uptorn by desperate fingers
And will not Silence know
In the black shade of what obsidian steep
Stiffens the white narcissus numb with sleep?
(Seed which Demeter's daughter bore from home,
Uptorn by desperate fingers long ago,
Reluctant even as she,
Undone Persephone,
And even as she set out again to grow
In twilight, in perdition's lean and inauspicious loam).
She will love well," I said,
"The flowers of the dead,”
Narcissa is thirteen when she discovers poetry; she is thirteen, and foolish, and preemptively grieving a loss still to come.
Andromeda is in love, and Narcissa has a book she is not supposed to have. She has never lied to her family before; she is thirteen and hides the book in her school trunk where the elves will never check. She has never lied to her family before, but she loves her sister and now she has a secret of her own.
*
When she is twelve, Uncle Orion becomes Head of the family. Great Aunt Melania dies after a long, drawn out illness; Great Uncle Arcturus lives just long enough to bury her in the family crypt, before passing peacefully in his sleep. She likes to think it’s because he couldn’t bear to live without her, but Bellatrix is not so romantic. “Don’t be stupid, Cissa. You can’t die of a broken heart unless someone curses it to explode in your chest.”
After the funeral, when the family is helping Uncle Orion and Aunt Wally settle themselves and the children in Great Uncle Arcturus’s home in London, her uncle pulls her aside.
“I think you’re right,” he tells her, over a plate of freshly baked biscuits and two glasses of milk. “My father - he was a strange man. My mother was the best of him, I think. Certainly, he loved her more than anything.”
“So he did die of a broken heart,” she says sadly.
“Yes, I believe he did,” Uncle Orion says sadly back.
They sit quietly for a moment, Uncle Orion sipping his milk and Narcissa pondering the nature of love and marriage.
“Will you die of a broken heart when Aunt Wally dies?,” she asks, breaking the stillness.
Uncle Orion laughs and pushes the plate of biscuits toward her. “Eat another biscuit,” he says, “before my wife finds us and puts us to work.”
So she does. They sit in that kitchen together for ten minutes before Aunt Walburga storms down the stairs and tells her husband that ‘he better get himself back up to the library to deal with his sister, or he won’t like the consequences.’
“Yes, dear,” her uncle says, and winks at her as he follows his wife out of the kitchen. “Of course, dear.”
Uncle Orion is the sort of man whose wife rules him; she knows this from listening to her parents behind closed doors, and that her father greatly disapproves. But whenever it gets brought up, Uncle Orion only shrugs and says, “It’s better this way.” Narcissa likes him best of all her uncles, but she doesn't think he has the authority to be Head of the Family, not really.
*
If women could inherit, Narcissa would say stern and slightly terrifying Aunt Lucretia should be the heir - but of course, women can’t. (Narcissa knows this very well, because Bellatrix complains about it constantly ever since cousin Sirius got to read the Black Family Grimoire after he turned four.)
November, 1963
Bellatrix is eleven and furious; Narcissa is eight and can’t understand what all the fuss is about.
‘It’s just a book,’ she writes in a letter, and even at eight her writing is beautiful and feminine.
Bellatrix writes the way she speaks; sharp and fast, letters made up of edges and points like the thorns of a rose bush. ‘It’s not just a book,’ she writes back. ‘It has the combined wisdom and magic of all the Black’s that ever were. It’s a book of power, and it should be mine. Sirius is a snot nosed child - I’m the eldest of this generation and Aunt Melania’s favourite. It should be mine.’
When Yule comes and Bellatrix, now twelve, is back from school for the holiday, Narcissa listens to her ranting, angry words in person.
“Listen, Bella,” she says eventually. “Enough about the grimoire; I want to hear about Hogwarts.”
“It’s fine,” Bellatrix says, dismissive. “It’s just school, Cissa.”
But Narcissa refuses to give up. “Is Slytherin nice?,” she asks. “Is McGonagall really like how Uncle Alphard says she is?”
