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The day Narcissa Malfoy’s perfect little world came to an abrupt end was the day two letters arrived. They were green envelopes, closed with a golden wax seal from the Department of Magical Minors; a small subsection of the Department of Magical Affairs.
It was a proclamation, she understood in an instant. Green envelopes were used for joyous occasions, and usually denoting some sort of addition to the family tree when it came to letters from the Department of Magical Minors. Black envelopes were used when there was a death involving a magical minor; a notice of bereavement. All other correspondence from that department came in the usual cream-coloured envelope.
There were two green envelopes, golden ink declaring them to be for the recipients Narcissa Malfoy and Lucius Malfoy respectively.
Curious, she raised an eyebrow at her husband. He was sitting opposite her in the tearoom, permitting the ministry’s owl to linger on the rest they had there for delivery owls. “Have any of your family written to inform you of any new additions?” she asked, staring at him curiously, mind racing as she wondered just what the proclamations were for.
“They’ve come from the British Ministry,” her husband informed her, reaching for the nearest letter opener, if only to crack the mystery open and put an end to their curiosity. “Any correspondence from my family would at least bear the stamp of the French Ministry if the seal were British… Though it would usually be the other way around, unless someone was rifling through our mail at the ministry.”
“And we know they would never do that, unless they want us to kick up a fuss,” she murmured, nibbling at her scone then, even as Lucius opened the letter he had received, and his face turned ashen. “What is it, dear?” she asked, frowning at him until he spun the letter around so she could read it.
“A Proclamation… for a godparent contract,” he answered, even as her eyes fixed on the name written there on the letter.
Draco Rigel Potter.
Her eye twitched at that. “This has Sirius’s grubby little hands all over it,” she muttered, eyes narrowing as she snatched her own letter up and pried the seal loose. It took her a few moments to read its contents properly, and her heart all but iced up as she read the entirety of that letter from start to finish. “It would appear I have befallen the same fate… only for a different child, it would seem.”
“Well, we have no other names for them to steal for their own children,” Lucius muttered, evidently somewhat irritated by the fact that both his son and his apparent godson shared the same first name. Sometimes he was petty like that, and it was infinitely amusing to watch at times.
Yet that moment wasn’t one of those times.
“Well, they say imitation is the highest form of flattery,” she said, the smile falling from her lips as she wondered then, if the mudblooded bitch knew exactly what she had done by giving her a goddaughter. “Do you think that mudblood knew what she was doing when she gave me a goddaughter?” she asked, wondering then, if it would have been better for her to have been made the godparent of the male twin.
It was no secret that she had longed for a daughter – and yet having Draco had been hard enough on her body, and the Mediwitch had pronounced her unable to carry another child to term shortly after. She could have no more children, not even the daughter she had once sobbed over the thought of never having. And the fact that her son would never have a sibling of either sex to grow up alongside. Her teeth clenched, part of her almost wishing then that Potter and his mudblood would drop dead so she could have another child to raise.
“That sly bitch,” she murmured then, knowing in an instant what had been done. “We’re bound to protect them…”
“What?” Lucius asked, eyes looking oddly owlish, even as he set his own letter down to one side.
“The Dark Lord didn’t spare the Bones’ children,” she said matter-of-factly, expression grim as she realised that they would have to straddle a line when it came to their newfound godparent duties. “Do you really think he would spare the Potter children?” she asked, tilting her head. “They’re the children of his enemies, just as the Bones’ children were…”
Lucius blinked. “You mean to say… that I might have to defy the Dark Lord, should he come to target the Potter Family?” he echoed, looking terrified at the prospect – something that Narcissa could hardly blame him for. There was only so long she could blindly look up to their Dark Lord after seeing her husband face crucio after crucio should he ever dare to fail a mission.
She remembered the latest failure – something which her sister Bella had gleefully informed the Dark Lord of upon their return – when Lucius had hesitated before the crib of a muggle child who had resembled their own newborn just a little too much for comfort. Though how a muggle child could look anything like their precious little dragon was another question entirely.
“I can hardly believe Sirius had it in him to come up with a plan like this,” she muttered, wondering then, if there was anything vaguely resemblant of a snake beneath those Gryffindor colours he’d once worn with such pride.
“Well who else could have?” Lucius murmured, and Narcissa didn’t need to be a legilimens to know that her husband was undoubted swearing in fluent French in the back of his mind. “Now we just have to… come up with a semblance of a plan for how exactly we’re going to get ourselves out of this situation alive,” he muttered, looking far more troubled than he had before the first owl of the day had reached them with those terrible green envelopes.
There was a deep throb in her chest, a jarring feeling that she needed to be somewhere all of a sudden. “Lucius,” she muttered.
“I feel it too – it’s the godparent contract,” he said, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt. “I can’t go,” he said, hand straying to the forearm that Narcissa knew was marked. “You know what the Dark Lord will do… but you’re the unmarked one of us. He can’t track you and recognise you as he can me,” he told her, reminding her of the barest indication of a plan that they had come up with some months prior. “Go.”
The iron-clad bond in her chest tugged once more, and Narcissa twisted sharply on her feet, apparating then to a quaint little street. It was a place she had only been able to reach thanks to the odd strength there was to the bond connecting her to one Rose Lily Potter; her daughter, if not in blood. Even Lucius’s tenuous bond to one Draco Rigel Potter wasn’t as strong as the one she held, and she wondered then if it were her wish for a daughter which had strengthened that contract between her and the Potter’s daughter.
She hurried towards the house with the broken door, all but flying up the path, onto the porch and into the house. Anti-apparition wards settled over her skin, yet they were weak – an indicator that the one who had laid them was likely dead and no longer able to power those wards. It wasn’t as if there would have been time to set up a wardstone to anchor those wards to.
