A Perfect Matcb
By
Eamane-Shu
Narcissa twiddled her
ring as she sat on the stairs; the ring was one that was given to all daughters
of the house of Black when they came of age, to remind them where they came
from and the duties that came with their family. The words ‘Toujours Pur’ were
inscribed in the silver next to her skin, while the outside was encrusted with
tiny pieces of jet. The voices from the study below had now changed from
shouting to an angry hushed tone and Narcissa could no longer hear what was
being said. She looked over at Rodolphus, who smiled guiltily and then to
Lucius, who was sitting on the other side of her, he seemed to find the whole
affair rather amusing.
Her mother’s wailing
came drifting up the stairs “And I thought you had both been murdered in your
beds!”
She laughed at Bella’s
snide reply “Well if we had been murdered in our beds we would have still been
in them.” This only stood to make mother worse and Narcissa rolled her eyes at
her sister’s stupidity, would Bella never learn to keep her mouth shut or to
think before she acted?
The voices were hushed
again now. They could go on for hours; she rested her head against the banister
and sighed.
“I never thought it
would cause this much trouble” Rodolphus told her, resting his head in his
hands.
“Well that’s the
problem – neither of you thought! And I don’t want to be caught up in the
middle – I’m telling mother that you blackmailed me into this.” Lucius was
chuckling at Narcissa’s scolding.
She had been awoken
two nights previous with a hand clapped over her mouth by a grinning Bella.
“Come on” she had whispered “we’re eloping”. It had taken Narcissa a while to
realise what was going on, but she quickly dressed and aided by Bella she
climbed out of her bedroom window. Since Andromeda had left their parents had installed
anti-apparition charms in their bedrooms to stop them disapparating like their
sister, so they had to be out of the house to apparate. When she looked down
she saw Rodolphus watching them impatiently, and at his side, waiting with a
slightly bored look on his face was a tall blond aristocratic figure. Narcissa
followed her sister as they climbed down the trellis which aided roses to grow
up to Narcissa’s window. The four had then apparated to
Violet Parkinson had
been cast to the wayside by Lucius almost the moment that Narcissa had
suggested that he do so, and Lucius hadn’t even thought of her since, save when
she sent him an envelope which had led to him coming out in rather
uncomfortable boils. Charles Jugson however had been slightly more difficult to
rid themselves of, due to his and Narcissa’s rather more substantial
relationship. Narcissa felt in this situation that honesty was often really
been the best policy and that blatant lying would not really work. However she
only told him snippets of the truth.
“Father will never
permit it” she told him as he bent down on one knee with an engagement ring in
his hand, “and even if that wasn’t the case Charles, I could never accept you”
she told him sadly “It would never work between us.” He had, with some
reluctance accepted, but though the break-up was amicable afterwards Narcissa
had cried for an hour.
“Narcissa” her
father’s voice drifted towards them “could you come here please?”
Narcissa walked down
the stairs, head held high as she glared at Lucius and her brother-in-law. She
opened the door to her father’s study where the rest of the family were
gathered. Bellatrix was standing in front of their father’s desk with an
unreadable expression on her face, which slightly concerned Narcissa; her
sister had never taken criticism well. Her father was standing looking out of
the window and he turned to face Narcissa as she came into the room.
“Well don’t look at
me” she exclaimed “It certainly wasn’t my idea.”
“I can believe that”
her father agreed “You’re the only one of your sisters that ever had any sense.
Which makes it worse on your count as you knew better.
You should have told us what was going on”
“Well at least you had
already granted the groom permission” Bellatrix added her two-penneth, however
the obscure reference to Andromeda did not help matters.
“That is not the
point!” her father roared “Again you doused the family name in scandal. You are
as bad as Andromeda – now get out of my sight. I’ll talk to you when I’ve had
chance to calm down.” With that Bellatrix stormed out of the room, and loud
cracks were heard as she and Rodolphus apparated out of the house, presumably
to his town-house.
He turned to the only
daughter he had left sadly, though he would never admit it, it had broken his
heart that he had not been present at the weddings of his two oldest daughters.
Narcissa walked over to him and kissed him tenderly on the temple, which
brought a smile to his wrinkled face “Don’t worry Daddy”, she told him gently
“I have no intention of eloping – with anyone.”
Narcissa had never
felt as lonely in her life as she did over the next few weeks. Bellatrix and
Rodolphus went off to
She currently hadn’t
heard from Bellatrix in three weeks.
And there was no
excuse for it as Bella had been back from her honeymoon for the best part of a
week. When a letter arrived a week later in the familiar hand
of her sister, though from an unrecognised owl, Narcissa threw it straight in
the fire without opening it. She
missed Bella dreadfully but her anger was cold and terrible, she was hurt by
Bella for having being forgotten, and resentful of Rodolphus who had stolen
away her sister and taken her place, she had always been Bella’s top priority,
her best friend and confidant, and being passed over hurt.
