Narcissa was sitting in the breakfast room, craning her neck out from behind the heavy velvet curtain, staring out the window. The grounds looked awfully small from the second floor. Perhaps it was because the only trees were on the horizon, and so was the creek, and only the bare lawn stretched out from the garden stairs and out to the border of her land, like a rolling green sea that was never parted by Moses.
A momentary tremor caused her to glance at the door to her right, and soon, the maze of solar bunnies sent off by the twinkling crystal chandeliers rippled to reveal a solitary figure almost creeping into the room. The bilious scent of carefully preserved dust and inherited cobwebs under the cabinet rose, disturbed, once again to her nostrils.
Theodore looked up and brought his fingertips out of his mouth. "Oh, sorry, Miss. I didn't want to disturb you."
He was too thin and too tall, with hanging lanky limbs and wavy chestnut hair that was oiled back below his earlobes. When Narcissa was young, gentlemen of his description would have been classed either as poetically tragic or inappropriately dashing. The difficulty with classifying them was that, among elders, they always acted poetically tragic – then, in a company of friends, the latter kind turned into charmingly wicked young ruffians, and the poetically tragic remained, clearly, poetically tragic. Alas, both kinds were rather secretive and very meticulous with whom they introduced into their group of trusted friends. Narcissa doubted a boy like Theodore even had trusted girl friends – as for her, a woman living out her last freshness, practically the wrinkled great aunt that no girl ever imagines she will age to be, she was sure she was the kind of woman he'd pay compliments to and privately scoff at her blushing and innocent, perfectly platonic admiration of him.
In keeping with this sorry opinion of herself, she glanced at him only briefly and shook her head and gestured with her hand soothingly, as if she were too old and sickly to answer with words.
Theodore gulped with such charming youthful awkwardness and stepped gingerly forward. "Draco's playing billiards in the cellar. I'm afraid I can't stand the stuffiness."
She had already bent her head back to the window, craning her neck more elegantly than before, but seeing as he continued the conversation, felt obliged to reply. "Oh. Oh, yes. Draco's very eager about billiards recently. Much more eager about them than about his Quidditch, I'm glad to say. I'm always very worried when he's on the field – all those b-bludgers dashing about so wildly. He might break something. I always said they should abolish the awful thing…" She stopped, anxious that she was rambling and expressing her uninteresting opinions more decidedly than was necessary or, indeed, civil. "Do you play Quidditch, um, Theodore? Oh, please sit down!"
She watched him smile meekly in gratitude and lower herself onto the corner of the sofa nearest to her. She could feel his breathing if she moved just a bit closer to him. God, he was the same age as her son!
"No, miss, I don't," he replied. "I'm afraid I quite agree with you about Quidditch. It's a highly dangerous sport, and a rather pointless one at that. Well, certainly not worth all the broken bones and hopes…" He smiled.
"Oh?" she tried to return the smile, but it came out rather crooked, more like a lopsided smirk. "I-Draco's good at it, isn't he?"
"Oh, rather…"
"H-his father didn't play, I don't think."
Theodore jerked suddenly, as if by electric shock. "He's a lot older than you, isn't he?"
"Well, not a lot. A couple of years." It was unusual for him to be so inappropriate, and it was even more unusual for her to be so accepting of it.
"But he was Head Boy when you only came to Hogwarts."
She sighed. "I know what a seven years' gap looks like when one is so young, but at my age, Mr. Nott, it isn't so great a difference."
Legs of the sofa scraped against the parquet, and now Narcissa felt his breathing more strongly than ever. It exited in audible gasps, and each breath was the beginning of a word lost in the airy void between them. At last he responded, "You're not old."
She jerked an eyebrow, and with it she could feel the veins pulse out of her painfully craned neck. "I certainly hope not, Theodore. Though I don't suppose that's possible."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"Oh, Mr. Nott, you speak in such riddles that I really can never decipher what you are trying to say."
His breathing felt closer. "I'm not a very successful conversationalist."
"On the contrary," she gasped, trying to stop herself from shrieking from the pain in her neck. She was leaning almost into the dusty window glass. "I think you are the best demagogue I know."
"Demagogue, yes." He suddenly leapt to his feet. "But demagoguery is a poor friend when one is trying to express his true feelings."
