"Her heart wears wisdom skin
and wit warmed splendor,
the echoes of a war cry holding
its four chambers together.
She rises like Athena
on a night of victory dancing.
She rises like the blood moon
in a sky of a thousand stars bursting."
Nikita Gill
"I know that this may come as a shock to you, but I shall marry her. It is decidedly so, when we visit our vacation home in Lyon this summer, I will seek her out and declare that I love her. The Malfoy family, with their cold, bitterness and loveless marriages will be a legacy I crush with my hands. I will fuel happiness for future generations; I will enforce and destroy the idea of arranged marriages. In another universe, we were lovers, you and I. Do not forget that. But in this one, we know of only pain and humbling heartache, and I despair to think of it any longer. It ends now with us. It is my greatest ambition that my children will not grow up to mourn their lost loves as I will, forever."
Narcissa took her trembling hands from the worn fragments of parchment and lifted her gaze to the bedroom door to watch his black silk cloak disappear around the corner into the dark corridor. There were times to chase after Lucius Malfoy; this was decidedly not one of them. An anger thudded in her heart, soft at first but the rage clawed its way up her throat, and she gathered the letters.
Freezing rain pelted the windows as she turned on her heel, her robes billowing out from her thin body as she stalked the corridor in the opposite direction he had escaped. She nearly tore the fragile letters in her hands from clenching them so tightly. When she reached the end of the corridor and stood in front of her mother's bedroom chamber door, she did not hesitate as she had when she was just a child, afraid to knock out of fear. The brass handle turned and gave way under her grasp and she was in, crossing the room, her mind a feverish blur.
Druella was sitting at her vanity table in pale red silk robes, her hair loose and smooth down her back. She took out her earrings slowly, her eyes on her daughter through the mirror, watching her hard breathing and fierce concentration of rage.
"I knew you stole them," she remarked, "The day you tried your dress on."
"And you didn't confront me?" Narcissa asked, an angry thump caught in her throat. She raised her eyebrows and swept across the threshold and dropped the letters onto her mother's armoire. "You always said you wouldn't stand having a thief for a daughter."
A tiny smile appeared at the corner of her mother's lips, but she quickly busied herself with the earring in her left ear, slipping it from her ear and into the jewelry box in front of her.
"I know you and Mr. Malfoy were in love," Narcissa said accusingly, crossing her arms and stepping toward her haughtily, "I know that you were top of your class, one of the best at healing spells and you finished all seven years—you went beyond that, you were certified as a Healer. I know you had a job at Hogwarts ready and suddenly you vanished, married my father."
"How…?" Druella asked, turning in her chair to peer at her daughter incredulously. "How on earth do you know all of that?"
"The Headmaster remembers you," Narcissa replied softly.
"Ah," she murmured quietly, "Did you know that I was also a Prefect, then? So was Abraxas. Not a very good one, I might add. Always skiving off of patrols; I told our head of house every time he did it, he got detention because of me more times than I can count."
"Why?" Narcissa breathed, ignoring the rest of her mother's statement, "You could have been happy. You could have had everything you wanted."
Druella frowned suddenly at her daughter's response and the small nostalgic bubble she perused popped. Had she been walking down the darkened castle corridor, stomping after a young Abraxas Malfoy as she tried to catch him misbehavior?
"You can't always help who you love, Cissy," her mother clipped, "but you decide who is allowed to be loved by you."
She crossed her arms over her chest. "I don't understand why you threw everything away for—for Cygnus Black. He tortured your brother. Abraxas said so—"
"Abraxas stretches the truth," Druella interrupted her and then continued methodically, "Abraxas is suffocating. Controlling. Intoxicating. A man that has never heard the word 'no' before—artfully selfish in his methods and his craving for the betterment of the world. An altruist, truly, blind against his ambition to make the future better, always looking onward and never minding the present. You think that I looked at Abraxas and did not notice how he craved an audience for his philosophy? We're thousands of loves he would say, proclaiming this or that. But when he said he loved me, he never quite looked me in the eyes."
