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Velvet & Lace

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Chapter Twenty-One | When She Asks, Answer

When she hadn't been busy serving Voldemort in however he saw fit, which thankfully wasn't too often considering Narcissa's main task at present seemed to be concerning herself with creating the next Malfoy heir, she had taken herself to visit her father, Cygnus, to attempt to learn more about the Black family Time-Turner.

"It's not that I particularly wished to," Narcissa informed Pansy and Regulus, "but whenever the thought crossed my mind, it wouldn't leave and I became weirdly obsessed, despite still not being overly concerned about the whole thing," she regarded Pansy, "it was a rather disconcerting feeling."

"I'm fairly certain I know who - or what, you can blame," Pansy stated, her mind drifting to what she knew was currently lying in a small drawer of the bedroom.

Narcissa gave a knowing nod. "Oh, I do too, and it turns out that our good friend Mr Time-Turner and his magic are most likely responsible for a great deal of our strange circumstance."

She swallowed as she listened to the other witch's words, somehow knowing without a shadow of a doubt that they were the truth. Regulus's hand clasped hers tightly and she felt both full of thoughts and questions but oddly empty all at once.

"Pansy?" she heard Narcissa ask.

"Hmm?"

"It was I who gave you the Turner, wasn't it?"

Pansy's heartbeat suddenly became very apparent to her. She had already divulged too much of the future, and she was fairly certain she had mentioned that the Turner had been given to her by a friend's mother, but how could she lie now?

Taking a deep breath, Pansy readied herself to admit to Narcissa Malfoy one truth of the older witch's future: she would bear a child.

"Yes."

Narcissa nodded. "Good...that's good, I believe." When neither Pansy nor Regulus spoke, Narcissa continued, "I have ensured it is I that will receive the Turner in my father's will. Which, if this indeed the correct path we must take, means that at some point between now and the point I send you back to, my father dies."

Pansy, whose eyes filled with tears that were full of both concern and comfort, opened her mouth to reply with words that hadn't yet formed in her mind. Draco's grandfather did indeed pass away, sometime around 1992, if Pansy recalled correctly, remembering the moment that Draco had informed her, before Narcissa held a hand in the air to silence her.

"It's alright, I don't need to know when, or how, or even if I'm correct, I don't believe that is not for me to know, not yet."

Regulus, who up until that point had been uncharacteristically quiet, spoke, "How did you work all of this," he gestured vaguely with the hand that wasn't holding Pansy's, "out, how did you know uncle Cygnus even had the Time-Turner?"

"I asked him," Narcissa replied simply, "and after he told me he was indeed in possession of such an artefact, he told me that when he had inherited it, it had come attached to a piece of strange parchment unlike any he had seen before." Narcissa had an odd look in her eyes as she buried her hand in a pocket, bringing forth a piece of clearly very old, yet very well preserved parchment, which she held out to Pansy to read.

When she asks, answer

What she wishes, grant her

For with the knowledge she possesses

It is the House of Black she blesses

"What in the world?" Regulus breathed beside Pansy as also he read the poem.

"Terribly dramatic, us Blacks, and apparently," Narcissa said, nodding towards the parchment, "we always have been."

"What she asks," Pansy whispered, "that was you asking whether he knew of the Turner?"

"I believe so."

"And you wished for it to be left to you in his will?" Regulus interjected as he and Pansy began to put the pieces of Narcissa's tale, and the parchment's riddle, together. She nodded in response, her face a mask of nonchalance.

Pansy frowned. "The knowledge...is that about me being sent back?"

"That's all I can imagine it means," Narcissa replied as she studied the pair. "I imagine it means the knowledge about your presence here also."

"The last line makes no sense," Regulus stated, wrinkling his nose.

"No?" Narcissa said with a quirk of her eyebrow, "it seems obvious, to me. Pansy," she said, turning her head slightly to face the younger woman, "I believe, even more so now, that you being here is no accident, and I believe you are here because you have a purpose to fulfil, that involves the House of Black."

