We Shine Until We Fade
She forgot to light a fire in the library, and now she is reaping the consequences. The cold from outside seeps indoors; the room seems to soak it up like an absorbent sponge or a leaf of blotting paper. In truth, an atmosphere of coldness pervades everywhere, not just the result of one frosty morning but of centuries' worth of frosty mornings accumulated together. The rows of ordered shelves are cold: empty and hollow, devoid of all feeling. The sofas, with their tacky covers of embroidered peacocks, share this coldness, and provide no comfort to her shivering, aching body. The whole place even manages to smell cold, somehow. There is none of that warm, musty, bookish smell a library should have, no tantalising scent of old parchment, no dust motes laying assault to her nostrils and making her sneeze. If she were to run across a boggart, she is convinced her greatest fear- or at least, her greatest fear that has not yet come true- would be to become cold and dead and faded like the furniture in this room, all her fire irretrievably lost.
How she misses Three Elms! It is on days like these that she misses it most acutely, misses its stately halls and elegant decor, misses the delicious sensation of sliding down the banisters and racing across the corridors, misses the peeling wallpaper of the schoolroom and the warmth and security of her old bed, misses the tranquil freedom of the secret spot and the endless summer days spent roaming the garden. God, she even misses the family burial ground that so frightened her as a child.
But it is not what it once was, and never can be now. Dust and cobwebs have settled in the crevices and hidden corners of the house, unnoticed by the one surviving geriatric house elf. Most of the rooms, aside from father's living quarters, have fallen into disuse and decay. No more waltzes will be danced in the grand ballroom. Gone is the pleasant hubbub of conversation and the beckoning call of the orchestra. The only sound there is the resonant echo of solitary footsteps, the only thing visible the ghosts of guests long since departed. She is not superstitious, and knows it is foolish- no, more than foolish, positively mad- to indulge in such delusional hallucinations, but she cannot help herself. Images of the glory days remain so indelibly engraved on her mind that it is impossible to erase them.
Everywhere, too, are the relics of former occupants. Here, a doll that used to belong to her, or an old coat of mother's, or some trousers of father's. There, a book left half-open, never to be finished by whoever was reading it, or a roll of parchment with a few lines written on it in Bella's distinctive scrawl. No one has made any attempt to clear away as, one by one, the residents of the house have moved on. Bella's room- she checked the last time she visited father- is exactly as it was left on the day of her wedding, right down to the unmade bed. Haphazard piles of loose paper and unwashed clothes, a white wedding dress sitting discarded on the floor, walls painted in a palette of intense reds and blacks and greys, pictures of the three- no, the two- of them hanging at intervals, the majority pierced through with a vicious, gaping hole. She cannot yet summon the courage to look into her other sister's room, has no desire to do so, not when she calls to mind the blind panic she felt all those years ago when she knocked on the door and no one answered, but does not doubt that it too is unchanged.
Quite frankly, no one cares enough. Father, the sole remaining inhabitant, is too preoccupied these days, though Merlin knows what takes up so much of his time. He is not the man he used to be. No longer does he stand tall and proud, the figurehead of the Blacks, the puppet master behind the Ministry. The madness has caught up with him, as it always does, as it will eventually catch up with her, though it is still only something she feels lurking in the deepest, darkest recesses of her mind during sleepless nights. Now, he is burning out: he long ago ceased to wield any real power- that has all passed over to her husband, the triumphant inheritor of her family's legacy- and spends his days muttering under his breath of the ghosts of the past, of his blood traitor brother and his crazed sister and his unsatisfactory wife and his dead son and his embarrassment of a daughter. Often, when she comes to see him, she catches him looking at her with an odd vindictive gleam in his eye, or letting out a low, wheezy cackle as he asks her how married life is treating her. She shrugs it off- it is unnerving how used she has become to this sort of instability, what with Bella and Aunt Walburga.
