Narcissa Black was a beautiful baby, all the way from her fine downy blonde hair to her tiny round toes. She was perfectly fair with blue eyes and a full pink mouth that hardly ever cried. She was a stark contrast to the dark calloused hands and brown-black hair of her father, Cygnus III. So small and fragile, that he hardly knew how to hold her despite having two equally beautiful children to his name. Daughters that carried his hair and complexion - daughters that were the perfect blend of mother and father.
There were rumors, of course. Just as there will always be vipers waiting to soil the Black name, so were there tongues hissing lies about her paternity. Perhaps if he'd held her more - if he'd paraded her around in public on his shoulders, as he might have liked - the rumors would have stopped. Instead, he'd handed her off to her mother and her aunt. Surely they could take better care of her than he could?
After all, that was the way of things and as the youngest of his own set of three siblings, he was hardly one to go against tradition. That didn't stop him from watching her sometimes.
She had a way of scaring him the most. Bellatrix would scream at any offense and Andromeda would scream about any offense, but Narcissa had a habit of remaining silent. No one knew she was sick until she fainted, or that she cut herself until the blood was seeping through her dresses - and even then she only apologized for the mess. He was the last to know that she almost fell out of a window during a lesson with Walpurga, and that was only because Andromeda was crying about it for her.
He should have paid more attention.
She was always calling out to him in her own way. He was always the first she addressed with her achievements, practically begging for his approval. On the rare occasion that she needed something, he was the one that she went to until her mother convinced her that he was too busy and the odd visits became less and less. She never asked for anything, and just like both of her sisters - he tried to lavish her with every material thing she could ever possibly want.
There were only a handful of times he could remember actually being alone with her.
"You look like your grandmother," he had told her once when he'd found her searching the portraits in the halls. Her eyes had been red, but, of course, not a tear was to be found. Later that night he'd had the portrait in question moved to her bedroom and a new doll rested on her bed.
When she cut her hair, he was the one that brushed it that one night it remained short. Her mother was livid, and for the first and only time the girl had been labeled 'his daughter' and his alone. Of course, he couldn't think of anything to say to her.
He should have tried more.
Eventually, she stopped needing him - it felt like she had stopped needing anyone. Cygnus would watch her from across the table at dinner; this beautiful dignified young woman that all but held a conversation together at the table. He should have been the glue of his own family, and yet this tiny little creature was the one constantly tempering fights between her siblings and trying to sew together the rift building between Druella and Andromeda. He was proud of her, of course, but duty and obligation were expectations in their household. One did not praise what was to be expected.
And so, he bought her more things. He kept her well stocked in laces and frills because that was what little girls wore. He gave her toys and trinkets because those were the things that little girls wanted. He took her to Paris to have a perfume made because he knew she'd developed a fondness for the art. He bought her a harpsichord and had her portrait made, so that she was immortalized in all her finery.
Still he said nothing more than a few pleasantries. Still he told her that she could always strive to be better and do more for her family. He allowed Walpurga to terrorize an entire family and Druella to instill all the feminine weapons Narcissa would need in her arsenal. He watched her study relentlessly and practice spells to perfection.
And just as he said nothing, Narcissa also said nothing. Never a word.
Yet her eyes would say it all. In those rare moments of vulnerability, he would see words decades left unspoken. "I needed you. I needed my father."