“How about this,” Bellatrix decides. “I’ll answer your questions about boring old Hogwarts, if you promise to ask father to make a formal request for me to join Sirius’s lessons with Uncle Arcturus.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“You know you’re his favourite, Cissa, come on. Please?”
Narcissa rolls her eyes. “Fine.”
“Thank you,” Bellatrix smiles. “Now go back to your room, I have to study.”
“What about-,” Narcissa protests, but Bellatrix only waves her away.
“Yeah, yeah. Later, I promise.” She pushes Narcissa out of her room and closes the door.
Narcissa sighs and wanders down the hall to Andromeda’s room. Andromeda is eleven and looks just like Bellatrix; they could be twins, for all that they’re ten months apart in age.
“Promise me you won’t ever care about Sirius being the heir and getting to read the Family Grimoire,” Narcissa says the moment Andromeda opens her bedroom door. “Promise me that when you’re at Hogwarts you’ll write to me about Slytherin, and classes, and if there really is a secret passage in the North corner of the Great Hall like Uncle Alphard says.”
“I promise,” Andromeda replies with a smile, and when she smiles she stops looking so much like Bellatrix, instead looks just like Grandmother, who never lies.
This is a great comfort to Narcissa. “Thank you,” she says, and when she goes to bed, she resolutely does not think about how in less than a year Andromeda will be gone to Hogwarts, and she will be all alone in this big house with no one to keep her company.
*
Father works long hours in the summers and longer hours during the school year; mother goes on long holidays to visit her cousins in France, her brother in Belgium, her favourite aunt in Vienna. Narcissa spends the last few years before Hogwarts shuffled back and forth between her grandparents' home in Kent and her Uncle’s house in Oxfordshire. When Narcissa visits, Uncle Orion reads while Aunt Wally runs the household with an iron fist and stern sensibilities. When Narcissa and Sirius get in trouble for running through the halls and knocking over the umbrella stand, Uncle Orion scolds them with all the iron of a goosefeather pillow and all the sternness of a sleepy kitten. Sometimes, late at night when Narcissa is thirsty but doesn’t want to disturb the house elves, she creeps downstairs to the kitchen and joins her uncle, curled up in a chair. He always hands her a biscuit, freshly made, and with a smile tells her she must have perfect timing because he’s just finished baking them. Narcissa always giggles and tells him he’s silly, because Blacks don’t bake their own biscuits; he just winks and sends her back to bed with the biscuit and a glass of milk.
(When she’s older she’ll look back on these memories and wonder if maybe he was telling the truth after all. But for now, while she’s still a child, Narcissa just eats her treat and drinks her milk, and goes to sleep with a smile on her face.)
*
She is thirteen and foolish. Children often are, and Narcissa is no exception; she follows her sister past the door of their Uncle’s home and onto the streets of Muggle London. Andromeda is fifteen and also foolish, but Narcissa doesn’t know that yet. To her, Andromeda is perfect, smart, on the cusp of adulthood. She trusts her implicitly.
Maybe she shouldn’t.
The streets of London are loud and awful and strange - Narcissa is careful to leave some distance between them, but in the crowded street it's hard to keep Andromeda in her sights. She watches her turn a corner, but as she goes to follow the crowd surges around her; she is not tall enough yet to see above the crowd, and she is too weak to force her way through. Perhaps thirteen is too young for the streets of London.
“Excuse me,” she says, and does her best to push out of the crowd. Her cousin Sirius always makes fun of her skinny arms and pointy elbows, but they become the perfect weapon when wielded against the sides of rushing adults. With a few well placed jabs she manages to squeeze herself through and turn the corner before she gets swept across the street. Moving quickly into the doorway of the shop on her left, she peers around the building to see Andromeda’s green silk robe move slowly down the street, heading toward -
“Andromeda, you made it!”
Narcissa’s eyes widen in shock as a vaguely familiar looking young man sweeps her sister off her feet and spins her around.
“Ted!” Andromeda laughs. “Put me down!”
