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Seven days had passed since Lucius’s funeral when Narcissa brought his favourite flowers, gardenias, to the family crypt on the Malfoy estate. White flowers, because despite his perpetually dark vestments, her husband had always preferred the stark contrast in that which nature grew; preferred its clear difference to his own ensembles. He’d been buried in black; he’d rest, amongst white.
The crypt was located all the way at the edge of the estate, found at the end of a path that ran alongside a clear, trickling brook they’d often sat by, gazing at, hand in hand. Narcissa smiled fondly – but still too painfully – as she passed by, then stopped by the mausoleum’s heavy iron door. Centuries of rust had eaten away at the hinges, but it opened with polite silence when she pushed.
The stone stairs descended into cold unlike that of the brisk spring outside. She licked her lips and grimaced – deep earth and limestone surging up her nostrils – and beyond, the same organics breaking down as when one of their house-elves had died inside the Manor walls during the Second War and they’d had to tear through the brick noggings and wattles and daub to locate its fetid remains.
Each time she and Lucius has visited the crypt to lay flowers by her father-in-law’s grave, Narcissa had remarked upon the charm-resistant stench. Lucius had merely shrugged and muttered, circle of life, my darling. Now that circle of life was about to stare her in the face in the form of his beautifully-draped coffin on a table-tomb, behind the corner of the sconce-lit corridor. Though the mausoleum held both an empty niche and a loculus, she’d chosen this for her beloved husband – wanted his final resting place centred enough to touch.
Unlike Abraxas Malfoy’s. He could stay right where he was – in the wall – for all she cared.
She rounded the corner – and the gardenias fell out of her slack hands.
Open.
The lid to Lucius’s coffin was – open.
Narcissa tripped in her tracks, empty-handed – ice, sprouting through her stomach; her brain, trying to make sense of what she was actually seeing – an empty coffin, emptiness inside.
But the meaning of the sight simply repelled – refused – processing. Because she’d watched them seal it; watched them close the lid over her husband’s lifeless, fifty-nine-year old body, tragically succumbed to Dragon Pox in his father’s footsteps.
And that had been seven days ago.
Carefully, she stepped over her dropped gardenias and neared the coffin on legs that felt distant, gone weak – someone else’s.
In front of her, the white silken lining of the coffin’s interior appeared completely undisturbed; where there should have been the impression or indent of a body, there was none. Nothing inside looked like it had ever been occupied at all, by neither the dead, nor the living.
Her husband was . . . gone.
But that wasn’t possible.
Feebly trying to hold down a rising sob, she reached out and touched the lining with shaky fingers. She couldn’t quite understand just why they were shaking – none of this made sense, none of this made sense, and her body – reacting before her mind could catch up with the implications of gone.
Someone must have taken him.
Stolen the body.
Some sick bastard with a grudge against all Malfoys, some light-sided vermin trying to earn a dime or five hundred off the Dark Lord’s memorabilia, some –
No – because the wards would have alerted her. If anyone else had entered or exited, she would have known. And Draco had left for France with Astoria and little Scorpius three days after the funeral.
Which meant . . .
. . . Lucius could only have left the crypt on his own.
“Don’t be silly, Cissy,” Narcissa muttered and rubbed her palm over her eyes, then looked around as to make sure no one was actually witnessing the certifiable loss of her mental sensibilities. Because the notion was insane, completely mad – dead men didn’t walk, dead men didn’t unlock their own coffins and just… climb out.
Dead men stayed dead. Dead men stayed in their coffins. Not even a Deathly Hallow’d Resurrection Stone could change such laws.
Narcissa turned around and all but ran back down the corridor, up the stone steps, until her eyes found the luminous April sun, her nostrils found freshness, and she could turn around and slam the crypt door shut. She made sure to not just lock it, but seal it with a charm so potent, anyone else would need an actual curse-breaker to pry the damn thing open again. Then, for good measure, she added a complex ward that would tell her if even a garden rat tried to scratch the iron surface.
And then, she realised she had absolutely no idea what to do next.
