concrete angel

Through the wind and the rain

She stands hard as a stone

TW: Thoughts of Self-Harm

Explaining what she had done was not going to be easy. Desirae was not going to understand why. There was a part of Narcissa that didn’t even understand why… But there was another part of her that knew. That was well aware of why she had asked him to come home. It had been years. And she knew that she had made the mistakes. She knew that she was to blame. But she also knew that if she didn’t go back, she was going to do something so much worse.

She had reached a point where she didn’t know how to cope up here. She didn’t know how to function properly. And she thought that it had something to do with him. She knew it did. Narcissa knew that being close to him would stop the nightmares. And it was the nightmares that were driving her insane now. When she woke up in the middle of the night with a scream on her lips, and she didn’t know if it was a cry for help, or one made in terror, she knew that she had gone too far.

Being up here in Scotland was never supposed to be a permanent solution. And she had started off working up here and coming in via Floo every morning. That was what she was going back to. It would put some sort of normalcy back to it all. She had to find something that could be routine. That could be normal. Because staying in her suite was coddling her too much. She needed to go outside. And she needed to do her job. And she needed to stop being scared of everything.

Going home was… Well, it was time. She had been away too long. And with the number of mistakes she had made over the holidays, she needed to be where that wasn’t going to happen anymore. She needed to be where he knew that she was going to be. And she needed to be settled, and calm, and she needed to sleep.

Without her occlumency to block things out, she had to try and control herself in some other way. She needed him. He could turn it off. He could make the bad things go away. And she didn’t have any idea if he even knew that. Narcissa had spent the last fifty years making sure that he didn’t see the marks. The lines on her arms that meant that it had been a bad day. The scratches across her stomach that meant that there was something in her mind that was trying to escape. She had hidden them.

Until now.

Without magic she was having a hard time controlling that. The elves had been instructed to remove anything sharp from her suite more than once. Simply because she didn’t trust herself. And yet she knew, if she went back there, she would have to get it together. She couldn’t do those things. She couldn’t be that weak. She couldn’t be weak at all. She had to hold it together. He made her stronger in that way, and he made her weaker in so many others. Going back there was give and take. But it was worth the give. Right now, anyway.

Narcissa wanted to not need him. She wanted to be able to control herself without him. But she needed him to keep her under control. She needed him to make sure that everything looked exactly as it was supposed to. Their lives had become some macabre show years ago. And she knew that she had willingly walked right back into that last night. But he had let her.

He had let her come home, and now she had to tell Desirae what she had done.

Avoidance had been the policy that she had been adhering to for a good majority of the time over the last couple of months. Avoiding first Desirae, and then Draco. But she knew that her son was well aware of what she had been planning to do. He had walked in on the elves packing. Desirae though… She didn’t know that Narcissa’s suite was once again nearly empty. Only the essentials were left there. A handful of clothes in the closet. A toothbrush. A little bit of makeup tucked in one of the drawers. Basics.

Stepping through the fireplace she landed Viktor’s study at the Tower, and she was quiet for a moment, listening for them. She was sure that they were here. It was too bitterly cold to have taken Jack and Vzá out in this. “Rae?” Narcissa’s voice was soft, but it carried through the lofty rooms of the third. If she was around somewhere close, she would have heard her, or at least heard the fireplace. If not, Narcissa would venture downstairs to find her.

Desirae Maribel Krum • 804 • narcissa's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]Through the wind and the rain

[attr="class","cscriptshop"]she stands hard as a stone

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[attr="class","clyrics"]But her dreams give her wings[break]
And she flies to a place where she's loved

