γ Orionis (magikoopa) wrote in reoccurrence, @ 2020-07-21 06:56:00 |
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Entry tags: | lestrange bellatrix, malfoy draco, malfoy narcissa |
WHO. Draco, Narcissa, and Bellatrix
WHERE. Malfoy Manor
WHEN. 21 July - extremely early morning
WHAT. Family reunion
WARNINGS. mentions of slight physical violence and mentions of blood
Like some irony sculpted by a set director, the night was gray and dismal as Bellatrix had made her way along the edges of her sister’s property, soaked through to the bone. The heavy cloak dragging behind her (she refused to take it off until she knew she was in relative safety) only added to her exhaustion, like she’d slept for far too long and wasn’t the least bit rested. Things didn’t add up, her immediate recall had no chronology aside from the night before the battle, and this only made her more determined to continue that march towards the one person she knew she could trust in this situation. If not out of loyalty at this point, then whatever love-shaped sentiment tinged with disdain they fed each other these days as everyone grew increasingly tense and morose. She’d tried one, two entrances that had been known to offer unbidden passage, though they were locked tight and saw her creeping along towards the entrance to the house, all the while glancing over her shoulders as if expecting a cadre of aurors to pop from the bushes and hex her down. Taking a huffing breath at the top of those few stairs, Bella didn’t even bother with the large knocker rather than taking a last step forward to slam her balled fist hard against the ancient wood and wandwork three times. With no lights on, and no other buildings for at least a mile in any direction, the ancient house of Malfoy stood like a black monolith, its roofs, windows and gables an orchestra of noise as the rain pounded, ran and trickled along them. The peafowl, no longer nearly so carefully bred and cared for as they had been, huddled together in their little out of the way coop against the south wall. Inside, where only four or five of its three dozen rooms were actually used, only a couple of candles burned. Draco was awake, as usual, too hot in his room which despite the storm had soaked up the heat of the day and was reluctant to let it go. He lay on top of his bed in pyjama bottoms and a white t-shirt that probably should have been washed a week ago. Though it had been a couple of days since his mother’s public outburst, he was still angry in a dull, numb kind of way. It was hard to get really angry in the way he had always seemed to be when he was younger, the kind of anger with purpose. That might have been better than the constant sick feeling in his stomach, the reminder that the one person he had left who he thought he could trust could so carelessly bare his weakness to the world. Not that he cared what people thought. At all. He was just starting to drift into something maybe resembling sleep, or a light doze at the very least, when it happened again. Just like when Pettigrew had crawled zombielike out of the cellar, he felt a shiver up his spine and all the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He sat up, breathing hard, and tried to tell himself it was just his imagination, that he was still shaken from the whole incident with the apothecary and Longbottom… and then there was a small pop as one of the House Elves appeared just inside the door, hopping anxiously from foot to foot and wringing its hands. “Malfoy Malfoy,” it breathed, its eyes by some miracle getting even wider. “Someone is knocking… the main door…” On the door? Sweat started dripping down Draco’s back. No one could just knock on the door. There were wards on all of the gates these days, he made triple sure of it on a regular basis. You couldn’t just walk up to the front door and knock as if you were selling… whatever it was people sold. The only people who could walk past those wards were people who knew how. And most of those people were either in prison… or dead. “Go see who it is,” he snapped at the elf, rolling out of bed. His heart was already pounding so hard it felt like he might break a rib. “Go!” he yelled, when the thing hesitated, no doubt afraid to go out and meet whoever it was who dared approach the manor like this in the middle of the night. Could it be? What if it was… Him? Draco shuddered. Surely He wouldn’t knock. The House Elf squeaked and vanished. Draco grabbed his wand and went out onto the landing in bare feet. Outside the door the poor Elf rematerialised, shaking. “Excuse Dibby sir,” it squeaked in a voice barely audible over the storm, trembling at the sight of the hooded figure. “Please, who… is…” Bella wasn’t in the mood for games, already annoyed and frustrated for not being able to piece together whatever was happening. Further from having had to dismantle a number of wards, ones whose signature she wasn’t familiar with - only adding