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apollaHave a Sirius/Narcissa ficlet from the realms of Daoimear de Dan for you. Enjoy or not, according to taste.
It might be important for you to note/remember that DDD was written before OotP and gave Narcissa very specific genealogy. She was not born a Black, but has married into what remains of the mischievous and cocky house of Black. Although Andromeda and Bellatrix are indeed Sirius' cousins and he had a brother Regulus, Narcissa is not part of that family. She is in fact, the cousin of George Richards, dead hero and Maura's One True Love. However, she is also, through her maternal line, descended from the Borgias, a dark pureblood family.
Oh yeah, and cos it was pre-OotP, Sirius AIN'T dead!
Chapter Summary: Because everyone has shadows in their past and everyone sees the shades of grey.
*
Black. White. Shades of Grey.
Dogstar, Alderley Edge, Cheshire. November 2011.
"You're mental, woman!"
"Not half as off my trolley as you are!"
Sirius and Narcissa Black's arguments always ended up plumbing the depths of adolescent insults. She'd always thought it was because it was easier that way, because then it was never entirely serious. After far too many years feeling nothing but serious, it was a nice change.
They'd only been married for eight years, but it always felt like much longer. It was probably something to do with them having known each other for so many years. Was it since they were eleven, or before?
She remembered now: Salome Parkinson's fifth birthday. Sirius and Narcissa were both eight years old. It was one of Narcissa's first run-ins with the snooty pureblood set- her father, upright and moral Roger Richards, had managed to keep his precious girl away from the nastier elements of the magical world. Her mother Bathsheba, on the other hand, was a Borgia through and through, and was more than happy to have her precious girl mixing with the Parkinsons, Borgias, Malfoys, Blacks and other 'Pureblood and Proud' families.
It turned out that Narcissa didn't much enjoy spending her day with the snobby children. Although it had been Salome Parkinson's birthday, only two people stood out in her mind. The first was an older boy, who stood out for his complete, flat-out refusal to join in with the little kids. He was clearly there under duress and made no effort to disguise his contempt for the proceedings. Narcissa remembered two things about him clearly: his sneer and his shining, golden hair. She hadn't spoken to Lucius Malfoy that day, but remembered him vividly just the same.
The other was a boy only eleven days older than Narcissa, but just as unhappy to be there as Lucius. Although he was wearing the same kind of fancy dress robes as every other child, his looked so much scruffier, as if he'd slept in them for two days before coming to the party. His black hair was messy and he had ink on his hands. She remembered the ink on his fingers well, and being shocked that anyone would be happy to walk around like that. He wasn't at all happy about being at the party, but where Lucius Malfoy sat quietly sneering, this boy chose to wreak havoc instead. His mother had been forced to take him home, while his little brother stayed behind and got cake. Narcissa knew even then, that the black haired boy had got exactly what he wanted. He always did.
Almost always, anyway.
***
"I don't see why this is such a problem!" Narcissa yelled at Sirius, who made a derisive sort of snorting sound.
"It's a problem because you want to take my son to the grave of one of Voldemort's groupies instead of going to the Burrow for Halloween!"
"My mother was NOT one of Voldemort's groupies!" she shrieked, vaguely aware that this was not going to be the sort of argument that was resolved by willingly descending to childish banter.
"No? What do you call an addled minded old broad who kills herself the day after her precious Dark Lord was defeated by baby Harry Potter?"
"She believed in what he believed in, not the methods!"
"Just like every other pureblood. After Voldemort lost," Sirius sniped.
"Perhaps so, but she was my mother, Sirius!" she shouted. "My mother! She wasn't perfect, and I never agreed with her about that stuff, but she was my mother nonetheless."
"A bad one, if you ask me."
"I didn't ask you," she said tartly. "It's been thirty years. I just want to see her. I hardly ever go down there these days."
"Fine, but why do you have to take Jamie?"
"Because it's his grandmother! I just want him to see the stone. Just once, so at least he knows he had a grandmother!"
"You don't see me dragging him to the Black crypt to prove the existence of a grandmother."
"I know. But I never hated my mother."
"Well more fool you," he shouted, and she knew she'd crossed a line bringing his mother into it. There was only one rule to talking about Sirius' family: don't. Still, she was determined on this point.
"I'm taking him down there and there isn't a thing you can do about it!"
"Why can't you go the day after? The day your bloody mother actually died!"
