A Flower by the Lake
by dilly
Narcissa thought she felt her heart stop whenever he walked in the room. Her mother would say that the boy was below her. Of course, her mother had chosen a man with a gambling problem who had left them with nothing but debt when he died, so what, exactly, did she know?
Only how to control her daughter.
Severus would always be a forbidden fruit as she watched him idly over her Charms book at the Slytherin table. It was Lucius Malfoy, a boy with a suitable fortune, she must go after. She had known that since her first year, when he had called her cubby and she had begun the seventy-two hour water fasts. She had kept fifty pounds off from first year to sixth year. There were a few yet that she wanted to shed so instead of eating dinner, she feigned studying and stared at Severus.
When she found Lucius and Severus in the empty classroom that day, she felt her heart break for the first time. It had been a wrong turn, nothing more, and there she was. Opening the wrong door, peering into the wrong classroom, seeing the wrong person touching her Severus... and seeing the wrong person touching Lucius in return.
Of course she was surprised when Lucius had taken her aside a few days later and kissed her.
"I thought you were with... Severus."
"He means nothing to me."
She had forced a smile and flirted coyly and accepted a date and went through the motions like her mother's daughter.
Then, she ran. She ran outside, past her giggling friends and past her sneering enemies. She fell by the side of the lake and she cried for Severus until she was sick.
She had been sick for Lucius many times, but none of them meant anything. And she had hated Lucius for many things before and after that, but never had she hated him so much as at that moment.