Disclaimer: JK Rowling is the genius and creator. I am simply the fool and the imitator.

"It is never too late to be what you might have been." –George Eliot

Chapter Six
The Bastard

Narcissa encounters Lucius Malfoy four times during this year, though she only speaks to him the first two times.

It's her third day at school, and her second day of classes. She's sitting alone at a table in the Common Room, quietly working on homework for her potions class, when she suddenly senses his presence behind her. She doesn't even turn her head to see if she's right – she knows that it's him. He stands across the room for a few minutes, watching her as she ignores him, and then, without saying a single word, he comes over to the table, pulls out the chair across from her, and sits down.

Only now does she look up. Without any sign of welcome in her voice, she says, "Hello," and then continues with the sentence she's writing.

"So," he says easily, hands folded neatly on the table in front of him, "your first week as a Slytherin. Does it feel as wonderful as you'd imagined?"

She says nothing.

He leans a bit closer to her, as if he thinks she can't hear him. "Do you like it here so far?"

Still, she says nothing. She's written the same sentence twice, though she takes no notice.

He leans in even closer. "Are you ignoring me on purpose?"

"How can you speak to me?" she finally says, desperation in her voice, shame evident in her eyes. She feels as though she might cry again, though she's determined to remain composed in front of him. She keeps her eyes on his forehead, too afraid and ashamed to look him directly in the eyes.

He appears to be confused. "Sorry?"

"Sirius," she says miserably, as if this explains everything. "My cousin. You must have heard about him."

"Oh," he says, realization dawning on his face. "Well … yes. Of course I heard. I think everyone in our house has heard."

She looks back down at her work. She feels as though she is dirty and tainted. Rather than a fond thought, Sirius has become an embarrassment.

Lucius glances at the Common Room exit, then rises from his chair. "Look … I have a few things to be doing. I'll meet up with you tomorrow to discuss our … agreement." He pauses before he says the word, as if to ask if she remembers it.

She nods. He leaves her. The room is quiet again, but Narcissa finds it impossible to concentrate on her work. She sets it aside after five minutes.

The second time she sees him, which is only a day after the first encounter, is a day she thinks will be hard to forget. He's already sitting in the Great Hall when she arrives for breakfast. He's surrounded by several of his friends, all of them in their sixth year, or at least all of them looking very old, and he's laughing with them hysterically about something.

She likes the way his eyes look when he laughs. They're gray, though they almost look silver – shining, alive – when he laughs.

She slides onto the bench across from him, in between two of his friends – both female – and waits until she has his attention. His friends all look at her as though she's mad. They aren't accustomed to such a bold approach from a first year. She pays them no attention, but waits until he stops laughing and has his eyes on her. At first, she doesn't notice that he's wearing a face identical to that of his friends.

"I was wondering if now would be a good time to talk about… you know," she says, not wanting to mention their agreement in front of everyone. She suddenly feels small and outnumbered under the many looks of scrutiny directed towards her.

He raises an eyebrow. "Actually, no, I don't know. Enlighten me, won't you?" He crosses his arms over his chest, and suddenly there's a look of mischief in his eyes.

She blushes, feeling even more uncomfortable. "Last night, in the Common Room, you said you would meet me to talk about … well … that thing you wanted to talk about."

His friends are suspicious now. "Lucius," one of them says, casting a look Narcissa really doesn't like in her direction, "we weren't aware that you were having any late night meetings with first years in the Common Room."

Lucius laughs. It's a cold laugh. "Well, that's because there are no late night meetings to be aware of. I really don't know what this little girl is talking about."

Little girl. He called her a little girl. The words echo over and over again in her mind, sounding harsher and more distinct each time. "You know what I'm talking about," she says, becoming anxious.

He looks at her as though he's taking great pride out of her discomfort. "Look, I'm sorry, but I really don't know who you are or why you're talking to me. I don't associate with little girls – especially little girls with Gryffindor filth in the family. However, I suppose I could grant you the honor of speaking with me for just one moment – so, little girl, did you want to ask me something?"

She doesn't understand why he's doing this. He knows perfectly well what's he doing and who she is – she can see the recognition and the mischief in his eyes, and she can hear them in his tone.

"I think someone has a little bit of a crush on you, Lucius," one of his pretty female friends muses, laughing icily as she speaks.

"Well," Lucius says, straightening up his collar and sitting up ridiculously straight for a dramatic appearance, "really, I can't blame her. It's so hard to keep track of my many admirers these days, you know."

