Tiny Blessings in a Cursed Place

Narcissa Malfoy had not been prepared for the stench. She had not been prepared for a fraction of what met her when she arrived at Azkaban. She realized very quickly that she had failed to properly prepare herself for the reality of this cursed place.

"I would like to see my husband."

That was the entirety of the message she had sent to whoever was keeping the prison in the absence of the Dementors. The reply had come almost instantly. It had shocked her when the frightening and amorphous silver Patronus from somewhere inside Azkaban had burst into her bedchamber and uttered its single word.

"Come."

She'd dressed and gone immediately. She was stunned that permission had been granted at all and she feared more than anything that the permission might be withdrawn in the intervening moments between her having received the message and her arrival in the North Sea.

She waded through the fetid puddles of stagnate water that dotted the pock-marked stone floors. Never mind her shoes. Never mind the hem of her expensive and glorious velvet robes. Never mind the screams of the madmen coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. She raised one lace-gloved hand to her nose and mouth, trying in vain to filter the rancid odor through the fabric and her cologne. With her other hand, she lifted the front of her skirts so as not to trip on the wet and sagging fabric. She traversed the uneven stones gingerly, careful to avoid tripping over or stepping on any of the sundry rodents that darted to and fro across her path as she went.

The keeper had only pointed. Narcissa hoped she was going the right way. The hallway forked. She had no way of knowing which way she was supposed to turn. "Lucius," she whispered, willing herself to somehow sense his presence. She closed her eyes and concentrated. She and Lucius had used to do this as a game; hiding from each other on opposite sides of the mansion and trying to sense the other's location. She had been far better at this that he ever was and now she tried desperately to access the part of her mind that had been capable of such detection.

She took the fork to her right.

There were no doors lining this hallway. No screams ahead of her. No whimpers, no cries, no indication of life on this hall. There was a flicker beneath the door at the end of the corridor. Narcissa was grateful for this tiny bit of light as she opened her eyes and studied the stones beneath her shoes again. An errant curl fell from beneath her bonnet and she shook her head to clear it from her view. As she approached the end of the hall, she heard a loud 'crack'. The noise startled Narcissa and she jumped backward, gasping to catch her breath and nearly toppling over as one of her high heeled shoes found itself upon a loose stone in the floor. When she caught her balance, the oldest and filthiest House Elf she had every clapped eyes on was standing between her and the giant steel door.

"Wand," he demanded. Narcissa squared her shoulders. She nodded. This she had been prepared for. She reached into her beaded drawstring bag and withdrew the slender shaft of wood. The House Elf sneered at her and snatched the wand from her hand.

"I thought House Elves weren't supposed to..." Narcissa remembered the law. House Elves were not to have wands in their possession. Had there not been an Elf dismissed for such an indiscretion at the World Cup of Quidditch? Perhaps law was a relative term in such a place. Either way she hadn't the time to finish her question as the House Elf was immediately gone from her sight with no more than a 'crack' left behind him.

He wouldn't have demanded her wand if this weren't the right place, she figured. She dropped her skirts and smoothed the front of her clothes as best as she could with her hands. It was a handsome traveling suit. Lucius had bought the forest green velvet costume for her in Duchess Weft's during their last trip to CordiAlley. Narcissa pulled her stray curl from the side of her face and tucked it as neatly as she could behind her ear as she pushed the door open.

The door was heavier than she had expected. It opened with a loud scraping noise as it strained against the jagged stones on the floor. Once it was possible, Narcissa took a single, tentative step into the room.

There was a table in the middle of the cavernous, square chamber. On the table sat a lamp- its flame turned so low that it might as well not be there at all. And in a chair on one side of that table, sat her husband.

His arms stretched across the width of the table and his head hung in the hollow between his upper arms. His hands were bound, by something metallic, as were his legs to the legs of the table. She could tell that this was no ordinary prison cell. It looked as though the room was normally used for questioning subjects; as evidenced by the various metal implements scattered about the room and tucked into corners, for which Narcissa could scarcely guess the purpose. They must have brought him here for her benefit. She wondered how long he had been shackled in that chair.

"Lucius?" she whispered, stepping slowly toward him. He did not respond. He didn't even stir. She tiptoed toward him. She bit her lip as tears began clouding her vision. How could this be? How could the proud, strong, indomitable man whom she had known and loved for the better part of twenty years be reduced to this sorry state? She slipped quietly into the chair across from where he sat.

She felt loathe to wake him, but she did not know how much time she would be allowed, and she had not come all this way not to tell him the news. Everyone knew, of course, that Draco had been killed fighting with Aurors in Bombay. The news of his death had been front page in every paper in the Wizarding World. It had been a great shock to Narcissa when that Irish girl had appeared on her doorstep just two nights before with news that he was alive. She hadn't believed it, of course. But the young lady had been very insistent; so insistent in fact that Narcissa had taken her seriously enough to go where she had been asked to go. And there he had been. The girl had spoken the truth, her son was alive; a bit worse for the wear; but weren't they all?

