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The first time Narcissa Malfoy contacts her sister after she runs away is to save her life. She flicks her wand with unnecessary force, seems to hurl the Patronus away, its silver disappearing into smoke. Narcissa sits at tables and nods politely and smiles sweetly at her husband and listens, gathers secrets like a dragon’s hoard. She would make an excellent spy if she ever deigned to share. But she’s tired of fighting. She’s too good at it. Andy told her once she could win a war if she ever bothered to try.
Imagine Andy’s face cold on the ground, those soft eyes unblinking, Dark Mark curled obscenely over her still body.
They are coming for you, her silver swan says with the voice of steel she learned at the dinner table. Run.
***
Let’s rewind, like one of those Muggle tapes.
***
This is the memory that fuels Narcissa’s Patronus: her first nightmare. She was four and had just received her first punishment, the family special kind. Andy and eventually Siri had all kinds of sardonic names for them. So did Narcissa, but the punishment is not something you talk about in polite society. Anyway.
She crawled into her bed, still smarting, tears prickling like a niggling fear at the corners of her eyes. The covers scratched against her skin. Eventually she must have fallen asleep. Behind her eyes she saw herself lying cold, forgotten on a damp dungeon floor. She felt her own blood drip from her neck.
She woke up and swallowed her scream.
“Cissy?” Andy whispered, from her side of the room. There was more than enough space for them to have their own rooms, of course, but daughters of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black shared with their sisters. Daughters of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black could not be trusted alone. “Are you okay?”
“Nightmare,” she whispered.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Tell me a story.” Andy told the best stories. Their father’s stories were about honor of the family and very boring. Their mother never told stories at all. In Bella’s stories the monsters always won.
“Which one?” whispered Andy, smiling with a hint of adventure. “Beedle the Bard?” Her grin turned right-out mischievous. Andy might tell the Tales of Beedle the Bard, but never correctly.
“The Warlock’s Hairy Soul,” Narcissa murmured, as if the name itself might hurt her. But that one had been her nightmare. She wanted Andy to conquer it. Naricssa always told Andy she could rule the world, if she wanted to. “You’d be good at it,” she’d say, when she was old enough to understand what Andy’s stories did.
“Sure? That’s the scariest one of all,” Andy said, her voice gone serious, not teasing the way Bella’s would if she was the one awake.
Narcissa nodded.
“Alright,” Andromeda said. “Once upon a time, there was a maiden who lived by a terrible castle. She was clever and kind and everyone said she was the most beautiful girl in the land. And one day, the warlock who lived in the terrible castle came to her village and had her parents betroth her to him.” Narcissa nodded, the process of betrothal as familiar as breathing from her parent’s tongues.
“Then what happened?” she said, relishing the way her heart sat at the edge of her throat. Dread banished like an evil spirit. Andy told the best stories. Narcissa might know the beginning of this story already, young as she was, but Andy would make the end.
“The maiden knew there was something wrong with the warlock,” Andy continued. “When she saw his Horcrux, she was not surprised. She remembered the sword she kept down her shoe. And she plunged that sword right into the heart of the Horcrux and killed it, right then and there. Its maker followed. And then she told everyone that he had died of natural causes, and took over the castle and made the sun shine over it so that no one called it terrible anymore. She took over his lands and ruled them wisely and well.”
“I like this story better than the one Aunt Walburga tells,” Narcissa said, smiling.
“Want to know a secret?” said Andy. “So do I.”
***
This is not the last secret they share, sprawled over each other’s beds at midnight, whispering just loudly enough to be heard. Later they will slip contraband music magazines and novels to each other under the sheets. Andy will show Narcissa the spells she learned from the other Slytherin girls for that time of the month when Narcissa wakes up with bloody knickers. They will listen to the wireless and mock each others’ terrible dancing, sharpening their tongues on targets that will not hurt. Andy makes up her own lyrics to her favorite songs. Sometimes they sneak in Muggle music, play it so softly they have to press their ears close to it and be careful not to drown out the sound with their breathing. It is not the last story Andy teaches Narcissa how to twist and turn. Sometimes she wishes she had listened better.
***
It is 1979. Andy runs. That night Bella comes back unsatisfied and cruel, asks Narcissa if she’s been warning that weaselly little blood-traitor that dared to call herself our sister. Of course, Narcissa lies.
