From the door, she sees him. Lucius is sitting down at the table, a scowl on his face, his breathing uneven. Something is very wrong…Where is Delphini? She is always first to breakfast, so that she can feed her pets from the table without being scolded for it.
"Darling…" she tries. When his eyes remain still on the newspaper, she moves from the doorstep, getting closer while adjusting to possibilities. She heard her husband raise his voice, but figured it was about feeding Vicious. Or Darkie. They alternate so that the raven doesn't become a meal himself. She now realizes it has absolutely nothing to do with it. Her husband has a look about him she has not seen in years.
He looked like this in the mornings. When he didn't come home until sunrise. When he wouldn't go upstairs so as not to soil our family.
Not caring about Malfoy propriety for a second, she stands next to him and takes his face on her hands. His eyes hold pain and sorrow, but his face keeps to the wrath she feels shivering through him, oozing off his body like a black muck, sliding and spreading around him. She keeps her eyes on his, questioning first, waiting then. He does not answer her, in any way. Simply looks to the newspaper, compelling her to do the same.
A gasp, a clear manifestation of horror, leaves her lips. Her hands drop to the table and her knees falter. She allows herself to kneel against an exquisitely carved leg.
She was right on that day, her instinct was right and she had buried it. The second flash was evident, but the first one had different subjects. The green thing in her peripheral, the blonde. The beetle. The woman.
"Rita Skeeter, then?" Her voice holds a menace.
"Yes" he growls back. His voice breaks. His fury is not at the article. There is something else there, she can tell.
"Where is Delphini? We need to talk to her again, to talk of what was left out-"
Her husband sobs. Sobs. His whole frame faltering, his head on his hands. There are tears running down between his fingers and over his hands. She doesn't know what to do. Her mind has not a clue and so runs loose, and wild, and mad, and mean. Over a cliff and into an abyss.
"What did you do to her?" It is her turn to growl. She flattens her palms against the floor and pushes her body away from him. "You… you never wanted her, you always resented her… You monster, what did you do? Answer me!"
His sobs rise, his fingers carve into his scalp, his nails digging in. She knows that pain, has seen it before. He had killed a child one night, she remembers. But she feels nothing for him. She knows the beast inside him, but this, she cannot stand this.
"Tell me, Lucius! What did you do to Delphini? What did you do to Bella's daughter?"
A sound made of pain leaves her husband, a sigh, a wail, a cry. A plea. The attempt of a breath follows.
"Stop, Cissa… please."
He is begging. There is a Malfoy begging in front of her. And that shatters her own wrath, her own beast, and slams into her mind, halting it at once. His voice comes, meek, hitched, broken and somehow still breaking.
"I was afraid of myself. I thought of…" he cannot say it. He cannot say his first instinct was to take Delphini from his house and his family. He won't even allow himself to think it again, "I couldn't, but I… I had to send her away."
Narcissa lunges forward, embracing her darkness, all of her fury. She stands tall, looking down, over her husband and then puts her wand to his neck. He is her guardian, but she is the keeper of this family. He raises his head at that, looks at her, seeing all of her, bare, and drops his arms to his sides, offering his vulnerability. He does not care for his life in that moment. The things that had gone through his mind were much worse than anything he had ever dreamt of the Dark Lord doing. Much worse than what he would imagine when Bellatrix took the blood-curling screams she liked from her victims in the basement.
I was willing to destroy her, to destroy my family, for the sake of my flower and my son. Like the lioness and the dragon would stay by the side of the man that snuffed a little bird out of existence. Not a man, a monster. I was willing to leave her to the wolves of the Ministry, to drop her off in the Muggle world if necessary, and deny everything. Even his care. Even his unspoken love of that child. Not a monster, a vile crawling low creature.
Narcissa has tears on her cheeks, flowing free, down her chin, dropping to her cleavage, drawing patterns of shimmering light against her flesh. She keeps her wand at his throat, but cannot say the words, cannot bring forth the green light she fears was her niece's last sight. The green light that already took so much. Too much.
She turns the wand on herself. Puts it to her chest, over her heart. Opens her mouth to call forth death.
