TITLE: You Only Say You're Sorry
AUTHOR: Meredith Bronwen Mallory
FEEDBACK: mallorys-girl@cinci.rr.com -- I live for it.
WEBSITE: Work in Progress
PAIRING(S): Lily/Narcissa, James/Severus, Lily/James, (eventually) Harry/Severus, implied Remus/Sirius [whew!]
SPOILERS: Through OotP, though quite possibly AU
RATING: R, to be on the safe side.
DISCLAIMER: Do I look like I'm in charge? Didn't think so. Needless to say, I do not own Harry Potter. I don't even own the couch I'm sitting on! Those lovely witches and wizards belong to J. K. Rowling, Warnes Bros, and assorted other companies. All of these groups have some very scary lawyer people in dark suits, so I am not going to mess with them. The only thing I own is the idea for the story itself.
SUMMARY: The past is never gone-- it follows you, hovering, daring you to turn around.
A/N: First things first; I have to thank you for taking the time to read this. I hope it's worth your while! This is my first HP fic, but definitely NOT my first slash. I'm fascinated by Lily (she's so pretty in PS, too!), and I love how bits and pieces of Harry's unknown past often come back to haunt him. I would dearly love any feedback you might deem to send my way.
Meredith
"Love is a piano dropped from a fourth story window,
And you were in the wrong place at the wrong time."
-ani difranco, "Two Little Girls"
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You Only Say You're Sorry 1/?
by Meredith Bronwen Resurfacing
[Today]
When you get home from Daigon Alley, you tell James you aren't feeling well and need to lie down. That's the quickest way upstairs, without any questions. Your husband's trepidation has grown, rounded itself with your belly-- now, in your ninth month, he regards you with a careful sort of reverence. There's a panic in it too, though, you think-- because this is the kind of magic only witches can perform. He looks at you as if you are a strange vessel, a ship in the night, mysterious and not to be disturbed.
Unknown cargo.
You tell him, yes, you'll be down for late supper-- supper is always late, in Godric's Hollow-- and you definitely don't tell him that, today, you saw Narcissa Black.
(Malfoy now, you remind yourself.)
Those are the words that what out, though. You can feel them, acidic, burning on your tongue-- you want to say them, and you could. It would have no meaning to James. He might say, "Oh?" or "How is she?"-- frowning, trying to put a face with the name-- but nothing beyond that.
He wouldn't, couldn't, know how caught you feel right now, how solid. You haven't felt this real in a long time, and it's scary. Better to be mist, or else a ball of light, bright and quickly moving. Hard to pin down.
(A game. A pillow fight, in Narcissa's gauzy, silver-scalloped bed. You roll one way, but she catches you. She can do that-- anticipate you, read your mind, interpret you in ways that only she can. It must be a lot of difficult work, though, this clairvoyance, this translation of your thoughts, because Narcissa is breathing hard. The air from her mouth is warm and sweet, only faintly spoiled, and her palms are flat down against your breasts, her weight pressing you into the bed. Her smile is triumphant, sneaky-- wholly Slytherine, if you believed in that sort of distinction-- and you see the deep green of your eyes reflected in the faint jade of hers.
"Got you," she says, pressing until you have trouble yourself. It's the truth-- which is odd, because Narcissa so rarely has anything to do with that-- a sort of painful pleasure, or else pleasurable pain.
She could always be surprisingly viscous.)
Or perhaps that viscousness is not all that surprising. She had so many sharp and pretty teeth. It's Narcissa that makes you feel this way, so physical. No longer a half-phantom, you've lost that important prefix, 'meta'. Slowly, you touch your fingers to your swollen abdomen; gently, gently. The baby stirs-- so perhaps this bothers him too. Part of your problem, you think-- stripping off your cloak, then the emerald maternity smock-- is that Narcissa makes you feel so much. An overdose, almost. People are like potions, each a delicate mix-- not enough is bad, but so is too much. You have to balance perfectly-- ingredients, emotions.
You said that to Severus, once, hunched over alchemy texts in the library. He took so long to answer that you were sure he thought your were being silly, again.