—
That very same night, she found a pair of footprints – slightly muddy tracks that started at the crypt entrance and took the very same path she’d taken to and fro. She must have been too rattled, too confused, to have thought to look down, earlier. But here they were, the clear, men’s-sized impressions in the dusky dew-wet grass.
Lucius’s shoe size.
Narcissa’s throat and eyes began to burn. Frozen cold, she still crouched down beside the closest print, to examine it.
It was, without a doubt, a size ten – as well as the very pair he’d been buried in. She’d placed the order with Cordwainer & Charm herself – his favourite shop, high-end Diagon with franchises in Paris – and now she was looking at the hexagonal pattern of the sole and the ornate maker’s mark C&S in the arch.
This isn’t happening, she thought – but it was.
She righted herself and, with a braver conviction than thrummed through her iced blood, she followed the trail along the creek. Each of the prints were of an even, certain gait. Upon reaching the house, they deviated: where Narcissa had used the back door in the morning, the prints led around the house and right to the great front doors of the Manor.
A grand entrance.
A grand return.
Madness – but Narcissa followed.
Wand tightly in hand, she entered her own home. The prints tracked through the foyer and up the staircase, but they quickly lost their muddiness, becoming so faint, she had to squint to keep making them out. They turned left at the third-floor West Wing corridor junction, then headed . . . towards Lucius’s study.
Whose door was open.
Narcissa thought she might actually vomit when she stopped by the entrance to the study, just-off to keep from seeing the inside – because if her husband – her living dead, resurrected, walking-corpse-husband – was inside, she should fear her own end by cardiac-arresting horror. Even just picturing the pallor of his bloodless skin or the swelling of his post-mortem lips made her insides twist painfully and work their way up her chest.
“Du calme,” she whispered, readjusting her grip on her wand – squeezing so hard, it might have snapped at any second. “Il le feut. Courage. Tiens bon, allons…”
With a shallow breath, she stepped into the doorway.
The sconces inside burst alight with her movement.
Like Lucius’s coffin, Narcissa found the study empty.
Steadying her heartbeat, she peered at the dark grey floor, and noticed that whatever remained of the footsteps stopped by the ebony writing desk. The leather chair behind the desk – the one he’d sat in at least once every evening for the past thirty years – held the fresh impression of a spine – the tufted cushion, compressed at the very centre, to accommodate the weight of a man.
Narcissa’s hand holding the wand was shaking against her side now. On legs that trembled like a foal’s, threatening to buckle like mere twigs, she crossed the study, rounded the large desk, and touched the indent in the centre.
Sepulchral ice.
Her hand jerked back at once in panic, her mind – even so – attempting to rationalise and offer explanations. Henny the elf, intruders, someone, anyone – but nothing fit. Narcissa knew. She knew, she knew, she knew – and the knowledge carved her stomach out.
Her legs had somehow gone even more ashen, but she still managed to stumble out of the study. As with the mausoleum door, she sealed the study shut, warded it thoroughly, and hurried towards her bedroom. What else was she to do? Owl for her son? Alert the Ministry, who would all think her as mad as she felt? Tell Henny that her dead Master was prowling the house, and that, worse, Narcissa had no idea where, and that, the worst of all, she was too frightened to look for him?
—
Going to sleep knowing that something wearing Lucius’s body was walking the halls of the Manor should have kept her brain from being able to uncheck. But her exhaustion must eventually have dragged her under – because sometime in the night, she woke up to the most rancid smell.
Damp soil – limestone – flesh, breaking down.
Narcissa’s eyes flew open. Caughing and heaving, she looked around, trying to adjust to the darkness of the Master bedroom.
Someone was standing at the foot of the canopied bed.
Someone whose form, even in death, she knew as well as her own body.
“Lucius?” she whimpered.
The shape didn’t reply – but it was him. He was standing there, wearing the very tailored funeral robes of black wool that she herself had dressed him in, for dignity in death. But the clothes looked… filthier, so far as the dark would allow her to observe while her heart pounded away.
Lucius’s arms were hanging limply by his sides. He stood entirely unmoving, motionless.
“Lucius?” she tried once more – but his name came out a bare squeak.