"Because, as you well know, Jamie has school that day! I can't just pull him out of school!"
"So go on your own!"
"Don't make me explain again, Sirius!"
"What do you care about some bloody Borgia anyway? Bunch of inbred, bigoted, evil and semi-evil... morons!"
"How dare you!"
"Like you care about the Borgias! Come on, you know you don't! What's this about?"
"She was my mother, Sirius! I loved her! After my dad died, she was all I had."
"She sold you to Lucius Malfoy!"
"No she didn't!"
"Might as well have. Waited until your dad died and then swooped."
"How dare you!"
"Are you going to stand there and tell me you married Malfoy entirely of your own free will?"
Silence. This question had been hanging over their heads for many years- perhaps since she resumed her relationship with Sirius after the war, or perhaps even since the moment she married Malfoy in 1978. Sirius had not had the courage to ask it, and she had not had the courage to answer it.
"No," she replied. He looked visibly relieved. "But if you want me to tell you I was miserable from the moment I married him to the moment I left him, I can't do that."
"What?" All the air seemed to be sucked out Sirius' lungs.
"I can't stand here and tell you I hated every second, because I didn't. Did I dislike him? Intensely. Always? No. There were a few times, in the beginning, when I liked him. Not loved, never loved. I allowed myself to be happy with my lot, especially after Lily and James died, and you ended up in Azkaban. I didn't want to marry him, that's true. But I was not miserable for twenty whole years. It was only later that it got truly horrible. I can't tell you I hated it all the time, because I didn't. I can't tell you that I didn't like the carefree life of the idle rich, of the society wife. I did, for a while. More than that, I had Draco, and when he was at home with me, life was never truly awful."
"Malfoy used to put you under Imperious to go out! When he let you out, that is."
"I know," she said with a heavy sigh, wondering what she could say to make her feelings clear. "I'll never forgive him for the things he did to me. The only truly good thing he ever did for me was letting the isolation charms at Azkaban incinerate him. It might have been the last of many cowardly acts, but it gave me my complete freedom."
"You're unbelievable! You liked him?" Sirius was apparently still on the earlier point.
"He could be considerate sometimes. I didn't realise at the time it was a sham. I was young, Sirius! When he said he loved me, I believed him! I didn't ever return the feelings, although I parroted the words back to him convincingly enough. And this is what this is all about, isn't it?"
"What?"
"You don't care whether I go to my mother's grave or not. You care that she's the one who arranged for me to marry Lucius. I've been married to you for years and you're still jealous of a murdering, wife-beating, child-abusing bastard I came to truly hate and despise!"
"But you liked him?" he repeated.
"Yes! Fine, I admit it! When Draco was very young, our life wasn't all bad. Voldemort was gone, so I didn't have to face the knowledge that my husband was a Death Eater. I had a beautiful son I loved more than life itself. What else was there? My parents were both dead. You were locked up, my best friend was dead and her son was who-knew-where. I resigned myself to it, I suppose. How do you think I feel now, knowing that there was a time I was contented to live that life? How do you think it feels now, knowing that once upon a time, I thought he was a decent enough man?"
Narcissa was sure she'd never been this angry. Not ever before. Sirius seemed just as surprised. She continued to speak.
"I hate him, Sirius! He made the rest of my life a misery, which makes those happy times all the worse! I hate him! You know what, I do hate that my mother set me up with him, but I loved her for other things! She wasn't some fairytale evil witch, she was my mother! I hated some of the things she did and almost everything she stood for, but I loved her because she was my mother!"
After her outburst, Narcissa found that she couldn't bear to be around him any longer, still glaring at her. She picked up her cloak and stormed out into the garden. She didn't linger on the patio, but kept right on walking. She kept on walking right to the edge of the vast lawn. There, under the shade of an oak tree, she sat down and began to cry.
***
Thoughts swirled around in her head, fighting for her attention. The struggles and contradictions she'd fought so long to keep under had made their way to the forefront of her consciousness and she couldn't bear it.
She'd never understood how her mild-mannered, liberal-minded father had ended up with her mother and understood even less how they seemed to love each other. As a child she'd certainly loved them both, but by the time she was at Hogwarts, she thought of her mother as something of a prejudiced harridan. She wasn't lying to Sirius when she said she loved her mother, but she also knew that she was defending Bathsheba more than she really wanted to. She wasn't lying when she said she loved her mother, but she disagreed with everything her mother had ever stood for.