Narcissa had been
energetically shopping for the last three hours and had unfortunately spent her
shopping allowance for the month. Her father, who was more than capable of
indulging the every whim of his daughters, had decreed that Narcissa needed to
learn some sense of decorum, though Narcissa knew that it was really to prevent
her from being capable of running off like her older sisters. He had therefore
given her a generous, though limited monthly budget. Which she had spent the
last of an hour ago, with two weeks until her next instalment was due. She sighed as she gazed at a set of pale blue dress robes
in the windows of Gladrags, they would be ideal for Violet Parkinson’s coming
out party next week.
She was so lost in her
thoughts that she didn’t notice two figures approaching her “Are you going to
stand out here all day or are you going to go in the shop and buy them?” Lucius
Malfoy asked her, his voice like silk and honey.
“I haven’t decided
yet” Narcissa lied, turning round. “Oh, Hello Rodolphus, I didn’t see you
there.”
“Hello Narcissa”, her
brother-in-law smiled as he bent down to peck her on the cheek before Lucius
put his arm round her waist possessively.
“Hello Rodolphus” she
smiled back in return.
“We’ve not seen much
of you lately” Rodolphus remarked to her conversationally “are you well? You
look pale.”
“I’m fine” she
reassured him, she hadn’t left Ravensden Hall in a month, she had only ventured
out because her mother had insisted that she go and get some fresh air, and she
did feel better for it.
“Why don’t you come
back to the house with us Cissy? Come and see Bella’s new place, I know she’s
dying to see you and show you around.”
She really couldn’t
think of a reason not to go. And she did want to go and see her sister, so she
accepted his offer.
It was common practice
for the richer of the pure-blooded families to have two houses, one in the
country and one in
When she arrived at
the house, arm in arm with Rodolphus, with Lucius walking alongside her, Bellatrix
was standing in the hallway of the house waiting for her husband, her eyes were
red and puffy, she had obviously been crying quite hard for quite some time. As
soon as she noticed her sister she flung herself into Narcissa’s arms and began
to sob. Narcissa watched her perplexed, with a worrying feeling developing in
the pit of her stomach; she had never seen Bella this upset in a long time.
Rodolphus was the one
to take charge “What’s wrong Bella?” he asked, gently extracting her from
Narcissa’s arms and sitting her down on the sofa in the parlour.
The next few moments
passed by in a blur for Narcissa, she was never really able to remember them
properly.
“There was an attack…
made by the Aurors… maybe they wanted to catch some death eaters, I don’t know,
anyway they had a tip off… oh my god… Cissy” she whispered, her voice high and
girlish “they attacked Dempsey’s.”
Narcissa’s face paled.
Dempsey’s was a social
club for the wizarding elite, to even be considered for membership you had to
be rich, have an impeccable bloodline, and know the right people. Everybody in
the room had family members who went there on an almost daily basis.
“Several people were
killed” she paused, and for a moment Narcissa thought she was going to be sick
“Narcissa, mother was in there… she was hit by a stray curse.” Tears were
slipping down Bellatrix’s face as she broke the news.
Narcissa jumped up as
if she had been shot, and ran to the front door and disapparated, Lucius
watched her go, then went to follow her but he was stopped by Bellatrix “I saw
your mother” she told him wearily “after it happened, she’s fine.”
“I’ll go find
Narcissa” Rodolphus insisted as Bellatrix got up, “Lucius, could you be so good as to wait with Bella?”
“Of course” Lucius
didn’t look like he wanted to stay with the elder sister, he had never seen her
looking so vulnerable, and it worried him slightly.
Rodolphus strode to
the front door and disappeared.
When he reappeared he
was standing in front of a ruined building in the middle of Diagon Alley. It
was a building that was as familiar to him as his own home; Dempsey’s the site
of his eighteenth birthday party, numerous family weddings. He had even
proposed to Bella there.
A crowd was gathered
around the building as the remaining survivors were pulled from the rubble, he
looked across and soon spotted Narcissa in the middle, her face streaked with
tears, he quickly made his way over to her, she was standing with Violet
Parkinson, who looked to be in a similarly distressed state to Narcissa.
“Who was in there?” he
asked his sister-in-law, who had seemed to have no developed an aura of calm,
despite the commotion around her.
“Mostly people we
don’t know” Narcissa recounted with relief that very few names on the list of
the dead were ones that she recognised, “but apart from…” she couldn’t bring
herself to say it yet “Charles Jugson and Lucretia Parkinson.”
Violet’s mother had
been in there too, and Violet’s father had died years ago in a tragic quidditch
accident.
“I’ve arranged for
mother to be brought back to Ravensden later” she told him with a false
calmness “but we need to go and tell Daddy.” She took Violet by the hand, the other girl was peering helplessly into the rubble,
as if it would make it not true. “Come away now Violet” she urged, and the
other girl followed her as they went back to the Black family home.
It was a well known
fact, among the pureblooded elite families that there had been no death eaters
in Dempsey’s that day, however, with the deaths of so many innocent bystanders
those who had previously only been sympathetic to Lord Voldemort’s cause took
the mark, and the number of death eaters tripled within the month. Among them
were Bellatrix and Regalus Black, while Narcissa Malfoy who refused to take the
mark aligned herself with her family’s new cause.