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“ What are you waiting for?”
“What do you mean, Mother?” she replied, straightening up and away from the papers scattered across her desk. She twirled her quill around her finger, waiting for her mother to continue.
She reached over and snatched the quill away, muttering about what a bad habit it was, how a noblewoman should be able to sit still.
“Well, for you to get married, of course,”
Marriage. With Malfoy. She was only 15 that year and yet she was already expected to give her whole future away to a man she didn’t love. She didn’t hate him but to love him? To bear his future heirs? To lay herself bare and vulnerable for him to get as intimate as he wishes with her? She couldn’t. There was no reason she just—didn’t want to. She didn’t want to let a man she didn’t love have his way with her. Just because she was a woman she had to do as he said? Submit to him? Fuck no.
“Black?”
Why? Why does she have to marry Lucius Malfoy when the love of her life holds her like she never wants to let go? Sure, Lucius told her that she could have a little mistress on the side, apparently, he has a secret lover too, but why? Why can’t she shout at the top of her lungs that she is hopelessly, terribly in love with Alice Fortescue?
“Black!”
“Hmm?” Looking up, her chin against Alice’s collarbone, her blonde hair all over the place in a way that would surely piss her mother off.
“You were spacing out,” Soft, gentle fingers pushed the messy strands away from her eyes, brushing through the soft locks like they were made of gold.
“I love you,”
“I love the weather, isn’t it just wonderful today,” a joking tone to her voice, she smiled at Narcissa, soft and sweet like the flowers they were lying in.
“I wouldn’t know, my eyes haven’t left you since I saw you,” there. There it is. Alice was beautiful, there was no denying it. But when she flushed red after Narcissa compliments her, a red reserved for her and her only, she was just stunning.
“Shush you,” the taller girl pulls away, lying fully on the grass, Narcissus flowers tickling her skin. Narcissa moved to lie beside her, locking their fingers together.
“I love you too, Black,” she whispered, turning her head to leave a quick peck on her cheek.
“hmm,” she looked up at the clouds, the sun bright and high. Outside the Come and Go room, the sky was gray and overcast, but here, where the only thing that mattered was the two of them, the flowers never died and the sun would never, ever set. Every breath she took full of the scent of grass, quidditch, roses and books.
One day, in the later parts of 1981, Narcissa Black walked into the Come-and-Go room with a metal band around her ring finger, “ N&A ” engraved into it.
That day, she stood in the room and suffocated in the scent of grass, quidditch, roses and books as the rain beat down on her back, pushing her to her knees and tears trailing down her cheeks.