He laughs and puts her back on the ground gently. “I missed you, you know,” he says with a smile, and moves one of Andromeda’s curls away from her face.
She can see Andromeda’s face begin to flush, and the beginning of that smile that always transforms her face into something shining and beautiful. “I missed you too,” her sister says, and, “It’s awful not being able to write all summer.”
“It is,” he agrees. “But I’d rather you be safe. I love you too much to want you to take that sort of risk.”
“I love you, too,” Andromeda says, and Narcissa is shocked to hear nothing but honesty in her voice.
Theodore Tonks, Narcissa realizes all at once. A boy in Andromeda’s year, a mudblood Hufflepuff of little consequence. Or, well, she’d thought he was of little consequence a minute ago; now, she’s not so certain.
Mother and father won’t like this, she thinks. Didn’t mother mention that Abraxas Malfoy had been writing to father with talk of joining the two families? Narcissa wonders if Andromeda knows about the possibility of an engagement with the Malfoy heir. She wonders what mother and father will say when they find out their daughter has been spending time with a mudblood. She wonders what Bellatrix will do.
Narcissa shivers; Bella can never find out.
The couple begins walking back down the street, hand in hand. Narcissa pulls her head back around the doorway and hurriedly enters the shop she’s been loitering in front of; she might hate the idea of being inside a muggle shop, but she would hate to be caught out spying even more.
She crouches down while her sister and her - boyfriend? - pass by outside, and finds herself staring at a shelf full of children's books.
“Those seem a bit young for you, if you don’t mind me saying so,” a voice says, and she spins around so quickly she loses her balance and topples over onto the floor.
“Oof,” she says, and pushes herself up.
“Oh, dear, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she hears, and looks up to see a man in an apron, standing behind a counter. “Are you alright?”
Narcissa brushes the dust off the side of her robes and nods. “Yes, thank you.” She keeps her sentence as short as possible without being rude; this man is a muggle, and she is terrified that she might say or do something that will reveal that she’s a witch.
“Good, good,” he says. “Well, now that I know you’re alright - are you interested in the classics, or something more modern?”
Her head spins in confusion and stress. “Pardon?,” she asks, and tries not to panic visibly when he moves out from behind the counter and passes her to point at one of the aisles.
“The modern books are here at this end,” he says, before pointing down the aisle, “And the classics are down there, by the wall.”
There’s an awkward pause as he looks at her appraisingly, and Narcissa tries not to fidget while she attempts to come up with a response that doesn’t give away that she has no idea what he’s talking about.
“Um,” she says eventually. “Classics?”
He smiles and nods. “Spend as much time as you want,” he says jovially, and Narcissa lets out a heavy breath of relief when he turns and goes back behind the counter. “Feel free to browse, take a look around, whatever.”
“…thank you,” she mumbles, and moves toward the other end of the aisle, where she can’t be seen and so no longer has to pretend to be comfortable inside a muggle bookshop. She shivers and touches her wand where it’s tucked into her pocket. The crowds outside were one thing; nobody tried to speak to her, they were all moving so fast that they hardly even saw her. But here, inside the shop - there is no escape, and worse, there are no witnesses. Narcissa has no idea what muggle men who run bookshops are like, but Bellatrix says muggles are dangerous, and Great Aunt Cassiopeia talks about the sorts of things muggle soldiers did in the last Great War - even jolly Uncle Alphard has some not-so-nice things to say about muggles from his travels.
Just as she comes to the decision that she will use her wand if she has to, the door of the shop opens.
“Hello, Jim,” a woman says, and she listens as the shop clerk responds in kind. Her shoulders drop in sudden relief; the new person may be a muggle too, but at least she is no longer the only one in the shop.
While the new person strikes up a conversation, Narcissa allows her eyes to look at the spines of the books around her; they seem to be organized neither by name nor by size, but some other mysterious way that she cannot seem to grasp.