Now that the room had become less black and more greyish, she could make out the colour of her husband’s skin. It was the hue of drainage. His hair, so beautifully silver-blond and shiny in life, now hung as lank and unwashed as Severus’s had used to. And Lucius’s eyes… they were cloudy, milky-white. Uncanny.
His chest wasn’t moving.
He wasn’t breathing. Yet his eyes – they were ominously fixed on her shivering body.
Finally, she screamed, the raw sound tearing out of her throat as she scrambled upwards, away, hitting the headboard. Her hand flew to her wand, and she raised it – but she was shaking so badly now, she could barely keep it aimed.
Nothing about this was her husband, everything about this was wrong. The most vomit-inducing image slashed across her mind’s eye, suddenly – those grey, icy fingers, holding her down, pushing her thighs open.
“What do you want?” she cried out as resolutely as she could.
Lucius’s shape vanished.
As though he’d been but an apparition all along, the space at the foot of the massive bed where he’d stood now held no-one, nothing. He’d simply… disappeared into thin air.
But the smell was still there – stronger. Now she could smell the formaldehyde the staff at the Magical Mortuary had used to preserve him until the funeral, and she pressed a hand to her throat, fighting the rising urge to retch. She couldn’t – wouldn’t – be sick in bed like a frightened little child. Though, that was precisely how she felt where she sat.
Like a frightened little child.
After long, unsteady moments, she ultimately forced herself to rise from the bed. The floor below her bare feet felt like it was tilting, but she made it to the bedroom door; to check that the blockage and wards she’d set there too last night were still intact.
They were.
Lucius hadn’t needed to break them, then. Locks and magic – did they even mean anything to whatever he was now?
He’d been inside. And now – he was somewhere else.
Narcissa still checked everything two times, her fingers shaking so badly the first one around, she wasn’t sure she’d managed it properly. Then she lit every single lamp in the huge room, flooding the space with light; banishing every shadow. But it failed to help. The stench was still there, sticking to the insides of her nostrils – climbing up her throat.
Bundled up in the bed, she kept staring at the foot of it, waiting; waiting for his shape to materialise again, out of nothing.
He could come back. At any moment, he could simply be there, again.
—
The second night, Lucius stood even closer. This time, he came to the side of the bed, close enough for Narcissa to see all the decaying parts she’d so far only morbidly imagined. His swollen lips and hollow cheeks; the deeply bruised circles beneath his milky eyes – eyes that tracked her when she sat up and screamed in alarm.
Despite her reaction, he remained silently watching.
This time, she didn’t wait. At once, she tried to banish him. Her wand was already in her hand; she’d been clutching it when she’d fallen asleep – couldn’t let go of it, anymore. Now she cried and cast a repelling spell – but the bright light passed through him without any effect.
He stood there – unchanged, watching her.
She ran – darted around him, out of the master bedroom, down the corridor, into the furthest guest room she could think of. Locking the door, warding it, casting every protective charm her screaming brain could remember, until her magic felt utterly scraped thin and all sides of the doorframe were glowing a sickly pink in the dark.
Then she waited for morning to come, sitting there, rigid, on the unfamiliar bed – guarding the door.
Only the next night, he came to that same guest room – without using the door.
Standing at the foot of the bed again – but again closer than before; so close, she could detail the ways his body had continued to break down beneath his robes. The smell was becoming worse too, worse than dampness and formaldehyde. Now, he was truly rotting – the smell so thick, it filled her throat and made her gag.
By the fifth night, he was standing near enough, that if she’d dared move her hand from where it was clutching the sheets, she could have touched his skin. His mouth was hanging slightly open tonight as he stared at her. His chest wasn’t moving – had never once moved, she reminded herself, fighting down the hysteria threatening to take her.
And those cloudy eyes – just kept watching her.
On the seventh night, Narcissa left Malfoy Manor and fled to her sister’s.
—
Andromeda opened the front door in a dressing gown and stared at Narcissa for a good ten seconds, before stepping aside and muttering, “What’s got you looking like hell?”
“Lucius,” Narcissa nearly sobbed, clutching Andromeda by the arm, “He’s in the house!”