Her heartbeat became slightly less frantic, the knowledge that somehow, bizarrely the Dark Lord was dead making her that much less apprehensive about entering the house.
The stairs creaked as she climbed up them, haste making her abandon all pretence of stealth as she reached the nursery room. It was a fairly large room – not quite as large as their Draco’s room – but considering there were a grand total of seven cots within the space it was somewhat warranted. “Seven,” she mouthed then, spying a grand total of six babies within that room, and a pile of adult-size robes gathered in a sad-looking puddle. A familiar wand rested within those robes, pale yew wood with a phoenix feather core, she knew. The Dark Lord’s wand.
She pulled her hood back, staring at the inky black tendrils which were curled protectively around the six children who were in that ruined nursery. Magic did strange things at times, and she wondered if there was some aspect to the Potter’s line which caused their descendants to sprout eldritch-looking tentacles. The rest of the room looked relatively normal in spite of the eldritch-ness. There was even a hole in the roof, and Narcissa was only glad it wasn’t raining.
She paused then, eyes finding the corpse of the mudblood lying on the ground – but in that moment, all she saw was a dead mother. A parent who had died trying to protect her children; something she had succeeded with, because all her children were seemingly alive and well, if not all of them conscious right then and there.
“A pity,” she murmured, part of her reeling in disbelief at the idea that she was pitying a mudblood. The people her family had sworn were sheep to be led; creatures who existed at the lowest rungs of society. “She was a fool to face him without a wand, but I suppose as a fellow mother… I suppose I could respect her for that much, disgustingly muggle as she was…” she said, a sneer contorting her face as she reminded herself of who Lily Potter was. She pulled her gaze away from the cooling corpse, staring then at the array of strangely-coloured children. Her eyes caught on the pink hair, part of her musing that the mudblood had named them far too simply to prevent her from recognising her goddaughter. “Did she honestly not think I wouldn’t be able to figure out which one of you is my goddaughter?” she asked, eyes straying back to the dead body in the room, even as she reached for her Rose Potter.
The distinct creak of the stairs came, and she froze, head whipping around as her ears caught the sounds of another person there in the house. She moved without much thought, tearing through the remnants of the anti-apparition wards as she made her way hope, feeling bereft of the children she should have – by all rights be taking home alongside her.
The hallway was dark – and that was the first sign which had her reaching for her wand. Before she had left, the corridors had been lit with runestone; little lights which had the ceiling looking as though they were studded with stars. Those had winked out, and the house was freezing, fingers shaking as she held her wand out in front of her, breath misting in the air in front of her.
“Lumos,” she intoned softly, the orb of soft light providing the illumination she needed to see the veritable nest of vines which were slithering about the walls and ceilings like snakes. She could see no spell controlling it, no defined pattern to the way they were moving even as she made her way to the study where she had been taking her evening tea with Lucius before the Potter fiasco. “Lucius?” she called, growing more nervous with each passing minute, because something was drastically wrong and she couldn’t figure out exactly what.
“Cissa,” he called back, voice high with the note of nerves, and cautiously, she made her way closer to the study, eyes tracing those vines as they writhed and moved along the walls and ceilings. Part of her was only gratefully they weren’t sliding over the floor and blocking her way. Which meant whatever was afoot wanted to be found, she mused, stepping into the study room and finding her husband sitting in the same chair she had left him in. “Be careful how you speak,” he warned, not even looking at her as his gaze remained fixed on the chair with its back to her currently.
“Oh,” a soft, lilting voice came, and Narcissa felt tears pool in her eyes – because that was the loveliest voice she had ever heard. “This is your mate, then,” the creature in the room with them said, pale bare feet seeming to glimmer in the moonlight as it climbed to its feet. “I do forget what you humans call your… beloveds… though I suppose it has been a long time since one of my kindred came to visit the new world.”
Oh Circe. Narcissa stiffened, feeling as though a block of ice had just been shoved down the back of her neck as she stared at the almost delicate figure, a perfectly symmetrical face with poisonous yellow-green eyes staring back at her. “To what do we owe your visit?” she asked, barely hiding her nerves as she stared at a creature which had long since fallen into folktales and myth.
It smiled, sharp canines revealing themselves from behind bow-shaped lips. “Seven is such a curious number, do you not think?” it murmured, and Narcissa glanced down at the vines curling around her ankles almost playfully. “For the old world it symbolises destruction or rebirth and renewal. What do you suppose these seven will bring?”
“The children…” she mumbled, realising then exactly what that fae creature was referring to. There had been seven cots in the Potter’s house, after all. Seven cots for seven children.
“Yes. Them,” the creature answered. “Do you finally understand just how important they are now, hmm?” A smile curled at its lips. “Important enough to obtain our attention when we’ve been content to leave your kindred alone for centuries.”
She swallowed then, fear thick in her throat because the creature before her; the fae thing which had slipped through whatever boundary separated their world from theirs. “And what do you request of us?”
“I cannot find them,” it answered. “Not through the usual methods. I suspect their mother had something to do with that. A pity it will be too late to bind her spirit now that she has passed… Then I could have all the answers I wish for,” it murmured, and Narcissa almost found herself pitying Lily Potter once more. “Though I suppose that is besides the point, no? I am not the only one who felt their awakening on this plane. Others have come, at least one intent on killing them before they can mature. You are bound to protect them, yes?” Those yellow-green eyes were suddenly far too close to her own. “I have a vested interest in their prolonged survival as well.”
Narcissa blinked, not quite certain of what she should say right then and there. “I… see,” she remarked, not giving anything else away.
It was going to be a long night, she understood, dread clawing at the eaves of her stomach as she slowly slunk across the room to sit in the chair beside her husband. A long night, indeed.