Narcissa was breathless. She leaned against the armoire, bumping into it noisily as her mother's words poured out of her mouth. The truth fell heavy in the room.
"I married your father as an act of defiance. It was the only way that I could tell Abraxas no. It made him very angry," her mother said, "He threatened me. He wanted to possess me. You may not believe it, Narcissa, but marrying Cygnus Black—saying no to Abraxas—made me free."
"Then why," she said, her throat raw, tears in her eyes, "Did you fight so hard to manipulate Lucius? To make him fall in love with me when you detest his father?"
Druella's eyes watered. She had never seen her mother cry before. But neither women let the tears roll from their eyelids.
"I loved Abraxas," Druella corrected, an angry flash in her eyes, "but he didn't deserve me. He's a martyr, Cissy, to be sure, but not much of a hero. Says he can save you but does it in a way that would suit him best. Marrying me would have suited him. Conveniently, when he no longer had the ability, he blamed me. Tainted the image of his own marriage to me, forcing me to think that he was living out his marriage in the visage he made of our own relationship and would pretend to be happy in order to carry out his duty for his children. Abraxas creates a narrative where he is self-sacrificing and hardworking."
"Then why Lucius?" she asked, shaking, "Why have us wed? I don't understand the point of it all. If Abraxas was so terrible…"
She laughed softly and Narcissa glared at her impatiently. She turned her head and watched her daughter curiously.
"I liked the idea of a real challenge," she admitted coyly, "How do I get my youngest daughter who won't wear a corset, let alone stay the entire evening on the dance floor, to marry the richest and move eligible bachelor in England?"
Narcissa narrowed her eyes shrewdly. "No. The real reason you orchestrated all of this."
Druella crossed her legs and arranging her robe across her knee, letting the soft silk tumble to the floor beneath her chair. "Fine. You're old enough now, I think."
Narcissa nodded her head furtively for her mother to continue. Druella paused, for dramatics or uncertainty she wasn't sure, but when she finally spoke her voice was even.
"It was four years ago, I think. One evening, during one of the clubs I was hosting, Ophelia mentioned the anxiety she had over Lucius's incessant brooding, how lately he had been avoiding the dinner table and refusing to dance with suitors. Ditching parties and the like. Said she'd wake up in the mornings and he would just be standing under that giant, ugly tree in their garden, gnarled up thing it is. One morning it was raining, and she found him drenched, soaked to the bone, hair plastered all over his face and she thought he might kill himself—she said that, she was worried that his father's heavy burden to fall in love would drive him to the edge at fourteen."
Her mother slid open the drawer of her vanity and pulled out a silver brush. And in the corner, she produced a thin metal container. She opened it at the small clasp. Inside, there were self-rolled cigarettes. Narcissa hadn't even known she smoked, let alone that they were hidden there. Her mother placed one delicately in between her lips and lifted her wand to the tip to light it. Taking a long exhale, the smoke wafting peacefully from her mouth to the ceiling, she continued:
"Ophelia said he was too gentle for the world, like a painfully young baby bird with sinewy wings waiting to snap the first time he took a crack at flight. He was like his father, she said, sensitive and quick tempered, obsessive. But he was gentle too, like her, genuine. Soft. She said what he needed out of a wife more than anything was a steady hand to guide him. I told her there was only one girl like that in our whole society."
"Me," Narcissa commented lightly.
Druella took another drag and nodded deeply. "Yes. Good girl. She wanted Bellatrix at first, of course, she would bring a more exotic look to the light featured Malfoy line, but even then, I knew Bella's mental health was waning. The passion was draining from her and if we married her off to a family too high, they would come back at us for giving them bad breeding. But you are of sound mind. I convinced Ophelia that when you came of age and were presented to society that you and Lucius would marry."
"You arranged this when I was twelve," she said, "How did you know how I would turn out? What if I went mad? What if I turned out argumentative and impossible like Andromeda?"
