Eyes Closed
Pairing: Tomcissa (Tom Riddle x Narcissa Malfoy)
Universe: Canon
Rating: M for general darkness? Elements of macabre.
Summary: A very late Halloween [trick-or-] treat based on an edit by aurorarsinistra.
An updated summary, in Aurora's own words:
"Ever been disappointed by canon? Desperate for more details about horcruxes? Unconvinced that Tom Riddle would simply cross his fingers and hope for the best? Well READ THIS because I fixed it, you're welcome."
1981
The End
The castle was much like he had been; dark and foreboding and multifaceted, beautiful in the light and ominous in the shadows, sharp and solid and yet, in a strange, intangible sense, as gossamer as a spider's web. It made sense to her that he had chosen this, a castle on a rocky island, a mimicry of the founders of Hogwarts rather than the pureblood nobles who had so willingly signed onto a vision they could scarcely understand.
He'd built all of it from nothing, and they would never understand that, either, beyond some nameless sense of awe. In the end, they had never truly known what he was made of.
They'd only held to the hope he wouldn't destroy them with it.
She'd run through these corridors once, feeling the castle twist and curl around her, leading her somewhere she didn't know or want to know or care to understand. This had been his castle, his magic, his rules. From the brine of the ocean tide to the salt of the breeze, everything here had been his—herself included.
She paused against the wall of the west battlement now, inhaling the wind that whipped against her cheek. She could no longer hear his voice, but she could feel him still. She shut her eyes and watched him again in her mind; the frame of his shoulders, the line of his back. The parts of him that were unworldly, godlike.
The flash of his eyes, the shape of his mouth, the motion of his fingers.
The sound of his breath, the taste of his lips, the searing poetry in his touch.
The way he made a room stand in fear, in awe, in wonder.
She'd told herself the world was so much bigger than just one man, even a man like him, but nothing had ever been more than he was. There was a time she could have worshipped him, exalted him, knelt at his altar like religion. If he'd told her he created the universe with his bare hands, cobbled it from nothing, she'd have believed him without question.
But that time had long, long passed.
I know better than anyone what you're made of, he'd said to her once, and she heard his voice now, as clearly as if it carried on the wind.
"In the end," she whispered to him, "you never really knew, did you?"
He was gone now.
He was gone.
She was the one left standing.
1978
The Beginning
"Wait here. Don't touch anything."
Narcissa bristled internally at the command, but forced a nod.
"You'll want to hold your tongue, too," her husband continued. "Don't speak unless spoken to. Do you understand?"
Yes, she thought fiercely, of course I understand, I understand everything, I've understood it all since I was born, that you are infinitely less clever and less interesting and less accomplished and less less less than I but because you have money, because you have charm, because you have a name that means something and because you have my father's seal of approval I must nod mutely, bat my lashes like a doll, and align myself steadfastly with your will.
"Yes," she managed quietly, and Lucius nodded, satisfied.
"He'll be pleased with you, I'm sure," he assured her, with something she might have called kindness if she hadn't had the distinct sensation that he was talking about some sort of prized bird, or a particularly adept hunting dog. "Don't be nervous."
She wasn't.
He, however, clearly was, sweat glistening in beads from his brow as he stooped to kiss her cheek. He brushed his lips against her skin so absently she wondered if he knew he were doing it.
"I'll come fetch you when he's ready," Lucius said, already adrift with nerves, and slipped out through the doorframe.
He'd fetch her, her mind echoed.
She bristled, shoving it aside.
She stood in the magic castle built by the man who called himself a Lord and wanted to laugh at the foolishness of what the world had come to. The arrogance of it was palpable, and her displeasure at the absurdity and the inanity and the inequity manifested as a fidget in her limbs, her fingers tapping helplessly against the beading of her new gown. The fact that this, the finery she was encased in, had been chosen for this particular moment—for the approval of what she imagined to be a silly old man in a crooked crown, the overlord of a wild kingdom—was restricting in the worst way; she felt she was play-acting, trapped in a mindless show performed for others.
The sky outside was more than grey; it was thick and viscous, stained that strange, smoky plum-tinted red. The color of unease, were she to put it on a palette, and she could no more stand the walls around her than she could stand living in Lucius' home.
He'd said to wait here, she thought with displeasure, eyeing the door.
She'd never done well with direction.
And it wasn't as if she'd go far.
Her heels tapped lightly against the smoothly polished stone floors, as dark and shadowed as the cliffs outside. If she closed her eyes, she could hear the crash of the waves; she could hear, too, the percussive rush in her veins, hear her mother's voice shouting SIT DOWN NARCISSA, CHILD DO AS YOU'RE TOLD, that was quieted only by the sound of her feet.
The sounds of progress, of freedom, of rebellion.
Where was she? The corridors were labyrinthine; not that it mattered. What would Lucius do, anyway, if she weren't there when he came for the fetching? He couldn't un-marry her. Not without oaths, binds, spells. Not without humiliation. He didn't seem the punishing type, either, though she couldn't necessarily be sure. Not yet.
In the ominous unease of her thoughts, she paused beside an open door, almost missing it in the darkened corridor.
As she turned her head, however, the door seemed to give way, beckoning her inside.
The inside of the room was unremarkable; it didn't have the finery of the room she'd been left in, which had been full of books and artefacts and paintings, sundry landscapes of foreign places she'd never been and would likely never see. That room had been grandiose to make her feel small, she was sure, but she was easily the most ornamental thing in this one. There was a single table, a workspace, a cauldron over an open flame that manifested from nothing. She stepped around the cauldron, watching the emerald sparks dance from inside it, and glanced at a series of items laid out on a bench, cataloguing them one by one.
A single white flower.
A small jar of nightshade.
Three neatly arranged slivers of wood.
A vial of crimson liquid.
A human bone.
She gasped, recoiling, and faltered with her footing; she felt fingers close around her arm and froze, her suspended breath swelling painfully in her lungs.
"Careful," a man's voice warned, and she aimed her chin over her shoulder slowly, taking him in inch by inch.
She saw him in snippets first; in flashes, as if he were too much to take in all at once. His jaw, firstly, smooth and carved and jutted out as his teeth shifted, his lips stretching just enough to accommodate an uptick of something like amusement. His nose was straight and angular, his cheeks lean and cleanly shaven, his brow unworried and unconcerned and framing a set of eyes so piercingly, garishly blue she foolishly might have compared them to the waves outside had she not known perfectly well that they were grey and violent and crashing.
Still, she thought, blinking. He wasn't unlike the waves.
"I take it you are Bella's sister," he said neutrally, releasing her as she pivoted sharply to face him. "This isn't exactly how I was expecting to meet you, but I have to admit some curiosities."
He wasn't as old as she thought he would be. True, wizards aged slowly, but even so; he had a youthful look to him, though he was clearly older than her husband, and perhaps even as old as her father-in-law.
