Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
This chapter once again carries a gore warning. Don't worry; the gore doesn't happen to Harry, and, in fact, not to anyone that most people care about. Nevertheless, this is Not a Nice Chapter for that one scene.
Chapter Sixty-Eight: A Toy and a Coin
Harry? Harry, I found my body!
Harry blinked and stirred, slowly opening his eyes. He hadn't heard from Regulus in so long that it took him a moment to recognize the voice. Then he smiled, as he realized that Regulus had really only left a few days ago to find his body and stay there until he knew where it was. It simply seemed longer than that, because of everything that had happened since then.
"Welcome back," he whispered, making sure to keep his voice low enough not to wake Draco. It was afternoon from the slant of the light, but both of them had irregular sleep schedules by now. What with the removal of the curse in his shoulder wound this morning, Harry thought that he could sleep for a week solid. "Where is it?"
In Wayhouse, Transfigured! Regulus would probably have done a jig if he could. I finally figured it out. I nosed and nosed and nosed, and still couldn't sense any trace of a preservation spell. And then I realized that I could sense some of the old and familiar magic from the summers I spent in Wayhouse. Spells on the room that used to be the nursery, in fact. I was just always in too much pain before to sense it, or I didn't stay with my body long enough, because it was boring. I'm Transfigured into a toy, I think.
"Of course," Harry breathed, remembering the room full of figurines that he and Narcissa had passed through when they were there. "Do you know what kind of toy you are?"
No. But it shouldn't be that hard to figure out. Once you can go to Wayhouse and I see it, I think I'll know it—
His voice paused abruptly. Harry shut his eyes, knowing what was coming.
Oh, Harry, Regulus whispered. No.
Harry sat in resigned silence as Regulus searched through his memories, growing more and more indignant at each one. He retreated into incoherent promises of vengeance on some of them, moans of pain on others, and Harry was startled, when he found the image of Dragonsbane dying, to feel a warm silence much like a sensation of arms surrounding him. He shifted, wanting Regulus to go on. Being held like that occasioned a sense of faint unease in him even when Draco did it.
Regulus at last reached the last clear memory he had, of Madam Pomfrey removing the changeable venom from his body, and sighed out. Why do the worst things happen to you when I'm not there to prevent them? he whispered. And why do the worst things always happen to you?
Harry shrugged, then hissed as pain and exhaustion both punished him for the too-sudden movement. He couldn't believe that he was still so tired that even a few minutes awake wore him out. "Just lucky, I guess," he murmured. He knew he could speak in his head to Regulus, and he would switch to that if Pomfrey entered, but just now, he didn't want the intimacy of it. He could feel Regulus's rage and pity, sweeping through him in unending waves. That was bad enough.
If you can even joke about being lucky—"Bad fortune is luck, too." Harry lay back, trying to make plans. It didn't help that his thoughts were swirling like paint splattered with water, moving in constant, lazy colors, dragging him towards sleep. He hated it, but it seemed like he was going to have to rest some more. "We have to get you out of Wayhouse," he muttered, his eyelids drooping. "Now that the wards are down like that, someone might already have walked in. Unless you can raise them again?" he added hopefully.
I tried. But Wayhouse is having one of its moods again. I could raise the barriers on Grimmauld Place and the others. That one is just going to have to remain unprotected for right now.
Harry nodded. Merlin, even that made his head feel hot and heavy, as if he had a fever. "Then I'll write to Narcissa. Can you communicate with her?"
Well, no. She has no link to the Dark Lord. She was never Marked.
"We'll work a solution out somehow," Harry muttered. "I think I should go with her to Wayhouse, but—"
You are not going anywhere for the next four days except to sleep.
Harry blinked. The sense of the words was sliding away from him, and he had to carefully form and hold the next sentence in his head for a few moments before he spoke. "You need to be protected."
Let the adults take care of this for once, Harry. Go to sleep.
Harry yawned, and burrowed into his pillows. The last thing he felt before he fell asleep again was a hand stroking his hair, and he honestly didn't know if it came from outside or inside his head—if Draco had awakened and come over to soothe him, or if Regulus was causing it. He didn't find out, either, because he was gone before he could open his eyes to check.
Harry opened his eyes, already feeling much better. As he should, he saw, with a quick glance out the windows of the hospital wing. It was already evening, and he hadn't done anything productive with his day except for his brief conversation with Regulus. (He didn't count lying passively under the spell that removed the changeable venom, because there Madam Pomfrey was doing all the work, and he had only to endure). He turned his head, his stomach rumbling, planning to ask for food and then parchment and ink so he could write to Narcissa.
