narcissa black

Daniyah was a pretty observant person. Even before the whole volunteer-for-a-war thing, when it wasn’t a matter of life or death, she was habitually aware of her surroundings. Walk into a room, do a quick scan to check its inhabitants. Overhear a conversation, subtly listen in while pretending to read. Someone approaching on the street, be aware of it before they are within arms’ reach. So, really, there was no need for a hand to be shoved in her face in order to get her attention.

“Yes?” she asked, voice as tense as her expression as she regarded the woman in front of her. Was she even a woman? Her face looked rather young but her whole look and demeanor screamed maturity, in a way that wanted people to notice. Beneath that, though, she looked somewhat familiar. Daniyah searched her brain for a minute trying to figure out who she was, but quickly gave up when she couldn’t land on something. She wasn’t well versed in British society and she didn’t care to be.

“What do you need?” Daniyah asked, not agreeing to anything yet. The girl seemed friendly enough, and that’s what worried her. Was she going to start preaching about something? “If it’s finding your way to some lawyer’s office, I don’t know where any of them are.”

"Nothing that will take up too much of your time,” said Narcissa, still sprinkling sugar over the conversation with a shameless sort of sparkle. She wasn’t put off by the stranger’s cold demeanor. In truth, it was something Narcissa was more used to, more comfortable with. One didn’t grow up siblings with the stony and moody likes of Bellatrix and Andromeda Black respectively without developing a strange affection for unpleasant greetings. 

She could not successfully keep himself from adding, “Though I’m sure you’ll forgive me saying, you don’t look like the type of person that isn’t acquainted with any lawyers.” 

Whether Narcissa was forgiven for the comment or not did not matter one iota; she was confident enough that this was someone she would probably never see again, and was positioned far enough below her to not matter even if she did. 

“All of the mail up to the castle has been paused for...security reasons, I suppose, but I can’t imagine what horrors they think are going to come through the mail. But I haven’t been able to get my hands on a newspaper all day; the shoppe that normally carries the daily copies was destroyed, and the post office here in town closed early. Do you happen to have a copy of the Prophet on hand? Or any worthwhile information. Sincerely, that’s all I’m after unless you have some hidden access to the Post.”

It was a good tactic, Anastazie had to give her credit for that. She couldn’t help but perk up a little with pride. Pride she very much deserved, thank you very much. Her level head had kept at least the students under her care from getting caught up in the thick of any of the action. Now imagine what she could have done with the Head Girl title pinned to her chest. A thought she would be sure was on the minds of the professors, if it wasn’t already.

“Well, I only did what had to be done in a crisis like that. I am only thankful I was able to provide any assistance. Such a terrible day, but it could have ended up a lot worse if we hadn’t stepped up.” ‘We’ not including you, Tazie thought without saying. Even if she wasn’t able to get the Slytherin girl to admit to running into the arms of her estranged cousin for protection, she at the very least couldn’t claim to have been part of those efforts.

Speaking of that, though, Tazie didn’t want to get too far off track. Not until she saw just how far she could push Narcissa. “But, I am glad you were able to stay out of the fray. Did you hide out until the coast was cleared, or find a back way back to the castle? Were you alone? That must have been terrifying.” A direct question. Tazie wondered if her would find a way to continue with her vague answers, or outright lie. Both would be interesting.

Narcissa straightened slightly at Anastazie’s comment, the expression on her face becoming no less pleasant or curious. But there was something else there, too - an alertness, the search for a snake she’d felt brush against her ankle but could not see lurking in the grass. Did not know if she’d imagined it. She smiled through it blithely, preferring to look rattled by the events of the day rather than surprised by any contents of a polite conversation. 

“Very admirable,” she said. “I’m sure your parents will be very proud.” 

Proud, and happy to brag about it at every social event for the next decade. Narcissa was no creature of great modesty, but she at least preferred to let others brag about her. Only families like the Dolohovs had to do it for themselves. 

everything about her pulled taut. Not that it was different enough from her typical demeanor to be noticeable; she’d learned better than to relax at school, and there was no point in bothering with something like relaxation while at school. Her peers were more like coworkers in the great cog of society than actual friends. It was something to keep in mind, something she chided herself for forgetting in the haste and panic of the day. 

