Chapter Eleven
My sister's new manor was situated at the edge of a cliff overlooking Wringcliff Bay. It was small, scarcely large enough to host more than fifteen people for a dinner party, but it was evident my mother's efforts in design and decoration elevated it beyond its humble frame. I suppose my sister chose the location for the seclusion and beauty, for at the north of the house faced the Bay, and the view on the other side was that of rolling pastoral hills. Proper country farmland. Muggles toured the prehistoric rock formations just down the lane, but her own home was charmed from their notice.
The Tudor style home bore the name LESTRANGE in rustic lettering on a rock by the driveway. It was just after dark when I arrived and walked up the curling pebbled lane up the hill to her house. I wondered what Andromeda's home might have looked like. A marriage to Candra Zabini would have been lucrative. They were old money, like my family, and any whim she had would have been answered by her dutiful new in-laws. My eldest sister's match was remarkably less fortunate.
And mine was non-existent. I was alone, yet I did not feel lonely.
I knocked on the front door and a blinking red eye swivelled open and stared at me. The door was enchanted carefully, and must have cost a fortune, but it was precisely the level of macabre my sister would aspire to.
"Ah," the door said, "Miss Narcissa Black, welcome in…"
The door opened for me. As I entered, I heard a scream and sidestepped just in time for a clear vase full of peonies to explode against the back of the door. Glass shattered across the small foyer with white and black checker patterned tile, and the pink flower buds and long stems fell limp in front of my feet. A pool of water filled the lines of tile and bled across the floor.
Shouting echoed above me and I looked up to find my sister and her newly minted beau on the first-floor hallway, near the railing, in some sort of fight. I could not make out the argument or the language; it seemed they were mostly making guttural, hissing noises at each other from my place on the main floor. My sister had no access to her wand. Otherwise, I thought, my brother-in-law would have been obliterated. She was an expert duellist; I had never met anyone who could best her. I likely never would.
I cleared my throat loudly, which caught both their attention. My sister heaved a heavy and ornately framed oil landscape painting from the wall and threw it over the railing. I watched it arc and fall until it hit the foyer floor. The wooden frame splintered and cut the delicate canvas.
"Narcissa! Thank Merlin you are here!" Rodolphus exclaimed, "Bella, Bella, now you must calm down, your little sister is here."
"I am perfectly calm," my sister replied, in her low and drawling voice.
Bellatrix was often perceived as mad by those who did not understand her. The trouble was that she was perfectly capable of sanity. She spoke five languages, was an accomplished musician, could draw and paint in almost every medium in addition to other vital crafts. She could sew and embroider. She was an expert duellist and a perfect dancer. My sister was more than capable of upholding the rigid rules of propriety in a polite society such as the one that we lived in.
She was the type to shoot a gun at the wall simply because she was bored. My sister liked to drink tiny bits of poison every single day to build an immunity to them, liked to forge her own knives and play with swords. She could do everything a woman might be expected to do, everything a man might do, but simply put: being human wasn't enough for her expansive mind. She had always instigated chaos where none could be found. It was why I knew she married beneath her, to test the limits of society.
My father once observed that it was unfortunate Bellatrix was a woman, because she would have made an exceptional wizard. He thought, if only she had been born differently, she would have completely altered the world as we knew it.
If you had that much power inside of you, Reader, would you know how to contain it?
"Cissy," she greeted evenly, her dark eyes gleaming, "What brings you here?"
"Revenge," I answered primly.
She stopped midway down the staircase. Her expression was that of a fox who caught a hen.
"I'll get my things," she remarked airily.
I watched as she floated by her husband, patting him lightly on the shoulder, and disappeared to the other side of the house unviewable from the foyer. Rodolphus leaned against the railing with a sheepish expression of gratitude toward me. No doubt he had some regrets on his nuptials. It had seemed like such a stroke of extravagant luck that a woman of her status would be interested in a man like him. Now, I thought, he considered things differently.
"Your sister," he called down to me, "She's…ah…eccentric. I apologize about the vase. I had no idea how much she detested the colour pink."