to the oddity that was this night - to even gain admittance onto the property properly. She was frozen to the bone by the point the Elf appeared to timidly address her; there was no way to help the slight smirk that came about at the use of ‘sir’. It wasn’t to stay, however, deep lines of disapproval taking over her shadowed features as she spoke tensely, barely protected from the pouring rain by the entrance’s overhang. “Where is my sister, Elf?” A peal of thunder, then without even a beat missed came the lightning streaking across the sky to clearly illuminate her face for a brief moment. For a moment Dibby was struck dumb with terror, but he rallied just enough to squeak out; “M-m-mistress Malfoy is s-sleeping, M-madam Lestrange… Dibby will f-fetch Master Draco!” Draco was just reaching the foot of the main staircase when the elf reappeared beside him, rain dripping off the ends of its long ears. “M-m-m-m-” “Out with it,” Draco growled, resorting to a mask of aristocratic arrogance to keep from showing his own fear on his face. “M...madam Lestrange,” the elf whispered, shaking from its head to its ugly little toes. Draco’s heart plummeted into his stomach. His grip tightened on his wand. He briefly considered hiding, but that was both foolish and cowardly, and would probably result in something much worse than the alternative. Not that there was any real way to predict things when it came to his aunt. He swallowed hard. “Open it,” he said, gritting his teeth. The elf squeaked and vanished, and the next minute the doors flew open in a gust of wind and rain, the shadowy figure between them illuminated by a distant flash of lightning. A perfectly arched, even in death, brow was raised at the mention of Master Draco. That Lucius hadn’t been mentioned prior to her nephew was off as well, even if there was no love lost between Bellatrix and her decidedly not-preferred brother-in-law. But there wasn’t time to question as the creature did as it said, the doors flying open shortly thereafter and the death eater wasting no time in hurrying past the threshold, hands raised to shift off that hood when she stopped suddenly. Though more in shadows than not, the other person in that foyer was not the little boy she’d last seen. It was certainly her nephew with both his father and her sister evident in his matured features, but this-- This was a step too far for her mind to just blindly accept. She may not have within her grasp every mental facility she once did, but hadn’t yet lost it to that degree. “Draco,” the word coming out somewhere between a statement and a question, the only thing evident was that the raven-haired one was obviously thrown off; dark eyes flitting around as if that would offer more clues as to what this was or what had changed without notice. “Aunt Bellatrix.” Draco swallowed hard, trying not to look or sound anything like as scared as he felt. His aunt had never actually hurt him, but then that wasn’t really what he was frightened of. Her laughing face already featured heavily in his nightmares, and she would not be gotten rid of nearly so easily as Pettigrew. He had been too hot only minutes ago, and now he felt like ice was running through his veins. He shivered, bare feet on the cold marble. He was not going to crumble, not now. He still had his wand, but he was not stupid enough to point it at her; he kept it carefully lowered by his side. “You’re back,” he said, woodenly. …... Meanwhile Narcissa woke suddenly to a House Elf - Dipy? Lippy? Sippy? - she really had no idea which one it was - trying to get her attention. A feeling of dread settled over her. There were very few reasons for her to be woken in the middle of the night. The most probable one was that someone had reoccurred in their Manor again and it needed to be brought to her attention. It just left the question of who it was this time. She was just glad that He hadn’t died in their Manor. She couldn’t imagine what would happen if he suddenly returned. She shuddered and pushed those thoughts aside; it wouldn’t do to dwell on them when it was obvious that something had already happened. “What?” she snapped at the elf in front of her. “M-madam Lestrange is here, Mistress!” the elf squeaked before disappearing to who knew where. Narcissa sat up with a sudden curse. What was her sister doing here? When had she come back? Shouldn’t someone have found her at Hogwarts? She would have to have a word with the professor…. Oh. But if people knew Bella was here she’d be taken to Azkaban... but she was her sister, could she do that to her? But… Did that mean lying and keeping her here? That wasn’t what she wanted either. She was scared of Bella even if Bella wouldn’t hurt her. Right. Maybe the Elf had been mistaken. Maybe it wasn’t Bellatrix… That could be possible? Laying in bed wasn’t going to solve the problem though. Raising from her bed, she picked up her wand from next to her and waved it at her hair, making