I feel so bad for the disgusting length of time between my previous update, and now. Getting back into the swing of things has been…. Difficult. Seeing to a loved one's last wishes while dodging family dramas is surprisingly taxing as well. But, onward we go!

Also; slight (?) trigger warning for spousal abuse and general douchery towards women. Shit that should get a dude kicked right in his peen. Misogyny, and all that.

Chapter 36

Against the cold, dry air of morning, frost bit into the warm edges around Hermione in a slithering approach, which was familiar to her as her whole life had been spent living under the whims of the high mountain weather. The familiar and homey scent of burning wood had joined the cold in a daily ritual that brought familiar memories to her mind. Air at altitude is a fickle thing in the winter months; it grows so cold that when you suck it quickly through your nose, the moisture in your nostrils freezes the sides together for a few seconds. This was something, that as children she and her brother did as soon as they could manage to explode their way out into the outdoors once they'd eaten a warm meal.

Now, standing at the edge of the balcony door, wrapped in her bedclothes and fortified in warmth through the covering with the vestiges of her nested heat. She had tried reliving those childhood joys fondly by sucking the air through her nose, trying to make it stick once, twice, thrice, before she heard a deep and familiar chuckle just behind her left shoulder.

She didn't need to turn her body to know who had joined her there, looking out of the frosted glass and onto the stark white sheets that decorated the valley and craggy mountains their home was nestled within. Her brother, from his higher vantage, rested the point of his chin atop the crown of her head and wiggled his jaw. She snickered, and jerked gently away without taking her eyes off the outside world.

"Does sleep abandon you?" He inquired, and after a lengthy pause, and a sharp sigh she wobbled her head indecisively.

"No, not at first." She admitted and her brother grunted his understanding. "It arrives surely enough, it just never…" she paused, hunting for the right word.

"Stays?" He supplied and she nodded, finally glancing back at him. He, too, exhaled sharply. "I find myself waking to strange dreams and sounds." Tyt'o murmured distractedly, as though it were an afterthought. From beneath the many layers of her quilts and coverings, Hermione shifted them to wrap tighter around herself. Her state unruly and unkempt from the bed she had only just left.

Her brothers words, though less loquacious that she herself might have made them, rang true for both of them. She looked at him seriously now with her eyes which matched his own, the ones he had spent every day of remembered life since childhood seeing, and they understood each other completely.

From beneath his own wrappings, a hand –warmed still by the heat of his body- reached for hers, and she took it. From behind their eyes, visions of dreams and nightmares haunted their thoughts and minds still, though it was the earliest waking of a new dawn. Dreams of fire, of screaming, and even of death.

Yule had passed more than a week prior, and since the first day of their festivities, there had been oddities occurring more and more that unnerved the siblings. First, it had been the greater sense of unease which had flooded them almost immediately after summoning the blessings of benediction ignis draco. The protection against Dragon fires had ultimately claimed Hermione in particular to exhaustion, and for a full turn of the sun she had lain in bed with symptoms of fever, though her skin had nary a trace of heat.

Their mother had dutifully watched over her with matronly concern for her youngest child as the young woman had thrashed and mumbled in her sleep until, in an uncharacteristic show of fatherly concern, their own father, Loren, had relieved his wife to attended her bedside in her stead.

Tyt'o had not been much better off himself: His head had been swimming since he had pulled his sister from the magical circle of blessing. His equilibrium was off, and he felt as though the core of his body were going to catch fire. Eventually he, too, succumbed to the delirium as well. Though without the same dignity as his sister had. The young Lord had joined his mother in her vigil over his sister and subsequently passed into unconsciousness in a seat at her bedside.

In his matured height and weight, neither Loren nor Ursa could manage moving his body to his own rooms, so they simply tucked blankets around his shoulders and left him to stay in the rooms as well. And though rest had cured most of what seemed to have come with the aftermath of that casting, it had been strange that only the pair of them had seemed so effected by the ritual. Though both Draco and Theo had each taken to their own rooms, both citing exhaustion and unrest as well, The Gresham heirs had been particularly affected.

The siblings stood there in the frigid and crackling air together; the cold was bitterly pervasive, yet it now failed to permeate them. From where their hands clasp together a radiating warmth was growing between them that heated the very air around them to the point where their coverlets were no longer needed. Hermione smiled at Tyt'o, and he returned it in kind as they felt the growing heat there, spreading with the new magic they had discovered.

He nodded his head as he squeezed his sister's hand, her expression was stoic and calm in the face of this newness, though they had not yet spoken any words of it yet together. Upon the discovery that when joined together in any direct contact, any combination of the four of them could conjure this heat and command it accordingly seemed to puzzle their father. Hermione had not yet voiced it, but she wondered fleetingly what would result from the four of them together trying to harness this ability.