"NO!" Lucius slaps her hand viciously, the tip of her wand scratching her skin, leaving an angry red mark behind.
"I will not-" her words are interrupted by a devouring kiss planted violently upon her lips. She claws at his chest, pushing, squirming away from the monster that holds her face with such strength her bones hurt.
He needs that reassurance of her presence. That physicality which proves that she still lives. He leaves her face and holds her arms against her sides, wrapping his own arms around them and her fragile waist, crushing her bones. She fights him, bites him, kicks him. He deserves all that and worse, much worse. He removes his mouth only when he absolutely must, when there are dark flecks on his vision. "I did not hurt her. I did not pull my wand on her." How I wanted to. It wasn't even the knowledge that the girl was just that, a girl, which stopped me. It was you. It was the thought of losing you. But that will remain unspoken. He lets go of her, completely, and stands at her mercy. "I sent her to her rooms."
He protected her! Narcissa stands there, saying nothing, doing nothing. He sent her to the one place he cannot reach. He kept her behind the one door that will take his life, and that of anyone else, should he ever attempt to cross it in anger. Any intention of wrong doing towards Delphini becomes a death sentence there, at that threshold.
"What does it say? What did that foul woman write about us?" She is not quenched in her ire yet. But priorities come to her mind. Damage control.
"She writes of a Lestrange child. It's right there, below the photo. I haven't read any further."
Narcissa's lungs feel like they have been deprived of air for an eternity as she gasps for it. She leans on her husband. Her darkness subsiding. She needs to know her facts before she can talk to Delphini.
"Wabby!" The inflection to her voice speaks of nothing but power. The elf comes, cracking at a safe distance from her masters. "Take Delphini's breakfast upstairs. Stay with her. Come get me if anything happens. Go!" The frightened elf leaves. Her mistress is never like this anymore, not since the war ended.
She moves away from her husband and reads through the article, all of it, several times. Insinuations and insults, hear-say and filth, but nothing of their secret. The Malfoys are supposedly grooming Delphini into a Death Eater, according to Rita. They are raising the daughter of Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange into a dark witch, so that they can start another war and impose their pureblood values on society once more, using the girl as a beacon to congregate those not imprisoned or dead. They have plans of sending her to Durmstrang so that she can learn about the Dark Arts. They have books of old magic that contain information needed to bring Lord Voldemort back. Skeeter is off the mark by a whole continent and Narcissa's heart beats steadier at that.
"Tell me exactly what happened, Lucius. Please." Now she must know the rest, so that she can tend to her sister's treasure.
Her husband is still in the same place, revelling in the sight of this flower turned feral then protector. Of the wife he chose and was lucky enough to be chosen by. He tells her. Everything. Even that he was afraid to find crimson in Delphini's eyes. Even that he was afraid of killing her in his rage, in his fear, in is hunger of safety for them.
Now they worry for her. She cannot read their minds, but she can feel their thoughts. She must have felt the anger, the danger, the threat. She orders Lucius to stay. She will not have him approach their niece just yet. She will not allow him anywhere near that door. She will go. Her darkness subsiding completely as she readies herself for the task ahead.
Only to rise in one last dying wave. "Then we will see to Rita." The menace is clear. "And we'll ask of Draco to go to Mr. Potter and see what can be done" Final, commanding.
My dark lioness.
Their son's steps sound on the boards. Rushed, uneven, frenetic. Running at times. His panting audible now.
He looks as out of sorts as he was the day he came home from Hogwarts after the tower. "Astoria showed me the Prophet. What do we do?" He looks to his Mother, instinctively recognising the shift of power.
As she is about to reply, a gloom comes over them. It is cold, dark, ominous. And familiar. This is magic unbound in a way they already know. That they all remember.
The Dark Lord's.
Delphini's.
Author's Notes: There is another one shot side piece up already called "Of the Severing of Ties" and now that the cat is out of the bag (or the beetle, as you prefer) there will soon be another one "The Scoop of her Life"Reviews are greatly appreciated, thank you for sticking with this