I own nothing.
So this is like my first fic which doesn't have a Black character in it. I'm scared, moving out of the comfort zone now. Be nice.
Narcissa.
It was forbidden.
So she had been told for the last twenty years. It was forbidden. Failure to comply with this rule would have resulted in her execution. So like a good, obedient wife, she obeyed. Until an hour ago. News of the old man's death had travelled fast. News of her son's involvement had travelled fast.
Over the last twenty years Narcissa Malfoy never questioned her husband. She had trusted Lucius to protect her. Protect her son. But now he was gone, and with his absence he left his wife and son wide open to attack. And they had been attacked. The dark lord had come knocking. He had wanted compensation for the damages caused by her husband and she offered herself to his cause. But her son, her baby boy had interfered. He wanted to prove himself as a man. The only problem was that the dark lord wanted to see proof of his ability too.
Alone. She was now completely alone. Her husband was in prison. Her son on the run. She was alone. And she knew… the dark lord would come knocking again.
Through stealth and cunning she would have to protect herself. If she had not been a daughter of the noble and most ancient house of Black, and not the wife of Lucius Malfoy, she would not think it possible. But she was no china doll despite her appearance, she was not ignorant to the fact that under the living room floor existed her husband's 'office'. A place in which, during the last twenty years, she was forbidden. A place in which her husband's collection of artefacts lived. A place in which the previous Malfoy heads of house had contributed their wisdom and their own relics. A place of dark secrets, a place, Narcissa mused, that would now offer her sanctuary for a short time.
Down the stairs she descended. Dark secrets, ghosts, whispers that the walls had kept over the years caressed her hair with a gentle wind, she felt comforted knowing that they approved, knowing that as she past through the abandoned mansion, the ghosts of the Malfoy household would do all that was possible to protect the throne from invasion.
Past the portraits she walked.
Even the house elves had fled.
Past the painting of cousin Hades the horrid.
She was alone.
Past the portrait of aunt Millicent the Magnificent.
It was dark, moonlight filtered through the windows.
Through and past the abandoned hallway, steel armoured figures turned their head gently and followed her spectre-ish figure.
She outstretched a hand and felt the wall as she made her way down the marble steps to the basement. Her silver and white robe flowing behind her like a bridal train, the last rays of moonlight disappeared as she descended into the darkness, her ghostly figure of white with it.
The room was rather large, but with her left hand she felt her way across it, and around it until finally her fingers met a crack in the wall. Using only her bare hands, she prised the door open by inserting her nails into the gap and pulling. Her feminine hands were unrecognisable as her nails bent back in the effort and snapped enabling a damn of blood to flow from her fingertips. Behind her she shut the door, trapping herself in the endless maze of blackness, and even further she descended into the shadows.
Blinded by the darkness, she felt her way through the labyrinth. The stone was cold and smooth under her fingertips. Of which direction she was headed she did not know. She felt. She felt the pull of the magic. The scent of the dark secrets that emanated from the room which she had been forbidden to enter, guided her. Her bloodied fingers traced the wall which would occasionally break enabling a passage to erupt from the stem of the straight line in which she was headed.
Finally there was no passage to follow as she met a dead end. Well informed of the whereabouts of the room, she took a right and then a left at the second break in the wall. The space was only four feet deep, and she knew what had to be done. Lucius Malfoy's hidden chamber was impenetrable without magic. However he was no fool. Some could go as far as to call him the Dumbledore of dark magic (minus Lord Voldemort of course). He had protected his chamber with various charms of course but the most brilliant of his plans would have to be his ultimate grand plan, that the use of magic more than once in his labyrinths of dark magic would cause the charms to react and murder the intruder, hence Narcissa's reluctance to use her wand.
She used all her energy and apparated onto the other side of the wall.
For all its secrecy, it was not a large room. A large picture of grandfather Malfoy harassed the back wall, overlooking a large table. The room was dark, but as soon as Narcissa arrived the fire in the grate hissed to life. Bookshelves. Bookshelves covered the walls like a blanket. Centuries of knowledge, centuries and centuries of the Malfoy family secrets.