it curl up into a french braid before slipping into her robe and making her way downstairs. She stilled at the bottom of the stairs as she immediately noticed two things. The first that it was Bellatrix and the second perhaps more pressing matter was that Draco was there. She didn’t think her sister would hurt Draco either, but she didn’t want to risk it. Moving so that she was standing between the two of them, she kept her wand in her hand. Just in case. “Bella?” she asked softly, praying, silently, that she was wrong. Even though she knew that she wasn’t. She looked exactly like she had the last time Narcissa had seen her seven years ago, and that scared her. Taking a deep breath she tried to calm her nerves and looked her sister in the eye. For Bellatrix there wasn’t really the chance to react to each minute piece of this puzzle, things rolling into and over each other somewhere around the time her nephew stating she was back and her sister (suddenly looking far more like their mother than she ever had before) appearing only to position herself in front of him. Almost as if on instinct, on the fact alone of someone daring to assume her next move, Bella’s dark eyes narrowed at her blood, but there was still a confused edge to her voice when she spoke. “Cissa,” she continued the trend Draco had started, insisting she sounded far more sure of her words than they rang out in her own head. The echoing reverberation it caused was liable enough to sour her mood, but her need to have the upper hand - or at least all of the information - won out in the end. “What is the meaning of this?” Having finally pushed back the hood of her cloak to reveal dark locks plastered to her face and neck, she made a sweeping arc between them as if that were explanation enough for the words she couldn’t put together right. “Why are you--” Cutting herself off she motioned to the wall to her left, having belatedly realised it was decorated differently than it had been only days before. “Is this some-- I--” A state very few had ever seen her in, the feared Bellatrix Lestrange was speechless as she tried to gesticulate something just beyond her grasp. Of course this had to happen in the middle of the night, Narcissa thought. Would Bellatrix let them sleep before they answered her questions? No, that wasn’t going to be possible. It wasn’t like Narcissa had gone without sleep before, the nightmares made sure of it. She had cut back on her sleeping potions and refused to take Dreamless Sleep, but that didn’t mean that her nights were easy. She didn’t think her son knew, which was how she wanted it. “How about we go into the living room and I’ll have some of the help prepare us some tea and something stronger and biscuits and I’ll explain the situation to you,” she finally said. “It’s going to take some time.” If Bella believed it at all. Turning to Draco she added. “You can either join us or return to bed. It’s up to you, Draco,” she said wanting him to have the choice not to be around her sister more than he wanted to. “Elf!” she called. “Tea, brandy and some biscuits in the living room for us” she instructed, before she raised an eyebrow at her sister and beckoned her to follow her to the living room. Distract her from Draco. That was easy enough. Draco knew what his mother was trying to do. It was embarrassingly transparent. Unfortunately, even if he’d been willing to leave Narcissa alone with her sister in this situation, there was very little point in going to hide in his room. He certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep. And if there were any plans to be made, he certainly wasn’t going to left out of them, even if every second spent in his aunt’s presence made him feel like there was a giant crack about to open right through the middle of his head. He drew his shoulders back stubbornly and stalked with as much dignity as he could gather into the family sitting room, lighting the lamps with his wand as he went. Bad things bred in the dark. Bellatrix knew her sister could be dramatic in her own ways, though it was quite clear what the older thought of this suggestion by a brow nearly disappearing in her hairline. At the same time she wasn’t going to say no to a hard drink at the moment, knowing it wouldn’t help that creeping ache taking over the back of her neck and base of her skull, but could certainly make standing here biting her tongue (not just demanding an explanation now) a bit more bearable. Her gaze having clung to Narcissa drew over to Draco again, a smaller furrow of her brows coming about at the glimpse of something much larger than his mark on that inner forearm, but he was petulantly following after his mother before either this was addressed. Huffing through her nostrils, she undid the clasp of her wet cloak and didn’t really hand it to the Elf that had come to take it as much as drop it in a heap on top of the thing before stalking after her family members. Her heavy