Disclaimer: I do not own any part of the Harry Potter series.
Awakening
Narcissa wandered through the candle-lit corridors of her home and wondered if she was alone.
"Bella? Meda?" she asked softly.
The only answer came from a persnickety portrait of an eccentric relative, annoyed at having been woken. Narcissa apologized half-heartedly with a wave of her hand and an ever-developing disdain for all. With the sky darkening and her sense of isolation increasing, Narcissa had little time for the bemoaning of the dead. She shivered as a breeze rustled the hair tucked behind her ear. Something in the house waited for her. Narcissa just didn't know what.
"Mother?"
But Druella did not answer, nor should she have, for the room into which Narcissa now entered was empty as the previous spaces. Narcissa sighed quietly, aching for someone to sit with, to lessen the unprovoked melancholy that weighted her lips into a frown. With nothing but time to wait, Narcissa sat before her mother's vanity.
Narcissa pressed a cold finger to her cheek and watched as the blood surfaced in a pink ribbon across her face. With a scowl, she narrowed her eyes, practiced glaring at her reflection.
"I am too a Black," Narcissa muttered.
Giving a huff to the fair features which had caused her to endure her sister's taunts earlier in the day, Narcissa twirled her fingers between two strands of blonde hair.
"I'm just better at hiding it."
Narcissa smiled then, because it was the sort of thing her mother would announce before kissing her youngest daughter.
Warming from the affection of her mother's invisible presence, Narcissa gave into the temptation the vanity always offered. She began opening bottles, testing the potions and lotions upon her face and dainty hands. The combination of her mother's morning and evening perfumes settled mysteriously in the midafternoon. Narcissa sniffed the skin along her wrist with a smile at the self-indulgence. She liked the smell of perfume, particularly upon her own skin. It made her feel pampered, which of course she was, but still Narcissa cradled her perfumed wrist under her nose because she admitted she could want nothing more than to be pampered.
A glimmer of light reflected in the mirror caused Narcissa to jump. When she saw no one behind her, she laughed uneasily. Perhaps it was just her imagination, but Narcissa felt that someone or something was watching her. The prick of worry disenchanted Narcissa from the vanity, and her feeling of childishness swirled hotly in her powdered cheeks.
Narcissa thus followed her feet to another realm of the house, still looking for someone, still unsure why she needed company so badly when the house appeared almost empty.
"Bella, Meda?" she asked the winding staircase.
She trailed her finger along the railing as she plopped down the stairs, too bored and too unwatched to carry herself daintily.
"Father?"
Narcissa entered Cygnus's study with a final huff of annoyance at the room's vacancy. She shuffled across the room to the richly carved desk upon which heaped half-written owls, several irritating issues of the Prophet, and the day's unfinished cigar. Because she seldom had the opportunity while her father was home, Narcissa decided to sit in her father's chair.
As she slid farther into the leather seat, however, Narcissa regretted her decision. The chair began to swallow her.
She stretched her legs to reach the security of the floor, but her feet dangled just above the desired point of contact. Narcissa bit her lip, wondered why the chair made her feel so unmovable and helpless. While she struggled, the shadows brought by the quickly clouding afternoon overtook the room in cold dark masses. Narcissa fought harder to leave the chair, for the shadows gave her a sensation of drowning, oppression, inescapable and unexplainable terror.
Someone knocked on the front door, and the shadows stopped. Like liquid, Narcissa slid from the chair to the floor behind the desk.
Narcissa frowned, rearranged her dress, and abandoned her father's study to pursue the knocking door.
She waited in the entrance hall, waited for a house-elf to answer the door. Narcissa knew very well that she had the grace and social skills necessary to successfully invite a guest into her house. But something stopped her. As the prospect of company drew nearer, Narcissa wanted nothing more than aloneness.
But the knocking continued with increased persistency, and no house-elf appeared.
"Worthless vermin," Narcissa quoted her mother.
Even with the insult, however, there was still the unanswered door to address.
Narcissa fidgeted. She was unsure of herself, which was stupid because what reason did she have to feel awkward and self-conscious? Touching a hand to her hair, Narcissa ignored the blood rushing from her face to her toes to lift her heavy feet toward the door.
But the door opened with a rush of chilly wind before Narcissa's fingers closed around the handle. The sight that met Narcissa's eyes with a cold sucking sound caused Narcissa's heart to leap in fright. She regained her composer, if only enough to utter a greeting.
"-Auntie," Narcissa squeaked, "Aunt Walburga?"
Narcissa knew the presumption was wrong as the dreadful woman in the doorway lifted her sickly face to Narcissa's startled gasp. The streaming curtains of black hair parted around the woman's face to reveal of horrible, twisted, screaming mouth.
No, not screaming, Narcissa registered before covering her ears, screeching.
"W-what do you want?"
Narcissa's plea fell unheard amidst the howling, tremors like a thousand sudden storms.
Or perhaps not.
The woman, if Narcissa dared call her that, turned her ghoulish eyes upon the scale of the house, then shrilled to the entire estate. With a guttural cry, the woman shook a pointed, rotted finger at Narcissa.
Narcissa screamed, whirled around to slam the door, to shut out the woman and her unearthly sounds. But even with the door closed, Narcissa felt the house shake in the woman's echoing wails.
Narcissa sputtered, "L-leave!"
She looked wildly about the entrance hall hoping to see Andromeda, needing to see Bellatrix.
The woman outside did not listen to Narcissa's frightened command, nor did she accept Narcissa's rude greeting. As Narcissa trembled against the door, the handle rattled, twisted, turned.
Narcissa bolted from the entrance hall to her father's study, thinking madly that he had returned just in time to protect his house, maybe even his daughter. But the room received Narcissa more harshly than it had before. Now the shadows moaned in a numbing harmony to the woman crashing her way into the house. Narcissa fumbled for the door handled, escaped the study just as the death-like woman crawled her way up the hall.
