Saturday, 25 August 1973
It had been three weeks since the wedding, and Narcissa had stopped lingering hopefully by the the fireplace during the day in hopes of a floo; she even barely felt a spark of anticipation when the elf brought her the daily post. Bitterly, she rather wondered if he'd yet returned, and if so, whether he had even noticed her absence. Her fingers moved across the ivory keys of her piano, the one she'd had since childhood, and the only thing that felt different than when she'd played here last was the weight of the gold and diamond on her left hand. She found a familiar tune, the most famous aria of Gianni Schicchi, and she sang mindlessly. Since she had no formal operatic training and her soprano voice was not strong, but still pleasant enough to her own ears to fill a lonely summer afternoon.
"La chanteuse." A warm hand came to rest gently on her shoulder, and she ceased playing at once.
"Michel!" she exclaimed, in pleased surprise. "Monsieur Perrot," she amended with quick, flustered uncertainty, causing him to laugh. She was rather mortified by her behaviour during his last visit; though once a dear friend, they had not spoken in years and she should not have acted so familiarly.
"Non, ma chère Narcissa, I will always be your Michel, as when we were children."
"I am rather embarrassed," she confessed, but nonetheless briefly rested her cheek upon his hand with affection as she gazed up at him. "I've not sung for company since I was a girl. My mother felt it unsuitable for a lady to perform even before friends. Perhaps she feared I would wish to appear on the stage," she laughed ruefully.
"Perhaps you should have," he offered flippantly, moving to sit to her right, close to her on the bench. Narcissa gave him an odd look at this suggestion— no woman of her class and blood status would ever consider such a thing— but he did not appear to notice as he shuffled through the sheet music to locate a new piece. "Let us play this," he declared, setting the pages before her. It was Schubert's Fantasia in F minor, written for four hands rather than two, and she blushed slightly. It was commonly known that the music had been written for and dedicated to the composer's unrequited love, by its very nature an intimate act to perform with another pianist.
She nodded and placed her fingers on the keys, but it was not a piece she knew well and moreover Narcissa found that she was suddenly terribly nervous. Though his was the more difficult section it was she who faltered more frequently. Only a few minutes in she moved at precisely the wrong moment, tangling the fingers of her right hand with his left. He stopped playing at once and snatched her hand up, pressing its back to his lips with a bright laugh.
"I... I'm afraid I'm rather out of practice," she apologised haltingly, blinking in confusion at the small fluttering in her stomach the gesture had evoked.
"It takes time to learn to play with another person; you must practice with that same musician over and over, one partner is not interchangeable with another no matter how well you play or know the music. You must learn to move in sync so the notes find harmony and truly blossom." She was already nodding in agreement when he added carelessly, "It is not unlike making love."
Color flooded her cheeks and she stood abruptly to step away from the piano, but he ignored her discomfiture and began to play another song, familiar enough that he did not need to find it in her songbook and he spoke over the melody as his fingers moved in easy elegance. "Hogwarts does not have music classes anyway, I think?"
Narcissa was still very nearly too flustered to reply and watched him continue to play Für Elise for several more seconds before managing to shake her head. "No, nothing like that."
"I thought as much," he went on easily. "We had art classes as well, both the creation and study of its history, and theatre electives. I think you would have been very happy with the courses at Beauxbatons, a creative magical soul truly could flourish there, and there is no doubt you are an artist."
Despite herself, Narcissa could not help to find herself drawn in by his descriptions and sat on a nearby chaise. "I should say I would have enjoyed that very much. We had only History of Magic, taught by a long-dead professor whose course material focused far too heavily upon goblin uprisings."
Michel wrinkled his nose distastefully. "Hogwarts is too militant a school. Not, of course, as brutal as Durmstrang in such matters, but to have an entire subject devoted to Dark magic and defending oneself against it! No, our education was concerned with elevating the minds of students, not preparing them for combat."
Despite her affection for her own alma mater, she could not deny the appeal of what he described. He finished with his song but continued playing Beethoven, the Moonlight Sonata now. Spotting her thoughtful expression, he asked, "Do you miss school?" When she hesitated in answering, he modified the wording slightly to clarify his meaning. "Do you miss the companionship you had there?"