The girls around him giggle madly at this while the boys exchange smirks, and Narcissa gets up off the bench. "Why are you doing this?" she asks him, cheeks furiously red now from her humiliation. "Why are you pretending not to know who I am?" Her voice is trembling. She feels like a child.

He suddenly looks as though he pities her now, though there's still no warmth in his gaze. "Look, I already told you – I don't know who you are, nor have I ever spoken to you before … but I suppose I could take a picture with you, if you'd like. You can hang it on your wall – then you'd never have to speak to me in public again, would you?"

Now his friends are laughing so hard that they're snorting.

Narcissa can't bear it any longer. She turns on her heel and runs as quickly as she can from the Great Hall, hearing the laughter echoing behind her, and finding herself completely unable to rid the image of Lucius's malicious smirk from all the corners of her mind. She doesn't stop running until she's reached her dormitory. She refuses lunch, dinner, and classes, claiming that she's too ill to get out of bed, and then spends another long night crying into the soft fabric of her nightgown.

Classes aren't so painful. They provide a welcome distraction from him. She's already made several friends by the week's end, and she does get to see Sirius in two of her classes: potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts. They try to sit as near to each other in these classes as is possible, though it's difficult. Sirius has already made friends, too. In both classes, he's sitting next to a boy with messy black hair and mischievous brown eyes. Narcissa doesn't like the look of this boy, but she says nothing about it to Sirius.

The red-haired girl, Lily, is very smart. Actually, both she and Remus – the boy with her on the train – are very smart. They're both in Gryffindor too, and during both potions and Defense Against the Dark Arts, they seem to compete with each other in answering questions. Remus is shy. He lets Lily answer most of the questions, though Narcissa is certain he knows the answers to all of them. He doesn't bother her so much.

Narcissa makes one friend in particular whom she likes better than the others. He's a strange boy, an outcast already, though he's very intelligent. He likes to read. He has straight black hair that grazes his shoulders, and his skin is sallowy and pale, but Narcissa likes him all the same. He doesn't talk very much, but when he does, he's intriguing.

She first meets him in the Common Room, when she's having trouble with her Herbology homework. He's sitting on the couch in front of the fire, his nose buried deep inside a thick book. He looks as though he doesn't want to be disturbed, so Narcissa approaches him cautiously.

When she's finally standing in front of him, just a few feet away, she doesn't know what to do. She decides to wait. She waits patiently, just standing there in front of him, watching him read, turn the page, read a little more, turn the page, read a little more, until finally, he glances up in her direction.

"Hello," she says quickly, not wanting to miss her chance.

He looks over his shoulder, as if to see if she's addressing someone standing behind him.

"You," she says, grinning. "What's your name, again?"

He mumbles something that she can't understand.

"What?"

"Severus."

"Oh, that's right. I remember you from class today – but – well – anyway – I'm Narcissa. Do you remember me?"

He shakes his head.

"Oh." She feels slightly discouraged. "Well … anyway … I was just wondering … I mean, I was having a little trouble with my Herbology classifications … I can't tell the difference between four of these plants."

He looks at her, waiting for more.

She holds out her homework. "So … can you help me, then?"

He hesitates before taking the papers from her. He almost looks afraid, and she wonders why. He studies her work for a moment, frowns, then looks up at her. "Do you have a quill?"

She goes back over to the table to get one. When she returns, he looks afraid again, and this time she can't help but ask, "Did I do something to scare you?"

He shudders and the look of fright is gone, as if it had never existed. He doesn't answer her. Instead, he takes her quill, makes a few markings on the page, and then holds it up to show her. She leans down a bit closer towards him, but this only makes him back away, so she straightens back up and resorts to squinting at the paper from a distance.

"You made a mistake here," he says, tapping the paper once with the quill. "And see here? This plant has heart-shaped leaves while the ones next to it are shaped like diamonds. You have to look at the points of the leaves – that's usually where the difference is."

"Oh," she says, brightening. She sits next to him without realizing it, examining the changes he's made to her paper. "Thank you!" she says, looking up at him.

He scoots slightly away from her and smiles uncomfortably. "You're welcome."

He picks up his book again, but before he can continue reading it, she asks him what it is. He holds it up so that she can see the cover: Dark Arts for the Darkest Minds: Level Nine.. She frowns. "Is that required reading?"