Andromeda’s face stayed neutral, if not slightly placating. “Cissy, Lucius is dead.”
“I know that! But he – he’s… Andy, he’s in the house.”
Right there in Andromeda’s entrance hall, Narcissa recounted the horror as best she could, barrelling on like a train. Once she finished, Andromeda was quiet for a bit, before summoning a robe and ushering Narcissa right back out the front door with a low but undeniably stern, “Show me.”
—
Narcissa reluctantly undid everything she’d imposed upon the iron door to the crypt, and down they descended, together, at just past midnight. Andromeda kindly abstained from commenting on the foulness of the smell and went directly to examining the still-open coffin’s interior; Narcissa watched, quietly, as her Healer sister cast a magnitude of detection spells, each of which left lingering residue of differently-coloured lights, from green to blue to orange to yellow – and then, a deepish red. When that one enveloped the silken white inside of the coffin, it illuminated a set of letters along the edges. Narcissa leaned closer, immediately recognising the script as Ancient Runes – but what they said, she did not understand.
“I’ll be bloody damned,” Andromeda almost chuckled. “What a right bastard.”
“What?” Narcissa gasped, looking between the red runes and her sister’s impressed-looking face. “Whatever do you mean?”
Andromeda re-holstered her wand. “He planned this.”
Narcissa blinked, mouth fallen open. “He… What?”
“Lucius. Looks like he went and arranged his own partial resurrection.” Andromeda gestured at the script glowing red against the silk inside of the coffin. “That there is a series of resurrection runes. It’s very old magic. Sort of barbaric too, if you ask me, because it requires the pain of a living spouse to activate. Your pain was needed to bring him back in a spectral form. Seems like it did, if he’s wandering about the place. Except… it backfired.”
Narcissa stared at Andromeda, then at the glowing runes – at the evidence of what her husband had done.
Carved into his own coffin, where she’d never think to look with anything except sorrow and an adamant for his final resting place to be perfect – to befit him.
Her pain.
He’d used her pain.
All those horrific nights she’d wept over his fighting, failing body while wearing every manner of protection at St. Mungo’s; while having to tell their only son he wasn’t allowed to see his father because she wouldn’t survive losing him, too. Then all the nights by her husband’s evacuated remains, before the funeral itself – mourning herself sick over him – and he’d planned for her to cry, suffer; to break herself open with the loss of him after thirty years of being each other’s all.
He’d needed it. Her pain – the power for whatever he was now.
She thought she might be sick here; might vomit her insides right onto Andromeda’s leather boots.
“He –” Narcissa’s words rose out of her throat strangled. “He knew. Before he died, he knew I would –”
. . . grieve him. Love him enough to be destroyed by losing him. And he’d taken that love, that grief, and he’d used it like pre-purchased ingredients for some potion. Like she was something to be exploited.
Even in death – or, perhaps, especially in death – Lucius Malfoy had found one last way to make her useful.
A right bastard.
“How…” she tried, unable to tell anymore if it was rage or horror or something else entirely clogging her speech. “I do believe you, I only… How is this possible?”
“Difficult magic. Expensive as well. Ghosts aren’t exactly everyday engineering. I reckon he must have set this up a while back.” Andromeda’s voice turned clinically detached next, though her eyes weren’t emotionless. “But he clearly miscalculated. That’s why all of this feels so malevolent. Obviously nothing can bring back the dead as they were. But if he knew he’d be coming back as this… this thing you’ve described, I genuinely doubt he would have done this. This sort of ritual would have given you a ghost. Not… I don’t know – whatever’s stalking your bedroom.”
“I don’t…” Narcissa ran a hand through her dishevelled hair. “Andromeda, what do you mean?”
Andromeda blew out her own fringe. “I mean that Lucius spent time in Azkaban, and Azkaban just… saturates prisoners with dark magic. Think residue of every person who died in there, and every Dementor that fed in there. That magic seeps into all the prisoners. Stays in them even after they leave. Surely you know this.” Andromeda looked at her pointedly. “He also took the Dark Mark. Meaning, whatever’s using Lucius’s body now isn’t just him, but also the rest. Azkaban remains, Dark Mark remains. It’s dark, alright. Much, much, much darker than the Bloody Baron. Can’t even compare, really.”