“Oh, I—” said Narcissa, tucking her hair behind her ears on both sides. “It all happened to quickly, I hardly remember. It’s funny, what one remembers. I can perfectly recall making sure I had my wand, I felt like it took hours. But the attack itself...” She waved a small hand, to try and make it seem as though she was keeping her words minced to spare Tazie’s disinterest, not because she had something to hide. “None of us were alone down in the village,of course. It was a mess of students, it was all I could do to stay out of the way. Take cover, wait until the worst was over.” 

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Narcissa listened to the entire story with the same expression – stony, unimpressed, alert though clearly only through obligation – wrought to her face. It didn’t take much effort on her behalf to keep it there. It was better, after all, than the resentful expression she might have worn had she allowed herself to react organically. As so often happened with those outside her circle, Narcissa balked at once at the overly familiar way he seemed to address her; whether it was just his personality or not, she was determined to stick another layer of bricks atop the wall around her every time he tried to poke through with his genial smiles and animated looks.

There were attempts being made, she could clearly see, to bring her in on jokes or to draw her interest into enjoying this meandering tales and its many details. But those attempts – the recognition of them – were what caused Narcissa to rebuff it all the more. By the time Davey paused to take stock of her reaction, she was standing in exactly the same position as when he’d first approached, only now her arms were crossed and she felt significantly colder and more tired than she had whilst standing up here alone.

Even as a child, Narcissa could remember feeling too old for bedtime stories, and this was one step further toward ridiculous than the likes of Babbity Rabbity. 

The story finished, Narcissa let a long, chilly silence linger between them.

Then, “Aren’t you the boy that almost lost an eye trying to touch the Whomping Willow?”

Davey could tell he’d lost her, that he dragged it on too long. Product of the time, the darkness, and trying too hard to be entertaining, he missed some of the cues he normally thrived on. He was ready to write it off as hopeless, unsure if he was supposed to say something else in the silence. He’d done too much talking already, but every second it lasted, he was growing fidgety and restless again.

His attention snapped fully back to her, lifting his eyebrows at her comment. It was the last way he expected to be drawn back in right about now, but it wasn’t one he could say he minded. 

“I’ll have you know I did touch the Whomping Willow,” Davey said with the excitement back in his eyes. “It didn’t appreciate it in the slightest, and it made that very clear. M’lucky I kept them both.” He put his hands in his pocket and leaned back against the rail behind him. “Surprised you heard, even if they left out a few details.” No, he wasn’t. He’d secured his status as “legend” pretty solidly with that one. Well, “legendary moron” according to some accounts, but the root was there.

Narcissa knew that she should have felt something—some lingering sense of annoyance, or at least ambiguity—when Davey sprung back to life following her shut down. But concerningly enough, there was no eye roll fighting for its place on her fair features; no trace of wanting to snap her voice like a trap snapped shut to cut his babbling and pride off at the source.

Instead, impossibly, she felt…well, amusement was too strong a word, but suddenly it was difficult to keep an exasperated, but genuine, smile from her face. Narcissa kept it at bay as best she could, inspecting Davey’s tall frame further with yet-to-be-impressed eyes. 

Something about his energy felt familiar through its unfamiliarity; he was exactly the kind of person the children of the house of Black were trained not to be, but as otherness from their family was quite a large category, it was easy to recognize.

“Well,” said Narcissa. Her skirt didn’t have pockets, but Narcissa mimed sliding hands into them anyway, leaning back against the tower’s railing and making a mockery of his posture – in a way very much unlike herself. Or, unlike the herself she expected her classmates to know. “I hear everything, of course. I’m very well connected.”

“It was hasty, there is no question. I would never have let him leave had I been handed a mirror,” Bellatrix said with a huff. It was easier to complain about this when she was as hung up on it as she was. She didn’t need to force it like she did the other emotions she was supposed to be feeling, and she could play it off as wanting to focus on something lighter for her own sake. At least, until they got into the more serious elements.

“There is a truth to the fact that while he is the chief healer, his expertise is in bone injuries. Specialists in…” Bellatrix paused and looked toward the ceiling like it was difficult to talk about even as she kept it so clinical. “Well, they should have done a better job. The one who took care of the slashing wound certainly did; I will not have a scar to remind me of this awful day.” She looked down and was a little surprised to find her sister not right there but wandering through the room. “I do wish he had taken my nose and ankle all the same.”

Bellatrix turned slowly to properly face her when she stopped moving. She suspected that addressing it head on was going to be what pushed her over the edge, and she was prepared for it. She had spent hours on what to tell her sisters when it was such a difficult line to tread: they might not know the exceptional witch she had become, but they knew that it was only someone formidable that could leave her in a state like this.