"There is nothing so bad as parting with one's friends," Narcissa said wistfully, switching momentarily to English and thinking of the many she'd left, not just after finishing school, but in coming here as well. Michel cocked his head curiously.
"This is a quote?" he guessed, and she nodded sheepishly.
"From a… an author called Austen," she affirmed evasively, wishing she had not spoken.
"I do not know him," he announced without shame. "Will you loan me something of his work?"
"Her," she corrected tentatively. "And I ought not. She was a Muggle." She found herself blushing once more as she stared at her hands and made her confession. "I know I should eschew all non-magical writings but some of the stories are..."
"Beautiful," he finished for her. He stopped playing at last and moved to sit next to her on the lounge. "Oui, I know. I enjoy many of their stories as well. Dumas, Voltaire… I know your family is very against such things," he added. "It is a peculiarity of the old British lines, I think. My family is very old too, but we do not worry so much about these things. We do not compile lists of thirty five holy families—"
"The Sacred Twenty-Eight," she corrected laughingly.
"Yes, that, and we do not marry Moldus of course, but Grindelwald showed us it is dangerous to pit ourselves against them. 'Live and let live' wrote John Ray, a Moldu Anglaise, I believe?"
"Yes," Narcissa agreed cautiously, "But he said that before the International Statute of Secrecy. Muggles have become a menace in recent years. It's really not the sort of thing I should be reading."
Michel shrugged, unruffled. "We cannot pick and choose, I think. What I find beautiful I enjoy, and I care very little for its origins. A non-magique novel, a magical painting, a bird in song, a winding river, an exquisite woman..." He studied her for a moment before adding, "Beauty is what gives you peace and pleasure. Why doubt it simply because of its source?"
"Spoken as a true aesthete," she teased, swallowing her deeper concerns of his nonchalance. It was one thing to privately indulge as a guilty pleasure, and quite another to openly admit that Muggles could create true, laudable art. Music was a slightly different matter; most of her favorite composers were half-bloods, and their vanity had encouraged them to share their masterpieces with wizards and Muggles alike. As far as she understood, the Muggles thought these men to simply be brilliant members of their own species. This was especially preposterous in the case of Ludwig van Beethoven, who had been cursed in a duel in 1798 and left deaf, able only to hear with an enchanted ear trumpet and hence his ability to write all his subsequent compositions remained intact. However the listening device had been clearly magical and could not be used in front of Muggles— as far as she understood, the Muggles believed he withdrew from society and all of his later works had been written despite his inability to hear.
In general, many of the same songs hence became popular in both realms, and the intangible nature of music made it very difficult to contain in any regard. Muggle paintings, static and simplistic, held no appeal to her at all, but books fell into a grey area. She certainly detested any tales of magical and non-magical blood mingling, but most Muggle fiction dealt only with romances among their own kind, and so eliminated the element of grotesque perversion that she so disdained.
Still, to openly praise them! To steer the subject away from such a delicate matter, she stood once more. "Come," she suggested mildly. "The weather is lovely today. Shall we go for a walk?"
Thursday, 13 September 1973
Narcissa was reading in the gardens when she first heard it— a clear, bright whistle, perfectly reminiscent of a songbird, except—
"I can think of no bird that knows Mozart," she laughed, turning towards the thicket of hemlock trees from whence the tune emerged. "And you dared to call me a chanteuse!"
Michel appeared from the grove moments later, grinning. "Peut-on vivre sans amant?" he sang the final line of the verse he'd been whistling as he strode towards the seat where she was perched. His own estate, where he lived with his parents and younger sister, was perhaps two miles west, and cutting through the deciduous forest that separated the properties was the most direct route to hers. He was dressed in a white silk shirt and brown jodhpurs with riding boots, and his black curls were windswept and rakishly tangled; clearly he'd been out on the Aethenons earlier. "I shall always warn you of my approach with a song," he swore, dropping to one knee before her and clasping her hand. "Tell me, ma belle, what are we reading today?"
