Punk rock," Rita said, spinning around. She walked backward through the crowd as she explained to Narcissa, "It's a musical genre about nihilism and alienation."
Narcissa scoffed, "I'll bet Sirius is a fan."
Rita had warned her to wear dark clothes, but hadn't said anything about the general state of disarray the muggles wore their clothes in. Or the layer of dirt covering all of them. Narcissa had picked out a neat set of black robes, Rita a dark green pair. As they wove through the crowd the muggles all gave them critical, appraising looks, and Narcissa sent them dry looks in return. It was absolutely stunning the muggles were observant enough to pick them out of the crowd.
One girl who had metal sticking out of her face stepped in Rita's way confrontationally. She looked them both up and down, seeming to find them lacking. Her nose flared as she smiled vindictively. "Run along back to your PTA meeting, we don't want you lot here!" The effectiveness of her taunt was somewhat diminished as she could only barely make herself heard over the band. Nonetheless her friends seemed to know exactly what she was getting at because they backed her up. Several of them stood just behind her, providing an intimidating wall of muscle. Or, what would have been an intimidating wall if they hadn't been two extremely talented witches.
Rita just smiled and continued on her way, brushing her aside with an "of course, dear."
She led Narcissa to the side of the stage where a grungy door was being guarded by a displeased looking man with muscles and green spiked hair. Narcissa saw Rita's wand briefly flick toward the guard before disappearing again. When they walked up he was blinking and looking around confusedly. "We're here to see the band," Rita stated, not breaking stride and heaving the door open herself. The bouncer gave them a suspicious look, and Narcissa definitely saw him take note of their out of place clothes, but they walked through anyway, losing the metal faced girl and her friends who were trailing after them.
The groupies Narcissa and Rita were stuck with for the rest of the night were absolutely hopeless. Mudbloods could probably hold better conversation. The group seemed conflicted between distrusting them, because they seemed to be part of a big corporation, and being caught up in their bravado and spilling everything to them.
As Narcissa sat on the filthy couch aggressively trying to avoid eye contact, she couldn't help but run through her only family members in her head. Of course the entire family supported Voldemort, who was on his way to taking over the Ministry of Magic. That could be considered anti-authoritarian. Of course no one did it better or more intensely than Bellatrix. She had taken to working with the death eaters with heretofore unseen enthusiasm. The lengths she had proven she was willing to go was… alarming... unnerving. On the other hand there was Andromeda. She supported the Ministry, but she had also run away from home for a mudblood. She had turned her back on everything they had been raised to believe and respect. And then there was Narcissa, who had stayed at home, married the man everyone expected her to marry, and was on her way to having the exact same life as her mother.
It wasn't long before the people back stage suspected they weren't supposed to be there, due to both Narcissa and Rita's profound cluelessness about almost anything to do with punk rock. At last, she no longer had to sit and hear about bands with such bizarre names. Honestly, the sex pistols? The two women were escorted out of the small bar and continued down the street until they were far away enough that the muggles wouldn't notice them apparate.
As they left the bar the music still pounded behind them and a bouncer watched them walk away disdainfully. More teenagers with strange hair were scattered throughout the streets near the bar, evidentially hoping to get inside. Narcissa had just wondered out loud "In what way are teenagers with strange hair "nihilistic"?" when they came across one such teen having an altercation with the police.
The police officer stood behind the teenager with electric blue hair, handcuffing his hands behind his back and loudly reciting his rights over the teenagers posturing. Narcissa heard the words "bourgeois" and "unfair, classist, racist prison bail system" as the officer moved up in front of him to open the car door, trying to guide the other man into the car. The second the officer reached over to guide him forward the teenager spit in his face viciously, cackling as the officer cringed in reflex. The next time the officer made to pull the teen into the car he was much less gentle. He angrily wiped the spit from his face as he slammed the door shut and moved around to the front seat.
It wasn't until a little over two decades later that Narcissa gave it another thought. "Punk rock, a muggle anti-establishment movement," she leaned over a pale boy lying on the forest floor. She had felt his pulse beating a mile a minute, and she turned back to look at the man who had ordered her to check whether the Potter boy was alive. This man was the closest thing to an all-powerful being that any wizard would ever be. He represented families like Narcissa's own, even if he wasn't one of them. He represented the corruption in the ministry that families like hers funded. He represented the literal spread of depression and unhappiness across Great Britain. He represented all-knowingness; he was the greatest legilimens on record.
Narcissa turned to look at him and said one word. "Dead." And it was the single most punk rock thing Narcissa Malfoy had ever done.
A/N - Could've been better but I'd say I'm happy with it. Next prompt should come out by June 25th, but I might give myself an extra week. There's some family stuff, and I'm flying across the country for about a week to be with my sister, so it might be out by July 2nd instead.
The next one will probably be a second chapter of Minerva's Hitlist. I'm trying out a different format though and sort of struggling with it so it may be something else.
As always, please send in prompts and/or characters!