Bohemian Rhapsody

moment ten: oh I do like to be beside the seaside (May 1973)

Narcissa Morgan lay on the pier, fanning herself and sipping iced tea from a straw. Her family's estate looked over the Irish Sea, and so, it was hardly out of the question for her to be reclining upon the private jetty. Tortoiseshell sunglasses (real tortoise shell - a Morgan would never buy anything fake) covered her eyes from the sun, although the effect was largely cosmetic. The British sunshine was pale, even in summer, and as an added precaution Narcissa had cast a Diffusio charm around her in a semi-permeable bubble, coupling it with a focussing spell so that the harmful UV rays were excluded, and the sun's heat concentrated just that little bit more to keep her warm. She had spent the entire week like this, curling up on the pier with an iced tea and a good book, dozing away the weeks until she took up her place as an undergrad at Oxford's Faculty of Magick.

The year she'd taken off from graduation had supposed to do her good, but all it had left her with was a vague sense of unease. Narcissa had travelled around the world, from Egypt to Brazil to Nambia to Japan and everywhere civilised in between. She had taken in the sights, she had turned her nose up at the patently ludicrous local customs, and she had visited Merlin knew how many sacred shines and places of worship, fascinated by their historical importance and yet disbelieving of their reality.

No God had chosen to speak to her, anyway.

She had browsed, she had flitted, she had bargained, traded, connived, swindled and bought. Entire trunks of robes and gowns and dresses, books and manuscripts, scrolls and texts, objects d'art, objects d'magique...all these she had bought. And within minutes of buying each, she had tossed it aside, and bought something new. Her mother had commented that Narcissa's spending had been ravenous - although certainly nothing beyond what the Morgan family's well-endowed coffers could handle.

But her mother had been right. Nothing had satisfied her. The world had lain at her feet for a year, and she had seen all its glory and delights, and found them turn to sand and ashes in her mouth, leaving only a vague uneasiness, a longing for what she did not have and could not name. And so she had bought everything that caught her eye, pursued by a constant terrible "if only", disturbed by the fact that the 'only' was always beyond her grasp, an itch she could not scratch.

Narcissa had returned home, and ordered the servants and house-elves to cart her new purchases into her rooms, and promptly never looked at them again. She preferred to find refuge here, by the water, away from her mother and her father, where the open vista was enough to reassure her that the wideness of the world meant that she always had a choice. And so she sipped her iced tea, and read her books. Perhaps all she needed was a return to study, to the determined pursuit of evidence, argument, refutation, the comforting challenge and boundary of scholarship. She would go to Oxford, and everything would be well, losing herself between pages, in constructing footnotes, as the past took her out of herself again. There were so many options for her, she had graduated in the top five of her class, first overall in History of Magic and Divination. Her mother's family had been blessed with many Seers - proper ones, not like that incense choked hag who taught Divination to the lower years back at Hogwarts, and from what Narcissa had heard was poised to take over as the senior classes too, now that Professor Kemp had left. Narcissa could use that familiar gift, she dreamt true on occasion, and could scry better than most - perhaps a position as a Forecaster then, or somesuch. University beckoned, and would save her from this "if only" that threatened to drive her mad.

Setting down her drink, she opened up her book to the correct page, and wondered absently what Lucius could be doing right now. She had heard through the grapevine that his father had died a few months ago, leaving him as sole heir, and he had visited the various Malfoy properties and interests around the world upon his assumption to the estate. She had half expected to come across him on the beaches of Crete perhaps, fucking a local rent boy senseless, courting a younger lover. He probably would have been most polite to her, had they met, and smiled his little smile, with its infinite capacity to know she wanted and yet could not have.

Snapping the book shut, Narcissa grabbed the towel than hung over the deck chair to wrap around herself, it wouldn't do to walk up to the house in a bathing suit. She dissipated the charm with a word, and stormed off.

The pier had suddenly lost its appeal.