Winter Waltz
Author: Larrythestapler
Rating: T
Category: Romance/Angst
A/N: The words came and my fingertips typed as I stared at the computer screen, peanut butter sandwich in one hand, and other typing randomly.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.
Winter had covered its blanket of snow over the magnificent Malfoy mansion.
It was that time of year again.
Inside the gothic manor, the dim lights vaguely lit the dark room. Rain poured outside, leaving Narcissa to contemplate on what could have been. She let down her lustrous, white-blonde hair as she stared at the dull, gray clock above the ceiling. She sat straight with a lingering emptiness and soberness. Time's abrasive race left her once youthful, sparkling eyes dull and cynical. Jaded with life's experiences, they meandered to the plate of cigarettes and burnt out matches. Narcissa picked up her glass of sherry and threw the dark green bottle on the floor with a fiery crash out of anger and contempt. She compensated all the pain with sherry and cigarettes. They did not cure her, but drugged her into an impossible fantasy.
What could have been? Those words, when uttered, made her scoff. Disgusting. Despicable. Impossible. Narcissa's life had become so jaded, that she lost any insight or respect towards bubbly-headed optimists vomiting happiness everywhere. They were pathetic and foolish. Yet, what could have been gave Narcissa an inevitably impossible hope.
Lucius was now in hiding, somewhere, and someplace out there, incognito. The Ministry had offered him a great job, yet he tore everything he owned for the sick bastard, who the Death Eater piously regarded to as the Dark Lord. The jaded beautiful blonde woman looked at the filthy creature with such disgust and disdain. Taking lives because he felt like doing so. Torturing people because he was bored. Sordid, worthless fool.
The floors of the large mansion creaked. Narcissa lingered in the magnificent, immense house by herself most of the time. Draco was at school, and she had missed him dreadfully. She stood up and closed the dreary gray curtains with a snap. Emptiness drifted around the room.
Yet she couldn't help but think about the haunting past, the past that left her cringing because of every thread she hung from it. And no wonder how painful the past memories were, nostalgia still crept up to her nose like the overbearing scent of a drug. Everything felt like a waltz, her waltz into love, and her sad waltz out of it, swung and led by none other than Lucius Malfoy.
The moment she met him, everything felt crystallizing and clear. She stood in front of the Slytherin common room, shy, yet not so shy, biting her cherry red lips with an insatiable lust. He sat in the common room talking to his friends, proudly showing off his badge. And he saw her in the corner, gray-eyed, red lips, pale skin, observing him. He felt like an unworthy mortal, peeping at the strong and beautiful Artemis. Lucius could not imagine any mundane feeling around her; no, she was too good to be true, but something was so acquirable about her.
His friends ogled, yet they could not even touch her. They did not see the scared little girl hiding in her iron colored eyes. Lucius stared, Narcissa stared back. Neither one of them broke the blinding gaze, flirting innocently, lustfully with their eyes.
She could not control herself, and fell into the depths of his bright blue eyes, lost forever in their sea of ambiguity. Their eyes waltzed, and danced passionately, greedily. Lucius felt himself drawing towards her at an alarming pace. He leapt from his seat, walking slowly toward her. She felt her throat closing, yet she kept calm. Narcissa was that kind of woman. She had charm and wits, but nobody saw past that, and none suspected the insecure, neurotic girl barely floating in the sea of her deep gray eyes.
Lucius Malfoy saw everything.
He could not think of anything charming to say except, "Lucius Malfoy. I could die tomorrow and it wouldn't matter. As long as I met an angel like you in Heaven."
"Narcissa Black. Charmed," Narcissa coolly replied, feeling her fine cheeks burn under her cold façade.
"After the flower narcissus, I assume? You are poisonous, yet no man can refuse any favor, no matter how blasphemous, in exchange to hold the fair petals of your hand," he whispered into her ears, gently kissing her hand. She felt the hairs in her back jump.
The waltz began. Elegant music cued, and the gentleman bowed with a romantic humility in his eyes. He led her, sweeping her off her dainty toes and stealing her breath away as discreetly as the most skilled thief. But this fairytale wouldn't last that long. At least, it wouldn't have the perfect ending.
