Chapter Nine: Conceal
"Where's Ariel?" Voldemort asked, upon his and Snape's return to the dining room.
"Draco's showing her the restroom," Narcissa informed.
Voldemort scoffed. "Bout time that boy did something useful." He muttered as he slowly settled into his chair.
Timid Draco led a quiet Ariel down a lavish, emerald green-carpeted corridor past galleon-encrusted chandeliers and wall-sized oiling family portraits until, in the end, stood the bathroom door.
He stood aside while Ariel quickly darted inside but was shocked to see her come right out before the door had a chance to close. She had with her a leather-bound journal which she shoved in his arms and instructed him, "You gotta learn how to hide your stuff better kid." She then added, "Oh, and don't feel bad about having a shrine dedicated to your crush. When I was your age, I had a life-sized marble statue of my crush in my room." With that, she sealed herself back into the lavatory while a stunned Draco looked down into his own arms to discover she had given him back his diary and, after a moment of confusion, did as she said and tucked the journal into his inner jacket pocket.
When she came back into the hallway, he thanked her profusely (if the Dark Lord hadn't already thought less of him for his father's actions and his shrine, then his diary would have sealed his fate at the bottom of the Dark Lord totem pole right next to blood traitors and Peter Pettigrew) and Ariel, to his gratitude, was kind enough to smile at him and pretend like she had no idea what he was talking about.
"You know," Voldemort said to her upon her return, "You don't have to stay."
"Sick of me already?" She said with a teasing smile.
He smiled and blinked. "Not at all. Which is saying something for me because I usually run out of energy for all human interaction once I hit the ten-minute mark."
Ariel crinkled her nose at him with mirth then glanced around the room. Half the Death Eaters were already gone and others were in mid-goodbyes. "Is that why everyone keeps leaving?"
"Oh yeah, they know. Once a meeting's done, it's 'you don't gotta go home but you need to get the hell out'."
Ariel smiled then shot a look towards Snape who orbited to the side as Draco and Narcissa shared a goodbye. Her mind drifted to the other night and a carnal fire was reignited in her.
"God, you're worse than a cat in heat," Voldemort remarked, half-annoyed and half-amused by the obvious lechery in her face.
"Don't shame me," Ariel said half-heartedly then she tore her gaze away from Snape long enough to ask him, her expression changed to that of inviting evocation, "This doesn't bother you?"
"Why would it mother me?" He asked, looking at her like she was crazy.
Ariel waited for him to hear his mistake. When he didn't, she said, "You know what? I think I will go with Severus then."
"Good. Probably for the better." He agreed. Then, with his elbow pressed into his armrest, he leaned towards her and explained in a hushed tone, "I have a meeting with the Full-Blooded Giant Mafia in the morning that's best have clandestine."
Ariel nodded, doing her best to keep her face neutral as cold disgust coagulated in her bloodstream.
A momentary silence passed before he added, somewhat hesitantly, "Well, if you ever want to visit…you know where I'm staying." His head dipped down and she saw his wandless hand twitch. She feared for a second, he was going to reach for one of her hands but he never did. Instead, lifted his head and said with a chuckle, "Let's try to do this again before the next sixty years are up."
Ariel's face turned magenta and they both feared for a moment she was going to burst out crying again but she swallowed the sadness whole and instead gave him tucked-in-lip smile. "I'll try."
By 3 am, Malfoy Manor was as quiet as a graveyard and everyone, except Voldemort, were in their respective beds. Nagini snored peacefully in Ariel's chair while Voldemort watched giant flames engulf the dining room fireplace from his wooden throne, his eyes distant with being lost in his own thoughts about grand schemes.
He was going over the mental checklist of things he had to do for the day but a malaise had started in his chest that forced him out of focus. He thought it was heartburn at first, which confused him because he didn't eat anything out of the ordinary (and he gave up coffee after midnight years ago). He punched himself in the chest but the warm tingling sensation didn't go away and soon, the malaise morphed into discomfort. Now, it wasn't just his chest. A balmy fluttering entered his stomach he never felt before and immediately assumed doom.
Did Potter find another Horcrux? He asked himself with wild fear.
No, it's September. He assured himself. He's usually too busy with his studies.
Then what the hell is going on?
He tried to soothe himself by pacing and drinking water and holding his breath for ten-second increments (he was on the working theory that he was merely experiencing the rarely heard of silent hiccups) but none of them made the horrible feeling go away. Defeated, and filled with dread, he sought Nagini for advice.
"Nagini." He hissed out in parseltongue as he poked his pet in the hood. "Nagini wake up."
The snake lifted its head and stared at him blurry-eyed. "What?"
"I think I'm dying."
"So…Did you want me to eat your corpse afterward?"
"Obviously, no, because I'm never going to actually die, asshole!"
"Why did you wake me then?" Nagini snapped.