Releasing the other, the two spoke quietly then of simpler matters between them as Tyt'o closed the door to the cold outside. Though they too were less affected by the elements, the castle itself was still subject to the laws of nature. The old stone structure, when heated sufficiently by method of the various fireplaces, would hold the heat to supply warmth to its residents. But if allowed to cool too much, the warming once again of it would take a greater feat than to have simply maintained the warmth.

The pair walked together back to their familial wing of the castle to retreat to their rooms in preparation of the day ahead. Silently they bid the other adieu as they parted and Tyt'o left his sister as she made to open the door to her room. She bit her lip mischievously as she flushed in a rush of warmth over her body after she allowed her imagination to open up to the question as to whether or not Draco and Theo were experiencing the same revelations as she and Tyt'o.

She glanced over her shoulder at the hallway leading to the guest rooms they occupied. The sun had already begun its daily ascent, and soon her family would stir from their slumbers and make to the hall to find a meal. She sighed hard and chided herself for not having the forethought to seek him at his chambers. But the very idea of being behind the door to his chambers simultaneously made her heart race uncontrollably. It was one matter entirely to steal away with her beau to exchange secret kisses, and another completely to enter a closed room with him in the shyest hours of a morning.

The young Lady disregarded the nagging sense of maintaining decorum and smiled wickedly to herself. She might not yet have the audacity to do such a thing, but imagining it harmed no one indeed.

She opened the door finally and let herself in, her mind at rampant play at the thought of Draco's unclothed person at the forefront of her mind.

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A wave of heat ravaged up toward her eyes as she glanced over the script again. Her hands, soft and delicate, shook as she palmed her quill again only to smack it down atop the writing surface for the third time.

Already, several weeks of separation had made her emboldened in her anger toward her husband. Why did he write her now? Of all times? In the privacy of her own rooms, Narcissa swore savagely while crossing her arms over her chest. Her bastard of a husband, again dared to command her? She was working herself up to a fury as she re-read some of the finer points in her husband's letter to her, speaking of her obedience to him, and her loyalty to his House.

Nearly two score of years in being his wife, and it seemed that she had finally had enough. With confidence in her indignation she slapped her palms across the table and ripped the letter and papers away, hurling them off to the floor. But now that she'd tapped into her anger, she couldn't stop herself. It felt so good to finally be able to feel without fear of notice.

Narcissa threw the table over on its side, along with the chair, drawing her magic to her command as she turned her rage to the mantle behind her, causing the fire inside it to rage into a veritable inferno under her power. She pushed easily through her arms and hands to the blaze in front of her as the flames erupted into a spitting volcano that bloomed out from the hearth stones and onto the earthen clay tile half-circle that surrounded the fireplace to keep stray sparks from igniting. As she pushed the rage from herself, she felt horrified that hot tears had crept into her eyes and run a track down her perfectly smooth cheek.

The heat from the flame was what caused her to finally have to retreat and dial back her magical summoning. Raw use of power was not her normal manner, and she found the exertion one part exhilarating, and another tiring as well. Though, as with all magic, it was in the practice that made it possible. Were she a Lady of temperamental outbursts, something such as this would not cause her to falter.

The Lady wiped at the traitorous tears she had allowed to fall as she took a deep breath in, and at the calming of the flames. She forced herself to take several deep breaths and cleared her mind. She gently conjured the righting of her desk chair, as well as returned the small table to its standing position, turning around again to smooth her hands over the top, noting that there was a sizable indentation in one of the sides where it had struck the floor with force.

She half-smiled in a wordless chide to herself. "Ah, see what manner of guest am I that I throw my hosts furniture around while I spit and curse like a petulant child? All over that bastard shit that I call my Lord." She whispered in spite as she molded the wood back to its original form as she bend her magic to her will through her hands.

The last piece she commanded to her side was the parchment that had arrived for her late the evening before, and the source of her irascibility. A letter from her husband, and Lord of House Malfoy. She sneered as she turned the man's name 'round in her mind. Remembering his handsome features and his cruel demeanor. Twenty year was a long time to be treated as a brood mare and an underling, and Narcissa had remembered every slight, every strike upon her flesh, and every cruelty he had shown her both with his words and his hands.

She curled her hands around the paper and sat herself down, taking her quill and an ink pot to prepare a response to the Lord. As she wrote out the very first words of her letter, 'To my Honorable and Good Lord Husband, the Lord of the House Malfoy', she found that she wished to spit upon those very words, as though she were no more than a common churl. Her words soured in her mind as she continued along her stream of pleasant salutations to the man whom she was married.

