Title: Tempest of a Mother's Heart.
Author: MurasakiNeko.
Rating: PG-13, to be safe.
Word Count: 4612.
Character(s): Narcissa Malfoy (narrator). Draco Malfoy, and Mrs. Black and Regulus Black in flashbacks. Other members of the Black and Malfoy families mentioned.
Warning(s): Definitely follows the R.A.B.Regulus Black theory. Spoils a very early section of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, having to do with Draco Malfoy's, erm, career choices-- or lack thereof.
Summary: As her son, newly initiated into the Death Eaters, is instructed in his dangerous task, Narcissa reflects on the parallelism between his fate and her cousin Regulus's, and how motherhood played a role in the acceleration-- and extrication-- of both.
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any of J.K. Rowling's characters.
I know of many things. Knowing is remembering, after all. Knowing History of Magic is to remember the names and dates of famous wizards and their contemporaries. Knowing Charms is to remember the spells and the wand motions. Knowing Potions is to remember the long lists of ingredients, and to remember their orders and timings just so. Knowing is remembering, and I remember.
I remember things as they arrive back to me, carried on the backs of objects that were once associated with the memory. My entire memory is a metaphor, visions and sounds and scents and tastes-- and feelings-- all carried as the tenor upon the vehicle of the objects I require.
Such vanity. Such materialism. Such a stupid girl, really, to be unable to grasp any abstract concept without means of tangibility.
Yet is my name not Narcissa? Does not one expect such behavior from such an aptly-named girl? Perhaps if another were to possess the same cognition, she would not be judged so harshly, as she is not Narcissa, the vain flower, the female of the man who died staring at his reflection.
Perhaps the name itself is to be blamed. My middle sister once wistfully recited lines on the lack of merits in names, from one of her favorite stories1. Yet she also spoke of another story by the same forbidden Muggle author in which a man's foretold prophecy came true by means of his own trying for it2. I cannot see why a prophecy would be any more powerful than a name, particularly when a name is said to one's face year after year, ingraining further its power into the soul.
When an olive-skinned, dark-haired girl with heavy eyelids clamped shut came screaming from the womb, she was named. She became Bellatrix, the Female Warrior. Yet she was Bella, Beautiful, too. So grew up a dark-haired, heavy-eye-lidded girl with a penchant for pain, revenge, and the propagation of pet causes, with intense beauty and knowledge of its power.
When a pink-cheeked but otherwise unremarkable girl wept softly into her mother's breast, she was named. She became Andromeda, the Woman Chained. So grew up a pleasant, mild girl with a hidden lust for more-- hiding, chaining, and repressing that which she desired against the wills of her family to no one's knowledge but her own.
So when a translucently pale, changeling-like girl with wide, clear blue eyes came silently, like a stillborn child, into the world, she was prodded to life with a wand and named. She became Narcissa, Flower, Vanity. So became me.
Perhaps I am vain. Yet vanity is only the meticulous attention to visual detail and the accepting of only the higher standards.
Perhaps there is more to my namesake. The pale flower which overlooks the riverbed, staring into the depths of river-- does it only see its reflection? Perhaps it sees not only the reflection of itself, but the reflection of those behind it. Perhaps it looks on even beyond the surface.
"Cissy, at least look as if you bothered to wake up," Bellatrix scolded me. I focused my eyes in on her. Though thirty-five years old– and she all of forty– she still spoke to me as she did when I was a child.
"I don't want to look," I confessed shortly to her, my voice soft, intentionally masked from the small cloaked figure beside her.
She sniffed and took no similar care with her own volume. "Your son's first instructions from the Dark Lord, and you'd rather sleep."
"I'm not sleeping," I barely muttered. Bellatrix heard, of course– she always heard, always ready at the ear of her sisters, to the demise of one– but she had learned after long enough that asking me would not always produce an answer.
My eyes flitted over the room, dark and dank, once Victorian lavish and now rotting. A Death Eater meeting indeed. There had once been days when the fine young men of their families gathered together in grand halls for the same purpose. Young, handsome, philosophical, eager, and energetic, they mixed politics with society behavior. Plans for terror were made over expensive wines. Gruesome deaths were discussed between nibbles at HORDERVES. There was always a laughter-filled dinner, and couches in well-lit rooms.
I did not have to crawl inside myself, asleep to the world, then. I could focus– vain as they say I was– on the party, the food and drink, the energy of the gathering. I did not have to think of death, planned or consummated, any more than I would were it told casually in a joke.
