Street - for the Hogwarts Writing Club Competition. This is round two, 170-230 words. (I hit 225.)
The street was not an appropriate place for a Black to be sitting - nor for a Malfoy, her brain added unhelpfully.
Yet, Narcissa found herself unceremoniously crumpled on the curb.
She held a paper in her hand: a prescription.
The air in Diagon Alley was stagnant and still - impossibly so, because nostalgia-tinged memories of days spent buying robes and books for Hogwarts replayed in her mind, occasions involving tremendous crowds.
She'd have to begin doing that again in a few short years.
Her marriage, only months earlier, had been the culmination and also termination of her young life, and there she was with a prescription for vitamin supplements. She had written proof that childhood was over. Marriage entailed children, obviously, but so soon?
Inside her, impossibly small, were the beginnings of another human life. Despite the calm around her, her heart beat loudly with the panic and fear that boiled within her. She hadn't eaten all day.
When her eyes fluttered shut, she mourned her dreams and desires, which were soon to dissipate like smoke from an extinguished flame.
She would probably never be good enough. Not for herself and not for her child - the Malfoy heir.
Could she love her child properly?
Would she become her mother?
A final fear twisted her gut, stealing her breath: could she keep them safe from Lucius?