She had to let Lucius know that his son lived. She had to offer him some tiny glimmer of hope whilst he was locked in this dreadful dungeon. She stood from the seat she'd just taken and rounded the table to stand beside him. She stroked his hair with one hand and rested the other on his shoulder. She leaned in very close to him and whispered directly into his ear, "Lucius," he stirred a bit, but did not wake. "Wake up, love," she implored him much in the same way she had roused him hundreds of mornings in the past.

A guttural growl escaped his throat and Narcissa couldn't help herself but smile. Lucius was still Lucius. He had always been difficult to rouse. She laced her fingers through his long and tousled locks and placed a tiny kiss on his temple. "I've brought gingersnaps," she whispered to him. His head turned toward her voice and his eyes fluttered open slightly.

He sat up with a jerk. Narcissa jolted backward to avoid being knocked by his head as he came to. His face was wan, thinner than she remembered, and the look in his eyes told her that he thought he was hallucinating. "Cissa?" he whispered in clear disbelief. He leaned forward a bit, obviously afraid to believe his own eyes. She nodded as she took his face in her hands. "But I'm dreaming," he declared. She leaned her face in to his until her forehead was touching his.

She knew by what he'd called her that he needed to be convinced that she was really there. There was a code to what they called each other; there always had been. It was 'Cissy' when he wanted something, 'Narcissa' or 'Mrs. Malfoy' when he was asserting his authority, and he called her 'pet' or 'love' or 'dearest' when he was feeling particularly romantic. But it was only 'Cissa' when he was expressing something deep and personal, or if there was something he truly needed from her. It was his most intimate way of addressing her, and no one else had ever called her that.

"No, my darling," she assured him, "you surely are not dreaming." He gasped. She could feel warm tears against her hands. She knelt before him and pulled him into an embrace, her arms wrapping around his neck. His shackled hands came to her face and she turned her head to kiss one and then the other. "I've missed you so," she told him, sniffling as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks.

Suddenly he pulled back from her. He sat up very straight in his chair and brought his hands to his mouth. "You shouldn't be here," he said, a tremor in his voice. "They'll find out... they'll...." Narcissa took her husband's hands in her own.

"They know I'm here," she told him. She sniffled again, looking Lucius in the eye. His eyes were still his eyes, and it made her smile a little. His clothes may be tattered and torn and he may be covered in filth from stem to stern, he may be beaten and half starved and stripped of his wand and his good name, but he was still in there. He was still her husband and she'd come to tell him something. Narcissa kept hold of his hands as she made her way back around the table to sit in the chair facing him. "I've come with news of our son," she said to him, her blue eyes looking straight into his grey ones. Lucius' face contorted as he stifled a sob.

"They killed our boy, Cissa," he cried, his head dropping onto the table. "They killed our son," he repeated as his whole body shook with sobs that he could no longer manage to control. Cissa made a soft shushing sound and moved one of her hands to rest on top of his head. So he had heard. Of course he'd been told. Even without the Dementors Azkaban was an unspeakably cruel place, and those who remained after the Dementors had left would have delighted in inflicting torment on one of their captives. And she could think of no greater torment than that visited upon a parent when they learn of the death of their only child.

"Lucius, darling," she addressed him. She knew she had to hold herself together well enough to give him the news. She still wasn't sure how she was going to do it. The reason Draco had remained in hiding was that there was no way to know who all wanted him dead, and how many of those people knew that he hadn't been killed in Bombay. She knew that some people had wanted her son dead badly enough to have announced to all of the world that they had killed him already. And she did not know if any of those people or their allies might be listening in. "My love," she said to him. He looked back up at her, the dirt on his face now streaked and smudged by his tears. "Please don't cry my dearest," she implored him.

She had never seen him like this. Not ever. He'd wept in her presence only a few times before; on the morning of their wedding, when she awoke from a coma in St. Mungo's after Draco's premature birth and her subsequent health crisis, and the day they'd sent their son off to school; but he had never lost his composure like this that she could remember. She could recall moments when he had come unglued with anger, but she had never seen him so affected by sadness. She remembered her own reaction to the news of her son's death and she tried to imagine what it might be like for her if she still thought that news to be true. She wondered if it would be more or less unsettling to her had he not cried so much. She looked into his eyes and tried to convey to him what she knew to be true.

"I really have brought gingersnaps," she said to him. Gingersnaps were his favorite and the Malfoy House Elves were required to keep a store in the house at all times. Narcissa had not relaxed this imperative in light of her husband's imprisonment. "I had Kibbitt and Lollie make them just like always," she told him. Cissa fumbled quickly with her purse and produced a tiny parcel of wax paper tied with purple ribbon from inside of it. "Best eat them now," she advised, "I don't know if they'll let you keep them..."

It was killing her to think about it. If this was the room they were willing to show to a visitor... well, there was no telling how deplorable the conditions might be elsewhere in the prison. She handed the tiny package to her husband and folded her hands on the table while he pulled it open. When he took the first bite from the first cookie, as she looked down at her hands, she had an idea. Narcissa took in a deep and shaky breath and pulled her lace gloves from her hands. She took hold of Lucius' right hand in both of hers as his left kept hold of the cookies.