"Red," I replied, "Her favourite colour is red."
He nodded meekly and smiled. I could see why she chose him. Rodolphus was a vision of Mr. Darcy, with wavy dark hair pushed back off his forehead and inquisitive brown eyes. He had the jawline of a Roman, all angles, with a celestial-shaped nose seemed carved from marble.
When Bellatrix strode into my view, I noticed she was wearing a fanciful ballgown in jet black. A matching lace collar was attached around her throat and her heavily-lidded eyes were darkened in shadow.
"Shall I accompany the two of you?" Rodolphus inquired.
"Stay home, little dove," Bellatrix replied, sweeping an affectionate hand over his face, "Run yourself a bath and calm your nerves. I'll be home soon."
She slid down the bannister, her legs on one side, and sailed down the entire thing until she neatly leapt from it and landed on her feet. I tried not to snort with laughter—my sister always had a flair for dramatics—but mostly, it was amusing because our aesthetics clashed. She, looking like a trained lady assassin, and myself in the same rumpled clothing I had worn all day, looking like a clumsy Muggle librarian.
"Now," she said, slipping her cloak over her shoulders, "What's the task? Setting fire to the office of Witch's Weekly for printing such distasteful things about you?"
With a swish of her wand, the door opened behind me and she went out into the darkness. I waved to Rodolphus, who looked considerably tinged with green even from the distance between us, and then turned around and followed her out into the night.
"Thomas Selwyn," I replied simply.
"Selwyn," my sister remarked, running her tongue over her teeth, "The man I beat in a duel once? He's wronged you?"
"Quite," I replied, pursing my lips.
Her eyes bore into mine for a moment. I knew she was not forcing her way into my mind with Legilimency, and anyway, all Blacks had a natural defence against such magic that we were born with, but nevertheless, she seemed to infer the legitimacy of such revenge without explanation.
"Thomas Selwyn then," she said with finality, "We're in luck, there's a dinner party being held at the Malfoy's tonight and he's on their staff."
I knew that, but I had no conceivable way of knowing how she did. It was unlike my sister to sit still long enough to read a paper, though she had on occasion paced the room while someone read aloud to her. If her husband obliged such a task, she might be well-informed.
"I cannot go to a ball like this," I hissed, pulling her back by the arm, "I'm scarcely dressed for a gentleman to make an appearance, let alone a woman."
She glanced down my body as if seeing me for the first time. "I never was fond of your fashion."
"This is hardly the time to critique my clothing," I reminded her, "If I'm to go to a ball, then I must have a dress."
She appraised me for a long moment and then said, "Very well, but you're not going to like it."
She grasped my arm hard and then Apparated without warning. I thought for sure my ankle had been splinched from the searing, overwhelmingly white-hot pain I felt, but when we landed on the curb of a street, I realized that in her haste, I must have jolted it against part of the rocks lining the hedges in her front garden. While my ankle hurt and appeared to be bruising, all my limbs were present and accounted for.
We were in London in a dark alcove on a dirty street. I knew that this was not where Mr. Selwyn lived. Straggling Muggles were in the streets, some of them in torn peasant shirts and dirty corduroy pants. Some were barefoot and others had shoes with holes in them.
Beggars, I realized. One man with long, dark wavy hair played a mandolin quietly to himself and sang with a dreary voice that pulled at me to listen.
My sister dropped coins and bills into each of their outstretched hands without considering them or waiting for their peals of gratitude. As I looked behind me, I noticed she had given them proper Muggle money.
"We could have just gone home," I complained, "Considering no one is home."
"Where's the fun in that?" she retorted, "That's boring. This is much more amusing."
We walked down a hill toward a nestle of narrow bricked flats with wide-brimmed front stairs. Low iron fencing covered the shabby hedgerows. Cars lined the street in various states of disrepair and rust. I heard televisions from opened windows letting in summer air, but there were no lit streetlights to see anything properly, and I didn't dare use my wand to light the way in a Muggle neighbourhood.