He checked, sharply, when he saw her sitting in that damnable convenient chair next to his bed. Her hands were clasped on top of her folded knees, and except for her expression, she might have been a statue. Her blue eyes were alive, though, and alight, and fixed on his face. She gave a faint nod when she saw him awake, as though they were continuing a talk they'd already begun.
"I came to see what had happened to you," she said quietly. "We have had letters from Draco, of course, and the warning that came when Lucius's Mark burned. And the Minister made an official public statement that the Dark Lord had returned yesterday. But I still wanted to know what you had suffered in person." She leaned across the bed and put one hand on Harry's forehead. Harry winced, even though he'd had no pain from his scar or visions about Voldemort since he worked such damage on his memory. The cool touch of Narcissa's hand, combined with that look in her eyes, said that there was someone else here worried to death about him, though.
"I promise you," said Narcissa, her voice eerily formal even though she wasn't making one of the old binding oaths, so far as Harry knew, "that my sister shall suffer for what she has done." Then her voice did take on the cadence of an oath. "Suffer to the ends of the earth and back again, suffer as salt in her wounds could make her suffer, suffer what she has done answered and given threefold." She paused, then gave Harry a beautiful smile. The beauty could not hide the coldness of it. "When I am done, she will never laugh again."
Harry couldn't speak, and in his head, from his chill gasps of shock, Regulus was in the same state. In spite of the fact that he could be giving Narcissa an important clue if she didn't already know about it, his eyes darted to the glamour of his left hand, only to find it gone.
"Draco did not tell me," said Narcissa, answering his unspoken question. "He's not even here right now, because I made him go eat dinner on his own. I cast a spell that banished glamours when I entered the hospital wing, Harry. I wished to know if you were hiding wounds worse than what Draco had told me you had. From there, my magic confirmed my sister's handiwork.." She paused a long moment in silence. Then she said, words viper-quick, "I suppose that you can tell me the purpose of this foolish, dangerous farce?"
Harry lifted his head. Narcissa, of all people, had no right to reproach him. He had done this to avoid the scrutiny of the world she had grown up in. "I suppose you think that Lucius will accept me with a missing hand?" he spat. "That the other Dark pureblood families would think a crippled wizard any kind of a leader? I did this for a very good reason, and you know it." He summoned the glamour back with a thought, this time making sure that his thumb curved the right way. He had adjusted the look of the illusion in the past day, with Draco's reluctant help, and soon he was satisfied that he would have it perfect. "Kindly don't lecture me on hiding it."
Narcissa blinked slightly, her mouth falling open. Harry wondered why, until she reached out, grasped his chin, and carefully tilted his head so that she could look into his eyes. Harry stared back at her, determined that no matter what she might say, he would not crack.
So, of course, she had to say something that made sure he did.
"Harry," she breathed, "how could you think that would matter, next to what you promise us?"
Harry jerked himself roughly away. Merlin, not again. He could feel tears burning and trembling near the back of his eyes. He scrubbed at them roughly. He was so fucking sick of crying, He was not going to do it again. And he wasn't going to pay attention to Narcissa's attempts to soften the blow. He knew that she only spoke of her own opinion, not the opinion of wizardkind in general. He would look weak enough when word of his confrontation with Voldemort got out—and he was sure that the Death Eaters would find ways to send that information slyly among the Dark purebloods. He would not add a weakness he could hide to the list.
"It's true," Narcissa went on, her words dripping down like water wearing on a stubborn rock. "Yes, Harry, you are right, and many average wizards are forced to wear a glamour when something like this happens to them, or else get a replacement. But with someone of Lord-level power, that has never mattered. There was Lord Guile in the seventeenth century, who lost his left leg and simply used his magic to levitate him. He never hid it, and chose his allies from among those who showed no reaction, and his strongest friends and counselors and Inner Circle from those who were wounded in similar ways. The Broken Guard, they were called, and it meant nothing but respect."
Harry shivered. He had heard of the Broken Guard, but he had not thought to apply that precedent to himself. It didn't matter, because—"He had the will to demand respect. He was a compeller. I don't want to force people to respect me."
