A / N : Narcissa is finally starting to realize she has a problem. This was one of the hardest chapters I've had to write so far, and one of the most disturbing. Then again, it is a disturbing subject matter, and I don't believe in sugarcoating things. I'm sorry if it's hard to read, because it is quite heavy going, so I'll understand if people don't like it. But I would love your opinions on it. Title is from the song by the All American Rejects.
Dirty Little Secret
It was only half past six, but that didn't matter. Narcissa had already decided that this was the worst birthday she had ever had. Lucius Malfoy, who she was 99.9 per cent certain was the love of her life, now thought she was insane. Bellatrix had been twice as frightening as usual, and had possibly (although Narcissa was wary of even thinking this) put her in the hospital wing. Her parents had come to visit her, or so she'd thought. Instead, they'd had a blazing row with Bella, the contents of which her sister apparently did not see fit to share with her, and had left in a bad mood, without even bothering to say goodbye to her. Oh sure, they had sent her a card – Narcissa glared at it, as if the intensity of her gaze alone could burn it to a crisp – and a present, but that didn't mean anything. She frowned, twirling the ring that was her birthday present between her fingers and watching the sapphire catch the light. So far, her day had been truly awful. All she needed now was to fall out with Snape, and it would officially be the worst day – never mind birthday – she'd ever had. Sighing, Narcissa placed the ring on her finger, admiring it for lack of anything else to do. It promptly fell off.
"Miss Black?"
Narcissa jumped. The school nurse was watching her with a kindly smile on her face. Cissy flushed. How long she been standing there, just staring at her? Narcissa didn't like being stared at. She hastily wedged the ring onto her thumb, the only digit where she knew for sure it wouldn't fall off, and turned to face the healer.
"What?" she demanded, in a far more sullen tone than she would usually have employed. "What do you want?"
The healer looked momentarily taken aback. But she recovered quickly. "How are you feeling?" she asked brightly. Narcissa narrowed her eyes. She distrusted such obviously false displays of cheerfulness. They usually boded ill for her. Bella, for example, always pretended to be nice when really, she wanted to weedle something out of you. And then there was the time Sirius had held that door open for her . . . she had had to wash her hair four times to get all the frogspawn out. So naturally, Narcissa had learnt to be suspicious.
"I'm fine," she said stiffly.
The nurse stared at her for a long moment, her chocolate brown eyes becoming wider and softer all the time, until they were almost oozing pity, like liquid treacle. Narcissa was forcibly reminded of her Uncle Sebastian's favourite labrador.
"I'm fine," she repeated. She decided she really disliked this healer, when she realized her words were having no effect. The pitying stare only intensified, if anything. And then, to her horror, the woman reached out and took her hand, squeezing it in a manner that was evidently supposed to be reassuring.
"Narcissa," she sighed, and that was Cissy's first warning, the fact that she was using her first name. "I think you and I should have a little talk, hmm?"
When Narcissa only stared at her, stubbornly bewildered, she sighed again. "Your sister," she said carefully, "tells me you're no longer eating. Now why would that be?"
Narcissa froze. All of a sudden, the nurse's friendly grip on her hand felt like a vice, a torture device . . . She felt her palm grow sweaty as her face prickled in the sudden heat, and she tried to yank it away, but the nurse held onto her, crushing her fingers once more in what was clearly supposed to be a companionable squeeze. It didn't feel that way to Narcissa. She wanted to pull her hand away, to curl up in a ball under the covers and pretend the nurse didn't exist. To make her go away . . . Stupid, horrible woman, Narcissa thought bitterly. What did she know about anything? The "stupid, horrible woman" was staring at her now, patiently waiting for an answer.
Narcissa swallowed, fighting to keep her face straight. She had a horrible feeling it was going to go wonky if she spoke, and then she would start to cry. Her heart was fluttering somewhere in the region of her throat, like a trapped bird dying to get free. This wasn't fair. Just when she thought her day couldn't possibly get any worse, along came this stupid woman, who seemed to think she could just calmly start discussing things which were none of her business, right in the middle of the hospital wing! The entire ward was currently empty, but that was beside the point. Narcissa felt blind-sided and exposed, as though the horrid woman had started reading her diary aloud, or as if she had plunged her hand into her chest and pulled out something rotten. And now she was waving it about, for the entire world to see, not caring at all. After a moment, Narcissa heard her own voice. It seemed to come from very far away.
"But I do eat. I do." Sometimes.
The healer stared at her for another agonizingly long moment. "That's not what your sister tells me, dear," she said sadly.
Narcissa stared at her as she absorbed the part of the sentence that had escaped her the first time round. "My sister?" she repeated, perplexed.
