Chapter Text
CHAPTER ONE: Convenience & Duty
The first thing Narcissa noticed upon returning home was that Bellatrix had stopped wearing her wedding ring.
Not removed entirely—Bellatrix was far too proud for that. But she wore it on a chain now, tucked beneath high collars and sharp laughter, as though hiding the thing might somehow make the whispers stop. Bella’s marriage appeared to be collapsing with all the subtlety of a cursed cathedral.
And Hogwarts suddenly felt very far away.
Seven years spent buried in Arithmancy equations and advanced Charms theory had done little to prepare her for Grimmauld Place in the summer.
The house thrummed with tension now. Mother spoke exclusively in brittle courtesies and poisoned implications. Father had taken to drinking headache draughts with dinner.
It did not need to be said aloud for everyone to understand it:
the House of Black was beginning to rot from the inside out.
“Cissy!” Bellatrix squealed. “Oh, I’ve just been dying to see you!”
“Bella.” Narcissa barely looked up from the settee.
Bellatrix narrowed her eyes as she tucked her wand away.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” Narcissa lied.
Bellatrix raised an eyebrow at the youngest Black sister, hands on her hips.
“Cissy…” she whined. “I hope you’re not taking my marriage problems upon yourself.”
“Why would I?” Narcissa replied sarcastically, getting up from her comfy spot on the couch and sauntering towards the kitchen.
Bella sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.
The Dark Lord had changed her.
Bellatrix still laughed loudly, still loved fiercely, still carried herself with all the sharp arrogance expected of a Black—but there was something feverish beneath it now. Unstable. Like standing too close to cursed magic for too long.
Narcissa understood blood supremacy. She had been raised on it.
But murder—cold-blooded murder? It just didn’t sit right with Narcissa’s complexion.
“Narcissa.” Narcissa’s father, Cygnus, drawled.
“Father.” Narcissa held her head high.
Cygnus studied Bella carefully. Bellatrix had always possessed a nasty temper. The Dark Lord had simply sharpened it into something dangerous.
“Bella, dear. How is it going in the midst of the death-eater ranks? I sincerely hope you are doing our family name justice.”
“Indeed, father.” Bella replied curtly, though her hand had jumped to her wand instinctively.
Cygnus nodded. He opened his mouth as if to say something, something that clearly upset him deeply, but a shrill scream cut him off.
“CYGNUS!” Walburga shrieked.
Narcissa sighed, closing her eyes in exhaustion. Grimmauld Place might have been considerably more peaceful if the Blacks communicated exclusively through homicide.
“Oh, dear.” Cygnus replied before casting a disillusionment spell on himself. Narcissa giggled as he hid from his raging sister.
Walburga looked half-mad these days, all wild eyes and hastily pinned hair. She never did have time to comb her hair properly, not since she’d started following in the Dark Lord’s footsteps. A shrill cackle erupted from her as she addressed Bella.
“Mrs. Lestrange.” Walburga cracked a dastardly smirk at Bella. “Have you seen your father?”
Bella glanced at Narcissa, who had turned around, a hand clasped around her mouth as she tried to stifle a very obvious giggle. “I can’t say I have.”
Walburga narrowed her eyes at Bella and then at Narcissa, choosing not to acknowledge Narcissa’s existence. Walburga had always regarded Andromeda and Narcissa as disappointments—too soft where Bellatrix was sharp. Narcissa never minded it though, she truly had no liking for the madwoman Walburga was.
“Very well then.” Walburga promptly turned around before leaving the room, after which Narcissa erupted into laughter along with Bella. Narcissa could’ve sworn she hadn’t seen Bella smile in at least five years, ever since Vol—The Dark Lord rose into power.
Bella walked over to where Narcissa was standing in the kitchen, her hands placed on the counter. “Don’t worry yourself, Cissy. Please.”
Narcissa looked at the eldest Black sister.
“How could I not?” Narcissa replied sincerely, tears threatening to well up and drip down her face. “You’re the only sister I have left.”
