The Tale of Three Sisters

Chapter 2: Risks

Selected Listening: Breathe (2 AM)- Anna Nalick

December 1972

Narcissa Black

It was an absolutely dreadful evening at the Black Family Estate. Narcissa returned home to find her father, slumped over in a chair, drunk in slumber, while the echoes of her sister's tumultuous argument echoed from upstairs. She removed her shoes and ascended the dark, wood stairs as quietly as she could.

"You don't even love him. Don't marry him!" Andromeda shouted at Bella.

"He made a reasonable offer. I agreed. Love wasn't a part of it."

"He's who you're spending the rest of your life with...it should be about love!"

"What matters is my happiness. While it's not ideal, it will make me happy to have the power of the Lestrange family name and a place in the Dark Lord's new regime."

Narcissa paused at the door frame. There was a silence. She decided it was not a good time to mention her engagement status.

"So that's what this is about! That awful man who keeps killing muggle-borns—"

"Why won't you say mudblood? You used to say it! Ever since that stupid Hufflepuff—"

"No, I won't say it, because it's a blood slur. It's hateful! We shouldn't be killing our own kind. There's only so many of us left. This Dark Lord, or whatever absurd name he wants to call himself, is making it worse."

Narcissa wondered if she should reveal herself, but she found her feet stuck solidly to the floor. Her bedroom door hung open a few feet away, but it the tears in her eyes blurred it. She tried to remember the last time her sisters were happy together, but those memories were lost in a sea of competition and pain, jealousy and shouting.

"I intend to crush anyone who steps in the way of wizards regaining their rightful place in the world. There's no reason we should have to hide in our homes, praying that the daft muggles don't find us and try to burn us again! We should be ruling them! All of them!"

"You didn't used to say these kinds of things." Andromeda's voice broke.

"Not out loud, anyway." Bellatrix corrected apathetically.

"One muggle killed mother, Bella. Not the whole world."

"I'm sorry, was one not enough for you?"

Narcissa found comfort crying into her pillow that night, and she awoke to a tapping. Obsidian, Lucius's owl, sat at her window, holding a scroll tied up with emerald ribbon. She went to the window and opened it. The mottled owl handed her the scroll, flew to an empty perch she had in the corner, and began pruning.

Narcissa,

Please find enclosed the original documentation of the Malfoy family wards. The calligraphy is old, but most is still legible.

Sincerely,

Lucius Malfoy

It took her all morning to read through the parchment, at least six feet in length, written by an old quivering hand. She picked it apart, although many wordings she didn't understand. It was old English. The Malfoys came from a long line of politicians, and they found enjoyment in verbose paperwork.

Some of it seemed standard. Protective spells and requirements of pureblood lineage for any woman marrying into the family. She noticed it didn't mention the same requirements for men marrying into the family, which she thought was odd until she read further into the document.