Apr 4, 2006

A/N:

So I was looking over my stories the other day when I notice that this one was in a C2 community thing that was dedicated to the Black family, etc, and I was inspired to do a similar chapter on Narcissa Malfoy (formerly Narcissa Black).

I look forward to doing another one on Bellatrix someday maybe, if ever I decide how to portray her. In the mean time, have fun with this one.

Disclaimer: Just as with the previous fic, I do not necessarily agree with what I'm writing. In other words, I don't necessarily think that Narcissa is…well, how this chapters characterizes her as. To be truthful, I'm not exactly sure how I feel towards her. I just thought it was an interesting take on her person.

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The Perfect Black

A row of small songbirds, various colors, perched in their respective cages. Their big black eyes glazed and wide with fear, each one trembling, feathers pressed closed to their bodies. Almost as if they were aware of the palpable loom of death that hung over them.

Narcissa Malfoy executed a series of sharp wand movements and sent a barrage of spells flying through the air, each one aimed toward a wire cage. A moment later, seven small thumps were heard as seven small feathered bodes fell to the ground lifeless.

Narcissa slid her silvery wand into the pocket of her robes and lifted a glass of blood red wine to her lips. She leaned back, crossed her legs, and swallowed, allowing a small gust of wind to play about her blond tresses. Her eyes, a cool grey-blue, scanned the cages, then the many small grave markings just beyond them. They were surprisingly sad, and not without reason.

Her husband, Lucius, now in Azkaban facing who knows how many horrors. Her son, Draco, miles away heading toward perhaps the same fate. It was enough to drive any woman to tears, but not Narcissa. Narcissa was strong, she was brave. Narcissa was a Black—proud, dignified…Narcissa didn't cry. It just wasn't in her nature, she had made sure of it.

A week after her eighth birthday, Narcissa's white cat had run away from her into a tree, and no matter how she tried to coax it down, it wouldn't budge. Sobbing, she had dashed to her father, who had taken one look at the tears in her eyes and grabbed the switch hanging on the peg by the door.

When he had finished with her, her father stood her across from him, looked her in the eyes, and said the words that she would never forget.

"Dry those tears, Narcissa, they are unseemly for a Black. We are a line of kings, and we never cry. If you want to be of this family, then you will remember this. We rage, we avenge, we wreak havoc and we make the lives of those who have hurt us miserable, but we never cry like the weak. Never."

And, wiping her tears on the hem of her dress, Narcissa had stumbled outside again, where she sat, bruised and sore, contemplating. She remembered her father's dark eyes, blazing with anger, with disappointment in her, and she felt the weight of her ancestry upon her shoulders. After a long silence which was uncharacteristic for a child her age, she had summoned her servant to her.

"Get that cat down from that tree," she had told the submissive house elf, "and have it killed."

After that she changed from a vivacious rosy girl to a cold, dark teen, a proud and dignified pure blood, just as her father had intended. When she entered Hogwarts for her first year, the professors often commented on her dark grace, but they never allotted her much attention because by then, it seemed, they were used to the Blacks.

Shortly after her second year Narcissa mastered the art of showing no emotion. She learned to crush and to kill any kind feelings from surfacing within her, and she promised herself that she would never again let a single tear fall.

If the foolish Muggle healers could be believed, tears were Man's way of easing pain and sorrow, of cleansing and replenishing. Narcissa, however, found other ways to express her grief.

First it had been spiders, the little black leggy things that made their homes in the dark corners and spun their webs of silver silk. When, at thirteen her first boyfriend gave up on their relationship, her cool eyes had flashed and with a sweep of her robes, she had descended the staircase into the dungeons.

She sat on a stone block for hours in sorrow before spotting the small critter perched on a cobweb suspended between two suits of armor. She had smiled, a dark smile, and reached for her wand. When it lay dead before her, her pain had eased and she was restored. She felt no remorse.

When her best friend fell victim to a vampire's bite and had to be taken away, Narcissa moved on to frogs, taking comfort if not pleasure in terminating each one. She watched their long legs go limp and cease movement, and each fleeing soul took with it some of her sadness.

When her father died during her second year at Hogwarts, Narcissa stood silently in her robes of black and grieved straight-faced. Her father had taught her everything: how to be proud, how to evoke fear, how to not show any emotion but scorn, anger, and dark amusement, and she had loved him in her own way. That night three mice sacrificed their lives for her.