“No doubt some weird muggle thing I can never hope to understand,” she mutters to herself as the fingers of her right hand trail over the books as she walks. “Merlin forbid they use a sensible, alphabetical sorting system.”
(She doesn’t know it yet, but one day she’ll go to a different muggle bookshop, and another and another - and find out that most muggles do use a sensible, alphabetical sorting system.
In fact, even this muggle bookshop sorts alphabetically; alphabetically by the first word, however, and not, as one might assume, by author's last name. Hardly sensible, but what can you do? Jim tries his best.)
*
An hour later Narcissa is back at Grimmauld Place, no one any wiser that she had even been gone. Aunt Wally has taken Sirius and Regulus away somewhere, perhaps to visit Uncle Alphard; the townhouse is quiet without the other children, without Aunt Walburga shouting at them.
Narcissa had escaped the muggle bookstore while the shop clerk’s back was turned; she’d waited for the perfect moment and then ran - it wasn’t dignified, but fear hadn’t left a lot of room for dignity and besides, what mother doesn’t know won’t hurt her.
So she had escaped the muggle bookstore, and made her way back to her aunt and uncle’s house, and now here she is; catching her breath with her back pressed up against the library doors, heart racing as though that muggle shop clerk had been chasing her through the streets.
She’d been running from fear, yes, but also from freedom, from joy, from adrenaline rushing through her veins - because once she started it was impossible to stop. And now she is in the library with the doors shut behind her, and the muggle world is so far away that it seems as though it has all been a strange dream.
“Hello darling,” her Great Aunt Melania’s portrait says from where it’s been placed on the wall above the library doors. “Where have you come from in such a hurry?”
“Hello,” Narcissa says shyly, for at thirteen she says everything shyly. “I’ve just been outside for a bit, but I’m in now. Is anyone home?”
“Walburga and the children are gone, but Orion’s over by the fireplace - why don’t you join him?”
“Thank you,” Narcissa ducks her head and does as Great Aunt Melania tells her to. Uncle Orion is indeed by the fireplace, a small book in his hands and several others stacked beside him on a table. The fire flickers in the grate, and Narcissa watches it flash over her uncle’s striped dressing gown in interesting patterns. She climbs up onto the chair next to his and tries not to look undignified with her short legs dangling off the end.
“Hullo,” Uncle Orion says, his reading glasses tipped down to look over the tops at her. “Did you just get in?”
She nods. “What are you reading?”
He smiles and shows her the cover of the book. “It’s silly of me, but I do like a romance every now and again. This one in particular has always amused me.”
The cover reads Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, and Narcissa nearly falls out of her chair.
“But that’s a muggle book!,” she exclaims. “I know it is, I saw it at the-,” she covers her mouth with a hand and widens her eyes.
Uncle Orion watches her curiously.
She watches him back. “It is a muggle book,” she insists again, though this time she doesn’t let herself get carried away.
He folds his reading glasses away slowly, his face pensive yet amused. “Yes,” he finally says. “It is a muggle book, you’re quite right.”
“But-,”
“Would you like to read it? It’s about your age, I should think.”
Narcissa hesitates. “Father wouldn’t like it,” she says quietly. “Nor would mother.”
“No, I don’t suppose they would - though considering they’ve spent all of three days with you this summer, I don’t see why what they want should matter at all,” Uncle Orion mutters, before Narcissa’s tears stop him.
“Well, I can’t imagine Aunty Walburga likes it either,” she says, voice warbling as she tries and fails to hold her tears in. It’s not fair, she thinks, wiping her eyes harshly. Why do I have to be such a crybaby?
“Oh dear,” he says then. “What a beast you must think me to be. I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. Of course your parents wouldn’t like it, and of course my wife doesn’t like it either, you’re absolutely right. I’m a terrible husband and a terrible uncle.”
“You’re not terrible,” she sniffles. “At least, I don’t think so.” Narcissa wipes her eyes one last time. “You’re my favourite uncle,” she admits in a whisper, suddenly deeply embarrassed about her outburst. “But don’t tell Uncle Alphard, he’ll be really cross.”
