Common Misconceptions
By: BonaFake
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Warnings: Rated M for brief descriptions of sex later on. No worries. S'all chill.
Author's Note: I should not be doing this right now. Seriously. I have like. Four in-progress fics and original fiction and tumblr drabbles. But either way, this is happening.
Let me give you a basic overview.
This is a triad veela creature fic. Cliches abound. I'm not apologetic. Not yet. Anyways, there are three "parts" to the story―Narcissa's part, Draco's, and Hermione's. None of it is prewritten. We're gonna be okay, but expect sporadic updates.
Anyways. Thanks for reading through this long-ass author's note, and sticking through this.
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Chapter 1
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She has packed. She has gone over her checklist. She has reviewed her itinerary with her fiance even though she will more than likely not follow a single word of it. Except for Paris. She'll go there for sure. It's always sounded so beautiful and she is in desperate need of some beauty.
There has not always been very much beauty in Narcissa Black's life.
True, she was raised by one of the richest families in wizarding Britain, but it was not beautiful. It was far too real to be beautiful. Or too fake. She couldn't ever tell. Her mother raised her to be flawless, perfect, beautiful. And for the most part, she is. She is perfect, unlike her sister Andromeda who developed flaws and that was a problem. No. She is perfect.
And that is the justification she uses to go on her trip around the world, using muggle transportation and muggle money and muggle everything. If she was not perfect, she could not have done this. But then again, if Narcissa Black was at all perfect, then she wouldn't be going on this trip, this miracle trip at all.
Because perfection is marrying right out of school to the highest pureblood bidder. Because perfection is a big eggshell cream wedding and a marriage consummated three months after the actual date on the expensive olive drab cardstock invitations so as to avoid any awkward counting backwards on fingers. Because perfection is quiet embroidery and joining the Ministry Ladies' Garden Club which most certainly does not discuss methods of poisoning various government officials and ways for their husbands to angle for power in the government. That's exactly what perfection is, to Narcissa, to her mother, but that's exactly what she's not.
Oh, granted, she'll probably do that as soon as she comes back from her travels. She'll arrange tastefully exotic flowers and grasses in fifty different shades of green for her wedding and embroider and fiddle with the engagement ring on her finger and join the Ministry Ladies' Garden Club and probably poison a few politicians of her own. Because that's what she's been made for; that's what she's been bred for, as if she was one of those krup puppies her mother selects and then kills through inbreeding. She is a krup puppy, ready to be killed through too many pure blood filled miscarriages and the infamous Black insanity that will destroy her soon enough.
But that's in a few months; when she returns from Greece and Italy and France and Spain and Egypt and Morocco. Then and only then will she subject herself to a lifetime of political alliances and arranged marriages. Once she has seen the world, she can die.
Marriage, in her mind, is a little bit like dying.
But of course she doesn't say a single word of this to her dear, dear, fiance. No. She lets him help her pack and then redoes it when he messes up, lets him shove the 24 carat diamond engagement ring onto her finger and then resizes it when it's too big, lets him book her flights throughout Europe and then rebooks them when they're at the wrong times. He tries. And it's very annoying.
But he's done it, and now she's ready. Narcissa Black kisses her mother goodbye on the cheek and gets ready to get on the plane. Lucius Malfoy has come to see her off. She practically brushes him away. Her father is looking at her with something in his eyes. She does not care.
Being on the plane is an experience. It's an experience that she wants to repeat. It's better than flying, faster and smoother and just flat out newer. She still loves flying on her Cleansweep Seven, of course. But this- airplane flying is better. She sits down and looks around with wonder at the people that stare at her like she's an exotic creature out of a fairy tale book. Narcissa is pretty sure that the muggles aren't all crazy. If they were, they would not be able to know that she is different.
She glitters. Not exactly, no. But she does all the same. She sparkles. She effervesces. And the muggles notice that. For that, she decides she actually kind of likes them.
Narcissa Black steps off the plane in Athens with a smile on her face.
The next few months ― the next few months are a dream. She travels, like nothing she's ever done before, like nothing anyone she knows has ever done before. Not they way she's known her family members to travel, sheltered in the best of hotels and apparating away with international licences and homemade portkeys. No. She walks down the streets, rents a motorbike and just goes, walks as far and as fast as she can, stays wherever she wants, travels.
And she sees vampires in Greece and death rituals in Egypt and werewolves in Spain ―
She travels. And she learns, too. There are hundreds of spells she's never heard of before, hundreds of people she's never met before. There is a hidden wealth of information that each person has, and Narcissa Black will take full advantage of it.
Traveling ― it is beautiful. It is wrong, and it is right. It is perfect, but it's really only perfect in its imperfection. She loves it completely, and without any reservations. Narcissa Black has never loved anything so without abandon before ― not her mother, not her father, not her sisters or her fiance. She's free. Perhaps that's why she found herself able to love the journey ― not because of the countries or new discoveries or anything else, really ― but because of her freedom.
It's an entirely new concept.
She loves it.
She can't ―
Not when she returns home, never then. But now ― now Narcissa is free to fall in love with whatever building she wants, whatever rivers she wants, whatever painting she wants ―
So she does.