"And that purpose is?" Regulus asked, though Pansy barely heard him, nor did she pay any attention to Narcissa's reply. She felt a sudden outburst of an uneasy anger.

"And what if I fail? What if we can't work out what it is?" She felt helpless and hysterical. What purpose could she possibly have that involved her being flung through time, to him, if not to save him? And she certainly didn't do that because Regulus was dead in her time, and if what he'd suspected on her first night here was correct, everything Pansy did here had already happened in her time, and that meant that Regulus was still going to die. The only purpose she could possibly want wasn't meant for her. The thought made her ill. She swallowed, before continuing her tirade. "And what if I actually succeed with whatever the hell it is? What happens once my purpose, " she said the word with an air of disregard, "is fulfilled?"

"It isn't, strictly, for me to answer," Narcissa replied and Pansy got the distinct impression that she was choosing her words carefully, "but what I am fairly sure of, is that it has already happened, in the time you came from anyway, it must have." Pansy nodded once, the age-old surety they possessed in reference to time magic was that whatever Pansy did here in this time had already happened. Her head jolted up as Narcissa began to speak again. "There is another I believe we should all go and speak to first, but to answer your question...I think that once whatever you are here to do, is done, that you must be sent back to your time."

"And if I don't want to?" Pansy demanded, knowing it was fruitless to even question. She felt Regulus slump slightly beside her at her words and the pad of his thumb began to weave back and forth over the back of her hand.

"You can't exist in two times," she heard him whisper the words she desperately wished she didn't believe to be true and wiped a rogue tear from her cheek as Regulus shifted his arms to encase Pansy fully.

"Who do you think we should speak to?" Pansy heard Regulus ask, not that she particularly cared considering the weight of what Narcissa had divulged rested so heavily on her Pansy was certain she would buckle were she not already sitting down.

"Phineas Nigellus Black," Narcissa said, "my father believes he may have information on when the Black family came to have our own Time-Turner, and how its magic works. He was a bit of an unpleasant man, from what can be gathered, often heralded as the worst headmaster Hogwarts has ever seen. He died sometime in the twenties, but he has a portrait we could speak to."

"Oh Merlin, not him!" Regulus cried, "Cissa, he's mental."

"Where is the portrait?" Pansy asked, although surely there could only be one plausible answer if Regulus was familiar with the painting.

"My house," he replied blankly. "Shit, Pansy, you're going to have to meet," he paused, composing himself as he groaned profusely, "my mother."

"Charming woman," Narcissa replied somewhere to her left, and she was certain that Regulus responded but Pansy barely heard the exchange between the pair. All that was present in her ears was a strange sort of white noise, that was providing a sort of backing track to the booming beat of her heart.

She didn't recall the moment she stood up, and she was only barely aware of the stifled sound of Regulus crying her name. She didn't remember walking, or running perhaps, towards the stairs, or thundering up them, only that she was suddenly on the upstairs landing and rushing her way towards the bedroom.

Not paying much attention to the footsteps that were clearly following her, Pansy slammed the door and magically locked it, not knowing how to face either of them in that moment, before throwing herself down on top of the bed, where her screams were masked only somewhat by the pillows.

Pillows she'd lain on with him. Pillows they'd laughed into and made love on in equal measure. Only a few short hours ago she'd been able to almost forget, how it was possible to do such a thing now she didn't know, but the fact that the soul she had fallen in love so easily, so effortlessly, with was going to die, was a fact she'd pushed aside in favour of focussing on the life rather than the death, perhaps because a small, deluded part of her chose to believe she would be the one to right what was the most heinous wrong her heart could think of.

Only now, as she cried and screamed and assaulted the pillows; it hit her, truly hit her.

Regulus was going to die, and Pansy wouldn't stop it.

Regulus was going to die , and Pansy couldn't stop it.