Cupboards and drawers ran across the bottom of the bookshelves, filled with dark objects.
She did not know what it was she was looking for, yet she knew that in the twenty years she had spent with Lucius she had promised she would never stray into his private quarters lest Draco's life was in danger, this was the vow she had taken. That not her own, and not her husbands, but Draco's. She had been taught how to enter. However she had never been told of the curse Lucius had placed upon the place, yet Narcissa sensed it was what her husband would do.
As she looked around the room, a silvery chain caught her eye. A familiar silvery chain. She took it out of the drawer it was in.
Pain and hatred convulsed within her as she recognised whose it was. The power, the strength, the darkness emanated from it, and the steady vibrations from the locket was unmistakable.
She remembered memories from a distant lifetime. A distant world. A world of fine garments and high status, a world where this locket would not be too out of place for it's beauty was breathtaking. A world where the women would sit in their pastel coloured frocks and the men would drink port and talk of the dark side in the comfort of their own homes. And she remembered the only man she ever loved and cared for apart from her son. He was graceful, charming, loyal. And one night, Lucius had come home with the news that he was dead. She enquired and he would not indulge. The subject was closed, and she knew. She knew that Lucius had killed him, that he must have been given the order. And this… artefact must have been the only thing on him when he died. The stench of dark magic was thickening quick. She wondered… could this be… could it be what he and I talked of before he left?
Swiftly she moved towards the fire to examine it. Yes it must be. The snake that coiled around the locket was unmistakably the calling card of Salazar Slytherin. It was made of better material than the one Regulus had made as a replica, and the stench was intoxicating.
With her bloody finger she caressed the necklace. It was in his vicinity. In his possession before he died.
Other memories came to mind. More distant. Memories of the apple tree at Grimauld Place. She touched the faint scar that she had acquired above her left brow. Sirius had pushed her off the tree so Regulus hexed him. Of course he didn't know that she was trying to fly and Sirius had nothing to do with it. She remembered hanging Sirius' Kneazle Akantha because he was a freak. She remembered being…jealous, jealous that unworthy Sirius Black was the brother of Regulus, and he neglected his duty. But she, she Narcissa loved him, she looked after him, even when he joined the death eaters, even when he reformed, it was her he came to, and her husband, her own husband had killed her baby brother.
Two weeks later ministry officials paid a visit to the mansion, they found nothing. In the secret chamber under the living room floor lay the corpse of Narcissa Malfoy. The dark lord had come knocking indeed as she had predicted, petty spells could not keep the Dark Lord at bay. Yet he never found the necklace. He never found the shell which had sheltered apart of his soul for so long, the shell which lay only mere inches from his feet. Indeed he is so altered in his humanity that the absence of it would not alert him.
Narcissa had killed it. She used her blood. Her blood which was the blood of the enemy forcibly taken. The necklace provided as the ancestry and as she lay there and lord Voldemort kicked her limp head to one side he did not notice that the sister of Bellatrix, a servant to the dark lord was missing a little finger.
A/N. I lied, it had Regulus in it. It wasnt a complete lie, he wasn't the main character, well he physically wasn't, and i feel i need to explain some things. I read fics about Narcissa and think to myself she really isn't as fragile as she makes out. in HBP she does averything in her power to help her son,she's a good mother, she just... fell in with a ...bad crowd, if thats how you want to put it SHE'S BELLATRIX'S SISTER FOR GODS SAKE poor thing. This fic really isnt working it's two a.m and i'm tired and i'm going to Wales tomorrow morning and i know if i dont post this now it will never get done. R+R and tell me if it's a waste of time. She destroyed the horcrux by some magical procedure which mirrors the way Voldy was resurrected. Voldy wants her to pay for all the wrong her family did to him, thats why he seeks revenge. 'Petty spell could not keep teh dark lord at bay' it's the dark lord we're talikin about, however brilliant you make an evil character, they're no way as brilliant as Voldy.