“Come here, Cissy,” Bellatrix said gently. She extended her hand then rested it on the spot beside her, inviting her to sit on the bed. This was part of the reason she requested protecting her face; it could have been more abstract. “It’s going to be alright. I am going to be alright, and everything is being done to make sure this won’t happen again. I have been promised as much.”

Narcissa obeyed her older sister, but slowly. Not out of fear of Bellatrix—if she’d feared the raven-haired other half of her heart, she’d have bolted to her bedside just to placate her—but in fear of breaking. The breaking of the ground beneath her feet, now that the world felt so unsteady and new; the breaking of her sister’s body, which had turned out to be human and fallible after all, if Narcissa reached out to hug her. 

She didn’t want to be the one that made something worse in a situation that was already so fraught. And so, it was difficult for her to do anything at all. Except move toward Bellatrix’s bedside and hover there, a little ghost of Christmas past, and let her worry show openly on her face.

“What’s being done?” Narcissa asked, needing to know the bounds of everything. She’d meant it as a demand, but her voice cracked piteously. “Who promised you?”

They were a child’s concerns from the child herself, but that made them all the purer.

Sniffling, Narcissa leaned in to her more entitled instincts – for once, for the better. She took a seat at the edge of Bellatrix’s bed and studied her sister with wide, sorry eyes. Her pale hands closed over Bellatrix’s pale hands, and they looked the same, holding each other like that, none of the hair color contrasts to throw people off of how similar they really were, inside and out.

“You promise me,” she insisted slowly. “That you’re okay. That you’ll be okay.”

That you aren’t going anywhere, her mind chimed in silently. 

Anastazie watched the tail end of a cloak flutter out the passage, following its owner who had scurried away. The best part of the fifth years’ rapid exit was the lack of effort it took on the girls’ part to secure it. No blatantly harsh words had to be exchanged, no obvious threats thrown. Just the aura they seemed to be giving off that this had become an exclusive event and no one else was on the guest list.

Taking her place in an imposing armchair across from Narcissa, Tazie effortlessly drew her wand and conjured delicate-looking cups filled with tea on the table between them, one for each. She cupped hers in her hands, letting the steam weave its way in front of her face. “Although,” she repeated in a judgmental tone, taking a small sip. She was still shaking off the annoyance of whatever inane conversation Lucy and Sybill had been carrying on with in her dorm, which had driven her to seek out the more private room in the first place.

“It’s enough to get by for now. As much as I enjoy being at school, I look forward to having place that is all my own. It was quite the adjustment, all those years ago, to come from so much personal space to a castle where everything is shared. To go from an entire wing to a bed.” Tazie both allowed herself to relish in the brag, while bracing herself for Narcissa’s possible retort.

Maybe it wasn’t considered a healthy part of a friendship to place themselves in competition with each other, but Tazie couldn’t stop even if she wanted to. Which, frankly, she didn’t. There were some arenas where the Slytherin girl would always win, such as the undeniable wealth and status that came from simply being born into her family. But there were plenty of ways, more important ways, that Tazie came out superior. Something she would never voice out loud, even if it was an opinion she held fondly and like to frequently reaffirm.

“But, at least they give us some reward for the efforts we put in,” she said with a general wave of her hand around the room. “Now if only they would provide separate dorms for prefects as well.”

“All your own?” asked Narcissa, feigning flat, polite curiosity where she actually felt some genuine interest. “A wing to a bed to a full manor, then?” If it was a misunderstanding and Tazie was simply planning to return to the Dolohov home base, it would shrink the truth against the implied grander option, and if she was planning to strike out on her own, there would be comments to made about a shirking of tradition.

It wasn’t as though Narcissa had set out today with the intention of making Anastazie Dolohov feel small or annoyed or any of that. She was a lady and, besides, the other girl was her friend! Mostly. But there was something to be said for keeping an eye on certain families and, when they gained too much visibility in said eye, reminding them of how small they could truly seem without a charitable microscope.

As far as Narcissa knew, Anastazie was lovely and sharp. But Naricssa also knew that her brother Antonin was hungry and that their parents were their own, unique brand of powerful. She didn’t trust it and she didn’t like it, though there was little she could do about it now. Information collecting, is all it was. But that didn’t make it without value.