Narcissa walked the few paces to the closest wall to lean against it; her legs were about to fail her, she could tell. “So… so if, if Draco…”
Andromeda gave an apologetic wince. “You must not let him, no, when it’s his turn. Hopefully not for a hundred years yet – but no. Not with the Mark.”
“He’s already proven himself much smarter than his father,” said Narcissa, absent-mindedly, then looked her sister in the eye. “Can you stop Lucius?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t,” Andromeda sighed. “But you can. At a cost.”
Narcissa blinked again, “What cost?”
“You have to be the one to destroy his body.” Andromeda’s voice was sibling-gentle now – understanding. “The ritual requires your pain. So to break it, you have to be the one who ends what’s left. No one else can do it.”
Narcissa stared at the empty coffin. “Destroy how?” she asked numbly, without looking at Andromeda.
“Fire. Like with vampires. Complete destruction of the remains. You’ll have to stun or petrify him and then burn what’s left of his body until there’s nothing for the magic to cling to anymore. Like… how Bella was, in the end. Dust, Cissy.”
Dust.
Her husband, still – regardless.
“I don’t know if I can,” Narcissa admitted, turning back to Andromeda. “I don’t even know where he is, he could –”
“He’ll come to you,” Andromeda proclaimed, with a near-frightening certainty – and Narcissa wondered how many times her remaining sister had seen this, before. “Already tonight, probably. If he’s been coming closer to you every night, that means the magic is building up. It’s trying to complete the process by proximity to the pain. My guess is tonight he’ll try to touch you. And that’s when you have to act.”
Narcissa’s hands were shaking again; she pressed them together. “Andy, I… I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Andromeda argued, grabbing Narcissa gently by her upper arms. “You must, or you’ll spend the rest of your life with that demon in your house just getting stronger, just getting more complete, until it stops just watching and actually hurts you for being alive. Do you understand?” Andromeda curled one of Narcissa’s messy blonde strands behind her ear. “I know the spell. You just have to be ready to cast it.”
—
Narcissa waited in her bedroom, one fist crushing her wand, and the other, the Latin incantation Andromeda had written down on a piece of parchment. Not that Narcissa needed it written down; she’d memorised it at once, despite its complexity. The wording wasn’t the problem.
It was the rest.
Andromeda’s voice kept circling back, blunt in its matter-of-factness – burn the body, turn him to dust. As though it were a simple act and Narcissa hadn’t spent thirty years sleeping beside that body, didn’t know every part of it by heart. Parts like – his hands. She’d have to burn his hands – the ones that had pressed against the small of her back whenever they’d danced at a gala; or had touched her in the most intimate of ways that no one else ever had – or, probably, ever would.
And his face – she was supposed to set fire to his face – watch his skin blister and blacken and peel away, until there was nothing but dust left.
Thirty years of marriage.
Thirty years of knowing someone.
Thirty years – ending with her having to pour Fiendfyre over her love.
Did it even matter, then, that he’d needed her pain to come back – that he’d had that script carved into his own coffin and planned for her to weep – when now, she had to burn him for it?
She had to. There wasn’t another choice.
But her stomach wouldn’t stop churning.
He reappeared, at last, at three in the morning.
As Andromeda had foreseen, Lucius now stood right beside the master bed nightstand, so close, his hand could easily have grabbed Narcissa’s wrist and tugged with pallid fingers – held with waxy knuckles, the flesh having now started to slacken away from the bones beneath.
This time, subaqueous sound emerged from his caved-in throat –
“Cissa.”
Her name, in his intonation. But the pitch had flattened, become discordant – sinister – and she had her wand levelled at his chest before conscious thought could catch up to what she was doing.
He extended his hand towards her.
She was certain that in her chest, her heart was galloping hard enough to fracture her from the inside – her gown, clinging to her back – drenched through.
The pads of his ice-cold, rotting fingers brushed the trembling skin of her hand holding the wand.
Il le faut, she convinced herself.
Il le faut.
Allons.
. . .
Allons.
. . .
- end -