Chapter Sixteen
A/N: Thank you to Guest for reviewing the last chapter.
Minerva was sat at her desk, marking essays by candlelight as she was often wont to do. There was something about the twilight hours, the peace and quiet that they offered, which made Minerva love the darkness more than any other time. Darkness could hide a multitude of sins, her mother had always told her. The woman found herself thinking that it did well to hide regrets as well.
Ever since that morning, she had thought of the awful ceremony she had discovered beneath the owlery. But it was not the barbarism of an exiling ritual that she remembered so vividly. It was Narcissa's eyes, pleading with her to leave her sisters be.
She had always been a sensitive child, ever since Minerva had known her. When she was very young, she had found a bird with a broken wing lying beside the Whomping Willow. It had been her own wish to put the bird out of its misery, but her daughter had insisted on nursing it back to health, spending hours every day with the poor creature until it was well enough to fly on its way again. 'She was so upset when she had to let it go.' Minerva recalled, remembering the tears dripping down from her cheeks onto the windowsill. 'This must be the pain she felt back then. She spent so much time caring and nurturing that innocent little thing, only to watch it disappear. I never understood it until now.'
Minerva's thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. The tap on the wood was quiet and did not seem to be urgent, nor did it seem the self-assured knock of a fellow member of staff. The professor prepared herself to berate her visitor, who was surely a student and should not have been out of bed at such an hour unless there was an emergency.
Minerva prepared a speech in her mind as she made the short walk to the door, but once she saw who had come to find her, she could not bring herself to deliver it. There, wrapped in a Gryffindor cloak above her nightwear, was little Annie.
"Miss Black." Minerva greeted, as much to remind herself of the fact as anything else. Narcissa inclined her head in response, but seemed too nervous to speak. 'She's never been nervous around me before.' the woman thought despairingly.
Then again, so much had been changed about the girl she had once known. Had she not looked identical, she could easily have been mistaken for a different person. Even her clothes were different, the little teddy bear pyjamas she had always worn replaced with a simple green gown trimmed in black ribbon. 'A Slytherin in look, if not in name.' Minerva could not stop herself from thinking bitterly.
As a draft of air blew around her ankles, the professor finally seemed to remember where she stood. Quickly, she invited Narcissa inside and shut the door behind them. In spite of herself, the blonde let out a sigh of relief as she felt the warmth from the fire envelope her, having been out in the cold open corridors of the school for a long time.
"What are you doing here at such an hour?" Minerva asked. Suddenly, she did not know how to speak anymore. When addressing a student, her voice was always firm, but with Annie, it had always been soft and caring. In the end, she chose a tone somewhere in the middle, hoping that that would be satisfactory.
Narcissa did not notice, seating herself beside the fire at her Head of House's invitation. "I wanted to speak with you, Professor." she began cautiously, as if she were afraid some of her sisters' Slytherin comrades might be listening through a wall. When she seemed satisfied there were no gratings around, no way for them to be eavesdropping, she continued. "It's about the ceremony you saw, this morning. I don't think you should have tried to stop it."
Minerva was taken aback. "Miss Black, if there is a student being put in danger, it is my duty as a member of staff to try and stop it."
"But this is different!" the girl professed. "He was a blood traitor. Meda, my sister, found him giving chocolate to a Muggle-born girl in Hufflepuff. He shouldn't have done that, so he had to learn. That's the Pureblood way."
It shouldn't be your way; it's wrong! You're not one of them! Minerva wanted to scream, but she held back. This was Narcissa Black; she was not little Annie to have to listen to what her mother had to say. And she was one of them, whether she liked it or not. By birth and blood, Narcissa was one of them.
"Professor, if you ever see something like that again, I think you should leave it be." There was a sweet innocence to the girl's voice, the same one she had had when pleading with her 'mother' as a child. Minerva did not know if she was conscious of it, but she sounded exactly as she used to do. "You see, it's the Pureblood way to carry out justice to blood traitors, and they will carry it out, whether or not you stop them from doing it on school grounds. You'll only put yourself in danger if you try to stop them and you'll put that boy in danger too. If they punish him back on their own territory, it'll be far worse for him. Please, I'm begging you. Just leave it alone."
By that point, tears had begun to well up in Narcissa's eyes. Minerva could not stand it. She wanted to bolt across to the girl and take her in her arms, rock her back and forth until she was alright again. But she couldn't. Not anymore.
Instead, the professor led her student to the door. "I promise I'll leave the Purebloods to their practices." she sighed. Smiling sadly, Narcissa disappeared off back to bed.
It was only once she had gone that Minerva realised. She had addressed the Pureblood Slytherins as 'they'. The woman smirked to herself. 'Perhaps she isn't one of them after all.'
A/N: Please review!