Uncle Orion smiles and offers her his handkerchief, which she takes. “And you’re my favourite niece, but don’t tell your sisters or I’ll never hear the end of it. Deal?” He sticks out his hand for her to shake.
She shakes his hand firmly, like father has always taught her. “Deal,” she says seriously. “But you have to tell me where you got that book,” she points to the book he’d been reading, the one by the muggle author. “If you don’t, I’ll tell Aunt Wally that you’re the one who put porridge in her slippers last week, not Uncle Alphard.”
“Ah, et tu, dear niece? Alright, if I must.” He turns to look at her seriously for a moment. “I bought it from a muggle bookshop,” he says then. “One not too far from here, in a muggle shopping district, where the shop clerk sorts the books in the strangest way...” he shakes his head. “No matter,” he says, and hands her the top book from the pile beside him. “Here, this one has to go back - I’m exchanging it for another tomorrow. Read it now, see if you like it.”
She takes the book with a frown, thinking back to earlier that day. “Do muggles really not sort their books properly?” When her uncle looks at her curiously, she only shrugs. “I’m only wondering,” she says, “because I- er, because…,”
He smiles knowingly at her. “Because the muggle bookshop you visited today did not sort their books by author?”
She gapes up at him. “Uh,” she says. “Um.”
He laughs. “Don’t worry,” he says with a nudge to the arm. “I won’t let on.”
Narcissa doesn’t relax, but she does let out a sigh of relief. Uncle Orion goes back to his book, Pride and Prejudice - and Narcissa curls up in her chair next to his and opens her own book, temporarily loaned.
They read until the crash of the umbrella stand outside announces the return of the rest of the family, and as Narcissa follows her Uncle Orion out to help pick up all the umbrellas Regulus has knocked over, a voice stops her at the library doors.
“Did you enjoy reading with him, dear?” Great Aunt Melania looks down at Narcissa with a knowing smile. “He always was a curious boy; preferring to sit and read, instead of running and fighting the way the other children did.”
“I’m the same way, I think,” Narcissa says, and turns back to look at the fire, the books sitting out where they left them. “Will they be alright there?”
“Don’t worry about the books, darling, hardly anyone else comes in here. Now, go help my grandson, before his mother comes in and sees the mess he’s made.” The portrait shoos her out of the library with a smile and a wink.
Narcissa, naturally obedient even at thirteen, does as she’s told.
But later, much later under the cover of darkness, Narcissa wraps a blanket around her narrow shoulders and sneaks past the portrait lined walls of the hall outside her room. On the staircase she is careful to skip the fourth step from the top, which always creaks dreadfully, and moves as quietly as a young girl can in a house she is very familiar with - which is to say, very quietly indeed.
The doors to the library should be shut at this time of night, which she thinks may give her some trouble; but when she reaches them, she sees that they’ve been left cracked open just wide enough for her to slip through.
That's rather lucky, she thinks, careful not to nudge the creaky doors as she passes between them. She keeps her elbows, of infamous pointiness, tucked tightly to her sides. Narcissa lets out a silent huff of smugness once she’s through - and takes a confident step into the library.
The doors thud shut behind her.
She spins around in fright at the sound, and her eyes widen. The blanket!, she thinks in a panic, and yanks the trailing edge of it away from the doors it has just managed to drag closed. She waits frozen for a long minute, holding her breath; when a minute passes, and then another with nothing so much as a house elf appearing, she lets her breath out in a long exhale of relief.
Then a rustle comes from high on the wall by the doors, and Narcissa freezes all over again as she peers carefully at Great Aunt Melania’s portrait in the dark. The portrait is asleep, thankfully, the rustling only the result of the woman’s dress brushing against the upholstery on the painted chaise longue as she sleeps.