She had not had enough time to work the pieces of her puzzle into play yet, and she would simply have to placate her Lord while she worked out the legalities she needed to return to Castle Black once more. But this time, as its Lady Regent.

The Lady crafted her words with great care, speaking of their son's tutelage specifically under the Masters employed by the House, but in the steads of flushing out the presence of her cousin, the Master Black, she only mentioned that of Master Mora. Meticulously outlining the rigorous physical training they endured through the week with various physical exercised on foot and horseback, she took great care in her brief statement that the Master Mora was at the House to tutor, but not to what extent. Should Lucius suspect that his Lady wife had, in fact, no intention to return to the House of her 'dear' Lord, her cousin's presence would be suspect and her plan potentially exposed.

It was for this reason of discovery that she had, over the last years, fell out of contact with her remaining family of the House of Black. Though Sirius had been the named heir, it had been his brother Regulus that the title of Lord had been passed to when Lord Sirius had forsworn his House in favor of a Mastery. It had been his place as the eldest son to take up the mantle of Lordship and lead his House to success and prosperity. But when Regulus had disappeared with nary a trace, the title had been left in suspension waiting for Sirius to claim it.

As she wrote her false affection for the man she had been supplied as a bride to, she felt her own posture sink as she remembered the sad histories of her glorious and royal House, the great and noble House of Black. Kings, they were once, of old years long past. Their lineage proud and strong with both magic and leadership over their lands and people. For centuries they had ruled proudly with prosperity only to find themselves scattered now among the division of Lords that ruled, and squabbled like common yard hens over territories, taxes and trade disagreements.

The men who had been born and raised to be brought to power and lead were, to Narcissa, largely ineffective and petty. They wasted time posturing and bluffing to each other over perceived slights and in a constant show to one-up their rivals while lining their own pockets. In reality, their inconsistencies and overpowering taxation to their surf classes was so stifling that the people over whom they ruled suffered in abject poverty in ruin. Meanwhile the Lords themselves dined in plenty and lived in luxuries that a common household could nary dream of in their wildest fantasies.

And at the very bottom of the pile, from where all the hardest burdens were pushed, were women themselves. They carried greater burdens than their politically scheming husbands in that they were wholly underestimated, and even greater still completely disregarded. She sighed wearily now as her mind found her miring in memories of the fates following her two older sisters.

While each of the young maids that had been born to the House of Black, by mere factor of their gender they were unable to be considered as possible heirs. Those distinct honors had been shouldered by her cousins Sirius, and then Regulus respectively following Sirius' disownment. But the three daughters of Cygnus and Druella had each, in their own rites, been both lovely and poised, as well as cunning and shrewd. Their father Cygnus had been possessed of older ideals where it concerned his daughters, and their educations had been extensive in the subjects of House Managements, and proper noble etiquettes, but had lacked decidedly in places where his heirs would have been allowed to excel. Such free reigns to explore magics such as she had seen here, under the roof of the House of Gresham, was strictly forbidden.

Shortly following the carting off of her eldest sister, Bellatrix, with her fiery temper and wickedly playful sense of humor, it became plain to see that despite the little indulgences they were allotted as adored daughters, they firmly served only one purpose for their families and this was to build alliances through the mingling of blood.

Bellatrix had been the first to marry, and at first glance her betrothed had seemed a perfect gentleman. Poised and kind, thoughtful and wise. Handsome with his auburn hair pulled back and tall stature. It was first at their own wedding celebration that Narcissa first witnessed a glimpse of his faltering indulgence of his sister's liveliness. For as she danced in celebration with their cousins, and their kin, she had let her beautiful dark curls to fall freely and wildly, like a great and wild halo of chaos and resplendence as they gleamed by torch and firelight. Unbound as she should as a lady she looked as wild as a forest sprite, and thrice as filled with life and joy. Her smile was a beacon that night, and her new husband watched her like a hawk. His greedy eyes feasting on her in equal parts lust, and jealousy. When she returned to his side, he turned to her with his smile solid and icy, and clamped upon her forearm with such a force as to leave a handprint as he forced her the rest of the way to her chair.

Her cry of protest had been silenced with a very public and very forward kiss straight upon her mouth, her dark eyes betraying her sudden fear as they darted immediately to Narcissa, who was seated within her line of sight. Narcissa hadn't missed a single bit of the exchange, though the guests to the celebration whooped and cheered the couple on, thinking them in quick love with the other. It was Narcissa who knew otherwise.