Yet this derelict room did nothing but draw death to the mind. There was a mustiness, but it was infinitely more pleasing than the sharper, sweeter scent that underscored it. The lights shone in red and brown. Upon the dusted windows fell a steady sheet of silver rain, swirling like the surface of a Pensieve. Not everyone was here, for fear of being caught in one fell swoop. The faces of the handsome men who were here were hidden under hoods and behind masks– and I knew that they had aged, and many were handsome no more.
I was hooded myself, but each of them knew there was an outsider among them. I could sense their stirrings.
From a tall, wing-backed chair before the fire rose the tallest cloaked figure of them all. The figure rose and turned towards me, advancing swiftly. My eyes faded out; I did not know where to look: To avert them would be a sign of fear, to boldly keep them would be defiance.
The cloaked figures on either side of me feel to their knees in deep bows. On my left, Bellatrix's tall, thin form sprawling at the figure's feet, desperately, madly, devotedly. On my right, Draco hesitated for a mere second, dropping first to his knees and doubling at his waist, not used to this practice.
I stood perfectly erect. I had never been ordered to bow.
A soft, high-pitched laugh emerged from within the cloak of the figure before me. It was nothing but an ethereal snicker. "Death Eaters, I ask you to greet our guest, Narcissa Malfoy. She will keep our secrets for us. She is more connected to our ranks than many of you: sister, husband, and now son." A thin white finger emerged from within the folds of the fabric to cue the smaller huddled figure on the floor. The laugh returned.
"And cousin," I muttered, even more softly than I had with Bellatrix.
The rain continued to splash against the windows.
Like a Narcissus flower beside the water, the little girl was beside the window– though it was hard to tell whether she was looking through or watching the pane itself. She had blond hair that was not golden, honeyed, flaxen or any of the beautiful similes used for blond hair-- for it was closer to white than blond, and no one would dare dub it such an unflattering color as that. It was curled, being of such an obedient texture though it usually fell straight. Her face was pale and pointed, drawn around a perfect, tiny nose, rosebud lips, cheeks with the palest trace of pink in them, and eyes that seemed entirely too large for her childish face. She wore a green organza dress, white stockings, and shiny black shoes. Her mother had dressed her in them just hours before. The girl knew what she looked like, for, after all, she could see her reflection in the window.
Yet behind her, she could see her cousins were beside the fireplace.
The elder poked at the healthy flames with a heavy metal poker, his dark hair falling over his profile. The younger, his equally dark hair slicked to his head, sat excitedly beside him, chanting "Incendio! Incendio!" into the flames every time his brother poked at them, the curls of blue and yellow and green and orange twisting upward into the chimney as if the boy had truly chanted them to life with his spell. He was far too happy for any real magic; it was all pretend.
"Sirius, Regulus, why don't you play with your cousins?" asked a large woman in a great armchair. Her face was square and her eyes small, and her dark hair was pulled intricately into a serpentine knot at the back of her head. Her small nose was slightly upturned, arrogantly– but it was scarcely noticeable, as all the women of the family possessed this nose. "Look at dear Narcissa; she's lonely there by the window."
The elder boy turned to the little girl. He was bigger than her, but she was used to those larger than she. "Hello, Narcissa," he said dutifully. His younger brother echoed behind him. The little girl did not move. The boy's large eyes were intense and they scrutinized her.
He scoffed,"Does she talk?" He smirked. It suited him. The girl only watched as he went on. "Well, go on, then. Are you going to say hello to me, too?" He waited for the moment of silence. "Ha. Figured you wouldn't."
The little girl understood he was only teasing, but her dark-haired sister did not. Impending over the boy's still-kneeling form, she approached him and glowered down at the mop of hair as dark as her own– though not nearly as polished and wavy.
"My sister will talk to whomever she pleases," she said calmly, her eyes alight.
"She doesn't need to, with you talking for her, does she?" he retorted, clearly set flame to by simply being spoken to by the dark-haired girl. In looking up into the girl's eyes, he lost track of the poker. The very tip, still glowing whitish-orange, seared the leg of the girl. Her white stockings curled into brown around the touch.
There was an otherworldly shriek and the boy was flung backwards. Surprised only for a moment, he heaved himself upwards and shoved right back. The two were fire and fire, the eldest cousins, used to being unmatched in their families. They were equals in their own right. The little girl somehow knew this, and knew there was a rivalry already at play. She was not horrified at their feud; she knew it was only natural.
Yet like a flash of lightning the two were wrenched apart. The large woman stood with a hand on the shoulder of each, her bosom heaving beneath purple silk and brocade, her eyes bulging so that they were nearly twice their usual size– and lit, at that.