He shakes his head. "It should be, though. It's really fascinating."

Her frown is paired with arched eyebrows. "It looks a bit … depressing."

He looks shocked at her words. It's one of the first emotions she's ever seen him display. "Depressing? It's far from that. I can lend it to you after I'm finished with it, if you want."

"No, thank you," she says, rising from the couch. "I have a lot of homework to do."

He nods, and she leaves him.

Their friendship begins from that point. They talk every night in the Common Room, by the fire, even if they have other homework they need to finish. They talk about anything, really, though it's usually about whatever Severus is reading, which is usually about the Dark Arts in some way. She likes to listen to him talk about the Dark Arts. They're something she's always wondered about, and when he talks about them he gets a certain gleam in his eye, a sign of passion, devotion, and dedication that Narcissa wishes she felt towards something. She asks him questions and he always knows the answers. He asks her questions and she always knows the answers, too, although his questions are of a different nature.

"What's your family like?" he asks her one night, not looking up from his book. She can't tell what his expression is, but his tone has more than curiosity in it.

She shrugs. "Well, I have my parents, of course, and then two sisters, Bellatrix – the oldest – and Andromeda – the middle sister. I'm the youngest. You've probably seen them around here. They're both in Slytherin."

"No," he says, still not looking up. "That's not what I mean."

She's confused. "Then what do you mean?"

"I mean – what's your family like – as a whole? Does everyone get along?"

"For the most part," she says. "Although I have one uncle, Uncle Alphard, who's a bit of a troublemaker. He's always trying to make my parents angry about something. And then –"

She's about to tell him about her parents' reaction upon discovering that Sirius had been sorted into Gryffindor, but for some reason, she stops.

"What?"

"Nevermind," she says quickly. She's looking away.

There are a few minutes of silence. It is Severus who finally breaks it. "I don't like my family."

She looks back at him. "Why not?"

He shrugs, and he finally makes eye contact with her. His eyes are sad and distant. "I just don't."

She doesn't ask about it further. After another few minutes of silence, he suddenly asks, "Wait … I meant to ask you … are you somehow related to Sirius Black?"

Her stomach immediately becomes a knot, though she tries not to look too surprised at the mention of Sirius. "Yes, actually. He's … my cousin."

Severus's face darkens and he glares into the fireplace. "I don't like him," he says firmly.

Narcissa stares at him. "What? You know him?"

He shakes his head. "No. And he doesn't know me, but he finds it rather funny to torment me whenever I see him."

"But – but we've only been in school for two months." This seems like a logical argument at the time, though Narcissa can't for the life of her figure out why she says it.

"So?" Severus says, and now he's angry. "I just want you to know that if you're anything like him, then I never want to talk to you again." He shuts his book, stands, and storms up the stairs to his dormitory.

Narcissa stares after him.

Christmas again. It's snowing and lonely and cold, and Narcissa sits in the windowbox at Grimmauld Place, wrapped in a blanket, dreading the moment she'll have to return to Hogwarts. Sirius is sitting in the box across from her, wrapped in a blanket of his own. He's watching her.

"I don't want to go back either," he says.

She looks at him. She says nothing.

About halfway through the year, Narcissa decides that she truly hates Lily Evans. Whenever the redhead answers a question in class, Narcissa scowls. Whenever Narcissa is sitting in the library or Great Hall with Sirius and Lily suddenly appears, usually with Remus or that black-haired boy, Narcissa looks away. Lily is always so vibrant, happy, intelligent, stubborn, and, worst of all, beautiful. She's always so everything. And Narcissa hates her for it.

Worst is when she interrupts one of Narcissa's few meetings with Sirius. It isn't often that they get to see each other – Narcissa always has homework to do, and Sirius is always hanging around with his other friends when he should be doing homework. He's already made so many friends. He's very popular.

This is why their meetings during lunch in the library, when they sneak food in and eat it behind the last row of books, or their meetings in the Great Hall, when they pretend not to notice the glares of their fellow housemates, or their meetings for a few brief moments in the corridors between classes – this is why their meetings are so important to her. They are few and far between, and so she relishes in every minute that she gets to see him, talk to him, or simply be near him. Judging from the mixture of anger and frustration in his eyes whenever they have to part, she assumes that Sirius feels the same way.

Lunch, after all, has never tasted better than when they're sitting in their hidden place in the library, enjoying the sound of the other's chewing, and knowing that they aren't supposed to be eating there in the first place.