But then, very quietly, he said, "Yes, I think so, too." You smiled, partly at his kind tone, and partly because you were relieved not to have done something strange again, the kind of something that made James' friends, especially Sirius, peer at you oddly. Not directly, of course, because you should always look at dangerous things from the corner of your eye. It was harder to tell if you had done one of those somethings around Snape-- either he didn't know about them, or didn't care. But then, Severus rarely begrudged you anything, especially when you were right.
Narcissa, however, would stop sometimes, right in the middle of something, mouth lax with an unborn question. You'd think, 'I did it again', while her eyes would measure you. She never said anything though, which was good. Other people could be so vocal, when you couldn't figure out what you'd done wrong. It hardly seemed to matter, anyway-- despite their silence crowding around you, their eyes asking 'what?'.
Naked now, you stretch and come to stand before the mirror. Pregnancy has made you vain-- you laugh at yourself-- but you can't help it. You like to look at this composite, this body you share with someone else. You flesh seems to glow, and you feel ripe, like a peach hanging in the moonlight, but also like a fortress. Strong, with battlements. You carry this little creature inside yourself, you give him everything he needs without really thinking about it. It's strange not to always be alone, but also nice, because you know he's safe inside you. The thought of actual birth giving worries you some, these days, because who will protect him-- your baby-- then?
In the armoire, you find James' invisibility cloak, hung inside out-- and, though he'll ask you about it later, you pull it off the hanger. Your wrap yourself in one smooth motion, like a bird fluttering its wings. Now there is nothing at all in the mirror, and that makes you feel better. Much better, to be liquid rather than solid, amorphous rather than firm. Easier to escape, to slide away from attempts to trap and conform. It's easier to love that way, too-- an uncertainty that makes it all the more certain.
And you do love James, you do. You know just how much and to what extent. You can love him past his faults, fully aware of what they are. It seems a double miracle that you can be sure he loves you too. Not just something he says, into the spaces between you molecules, but something you _know_. He loves you, despite your lack of form and substance. Maybe he loves you all the more because you can slip through his fingers and James-- darling James!-- doesn't try to hold on.
You flip the cloak back over, laying down on the peach-colored king-size bed in the middle of the room. A soft "nox" turns warm colors to shadow, and you smooth the laticed-blue lining of the cloak over you. It's mid summer and this garment, with the invisible side turned towards your skin, is the only thing that feels remotely cool.
A long sigh, under the moon-- "Ahhhh..."
You remember the first time James showed you the cloak. You put it on, inside out, twirled, and he laughed.
"A shame," you said, "it's so much prettier this way!"
Sirius snorted, "Pretty?" Maybe it was more of a sneer, "Pretty is not the point." His hand was curled around Remus' hip, at the time.
"Dogs have no taste," Severus said, later, regarding some other crime perpetrated by James' best friend. It must have had something to do with you, the prank, because Snape knew what a precarious position you in were in, careful only to insult the Marauders when the two of you were commiserating. At least-- he refrained when you were around. At the time, he added, "Son of a bitch" and you couldn't help but laugh. Severus didn't, though. He never laughed at his own jokes.
Safe in the darkness, you curl around your baby. It's easy to imagine you're back in the old house on Darnell Lane, in your bed under the attic eaves. There's even a strong breeze tonight, pushing the tree branches against the window-- a sound that travels across time. At the top of the narrow stairwell, you're utterly removed. Petunia won't bother you, she's afraid of all the dust and shadows. Mom and Dad give you peace too, in case you're studying. It must be hard, they say, you work so hard to get such good scores at Hogwarts. They're proud of the fact you're 'unusual'-- a word that, when said by them, is nothing at all like Petunia's spat pronunciation of 'freak'. But it bothers you, all the same.
Suspended between years like this, it's perfectly alright to think about Narcissa, even the Narcissa you saw today, standing infront of Madam Malkin's in Daigon Alley. It took you a few minutes to realize she was holding her baby, because you were so focused on her face, which hadn't changed at all. Same pale green eyes, skin pale like the underside of a seashell, platinum hair alight despite the overcast day. She was being cross with a street peddler over something-- Narcissa was always prettiest when she was angry-- ripe red mouth twisted in distaste. That's when you saw the baby, because she tossed her hair and the infant reached for the enchanting strands, much as you had, once. He looked like her, the baby; a boy of course, as Lucius would have nothing else. Or maybe that's just something only you would think. After all, the head Malfoy and his consort both had ivory, lunar glow about them.
