The Female of the Species
Epilogue
The small girl ran along the wide landing in Malfoy Manor, not watching where she was going. Suddenly, she ran headlong into a pair of legs, stopping her dead in her tracks. She looked up, such a long way for such a little person, and when she saw the familiar face, she gave a huge smile, and she giggled.
"What are you doing?" asked Draco Malfoy, smiling back at his half sister. She shrugged her shoulders in response, and threw her arms around his legs so that he had difficulty standing. Draco shook his head in amusement.
When Cho had first given birth to her daughter, Draco had been resentful and angry. He had refused to acknowledge the child in any way. He felt the loss of his mother keenly, and unconsciously blamed Cho for her death. He had no logical reason for this feeling, except the suspicious way his mother had died suddenly at Glen Moy Castle, and the fact that Draco knew Lucius had been there with Cho. Draco felt outraged that his father should have decided to make such a fool of himself by falling for this girl: she had humiliated Draco at Hogwarts by being a better seeker than him, and had even been out with that unspeakable Harry Potter. Draco had envied and desired to emulate his father's reputation with the witches, but Lucius' previous rule had been never to fall in love with any of his conquests: until Cho.
But once the small girl had begun to talk, the change began. She did not recognise Draco's attempted rebuffs. She just laughed, and carried on chattering, sometimes understandable broken sentences, and more often, childish nonsense. If he was sitting in a chair, she crawled into his lap, and played with the buttons on his clothes or stroked his golden hair, that was so like her Daddy's. Draco tried setting her back on the carpet, but she was delighted by this game, and immediately climbed back up, like a playful puppy. Staring into his pale eyes with her dark brown ones, she rubbed her fingers over his strangely rough chin, then over her own smooth one, learning in her own way one of the differences between male and female.
Draco could not help but smile at her comical ways, and one day Lucius found them together in the morning room: Draco was stretched out on his back asleep on the sofa, snoring gently, his head on a cushion; and prone on top of him lay Cho's child, her dark hair spread over his chest, also sound asleep. Lucius smiled to himself, marvelling at the ability of a trusting little girl to charm embittered, hardened men.
Now, in spite of retaining his antipathy to Cho herself, whenever he and the child met, Draco was her slave and protector, and her comforter when she hurt herself. With her alone he was kind and gentle, for she loved him unreservedly, and he had no need to maintain the hard edge he presented to the rest of the wizarding world.
Today, however, Draco had no time for his sister, he had been just about to leave for an appointment. "I have to go out," he told her, untangling her arms from his legs, "I'm already late."
"Back soon?" she asked him, pouting. "I don't know," he replied. He had learnt to be honest with her. She accepted "don't know"s at face value, because there was so much she did not know herself, but if he told her a time, she expected him to be there. She could not tell the time herself yet, but would ask frequently, "Two o'clock, Daddy?" and if he said it was, she would wait expectantly for the sound of Draco's voice, and scream in delight when he finally appeared.
This time, however, she watched her adored brother disapparate, then looked around herself again, and carried on happily with her trip along the landing. Finally, she stopped, and looked up at a door in front of her. It stood ajar. This was a great temptation, for usually the doors were closed. She gave it an experimental push, and it swung inwards with a creak. The girl stepped through and found herself in a large sunlit bedroom. She knew she had never been in this room before, and looked around with great interest. It was comfortably furnished in unmistakably feminine pastel colours, and dominated by an enormous four-poster bed with turquoise blue hangings.
But it was not this that attracted her eyes. She looked at the wall opposite the foot of the bed, and was enchanted by what she saw hanging there: a portrait of a lady. The lady was asleep at the moment, leaning against the wall of the room in the painting. When she looked at the portrait, the child saw a beautiful golden-haired woman who looked like an older female version of her brother Draco. She stepped closer for a better look, mesmerised. As she stared wide-eyed, the lady awoke, stretched, and then glanced downwards and noticed her tiny observer, who smiled with pleasure when a pair of cornflower blue eyes looked into hers.
"Hello," said the child. "Who are you?"
"I'm Narcissa," replied the lady. "And what's your name?"
"Bryony," answered the girl, with great care. She had obviously been taught to say her name clearly when adults asked this universal question.