She'd half-expected to see him in emperor's robes, openly playing at tyranny, but instead he wore a plain, crisp white shirt, tucked into black trousers and emphasizing the leanness in his hips, along his torso, in the lines of his forearms. His movements were smooth and unconcerned, unhindered, and she, uncomfortably, forced a swallow.
Abraxas Malfoy did not look like this.
No man she'd ever seen looked like this.
"You must be Bella's keeper, then," she returned plainly, and his mouth curled up at the corners.
"She isn't kept," he replied. "Are you kept by Lucius?"
She wished she could've held her tongue.
"Aren't I?" she prompted. "In a sense."
To her surprise, he chuckled. It was strange to see him express amusement; Lucius was so skittish when speaking of him she wouldn't have guessed him capable.
"I would have thought you'd aim higher," he said.
She was conscious enough of her own qualities not to ask why.
"I thought Lucius served you well," she remarked instead, and he nodded.
"He does. Does it please you," he ventured slyly, "knowing you married a servant?"
"One of my sisters married a rat," she replied, "and the other a fool. If I married a servant, then so be it. Considering the trajectory, I might have done a lot worse."
He laughed heartily this time, his head falling back, and then he swept a hand through his black hair, shaking his head.
"Ah, so she can play," he murmured, shaking his head. "I suppose I misjudged you, then."
"Happens often," she replied, and his tongue passed over his lips as he nodded slowly.
"I imagine so," he agreed. "I'll make sure not to make the same mistake twice. I don't suppose you'll apologize," he transitioned smoothly, "for interrupting my work?"
"Is that what you call this?" she prompted skeptically, fighting a shudder at the sight of the bone on the table. "I thought your work was something of a more … political nature," she managed, and he laughed again.
"I dabble," he said simply. "And about that apology?"
She hesitated; she had meandered in, poking around in his things.
"I'm sorry," she permitted. "That I interrupted you, and that I entered without permission."
"No, no," he corrected, shaking his head. "Just the interruption. You were invited in. The door," he explained, gesturing to it, "wouldn't have opened for you otherwise."
"I—" she frowned. "The door?"
"Sentient castle, in a sense," he clarified, waving a hand to blindly reference the walls. "Does my will rather exclusively, however. Not quite refined enough to have any direction of its own, so I expect this means I wanted you to come here."
"We've never met," she reminded him, and he shrugged.
"Then maybe the castle is maturing," he remarked, turning back to the cauldron. "Are you familiar with this type of magic?" he asked, without looking at her. "I know the Black family is quite advanced in the arcane."
"You mean the Dark Arts," she said, clearing her throat, and this time he glanced up, settling his gaze on her face.
For a moment he simply stared at her, contemplating something; she stared back, not wanting to be the one to cave. It wasn't until he took three strides towards her, his movements feline and coiled and swift, that she noticed the slim, silver dagger in his hand, only registering danger when she couldn't possibly have escaped it.
"Magic is magic," he said quietly, "just as blood is only blood."
He took her hand left hand in his and sliced it, slitting the skin of her hand so quickly she felt no pain, and she let out a sound that was half gasp, half wordless shriek; he, consummately unbothered, held the dagger out for her free hand, waiting for her to accept it.
"Now you," he beckoned, and she, obviously lost to madness, accepted the blade by its gilded handle, curling her fingers around it.
She swallowed hard, holding her breath, and he placed his left palm out for her to do the same, letting it float expectantly between them. She glanced down and froze, distracted by the line that curved around the center of his palm; or rather, what should have been a line. In place of one was splintered web—tiny, slivered tributaries that swam across his hand—and she exhaled in dismay, unable to look away.
He waited, and though she knew well enough what was expected of her, she gripped the dagger hesitantly, fighting the urge to drop it and run.
Instead, wordlessly, she stabbed the knife directly into his palm, piercing the burst of fissured lines with her fingers still wrapped securely around the handle of the dagger. He jerked away in pain, his beautiful mouth coiling around surprise, and betrayed a sound of obvious, startled anguish, escaping in a gasp from his lips.
"Don't you ever," she told him flatly, "fucking stab me again."
His eyes widened.
Then he laughed, and she blinked with alarm, releasing the dagger and staggering away, her fingers curling protectively around the still-bleeding wound on her palm.
"Come here," he instructed curtly, yanking the dagger from his hand and holding it over the cauldron, letting three drops of his own blood fall into whatever nightmarish creation he'd been pursuing. "I won't hurt you," he assured her, placing his bloodied dagger on the workbench. "I just want you to see."
She kept her distance, uncertain, and he sighed, stepping towards her.
"Look," he said, holding his hand out, and gestured for her to do the same. "Blood is blood. You and I, we share mortality, we share chemistry," he explained softly, and she looked down, eyeing the viscous stains on their palms, as deep and rich as her mother's garnets she'd so envied as a child; as dark and textured and faceted as fairy-made wine. "This is the blessing and the curse, that we all bleed so similarly, and so easily. That you for your blood and me for mine mean nothing once we're sliced open and left to rot, and when we're gone, all that remains is the same basic matter that will only diminish us to nothing. Blood is more fragile than magic," he added, "but it is essentially all the same."
She waited, saying nothing.
"Dark or light, it means nothing. Magic is magic. Blood is blood." He waved his hand over her palm, renewing the surface of it so effortlessly she could not have possibly believed it had ever been opened; as if all of this had only been a dream. "To romanticize either, or to forbid either, is to waste time with minutiae. With mundanity. Such are the pitfalls of humanity," he added wryly, and then waved a hand over his own palm, holding it up for her scrutiny.
She paused, shaking her head.
"That isn't what you teach your followers," she said hoarsely, and his lips curled up in amusement again.
"I doubt they'd take kindly to the details of my work," he said. "In the end, I find there's more value in their loyalty than in the grasping of my vision."
"What if their loyalty corrupts your vision?" she asked, and he tilted his head, the smile slowly falling away.
"I suppose it's my job to prevent that, isn't it?" he supplied neutrally, though she had the strange sensation he was avoiding an answer. "Anyway, as you say, I'm pursuing a variety of avenues. This is one of them," he explained, "though a private one."
"Odd that you'd share it with me, then," she commented. "Does my sister know about this? Or Lucius?"
"For them, this room does not exist," he replied easily, shrugging it away as if it were nothing, though she could see in the way he didn't meet her eye that he clearly felt otherwise. "Now," he pronounced, "are you coming? I'm told I have the dreary misfortune of meeting Lucius Malfoy's new wife. Poor thing," he mused, glancing sideways at her, and she blinked. "I suppose we're all slaves to obligation, aren't we?"
She hesitated.
"How do I get back to where I was?" she asked, gesturing to the door.
He smiled; it was purposeful, deliberate. Unlike Lucius he studied her carefully, every motion of his gaze calculated to take her in.