"Look, Lucius," she said to him, her eyes trying to convey to him the urgency of her words. "Look, darling, I'm wearing the ring you gave me on our anniversary." She cast her eyes quickly and intently on the exquisite and obviously expensive ring on her right index finger. Lucius had given it to her on their fifteenth wedding anniversary and it had fit her ring finger at the time. But isolation and sadness had caused her already slender frame to become even more slight and the ring now fit comfortably on her index finger. Lucius looked into her eyes, nodding.

"I don't know," he began, his voice breathy and tentative, "what you'll get from me this year," he finished with a smile. That was her Lucius; that was further proof that he was all there. He had always done whatever he could to soothe her, to make her smile and be happy and comfortable no matter the situation.

"Just look at my ring," she implored him. His eyes showed suddenly that he recognized that she was telling him something; something more than just a desire for him to admire her finery. He watched as she turned his right hand so that his palm was facing upward, and as she placed her index finger, the ring shining in the dim light reflected from the decrepit table lamp, into the center of his palm.

"You should have a cookie..." Her breath was short, her eyes wide. She had never been involved in any sort of intrigue or high-stakes deception before. Lucius had seen to it that she was far removed from any such doings and that nothing related to that world had been brought into their house, or at least in to her field of view. Nothing had affected her until recently; she had been insulated from reality and was therefore completely unprepared for trying to pass a message to a prisoner in Azkaban. "You should have a gingersnap while you admire my ring," she finished. Lucius, whose gaze had not left her finger, nodded and brought a cookie to his lips.

Narcissa kept her eyes forward, part of her enjoying watching her husband nibbling on his very favorite cookies, and the other part feigning the same as her finger deftly moved across his palm. 'D. R. A. C. O.' she spelled into his palm with her finger. 'A. L. I. V. E.' she finished; again one letter at a time onto his palm.

Lucius gasped. He looked from her finger into her eyes. A tear fell to his cheek as his head rose. Narcissa nodded. "Yes," she assured him.

"You... how...?" he couldn't finish. He took both of her hands in his. He shook his head. "How?" he repeated.

"With my own two eyes," she told him. Lucius looked as though a weight had just been lifted off of his shoulders. He sat up straighter than he had all day. He stood from his seat and leaned across the table. Lucius took her face into both of his hands and kissed her. She kissed him back, willingly, wantonly. She would have made love to him then and there if she had thought it possible. Damn the filth and the smell. Damn the rats and the cockroaches. Damn the mold and the lice and the madness down the hall. He did not belong there; no one of their station did. And for that moment he wasn't there. For that one moment he was not a prisoner; for that one moment they were home, together, where they belonged.

'Crack'.

It was that damned House Elf. Lucius sank back into his chair, but his eyes never left his wife. There was something new about him. No; something old. She had given him back his son. She had given him back a part of himself.

"Your time is over!" The filthy elf decried. Narcissa turned to him and nodded. Then she looked back at her husband.

"I love you," she told him, "and there are more of those waiting at home for you. Come back to me soon." Lucius looked at the sole remaining cookie on the table and then back at his wife just in time to see the nasty little House Elf grab hold of her hand, getting it's grimy little fingerprints on the ring that had just given him the second best news of his life; news that had been made sweeter by circumstance.

"I love you..." Narcissa hadn't heard him. There was another 'crack' and she found herself back outside the gate of Azkaban prison. The vile little creature handed Narcissa her wand and then disappeared with another loud 'crack'. She had to grab her bonnet to keep it from blowing away in the fierce winds of the North Sea. Narcissa shivered and Disapparated.

She found herself back on her own balcony. It had been generations since anyone had known how to take down the wards preventing Apparition into and out of Malfoy manor, but Lucius had seen to it that a certain few could come and go as they pleased from a balcony of the library on the North West corner of the house. No one had ever been so thankful for that place on the balcony as she had been this afternoon, when that young woman had brought her son home- landing on that very place. And how clever she'd been to bring him side along; so that the Aurors and Ministerial Guardsmen who were undoubtedly watching would not know of anyone but this unassuming Irish school teacher doing magic. Narcissa smiled to herself as she stepped through the tall French doors and into the library, where a roaring fire was waiting for her.

She shed her bonnet, her cloak and her jacket, and then she looked down at her hands. She had left her gloves with her husband. She could only hope that he had found a way to keep them. Leaning against one of the blood-colored leather high-back chairs, Narcissa looked at the large portrait of her husband and son that hung over the fireplace. They were so much alike: Lucius and Draco. And one of them was finally home safe, asleep in his own proper bed. And the other would be home soon. She had to believe that to stay sane. And now she had given him one more reason to get himself out of there- as though he had needed one.

She had comforted both of them that day, that she was certain of. Narcissa smiled as she picked up a plate of cookies from the small table near the chair she leaned on. A love of cookies was something that her boy had inherited from his father.

Perhaps Draco would like a gingersnap as well.