Title: Red Roses & Cobwebs, Chapter One: Here Comes The BrideAuthor: serpentqueen13Pairings: Draco Malfoy/Pansy Parkinson, Draco Malfoy/Morag MacDougal (past), hints of Serafina Zabini/Alecto Carrow, Narcissa Black/Lucius Malfoy (past), and eventual Salazar Slytherin/Rowena Ravenclaw
Chapter Rating: PG
Warnings: Slight darkness in this chapter, but not much
Summary: A widower Draco Malfoy marries childhood fiancée Pansy Parkinson, and as the crowd looks on, Narcissa Malfoy wonders if she did the right thing.
Warning: I don't tend to be particularly kind to Pansy, but I don't see her as a vapid air head either. She was able to keep Draco's attention in school, so please, don't criticize me for some imagined hatred of the character.
The wedding guests were packed into the ballroom at Malfoy Manor for the wedding, the crème de la crème of wizarding high society. Despite the flashing rainbow of gems and silks, however, a distinctive cloud seemed to hang over the gathering, despite the noble attempts otherwise.
This wedding, unlike the groom's first, was the social event of the season--from the expensive bridal gown, and designer bridesmaid dresses, to the expensive flowers flown in from Peru, to the ice sculpture and chorus of sirens to sing for the reception. Despite all this, all the whispered conversation was circling around that first wedding, a hurried mid-war thing that only a handful of people had been able to attend. The general consensus, with a few dissenters, was that the widower had traded up.
Narcissa Malfoy, unfortunately, was one of those dissenters. She sat, her hands primly folded next to her friend Serafina Zabini, fighting the unladylike and inane desire to bite her nails, something she hadn't even done as a child, no matter what Andromeda might say to the contrary. Unlike everyone else, she knew that this wedding was for her, to make her happy, but she had her hopes that it would make her son happy as well.
"It'll make him happy." Narcissa whispered to Serafina, who had her own record for weddings. "Pansy loves him, she'll distract him from his pain, and he loved her once, he'll be able to love her again."
Serafina was not at all convinced, but she put on a brave face for her friend. "He agreed to it, after all." Serafina said with a smile. "And he'll be happier with her than alone."
"That's right." Narcissa said. "It won't do for him to be alone. After all, friendship is no replacement for love." She shook her head. "I'll never know why you didn't marry, Alecto."
Alecto Carrow, seated next to Serafina, choked at her sudden inclusion in the conversation in such an awkward manner. "I guess I just never found the right man to marry." She replied smoothly, recovering easily. "That's what I get for being Serafina's bridesmaid so often. You know what they say, always a bridesmaid and never a bride."
Narcissa shook her head and smiled at her son, who looked calm and even-tempered, and she couldn't help but compare his expression to the one she remembered from a mere three years ago, pounding on her door and begging her to hurry because his bride would think he had lost his nerve; or the way he had smiled when he had caught sight of his first wife in a modest white silk dress, commandeered to be a bridal gown before a battle—just in case.
His expression when Pansy appeared, in a frothy but tasteful white gown with a train long enough to be fit for a cathedral, was a smile, but the enthusiasm wasn't in his eyes. Narcissa had to bite the inside of her cheek when the officiating minister asked if there was anyone who would supply reason for them not to be wed.
For a moment, she could have sworn she saw a flash of red at the altar, and a figure standing between the bride and groom, but when she blinked it was gone, and apparently no one else had seen it, but she couldn't help the dread in her stomach. Still, she held fast through the vows convincing herself that Pansy would be able to pull Draco out of the depressed slump he had been in for the past year, to make him live again.
She was just glad he didn't overhear the woman behind her make a comment that made her want to turn and snap at the woman for speaking ill of the dead, and dead that had been her family and made her son so happy. "Well, after the sow's ear he had for a first wife, he's found himself a silk purse." Violetta Bulstrode was most definitely not going to be invited to any further social functions Narcissa Malfoy was holding, that was for certain.