"That's a pretty name," said Narcissa, and Bryony smiled at the compliment. Until then, Narcissa had only seen a miniature version of Cho Chang, distinguishable from her mainly by the lack of an epicanthic fold over her eyes. But the angle of Bryony's head, and the expression in those large brown orbs as she acknowledged Narcissa's praise, reminded her forcefully of Lucius.
Bryony stared at Narcissa with interest. "N'cissa?" she said experimentally. The lovely lady nodded back. Then suddenly, the child saw Narcissa's hand. She put her own hands in front of her eyes as if to check all was there, and a look of sorrow came over her face. "Hand hurt?" she asked sadly.
"No, Bryony. Not now. It happened a long time ago. The hurt's all gone now."
Bryony nodded, but she was still curious. "Why N'cissa got sore hand?" she asked.
"An accident." The little girl frowned. "A knife." Now she understood. Mummy told her often she was too small to use sharp knives, and had once shocked Bryony by shouting at her when she caught her handling a kitchen knife. So even grown-ups sometimes cut themselves too.
Then Bryony saw a strange thing happening to the painting. The lady was wearing a blue dress that shimmered and caught the light. But now she could see that the dress had a long pocket in one side of the full skirt. Bryony knew about these pockets, witches had them for their wands when they wore traditional clothes. With the innocence of a child, Bryony did not wonder why the layers of paint had suddenly become transparent to her eyes. She looked at Narcissa's wand, and saw that it was not the only object in the pocket. Fastened to the wand was something else: something that seemed to call out to her to hold it. Bryony put out her small hand, and lifted the wand out of the portrait. With the extra item, it was heavier than she had expected, and she almost dropped it. She stared, fascinated by the other object, which was wrapped in something thick like a pair of Draco's boots. There were shiny buckles holding it in place. Bryony pulled at one of the buckles. She could not work out how to undo it. She tried desperately to remember what Daddy had taught her when she had tried to undo the buckles on a pair of his boots.
She was so engrossed in her task that she did not hear the voice calling her name, or the footsteps entering the room. She looked up when she heard a shout. Her Daddy was standing there, a look of thunder on his face.
"Drop it, Bryony! Now! Do you hear me?" Bryony had never heard Daddy speak to her like that. She could tell he was very angry indeed. Shocked and frightened, she dropped the wand as if it were burning her hand, took a step backwards, and burst noisily into tears.
In a moment Lucius swept his precious daughter into his arms, and hugged her to him so tightly that she could not move. Her anguished screams did not subside, she could feel his agitation, and it increased her fear. He turned furiously to the portrait to confront its occupant. "What are you up to, Narcissa? Are you trying to kill my daughter as well as yourself?"
Narcissa was cool as a cucumber, and replied calmly, "No, Lucius. It wasn't me. It was the Knife. It called to her of its own accord. It knew I had not chosen a new Secret Keeper because I could not identify anyone suitable before I died. So it sought one for itself. It recognised a hidden power in her. She saw the Knife through the layers of paint. She took it freely without coercion. It would not have hurt her. It is not in the interest of the Knife that its new Secret Keeper should die immediately she made herself known to it. The Subtle Knife knew she lacked the skill to expose the blades.
"Put the Knife back in its place in the pocket, Lucius. It will stay safe until she returns for it when she is old enough to use it safely. Or perhaps she will never use it, for I was the first to do so for many generations.
"Bryony, don't cry." This in a soft voice that somehow forced the listener to pay attention. "Your father loves you. He only shouted because he was afraid for you. Even grown-ups are afraid sometimes."
At these words, Bryony's sobs subsided, and she looked from the beautiful lady to her father. Both were smiling at her. She saw that Daddy had tears in his eyes, and she was confused, for this she had never seen before. One rolled down Lucius' cheek, and Bryony wiped it away with a tiny finger. She did not understand why this made her father's tears flow even more freely.
Lucius carried his daughter from Narcissa's room, heading downstairs to greet her mother, newly arrived from Cho's Chic after a long day at work.
The End
I would like to offer my thanks to all my loyal readers, especially those who have taken the time to leave such positive reviews here, elsewhere, and in private to me.
"But what happened to Cho and Lucius?" you ask.
Dear reader, you decide.