She hadn't been lying when she told Sirius there were times she'd liked her life with Lucius. It was hard for her to explain it to him, because it was hard to understand it herself. She felt guilty for having felt contented with her life at one point. Not really for very long, and she knew full well that what came after it cancelled out any good. That's why she felt guilty she supposed, for remembering that it hadn't always been gut-wrenching horror, that she hadn't always recoiled at her husband's mere look. For once believing that he really had been coerced into working for Voldemort. Perhaps for being persuaded into marriage in the first place. For not getting out of it earlier. For being as passive as she was in regards to his tutelage of Draco. She hadn't known at the time where it was leading, but she was not a fool and remembered suspecting.
Everything had changed in 1991. The return of Harry Potter to the wizarding world had started a chain reaction that culminated in the war, and for her, in leaving her husband. She loved Harry for that, for enabling her to leave the life she had not wanted to begin with and the life she had come to hate. She loved Harry even more for the world he created that allowed her son to find the courage to stand up to his father and then move on from it.
Sirius would never understand the conflict she had inside her. She loved him dearly, but everything was black and white for him. He hated his mother, his father and his brother. He hated Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew. He hated Lucius Malfoy. He loved Narcissa and Jamie. He loved James, Lily and Remus. He loved Harry. He hated bad things and liked good things. He didn't understand, simply could not understand, how she could love her mother. Perhaps his parents had been so truly awful that there had been nothing to love (she wouldn't be surprised- she had met Mrs Black as a child) and so he could not conceive of there being anything to love about Bathsheba.
Everything in black and white. She envied that element of his personality. She would love for her thoughts and feelings to be so easy. That way she could choose to hate her mother for her archaic, bigoted views and the trust she put in Voldemort to solve the 'problem'. She could then forget all about the granite gravestone bearing the name Bathsheba Borgia Richards, forget she ever had a mother. That would be easy. It would not be true. Ultimately, Narcissa would always see the shades of grey. She saw them in herself and in the people around her. Even Sirius had his shades of grey, although they didn't trouble him as often as they did other people. It was probably the reason, above everything, that he would never get on with Severus Snape- he'd decided long ago that 'Snivellus' was bad, that he fell into the black category, and almost nothing would be able to change that. In the same way, there was almost nothing Harry Potter would be able to do to dislodge himself from the white category. After all, Aberforth Dumbledore still fell into that category, and after his questionable conduct! There was only one person who had ever managed to switch from one side to the other in Sirius' mind and Narcissa knew him well enough to know that Peter Pettigrew's betrayal still tore at him, many years after the fact.
It was this thought that began to make her anger slide away. Not entirely slide away, but Wormtail was the proof that Sirius did see the shades of grey. He didn't always understand them, but he saw them. He'd spent decades wondering why Peter had done it, decades wondering what he could've done and decades feeling guilty about doubting Remus. It was Wormtail who truly inspired Sirius' hate for the dark forces, not his family. He'd hated his parents and his family and everything old pureblood families usually stood for, and fought against them, but Peter had spurred him to the next level. It was because of him that Sirius could not understand how Narcissa could still love her mother- Sirius was still at a point where 'tarring with the same brush' was the most painless thing to do. Accepting that Narcissa still managed to love her mother despite everything would have to one day lead to him accepting that yes, Peter had once really been a trusted friend. That Peter Pettigrew had been a good friend, a close friend, a Marauder.
Perhaps that day would never come, but Narcissa hoped for his sake that it would, if only for his own peace of mind. If he could accept Peter, perhaps one day he might even be able to forgive and accept himself.
She turned at the sound of rustling in the near distance. Although it was starting to get dark, she could clearly see the outline of a dog walking across the lawn.
The dog padded over to her quietly, pausing a few metres away to gauge her reaction. When she nodded, it came right over to her and put its head in her lap as if it had always belonged right there. Idly, she stroked the dog's fur and smiled despite herself as it let out a contented sort of growl.
She knew this old dog very well, and knew that this was about as close to an apology as she was likely to get. She also knew that somehow this dog had a great deal of charisma and could charm birds from trees.
"Snuffles," she said. "You're getting grey fur. What am I to do with you?"