Tears washed Druella's makeup from Narcissa's face. Narcissa discarded her dignity and ran through the house, through it's passageways and dimly lit corridors, ran until she herself was lost so that that woman would not, could not find her.
Narcissa huddled in the corner of an empty room. It was a room she had never seen, but she cared little for such curiosities as she trembled with tears.
"Be with me," Narcissa sobbed madly.
Perhaps she was talking to her ancestors, perhaps just the walls themselves, perhaps she spoke to her older self. Then Narcissa hated herself as a child, so afraid, so helpless. She needed to be old and cunning like Bella or wise and clever like Meda or aloof like her mother or terrifying like her father. Narcissa, small and pale and unsure, would remain in the dismal corner and wait for her fate, wait to be rescued.
The screaming of the woman discredited Narcissa's worries. Narcissa scooted farther into her corner, made herself smaller and paler. Her uncertainty made rescue sound like a dignified option.
"Please," Narcissa begged no one.
The monster was coming for her. Narcissa knew now that it was not just a woman, but a monster, a banshee. Narcissa remembered Bella telling her all about them, too. How that if a banshee ever found Narcissa it would claw out her hair and eat Narcissa's heart right from her chest. As Narcissa thought of the banshee's wicked mouth tearing at her young flesh, she didn't care that Andromeda had called the story a lie and Bellatrix a liar. Narcissa heard only her heart pounding against her tiny ribs, and she knew she wanted it to stay there.
Then she heard running.
Narcissa cried out, and the running became faster, heavier, more powerful and more purposed. It was coming for her and it would have her and Narcissa would die alone without-
"Cissy."
The corner became soft, dim with light.
"Cissy," Bella's voice called. And again, "Cissy."
Bella breathed in small pants, as though she had just sprinted, against Narcissa's cheek.
"Don't cry over dreams," Bellatrix whispered. Her voice was warm, playful, as if she knew the hypocrisy of the statement even as she petted the tears away from Narcissa's face.
Narcissa opened her eyes and, in the blur of tears and sleep, saw Andromeda. Or did sleep just soften the lines of Bella's face? No, it was Andromeda, kneeling at the edge of Narcissa's bed with waiting comfort.
"Ah, she wakes," Andromeda sighed happily, kissing Narcissa on the cheek.
Narcissa turned to Bella, needed to make sure her nightmare was just that.
"Bella," Narcissa choked as tears flowed afresh, "She, it, was chasing me just like you said. She was going to take my hair, my heart. She was going to eat my heart, Bella. And you weren't there, nobody was there, and I couldn't stop her, she just came in the house."
Narcissa watched Bellatrix receive Andromeda's disapproving stare.
Bella, in her insensitivity, or perhaps because she always knew exactly what to do, laughed.
She lifted Narcissa's blankets and placed herself next to her little sister, pulled Narcissa into her arms.
"Shh," Bellatrix cooed as she stroked Narcissa's hair, "You're safe now. I won't let her hurt you."
"Promise, Bella, promise," Narcissa said, her words muffled against Bellatrix's shoulder.
"I'm here, Cissy," Bella promised.
Narcissa's heartbeat slowed gradually to match her sister's.
"It isn't true, Cissy," Andromeda said, "what Bella told you about the banshee."
Narcissa scrutinized her sisters, unsure whom to believe.
"Banshees only warn you," Andromeda clarified. "They don't claw out your heart. And they won't chase and terrorize you."
Andromeda gave Narcissa a reassuring smile.
"Bella was just describing herself."
Andromeda merely laughed with victory as Bellatrix smacked her with a pillow.
Narcissa frowned into the soft fabric of Bella's nightclothes. Why would her sister do something to deliberately terrify her?
"I'm sorry, Cissy." Bella lifted Narcissa's chin so that Narcissa's gaze fell upon Bellatrix's grin. "But you asked for a bedtime story."
Terror began to return to Narcissa and, with that, anger.
"I wanted a story, Bella, not a nightmare!"
But it seemed Narcissa was destined to endure only nightmares as the image of her oldest sister twisted before her eyes. Andromeda slowly faded before Narcissa's gaping eyes; Bellatrix contorted with savagery unknown to Narcissa's ten-year-old self. Bellatrix grew taller, her hair longer and wilder, until she was a woman over thirty, a warrior in prison robes.
But Narcissa grew no older; she was still a child cowering from death-bearers.
A muted voice, the voice of the Wizengamot, floated around Bellatrix's decaying visage.
"Azkaban Prison, Life Sentence."
Narcissa woke with a scream strangled by a helpless sob. Resurfacing, she gulped the chilled air of her dark bedroom. But as her senses returned to her bleary eyes, Narcissa acknowledged that the long walls that surrounded her did not belong to the pale palace of her husband. Then she remembered the day before, the trial, the sentence. All of that was real. And when they had taken away Bellatrix, Narcissa had returned to her childhood home.
This was Bella's room. Narcissa cast aside the heavy covers and embraced the cold as she paced to the cob-webbed mirror. The house, much like its former occupants, was falling swiftly into disrepair. Narcissa's breath hovered before her in a smoky sigh. She stared at the not-yet-but-almost old woman in the mirror.
She pressed her hand to the reflection, searched for a glimmer of her younger self.
Was this how she would exist without her sister? Nightmare upon nightmare, drowning in constant fear, unable to distinguish between dreams and reality? Was this how she had existed with her sister?
"Am I alone?" Narcissa asked the crying, silver-backed woman.
Author's Note: And there you have it, Dancing Through Thunderstorms Inception. Thank you for your patience as I attempt to gain an education which involves a multitude of writing, reading, and writing! Reviews are love.