"Because! I—I think…" He stopped and sorted his thoughts, searching for the right words to explain what he was feeling. It couldn't be dying. As he said, he was never going to die. And he couldn't be dying because Potter's still in school and if he was near a Horcrux he would know. So why did his head hurt? Why did his stomach feel like it was in knots? And why the hell did his heart, which he swore didn't exist up until ten minutes ago, feel like it was floating around in a milky way of contentment?
Dread exploded within as a terrible truth dawned on him.
"Fuck." He groaned in English.
Narcissa was in one of the guest rooms, nursing a bottle of vampire wine while she laid in bed and stared dejectedly out the second-story window when her bedroom door opened with a bang and from the doorway stood Lord Voldemort.
Narcissa hugged the bottle into her chest and trembled with fear, as the Dark Lord stepped over the threshold and closed the door wordlessly. Her mind raced with images of violence and death as the sounds of the locks clanked shut. He stood there with his white-spidery fingers tightly wound around his hook of a wand. All pretenses of dignity and courage fell away from her as he put a silencing charm on the room, concealing her to whatever fate he had in store. She started to quake with unmitigated fear as he slowly approached her bed.
"Please…no…" She croaked, misty-eyed, and petrified.
"It goes without saying," the Dark Lord began his voice low and threatening as he migrated to the center of the room, "That what I am about to tell you may never, ever, ever leave this room."
Narcissa managed to pull herself together long enough to give him a vigorous nod, promising her silence.
"That, emphatically, includes your big sister." He insisted, his voice an angry hiss as he began pacing the room.
"Of course, My Lord," Narcissa assured as she corked the bottle of wine, tucked it under her pillow, and sat upright in her bed attentively. "How—how can I help you?"
Voldemort halted mid-step, his fists clenched at his thighs, looking utterly frustrated by his own inarticulation. He opened his mouth twice and closed it three times before he started to explain, "I think…I love…Ariel." He turned to a stunned Narcissa and added, defensively, "But not romantically. Like I think I love her and I think I want her to love me back but I mostly just want her to be proud of me and for her to visit me sometimes and also the idea of her death doesn't make me laugh in any way shape or form. Is that normal?"
"Um." Narcissa did not know how to answer that question without getting killed or maimed so she circumvented the question with another question. "My Lord, have you ever heard of the word association game?"
"No."
"Well, it's a game where one person will say a word and you say the first word that pops to mind."
"Okay?"
"So, if I said 'magic', you'd say…?"
"Power."
"And if I said 'ghosts', you'd say…?"
"Ha. Losers."
"Flowers?"
"Superfluous."
"Bellatrix."
"Uh, irritating."
"Ariel?"
"Mom." He cringed the second it left his tongue. His head dropped into his tented fingers. "Oh fuck! I do love her!" He reached with both hands, clutching at his bare skull as if he had forgotten he had no hair to tear. When his hands came back empty, a ferocious groan roared out of him that made Narcissa flinch but he didn't strike her or destroy anything as she expected. Instead, he stood there, clawing at his hairless head looking somewhere between suicidal and homicidal before he let out a frustrated growl and cried, "What's the point of splitting your soul seven times if you're still going to feel?!" He sunk to the floor with an anguished moan. "Fuck!"
Narcissa, fearing if she didn't at least try to comfort him he would torture her for it later, pulled the blankets off of her, and bravely approached the fetal-positioned Dark Lord.
"How did this happen?" He asked, his voice muffled as he face-planted into the ornate rug. "How did I become…that guy? That seventy-year-old guy with mommy issues?" Narcissa opened her mouth to offer her thoughts when he cut in again, head turned sideways so he could breathe, "I mean—I know I was an orphan but…Merlin's beard, am I really that weak? Am I nothing but an overgrown child who needs their mommy?"
"No one thinks that, at all, my lord." Narcissa insisted, shaking her head.
"You're just saying that..."
"I wouldn't dare lie to you, My Lord. If anything, look at tonight."
"What about tonight?"
"Forgive me, my lord, but it was pretty obvious from the beginning that you had…high esteem for Lady Ariel. But even as you were gushing over her, nobody in that room thought you were any less evil or frightening."
Voldemort turned his head and peered up at her from the floor. "Really?"
"I swear to you, nobody thinks any differently of you for your attachment to Ariel," Narcissa said. "We are all still so very terrified of you in every way imaginable."
Voldemort's face twitched into a shadow of a smile. To her immense relief, he got from the floor, stood up, and turned partway towards the door. "Thank you, Narcissa." He turned to leave when he stopped halfway and told her, "Once again, if you tell anybody—"
"You'll slit my throat and feed me to Nagini."
He winked at her once then left the room, leaving Narcissa to resume her solitary drinking her mind spinning with the formation of a new plan to save her husband's life.