clack of a gait was slowed as she stepped into the living room, into the light that highlighted precisely how much each of them had changed. Had… aged? Even being told things would be explained, of course Bella’s need for instant gratification still tried to grab out at something. She wasn’t sure what had happened, but knew she felt unnerved in every fibre of her being as she stood there, refusing to take a step forward momentarily, studying the blondes like they might disappear at any moment. Narcissa honestly wasn’t surprised that Draco came after them. He would want to know what was happening but it didn’t mean she liked it; at the same time he was a grown man and was able to make his own decisions. He was already 25, she had already been married by his age. It was hard to think of him married… He was her baby. Sitting on one of the couches, she indicated Bellatrix and Draco to sit. “Tea, brandy, or tea with brandy?” she offered them as the requested items popped up in front of her. At her look Draco only shook his head stiffly and sat down - on, she couldn’t help noticing, the far side. He looked very pale and wan, even in the warm yellow lamplight. “Brandy,” Bella said, after a few more long moments of watching them. Her gaze stayed where it was even as she crossed the room to sit on the loveseat set parallel to them, wordlessly casting a drying spell on her clothes and hair that ended up far closer to it’s true curl than the product of the straightening charms she usually put it through. Even though the seat was plush, Bellatrix sat like it was some concrete church pew, stiff, straight, and as if there was some horrible trespass she had committed. Perhaps it had something to do with the fact she surely owed both quite the penance, it was quite clear long ago that absolution wasn’t in the cards. Narcissa watched her sister discretely as she poured her brandy before pouring herself a cup of tea and a good dosage of brandy into it. It was going to be a long complicated discussion and she was going to need the fortitude of it to tackle the topic. Silently she sat her cup down, took a deep breath and looked her sister in the eyes. “What I’m going to tell you is going to sound ridiculous and impossible but I promise you that it is the truth. Can you keep that in mind?” she asked Bella, with a raised eyebrow. Bellatrix accepted the drink, appreciating the fact that whatever was going on her sister continued to have a heavy hand when coming to pours. Eyes sweeping between the two, a sizable gulp taken as civilities be damned, Bella barely reacted to that warmth at the back of her throat though on some level realised it was such an unnatural thing. That there were probably more reasons than rain as to why that chill wouldn’t seem to leave her. Drawing back to her sister, her lip quirked into something close to a smirk (even if on her it came off as a sneer), “What about our lives aren’t ridiculous and impossible, Cissa?” The words flung dismissively in jest as opposed to answering the question asked of her. Draco’s arms rested heavily on his knees as he watched his aunt make herself at home, just as cold and aberrant in death as she had been in life. Of course everyone who crawled out of the grave these days were apparently unchanged by their missing years - whether one, seven or a thousand - but from Bellatrix it seemed somehow especially disconcerting - and somehow insulting. “You’re dead,” someone said coldly, and he was as surprised as anyone else to realise it was him, some reckless strand of his unconscious wanting to see the mad smile come off her face. Bellatrix bristled at those words, hearing them and also having absolutely no idea what they could possibly mean as the idea she wasn’t sitting here, flesh and blood, was preposterous. Though the slight furrow of her brow gave away she wasn’t entirely amused, there was an incredulous burst of laughter as she narrowed her eyes at her nephew. “Is that so?” Because of course she did, the last bit was said through that quartz tumbler being raised to take another drink. “Could have fooled me.” Closing her eyes, Narcissa sighed, took a deep breath then looked at Bellatrix. “I was going to break it to you gentler,” she responded, glancing at Draco with a raised eye. “You’ve been dead for seven years, Bella. It’s 2005. We don’t know what happened but for months, people have been coming back to life. You died at Hogwarts during the battle. Do you remember?” she asked, hesitantly. She really didn’t want to have that conversation, but based on the other reoccurred it was highly likely that Bellatrix didn’t know how she had died. There was also the fact she would have to tell her sister that Potter won… That wasn’t going to be pleasant. Maybe she could forget to tell her? No, that would just end badly. She’d try and get Draco out of the room before she broke that to her though, she didn’t want her son to be hexed when her sister lost