It is the icing. The icing would do it.
The tip of the iceberg. Just a smudge, on her fingertip.
She would trace it like one of Lucius Malfoy's smiles – stiff, resistant . .. but rather sweet all the same.
Bad for you. Everyone knows it's bad for you.
Cissy swallows, and sits up a little straighter.
Glasses clink beside her.
Druella clicks her tongue and leans across her plate, to adjust one of her daughter's curls. Cissy smiles without thinking and tries her best not to fidget - and to shrug off the sense that the cake is watching her in return, with a thousand hungry, silver ball-bearing eyes.
The trouble is, it wouldn't end with the icing.
There would be layers of sponge (whipped light as air), and jam (a sharp, tart note, perfectly balanced), and . . . cream. There is always cream, with cake. Piped around the edges, squashed into the centre, thick and threatening. It will melt her resistance. It always does.
And then there are the words - sweeping calligraphy that will snap at the first bite, sugar granules dissolving on her tongue. The sugar violets - too delicate to do any harm, gone before she has a chance to truly taste them. The sugar-dusted strawberries - bright against white icing, summer-scented.
It wouldn't end with the icing. Of course it wouldn't. How could it?
It would end with a stomach-ache. It would end with a clear cakeboard, with her own sugar-stained reflection in the silver surface.
Her fingers twitch.
Perhaps they wouldn't notice, if it went missing. She could blame the house-elves.
And she could make it right . . . .
Cissy sits forward a fraction.
She could find an excuse. She could.
Her mother - beside her – is busy bemoaning the unseasonal humidity. Her uncle - on her other side - is busy berating cousin Sirius - who in turn has been busy twisting his napkin into crude and unusual shapes, apparently bored stupid. Priscilla Parkinson is busy batting her eyelashes at him. (Any minute now, she'll tell him her best "a troll, a hag, and a Mudblood" joke, and sulk when he refuses to laugh.) Lucius' boring friend has already run through his own repetoire of inappropriate "halfbreed" jokes, and has now limited his vocabulary to just one word.
"Malfoy."
Cissy's fingers close around her spoon. A fork would be better, but there isn't time to be fussy . .. .
"Malfoy."
She told them she didn't want one, of course . . . but that doesn't matter. It's here now, isn't it? It's her cake, her name sounding such a clarion call. Happy Birthday. Fifteen. Narcissa.
"Malfoy!"
Narcissa jumps.
Lucius, however, pays his companion no heed. He raises his glass a fraction in greeting, and then sets it down, still staring at Narcissa. He looks faintly bewildered.
And then she realizes.
Oh Merlin. How long has she been staring at it?
Cissy blushes pink, but it is already too late. He is at her side before she can do a thing about it, he has picked up the knife before she understands what he intends to do.
The blade sinks through the strawberries, a sudden, brutal move . . . and then it is over. Spoiled, and she has not been the one to do it.
Cissy laughs, surprising herself, and Lucius smiles - her favourite, not-quite-sweet smile. (Her mother would call it sinful.)
"Cake?" he offers.