Snuffles looked up at her with big eyes, and she knew he was trying to decide whether she was still angry or not. He put his head back down in her lap and let her continue stroking his fur. She reached down to tickle his tummy, and within a second there was a man in place of the dog. She smiled in spite of herself at the grin on his face, before remembering that, yes she was angry with him. Not as angry as she had been, but quite a lot.
"I'm sorry," he said without prompting. "I really am."
Narcissa had nothing to reply with. Getting Sirius to admit he was actually wrong sometimes was a hard thing to do.
"I want to understand what it was like, I really do," he said, taking her silence as an opportunity. "I'm not sure that I ever will, though. Maybe that's not a bad thing."
"Sirius-"
"No, let me finish. I like Jamie not having all that much idea of his family. I really do. I know Harry hates that Richard and the twins don't have grandparents around, but his parents, his grandparents, were good people. Mine weren't. Some of yours weren't and I don't want Jamie to have to know that. Not yet at least. Honestly, I really... I don't like even admitting to myself that I was spawned by that... woman and her unsuspecting prey. Well, he wasn't really unsuspecting at all, actually."
"Sirius, the only way we will ever learn from our mistakes is to remember them."
"What?"
"I wasn't going to sit Jamie down in front of my mother's tomb and start saying how wonderful she was. She wasn't. I'm not lying when I say she stood for everything I'm opposed to. But Jamie deserves to know where he comes from, and he deserves to know that not all of it is bad, but that where he comes from does not dictate who he will become."
Sirius looked at her suspiciously and said, "All right Dumbledore, what did you do with her?"
Narcissa laughed.
"It is me, you idiot. How much worse do you think it will be if one day we sit him down and say 'now look here, Jamie, I know you think everything's fabulous and good, but your grandmother was so infatuated with the worst dark wizard of our time that when he was apparently defeated she killed herself?'"
"Well..."
"Or how about telling him about the most ancient and noble house of Black, hmm? You know I love you and your son loves you, but finding out about the not-so-illustrious history of your family will be a bit of a shock."
"I-"
"It didn't dictate what you became any less than being a little bit Borgia dictated what I became. Although perhaps my sentence with Lucius was enough for that. You know as well as I do that we can pick and choose what parts of our families we decide to follow and emulate."
"Some of us had less to choose from," he grumbled, his gaze darkening as it always did when thinking of the people he came from.
"Exactly! Sirius, you're the perfect example of how your family does not make you who you are!"
He seemed to looked equal parts pleased and uncomfortable with this declaration. He sighed heavily, and all 48 years of his age seemed to settle in his face for a long time.
"Fine. Take him. Teach him. Anything to stop him being anything like them."
"All right."
"But-" he stopped.
"What?"
"Don't not come to the Burrow. It's thirty years since they died. For Harry's sake, I think we should all be there."
"Sirius, I miss Lily as much as you miss James. We were never not going to come."
"What?"
"You're an idiot, Sirius!" she said, now giggling, realising that this entire fight had been almost completely in vain. "I was only trying to tell you we might be a little bit late!"
"What?"
"Oh... Never mind!"
"You were always going to come to the Burrow?"
"Of course I was! What kind of heartless mare do you take me for? Of course I was!"
"Oh. Well you didn't say that."
"You didn't give me the chance."
"Oh."
"Yes. Oh."
"Is there any amount of grovelling that will make up for this oversight on my part?"
"Oversight?"
"Extreme and careless oversight," he amended.
"That was never the point of this argument."
"I know," he said sincerely. "I'm glad we had it."
"You are?" she asked dryly, rubbing her swollen eyes. "I'm so happy for you."
"I think it cleared the air."
"You mean, you finally got angry enough to ask me about Lucius? It's only taken you... eight years?"
"Much longer than that. I've been dying to ask you since you turned up at Hogwarts that night."
"That's a long time. I didn't know you had such self-control."
"You'd be amazed."
"I most certainly would not. I know you far too well."
"Oh yeah?" he asked, cocky grin turned up to its maximum effect.
"I know, for instance, that you must be the cheekiest, most insufferable person alive."
"True."
"And the randiest old dog I know."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," he replied, grin still cocky. She laughed at him, despite not wanting to. He pulled her head down to kiss her for a moment. When she pulled away, the cocky grin was gone.
"I love you," he whispered. "No matter what."
She smiled, thinking that sometimes, black and white was never really a bad thing.
"I love you back," she replied, knowing that although this thought was cliche even in her head- she said it with no real shades of grey at all.