Still, it grieves her, watching her family go to the dogs. For centuries they stood noble and proud and unsullied, the top of the top, the purest of the pure, only to be brought down in the space of a generation. Hope seems entirely over now, what with the heir having been disowned (and she's seen how he looks at that dreadful Lupin boy, she's certainly not blind to his abnormalities) and the older generation all too cracked to arrange a match for the spare. Part of her- the proper, upright, rational part- retains that bred-in-the-bones desire to continue the family line at all costs. The other part, still Narcissa Black, spirited and wild and free, is glad for poor Regulus that he has so far avoided a similar fate to hers. Besides, a strange sort of feeling stirs in her at the prospect of Reggie being married off to some undeserving daughter of another family. Whoever it was, he'd be far too good for them, in both name and person.
The door knocks; a smart, formal rap.
"Come in," she answers, involuntarily tensing.
"Regulus!" she half-laughs, half-exclaims, relaxing immediately. Her cousin looks even thinner and paler than when she last saw him at Grimmauld Place two weeks ago, she observes with some concern. His skin is stretched taut and ashy-white, thin as paper, with premature lines showing on his forehead. Dark circles underscore his eyes, which stare listlessly into the distance. "How are you? Do come and sit down."
"Fine, Cissy. I'm just fine," he replies, and as he does he trudges towards her, his walk heavy, his shoulders stooped. He sits beside her, burying his face in his hands. Cissy pities him, wants nothing more than to envelop him in her arms and hold him tight and tell him everything will work out in the end, but she is at a loss about the cause of this behaviour. Just months ago, he seemed fine: laughing with her, whispering inside jokes in her ear, making snide, derogatory marks about her then-fiancé with his characteristic sarcastic humour. But even then, she realises, with the advantage of hindsight, a shadow had been over him, though less pronounced; indeed, had existed in half-second glances and involuntary gestures ever since Sirius left. She feels guilty, blind, stupid, selfish. How could she not have noticed before? How could she have been so absorbed in her own troubles and domestic misery that she didn't notice his urgent need of help and support?
"Is anything the matter?" she asks, at long last. "You know, you can tell me anything you want. You don't need to keep secrets from me."
"Nothing's the matter," he retorts, but she knows from the way his head retreats even further into his hands and his shoulders bend even lower that he is lying. "I'm just being stupid, that's all." He paused. "School's very busy. I've a lot of work to catch up on. It's only a few months until NEWTs and you know how hard they like to make us work for them."
"Yes, all very true, but I don't think that's enough to warrant a full nervous breakdown," Narcissa answers, with a sharper tone than she intended. Then, in a flash of perception, "Is it anything to do with Bella? With fighting? With the Cause?"
A pained expression passes over Regulus' face; it flickers there awhile, and is gone. He opens his mouth, as if on the brink of confessing something to her, but after a few seconds of contemplation his jaw closes shut again, and a firm resolve, a hardness, enters his eyes. "No, not that. It's going very well. I'm working my way up the ranks. The Dark Lord is pleased with my service."
Narcissa is not convinced, but says nothing to counter him. If he doesn't feel comfortable telling all to her, than who is she to force him to? Instead, she wraps a tentative arm around him and pulls him tight to herself, rubbing soothing circles against his back in the same way Bella and Andy used to do to her when she was upset. She heaves an inward sigh of relief when he responds, his body warming against hers, his muscles relaxing.
"God," he sighs, in a near-whisper. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Cissy."
"And I without you," she adds, but does not say.
They stay this way for several minutes, neither willing to let go of the other. Then, suddenly, Regulus jolts upwards, clutching his left forearm.
"The Dark Lord," he explains, his voice a mixture of urgency and despair. "He is calling. I must go."
Cissy feels a heavy, sinking feeling, a sense of grim foreboding, a reluctance to lose this unexpected source of peace. There are many, many things she wants to say: please don't go, stay with me here, I don't want you to get hurt, I wish we could be safe together and away from all this mess, but in the end she contents herself with just one sentence.
"Take care of yourself," she whispers, as she brushes a lock of dark hair behind his ear. Then, feeling bolder and more daring than she has for a while, she kisses him on the cheek, so lightly she does not know if he will feel it.
"You too," he grins, though his smile is somewhat forced. And in that moment she swears she can recognise something of the old Regulus, before the fire went out of his eyes.
He gets up and disapparates away.
It is the last time she sees him alive.