"Not will," said Narcissa. "Magic. Haven't you noticed yet, Harry, how honor is done you that would not be done anyone else at your age, because of your magic? And then, once someone gets inside that magic and sees and knows more about you, and sees what you have done for others, they will become your allies because of who you are. Believe me, most of the Dark purebloods would dismiss you as a child if not for your power." She leaned forward and clasped Harry's hand. "They have not. They might be shocked at this, but they are far more likely to swear vengeance as I have done." She smiled a bit. "It is too bad that I am the only one who can swear that particular oath on Bellatrix. The others will have to content themselves with other Death Eaters. Lucius in particular…oh, Harry, he will be so angry." Her smile widened and became dreamy. "You have never seen Lucius when he is really, truly in the grip of one of his overpowering rages. He's so cold most of the time that one forgets he can torture with passion as well as detachment." Her eyelashes fell, once, as she closed her eyes in some intense memory. "It was when I saw him fly into one of those rages after Crispus Rosier insulted me that I knew I really wanted to marry him."
Harry couldn't speak, couldn't think. The thought of finding himself embraced and held close by those he had been sure would be among the first to push him away if they found out about the loss of his hand…
But then he did find his breath, and blurted out, "Do you really mean to tell Lucius about this?"
Narcissa sighed, the way she would if Harry had disappointed her. "Of course," she said. "I mean to tell everyone, Harry." She reached into the pocket of her robe and drew out a long scroll, which she opened with some ceremony and laid down before him. Harry looked down, and saw name after name in shining silvery ink, like moonlight. At the bottom was a blank space, a deep green line.
"These are the names of Dark pureblood wizards I have won to your cause with my dancing," said Narcissa simply. "Some of them I approached as myself, some as Starborn, but all of them know the truth now, and all of them agreed. The majority of these particular agreements came after Walpurgis Night. When it comes down to it, Harry, magic is more important to us than blood. And we have seen how highly you value that old, wild Dark magic, and how much you would risk to protect both it and the people who use it."
Harry stared at the list in a daze. Most of the names were familiar, though not together. The first names were ones that had occurred and reoccurred in pureblood families for generations, the surnames ones that he had studied for days and weeks and months and years, reclining on his back with his books on the lawn of Godric's Hollow.
Charles Rosier-Henlin. Mortimer Belville. Henrietta Bulstrode. Ignifer Apollonis. Edward Burke. Thomas Rhangnara. Honoria Pemberley…
And on, and on, and on.
Harry swallowed as he looked at the line of dark green ink at the bottom of the page. He knew that was where he would sign, binding himself to these wizards and witches. "And you are absolutely sure that they would remain with me in spite of my missing a hand?" he whispered.
"There is nothing that you could do that would deter them," said Narcissa, "short of betraying your ideals, and turning out to be someone who would, say, Declare himself a Light Lord."
"No," said Harry. "But I have no intention of Declaring myself a Dark Lord, either."
"I told them that." Narcissa's eyes were large and calm and just the slightest bit triumphant. "They did not care. In fact, some of them have had enough of Dark Lords to last them a while. The Dark Lord has intimidated them and punished them when they dare to do anything but send their children to be Marked. They've had their homes raided and valuable books taken." She paused, and her lips pursed. "Arabella Zabini, in fact, gave me this message for you. She said that she is your firm ally now, because Death Eaters took her Parseltongue books."
Harry experienced a brief stab of regret, but he was feeling too much else for it to make an impact. He stared at the scroll again, and shook his head. He had always intended to move forward, of course, and make more allies, and take more people under his protection, but he had resigned himself to the thought of wearing a glamour while he did it.
The thought that he might not have to, and it would make no difference—
He could not assimilate it right now, he thought, and he rolled up the scroll and handed it back to Narcissa. Then he had a sudden thought, and sat up in alarm, looking around. Is Dumbledore listening to this conversation?
Fawkes appeared above him, and gave a run of notes that sounded like a chuckle. A vision formed in Harry's mind of Dumbledore bent over his paperwork again, vaguely wondering why he took more satisfaction in it than ever. Fawkes had kept an eye on him while Harry rested and recovered. Harry really should learn to trust him, in fact, since he would have let him know at once if Dumbledore had suspected anything about Narcissa's intrusion.
Harry relaxed. Then he looked at Narcissa as Regulus nudged him and whispered, You know that you can't go to Wayhouse in this condition. Besides, I'd knock you out if you tried. So ask her to go.