*
The End
It might be important for you to note/remember that DDD was written before OotP and gave Narcissa very specific genealogy. She was not born a Black, but has married into what remains of the mischievous and cocky house of Black. Although Andromeda and Bellatrix are indeed Sirius' cousins and he had a brother Regulus, Narcissa is not part of that family. She is in fact, the cousin of George Richards, dead hero and Maura's One True Love. However, she is also, through her maternal line, descended from the Borgias, a dark pureblood family.
Oh yeah, and cos it was pre-OotP, Sirius AIN'T dead!
Chapter Summary: Because everyone has shadows in their past and everyone sees the shades of grey.
*
Black. White. Shades of Grey.
Dogstar, Alderley Edge, Cheshire. November 2011.
"You're mental, woman!"
"Not half as off my trolley as you are!"
Sirius and Narcissa Black's arguments always ended up plumbing the depths of adolescent insults. She'd always thought it was because it was easier that way, because then it was never entirely serious. After far too many years feeling nothing but serious, it was a nice change.
They'd only been married for eight years, but it always felt like much longer. It was probably something to do with them having known each other for so many years. Was it since they were eleven, or before?
She remembered now: Salome Parkinson's fifth birthday. Sirius and Narcissa were both eight years old. It was one of Narcissa's first run-ins with the snooty pureblood set- her father, upright and moral Roger Richards, had managed to keep his precious girl away from the nastier elements of the magical world. Her mother Bathsheba, on the other hand, was a Borgia through and through, and was more than happy to have her precious girl mixing with the Parkinsons, Borgias, Malfoys, Blacks and other 'Pureblood and Proud' families.
It turned out that Narcissa didn't much enjoy spending her day with the snobby children. Although it had been Salome Parkinson's birthday, only two people stood out in her mind. The first was an older boy, who stood out for his complete, flat-out refusal to join in with the little kids. He was clearly there under duress and made no effort to disguise his contempt for the proceedings. Narcissa remembered two things about him clearly: his sneer and his shining, golden hair. She hadn't spoken to Lucius Malfoy that day, but remembered him vividly just the same.
The other was a boy only eleven days older than Narcissa, but just as unhappy to be there as Lucius. Although he was wearing the same kind of fancy dress robes as every other child, his looked so much scruffier, as if he'd slept in them for two days before coming to the party. His black hair was messy and he had ink on his hands. She remembered the ink on his fingers well, and being shocked that anyone would be happy to walk around like that. He wasn't at all happy about being at the party, but where Lucius Malfoy sat quietly sneering, this boy chose to wreak havoc instead. His mother had been forced to take him home, while his little brother stayed behind and got cake. Narcissa knew even then, that the black haired boy had got exactly what he wanted. He always did.
Almost always, anyway.
***
"I don't see why this is such a problem!" Narcissa yelled at Sirius, who made a derisive sort of snorting sound.
"It's a problem because you want to take my son to the grave of one of Voldemort's groupies instead of going to the Burrow for Halloween!"
"My mother was NOT one of Voldemort's groupies!" she shrieked, vaguely aware that this was not going to be the sort of argument that was resolved by willingly descending to childish banter.
"No? What do you call an addled minded old broad who kills herself the day after her precious Dark Lord was defeated by baby Harry Potter?"
"She believed in what he believed in, not the methods!"
"Just like every other pureblood. After Voldemort lost," Sirius sniped.
"Perhaps so, but she was my mother, Sirius!" she shouted. "My mother! She wasn't perfect, and I never agreed with her about that stuff, but she was my mother nonetheless."
"A bad one, if you ask me."
"I didn't ask you," she said tartly. "It's been thirty years. I just want to see her. I hardly ever go down there these days."
"Fine, but why do you have to take Jamie?"
"Because it's his grandmother! I just want him to see the stone. Just once, so at least he knows he had a grandmother!"
"You don't see me dragging him to the Black crypt to prove the existence of a grandmother."
"I know. But I never hated my mother."
"Well more fool you," he shouted, and she knew she'd crossed a line bringing his mother into it. There was only one rule to talking about Sirius' family: don't. Still, she was determined on this point.
"I'm taking him down there and there isn't a thing you can do about it!"
"Why can't you go the day after? The day your bloody mother actually died!"
"Because, as you well know, Jamie has school that day! I can't just pull him out of school!"
