Dorcas almost felt guilty, guilty for letting her tongue slip in front of a child. She was almost there when Narcissa started speaking and all guilt and all feeling melted completely away. This wasn’t about Narcissa and Dorcas, not really, this was about the fire burning all around them. The two very different sides of the war that they fell on and the two very different ways that they had embraced how their upbringing made them. They’d started at base, both women in a powerful family with money and power at their fingertips, and Narcissa had embraced it with open arms, marrying Lucius Malfoy and spitting out his spawn because that was what women in their station did.
Dorcas had rebelled. She’d stepped outside of their small social circle and found people outside of it. She had given up everything because she had stopped believing in the ideals that others had tried to force on her. She was better in her own mind, because she was fighting to protect the people who weren’t offered a chance to protect themselves. Fighting against a man rallying people with more pure blood than he had, starting a war under a banner he had no business under.
Her eyes turned to Draco then, the little bouncing thing, cooing and happy to be there. She should bite her tongue, leave it alone. Unfortunately, Dorcas never had been great at that. “I do hope that the war torn world your son grows up in is worth it. Worth the violence. Worth the destroyed families and broken friendships. Worth the pain. Worth every child that was ripped away from their own parents because they weren’t pure enough. Your son gets to live in excess and lavish, while others are getting murdered. What kind of mother is okay with any child being hurt like that? Perfect you may be, but a perfect mother? You might need to re-read parenting books, find the chapters on empathy.”
Dorcas moved then, took the step that it took to get closer to Narcissa and offering her a toothy smile of her one. “Have a lovely day, Narcissa. Happy Valentines day.” With a pause, she shoved past the woman, mindful of the side the baby was on and going the other way. “And do send Lucius my regards.”
If Narcissa hadn’t grown up in the house she had, if her father hadn’t raised her with harsh words and a quick wand and her mother with vast amounts of distant and little validation, her face would have fallen. She would have flinched at Dorcas’ harsh words. But there was such a thing as compartmentalization. For years it had been impressed into her that some wixen were worthier than others and she was a shining example of that. She didn’t mix with the lower class or cut her nose off to spite her face. Narcissa stayed where she belonged gladly, safe and comfortable.
What she couldn’t stand for was any attack on her son or on her ability to be a good mother. Dorcas had come from her world. She had met the late Mrs. Black many times in her life. It was utterly clear even by the limited amount of behavior she had witnessed that Narcissa was already a much more hands on parent. How could she not be when a child of her own was all she had been working towards for years?
She bided her time, letting Dorcas rant on and even taking the shove that unbalanced her without a word. It wasn’t until Dorcas was a few feet away that Narcissa deemed that time had passed enough for her to speak. “Dorcas, before you go. Do remind me, what is it you’re doing for all those disadvantaged children? You speak on them with such authority that you must be doing something to help them and not only using them as a prop when you don’t know what to say in a discussion.” Pulling her cloak a little more securely around herself and adjusting Draco in her arms, Narcissa nodded her head in Dorcas’ direction. “Please make sure let me know what parenting books you recommend when you have your first child. Should I expect your owl in this decade or next? Happy Valentine’s Day to you as well and have a lovely birthday. Seeing you today has just been a gift. I do hope it won’t be too long until we see each other again.”
She gave a small wave with her free hand and turned away. Her face shifting back into the blank mask until she could find somewhere on this terrible street to pull herself together.