She rounded on the girl, not her own, not her son. The boy slipped back beside the fire to watch, smirking, expecting.
Her screams filled the room. They were clear words forever etched in the little girl's brain, though they were not to her. "DO NOT LAY YOUR HANDS ON MY SON!"
They were the words of every mother, protective and deadly.
A curtain behind the woman came loose from the frame, falling to the sofa with a crash and a thud. The woman saw the flame in the girl's eyes and connected the two, though the girl was in her right as far as justice went. The woman's wand moved just the slightest inch, but the girl gasped and clasped her hand to her arm, which clearly was stung.
The woman went to fix the fallen drapery, and the fair-haired little girl looked up into the eyes of her smaller cousin, now on his own feet. "Why don't you talk?" he asked with the words of one unable to do anything but copy those of an idol. "Why not?"
His hands came out, and though he was but the same age as the little girl, he was far too strong. She fell backwards, her skirt rustling and crumpling into the carpet. She had not resisted as her sister had.
The little boy's eyes grew wide with shock at his own daring. His mother merely looked back for a moment, and then went back to straightening the curtain. It was not her own son who had fallen.
"And cousin?" came the laugh again. "My dear, as of late, you have no cousins. Or has Bella not informed you?"
She had. She had sulked for days that my grief over my husband's arrest had superceded compliment over her victory against the dark-haired boy she had been at odds with for years.
Death still did not change what once was.
Bellatrix rose to her knees beside me. "My Lord, the defeat of Black was of no great consequence to our family. He was dead to us for years." That hadn't been what she said to me.
A short man, his cloak made plump by his stout body, twitched and squirmed, trying to get a glimpse of me before his lord from within his hiding hood. I refused to look at him. I knew who he was, one of my once-cousin's once-friends. The world changed, and these things were no longer, but memory, unlike existence, was unchangeable.
There was the smallest rumble of thunder outside. The rain was growing into a storm.
The fair-haired girl who once stood at a window, now a teenager, was silent beside the door which did not keep out the sounds of animated conversation within.
"Gone," said the voice of the large woman who had once fixed a curtain in a purple silk dress said. "His bed unmade, his school trunk gone, only half his clothes taken . . . no one heard him, not even Regulus."
"It was to be expected. There was nothing to be done," her own mother replied.
"How, though? How? How does the heir to the House of Black come to such ruin? What possessed the little bastard?" Her words were sharper than they ever had been– and ever would be, towards a member of her own sacred family.
"He was always different. It was clear as soon as he was Sorted into Gryffindor."
"MY SON. How does MY SON come to be a GRYFFINDOR, hang round with HALFBLOODS and MUDBLOODS and TRAITORS and SCUM? MY ELDEST SON!" Her voice was growing shriller.
The fair-haired girl dug her fingers into the wood of the door, surprised that it gave way to her sharp nails. The knuckles of her white hands paled further white.
Her own mother panted consolingly, "It's no fault of your own, no fault of your husband's; these things just happen! It's like the curse of Squibs! There's nothing to be done!"
"OH, THERE IS!" the woman's voice broke into a low, primal roar. "NO SON OF MINE . . . NO SON OF MINE! DEAD TO US!"
"You– not the tapestry! Wait! Before you– wait!"
There was the unmistakable cry of "Twelve Grimmauld Place!" and the snap of Floo powder taking effect.
The kitchen door opened. "Narcissa," the dark-haired girl was suppressing her grin. She did not realize she had heard the news. "Listen to this! Sirius's scarpered off! He's gone!" she laughed, her mad cackle full of ill-intended glee. "His mother's just gone back home to blast his name off the family tree for good, like that Squib Uncle Betelguese and that bloodtraitor wench who married a Muggle. Who'd have thought we'd see the likes in our own generation! It's such a shame; what will we say at school?" She sounded anything but ashamed; her eyes were filled with triumph. "He's disowned. His mother absolutely HATES him."
The fair-haired girl thought this was anything but true, as well. Hating was something she was quite unfamiliar with; there was love, and there was apathy, but hate was rather inexplicable. Hate required love, somehow or another, in its necessity for care and effort. It was obvious that, even coupled with hate, her aunt still loved her son. She couldn't see why else she would be so utterly disappointed in him.
"There was another cousin, once, as well," I knew there would be a smirk beneath the cloak if I could see within it. "Has he also died to the House of Black?"
"None of us are any longer of the House of Black," I said unequivocally.