Bellatrix abruptly turned left at a building marked 221. She ran her thin fingers down the index of tenants and pressed a button when she found the name. I heard the buzzing from somewhere off in the building. The name on the list for 221 was Tonks.
I inhaled sharply and stepped backward, nearly falling down the short landing of steps. Bellatrix laughed.
"Just now figured it out?" she asked, "I forget how painfully slow you are."
The front door unlocked and Bellatrix turned the door handle hard and opened it. We went up a set of spindled, dirty stairs. I heard an echo of coughs and babies crying, and an ever constant blare of a telly, as if Muggles just couldn't get enough of it, as if they never shut it off just to think for a moment.
While I read quaint novels of aristocratic women I found mirrors of myself in, there were deep gashes of poverty and suffering that lived long past the romantic sweep of the 1800s. In this context of the world, I understood very little.
A door on the third floor was painted seafoam green with a small mat rolled out in front of it. Calligraphy writing spelled out the word welcome in black ink. Bellatrix knocked three times and then dropped her hands. I heard shuffling on the other side of the door, and then the knob turned half-heartedly and wouldn't turn—it seemed to stick—and then it opened. A man with short brown hair, which he had carefully plied with pomade to force it into an elegant side sweep off his forehead, answered the door.
"Bella!" he greeted, swinging the door open wide for her.
He enveloped her in a hug without warning. My sister flinched, but accepted the gesture with a weary smile and a quick pat on his back. He seemed not to notice her reluctance, and then his eyes brightened when he saw me, standing just out of his field of vision.
"You must be Narcissa," he said, "Come in, come in."
I entered the small living quarters of my sister, Andromeda, and her new husband. It was a studio, so I saw the confines of their entire life in one room, except for the attached loo. It was immaculately clean and tidy, this offering proof to me that my sister lived here, as she was exceptional at domestic spells. A pot of stew simmered on the stove to my right and a wooden spoon stirred itself. I could smell a variety of rich spices and beef. Ted plucked up a copper kettle and filled it with water from the sink, and smartly placed it on the burner next to the pot. He turned the knob and blue flames appeared below the kettle.
"I may not be as quick as Dromeda," Ted remarked brightly, "But I do make a decent cuppa. You'll stay long enough to have some, won't you?"
"Of course," Bella replied, slinking out of her cloak and placing it on the hooks affixed to the wall behind the front door.
She pulled a barstool out and sat at the small island as if she were familiar and comfortable in the space, even though she contrasted hard with the small, homey space looking like a caricature of a Gothic horror novel. It occurred to me that she must be familiar here, that she might have even known where our sister was all along. Our mother would have been furious if that was the case, as she took great pains to find her missing daughter, only to find her after she was properly wed.
"She's just gone out to get an ingredient she was missing," Ted explained, "She shouldn't be longer than a few minutes…I've heard much about you, Narcissa. Your sister says you are a very accomplished writer."
I was looking at the easel by their back window and the canvases balanced against the wall. My sister was painting figures of women, but they were different than her usual style. She had always drawn elegant silhouettes and softness in watercolour, but these women were all painted with expressions of elation and laughter.
"Chiefly amateur," I remarked, wincing at the idea of being considered anything of importance as I had never accomplished anything in the way of publishing. "But it is a passion of mine."
"Dromeda showed me an illustrated book the three of you wrote as children," he remarked, "Darling pictures, really, and such a cute story."
Bella's Missing Ruby. It was based upon a story my mother told us about her small brown spaniel dog she had as a child, who had a squashy sort of face and light tufted ears and always wore a red ribbon around her neck in addition to her collar. Her collar had a ruby affixed to it, which was lost one day while playing out in the garden. The story was about the dog, whose name was Bella (clearly her affection for the name continued into adulthood) trying to locate the gemstone before her family found out it was lost. In the end, she befriends a rabbit who takes her on adventures through the woods, where she finds the ruby in the hollow of an oak tree. Children's stories always have a moral to the story, a nice gift wrapping with a healthy life lesson, easily digested by a child's developing mind. Ours was that little Bella went into the unknown to find her simple bauble, and came back more knowledgeable of herself and the world around her.
