If anyone's wondering, the roses are black baccarat roses and they mean something like 'my love is eternal/goes beyond death'. I liked the meaning, and dark roses are gorgeous anyway.

The Sweet Smell of Roses

She hadn't meant to love him. Narcissa knew that no woman of her station for love – well, her sister Andromeda had, but Andromeda had also lost her station that day – and she had been resigned from the moment she had been old enough to understand that she'd have to marry, that love would come, if it ever did, after everything else.

She had been five when her mother and father had introduced her to her betrothed, five when Lucius' eyes had dismissed her even as he greeted her with a polite smile, a sixth year old child pretending to be grown already, following after his father dutifully.

She had been five when she had thought that her marriage was doomed before the start.

Thankfully, Lucius would come to prove her wrong every time.

.x.

They didn't speak much before Narcissa turned fifteen, the age at which a courting could properly begin. A word here and there, greetings when they saw each other in the Common Room or the corridors, a whispered indication for a Charm or Transfiguration essay due the next day.

Which was why it took her so much by surprise when Lucius' personal owl delivered her a black rose one Friday morning – her favorite flowers – along with an invitation to Hogsmeade printed on parchment that might even be finer than the one her family used.

Lucius stood up, something of a smile in his eyes, and spoke.

"Would you do me the honor of being my date to the next Hogsmeade week-end?"

Narcissa's heart fluttered in her chest. "I would," she replied softly, her fingers slowly caressing the thorns he hadn't taken care to cut. "Thank you for the flower," she added with a hint of a smile.

"Of course," Lucius responded. "They're your favorites, aren't they?"

"Yes," she said. She didn't ask how he knew: they were in Slytherin - she could think of a hundred ways he could have learned that information. Still, that he had taken the time to find out touched something in her, and she felt something unfurl slowly inside her, a delicate thing she hadn't know she could feel.

With a nod, Lucius went back to his seat.

That very afternoon, Narcissa went to the Library and looked up a spell to preserve objects.

She cast it on the flower, and put this first gift in the crystal vase her parents had gifted her with.

(she spelled the flower everlasting but in truth she hoped to spell something else everlasting: this burgeoning feeling growing inside her chest, tendrils fragile and tiny still, but already strong)

(what a thing it could be, if she let it grow)

Before the promised date came, she had filled that vase with more black roses than it could carry – she had had to enchant the vase as well as the flowers to keep them all in one place.

She smelled them every night before falling asleep, and let that smell lull her to sleep.

It felt like they were telling her a story, giving her hope.

You were wrong, the flowers said in her dreams.

I know, Narcissa replied.

She smiled then, always waking up before anything else could happen.

That didn't matter though – after all, she had a date to prepare for, and the rest of her life to look forward to.