#hcartless

  always a c c e p t i n g  ✓ ✓ ✓  ask the hard - hitting questions

@hcartless​    

Narcissa loved her sister and loves her still. Then again, more often than not it seemed that to simply know Andromeda at all was to love her. She was like a fire, spreading warmth wherever she went and causing devastation to whatever - or whoever - stood in her path. She was always brilliant and laughing in a way that made their house seem more like a home than a museum. Narcissa envied her recklessness, the way she brawled with their cousins and didn’t give a second thought to getting a few leaves or twigs stuck in her hair. The thing about Andromeda was that from the very second she came into the world, she made the most out of being alive. 

Narcissa watched her burn the skies from her position on the ground, rooted in the soil.

For the longest time, she was her sister’s secret keeper. There was nothing that they didn’t share with one another or with Bellatrix. It was ‘the sisters Black’, as if they were all part of this packaged deal and you could not have one without also taking the others. Theirs was a bond that couldn’t be broken, forged from shared experience and that innate desire for a ‘more’ that none of them could properly define. In this way, Narcissa watched both of her sisters tear a path through the heavens. She made excuses for them at the dinner table when they were absent, cleaned up after the messes that they left behind ( neither of them was tidy in their pursuits ), and she held them when they cried. In a lot of ways, Narcissa was forced to be the mature one, the grounded one of the three….for the sake of peace, a little structure, for the good of the family. One of them had to be perfect, the other two had run away with everything else.

And Ted wasn’t the first boy that caught her sister’s eye. Narcissa had watched them all, a long line of suitors eager to soak in Andromeda’s warmth. What she didn’t see, her sister would invariably tell her about later. Love was an exciting concept to the middle sister, that was her ‘more’ she’d come to realize. She chased after it with all the fervor and reckless abandon she did all of her interests. Narcissa watched her fall in and out of love so many times that it made her head spin. She watched the fights, her sister’s tears, all the burning accusations. Where Andy saw fireworks and sparks, all Narcissa could taste was ash and soot. 

Love of family, she understood…but this….this she didn’t want to.

She had assumed that Ted would be another one in many. Not only was there no one good enough for her sister, but Narcissa found him bland and uninteresting. Where was the spark to light Andromeda’s fire? In her mind, there was nothing about him that could make up for his unfortunate parentage. He was neither skilled nor exceptional, and he had all the charm of a digestive biscuit. But Andromeda wanted him, and what Andromeda wanted, Andromeda always got. It was a very Black trait, actually.

And so, the secrets they had once shared became secrets that her sister kept to herself. The missed dinners became more frequent, so much so that Narcissa began running out of excuses. While Andromeda built her castle in the sky, Narcissa’s began to crumble into sand that slipped through her fingers with the passing seconds. The rift was more like a chasm, separating her from a part of herself - a piece of her soul. There was no longer any warmth on her cold skin, no hugs of affection and sisterly embraces. Even Bella had begun to grow distant, wrapped up in her own pursuit of the ‘more’ that she had found, while Narcissa could only look down at her empty hands.

The marriage had been the final straw. It was one thing to run around with a muggle a bit, but it was another thing entirely to marry one. The tapestry that had once brought Narcissa so much pride in her heritage quickly became a tarnished, ugly bit of cloth that she loathed and despised. She quietly swallowed her anger, bit down on the teeth of her rage. How could any of them do this? How could any of this be okay? They were all of them selfish, and stupid, and so bloody blind!

Her too. Narcissa simply fell in line.

To be fair though, she’d had no choice. Andromeda had always had friends, and now she had Ted. She had made her escape, and there had been someone for her to run to. Who did Narcissa have? Where could she go? What could she do without her family? How could she live without them? More importantly, how could they live without her? Bellatrix needed her. Regulus needed her. Someone had to be there. She had to be the one that stayed where she was, who remembered to stay rooted in the soil so that they could all live in the night sky.

“Welcome to the Hunter’s Tavern, ma’am-- how can I help you?” It was odd to have a customer come in so early-- and he could have sworn the doors were still locked. But he had a business to run and he was here-- so why not wait on a customer while he got the bar opened?

“You're far too radiant to afford one, dearie,” he replied, his grin sharp, sideways, and crooked as he took her in. She was adjusting to life in the palace well, or so it seemed. It warmed his heart, really--or   W O U L D , if the shriveled mass in his chest could feel anything past its own blackening, rotting flesh.

 ALWAYS ACCEPTING ┊ ask nim & i stuff & things

@madameserpent

If we had to pinpoint one thing that would most likely grind Nim’s gears about Cora, it would have to be her penchant for developing tunnel vision. A great deal of the time, Cora wants what she wants when she wants it, damn the consequences! Her focus is swift, immediate self-gratification. As conniving and manipulative as she is, she’s really only interested in playing/winning a short-term game that she believes will have lasting, long-run power. Become a queen. Nice, but what do you do with the crown? How do you keep it? These are all afterthoughts to her that she only considers as the hurdles arise and immediately threaten her as an individual, which leads to poor alliances, poorer decisions and messy mistakes.

  a c c e p t i n g  ✓ ✓ ✓  give me an au and get headcanons

@hcartless

un !!   narcissa planned for the eventuality.  make no mistake, the moment that narcissa found out that she was pregnant with draco, she pulled out every stop, every ounce of charm, every bit of manipulation, and lbh just the plain old fear of family ruin she had at her disposal to convince lucius to put all of their assets in her name ‘just in case’. while she would have reluctantly given it all back to him post-war, in this instance she gets to keep everything without any red tape or government meddling. 

deux !!   there’s some major house and vault cleaning. thanks to lucius, narcissa was also very thoroughly investigated in the aftermath of the war. ( although no one really took her - a trophy wife and new mother - very seriously, lbh ) when it became obvious that lucius would not be coming home, she made a point of ‘disposing’ of all the odds and ends he tried to sneak into their house despite her warnings about bringing ‘his work’ home with him. she’s the only one who knows where she put it all, and she intends for it to stay that way. i mean, she’s not going to throw it away — some of it may prove worth something one day.

trois !!   only muggles divorce. there are equal parts pity and disdain to be had from observers of the lonely mrs. malfoy, who continues to wear her wedding ring and lives in a large, empty house too big for just her and her little boy. and for a while she does miss lucius - she misses the familiarity, the extra weight on the mattress of their bed. but distance does not make this heart grow fonder. eventually, she gets a taste for the freedom, the independence of being master of her own house and raising draco how she likes. unbeholden to anyone, that wedding ring becomes more of a pretense to keep her newly found freedom than a token of love.

quatre !!   anything for her baby boy. rather than trying to make up for a stern father and heavy family expectations by spoiling draco with material things and plying him with sweets as she does in the books, narcissa is instead gifted with the rare opportunity to give her son any kind of life that they want. post-war has lost her more friends than she’s gained which, combined with her inherent not giving af about the opinions of others, makes for a mother who tells her son that he can be anything he wants to be, can do anything he wants to do, and she surrounds him with warmth and love. of course, he’s still a spoiled little shit and you best believe she’s told him that he’s better than everyone whatever their blood status…but some things just don’t need to change. 

Send me “Smash or Pass” + a name and my muse will answer with 100% honesty.

Why did it have to be Riku asking this? His hand tentatively wavered between the smash and the pass buttons until it finally pressed the smash.