Chapter 6
Narcissa
I don’t tell Lucius about the baby. I haven’t told him much of anything ever, why start now? I also haven’t told Alice. I should've told her first. Fucking Merlin, I should’ve gone to Andromeda. She would’ve known what to do. But no, she was never truly an option, so I went to Bella.
I rap on her mansion door, and a little house elf answers. It stares at me, then squeaks, “Mistress Lestrange, Mistress Malfoy is here!” “Let her into the parlor room!” I hear Bella’s magnified shriek echo from far into the house.
The parlor room is eerily familiar to my childhood home parlor. Dark green wall paper and golden velvet furniture. Mahogany tables with decanters holding all sorts of alcohol. Portraits hang on the wall, including a fresh one of Bella and her husband on their wedding day.
In sweeps my sister, and my body tenses, but my heart relaxes. Bella smiles, her curls wild and her black dress quite innocent compared to the tight revealing ones she usually favors. “Cissa! What brings you here?!” I grin, and hug her. “I just missed you. Lucius is usually gone on missions and work meetings, I’m so lonely.” My sister rolls her eyes. “Better he is gone all the time then being there, hovering over you. He is an idiotic brute. But he does have the money,” she twirls me around, admiring my silver robes.
I stop her, before I can get distracted. Bella is always good at distracting and then disarming people-even the people she loves the most.
“Actually, I need to talk to you about something important.” Bella’s nose flares and her jaw clenches. The Black trait, we all clench our jaws when we’re about to fight or talk about real emotion or try to act human in any sense. “Is it about Dromeda?” She asks stiffly, and pours us tall drinks.
“No,” I choke out, caught off guard that she would immediately think about our estranged sister. “And it’s nothing to do with the war.” That catches her attention and she tilts her head. To my sister, everything has to do with the war these days.
“I was pregnant.”
Her mouth falls open.
“Narcissa.”
She sounds so much like our mother I flinch.
My words pour out in a frantic rush, and I feel myself becoming more like the frightened teenage girl that used to run to her older sisters and parents when anything hard happened. I suppose nothing has really changed.
“I was pregnant and I wasn’t trying to be! Lucius…he doesn’t always listen to what I want. I have no desire to have a child from that man. I…I couldn’t let myself be tied down anymore then I already am! He has no idea and he will never have any idea. Bella, please, I was a Black before I was ever a Malfoy. I already gave up my hair, and my name, I cannot give up my freedom as well. You know as well as I do that if I have a child I will be stuck at home with it. And it will give him more incentive to control me.”
My sister says nothing for a while as I try to keep the tears from falling. Then, harshly, she hugs me. “Oh Cissa, I am so terribly sorry. I would kill him if you’d let me. Never let Mother or Father find out. Dromeda is having half breeds with that muggle-born, they will never accept them as their grandchildren. You cannot let them know you could have their grandchildren. Let them think you are barren. Or adopt once Lucius dies in war. But you must do what you have too, Cissa. For the good of the family.”
I shake in her arms, and laugh quietly. “What a bunch of disappointments, you, refusing to have a Lestrange, me, who refuses to have a Malfoy, Andromeda, having half-breeds, Sirius, who refuses to breed, and Regulus, who cannot breed. For being named after stars we don’t burn very brightly.”
She grips me tightly, so tightly it hurts, but it comforts me. It’s what I have always known. “We are simply who they raised. Powerful women, who learned to rise above and fight for what we want. We don’t want to be remembered by our children. Or by our husbands. We are Blacks.”
I pull away and fiddle with my wedding ring. When I was younger I had a vision in my head of a little boy at my side. He was my companion while his father was away, he was my son. He was the light of my life, and back then, in my dreams, my husband was far better then any real man. The child would be named after a star, and would look like me, but with white blonde hair. I always thought that would be the most charming looking child in the world. But as I grew, the dreams soured into reality. Any child I would have I would raise on my own, before Lucius coming in to sweep them away into the world of money and pure-bloods and dark magic before leaving me with a broken shell of a brutalized child and no real love.
I refuse to let that become my life.
A ringing noise sounds throughout the house and I jump. Bella stands, and draws her wand. “What is it?!” “Someones here,” she growls, and we hear the house elf answering the door. “Mistress Lestrange, Mistress Skeeter is here!”
Shock makes me go rigid, as my sister's roommate from our Hogwarts days glides into the parlor room as if she’s been here the whole time and simply popped back in from using the loo.
Rita Skeeter has tight blonde curls and animated large eyes that hide behind dazzling rhinestone glasses. Her robes are a disgusting shade of green, I understand Slytherin pride but this is atrocious. Her smile is wide and toothy and makes me want to hide. She and my sister were very close, but they also fought like wild animals. Every other day Bella was in detention for setting fire to her newspapers and leaving them on her bed. Rita wrote a gossip column at school which led to her working for the Daily Prophet. She knows things no one has ever told a living soul, and fear rips through me at the sight of her here after I spilled my heart to my sister.
“Ah! Hello Madame Malfoy!”
Rita shakes my hand slyly, and I notice Bella’s face has gone pale. She looks…scared. “Rita,” I purr, pushing back my emotions, “How lovely to see you again. It’s quite a surprise to see you here.” She beams, and glances at my sister, who is still frozen in place. “Thought I’d pop in to see how my old friend is doing!”
That's when Bella melts and anger sparks in her grey eyes.
“Actually, Narcissa, will you excuse us for a moment, I’d like to speak to Rita alone.”
With hostility, Bella grabs Rita by the arm and drags her out into the hallway and I hear a door slam. Being the youngest sister I learned how to eavesdrop, so I slip down the hall a few feet and listen in. And I’m curious as to why Rita Skeeter simply showed up at my sister's mansion and why Bella looked like she got caught with a muggle.
“You cannot just show up simply because you feel like it, Skeeter! I have spells and rules for a reason!”
“Relax! I knew you weren't with him. Otherwise I wouldn’t have come, you know that.”
“I was trying to have a nice time with my sister before you barged in!”
“That is what you call a nice time? You both looked like you wanted to spew!”
“Did you hear anything?! If you did, I swear to Morgana I will crucio you until you forget about it. You must never ever repeat anything you hear to anyone. I will drag you to the feet of-”
“Relax, Trix, I didn’t hear a thing. You know I’d never say anything about your darling sister. She looks too fragile anyway. One strong wind might knock her over. And besides, the crucio curse doesn’t hurt unless you mean it. You will never hate me that much.”
“Don’t underestimate my hatred Rita. You’ve reported on the dead ones who did.”
My sister’s threat makes Skeeter go quiet and I dart back to the parlor. The shock of her calling my sister Trix circles my mind as well as the familiarity with which they spoke to one another. It seemed intimate….
Within seconds, Bella is back, and looks irritated and flushed.
“Everything alright?” I ask innocently, but also nervous at the fact that Skeeter could've heard anything we had been talking about. “Yes,” Bella fiddles with her wand, “That bitch heard nothing important. But I think it’s a good time for you to leave, Cissa. We don’t want her hearing anything else.” I nod, slightly hurt. She's kicking me out and not her ex-roommate.
As I’m about to cross the threshold of the front door I hear Rita taunt, “Oh I’m a bitch, am I?”