It was shortly after that Bellatrix had been hauled to her feet as she struggled to pry out of his hands. All traces of joy from dancing and celebrating had been dashed away and had been clouded by her reproval and indignation. Her groom's hands bore down on her as he drew her close and whispered in her ear. She had paled visibly as her face slackened, and the fight left her and the man smirked his triumph. Her sister's dark eyes had darted again to Narcissa, who sat helplessly as she watched this abuse of her sibling unfold before a veritable crowd, who all seemed to care more about the tempo of the music, and refilling their wine than they did for the treatment of a woman.

It filled Narcissa with a bile she had never before experienced, her stomach churned as her eyes never left her sister, who was shortly paraded out on the proud arm of her husband, her hand limp and her eyes a bit glassy as she accompanied him out of the Great Hall within Castle Lestrange.

As the wedded couple had left, more cheers and shouts heralded the pair of his intention to imminently christen her as his wife in their marital bed, and her lively and spirited sister fearfully cast her eyes to the ground as she was led away. It was up until this point that Narcissa had felt the first fires of rage building within her.

Bellatrix had done nothing wrong! She bad been proper and chaste with every man with which she had danced that eve, and most of them were her own blood! Lord Lestrange's possessiveness was disgusting, and Narcissa closed her eyes as she exhaled a fantasy in her mind of wrapping her magic around his throat as Bellatrix fled the Hall alongside her.

Had it not been for a clearing of his throat, Narcissa couldn't have been certain she would have opened her eyes back up to break away from her vision so quickly. But there beside her had stood the Lord Lucius Malfoy. His blond hair perfect and pulled away from his face. His doublet fastened beneath his coat gleamed with a rich forest green under a coal gray coat, and he smiled to her.

It had been the first time she had lain eyes upon the Lord, and looking back at what she had just witnessed, she wished at this moment that she could have stood, and bade him a good evening. But his poise had been perfect, his manners were sharp and polished. He spoke kindly to her, respectfully even. He praised her dictation and pedigree claiming she was the finest Lady a Lord could ever hope for. An equal to himself, he had called.

His words had been sweet, but filled with lies all the same, as she had discovered. For she was no equal to him.

With a final flourish, Narcissa of the House of Malfoy looked upon the name of her husband's House, and vowed to herself in that moment that she would have her revenge. Every one of them that had suffered through the domination and cruelty that had been bestowed upon them for no reason other than their fairer sex, she vowed for them too.

If she had to burn every great House to the ground with the fury of her own magic, the Lady Narcissa Black would reclaim her name, and reclaim her House as her own birthright.

With a satisfied smile, she heated the wax to seal her letter accordingly, pressing the coat of arms of Malfoy into the heated substance and waited patiently before it set and she peeled it away. The Lady leaned back into her chair and took a deep breath, drawing air into the very recesses of her lungs. Her night had given her such emotional turbulence that she found herself looking at her vast bed with its quilts and comforts. She lay her letter upon the desk to be seen to in the morning, and ran her hands over the ties to her gowns, commanding her magic to unlace her garments as she reached up and unbound her hair.

As her dress began to fall to the ground, she heard a soft rapping against the thick wood of her door, causing her to jump as she reached for the collar of her garment to pull it back up. When silence followed, Narcissa found hesitation in calling out to whomever called upon her in her rooms, but when a second series of knocks was heard, she re-tied her dress quickly and swept to the door, pressing her hand to the wall beside as she spoke.

"Who calls?" She asked, and as her voice waivered, she cursed in silence that her confidence had wavered. From behind the thick wood she thought she heard a chuckle, and nearly gasp at the male tone to the voice before she was sorely proven wrong.

"Too afraid to open the door?" A deeper, but feminine voice asked silkily. Narcissa jerked her head back in scorn. Afraid? Narcissa sneered.

"A Lady knows never to open her door to a stranger in the dead of night." She said with an air of superiority to the would-be stranger at the other side. "Now state your purpose, or leave me in peace." She commanded and folded her arms across her chest defensively.

"I brought you something to warm yourself." The voice said again, more quietly and Narcissa scrunched up her nose in a manner less becoming a Lady, and more like a young girl determining if something suited her sense of smell or not.

"And who assumes I need to be warmed?" She challenged again.

