Lady Of The House (Interlude)
Narcissa feels like she's falling apart. It's like her very soul has been ripped from her body, or else been stuffed into a too-small box.
Her son is gone.
She sits at the window, looking blankly out into Draco's forest, because that was what it was to her. How could it be anything else? How could anything in the house be at all, without her boy?
The house was dark all of the time now, especially since Draco had gone to school, but it seemed to sag in on itself today, floor warping and bending from water stains that weren't there and lights going out at random intervals.
It was all for Draco. Every bit of this house, and everyone in the family knew it. Even Bellatrix had walked in and remarked at how Narcissa couldn't even get her own house to prefer her.
Narcissa hated Malfoy Manor these days. That Draco had loved it so much, struck her like one of her sister's knives to the ribs. She couldn't stand it, walking through the rooms and seeing Draco in every one of them, his favourite birds on the wallpaper, his favourite colour on the settee, his favourite painting sitting front and centre of the personal sitting room. She felt like a ghost, except it was the house that was dead, everything in it dedicated to a boy who could never see it again.
Lucius had appearances to keep, and she loved him dearly for keeping them safe, but she despised the stony look he put on. In her weaker moments, she hated him, for not protecting her boy enough, but Narcissa could never hate Lucius, not truly.
He tried to comfort her now, but he didn't know, not like she did.
"Love, he'll be alright, he has to be." He said, with the authority of someone who hadn't been able to control his son in a good long while.
Narcissa just continued to stare out of the window, "Do you remember Regulus?" she asked, her voice flat.
Lucius flinched, as if she had hit him.
She continued, "A good few years below us, Sirius' little brother." She turned to look at her husband, eyes just as cold as her heart.
"He joined young too-"
"Yes, love, I know-" Lucius tried.
"No. No, you don't." She interrupted, a grievous breath of etiquette, and one she had never committed before.
"Walburga forced him, you understand. He was a favourite of The Dark Lord's." She turned back to the window, "He disappeared too." She paused, the words sticking in her throat.
She forced them out, her husband had to hear this, "He's been dead 18 years."
She continued, words flowing to the surface easier now, "That's just as long as he lived. Perfect symmetry. Next year he will have been dead longer than he'd been alive."
She felt a tear roll down her cheek, "He got the mark at sixteen, too."
Lucius came forward, brushing the tear from her face with his thumb, "I'll never be able to rectify my mistakes." He said, voice soft, "And I will continue to apologise to my dying day, but Draco is not dead, I swear it."
She turned to him, not daring to hope, "How do you know?" she demanded.
"I would know, as would the house, as would you. I will not say he is alright, because he is not, but he's alive."
Narcissa let the tears flow freely for the first time in months, and let herself fall into her husband's arms. She didn't sob, because she was a Lady, and it wasn't becoming, but she wanted to.
"Have you ever known Draco to forsake family? He will come back." Lucius murmured.
Narcissa had no choice but to believe him.