her temper. That usual look of haughty arrogance slowly slid off Bellatrix’s face, replaced with a noted irritation before settling into bewilderment. There wasn’t some sudden realisation that what her sister and nephew said were true as much as a number of hazy images floating in the periphery of her mind slid into place like that puzzle piece you’d turned every which way and it still wouldn’t fit regardless of being the last one left. Instead of answering her sister’s question, a number of her own came to mind - along with a healthy dose of skepticism only done away with by the severity of Narcissa’s features - and, per usual, Bella was able to dig down through them to find the ones paramount from the start rather than playing a passive aggressive game of twenty questions. This still led to a handful of them being left over to ask, none more important than what was summed up in that single word: “Who?” She didn’t extrapolate, but it should really come as no surprise to either of the others that avenging her own downfall would be one of her first concerns. “Molly Weasley,” Narcissa replied, looking Bella in the eyes. “Mother!” Draco warned, glaring at her with wide, disbelieving eyes. Narcissa ignored him; she knew what would happen now, and while she was trying to live a better life, she had no love lost for the Weasley family. And if Narcissa didn’t tell her someone else would. It was better coming from her. That Bellatrix didn’t actually drop the glass was entirely due to the quick reflexes she’d honed over decades - instead tightening her clawed grip on it - but the absolute stupefaction washing over her sharp planes gave away how that could have ended otherwise. “Excuse me?” She’d heard her sister fair and well, and her nephew’s answering hiss only belied the truth was being told. Bellatrix wasn’t quite sure how to take this information as it didn’t even sound like it was in the realm of possibility that the disheveled weasel matron had been the one to do her in; it was surreal to even consider it. Looking somewhat like a querulous child the more and more this sunk in, it was quite obvious her mind was already spinning into figuring out how to rectify this, but first raised that glass again and finished it in a single gulp. Narcissa breathed again. Well, there were no spells flung at them. That was something, but she did have to bite back her reaction at the look of shock that passed over her sister’s face. Narcissa wasn’t surprised that Bellatrix didn’t believe her; Molly Weasley was someone who looked entirely harmless and if it wasn’t for the numerous reports she would have found it hard to believe herself. “I didn’t see it happen, but enough people did.” She honestly thought that her sister’s ego had gotten the better of her as she fought someone ‘harmless’ but she was never going to voice that out loud. “I wanted you to hear it from me first before someone else had the chance to tell you.” Draco bit his lip hard. They could have said they hadn’t seen anything and no one knew for sure, but no, his mother chose this moment to be honest. Not that he had any love whatsoever for the Weasleys, but the last thing they needed was his aunt going on a redheaded massacre when they were supposed to be lying low. Still, perhaps Narcissa was right; someone else would have mentioned the killer eventually, and they would have faced her wrath for lying. Maybe his mother was better at thinking on her feet than he gave her credit for. Not to say that she wasn’t going to insist on another at some point, that glass was slammed down on the table between them before Bellatrix suddenly rose and started towards the exit of the room. It certainly would have looked like she was indeed about to walk out and see to the death of a ginger hag, yet this was actually a display of habit she’d picked up during and after Azkaban; pacing back & forth both as a distraction as well as an attempt to focus her mind. As if on some sort of track, she stopped only short of crossing that doorway once more before turning on her heels and continuing in the other direction without so much as a glance at her family. Fingers tapping against her chapped lips in a quick rhythm, it was obvious the eldest (well, formerly) Black sister wasn’t looking at the wall in front of her as she was stuck deep in her own mind deliberating. Finally coming to stop in front of that paned window, fingers digging into the sill at each side as she furrowed her brow even deeper than before and stared out the blurry window to the torrents still beating down upon them. All at once came her next question, carefully weighing each one in working up to the one she truly feared the answer. “And of the Lestranges?” she barked, “My husband?” Rodolphus being brought up more of a testament to her possessiveness than any real love that existed betwixt them. “We don’t know,” Draco said, before Narcissa could speak. He felt in the pit of his stomach