Narcissa’s heart rate slows down. “Merlin and Morgana, I really can’t take much more of this,” she mutters, and blanket held tight in her arms, she squints her way through the dark room toward the unlit fireplace. Her book, a tale of drama and dark gothic atmosphere called Northanger Abbey (which she found herself at once repulsed and fascinated by, in equal measure) sits untouched on the side table, exactly where she’d left it hours before.
An Everlasting Candle is next to the book, unlit, and she picks up her uncle’s cigar lighter from the table and sparks the tip until the flame burns brightly enough to read by.
Then, she wraps herself in the blanket, tucks herself into the armchair, and opens the book to where she had left off.
*
Tomorrow comes, though, as tomorrow always must; Narcissa is still tucked away in the library when the sun rises, and as the house elves draw back the curtains, start the fire, dust the shelves - she closes the book on the final page and sighs in tiredness and contentment. When the sounds of life begin to stir in the house beyond the library, she blows the Everlasting Candle out, bundles herself up in her blanket and heads back upstairs to her room to get ready for the day ahead.
She’s careful to be as quiet as she can, but it’s not nearly as daunting or necessary a task as it had been the night before; darkness, even in a house well known, can do strange things to the mind of a thirteen year old. It invents danger where there is none, and makes an adventure of every foray through familiar halls - but in the daylight, with the portraits stirring and the house elves going about their morning tasks, Narcissa doesn’t even feel urgent need to avoid the creaky step.
She still does though, because people are sleeping and it would be rude otherwise. (But that’s just because she’s ever polite and thoughtful, as her father always says - or if you listen to Bella, has the heart of a Hufflepuff, even if her Hogwart’s robes are trimmed with green.)
Breakfast is quiet, just her and Uncle Orion - her aunt is still sleeping and her cousins take breakfast in the nursery on the weekends. And Narcissa doesn’t know where Andromeda is, but she doesn’t much care. Sleeping still, probably, if she had to guess; she’d gotten in late last night, an hour after curfew, and had a shouting row with Aunt Wally about the whole affair.
(“In my house, you will follow my rules!” Their aunt had shrieked.
“I am fifteen!” Andromeda had shouted back, “I’m not a child! I’m only here because father says I can’t live with Bellatrix until I graduate!”
This was news to Narcissa, who was doing her best to eavesdrop from the hallway, ear and eye pressed to the door. Bellatrix, who their parents had never been able to control, had moved into her own place the minute she had gained full access to her trust at sixteen. Narcissa thought of her sisters living together after school with a pang; she, who was so much younger than the both of them, would be stuck at school long after they had both left.
“You dare shout at me in my own home,” Walburga snarled. “You, who isn’t even of the main line?”
Andromeda had scoffed, and Narcissa could picture her rolling her eyes, though her face wasn’t visible from where she hid. “I’m as much a Black as you are, Walburga, as your sons are,” she sneered back.
Aunt Walburga’s face was visible to Narcissa, though, and she watched as it turned an unprecedented shade of red. “You-,” she breathed, her anger so great that she could hardly speak. “You!” She had lunged forward with her hands outstretched, as though to physically grab Andromeda and shake her. “Your mother a Rosier, and you claim as much right to the Black name as me? As my children?” She laughed cruelly in Andromeda’s face.
“You keep my mother out of this,” Andromeda said in a quiet voice filled with all sorts of danger. Narcissa, who had watched and listened to a hundred fights between her sisters and her parents, knew when it was time to intervene; Andromeda had never sounded so much like Bellatrix in her life.
It terrified her.
“Andromeda,” she said, pushing into the room suddenly. “I need help with my summer work - oh, I’m sorry.” She stopped at the threshold and ducked her head politely at her aunt. “I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she murmured with a slight curtsy.
Andromeda’s back tensed and then relaxed. “It’s alright Cissa,” she murmured quietly. “We were done here, anyways.” She curtsied as prettily as if she were before Royalty. “Aunt,” she said, polite and cold as ice.
Narcissa watched warily from the door as Aunt Walburga clenched her fists and nodded. “Niece,” she bit out between clenched teeth, and with a jerk of her head acknowledged and dismissed them both in one.