"So go on your own!"
"Don't make me explain again, Sirius!"
"What do you care about some bloody Borgia anyway? Bunch of inbred, bigoted, evil and semi-evil... morons!"
"How dare you!"
"Like you care about the Borgias! Come on, you know you don't! What's this about?"
"She was my mother, Sirius! I loved her! After my dad died, she was all I had."
"She sold you to Lucius Malfoy!"
"No she didn't!"
"Might as well have. Waited until your dad died and then swooped."
"How dare you!"
"Are you going to stand there and tell me you married Malfoy entirely of your own free will?"
Silence. This question had been hanging over their heads for many years- perhaps since she resumed her relationship with Sirius after the war, or perhaps even since the moment she married Malfoy in 1978. Sirius had not had the courage to ask it, and she had not had the courage to answer it.
"No," she replied. He looked visibly relieved. "But if you want me to tell you I was miserable from the moment I married him to the moment I left him, I can't do that."
"What?" All the air seemed to be sucked out Sirius' lungs.
"I can't stand here and tell you I hated every second, because I didn't. Did I dislike him? Intensely. Always? No. There were a few times, in the beginning, when I liked him. Not loved, never loved. I allowed myself to be happy with my lot, especially after Lily and James died, and you ended up in Azkaban. I didn't want to marry him, that's true. But I was not miserable for twenty whole years. It was only later that it got truly horrible. I can't tell you I hated it all the time, because I didn't. I can't tell you that I didn't like the carefree life of the idle rich, of the society wife. I did, for a while. More than that, I had Draco, and when he was at home with me, life was never truly awful."
"Malfoy used to put you under Imperious to go out! When he let you out, that is."
"I know," she said with a heavy sigh, wondering what she could say to make her feelings clear. "I'll never forgive him for the things he did to me. The only truly good thing he ever did for me was letting the isolation charms at Azkaban incinerate him. It might have been the last of many cowardly acts, but it gave me my complete freedom."
"You're unbelievable! You liked him?" Sirius was apparently still on the earlier point.
"He could be considerate sometimes. I didn't realise at the time it was a sham. I was young, Sirius! When he said he loved me, I believed him! I didn't ever return the feelings, although I parroted the words back to him convincingly enough. And this is what this is all about, isn't it?"
"What?"
"You don't care whether I go to my mother's grave or not. You care that she's the one who arranged for me to marry Lucius. I've been married to you for years and you're still jealous of a murdering, wife-beating, child-abusing bastard I came to truly hate and despise!"
"But you liked him?" he repeated.
"Yes! Fine, I admit it! When Draco was very young, our life wasn't all bad. Voldemort was gone, so I didn't have to face the knowledge that my husband was a Death Eater. I had a beautiful son I loved more than life itself. What else was there? My parents were both dead. You were locked up, my best friend was dead and her son was who-knew-where. I resigned myself to it, I suppose. How do you think I feel now, knowing that there was a time I was contented to live that life? How do you think it feels now, knowing that once upon a time, I thought he was a decent enough man?"
Narcissa was sure she'd never been this angry. Not ever before. Sirius seemed just as surprised. She continued to speak.
"I hate him, Sirius! He made the rest of my life a misery, which makes those happy times all the worse! I hate him! You know what, I do hate that my mother set me up with him, but I loved her for other things! She wasn't some fairytale evil witch, she was my mother! I hated some of the things she did and almost everything she stood for, but I loved her because she was my mother!"
After her outburst, Narcissa found that she couldn't bear to be around him any longer, still glaring at her. She picked up her cloak and stormed out into the garden. She didn't linger on the patio, but kept right on walking. She kept on walking right to the edge of the vast lawn. There, under the shade of an oak tree, she sat down and began to cry.
***
Thoughts swirled around in her head, fighting for her attention. The struggles and contradictions she'd fought so long to keep under had made their way to the forefront of her consciousness and she couldn't bear it.
She'd never understood how her mild-mannered, liberal-minded father had ended up with her mother and understood even less how they seemed to love each other. As a child she'd certainly loved them both, but by the time she was at Hogwarts, she thought of her mother as something of a prejudiced harridan. She wasn't lying to Sirius when she said she loved her mother, but she also knew that she was defending Bathsheba more than she really wanted to. She wasn't lying when she said she loved her mother, but she disagreed with everything her mother had ever stood for.