"Ah, yes, of course– Mrs. Lucius Malfoy. Has love for your husband changed all of your loyalties?" he taunted with amusement.
He could not speak to me of love. He mocked it.
The foundation of the house shook as another low roar of thunder rumbled up from the horizon.
The fair-haired teenage girl was silent, cross-legged upon the green duvet cover of her bed. Before her paced a girl– a woman– with hair not so dark as her elder sister's, but with the shine particular to her family.
"You've always been much closer to Bella than you have me," she said earnestly, her dark eyes meeting the fair-haired girl's pale eyes. "But– but I can I talk to you about something? You'll understand better than she would, I'm sure. I mean, you and Lucius Malfoy–"
The fair-haired girl felt her chest heave and her heart start to flutter in spite of herself. Her mind was flooded with thoughts of the young man with his long, rakish, blond hair, clear-complexioned skin, steely grey eyes. Her insides squirmed hotly with memories of his hand upon her hand, her cheek, her leg . . . and then glowed soft and warm with thoughts of all he had said to her. Words of praise, words of compliment. The young man never complimented anyone.
The brown-haired girl was watching her intently. She smiled. "You know."
The fair-haired girl mutely acquiesced that she did.
The other girl's expression sobered. "What would you do for Lucius? What would you be able to give up? Everything, do you think? How transforming is love?" She did not wait for a reply. "Could you throw away everything you once had? Our house? Our family? Could you do it? Could you do it for love?"
Not for love, exactly, the fair-haired girl mused. For Lucius himself. "I plan on it," she said. "Once we marry, we won't be of the House of Black any longer, will we?"
Her sister returned a sad smile. "But you can return. You can. You'll be home for Christmas. Bella will come to visit. Mother will be there when you have your baby–" she suddenly stopped, as if she had choked upon something.
The fair-haired girl's eyes fell upon the brown-haired girl's middle– and she realized how transforming love really had been for her sister.
Their eyes met for a moment. "You would do the same, wouldn't you?" the brown-haired girl asked, eyes terrified. "Love doesn't know family boundaries. Love doesn't know bloodline. You can't stop it, and you'd do everything for it, wouldn't you? It wouldn't change your feelings for Lucius if he weren't pureblood?"
Suddenly, the door burst open, and the dark-haired girl charged in, livid. "You!" she shrieked to the brown-haired girl. "We know your secret, you Mudblood-loving whore! You get out of this house, out of this house before we blast you out!"
The offended girl stood up straight and tall. "Gladly. Andromeda Tonks is a hell of a better name than Black. Curse you and your self-righteous talk of bloodline! Marry your own cousins and have mutant children with blue skin and nineteen toes, and be gone from my husband's and my life forever!" With a snap, she disappeared.
The dark-haired girl stood aghast. "Married, is she? Married already? Or planning on it? The whore's already seeded with his halfbreed child. Disgusting! Why, I ask? First that other bloodtraitor, now her!"
"She loves him," I explained softly. She had been right; I understood.
Another was dead to us– dead to us, but still remembered.
My silence had gone on long enough. I was mere amusement for him. He turned to the business at hand.
"Rise, Malfoy."
The small figure at my feet rose to his feet, standing erect before the terrifying tall figure who yet did not scare me. I slipped backwards; Bellatrix took my arm and held it fast to her side. It did not console me.
The tall figure took my son's arm in his hand, too, but, as if appraising it, held it gently before him. The sleeve was rolled carefully back, revealing a small, new, raised burn– a dark tattoo, the Dark Mark. Draco gasped, and the white finger emerged from within the folds again, to be placed upon the burn. Draco shuddered and made a low groan, as if he were about to be sick.
"Excellent tolerance for pain," the figure mused. "Even your father had to suppress screams when he first joined up."
Draco, too, was humbling lying in the presence of his lord. Every time Bellatrix– staying hidden in the Malfoy manor since her return from Azkaban– or I even so much as grazed his left forearm, he let out a hell-raising shriek.
The rain began to pelt harder against the roof.
"Don't touch it!" the dark-haired young woman warned. Her sleeve was pulled hastily to the side, the fine velvet of her evening gown crumpling in her hand. The burn was fresh.
The fair-haired young woman turned to her husband. "You, too?" she asked, concerned.
His grey eyes did not change expression. "Of course. I was first at the ceremony."
"And I right after," the dark-haired young woman insisted. "Before even my own husband, Rodolphus. It was merely out of favoritism to his father that the Dark Lord brought Lucius in first."
The fair-haired young woman glared at her for him; he did not want to bother. She knew her husband was well-favored by his master.