It was like we knew even back then that we were different, that each of us had a desire to aspire to more than what was given to us. Had my sister found that here? Had she found what the three of us searched for in a cramped flat with a Muggle for a husband, her paints, and cheerful stews? All my life, I thought marriage was the death of liberation, but my sister married for freedom, and I had no idea how to reconcile the opposing ideas in my mind.
When I refocused, Bellatrix and Ted were discussing Sherlock Holmes. Ted gesticulated wildly when he was enthused about something. His favourite genre was mystery and true crime—in fact, he had once thought to become a detective. As a child, he wore plaid hats and carried a magnifying glass and a notepad. I suppose, in this way, he and my sister made perfect sense. She was a complex enigma he had to really work at to understand and once he had solved her mystery, rather than throwing her away, he loved her.
The door behind me creaked open and I heard the rustle of canvas bags and footsteps as my sister came through the door.
"Teddy, you'll never guess what I found…"
Her voice trailed off. I turned my head over my shoulder and found her dark eyes staring at me in the same startled way someone might see a ghost. Her hair was cut short around her neck, curled and partially braided back. She was dressed in Muggle clothes, in slim denim pants and a slightly oversized cardigan that I realized, after some inspection, once belonged to me.
"Narcissa," she murmured.
Turning the corners of my lips up into a half-smirk, I said, "Andromeda."
Bellatrix lifted her cup to her mouth and took a drink, scalding herself on the liquid, then let out a quiet murmur of obscenities. And while we ancient and noble Blacks were frozen in place, Ted took the bags from his wife's hands and placed them on the counter.
"Perhaps the two of you should have a walk?" he suggested, "I'm sure you've much to talk about."
"Not necessary," Bellatrix said breezily, rising from her own stool and clutching the cup of tea in her hand. "Cissy needs a dress for a party we are attending at the Malfoy's. Sort of late notice. You've kept yours though, haven't you?"
Andromeda narrowed her eyes shrewdly and said, "You came all this way for a dress?"
"Just for tonight," she chirped, "We'll return it."
After a brief pause, Andromeda moved across the room. No doubt she was puzzling the pieces of our sister's motives, which was difficult under normal circumstances and impossible in situations such as this.
"I'll just pop downstairs, darling, and give you some privacy!" Ted called from the front door.
We were at the back of the apartment. Andy pulled a suitcase from beneath her side of the bed and lifted the lid. Inside was a bottomless closet full of dresses and accessories. I thought it strange she kept this part of her life if she never expected to return to it. Bellatrix drained her cup of tea and moved her out of the way and began to rummage violently through it, so Andromeda stepped away and closed the blinds so that I might change when she found something that suited her.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"For what?" I asked, turning toward her in surprise.
"I ruined your life," she replied, "I-I've been reading the papers, I know what they are saying about me. I know that it means I've…ruined everything."
I let out breath I hadn't known I was holding. She was right. I was angry with her. Because her single choice to be happy made my life bankrupt. My parents would be unlikely to provide with me after their death once they lost their assets, no husband would want me, and no one would read a book written by a mad woman.
"Ghastly," Bellatrix cooed, "These are hideous!"
"Anything that isn't black or red is ugly to you," Andromeda chided, folding her arms.
Then, shifting her attention back to me she continued, "Narcissa, I never wanted it to be like this. I knew it would hurt our family's reputation a little, but I thought it would blow over. If I had known marrying Ted would cause this…"
"It's funny," I interrupted with a sneer, "The things we say when filled with regret instead of selfishness."
She tugged at the edges of the knitted sleeves of her cardigan. She couldn't keep herself from stealing my clothes in the same way she stole my life.
"I don't expect you to understand or condone my actions," she replied, her voice shaking, "But I just couldn't do it. I couldn't marry that man. The loneliness…the society, Cissy, all I have ever wanted to do was run. I'm not like them. I'm not cruel enough…I never meant to hurt you."
"Oh, you're plenty cruel," I said.