“That’s very generous of your parents,” continued Narcissa, smoothing her skirts and reaching for her teacup, set pretty on a nearby saucer. “I’m moving back in with my parents straight after graduation, of course, but things will be quiet by then. Bellatrix is already nearly out of the house, and Andromeda soon to follow. Then there are the French properties to content with and, truth be told, I’ve always preferred the French manor to the English one, and my grandmere on that side can’t live forever. But would that be too quiet? One wonders.”

Narcissa gave a demure laugh of agreement, looking around the lounge and mentally appraising what kind of dormitory decoration the school would offer up for an all-prefect abode.

“I would enjoy that,” she allowed. “But the selection process would have to go through an overhaul first. Sharing a common room with the likes of Emma Vanity and Barty Crouch I could get behind, for sure. But the Gryffindors? I feel like I see enough of Lily Evans and Remus Lupin poking into my personal space as it is. Without a dungeon to retreat to, I fear for my sanity.”

“Do I have any—?” Sirius did the best he could to keep his eyes on the battle, to not give in to his baser instincts and swing around to face his cousin with that look of childish contempt they’d shared so many times. It was only the action that kept him distracted, the constant flashes of color and movement. All of that, and the protective instincts he felt toward Narcissa; they were stronger but harder to name. Harder to claim. Harder to believe of himself, even when he was trying so hard already to play the hero.

Fuck you, he wanted to say. Fuck you, fuck you.

But he didn’t. Instead, he nodded in the affirmative—one single, terse time—and spread his legs to further block his cousin’s slight body.

“Keep your head low,” he said, voice low and harsh. It was disconcerting to realize that he didn’t recognize every spell whizzing past. Some were curses, of that he was sure. Shields were flying up all over the place, but the damage was more intense. It was scariest of all, to see that this was not quite a battle so much as absolute chaos. Sirius claimed to thrive on chaos, lauded it and coveted it loudly for all to hear.

But seeing it here, laid out in front of him in a way that didn’t make sense, couldn’t be rearranged by logic in his too-clever-by-half brain? It was scary. Curses were not just being thrown across battle lines. They were being thrown up in bursts, splitting apart the very groups from which they came, pushing friends away from one another just as much—maybe even more than—they were driving the enemy away.

And was it so hard to believe, really, that it would be so ineffectual? The enemy was everywhere.

This was no old painting, hung proudly in Orion’s study. There were not two sides, each wearing a different, bright color and facing their targets head on. People where everywhere, sound was everywhere, magic was everywhere.

But Narcissa was behind Sirius. Which seemed as good a first step as any.

“I’m keeping it low,” snapped Narcissa, not with the petulance of youth but with the sharp break of a panicked animal. She was no young deer; she was unable to turn her wide eyes and bushy tail and gallop off gracefully into the woods for the solace of solitude. Instead, she was trapped here. 

Trapped at the center of the action—the way she’d always claimed to want, before it occurred to her that action could mean things other than wars and whizzing curses and fear—completely unprotected.

The things that usually kept her safe were intangible. Money. Social standing. Her beauty, her feminine wiles. Sirius was all that stood between her and harm now and, though Narcissa trusted him against all her better instincts, she was still acutely aware that he was human and therefore fallible.

She worried for herself with him as her only shield. She worried for him as well, though she’d been told so many times that she shouldn’t.

“I want to go back to the castle,” Narcissa whined, impractically. Though the chaos of the lawn had been startling in the wake of the sudden blackout, she trusted those familiar school walls and her often incompetent peers more than she trusted this small, working slice of the real world. Men in masks streaked past, silver bullets or unsettling hoods.

Perhaps her best social talent was her ability to look into someone’s eyes and guess what they wanted from her. But she couldn’t do that here, with everyone’s faces covered and their only want seemingly chaos.

“No one does,” Bellatrix replied bitterly. “It is awful. It would have made the perfect wedding gift—and perhaps birthday as well, but now I must resign to making sure they make this process just as difficult when you get married. More so, if I can manage.”

She was going to stay true to that, even if it wouldn’t be an easy task. She knew part of it was both of their families were determined to make this even worthy of the title it held. It would be impossible to match in name regardless of who Narcissa wound up with, but she could press for all the more lavish. She would start directing her towards only children.

“I do think they already have three,” Bellatrix answered, looking to draw out the conversation and the walk as long as possible. She knew it was her own shortcoming thinking that she would not be caught, but considering this was the part of her night with the lowest risk of being discovered, she thought she could handle it. “I want to be involved in the conversations I wish to be involved in, and I want them to know exactly what those are without asking. Is that really so unreasonable?” It fell into the territory she thrived in: comments that could be a joke but she might mean entirely seriously. She was leaning towards the latter, impractical as it was.

