A / N : First of all, sorry I haven't updated this in a while. I've been busy and I have to admit, I put this to the back of my list of priorities. But I haven't given up on it by any means. This one . . . . this is another odd one, I suppose, and probably goes to prove that the odder the request, the more likely I am to try it eventually! Narcissa Malfoy, as requsted by Daring D. (In case you can't tell, it's set after Lucius' arrest and imprisonment in OotP. Enjoy, and let me know what you think, as always.
Narcissa Malfoy
In her dreams, there is nothing but ice, everywhere.
Her home is filled with it, the air freezing in her lungs, and she stumbles on the steps, because they are covered in ice too, clear and deadly – she falls, because she can't see the trap they have set before her very eyes.
Her husband is an ice sculpture, cold and immobile, and he cracks beneath her touch - splinters into a thousand tiny shards and falls apart - and this time, she does not know if she can put him together again.
Draco too is made of ice, and he too is falling apart, but he collapses differently to Lucius. He melts, water trickling like tears down clear and glassy cheeks.
Narcissa awakens with a start, to find that her dream is not so much a nightmare as a sharper, colder version of reality. She shivers. Someone somewhere in the house is screaming and for a moment she freezes, her heart pounding in her throat before she relaxes again. The scream is not Draco's. His scream is a sound she would know anywhere, a scar upon her heart that bleeds through into her dreams.
She ought to sleep. She knows this, knows that sitting awake, sick and fearful and numb with loneliness, won't do her any good.
But the dream won't let her sleep, not until she knows.
So she goes to find the one person who can tell her.
It is cold outside, and raining. The water falls in slanting sheets, iron grey and menacing, and it soaks her in an instant. It feels as though it wants to strip her clean, to wash away everything but the cold lodged in her heart.
She picks the loneliest part of the grounds, and the darkest. Sure enough, Bella is sitting there, soaked to the skin, bloodstains dark against her robes. Black on black. Can she even feel the rain? Narcissa doubts it.
Bellatrix's face is stark white, blood beading on her lips. She has been punished, again. Cissy cannot quite bring herself to care. There is something about her sister's devotion that sickens her, now.
"What's it like, Bella?" she asks quietly.
Bella stares at her, a look that is somehow both blank and . . . . . calculating. Narcissa feels her stomach twist. Sometimes, looking at Bella, she feels as if it is not her sister she sees anymore but a stranger. Someone she will never understand.
"What's what like?" Bella replies dully.
"Azkaban."
Bella stares past her, up at the moon. Tonight it is thin as a nail paring and a hard, bright silver, like the blade of a knife.
She shivers.
"Cold," she murmers at last. "It's cold."