***
Narcissa knew the path to Andy’s dorm room as well as her own- they were close enough to touch, crowded together in the Slytherin girls’ wing. If Narcissa shouted loudly enough Andy would hear her even in her own dorm. Andy’s dorm was the better one to cry in.
The walk seemed too long, when Narcissa was holding in her tears. She knew the other Slytherin girls would make the kill strike as soon as they first drew blood, hold it over her head like the Dementor’s kiss for years til she was beholden to them. As soon as she got to Andy’s bed, she fell down upon it and let the tears finally come.
“What happened?” said Andromeda as Narcissa buried her head in the blanket so no one, not even Andy, could see her cry.
It took her an eon, to gather her voice enough to talk.
“Now I know something’s wrong,” Andy said. “You always have something to say. Even if it’s a lie. Especially if it’s a lie.”
“I don’t lie to you,” Narcissa said, eyes red and puffy, indignant. It had been true then.
“What happened?” Gently insistent.
“Iridia Parkinson called me a stupid whore and said I wasn’t a real Black because my mother obviously cheated. She came up with a new nickname for me. Slut-cissa. It’s not even a good insulting nickname.” Honestly, the sheer lack of creativity in Iridia’s insults had been the most galling part of the whole thing. “And she dumped my cramps potion down the sink because I used valerian in it and the one her mother makes doesn’t use valerian.”
“That bitch,” Andy snarled. She could have, in the right state of mind, sounded like Bella. Narcissa knows better. “She had no right to destroy your property like that!”
“She didn’t get my spare,” Narcissa said. Keeping spare bottles of essential potions was a necessity of growing up in the House of Black.
“Good for you, for hiding it well,” said Andy. “Now, I’m going to slip a note under Slughorn’s door, unsigned, of course, and tell him Iridia Parkinson cheated on her last Potions exam off Sylvana Rosier.”
“How did you know that?” Narcissa said. She wouldn’t ahve said something so stupid in front of anyone else, of course, but she wanted to know how Andromeda did it. Nothing seemed to get to her. Insults, even from their parents, bounced off her like water. When she walked into a room, people sat up and paid attention. The whole school was terrified of Bella but in awe of Andy. Narcissa wanted to be her.
“I pay attention. Rosier and Parkinson were acting all chummy last week, and you’d told me you had a Potions exam. And Parkinson got a Howler for failing the Potions exam before that one. And Rosier’s top of your year in Potions.” She said all of that like she was putting together a puzzle.
Narcissa grinned. “Teach me your ways, oh wise one.”
“You’ll learn,” Andy said, answering the smile. “You’re just as smart as I am, Clever Cissy.”
***
Next time Iridia Parkinson called her Slut-Cissa she got another Howler from her parents, about slipping off with that Nott boy this time, maybe-just-perhaps because Iridia Parkinson’s mother lunched with Narcissa’s, and Narcissa had dropped a few hints in her last letter home. Across the common room, Andy nodded when Narcissa looked at her and if you knew her you would see how proud she was.
***
Are you still proud of me , Narcissa did not write. After all, Andy never wrote her anything, not even to say thank you for saving her life.
***
“What do you think of Rabastan Lestrange?” their mother said at dinner one night, Bella gallivanting around someplace with that Dark Lord of hers, and quite likely the wizard in question. Andy and Narcissa held their forks like weapons and sat up straight at the edges of their chairs like armor. Mother’s voice was still clouded from her potions. It was rare enough to see her roused from the depths, rarer still for her to say something important. Narcissa looked carefully at her plate.
“I think he’s an overbred piece of shite, but I sincerely doubt you want my actual opinion,” Andy said, and Narcissa wasn’t sure whether to cheer or run away and put up Shield Charms. Lately Andy had been pushing against their parents, instead of smiling and nodding to keep the peace. It was like watching a broom crash in slow motion, though maybe Narcissa has the benefit of hindsight.
“Andromeda Black! Go to my study for punishment right now,” their father said. Narcissa had swallowed quietly and shoved her fork into the meat with unnecessary force.
“Make me,” Andy had said, tossing her hair back, looking like a queen. “Maybe practice that Imperio of yours, I heard it could use a dusting up-”
Their father had cursed her right there at the dinner table. It hadn’t been Imperius, he knew Andy could resist that. You could tell by looking at her. She was not the kind to kiss anyone’s robes.