the cold clear fact that he was master of this house now, a responsibility that felt less like a weight and more like a knife constantly twisting in his guts. “Neither of them showed up after; they either died somewhere in the forest or they managed to get out. Left the country, I suspect.” He sat up a little straighter, willing something harder than jelly to take hold of his spine as he had an idea. “You should probably do the same,” he suggested. “If they catch you here, you’ll be sharing a cell in Azkaban with my father for the rest of your life. There’s no more Dark Lord to break you out again.” Her fingers tight against that sill, bracing Bella so every bit of tension in her body was running between them and her shoulders, it would have been quite easy to overlook the tiniest of sounds of wood splintering and paint cracking under her. Even though she’d surely be drawing cruror if her long nails were digging into flesh, as it stood it was her anger and despair and the raw pain that came about at her nephew’s words projected around her rather than brute strength alone. She didn’t miss that pointed attempt at giving her guidance in what her next steps should be, but Bellatrix was going to go her own infuriating route in this conversation rather than the easier one laid before them. How you couldn’t also hear her teeth grinding, as she stood there for a number of long minutes after he’d stopped speaking, must have been a miracle. After some time she’d pulled back enough that the cool window no longer brushed against her forehead and looked levelly at Draco over her shoulder, “The wards were yours.” It was more of an accusation than a question. He had no idea how he was able to meet her gaze steadily, but perhaps it was his survival instinct, honed over the years the Dark Lord watched him constantly, when he had to present a facade of calm both on the outside and on the surface of his mind where he could feel magical fingers groping for any sign of weakness. “They are,” he said, shortly. No longer a child. “Draco is right,” Narcissa interrupted them. “It is safer if you leave the country. I am… glad to see you, but if you stay you will be caught and either killed or sent straight back to Azkaban. With the other side,” that felt somewhat wrong to say, “running things there’s no way you can live safely. We’ve already been raided after the return of one of the marked Death Eaters in our house. I don’t want to risk them finding you. I only just got you back.” She would galdy do without, but that was beside the point. Were they in another situation that didn’t involve finding out her entire life was gone from tip to toe Bellatrix may have acknowledged she was indeed impressed with her nephew; though she didn’t have much trouble at all tearing the wards apart, it was more advanced magic than she’d known him capable of. Much like the look he was giving her now, not wholly confident but far more assured of his own presence than Draco had ever seemed before. It was about time, though the mention of Lucius’ whereabouts probably had something to do with any semblance of a spine surfacing. And then there was her sister speaking again, trying to tell her what to do. Looking out the window again, you would think they had suddenly jumped back in time somewhat over seven years ago by the way she snapped, “I will be staying here until I can plan my next move, Narcissa!” There was no need for such an outburst, yet there was a look of rage on her face as she tried to keep some sort of control over this situation. Over herself. Wrapping her arms tightly around her, Bella started pacing back towards the other side of the room but stopped once across that table from them again. “And what was to become of our Lord?” A subtle jab in there that they had all played a part in this together, whether they wanted to admit or remember it. Draco watched his aunt pace out of the corner of his eye, enough so that he could predict any sudden moves, not closely enough that she might decide he was staring at her. “He’s dead,” he said, and then added, with more conviction than he actually felt, “Gone. He was killed in the same battle.” A look of absolute hatred washed over her face, though not at either of the ones in front of her. It was that single word she spat out as if it’d burnt her mouth and gone foul all in one go. “Potter?” Draco shrugged. Oddly enough he didn’t have the same reservations about Potter’s safety as he did about Molly Weasley. “Who else?” Her face reddened with anger and her arms would become claws at her side as Bella let out a harsh noise of anger and frustration and the need to destroy something; if the neighborhood hadn’t been alerted to her presence yet, that scream was a good start. Visibly shaking with rage as she glared down at her sister and nephew, there was an attempt to calm herself the slightest bit with a few huffing breaths through her nose and mouth. Rather that had been the