"Narcissa, when you were an infant you only cried when you needed something," her mother remarked, smirking, "When you were three, you politely asked for scones and when you were told no, you accepted it and waited until the next opportunity presented itself and then you asked for them again in a different way. You knew instinctively when to take action and when to wait. You were you before you could remember."
Her mother waved her wand. A tray with two glasses and a dusty bottle of whiskey appeared before them. She uncorked the bottle and poured, then she offered Narcissa a glass. She crossed the room slowly and accepted it. Her mother pointed her wand at one of the chairs in between a table, pointed toward a large window. It slid across the room and stopped in front of the vanity. Narcissa delicately took a seat. Druella handed her one of the cigarettes softly and lit it for her.
"I was out in society looking for bachelors for a year before you became interested in Lucius though," Narcissa commented, "Why did you not immediately put us together?"
"Because Lucius still had too much time. I knew if he was like his father that he might change his mind if he was given options," she replied, "You think I was Abraxas's only love? He had many, more than I cared to keep track of while we were at school. Even when he claimed he was devoted to me; he was in empty classrooms with someone else."
"Why?" she asked, quizzically, "He's so obsessed with the concept of monogamy, of loving one person in 'every age' as he says."
Narcissa eyed the soft rolled cigarette in her hand and took the tiniest drag; it was supple and earthy, the smoke in her lungs burned. She understood how this could be relaxing, the sour tobacco mixed with the perfumed wood scent. She took a sip from her glass; the pair reminded her of a forest.
"Quite frankly, he was a teenage boy, and I would never have met him in one of those darkened rooms," she said, "I was obsessed with propriety and pureness, more than any Black ever has been."
She barked a laugh that was remarkably like the one she heard other members of her family do, like Bellatrix and Sirius and her Uncle Orion. She shook her shoulders softly and smiled, her face lit up with a serene kind of happiness.
"Tojours pur," her mother said in a sing-song voice.
"So, Abraxas Malfoy is actually a massive asshole," Narcissa surmised, biting her lip.
"Yes, but his wife reigns him in very nicely, something I was never willing to do," Druella said, "I never wanted to get my hands dirty, didn't want to smooth over his imperfections or make him a better man. What I wanted was low maintenance, a man that already whole. Ophelia loves projects."
"My father—was he whole?" she asked quietly.
A shadow of sadness crossed her mother's features. "Your father was stalwart, and he was always there for me. I confess it was not a passionate love affair cast into the stars. It was secret, something that got to be just ours, that Abraxas couldn't take or comprehend. Years of long talks and scheming walks through the garden and quiet moments all to ourselves where we weren't parents or husband and wife, but just what we were when we were together. I loved him. I didn't always feel it strongly, but I went to him when I wanted to be myself."
She softened. She did not know this version of her parents, who seemed at odds and separate from one another. Narcissa thought they loathed one another. They seemed instead like quiet companions, both very fond of their time spent alone and their time with one another.
"He knew everything," Druella said, "The arrangement with Ophelia. He knew all about Abraxas. He distrusted him and he was not keen on the idea of placing you with Lucius. He disagreed with the arrangement until the very end."
"Did Abraxas actually secure the estate away from Uncle Orion or did father…?" she asked softly.
Druella shrugged. "Your father made the hard choice and sacrificed his legacy for something more important. But I have no doubt Abraxas helped him come to those terms, surprisingly, with the same common goal. The only thing they might have had in common."
Something else bothered her, though. She thought it might upset her mother if she asked but she couldn't stop herself, she ashed the cigarette on the floating tray and took a deep breath. "Do you know who killed him, then?" she asked in a rush.
Her mother was quiet, her eyes averted to the soft threaded carpet. She took a drink from the glass and placed it onto the tray.
"Bella," she said at last.
"What?" Narcissa exclaimed, "How do you know?"
"Because she wrote to him repeatedly, sent him an owl the night he died and told him to remain behind," her mother said, "I knew something strange was going on. None of you spoke to him much and you never wrote."
"You won't tell anyone though," she guessed, "to protect her?"