"Come now, we're in a castle in the reaches of a mountain range so vast that it took our ancestors a hundred years to cross them! It's frigid out, good Lady, and the warmth of the fires never reaches quite to the bed." Narcissa rolled her eyes and dropped her arms hesitantly. She knew whom it was that stood at the other side of the door. She played with the latch to the door in hesitation as she warred with her annoyance and nervousness in turn

From behind the door she heard no other noises. No breathing, nor shifting of feet. She reached out hesitantly with her magic to sense if it were more than one person at the other side, or some kind of scheme to pull her out of the safety of her room. As the unseen source she had send out sought some kind of contact point, she felt it batted away just as quickly, like a feline swatting at something in the air.

She jerked from the door at the feeling of having her magic so harshly quashed and scoffed as she heard a laugh being smothered on the other side.

"Ah, what a pity then." The voice said, with what Narcissa heard as mocking disappointment, followed by footsteps that paced away further from the door. The Lady held her breath a moment and sagged against the door, allowing the tension to flow out of her shoulders. She tapped nervously on the wood of her door a moment before she palmed the latch gingerly again and slowly opened the door once more to look into the corridor.

The walkways were dark in the night, and barely any light shone around. She straightened and opened the door a little more, wondering why the visitor had carried no torch to light the path?

From beside her to the right, a chuckle sounded which caused Narcissa to gasp, and throw a hand up in defense of herself. Magic bursting from her palm to form a barrier of protection around herself in a show of pure reactionary magic.

The force she conjured within her met with something immovable and unyielding, like nothing she had felt before. Usually when she used her magic, if unchecked with another's spell work it could travel through doors and walls and even a person if she willed it to. But there outside her door stood the stout, and smirking countenance of one Rune Mora.

The other woman smile was a bit crooked and a little bit more cocky, and Narcissa felt herself bristle slightly as she pushed a little more, uncertain of what she had encountered. Rune shook her head slightly.

"Tisk, tisk, good Lady. It seems you are a great deal more skilled than you let on." Narcissa felt her stomach drop slightly as her face grew a little cold at Rune Mora's implication, but yet she did not let up the spell, but continued to test in little places here and again at the barrier between them to seek some kind of weakness.

Rune tilted her head slightly. "Clever, clever." She whispered, and stood up from where she had been leaning against the wall. Her blue gray eyes had met Narcissa's and never broke with them. "It's rare that you see a Lady of such a great House use her magic so freely," she paused dramatically. "And so skillfully."

Narcissa steeled herself, not allowing her expression to change, but felt the borders of her magic being pushed inward as Rune stepped a little closer. The Lady pressed harder outward, and Rune stepped forward again, causing Narcissa to shiver at the diminishing ground she covered suddenly. Unwilling to concede, Narcissa fought against the idea that she could use both her hands and increase the power she wielded, but at the expense of showing how much power she could wield.

Her would-be opponent smiled then, and put her own hands up in surrender. In one of them there was grasp the neck of a dark bottle, and the Master smiled slyly. "I didn't come here to battle wills with you in a dark hall, my Lady. Trully, I only came to offer you a warm drink." Narcissa felt the barrier that enclosed upon her wards dial back and recede completely away from her awareness. She shook her head in suspicion.

"Why then were you casting against me?" She asked quickly, and the Master shot her a disbelieving look.

"I'm not the one that threw a defensive spell without even looking whom they were sending it to. Bit jumpy you are, don't you think?" She accused, and Narcissa scoffed, immediately lowering her hand.

"I'm not the one skulking around in a freezing cold hallway in the middle of the night, scaring Ladies to their wits end!" She shot back, and Rune Mora chuckled again.

"So you agree that it's too cold to be out in the dark, do you?" Her smile showed the faint crinkles around her eyes that gave her face a warmer, less serious look to it, and it occurred to Narcissa that the woman before her was not unattractive to look at. But she shook her head nonetheless at the impetuousness and gall of her uninvited visitor.

"Too cold for company." She bit out finally, straightening herself and crossing her arms again.

Rune held her gaze for a few extra breaths before she shrugged, and began to walk away. "Well if you ever want warm company, I'm sure you can find me."

The chuckle in her voice was more playful that it had been, and less suggestive than it could have been. Narcissa watched as the other woman walked into the darkness of the rest of the castle, with no light to guide her in the night, and disdainfully shook her head at the strangeness of the encounter.

At that, she shut her door, and pooled her magic with both hands to ward her door soundly from intrusions, and crept warily back to her room. Muttering in a most un-Ladylike way she recounted Rune's arrogance and strangeness as she once again disrobed herself and made her way finally into the cold of her bed.

As the cold of the icy sheets beneath her quilts made contact with her much-warmer flesh, Narcissa shivered and moaned as she willed her power back around her to warm her immediate area as quickly as she could, and scrunched up her nose at how accurate Rune's statement was about the warmth of the fire being unable to reach all the way to the bed.

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