Bellatrix tossed a dark green gown at me. Andromeda's style veered highly vintage. This specific dress was in a medieval style, with a narrow skirt and long sleeves ending just over the knuckles and a v-shaped neckline, coming just off the shoulders. The dress was modest as all her gowns were.
"Sister, you did not hurt me," I said, shifting the dress over my arm, "You gutted me and left the pieces of me lying on the street. How shall I write now? Before I could even have a voice, you stole mine. You wrote my narrative. Congratulations, Andromeda your selfishness is my sorrow."
The outline of her jaw clinched against her skin and her eyes blazed fiercely.
"I said that I'm sorry," she replied.
Of the three of us, it was she who comported herself best. She who curtseyed and flattered instead of lashed out in anger at those most deserving. No one understood the subtle language of our society better than my sister Andromeda, and yet she was the one on the outside of it now.
"We're both sorry," I snapped, "We're both immensely sorry. And these are just words that live inside of us, but they don't mean anything."
I slipped out of my clothes, an excellent excuse to avert my gaze and avoid tears, and let Bellatrix help me into the dress.
It was this that broke me. My own announcement that everything I stood for was hollow. The books I read and shared with dozens of others, the poetry and things I wrote were all intrinsically meaningless. This was my fear, my worst fear, that in the end none of it mattered. In the end, I did not matter. Shamelessly, this notion haunted me more than anything. I wanted to be useful, to be someone of substance. I wanted more than gilded cages. My insides should be poetry I read in the dark, not layers of muslin dresses and ribbons.
In my careless and reckless ambition, it was not enough to be myself. I wanted to be the universe. My prose like an aurora borealis living in someone else's mind, every mountain peak and valley textures upon the woven universe that only I could create. I wanted to infuse myself with the earth so that it could not break me, as the people I loved could break me, over and over, until my bones were fine mists of powder.
"If you have been able to find happiness here, do not waste it. Be happier for the both of us. At least make the effort and the sacrifice to get here worth doing," I said, which was the only way I could be angry and forgiving at the same time.
Bellatrix affixed a long strand of pearls to trail around my waist and down the front of my dress, then she tied a matching velvet ribbon around my throat. My hair was in disarray, so she pulled it from the messy braid and let it hang loose. Andromeda stepped up timidly and plucked her makeup bag from the suitcase. For any party we attended, she applied our makeup. I recognized both the habit and the gesture, and more than anything, I wished we could go back in time. Back before the two of them were married, before they had left me alone in that house with our parents.
I wanted to be seven again, staring at my older sister in awe of everything they did, believing they were always right. I thought that they held up the fabrics of the universe, that their wisdom and insight was a kind of gospel. I worked so hard on capturing their likeness I lost where they ended and where I began.
As Andromeda worked on applying lipstick, Bellatrix produced a wad of cash from the front of her dress and stuffed it into the pocket of Andromeda's cardigan. I didn't need to ask where my sister procured the money. I knew it was from my mother, skimming off the top of their dwindling finances. But tt was a bitter, acidic pill to swallow to see her accept it. Andromeda Tonks, the woman who defied her family and still reaped the benefits of their efforts. When she met my gaze, it was full of guilt, but she did not defend herself. And likewise, I felt no need to obscure the judgment in my features.
"You should come around for tea sometime, sisters," Andromeda said as she finished. "An earlier time, perhaps, when you're both free."
"Yes, yes," Bellatrix remarked, waving her aside, and plucking my shoes from feet and tossing a pair of matching slippers for me to step into.
She dragged me from the apartment without a proper goodbye, but then, it was her way. I knew that somewhere, in her mind, she might have said all sorts of things, but forgot to shift from her internal thoughts to speaking out loud, which happened often enough, and she never seemed to notice.
We stood outside the iron gates of the Malfoy manor. I did not want to be here—in fact, I made a conscious effort not to be. Lucius belonged here when he was healthy, not reduced to whatever condition this pathogen had rendered him. The mere idea that he was lying in his bed, weak and helpless, stirred irrational anger inside of me.