“Does it really matter, Cissy?” she asked as they continued to her room. The moment her sister turned back around, Bellatrix had her wand in her hand and ran it down her left wrist. She barely spared a second to inch up her sleeve and see the Dark Mark fall under the concealment charm before stashing it away again, never missing a step. “It was an incredibly average night, a perfect representation of them—last night or otherwise. I have to travel for many of these. Just last week, I took a day trip to Madrid for a collection of books I thought might be of interest to the Archives. They neglected to mention it would be in the midst of a visitation, and I did not pry myself away until past eleven.”

Bellatrix pursed her lips and gave her an irritable look that she likely would have given to her face. Perhaps a hair fonder, but she didn’t need to play the game quite as well from this angle. She could be a little more genuine. “I tell you plenty about my life. If it is not enough, I will start keeping a diary and mail you the entries. Would that suffice?” Bellatrix quipped.

Narcissa managed an eye roll at the petty threat. “Focus your ire on Andromeda if you need an outlet,” she said. “I don’t see what annoyance you can actually cause me when you’re giving me a multi-years head start and admitting that it’s only for stupid reasons. You’re the oldest sister. You suffer first so that the rest of us suffer less. That’s the deal.”

It was no deal written down, nothing signed in ink or blood or tradition, but it had survived as a maxim to trust after all these years and Naricissa did. Trust it, that is.

“For all your big talk about how,” Narcissa lilted into a poor impression of her older sister’s voice at its most preachy. “’Nobody can protect us the way you do, nobody cares for us the way you do.’ You do a poor job of showing it when you’re in a mood.”

Narcissa did not bother to answer Bellatrix’s question about whether or not her expectations were reasonable. She assumed—or hoped—that by now her sister would realize they were. Bellatrix was so desperate to be mysterious and unknown and yet expected everyone to anticipate her wildly fluctuating wishes and needs as they cycled. She wanted everything, except for when she only wanted part of something, but she would not ‘deign’ to answer which part that was and Merlin forbid she had to be asked twice…

“It does matter,” said Narcissa. “Not only because you’re a hypocrite and get angry when I don’t tell you every detail you wish to wring dry from me. But because either you have something to hide, or you want to seem like you do so that I think you’re important, and neither is an especially flattering look.” 

She assumed that Bellatrix would shoot back with some comment about how Bellatrix didn’t care which looks flattered her and which didn’t, but Narcissa had learned a long time ago how untrue that was, so she mentally moved on before she finished speaking.

Narcissa laughed, some low noise from the back of her throat. “No, that would not suffice. It would just give you more editing power. Stop being ridiculous, I am already growing so tired of you today, and I’ve just woken up. Do you know what a feat that is?”

The list of people that Marlene actually wanted to talk to right at this very moment was extremely short. Narcissa Black was definitely not on the list; infact she was nearly at the top of the list of people Marlene didn’t ever want to hold a conversation with ever. She wasn’t in the mood to play nice; or make any kind of attempt at forming some conversation to keep up some pretence. 

‘‘That was kind of the idea. You know? Sitting where nobody else is? Does that not give you the impression that I didn’t want to be bothered.’‘ Marlene rolled her eyes, looking up at Narcissa for a brief moment. Before her eyes trained back to the ground. ‘‘I’m sure if I was hurt; I’d be more than capable than to get myself to the hospital wing. Besides, I wouldn’t want your help anyway.’‘  

‘‘Emotional state? I’m perfectly fine; just wanted to be on my own. Which was going great until you decided to grace me with your joyous company.’‘

“It does actually strike me as something one would do if they wanted attention,” said Narcissa with a small sniff. Her arms folded across her chest, but it was impossible to know whether it made her look authoritative or petulant. With the childish way Marlene was acting, Narcissa found that she didn’t quite care.

“It’s very ‘oh poor me, ask me about my day,’” she added, in case the point hadn’t been fully made. “As though everyone in the castle had not just had an awful day of their own. If you’re looking for some true alone time, I recommend your bed or a shower. Rather than sprawling out in the middle of a corridor, making everyone–” Though of course nobody else was around. “Uncomfortable and becoming a fire hazard.”

Narcissa let out a small laugh – a cruel, monosyllable sound that highlighted the resemblance between herself and Bellatrix, not the mention between herself and Sirius, all too well.

