#a marked queue

[purestpeacock]

                                    " Don't you d a r e —                                           Don't you DARE blame my husband ! "                                                    — said Narcissa, in a low and deadly voice.

[purestpeacock]

A FLOWER WITHOUT A WAND: An Impossible Affection

Every family produced a Squib now and then; it was something to be ashamed of certainly, but it was nothing to be ruined over. Especially for a family as pure and respected as the Blacks. Besides, they had sired two undeniably powerful and talented witches already so no one could doubt their blood. It was just a fluke that Narcissa didn’t have magic, not a commentary on the family.

“They pushed their luck, with three,” some whispered. “What did they expect, with the other two so strong? There was nothing left for the third!” Of course there had always been families who over-bred, whelping scores of children far beyond any sort of common decency, all of whom had magic -- so it wasn’t like it really ran out. But then again, Bellatrix and Andromeda were both uncommonly powerful and gifted witches, so perhaps there really had been no magic left for poor Narcissa. Regardless of the reason, the fact remained: the youngest Black daughter was a Squib and nothing could change that.

Nothing could change Lucius’s interest in her, either. The problem of course was that it was so hard to tell that a child was a Squib; they might just be a late bloomer, or perhaps they were overshadowed by boisterous and bold older sisters. And if their siblings and cousins all had magic, well, why would parents be looking for a Squib after producing such prodigious magical talents with their first two children? Narcissa had been nearly nine before anyone had even begun to wonder at the fact that she hadn’t shown any specific manifestations of magic yet, and by then it was too late: she had already been introduced to all the other children and there was no sweeping her back under the rug.

Besides, she was a charming and lovely girl, and if she didn’t have magic at least she had obedience; where her older sisters were talented they were also troublesome and Narcissa, at least, was never a problem -- perhaps because she knew that she was there on sufferance and could be shuffled-off to Muggle spheres if she ever became more trouble than she was worth, or perhaps simply because she had grown-up in the shadow of two such irrepressible sisters. Whatever the reason she was charismatic and polite and well-spoken and it was hard to think of her as something lesser despite her lack of magic.

So she stayed at her parents’ house while her sisters went to Hogwarts, and she still got invited to all the parties just as though she were a normal person and no one ever talked about sending her away. Perhaps she had to suffer through some nasty whispers behind other people’s hands, had some insults slung her way -- but then, she had fearsome sisters to defend her wandless person, so there weren’t many insults or whispers either.

Lucius Malfoy, for his part, couldn’t stop thinking about her. They were the same age and had expected to go to Hogwarts together, when they were children; they had been friends. When he went to school and she didn’t he had written her letters, out of pity at first and then out of genuine interest because she was witty and clever and sometimes even scathing. He didn’t realize that he was falling in love until it was too late, but there wasn’t anything to do about that either: he was the only Malfoy heir and he couldn’t possibly marry a Squib, not even one from so pure and prestigious a family as the Blacks.

So he got the Mark and she stayed at home because what good was a Squib in a war? But they still wrote, and they saw each other at parties, and he still loved her even while he went through the dutiful motions of choosing an appropriate bride to help him carry-on the family name and line. But then the Dark Lord fell and everything changed. Now the world was no longer split between magic and Muggle, but was back to the way it had once been before the Statute separated them -- back when Malfoys had married for money and power, not purity. There was violence and strife between the two sides of course, but when wasn’t there violence and strife and sides? Lucius didn’t care about that. What he cared about was the family name, and duty, and reputation. He could further that through the Muggle world, just as the family had once done in days long ago. There was a new world to be forged and Lucius was determined that his family would be at the forefront, where they belonged: setting the fashion and leading the way and shaping this world to their whims, just as they had the old. It was time to burn that one down and embrace what came next, just like they had done before.

And maybe, just maybe, the new world that would rise out of the ashes would be one in which Malfoys could marry Squibs, if they wanted.