"This was not a good idea," I whispered.
My sister's face was a pale flash in the moonlight, her face drawn in a wide smile. "Come now, Cissy," she remarked wisely, "You cannot live in calm waters all your life—whatever would you write about?"
"I suppose I can't argue with you there," I admitted, and then softly to myself I added, "though I'd sorely like to."
She tapped her wand against the gate and it opened for us. As we walked up the paved driveway, she mapped out her plans.
"Your reputation simply cannot endure another catastrophic event," she stated, "And so you should not attend to the matter of Mr. Selwyn at all, but allow me to do so in your stead—go and see Lucius, if you must. Create an alibi. He's ill, they'll not bother with interrogating him."
We walked in through the front door to find the foyer empty. Music was playing loudly through the ballroom and I could see partners amid a waltz.
"Do you think Edith is here?" I asked, my eyes chasing shadows wherever my head turned.
"No," Bellatrix replied, "Rodolphus said there was a dinner party at his parents' house tonight. All the lower families will attend—Edith cannot hold her liquor, you may recall—and she's vying for Rabastan's hand. She'll stay overnight if she can to sneak into his bedroom chamber."
Rabastan Lestrange was my brother-in-law, who I sat next to at Bellatrix's wedding. He was four years younger than Rodolphus. It seemed strange to me that, in the death of my reputation, there were still people playing the game. Each strategy of its various types of elaboration, but a game nevertheless. Part of me wished I had played my hand better.
If I were normal, I wouldn't be skulking around the Malfoy's mansion uninvited with my half-mad sister. I would be dancing and socializing. Flirting, even. Tonight might have been the opportunity to meet my future husband.
"What do you intend to do, Bella?" I asked, fear fluttering through my stomach.
"I'm going to dance," she replied, shifting out of her cloak and leaving it draped over a table.
She turned her head, smiling at me, and disappeared into the ballroom.
In an alternate universe, I would meet Lucius Malfoy on the dance floor. We would exchange polite pleasantries as we stood in line to wait for our turn. He would wear a stupid cravat. Only I would find everything about him, from his soft pink lips and steel grey eyes, a source of wonderment. I would compliment the ribbon in his hair, smoothed back from hundreds of brushstrokes until he had drawn his hair back to his liking. The lights in the ballroom would wash us in a warm glow, and by the time the music stopped playing, I would have enchanted him. Our conversation would be light, but funny, our quips back and forth mild and good mannered. He would find me charming for a woman, with a certain shyness about me that made him intrinsically wish to shield me from the darker parts of the world.
And what a world it would be, to be shielded from everything that hurt.
I relished the lives of the ignorant, who saw nothing beyond their fixed mindset. Whose world truly revolved around waltzes and silk slippers, hand-painting bone china, and being pretty brides. But that was not me and it certainly was not my life. It occurred to me that my sister knew far too many things, that she had done reconnaissance on the Selwyn's before arriving here. My family knew that Bellatrix was brilliant; it occurred to me then that she could also be dangerous.
Quickly, I skipped every other step on the stairs to the first floor and hurried through the corridors. My nerves felt like electric shocks. I had no need to be nervous, yet I was. Perhaps more than that, I was terrified I would be the one to watch him draw his last breath. I ruined everything I touched; if I saw him, he would surely die. I thought that my staying away would help his chances.
Outside of his bedroom door, I gave a soft knock and then entered. The room was drenched in the smell of fresh cut flowers on the brink of souring, the few days it had before the water turned a garish yellow and the blossoms fully curled into themselves and turned brown. And there were dozens of vases of flowers, all in various states, intermingled on every surface with his usual array of mundane plants.
The hangings around his bed were partially drawn, but he was awake. He was sitting up against pillows.
"Narcissa!" he exclaimed, closing the book was reading and placing it off to the side of his lap.
It hurt to see the happiness so clearly etched in his features because I did not deserve it. The last time I saw him, I rejected him. A part of me hated him for asking for my hand. Mostly, I hated myself for not accepting it.
"How are you?" I asked.
