Passing Afternoon

Thursday, July 4th, 2019
Mid-Afternoon
Flourish and Blotts
Diagon Alley
London

It wasn’t like it was an uncommon thing to say… She said it nearly every day. Sure, maybe her timing had been weird. But it had been nothing on the follow up question that she had received. And Narcissa didn’t want to think about it. It was silly. He couldn’t have actually been serious… She was not her sister, and they had not talked about that. It wasn’t something that you just sprung on someone. And they were Malfoys. There was a precedent. Breaking away from that now was… The biggest change since he had let her build an entirely new manor.

Which was just a whole other subject.

But she was trying not to dwell on things. She was trying to just breathe, and relax, and she knew what she needed to do. But she also was well aware that that was no longer an option. If she talked about things without her magic, she was going to do something unimaginable. And then nothing would really matter anymore. For Lucius, yes, and for Draco. They would have to deal with the aftermath of that. But not for her. She didn’t have to deal with the aftermath of that. The only way that she would have is if she lived again.

But she wasn’t going to find out. She couldn’t do that to him. Not now. Not when she had promised him so much. She had come home, and she had promised never to leave again. She couldn’t break that promise. And there were days when that was all that was keeping her alive. Days when she was sure that everything else was going to go to hell, and she was going to be stuck holding on to just that one thing. Just her promise to him. A life line that she wondered if he was even aware that he held the other end of.

Disappointing Draco was her biggest regret, and yet she had done it again, and again. And when she had gone back to his father, she knew that he hadn’t understood why. That he could never understand why she would go back to someone that she hated. And the answer was that it wasn’t that simple. She didn’t hate Lucius. Not really. She hated who he had become. She hated how he had failed her. How he had failed Draco. But there was more to him once. And it was that man that she loved.

It was the white knight, in the suit of armor, that could protect her from anything. The one that had taken her away from that first beast and given her the perfect little dragon instead. That was the man that she loved. Because he was her everything. Her whole world revolved around Lucius Malfoy. And that was both perfect, and horrible. She wanted him to know that she loved him. She wanted him to know that she was going to keep her promises. ‘Til death do us part. She wasn’t going to leave him again.

Narcissa had paid for that.

Time and again she had paid for leaving him. And she was sorry that she had. She was so sorry that she had left him here alone. That they hadn’t worked through it all together… That was exactly what should have happened. But it wasn’t. She had made her choices, and they had led her to different things. Viktor, and Vzá, and Jack… She loved them like family, and she loved Desirae too. She always had. It was just harder now. It was harder when she didn’t want anything to do with her. When she was sure that every step of the way she was going to find herself just wanting to escape.

She didn’t miss the hotel. Well, that wasn’t true. She missed working. That had given her something to do with her mind. Something to occupy herself with. She couldn’t do complex arithmancy and warding without her wand. But she could do mathematics. She could do the books. She could keep a hotel running, and she knew that Lucius had given her the bookshop as a gift. It was to fill that void. But she also thought that it was partially a reward. She had done something without him asking. And the bookshop had been a reward for that.

Having Tinky drop her off in the alley out front, Narcissa smoothed her blazer over the top of her dress. It hid just how slim she had become since she had returned. She only ate one meal a day, and even then, it was something small. Narcissa preferred to drink her calories in the form of red wine. And everything that she actually needed to survive could be found in potion form. Though she supposed that those were not the only potions she needed to get on her next trip to the apothecary.

Not having Andromeda to brew them for her was annoying. And she knew that her sister was finding it exceptionally difficult to find someone to trust with that. But she thought that they had settled on their niece. Ursula had managed to find herself styled the Lady Selwyn now, and Narcissa could appreciate the effort that she had put in there. The man was old enough to be her own father, let alone Ursula’s, and yet, she had everything that she could have asked for. There was nothing wrong with that. Narcissa wouldn’t have chosen that life, but she also didn’t think that she could have seriously considered anyone that wasn’t Lucius Malfoy. If something were to ever happen to him, she would not move on from that.

She couldn’t.

But Ursula could. And she knew that her sister had finally caved in and taught the girl how to make the nausea potion that she was so in need of. She had gone to see her before she had come to the Alley, and Andromeda looked better than she had in a long time. Narcissa remembered the other side effect of that potion, and while she hadn’t taken it in forty years, she doubted that Andromeda had done anything about that bit. It was fun enough, if you had someone that you could count on to help you with it.

Heading into her shop, she surveyed the stacks as she slipped quietly in the front door. Normally she only had a matter of moments before they realized that she was in the building, and then they were all a flurry of motion. Her theory rang true, and the moment that one of them saw her, she shook her head as they all scattered in various directions to attend to just about anything that they could so it looked like they were working.

All of them except one…

The girl behind the counter was crying. And Narcissa arched her brow at her. She couldn’t have been more than seventeen. She did not want to deal with her tears. She didn’t care what it was that she was crying about. She could cry in the back room, or she could cry at home, but she was not going to cry at the front counter. And Narcissa told her as much. She didn’t want to see it; she didn’t want to hear it. Which had only seemed to make the girl cry harder…

And she had tried to ignore it. She truly had. She had wandered away from the desk and out through the shop. Picking up little things that she thought that her sister, and her new sister-in-law, and her son might appreciate. The display of toy hippogriffs caught her eye, and she grabbed one of those for Jack. Making her way back up towards the front of the shop she rolled her eyes at the fact that the girl behind the counter was still sniffling. “Get out.”

There was no grand ceremony to it. There was nothing aggressive, or even hostile. But Narcissa slipped behind the counter herself and nodded towards the door. “Go on. If you can’t get it together, you can go. But you no longer work here either.” The petite blonde watched as the girl slid off of the stool at the cash register, tears still streaming down her cheeks. Icy blue eyes followed her all the way to the door, and there was a part of her that wanted to call her back. That wanted to tell her that whatever this was, she had her whole life ahead of her… Things could always get so much worse…