Harry sighed. "Narcissa, Regulus is with me, and he knows the location of his body now. He thinks that he was Transfigured into a toy and left at Wayhouse. Could you—"
Apart from the slight widening of Narcissa's eyes, there was no sign that she had been startled by the news, and she nodded, interrupting him. "I would be most happy to, Harry."
"He thinks he's in the nursery," said Harry. "Other than that, he's not sure what kind of toy he might be."
"I will simply fetch them all, then." Narcissa stood with a graceful motion. "Rest for right now, Harry." She leaned over him and kissed his forehead. "I have seen you," she said, "and I will carry a report back to the others." She turned and strode towards the doors.
Fawkes let out a warning chirp, to show that the Headmaster was paying attention again. Harry opened his mouth to warn Narcissa, but without even looking, she touched something in her pocket—a Portkey, it must be—and was gone, smoothly vanishing in a whirl of color.
Harry let himself fall back on the pillows, and sigh, and wait until Madam Pomfrey, still looking haggard from the magic she'd performed that morning, came out of her office and smiled at him. "Would you like some dinner, Mr. Potter?"
"Yes," said Harry, and let himself whine. He wanted to, and besides, it would help convince the Headmaster that he was still weak and acting like a child. "Can I have something other than beef broth, this time?"
Regulus snapped at him at the same time as Madam Pomfrey did. Beef broth makes you strong.
"Beef broth makes you strong, Mr. Potter," said Madam Pomfrey, and then paused as if wondering why Harry was trying not to giggle. "It's what I will bring," she ended firmly, and went towards the fireplace to call a house elf.
Harry squirmed, unsure if he could take food from house elves right now, but just then the doors opened and Draco came in, and he stilled, because Draco would get upset if he raised those scruples now, and it really wasn't worth it.
Why will you listen to him but not me? Regulus said in injured pride.
Harry thought that was ridiculous enough to deserve the jab he gave back. Because he's a much better kisser.
That did, indeed, shut Regulus up.
Albus frowned thoughtfully as he studied Harry through the wards. He'd had the impression of someone vanishing just before he looked in on him again, but if so, it hadn't been someone whose visit had managed to influence the boy unduly. His eyes looked swollen, but Albus welcomed that. Keep him emotionally off-balance, and then he would not question his sudden inclination to visit Lily again.
Albus watched a longer time, and was pleased to see that every time young Mr. Malfoy brought up the issue of where Harry was going to spend the summer, or made some supposedly casual remark about Harry staying at Malfoy Manor, Harry slid smoothly away from it. He didn't address them if he could help it, and other times he was so neutral as to soon send the easily bored Malfoy onto other topics of conversation.
Good. That is the way to do it. Let anyone suspect the truth beforehand, and we would not be able to move him in time. I will summon Lily to come back three days from now, when Madam Pomfrey has said he may leave the hospital wing. We will whisk him away before either the Malfoys or Severus get ideas.
It might be that he didn't have to worry about Severus, though, Albus would admit. The man had been looking into a Pensieve and writing most of the time lately. Albus could see that much, though he could not tell what Severus was writing; the errant professor had exiled Hogwarts's wards from his rooms almost entirely and woven his own.
And, as more good news to be added to a surfeit of it, it seemed that Fawkes was trying to reconnect with him, creeping back bit by bit. Albus didn't try to rush it, didn't hurry him. He just let images of the phoenix flash across his mind whenever they could be persuaded to enter, and the rest of the time worked in happy silence, content with his visions of the Light becoming strong.
Narcissa stepped carefully into Wayhouse and looked around once. The changeable house had a knothole in the wood above the main staircase. Narcissa paused, looking at it, and then walked up the stairs and further into the house. Cousin Arcturus's distinctly odd sense of humor for once failed to materialize, and she did not go sliding down the stairs to land in an ungraceful heap at the bottom of them, or begin dancing a jig that she could not calm.
When she reached the reading room at the top of the stairs, she found one of the boxes from which she had taken certain small treasures on her last visit to Wayhouse shifted a few inches to the left. Narcissa paused again, and let her fingers brush across the top of the box, wiped free of dust. It might only have been the house's whim, of course, which had lowered the wards in the first place and would insure that some parts of it were clean and others dirty at a moment's notice.
Narcissa didn't think it was.