"To protect us all," her mother replied sharply.
A twinge of horror went through her. Did her mother know about Lord Voldemort? Her mother was calculating and intelligent to be sure, but did she also somehow know about the secret wedding in the cave? The Dark Lord's first devotee, her sister, and Narcissa bared witness to it and took an Unbreakable Vow to never share their secret. A secret she could not, without dying, reveal to her mother now.
Druella drained her glass and stood up. She walked into her closet and reemerged a few moments later with a thick winter coat buttoned over her robe and boots in her hands.
"You had better dress quickly," she said, "If I guess correctly, you didn't have the good enough sense to read those letters alone, did you?"
Narcissa blushed pink and shook her head slowly. It seemed reasonable for she and Lucius to unravel the past together. She had not thought to keep that secret from him.
"Figured," she replied, "Then hurry, we might catch Lucius before he murders his father."
Her mother had not said it sarcastically, but with a noted seriousness to her tone that made Narcissa leap from the chair and sprint to her bedroom to change. She slipped the thick coat the Malfoy's had gifted her last year with the fox trim hood over her shoulders and buttoned it up as quickly as she could. She pulled socks on and tugged her boots onto her feet and ran into the hallway where her mother was waiting.
They Apparated to the Malfoy property line. Narcissa unwrenched her arm from her mother's as soon as they were on proper footing and she walked to the iron gate. The metal was cold and covered in ice. Snow powdered the ground evenly and it was completely silent in the Wiltshire countryside. The mansion loomed above them in the dark sky and as she touched the gate, a light went on in the second floor.
"That would be the bell to alert them we are here," Druella said softly.
After a few minutes, she felt the gate creek and break the ice wrapped around the hinges. They swung open slowly. Impatient, Narcissa slipped through the first open space she could fit through and her mother followed suit. They walked up the winding driveway quickly. If her mother had not been present, she would have sprinted up the drive from nerves alone, but she knew that even Druella Black would tell her to walk like a lady when they were trying to stop someone from being killed.
The massive double doors opened as they neared the door. Abraxas Malfoy, wrapped in a thick bathroom robe and his hair wildly askew, glared at them sleepily from the doorway.
"It's the middle of the night, Drue," he said, his voice warbling, the sound of exhaustion thick.
She sighed heavily and swept past him into the foyer, ignoring his complaints. Narcissa slipped through, wincing from embarrassment and trying not to apologize. Abraxas took in their appearance, the haphazard coats pulled over their nighttime attire and their oddly placed boots. His eyes widened with worry.
"What's happened?" he asked.
"I'm afraid," Druella began, but then she stopped.
She stared at the staircase and her eyes traveled upstairs.
"Is Ophelia awake?" she whispered.
"Merlin's sake, Drue, just what happened?" he hissed.
But she was still nervously sweeping her eyes along the stairs, as if Ophelia Malfoy would suddenly appear. Abraxas sighed heavily and gestured for them to follow him. They walked up the stairs silently, tip toeing in case of noise. The manor at night was cold and quiet except for the occasional creaking.
He brought them to his study and quickly let them inside. As they walked in, the fireplace burst to life and merrily crackled as if it had been burning for ages. Warmth seeped across the room. He didn't bother with any lamps and instead brought them over to the chairs surrounding the hearth. Narcissa glanced up at the portrait above the mantle of a long ocean and a ship; it was the perfect vantage point for the hidden passageway lookout that she and Lucius used to listen in on last year.
"Go on then," Abraxas said, slouching into his high backed leather chair and rubbing his eyes sleepily.
"I'm afraid our children stole something that belonged to me," her mother said.
"And?" he asked, dropping his hand onto the arm rest, "What do you want, dear? Reimbursement? Did Lucius trip down some stairs and crash into a Black family heirloom? Maybe a vase full of Cygnus's mum's knickers…"
"Letters," Druella replied tactfully, her expression tight and serious, "Letters from our years in Hogwarts and thereafter, Abraxas. Letters that incriminate your marriage and your good reputation."
