Prologue

"These are for you," gasped Narcissa, pulling a thick, calligraphied envelope, yellowed with age, from behind her pillow. "Take them, Draco. They're your inheritance."

Draco took the envelope and reached out to clasp his mother's hand tightly in his own. She was dying, sure as her side had lost the war fifty years ago. It wasn't like it was unexpected. She'd lived through over a century of change, from participating in the Pureblood dominated society of the Dark Lord's reign to struggling through the reform since. Her own child had grown, and now Draco had had a child of his own who in turn had his own children. Narcissa had great grandchildren, three of them. Three beautiful little girls, ages six, five, and two. Yet with her sister Bellatrix long dead and her husband three months cold in the ground, Narcissa seemed to have resigned herself to having more to live for in the realm of the dead than here. It was a fast decline; one day she was as vain and fussy as always; the next she had withered away to nothing.

"Do you want me to send for a healer, Mum?" he asked softly, squeezing her hand despite her cold rings digging into his palm. "Perhaps call Astoria, Scorpius, and the girls in …?" He left the question hanging, not wanting to say "for their final goodbye."

"No," said Narcissa. "No. Only you, Draco." The hand that he wasn't holding crept across the bedspread to rest on the packet she had just handed to him. She ran a wizened finger, adorned with a large silver ring, across the clasp. "The past is catching up to me. They say when you die your life flashes before your eyes, but if that were true, I would see more than … than …" And now it was her turn to trail off.

"Then what, Mum?"

"Only the past," she said, after a long pause. She closed her eyes wearily, fingers curling tighter across the surface of the envelope. For several minutes she lay, chest heaving as she labored to catch her breath. Draco watched as if in another body, unfeeling, or trying not to, as his mother's life trickled from her before his eyes.

Narcissa's eyes flew open. "Tell them, Draco!" she cried. "Tell them I'm sorry I never said goodbye."

"Who?" he said gently, running his thumb down the length of her hand. "Astoria? Scorpius?"

"No, no …" She fought to catch her breath, to force a last thought into the world. "Sisters …" she managed.

"Calypso, Callidora, and Halcyon?" Draco spoke of his granddaughters almost absently, unable to think anymore. He wasn't observing this scene; he was now all too much a part of it. This was his mother he was watching fade away, his last link to a nearly forgotten family.

Narcissa clutched Draco's wrist, clawing desperately. "Tell them," she insisted, scrabbling to give him a conclusion he couldn't come to.

"I love you," he choked, taking both her hands in his now. "Don't leave me."

"Love … you," she insisted. And then, to someone who was not Draco, who was not present in life beside her, "Wait!"

Her final word punched through the last tie she held to living. With a small shudder, Narcissa Black-Malfoy slumped over on the pillow, fingers loosening around Draco's wrist, and died. Draco slowly peeled away from her, holding onto her love and expelling from him the frantic "Wait!", the desperation in her voice as she told him about the people she hadn't said goodbye to. He didn't understand her, and as his gaze slid to the ancient looking envelope resting near his mother's body, it occurred to him that maybe he never had.

He waited a few days to look inside the envelope, taking it home and hiding it with his sorrow in the liquor cabinet. It was like the old days of reform, after the war; before retreating from Britain. When Astoria caught on that he was not only grief-mad, but stone drunk, he slept for eighteen hours straight and then, upon waking up at midnight three days after his mother's death, crept downstairs and pulled the envelope from the back of the liquor cabinet.

Looking at it with clearer eyes showed it to be not so age worn as he had imagined it, but simply antiquely made. Pureblood, no doubt. Old Pureblood, from before the fall of the Dark Lord. Maybe from when Narcissa was a girl.

A thin, pale blue ribbon tied the envelope shut. He unknotted it gently, unsure of what to expect. But it certainly wasn't the multitude of parchment that cascaded out, slipping to the floor in a crumpled heap. Some pieces were age spotted, a few were ripped and torn, but without fail, he could see his mother's curly cursive winding across each in the familiar outline of a letter.

Picking one up, he read the date and first line:

July 31, 1969

Dearest Andromeda, I would give anything to have you back. Even …

But Draco didn't read any further. Dropping it like a hot brand, he picked up another letter. Dearest Andromeda … Another one. Dearest Andromeda.

They were all addressed to the aunt he had never known; Narcissa's sister, to whom she had never professed anything but bitterness towards, on the rare occasion when she would mention the name.

Dearest Andromeda …

It changed everything he'd thought about his aunt.

Even after the war, when everyone had supposedly become equal, he and his mother and father had withdrew from society. Gone to the continent for a while, associated with the wizardry of Germany, Russia, Scandinavia—the places where Dark Magic still festered unchecked. When Narcissa and Lucius returned quietly to Malfoy Manor and Draco married Astoria, the small family kept to themselves. Narcissa had certainly never sought out Andromeda, not to Draco's knowledge. And nor had he ever heard of Andromeda calling on Narcissa.

With a jolt, he realized he didn't even know if Andromeda was still alive. Her grandson Teddy was—he was married, thought Draco, surprised that he remembered that advertisement in the Prophet telling of Theodore John Lupin marrying Victoire Elizabeth Weasley.

The stately old grandfather clock, a Malfoy heirloom, struck one in the adjacent room. Draco returned to the present and knelt, gathering the letters with just enough care to be certain that they all were labeled Dearest Andromeda.

And so they were. From her sixteenth year to just before her death, Narcissa Malfoy had never stopped writing wistfully to her estranged, disgraced elder sister.

This isn't so much a plotted story as an exploration of the relationships between the Black sisters and, less directly, Narcissa and Draco. The letters will continue to fuse past and present, and future chapters should continue to be about this length. Nothing too serious - or Sirius ;-D I'd love to hear any opinions!