She hadn't been lying when she told Sirius there were times she'd liked her life with Lucius. It was hard for her to explain it to him, because it was hard to understand it herself. She felt guilty for having felt contented with her life at one point. Not really for very long, and she knew full well that what came after it cancelled out any good. That's why she felt guilty she supposed, for remembering that it hadn't always been gut-wrenching horror, that she hadn't always recoiled at her husband's mere look. For once believing that he really had been coerced into working for Voldemort. Perhaps for being persuaded into marriage in the first place. For not getting out of it earlier. For being as passive as she was in regards to his tutelage of Draco. She hadn't known at the time where it was leading, but she was not a fool and remembered suspecting.
Everything had changed in 1991. The return of Harry Potter to the wizarding world had started a chain reaction that culminated in the war, and for her, in leaving her husband. She loved Harry for that, for enabling her to leave the life she had not wanted to begin with and the life she had come to hate. She loved Harry even more for the world he created that allowed her son to find the courage to stand up to his father and then move on from it.
Sirius would never understand the conflict she had inside her. She loved him dearly, but everything was black and white for him. He hated his mother, his father and his brother. He hated Voldemort and Peter Pettigrew. He hated Lucius Malfoy. He loved Narcissa and Jamie. He loved James, Lily and Remus. He loved Harry. He hated bad things and liked good things. He didn't understand, simply could not understand, how she could love her mother. Perhaps his parents had been so truly awful that there had been nothing to love (she wouldn't be surprised- she had met Mrs Black as a child) and so he could not conceive of there being anything to love about Bathsheba.
Everything in black and white. She envied that element of his personality. She would love for her thoughts and feelings to be so easy. That way she could choose to hate her mother for her archaic, bigoted views and the trust she put in Voldemort to solve the 'problem'. She could then forget all about the granite gravestone bearing the name Bathsheba Borgia Richards, forget she ever had a mother. That would be easy. It would not be true. Ultimately, Narcissa would always see the shades of grey. She saw them in herself and in the people around her. Even Sirius had his shades of grey, although they didn't trouble him as often as they did other people. It was probably the reason, above everything, that he would never get on with Severus Snape- he'd decided long ago that 'Snivellus' was bad, that he fell into the black category, and almost nothing would be able to change that. In the same way, there was almost nothing Harry Potter would be able to do to dislodge himself from the white category. After all, Aberforth Dumbledore still fell into that category, and after his questionable conduct! There was only one person who had ever managed to switch from one side to the other in Sirius' mind and Narcissa knew him well enough to know that Peter Pettigrew's betrayal still tore at him, many years after the fact.
It was this thought that began to make her anger slide away. Not entirely slide away, but Wormtail was the proof that Sirius did see the shades of grey. He didn't always understand them, but he saw them. He'd spent decades wondering why Peter had done it, decades wondering what he could've done and decades feeling guilty about doubting Remus. It was Wormtail who truly inspired Sirius' hate for the dark forces, not his family. He'd hated his parents and his family and everything old pureblood families usually stood for, and fought against them, but Peter had spurred him to the next level. It was because of him that Sirius could not understand how Narcissa could still love her mother- Sirius was still at a point where 'tarring with the same brush' was the most painless thing to do. Accepting that Narcissa still managed to love her mother despite everything would have to one day lead to him accepting that yes, Peter had once really been a trusted friend. That Peter Pettigrew had been a good friend, a close friend, a Marauder.
Perhaps that day would never come, but Narcissa hoped for his sake that it would, if only for his own peace of mind. If he could accept Peter, perhaps one day he might even be able to forgive and accept himself.
She turned at the sound of rustling in the near distance. Although it was starting to get dark, she could clearly see the outline of a dog walking across the lawn.
The dog padded over to her quietly, pausing a few metres away to gauge her reaction. When she nodded, it came right over to her and put its head in her lap as if it had always belonged right there. Idly, she stroked the dog's fur and smiled despite herself as it let out a contented sort of growl.
She knew this old dog very well, and knew that this was about as close to an apology as she was likely to get. She also knew that somehow this dog had a great deal of charisma and could charm birds from trees.
"Snuffles," she said. "You're getting grey fur. What am I to do with you?"
Snuffles looked up at her with big eyes, and she knew he was trying to decide whether she was still angry or not. He put his head back down in her lap and let her continue stroking his fur. She reached down to tickle his tummy, and within a second there was a man in place of the dog. She smiled in spite of herself at the grin on his face, before remembering that, yes she was angry with him. Not as angry as she had been, but quite a lot.