He narrowed his eyes shrewdly, and then crossed one leg over his knee. "Very well. You didn't think to destroy them after all this time?"
"No, Abraxas, sometimes when you beguile me into believing something different, I like to look back on our past to remind me whom I'm dealing with," Druella retorted, a frozen smile crossing her features.
"I wasn't aware you still held a torch for me," Abraxas replied deftly, his eyes suddenly calculating, "Over eighteen years, Druella, and you still can't let go. Can't say I'm surprised, husband like yours…"
Narcissa rolled her eyes and stood up from her seat. "While the two of you both flirt and insult each other, I am going to find Lucius, since no doubt he's undone about the fact that his parents' marriage is a lie. I'm sure he's quite angry too, about how you burdened him with the duty of finding his soulmate and to uphold a reputation of strong bonds when you yourself lied about loving your wife, Mr. Malfoy. Excuse me."
She floated across the study and wrenched open the door. Before she left, she heard Abraxas mutter bitterly:
"Well she certainly got that bit from you, Druella…"
In the cold empty corridor however, it was difficult for Narcissa to know where he would be. Certainly, he went home after he left her bedroom, enraged and She had not considered he might not want to be near his parents at all. Was he nursing a drink at the Leaky Cauldron where she could not find him? He was an adult after all, nothing would have stopped him from going anywhere in the world…
His bedroom was empty and appeared undisturbed. He spent the week with her and there were no obvious disturbances to his room. She opened the balcony doors and walked out into night. The garden lights were out, but she could still see the shadow of the ancient tree illuminated against the darkness. The branches were covered in a soft powder of snow and when the wind picked up the branches creaked menacingly.
Sighing heavily, she left his bedroom and padded down the corridor. The door to the study was cracked, and light from the fireplace poured into the hall. She stopped in front of the door, her eyes sweeping back across the dark parts of the room to ensure he wasn't in the room.
She turned back to the hearth and stared. Druella stood up, her back tensed with anger, arms folded across her chest. And with a brazen look upon his face, Abraxas stood up and he kissed her, his hands cupping her face. Narcissa's eyes, wide as saucers, watched her mother wrench away from him and slap him so hard in the face that the sound reverberated across the room. A reddened handprint was visible on his face even from Narcissa's view from the slant of the door.
Narcissa jolted down the stairs. She was uncertain of where the secret passage was, but she remembered where it had ended. They had come out by the entrance hall closet. She found the space in the wall, the stone had tiny, almost imperceptible spaces in between the next stone, and she could feel a cold breeze. She touched the stone felt around until she pulled a candle sconce on the wall. The stone slowly opened, and she slipped through the door.
The stairs were narrow and more difficult to walk up than they were coming down. She was sweating and panting in her winter coat, so she pulled it off and carried it the rest of the way. The passage way curved into a small landing and as she came up the stairs, she saw Lucius sitting in a chair that appeared to have come from their dining room. Bast was curled on the floor by his feet, and he was reading as he listened to the conversation from the study. He had placed a charm on the portrait to project the sound to be much louder than she knew their parents were speaking, as their voices filtered through the tiny alcove as if they were mere feet from them.
"Lucius," she whispered, panting through an angry stitch in her side.
He pressed his fingers to his lips and flipped the page of his book. She watched his hands, which were usually more telling than his expressions, but found his grasp quite even and still. She crept closer and sat on the floor to listen. She gathered Bast into her arms and held him to her chest, comforted by his immediate pur.
"…I have always loved Ophelia, that's not a question," Abraxas said.
"You don't betray people you love, as I have told you before," her mother said.
"I haven't betrayed her at all, I simply love you both," he said, exasperated, "I have always loved you. Coveted you. Adored you. You were my first love, Drue, and you married Cygnus and it felt like I was dying. Ophelia and I were destined to be together; I believe this now. I was misguided. But you are my constant, my confident and friend. I have misplaced this for love more than once in our lifetime. I'm sorry I kissed you, it was disrespectful."
