#knowshisown

╳                         Pale knuckles tap against the wooden doorframe, gently rapping the mahogany in an attempt to rouse Rodolphus from his silent contemplation in the dark depths of his study. Narcissa is intruding, she knows full and well. She’s letting in the light from outside, casting a shadow about her lithe form and svelte cut of the gown she wore to the dinner party only hours before. Her wide eyes and parted lips denote a certain innocence, both punctuated and accentuated by the soft and unassuming words that escape her next: 

❝ Rodolphus, do you mind if I come in? ❞ 

Not that she waits for any real sort of answer, the girl simply slips inside and closes the door behind her without so much as a creak from the ancient wood. Narcissa has made an art form out of silence and the ability to slink about without drawing unwanted attention to herself. Her attention, however, is fully engaged with looking at her brother-in-law, reading his face through the shadows and the flickering glow of candlelight. 

❝ You left the party early, ❞ she offers up finally, nudging his legs impishly with her knee in order to push them far enough to the side to offer herself a seat on the ottoman in front of him. ❝ I noticed - I missed you. ❞ 

She glances up at him with her too blue eyes before reaching behind her head to pull at the comb holding all her curls in place. Pale gold tumbles in the aftermath, cascading down her back and shoulders like an avalanche. Narcissa is making a point; that she is comfortable in his presence - safe and secure, she trusts him.

❝ I came to see if you were alright, ❞ she supplies after a time, her right hand moving to rest near the hem of his trouser leg. The other tucks a stray tendril behind her ear as she regards him for a moment, head canting delicately to the side. And then her brows furrow, her lips thinning into a frown as if she - of all people - is uncertain about what she means to say next. The words are even laced with some small level of concern ---- caring and compassion, even.  ❝ You’re rather....taken for granted in your own house, aren’t you? ❞ 

This is an understatement. Narcissa has been watching the dynamic between her sister and Rodolphus with a keen eye and the dynamic between sister, Rodolphus, and one pretentious Dark Lord with a predator’s gaze. She knows the weakening of a triumvirate when she sees one. ( She should, after all, she and her sisters used to be the strongest. ) Her index finger hooks on the fabric of his leg, tugging lightly.

     It had been one of the most humiliating days of Narcissa’s entire life, leaving her completely frustrated and exhausted. She had lost all hopes for the life Lucius ha promised her once he had been caught by The Ministry after his last mission, exposed as a traitor to the community and was to be held on trial for his crimes. She knew it wouldn’t be like last time, that he couldn’t lie his way out of it and claim he had been under someone else’s control the entire time. No, there were too many witnesses and too many holes in his story. And she knew that she and her son would pay dearly for it.

     They had been forced to attend the trial, to show face for the sake of their reputation. But what good was their reputation now that Lucius had been caught? A reputation they had spent years building, one their families had spent generations upholding, had all been thrown down the drain. And just as she had expected, they had announced his sentence as Guilty almost immediately, sentencing him to Life in Azkaban. She could only imagine the laughter that would ring through the halls of Malfoy Manor when her jail bird of a sister found out. The thought made her sick, as did all the cameras flashing in the face of her and her son as they left the building.

     As soon as they had actually gotten back home, Draco hadn’t wasted any time in going up to his room to lock himself away from the world. She knew he was hurting, not only was he ashamed as well but this was his father they were locking away. And they hadn’t even let Lucius say goodbye before they took him away. What would she do now? She wasn’t incapable of protecting them, she was a powerful witch after all. But what good was she against The Dark Lord? No doubt he would take his anger at Lucius’s failure out on her and her son. What would become of them then?

     She waited until she heard Draco’s door shut before she walked into Lucius’s office and simply stood there, her chest rising and falling in anger and frustration, humiliated tears building in her eyes before she ripped her wand from her sleeve and began using it to destroy anything she could get her hands on. The lamp across the room exploded, the curtains on the window shredded, the books on the shelves all flew out across the room-and all the while she was screaming in frustration. He had doomed them, and now she and her son would pay for it with their lives. Who would protect them now? 

