A/N OK Second chapter, reasonably quickly updated! You should be thankful this is happening! I usually don't update… EVER!... Oh yer and I own nothing… Except maybe Gloria… not that I'd want to :P
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Silence rang, as it usually did, around the dining room.
"I said, I asked you to lay the table."
Sharply, Narcissa looked up, "I did!" she cried indignantly.
"Then where the bloody hell is the salt?" her father asked, eyes narrowing dangerously.
Narcissa looked at the ground again and whispered, "I forgot."
"Oh!" the woman next to her father cried, throwing her pale arms wildly in the air in a sarcastic manner. "Oh well that's alright then isn't it? Would you do this in your mother's house?" her last two words were sneered.
"I did-", Narcissa started, but her father had banged his fork down onto his plate with a bone shattering clatter. Narcissa winced involuntarily.
"Well thank you very much Narcissa, Gloria spends all day slaving over this meal and you just ruined it for everyone."
Getting up, he swiped his plate and that of his fiancé into his hand and left for the kitchen.
Gloria whipped her head around and spat viciously, "I hope you're happy with yourself!" before following him from the room.
The flame from the tea light flickered before her, mirroring the unspoken emotion in her grey eyes. Listening to the barely audible voices from the pther room she fought to keep her tears in. As the orange fire burned down the wax and wick she kept her eyes fixed on it, willing the destructive element to shine on, drowning out the rising shouts a wall away.
"Girl… too hard… burden… Narcissa... useless…"
Then, as quick as a snap of fingers, the fire snuffed out and with it, so did her embodied hope in its light. Chocking, her body wracked with inward sobs, she ran from the room and threw herself onto her bed.
SSNM
That was one of the few moments I witnessed first hand of Cissa's home life. Why was I there at all? You ask. I am half blood, and though this bothers me little now, in my school days it was like a hated infection that no modern medicines could cure. I was a leper in a House of health, I craved acceptance, even if it was from the wrong people.
I hated my father for many things. One was being a muggle, I hated him more than anything; I was different because of him. I know, from that garbbled reasoning I should have hated my mother too, yet she was always the victim in my eyes, from my father's drunken rages about "that bloody House"; Cissa's house. He claimed to love my mother, yet me feared and resented magic. She should have been working in a muggle house, or bar or office, not as a housekeeper to one of the purest wizarding families in Europe. It was their wealth which made it bearable for him.
I didn't want to spend a minute with him; so, when I was younger, I would wither take the change from the top of the hallway cabinet and wander Diagon Alley (indeed, I had become such a regular on the Knight Bus they were beginning to offer me discounted rates), or I would go to my mother's work.
Black Hall was like a palace; a cold, draughty, bleak palace of infrequent visitors. Before Cissa's birth, before her parents divorce, there had been parties and festivities every weekend for the highest and finest of the wizarding world to attend. But now no one ever visited. My mother was overworked and underpaid. But she always let me come with her. The house still needed to be cleaned and organised but the workers were paid less on demand from Gloria; Cissa's stepmother.
It is true, what they say, about Butler's hearing everything. At least housekeeper's sons. The stable boys, who tended the horses for hunting and carriages (unlike the muggles at the time, cars and such were shunned by traditional methods of transport), complained endlessly. They didn't mind me coming to listen, in fact they relished it, having someone to moan to.
I find it strange how I managed to go nine years without laying eyes on Cissa. Up until she was six the guests were still coming round and I supposed she wasn't caught in the rush of preparation. But after three years of visits she never saw me, or at least, I never saw her.
SSNM
She woke with someone stroking her hair and hushing her. Turning around, she wiped delicate fingers across her red and swollen eyes.
"Andie, I can't… I just can't… Andie wha- what?" she choked out her troubles.
"Hush Cissie, I'm only here for a day then I have to go back. But I'm here now." The tall brunette gently stroked her sister's light strands of hair.
"It's not fair, why couldn't I have been… why can't I stay with you and mum?"
Sighing, Andromeda replied with forced calm. "You know why, you're still going to have to marry Lucius, you need to-"
"I don't have to do anything! I hate him! He's an arrogant chauvinistic pig and I hate him!"
"Come on Narcissa, he can't be that bad. He's rich and all he other girls love him. When you go to Hogwarts and spend some time with him you're sure to get along better."
Cissa glared at her sister. "If you like him so much why don't you marry him?"
"You know I couldn't!"
"Oh yer? Why?" Narcissa spat viciously.
Andie looked sympathetic, "Because I'm a brunette."
Narcissa's face turned from anger to shock. "What?"
"Think about it! You're blonde, he is blonde, his whole family is blonde. Malfoy's have been pale and delicate, like you, since the beginning of time. You are their legacy!"
"No, that's not true! You're lying!"
"I wish I was."
SSNM
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A/N Mean right? Poor Cissa! And what about Sev, eh?
You know what to do! Review!!