The healer nodded encouragingly. "That's right. Your sister."
"Andromeda?" Cissy said blankly, more confused than ever.
To her surprise the woman frowned at her. "No, dear," she said carefully, wincing a little as she did so. "Your sister." There were only two sisters in the Black family now. Bellatrix had gone to considerable lengths to make this very clear to the staff, on a number of occasions.
"Bella?" Narcissa could hardly believe it. Since when did Bella care about her eating habits?
The matron nodded. "That's right. Bellatrix. Now . . . let's talk, shall we?" She flashed her patient a hopeful smile.
Narcissa made a small, non-committal sound in the back of her throat. Personally, she was far more concerned about Bella's sudden, uncharacteristic interest in her. But the nurse seemed to have other ideas.
"Alright then," she said, letting go of Narcissa's hand at last and spreading both her own in an expansive gesture. "Tell me," she began, "how would you define your relationship with food?"
"What?" In the middle of mentally retracing her last steps, and re-examining Bella's relationship with Lucius to accomodate any wild conspiracy theories, Cissy paused. She blinked at the healer, certain she had misheard. "What did you say?"
"Your relationship with food," the woman continued calmly. "For instance, how do you feel when you eat? Happy? Unhappy? Are there certain foods you think are bad? Do you punish yourself for eating them?"
Narcissa swallowed. Her mouth felt very dry, and she wished this stupid woman would talk about something else – anything else.
"No," she said carefully, "They're all about the same."
The woman nodded. "That's good!" she said encouragingly.
Narcissa nodded back, careful to keep her expression neutral. Truth be told, she wasn't sure why she was lying to the healer. She was fairly sure, however, that the reason she had taken such an instant and violent dislike to the woman was the fact that she had brought up this most private of subjects. Narcissa didn't know why the subject was private, she just knew that it was. And she was never, ever supposed to talk about it. Something bad would happen if she did . . .
The healer was talking again. "So you don't like or hate any one type of food more than the other?"
She shook her head this time. A silent no.
"I see . . . and going back to the original question. How do you feel when you eat? Or when you don't eat?"
LIE.
The voice in her head was cold and commanding, and it seemed to come from nowhere. It was cold and crushing, and it had the threat of iron behind it. It was like when Bella ordered her to do something, and she found herself powerless to disobey, weak against a force that could crush her if it chose.
Lie, the voice commanded again. She felt a shiver run down her spine. And suddenly, before her mind had a chance to catch up with her mouth, she realized she was lying.
"I'm sorry," she heard herself say, "I don't understand. Why are you asking me about food? There's not a problem, is there?"
Her feigned confusion seemed to have worked, to have thrown the healer off track. The woman frowned.
"Isn't there a problem?" she asked uncertainly. "Your sister, I must say, seemed quite adamant that there was."
"Oh." Narcissa felt her eyes widen. "But that's why I was confused, you see. Because Bella . . . well, I don't know why she'd say something like that. She doesn't even notice me, most of the time . . and when she does, it's never to say anything nice."
The healer's eyes widened. "You think your sister is lying about you?" she exclaimed, surprised.
Narcissa felt herself nod. A thrill of fear coursed through her. She didn't know why she was telling such an awful, malicious lie, but she couldn't seem to stop herself. The voice, this new, terrifying voice in her head, scared her more than Bella, even.
"It was my birthday today," she heard herself say miserably. "My parents came to see me, but they didn't even stay to give me my present. Bella got into an argument with them, and they left . . ."
"Ah. I see . . ." The woman stared at her for a long moment, but Narcissa kept her face innocent, and upset, knowing that Bella had a reputation among the staff for causing trouble. This would sway the matron into believing her, she was sure. She held her breath, waiting.
"Well," the healer said at last, "I'm sorry to hear that. But I think I should give you a quick check-up, all the same. You don't mind that, do you?" Her tone was kind, and conciliatory.
Narcissa hesitated, and then she shook her head. The nurse smiled at her.
"Excellent!" she said cheerfully. "Could you stand up please?"
Narcissa obeyed her. The woman huffed on her fingers to warm them, and then she placed them on Cissy's side, frowning at her bare ribs. "Breathe in," she instructed, "And . . . out again." Her fingers moved up and down as Narcissa obeyed, as though feeling for lumps. That was probably exactly what she was doing, Narcissa thought. "Is there something wrong?" she asked, trying to sound worried, even though she knew perfectly well there was nothing wrong with her.
"No," the nurse said cheerily as she took her pulse. "You do seem a little on the skinny side though. Tell me, how much do you usually weigh? Have you noticed any weight loss recently?"
