Narcissa felt winded,like all the air had been knocked out of her lungs.She staggered out of her chair after hearing the news.
Alice. Her Alice . Tortured to insanity
~Narcissa and Alice tumbled onto the sunny grass giggling and clutching each others arms.
when Narcissa turned her head from where she lay, breathing slowing down, she sees Alice looking at her with an unfathomable expression in her brown eyes."cissa" she breathed, slowly leaning in. Narcissa closed her eyes and tangled her hair in short dark locks of hair. She breathed in Alice and everything that came with it.For just a moment, just a moment everything fell away and it was just them~.
"who" she managed to get out from her constricting throat.
silence
she looked round at the carefully blank masks of faces and felt a rolling wave of disgust.
"who did it" she said, stronger this time."who, who tortured them, who tortured her" her hand gripped her wand tighter, and she swung it clumsy with fury in their faces.
their stupid blank faces, "TELL ME WHO DID IT" she screamed, drowning in the loss of the person she couldn't protect .
she heard a high cackle.
no
"Oh dear sister if I knew you would be so sad i would have saved some for you" bellatrix cooed.
no
Not Bellatrix, the only sister she had left. Narcissa felt bile rise to her throat. Narcissa had let Alice go, stood by as Alice got married to Frank, stood by as Alice looked at frank with the kind of adoration you couldn't fake. She stood by and told herself 'It's for Alice's good' so often it became a mantra in her head. But all, all of it. The death eaters, the marriage, the breakup had been for nothing.
"I'm sowwy, can you forgive your sissy" Bellatrix continued patronisingly, cocking her head to the side, the death eaters around the table started to smirk.
Then.Then Narcissa saw. She looked, really looked, at Bellatrix for what seemed like the first time. She scraped off the 'caring sister's 'pretensions and saw what people meant when they called her vile, when they called her a monster.
Because a monster, a monster, is what she had become. She finally saw the crazed madwoman Bellatrix really was.
~
Every week, Alice Longbottom got a visitor in St Mungo's.
A tall blonde haired woman who would sit at her side.Arched back and stiff face
She wouldn't talk, no, she would just sit there, stroking her hand while Alice slept, or screamed, or just looked blankly In Front of her.
It didn't matter that Alice wouldn't recognize her, or that she didn't get better, would never get better.
she was there
~
Narcissa stood, back stiff, head held high, watching the scene In Front of her.
Voldemort speaks again to everyone in the school, telling them that Harry was killed while trying to flee and save his own life. He tells them that they should end this fight, and if they come out of the castle and kneel before him, they will be spared. Then he moves forward, Nagini draped around his shoulders, and forces Hagrid to follow. They halt in front of the doors, Death Eaters spread out in a line as the survivors gather on the steps. The first who breaks the deatly silence. hears is McGonagall, who shouts “NO!” Then come the voices of Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, even worse. Voldemort orders Hagrid to lay Harry on the ground at his feet, and insists on Harry’s cowardice. Ron exclaims that he beat Voldemort, and the survivors start shouting. Voldemort continues with his lie that Harry died while trying to escape.
She hears a scuffle and a bang, and realizes that someone tried to charge Voldemort, and was stopped and disarmed by him. It’s Neville.
Neville Longbottom.
Her heart freezes in her chest and she feels like she's been punched in the gut. She feels the pain and rage of that fateful day again, just as suffocating as it was 15 years ago.
no
Voldemort knows he’s a pureblood, and suggests he should join the Death Eaters, but Neville gets to his feet and refuses with a cry of “Dumbledore’s Army!” and the crowd cheers despite the Silencing Charms Voldemort has cast on them.
She wants to help him. She wants to pull him away from all this and Protect him.
Like Alice would have wanted.
But she stood there, face impassive. Exempt from the slight tremor in her hand.
She waited, waited for Harry to stand up and say he was alive.
Protect. Neville.
Voldemort forces the Hat onto Neville’s head, and cackles that the boy will be a demonstration of what happens to anyone who opposes him. Then he sets the Hat on fire and Neville screams, the noise oddly similar to Alice's broken cries of "make it stop" at the mental ward. Narcissa knows she has to act—and suddenly many things happen in concert. Hundreds of people begin surging toward the dilapidated castle to fight, Some giant appears and is charged at by Voldemort’s giants,Hagrid cries out in rage and the centaurs arrive to shoot Death Eaters with arrows, and Narcissa swiftly draws her wand from under her black robes.
Then the Body-Bind Curse on Neville breaks and the Hat falls from his head, bearing the sword of Gryffindor, which Neville picks up and uses to slice Nagini’s head off.
Narcissa heads towards him, flinging off all the curses that dare come near Neville,her maternal instincts turning on like a blazing flame.
Neville, the only thing she has left of her precious Alice apart from a hollow puppet of her lying in st Mungos, blissfully unaware of everything going on .
'Mine' is all she thought as a green light surges towards Neville.
She jumps towards it…
In St Mungo's ,for the first time since Alice arrived there and the last time till she dies, a lonely death .Alice Longbottom utters a word.
"cissa"
~
In another universe many hundreds of years later, a short dark haired child bounces towards a girl with straight platinum locks and a closed off face.
"Alice, pleasure to meet you"