“I can’t lose you too.” Narcissa whispered through a sob before Bella’s arms wrapped around Narcissa, comforting her with empty words and her practiced apologies.
Narcissa held onto her anyway.
————
As Narcissa sat down in the dining room, Kreacher appeared with a crack!
“Mistress Narcissa has arrived back home. She’s graced us with her presence. How lovely.” Kreacher rambled on. Narcissa reckoned he was going a bit mad, though compared to Bellatrix, Kreacher suddenly seemed remarkably sane. Narcissa had never liked him. Tolerated him at best.
“Now, now House-Elf! That’s no way to speak to your Mistress!” Druella drawled. Druella Black spoke with the careful precision of a woman terrified of wrinkles. Even her expressions seemed measured now, restrained into something elegant and bloodless.
Walburga sat down along with Bella. “Narcissa is hardly mistress material. The girl apologizes to house-elves.” Walburga mocked Narcissa.
Narcissa noticed Bella’s reluctance to comment on the matter. It was far too depressing.
“Bellatrix. Narcissa.” Cygnus greeted the sisters for the second time this evening.
The silverware clinked softly against porcelain. For one brief, miraculous moment, the dining room fell quiet. Narcissa took a measured sip from her goblet, already dreading whatever discussion her parents had clearly rehearsed beforehand. Blacks did not gather peacefully unless someone intended to ruin another person’s evening.
Unfortunately, she suspected tonight’s victim was her.
“Kreacher mentioned,” Druella began delicately, smoothing nonexistent wrinkles from the tablecloth beside her plate, “that several owls arrived for you while you were at Hogwarts.”
Narcissa blinked once. “How thrilling.”
Bellatrix snorted into her wine. Druella ignored her eldest daughter expertly.
“You are quite accomplished, darling,” Druella continued. “Top marks in Charms, advanced Arithmancy, excellent social standing—”
“And still unmarried,” Walburga interjected.
There it was. Narcissa set her goblet down carefully, a storm threatening to brew inside of her. “Tragic, truly. I imagine the Daily Prophet shall report upon it by morning.”
Cygnus exhaled slowly through his nose. “Narcissa,” he said in the tone of a man approaching a wild animal, “you are of age now.”
“Yes, Father. I was present for the graduation ceremony.”
Bellatrix choked on another laugh.
Walburga looked scandalized. “Must the girl always speak like she’s fencing?”
“It is preferable to listening to you speak at all,” Bellatrix muttered. Narcissa grinned fondly at Bella, the sister who had always stuck by her, no matter the cost. She was incorrigible and by extension, Narcissa no longer had to listen to their… conflicts with her sparkling personality.
“Bella,” Cygnus warned tiredly.
Druella dabbed elegantly at the corner of her mouth before continuing as though no one had spoken. “What your father means,” she said, “is that it is time to begin considering your future.”
Narcissa stared at her mother, devoid of emotions. “My future,” she repeated flatly.
“Yes,” Druella replied. “Your position. Your prospects. Your… suitability.”
How fascinating. They had somehow found three different ways to say marriage without actually saying it. Narcissa leaned back in her chair, rolling her eyes. “And here I was foolish enough to believe I possessed a personality.”
Walburga scoffed loudly. “A husband does not marry a personality.”
Bellatrix visibly grimaced at that. Something cold settled low in Narcissa’s stomach.
“Bellatrix married suitably,” Cygnus said carefully, choosing each word with painful precision. “Yet circumstances have… shifted.”
The room went still. Even Walburga had the decency not to elaborate. Rodolphus Lestrange’s… dalliances… had become impossible to hide. Pureblood society thrived on secrets right until it smelled blood in the water.
And Bella was bleeding publicly.
“The family requires stability,” Druella said at last. “A strong alliance would quiet speculation.”
An alliance. They didn’t care for her happiness or her well-being.
Semantics. Optics.
What worked for the House. Not for her.
Narcissa suddenly lost her appetite entirely.