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[attr="class","cbody"]If there had been one chance that had taken some getting used to when she had moved from London to Scotland—apart from everything having to do with the reason for that change, of course, it was Scottish winters. That was not something that she had been all that prepared for. Living so close to the highlands had been a lot more than she’d been anticipating. But she didn’t mind the cold. Not really. Being outside in the snow had always been peaceful to her, and it was never something that had bothered her all that much.
[break][break]
But she didn’t like being cold. Maybe that was silly. But as long as she could leave the snow and the cold and sit in front of a fireplace and warm up, she was fine. As long as she could crawl into bed with Viktor to warm up from how cold the tower could get, she was fine. He was practically a space heater, he was so warm all of the time. It was not difficult to warm up when he was in bed with her.
[break][break]
It was when he was gone, and it was cold that was the problem. Even in general, she just didn’t like spending the night away from him. It could be the middle of the summer, and he could be off at a match, and she was certain that their bed would still feel freezing cold without him in it. Obviously, in the winter months, that was even truer. Of course, there was also less of a reason for him to be gone in the winter, which was a good thing. If he did have to spend a night away from home, she wasn’t sure she would be able to sleep at all.
[break][break]
Today was one of those days where the chill from outside seemed to be closing in on her inside. She had been absolutely unable to get warm, no matter where she went in the tower. Vzá was playing in her room, Jack was down for his nap, and she had been tempted to curl up on the rocking chair in his nursery and sleep too. Under about a dozen blankets—because she didn’t think that she would be able to get warm with any less than that.
[break][break]
Unfortunately, there were things that she needed to do, and napping hadn’t been on the agenda today. She had to do laundry—and without magic, that could be a whole day affair, easily. They had somehow accumulated far more clothes for Jack than was probably necessary and Vzá tended to ruin clothes so often that they always needed more. Viktor’s clothes just filled up a load so quickly with the sheer size of it all, and all of that compared just made laundry take quite a long time.
[break][break]
She had just been accumulating a laundry basket full of dirty clothes from the nursery when she heard the familiar sound of Floo going off a few rooms over. Since there were very few people that actually had access to their Floo, she wasn’t worried as she stepped out of the nursery and softly closed the door behind her. Waking Jack up when she had just got him to sleep was definitely not on the agenda. “Hi…” She said, slightly surprised, when Narcissa finally came into view. Normally, her coming over was not a strange occurrence but the woman had been… quite absent, in passing weeks. Seeing her out of the hotel was not expected.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]585 ● @ cissa ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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concrete angel

THROUGH THE WIND AND THE RAIN

she stands hard as a stone

If there was some way to do this that wasn’t going to hurt the girl that she had come to look at like a daughter, Narcissa would have taken that route. But she knew that she was going to hurt her doing this. She knew that going back to Wiltshire was going to seem like it was coming out of nowhere after two years of living up here. But the fact that she had lived up here for two years was a part of the problem. She shouldn’t have ever lived up here permanently. It had been somewhere to stay when she was working late. And then it had become somewhere to stay during the week, and eventually she had stopped going home all together.

And he hadn’t tried to force her back home. That was the worst part. If he would have said something, she would have gone in a moment. She would have gone back to him the moment that he made that desire known. But he never had, and the separation had only seemed to grow and grow. Narcissa knew how much she had to make up for in her husband’s eyes. She knew the severity of the sins that she had committed against him, and what it was going to take to repent for those.

But she would live with that. She would repent all that he wanted her to. She would do whatever she could, if it meant that her nightmares were going to stop. Because that was why she had gone back to him at all. She couldn’t control them. And without control she was spiraling further and further down a path that he could keep her from. He was the only one, he was the only one that could keep her from falling down that path, and she trusted him with that. She trusted him to keep her alive.

Part of her wanted to be free of him. She didn’t want to need him. She didn’t want to rely on him for this, or for anything. But there were just some things that she couldn’t do by herself. There were some things that he had been in her life for too long. Narcissa had been Lucius’s for her entire life. She had never so much as looked at anyone else. He had always been the one that she knew she was to go to, and he had been the one to take care of her. No matter what had happened, she had fallen. And she needed him to take care of her.

That had meant going back. That had meant going home. And now all she had left to do was to tell Desirae that she would be spending her time back in Wiltshire. The flat was still hers. She had told Viktor she would pay for it. Just in case. But she needed it to stay as it was. She would make it good in the books. She could pay for it out of her share of the Black family fortune. It would barely even scratch it, and they could rent it for generations. It wasn’t the money that she was worried about though.

It was the other witch’s feelings about her going home. She was not leaving her, she was not abandoning her, but Narcissa knew how it could be perceived as those things. The blonde would still be at the hotel every day, well, almost every day. She doubted that she would be there as much on the weekends. There were always going to be more social engagements to be attended if she went home. If they were well and truly to be the Lord and Lady Malfoy again, they would have to start acting like it. Still, she would be here quite often during the week, and she had a gift for her as well. Something to ease the transition.

“Hello.” She smiled softly and stepped forward to brush her lips to the girl’s cheek. Already she seemed better. She seemed normal. And she had only been home for a couple of days. He had that affect. He put her back together again, and how he did was not important. It was the fact that it worked. “Laundry day?” Her smile stayed as she nodded down to the basket that the younger witch was carrying with her.

