Bruises
Prompt: Harry x Narcissa - Bruises
for weestarmeggie17
Ever since childhood, Narcissa had understood the value of perfection. It had been drummed into her even before she'd had enough words to articulate the lessons she was being taught, but she'd felt it.
Keep your dress clean, or you'll not get any new ones.
Speak unless spoken to, or lose the right to speak at all.
Make the right friends or lose something you care about, or someone.
Her parents had belonged to the 'spare the rod and spoil the child' school of parenting, there was no such thing as positive reinforcement in her household, and so Narcissa had learned quickly to survive. By the time she attended Hogwarts she was fully versed in the rules of her existence, they not only governed the minutia her life but also provided the framework for which she was to judge everyone else she interacted in.
Despite the hardships, Narcissa revelled in the quest for perfection, to her it simplified things, it made what could be a complicated life easier to understand. If her shoes didn't match her outfit, she wasn't perfect, so it wasn't the right choice. If a potential friend had a muggle grandmother, they weren't perfect so they couldn't associate.
Narcissa had known the moment she saw Lucius Malfoy that he was the match for her. Just one look at him and she could imagine a picture of them together, sitting proudly on her mother's mantelpiece for her to show off to all of her friends. It didn't matter what he was like, that was always a bit of a gamble for her set and she had been told time and time again that love wasn't a factor for her, like wasn't even considered.
Narcissa had always known her value was all in the potential alliance she could make through marriage. She hadn't been deemed capable of providing anything else.
Bellatrix had been granted leeway, more than her sisters in any case. Her parent's had seen her older sisters power, the savagery lying not quite dormant behind her beauty, and they had twisted their teachings to nurture the beginnings of that wildness.
Andromeda had not been so fortunate. Deemed neither as powerful as Bellatrix or as beautiful as Narcissa, she had been seen as a failure from the off. Narcissa introverted her feelings to the point of existing at home as a passive observer. But Andromeda hadn't been capable of that level of detachment, or any, come to think of it. She said that their parent's obsession with the unattainable made the margin for failure too high. So she did the unthinkable, Andromeda forgot all of their expectations and sank even further than they could ever have expected, and ran off with a muggleborn.
Narcissa had known of Ted Tonks; he was a good looking boy who was always smiling. As far as she knew he didn't have a galleon to his name, so she supposed her sister had married for love, or to get as far away from the rest of them as possible. Maybe even both.
Outwardly Narcissa condemned her sister and soon after Hogwarts, she married Lucius to keep her family happy and to help them recover from her sister's shame. On her wedding day, she brushed her long hair, wore the dress her mother picked and didn't issue a complaint from sunrise to sunset. It was the day the obligations to her parents ended, and the day those to her husband began.
Lucius was a good husband, by pureblood standards. He gave her a son, took her arm when they went places and spoke to her warmly though with the same sort of questioning tone her mother had always had - as if she doubted her ability to sift through and understand the more difficult concepts of life.
At night, in her private chambers, Narcissa dreamt of a gentle touch that would come along and wake her up from the coldness that surrounded her. She waited for years, and it never came.
So, after the war, once the immediate terror had passed, Narcissa did what all Black's do when they are faced with emotions they don't understand, she rebelled; inappropriately, defiantly, and secretly.
Blood will out, or so the saying went. There was only so long you could repress emotion before it stopped trying to crawl out of your mouth and began leaking from your pores.
Nothing was more rebellious than a dalliance with Harry Potter; with his unkempt hair, askew glasses and muggleborn and blood traitor best friends. He was perfect, from his disdain for the pureblood world - part of his own heritage - and his total unwillingness to play the role of the war hero. Narcissa admired his defiance and hated him for it all at once.
Everything about him was wrong and yet, at the same time, so right.
There was nothing gentle about his touch, nothing at all, and yet it woke her up from the coldness of her life as if he had deliberately set it ablaze.
He didn't care for her, or so he said, but Narcissa didn't care either, so it was no matter.
Their shared hatred became an almost violent force when they were together, and it was those moments that Narcissa clung to afterwards when all she had to show for it were the haunting whispers of words in her ear and the marks on her skin.
Perfect, perfect marks.
A/N: Hello lovely readers. If you are still waiting on a prompt request to be fulfilled please hold tight. I am working my way through a few more half-finished ones and hope to have some more up over the next few weeks.