"Isn't that the eternal question," he remarked, more to himself than to her.
oOo
"My Lord," Lucius said, bowing low. "I'd like to present my wife, Narcissa Malfoy, the youngest daughter of Cygnus and Druella Black."
"Ah yes, Narcissa," the Dark Lord replied, surveying her from where he sat at the head of the room, his eyes glinting in the firelight. "Tell me, Lady Malfoy, are you pleased with your visit?"
She could see Lucius' eyes flash warningly, and she let out a breath, forcing a smile.
"Yes, My Lord," she replied. "Of course."
"Will you return, then?" he asked, and she blinked at that, surprised. She glanced at her husband for confirmation as he hurriedly stepped forward, bowing again.
"If My Lord wishes it, I would be happy to have my wife accompany me on my visits," he assured Lord Voldemort, and the other man nodded.
"You should stay the night," he suggested dispassionately, waving a hand. "Spare you the return in the morning."
Lucius looked surprised, but to Narcissa's dismay, he also looked obscenely delighted.
"Yes, of course, My Lord," he said, answering for them both.
Narcissa, meanwhile, wondered what her answer would have been.
No, she thought firmly, but felt the tremor of a lie.
She touched her left palm behind her back, pressing her fingers against it.
oOo
"I thought you might find your way back here," he said, glancing up as she entered. "Couldn't sleep?"
I could have, she thought. I just didn't want to.
"You know, it's funny," he continued, not acknowledging her silence, "I can't read you the way I can read Bella. Her mind is noisy, clanging all the time. She has so many wants, so many needs, so many desires. I find it overwhelming; when she's with me, I long for silence." He looked over at her, eyeing her. "Your mind is quiet. Subdued. Your face, however," he said with a laugh, "expresses some level of anxiety."
Instantly, she swept it from her features, painting herself a mask.
"You didn't tell my husband that we'd already met," she commented. "You invited us to stay the night. I'm not an idiot," she informed him pointedly. "I just wanted to tell you that I won't be whatever my sister is for you."
To her surprise, he nodded.
"Good. Now that that's been addressed," he said, gesturing her to come closer, "we might discuss an arrangement. A working arrangement," he clarified, catching the narrowing of her eyes. "I have quite another thing in mind for you."
She swallowed, stumbling on a mix of disappointment and surprise.
"Oh," she said dully, and stepped closer, waiting, as he gestured for her to stand beside him.
"This is not an easy task," he explained. "It's not for the squeamish, either, but I'd rather not attempt it alone. I want you to do something for me, but you can never speak of it, either to your sister, your husband, or to anyone else, alive or dead. Understood?"
"Alive or dead?" she echoed, and he shrugged.
"Just covering all of the possibilities," he said. "Am I clear?"
"What will I have to do?" she asked suspiciously, and he turned to face her, studying her for a moment before he spoke.
"I want you to kill me," he said, and she blinked, startled.
"What do you m-"
"I want you to kill me," he clarified, "and then I want you to bring me back."
She felt her jaw open and close, speechless, before he finally held up a hand, pausing her.
"I've created something," he began, and stopped, reconsidering. "Several somethings, actually. Have you heard of a horcrux?"
She started to say no, but he shook his head, intent on progress.
"I'll spare you the details; they're gory," he admitted, though he himself looked unfazed by the acknowledgement. "This once belonged to Godric Gryffindor," he continued, holding up the small silver dagger he'd cut her with earlier, and she noticed that in her initial panic, she'd previously missed the carved initials at the bottom of the handle. "It's one of many, and the least valuable in my estimation, but if I've been successful, it will be enough to bring me back. There's some other things involved," he conceded, tilting his head in thought, "and it's a bit complex, but if you're open to trying, then—"
"Are you insane?" she interrupted. "Is this some kind of—some sort of—" she faltered, stumbling over her words. "Are you crazy?" she demanded, taking three quick steps back, but he stepped towards her, shaking his head.
"Stop," he said, his voice edged with warning. "Breathe."
She inhaled.
He waited.
She exhaled.
"Good," he said, nodding. "As I was saying, a horcrux is an object imbued with a piece of my soul. Theoretically, I would be able to resurrect myself through the use of one. At this point, I can no longer resist the necessity to test it. Either I have defeated death," he postulated, "or I've accomplished little more than gathering a group of miscreant purebloods, and I can no longer afford to be uncertain of the answer. Which is, in fact, your doing," he added morosely, as if he were irritated by admitting it. "Though I've been considering it for quite some time."
She swallowed, taking another pair of deep breaths.
"It's not natural to bring someone back from the dead," she said carefully.
"Why does it matter what's natural?" he asked.
She waited, hoping to summon an answer.
"I don't know," she confessed, finding none. "I just thought it needed saying."
"Well, good," he said crisply, turning back to the cauldron. "You'll need to stab me again," he informed her, holding the handle of the dagger out for her. "You've proven yourself capable already, but it will need to be a bit more fatal this time. Only marginally."
"Right, of course," she scoffed faintly, and he smiled.
"There's more to the process than the sacrifice of life," he warned. "More to it than magic, too. I'll need to tell you things; secrets from my soul. You'll need to keep them for me," he said, with what she thought might have been quiet undertones of desperation. "I must ask you to keep them for me, even if I fail."
"This is quite a gamble," she noted, taking the handle from him and eyeing it before looking up, staring into the blue that was so vastly brighter than the rubies in her palm. "Wouldn't you rather take your chances with the life you were given?"
"For what?" he asked, seeming to genuinely not know the answer. "The world is an easy place to rule, Narcissa," he murmured. "I have conquered it already, and only endless tedium remains. Either I have conquered death, or I have done nothing that will outlast me. And if I have done nothing, why grow old?"
"Perhaps my sister has some thoughts on that," she attempted meagerly, and he grimaced.
"She's a gifted witch, Bellatrix," he conceded, "but her desires are as earthly as anything, and I'm destined for more."
She was running out of arguments; but still, she hadn't resolved to certainty.
"Why me, then?" she asked, because she doubted she could bear not knowing.
He shrugged. "The castle brought you here," he said. "My magic chose you. And besides," he added wryly, eyeing the knife, "you do have a natural aptitude."
She stared at the handle, finding herself saddled with the problematic combination of no further opposition and an immense, unbearable curiosity.
"What do I do?" she asked, and he took a slow, deep breath.
"Listen closely," he said, and stepped closer, his gaze falling inescapably on hers. "I'm putting my life in your hands, Narcissa."
oOo
"My name is Tom Riddle," he choked out when she stabbed him; a slit to the throat would be quicker, he admitted, but my secrets are as important to this as anything else, and I need you to be certain they bleed along with me. "I was born an orphan, the son of a pathetic witch and a heartless, foolish muggle, and I killed them both; my mother with my birth, and my father with my wand."
His grip on her slackened slightly for a moment and she looked down, eyeing the glow of the silver dagger in her hand as a translucent specter began to manifest from it.
"I was born to nothing," he retched, his nails scraping at her arm, "and I have felt nothing, I have done nothing, and this is what I fear: that I will die as they have died, by the hand of someone who feels nothing for me. Who extinguishes me so easily it is as though I never existed—"
"Tom," she whispered, watching his head loll back; he was bleeding in earnest, dying a gruesomely visceral death all over her dress, and the dagger in her hand began to pulse with warning, filling the room with a bright, unbearable radiance. "Tom, are you—what am I supposed to—"
"Don't let go," he said through gritted teeth, his eyes wild as he stared at her, shock gradually giving way to pain. "Narcissa," he forced out in anguish, "do not let go—"
"I won't," she assured him, though she felt certain she was going to be sick; she'd never seen so much blood. She'd never witnessed death, never known how ugly it was, and how strangely, dauntingly human. "I won't, Tom, I've got the dagger, I've got it—"
"Don't let go," he pleaded again, his eyes meeting hers this time, and then, without warning, the dagger in her hand exploded with light, delivering her to blindness.
oOo
When she opened her eyes, clearing the ringing from her ears, it was to Lord Voldemort's corpse lying still in her arms. She inhaled sharply, her hand still curled around the dagger, and pondered whether to vomit or run; her dress, her hands were covered in blood—she could feel it stretched dry across her skin—and it was a sickness, a loathing, a desperate, quaking fear that had replaced the air in her lungs, clawing tight around her throat.
"You killed me," she heard behind her, and she spun, scrambling away as the Dark Lord—a much younger Dark Lord, his hair swept from his eyes and a frown burrowed in his brow—stared down at her, bemused. "Who are you?"
She took a moment, trying to still her thudding heart, and rose slowly to her feet.
"I'm Narcissa," she told him carefully. "Narcissa Bl-" she paused. "Narcissa Malfoy."
The Dark Lord before her blinked, staring down at his hands, and then looked back at her.
"Narcissa," he repeated quietly, and she felt her breath quicken, noting the look in his eye as his gaze settled on her face, traveling carefully over her cheek.
"Tom," she whispered, letting him pull her to her feet.
1979
The Dark Lord
"Lucius," the Dark Lord beckoned, surveying him from where he sat and crooking a finger, his eyes glinting in the firelight. "Come here."
"My Lord?" Lucius asked, venturing forward. At the back of the room, Narcissa swallowed hard, compelling herself to leave; run, she thought fiercely, you won't like what you see, but there was no looking away. She closed her eyes briefly, focusing so intently on the sound of raindrops above their heads she half-thought she could feel the droplets bursting on her shoulders, cracking like tiny, violent fissures down her spine.
"Rodolphus tells me you were unsuccessful with the goblins," the Dark Lord postured, his thumb running thoughtfully across his lower lip. He curled his fingers around the goblet on his right, contemplating it for a second; around the room, Narcissa could feel the captive breaths, the tension poised to snap, and then he rose to his feet, carefully taking a single step in Lucius' direction.
"I take it you have an explanation," Lord Voldemort suggested drily, his eyes dropping to regard the angle of Lucius' bent head. "Do you?"
"They demanded wands," Lucius said, clearing his throat. "I felt it unwise to indulge them."
"Why?" Lord Voldemort countered, his voice an eerie, charged quietude. "You have a wand, Lucius. Why deny it to your would-be allies?"
Lucius' shoulders stiffened.
"Begging your pardon, My Lord—"
"Oh, I'm sorry," Lord Voldemort cut in sharply, prompting Lucius to flinch. "If you're going to beg my pardon, Lucius, then be sure to do it wisely, and do it well." He took a few steps closer, eyeing the exposed line at the back of Lucius' neck before glancing up, catching Narcissa's eye. "You know," he began, leaning over to speak in Lucius' ear, "your wife is watching you. She's watching you serve your master, Lucius, and if I were you, I wouldn't do anything to upset me too greatly, or she will have to watch my displeasure, too."
Lucius visibly shuddered, and Narcissa turned her head away.
"So," Lord Voldemort prompted, louder, "you were begging, Lucius?"
Lucius hesitated, his pale hair glinting in the light, and then his chin dropped, the words nearly muffled into the floor.
"I am not a goblin, My Lord," he mumbled. "I earned my right to my wand when I was born to it, and—"
Only Narcissa saw the Dark Lord's fingers twitch.
Only she caught the rage that dug into the gaps of his spine.
Only she held her breath, anticipating the storm that broached the breathless room's horizon.
"Ah yes," Lord Voldemort chuckled. "How silly of me to permit that to slip my mind, Lucius, when you do so rarely allow anyone to overlook your worth. I forget how much stock you put in birth—in blood. Nearly enough that you forget about power, don't you?"
He looked up then, catching Narcissa's eye, and as if she were the one at his mercy, she shuddered without warning.
He didn't even lift his wand; he didn't speak an incantation.
Instead, as if he'd drawn his magic from the very fibers of the air around her, the charge of it swept through her veins, thrilling her morbidly to watch him.
At his feet, her husband let out a sharp cry of pain, the rest of the room's lungs vacating in concert as they watched the handsome, dispassionate Lord at the head of the room bring their own lordly peer to anguish without a motion, without a breath, without even the blink of an eye. To them, the Dark Lord only seemed to be getting younger, more powerful, more ruthless; because his Death Eaters could not understand what they were witnessing, they only feared him more intently, worshipped him more zealously.
They could not have known he was both more and less than what they feared, but she did.
She knew him.
She knew, too, that he was putting on a show for her.
Tom, she mouthed with a tiny grimace of displeasure, please.
His mouth twitched, his tongue darting between his lips; testing her resolve.
Lucius gave another terrible, gut-wrenching yell, and Narcissa winced.
Tom, she mouthed again, shaking her head. Stop.
"Have you had enough?" he asked neutrally, finally taking a step back, and Lucius collapsed, panting, his blond hair matted and slick against his face.
Narcissa slipped out of the room, not bothering to look back.
oOo
He'd come back a different person than he'd been.
"We can't do this, Tom," she begged in the moments that he looked at her too long, when he'd run his fingers carefully along her spine, when he'd stood too close to her, making it impossible to breathe. "You ask too much of me."
"You killed me once," he reminded her, as if she could possibly forget. "You killed me and brought me back, and you used your own power, your own blood, and you held my very soul in your hands to do it. Do you really think I can ever be parted from you, or you from me? That I can ever accept that you weren't made for me?"
She said nothing.
There was nothing to say.
"How can you live with a man who isn't me?" he pressed, always too close, always too tempting, always too captivating to hold. "How can you choose him over me?"
"He doesn't ask me to bend heaven and earth for him, Tom," she said quietly, and his face contorted with fury, or envy, or in the wake of helpless wrath.
"Do you think his love is virtuous simply because it is soft?" he demanded, his fingers cutting into the silk of her bodice. "He doesn't ask it of you," he snarled, "because he doesn't believe that you can—but I know better." His lips grazed the side of her neck, catching the motion of her heavy swallow. "I know better than anyone what you're made of, and I refuse to soften so that you can live a pretty lie."