She felt the cold air touch her once more, as she stepped back into the dance floor of her memory, a different one. She was no older than sixteen, going on seventeen, her mind still naive and innocent. She sensed her partner's sweet breath crawl down her neck, her skin abrasive to his soft honey touch. The entire world was gone when they danced in circles, their hearts merry and their bodies close. But they really only danced in circles, not going anywhere at all.
"Cissy!" He grazed her face and placed a soft kiss on her lips. Parting from her lips was a handsome, thin man, whose blue eyes lit with an electrifying curiosity and youth. Snow fell down on them, like sugar on a sweet pastry, fresh from the baker's warm oven.
Across the surface of the thin ice of the lake, Lucius bowed and took Narcissa's hand and twirled her. He made her laugh and smile, and finally got her to say those three sweet words.
"I love you."
And those words resonated over and over again like a broken play tape that lost its meaning in the process of repetition.
Their marriage was no different than any other; they were perfectly content, with their low and high notes. However, Narcissa and Lucius did not understand the meaning of poverty nor the value of hard work. Cherries dipped in chocolates and massages for their feet took up main parts of their daily routine, unless they did not feel like it. Indulgent buttery massages consumed their days as they consumed endless rich meals. But it was indulgent to the point where they lost the meaning of family and love.
The young couple could make love anywhere, everywhere, whenever. Lucius only worked whenever he wanted to, occasionally attending formal parties and visiting relatives for formalities. In his opinion, only fools worked hardly. Why labor with stress and tears when the most beautiful woman in the world embraced him in her arms and sugared him with her love? His wife reciprocated his love, and they spent their last days together in passionate, lustful, ravishing paradise.
A working person sits at their office everyday thinking and praying about their spouse and children, wondering what they do all day, and looking forward to coming back home and loving them. Narcissa and Lucius ate and relaxed every day, yet at the end of the day, when one of them really though about it, they would wonder if it was a life worth living, or if they would continue to be incessantly in love or truly happy with only happiness alone.
This time, it was Lucius who truly contemplated upon his happiness as he caressed his wife's belly, neither of them aware of the tiny creature forming in her soft, fleshy womb, a miracle from their immodest love. She kissed him good-night and flicked the lights off, holding her husband close.
The next day Lucius Malfoy left to find work at the Ministry of Magic.
By that point, they reached the climax of the exotic dance, and soon a decline progressed to the point of no return. Everything slowed down. They kept each other close, but really, they were so far from that happy end, both knowing they'd never reach it.
The blonde woman watched her husband silently file papers. She heard her five-year-old son crying in the room next door, hoping the maid would get him. What a difference six little years made. Narcissa no longer remembered his little kisses or tickles. He buried himself into his work, treating her often with fancy foods and nice clothes.
She wasn't sad. Just not satisfied in her expensive dresses or silk bathrobes. The tastes of dark chocolate became bland and bitter, no longer insatiable nor satisfying on the tip of her tongue. Narcissa flicked off the lights and fell asleep, unaware of a lit wand in the hands of a stranger she once knew.
The same stranger whispered a haunting, "I love you."
Before the hands of the dancers forever parted, they looked at each other one last time, and forever paved their own roads.
Broken fragments of glass lay under her feet, each piece threatening to delve in her milky white skin and pierce it. Lucius threw a bottle of Firewhiskey at her, drunkenly claiming he loved her and Draco, saying that was why he had to work for the Dark Lord. His blue eyes sharpened like knives when he yelled the statement aloud, though bags of red surrounded his eyes. His posture limped, and Narcissa lacked trust in him. They estranged away from each other for years, twelve years.
He walked out that door forever, not even saying that he loved when he slammed the door shut. She picked up the broken pieces of glass and threw them away. Narcissa told her son his father went on a long business trip, and took him to the Hogwarts Express for the very first time.
She never liked picking up the broken pieces. But even though they lost themselves forever, it was nice to say they danced together, and fell and hurt themselves rather than to ask herself what could have been.
End.
A/N: I kinda rushed the ending, but I hope everyone finds something good about it. I hoping. Praying. Loving.