I do not own the Harry Potter series or the poem "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud." That honor goes to J.K. Rowling and William Wordsworth, respectively.
"Plant lilies on his grave," she had said when they came to her for advice on what to do for him. "It is what he would have wanted."
And then she had made her excuses and fled upstairs, not to cry – because Black ladies never cried, and she was very much a Black still – but to be alone with her memories.
Why did they come to me? There is no possible way that anyone could have known…
When she was still a schoolgirl, young and foolish, Narcissa Black had fallen in love with a most unsuitable boy. Several years younger than her and a halfblood, Severus Snape was practically an outcast amongst her peers. He was an enigma, and perhaps that was what had drawn her to him. But he had never seen her, focused as he was on the Evans girl. The Evans girl, who would never return his childhood love for her.
Narcissa had watched him, and hoped that he would forget the Gryffindor Mudblood and see her for once in her life. Life always dealt her the short straw, what with Andromeda's betrayal and her own subsequent loss of freedom. In fact, she thought wryly, it started when I was born, when it turned out that I was yet another disappointment of a girl child, instead of the boy that Mother and Father hoped for.
When at last she had realized that Severus Snape would not, and could not, love her, Narcissa had swallowed her pride, put the past behind her, and accepted Lucius Malfoy's offer, bringing no few regrets with her to her marriage. Not that it mattered, since Lucius did not care for discussion from me, and never even noticed when I was unhappy.
She had not allowed herself to dream of the could-have-beens, but wistful pictures of a happier life floated into her mind regardless of what she would and would not permit. But it was not to be. My story is a not a child's tale, meant to fool them into thinking love and happy endings came to everyone. Mine was an unhappier story, of a love that could never be.
She had only visited his grave once. It was, as she had suggested, decorated with lilies. She had never hated the sight of the delicate flowers as much as she did in that moment. Slowly, barely conscious of her actions, she picked one and shredded it while her eyes filled with tears that she would not permit herself to shed.
As she turned to leave, with a sense of nothing accomplished, she gasped suddenly. In a corner, barely visible amongst the lilies that threatened to take over, was one small daffodil.
Daffodils are of the genus Narcissus.
I am not, and have never been, superstitious, but this…
And for the first time that she could remember since she was a very small child, Narcissa Black let herself cry.
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Shadowed Ember