"I won't stand behind you like this," Druella snapped, "I won't be your mistress. I will not stand for impropriety. Touch me again and I'll hex whatever part of you is nearest. I'm a widow, Abraxas! My husband was just buried."
"Your husband was Cygnus Black," Mr. Malfoy said, scoffing.
"It doesn't matter if my husband is Cygnus Black or you, Abraxas, there is a proper grieving period," her mother snapped, "You would understand that if you weren't such—"
Lucius waved his wand and their voices drifted to scratching whispers behind the wall.
"There's two decades of squabbles in them and I don't think we will get any nearer to the truth than his final letter," he announced tacitly.
He shut the book and Narcissa eyed the cover. It was a log book with the Malfoy seal across the front, clearly, she thought, stolen from his father's study. Lucius stood up and the chair underneath him disappeared. She followed him as we walked up the staircase to the higher levels of passageways.
"For centuries my family have married in front of that authoritative tree and carved their names into the stones," Lucius announced.
The cat snoozing against Narcissa's chest lifted his lamp like eyes for a moment and then stretched one paw out and nestled against her arms again.
"It's the Malfoy way," he continued, turning sharply left.
The passage was an even flooring now, adjunct to the stairs. This must have been how the house elves navigated the mansion, she realized. Unseen and out of the way. This must have also been how Lucius disappeared during dinner parties too. The passages seemed to be connected, but their hiding places were still a mystery to her except for one. After a long walk, they seemed to be on the other side of the house. Lucius took the stairs and walked down them. He tapped his wand against a piece of stone wall, marked by the familiar rune she had seen last year at the exit of the door in the foyer.
The wall curved out and when they stepped through, they were in the dining room next to the head of the table. Lucius swiftly walked from the dining room to the ballroom. She knew then where he was headed, and she had half an idea of what he was about to do. She placed Bast gently onto the floor and kissed his head.
"Go on then, it's much too cold for you outside," she murmured, and then she ran to catch up with her fiancé.
She met up with him on the veranda, the wide sprawling wooden porch which in the summer was bursting with potted flowers. It was cold and bare, none of Ophelia's lounging chairs or tables were here. The garden itself was asleep, deep in hibernation and covered in a thick swath of snow.
Narcissa pulled her coat over her shoulders and twisted her arms through and buttoned it. Lucius hardly seemed to notice the cold.
"So, you're going to destroy it, I get that part," Narcissa said as she followed him through the maze of hedges, "Will it really help? I mean, the tree is a symbol, but it doesn't provide an actual solution. Our parents were still in love and they married other people to spite each other. And somewhere they did fall in love with their spouses, but it's true. It came from a place of hatred and regret, like all arranged marriages…"
They wound their way through the last bit of hedge and the tree came forward in full view, breathtaking and overlarge. She would be sad to see it destroyed, she realized. After all, she had grown up with it, practically memorized each gnarl and limb swaying in the breeze. In winter it slept, but she knew in spring the massive tree would come back to them and burst electric blossoms. And the petals would cover the garden, blow through the wind and perfume the outside air with its striking beauty. To see it in flames, she realized, would sadden her a great deal.
Lucius placed the book at the base of the tree and the wind flipped the pages wildly until he waved his wand and it settled on the last page. The aging signatures of his parents were written there in soft ink in the pages, and the Malfoys before them had each written their names and the dates in which they were married. To burn the book too, Narcissa realized, would mean that the proof of his legacy would also be destroyed. She sighed heavily, feeling the weight of what they were about to do.
"I thought that running would make me happy," he said, turning toward her, "That if I held out long enough and avoided my destiny that I would be happy in the interim and I could piece out meaning and myself in the spaces between childhood and marriage. The idea that I had to find my soulmate in a short few years and know that she was the one by the time I was seventeen was both staggering and impossible. I anguished for years over it, long before I should have. I believed myself to be cursed."
"I know," Narcissa breathed softly, a horrid longing filling her chest.