Narcissa had never been weighed in her life, and her weight had been as it was now for most of the school year, if she was honest. But the voice in her head had no intention of being honest. It manipulated her as easily as a puppet on a string.
"Well . ." she hesitated. "I wouldn't really know. I've never weighed myself." That much was true. "But I suppose, I am getting a bit skinnier. I haven't been trying to, honest. I've just been busy, and I suppose I missed a few meals, here and there. I've just been distracted. I fell out with my cousin, and I'm worried about the summer exams . . ."
She hadn't even given them a thought yet, actually. But as soon as she mentioned those two little words, the healer's face cleared. Instantly.
"Oh I should have known!" she huffed. "Every year I get this! Students, running themselves into the ground. Overstudying, forgetting to eat, not even leaving the building for a full week, if you can imagine it! A whole week without a breath of fresh air!"
Narcissa nodded weakly. The matron continued to rant as she hustled her into her office and put her on the scales, backwards. Cissy tried to glance back, to just see what she weighed, for curiosity's sake. But the healer turned her chin up, so that she was staring at the ceiling. The voice in her head didn't like that at all. It started up again as the healer jotted a quick note on her file. A whisper, this time – an insiduous little whisper, telling her how unfair it was. Why, after all, could the healer – a complete stranger – know what she weighed, when Narcissa, the one being weighed, wasn't trusted with this information. It had never bothered her before, how much she weighed. She had never even wondered. But now . . . the voice wanted to know. It wanted to be in control, to know more than the stupid, horrible healer.
Narcissa pulled on her dressing gown and climbed back into bed, sipping the nasty, fish-tasting vitamin potion the nurse had forced into her hands, and listening blankly to her explanations about food groups, vitamins and minerals. She nodded obligingly at the "importance of three square meals a day." Personally, Narcissa didn't feel more than one meal a day to be actually neccessary. But she pretended to agree with what she was being told, and when the nurse set her dinner down in front of her, she chewed obediently, aware that she was being watched
Midway through the meal, the healer decided she was approaching her food with enough enthusiasm to be considered normal, and felt safe enough to go and tend to a little boy injured during the Hufflepuff Quidditch practice. Narcissa continued to chew and swallow as she listened to her footsteps die away. When she was sure the nurse was gone, she pushed the plate away from her. Suddenly, she felt sick. She had lied. She had said those horrible, untrue things to the healer about Bella, and she didn't even know why. After all, she loved Bella. She might be frightened of her, sometimes, and jealous of her, but she still loved her, and Bella was all she had. Her own sister. Her only sister, now. But she had lied about her, and made the healer believe she was some kind of lunatic, who would say anything just to get her little sister into trouble.
Narcissa picked up her fork again, telling herself that she hadn't meant it. It had been a moment of madness (she smiled wryly at that) and she would make it up to Bella, somehow. She would do something nice for her. Something. Anything. But when she raised her fork to her lips, she found she couldn't bring herself to continue. Her stomach twisted unpleasantly, and her lies had left a bitter taste on her tongue. She couldn't eat, not now, not when her stomach was writhing in guilt. She put the fork down again, tears blurring her vision, because it didn't matter what she might do to make it up to Bella. It didn't even matter if she never found out about it. Narcissa would still know. She would still have lied. Nothing would change that.
Cissy rubbed her eyes frantically on the sleeve of her dressing-gown. Crying wouldn't do any good, and she couldn't let the nurse think she was crying about eating, it would ruin the whole point of the lie. She swallowed hard, panicking. She couldn't tell the truth either, for precisely that reason. There was only one thing she knew for certain – she could not finish this meal. Hastily, she swung her legs out of bed and glanced up and down the ward, double-checking that it was really empty. Then she pulled out her school bag and began sifting through the spare quills and scrolls of parchment, searching for her wand. It wasn't there. Of course. She groaned – she had lent it to Snape, hadn't she? So vanishing the food was out of the question, and the only bin was the one in the nurse's office, which was equally impossible. In desperation, she opened the nearest window and (hoping there was no-one standing directly below her) tossed out the remains of her mashed potato and chicken. She climbed back into bed just as the nurse threw open the door and re-entered the room, muttering under her breath about dangerous sports and dunderheaded practical jokers. She smiled at the site of Narcissa's clean plate and positively beamed at her as she whisked it away. Narcissa smiled back, but it was a stiff, forced smile. She supposed she ought to feel clever. She had fooled the healer, after all. She had got her way.
Sitting in the hospital wing, with her stomach twisting into knots and the fact that she was a liar burning a hole in her conscience, Narcissa didn't feel clever.