Beaming at the sight of his shining gaze, Narcissa showed him the volume she'd been flipping through; he exclaimed in delight. "The Idylls of the King! Well, you know my English is not perfect, but I will read to you from Lancelot and Elaine; it it my favorite. I am particularly fond of the line— how is it? 'I know not if I know what true love is, but I know then if I love not her, I know there is none other I can love.'" He reached for her cheek as he recited the words, stroking it with a tender brush of his fingertips. Narcissa pinked and relinquished the collection of poems, but could not help but to correct his recitation:
"'Him.' The line is 'if I love not him;' it's Elaine speaking of Lancelot."
"Oui, I know, ma chérie. But I am in love with a 'her', not a 'him,' so I edited the verse to my own purposes."
Her flush deepened but he spared her the embarrassment of responding by settling in the grass by her feet, one arm bent to cradle his head and the other hand holding open the book. "Narcissa ze fair, Narcissa ze loveable, Narcissa ze leely maid of Asolat—" he began in heavily accented English.
"Arrêtez!" she cried laughingly. "Stop, it's a sad story; I don't want to hear my own name in it."
"Fair enough," he conceded, dimpling up at her and squinting through the sunshine. "Your own story will not be a sad one."
At his words her face fell somewhat, eyes casting down to the rings upon her left hand. "Is it not already one of bitter disappointment?" she asked softly. He waved her self-pity aside.
"A little so far, perhaps, but you are far too young and beautiful to stay sad for too long. No woman half so charming as yourself can fear of living a life unloved. It is simply not possible."
Narcissa sighed, her heart heavy at his optimistic words. "I'm married, Michel," she felt the need to remind him, "to a man four hundred miles away who seems to despise me. Or at the very least cares so little for my whereabouts that he cannot be bothered to even recall me to his side."
"And so?" Michel sat up slowly, and made a show of craning his neck to look in all directions of the garden. "I do not see him here. I think he will not bother us."
Narcissa tried to frown in reprimand but could not keep a small smile from twisting her lips. "The fact that he is not here," she pointed out reasonably, "Does not make me any less married, you know."
"Ah! I think here in France we are far less concerned with things like this. After all, if a sensible husband never thinks of marriage, why should his wife?"
Now she did smile fully. "I don't think that's what Alexandre Dumas meant with those words."
Michel rolled over onto his stomach, propping himself up onto his elbows and squinting up at her. "You worry too much, I think." Carelessly, he toyed with the hem of her gown as he spoke, the cornflower silk slipping fluidly between his fingers. "I think I know what might cheer you up. We will go riding tomorrow, yes? Faustine shall come as well. She is jealous that I have spent so much time here this past month, and she returns to school in a few days."
"Yes," Narcissa agreed at once. "That would be lovely, I've not seen you sister since she was small. She must be... fourteen now?"
"Fifteen, and she will be thrilled. She has wanted for some time to see you, but I must confess, I selfishly wanted your attentions all for myself. I was not sure how long I would have you here."
Narcissa sighed again, but now it was not entirely with unhappiness. "Indefinitely, it seems." The week before, she had received word at last from her new husband. It had read about as romantically as an Arithmancy essay. It spelled out the details of her monthly allowance (she'd been surprised by the generosity of it, and he included an instruction to simply inform him in the even she had an uncommon expense and needed more), asked her to send out owls thanking the witches and wizards who'd attended their wedding and given them gifts (she had of course already done this), and a brief note at the foot of the parchment confirmed that he had, in fact, returned to London. There was no hint he desired that she do the same.
"Good," Michel replied firmly, and lifted the book once more and resumed reading aloud. Her eyes slid shut, lulled by his soft voice, and she tilted her face up to be warmed by the sunshine. If her husband did not want her at his side, surely there could be no harm in enjoying this?
Monday, 3 December 1979
"Bella!" Narcissa's heart was pounding and she knew she must look like a madwoman, but for once, she didn't care. She pounded on the door again, unwilling to accept that fact the her sister might not be home; not when she so desperately needed to see her. "Bellatrix!" she cried again, hitting the heavy ebony door with a flat palm when her knuckles began to ache. "Bella, you must—" and the door opened at last, and relief flooded her, as though somehow seeing Bellatrix would reverse the news she'd received that morning.