"I'm sorry," he said without prompting. "I really am."
Narcissa had nothing to reply with. Getting Sirius to admit he was actually wrong sometimes was a hard thing to do.
"I want to understand what it was like, I really do," he said, taking her silence as an opportunity. "I'm not sure that I ever will, though. Maybe that's not a bad thing."
"Sirius-"
"No, let me finish. I like Jamie not having all that much idea of his family. I really do. I know Harry hates that Richard and the twins don't have grandparents around, but his parents, his grandparents, were good people. Mine weren't. Some of yours weren't and I don't want Jamie to have to know that. Not yet at least. Honestly, I really... I don't like even admitting to myself that I was spawned by that... woman and her unsuspecting prey. Well, he wasn't really unsuspecting at all, actually."
"Sirius, the only way we will ever learn from our mistakes is to remember them."
"What?"
"I wasn't going to sit Jamie down in front of my mother's tomb and start saying how wonderful she was. She wasn't. I'm not lying when I say she stood for everything I'm opposed to. But Jamie deserves to know where he comes from, and he deserves to know that not all of it is bad, but that where he comes from does not dictate who he will become."
Sirius looked at her suspiciously and said, "All right Dumbledore, what did you do with her?"
Narcissa laughed.
"It is me, you idiot. How much worse do you think it will be if one day we sit him down and say 'now look here, Jamie, I know you think everything's fabulous and good, but your grandmother was so infatuated with the worst dark wizard of our time that when he was apparently defeated she killed herself?'"
"Well..."
"Or how about telling him about the most ancient and noble house of Black, hmm? You know I love you and your son loves you, but finding out about the not-so-illustrious history of your family will be a bit of a shock."
"I-"
"It didn't dictate what you became any less than being a little bit Borgia dictated what I became. Although perhaps my sentence with Lucius was enough for that. You know as well as I do that we can pick and choose what parts of our families we decide to follow and emulate."
"Some of us had less to choose from," he grumbled, his gaze darkening as it always did when thinking of the people he came from.
"Exactly! Sirius, you're the perfect example of how your family does not make you who you are!"
He seemed to looked equal parts pleased and uncomfortable with this declaration. He sighed heavily, and all 48 years of his age seemed to settle in his face for a long time.
"Fine. Take him. Teach him. Anything to stop him being anything like them."
"All right."
"But-" he stopped.
"What?"
"Don't not come to the Burrow. It's thirty years since they died. For Harry's sake, I think we should all be there."
"Sirius, I miss Lily as much as you miss James. We were never not going to come."
"What?"
"You're an idiot, Sirius!" she said, now giggling, realising that this entire fight had been almost completely in vain. "I was only trying to tell you we might be a little bit late!"
"What?"
"Oh... Never mind!"
"You were always going to come to the Burrow?"
"Of course I was! What kind of heartless mare do you take me for? Of course I was!"
"Oh. Well you didn't say that."
"You didn't give me the chance."
"Oh."
"Yes. Oh."
"Is there any amount of grovelling that will make up for this oversight on my part?"
"Oversight?"
"Extreme and careless oversight," he amended.
"That was never the point of this argument."
"I know," he said sincerely. "I'm glad we had it."
"You are?" she asked dryly, rubbing her swollen eyes. "I'm so happy for you."
"I think it cleared the air."
"You mean, you finally got angry enough to ask me about Lucius? It's only taken you... eight years?"
"Much longer than that. I've been dying to ask you since you turned up at Hogwarts that night."
"That's a long time. I didn't know you had such self-control."
"You'd be amazed."
"I most certainly would not. I know you far too well."
"Oh yeah?" he asked, cocky grin turned up to its maximum effect.
"I know, for instance, that you must be the cheekiest, most insufferable person alive."
"True."
"And the randiest old dog I know."
"You say that like it's a bad thing," he replied, grin still cocky. She laughed at him, despite not wanting to. He pulled her head down to kiss her for a moment. When she pulled away, the cocky grin was gone.
"I love you," he whispered. "No matter what."
She smiled, thinking that sometimes, black and white was never really a bad thing.
"I love you back," she replied, knowing that although this thought was cliche even in her head- she said it with no real shades of grey at all.
*
The End
