Child of the Mark

Child of the Mark

Toujours Pur

Old castles get cold in winter. Narcissa Black knows this. She also knows that the heat radiating from the fire crackling in the grate will do nothing to warm the flagstones of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, nor the chill that had settled in her very blood.

She crosses her private chamber- only the best for a Black- to a creased piece of parchment perching on the edge of her vanity. The words upon the parchment had not changed, and she knows they never will. The flourish of her mother's signature, sinister in itself, was the only thing that stood between her and the life to which she was doomed; her fate was undeniably sealed. This she knows as well.

With a final glance, she casts the parchment into the flames. "Always pure," she almost barks, but proper young ladies are not to raise their voice. A sneer momentarily appears on her face.

She takes a seat at the vanity, stares into the mirror, and watches herself watch herself. She is beautiful- so very beautiful, but it is a cruel beauty, a callous one; meant only to be looked upon and never touched. And therein lay its flaw.

A pale hand reaches to release her hair from its binding atop her head, and it falls in equally fair waves- blonde, but white as the snow- to rest a decent way down her back. The deep emerald of her gown is almost blinding in contrast with the rest of her, but that, just like everything else, is beautiful.

A shift upon her seat, a last silent plea, the wiping of barely-sweaty palms against green silk. Narcissa stands, then. It is a quarter 'till nine, and the belle is needed to begin the ball.

Lucius Malfoy is waiting for her when she arrives in the entrance hall. His eyes- gray and bitter as all that made him Malfoy- blatantly travel from her face downward. She is used to this; a wife is property, after all. At length, they rise to meet her own. Hers are blue, and not nearly as unfeeling as her mother would like.

He takes her gloved arm in his, and leads them to the Great Hall.

"Thank Merlin they set the decorations right this year," Lucius drawls, his aristocratic nose held high in the air as he considers the Hall. "Dreadful, the last ones were. I couldn't possibly display my bride under that chandelier." Indeed, the Hall is a splendor; not as fine as her manor, perhaps, but a sight to behold even for Narcissa.

"How typical of you, Lucius, to comment on the appearance of this castle before my own," she says, all reluctant pleasantries suddenly out of reach. She hears the frost from her heart in her tone, and it delights her, for she can be just as spiteful as he. She knows this.

The deafening chatter that had previously filled the Hall ceases abruptly as the Headmaster- new, by the name of Dumbledore, she thinks- stands, and motions the couple forward.

"It is with great pleasure that I be the first to announce the arrival of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy. If you would all hold your applause and keep your patience, the Head Boy and Girl will now open the End-of-Year Ball with a dance." He smiles, eyes twinkling over his half-moon spectacles.

Beside her, Narcissa sees Lucius scowl in return, before he takes her arm again and almost drags her to the center of the room. He places his large hands on her waist and pulls her so close to him that she can smell the liquor on his breath. She turns her head, and looks anywhere but at him as they begin to move.

In the very back of the Hall, leaning against the doors, is her sister Bellatrix, pulling the legs one-by-one off a rather large spider and grinning with such a ruthless enjoyment that Narcissa cannot bear to watch. Her head turns again, in the opposite direction this time. It is then that she spots Sirius.

He sits at one of the many small tables spanning the Hall. James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, and Lupin the werewolf are with him, along with Lily Evans, laughing at something he is saying. She misses Sirius, more than anyone could ever know.

As if feeling her eyes on him, he looks up and smiles. It is for the briefest of moments, but it is there, she knows. When looking back, she will probably wonder whether or not her imagination had been twisting her around its finger, and there would be no one to ask.

Narcissa can remember, if she puts her mind to it, a time when she was like Sirius, before she was old enough to understand everything that was expected of her, and before she was sorted into the house of snakes and ambition. She thinks, maybe, that she is not a Slytherin because she was meant to be one, but that she is a Slytherin because she is one. She has so much coldness bred into her blood that sometimes, she is afraid her heart will freeze.

She loves Sirius because he hates her when she sits at the dinner table and pretends to be fascinated by the stories of war and killing, and because he loves her when she puts on red velvet dresses and laughs in the library. He hates the Slytherin in her, and loves everything else, because she will always be his 'Cissa, the girl who dyed his hair purple for three weeks and giggled under the blankets with him after they were supposed to go to bed.

No one calls her 'Cissa anymore, just as they don't speak his name.

She wishes he loved all of her, even the Slytherin parts, because she wants to be able to explain that just because she's a Slytherin doesn't mean that she's evil. She's not. She's not like Bellatrix, who is dark and pitiless and likes to kill things with her bare hands, and she's not like Andromeda, either, for all that Sirius might wish she was. Andromeda's his favorite.

She could never leave her family, even for love, though she can only imagine what it might be like if the way her heart flutters when she looks at Lucius was reciprocated, or if the things she's thought about, late at night, when she's glad no one in her family is a Legilimens, actually happened.

Andromeda doesn't have ambition and coldness, she has intelligence and laughter, and she has that muggle and her daughter, who Narcissa saw once, in the foyer, when her sister came, tight lipped, to collect all her things from the attic, and got in a screaming fight with their mother. She waved at the little girl, from her hiding place behind the great oak dresser, and the little girl waved back, turning her hair blonde and her nose into Narcissa's.

She wishes things didn't have to change. She wishes that she had the courage to tell Sirius to come back, to tell him that the Potters don't need him. She needs him. She needs him to keep her from a danger she cannot be bothered to give a damn about, and to try and protect her when it is far too late. She shivers at the thought of looking down upon her arm to find a mark that will never go away.

"You're cold," Lucius says, running a finger along her sides. She can feel his gaze burn through all the careful layers she has built around herself, and she is suddenly terrified of Lucius Malfoy.

"Never you worry," he continues, "because you're a Malfoy now. Every night will be like this. You will be a princess, and princesses are never cold." It is funny to her how much he doesn't know, but it is all right, because Narcissa is tired of fighting.

She nods her head, laying it gently on his shoulder, giving in to the fate that being the middle princess in a kingdom of dark rooms and rich velvet has leant her.

Many years later, she finds the scroll behind the old desk, one that the Aurors who cleared out their house left, probably because it was too heavy to move, or maybe because it was spelled to the floor. It is covered in nearly two decades worth of dust, and when she shakes it free and unrolls it, there is only one line, in familiar handwriting.

I'm sorry, the faded black ink reads, but it is too late. Narcissa Malfoy knows this.