He'd come back a different person than he had been.
She'd always known it was only a matter of time before she could no longer stand the lack of him.
oOo
She heard him coming before she saw him, her eyes closed as she leaned her head against the wall.
"That was unnecessary," she said flatly. "You're just showing off."
He chuckled, and her eyes fluttered open to find him carefully rolling the sleeves of his crisp white shirt, drawing it up over the span of his forearm.
"I was merely presenting you with options, Narcissa," he replied, effortlessly neutral.
"He won't understand why you've done it," she reminded him. "He thinks you share his beliefs; they all do," she warned. "They won't be able to make sense of it."
"Lucius is not a child," Tom said irritably. "It's not my job to discipline him in a way he understands. The only thing he needs to grasp is that he serves me unquestioningly, and that he is subject to whatever punishment or reward I deem him worthy of." He leaned forward, leaving only a breath's distance between her pounding heart and his. "Besides, he's far too arrogant—"
"Says the man who calls himself a Lord," murmured Narcissa, and Tom's lips twisted wryly.
"You know," he remarked, "to pity a man is not the same as to love him, Narcissa."
She waited; every moment she didn't speak was an ounce of power she wrested back.
But she was foolishly desperate, and aching, and there was only so much left for restraint.
"You know that I don't," she said, and a glint of satisfaction manifested in the blue of Tom's eyes.
"Tell me again," he beckoned in her ear, his fingers slowly drawing up the fabric of her dress, and she sighed, feeling the cool slip of his palm against her thigh.
"Tell you what?" she prompted. "You tell me often enough not to need reminding, don't you? That I belong to you."
She felt him smile; his hand tightened possessively around her leg.
"And do you?" he asked neutrally. "Do you belong to me, even when you're with him?"
She let out a sigh, feeling his breath on her neck.
"When I close my eyes," she remarked, "he almost looks like you."
His nails dug into her waist as he pressed his hips against hers, drawing her leg up.
"Aren't you tired of pretending, Narcissa?" Tom asked softly, intimately, and a sound that might have been equally yes or no or Tom, please, deliver me slipped unbidden from her lips. "Haven't you fought it long enough?"
So what if I live a lie, Tom? she'd demanded of him, back when she thought she could resist his lure. Your life is as much a lie as anything—
This is not a lie, he'd said, and though lying was perhaps his greatest skill, she couldn't bring herself not to believe him. One day you will tire of pretending, and you'll come to me, Narcissa. Call it a prophecy.
"Call this fulfillment, then," she whispered, and he shivered in her arms.
oOo
She thought it would fade; even flames eventually die down, after all. Even wildfires burn out.
But for Tom, she was constantly ignited.
"I hate when you're gone from here," he said, pressing her back against the cold stone wall of his castle, the heat from the fireplace materializing in beads of sweat that clung to the places they touched. "I swear, even the waves miss you. They crash against the walls like they'd rather die than be without you."
"They always do that," she said, picturing the froth of the ocean tides outside the stained glass windows, the motion of them as steady and unyielding as his hips against hers. "I don't think I can take credit."
"I think it knows," he whispered to her. "It knows that I wouldn't be alive without you. This castle knows I would be nothing without you, Narcissa, and we suffer in your absence, brought to nothing again."
She bit hard on her tongue, not wanting to admit the truth; that it was she who suffered most in his absence, desperately pretending the silvery-blond head beside her at night was the raven-black she so badly desired, belonging to the man who toyed with her so easily she wondered if she were not part of his magic herself.
"Do you suffer, Tom?" she asked instead, yanking his head back and watching him hiss with pain, his tongue dragging slowly across his lip before it stretched into a darkly covetous smile.
"Show me," she whispered, and his eyes widened as he carried her to his bed, still unmade from the hours they'd spent there before.
What was perfunctory with Lucius—almost polite—was barbaric with Tom, and savage, and she relished the wild look in his blue eyes, the knowledge that he spent every waking moment craving her, refusing to relent for want of her. It was sex and it was carnal and it was love and it was magic, and there was no softness, no emptiness, only longing and rapture and ardor, fervor and fury, passion and pain.
He twined his fingers in her pale hair, holding it in his hands like streaks of moonlight.
"Narcissa," he said, worshipping her like he would an idol, like a deity, like power itself. "Will you keep my secrets?"
She kissed him, brutally, and half-laughed into his mouth.
"Don't I always?" she asked, as he dragged his lips against her neck.
"I granted myself eternity," he whispered in her ear, "and I want to spend all of it with you."
If it was love, she thought, then love wasn't a pretty bauble to be held in the light; instead, it flashed, it blazed, it blistered and seared, and if this was love, then she finally knew that love wasn't pretty at all. It was devastating, every clandestine sensation set alight, and love was a match set to burn.
She burned for him.
She loved him.
She burned for him.
oOo
It wasn't only sex, though the Dark Lord's work—the furtive projects he continued, tucked away with her in his hidden castle rooms—had a similar sense of intimacy, of joining, to the point where sex and love and power were nearly indistinguishable.
"Magic is a function of many things," Tom said to her as they moved together, the slip of skin-against-skin as much a spell of its own as the words he spoke in her ear. "It's a language, a balance, a ritual. A connection between what flows in our blood," he said to the line of her neck, "and what beats in our hearts, the current of the world we inhabit. It's never merely spells and charms and enchantments. It's not something we heat over a fire and pour into a vial. Magic is elements of life, of death, of mortality. It's what we're made of, and what we create. It is everything and nothing, and we are everything and nothing, and you—"
He broke off with a gasp as she leaned her head against his chest, coiling her fingers in the hair at the base of his skull to rock rhythmically against him, delivering him to familiar sparks of madness.
"If we are the same as magic, then what am I to you, Tom?" she asked him, letting his lips travel hungrily over her neck. "Tell me," she commanded with another yank at his hair, reminding him he was hers to command.
He gripped her hips violently, leaving marks from the pressure of his fingers.
"You are a storm," he said, "and I am the wreckage. You are a reckoning, and I am the price. You are an angel, a demon, a witch and a goddess, and you," he growled in her ear, his hand spreading flat against her belly, "for all your power, are unequivocally mine."
"And what are you, Tom?" she asked. "If I am yours?"
"I'm a Lord beholden to a queen," he told her, biting down on her shoulder as she laughed.
"Good," she said, closing her eyes with satisfaction. "Good."
oOo
"You seem distant tonight," Lucius said to the tension in her shoulders, eyeing her from across the bed. "More so than usual."
Tom, she thought, feeling the warmth of him, the thrill of him as he'd lain entwined with her, alternately stroking her hair, her arms, the line of her spine. Tom, I don't want to always be this—I can't be a liar forever—
So don't be, he said flatly. Leave him.