She let a smile play across her lips, and ducked out of the reading room and into a low-ceilinged sitting room. She had come to the house only for the Transfigured Regulus. She must remember that. She knew where the nursery was, and it would be the work of a moment to levitate the toys and float them after herself. She was sure that no one would have disturbed those. Ingenious of the Dark Lord, really, to make Regulus a common object that might be lost among a thousand others and not a magical one, one that might be touched or disturbed. It might have amused him to keep a traitorous, Transfigured Death Eater in the hands of someone else and see him used constantly, but obviously in this case, a different sense of the fitness of things had ruled.
She had come to the house for that reason, and that reason only.
No, not really. That was the only reason Harry had asked her to come. In truth, Narcissa had another, and she moved lightly through room after room, following a faint trail in the dust, gratified to see that her suspicions were correct.
Of course, she did not take her unawares. A certain kind of silence ceased ahead of her as she passed through Cousin Arcturus's bedroom—his portrait blew her a kiss—and a different kind of silence took its place. Narcissa quickened her pace. The plan hadn't been to take her by surprise.
The plan had been to take her.
She swept into a circular room, oriented around the delicate mosaic on the ceiling, one of planets moving around the sun in an endless waltz. Cousin Arcturus had been ever so proud that he'd known Pluto was there before the Muggle astronomers did, and the three planets he'd discovered and they still hadn't danced merrily in the outer rings.
Of course, the spell came at her from behind, a curse that they'd used again and again in their childhood, one that would cause small sharp pinches all over the skin of whoever it struck. Should the curse continue, the pinches would move inward and start squeezing the heart and lungs—something that was never allowed to happen when they were children and their parents were always just a breathless, frightened scream away.
She chose it because of where we are, Narcissa thought, as she performed the countercurse and turned around. This is a place for family.
"Hello, Bella," she said.
Her oldest sister edged into view from behind the bookcase where she'd hidden, her teeth bared. Narcissa regarded her with a pleasure she had not thought she would feel. When they were children, and her mother had told her in confidence that Bellatrix appeared to have inherited all the madness of both the Black and the Rosier lines, Narcissa had been divided between fear that Bella would hurt her someday, and horror that she would disgrace the family in public. Now, she saw the madness as the beginning of a payment for the debt that Bella owed Harry.
"Cissy," said Bella, her voice a broken echo of its old sweetness. "You're here. You came. You're here."
"I did," said Narcissa, and touched the thing riding in her pocket, next to the Portkey. Exaltation surged and rode her. She had thought she would use it for a different purpose before she cast the Finite Incantatem and watched the glamour of Harry's left hand vanish, but now she had changed her mind. There was no doubt of the appropriate punishment for Bella. "Did you know that I would be here, sweet, sweet Bella? I wondered."
"No," said Bella. "You were already here. Took the weapons, I know." She smiled, revealing a mouthful of cracked teeth, and held up her wand. Her dark eyes gleamed with dazzling excitement. They'd always been her most beautiful feature, Narcissa thought, at least when her long black hair was a rat's nest, like it was now. "Tell me where they are, Cissy. Or, better, come join him. He is the one you should have been serving, if you held to the true ideals. Not like our cousins." Her eyes clouded over with anger. "Not like our sister."
Andromeda had always been Bellatrix's nemesis when they were children, biting her lip and keeping stubbornly silent when Bella tried to hurt her, and then she had delivered the most stinging insult possible: she'd slipped out of Bella's guard when their parents were trusting her to keep Andromeda from eloping with Ted Tonks. Narcissa remembered walking into the room where they'd kept Andromeda prisoner and finding Bellatrix on the floor in a variation of the Full Body-Bind that took eight hours to undo. The next word they'd had was that of their sister's marriage, and then her name had been burned off the family tapestry. Narcissa smiled more widely now, thinking of that, thinking of what their quiet, proud, far too bitchy middle sister would have given to be standing here with her now.
"I hold to the true ideals," she said, and began moving left, so that Bella would think Narcissa was trying to draw her into a dueling circle. "The ideals the Black family had before the Dark Lord arose. This is only one Lord, Bella, you know that, and in the end he'll die like they all die. It's not worth betraying what we are to serve him."
Bella's eyes flew wide, and she shrieked, sending a mouthful of spittle flying. "He is invincible," she said. "He has conquered death. He is my lord, and he is my master."
Narcissa laughed at her. "One invincible lord, defeated by a baby and then by a fourteen-year-old," she said, shaking her head. "Bella, really, I would have thought better of you. At least choose a master that a twenty-year-old wizard alone could have destroyed."