“Too late for that,” agreed Emma. The laugh that escaped her was a small, wry one — but it was as real as any of the others she dared to let escape, and surely as real as any that she’d shared with Narcissa Black before. It wasn’t that she had anything against the girl personally. It was more the idea of her that had always caused Emma to roll her eyes. The blonde hair and the wide, deerful eyes; the coordination that she herself coveted combined with the feminine charms of a Lucinda-type.

It was the family, most of all, that had driven Emma away. Her earliest experiences had not been with Narcissa, or the hard-headed and commendable Bellatrix, or even the stubborn, half-silent wisp of Andromeda with whom she shared a dormitory. No, Emma’s earliest exposure to the Black family had been in the form of Sirius. Obnoxious, pigheaded, overcompensating Sirius, in whose eyes Emma could see every reason that it was time for the Black family to relinquish their outdated claim on Wizarding society and allow some newer ancients to try their hand at smoothing over the Blacks many, many mistakes.

When Antonin loosened up after a few drinks and got to talking about how the Blacks’ day in the sun was over, how he was going to make something of himself and align some new names at the top, it was easy for Emma to nod along with agreement in her mouth and fire in her eyes when it was Sirius’s smug, insufferable, hungover face in mind. It was a little harder to think about such things when it was Narcissa’s patient, grey gaze meeting her own in the mirror.

So Emma didn’t think about it. She had another drink instead.

“But not to claim tired and call off tonight.” Emma laughed and flicked a wrist toward her desk. Unlike Lucinda’s, it was covered in binders and papers—lists, most of all—and not accoutrements. It also boasted a heavy stack of books. “By all means, have your horrid cliché and pick out something to read.” Her voice bordered on teasing, which was as close to fond as it got, in situations like these.

“All I’m saying is, I won’t complain if I don’t have to put my heels on tonight. It’s a Hufflepuff party; I doubt anyone is in real danger.”

“Hufflepuff,” repeated Narcissa around the rim of her wineglass, taking a deep sip and—just barely—suppressing a cough when she drank too deeply. She was surprised that a laugh bubbled to her lips, though the joke had been merely in passing – and low hanging fruit to boot, picking on the badgers’ house. But there was a nice bout of camaraderie to be found here this evening. A fellow Slytherin, a fellow prefect, a fellow pureblooded woman. It wasn’t quite an inside joke, but the runway seemed possible, now. “No, you’re right. Unless they were worried about lethal amounts of small talk or over-processed pastries.”  

Narcissa hovered on her perch at the edge of Emma’s bed, unsure what her next step was. It was clear, between the other girl’s words and tone, that they were going to skive off their duties tonight one way or the other. But was it a dismissal, meant to send Narcissa bird-fluttering back to her books and her pleasant solitude while Emma, in a silo, did the same? Or was it an invitation?

Consciously, Narcissa bit back the small, wavering voice in her head that wanted to blurt out: You want to hang out with me? 

It was a scary and precious thing, being the youngest child. Regulus was younger in years, but Narcissa was a girl and had been lowered to the bottom of the totem pole during his birth. Even covered in satin pillows and rose petals, it was an awful place to be: the baby. It wasn’t just conversations she was left out of, but games and rites of passage and family secrets.

She’d gotten very good at spending time on her own, as the others all grew and found their own footing. She liked to think that she’d found her footing, as well. She was both smarter and colder than others gave her credit for, and yet? Narcissa had a soft spot in her heart, one that always ached to be included.

Smoothing her skirts, Narcissa aimed instead for a bit of Black family authority, which she probably should have been wielding since the first of this conversation.

Marlene’s head was thumping; her mind reeling from the events of the day. When she’d woken she’d expected it just to be a normal day; the plan had been to spend it in the library. Cramming as much last minute studying in as she possibly could, being classically Marlene and leaving it all to the last minute. Perpetually unprepared for life. 

But then the whole school had been enveloped in darkness; there was screaming and running and chaos. Marlene somehow manage to get caught right in the middle of it; getting knocked to the floor as students scrambled to try and find some morsel of light. Pulling herself up; and drawing her wand she attempted to bring the light back only for her words to be lost in the darkness. 

Then the spells started to fly; she watched as students were hit with minor hex’s and jinx. Running to their aid when she were able, as she tried to find the source. Turning towards the middle of the group she looked into the eyes of her best friend; cold and disconnected. Why the hell was Mary throwing curses? It had to be some trick or illusion? There was no way that this was reality. Chaos erupted again as the decision was made to evacuate down to the village; Marlene decided to stay at the Castle, to help look for others lost in the dark. To stay where she thought the danger was.  