plan before her dark eyes landed on Draco’s arm again, a look of disgust apparent though not in any way an indicator of what she did next. Moving with a quickness one might not expect from the recently undead, Bella all but threw herself over the table to grab his left wrist and pull it towards her tautly to expose Draco’s inner arm to her. The boy hissed and tried to pull his arm back, but her grip was a vice. “What is this?” Much closer than she had been mere seconds ago, the full extent of her murderous gaze focused on him then. Draco bit his lip and tried to ignore the bruising pain of his aunt’s fingers digging into his wrist. It was his own fault; if he’d only taken ten seconds to put on a robe… “I… covered it,” he said, stating the obvious, his controlled facade starting to crumble with her face only inches away from his as she glared down at his tattooed rose, its shaded petals thick and black to conceal the ugly, sneering skull that lay beneath, and the thorny vines that circled his arm up to the elbow. The thorns were oddly comforting to him, usually, a reminder of pain overcome. Not so now. “It’s… I…” he stammered, as he tugged again against her icy fingers, uselessly. Narcissa didn’t remember moving but she was suddenly standing next to Bellatrix, her wand out and poking into her sister's neck. “Let him go,” she hissed at her. “You do not get to judge him or his actions. Not only is he an adult and can make his own decisions, the war is long over, the world has changed and we need to adapt. People hate the Death Eaters and we need to survive and if covering it up makes it easier for him then let it be,” she explained digging the wand into her sister's neck. It was out of the corner of her eyes that Bellatrix viewed her sister, not daring to turn her head to look at her properly lest it be taken as a provocation; that’s how she would see it anyway were the roles reversed. Bella couldn’t help the wicked smile that slid across her face as that wand dug into the flesh of her neck, however; that Cissa hadn’t gone entirely soft was a lovely discovery in it’s own right. Not really the time to address it - she didn’t so much let go of Draco’s wrist as opposed to raking her nails over it, making him gasp as she drew blood, as her own retracted towards her. With an annoyed sigh her hands were raised as if in defeat. “Would you mind?” It was only fair to return the favour. “Mother…” Ignoring the pain, Draco got up quickly to stand in front of Narcissa, pushing her wand arm back down to her side. “Don’t, please, it’s fine… I’m fine,” he told her in a low voice, begging her with his eyes as well as his voice, his heart pounding. If the two sisters started an all-out duel, he knew Narcissa would lose. She might be impossible sometimes, but the thought of losing her was enough to send him into a panic. She was all he had left. And she might be one of the only people in the world who could point their wand directly at Bellatrix Lestrange and not be killed on the spot, but his aunt had been out of her mind even before she died, so who knew how unpredictable she might be now. Narcissa turned her attention to Draco and she looked him over. He looked okay but she had to frown at the scratches on his wrist. They didn’t look bad but she didn’t like them. She would make sure he got them looked at as soon as they were done, she would have liked Bellatrix to calm down but she probably would end up storming off in anger instead knowing how she reacted to things. She could see the panic in his eyes and she felt bad for triggering it, she didn’t want him to go through that. Lowering her wand, she nodded at Draco. “All right, but do you want me to call an Elf to get a potion for your wrists?” she asked him. Draco shook his head, the fear in his eyes receding only slightly. Turning to Bella she added. “Are you going to sit calmly and let us continue to talk about the situation or are you going to storm off in anger because if it’s the latter I will have Dippy organise your room for you so you can go straight to it,” she challenged her sister. Between grabbing Draco and Narcissa’s interjection Bella had ended up on one knee there in front of that table, taking the freedom of movement to push herself up stiffly. Eyes glaring daggers at her sister before the other acknowledged her, she played her part perfectly in turn dramatically rolling her eyes at the blonde before directing her sharp survey onto the heir apparent. “You think that little garden does away with your vow to the Dark Lord, do you, Draco?” Regardless of it being a question, it was clear her mind had already been made up on the manner. Draco remembered kneeling in a circle of masked, hooded figures, less than a week after his sixteenth birthday, murmuring the words that bound him to the Dark Lord forever. It had felt like a privilege at the time, an acknowledgement of his specialness, an honour. But it had all been a joke; a punishment