There was a chair at his bedside where I imagined his mother sat with him for ages watching and tending to him. I sat there, close enough to see his features in the candlelight. A light sheen of sweat covered the front of his bare chest and forehead, a sign is fever was broken. His face was full of sharp edges and too pale to be healthy, but he certainly did not look to be on his death bed.
"Better," he admitted, "Mr. Selwyn sent for a team of Muggle doctors who diagnosed me, but they said it was too far advanced for them to cure with their standard methods. The Healers developed a magical remedy using properties from the Muggle's, which would tend to the rapidity of the disease and cure it. The recovery is slow, but…I believe I shall survive it."
"Is it Meningitis?" I asked.
"Correct," he replied, tilting his head, "But how…?"
I shrugged sheepishly, "Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Malfoy. Honestly, they consider you educated?"
His laughter felt like an echo chamber inside of me, a small dagger that pierced my heart. It was my own pride dredging up that took satisfaction in making him laugh, as if no one else were capable of such a feat.
"I must admit," he remarked, and his eyes slowly fell from my face to my body and the layers of green fabric around my body, "It's strange to see you in a dress like that."
I stood from the chair and pushed it back. Quickly, I twirled, giving him the entire experience of the gown in motion, as it was meant to be observed.
"It's my sister's," I admitted, and pushed the chair back into place to sit upon.
"That makes more sense," he said, and after a slight pause, he added, "What doesn't make sense is how you managed to diagnose me with a disease without ever seeing its symptoms."
I bit back a retort. It was natural to want to goad him. We were so good at arguing, and those heated debates and conversations were somehow safer than any normal conversation we might have. I had no idea how to navigate a topic without deflecting against it when I spoke to him. It was easier because I had no idea who I was supposed to be when he was in the same room with me, and so I tried to be the otherworldly, knowledgeable one. The semi mad genius, emulating parts of my sisters, to make people like me. Because who I was on the inside was some broken, nervous thing terrified of failure and petrified of what people could do to me if they really knew me.
"I'm immensely clever," I said, with a confident lift of my chin, "Surely you've discovered this by now."
He shifted higher up on his pillows. I thought to help adjust them, but did not know how he might react to my closeness, so I remained in my seat. An odd expression crossed his features, as if he were connecting things I couldn't infer.
"This goes beyond your scope of cleverness," he admitted, "but since you seem unwilling to divulge, I'll accept it as a nearly impossible coincidence."
I wondered why he accepted me so blindly. Each time that we argued, each time we met. He trusted me foolishly, the likes of which I did not understand. But I watched the subtle change in him after he said such familiar sentiments, the slight clench of his jaw, the way he averted his eyes toward the opposite corner of his bed. He accepted I would tell him nothing, but it angered him that I had not changed enough after our heated argument to tell him the whole truth.
"If I told you," I said, "You would be impossibly angry, and I doubt you are well enough to handle such emotions. Ask me again when you have recovered."
I imagined the scene in my head. A normal, whole Lucius, whom I recounted the details of Mr. Selwyn in his office. Where his hands touched me, the names he called me. Would he be angry at Mr. Selwyn? Or mad at me for putting myself in the situation in the first place? In the end, did it matter whose fault it was when I was the one left with scars?
"Narcissa," he said quietly, and his eyes found mine, "I don't…I cannot continue this with you."
My hands trembled and I pressed them against my thighs.
"I see," I replied.
He sighed. "It's not that I don't want to be a part of the Moonflowers, but I just…it's overwhelming. I have had a lot of time to consider it and I want a shred of normalcy again. Less…chaos and half-truths. Being friends with you is like running completely wild. Thrilling, but it wears on you."
I believe I could have counted on my hands the amount of times I was rejected by someone. My parents hardly counted, but none in my society had ever crossed me until Andromeda married a Muggle. It was such a strange feeling to go from being beloved to unwanted.
"Of course, Lucius," I answered, and stood up from my chair.
"Narcissa—"
Wordlessly, I shut his bedroom door and decided in my heart, once and for all, to close the chapter of Lucius Malfoy from my life.