“I have nothing of significance to report.”

That’s, of course, a lie, but what could she have possibly said? That she followed Rabastan Lestrange, known mass murderer, around London and found out that he had murdered more innocent Muggles? That he was covered in blood, noticed her, and threatened her with a knife in his hand? That he kissed her, all needy and raw, like he hadn’t kissed someone for a very long time? That she kissed him back?

The last thing she needs right now is the judgment in Albus Dumbledore’s eyes. Or his pity. 

He’s the last person on this earth who has the right to judge her for her actions, when he’s the reason she has a magical brand on her skin that no amount of scrubbing can take away. The knowledge that she’s forever marked this way is something Dorcas still can’t quite stomach. She climbed the ranks, pushed her way into that deadly little circle that surrounds Lord fucking Voldemort, and this is her reward.

Someone enters the shop, the bell tinkling as the door opens, and her head jerks up at the sound. Dorcas quickly pulls her sleeve down, over the arm with the Dark Mark, and berates herself for being a bloody schlemiel. There’s a forced smile on her lips and she opens her mouth to repeat a greeting she’s practiced a thousand times over at the potential customer when she realises who it is.

Clean and without a knife this time.

previously: some insight into the malfoy marriage. 

              Lucius takes more than sixteen years to realize out that Draco isn’t his. He probably should've figured it out sooner, but some people only see what they want to see and Lucius didn’t want to believe himself a c.uck.old. So he let himself be convinced that Draco took after Narcissa’s side of the family, though he held those genetics against Draco too. 

Narcissa tells her son because she would rather Draco hear it from him than someone else. She tells Rabastan because it’s been so long and if Bella hasn’t let it slip yet, she wants him to hear it from her. She tells Rodolphus---or did he already know?---because he’s family and she needs him on their side. 

She fails to tell Lucius because it isn’t a priority to her---Draco and Rabastan are her priority. Besides, she doesn’t trust him not to cock it all up for the rest of them. Narcissa figures she’ll let him know after everything is all sorted out, a parting shot on her way out the door. 

Lucius has enough of his own shit to worry about in ‘95-’96 anyhow. Has to prove his loyalty to Voldemort, complete his mission to retrieve the prophecy, etc. He can’t even vent his stress by arguing with Narcissa. The Lestranges are back, are irrevocably on Narcissa’s side, and Lucius is uncomfortably outnumbered and outgunned. He finishes out the year in prison, none the wiser. 

But after his release, it doesn’t take him long to figure out. Between Bella’s taunts and Draco’s uncanny resemblance to Rabastan, he’d have to be dead not to see the truth. The suspicions eat at him in the midst of the rest of what’s going on---the Dark Lord’s disapproval, his loss of power and respect in his own home---until he manages to get Narcissa alone and confront her about it. 

Which isn’t easy. Though she isn’t a DE herself, Narcissa is rarely alone those days unless she’s in her room. So that’s where he corners her. He accuses her of i/nfidelity, of forcing him to raise another man’s child. She admits to it immediately; the cat’s out of the bag and she has nothing to lose. 

The following argument is as vicious as it is quiet. They used to hide their arguments first from Abraxas himself and later on Draco. Secrecy is even more important now that their house has been taken over. Lucius calls her every nasty thing he can think of---frigid, bitch, adulteress---and a bunch of slurs I won’t repeat. Narcissa picks at every crack and fissure in his ego, takes him apart the way only she can, because no one knows him the way that she does. 

I want to say that things got a little violent---or it had the potential to become that way. Because things got nasty to the point where it had to spill over: a rough grab, a push, a threat. There’s no way it wasn’t headed that way, and the only way for that to stop would be for there to be an interruption of some sort. 

