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Narcissa really never anticipated it to go this far–it referring to the asinine, preposterous, downright blasphemous makings of the sherry-addled columnists down at Witch Weekly, what with their whorish appetites for gossip.
When she had first heard the rumors–accompanied by the hidden smiles and stifled taunts–she was too shocked to be enraged. The rumor was so utterly unfounded, and so beneath her station in its crudeness, that Narcissa had honestly been more prepared to hear that she had left a witness from the last war unsilenced, and her husband was going to prison after all. But nothing like–like this!
She dreaded that her husband, in all his obliviousness, would finally catch on. Surely, the day must come–even if she traded all the coins in the Malfoy vault for luck, one day the reservoir would run dry. The dread clawing at the base of her stomach like some demoniac baby worsened with each passing day. It, like a canker, was eating her inside out.
So, when she answered the door that night with all the enthusiasm as one headed towards her grave might muster, it was with a dip in her stomach and a relief when she saw his face.
In that moment, she knew that he knew and he knew that she–because Merlin save him, Lucius, despite all his pride, could never hide his feelings from her.
Narcissa found herself sitting in her usual seat opposite him at the dining table. In the glances she stole in his direction, she gleaned nothing new in his cold expression nor in the tautness in his movements as he sliced juicy flesh with more force than warranted, scraping knife against plate. She felt all the fool for it. Still, he spoke not a word. She washed away the guilt lingering on her sides by downing a glass. Unable to tolerate it any longer, Narcissa ventured,
“Is the venison to your liking?”
“It is fine.”
Narcissa, though she would later attribute this to the pinot noir, was emboldened to continue. “I’ve heard that the Greengrasses are finally letting go of their groundskeeper after they caught him stashing goblets in the glasshouse–”
An abrupt clash rang out as he dropped his knife onto the table. “I do not care,” grunted Lucius, “about the going-ons of other houses, so much as for my own house.”
Narcissa’s cheeks were tinged slightly pink; she knew that she had been merely babbling to fill the silence, but she could not deny that perverse thrill. She took another sip and sniffed,
“Where is the elf?”
Now, she had really done it. Lucius shifted his glare from the gilded centerpiece to boring into her eyes. When he spoke, it was with a curl in his lip that Narcissa had never seen directed at her; she wondered if she should welcome the novelty.
“He was dismissed.” He stiffly returned to massacring his dinner. “Loyalty is a trait scarce to be found these days.”
A few months prior, when the shock of the rumor wore off, Narcissa knew that affording her husband a chance to even hear of it was unthinkable. It was lucky that he was too proud to read beyond 'Meryl's Maintenance for Magnificent Manes' section of the magazine–but Narcissa knew that even smothered between glossy pages of sickening advertisements and star-crossed trysts, there could be a spark. Oh, even if she swore otherwise to her grave, she took a pleasure, rosy glass in hand, in seeing unfettered gossip burn down other houses; there was a certain beauty to it.
She had wanted to take her husband on a trip to their countryside manor, perhaps, until it had all settled down. Now that it was too late–undoubtedly that creature had something to do with it–she wondered if the flames would look so beautiful, swallowing her house whole.
“Lucius,” she tried placatingly, although she had no idea what she was going to say next.
“Damn!” She looked up, and saw Lucius had toppled his goblet, staining his starched sleeve crimson. Narcissa, albeit awkwardly, rushed to his side and found herself wishing for the second time since having to summon their supper that they still had their elf. As she tried to dab the color out with a handkerchief, he dismissed her futile ministrations with a wave of his hand. Up close, she could see the blood pooling beneath his cheeks.
She was there, like a fish in a net caught unawares, humiliated and wondering if she should stay or flee. There was that space again.
“I don’t know what it told you–”, she started, with some difficult resolve.
“Oh, you know very well.”
Narcissa flushed red, then white. While it was true that she had kept her share of lovers, she would truthfully rather die than bed Peter Pettigrew. So to even suggest that she had gone so far as to carry his son as the rumors went–she was brought to life once more by that familiar outrage. Her voice cracked with a touch of hysteria at the absurdity of it all.
“Don’t you dare insinuate–”
“What, that my wife is a wanton? Or that my only son-”
“I can prove it! I had the tests done when he was only a little thing in my womb!” she shrieked, and regretted it instantly.
“And why, my dear, did you have them done in the first place, if you had no reason to doubt the root the branch sprang from?” Lucius was all frost, and she hated the bristle in his voice and the grim understanding in his eyes. “Oh, I don't mean him–there's no need to look at me this way, I understand you have standards. But what of Rodolphus, or Rowle? I can picture you in all your anxieties then, Narcissa, and your relief when you knew–but no matter. I do not doubt Draco’s parentage,” he barked a laugh, an awful sounding thing, suggesting that he had not gone blind and could yet see that his son was a carbon copy of himself.
He excused himself, and left early the next morning probably to tongue-kiss Nott she could not help thinking. Weeks passed and her gardens became pregnant with life, and she began running out of answers to give when her son came home and asked where his father went. But when she began absently wondering if he would ever come back to stare at her opposite the table, he did.
He pretended, and she pretended, and only Draco, her naive, green boy whom she would never let become a death eater questioned why. He pretended while she knew that he probably preferred men. She knew that he loved her as she once loved him, and that he loves power and so should she--but was love enough to fill the space stretched between them?
If Lucius could close his eyes and still his heart when he heard her softly beckon ‘you can come out now’ to her closet when he left her chambers at night, then so could she. Sometimes, in the privacy of the dark, she wondered if she and him would go around and around pretending while their house burned up in smoke.