She knew the dread of the future well. She had been running from it for as long as she could remember too.
"And then to discover that my own father lied," Lucius said, anguish crossing his features, "I suffered so much under this philosophy, that love and only love could save me. I was supposed to find true love when my father probably picked my mother from a bloody list at random, perhaps intrigued by her intelligence and finesse with languages, but mostly because she wasn't your mother."
She winced, as if it was somehow her fault that Abraxas loved Druella Black. "She was right for him in the end, Lucius, you have to know that. My mother said—"
"I don't believe either one of them," he interjected calmly, "There are two versions of the story and frankly, I think both of them are irrelevant. My life was steeped in their history, hidden in the shadows. Yours was as well. Do you not feel their anger? Their despair? Their lost love has us here, at least. They orchestrated our marriage to rekindle something they could never have."
"But they didn't," Narcissa said quickly, feeling tears well into her eyes. He was in pain, he was suffering, but she could do nothing to soothe him. "Your mother and mine planned the whole thing with mine four years ago. I had no idea until tonight. It wasn't your father at all; it was your mother. She wanted you to be happy. She wanted you to be with me."
The tree creaked above them and then they heard a snap. Narcissa turned around. Ophelia Malfoy crossed the distance between them.
"That's right," she said, looking cheerful in royal blue silk robes and a winter coat.
She paused and looked at the record log on the ground, then her eyes trailed up to the tree. She pulled out her wand and pointed it at the tree. Narcissa felt a chasm of fear in her body, her heart thudding, but instead small orange lamps appeared above the tree, lighting the garden in a soft, almost summer hue.
Lucius stared at his mother for a long moment before he nodded.
"Then I won't do this out of anger," he murmured, and turned toward her and held out his hand.
She took it willingly, trusting, without thinking. She thought she might distract him from his sorrow and perhaps from his destructive desire to burn his legacy to the ground.
"When I left, I thought about many things," he said, "About hurting my father, about razing my home and this tree. I thought if my father could see my rage manifested that he would understand, and then I listened to the way he spoke with your mother and I knew that no matter what you might say to him, he doesn't actually hear you. He only understands what he wants to."
"I don't understand," she said, shivering from the harsh winter air, "Why are we here then?"
"To childishly act out in defiance of my father's stupid legacy," Lucius replied.
Ophelia took her by the shoulders and repositioned Narcissa to the side to face Lucius before the tree, and Lucius grasped her hands. She was suddenly and painfully aware that she stopped breathing from shock.
He wasn't going to destroy the tree at all.
"We come together tonight to witness the marriage of Narcissa Black and Lucius Malfoy," Ophelia said, smiling excitedly as she pulled her wand from her cloak.
"Lucius," Narcissa muttered, warningly.
He smiled at her sheepishly in response.
"Both of you must pledge to honor, trust, and love one another," Ophelia said, her soft, flowery lilt warming the cold winter air around them, "Do you vow to always be faithful and honest, devoted and true to one another both in sickness and health, over the many roads of life, until death?"
"I do," Lucius said.
"I do," Narcissa said, her voice shaking.
Thin silk ribbons wound over their hands and Ophelia waved her wand. She watched them braid rapidly and flow across her hands in the soft glow of the light from the trees. She was frozen to her core and snow picked up and swirled around them.
"I pronounce you husband and wife," Mrs. Malfoy said, tapping her wand again.
The ribbons fell from her hand and turned to tiny snowflakes, which Narcissa watched catch in the wind and flutter through the limbs of trees. She watched Ophelia turn and point her wand to the book. Their names glowed against the pages and scribbled across the columns.
And there her name was written, Narcissa Black, in the soft curling handwriting of Ophelia Malfoy. The edges of dawn drifted against the tree lines and Narcissa could scarcely breathe. Lucius reached for her at once and kissed her then, beneath the flickering shadow of the ancient tree. When they parted, she realized tears were welling up in his eyes, and she watched them spill down his cheeks as he looked at her. She stared, suspended in time, more in love with him than she even understood.