@ daughter • 728 • narcissa's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]THROUGH THE WIND AND THE RAIN

[attr="class","cscriptshop"]she stands hard as a stone

[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]BUT HER DREAMS GIVE HER WINGS[break]
AND SHE FLIES TO A PLACE WHERE SHE'S LOVED

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[attr="class","cbody"]Getting used to life without magic had been more emotionally difficult on her than anything else. All things considered, Desirae knew how to do a whole lot the Muggle way. Vince had made sure of that. Every day, he’d left for work and he had expected certain things of her by the time he got home. And since he had hidden her wand from her, everything had to be done the Muggle way. At the beginning, there was a lot that she had done wrong, simply because she hadn’t been used to it. She wasn’t a messy person, nor had she been someone that relied on magic for every little thing, but she still wasn’t used to cleaning an entire house from top to bottom, by hand. There had been plenty of occasions where she’d missed a spot, or had forgotten to do something, and had gotten intro trouble whenever Vince notice. He had always noticed, after all.
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But, putting all of that aside, she still could get by doing most household tasks the Muggle way. She had no problem doing the dishes—now, anyway, since for a time she had barely liked even being in the kitchen. She could do laundry the Muggle way, she could pick up after them and keep things relatively tidy. Vzá had been taught to pick up after herself when she played with her toy, so she did her part—usually, anyway. Sometimes there were some toys to pick up too, but that wasn’t all that hard to do.
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Apart from that, there wasn’t honestly too much cleaning that she even did. The castle was far too big for her to put too much effort into dusting by hand or anything like that. If she even tried to do that, she knew that she would be dusting all day, and there was just no reason to put that much effort into cleaning. Right now, anyway. She supposed she didn’t want everything to be covered in dust, so that might prove to be a necessary chore at some point. It seemed like the type of thing she could do once every month or so and be fine, though. It wasn’t something that she needed to worry all that much about.
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She knew that Viktor didn’t mind it. He didn’t expect her to spend all day cleaning or anything like that, but there were still things that needed to get done. Merlin knew that if she didn’t commit a certain allotment of time to doing laundry, Viktor would likely forget to do it himself.
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It was a task that was likely going to take most of the day, simply because of how much laundry they had, but that was fine. There were other things that she could do while she waited for the loads to run. It was just a matter of getting all of their laundry together and separating it. Once that was one, she’d just have to change the loads, and eventually fold and put it all away. Simple, really. It would more than likely be done before Viktor even got home, and then they could figure out what to do for dinner. Her vote was going to be Chinese food.
[break][break]
Desirae really hadn’t expected to see Narcissa, in light of everything. She had not been around nearly as much recently, and Desirae had missed her company. She was more of a mum to her these days than her own mother, and it was hard not having her around. It was hard to know that she wasn’t doing all that well and that there was nothing she could do about it. But the fact that she was visiting her here was a good sign—or at least, she was going to take it as once. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d seen Narcissa outside of the hotel… or more accurately, outside of her own suite. “Yes, it is. If I don’t do it now, it’ll just keep on accumulating.” She shook her head. “I think Viktor forgets that laundry doesn’t do itself.” She was kidding… mostly, anyway, but she really didn’t mind doing the laundry. Of everything that needed to get done in their household, it was probably the chore she liked doing the most.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]713 ● @ cissa ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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CONCRETE ANGEL

THROUGH THE WIND AND THE RAIN

SHE STANDS HARD AS A STONE

This wasn’t going to be an easy thing for Desirae. Narcissa knew that. She knew that the girl wasn’t going to like it, and she couldn’t blame her. This was not something that she would have expected her to do, and it wasn’t something that she had honestly planned on doing. But the illness… It was causing more issues than she thought that it was going to. Losing magic, it hadn’t even crossed her mind that it was going to weaken her resolve. That she was going to have to rely on something other than just her Occulmency to keep her head above water.

She had not been prepared for that, and after struggling through it on her own, she had finally decided that there was only one solution. There was only one thing that was going to make her feel better, and so she had done it. She had gone home, and she was going to spend however long he deemed fit, begging for his forgiveness. But she needed to be there. She needed to be with him, and it was pathetic, and she knew it. She knew that going back there was defeat in some way. Some sort of tangible proof that she couldn’t make it on her own.

