A/N: There will be no disclaimer in each chapter here; it's obviously not mine and really, that gets annoying. Here's Narcissa. She was hard for me to write; Bellatrix was easier because she's so powerful (and mad), but Narcissa and her lover are so cold. I'm not entirely happy with this chapter, but I don't think I'll ever be, so here's a Halloween present for you all. Hope you like it! Also, as a special treat (heh), you will get virtual cookies if you catch the reference to a very well-known fanfic in here.
Narcissa was always, always cold. The wet stony Slytherin dungeons did not help, but she loved them anyway. She was used to the cold and the stone; that was where she'd grown up. It was the heart of luxury, and she loved it. Of course she did.
She knew that she was beautiful. (She did not know that later in life she would cling to that with all she had, because it would be all she had.) She had magnificent silver-blonde hair and ice-blue eyes (which she'd been a little offended and scared by until she actually saw the beauty of blue ice), the only set in a family of Black. She didn't understand where it came from, and she didn't quite understand how to use it (not at twelve), but she did understand that it was important. And she understood that Bella had a very different sort of beauty and Andromeda another sort altogether, but that hers was the most distinct. And she liked that. And sometimes, her cold beauty could make up for her cold body, and it was at those times that others found her most insufferable but that she was the happiest. So as she grew older, she learned to relish and to use her beauty, and to ignore the fact that she was cold.
In her fourth year, she met Lucius Malfoy. She didn't know how she hadn't met him before, since he was in her House and only a year older than her, but there it was. And she could tell from the very beginning that he was just as cold as she was. It wasn't the fact that he dressed warmly (because he didn't; silver and silk can't make anyone warm, and Narcissa knew that very well) or that he shivered (he was too proud to shiver); it was that she recognized in him the very same qualities she saw in herself. He was beautiful, just as she was, and while she wanted that to be less important she knew how much it really mattered. Especially to him. Because he used his beauty the same way she used hers: to protect himself. He was Wizarding aristocracy, noble and strong and brittle, and the beauty kept the brittleness away. And Narcissa could tell, even if no one else could, because that was who she was.
She'd grown up in darkness, the shining light in a family of Black. And people could talk about the strength and beauty of the light, but one candle in the dark is so fragile it can be extinguished in a single breath. And Narcissa lived in fear of that breath, surrounded by so much mad strength: it could be her mother, her aunt, Bella, Andromeda, even her little cousin Sirius who was even more of a spitfire than Bella. She shielded herself with her beauty, fighting to keep the little bit of light alive, because she didn't want to be lost to the madness. And with a name meaning "light," how could she help but fall for him?
She couldn't call him nice, but she couldn't call him mean. He was intelligent, clever, ambitious, even admirable, but so cold. But she couldn't care, because she was used to being cold, and he would know how to keep her sane. He had kept himself sane, after all.
She supposes that if she gets right to the core of it, she'll find that she wants someone to protect her. But she doesn't want to find that: she's a Black, after all, and Blacks don't need anyone. So she takes Lucius, and she loves him, and she thinks he loves her, and she hopes hopes hopes that he will be enough, and she gets used to the cold, because the Malfoy house is just like the Black house, and she fears that she will be cold for the rest of her life.
And that's Narcissa Black Malfoy. Next up: Andromeda Black Tonks, whom I LOVE despite vitually no canon existence. I also currently have no idea (or rather, too many ideas) of what to do for her, so it may be a while before that, but I promise it'll come because I really want to get to Nymphadora (whom, by the way, I am currently dressed as - it's Halloween, after all!)