"Oh thank Circe, I—" but it was not her sister who greeted her.
"What do you want, Narcissa?" For once Rodolphus was not grinning down at her with misplaced glee, but this was hardly the most startling thing about his current appearance. He stood in the entryway shirtless and scowling, and had what seemed to be a bullwhip looped carelessly around his arm and resting upon his shoulder. Despite her fine upbringing and deeply ingrained manners, she could not help but to stare for several long seconds. Somehow, paradoxically, being unclothed made his already huge frame seem even larger than usual, heavily muscled and imposing. Scars from long-healed wounds scored his torso, their faint iridescence evidence that the marks came from curses and magical injury. The inside of his left forearm bore the same skull and snake that her husband wore, but his right arm was heavily tattooed as well, beginning just below his elbow and covering his bicep, spilling over onto his chest until the markings were obscured by dense, dark, curling hair. There were several purely decorative images— a exquisitely realistic raven, the sigil of his family, stretched its wings and shuffled ominously beneath his collar bone— but most looked to be far more primitive: runes carved into his skin and rubbed with black pigment before being left to heal without the aid of magic, resulting in raised inscriptions. Narcissa recognized some of the symbols; it seemed he had placed defensive and protective wards on his wand arm, and spells to enhance the power of his casting. She'd read about such things, but the barbaric practice had died out a thousand years ago with the end of warring magical tribes. Supposedly the pain was nearly unendurable, and positive effects negligible if there were any at all.
"I—" she was truly at a loss for words and blurted the first thought that came to her mind. "Don't you have your elf answer the door?"
He gave her a long, measured stare, still unsmiling. She had always found his inappropriately-timed laugher to be unnerving, but in its absence, real fear thudded in her throat as she beheld her brother-in-law. She tried to assess his physicality in less alarming terms; beneath the scarring and tattoos, she reasoned, he looked like classical statuary— not a slim-hipped Apollo or a effeminate David; but a contrapposto Jupiter, Neptune of Bologna, or the Farnese Hercules. Though of course, these were not her favorite works of art. Even cast in bronze or sculpted from marble she'd always found them somewhat intimidating. Slowly he reached into his pocket— she flinched despite his languor— but he merely withdrew a package of cigarettes. Never taking his eyes from her face, he struck it thrice against the heel of his other palm to pack the tobacco.
"I sent the elf on an errand," he replied at last, opening the box and plucking one of its occupants from within. He brought the cigarette to his lips, and she realized suddenly that he was gleaming with sweat, as though she'd interrupted him in the middle of some sort of vigorous exercise. His chocolate brown hair was darkened with it, clinging to his temples and staying slicked back when he ran his hand through it. Rodolphus drew his wand and this time Narcissa did take a step back and reached instinctively for her own, but he merely conjured a small flame to use as a light before stowing it once more. "My wife isn't here either." He took a long, slow drag, eyeing her with an unreadable expression. "This isn't a good time. You should go."
At his words, Narcissa recalled why she'd come with painful acuity. "Do you know when she'll be back?" she half-pleaded. Rodolphus raised an eyebrow at the trace of desperation in the question.
"I don't." A cloud of smoke accompanied the words, and she waved it away impatiently.
"It's important," she insisted, "or I wouldn't have come."
"I'm sure it's not," he scoffed, and she bristled at the dismissive condescension. However, before she could reply, a high thin wail split the silence from inside the mansion. Narcissa's eyes widened, and Rodolphus made a sound of irritation. "I told you this was a bad time," he offered simply as explanation, taking another drag of his cigarette and glancing over his shoulder with annoyance.
"What in Circe's name—" Narcissa breathed, her fingers drifting towards the pocket of her robes that contained her wand.
"Wouldn't do that if I were you, Cissy," he spoke almost apologetically, his eyes snapping to her hand. "Bella will be furious if I have to curse you."
"Please!" A hysterical female voice rose from the annals of the house. "I'm locked in here, please help me!"
"Who is that?" Narcissa demanded, though she resisted the urge to draw her wand; she was sure Rodolphus's threat was not an empty one.