(You're outside, somewhere-- you know this because the sun makes Narcissa so bright that it becomes hard to look at her. "If Lucius had been darker, like his father," she is saying, "I would have been married to the younger son. Mother says its important to coordinate." As if they are clothing, or pieces for a portrait-- not human beings.)
He must be at least two months old, Narcissa's son, because you can't imagine she would forgo the sequestering traditional for mother and child amongst the purebloods. Your own son is due very soon now-- so soon that the midwife insists that you begin keeping to the house come Monday. You really don't mind that the baby is running a little behind, because, being your son, he's probably as vague about time as you are. Was Narcissa annoyed, you wonder, towards the end of her pregnancy? Actually, you can't imagine her having the patience for pregnancy at all, never mind the blood and pain, the smell of new flesh, that would come with it. It seems more likely that this boy-- he looks like a porcelain figurine-- merely appeared in Narcissa's arms, conjured by her desire.
How long you stood there staring, you don't know. Perhaps it wasn't long at all. Your heart wasn't beating any faster, just harder. Louder, shaking your ribcage. Then, Narcissa looked up, eyes finding you all the way across the street. Her face was perfectly still a china doll mask, but you were somehow privy to the real expression beneath it, even if you couldn't interpret what it was. Your first thought was, 'our telepathy must still be working'-- that strange, thin cord between the two of you-- which was funny, since Narcissa had sworn never to use it again. She must have found a way to turn it off-- even if you never did-- because, if she hadn't, then wouldn't you have seen Lucius' face hovering above, that first horrible night? But there it was, that small tingle at the base of your spine, and you wondered if she heard your voice in her head saying 'Narcissa', the way you heard hers saying 'Lily'.
You turned then, hurriedly, having no compunction against retreating. You never figured out way some people seemed to think it embarrassing, or degrading-- a strategic withdrawal. There's always another way around, if the most obvious is blocked. You weren't looking where you were going and you stopped when it felt right to, leaning against a cool stone wall, feeling sure you could pass through it. Damn Narcissa-- you might have been able to, if not for her. Instead, you stood there, feeling each breath carefully, wondering why it felt like you weren't getting any air.
"A mushroom for the pretty mother-to-be?" You almost screamed at that voice, you were so startled. But that would have definitely qualified under one of your strange 'somethings', and you couldn't bare to have the whole alley looking at you. Not when Narcissa had made you visible, once more. As if was, you jumped a little, turning. It was an elderly fruit-merchant-- that was who the voice had belonged to-- and she was looking at you with eyes a bright blue under her wispy grey bangs. She pressed the plump mushroom into your hand-- her own fingers were so cold and boney!-- smiling.
"I can't--" you said, in regards to paying, because you were sure at the moment you'd never find your purse, never mind the face it was still tucked in your right pocket.
"Never mind that," the old witch smiled, "not a bother. You look so pale, child! You should eat. Fainting is not good for the baby." She eyed your full figure, encased in the emerald velvet smock, and nodded to herself. "Best take care, dear." Her smile said she knew you were close, but close to birth giving or close to the edge of tears, you don't know. "You ain't seen nothing yet!"
And you haven't, you haven't seen anything at all yet. You know this with a certainty that has nothing to do with the old woman's sage advice, or with the mushroom you delicately partook of on the way home. Suddenly, your little burrow under the cloak is no longer safe, and neither is the attic of long ago. You're stuck here, and things are changing. Only Narcissa could be an omen of such things-- so radiant and out of place amongst the rest of the wizarding crowd. You'll give birth, but your arms will never be able to protect your son the way the whole of your body was. You'll go back to work at the Ministry of Magic, listening to the hushed conversations, reading reports that don't dare to actually enscript You-Know-Who's name. Shuddering, you hug yourself and, thus, at the same time, your child. Narcissa smiles at you, over her shoulder, a memory that is some how more dangerous because it can not be quantified.
It occurs to you, horribly, that you still love her.
Even now, when you know better.
Severus would have several choice things to say about that.