And she had been. She had been fine for the last two years up here without him. But she couldn’t live without him, and there was a part of her that had to wonder just how much longer he would have gone on living without her? Because she knew that he didn’t like it, but he had also never tried to tell her to come back. There were questions there that she just simply didn’t have the answers to. Why he had made that choice, what it was that had kept him from coming after her? There were things that she wanted to know. Questions that she would bide her time in asking.

She wasn’t going to push him away now. Not when he was putting her back together again. It helped. As much as she didn’t like to think that it was necessary, it was. And it helped. All of this helped. Putting her back together again was something that only he could do. Only he wasn’t scared of all of the sharp bits, and the broken pieces. He had them to. They were damaged, and flawed, and broken, but their broken pieces fit together in a way that made them both whole again. And she needed that now more than she ever had before.

Losing magic was something that had taken its toll on everyone in very different ways, but Narcissa couldn’t help but wonder what it was that made it all so very different about her own ways. There were a lot of people that blocked out trauma, people in the world that didn’t have magic to start with. But she had become so dependent on it… Her sanity was tied to her ability to block things out. Otherwise she knew just how easy it would be to follow her mother and her sister down the path into insanity. Bella had had some help, Azkaban, and dementors had made their mark, but Maman hadn’t.

And she didn’t want to follow down that path. She had to stay sane, and she had to stay stable, and the easiest way that she had found to do that, was to let him do it for her. To let him keep her stable.

Wrapping her hand around her arm, Narcissa was glad that she had opted for long sleeves, and a long skirt. There were bruises on her skin that would be there until they faded naturally. Reminders that she was going to behave now. That she was going to do as she was supposed to and play the role that she had been born to play. Because while no one had ever said that, she believed it. Narcissa Black had been born with blonde hair, and blue eyes. She looked the part for the family that she had married into, not the one that she had been born into.

In coloring, anyway. Her face was square, and her cheekbones and jawline gave her away for who she had always been. Something that she had been more than proud to see take shape in her son. He had her facial structure, not his father’s. Draco Malfoy fit the mold of a Black. And Narcissa Malfoy was very proud. But it was not her son that she had come to see. It was the girl that she thought of like a daughter. “Well,” there was a hesitant smile on her face at Desirae’s comment, “I actually brought you something that might help with that.”

@ desirae • 793 • narcissa's outfit

MADE BY VEL OF GS + ADOX 2.0

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[attr="class","ctopline"]THROUGH THE WIND AND THE RAIN

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[attr="class","cline"]

[attr="class","clyrics"]BUT HER DREAMS GIVE HER WINGS[break]
AND SHE FLIES TO A PLACE WHERE SHE'S LOVED

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[attr="class","cbody"]Her life with Viktor was one that she never had expected. Not in a million years. Not at any point in her life. Even before Vince, she hadn’t exactly had the most optimistic standpoint about love and relationships. Her parents’ divorce had seen to that. While she knew that there were thousands of children that came from divorce that still believed in love afterwards, she was not one of them. She had just come to the conclusion that someone always got bored. Someone always left. She had seen it happen to her parents, and she had no reason to believe that her life would play out any differently. When it had come to love, her parents’ divorce had been enough to turn her into quite the cynic, and she hadn’t seen any real reason to change that.
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Because of Viktor, it had changed. She had never imagined this kind of life for herself. She had never even thought that she would get married. But they were more than just married. They were happy. They had a baby—she thought that she wanted another one, if Viktor did. Her pregnancy had gone pretty well up until the end, and while she had been terrified when Jack had come early, it had ended up okay. They were all okay, and Desirae did think that she could do it all over again if he wanted to. And maybe have a girl this time around. Not that she didn’t love Vzá like she was her own daughter, because she did. She just thought that she’d like to have a daughter of her own too.
[break][break]
But that was not something that she was going to think about right now anyway. It wasn’t the time. Jack was not even twelve months old yet. There was an epidemic that called everything into question. It didn’t really matter to her, but she did wonder if having a baby while without magic would have any impact on whether or not they would have magic. Not that there was anything at all wrong with a Squib, but it felt careless to get pregnant and not take that into consideration. It just wasn’t the right time at all. It wasn’t something that she had even brought up to Viktor anyhow. They had time to figure out if they wanted to have another baby. There was no rush in that. She was only thirty-four. They could wait until Jack was five or six, or even older, and it would likely still be possible. It wasn’t something that they needed to talk about and decide on right this second.
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It was just something that she had never thought she’d want or have a chance to think about. She didn’t think that a normal day for her would be collecting laundry in a basket while her son slept, and while Vzá played. It was all very… different, than what she had imagined, but she wouldn’t have it any other way. She felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be. She felt like she was with the right person, that she was in the right place, and that she would never be as happy as she was right now.
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Maybe not right at this moment, while doing laundry. But the point stood. She was happy. Things were complicated, there was so much to worry about, but she was still happy.
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But she was still worried about Narcissa. It was why she was so surprised the moment that she came into sight. It was the first time that she had seen the woman outside of the hotel, or even outside of her suite, in Merlin knew how long. That was definitely progress. And progress was good. It was just sudden, and a little surprising. Her words were just as surprising… or maybe more confusing than anything else. “Something to help me with laundry?” Her brows furrowed in confusion, trying to piece together what that could possibly mean. “What, like a new washing machine? Because ours works fine.” Better than fine, honestly. Leave it to Viktor to have probably the largest and most effective washing machine to grace the earth.
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[attr="class","cnotes"]696 ● @ cissa ● outfit

