She goes back to black

Summer got off to a slow start. She found the first month quite boring. Not good boring, where you laze about, relax and simply enjoy having nothing to do, but the bad boring. Wishing you were anywhere else or that something, anything would happen, and eventually something did. Narcissa began to wish for the boring after that.

For all of July, Bella had been away. She hadn't asked where her elder sister had been and mother and father did not tell her. But when she returned, she did, and Narcissa wasn't quite prepared for the answer. Bellatrix was barely back in the manor before she was off on a tangent about the dark lord. She'd been with the dark lord!

Narcissa had always known her family was dark and was usually fine with it. Dark magic having such a bad reputation always irked her. Yes, it could get addictive, but it could also do great things. Narcissa had wanted to be a healer all her life and she was always fascinated by dark healing. How can you call something that heals evil? It opened up a whole new branch of treatments and people chose to ignore it simply because it was ‘dark and evil ’. Silly really.

But this was different. She was no Muggle lover like her sister, but not did she hate them to the extent her family seemed to. She blamed it on her extensive conversations about it with Andy before she left. Yet no, she wanted to stay separate from muggles, however massacring innocents who didn't even have magic to defend themselves with, didn't even know about it wasn't something she could see herself getting behind.

But Bellatrix clearly disagreed. Not that she ever assumed Narcissa's muddled opinions were any different than her own. Some of the stuff her sister said she understood, agreed with even. But then she would get that manic glint in her eye that seemed to be showing more and more as the weeks went by as she talked about the things she did to muggles and Muggleborns, and about how she “couldn't wait for the purer future our lord is going to bring”. It made her stomach twist, her skin itch and made her feel a little bit sick if she was honest.

So Narcissa spent the month of August listening to Bellatrix's rapt speeches about their great lord, and her mother telling her how to act and who to talk to, reminding her cousin Sirius, the heir, will be joining hogwarts this year and to make sure he is welcomed smoothly into Slytherin. She felt kind of guilty, but in all honesty, she had never been happier for September first to arrive and eventually she was off in the train for her third year to begin.

Sirius sorted Gryffindor. No one could believe it, a black, the black heir, a Gryffindor! He seemed fairly pleased with himself once he got over his nerves however. Narcissa could hear Bellatrix further down the table exclaiming about how it was “ridiculous” and “more proof that our family should be the main branch if they're going to produce that kind of heir”. She didn't particularly like the house, they were reckless, they were often loud and had no sense of decorum and those who did slowly let it slip away. It wasn't a place for a Black. But they weren't all awful, she guessed. Alice was Gryffindor.

She received a letter from mother and father telling her she wasn't to associate with Sirius as this just confirmed he wasn't fit to be the heir to their house and that if he kept this kind of behaviour up, it would probably pass to Regulus. Narcissa thought that was a bit silly, to be honest. Bella didn't, but she knew her sister well enough to know she was hesitant about ignoring their cousin, so she gave her plenty of a reminder why.

“I know you care about him, Narcissa, but he dirtying the name of the house of black, and it would do us no good to associate with him further” she had told her.

“All for sorting Gryffindor?” she had asked, slightly incredulous.

“It shows his true character and values, and they are not befitting our noble house. He's always been a bit of an odd one out, Sirius. It doesn't matter though, if you are seen talking to him there will be trouble ” 

“What happened to ‘ the family is everything’? Narcissa asked, echoing what she'd been told in her childhood many times.

“Appearances are everything” was the only reply she got.

She had thought about that conversation for a while, before deciding if appearances were everything, as long as she appeared to be giving Sirius the cold shoulder, it wouldn't hurt if she said hello every now and then.

So that's what she did.

She made up her mind during transfiguration a few weeks later that she was going to find him and let him know he wasn't alone, because she knew exactly how that felt, and it wasn't nice.

Narcissa had mastered the supposedly ‘tricky’ spell ages ago, and was planning on how to find him when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

“Excuse me,” Alice said.

Alice was talking to her.

She thanked her pureblood training as she wiped her face blank of any emotion other than polite interest.

“Yes?”

“I'm sorry to bother you, but would you mind helping me with the spell? I can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong and you're awfully good at transfiguration. Well you're good at most things really” the girl said, a smile on her face.

“You know how I am?” She spluttered, internally cursing herself. Of course she knew who she was, she was a black!

“ 'Course I do. You're the girl who's always watching quidditch practice. Your top of the year in pretty much everything too. Narcissa Black, right?” Alice answered, grinning.

That was one of the few times someone ever remembered Narcissa for her, not her name and it felt good. She was proud of her family, but she was proud of herself too.

“Yes, that's me” she said, allowing the ends of her mouth to curl into a small smile. 

“Alice Fortescue, isn't it?”

“Wow, you know me” she teased.

“‘Course I do,” Narcissa said, playing along.

 “You're the girl who's going to cost Slytherin the quidditch cup because you're such a good chaser” she smiled.

“Why thank you Miss Black. I'll be sure not to gloat too hard when we win.”

Narcissa couldn't resist, and asked about a certain maneuver she saw the Gryffindor team trying in practice, which lead to a conversation about quidditch strategy, the request for help long forgotten, that continued after the bell had rang and they were walking down a corridor after the lesson.

“So how come you don't play Black? You sound like you'd be amazing” Alice asked her as they walked along.

“It's not ladylike, and as a daughter of the house of Black we have a certain reputation to uphold” she said, with a slight sigh.

“That's ridiculous!” Her companion exclaimed. “It's a sport! If you're good you should play, and play well so then you can bring glory to your house, how about that”

“I wish it worked like that” Narcissa sighed.

“It's a shame, you clearly love it” 

“I do” She admitted quietly as Alice came to a stop.

“Whoops, seems I've led you straight to the Gryffindor common room, sorry about that” she said sheepishly.

“It's fine,” she replied, turning to walk away. “It was lovely to talk with you.”

“Let's be friends, yeah? Call me Alice”. She was supposed to be careful with who she was friends with. But this was Alice, the girl who she'd been dying to talk to for ages, who recognised her for something other than her last name.

“Narcissa” she said, with a wave of her hand as Alice disappeared into the portrait hole. Smiling to herself, she went to make her way back to the dungeons when she walked right into someone