Narcissa wasted no time in grabbing hold of Andromeda’s sleeve and pulling her from the room; she held her breath until they were both up the stairs and safely ensconced in the hallway between their rooms.
She let go. “I should curse your tongue from your mouth,” she said wearily.
“Someone’s got to say something,” Andromeda tried to reason, but Narcissa was having none of it.
“Goodnight,” she said pointedly, turning away to open her bedroom door.
“I thought you needed help with homework?”, her sister asked.
Stupid, Narcissa thought uncharitably. “I lied,” she said, like it was obvious - and really, of course it was. Stupid Andromeda.
“You don’t lie,” Andromeda said in surprise. “That’s not like you at all.”
Narcissa shook her head. Well I’m a liar now, she didn’t say. I learned it from you. “Goodnight,” she said again, quietly, and left her sister in the hall.)
A couple of hours later she had snuck downstairs to the library to read an illicit muggle book, and, well - here we are.
“I can take the book back to the shop for you,” she says over her plate of eggs and sausage and toast, because on days Aunt Walburga sleeps in, the elves know to serve more than the usual porridge and tea. “I don’t mind.”
“Would you? That’d be a tremendous help, dear, thank you.” Uncle Orion spreads blueberry jam on his eggs with a smile.
(Sometimes Narcissa thinks he’s gone round the twist, even if he is her favourite uncle.)
*
“Andromeda, are you in?” Narcissa knocks on the door across the hall from her own. “Andromeda?”
“Eugh, what, Cissa?”
“You missed breakfast,” Narcissa calls, cupping her mouth close to the wood so her sister will hear her even if she doesn’t shout.
“I’ll be down for lunch, alright, leave me alone.”
“I’m going out,” Narcissa says then, “see you at lunch,” and doesn’t bother replying to the muffled groan she gets back in response.
She tucks her hair behind her ears, holds her bag a little more tightly, and leaves the house with one last glance behind her to the double doors of the library, where she knows Uncle Orion once again sits, reading by the fire.
Her bag knocks against her side with every step, but she refuses to slow down as she makes her way through the streets of London - if she slows down, she might stop all together. And she can’t stop, not now; she’s told Uncle Orion she’ll do this task for him, and so she will.
Narcissa follows the same path she’d taken the day before - had it really only been the day before? Merlin’s beard, time is strange, - and tries not to think about the muggle book she shouldn’t have, tucked away in her bag, on its way back to a muggle shop she should never step foot in.
Instead, she thinks about her sister Andromeda; with her face like Bella’s and her smile like grandmother’s, and all the lies she has told that nobody knows about - except, now Narcissa knows. Narcissa knows and she doesn’t know what to do about it, because Andromeda is her sister, and she loves her. But Theodore Tonks is a mudblood, and Andromeda should know better; no, Narcissa knows that she does know better, because mother has always said how good a daughter Andromeda is, and father is never cross with Andromeda no matter what she does.
But not this time, Narcissa thinks. This time, Andromeda will break both of their hearts and possibly her own at the same time, and Narcissa knows all this and still she has to stay quiet because she loves her sister, and maybe Uncle Orion was right. Maybe, if mother and father aren’t around, they don’t get to complain when things happen that they wouldn’t like, when their daughters keep secrets from them.
When Narcissa pushes open the shop door, she greets the shop clerk before he can greet her. “Hello,” she says, shy but polite, no longer scared the way she’d been the day before; after all, Uncle Orion knew this man, and knew that she was coming here. In the face of that, it was easy to be brave. “I’ve come to return this book for my uncle; he said he was exchanging it?” She pulls the book from her bag and places it on the counter. She looks up at the shop clerk expectantly.
“Hello,” he says. “Yes, I thought I’d be seeing you again! You ran off so quickly yesterday, I hadn’t the chance to give you - and your uncle, you say! Well, let’s see what you’re returning, then, shall we?” He plucks the book from the counter and hums as he looks it over. “Well, just as I thought,” he mumbles as he shelves the book behind the counter, pulling down a different one at the same time. “Here, this should do as a replacement; tell your uncle not to skip the foreword on this one.”