[attr="class","cred"]MADE BY VEL OF WW + ADOX 2.0

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CONCRETE ANGEL

THROUGH THE WIND AND THE RAIN

SHE STANDS HARD AS A STONE

Life took unexpected turns, and Narcissa knew that. She would have never thought that she would have liked this life. Dresses, dresses she hadn’t minded. Working at Twilfitt and Tattings hadn’t been all that bad. But this? This had gotten her out of London. It had gotten her out of England. And she had never expected how attached she was going to become to the Krums of all people. Not that there was anything dramatically wrong with the Krums. They were an old, Bulgarian family. She had every right to associate with them. Even Desirae, being a halfblood. But there was something about Desirae.

Something that Narcissa had always felt very familiar with. And it wasn’t a familiarity that they talked about. It wasn’t something that she allowed herself to talk about. Because things with Lucius had never been to the point where she thought that he was going to kill her. And she knew that there had been a chance, that day that Viktor and Andromeda had gone to get her back, that the man was going to kill Desirae. Narcissa hadn’t asked too many questions. But she knew what had happened. Or at least as much as Dia would tell her.

She had worried for three days that her sister wasn’t going to wake. But she had. And she had recovered. They had all recovered. And the man was dead. Narcissa knew that the man was dead, simply from the way that her sister spoke of him. From the way that Viktor acted when it got mentioned. The man was dead, and no one knew. No one but the four of them. And that was the way that it was going to stay. Narcissa could keep a secret. Even without her Occulmency, she could keep a secret. She was a Black. It was what they were good at.

Well, what other choice did they have. They had to be good at it. There were things that they had to go be good at. Things that they had always had to be good at. And Narcissa didn’t want to think that that had anything to do with the choice that she was making now. But she knew that it did. She knew that she was going back there, because she needed his help to continue to keep her secrets. She knew that she needed his help to hold herself together. To keep from coming apart at the seams. And she knew that they weren’t going to understand.

Draco certainly didn’t. She had seen that the other day. He had not taken this lightly. He had not been pleased with her in the least, and she was going to have to try and bridge that gap. She was going to have to try again. But they would get there. She would find some way to prove to him that this was for the best. She would be better with Lucius. He wouldn’t have to worry about her as much. Because she could hold it together there. So much more was expected of her. She didn’t have the luxury of falling apart when she was with him.

Perfection was expected, and perfection was what she could present. Being the Lady Malfoy was all a show. And she was a very good actress. She could put on that show, and she could find out who she had to be now. Who it was going to take to survive? Because she was never quite the same person each time. She was whomever she needed to be. Masks, and walls, and ice. She could hide behind all of it, and come out the other side as perfect, and as cold, as the freshly fallen snow.

“Something to help you with whatever you wish…” Narcissa didn’t know how well this gift was going to be received, and she had warned the elf not to be discouraged if Desirae didn’t like her. She had never, to Narcissa’s knowledge anyway, had an elf before. And gifting her one was something that was going to be just as unexpected as her presence here had been. But she was going back to Wiltshire, and she refused to leave her entirely alone. “Elsie?” Narcissa called for the elf quietly, and she popped into being next to her. Smiling down at the little thing, Narcissa nodded towards Desirae. “This is Desirae. You will serve her now.”

The elf bowed low, and nodded towards the younger witch, “Mistress Desirae.”

@ desirae • 747 • narcissa's outfit

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