Title: Musings of a Reluctant Housewife
Author: Eirene
Summary: Draco is one month old. Narcissa thinks about stuff and finds herself sans husband and maternal instinct. Blahblah. Easier just to read it.
Author's Note: Narcissa is much-neglected, and I wanted to give her character a little bit of rounding out. I wrote this during Spanish class. I haven't written fanfic in ages, but I thought I'd give it a try. This is probably a one-shot but it is continuable if I by some chance get motivated. Erm. I want to know what you think!
***
Bright, unfathomable blue eyes. A low, cool voice, lilting up and down.
"There's my precious boy!" Narcissa cooed, delighted with her new son, his special baby smell and wispy white-blond hair. She picked him up, cuddling his tiny, month-old frame close to her angular body, already free of the excess weight from her pregnancy. She rocked him back and forth, a little girl with an expensive new doll.
He started to scream.
Narcissa jumped, startled, nearly leaving her new baby tumbling to the floor. Realizing what she'd almost done, she became more flustered, and her gaze caught the new nanny dead on, her eyes at once frantic and commanding.
"Nelle! Take him!" Even as the words left her mouth, the young woman was bustling toward them and scooping the baby into her own ready arms. She was soft and warm to Narcissa's cool and sharp; Nelle exuded a maternal glow than Narcissa could neither comprehend nor match. Still, Draco continued his roar. It seemed, at times, that the infant would breathe his namesake's fire if he could.
"How he cries…" Narcissa whispered, feeling at once profoundly relieved and strangely guilty at being freed from the stifling wail of the baby. She closed her eyes, reminded of the day she gave birth to him. The pain—no magic could erase the pain of allowing a new life to escape a woman's body, a tiny human with all the world's possibilities in it, waiting to be unlocked or left to rust. She'd tried to hex the doctor and managed to stun a nurse before they'd had the sense to take her wand away from her. Then she'd reached for the photo, stared at it, concentrated on it.
The photograph was of her and Lucius on their wedding day. Her picture-self smiled back at her confidently, and picture-Lucius beside her had snaked his arm around her waste. He stroked her side, keeping her subtly tethered to him, like a pet. In a very real sense, this was true; she was Lucius' pet. He played with her as he pleased, and when he tired of her, she knew he would take his pleasure elsewhere, from other men and women and gods only knew what else, and he would do so guiltlessly. Narcissa's deep Slytherin desire for control, for power, wilted in his presence; he was so charismatic. So beautiful and cunning and rich. She allowed herself to stay because, simply, she would always be around. His other playmates would not live in his house or bear his babies or accompany him in public. He may be able to toy with her, but she, in turn, could milk his presence and his money and make it her own. She could have power in her own right.
Hours later Draco Malfoy had emerged, tiny, premature, and loudly proclaiming his indignation at the world. Narcissa had been so tired, so overwhelmed, that she declined the privilege of holding the bloody mess in her arms in favor of a long nap and shower.
She was startled out of her reverie by a sudden silence. Her eyes found Draco, suckling happily on a bottle as Nelle held him close, humming an old tune borrowed from her own childhood. Narcissa flushed and looked away from the plain-faced, full-figured girl, not much younger than she, who looked more a mother to the boy than Narcissa felt she could ever be.
Perhaps when he is older, she thought, when he can talk to me. Then she would take him out, buy him everything she was ever denied, mold him into a man like his father but not… not so cruel perhaps? Then maybe she could love him like all the other mothers loved their little boys. She could love him like her own mother had never loved her. How, in the meantime, was she expected to love a little something, who wailed all day and preferred that poor, unremarkable girl to her?
She waited for Nelle to put Draco to bed and summoned her to the kitchen.
"That was marvelous, Nelle, what you did with him back there," Narcissa declared. "I just don't know how you do it. It's just… well, it's one thing."
Nelle's eyebrows furrowed. Narcissa noted that her eyes were brown, and conveyed the same simple compassion that her movement did. She was from an old wizarding family, but had very little magical ability herself. Everything about the girl screamed "nonthreatening." Narcissa did not know whether this made her more reluctant or eager to do what she planned on doing to the nanny, to let her go. She would not let the inferior wench steal the affection of her son. And yet… she certainly had no time for a baby. She would go completely mad. Nelle murmured, in a neutral tone, "What is it, Miss?"
"Oh, nevermind, dear. Fix me some tea, won't you?" Good help is so often hard to find, she reasoned, and it never hurts to make the house-elves nervous, thinking they're going to be replaced.
The woman's thoughts drifted again to Lucius. She hadn't heard from him in over a week, and was disappointed staying at home while he ran in Voldemort's inner circle. Voldemort hadn't taken to Narcissa the way he had Amelia Lestrange, and so she remained merely a dispensable operative, used occasionally. Secretly, she preferred it this way, for although Voldemort had her loyalty, he did not own her entirely as he did Lucius.
But even the expansive Malfoy Manor couldn't amuse her forever. She'd learned enough hexes and studied the dark arts, the light arts, and all of the in-between so extensively that she'd become convinced there was no practical purpose for continuing. She knew all the magic she needed to go to get around in the world.
If only Lucius would come… he was nearly always amusing, if not attentive for extended periods of time. He had, in fact, only seen Draco twice since his birth. Narcissa felt a twinge, sprung from many bad memories, and resolved once again to make sure the boy had everything, and the best of it, including his father.
And she would have the best of it too.