When she was nineteen she was married to one Lucius Malfoy. He was the only suitable husband for her, the only man who didn't cringe at her piercing gaze. The only one she had ever cared for. The night of their wedding, she had smiled at her new groom, the closest sign of genuine happiness she had shown in months, and he had smiled back at her, and they knew that they were in love, even though neither could find the nerve to say it.

Her son, Draco, was born to her at twenty five. She had looked down into the bundle of robes the midwife had placed into her arms, and for the first time in many years, she was moved. For an instant, one moment, Narcissa had allowed a flash of emotion to creep into her eyes; a moment later, her mask of dignity was back in place as she handed little Draco back to the nurse to feed.

And a year ago, Narcissa's cousin was murdered at the hand of her own sister. When the news reached her that Sirius Black was among the dead, Narcissa had had to kill a dozen moles just to ease her pain. Sirius, although the scum of their line, although no better than a Mudblood, had been her cousin, and she had always admired him with that one sliver of her heart that still allowed her to.

He had been proud in a different way, brave in a different way, so handsome, perfect, and happy. When the sorting hat has placed him into Gryffindor many years ago, Narcissa had been shocked almost out of her carefully arranged façade.

How dare he question his heritage, how dare he go against his ancestry, that ancient and noble house that had given him his name? And so Narcissa had watched him carefully for signs of falling apart, waited silently for him to realize, the hard way, the dangers of going against the grain, and when that never happened, a part of her mind had begun to question, to doubt her own actions. And she had hated him for it. But not really.

While her mind conceded that Sirius was a failure, a disappointment, Narcissa couldn't help but admire him for not being the standard Black. Sometimes she wished she could go to Sirius and ask him. Ask him why he chose to go the way he did, ask him why he couldn't just accept who he was. She told herself she stayed away because she didn't want to be associated with the filthy blood traitor, but deep in her soul she knew the truth. She feared him; she was terrified of Sirius because he was the one that had almost loosened the carefully arranged blocks of her life. And she couldn't let that happen, because she was perfect and had worked so hard to achieve that perfection.

Perfect. The perfect Black, the perfect Malfoy. She hid her emotions so well that no one would ever thing of her as anything but a Malfoy or a Black. She was so immensely proud of having achieved it that sometimes she wanted to raise her arms to the sky and shout her joy. But of course she couldn't do that either.

When she'd learned that Lucius had been caught by the Aurors, she had remained calm. Even when her son showed signs of harboring the Dark Mark that she so feared, Narcissa used her carefully cultivated control to suppress her feelings, but she knew she couldn't do so for long.

The moment she felt her grief about to overwhelm her again, she'd had her servant bring to her seven small birds that had been captured the day she'd found out. She had held each one in her palm carefully, her eyes almost caring, then set them in their cages and removed her wand from the pocket of her robes.

And now they lay dead.

Narcissa rose in one fluid motion and strolled over to the cages, examining each one and drawing the corners of her mouth down into a frown. Useless. These birds had been useless.

As the years passed she had noticed it, and she didn't know if it was because her sorrows had grown from childish pettiness to full fledged grief, but it didn't particularly matter. The fact remained that as she grew older, her method no longer worked as well as it used to.

Slowly, gradually, killing began to lose its effect on her. She no longer felt calm when she heard the small thud of bodies falling to the ground. Seven. She had killed seven. But she still felt anguish. She still longed for her husband's warm caresses, still ached to see her grown son, now so defiant, beside her. If anything, it had made her pain worse.

Why? Why did it no longer work? Why couldn't she escape like she used to? Why didn't killing soothe her like it had done for so many years? What was wrong? Had she finally reached her limits?

Narcissa pondered this for several moments, trying to keep the panic at bay. It was the birds, that had to be it. Tomorrow she'd send her servant to the countryside to bring her ten different creatures, bunnies perhaps. That would work. She was counting on it to work, desperate for it to work. She was too far gone to change now; she had nothing else to fall back upon.

It wasn't in her blood to show sorrow and so she expressed it in different ways. Narcissa didn't have to cry, no. She was a strong woman, a dangerous woman. There was no way in Hell she was about the risk having the carefully sculpted facets of her life come tumbling down haphazardly around her like poorly crafted sand castles.

Her husband was gone and her son was all but missing, but there was no way in Hell she would let this destroy her.

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A/N:

Having finished this, I realize that it didn't entirely come out the way I had intended for it to. It was incredibly difficult to express what my mind was saying in words.

Ah well. Leave a review or two if you're feeling generous (: