Chapter Twenty Two

A/N: Thank you to GabbiGrl for reviewing the last chapter.

Once her eyes had cleared a little, Narcissa returned them to the page she still clutched in her shaking hands. The ink had blurred so severely now that it was almost impossible to distinguish one word from another, but the blonde woman did not need the page to know what it had once said. Each individual curl of the script was embedded into her mind, trapped there and haunting her each time she closed her eyes. Raising her hand to wipe another teartrack from her cheek, she read the heartbreaking words once more.

Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy,
It is with great regret that I inform you of the results of our magical tests, following the incident at the Ministry of Magic on Thursday 5th January 1978. On that evening, as a result of an extremely strong Stunning Spell, Mrs. Narcissa Malfoy sustained a severe abdominal trauma.
Unfortunately, we have discovered that at the time, Mrs. Malfoy was carrying a baby, and had reached one month into her gestation period. However, the Stunning Spell was aimed at the abdomen, and the impact of the magic caused a miscarriage of the child.
It is with regret that I also must inform you that, once the miscarriage was complete, we were able to run some more tests, and discovered that some measurable damage was done to Mrs. Malfoy's womb, and chances of another child being conceived have been greatly reduced. The chances of a future pregnancy have now been reduced to approximately one in one hundred, and in the event of a pregnancy occurring, the danger to Mrs. Malfoy's health would be great.
I have arranged a meeting two weeks from now, to discuss how best to manage this situation. I shall hope to see you there.
With greatest sadness,
Edmure Selwyn,
Head of Department of Maternity, St. Mungo's Hospital.

Narcissa could hardly believe that, after all the pain and suffering she had gone through in the early parts of her life, she could have had her chance of conceiving a child, the one thing that could have been a part of just her and Lucius, taken away in just the blink of an eye.

The tears surfaced once again, and once again, the woman did not have the heart to try and prevent them from falling. She attempted to remain quiet, not wanting for her husband to notice, but the attempts were futile, as he was watching her every move, waiting to see how she would react to the news. He had remained on the sidelines when she had cried for the first time reading the letter, and each time since, becoming more and more withdrawn the more emotional his wife became. They had always had a very affectionate relationship, truly, but Lucius was so concentrated on controlling his own grief that he had done nothing about his wife's.

Finally, he could stand it no longer, and moved quickly to side on the bed, taking Narcissa in his arms and holding her tightly against his chest, allowing the tears to flow from his eyes once she could not see them, a matter of pride if nothing else. And finally, the woman allowed her own walls of pride to fall down, crying out with the pain of it all, crying for the child she had lost and the child that now they would never have.

"It's alright, Cissa." Lucius sighed into her hair, his voice shaking as he spoke. "There's still a chance that... We'll just have to wait until we meet Selwyn."

But his tone was not convincing at all, and Narcissa doubted that she would have believed him even if he had tried to be. He was in almost as much pain as she was, she could tell from his expression, and she used the term 'almost' purely because she did not think that anyone could be in as much agony as she was feeling at that moment, and if they were, she pitied them far more than she did herself.

'This was all my fault.' she thought, her whole body seeming to have become numb. 'If I had just stayed at home, like Lucius had told me to, then I would never have been cursed. We would still have a chance to have a child of our own if I hadn't been so stupid.'

"I'm sorry, Lucius." she whispered, the sound carrying clearly across the silent room. Her voice was choked with tears, and she pressed her eyes tightly together to prevent any more from spilling over. "I'm so sorry."

"It was not your fault, Cissa." Lucius responded, holding her all the more tightly, and planting a feather light kiss on her hair. He took a deep breath and a moment of pause before continuing to talk on the subject. Evidently, he was experiencing as much pain as she was. "It was Black. He was the one that fired the curse. It was him that took this chance away from us, not you."

Narcissa froze with shock. It had been Sirius. Her own cousin, a man she had used to run around the gardens of their home with as children, had taken away her chance of ever doing the same with her own son or daughter. She did not understand how he could have come to hate her so much. 'I thought that we were friends.' she observed in her mind. True, she had not seen him for a long while since he was disowned. 'I never thought that he could be so cruel.'

"I'd like to be left alone for now, please." she sighed quietly, and, though he was a little taken aback by her sudden request, Lucius complied, standing from the bed after one last kiss to her cheek and leaving his wife to her thoughts.

Once she was alone, Narcissa leant her head back against the headboard, remembering all the thoughts she had ever had about having children in later life. All the times she had thought of a name she liked, all the times she had passed a toy or dress shop in Diagon Alley, all the times she had visited her friends and family and played with their children. The memories were beginning to fade away, and as sleep suddenly claimed her, her eyes weary from their crying, Narcissa's final thought was that it had all been for nothing. She would not have her fairytale ending, and she could not provide a child for her husband.

She was a failure.

A/N: Please review!