the last verse ; harry potter [2]

twenty ; narcissa's story

Weeks before Dumbledore had come to get Diana from the hospital all those years ago, she had felt the spark.

It was like a sleeping beast awaking inside of her. There was a cage, and her heart was a monster, and it was dark out when she felt it: the hot blood inside of her, her heart was alive, more alive than it had ever been. That night, she later found out, was the night poor Hufflepuff Cedric Diggory died. The night her father was brought back.

That night was the first of many. She felt the same waking inside of her at the Ministry of Magic the night that Sirius died: her father was right in front of her, and he was alive and a monster, but she felt it then. She felt it the night Dumbledore died, and the night Bill and Fleur's wedding was attacked.

She felt it now.

It was a dreary day, all gray rain clouds and the dewy smell of rain and her boots sloshed through the puddle-strewn street. She was close to the forest, where it was only a mile's hike to a tall hill overlooking Malfoy Manor. The leaves dripped rain onto her hair and eyelashes, and the soft twigs underneath snapped with each step. It was so quiet here, nothing like the forest at Hogwarts. She only caught brief glimpses of wildlife, but they were only fleeting.

The secluded manor belonging to the Malfoys was a dark dwelling, all shadows and sharp angles and dark greens, dark stone and pointed arches. It was not the homely atmosphere of the Burrow, which always smelled of cooking food and sounded of laughs. This was a place that smelled like death, a place of foreboding silence and empty stares, a place in which a broken family insists they're anything but. It made Diana's skin crawl, even the peacock Patronuses looked dark, even though they were creatures forged from light.

She wondered what happy memory Lucius Malfoy conjured when he created the Patronuses. In a place like this with a person like that, she couldn't imagine that he felt anything remotely reminiscent of happiness. That house was only one that held misery. The darkened windows of the manor were curtained with black silk, obstructing any view inside. On the left-most side of the house, a certain window stood out: instead of onyx curtains, they were emerald green.

The feeling in her stomach, the spark, sizzled at the sight of the manor.

Narcissa Malfoy was stooped upon a bench near the furthest treeline, far from the back garden and far from the back door to the Manor. She held a thick book in her hands, flipping the page every minute or so, and for a long time, Diana just watched in silence. Narcissa was far, but Diana could make out the solemn expression on her face, the way her platinum hair was more a silvery gray. Though she was a Malfoy, known for the terror they bring, she was not a scary woman; she resembled more of someone too miserable, too dark, someone who had been dragged too far into something they never wanted to enter. Narcissa and her son were startlingly similar in the way that they weren't the bad people everyone believed they were.

With nimble fingers, Diana twirled her wand in her hand like a baton. The manor looked relatively empty, only the simple brush of a curtain here and there or the very occasional guest at the front gates.

Diana Apparated to the forest on the other side of the mansion from where she had just been, the forest that Narcissa's bench had its back to. She landed closer than she had anticipated, and the sharp crack of her arrival caught Narcissa's attention.

The woman stiffened, and she turned her head to peer into the trees. Diana huddled behind a thick tree trunk, her breathing silent. She listened as Narcissa stood up, the added weight crushing the leaves at her feet.

"Homenum Revelio."

Narcissa was close, her voice clear and loud. The human-revealing charm let out a throaty hiss, which meant someone was near.