I can't, she replied, though he'd already known as much, and disliked to hear it as much as she disliked relaying it. Marriage vows, and besides, he wouldn't just let me go—
Do you want me to do something about it? he asked carefully, and she'd frozen, considering the terrible lengths she'd go to have him and pleading herself to silence.
"Do I?" she asked her husband, feigning ignorance. "I suppose I'm tired."
"Oh," Lucius said, swallowing heavily. "I guess you don't want to, um—"
Is she pregnant yet? she'd heard Abraxas say; the haughty grouch of a man who was never quite careful enough to keep his voice down inside the Manor. It's been long enough, Lucius. She's not meant to be some sort of trophy for you to take to the Dark Lord's castle. You gave her privilege, Lucius, and wealth, and now it's her turn to pay you back. She exists to give you Malfoy sons.
"We can," she said carefully, trying not to shudder at the thought. "If you want to."
"I do," he assured her, though she felt it again; the sense that he wasn't quite looking at her. Like he was distracted, absent, staring at the manifestation of his father's disappointment rather than the wife his own master so dutifully adored. She let him lift the silk of her nightgown; let him slide her underwear aside; let him mount her like some prized horse with favorable breeding and closed her eyes, resting her hands on his waist.
With her eyes closed, he could almost be Tom.
With her eyes closed, she could almost pretend.
It seemed she lived her whole life with her eyes closed, wandering in a daze until the Dark Lord's castle walls opened for her again, drawing her back into his arms.
oOo
"Why bone?" she asked Tom, repressing a still-present repulsion. "Bone, blood, flesh. All of it is just so—"
"Morbid?" he guessed, and she shuddered in answer, prompting him to chuckle. "It's the closest I can get to imitating life, Narcissa. And last I checked, you weren't much a fan of human sacrifice."
"Not true," she reminded him, rising to her feet and sliding her hand across the span of his shoulder blades. "I sacrificed you, didn't I?"
"And I remain grateful you did," he permitted, drawing one shoulder upwards to skate his lips across her knuckles. "Though I wonder," he murmured, "if your limits have shifted in the time that's passed."
"What does that mean?" she asked. "You already know your horcruxes work. I can't imagine you'll risk another one just for experimentation."
"I don't mean me," he said, and she stiffened, frowning.
"Then what do you—"
"I meant it, Narcissa," he said. "When I said I wanted eternity with you. I intend for eternity itself, and therefore, so should you."
She froze, swallowing suddenly on disbelief, or air.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," he clarified, his blue eyes drifting to hers, "that you should have a horcrux."
He waited, watching her eyes widen.
"Breathe," he reminded her.
She inhaled.
"And?" he prompted.
She exhaled.
"Good," he said. "And I don't see why you're surprised. I couldn't bear to lose you, Narcissa, and I'm not a man to leave such things to chance. Obviously this was going to come up."
"But—" she began, and faltered, wondering how he could be so cavalier. "But don't you have to—to murder someone?"
"Yes," he replied, without elaboration.
"Oh," she managed, discovering that a faint, indistinguishable ringing was suddenly present in her ears. "Well, then."
"Magic is magic," he reminded her, dragging her attention back to him. "It's a sacrifice, at its core. The more you require from it, the more you have to offer it. But surely some prices are more easily paid."
She blinked. "Easily?"
He sighed, turning towards her.
"Narcissa," Tom ventured, taking a few steps to take hold of her hands, the two of them standing in the same spot he'd once died in her arms. "Isn't there someone your life would be better off without? Someone," he added, "whose absence would give you the things you desire most? I'd give you power if you wanted it," he whispered. "Anything you wanted, Narcissa, I would give, if only you were free to take it."
"You—" she broke off, dizzied, as she processed what he'd said. "You want me to kill Lucius?"
She waited for him to say no.
She waited, breathless, for him to say no.
"Yes," he said, unsurprisingly. "It would resolve things rather neatly, wouldn't it?"
For a moment, she opened her mouth, certain a rational response would eventually formulate.
It didn't.
Instead she turned her head, vomiting abruptly on the floor.
oOo
It wasn't only sex.
Some nights, like this one, he held her close, curling himself around her, and they watched the fire's shadow dance along the castle walls, the waves crashing recklessly outside.
Some nights, like this one, she half-remembered he was a man; felt him like a lover who might have been hers in another reality.
Perhaps one where he'd grasped for less, and didn't require a hereafter.
Perhaps one where she were willing to do more, and didn't fear retribution.
Perhaps it was a reality only breaths apart from this one, and no reality was too far away.
"Tell me a secret," she coaxed him, pleading for certainty, and he tightened his arms around her, holding her so firmly she winced from pain.
"I think if anyone can destroy me, it will be you," he said back.
For a moment, she wanted to laugh.
Instead she sat upright, forcing her eyes shut.
"What is it?" he asked, brushing his lips against her arm.
"I feel sick," she whispered, something twisting wretchedly in her soul.
1980
Star Signs
"It isn't mine," Tom said flatly, and Narcissa didn't look up.
"No," she agreed. "It can't be."
"Why not?" he demanded, and she closed her eyes briefly.
"Because," she exhaled, "I knew you wouldn't want—"
"Wouldn't want what?" he cut in brusquely, and she glanced up, pursing her lips.
"Breathe," she warned him.
He inhaled, glaring at her.
"And?" she prompted.
He exhaled.
"Better," she said tartly, but he shook his head, pacing the floor.
"You used a spell," he said. "You used one for me, and not for him?"
"I couldn't with him," she said. "You know I couldn't."
He spun on his heel, staring at her.
"That," he growled, "should be my child."
"You don't want a child," she reminded him dully.
"I don't want you to have his, either," he snapped.
She said nothing.
"Does this mean you've changed your mind?" he asked sharply. "Is that what you came to tell me? That after everything, you still—"
He broke off, furious and pained, and she rose to her feet, taking his face delicately between her fingers.
"Tom," she said. "Nothing has changed."
He swallowed moodily, blue eyes flashing with displeasure.
"I'm as much yours as I've ever been," she promised, but he stood still for a moment, stubbornly making her wait before gradually sliding his hands up her shoulders, raising her up for his kiss.
"And Lucius?" he asked, his expression going cold.
"When I close my eyes," she said, "he almost looks like you."
Tom grimaced. "Aren't you tired of pretending, Narcissa?" he asked her. "Haven't you fought it long enough?"
"Almost," she promised him. "Almost."
oOo
"What about Abraxas, for my father," Lucius suggested, and Narcissa turned from her spot by the window, missing the sea breeze from Tom's castle. There, the walls themselves seemed to warm at her touch, humming indolently under her palms, and from there, the view, wherever she stood, was imminently breathtaking.
Here, though, everything was dull.
"No," she said. "I told you. A constellation, for my family."
Lucius hesitated before rising to his feet, approaching her tentatively.
"Cygnus?" he asked. "For your father?"