“And if I decline?” she asked quietly.
Walburga barked out a laugh so sharp it bordered on cruel. And she was sat next to Bellatrix Lestrange.
“Oh, darling,” she said. “You were never going to be asked.”
Beside her, Bellatrix’s grip tightened around her wine glass hard enough to crack the stem slightly down the center. Cygnus noticed.
So did Narcissa.
“I believe I’ve lost my appetite.” Narcissa clenched her teeth, throwing the napkin off her lap with disdain.
“Narcissa—” Druella began.
“Excuse me.”
No one stopped her. That almost hurt more.
The corridors beyond the dining room felt colder than before. Grimmauld Place always seemed to breathe differently at night, its old floorboards groaning softly beneath centuries of Black family ghosts and bitterness.
Narcissa had nearly reached the staircase when voices rose sharply behind her.
“Isn’t one damaged child enough?” Bellatrix snapped.
Narcissa froze. Bella’s voice stopped her dead in her tracks. A part of her knew she mustn't eavesdrop. Would she defend her even when the curtains were drawn?
“Must you ruin another? Narcissa is a girl, not a piece of meat you second-rate barters.”
“Bellatrix,” Cygnus warned.
“It is upon our duty to the Black name—” Walburga began sharply.
“If Narcissa is unhappy, there is no House of Black!” Bellatrix hissed. “She is pure. You will not steal that from her by forcing her into a marriage.”
A brittle silence followed. Narcissa didn’t even notice her tears until she felt them roll off her face and onto her dress. Then Druella spoke softly.
“You’ve always had a soft spot for your younger sisters. First Andromeda and her filthy muggle husband, and now this.” Her voice cooled further. “Bella, you are losing your touch.”
“No,” Bellatrix replied coldly. “Mother. You are losing your mind.”
A chair scraped violently against the floor. Footsteps approached. Narcissa wiped quickly at her face, but Bellatrix appeared around the corner before she could compose herself fully.
Bella’s expression shifted instantly.
“Oh, Cissy,” she whispered.
And just like that, the fury vanished from her face entirely. Bellatrix crossed the corridor in seconds, cupping Narcissa’s cheeks carefully between cold hands.
“You heard that.”
Narcissa hated herself for how her lip trembled.
“I don’t want this,” she admitted quietly.
Something heartbreakingly human crossed Bellatrix’s face then.
Not the Dark Lord’s most loyal follower.
Not Bellatrix Lestrange.
Just her sister.
Bella pulled Narcissa into her arms immediately.
“I know,” she murmured into her hair. “I know.”
The familiar crack of Apparition split the corridor a moment later.
Narcissa’s chambers materialized around them in a blur of dark green silk and candlelight. Bellatrix released her slowly, one hand still wrapped tightly around Narcissa’s wrist as though afraid someone might drag her back downstairs by force. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Bella exhaled sharply through her nose.
“I’m going to kill Walburga one day,” she announced.
Despite herself, Narcissa let out a weak laugh, tainted by her quiet sobs. “That’s comforting.”
“I meant it affectionately.” Bellatrix pouted, snapping her fingers as two bottles of Firewhisky appeared on Narcissa’s bedside.
“That somehow makes it worse.”
Bellatrix guided her toward the edge of the bed and practically shoved her down onto the mattress before beginning to pace the room in restless circles. She looked furious in the way thunderstorms looked furious—beautiful and vaguely catastrophic.
“I knew they’d start this eventually,” Bella muttered. “But this soon?”
Narcissa stared at her hands. “I only just graduated.”
“Yes, well. Apparently surviving adolescence means they immediately begin selecting breeding stock.”
“Bella.”
“What?” Bellatrix snapped. “That is what this is.”
Narcissa flinched slightly at the bitterness in her sister’s voice. Bellatrix stopped pacing instantly.
“Oh.” Her expression softened with visible guilt. “Oh, sweetheart.”
