Narcissa Goes to Tea
Theo de Roth
(the Old Fiats' older sister)
Theo's author's note: This is payment for a specific idea. Thanks, sibs. By the way, the story is set when Narcissa Malfoy, née Black, is still a little girl. She was never the same after this.
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Narcissa delicately picked up her saucer and teacup, eying Walburga with disdain. Narcissa was bored stupid, and didn't want to be at her aunt's silly tea party. Walburga was autodidactic and megalomaniacal: Everyone else existed strictly to form an audience for her rantings. And she only ever ranted about a few, very strictly circumscribed topics: Mudbloods; the downfall of the wizarding world due to mudbloods; and her (Walburga's) own genealogical superiority. Usually, the latter was expressed in thinly veiled jabs at her guests' backgrounds; the two former were spoken outright.
Narcissa sighed and wondered if she could have another biscuit.
"…and really, the only thing keeping the Ministry from allowing filthy muggles to come and work in their utterly corrupted offices is the fact that we simply don't have enough purebloods left to overpower them if they became fractious," Walburga was saying. "I don't know why we ever stopped keeping them in thrall to our powers in the first place."
Narcissa watched her mother sigh. Walburga Black had an uncanny ability to put into the most objectionable terms possible the most secret beliefs of many of her friends, and it made all of them uncomfortable.
Except, it seemed, for a hunch-backed little old lady in the corner of the room. She was giggling and snuffling into her tea, snorting and almost-silently admonishing something no one else could see.
Narcissa was willing to bet that the little old lady would help her get another
biscuit, or would tell her that it was all right, at any rate.
Silently, Narcissa slipped down from her chair and, crouched slightly, made her way behind a tall, prim, deeply disgusted-looking woman, and came up beside the hunchbacked old lady.
"Hello, deary," said the little old lady. "What's your name, now?"
"Cissy Black," said Narcissa. "What's yours?"
"You may call me… Edgar," said the old lady. She turned away and mumbled something, as if telling off a child who happened to posses perfect lip-reading ability. "Are you enjoying yourself, Cissy dear?" she asked, turning back.
Narcissa wondered what it felt like to be a hunchback. She had seen muggle
schoolchildren, bent over under the weight of heavy knapsacks – perhaps rather like that.
"I'd really like another biscuit," she said, without thinking.
"Of course, deary," said the old lady who called herself Edgar. In a whisper, she added, "Yes, yes, I'll get one for you all as well."
Edgar leaned over to her neighbor, who was unluckily seated next o Walburga, and requested that the biscuits be passed in her direction. The disgusted-looking witch sighed and squirmed in her chair, mumbling something about odiousness and rottenness of mind. Narcissa thought she heard someone crying when Walburga momentarily paused for breath. Then she launched forth yet again.
"And honestly, I don't know how people can stand it," she said. "It must feel like a fly that won't go away, having even the faintest trace of muggle blood in one's background." Her glance flicked over the disgusted-looking witch. "I wonder if their blood flows more sluggishly… Poor circulation can cause brain dysfunction, you know, and it would explain why they're so very, very stupid."
"Here you are, deary," said Edgar, offering the plate of biscuits to Narcissa. Narcissa took one, then, when a quick look around the circle told her no one was looking, took three more. Edgar smiled at her.
"Now, deary, would you be so kind as to help me out a little?" whispered the old lady. She mouthed something that looked like, "In a minute!"
"What I need you to do," Edgar continued, "is to take two of those biscuits – not the ones you've taken for yourself, deary, I wouldn't want to deprive you – and feed them to my children."
"What?" asked Narcissa. "What children?"
Edgar chuckled a little. "Oh, of course, you don't know!"
Slowly, haltingly, the old lady stood up. Her hunch was even more pronounced when she was standing, and it scarcely made a difference to her height: Narcissa was two inches taller than her, even now. Shuffling her feet a little, the old lady turned around.
Covering her back, like some kind of appalling cloud, was a writhing mass of spider-silk. No, not just the silk, Narcissa realized: It was an egg, full almost to the bursting with hundreds upon hundreds of baby spiders. They skittered and wriggled under the spider-silk skin, and Narcissa could almost hear a vast, collective whisper: "Feed us!" "We're hungry!" "We're bored!"; a thousand tiny complaints. One of the babies pressed itself against the skin, and Narcissa was disgusted to see that it had the old lady's face, attached to a spider's body.
"She has food!" it cried, and immediately a hundred thousand other little Edgar-faces where pressing and straining against the skin, pushing towards her. "She has food!" "Feed us, feed us!" "Biscuits!" "Food!"
Suddenly, the mass of baby spiders must have become too great; the silk stretched, stretched, and with an audible snap!, broke. The baby spiders gushed out, all over the floor, all around the guests' legs. The disgusted looking witch jumped up on her chair, shouting; Narcissa's mother shrieked and nearly fell into the writhing mass. Narcissa, without further ado, fainted dead away.
Walburga Black looked up, surprised, then took an unharried sip of tea.
"Edgar," she said, "I think perhaps your children require a nap."
"Yes," said Edgar, grinning. "I do believe they've had too many biscuits."
The spider-carpet on the floor shimmered and whispered, then disappeared into the many corners of the room.
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Old Fiat s. Italy's author's note: Okay, I will now attempt to explain this... this... oh geez, is there really a word for Edgar? OFnFR and I came up with her one night when we were joking around together about what a tea party would be like at the Black house. We were joking (creepily) that Walburga and her friends would probably use Sirius as a living pinata (that idea is actually mentioned in this, as Theo told me, when it says "Narcissa thought she heard someone crying when Walburga momentarily paused for breath..."), but we couldn't think of anyone else to be at the tea party, other than Walburga herself and maybe Narcissa.
So OFnFR said to me, "Okay, so... how about this little old woman named uh... Edgar or something. And she's married to a... a... What's Aragog again?" And I said, "Wait—you mean an acromantula?" And OFnFR went, "Yeah—she's married to an acromantula trainer—" and I just said, "No, no, I like the idea of her being married to an acromantula better."
And thus, Edgar was born!
Anyway, when we told Theo about Edgar, she asked if she could use "her" in a story of her own and we agreed—not being horribly attached to Edgar—on the condition that she write the fanfiction about the tea party (because we were both too lazy to do it).
Please review and tell us what you think of... this... yeah... No words can describe...