She Says Her Hands Aren't Soiled
...and perhaps they aren't. But still, it's blood she sees on them in her dreams. Everyone knows the Killing curse is too clean for that, though. Narcissa's rambling, third-person stream-of-consciousness in November 1981. She's got peer problems, Draco problems, Lucius problems, Potter problems, and pill problems. Ah, the trials and tribulations of a trophy wife. Cowritten with Tinuviel Henneth. September 2003.
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She couldn't help but feel a little relieved, and secretly, more than a little thrilled. After all, she'd just gotten rid of that pathetic little whore and she hadn't been remotely involved in the girl's demise. She could just picture the looks on all their faces-- her cousin, the Headmaster, the wizarding world, oh, and yes, Remus especially because no one ever thought of him first and she figured it was high time someone did, even if it was just the trophy wife of some Death Eater who happened to have a hand in the death of his lover and her husband and the demise of his own master, since said lover's baby son by her own husband went and somehow managed to destroy everything that she held dear. So what if she had her husband all to herself? It wasn't really so much that she particularly wanted him.
Everything in her world had been blown apart in a matter of weeks. Her beloved sister was gone, off to Azkaban to rot (perhaps she deserved it; Alice had been quite lovely at Hogwarts before she was ever a Longbottom). Her own son had begun to say his own name, which could or could not be construed as a good thing. She wasn't sure if maybe that wasn't setting him up for a lot of pretension that would have to be slapped out of him at Hogwarts. Her husband had disappeared sometime after the news broke that the Potters were dead. She might have suspected he was mourning the wife. However, she knew what a selfish bastard he was and that the destruction of their Lord would lead to a lot of ass-covering on his part. He didn't want to end up like the others, and as much as she missed Bellatrix, she didn't want to end up like her, muttering and doddering in a cell, always cold.
It was thoughts like that that made her ring the bell for a House-elf to come and put more wood on her fire. She pulled her robe closer around her bony shoulders and shuddered.
Anyway, back to rejoicing about the end of the affair. Now, she'd been raised in a Slytherin family. Sure, a cousin in Ravenclaw or two wasn't much of a setback to their most ancient and noble of houses (Ravenclaws weren't too intolerable), although the one they pretended didn't exist had suddenly leapt back into the spotlight when he went and murdered that little letch (oh, couldn't happen to a creepier bloke; she had more than once told the little shit that if he ever came onto her again she would personally see to it he had no genitalia at all. He'd just told her he hadn't realized she was so kinky. To that, well, to that she just reminded him why she'd slept with Remus at Hogwarts) and a dozen or so Muggles. Honestly, the man was doing a public service. She had half a mind to speak on his behalf assuming he had a trial. He, of all people, would have been the most disturbed to know what she'd known all along. His precious best friend's wife-- the mother of his lovely little godson-- had been carrying on a long and dare she be trite and say torrid affair with his pretty, blonde Slytherin cousin's Death Eater cretin husband. It was all to fucking hilarious.
She shook her head. It was so confusing. She felt like a piece of unicorn tail hair that had been trimmed to go into a wand that would one day serve a great wizard. She felt used. She felt sparky and unstable. And, most importantly, she felt discarded.
There were several Death Eater wives in her parlor right then, talking about her, about each other, their insufferable little brats, whatever. They were all afraid that their husbands would be shipped off to prison; no matter how much her husband assured them (and her, and by extension, himself, the selfish bastard-- that much should be obvious by now but she finds herself frequently titling him in that way because she hates him more than she is drawn to him-- honestly, underneath it all, does it even matter how anyone feels about their station in life?). There were Death Eater wives in her parlor, probably criticizing her Hummels (the true definition of the Dark side; the little porcelain people were just so....) and the Iron Maiden her grandmother had given her as a wedding present (whether the old bat just had an incredibly odd sense of humor or if there was a fiendish ulterior motive she still hadn't decided). She wasn't in there. She was sitting on the toilet in her bathroom, staring wistfully out the porthole window at the vegetable gardens and wondering if it need de-gnomed. When she was very small she used to sneak out back and help toss the little buggers over the fence and into the field beyond.
Really, she wondered, as she watched the Head House-elf, Grausser, point at a substandard tomato plant, gesturing rather cruelly to a younger elf what he saw was wrong about it, when had that evil creature her husband hero-worshipped, his friends hero-worshipped, her parents hero-worshipped, become someone she hero-worshipped? He was not her master. She had never felt one way or another about any of the issues regarding her family's twisted brand of Slytherin politics. Personally, she agreed with Morelia Zabini that any follower of that cretino was a hypocrite and she'd never been as comfortable as the rest of them wearing such a weighty label. She generally wore only silk and linen because of her aversion to heavy textiles and often wondered why she lived in such a cold climate.
She could almost hear Dorothy Parkinson talking about her own lover. Honestly the woman had no shame. She was pregnant by him, although no one outside Dorothy, the lover, and a certain trophy wife knew the real sperm donor of the pampered Parkinson wife's third child. At least her daughter Pansy was a normal child. Dorothy just loved that little girl. Personally, she looked like a pug puppy, squashed in nose and doleful eyes. Not an attractive set of features, but she supposed that the Parkinson money would be enough to secure her a marriage not unlike her mother's later in life. She just hoped it wouldn't be her own little Draco damned to such a fate.
If the women downstairs weren't so insipid, she would fully be down there with them, chatting about all their narrow little worlds and how the money one woman's husband had compared to another's. Sad, she was one of them and she was avoiding them. Did she not have perfect hair and a flawless figure, teeth to make an American jealous (they always had such nice teeth compared to most of the Britons she knew, including her husband), more money to her family name than some nations in other parts of the world? It was ironic in a way that she was considering the glass bottle of sleeping tablets in her bathroom as company for the remainder of her evening over her fellow trophies.
Then again, she had never been content to be put in a cabinet.
She did not want to be buried in a casket when she died. She wanted to be cremated without ever being in a box. She was rather loath to admit it, but she was deathly claustrophobic. Bellatrix has always teased her about it. When they got older and their spats got more and more serious, she stopped speaking to Bellatrix for long periods at a time-- after all, the woman had started harping on her about not standing beside her husband in the Death Eaters' circle. It wasn't enough to tell Bellatrix that her own husband was merely standing beside her, and that she was the one who waved the wand in that family. It was never enough, and it often ended in Bellatrix laughing on the other side of a shut up cupboard door while she beat on the other side of it and tried not to scream.
In that way, and only in that way, she was most pleased that her dear husband had been carrying on that affair. Their relationship was unhealthy at best, and she was made terribly happy that he was miserable over the double whammy loss of his master and his fuck bunny (and fuck bunny's husband). Truthfully, it had to be the funniest thing she'd ever heard.
And, to think, she hadn't had to play dirty like most women did when they found out their husbands were cheating. She had an inhuman, evil overlord to dispose of the tart for her.