She shook her head, staring out the window at the clouded sky above.
"Not a swan," she said. "Something powerful. Unbreakable." She leaned her head back, watching a patch of clear sky come into view. "Something that can't be burned," she whispered, more to herself than to him, and Lucius stepped closer, resting a hand on her shoulder.
"Draco?" he suggested; warily, as if he thought she might argue. For once, though, she felt grateful that he'd understood.
She rested her hand on her stomach, wishing to exist in two moments at once.
"Draco," she whispered, feeling the baby kick.
oOo
He was beautiful.
If this was love, she thought, then it was an indulgent one; a sweet one, a gentle, honeyed one, a lullaby on a summer breeze that was hummed amid the flowers, beneath the stars, and if this was love, then it was fragile and delicate and tiny, like the perfect fingers on the hands of her perfect son. It was soft and warm and close to her heart, and love was a child sleeping in her arms.
He looked precisely like his father, grey eyes and pale blond hair.
He looked unmistakably like his father.
She'd never seen Tom's blue eyes go so cold.
oOo
It wasn't just sex.
Sometimes it was fighting, though at times, those things were indistinguishable too.
At times, like tonight, there was anger to the way he fucked her, and though it was good—yes, Tom, so good, always so good, you fucking bastard, you're always so good—it was mean and rough and furious, and eventually he was left to stare at the line of her back as she picked her dress up from the floor, carefully mending the tear he'd ripped in the slit of her skirt.
"I don't want you to leave," he informed her flatly.
"I don't want to either," she reminded him, glancing over her shoulder, "but I have to, Tom. You've made it clear that you don't like it when I bring Draco here, and—"
"Don't," he snapped, flinching. "Don't talk about him."
She turned, perching beside him on the bed, and slipped a finger under his chin.
"Do you still want me, Tom?" she asked him. He leaned into her hand, pressing a kiss to the inside of her wrist, and she sighed, letting him pull her into his chest. "Then be patient," she whispered to him. "Be patient."
He gripped her hand, the splintered lines on his palm closing around her fingers.
"You promised me forever," he reminded her, and she closed her eyes for a moment, taking a breath.
"I know," she told him. "I know."
oOo
"Lucius?" she asked, opening her eyes to find him standing in the window frame, staring out at nothing. "I didn't know you were back. Is something wrong?"
He turned stiffly towards her, revealing a deep purple bruise across his face and slim tracings of marks that ran down the side of his neck, reaching like tendrils into the fabric of his shirt.
"Lucius," she gasped, unsteadily lurching to her feet, and he stared through her, haunted.
"You'll take care of our son, won't you?" he asked hoarsely. "If anything happens to me, you'll protect him?"
"Lucius, why—"
"Promise," he rasped. "I need you to promise."
"Yes, Lucius, of course, I'd never let anything happen to Draco, you know that—"
"I think he wants me dead," he said, half-babbling to himself. "I used to think he favored me, but now I think he hates me. I thought it was fatherhood alone, but he doesn't seem to bear any ill will towards Nott. He treats Crabbe and Goyle no differently. But me—" he broke off, choking quietly, and Narcissa, lacking any better alternative, drew him into her lap, letting him curl up in her arms.
"He hates me, Narcissa, and I think he wants to kill me," Lucius whispered to her. "Sometimes I think he's killing me slowly just so he can watch."
"No," she said helplessly, though she wondered if it were true; she traced the lines along his neck, soothing the welts that led to his chest. "No, he—I'm sure that's not—"
"Take care of our son," Lucius said painfully. "I would die for him, Narcissa. Just promise me he'll be safe."
"You're not dying," Narcissa admonished, but felt a pang of guilt; she knew she could make no such promise. Not yet. "But you'll never have to worry, Lucius. I will always protect our son. I promise you that."
He closed his eyes, heaving a deep sigh.
"Thank you," he murmured.
She closed her eyes, too.
But this time, in her arms, she only felt his sorrow.
oOo
"It's easy," Tom ranted, throwing a cauldron against the wall. "Brew him a poison. Cast a fucking spell. Throw together some hair and bone and venom into a fucking cauldron and just fucking wish it," he snarled. "Just do whatever it fucking takes, Narcissa, to keep your fucking promise—"
"Breathe," she snapped, and like the castle itself were suspended, he froze.
Inhaled.
Exhaled.
"You will not lose your temper like this," she warned him. "Not if you intend to keep me."
His mouth stiffened.
"You were supposed to always be mine," he said.
"You were supposed to always deserve me," she returned.
He curled one hand into a fist, pressing his lips to a thin, inarguable line.
"The decision to be rid of him is yours," he conceded. "I'll keep him alive. If," he added sourly, "that's really what you want."
"You have always asked me for everything, Tom," she reminded him. "I would hope that the autonomy of my own husband's murder might fall under the category of things I can safely request from you."
He scowled.
"You said you didn't love him," he accused.
"I don't," she replied. "But he's the father of my son, Tom, much as it pains you to hear it."
"It doesn't pain me," he spat. "It incites me. It floods me with fury, with rage, and I can hardly eat, hardly sleep, hardly think for knowing what he is to you—"
"He will never be what you are to me," she said, stepping towards him. "Tom. No man will ever be what you are to me, I swear it."
He bent his head.
"I can't sleep," he mumbled. "I can't sleep. I can't sleep. I can't sleep."
Narcissa reached up, smoothing the hair from his forehead, and saw the lines under his eyes.
"Be patient," she whispered, pressing her lips to the furrowed span of his brow.
1981
Sacrifice
It was impossible not to mark her son's growth with her lover's decline.
"Here," Tom said, thrusting something into her hands the same day Draco had first learned to smile at her, his little fingers playing with the light from her features. "I need to—to arrange things. To hide things. I want you to keep this," he instructed, eyes wild. "A diary. A horcrux. Another secret, Narcissa, if you'll keep this one too."
"Tom," she said slowly, glancing down at it. "Is everything—"
"Alright?" he guessed, blinking. "No, no, it isn't. Your swine of a husband cost me the goblins, the wolves are fucking lawless, the Ministry is breathing down my neck and you, Narcissa," he barked, laughing humorlessly, "you exist to torment me. To dangle out of even my indomitable reach. Someday your son will be grown, you know," he added, still muttering to himself. "Someday he will be grown, and he will look and behave just like Lucius, and do you think he will serve me just as blindly, Narcissa?"
He stepped towards her, an eerie smile on his face as he watched her go rigid with fury.
"Do you think your son will kneel so reverently at my feet, Narcissa?" he asked darkly, and she slapped him so hard it stung them both, her palm buzzing with pain as his face glowed red from the pressure of it.
"Leave my son alone," she croaked, and he gave her a brilliant sneer, taking a step to press her back against the wall.
"I don't want your son," he snarled, the words slipping through desperately gritted teeth. "I want you, Narcissa, and however long it takes, I'll wait. You told me to be patient," he reminded her. "I have more lives than you can possibly imagine to do so."