Narcissa's forehead touched the infernally icy glass. Taking it to be God hinting that he – and she – had crossed the phantom border between civil conversation and things that were never talked of in hypocritical society, she sprang up and once again craned her neck to look into his face. He was too tall. "Really, Mr. Nott, if I didn't know better, I'd think you are about to declare a sonnet to me."
He stood still as marble, and then suddenly snorted humorously, which Narcissa took as an unusually painful affront. "I'm not cynical enough to write powerful poetry. Besides, a sonnet is the most vulgar way to express love. There is no phrase powerful enough to encompass all the destructive power of my love for you."
"I really don't see what you mean, Mr. Nott. Is this another marvelously clever joke of yours?"
He grabbed her rudely by her shoulders and shoved her back, pressed her into the cold window. She shrieked. He said, "Oh, no. I find that no joke could possibly be cruel enough to answer for the pain you have caused me, Narcissa. Really, the only satisfying retribution for it would be to make you love me back."
Her cheeks burned. "Mr. Nott! I-I'm—"
"You're old enough to be my mother?" he sneered.
Narcissa was aiming to try to defend her virtue, which was, she heard, the only elegant way to flirt for a married woman. Instead, she froze and, after a brief moment's pause, roared like a woman in labour and brought a thundering slap over his cheek.
His cheek produced a sort of clap, and, lips popped childishly into an 'o', he staggered back, caressing the sickly red skin with a pale bony hand. He blinked furiously, yet Narcissa could still see a sprinkling of water squeeze itself in between his eyelashes. She stood with her shoulder blades glued to the window, unsure of what to do.
"Oh," he groaned maliciously. "You didn't let me finish. I was going to tell you that it doesn't matter. I don't want a mother. All I wanted to say was that there is nothing stopping you but that stupid idea of yours. If you weren't so worried about that, we would've been so much happier. That's what distinguishes the old from the young – the old worry too much, and the young don't worry at all. As soon as one starts to worry, one grows wrinkles, and wrinkles make one old. I'll never worry."
"No, I suppose not, Mr. Nott," Narcissa spat. "You haven't a husband and a son and a house to look after."
"Does it matter?" he hissed with an angry glare. For the first time ever Narcissa looked into his swampy eyes. They were ugly with repressed emotion. "Your husband and your son are old enough to look after themselves, and this old wreck can burn to the ground for all you should care! It's just matter! It has price but no value!"
"I'm too old for your pathetic poetry, darling."
He straightened his back and raised his arrogant chin. "If you let your greed govern your actions and others' expectations govern your thoughts, then you are already dead."
"Don't try to entice me with pretty words."
"Only pretty concepts make pretty words, Narcissa. You want to be enticed."
She turned away from him and looked out the window, arms crossed. She couldn't bear to leave him. "Not in the least. Go."
"I can't?"
"Is your immortal love for me binding you to the floor?" she snorted.
"No. Yours is." She held her breath. He crept up behind her and cupped her shoulders in his hands. "Come away from the window. I'm more interesting than your lawn, I'm sure."
"But not as safe."
"But not as boring and green."
"You are rather green, however. I think today is the first time I saw you blush as other people do."
"I'm much pinker under my clothes than I am in my face, Cissy," Theodore nestled his face in her hair.
She whirred around and glared at him, "Don't be so lewd. I'm sure it can't be good for someone your age."
"But I'm sure it's very good for someone your age," he smiled at her indignation. "Come, I'm only joking. When can you receive me?"
Narcissa hesitated some more, but deciding that she'd given the boy sufficient encouragement as it was and that it would be improper to back down on the deal now, replied skittishly, "I really don't know. Tomorrow, the week after?"
"How about today?"
"Insufferable insolence!"
"Oh, well, I'll beg your forgiveness after dinner."
Narcissa tried to jerk the initiative back into her hands. "I'm only available after nine, Mr. Nott. I'm extremely busy and important at any time before that."
"You insist on making me jealous," Theodore smiled. "Well, it's your right. I obey, ma'am."
They parted after his very elaborate bow, and she watched him skip out of the room the way he came, rippling through the dusty sunspots once again.
She listened until his footsteps were no longer audible in the hallway outside, and settled back into her chair, craning her neck out to the window as it was thirty minutes before. This return to the dull, level life of before was the sweetest thing, now that it had been pricked by an accidental pin and was slowly wheezing away.