Someone walked in when Lucius had Narcissa’s arm in a bruising grip, a half-step into her space---maybe his other hand raised---while she spit out that he was trash and that he’d die unloved, unmourned, and with nothing to show for his shitty life. 

 a c c e p t i n g  ➟  cruel beauty sentence starters

rodolphus .  // @knowshisown

                 ● ● ●                     ❝ I suppose it’s just as well that I have immortal longings in me, ❞ she muses with a soft, lilting laugh. Her fingers still their work upon the strings of her harp, the last twanging chord giving way to a contented silence between man and woman, doctor and nearly freed agent. Their time together has offered up a bliss that Nimue had never thought to know in her tired existence, and in that time she has become a greedy, selfish creature in want of all that Rodolphus has been willing to give her. The rest she’s taken all the same.  

No one tells you that love - a ritualistic devotion - is going to be like this. 

❝ I am not alive without you. ❞ The blonde insists, raising herself from her chair to step around her prized instrument and into his circle of space. Given the opportunity, she could devour him. Eyeballs to entrails, she’d swallow him whole. After all, it was only fair; there wasn’t a day gone by where she didn’t feel his teeth gnashing around inside of her.

❝ If I take one step too far away from you I cease to exist in any meaningful way. ❞ Fingers splay over his chest, another instrument to indulge her artistic inclinations. Nimue has enjoyed learning what sweet music Rodolphus can make. ❝ I walk, I talk, I play out the part of the mundane. I go through the motions of living and breathing, just as I did before I saw my true reflection in the glass of your cell. It’s only here, in this room, your hand wrapped around my heart, that I feel anything at all. ❞ 

To steal a popular phrase: It would be a cold day in hell before she was willing to give that up. Having eaten the forbidden fruit, all the was left for Nimue ( and her Rodolphus in tow ) was to leave Eden and explore the great wide world. 

✉ ➟ @knowshisown // rodolphus said:

∟  “🛀” : D

 a c c e p t i n g  ✓ ✓ ✓  Send “🛀” for my muse’s reaction to yours  joining them in the bath

╳                        She sits on the ledge of the great roman style bath, one pale leg dangling over the side and submerged to the knee in the warm water she has drawn for herself. Flower petals float atop the surface, the decadent smell of one of her own potions wafting into the air with the heat as it rises. This is a true moment of luxury and isolated pleasure for the young woman, her blonde curls tied and pinned atop her head in such a way that tendrils fall here and there around her face and stick to the damp nape of her neck. She dips a rough sponge into the milky depths, squeezing it between her fingertips and allowing the excess to run down her forearms before running it over the alabaster thigh of the bent leg she keeps above the surface.

If Narcissa knows she is being watched, she says nothing of it.

Of course, she can hear the rustling of fabric. She is so attuned to the sound of his belt at this point that she is almost certain she can pick it out even in the most crowded of rooms. ( Which is, in fact, a theory she now intends to find a way to test at some later date. ) Her gaze doesn’t drift however, blue eyes diligently roaming with the sponge over the expanse of her skin. She trails a path up her thigh and over the peak of her knee, the rosy bud of her breast brushing against previously charted territory as the sponge smooths along her calf to her ankle. Only when she has made the trek back up, focusing the pressure of her wrist and the weight of the sponge on the inside of her leg and thigh does she acknowledge the shift in the air and the first ripple of water to lap against her now that he’s entered the bath.

Anticipation is already well and truly taking over all her other instincts. Her breathing slows, the rise and fall of her chest becoming more pronounced with each dragging inhale and exhale of air as she watches him cut through the water towards her. Rodolphus is every bit an addiction; a fever that she cannot and certainly has no intention to break. She cannot help the way her fingers instinctively curl into his dark hair any more than he can help the way the side of his face finds home against her hip and thigh or the way his arm drapes around her lithe waist. Her nails drag back and forth, neither soft nor hard enough, along the flesh at the nape of his neck. The sponge is put aside, abandoned on the marble tiles.

❝ Long day, darling? ❞ She asks it so simply, as if she alone has the right to play this role. Her free hand moves of its own accord, smoothing over the corded muscles of his shoulder and down his back. A soft sigh escapes her, simultaneously content with the weight and feel of him yet still wanting that much more.