“I’m still not marrying myself off like a cut of meat or a prize Kneazle,” Andy had said, though she was bleeding. Afterwards Narcissa washed her face and healed her, spare potion bottle coming in handy once again.
“Don’t antagonize them openly like that,” she’d said.
Andy had sighed, deep and low like the ocean. “Cissy,” she’d said. And then, “They’re wrong. Not just about marriage, but everything, Cissy. Muggle-borns. Do you ever wonder how much spilled blood we live upon? The wizarding world is cursed, Cissy, by our own cruelty. We shove people to the sidelines. We treat them like garbage. Do you ever wonder how complicit you are in it?”
After that, she did, just a little bit, and buried it like secret treasure for years and years.
“It’s a cycle of violence,” said Andromeda after she was silent for too long. “The wizarding world. The family. Everything. Our grandparents fucked up our parents so they fuck us up.”
“True,” said Narcissa, combing her fingers through her sister’s hair to untangle it, an old sisterly ritual of theirs that was always much more fun than the stuffy old family ones with Dark magic and far too many boring speeches.
“Sometimes, I wonder...” said Andromeda, thinking better of whatever she wanted to say. Later Narcissa will recognize this as foreshadowing.
“Do you want to hear something funny? Lester Gudgeon, you know him? The utter nonentity of a third-year with thick glasses and very bad body odor? He asked Sylvana to Hogsmeade for the very first weekend,” Narcissa had said, instead of anything she could have said. Because, when roused, swans are very good at fighting. But Narcissa didn’t want to fight, not right then, not when after all she had money and a warm bed and sisters who loved her.
“Deflection,” said Andromeda, an old game of theirs that neither Bella nor the boys was ever fully included in, a game of pointing out each others’ words. “But alright.” And she had sighed again and let Narcissa enchant her comb for her but the words did not come easy for either of them that night.
The next day Bellatrix arrived home, flush with a happiness that made even Narcissa uneasy. She had cloistered herself with their father in his study, who suddenly seemed not so angry with his rebellious and unconventional eldest after all, and come out and glared at Andy in the drawing room.
“Take this new dress, I got it special for you,” Bella had said, in that mocking child-voice of hers. And Narcissa, who was said to have the subtlest and sharpest tongue in the common room, did not allow herself to consider the implications. Instead she remembered how Bella had played with her as children.
“I’m not taking anything from a Death Eater,” Andy had said.
“Better a Death Eater than a filthy little blood-traitor in training like you,” Bella had sneered. “I can’t even call you my sister anymore, scumsucking filth.”
Narcissa had gone to use the bathroom and found it locked- never a good sign. Sometimes it meant that Mother had overdosed again, and sometimes that someone was crying. She forced the door and found Andy, hunched over the toilet, sobbing gut-wrenchingly, like her heart was broken, her hair all a mess, her back slouched.
Narcissa didn’t need to ask her what was wrong. But she didn’t entirely believe that Andy could look so broken.
The next night at dinner their mother had asked Andy what she thought of Lucius Malfoy. Andy had remained stubbornly, impeccably silent, spine ramrod-straight, every inch the warrior, every inch Andy.
She’d been cursed again. “They can’t curse you for not saying anything, it’s just stupid,” Narcissa had said.
“Silence speaks louder than a thousand words,” Andy had said, like she was telling a story, something to remember.
***
Then Andy ran. And she said nothing to Narcissa. And she wrote nothing to Narcissa. And so Narcissa wrote nothing to her.
Silence speaks louder than a thousand words.
***
Narcissa clung to her anger like a weapon, like a shield, like it was some kind of dignity. She did not think about Andy unless she needed to. Unless she needed to save Andy’s life. Through two wars she smiled and nodded and lied, lied, lied.
***
After the second war, Narcissa’s anger falls from her like a discarded cloak, outgrown before she realized it. Perhaps she was too late, too cruel, too stupid. She cannot time-travel. There are no words to apologize for years of blank space, for no memories of her niece.
***
Let’s skip forward, like one of those Muggle tapes.
***
“Your gran tells the best stories,” says Narcissa to Teddy Lupin.