Narcissa looked away quickly before another humiliating tear escaped. “I don’t understand why everyone acts as though this is normal,” she whispered. “Mother speaks about marriage like she’s discussing property acquisition.”
“She does discuss it like property acquisition.” Bellatrix snorted.
“That isn’t helping.” Narcissa snorted through a silent sob.
“No,” Bella admitted, wrapping her arms around Narcissa as she sat on her bed. “Probably not.”
Silence settled between them again, quieter this time. Bellatrix sat beside her at last, close enough for their shoulders to touch. “You know,” Bella said carefully, “when I married Rodolphus, I thought I was doing everything correctly.”
Narcissa blinked. Bellatrix rarely spoke about her marriage at all.
“At first he was charming,” Bella continued distantly. “Attentive. Clever. He listened when I spoke.” Her mouth twisted. “Mostly because he enjoyed hearing himself agree with me.”
Narcissa stayed very still.
“And then?”
“And then we married.”
Something cold crept down Narcissa’s spine. Bella laughed once under her breath, humorless and sharp.
“The funny thing is,” she murmured, “he still thinks he owns me.”
“But he doesn’t,” Narcissa said immediately, her eyes widening.
Bellatrix turned toward her slowly. For the first time that evening, she smiled properly.
“No,” she agreed softly. “He doesn’t.”
The room fell quiet save for the crackling fireplace.
Narcissa swallowed hard. “Were you happy?”
Bellatrix didn’t answer immediately.
She huffed. “I think I could have been.”
That hurt worse somehow. Narcissa curled her hands tighter into the fabric of her skirts. “I don’t want to wake up one day and realize my life belongs to someone else.”
Bella’s expression darkened instantly.
“It won’t.”
“How can you promise that?”
“Because,” Bellatrix said, voice suddenly deadly calm, “I will murder him.”
Narcissa stared at her, unmoving.
Bella blinked once. “What? Don’t make that face. It’s a perfectly reasonable contingency plan.”
A startled laugh escaped Narcissa before she could stop it.
“There she is,” Bellatrix said quietly.
The laughter faded quickly enough though, fading into the heavy fate that awaited Narcissa.
“What if they force me into it anyway?”
Bellatrix leaned back against the headboard, eyes fixed somewhere distant.
“They probably will.”
Honesty. Brutal and immediate. Very Bella.
Narcissa felt tears sting again.
“But,” Bellatrix continued, “that does not mean they get to decide who you become afterward.”
Narcissa frowned slightly.
Bella reached over, taking Narcissa’s chin between two fingers and forcing her to look up.
“Listen to me carefully, Cissy.” Her dark eyes sharpened. “Marriage is survivable. Men are survivable. Pureblood society is survivable.”
A pause.
“But only if you never let them convince you to become smaller.”
Something in Narcissa’s chest tightened painfully. “I don’t think I’m like you.”
Bellatrix barked out a laugh.
“Thank Merlin for that. Imagine two maniacs in this family. I think Father would be having a heart attack on the daily.”
“I’m serious.” Narcissa pouted, playfully smacking her sister on the shoulder.
“So am I.” Bella brushed a pale strand of hair behind Narcissa’s ear. “You think strength only looks like violence because that’s what this family worships.”
Narcissa looked unconvinced. Bellatrix’s smile turned faintly sad.
“But you,” she murmured, “you’ve always been the one thing none of us ever managed to be.”
“What’s that?”
“Kind.”
Narcissa almost protested instinctively. Bellatrix didn’t let her.
“And do not mistake that for weakness,” Bella said sharply. “The world certainly will. Let them.” Her mouth curved slightly. “Makes it easier to destroy expectations later.”
Bellatrix stayed until Narcissa’s breathing finally steadied, each taking sips from the bottle of Firewhisky Bellatrix conjured until they were both drunk enough to forget the night existed.
Neither of them mentioned the tears drying stiff against Narcissa’s cheeks. Neither mentioned the fact that Bellatrix still held her hand loosely between both of hers, thumb brushing absentminded circles into her skin like Narcissa was still small enough to soothe with touch alone.