Bella shrieked, and charged her.
Narcissa pulled the weapon out of her pocket. It was nothing, really, if you just looked at it, a small silver coin with an imprint of a wizard's head on one side and the Black family crest on the other—an odd Sickle, perhaps. But Cousin Arcturus had made it, and Cousin Arcturus had had a peculiar sense of humor, and an obsession, in his later years, with the difference between chance and fate. He'd made a weapon that carried both with it.
Narcissa flipped the coin into the air, calling, "Heads!"
Even if Bella recognized the coin for what it was, she was too far gone into madness to stop her charge—or speak coherent spells, for that matter, since she was shrieking threats, instead.
Narcissa whirled aside from her, and ducked behind the bookcase. She watched the coin complete its twinkling tumble, and land on its side, and roll in three circles before falling over with the wizard's head up. Then it gave a brief black sparkle, letting Narcissa know it was ready.
Narcissa waited until her sister turned around and looked at her again. She stared her directly in the eye, and smiled, and said, "What you did to Harry in the graveyard, I wish revisited upon you, threefold."
Black lines of power lashed from the coin, leading directly to Bellatrix's left hand. She began to scream as a line of blood spouted across her wrist, and then an invisible knife began to cut, straight down.
Narcissa leaned against the bookcase and watched, calmly, as muscle tore and parted, as bone appeared, as the magic revived Bellatrix when she would have fainted from the pain, as the incantations Bella had performed must have kept Harry awake to feel the trauma in the graveyard. Draco's letters had hinted only, never being explicit. But they, combined with the fact that Harry's hand was gone and he had certain exceptionally difficult Dark spells wound about the stump, satisfied Narcissa that what she was seeing now approximated the reality of what had happened there.
Only threefold, of course.
The hand sagged free at last, and a flash of fire cauterized the wound. Bella slumped with a low wail of pain as the black magic consumed her hand and soared away into the coin again, lying in a pool of her own blood.
She looked up at Narcissa, and, amusingly, among all the other emotions in her face was a spark of betrayal.
She vanished, Apparating.
Narcissa gave a smile she knew would be faint and distant, and stood away from the bookcase. She could not try to pick up the coin.
Dear Cousin Arcturus and his obsession with the unusual. The coin could be flung by any person of the Black bloodline once, though they had to call out the name of the side they wanted, heads or crest, in mid-flight. If it landed with their side upwards by chance, then their wish was as fate—for that one wish only. Afterwards, if that same person tried to touch the coin again, he or she would simply die. Likewise, someone who tried to touch the coin and didn't share the Black blood would perish.
Narcissa had intended to try and use the coin to persuade one of her reluctant, wavering potential allies to come to Harry's side. She'd toyed with the idea of using it on the Dark Lord, but then remembered that Regulus had been in his service. The Dark Lord had been in the habit of asking questions of any pureblood follower whose family might possess weapons that could hurt him. He would have protected himself against the coin long ago, or else he would have confiscated it without touching it and hidden it away. The fact that it had been in Wayhouse proved he was protected against it.
Narcissa gently levitated the coin behind her. She could no longer use it, but Draco could, or Andromeda, or her niece Nymphadora. And she was certainly not going to leave it here for Bella to find, though Bella had used it already, in her childhood.
She gathered a few more weapons as she made her way through the house, noting the absence of those she had expected to find. Bella would have them, then. Narcissa would mention that to Harry.
She reached the nursery, shook her head at the jumble of toys, and swept them all up in one whirlwind. Then, with them hovering obediently behind her, she reached for the Portkey that would take her back to the Manor.
She landed gracefully in the small library. Lucius laid down his book and looked at her, carefully raising an eyebrow at the jumble of objects floating behind her, but not saying anything.
Narcissa went to him and kissed him hard, without speaking. Lucius laughed soundlessly at her beneath the kiss, and, when she pulled away, took her hips in his hands and looked up at her with an expression combining eagerness and affection.
"Whom did you hurt?" he asked.
"Bellatrix," said Narcissa, and sat down to tell him all the details. He would enjoy hearing them as much as she had enjoyed seeing them, she thought.
Besides, by telling him about this first, then she would have two enjoyments unalloyed. She would tell him about Harry's hand next, and the other signs of suffering she had observed, and get the pleasure of watching him go into a rage.
She wondered whom he would swear vengeance against.
She hoped she would get to watch him exact it.