“Alright,” Narcissa agrees, taking the book carefully (careful not to crease the pages, careful not to touch the muggle) and placing it into her bag. She looks around at the shop for a moment more, before shaking her head. “Goodbye, then,” she says.
“Hold on a moment,” says the shop clerk suddenly. “Just hold on a moment! I’ve a book for you too, see if I don’t.”
“But,” Narcissa protests, more out of an interest to be gone from the muggle shop, than anything else. “I haven’t any - any way to pay for it.” And isn’t it funny, almost, saying those words for the very first time? She’s never been unable to pay for anything in her life.
“That’s alright,” the clerk says, but Narcissa is still protesting.
“But it’s a bookshop, not a library,” she insists now, her nerves a thing of the past. “I can’t just take a book without paying for it! That would be stealing.” You stupid muggle, she doesn’t say, though she is sorely tempted to. But of course, Uncle Orion would be cross with her if she was rude, no matter that it’s just a muggle.
“Ah,” the clerk shakes his head. He puts the book, a little hardback thing the size of a pocket journal, down on the counter. “But you’re not taking this one, not at all!” He pushes the book across the counter, until it sits just in front of Narcissa’s eyeline. “I’m giving it to you; world of difference, wouldn’t you say?”
“Well,” Narcissa says reluctantly, “maybe.”
“And you’d be doing me a favour, you really would; I’ve had that one longer than you’ve been alive, now, and haven’t managed to sell it yet.”
“Well,” Narcissa says, “well.” She reaches forward and slides the book off the counter and into her hands. Its cover is unmarked, and when she flips it open there is only a publication date written on the first page.
Strange, Narcissa thinks, flipping to the next page. Ah, there we are.
‘A Collection of Poems and Recipes’. She finds herself riveted with surprise - Muggle’s write poetry?, she thinks in astonishment. But that's-! She doesn’t know what it is, just yet, but can feel herself trembling down to her bones.
“You can always return it, if you’re really not keen,” the clerk says, and Narcissa shakes her head and shoves the book deep inside her bag.
“No,” she replies quickly, “I think I’ll keep this one.” She smiles tentatively at the clerk (who’s name tag says Jim, she’s only just noticed) and nods toward the door. “Thank you, and goodbye.”
“Goodbye,” says Jim. “Don’t forget to remind your uncle about the foreword!”
“I won’t,” Narcissa says, and when she gets back to Grimmauld Place and rushes into the library, the first thing she does is tell Uncle Orion - “Make sure you read the foreword, the muggle was very firm about it.” Jim the muggle, her brain reminds her, but she brushes the thought away. It isn’t a very dignified name, anyways.
“Alright,” Uncle Orion says with a laugh, taking the book from her. “Thank you.” He smiles at her over his glasses and gestures to the chair next to him. “Want to join me? We still have a couple hours until we’ll be required for lunch.”
She wants to; when she looks at the chair, which she spent the better part of her night in, it does seem incredibly inviting. But the book still in her bag is heavy on her mind, and she wants to explore it as soon as possible - and she doesn’t know why, but she wants to keep it a secret for now, even from Uncle Orion.
Maybe Andromeda’s deceitfullness really is catching.
“Not right now,” she says, pulling the bag back up her shoulder. “I’m going to be in my room until lunch, I have some summer work I still haven’t finished.”
Uncle Orion nods. “As you say.”
She smiles politely and walks back out of the library as carefully and normally as she can. Out through the front hall, past the portrait of Great Uncle Arcturus, and up the stairs to the first floor where her bedroom sits. Andromeda’s door is still shut tight, and as Narcissa creeps past to push her own door open as quietly as possible, she strains her ears to try and see if her sister has gone back to sleep.
Once in the safety of her room, Narcissa pulls the book out carefully, flips it open, and begins to read.