"An acquaintance with a piece of critical information that she's been rather unwilling to share," he replied coolly, stepping out of the doorframe towards Narcissa and closing the door behind him with a firm click, cutting off the screams. "I've been tasked with encouraging her to do so."
Narcissa shuddered but did not press the matter. "It's Regulus," she managed at last, accepting at last that she would not be able to share this new with her sister as she had hoped. "This morning my aunt went into the drawing room and a date of death had appeared on the family tapestry." She blinked furiously upon speaking the news out loud, hating that it was brother-in-law with whom she was sharing the raw information.
Rodolphus's expression remained inscrutable as he finished his cigarette and flicked the butt carelessly away. "Well," he sighed at last. "That's a disappointment."
Her eyes raced to his face in disbelief that he would be so blasé. "Can't you tell me it isn't true? What happened to him? If he was killed, where's his body? He's just a child, he's only eighteen…" Narcissa's voice broke and she began to shake. Rodolphus withdrew and lit another cigarette.
"I don't know what happened to him," he muttered darkly, distractedly. "Gods, but Bella is going to be livid when she hears."
"Why would she be angry?" demanded Narcissa, her tone full of accusation.
"Honestly? Because he probably killed himself. He's been… off, lately. Not exactly living up to the hopes we had for him, if you want the truth." He spoke matter-of-factly, but Narcissa found that she didn't want the truth after all.
"How can you say that? He's five months out of school, you should be helping him, not putting demands on him that no child—"
"He isn't a child!" Rodolphus interrupted loudly. "My brother was sixteen when he took the Mark, I was seventeen, your sister eighteen. The issue was not your cousin's age, it was his cowardice and lack of commitment. And what of yours?" In a flash before she could duck away he seized her chin, his large hand locking her jaw in a vice grip, and forced her to meet his gaze. Accustomed to years of Legilimency attacks from Bellatrix, Narcissa was no stranger to what he was doing, but she was feeling overwrought and more than a little distressed and unable to keep him at bay. She felt him force his way past her hasty mental barriers and penetrate deeply, violently into her mind, as carelessly rough in this realm as the physical one. Images swam before her eyes unbidden, memories of Regulus as a child, but more overwhelming were the waves of emotion his assault dragged to the surface— bereavement, loneliness, and a suffocating sense of terror.
He released her after what felt like an eternity but was actually perhaps fifteen seconds, his hand moving to her upper arm to steady her when she staggered back. When he was sure she would remain upright on her own accord, he removed his hand entirely and crossed his arms, leaning back against the door. She wasn't sure if he'd found what he was looking for, but was shocked by his next question.
"Why haven't you told Lucius that you're pregnant again?"
"I… it's still early," she stammered. "We've had a bit of a row and I… I don't want to discuss it," she snapped, fighting to regain her composure. Rodolphus shrugged and ashed his cigarette before taking another slow drag.
"You're afraid," he breathed an acrid halo. "How many is it you've lost?"
Her shoulders sagged. "Six," she confessed, her voice cracking; there was no point in hiding it any longer. "Lucius knows about three of them."
There was a long silence. Rodolphus looked uncomfortable as he stared past her; his irritation had gone, and he put the cigarette to his lips once more. Narcissa opened her mouth to announce her departure, but he did not see and spoke first.
"Bella got pregnant once, you know," he blurted gruffly. "Her seventh year. I came to visit on a Hogsmeade weekend, she wasn't expecting me and I'd forgotten to take a potion before I left that morning." He hesitated. "She got rid of it though. Children aren't everything."
Narcissa blinked. She was sure she would be offended and hurt and angry when she looked back on this moment, but for the time being she only stare, stunned that anyone could say something so completely and utterly wrong and inappropriate in an attempt to offer some semblance of reassurance.
"I'm going to leave," she managed at last and Rodolphus nodded, looking relieved.
"I'll tell Bella she should contact you when she returns. And good luck with…" he gestured vaguely towards her midsection with his cigarette.
"Right. Good luck with…" she waved towards the door, behind which she was certain a brutalized woman was still screaming for help.