for his father’s incompetence. The Dark Lord never cared whether Draco lived or died in the pursuit of his impossible task. He had been little more than a toy, a sick kind of experiment. And yet he had accepted the mark with eagerness, like a puppy that comes back to lick its master after every kick. He swallowed his terror, ground his bare feet to the floor and lifted his chin; a poor imitation of his father, perhaps, but it gave him just little strength enough to speak. “No,” he managed, faintly. “Him dying did away with it.” He held his bruised and bleeding arm protectively against his chest. “Look at your own, if you don’t believe me.” Again, were this a different time or a different place or perhaps under different circumstances? Bellatrix would have some sort of acknowledgement of the young man being evidently more mature than she could have imagined him, of how his father’s influence on the surface did nothing to do away with the Black blood that ran in his veins. Took him long enough to prove it, but beggars can’t be choosers, she supposed. Eyes boring into Draco a moment more past his words, as if she couldn’t quite grasp what he was saying, she did eventually turn her attention to her own left arm before hesitantly raising the fitted black sleeve of her brocade-accented robes. She wasn’t consciously holding her breath, and certainly hadn’t planned on letting out that incredulous noise upon the bottom half of what had once been crisp lines coming into view, seeing to the rest of her sleeve quickly raising to the elbow before turning an evil eye if there ever was on to the youngest of their group as if this was his fault simply for having pointed this out. Her lips curling into a sneer, her hands clenching into fists, and all at once she let out another aggravated shout as if screaming at the heavens was going to do her any good. A shuddering breath, then another had her turn and finally to stomp out of the room towards the dark that took over the majority of the manse. It wasn’t until she was halfway down the hall that she roared again, this time actually verbalising something. “Don’t follow me, Cissa, I know where the fucking guest rooms are!” Her final word punctuated by the large mirror hung right behind the two Malfoys suddenly slamming to the ground in a display no one could prove was intentional or not. Draco jumped as the mirror smashed onto the floor behind them, sending shards of glass everywhere. He winced and stumbled away as some of them stung his feet, dragging Narcissa out of the danger zone as he went. “Seven years bad luck,” he muttered, with a breathless sort of laugh, before collapsing in a heap in the nearest chair. Narcissa hadn’t planned on following her sister, there were some things that were better not done. She had been about to respond when the mirror fell to the floor making Draco and her jump in surprise. “For her, she was the one who broke it. It has to be for her,” she said not sure if she was trying to reassure Draco or herself. “Well I’m glad that went as well as it did,” she said with what could have been only brought on by just how incredulous the whole situation was. That or she was in shock. It was either cry or laugh and she just laughed, burying her head in her hands. “The question is what do we do now,” she asked looking at her son. She hadn’t wanted to be in this position, she’d dreaded the day it would happen and here they were and she didn’t know what to do. Draco shuddered. He felt brittle; ready to snap. He needed to sit alone in the dark where he could have a meltdown without having to worry about his mother fussing over him. “I… don’t know,” he admitted, wincing as he picked glass out of his foot. What were they supposed to do? They were no match for his aunt; if she wanted to stay, they could hardly refuse her. For a brief moment the option of what he had done with Pettigrew floated across his mind - but it was out of the question. If she got any hint of either of them betraying her, he was almost sure even a blood connection wouldn’t be enough to protect them from her wrath. They could run away. She would find them. “We may not have a choice,” he murmured, finally. Narcissa sighed. “I don’t think we do either,” she admitted. It scared her. What she needed was a drink. Reaching for the brandy she poured herself a good dose before gulping it down. “For now I think all we can do is to go to bed and deal with it once we’ve had some sleep. Did you want a potion?” she asked cautiously. She probably would take a Dreamless sleep for once, she really didn’t want to deal with the nightmares after this encounter. Draco shook his head as he got up. “I’m all right,” he lied. He hesitated, then turned to quickly put his arms around her. “Be careful,” he said. “Please.” “Always. You be careful too Dragon,” she replied pulling him into a hug. “Do try and sleep,” she said before turning and silently making her way back to her room. |