The rain is cool against her porcelain flesh, face turned towards the heavens as Narcissa Black wanders aimlessly through the quad. The girl is properly drenched. The muggle dress - an old gift from Andromeda - that she’d pulled from the dregs of her trunk is practically stuck to her limbs and clinging to her form. She’s meant to be inside, of course - it’s well after hours and there’s a messy haired Gryffindor waiting to pick up their midnight meetings once more.
Certainly, it’s not as if she means to be out here.
It’s only that she needs to breathe and she can’t do it within the confines of her cloistered dorm room. Narcissa is afflicted with some unknown curse. Something clawing deep within her chest and tearing at her throat. Whatever it is, there’s something that tells her she can face it better out here. Each drag of air through her lungs is cold and welcome.
Somewhere from within, the blonde realizes she blames the necklace resting against her collar - yet another gift from her father. Her parents are always quick with some shiny jewel to divert her attentions and ease her mind. Oh yes, that was what she needed! As if such items were comparable to human compassion, empathy and understanding.
Junk! It was all junk! The wreckage left in her room was the physical imprint of her thoughts.
All of her laces and finery were in disarray. Every trinket and bauble her parents had thought to give her when they couldn’t be present themselves? They were all strewn across the floor in her attempt to find something that didn’t remind her of the museum she called a home and the emptiness that dwelt inside it. That was all she was, after all - an exhibit to gawk and look at! She wore what they told her and acted as instructed. Everything that she did was this carefully and cleverly orchestrated thing.
And yet where had it gotten her?
Narcissa was a creature of comfort. Happiness had never really been high on her list of desires, but stability and security had always reigned supreme. These were the things that were promised to her - the things due her for playing her part to absolute p e r f e c t i o n. This she had done. This she was still doing, and yet there was nothing to show for it but a shiny bauble to clasp at her throat. It might as well have been a hangman’s noose.
Suffocated. It was such a perfectly adequate word for how she was feeling. Ever since that wretched night she had surrounded herself with the very people that had broken her bubble of glass. Lucius and Bellatrix had ultimately destroyed the blanket of security she had thought wrapped tightly around herself. Whatever they did, whoever they did it to - she had been certain that she would always be safe. Above it, so to speak. She was a Black, nothing could harm her.
As long as she followed the path laid out before her without question, Narcissa would always have the stability, comfort and security that she needed. Perhaps the other students were all right about her? She was nothing but a sheep and all of those promises had turned out to be a lie.
Even now she smothered her feelings for the sake of others! There were no calming breaths after waking up in the infirmary - only calculated action. Narcissa couldn’t grieve or show the slightest weakness, instead she had to spend time with her attackers - love them, as she loved no others. Every ounce of energy had been devoted to making their lives easier and lessening the load on their shoulders while she carried her burden alone.
Even for her it had become too much and the moisture on her face is warmer than the rain falling down.
“Go back inside, James -”
Narcissa knows it’s him, but she turns around all the same, her blue gaze lifting through her lashes in a weary examination of his face. It’s hard to muster any sort of emotion to her words.
“- you’ll get your hair wet.”
"Are you positively insane?!”
The boy stands bellow a curtain of rain, narrowed eyes but just only adapting to the darkness of the stormy night. He’s angry, that much can be tell. The beat to his heart is mighty high, beating hard and reckless against his rib-cage, a thundering after each palpitation - dun, dun, dun - short of breath and a wand in hand. Holy fuck, he’d been terrified.
To go, and not see here there, where she was supposed to be...
“What - what the hell are you doing here, Cissy? Couldn’t you bloody tell me where you are?”
Raspy words grate at his throat , as if he wanted to scream and stay quiet at the same time. Could he demand her such a thing? To tell him where she’d be at all time and all moment, because he would go absolutely mad if anything else happened to her? Was that something friends were supposed to do? Was that something they could do?
James’d sauntered calmly to her dormitory, hand in pocket and wand in the other, hidden underneath the shield of his invisibility cloak. There was no need to check the map folded in his pocket; not at first, at least. For the past few days since the girl woke up and he could breathe again, he’d make it a point of never being a single second late to their meetings. The path to the Slytherin room had long become as familiar as that to his own den, sneaking through the secret darkened door with the snake on its knob, and walking to the same place he’d visited every single night he could.
Perhaps his first reaction should’ve not been to panic. When he spotted only three girls - among them a tiny wicked girl glancing at the door with a frown on her face, but an a single empty bed where she should’ve been, James’ first instinct was to run. To gather his mates and build a frantic, bloody search party if he had to! For fuck’s sake, he was about to wake up both of her sisters, if only to find out Narcissa’s whereabouts.
He could see the vapor of his breath, whirls of smoke floating and levitating into the air as the drops of cool Spring rain wash over his face. Soothing as the water was, he still made his way to the girl after placing the map back on his jacket’s pocket - quickly noting the shiny diamonds and expensive gems glinting with the spark of water and thunder on the floor. Dark hazel eyes fixated upon the young blonde’s face soon enough, the mere sight of those pale, sky blue eyes tugging at his heartstrings and twisting his insides. So once he reaches her sight, his arms embrace her at once - pulling close to him by her waist as he hugs her with no sense of control or prudence. Fuck sensibilities, and fuck limitations - he’d been bloody scared, and she was fine, at least to his naked eye.
“For Merlin’s fucking sake, will you at least leave a note next time? Something akin to James, I’ll be out playing in the bloody freezing rain, love, Cissy?”
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