From across the ballroom came the young cousin still in the family– the only true Black left. His dark hair was still as slick as it had been. His eyes fell on the dark-haired girl's arm.
"Bella, will I ever–" he started to ask.
"Hush! Yes, of course, Regulus. You are still young, still in school. Don't be so impatient! You know very well that old fool Dumbledore cannot know."
The fair-haired young woman wondered, if the old fool was such a fool, why it was imperative to hide from him.
The large woman who had once fixed the drapes slunk up beside her now only son and placed a protective hand on his shoulder. "The youngest, isn't he?" she asked, proudly. The fair-haired girl was astonished at her depth into the cause.
"No, Crouch is younger," said the grey-eyed man casually. "But he is, still, indeed, very young. SO devoted, for his age. The Dark Lord approves."
"So young, so devoted for his age. I approve," the figure whispered down to the burn on my son's arm. I felt myself boiling, heating like the very burn did under the finger of the Dark Lord.
"Death Eaters!" he announced drawing back. "Those of you whom I have called upon are privileged to know my greatest and riskiest plan yet! You, Wormtail–" the plump figure squirmed again, "-- are to report this information. You know." Clearly he did, for the squirming stopped.
"Draco Malfoy," the figure bent slightly, towering still over the boy. I could feel the blood pounding in my arm that Bellatrix held fast. "You have the great honor of fulfilling for me one of my greatest needs, one which neither your aunt nor even your father would be capable of. Your father would be proud, were he here to witness it."
The entire establishment was bathed in the blinding incandescence of lightning just over the house.
His father was not by to witness it.
It was then the fair-haired woman learned of motherhood herself. She had known love and she had seen motherhood, but to know both was to become consummate.
Aided only by her own mother and the House-Elf, the fair-haired mother brought a child into the world. Screaming terribly, his pale face drawn and deep pink, his head dusted with the lightest silvery hair, Draco Malfoy, son of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, was born. His mother instantly loved him.
In loving her husband, she agreed that she would give up anything had she been required to, house and family and gold. Yet in loving her child, this piece of her very self which had nested within her for months and emerged into an embrace of only her, depending solely on her, needing her above all other things– she would give up her very life.
This was love. This was motherhood.
The storm had not passed by midnight.
The house was periodically flooded by silent waves of blinding light, accompanied in moments by rolling, roaring, shuddering blasts of thunder. The candles in the chandelier over the white marble staircase flickered. The panes in the large guest room where Bellatrix slept trembled.
I slipped silently into my son's room. He lay buried beneath layers of duvet and silk, pillows arranged around him in a haphazard nest. I sat on the edge of the giant four-poster bed, where even if he were awake, he would not detect.
I watched him for an immeasurable amount of time. When the lightning burst overhead, his pale face, turned upward to the ceiling, looked washed and decayed, as if he were already– dare I thought it– dead.
The younger cousin lay on his back, his face washed and decayed, dead.
Only his mother made a sound– the primal sobs of a broken person who would never feel happy again. It was a permanent dementor, the death of a child.
The dark-haired woman had returned the body to the house and left without a word. She thought his death was in the right, as far as justice went.
To witness his funeral now was only his mother, his father, his aunt, his uncle, and the only cousin left who cared– however so much she did.
I cared now.
I cared like the mother who defended her sons, who loved them so dearly that one spurned her she could do nothing but hate him, who watched with pride as the other came to his undoing by the very promptings of her own encouragement.
I cared like my sister who knew of love for husband and child long before I did.
I cared like I had never cared for anything ever in my life.
I had never spoken, never resisted, in so many years of watching my family's lives play out before me. I saw the memories, never lived them, in all their unchanging forms. I watched as mothers' and sisters' screams rose up in the name of their loved ones, never having the chance myself.
Now was mine. If it were not seized, it would be my son lying face-up in the casket, myself sobbing helplessly by his side.
I seized my cloak and focused hard on a village I barely knew, a tiny hamlet I had never visited but had heard of, once long ago. I would speak to he who lived there; I would save that which I loved, as I had been unable to save my sister, my cousins, my husband, and my aunt.
I found myself in the misty hills of Spinners End. Leaving only traces, the storm had passed.
Bellatrix had never understood, only tolerating her husband and possessing of no children. Lucius barely understood, loving me and his own son only in regards to our good name to him. The Dark Lord understood the least, laughably so.
The Dark Lord had been wrong. There was not power– only love, and those too weak to possess it.
1Romeo and Juliet, by William Shakespeare.
2Macbeth, by William Shakespeare.