It wasn’t until much later that she heard about the ambush in the village; that someone had tried to take Lily.  The crushing guilt she felt was something that she had only ever felt once before. She should have been there to protect her friend; she should have gone with Lily. She should have known. Now she was in the hospital wing and nobody would let her in to see her; no matter how much she begged and begged. 

As the day progressed; more and more information came out in the forms of whispers amongst the students. Remus had apparently attacked Mary, and both of them were taken for questioning relating to the events of the day. The whole world had turned upside down and Marlene was really struggling to get her head around it. She wasn’t in a sociable mood; and everytime she sat among the groups of people gathered in the castle, people she barley knew just kept asking her about her friends about how she felt, if she knew what was happening. Marlene was a very personable person; but if she heard one more person asking her if Mary was a death eater she was going to punch someone between the eyes. 

Thus; she went off alone. Finding a quiet corner to try and decompress all the feelings inside her head to try and sort through her thoughts and feelings and make sense of what had happened.  

Hearing footsteps coming towards her; she let out a soft groan. Keeping her eyes trained on the floor. ‘’If you’re here to ask my if my best friend is responsible for today I’m going to make you regret ever coming over here.’’

Narcissa was shaken, but she had no time to lean into the sensation. Her coldness had always been a preferable alternative to vulnerability, so she drew it around her like a cloak now — imperiously pointing her chin at students as she passed them by, letting her heels click stately against the stone floors in a way that signaled she belonged and shouldn’t be approached. She wanted her sisters, both of them, Bellatrix’s graduation be damned. She wanted her cousins too, Regulus and Evan and…

Without realizing it, Narcissa had taken a wrong turn. She had tried to be seen walking around alone, so that nobody would ask where she was. So that the gossip wouldn’t get around that it was Sirius who’d saved her, Sirius who’d stayed by her side and protected her when it felt like the sky was falling all around. She wanted him now, too, but that was something for which she new better than to ask.

Marlene was a surprise, sitting curled up and feral in a corridor by her lonesome. At once, Narcissa decided that she should turn to go before she was seen…but then it was too late, she was begin addressed, and her pride was such that it would not allow her retreat.

“If that’s your idea of a polite welcome, I already regret coming over here,” retorted Narcissa coolly. “But, alas, no. I am not here to question you. Only to wonder why you’re in the way and, as I’m obligated, ask if you need a prefect escort to the Hospital Wing.”

She eyed the Gryffindor girl up and down, shrewd eyes narrowed and unashamed to openly judge.

“For physical ailments, of course. I don’t know that they have anything in the hospital that would help level out your…emotional state.”

If such a potion existed — one that didn’t wreak havoc on the body, at least — it would have surely been bought out by the Black family ages ago. Merlin knew Marlene McKinnon wouldn’t be the only one to benefit.

Anastazie stood in the Great Hall, helping to account for the last of the students as they returned to the castle and hurried off to their dorms. On the outside, she still held her calm and commanding expression that had allowed her to keep some semblance of peace in the midst of the chaos that day. On the inside, though, she was buzzing with pride.

Dumbledore had already pulled her aside as he made his way up to his office to no doubt take stock of everything that went wrong today, but not before taking a moment to commend her leadership instincts. One hundred points for Ravenclaw were also thrown in as a reward, which was a nice bonus but didn’t matter nearly as much to Tazie.

It’s not that she had done what she had done just for it to be noticed by the Powers That Be at Hogwarts, a fact that surprised even herself. She had done it because someone needed to step up and take charge or everything would quickly devolve, and she could think of no one better suited for the job than herself. It had been a gut reaction, a rare move she made without any plan for how it would benefit her down the line. Which just made the fact that it was now so much sweeter.

Among the waves of students, Anastazie saw a face that stood out as one she particularly cared about, and she let herself break free from her thoughts and her station for a moment. “Narcissa,” she called out only when she was close enough to not have to yell to be heard. She had seen the Slytherin earlier — in the care of someone interesting, a point she was sitting on as she tested the waters — but it was nice to confirm that she was okay now. “How are you? Did you get too close to any of the action?”

@narcissainbloom​

Narcissa had been walking in a daze, and the interruption by Anastazie was a welcome distraction.