For all her sharp edges, Bella had always loved with her entire body. It was a rare occasion for her to love, she had barely found it in her to love Andromeda and yet, she still did. It was one of the few things the Dark Lord had not yet managed to carve out of her.
At the doorway, Bellatrix paused.
“If they try to marry you off to someone intolerable,” she declared, one hand already on the knob, “I reserve the right to hex him sterile.”
“Bella.”
“What?” she asked innocently. “You said you wished for independence.”
Despite herself, Narcissa laughed softly. Bellatrix smiled at the sound, something warm and fleeting softening her face for half a heartbeat.
Then the expression vanished beneath practiced arrogance once more.
“Goodnight, Cissy.”
“Goodnight.”
The door clicked shut behind her. Silence settled over the room almost immediately.
Narcissa stared at the canopy overhead for several long moments, listening to the distant creaks and groans of Grimmauld Place around her. The house never truly slept. Old magic lingered in the walls like dust trapped beneath floorboards, heavy with generations of Black tempers and Black daughters and Black mistakes.
Somewhere downstairs, Walburga was likely still shouting. Narcissa imagined Cygnus hiding behind another Disillusionment Charm and nearly smiled.
The smile faded quickly.
Marriage.
The word sat unpleasantly in her chest, too heavy for something spoken so casually over dinner tables and tea cups. She rolled onto her side slowly, drawing her knees toward her chest before her fidgety anxiousness forced her to roll out of bed. She started to change into her nightwear.
Bellatrix had once believed in marriage. That part unsettled her most.
Bella had not once been soft—not even as a girl—but she had been alive in ways she no longer seemed capable of now. Loud laughter. Sharp smiles. Dramatic declarations whispered long past midnight while Narcissa pretended to sleep beside her during childhood summers.
Bella had once spoken about love as though it were something worth destroying kingdoms for. Now she wore her wedding ring hidden beneath her throat.
Narcissa closed her eyes tightly. Perhaps that was the true horror of pureblood marriages. Not the cruelty. Not the infidelity. Not even the control.
It was the slow erosion. The way women disappeared inch by inch until only titles remained.
Mrs. Lestrange.
Lady Black.
Wife.
Mother.
Useful things.
Decorative things.
Interchangeable things.
Narcissa swallowed hard against the sudden tightness in her throat. She did not want to disappear. The thought came quietly, but once it surfaced, it refused to leave.
She wanted—
What did she want?
Not marriage. Children, perhaps. Though every pureblood girl was expected to produce them eventually like heirloom roses cultivated carefully in greenhouse rows, she wanted a child made out of love. Not politics. The men could keep their endless games of influence and blood purity and whispered threats behind crystal glasses.
No.
Narcissa wanted something terribly selfish.
Freedom, perhaps.
Or at the very least, the illusion of it.
She wanted libraries large enough to lose herself inside. Sunlit conservatories. Long conversations about magic that did not end the moment a man entered the room. She wanted to pursue her Charms Mastery properly without being looked at as though she’d suggested employment in Knockturn Alley.
Merlin forbid a Black daughter possess ambitions beyond producing heirs.
A bitter laugh escaped her quietly into the darkness. The worst part was that she understood her parents. Bellatrix’s marriage was crumbling publicly. Andromeda had ‘disgraced’ them. The Black name, once untouchable, now lingered dangerously close to scandal.
Narcissa was meant to fix it. Beautiful, accomplished, obedient Narcissa Black. The last respectable daughter. Something cold settled low in her stomach.
She wondered suddenly if Bellatrix had once sat awake exactly like this before marrying Rodolphus.
Wondering whether fear always felt this much like grief. Outside her bedroom windows, rain had begun to fall softly against the glass. Narcissa listened to it for a while.
Then, very quietly, she whispered into the dark:
“I don’t want to belong to someone.”
And somewhere far below her, deep within the old bones of Grimmauld Place, something groaned like a living thing.