She closed her eyes, suffering a chill.
Breathe, she thought, and inhaled.
Exhaled.
"Is that a threat?" she finally asked, her eyes fluttering open, and the look on his face confirmed it.
"All things are sacrifice," he whispered to her. "What's a little more time, Narcissa, when I already possess it all?"
He kissed her then, laughing, and tasted of madness and delirium, a venom that burned at the roof of her mouth.
"You promised me eternity," he said between her lips, letting the consequence of a deal she'd made with a very different version of him stick to her teeth and twist her tongue to silence. "You promised me."
You're not the man I loved, she couldn't say, because she wasn't wholly sure it was true.
He crackled with power.
She sought out a plan.
oOo
He'd always made magic seem so easy. She'd loved him first for that—for what he could do with it, as no other witch or wizard had ever done. As if it were a thing to call upon at will, an element in the air, a being that danced along the currents. He used it equally for beauty and pain and she'd loved him for it, admired him; watched him.
She collected things slowly, one by one.
She started with him.
His blood, firstly, which was easy to find, and easy to take. The castle let her in and helped her slip out, welcoming her and then sighing in her escape, lamenting her absence like a child denied its favorite toy.
The bone was more challenging. At first she thought to find his father's bones, but remembered that his own bones existed; this, too, the castle made easy to find, leading her to an unmarked grave where Tom had buried his own body, the grotesquely splintered dagger still left where she'd once dug it into his side. She slid a rib from the grave, tucking it carefully into her pocket.
She added a hair, too, plucking it from his pillow. It was still raven-black, as thick as a silken thread, and she rested it atop the bone and beside the blood, pondering what to do next.
She knew that sacrifice was important; he had sacrificed his secrets time and again, and he'd made it clear that magic was some sort of give and take, so while she had taken from him, she gave of herself. She added the flower of her namesake, winding her own silvery blonde hair around the stem. She added a rose, too, for her love; kept the thorns, for the faults in it.
A request of this magnitude, she knew, would require the thing she loved most in the world, and so when Draco stumbled, cutting his knee with a wail, she slid a drop of blood from him, too.
She knew it wouldn't be immediate; Tom had often said that time and place were as necessary to magic as any of the ingredients, and it was from an iteration of him in her past that she gleaned the perfect—the only—opportunity.
Samhain, he'd once said, then-drawing her out into the crisp autumn air. The doorways to the Otherworlds open for sacrifice, for offerings to the dead and the living, on the night we call Halloween.
Sacrifice, she thought, recalling his constant refrain.
Sacrifice.
She waited to make hers.
oOo
"Tom," she said, watching him rustle back and forth across his bedroom floor. "Tom, listen to me—"
"I found them," he said, not looking at her. "The Potters. This prophecy is all but finished, and I'm going to take care of it tonight."
"Tom—"
"The entire thing is a thorn in my side," he muttered, his hands curled in frustration. "I've died and come back to live, I've ruled uncontested and without any conceivable opposition, and now I'm being threatened by a child? The whole thing is—"
"Tom," Narcissa interrupted, taking his face in her hands. "I have a secret for you."
He paused, glancing down at her.
"You do?" he asked.
She nodded.
"You told me once that your greatest fear was dying at the hands of someone who cared nothing for you," she reminded him, and though he didn't respond, she knew he still feared it, tension evident beneath her touch. "And you also told me you thought I would destroy you."
He stood still for a moment, contemplating her.
"Those aren't secrets," he said eventually and she gave him a small, tepid smile.
"The secret," she said, "is that you were right. And therefore you have nothing to fear, Tom," she murmured, "because when I destroy you, I will do it with pain and with love. I will destroy you the way that I have adored you; with passion. With sacrifice. With meaning." She paused, feeling him stiffen, and brought him close to her; so close she wondered if he could taste the terrible, twisted poison of her intentions. "I promised you eternity, Tom, and I meant it. I will spend eternity longing for what we could have been."
"Narcissa," he said gruffly. "What are you—"
"Breathe," she instructed, waiting.
He inhaled.
Exhaled.
"Good," she said, and when she knew he would have argued, she kissed him firmly instead, not letting him waste a moment; permitting him only the freedom to hold her in his grasp.
Their last time was frantic, half-clothed; it was panicked and restless, a tumultuous crash, not unlike the waves outside. She wondered if that was all they'd ever been; a crash of tides, always ebbing and advancing, desperately fighting their way back.
"Narcissa," he said when it was over, his hands still tangled in her hair. "You are a storm."
"We are both the wreckage," she promised him, and closed her eyes, committing him to memory.
oOo
She took everything, bone and blood and thorns, and buried it outside his castle.
She waited for the earth to stake its claim.
"I love him," she said, sparing her final secret as her most important sacrifice; the closest to her heart. "I love him, and I can no longer allow him to love me. I know he'll come back," she whispered, half to herself, half to the waves that rose up against the rocky cliffs. "I know he'll come back, and I'll be waiting."
She inhaled.
Exhaled.
Good, she thought, satisfied.
She waited until she heard the news that he was gone.
Nobody could explain it, they said. Nobody knew where he had gone, or how, or why a boy—a baby, younger even than her own son—had survived; but he was gone, and slowly, gradually, they exhaled their captive fear in his absence.
She didn't.
Not yet.
Instead she went to his castle and made her way to the battlements, letting the wind whip her memory around along with the tousled waves of her hair.
I know better than anyone what you're made of, he'd said to her once, and she heard his voice now, as clearly as if it carried on the wind.
"In the end," she whispered to him, "you never really knew, did you?"
He was gone now.
He was gone.
She was the one left standing.
"I won't let them destroy what you built," she said aloud, and true, he'd never asked her to make such a promise, but she felt she understood him by now. The castle would be seized by the Ministry, and she knew he wouldn't abide it; wouldn't be able to stand the thought of someone else possessing what he'd crafted himself, what he'd clung to—for power, for meaning, for love.
She could feel his familiar pulse in the stone beneath her feet, and she bent her hand to the cobbled ground, letting it recognize her touch.
"Time to go," she told the castle sadly. "Only he was meant for eternity."
There was a crack, then.
A rumble.
A foundation that sank, and she watched the pieces of his creation fall into the water one by one, diminishing to rubble and dropping into the restless sea below, burying his fallen kingdom under the waves.
When the only structure remaining was the stone beneath her feet, a narrow platform raised high above the sea, Narcissa closed her eyes, taking a breath and letting it out.
With her eyes closed, she could almost feel him.
With her eyes closed, she could almost pretend.
a/n: Check out Aurora's edit that inspired this story on tumblr, and while you're at it, take a look at the cover she designed for my anthology of stories, Fairytales of the Macabre, at olivieblake dot com. If you enjoy this collection, you might enjoy those as well. Thank you for reading, and happy belated Halloween!