Sirius had left her side, in Narcissa’s opinion, far too quickly. Once the danger had subsided and he’d convinced himself that she was uninjured, he’d disappeared just as quickly as he’d come to her aid, no doubt worried about his friends – the long list of names that he did not know the fate of, distracted now that her wellbeing had been confirmed and she’d been struck from it. Narcissa carried anxiety back to the castle with her too, for Andromeda and Regulus and Evan and others. But she wished she’d at least remembered to thank Sirius first.

Not that it would have been a good idea, so in public and with so many people coming to their senses.

For the first time in a long time, she was optimistic that she might have another chance to thank him, and soon.

“I did my best to stay out of the way,” said Narcissa, a hand pressed against her chest for emphasis – as though her heart were still beating as fast as it had been in the thick of things, as if she was still calming down rather than trying to wake herself up from the lingering shock. Her answer was vague by design; she prayed it would go unnoticed and that Tazie was looking, merely, for an excuse to talk about herself. “What about yourself? I heard rumblings of the Ravenclaw prefects taking charge.”

Sirius was on his own – an unsettling situation when the ones normally by his side were the ones that had rushed into the fire; unnerving because Sirius wished to do so, too. 

He was not James, the Head Boy valiantly following up the pack of evacuating students to make sure nobody got left behind. The same way he’d made sure, so many times, that Sirius didn’t get left behind, or Remus, or Peter. He was not Remus either, an anointed Prefect with the crippling weight of responsibility on his shoulders to drive him into action. He wasn’t even Peter, accurately ware of his own cowardice and satisfied to slip out of the center of the action to ensure he didn’t get underfoot and cause – intentionally or not – more harm than good.

Sirius, who had hated being told what to do for as long as he had been alive, was a ball of restless energy without direction. There was adrenaline in his veins, blood pumping through his limbs…but he did not know how to help, or how to do it well. His wand was out. His eyes were open. His heart felt wild and desperate to participate.

Without realizing it, he began to search the crowd for dark hair and light eyes; his ears strained to hear familiar voices that would have struck him coldly on any other day.

And when he couldn’t find any of the dark hair that he sought, Sirius began to look for blondes.

Narcissa wasn’t hard to spot. As she did socially, she’d seemed to cast a forcefield around herself that did not invite outsiders in. The forcefield wasn’t real, however convinced other people were of that fact; she had erected no shield and, even when jets of light from the village outskirts flew too close for comfort, she did not turn to run. Was it fear or defiance he was reading on his cousin’s face? It had always been so hard to tell.

“Narcissa,” called Sirius, his voice slicing through the crowd. It was a rough voice, commanding and brusque and uncompromising. It was a king’s voice, not the princely tone he’d learned from his father. It was a soldier’s voice, taking note of another troop in danger. 

Sirius lifted his wand, ready to spring into action – no, desperate to spring into action.

To his cousin he nodded just once, beckoning her over. “Behind me. Now.”

@narcissainbloom​

Narcissa did not need to be told twice.

There was a certain image she liked to place forth; a certain way she liked people to perceive her. At best, it was a regal impression she lived to give off. At worst, she would allow it to be mistaken for something stoic. Common thru lines ran through both: mystery, intangibility, an air of more than.

But here, as chaos erupted around her, Narcissa was not mysterious or intangible. She was a young girl in danger, easily recognizable and absurdly easy to injure. She was not more than anything. She was just out there, in the open, unsure of what to do and unsure of how to defend herself when the danger came from every side and her brain would no sooner give her limbs commands than she could sprout wings and fly herself away from these threats.

Sirius’s voice cut through the madness, slicing the air like a knife. It had always been a bad thing, before today. She would overhear him laughing in the Great Hall and have to slide further down in her seat, to forcibly remove him from her line of sight. She would recognize his haughtier tones rising above a crowd when he walked with a group of friends and have to keep herself from eavesdropping, from wondering which buttons he was aiming to push that day.

His voice was as commanding as Narcissa had ever heard it, and no childish instinct to disobey was able to rise through the fear. She ran to him at once, desperate for the solace that behind me would provide. There was pride in dueling and defending oneself, Narcissa knew. But there was no pride in dying thanks to a stray curse, and even less pride in depriving an already cut-down family of one more child. She ducked behind Sirius without an ounce of self-consciousness, her fingers grabbing for his robes and her forehead – however briefly – pressed against the back of his shoulder in gratitude.

“Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” It was not a kind question, but it was a fair one, as far as Narcissa was concerned.